Ghost caught on tape?

[Obev]

I'm sorry but I have to ask: what is the point of completely disregarding all aspects of faith and spirituality and look at the world and the body in cold, mechanical terms? I don't see how someone can feel happy and hopeful about life if all they feel is that they and their personalities are simple chemical reactions.

I don't know about others, but I certainly find a lot more happiness in knowledge than in belief. Knowing that the progress of technology will eventually lead to near-immortality within the next few hundred years makes me much more satisfied than believing that maybe if I recite my Hail Maries enough times I might just get immortality beyond the grave.

Edit: The fact that I and everyone I know are the products of "cold, mechanical" chemical reactions makes the feeling of being alive more thrilling, and fills me with a wonder at the processes by which the universe is structured.

[Warudo Ecksu]

I'm sorry but I have to ask: what is the point of completely disregarding all aspects of faith and spirituality and look at the world and the body in cold, mechanical terms? I don't see how someone can feel happy and hopeful about life if all they feel is that they and their personalities are simple chemical reactions.

Ignorant question imo. You're basically saying people should believe in faith and spirituality rather than science b/c otherwise they can't be happy? I'm happier now that I look at life in a scientific manner than I was when I did believe in God/souls/heaven and all that other bs. I fail to see the point in living a life believing in things that logically make no sense.

[Toth]

There is nothing ignorant about my statement though it was wrong for me to say that you can't feel happy. That's subjective for everyone afterall. Still, I am not a hard core religious person but I do have a strong spiritual side. I am also a humanistic psychology follower whose basis is that humans live their lives with a need for self-actualization; essentially being the best we can be. I too love to learn the physical causes of most phenomenon and the inner workings of the body. However, I do feel our millions of years of philosophy, art, and culture cannot merely summed up as products of chance chemicals. It cheapens the aspect of being human.

But again, this is just my opinion and I hope you respect mine if I respect yours.

[Alleya]

There is nothing ignorant about my statement though it was wrong for me to say that you can't feel happy. That's subjective for everyone afterall. Still, I am not a hard core religious person but I do have a strong spiritual side. I too love to learn the physical causes of most phenomenon and the inner workings of the body. However, I do feel our centuries of philosophy, art, and culture cannot merely summed up as products of chance chemicals. It cheapens the aspect of being human. But again, this is just my opinion and I hope you respect mine if I respect yours.

You act as if those chemical reactions aren't what makes us human. How life works and what life is are not the same thing. Knowing how the body works does not automatically deprive you of the satisfaction it brings.

Personally I was deeply dissatisfied with life when my only explanation for it was "I..guess I don't really know for sure?" Since I could never really accept supernatural explanations. It's just too damn easy. Life is never that easy, why would death/unlife/superlife be?

[Titanss]

You can totally see a ghost in the window on that one scene in 3 men and a baby. I haven't been able to sleep since I watched that movie 17 years ago, I'm still freaked out.

anyone got a pic of that? I tried to see it but apparently they fixed it later on after i heard about it

[Khamsin]

Think someday life will be able to be created in a laboratory, not grown from a test tube (because that's just letting nature do your work for you), but taking a whole object that was not alive and then doing something to make it alive?

I imagine if such a thing were possible (which I imagine it would be once we understand all the chemical reactions and electrical signals that define life), it'd first be done with something freshly dead, since all the raw materials are already there in place. Say, someone died of asphyxiation. All you'd have to do is repair the damage to the brain or whatever it is that prevents the person from living, then reintroduce life. It'll be neat once we figure it out.

I imagine, though, that even prior to that, we'll first be able to transplant brains sucessfully in humans. It seems as if no matter the cause of death in any part of the body, whether it be a stabbing, cancer, failure of an organ, blood disease, etc. that the actual moment of death is caused by damage to the brain from the rest of the body not doing it's job. So if there is a terminally ill person who is about to die, you could transplant their brain before irrevocable damage is done and they'll be just fine. The only thing you won't be able to escape is mental degradation.

