No, I don't believe in ghosts.

But they believe in you. : )

I believe that the human brain is a pattern-recognition machine that is finely tuned to see events as the product of human (or quasi-human) agency, and that we are frequently subject to confirmation bias. That is, "no."

I don't believe in ghosts, but I LOVE ghost stories.

same as jrossi

No. There is no afterlife, your atoms and all that make you 'you' go off and make something else 'something else', so it is impossible for ghosts to even be a possibility.

They can, however, make for good fiction stories.

No. There is no afterlife,

Perhaps there's an apres vie where we all sit around sipping cocktails and eating canapes.

If there is an afterlife there better be smokes, because I'm gonna need one.

I don't believe in ghosts, but I've seen one. Don't feel like retyping it. Previously typed here.

My coworker, Loud Lady, was just talking today about how she believes in ghosts and has hired someone to do something de-ghosting to her house. I fucking hate LL so much I don't minder he getting scammed. She also has a toy that makes a crowing-rooster sound.

The shrieks of startled birds cracked through the blinds with the predawn light of a sleeping Cairo. The chandelier, hanging from the high ceiling of the hotel room, swung tinkling above me in wide arcs. My friend [Drew Peacock] slept in his bed across the room.

When the wooden slats under my mattress began to shift and jiggle, I tried desperately to hold them down. But the hands that shook them were stronger than mine, and I gave up, mute in my terror. [Drew] slept on.

The birds fell silent the instant my bed stopped moving. In the eerie quiet, broken only by the creak of the chandelier's hub as it wound down, I lay quietly waiting for the poltergeists to begin anew. Of course they were ghosts -- if there was any place to be haunted, a turn-of-the-century French hotel hidden on a side street off Tahrir Square, once grand but now dilapidated, with an old ascenseur treacherous enough for us to take the stairs six tall stories up, this was that haunted hotel -- and in any case, what more proof did I need? I had been scared out of my wits; [Drew] hadn't even stirred. It had happened to me, and me alone. Poltergeists.

I took my time falling back asleep. In the morning, I told Paul of my night. We agreed that we should probably change hotels, if there were ghosts in this one bent on keeping me awake.

Over a streetside breakfast of pittah and oranges, we discussed our plans to visit old Cairo. On our way to the square, we ran into a couple of Australians we had met earlier.

They asked us, "Did you feel the earthquake this morning?"

I still believe in ghosts.

Holy shit! I slipped a real name in there! Lord have mercy.

After my father died, I swear I smelled cigars while driving alone in the car. My father always smoked Top Stone cigars. He thought they were high-class. He kept the chewed stubs in a mayonnaise jar on the coffee table.

Sometimes, when something good happens, I'll thank one of my deceased parents. Course, it could've been my birth mother who tripped me coming out of the elevator the other day (see poltergeist thread). I wouldn't put it past her.

I'm a strange atheist.

Yes, I do. See muddie's link.

Yes. Yes I do.

I don't just believe. I know.

I believe 100% that there is something really happening that is making people believe in ghosts, but I do not believe that the spirits of the dead are coming back to visit us. Possession is almost certainly the result of mental illness, sicknesses brought on by certain contaminants (such as the mold or whatever it was that is widely blamed for the strange behavior that brought on the Salem Witch Trials) and brain tumors. However poltergeist activity has been fairly well documented by some not-crazy folks and I have felt a "cold spot" in a house myself, which freaked me out pretty good at the time. I have no doubt that there is a scientific explanation for each and every instance, but I do not believe that it is all nothing more than people's imagination. It's like sasquatch, people frequently assume that if you say you saw bigfoot, you saw nothing at all, when it is far more likely that DID see something - a bear on it's hind legs for instance.

Yeah, weretable. That's pretty much what I think. There's likely a natural explanation for various phenomena that we just don't know about yet. No need to go looking for the supernatural.

Anyone wanna hold a seance? I used to so freak my friends out with my ouija board.

(and lola, do tell... we're left with such a mysterious declaration)

I've never gotten to have a ouija board seance but I've always wanted to so I can move the board and make hilariously homicidal messages.

No, but as I do believe in an afterlife, I suppose I wouldn't be altogether shocked by definitive proof of their existence. Much like Bigfoot.

