kinds of encounters in dreams or through animals or other symbols that they believe is connected to loved ones in the afterlife.

I have been a hospice nurse since 2005. People actively dying sometimes see relatives that have died in the room with them. It's possible it's a self soothing method or it's part of the brain shutting down. Even so, it's pretty cool.

My best friend and roommate died of AIDS many years ago. For a few weeks I could feel him laugh at our jokes. I didn't see a ghost. But, I felt him. Was he there? I hope so. But, I was a bit of a mess at the time. So it could have been all in my head.

I once had a patient who was over a hundred years old in her final days "play with her baby" in the bed . She saw her baby who didn't survive to be a toddler.

It's a story some of the young moms of dying babies like to hear. They want to know when their baby dies they will see them again.

Are there ghosts? I think so . But, maybe not.

I was awoken at 3 am one morning by an image of my mother who lived 1000 miles away. She smiled and said goodbye. She was not in ill health or any expectation of near-term death. I went back to sleep. Later that morning my sister called me and told me mom had died earlier that morning.

He was there and gone. A few hours later, she got the call that he was gone. It was sudden. He had not been sick. Take it for what you will.

Which may support the concept of telepathy rather than ghosts...someone sending a final farewell.

I have seen things and had things happen that can not be definitively explained. I'll remain agnostic on the issues (don't know what happened, but will accept the stories as true experiences)

Happens millions of times a night, someone somewhere dreams one of their close relatives has died. 9,999 times they wake up, talk to their relative and think, "glad they're Ok, that was a weird dream." But once in 10,000 times (or whatever the number is) someone has the dream the day before their relative dies.

I was awake. Believe what you want.

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dying of acute kidney failure, which took a few weeks, she told me that she was hallucinating. I asked what she meant and she said that she could hear music which was beautiful beyond anything she had ever heard.

Then she asked if I saw anything in the room. I didn't but she said that she saw figures of people. I'd read about near death experiences so I asked if they were anyone that she knew, like deceased relatives. She said that she could not recognize any of them because the vision of them was too vague. This was two weeks before she died.

Her doctors told us that her hallucinations were caused by impurities in the blood that her kidneys could no longer filter out, causing sensory and brain distortions.

But, since she was alert and rational enough to recognize them as hallucinations that were beyond ordinary hearing and vision, it seemed to me that her mind was functioning quite well. She had no problem recognizing visitors, being aware of her surroundings, keeping up with things going on in her great-grandchildren's lives when they visited, etc. Her last relative from her generation, a cousin, was gravely ill at the same time several miles away from her and she asked for updates on his condition.

So, were the doctors right about the cause of her hallucinations? Or was something of a more spiritual nature beyond this life happening? I don't know.

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She said it didn't really matter if they were real, because they were real to the person having them. As long as they were comforting and not frightening (sometimes family members get freaked out by them) there's no need to take any action. And they can indeed provide comfort to the patient. She told of a gentleman who'd been on a rugby team, and during his last days he was visited by his late teammates. His granddaughter, who took care of him, asked, "Who's here today?" He would tell her, then launch into the memory of a very happy time in his life.

it was important to her. I had heard of visions that dying people had, but it was the first time that I heard of them hearing music. Music had always been important to her. She did not play an instrument, but she had a strong soprano voice and sang in her church choir, and for people's weddings and for benefit programs. She loved classical music, but my father did not, so when I was a child, she took me with her to philharmonic concerts.

As long as the patient isn't in pain or distress. Sounds like it was a lovely way for your mother to go out.

made mocking jokes when they arrived for a visit and overheard her telling me about her experiences. I was furious at them for that and gently kicked my nephew's leg out of my mother's view to get him to stop.

Outside of the hospital, I told both of them that it wasn't about them and their views. It was about my mother's feelings and needs in her dying days, so I expected more respect from them toward her.

After that, she carefully confined her comments about her experiences to me when she was sure that they were not around. And, she sized up my brother accurately. She told me that he mocked what he feared and that I should stay in touch with him when she was gone because "He loves you, but he doesn't show it because he puts up a front of toughness to hide his feelings."