Other things that would be neat: developing a technology to interface with the brain to provide stimulus and communication, as well as oxygen and energy, to fool it into thinking it had a flesh and blood body (mimicing the signals that communicate certain sensations) all while just sitting in a machine somewhere attached to a camera/microphone/speakers (that emit sound based on what your brain is intending to do with the signals meant for your larynx, lips, and lungs). This way, brains can be preserved without a body while waiting for one to become available.

Also: being able to tell exactly what makes a person act or think a certain way, and being able to change it. Although some people get paranoid about that possibility, even though it'd only apply to violent offenders otherwise needing to be executed/put away for life, and would not be a slippery slope or abused.

[Gwynplaine]

The only time I thought I had a ghostly encounter was about two years ago as I was falling asleep. I couldn't move, but I was wide awake, and I felt this feeling that I just could not for the life of me shake that someone was watching me and holding me down with an invisible force.

I experienced a panic so deep that it was a completely new sensation to me, then I looked up on the ceiling and swore I saw eyes staring at me. I managed to close my eyes long enough to regain the ability to jump out of bed screaming.

It shook me so much that I did some research on it, ends up, it was a condition called sleep paralysis. I don't completely discount all ghostly experiences, but I am skeptical of all of them.

You can read a little about it here:
http://skepdic.com/sleepparalysis.html

[Alleya]

Also: being able to tell exactly what makes a person act or think a certain way, and being able to change it. Although some people get paranoid about that possibility, even though it'd only apply to violent offenders otherwise needing to be executed/put away for life, and would not be a slippery slope or abused.

Clockwork Orange.

[Zoot]

The only time I thought I had a ghostly encounter was about two years ago as I was falling asleep. I couldn't move, but I was wide awake, and I felt this feeling that I just could not for the life of me shake that someone was watching me and holding me down with an invisible force.

I experienced a panic so deep that it was a completely new sensation to me, then I looked up on the ceiling and swore I saw eyes staring at me. I managed to close my eyes long enough to regain the ability to jump out of bed screaming.

It shook me so much that I did some research on it, ends up, it was a condition called sleep paralysis. I don't completely discount all ghostly experiences, but I am skeptical of all of them.

You can read a little about it here:
http://skepdic.com/sleepparalysis.html

Yea, I actually was directed to wikipedia from google when I first searched for it. They have some pretty good info on it as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

[Day]

The only time I thought I had a ghostly encounter was about two years ago as I was falling asleep. I couldn't move, but I was wide awake, and I felt this feeling that I just could not for the life of me shake that someone was watching me and holding me down with an invisible force.

I experienced a panic so deep that it was a completely new sensation to me, then I looked up on the ceiling and swore I saw eyes staring at me. I managed to close my eyes long enough to regain the ability to jump out of bed screaming.

It shook me so much that I did some research on it, ends up, it was a condition called sleep paralysis. I don't completely discount all ghostly experiences, but I am skeptical of all of them.

You can read a little about it here:
http://skepdic.com/sleepparalysis.html

Yea, I actually was directed to wikipedia from google when I first searched for it. They have some pretty good info on it as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

That's actually pretty fucked up. Hope that never happens to me :X Gives me the heebee jeebees just reading about it.

[Flarega]

Think someday life will be able to be created in a laboratory

It's been done.

http://www.geocities.com/rraattbbooy...s/lifecerl.jpg

[Suburbanelite]

I don't believe in ghosts as disembodied spirits of the dead, but I don't discount that freaks of perception occur for unknown reason that people attribute to ghosts.

/thread, honestly.

There's a million of these freaking things. If you stare at a random pattern long enough eventually you will see faces and shapes. If you sit in a dark room with a single point of light nailed to a board, that light will start moving eventually. It's not fucking ghosts, your eyes are just subconsciously moving and you don't realize it. You and every other "normal" person on this planet is 1 mutated gene away from seeing things that don't exist, hearing voices, and feeling things that aren't there. The neural faculties to reproduce sensation and perception without actual tangible physical stimuli is as vast and comprehensive as the real world itself, if not more so. Ghosts are just an archaic explanation for things that are now wholly understood. Your mind will always fill in the blank spots in reality with the best approximation it can come up with. The blind spot in your eye is a good example of this, if you can find the test. If you line up a black dot on a white sheet of paper with the blind spot of your eye, you will see white where the blind spot is, not a hole.

