Have you seen a ghost?

The results of Kevn's ghost poll got me wondering how many people here have seen a ghost.

My answer is assuming that a ghost is an entity seen that was not physical. I have no proof though. There were only three of us that saw it on several occasions, and my friend who was one of the witnesses is not very credible after he tried to commit suicide by cutting his wrists to the bone, because of what the doctors called psychotic episodes. I know his sanity will be questioned, and I know there is no reason for you to trust my sanity or his wife's sanity. I don't know if the entity is a dead person, what some people would call a demon, or something else not understood. I just know it was not physical.

We all saw lights in rooms that no one was in. They weren't lights that illuminated walls, they were balls of light that didn't seem to illuminate anything. The lights would be gone when we entered the rooms.

The next day after we would see the lights, pictures would often be on the floor and funiture would be knocked over. Only once was I in the room when something fell. Right before I walked into the kitchen, an almost all black painting the wife had made fell to the floor in an empty room.

The wife got taken to the hospital by her husband, after our CQ desk was called in the middle of work. She broke her leg falling down the stairs. She told us that something pushed her. She told everyone else that she tripped. Our leadership tried to prove that my friend pushed her down the stairs before work, and thought she had waited 5 hours to call into her husband's work to get him to take her to the hospital. They never were able to build a case for it though, ecspecially with her always claiming she tripped.

My friend insisted on using a Ouija board. I don't believe in them, but we used one. It didn't do anything. The little pointy thing never moved. Later that night my friend ran out of the house and tried to run down the nearby highway into oncoming traffic. We only know this, because when we got back from not being able to find him the cops showed up with him. They said he wouldn't tell them our Captain's or our First Sergeants number. They said they didn't want to arrest him, but they wanted to talk to our leadership. I gave them our CQ number, and an NCO took him, his wife, and me to the hospital to have him admitted into the psychological ward in the hospital. The ouija board was on the table when we left the house, but when we got back to the house the wife wanted me to look around the house. She was scared after the stairs incident, and one of the first thing I noticed was the ouija board was gone. We never found the ouija board again.

I don't have any photographs, and I don't have any proof. In this one house I'm positive there was a malevolent entity though. I saw and felt to many strange things in that house, and I'm positive of it. Everyone else can believe what they like. I don't really care what others believe.

It's a shame we can't ask multiple questions to do correlations in these polls. I saw the results of a Skeptic magazine poll years back that showed that the belief in aliens, ghosts, witches, and gods (of all flavors) were strongly correlated. I've always wanted to supplement that study with questions on geography, education, and ability to think analytically.

~Ulrika~

If onlie I wasent to stoopid to now wat ur impleyeing.

My sister and I saw an entity which we called a ghost when we were children, although we didn't tell each other about it until we were well beyond voting age. Her apparition shone like an angel, mine was .. opposite, an almost palpably sucking darkness. We feel that it was the same entity though, having had the same sensation on its appearance - that of a kind of gravity towards the entity.

No, I haven't personally (although other things I have, but that's an awfully long story). But my father, who's an extremely down to earth, non-alternative guy, used to stay in a hotel in Surrey in the UK. When he first stayed there he saw a ghost at the end of the bed in the middle of the night, an old woman, but was not afraid. Next morning he spoke to the staff and they told him that they didn't mention it because they had had no other free rooms available that night.

Anyway, after that he spent many other nights in the same hotel (which was close to where he was working at the time) and he always asked for the same room. And, more often than not, always saw the same woman with a smile on her face at the end of her bed. He'd get a cold chill and things and it would wake him up, but he said he'd just sit there watching. He stayed there, on and off, for about 6 months, as he was working away from home in the week.

He kinda got used to it. And he never told anybody other that the hotel and us (his family) about it. He's not into dramatics, or anything like that, and it didn't scare him. He was intrigued by the whole thing, more than anything else.

Put it like this, my experience freaked him out. But don't ask, I'm not telling.

