And really, this is what we started out with as kids, and as a culture.

So, some people see ghosts, hear the dead, etc. What we’re really seeing is the odd side affect of the very adaptive human brain.

@HvP: Short answer: Where do people get their energy? From eating food. Where does their energy go when they die? The little wormies go “Nom Nom Nom.”

If you enjoy the entertainment value, more power to you.

However, that electrical panel you refer to does not even approach the standards of a rational explanation.

Feeling anxious and sensing you are being watched are well documented neuroses and have squat to do with electrical panels or EM disturbances.
(unless the participants knew or suspected the panel had a dangerous fault. Then they might have reason to be nervous being in the same room with it.)

Myself, I have no idea if ghosts are real or not but I think actual ghost hunting can be a fun group activity providing you don’t do something dumb like trespass or run around in structurally unsound buildings.

@HvP
What about the energy in a “dead” train?

Well, it continues to burn ghost-coal to heat the ghost-water, which is converted to ghost-steam, which powers the ghost-engine.

I wonder… Does burning ghost-coal create ghost-greenhouse gases? Does that have any effect on corporeal beings? Where does one get ghost-fossil fuels? Do they come from dead ghost-dinosaurs? Could there still be “living” ghost-dinosaurs around? Can ghost-people get ghost-cancer from the hole in the ghost-ozone layer?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Coming this Fall to a channel near you… “Ghost, Hunters”. Follow along as we follow a team from both sides of the grave as they search for the answers. Sponsored by the publishers of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”.

So, basically, you have performed many experiments of presenting your evidence to people in this group and recieved a negative result each time. So you now assume the same result without performing the experiment because you have no reason to think the result will change, barring extraordinary evidence indicating that someone is willing to believe you.

Guess what? That’s the same logic we’re operating on!

I thought the joke was about the evidence for Bin Laden’s death…..

Thank you for answering my question. You have given exactly the right reasons as to why you shoudn’t believe my story. Now you only have to apply that to the “real” ghost stories.

No, it’s simply that my experience based on several years of commenting on paranormal threads here strongly suggests that no amount of available evidence would satisfy the majority of posters. IMO, many people here have a Catch-22 mentality toward *possible* paranormal phenomena, i.e., it’s so unlikely any event can’t be dismissed by prosaic explanations that such phenomena aren’t worth scientific investigation…but the only way to determine if phenomena *are* outside our current physical knowledge is to investigate them.

I’m not a full-time UFO or paranormal investigator, so I don’t have the time (yet) to really do the research that might change people’s minds on this blog. I posted to make people think, not to *prove* anything. I try to make it a conversation between friends.

“Stop talking about Oldsmobiles too….”

Um, such mentions are meant to be humorous metaphors for the explanations skeptics *do* use. Chill. (I usually use “Volkswagens.”)

“Do you believe my story? If so, why? If not, why not?”

Not without investgation. What’s your credibility as a witness? Did anyone else see the same thing? Is there any physical evidence to suggest said robot was there? And a couple hundred other questions. That’s my point; even the most outrageous claims should undergo progressive levels of investigation depending on the findings.

Last word from me: I’m far more skeptical than you give me credit for. I don’t give credibility to “orbs” or smears of light on photos. EVPs? Meh. (I can’t understand why digital recorders pick those up but the TV camera [digital?] audio doesn’t.) I’ve never actually seen a UFO or a “ghost.” The only thing that haunts me is my monthly alimony payment.

@44 UmTutSut

Many of us have said that we’d love to see evidence. Knowing that there could be some life after death or indeed an ability comunicate or interact with “non-physical” or beings or whatever would be an amazing because it would open up many new avenues of scientific investigation. Sadly as yet, no evidence exists that such a thing is possible.

But you are unwilling to provide any evidence at all. By hiding it you give us no reason to believe in it. Stop talking about Oldsmobiles too, as I’m sure you know full well that most sceptics will not use that particular explanation for most of your examples.

One simple set of questions for you. I said I saw a robot from the future outside my window. It was shiny and spoke to me in a robotic voice. It wanted to know where it could find C3PO, because it thought he was a real robot too. Do you believe my story? If so, why? If not, why not?

I used to believe in ghosts. I even believed I had encountered ghosts. I was young, I was religious.

You know what happened to me? a 4 AM session at the controls of an NRAO radio telescope. That experience completely changed my life. I went into that control room a young earth creationist with questions and left a newly minted atheist finally at peace with the world. The part relevant to ghosts, however, would be… those silly little detectors could be picking up *anything*, including a vast array of completely non-manmade phenomena. I took my grandfather’s handheld IC AM/FM receiver, tucked the antenna all the way in, and made recordings of all sorts of crazy bizarre electromagnetic signals… including many that I could not identify the source of. I will never, ever accept “ghosts” as a plausible explanation again.

