Do Ghosts really exist? Help me to find the true answer.?

Question

I find it hard to believe that there isn't a scientific explanation for them, and I for one would like to know what it is I have therefore set up a little website if anyone would care to assist me in finding the answer.. if not please leave a reply here.

www.thebigones.co.uk

Answer 1

Yes, ghosts exists as a real human experience.

First you would have to define the term ghosts. The Society for Psychical Research went with the term "Apparition" as early as 1882 to mean the life like visual appearance of a person you knew not to be physically present at the location of your sighting. While dead people obviously qualify here so do people that are alive and somewhere else.

There are a multitude of different scientific explanations for ghost ranging from hallucinations to ESP. The problem is none fit all the reported observations and characteristics of ghosts. Thus, more than one explanation is probably required for different types of ghost experiences.

Falling asleep or just waking up may be explained by waking dreams but this hardly applies to cases seen when a person was fully awake.

All of the books listed below address (at least in part) your question.

Answer 2

The question of proving that which does not exist is up to the believer. There will always be those that believe in ghosts, Bigfoot, and the democratic party as long as we do not sterilize retards.

Answer 3

All the gobbledygook on this thread ignores a simple fact.  

No one in the history of mankind has ever demonstrated a single instance of the supernatural.

Fame and riches await the first person to prove ghosts exist.

Answer 4

I do not drink, I do not smoke, I do not take drugs.  I used to think ghosts were interesting, but didn't know if they were real or not ...

Then I saw a few, delivered a few messages that I had not idea what they meant but the receiver certainly did, and I have seen some amazing things.

I think adc (after death communication) is an incredible gift.  Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

Check out this site:

http://www.after-death.com

Answer 5

Why do you find it hard to believe?  People believe in ghosts not because of science. They believe in ghosts because (a) they are prone to beliefs in the supernatural and (b) they had some kind of experience once that they didn't understand, and call it a ghost.

Sure, observations are a legitimate and necessary part of science, but anecdotal and irreproducible observations don't make for reliable evidence. Moreover, science cannot proceed on observations alone. The mechanism for scientific progress is the formation of hypotheses and theories.

Science progresses by building new hypotheses on top of established theories, like bricks in a wall. Those hypotheses are either confirmed, or modified, or discarded. The ones that survive falsification to be confirmed and become new theories are the new layer of bricks. You can't hang a brick in mid-air -- you have to build the brick wall bottom-up. That is how science marches forward. Unfortunately, with ghosts and "paranormal research" you have people trying to hang their bricks in the air because there is absolutely nothing in our current scientific knowledge that directly (or even indirectly) predicts the existence of disembodied spirits, much less in a way that is testable and falsifiable.

Answer 6

Yes they do exist.

Answer 7

Spirits ghosts call them what you will, but there are things that simply cannot be explained otherwise.

Like people who have operations and see what's going on from another place in the room. Sometimes you wonder who is more ignorant believers or non-believers.

I wonder how many of these science preachers would have been fervent ghost preachers centuries ago - because that's what they were supposed to think back then.

http://www.nderf.org/vonlommel_conscious...

These out of body experiences I think are closely related to the existence of ghosts, because they show conciousness can exist in the absence of a body (or at least detached from a non-functioning body - scientfically declared so).

Answer 8

No they don't.like Santa and Leprechauns.They are myth and superstition.I'll give you a link for some good investigations.Mostly people want to believe so the do.Despite what their good sense tells them

Answer 9

TR is totally off the mark. People believe in ghosts due to a lack of education and/or rational thought IN a nutshell, they are either feeble minded or extremely gullible.

Answer 10

There is no evidence of ghosts, therefore there is no evidence for science to examine.  Until that changes, as far as science is concerned ghosts are magical creations of the imagination of some people.

Answer 11

Obviously, many people purporting to have seen ghosts suffered from sleep deprivation, emotional problems, or were drinking or have used illicit narcotics.

Also, certain drugs have been shown to create "flashbacks", so even if a paranormal witness only smoked PCP laced pot once, (for example) months or years ago, there is nothing to say that they are credible witnesses however sincere they may be.

Some people will always believe in the easiest answer no matter how irrational. "Ghosts" being the easy answer here.

But assuming we are talking of credible and scientific or otherwise reasonable investigations, try to consider the following:

The mind is very powerful in both memory and creativity.

The human mind is also very capable at "filling the gaps". If we see a pattern, say a fence or a row of people all wearing the same colours, our mind tends to group these associations together so that later, even though there were elements missing or different, our brains only remember everything alike.

Sometimes these functions can become crossed, causing us to "remember" things our minds made up. Ghosts always seem to appear when people are tired, asleep or in dark strange places.

The older we get, the more dreams and memories become muddled, so that we have a harder time distinguishing the two.

That is the psychology answer.

Since this is the science part of yahoo, I will give you another scientific viewpoint.

It is JUST BARELY POSSIBLE scientifically for ghosts to MAYBE exist. Our minds and therefore our personalities are formed by extremely weak electric currents in our brains. Even though our bodies die and replenish body cells over months to years, our thoughts, and therefore our "selves" persist.

You are not the same pile of cells now that you were when you were born or when you were a 10 year old, but despite the different body, you are still you. Your memories and personality persist.

Also, it is well documented that some people suffering from a near death experience can still come back several minutes to almost an hour after being clinically "dead".

(Some report seeing visions of an afterlife, but scientifically this is likely a psychological response to a universal biological experience)

Therefore, your mind CAN persist beyond your body, after a fashion. At least for a brief while.

Can this mind or tiny electrical field persist without a body?

Can a "ghost" of someone really exist?

Probably.

But can it exist for weeks, months even centuries as parapsychologists suggest?

Not likely.

Your brain puts out the heat equivelant of a 100 watt bulb.

