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Why Do People Believe in Ghosts?
thantlantic ^

Posted on 09/05/2014 11:01:29 PM PDT by chessplayer

In June, Sheila Sillery-Walsh, a British tourist visiting the historic island-prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco, claimed that she captured an image of a ghost in a picture she snapped on her iPhone. In the frame of what was otherwise supposed to be a picture of an empty prison cell was a blurry black and white image of a woman. The story, which was printed in the British tabloid the Daily Mail, featured on the Bay Area's local KRON4 TV station and mocked by SFist, isn't the first time the Daily Mail has claimed that strange images have come up on smart devices.

Normally, a paranormal story wouldn’t catch my attention, but a few months before the story came out, a Spanish friend of mine named Laura showed me a weird image she found on her phone while I was traveling in Madrid. The photo, taken on her iPhone while on a trip to Ethiopia, shows a boy looking down at leaves he is holding in his hands. Seemingly superimposed onto the boy is another image of the boy, hands in a different position and eyes looking straight at the camera.

Laura was convinced she captured an image of a ghost.

Then a few weeks later I discovered an image of a man in the background of a photo I took with my own iPhone. The picture was taken in my apartment and the man, whom I can’t identify, was not actually in the apartment at the time.

Recent surveys have shown that a significant portion of the population believes in ghosts, leading some scholars to conclude that we are witnessing a revival of paranormal beliefs in Western society.

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Miscellaneous; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: afterlife; ghosts
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To: PLMerite

Sorry PL, I meant bottom right!


81 posted on 09/06/2014 10:18:54 AM PDT by fidelis (Zonie and USAF Cold Warrior)
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To: DariusBane
I remember reading something about a stairwell where there are noises that occur at the same are several sailors were killed in WW2, on the USS Alabama.
I have myself heard footsteps in a guest room at a old southern house. I was the only one there, so I assumes it was neighbor kids who were supposedly coming in the house and turning all the lights on when the family was away. I stood out side the room, for a few seconds listening to the footsteps, then threw open the door with a knife in my hand.
No one in the room, my hair stood on end and I went outside to wait in my car for the owners to get back home.
(The Moseley House, Meridian, Mississippi.)
82 posted on 09/06/2014 10:39:10 AM PDT by Boowhoknew
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To: Vendome

I’m one who thinks that of the psychic/spiritual phenomena that cannot be explained, “ghosts” are not the spirits of people—who, as you show from Luke 16:26 cannot come back... but rather demonic forces, which enjoy negative human reactions—or perhaps recreate evil memories they inspired.

NOT an area to go poking into (like the multitude of stupid “ghost hunter” TV shows today).


83 posted on 09/06/2014 10:49:35 AM PDT by AnalogReigns (Real life is ANALOG!)
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To: fidelis

I kinda thought so. I’d have to know a lot more about that image, like what kind of camera, what she was taking a picture of (did she actually see something, or what?), etc.

I don’t know what the far right thing is, other than it looks like a cartoon drawing. I can tell myself I “see” a figure with eyes, a mouth, nose, etc.

The innermost right figure is also a mystery but it is mirrored on the lower cabinet doors a little in front of the refrigerator. That tells me maybe all of them are some kind of reflection of other things in the room.

That’s all the amateur photo interpretation I’m capable of.


84 posted on 09/06/2014 10:54:36 AM PDT by PLMerite (Shut the Beyotch Down! Burn, baby, burn!)
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To: laplata

I always say, *and so does the new translation)

:In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In the bible Sprit has more of a positive conoation; ghost does not.


85 posted on 09/06/2014 11:22:01 AM PDT by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Salvation

We stick with ‘Holy Ghost’. Drives me nuts when the priest, even during the Hail Marys after the Latin Mass, says “The Lord is with you” instead of the “Lord is with thee”.


86 posted on 09/06/2014 11:40:51 AM PDT by steve86 ( Acerbic by nature, not nurture)
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To: chessplayer

I believe in ghosts. We were at The Tower of London, in London England. In the central courtyard there was a small patch of grass fenced off and a sign said it was where 2 little boy princes had been murdered.

I snapped a picture of the small grassy place and the photo showed two smoky looking shapes, one about a head taller than the other standing side by side. No one was near by and no one was smoking in the whole area.

Was it the little princes standing for my photo? I’ll never know.

We were on our ranch about 2 years ago, driving around. Out of my side vision I saw Eugene, a black man who had worked on that property his whole life. Only Eugene had died a few years before. He was only there from the waist up and he was smiling at me and looked like a young Eugene.

I told my husband about it and he said “yeah SURE you did!” .

It was only later that I told him Eugene was wearing a green cotton work shirt that He said “my mother gave both of us those shirt”. He became a believer. . These shirts happened before we were married, no way I could have known about them.


