Ghosts

What do you guys think about ghosts?

Real or not? 

Not.

Ghosts are made of aether.

Not.

Have you forgotten about haunted houses? Ghost sightings? The fact that over 70% of the world's population believes ghosts exist?

Have you forgotten about haunted houses? Ghost sightings? The fact that over 70% of the world's population believes ghosts exist?

Nope, I just don't find any of it convincing. Never been a particularly credible sighting, most tend to be camera influences (eg: lens flares and blurs) mixed with pareidolia, and you can find any house (especially old houses) haunted. I live in a 30s era, semi-detached house and you can hear pipes gurgling and voices from next door a lot of the time, and the heating's not great so it often feels cold. Never yet found a ghost. Before this, I lived in a house where someone died in the front room, and there was no such thing.
Wildly inconsistent and badly-applied laws for how ghosts come about are a mark against them, and there's never been a particularly good sighting. Most of the reason haunted houses are haunted is because people go in expecting ghosts. They'll see what they want to, interpret what happens through the lens of that: especially if they go in at night, it's easy to feel paranoid when you're tired.

Plus just because a majority thinks something does not automatically make it true, especially when biases enter into it: the appeal of believing in loved ones living on, even as ghosts, is obvious.

The fact that over 70% of the world's population believes ghosts exist?

Sadly there'll always be enough people to keep the woo pedlars in business.

Quote from: BiJane on March 14, 2015, 04:11:37 PM

Not.

Have you forgotten about haunted houses? Ghost sightings? The fact that over 70% of the world's population believes ghosts exist?

99% of people believe the earth is a sphere. What does that prove?

Quote from: Vauxhall on March 14, 2015, 04:39:15 PM

Quote from: BiJane on March 14, 2015, 04:11:37 PM

Not.

Have you forgotten about haunted houses? Ghost sightings? The fact that over 70% of the world's population believes ghosts exist?

99% of people believe the earth is a sphere. What does that prove?

Wrong as always hoppy, 99.9992% believe the earth is an oblate spheroid.

What about psychic mediums who communicate with the spirit world?

What about psychic mediums who communicate with the spirit world?

Fraudsters, one and all.

What about psychic mediums who communicate with the spirit world?

Cold reading, warm reading, hot reading: all pretty well-known tricks.
As a general rule, if an identical effect can be achieved by magicians who don't claim to have supernatural powers, there's little need to appeal to them. Derren Brown's done way more impressive mediumship than any I've seen, and he admits it's all a trick.
You just need to go to youtube to find plenty of examples of fake mediums. Those who appeal to an audience, and go around chatting before the show gathering information which they then repeat later, or who invite people who've lost someone (and who've been in the news or obits) and recount the news story to amaze everyone with the detail... Such things are easily known to happen.
While this doesn't automatically mean every medium must be fake, it does mean there's no reason to think they're anything other than fraudsters, and particularly cold ones at that.

My sister is a devout believer in ghosts, physic mediums, and other such ridiculous things. I have not yet been able to convince her otherwise. She is a 30 year old woman, far too old to be polluting her mind with this garbage. She insists that a physic medium spoke with her dead fiancee and answered several questions accurately. She is seriously slipping into the realms of insanity every passing day. How can I bring her to her senses?

I was fishing for responses to see if I could gather any new useful rebuttals, but I have already presented all the points in this thread to her to no avail.

Quote from: Vauxhall on March 14, 2015, 05:24:42 PM

What about psychic mediums who communicate with the spirit world?

Cold reading, warm reading, hot reading: all pretty well-known tricks.
As a general rule, if an identical effect can be achieved by magicians who don't claim to have supernatural powers, there's little need to appeal to them. Derren Brown's done way more impressive mediumship than any I've seen, and he admits it's all a trick.
You just need to go to youtube to find plenty of examples of fake mediums. Those who appeal to an audience, and go around chatting before the show gathering information which they then repeat later, or who invite people who've lost someone (and who've been in the news or obits) and recount the news story to amaze everyone with the detail... Such things are easily known to happen.
While this doesn't automatically mean every medium must be fake, it does mean there's no reason to think they're anything other than fraudsters, and particularly cold ones at that.