Sounds like you handled it as well as you could.

and she did.

That happened 12 years ago. My brother is gone now, too. Died in July, 2020 when covid spread through his area at very high rates of infection. Because of the pandemic, and my own vulnerability from underlying health issues, I was not able to travel to see him or attend his funeral, but I was in touch with him electronically.

Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die by David Kessler. It appears to be a universal thing, devoid of culture and religion.

I haven't had experience with ghosts or spirits and am of the belief that maybe/maybe not, but I do have what I call "visitation dreams" where I have experienced a dream where I interact with a loved one or friend, and sometimes my deceased dogs, that are vivid both visually and physically. I love them.

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He remembers seeing our late dog running toward him, wiggling with happiness. Then she grew sad and turned away. Then he was brought back. Whether it was wishful thinking or not it remains a comforting memory.

It made my heart heavy, and I got choked up.

I guess I was so wrapped up reading your words:

I know I sound crazy because after all your husband survived, and that was the best thing. It just made me sad that your old dog was sad.

I think tonight I've read too much about Kristi Noem murdering her happy puppy. What a cold-hearted, cruel, callous human she is.

So, you're in good company.

We believe in all sorts of stuff, and my mom grew up in Cherokee NC (she was a tribe member) and the residents there are pretty sure of ghosts

I've had two incidents in my life that shook me to my bones and I still can't explain

Thermodynamics is no friend if you're looking for scientific justification for the reality of ghosts.

What's important about life isn't energy in and of itself, but complex patterns and flows of energy. Everything that makes you uniquely you is subject to entropy. The "energy" of a living person doesn't retain the complexity of memories and personality after death. It's mostly dissipated as waste heat.

Contrary to Hollywood movies, there ain't no going back

While it is true that on the macroscopic scale, time flow is perceived as (and for practical purposes is) irreversible, broken teacups don't unbreak themselves and smoke never condenses back into a piece of paper…there's no physical reason why they can't, and if you look at a small enough scale, canonically a particle of dust wafting through the air, you can't actually determine which way time is flowing. Whether you play the video forwards or backwards, it's going to just sort of float around randomly; even if you do a rigorous physical analysis of its motion you still won't be able to figure out the direction of time because the laws you'd be using apply the same no matter what direction time is flowing.

It's actually one of the biggest and most important unanswered questions in physics. To quote the Wiki, because it's much better than anything I could write: "Why does time have a direction? Why did the universe have such low entropy in the past, and time correlates with the universal (but not local) increase in entropy, from the past and to the future, according to the second law of thermodynamics? […] Are there exceptions to the principle of causality? Is there a single possible past? Is the present moment physically distinct from the past and future, or is it merely an emergent property of consciousness? What links the quantum arrow of time to the thermodynamic arrow?"

Universe (or multiverse).

In an odd coincidence, three of my professors were devout - two Christian, one Hindu. They were also all hard scientists, ranging from hydrogen bond theory to the very origins of the Universe – my advanced math professor was also a fellow at Tufts and a well-known cosmologist who made it very clear that while he believed that everything after t=10e-43 seconds can be clearly and unambiguously described by physics, before that point and especially before t=0, before the Bang, he believes that Brahma ruled supreme. Reality gets real fuzzy around the edges, if you look closely enough.

It's something that I've always felt is a bit of a failing amongst scientists, an inability to say that some things are simply outside the purview of the field – Sagan and the afterlife have been mentioned here, and oddly enough I also got that quote earlier today on my FB…IMO it's a bad take, the existence of an afterlife is not a scientific question, it can no more be falsified than proven. Ditto the existence of God, that's why I stubbornly call myself agnostic even though I don't really believe there is a Supreme Being…but I can no more disprove it than I can prove it.

As to an afterlife, I'm a lot more open; I do think there's something special about consciousness, probably involving quantum mechanics and our brain's observation (in the physics sense) doing unconventional things with the wavefunctions, and perhaps whatever intangible causes that is something that can persist, but again…can't prove, can't falsify.

Also I had some whiskey in my coffee so I may just be rambling

Why should anything be beyond the purview of that?

