Excuse me but there is a ghost on my boat.

[Mr Efficiency]

The belief in the persistence of life into some unimaginable afterlife once seemed to me a psychological construct that gave meaning and shape to the lives of the feeble-minded, I still think that is true, but the big surprise on the evidence presented to me is that it is literally true, for at least some. Wishful thinking does not create such a reality, but neither does it negate it.

 

[J Feenstra]

Sorry to interupt this discussion, but the title of this topic is wrong, Frosty said it was his cat, but in fact "the ghost" still owns the boat, or am I wrong?

 

[Leo Lazauskas]

Sorry to interupt this discussion, but the title of this topic is wrong, Frosty said it was his cat, but in fact "the ghost" still owns the boat, or am I wrong?

Sorry, but this thread has morphed into the sequel to the film "Men Who Stare at Goats".

 

[Mr Efficiency]

Next thing the mods will be stipulating no politics, religion, or ghosts.

 

[Mr Efficiency]

I never imagined for one second that I would be worrying my head about what became of a deceased person. Nowadays I do.

 

[Eric Sponberg]

Eric claims that he does have evidence.
I'm asking for scientific confirmation of extraordinary claims.
What's unscientific about that?



No, thanks. I prefer to call it the work of crackpots and charlatans.
Eric's spooky, ghosty area is accessible. He reckons there are ghosts there,
and that they appear regularly. It seems pretty easy for independent
scientists to confirm the claims.
Millions of dollars beckon, not just from Randi and the skeptics. Fame, fortune, new industries. The US would become the envy of the world for
this discovery. Eric owes it to the USA

I don't owe anybody anything. And no, it isn't "pretty easy for independent scientists to confirm the claims." If it were easy, it would have been done a long time ago, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

It's not my mission in life to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. I am merely having a good time. Ghost tours are a lot of fun, and you get to meet lots of interesting people from all over the world, never mind their belief in ghosts or not.

Eric

 

[Leo Lazauskas]

I don't owe anybody anything. And no, it isn't "pretty easy for independent scientists to confirm the claims." If it were easy, it would have been done a long time ago, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

It's not my mission in life to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts.

What a shame.
At the Nobel awards you could have turned down the lights and shone a torch under your chin during your acceptance speech.

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This me shimmering out of the thread
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[Wynand N]

It's not my mission in life to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. I am merely having a good time. Ghost tours are a lot of fun, and you get to meet lots of interesting people from all over the world, never mind their belief in ghosts or not.

Leo will not understand that math.....
He is one track minded, still believes the world is flat, Zeus and his comrades are ruling the elements, the tooth fairy and the moon made of cheese.

Maybe I must go to the local witchdoctor in town and let him put a spell on old poor Leo, perhaps conjuring up a few demons, bad luck, a slack ***** and growing a tail will change his views about ghosts, the unexplainable and other "un-worldly" phenomenons

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This me shimmering out of the thread
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May the force be with you and call me when demons manifest themself and tail starts to grow and I will cancel the spell

 

[Mr Efficiency]

I used to think the seeming impossibility of 'nailing down' the so-called paranormal was because there was nothing there to be nailed down. Now I think whatever is at work here is far too clever to get caught in any cross-hairs it doesn't want to be lined up in.

 

[WestVanHan]

The million dollar offer by that Randi is quite disingenuous.If he can't explain anything-you're just a better magician than him.

Myself- I don't know what's going on.
When I was 19, I heard of a house in my area that was supposedly haunted.So of course myself and a couple friends went to check it out. I was standing close to one wall in the living room and my one friend was on the other side of the room-were both touched from behind on our necks- no windows,no one else there.
So we got the hell out of there,only to hear our other friend running down from the upstairs in a panic. The windows were closed,yet he insisted he saw the curtains move-but the branches outside the window were still-and it was a still August hot day yet we felt cold areas.

Two of us are big guys- hiked around in the wilderness and had bear/cougar encounters,been charged by moose and mother grizzlies,etc. When you've had an 900 pound grizzly chase you up a tree or been run into bushes by a horny and pissed off 1500 pound bull moose-not much else in this world can faze you.
None of us ever went back in that house.

