Proof Of Survival: Ed. Andrew Honigman

[poliphilo]

Two reasons for believing people when they say they've had ghostly encounters:

1. Ghosts IRL are not very much like ghosts in fiction. If people were making things up you'd expect them to import fictional tropes: you know, sheeted spectres, blood-curdling laughter, all that Scooby stuff- and they don't.

2. There's a consistency about the reports. Ghosts have limited energy; they don't persist, they're accompanied by a drop in temperature, they can affect the physical environment- but not very much, they have an affinity with children, they can hack the telephone. There are things ghosts can do and things they can't. The evidence is anecdotal but it feels like a real phenomenon is being described.

And here's a third reason, of sorts: ghosts are common. When you deny their existence you're saying you think a very large proportion of your fellow humans- the people who say they've had ghostly encounters- are lying, delusional or stupid- and I'm just not that much of a cynic.

I've never seen a ghost but I've frequently brushed up against the odd. I don't have any difficulty believing the  "reality" we inhabit is permeable. 

Comments

[chochiyo-sama.livejournal.com]

Well, I have seen a "full bodied apparition" up close and personal. It did not speak to me. I have also seen other "things" which I don't know how to classify. I have heard and even smelled things that cannot possibly be "real."

I think I told you the story of the ghost lady I saw floating in my college boyfriend's bedroom when I went down to Tennessee to meet his parents. I'll tell it again, if you want me too, just tell me.

As a young child (between the ages of 6 and 10), as I lay in my bunk bed which faced the doorway through which I could see the stairway, I watched many, many pulsating, faintly glowing, tinkling glob-like "orbs" float up from the bottom of the stairway, make the turn at the landing, float just a bit higher, and *pop* (like the sound you can make by putting your finger in your mouth and popping it out), and vanish.

In my old house, I would wake in the night to smells of bread baking or roast beef and potatoes or bacon and eggs. Sometimes I would say aloud, "If you are going to cook in my house, you could at least offer me some!" There was never any response. I also often smelled cigarette smoke, especially when I was at my desk working on my computer. It felt as if someone were leaning over my back, reading over my shoulder, while smoking a cigarette. When I was trying to go to sleep, it was as if someone were sitting on the edge of my bed, smoking, and blowing the smoke in my face. I defeated that by putting mentholadum under my nose.

Frequently, while I was either lying in bed or sitting on my front porch (an enclosed one), I would hear the distant murmur of a group of people. It reminded me of times in childhood when I'd be upstairs in bed while my parents had people over to play cards. You could hear the conversation but it would be faint and distant. I couldn't make out words, even when I listened very closely, but I could hear the murmer and occasional chuckles.

I am not a compulsive liar, nor am I delusional or stupid. In fact, I am pretty smart. :)

Also, I think that the ability to experience this kind of thing may be genetic, as all of my siblings and some of my nieces and nephews have also seen and heard and felt things that cannot be explained. While he was in the army in Germany, my brother experienced an aggressive encounter with a spirit. My sister Kim saw a small creature with a body that appeared to be made of tree bark rifling through her laundry with long, thin fingers that looked like twigs. When it realized she could see it, it scampered up the stairs and disappeared before it reached the top. Upon hearing noises in her house in the middle of the night which were keeping her awake, she grumpily told whatever it was to "shut the fuck up." This pissed it off, and all the doors and drawers in her upstairs began openning and slamming shut again, which continued until she began to pray the Lord's prayer.

My niece Sadie, when a very small child, possibly 2 or 3, would come into my sister Tammy's room at night, complaining that she couldn't sleep, and could Tammy or her husband Bert please tell the people in her room to be quiet. "They want to play with me," she would say, "and I am tired and want to go to sleep."

So Tammy would go in and scold the spirits and say, "She is just a little girl and she needs her rest. Leave her alone."

I don't understand these things, but I know they are real. Mostly they are confusing. My sister Kim was afraid during her experience, and my brother was afraid for his experiences too. I never really felt threatened and therefore didn't feel terrible afraid, just confused.

I get irritated with the ghost hunter people on TV who go looking for ghosts and then freak out and shriek and act ridiculous when there is a thump or bump. Idiots. I do not go looking for ghosts, but if I experience something, I get quiet and listen and observe. I don't hoot and howl and run away.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'I've never seen a ghost but I've frequently brushed up against the odd'

Likewise, which is why I'm willing to keep an open mind on the subject.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

1. 'Scooby stuff' is right -- those are cartoonish tropes. I wouldn't expect anyone, certainly no adult, to import those tropes.

But those are not the only fictional ghost tropes and in my experience the non-cartoonish ones do appear in real life experiences. I also think people tend to import the tropes they're culturally most familiar with -- those that fit in with their culture's ghost story telling traditions.

2. As we're all human, with human brains that work, misfire and misinterpret data in the same ways, wouldn't you expect a high degree of consistency between accounts?

As children have less concrete knowledge about the world wouldn't you expect them to interpret unfamiliar experiences more readily as ghostly (something all children know about)?

It's important to remember that our brains are very good a filling in blanks without us realising that that is what has happened. A child's brain can fill blanks with more fantastical things and accept them as true simply because those possibilities still seem plausible to a child.

It does feel like real phenomena being described and that's because they are interpretations of real experiences, but that doesn't mean they're accurate interpretations.

We construct, usually unconsciously and without any intent to deceive, explanations for the odd things we experience.