While I gave it up ages ago, once upon a time I was a formally trained scientist. With metaphysical questions, there's no logical way to determine whether or not you are "fooling yourself" – you simply can't show any evidence either way, pro or con.

There is no empirical test than can deny the existence of an afterlife, any more than there is one than can prove it. In the absence of that, the question ceases to be Scientific. Not everything has to be Scientific, you know.

…then “I don’t know” is the only sensible answer. We shouldn’t dress up every crazy, unverifiable idea as “beyond” science, imparting a lofty aura of mystical knowledge upon it.

Further “can’t be proven or disproven” shouldn’t be treated as if it means “50/50 shot of being true”.

There’s nothing positive going for the idea of ghosts apart from the idea being popular, while fitting quite comfortably in the realm of exactly the kinds of things people misperceive. Occam’s Razor favors explaining ghosts via known human psychology rather than invoking fanciful unproven phenomena.

I said "I don't know", just in very specific terms – "you simply can't show any evidence either way, pro or con."

That said, on balance I do believe consciousness has some sort of persistence, because I believe it can't be explained through simple physical laws.

…that wouldn’t imply persistence. There’s no reason unknown phenomena can’t be ephemeral.

…and there's no more reason they can't be persistent.

And, since it's such a hard unknown, we can't even make a SWAG.

He wasn't talking about ghosts, a soul, anything. He was just explaining part of a theory. Didn't speculate as to where thoughts and memories might go or what might become of them.

His name currently escapes me and frankly I'm too lazy and daydrunk to look him up, but he's damn right that the fuzziness of QM allows for a lot of metaphysical stuff to be plausible.

I like to think that something about consciousness is special and may survive, but I can neither prove nor disprove that so it's not Science.

There is not yet a good overall explanation of how it arises, but it's clear that it involves a working brain that needs energy from metabolising nutrients, and which can be physically or chemically disrupted. It's debatable if there's a distinct point at which a brain becomes complex enough to be said to be "conscious" (either as we grow, or in terms of evolution - is a chimp conscious? And so on). There might be other ways (eg a computer) that consciousness could come about.

The existence of ghosts is also not "outside of science". If people think there has been an effect on the physical world, then it can be (and has been) investigated. Any theory that could explain how an effect happens - how any consciousness could both survive the death and removal of the body it has always been associated with, and be able to stay at a certain place (why does it seem to obey the laws of inertia and gravity, still being on the surface of Earth, but not have any identifiable matter? How does it interact with the electrons, protons, photons etc. of the world we sense in a few select and very human ways, when actual humans depend on bodies to do that?) would be useful, but believers have produced bugger all.

An afterlife that is not associated with the Earth at least doesn't have physics to account for, but given that our consciousness is so tied to our working bodies, it requires a proper explanation beyond "well, it might happen". Well, I might develop psychokinetic powers tomorrow, but that is the same sort of stretch as "my consciousness might survive my body". Would an afterlife involve a lot of people in the state they were in around the time of dying, eg comatose, with dementia, in confusion or pain? If the afterlife starts with consciousness from some time before the body "gives up the ghost", would everyone be a child or a newborn baby in it?

Although if you believe in essence, or soul (I'm talking strictly hypothetically, I know most people here don't) it would exist apart from dementia or whatever was ailing the person at the time. Hypothetically. And, again, way above my paygrade.

Would be something other than, if a soul exists? If a soul left the brain, it would no longer be governed by the brain? If it could indeed live apart from the brain? Again, way beyond my paygrade. I'm just speculating, which is all anyone can do.

I recall Barbara Ehrenreich speculating in her book Nickle and Dimed. Would heaven look like a nursing home? Since people die at all ages, obviously not. But I thought it was an interesting question. Then as well as now. All I can do is speculate.

In that instance, yes, the brain could be damaged, as you say with dementia, and the soul would be damaged too.

If they are correct, then the soul exists apart from the body, enters the body when reincarnation occurs, and so isn't damaged by the body. If the soul is a thing apart from the body, then it wouldn't be damaged. I'm not saying reincarnation believers are right. I'm just saying I've never heard any of them say the soul is damaged by the condition of the body in its various incarnations.