Incidents I described happened in Hawaii. I'm originally from Indiana/Illinois/Missouri/New York/South Carolina in my childhood. I have always moved alot even when a kid. The husband was from New York and North Carolina. The wife was from New Mexico. The NCO that ranked one level above me and 3 levels above my friend who took him to the hospital, and was in the house quite a bit as well never saw anything. He was from New Mexico. I have a year left for my CIS degree in college. The husband is a drop out from some New York school of acting. The wife and NCO are both high school graduates. I'm a programmer, so I consider myself to think analytically. I have no idea how well the wife or NCO think analytically. I would assume you think the NCO thinks more analytically, because he thought all three of us were just getting more paranoid the more things happened. The husband was honestly found to have multiple psychological problems, but the military doctors never seemed to agree on what psychological disorder he had. I would say he had a very hard time thinking analytically. That is about all the information I'm willing to give. I don't think I'm supposed to nor do I want to give more specific RL detail in the forums. Hope that helps your correlating.

I used to see all kinds of ghosts, goblins and ET's..

Then i started taking Zyprexa and it all went away.

Briana Dawson

No, and I don't know if they exist since I haven't seen any evidence for or against.

Fascinating. What do you think about the invisible dragon that's reported to be in my garage?

~Ulrika~

I have not seen ghosts personally.

I don't assume an eye witness account of a ghost sighting is false from a bias.

If one is credible, and has no motive to lie, I assume they actually saw what they describe.

Education level has nothing to do with one's credibility.

A judge wouldn't believe one over another based soley on the fact one is more educated than the other.

If one is credible in every other way, it lends credibility to their eye witness account.

Hi Ulrika, hugs sweets

I think you must have a large garage, or a small dragon.

I think the question should be rephrased "how many of you have experienced something you can't explain that you associated with ghosts due to cultural conditioning?" er, or something like that.

Here's a related question... how many people that have seen what they believed were ghosts would have thought it was one if they had never heard of them and had no concept of a soul being able to exist outside the body? If you were clueless about all of that, thinking critically about what you saw, would you invent the concept of a ghost or disembodied soul on the basis of what you saw?

I saw a pic of Chip once.

Hello, fool.

~Ulrika~

That was just an orb, Nolan.

You left out my answer which would be "Yes, but I don't think they exist."

ah yes, the old saying: "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it"

Brilliant! I'm adding that to my repertoire.

~Ulrika~

Well, the shape my sister and I saw was roughly human and it spoke a few words to me, so I would have thought most likely that it was a person in a form I hadn't yet seen.

Kisses and hugs, my love. I'm dreaming of you.

Minnesota, BA UofMN, plus additional Computer science, Sr. System Engineer in IS.

My current house had many ghosts when I first moved in. I moved in Oct 1st, I was promptly visted by an older lady long white hair, bathrobe, ghost. On Halloween I was woken by a huge party in my living room, loud music, laughing, chatter. I was tired so I yelled at them to be quiet, I had to work the next day, and so they were. I lived alone at the time, these were not 'living' visitors. My boyfriend has since moved in with me. The ghosts are more reserved now than at first, but still let me know they have not left.

I wish I could claim credit for that one, I filched it from an Over the Edge show. Check out the archives at the serpentx archive , it came from the "it's all in your head" shows at the end of 2004.

It is purely because of cultural conditioning that some people call others delusional when they witness something that does not fit with the general culture's view of what is possible.
Why it is so important to impugn another's reality I'm not sure. It's not like someone claiming to have seen a ghost poses a real harm to anyone.

On the other hand, representing someone as not being in full possession of their mental and perceptual faculties can pose a real threat. Things are not as bad as they once were, but such accusations have often been enough to get another person locked up and tortured for being insane.

It's tyranny of mob-rule reality.

You might have a point, if those who claimed they believed in ghosts were in the minority.

~Ulrika~