I have completely reversed my position on ghosts – and by extension the afterlife.
This small outburst of mine is inspired by watching an otherwise quite-good TV drama showing a female character calmly conversing with a recently deceased husband that only she (and us) can see. In time, it goes without saying that eventually the ghost will nod approvingly about a new relationship and be gone for good. Yes, just like that bit at the end of Return of the Jedi when Yoda, Obi Wan and Anakin all throw Fonz-like thumbs up gestures at Luke – all going “eyyyy!”.
Having said all that, I do know otherwise sensible people that will pay good money to see a stage show where Madame La Zongas de nos jours with hairdresser hairstyles converse vaguely with the deceased.
I am nothing if not open-minded. For one thing I hold the Massive in collective high esteem. I respect what you all think. So will anyone here raise their heads above the paranormal parapet and declare that, yes, there is someone there and it’s not total, total balderdash? Have you had an experience that can only be explained by there actually being an afterlife?
H.P. Saucecraft says
Yes.
nigelthebald says
No.
Arthur Cowslip says
Maybe.
Milkybarnick says
Can you repeat the question?
dai says
If there is an afterlife then it will be of a kind that we can’t comprehend, so would not be possible for it to materialise in any recognisable way on this planet.
Vincent says
Strange phenomena you can’t explain are not the same as being genuinely paranormal. But I am sure that we are not the highest level of development, and just as yeast can’t comprehend an ant, and an ant is only dimly aware of things magnitudes greater than itself, who is to say there isn’t something several stages up, and just occasionally there is a glimpse of something beyond ourselves by an individual. Their competencies might be as Gods, though it’s nothing supernatural, just levels of advancement in workign with then forces of nature, which are doubtless incompletely understood.
mikethep says
This reminds me of that funster Leibniz, who asked: what if our entire universe was contained in a single atom of some other being’s table?
chiz says
No. We’re not very patient when it comes to filling the gaps in our understanding, particularly about how our brains work and what they’re capable of. That’s not to say people don’t genuinely see ghosts, I’m sure they do, but there’s a lot of miles between that and it actually being dead people trying to communicate with us.
attackdog says
No, it’s all bollocks. When you’re gone you’re gone and ghosts only exist in the minds of those who knew you.
I post mainly to say that if you enjoyed the TV drama you may also enjoy the film Truly, Madly, Deeply. It explores a similar theme and is a fabulous film in its own right.
SteveT says
Don’t believe its all bollox – @h-p-saucecraft died a few months back but now he has come back to haunt us. And there are whisperings of a Bri reincarnation.
Although Gerry Rafferty really is dead.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Talking of Bri
July 1980 I am 13 years old reading in bed on a Sunday night. From the corner of my eye I spot something moving on one of the walls. I put down the book and focus on the bedroom wall. I see faces morphing out one after another and then several at the same time. I am transfixed. Then the telephone rings. I answer. It’s the police. “Hello son, is your father or mother there?”
My eldest brother had just been run down and was fighting for his life.
ps he was ok in the end
Black Celebration says
I find it a bit of a bore when it’s used in a gritty TV drama – as if it’s something that happens all the time. The brutal thing about death is the immediate, non-negotiable and absolute absence of the deceased. We are not great at coping with that kind of thing and we don’t like it. That’s why mediums and the like do so well I think.
Billybob Dylan says
I’ve often thought that if ghosts were real, why are they limited to humans? Why aren’t there ghosts of dinosaurs or rats or dogs? Or fish?
Locust says
Well, if there are ghost dinosaurs, I bet one of them appear (to some people) in Loch Ness… 🙂
Moose the Mooche says
The dinosaurs are coming back.
You wanna know how I know ….Well… Why do you think kids are so obsessed with them?
They know what we don’t know. And they’re getting ready.
Beezer says
No, I don’t believe in ghosts or the paranormal. Why this need for humans to insist that a soul or spirit will endure after death? We may be the most intellectually developed organic life form there has ever been on this planet but that doesn’t imply that we are so wonderfully special we simply can’t not exist in some form for eternity. Why do we need to?
It’s mind-boggling that we exist at all but we are a variation on stardust. Made of the same stuff as everything else in the universe. We may be able to express that and feel we are something more. But we’re not.
I used to think I was has having paranormal experiences when I was a child. I wasn’t – I had episodes of sleep paralysis. Moments when I would seize up solid while on the brink of sleep. It was terrifying and I thought I was on the point of death but would be astonishingly released.