I guess it depends on whether you believe the soul is generated by the brain. If it isn't, if it exists apart from the brain, then the brain and body would have less impact on it than one might think. Again, simply wondering out loud.

We know what it takes but we haven't the foggiest idea how it works. We can map out "circuits" and "processing areas" but those are pure analogies, the actual mechanism of cognition is currently an unknown; all theories are theoretical, involving the processing and integrating of information without addressing the underlying physical mechanisms.

Beyond that, you're certainly asking some good questions, but even in the context of theories of consciousness, they're far deeper metaphysical inquiries than "how does the brain physically process information".

("Electrified lard" is a memetic reference to the brain being ~85% fat and, of course, electrified)

Wedge in the supernatural keep getting smaller and smaller.

We can see billions of light years into outer space, and see things millions of times smaller than a grain of sand, and yet, somehow, the supernaturalists will always say that 'it's outside of science' to study their pet fantasy concept.

Maybe these silly legends aren't 'outside of science,' but simply made up nonsense, and it's only a matter of time before science closes off the gaps where they live, once and for all.

If anything the "gaps" for "fantasy" grew with the discovery of quantum mechanics; it does quite the opposite of throwing reality into sharp relief – it leaves a very essential, basic fuzziness that allows for a lot of quite interesting, perfectly theoretically plausible (if entirely unrealistic), concepts. Heck, Real Science delves into some pretty outré stuff already.

As to myself, I certainly don't believe in some organized higher consciousness or structure, but I'm also far from certain that This Is It And There Is Nothing More. Take that as you wish.

But that side of my brain is sadly incapable. Fascinating stuff.

As you say, this is probably at a quantum level. We may never understand.

Would have dismissed it as a shadow or reflection had my friend not seen the same thing.

We had finished up with work and were sitting in the back of our bar shooting the shit when, in my peripheral, I saw something move in the front of the bar. Turned my head and saw a man, slightly balding in the front with longish hair in the back and a big beard. He was all grey and only visible from the waist up. He was walking and his arm swinging is what caught my eye. Then he disappeared.

What makes me know it wasn't a shadow or figment of my imagination from being overly tired or whatever is immediately after he disappeared, I turned to my friend to see him staring wild-eyed back at me and we both said "Did you see that!!" at the same time.

We were the only people in the building, in the historic section of a small town town, and a nasty Civil War battle (Ball's Bluff) happened a couple miles down the road. I think what we saw was some soldier's residual energy.

That's why I'm agnostic and not full on atheist. There's something more. I saw it. Whether or not it's conscious, or can be, or just unspent energy... I don't know. I don't think we are meant to know.

I spent my early childhood in an apartment that had belonged to a slightly well-known artist.

Her family owned a textile mill, and had the 7-story building built as an investment in the late 1930s. She - Lydia - took the rear top floor unit.

But she later married a man only interested in her for her money (and a real right-winger to boot), and who spent the late 1950s slowly driving her insane by mixing her anti-anxiety meds and such.

Her old maid cousin Julia found out, sometime in the early '60s, and rescued her - whereupon Lydia gave her the neighboring apartment in gratitude.

Sadly, a few years later Lydia developed liver cancer due to all those pills - and she died in hospice care at her home.

We moved in a few years later, in 1980. Both my mother and I saw her: tall, distinguished, hair in a bun and always in her flowing nightgown (she liked to tickle me!).

Our neighbor Julia - by then quite elderly - told us what happened. She had a photo of Lydia that matched who we had seen exactly.

Who's to say?

In a historic pub in York England, and no I wasn’t drinking at the time.

No.

I caught a mouse in a mousetrap, shortly after moving into this house. I was living in the basement at the time, doing work upstairs. I heard the trap slap onto the floor upstairs, when I caught it.

Sometime later, I heard the trap slap again against the floor, it was very recognizable and obvious what the sound was, so I went upstairs to reset the trap and dispose of the 2nd victim.

Well, there was no 2nd mouse, and the trap was still set....


(Also, there were weird noises in the house after I had first moved in... One night there was a huge CRASH sound, and I was totally convinced that some bookcases had fallen over in the basement.... but upon searching everywhere, there was nothing out of place, and no plausible explanation for the noise I had heard....)