 

[philSweet]

Okay, a ghost story. Don't know what else to call it. But I do want to say I don't believe in ghosts just in case any eminent societies might be looking in.

A friend moved in to another acquaintance's house to housesit a whole bunch of cats in exchange for free rent. I ended up moving in as well. My girlfriend kept accusing me of moving stuff around, like her jewelry and things on her nightstand. I think she thought I had been bringing another girl over or something. This expanded with time into a wider sense of creepiness involving all sorts of things which culminated with the discovery of the box. The box was a cigar box. Old. Torn lid hinge. Cheap cigars. Name written on top on a piece of tape, which helped us identify the contents.

The next day, after catching our dinner, the box was disposed of overboard.

The creepiness all seemed directed at my girlfriend, but there was one extremely odd thing relating to me. I had met the deceased exactly once. I was driven to downtown Miami and met her in a home there. The entire day was bizarre and there was no reason for me to meet her. We were in town for a different reason and the driver said we should stop by for a moment. Everything I knew about the deceased I learned during that five minute visit. One of the things was that she couldn't stand cigarette smoke. Or cigarettes. She'd throw a tantrum if she encountered either. From my perspective, the odds look pretty random all round. Why I should have met anyone in a home in Miami is odd enough. That I should have met her and learned about her fear of cigarettes and then been the one to find her ashes and rid her of the cigar box just boggles the mind.

Anyhow- Things seemed to settle down afterwards.

There are so many levels of denial that lead to this woman ending up in that cigar box that a belief in ghosts one way or another doesn't rate very highly with me.

 

[Frosty]

I heard of a doctor / surgeon painting big white number on top of the cupboards in the surgery. Any one claiming to have died and risen from the operating table and could look down on them selves was asked to say what the number was.

Needles to say it ended in red faces and embarrased silence.

 

[rwatson]

I heard of a doctor / surgeon painting big white number on top of the cupboards in the surgery. Any one claiming to have died and risen from the operating table and could look down on them selves was asked to say what the number was.

Needles to say it ended in red faces and embarrased silence.

I was me who told the story.

I repeated it in post 43 of this thread.

It did NOT end in red faces, it is still ongoing, in the face of large number of claims from hospitals all over Britain.

Post 44 quotes an experiment under controlled circumstances where the "out of body experience" occurred and was tested.

No-one seems impressed by a scientific result - despite the controversy

 

[bntii]

, in the face of large number of claims from hospitals all over Britain.

I remember hearing that the spread of UFO claims is similarly regional and can be seen as a function of how beliefs and folklore spread and are retained in a society.

The interesting bit isn't what we experience, it's how we explain it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6960612.stm

‘The scientific evidence suggests that all aspects of the near-death experience have a biological basis.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...e-brain-playing-tricks-you.html#ixzz26IFXN8cg

 

[rwatson]

I remember hearing that the spread of UFO claims is similarly regional and can be seen as a function of how beliefs and folklore spread and are retained in a society. ...

Yes, that can happen.

But the reverse effect, information suppression, is also alive and well.

My personal experience of this was me listening to the ABC radio station, and they crossed to Mexico city reporter to get some info on a mexican government political situation.

The interview went somthing like this
Aus ABC "Can you provide some more information on the political conditions behind this ?"

Mex City ABC "What ? "

Aus ABC "Um, what is the Mexican Parliament going to do ?"

Mex City ABC "Mexican Parliament ? - what do you mean - I thought we were covering the UFO's that have been hovering over Mexico City for the last few days"

Aus ABC "Sorry ?"

Mex City ABC "yes, the police and air force ..."

Aus ABC "Well, we will leave this story and continue on with ..."

There are many Youtube videos, taken by dozens of independent cameras of this event ( one below ) - and the whole event is well and truly documented, but not very well explained.

Whether they were UFO's or not, I was surprised that the story was abruptly cut off - it was spookily like some sort of conspiracy that prevents any 'weird' events from being broadcast.