What the scientists said.

OMG, Bigfeet in Heaven!!~!

I believe in them and I've seen them, several times. My beatnik painter auntie says they're a form of electrical energy left over when people die, and that's why there are so many in damp places (like Charleston) because the damp conducts the electricity. Go figure.

My exhusband's family owned a haunted painting; all of us, from the great grandfather on down through all the kids & so on, saw the little girl in that painting at one time or another. I woke up out of a dead sleep to see her standing by my bed and I felt her hand on my chest, I kid you not, but I wasn't scared or even alarmed. When the painting went to another relative's house, the ghost apparently went too.

I believe that there are (as yet?) unexplained phenomena that humans have interpretted as ghosts.

George and I had a silly in-joke, as a result of which he bought me a fly-swatter.

One day last November I got home from work, it was a freezing cold day, I have sealed unit double-glazed windows that were all shut. I sat down at my desk, checking the mail when all of a sudden there was a huge - and I mean enormous, about the sze of my thumbnail - bluebottle flying round, kept landing on the screen, I kept waving it away, it kept coming back, wheeling around slowly, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing.

The phone rang. It was George's sister to tell me he'd died.

I hung up, stunned. And the fly was gone. I never saw it again, nor did I find it dead anywhere. There was nowhere it could go to get out of my study and weeks afterwards I even pulled the desk out from the wall to see if it was down there. But it had disappeared.

I just wonder, that's all. See, he knew I'd notice and question why there was a fly there in November. Was it him telling me he was ok where he'd gone?

I do: my story.

essexjan, I feel the same way about a hummingbird that kept showing up right after my mother died. And when I was reading books about grieving, one of the authors said he was in his office on a high-story of a building, and suddenly there was a huge praying mantis on the desk. As he tried to figure out how on earth it got there, he got a call saying his sister had died.

I don't know what to make of any of that, really. But you're certainly not alone.

As for real ghosts -- I do believe in them, though I don't really believe in an afterlife. I like weretable's description, but I'd probably expand it out a bit because I feel like what we label "scientific" is a bit limited.

For me, it's dragonflies. For some reason, when I was in Miami, I associated them with my birth mother, who had died a couple years before jon and I moved down there. On the Miami campus, where I was going to grad school, these huge iridescent green and yellow double-winged dragonflies used to buzz by me, and, for some reason, I took it as my birth mother saying hello. Now, it seems, everywhere I go, I see dragonflies: a girl's socks on the subway; a fellow teacher's tie; a trainer's shoulder-dangling earrings; an umbrella stand in my adopted mom's house.

Recently, when jon and I were apart, I got this urge to get a new necklace; I always wore a chai (the hebrew symbol/letter for "life"), but I wanted a dragonfly. I drove up to the Danbury mall, about an hour from where I was staying with my adopted mom, to a silver shop I thought would have a dragonfly necklace, but they didn't. I must have looked in half-a-dozen stores, but a little voice kept telling me to go to Macy's, of all places. Finally, I did. It was crowded from a "big" sale (they're always having "big" sales). At first, I didn't see any dragonflies, and something told me to ask the saleslady. "Yes, we do; in fact, it's our last one. I was just showing it to another customer." She led me to a case in back, and took out this lovely dragonfly necklace, with crushed diamond wings and a ruby tail (60% off). And ruby's my birthstone (the other customer had wanted emeralds). My mother always said she wanted to get me a ruby for my birthday (I turn forty this year).

I don't know what to make of it either. I am still not a believer. But I wear my dragonfly everyday. I guess it helps thinking she's near.

I told some friends the fly story and now they joke that I'll end up living in a house full of flies, afraid to kill any of them in case one of them's George, lol.

Heh, I always thought I'd end up as a batty old woman with 53 cats, instead of several thousand flies as pets.

Yep, but I'm not sure that "ghost" is the correct term. I also posted in the thread mudpuppie linked.

Not at all. and what matildaben said.

Yes. Like Lola, I don't believe, I know.

... electrical energy left over when people die, and that's why there are so many in damp places (like Charleston) because the damp conducts the electricity.
Except that water is actually a very poor conducter of electricity. Sorry to rain on your parade ;-)