87 posted on 09/06/2014 11:41:11 AM PDT by Ditter
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To: Salvation

We still say “Holy Ghost”.


88 posted on 09/06/2014 11:43:48 AM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: JRandomFreeper
Meh... I've had something happen that didn't accord with the laws of nature and physics. I wrote it off as an artifact of my fallible human mind.

If it's ever for something important, I hope you have to good sense to listen even though your "wise" analytical brain tells you "it's nonsense." Even if you can't understand where it's coming from. I wonder how many people are dead or in trouble because they ignored mysterious communication of some oncoming event, versus people better off because they listened?

I paraphrase Steinbeck -- God works His wonders in strange and mysterious ways. Don't try to second-guess -- just accept them with thanks.

Although I'm not talking ghosts in particular -- I've never seen a ghost that I know of. But it is a very strange thing to hear over the course of a few months, during plain daylight hours, the refrigerator door open and close, or the front screen door bang open, as you are putting on makeup in the mirror in a house you think is empty; you stick your head past the doorjamb to glance into the kitchen and toward the front porch in immediate response to see who's home ... nobody's there nor been there ... you start to think you're nuts.

Until you find out that other people living in the home were experiencing the same thing but afraid to talk about it because they thought they were nuts. Noises and falling shelves begin to center around one of those people, in fact, which is how the topic came to the open.

No "chemical jacking of perceptions," here. These were straight college girls room-mating in sprawling '50s era family tract home. If you are correct, the human mind is indeed so fallible that one is insane to ever count on it at all.

Meh! {^) God bless you and keep you, Johnny! I know He does!

89 posted on 09/06/2014 11:48:08 AM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: Salvation

As you wish.


90 posted on 09/06/2014 11:51:07 AM PDT by laplata (Liberals don't get it .... their minds are diseased.)
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To: Salvation

I use Spirit. Most people do. I’m glad you do, too.


91 posted on 09/06/2014 11:53:20 AM PDT by laplata (Liberals don't get it .... their minds are diseased.)
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To: Finny
But it is a very strange thing to hear over the course of a few months, during plain daylight hours, the refrigerator door open and close, or the front screen door bang open

My wife claims that things like that happen occasionally in our house but I have never witnessed it (and was not playing pranks).

But 'The Exorcist' scared the living **** out of me.

92 posted on 09/06/2014 11:55:34 AM PDT by steve86 ( Acerbic by nature, not nurture)
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To: chessplayer
Thats what atheists claim about people in the Bible who saw strange things,,,they were all dopers.

My stars ... that is true, isn't it?

93 posted on 09/06/2014 11:56:34 AM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: Kirkwood
Great story, Kirkwood!!

Wait, did I lock the door? Yes, I did.

!!! Yup!

94 posted on 09/06/2014 12:00:15 PM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: Salvation

I grew up around the corner from The Holy Ghost Catholic Church and School, it is still there. We called the kids who went to the school Holy Ghosters, just to tease them. We were Lutheran, don’t know what they called us.


95 posted on 09/06/2014 12:01:27 PM PDT by Ditter
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To: JRandomFreeper

Sound can kill. Sound and vibrations are much more powerful than is commonly thought, music being one prime example, evoking chemical tears (not onion tears) and laughter with zero visual suggestion. Sound would be a very sure, swift, and effective way to enslave a human populace. One other thing .. the body is mostly water; the frequency vibration of those sounds plays your body the same way frequency vibrations move a violin string. There is no “ignoring” them unless you remove your mind from your physical body.


96 posted on 09/06/2014 12:08:30 PM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: chessplayer

Ghost? Not sure, but I do believe God allows the easing of pain because of loss by allowing beautiful and extraordinary experiences between those in heaven and those on earth. I know this beyond doubt. My experiences with a beautiful soul after her death, are remarkable, true and wonderful.


97 posted on 09/06/2014 12:12:11 PM PDT by Toespi
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To: driftdiver; alexander_busek; JRandomFreeper
There are some things we don’t know how to measure or explain. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Agreed. Thinking it has to be measured and reproduced or it doesn't exist is like thinking if ABC, CBS, and NBC didn't report it, it didn't happen.

98 posted on 09/06/2014 12:25:07 PM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: Joe 6-pack
Will you be so kind as to share that experience, either here or in FReepmail?

Another point ... the word "super-natural" doesn't remove naturalness from the subject, it attributes "super" quantities of naturalness to the subject.

99 posted on 09/06/2014 12:29:51 PM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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To: driftdiver; JRandomFreeper
driftdiver, I cannot speak for JRandom, but I can speak for myself. From my POV, JRandom is very much Right with God on every front. He is a person I value highly on FR. Question his faith at your own risk.

I question his faith in his own perceptions! {^)

100 posted on 09/06/2014 12:32:26 PM PDT by Finny (Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. -- Psalm 119:105)
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