Your thought energy would be something less than 1% of that.

For 1 watt of cohesive energy to "float around" undisturbed by other energy fields, or for it to not dissipate or float away seems unlikely in the extreme.

If you can prove there is a mechanism which allows these energy fields to persist, you will have won yourself a Nobel Prize.

Good luck

Answer 12

There is plenty of evidence.  Some of this was summarized in an article by Pulitzer prize-winning science writer Deborah Blum, in her article "Is Science Afraid of Ghosts?"

Check out the article.  Most of the best research was done by the British Society of Psychical Research.

Answer 13

Ghost do exist. Based on the research done, I found out that the Chinese believe in such existence of entities (ghosts/souls). The Chinese believed that on the Seventh Month of the Lunar Calendar, the h**l Gate will be open wide to free the tormented souls and roam the Earth for a month. This month is also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival. During this Month, chinese stage operas will be held. Usually the front few seats are left vacant so that the souls can seat and enjoy the show.

Offerings such as fruits and meat are placed with a few candles and joss papers. This are known as the Essentials. During the Month, these Essentials are a must. These offerings/Essentials is to appeased the tormented souls. Vulgar words must not be spoken in this Month.

I stumbled across lots of news regarding ghosts/souls. They exist in photos, dolls, paintings, musics, house, hospitals, cemetery, military campsite, dorms, toilet, etc...

There is a haunted painting sold on eBay. A few haunted dolls too. Even some heard it using the EVP system. Some claimed that they saw things in the toilet. Even my lecturer in highschool told me an incident happened to her. She is haunted by this ghost when she is the age of 16 like me. She stay in the dorm, and at one night, she can feel that a strong pressure is pressing against her even there is no one on top of her when she was asleep!

Well, we know what happen to us despite no scientific evidence prove them.

Answer 14

IMHO--and I mean no disrespect to anyone's beliefs--but anyone who doesn't believe in ghosts...has obviously never had contact with one. Hear a voice outside of your head (a voice that sounds very much like what you'd hear if you were to call a friend on the phone) when you know you're totally alone and then tell me you don't believe. Feel what it feels like when an angel wraps you in his wings to comfort you and tell me you don't believe. Or when you hear your dead father's voice beside your bed just as your drifting off to sleep. Feel the peace that envelops you when a lost soul finally crosses into the light. Or when your dead kitty curls up in the crook of your arm at night and begins to purr. I'm not sure there ARE measures for that, I certainly can't prove it to you, but I don't need to. I don't need scientific evidence to know it's real. Because I've felt it.

Ididn't used to believe either...until I experienced it for myself.

Love and light

Answer 15

The term ghost has been replaced by apparition in parapsychology, because the word ghost is deemed insufficiently precise.-In psychology and parapsychology, an apparition is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience.In scientific or academic discussion it is to be preferred to the term ‘ghost’ in respect of the following points:

*The term ‘ghost’ implies that some element of the human being survives death and, at least under certain circumstances, can make itself perceptible to living human beings. There are other, competing explanations of apparitions experiences.

* Firsthand accounts of apparitions experiences differ in many respects from their fictional counterparts in literary or traditional ghost stories.

* The content of apparitions experiences includes living beings, both human and animal, and even inanimate objects.

Answer 16

There are good explanations for them, it's just the "ghost hunters" don't want the plausible explanations, they want it to be ghosts.  There are no ghosts, there are no dragons, there are no unicorns, there is no Santa Claus.  We are just apes wired to see things in the dark so we run and hide so critters don't eat us.  

I always laugh at the ghost shows, what they pass off as "proof" is pretty thin.  So, instead of bad wiring, animals foraging for food at night, faulty equipment, or reflections off of the camera lense, you think it is a extra planar spirt from beyond the grave.  That's is quite the logical deduction.

Answer 17

People belive in God. People live their lives by a book.Why is it so hard to belive in ghosts? I think because people are scared, maybe they relate it with the devil, maybe they wont get anything out of believing like they do God. Nobody really knows for sure...anything. I dont think spirits are something you can belive in, its not like Santa...Spirits are the former remains of humans, bodies. I have had alot of experiences so thats why Im so sure they exsist. I have related stories of what i thought happened in  houses, and have found proof that proved those people lived there and what happened.I am not fully physic, (id be rich from the lotto!)but i am very sensitive i think everyone is born with it, but is not taught how to keep it, it is kinda like tuition something inside just tells you. People who dont believe its because they arent senseitive to spirits energy. It doesnt make you dumb if you believe..some things cant be fully explained we humans do not know everything.

Answer 18

I believe in spirits, I have experienced it myself you can believe what u want.

this is for berry

in the bible it does talk about spirits how do you think ppl are possesed and that is a fact that ppl have seen

Answer 19

i use to not believe in them and i use to laugh at people who would say anything about them. i thought they would do anything for attention. but when i had a few experiences myself it changed my mind. i got a whole new view of the way i felt about it.

Answer 20

in answer to TOP, the point of saying people who believe are feeble minded is absurd. I am ex Air Force, IQ tested as high as 150. I am a licensed insurance producer in the state of Colorado, licensed bounty hunter, and I have an Electrical degree. I have numerous certifications in different subjects and have raised 4 kids as a single dad. I have a paranormal Investigative group, and I have been involved in this since about 1999. I could see you when someone suggested the world was round instead of flat, you were the one saying, no its flat and you will fall off the edge of the earth and be eated by monsters.

I believe there is a huge probability ghosts exist and I don't ridicule those who don't believe. I would say it is you who is feeble.

Answer 21

No. If you look in the Bible then it will say it several places (I'll find them) that not in these words lol but Once your dead---Your dead! That means there is no ghosts or sprites or anything else not alive...

Hope I Helped...