Eventually I decided that some 'previous occupants' were dissatisfied over my choices of paint colors...

LOL

Things calmed down after that, but it was a weird first month or two here...

not including countless cameras in private homes and buildings

And not one of them has captured a clear image of anything supernatural.

Record light, perhaps their energy is not light yet we can, somehow, see the ones who are seen when cameras cannot.

How come there's such a thing as a non-photo blue pencil?

A typical camera sensor and the human retina detect photons in the visible spectrum

(There are cameras that can detect energy outside this spectrum as well - infrared, UV, etc)

But I know people who are.

Now for something even crazier: I think there are some living people who can do what ghosts do (quantum traveling while asleep).

Unfortunately, there's really no way to confirm any of this. There are a bunch of shows that supposedly show video footage of ghosts, but at the end of the day, most people are going to be skeptical. It's something you have to personally experience and then draw your own conclusions.

place in ireland. i’m so curious. there’s 1 that haunts the bar. i plan to buy him a drink. see if he says thank u.

there’s a lot of famous hauntings in chgo. i’ve seen ppl believe some pretty stupid stuff, so just cuz a lot of ppl say it doesnt make it true. it’d take a lot to convince me.

First, that sounds like the plot of numerous horror movies.

Second, spending the night in a haunted castle sounds exciting but what if it turns out to be true that the castle really is haunted? What if the ghosts can follow you back home? Think of all the quacks you'd have to deal with to get the situation resolved. It wouldn't be as easy as calling up a plumber.

Maybe get some "ghost hunter" numbers handy prior to the trip? Lol!

i dont think they’ll follow me all the way to chgo.

You don't know what you letting yourself in for!

last known address of my da’s side was kinnitty.
https://www.kinnittycastlehotel.com/

quantum mechanics suggests that it is possible. so, i dunno any more.

i had hallucinations from a head injury for most of my life. a lot of them early on, but 1 persistent 1 was olfactory hallucinations. sometimes smoke, and sometimes a perfume that it took me a long time to put my finger on. it was gardenias, my da’s fave flower. 1 of the few plants he struggled w, but we had a couple in the house for a few yrs. my youngest also had a tbi, and was dx’d as paranoid, cuz she saw ppl following her. sagan points to seizures and other known neuro processes as explaining many phenomena.

there is 1 thing i cd never explain, tho. my da had 1 brother, 10 yrs older. he had alzheimers at about the same time cancer started killing my da. we didnt know. it started w a vertebrae, so he was on big painkillers and mostly out of it for a long time.
rt when his brother died, at 2 a.m., he sat up in bed, yelling his name.
if u know irish lore, u know this is a banshee.

so, yeah… my family was the sort that wd have 1.

Your definition of "real".

I don't believe in anything but I know I have seen at least a few and interacted with some, they are there, you'll notice them if you are sensitive to the energies or if they insist. They are not all nice.

"Ghosts" fall under paranormal bullshit



* "Bollocks" is Brit-speak for "Bullshit"

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It wasn't as much a visual image as it was a presence. He told her to stop mourning because everything was great.

I also heard my mom's voice the morning she died. She said, "It's beautiful here." I didn't know she died until the hospital called very early in the morning.

I have a few experiences. As recently as this year.

The one that was most interesting was when I lived in an old brownstone 6 unit building near Lake if the Isles in Minneapolis MN.

I liked there with 2 roommates. There were a few things that happened that were confirmed by all of the roomates but there was an ongoing thing that kept happening to me. Shortly after moving in I started being woken up in the middle if the night abruptly as though someone shot a gun on the room. No noise or anything like that but awoken that abruptly. And always I had the feeling that my bed was just settling from being shaken. This went on for sometime and I chalked it up to anxiety at first, until it happened one night (still early on in this story). I got up and walked down the length of the apartment (It was a very long apartment that stretched all the way from the front of the building to the back. Anyway I got up to go fet a glass of water and as I was walking I noticed my roommates light was on. I thought he mist’ve fallen asleep with his light on. It was somewhere around 3am. I went back to bed and slept the night through. The next morning my roommate asked me if I had gotten up in the night and if anything strange had happened. I said yes and asked why? He said he woke up to someone shaking him and telling him to “get it” or “get out” but that there was nobody there when he woke up…..