We know our brains fill in often quite huge gaps without us being aware of it and that because of this a lot of what we hear and see and feel is not accurate, not 'real'. Most of the time we don't notice because our brains do this in ways that aren't outside what we'd expect.

3.These are all reasons to be skeptical and I say this as someone who has experienced many ghosts. More in childhood than adulthood. I'm not lying, delusional or stupid. What I experienced was as real to me as the keypad I'm using to type this, but that doesn't mean I really encountered real ghosts (unless you understand ghosts to be perceptional constructs, not actual entities). The truth is likely both much more mundane and much more amazing.
Lying, delusional or stupid are not the only alternatives to accepting these accounts at face value. Our reality need not be permeable, we just need to be highly prone to making faulty interpretations about it.

Being a skeptic means I'm open to the possibility that the supernatural really exists, but it also means I can't take ghost stories at face value -- I have to look for other more plausible explanations.

[negothick.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that one can experience the phenomena without ascribing human characteristics to them or assuming that they are represent the survival or traces of human beings after death? I'd like to know your "truth". . . .that is "much more amazing."
I have collected ghost stories all my life, and I've visited many reputedly haunted places, and until a few years ago I would have written "But have experienced nothing." I listened to others' tales and thought of other explanations.
That changed when I stood next to an enthusiastic ghost-hunter who was staring at a (reputedly-haunted) staircase as though she saw something. I saw nothing. Looking down at her digital camera, though, I saw the wavery outline of a white misty something, with a clearly-formed skeleton hand holding onto the bannister. She pressed the button, snapped the picture, and there it was. I can attest that no trickery took place, and I watched her upload it to a computer, with no photoshoppery possible. That's the first thing I've seen for which I have no explanation.

Re: King Tubby meets rockers uptown.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Talking ghosts are rare but not unheard of. There have been many instances of ghosts getting in touch by phone.

The eddies of wind explanation sounds like a load of materialistic bollocks to me.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

It's both amazing and mundane that our brains can and do construct wholly believable experiences from tiny amounts of data.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

You can attest to being aware of no trickery.

[wyrmwwd.livejournal.com]

I was raised in the belief that ghosts are real, and that everyone in my mother's family inherits the ability to perceive them. I was also raised to believe that they are common and generally harmless... most of the harm that is attributed to them is generally done by the living, and usually due to the living's fear and ignorance in the subject.

So, having said all of that, yes, I have seen many ghosts... mostly at the periphery of my vision. They disappear when I look straight on. And, yes, there power to do things in this world is EXTREMELY limited. We had an old lady that used to cook breakfast on Sunday mornings.... we could smell her cooking, but we never saw her. Once, a paper was picked up and moved off of a table (this occurred while I was giving a woman the very same information that I am writing about right now). Mostly, people are freaked out about something that they don't understand.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think it all depends on one's starting point.

I see nothing implausible about a multi-dimensional universe in which our reality co-exists with others. In a multidimensional universe things like ghosts and other paranormal phenomena are neither unlikely nor in need of being explained away. If our dimension is knocking up against other dimensions a certain amount of overlap and interpenetration is almost to be expected.

19th century science was powerfully materialistic and had problems with the paranormal. Modern science- so far as I can see- has none at all.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your stories. I don't remember the one about the ghost lady. I'd love to read it.

I've never seen a ghost myself, but I've been around when other people have. A girlfriend and I were staying in an old hotel in London when she woke in the middle of the night to see a woman in 19th century costume standing by the window looking out. I wish she'd nudged me in the ribs. As it was I didn't find out about her experience until the following morning. When I researched the hotel afterwards I discovered the dreary little park the woman was looking out at had been the cemetery of a church that was flattened in the Blitz.

I get annoyed by those TV ghost hunters too.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I pretty much take ghosts for granted. I'm not the least bit psychic, but I know people who are- yourself included- and I trust them.

This is an oldish house. We get "visitors". Ailz is more aware of them than I am. I believe my father- who died about 10 years ago- has dropped by on occasion.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The odd is pretty normal I think.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

It's odd though- our house was the home of Major James Byford McCudden VC, the WW1 flying ace and his family.

The three McCudden brothers, all fliers, died in the war and this should be a house of deep sadness, yet it's quite the opposite.

I suspect Jimmy and the boys are around somewhere, misbehaving, as they appear to have been quite a bunch of lads. :o)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Most old houses will have known death- on and off the premises. Death itself is nothing. It's the feelings around it that leave a mark. From what little I know of McCudden he was one crazy dude. Wasn't he the one who painted German crosses and RAF roundels on the sides of some French farmer's pigs?

Your cupboard

[(Anonymous)]

Do you remember when the cupboard in your back room went bang when I was alone in the room. As if someone was inside kicking it. I saw it move, felt the shudder of it. Thought it was the boys winding me up. But it wasn't. Scariest thing ever that was.

But we used to play in that cupboard all the time... It was never scary before or after. Geez I hid in it out if embarrassment when mum decided you should tell me about periods before we went Switzerland.

So maybe it was one of your visitors.

Al x

[negothick.livejournal.com]

True. But the picture-taker could barely use the little digital camera, and she didn't know how to upload--and I trust the person who brought the cable and laptop. It was all quick and extremely low-tech.

Re: Your cupboard

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Later, when you were older and staying over in that room at the weekend, you reported having had someone come in and look at you in the middle of the night.

Carl- who is psychic but in denial about it- has seen spirits in the house and Ailz often senses them.