This doesn't even go into things like the placebo effect-it's not just for sugar pills. If you turn on your tape recorder in a graveyard and expect, even a little eensy-teensy-tiny-bit that you're going to hear a voice in the static when you play it back, the chances are you will. If you expect to see the ghost of a young woman at the top of the stairs at midnight, chances are you will. Doesn't make it real.

I get it. Alex DeLarge right underneath this post made me laugh on the inside.

[Vail]

I'm sorry but I have to ask: what is the point of completely disregarding all aspects of faith and spirituality and look at the world and the body in cold, mechanical terms? I don't see how someone can feel happy and hopeful about life if all they feel is that they and their personalities are simple chemical reactions.

Ignorant question imo. You're basically saying people should believe in faith and spirituality rather than science b/c otherwise they can't be happy? I'm happier now that I look at life in a scientific manner than I was when I did believe in God/souls/heaven and all that other bs. I fail to see the point in living a life believing in things that logically make no sense.

I disagree with Toth that religion doesn't necessarily mean happiness. People are either happy with what they have or what they don't have. If you are happy with viewing the world for what can be explained through sciences only: then be happy with it. If someone is happy with the world in a manner explained by things we have yet to have explanations for: who are you to pass judgement? Be happy with what you have, and respect what others have for if it makes them happy you don't have the right to impose against it. Isn't that what we made this country for to begin with? Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Let people be happy, and be happy for them.

Speaking of senses, we know many animals have different ranges of what they can see/smell/hear/taste. Many of these things out of our range we can't ever directly observe, only second handily through machines do we "explain" what objects or energy is making what light/sound/smell/taste. So those things are really simply because you have a device that proves they are. But for hundreds/thousands of years there was nothing to prove that.

It's like when I took my hearing test for the military, and I was able to hear several sound ranges that very few people can even hear. People that can't hear those sound ranges only know that "well this device is doing this and it makes this sound at this pitch/volume" but they have no way of experiencing it. I don't think it's much of a leap to think that people might see things that others can't see because they're body is able to while others aren't? There is so many factors that could go into it: senses can be heightened by the body at different times. Who's to say one person's body was able to see something where another person couldn't for only that one period of time.

There is still alot about the world/universe we don't know. There are still so many "theoretical" depictions of light/energy/mass, and so much we have yet to learn. I wouldn't be so quick to rule things out just yet. Saying one person saw something cause the brain imagined something that wasn't there is just as much a cope out as going straight to "it was a ghost". Do Brains do odd things at times and cause things to happen that aren't real: yeah they very likely do. but that only makes it more probably, not a defiant.

[Blarg]

It's like when I took my hearing test for the military, and I was able to hear several sound ranges that very few people can even hear. People that can't hear those sound ranges only know that "well this device is doing this and it makes this sound at this pitch/volume" but they have no way of experiencing it. I don't think it's much of a leap to think that people might see things that others can't see because they're body is able to while others aren't? There is so many factors that could go into it: senses can be heightened by the body at different times. Who's to say one person's body was able to see something where another person couldn't for only that one period of time.

If they are seeing it then something is reflecting light into their eyes right. Sure some people can see or hear better but the method in which they are seeing and hearing is the same for everyone as far as I know. These things would be testable because of this. Sure it's possible that they are seeing spirits and whatnot but it is far far far more likely that while they truly believe they saw something paranormal they really didn't.

[Toth]

Very well said, Vail.

[Alleya]

There is still alot about the world/universe we don't know. There are still so many "theoretical" depictions of light/energy/mass, and so much we have yet to learn. I wouldn't be so quick to rule things out just yet. Saying one person saw something cause the brain imagined something that wasn't there is just as much a cope out as going straight to "it was a ghost". Do Brains do odd things at times and cause things to happen that aren't real: yeah they very likely do. but that only makes it more probably, not a defiant.