Way to take all the fun out of life Jane.

I believe that ghosts exist, but they can't interact with the world.

We traditionally assume here, no matter what religion one has, that the soul haunts several days around the corpse till it departs. It is in a condition not yet knowing that it is dead. They are frequently seen, mostly by people who were close to them.

Obviously this can be explained by hallucinations caused by emotional overreaction. To me that question is quite irrelevant, since I do not believe in an absolute distinction between reality and illusion.

Ghosts can be dangerous, if they see their family not mourning enough.

 I would estimate that 99% in Malaysia believe in ghosts, all educational levels.

We traditionally assume here, no matter what religion one has, that the soul haunts several days around the corpse till it departs. It is in a condition not yet knowing that it is dead. They are frequently seen, mostly by people who were close to them.

Obviously this can be explained by hallucinations caused by emotional overreaction. To me that question is quite irrelevant, since I do not believe in an absolute distinction between reality and illusion.

Ghosts can be dangerous, if they see their family not mourning enough.

 I would estimate that 99% in Malaysia believe in ghosts, all educational levels.

My religion teaches that your soul actually doesn't stick around for long once your dead.

My sister is a devout believer in ghosts, physic mediums, and other such ridiculous things. I have not yet been able to convince her otherwise. She is a 30 year old woman, far too old to be polluting her mind with this garbage. She insists that a physic medium spoke with her dead fiancee and answered several questions accurately. She is seriously slipping into the realms of insanity every passing day. How can I bring her to her senses?

I was fishing for responses to see if I could gather any new useful rebuttals, but I have already presented all the points in this thread to her to no avail.

At this point, the thing to fish for is tact. Pragmatically, peoples' defenses go up when you directly argue against them, it's hard to convince someone of anything that way. Morally, you're essentially asking her to lose them again.
Mediums are insidious, it's how they work: they create dependence. People want it to be true. There's no easy way to get out of that, that doesn't feel awful. There's a reason every sceptic harbours a particular dislike for mediums, and the kind of people who prey on those who've just lost someone. I could recommend videos (probably of James Randi) if you want something that'll convince her if she watches with an open mind: but the fact is, it is nigh-impossible to be open-minded on issues where emotions are at play.

There's no use arguing directly against such things. All you can do is be there, and remove the need, slowly. Maybe idly let slip you don't accept it, but don't be aggressive, don't argue it. The entire audience for mediums is those who're emotionally unfulfilled after a loss: the people who want something to be true so much they ignore the guesswork and cold reading at play, or the fact (in the case of personal mediums) that they can find out 99% of what they say via typing your name into google.

If you want an argument or test to run, ask the medium about something that doesn't exist. I did something similar on a test with a friend a while ago, though it was a psychic rather than medium: pretend to be pregnant, or have another sibling/child/whatever and ask about their future, the psychic is apparently unaware they're taking readings on something that doesn't exist.
Of course, you need to already be somewhat sceptical to ask such a question, so it's not automatically practical. Tact is all I can recommend.

My sister is a devout believer in ghosts, physic mediums, and other such ridiculous things. I have not yet been able to convince her otherwise. She is a 30 year old woman, far too old to be polluting her mind with this garbage. She insists that a physic medium spoke with her dead fiancee and answered several questions accurately. She is seriously slipping into the realms of insanity every passing day. How can I bring her to her senses?

I was fishing for responses to see if I could gather any new useful rebuttals, but I have already presented all the points in this thread to her to no avail.

It will not help you, but I tell you.