There is always an explanation.
Artery says
I wouldn’t base your beliefs on a fictional TV drama…
Still, interesting range of subjects here: Divinity, afterlife, alien encounters, apparitions, Nessie.
I was intensely interested in this stuff as a young man; in some ways I still am in my sixties. I read voraciously around the subject, interviewed an exorcist, spent the night in a haunted church (Borley), went UFO spotting in the West Country, attended seances etc.
I have come across many compelling personal accounts of apparently paranormal phenomena. There is no doubt that there are people who honestly believe that they have seen ghosts. Stigmata is real but so is psychosomatic illness – the mind and imagination are powerful influences upon the body and senses. However, there remains no objective evidence of most phenomema – with perhaps two exceptions. These exceptions are sleep paralysis (as Beezer describes above) and dowsing. Both i think are scientifically explicable. Sleep paralysis is now a recognised medical event I think and goes some way to explaining a lot of ghost sightings. Dowsing has yet to be explained but I think it is only a matter of time.
These days I am really a non believer in almost all this stuff. However, a few years ago I tried my hand at dowsing at the Rollright Stones near Banbury and was staggered to discover that I have the ability to dowse with copper rods and map the path of underground water courses. Nobody was more shocked than me. Subsequently I bought a pair of rods from Amazon and have continued to have this odd ability. I am certain that there is a scientific explanation.
One last thing: seances can be very dangerous to the impressionable. I do not recommend. I knew a young lady in the throes of grief who (she thought) contacted her late mother at a seance and almost immediately threw herself in front of a bus.
NigelT says
There seems to be a need in us to believe in something continuing on after we go – surely this is the basis of religions and superstitions going back to the dawn of the human race. It is tough to believe that we just die and finish, but any sort of logical thinking can’t really imagine millions of us somehow inhabiting some sort of heaven, or continuing to be here in some ghostly form. We believe we are so important as individuals, but we aren’t – we are no more significant than ants; we live a brief lifespan and most of us are forgotten after we slip from living recollection.
bungliemutt says
*Slits wrists*
attackdog says
And anyway, given that give or take 550,000 of us leave our mortal coils in the UK each year, that would be a hell of a lot of ghosts clogging up the ether space.
Vulpes Vulpes says
Woooo-oooooo – woooooo-hoooo – woahhhhhhh- wooooo
*shakes king-sized sheet free so he can see where he’s walking*
hoo-woooooo – woooooo-hoooo – wooooowoahhhhhhh
*trips over in heap, giggling*
Moose the Mooche says
You’ll get wrong off your mam, you wee scamp!
hubert rawlinson says
You are the janitor from Scooby Doo,
nigelthebald says
And he’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you pesky…
Somehow the word “kids” seems less than appropriate.
Black Celebration says
Well, I have given it a few days and although @artery points out that there are a few unexplained phenomena (Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo) out there – the act of talking to a deceased person is not a common experience or one we can relate to through a grieving process.
You may talk “to” the person – but to have the calm feeling of a two-way exchange, or to have them appear like Yoda and his cadaverous mates to signal approval is not something that happens.
With a film like The Sixth Sense, this is all perfectly fine. But in gritty real-life type dramas on the TV it’s becoming a thing that they do. And it should stop.
retropath2 says
I beg to differ, many of the bereaved I see on a regular and routine basis, and have observed over decades, is the commonality of talking to their departed, frequently gaining the comfort of a 2 way exchange. They can’t see or hear but feel a presence. I suspect it is a psychological manifestation, rather than reality, but it gives enormous comfort.
thecheshirecat says
I have experienced something like this with such regularity that I can now come to expect it when I lose friend or family. The person’s presence is unmistakable in the room, and sometimes conversation takes place. It all happens as part of dream, and I don’t see it as any more than that. Yet the experience is so vivid that I can easily see how someone less hardline sceptical might believe it to be / want to believe it to be a visitation of sorts.
Black Celebration says
Yes I have certainly experienced this as part of a dream. It’s a very real feeling and there’s an ache when you move back into reality. That ache decreases over time but it’s still there.
At the moment I am in the lounge with my daughter. My mum would have loved to know her as she is now. However I know that Grandma Celebration is not going to physically appear and converse with me like what happens off the telly. Part of grieving is to fully take that on board.