Ok this was too much of a coincidence. The problem was that I had these experiences for months and I really did not like my room. It felt bad. And those words would literally haunt me later. As roommates typically do the other two moved out at one time and new ones moved in. As soon as a different room opened up I move the F out of that room. The two new roommates moved in but one of them, the one that took my old room hadn’t slept in his new room the first month. He would come home, stay for a while and either crash on the couch or would stay at his parents house. The other roommate teased him about it while I wondered what was up. We asked him over and over again and he joked around until one day he finally came clean. He said he didn’t like that room. It made him feel bad and that he didn’t want to stay there because it seemed off. This was a 22 year old man that was as carefee and easy going as it gets. And he was terrified of that room. I never told him about my experiences in that room until that exchange. We all loved into a house together shortly after that. There were many other occurrences in that apartment as well. But don’t want to get into them.

Of you are interested I will tell you about the three spirits that saved my life on the night of my bachelors party. I will swear until my last dying day that I was near death and 3 spirits (two I had met and one I hadn’t) turned me back. No joke it still has me windering if I did actually die for a moment.

The human mind/brain is remarkable for its ability to modify reality in many ways.

And this is just about on the same level as the people that believe JFK jr, or Elvis still operate among us, or that Tru.p is Jesus reincarnate.
I have to wonder, who's zoomin' who?
Science doesn't care what you "believe" you saw.
-DTC

When I was a kid, my family were visiting an old over-run Bushrangers grave near Young and I got a weird prickly feeling and ran back to the car quick, but as an adult I know it was just a bit of a change in temperature as a cold front came through.

My proof that there's no such thing as ghosts? I lost both my parents over the past two years and I'd give anything for them to come back and haunt me. They haven't, so there ya go...

into our brains. The brain is what interprets this information, and this is where a variety of perceptions to identical stimuli is being generated, these perceptions not necessarily being identical from one brain to the other.

The vast majority, but not all of us, interprets most physiological stimuli in a fairly identical ways, but not all of them. Since the connections formed by neurons in our brains are never identical (not even in identical twins), variations of interpretation are inevitable, and these variations create the areas of perception that we rarely agree on. Being social creatures, we suppress those variations for the sake of ending up with common understanding of reality.

What I am suggesting is that ghosts and other extrasensory experiences are the realm of the brain activity that is not common to all members of our species. It is rare but possible for two or more brains to respond with identical extrasensory brain activity to the same sensory stimuli, and that would explain, for example, two people "seeing" the same ghost at the same time. I suspect that this happens more commonly than is being reported, but we tend to suppress such experiences, subconsciusly or deliberately, for the sake of sustaining our social connections.

Although our "reality" is, consciously or subconsciously, being defined by a range of the socially acceptable brain responses to physical stimuli, for some people their uncommon perceptions constitute a more significant part of their selves, and they are more free than others to outwardly express the interpretations that are rare or unique.

We call these people fucking nutcases. But in the end, all of us have had an occasional spark of a unique brain activity that makes us, at least nominally, fucking nutcases.

My two cents, from a perspective of an admitted fucking nutcase.

Although I would suggest there are levels to people with "uncommon perceptions." It doesn't start at fucking nutcase. I think it starts at open minded and goes from there. Lol.

One can actually be trained to amplify sensitivity to certain perceptions or suppress it. There are different degrees of social conventions in different societies aimed at discouraging or encouraging the outward expressions of these sensitivities. There used to be times when being shamans, oracles and seers were considered very valuable vocations. There were schools that would train people to expand their range of uncommon perceptions. As in every vocation, some were better at it than others. But the people who got better at it, had, by definition, to become increasingly antisocial. In situations like this, the mobs usually win out. Hence the "fucking nutcase" stereotype.

There are many more than that, but the 5 is easy.

Your second problem is the "outside the realm." Scientific method can still test it. There aren't ghosts. We've had centuries to find the means to measure that.