This is where it rubs up against my argument. I agree with your assessments of perception and whatnot, but I draw a distinction between what can be observed and measured by more than one person. Your example of the hearing test is not very analogous to the spirituality argument. If it was that there were a group of people who could see a ghost in a particular spot at a particular time with regular reproducibility but other people couldn't--and then someone went in there with some instrumentation and found some wildly fluxing magnetic field or was able to prove that air was being displaced in that part or whatever else, then that would be peachy. The sounds you can't hear still exist- you can measure them, you can prove that they are still being produced. You can't measure that ghost that one guy saw once.

There's no sense believing something that can't be measured, not because it's inferior or incorrect or nonexistent necessarily, but because it's a waste of time. What difference does it make if there are ghosts/aliens/souls? How is life on earth going to change if we discover the existence of these things? I submit very very little- so people clinging to these explanations, insisting incessantly that they must be true despite the mountains of other possibilities or outright debunking...it's just useless. I think there are better investments of time and faith, and I think that the explanations that science and reason offer, not ancient superstition, are far more satisfactory.

[Vail]

There is still alot about the world/universe we don't know. There are still so many "theoretical" depictions of light/energy/mass, and so much we have yet to learn. I wouldn't be so quick to rule things out just yet. Saying one person saw something cause the brain imagined something that wasn't there is just as much a cope out as going straight to "it was a ghost". Do Brains do odd things at times and cause things to happen that aren't real: yeah they very likely do. but that only makes it more probably, not a defiant.

This is where it rubs up against my argument. I agree with your assessments of perception and whatnot, but I draw a distinction between what can be observed and measured by more than one person. Your example of the hearing test is not very analogous to the spirituality argument. If it was that there were a group of people who could see a ghost in a particular spot at a particular time with regular reproducibility but other people couldn't--and then someone went in there with some instrumentation and found some wildly fluxing magnetic field or was able to prove that air was being displaced in that part or whatever else, then that would be peachy. The sounds you can't hear still exist- you can measure them, you can prove that they are still being produced. You can't measure that ghost that one guy saw once.

and yet it's possible whatever causes ghost sighting can't be measured or explained by current technology

There's no sense believing something that can't be measured, not because it's inferior or incorrect or nonexistent necessarily, but because it's a waste of time. What difference does it make if there are ghosts/aliens/souls? How is life on earth going to change if we discover the existence of these things? I submit very very little- so people clinging to these explanations, insisting incessantly that they must be true despite the mountains of other possibilities or outright debunking...it's just useless. I think there are better investments of time and faith, and I think that the explanations that science and reason offer, not ancient superstition, are far more satisfactory.

I understand where you're coming, but I don't think it's appropriate to say that people believing in something less probably then what you believe are wrong or wasting their time. People still root for the underdog team in sports, despite probability being completely against them. Also I honestly believe if science did in fact: prove the existence of the human soul, the world would change alot, so much so it would be very difficult to predict how, but our understanding of human-social behavior would most defiantly point towards a radical shift in societies around the world.

There really isn't anything I know about you personally in your beliefs that would allow me to draw an example of something you believe in that can't be measured, but I don't think you should focus so much of yourself to saying other people are wrong for their believes, just because what they believe doesn't come from science. Maybe it's some angist you have about having people try to push religion on you? Pushing your believes of non-religion is mostly just gonna back fire on you, and it doesn't really reflect well on you. I don't think it's right for anyone to push their believes on others, I think it's better for people to take the approach of understanding and compassion for others. Instead of focusing on who to change others views on ghost, maybe you should find ways to relate or understand those people so you can have better relationships with them? just a thought.

[Blarg]

If souls/ghosts/spirits were proved to be real then science would change a whole lot. Discovering something like that would be huge.

[Metticus]

This one was actually on the news
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE_C1FXRo20

[Tokitoki]

Some of you guys might be interested in the show on Sci-Fi Ghost Hunters. They use video cameras, magnetic field detectors, thermal imaging cameras, and other newer technologies to try to capture "ghosts." Even if you're not a believer it's interesting to watch. There was one episode where one of the sound guy's packs lifted up and hit him in the face. The problem was that he was holding a boom mic with both hands.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=klJIrCTDIY4&feature=related

go to halfway through if interested. The show the video progressively slower. I'm not saying this is any kind of definitive proof, or that it's proof of ghosts, but that is strange.