In Malaysia she would be considered as somehow "possessed" or at least disturbed by the spirit of her dead fiancee. So we would call a "dukun" (kind of shaman), at least in areas where you still find some, who just would send him back where he belongs to. Interaction with spirits of the dead is thought of as possible, but not desirable, cause it makes people mad. Dukuns are quite successful in curing psychic deceases, less so corporal ones.

The problem of your sister seems to be, that she does not want to get rid of him. She wants that contact, so, if real or not, it effects her life in a dangerous way. She has to learn to let him go and start a new life. In fact what she needs is to fall in love again. If she then still believes in ghosts or not is rather irrelevant.

EDIT: well, sorry, i really don't know anything

She is a 30 year old woman, far too old to be polluting her mind with this garbage. She is seriously slipping into the realms of insanity every passing day. How can I bring her to her senses?

I'm sure she says the exact same things about you.

BiJane, that was truly a beautiful post. One of your best.

It's true. All my skepticism and debunking just seems to make her more convinced that ghosts and spirits are real. I think this is something that just has to pass, and there's nothing I can do about it.

When King Saul consulted with the Witch of Endor to speak to the dead Prophet Samuel, this was a serious no-no. Although Saul had originally banished witches and the like from the Kingdom, he went and used one. Samuel's ghost berates Saul, and tells him that he will lose the battle with the Philistines the following day. That does happen, and he commits suicide.

There is another passage in the Hebrew Bible (I forget where) wherein it says that "thou shalt not permit a witch to live". Judaism has always taken a dim view of witches, and communication with the deceased.

Now, the Talmud and the Qur'an both speak of Djinn. The Qur'an has a whole chapter titled "The Djinn" (74, I believe). Angels are made from Light, Humans from Clay, and Djinn from Smokeless Fire. Satan is the Chief Djinn.

Djinn can always be seen by animals, but not by humans unless they want to be seen by us. For what it's worth, I personally think my dog and I had an encounter with a Djinn. Said dog saw the Djinn, although I did not. It would be hard to explain in this form of communication.

Suffice to say that we were passing down Fifth Avenue when the dog stopped in front of one of the glass buildings and began barking and yanking at the leash as if she were fit to be tied. I pulled her away with force (which, given that she is only a mini schnauzer was surprising in itself that it was necessary), and when we were clear, she stopped barking and was fine. I took her back, and her reaction was the same! She flipped the eff out! I repeated this several times, and each time we returned to the spot she flipped the eff out and started barking and yanking on the leash as if she were fit to be tied. I could see nothing amiss.

The following day I took the same route. I stopped in the same place. She had NO reaction. Just looked at me like, "what's the problem, Dad? Why are we stopping?" I tried several times, and got the same puzzled reaction from my dog. "Why are we stopping, Dad?" kind of thing.

I can't prove that it was a Djinn, obviously. But that is what I think it was. Its the only time in my life when I have ever encountered something so strange that has absolutely NO other possible explanation for it. You really had to be there to appreciate it.

I don't believe in ghosts but i'm still afraid of the dark and also mirrors

I don't believe in ghosts but i'm still afraid of the dark and also mirrors

What about mirrors IN the dark.

That gives me the willys.

Quote from: SpheresForLife on March 19, 2015, 03:47:20 PM

I don't believe in ghosts but i'm still afraid of the dark and also mirrors

What about mirrors IN the dark.

That gives me the willys.

What about Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark?

The Quija board is done using something you are not aware of. It is simpler in a demonstration. Make a finger gun with both your hands, holding your pointer fingers a millimeter apart. Your fingers will move, with no interference from your conscious self. Blindfolding them makes the ghosts speak nonsense, there's an episode of Brain Games talking about debunking the supernatural.

Quote from: SpheresForLife on March 19, 2015, 03:47:20 PM

I don't believe in ghosts but i'm still afraid of the dark and also mirrors

What about mirrors IN the dark.

That gives me the willys.

Wardrobes with mirrors, with the door slightly open in the dark