Everything that happens in the universe is by definition, “natural”.

@44

Dont be so quick to dismiss the audience you have here. I think the BAblogees have been remarkably restrained in this thread, and have offered well meaning suggestions as to the only possible means of advancing research in any field.

You might be behind the eight ball to start with, due to the millions who have come before making extraordinary claims, this requires extraordinary evidence.
This evidence must also reproducible or we learn nothing.

I also notice in your responses that you seem reluctant to include the vast numbers of people who have been shown to LIE about this stuff.

I would bet that the BS peddlars who make ghost hunting TV shows know better than anyone that it is complete bunk.

Do you believe Richard Hoagland and his opinions on …..well anything really….?
He sells a type of fiction that requires him to appear to seriously believe his own malarkey, otherwise its just bad science fiction.

Well, I just might if I thought there were the slightest probability that, no matter what I presented, most people who post here wouldn’t shake their heads and cluck that it was totally unconvicing and could obviously be explained by the EMF effects from a passing Oldsmobile stimulating part of the optic nerve.

Look, I’ve been on here long enough to know that trying to suggest paranormal phenomena *exist*, much less that they’re worthy of scientific study, is a losing proposition here. Hence the statement about reluctance in my original post. I’ll just go back to my conversation with Anna Nicole Smith’s ghost….

Why do delusional people often project their own motivations and fears onto their opponents? Is it because they lack the imagination to think of other possible motives and fears?

Damon also accuses the vaguely defined “you” of lacking imagination. He is the one lacking imagination. He thinks that just because he can’t think of a real physical or psychological explanation for some anomaly, there must not be one, and therefore it’s a ghost. Just like the fundamentalist “God did it” explanation for everything the don’t understand or fear.

I said in my last post: “(Don’t ask me to cite anything particular without research).” The “core of unexplainables” is based on my general memory from the last couple decades.

How convenient!

Show us the evidence. Show us the “core of unexplainables”. If you’re basing this on your own memory then we don’t have any reason to believe you. In fact, human memory is so unreliable that it makes half of these ghost stories possible. Show us something real. Take your time and do your research to find it if you must. We’ll wait, but don’t expect anyone to take you seriously on your assertions alone.

As yet, there doesn’t seem to be anything going on beyond the “current state of physical knowledge”. Just people half remembering things they half saw and heard and victims of tricks and hoaxes. Having someone say they “saw an apparition of a human, in period clothing, in proximity, during a fully awake state in daylight, and it *spoke* to them” doesn’t mean anything. I could say I saw a robot from the future hovering outside my window. Would you believe me?

I said in my last post: “(Don’t ask me to cite anything particular without research).” The “core of unexplainables” is based on my general memory from the last couple decades.

Martin, I think even you would admit that when someone says they saw an apparition of a human, in period clothing, in proximity, during a fully awake state in daylight, and it *spoke* to them… that’s kind of difficult to chalk up to misperception or tricks of light. And I know several such occurences have been reported on the seven seasons of Ghost Hunters. (No, GH couldn’t prove it happened.) Maybe people are lying, but if not, there seems to be something going on beyond the current state of physical knowledge.

Given that thousands of people have observed human-like apparations, even if you toss out 99.99 percent as delusions, matrixing, misidentification (although I think I’d know a human shape from an Oldsmobile), or whatever other “ordinary” phenomena you chose, you’re left with some that can’t be explained away. (Don’t ask me to cite anything particular without research) If nothing else, that core of unexplainables seems to indicate a valid phenomenon occuring.

What ‘core of unexplainables’? You haven’t demonstrated the existence of any such thing, you’ve just baldly asserted it.

“I don’t think we are in any real danger of being herded into your Occam’s Concentration Camps any time soon”

Anyone still want to argue that’s not a Poe?

What rubs me and I assume many others is when people make claims to knowing the “truth” and having absolute “proof” when they actually have neither.

When questioned their truth and proof disintegrates.

I think we’re all very curious about things we don’t have the answers to and I have nothing but respect for people who are out there trying to find the answers.

But when people start claiming to know things that they don’t know and won’t admit that their proof and truth massively failed when held up to scrutiny while at the same time condescendingly telling others that they’re “blind to the truth”, etc. Well, it’s time to start giving them the mocking they deserve.