[chessplayer]

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

[JRandomFreeper]

Because people decide to chemically jack with their perceptions.

/johnny

[Beowulf9]

I’ve seen a few. No longer fairy tale to me.

[Durus]

I would like to know how a Christian could believe in ghosts.

[ChicagahAl]

I believe in the Holy Ghost.

Does that count?

[wastedyears]

"I ain't afraid of no ghost."

[lowbridge]

Bump

[Vendome]

Great Scott!!!!

[Politicalkiddo]

Biblically, the Witch at Endor, who raised Samuel’s spirit.

[Vendome]

Luke 16:26
And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

[Kirkwood]

I have my own ghost story. Well kind of one. It happened about 40 years ago. I was working one night about midnight in the upstairs room of an historical building built in the 1800s. This is a very creaky building without plumbing or heat, but it is wired for electicity. So I hear the outside door slam downstairs and I figured it was one of my coworkers. Wait, did I lock the door? Yes, I did. I heard the footsteps across the creaky first floor then heard each step up the creaky first and second staircases to the door to the second floor room. No one came in. I said come on in! No one came in. Huh? Went to the door and opened it and no one was there. Amazing!

I went through the entire building and into the cellar and there was no one there. The outside door was also locked. Very strange! Never figured out what caused that. Anyone coming up the stairs would have been heard going down. Guess it was the wind. I spent many nights in that old place, but never had that happen again.

I mentioned it the next day to an old-timer who worked there and he said others had similar experiences, but no one ever saw anything. Just heard foorsteps.

[buffyt]

Let’s see, The Father, Son and Holy Ghost! Good enough for me.

[jocon307]

I read this, it’s very interesting.

[Maurice Tift]

  For something to be proven, we've decided that the experiment needs to be performed by different people in different locations and the results should be the same. We've learned so many useful things from the scientific method. However, a lot of people have personal experiences and they can't reproduce the event in a lab. Sometimes, I tell someone one of my interesting stories and I often hear an interesting story in return. It's not scientific, but I find myself believing a lot of the stories I hear. I don't think I would have heard the story without sharing my own, so I think that there's a group of people who believe these things and then maybe there's another group that thinks that the first group is just crazy.

[FredZarguna]

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

No doubt true. That doesn't mean every stupid thing people believe is real.

[LibWhacker]

Chicken wire ghost. Great practical joke.

[RegulatorCountry]

I’d say there are presences just barely in this world that some people experience.

The benign ones almost seem like an echo from another time. Maybe time isn’t quite as linear as we perceive? Not sure, but those sorts of so-called “ghosts” are almost always associated with sites involving very strong emotion, mass tragedies and casualties, battlegrounds.

The malign ones are demonic. Scripture is clear.

None of them are your departed loved ones, that is deception. Again, scripture is clear.

[DariusBane]

I saw something in the generator room of the USS Alabama while visiting the battleship in Mobile. A small child in a bright colored coat. I was the only one in the room. Small child, around three or four. I followed the kid because I was worried that he was by himself. Followed him around a blind corner with a dead end. No kid.

Don’t know what I saw.

Not scary, the kid was giggling and happy, but just not real.

Was it me?

That’s my story. I have no idea. That is what I saw.

[Joe 6-pack]

CS Lewis wrote of his dislike for the terms, "supernatural," "paranormal," and such, indicating they were expressions of human vanity, implying we had a complete and total understanding of all that is natural and normal when clearly, we do not. Lewis teased that most people consider God a, "supernatural," being, and yet, as the Creator of all things, nothing could be more, "natural," than God.

I had my own experience while a student at Gettysburg College which really shook me up, and to this day, a quarter of a century later, the hair on my arms still stands up when I think about it. I spoke with a philosophy professor on campus, a former Jesuit who had a background in parapsychology. One of his pet theories was that just as some people seem to have flashes of precognitive insight (i.e. seeing events before they happen), others may have brief flashes of post-cognitive visions, or seeing events that unfolded in the past, which may account for some ghost sightings.

[Oratam]

Britain seems to be ground zero for ghosts and hauntings with the U.S. a distant second. Are there French haunted houses on the tourist trail? Itailian? German? I wonder how much of it is cultural.

[GreyFriar]

An interesting, straight forward article.