Forming a non-testable hypothesis from observations that cannot be measured or analyzed falls outside of scientific method and are therefore not subject to conclusions. "There are no ghosts" is a conclusion not based on the scientific method, just as my observations are not.

Observe, research, test, hypothesize, analyze, conclude. The boundaries of scientific method are built into its description.

Not my problem.

The test is to prove there are. If you can't we have to default to the null set. The "there are no ghosts" crowd is not the one making a hypothesis.

and on about his belief here. He apparently differs from Einstein. As best as I can recall with my layman's mind is that he thinks the spiritual self is limited to what the body can synthesize from nourishment. Once the body becomes unable to perform that synthesis the spirit dies. All that is left is the body as potential nourishment.

Anybody know what Hawking thought?

I'm guessing somewhere along the line someone made an unfounded and erroneous leap of illogic based on the conservation of energy, and falsely attributed their own "ghosts = energy" assumption to Einstein.

And somewhat likely.

https://www.astronomy.com/science/what-is-quantum-entanglement-a-physicist-explains-einsteins-spooky-action-at-a-distance/

We don't have a solid way to test it and our understanding of the universe is still evolving as we find new evidence, and what we believe is the universe could actually be even larger than we can comprehend. There could be an entire extra sensory perception (maybe more) we simply don't have the ability to perceive or understand how to recognize. It's easy to dismiss something when you don't have any solid proof, until you do. I prefer to keep an open mind, life is more interesting that way.

The "physical" interaction some occasionally experience, may mean you have a bit of ability to perceive, but lets be honest, its a rarity, impossible to identify, and thus, don't even have a clue how to study it.

I've read where both the KGB and CIA looked into this, for spying purposes, but abandoned the projects as it was unreliable, interestingly not that they didn't find any "super natural" that implies evidence, but deemed it not useful. Go figure.

Most of the "Ghost Clubs" are probably bunk, however, the ones that aren't and call out bunk, sometimes provide some interesting info, but that's still not proof in the scientific way. Maybe its an evolutionary thing that has to occur. We'll all know once we croak....or not. I

Me personally, I've seen enough to accept there is another "something" we can't see. But its not proof, it can't be repeated and tested.

https://higgs.ph.ed.ac.uk/outreach/higgshalloween-2021/haunted-frequency

The Haunted Frequency

Vic Tandy had dismissed reports of his lab being haunted as mere make-believe. The whirrs and groans of the lab’s machines must surely be the answer. At this time at night, though, none of them were switched on. Something else must be causing the cold sweat running over his skin, the feeling of dread rolling over him like a chill sea mist. Then, he saw it out of the corner of his eye. A ghostly, grey figure, watching him as he worked. The hair stood up on the back of his neck: “I was quite frankly terrified,” Tandy would later reminisce. Finally, he worked up the courage to look the apparition straight in the face but, as he turned, it vanished back into the aether. Understandably spooked, he gathered his belongings and headed home for the night.

Was the lab haunted after all? Sadly for enthusiasts of the paranormal, the next day would bring a logical, if fascinating, explanation. Tandy happened to be an avid fencer, and brought his sword into work for repairs. When he fixed it into a vice, he noticed that the sword’s tip began to vibrate frantically, almost as if possessed by his visitor from the previous night. Tandy’s scientific skepticism kicked in, however, and upon further investigation, he discovered that a newly installed fan system had been generating infrasound—sound which is at too low a frequency to be heard by the human ear—at a frequency of 19 Hz.

This frequency is important because it was the resonant frequency of the sword. If an object is exposed to sound at its resonant frequency, then large vibrations can be induced along it. It’s how an opera singer can break a wine glass by singing the right note—the note she sings is the resonant frequency of the glass, and the vibrations which are induced are large enough to shake the vessel to pieces!

It turns out that the resonant frequency of much of the human body is also close to 19 Hz. Vibrations in Tandy’s chest led to breathing difficulties, which in turn brought about the feeling of dread and the cold sweat. Even the sight of the apparition could be tied to resonant vibrations in his eyes. The infrasound was the source of the haunting!

Tandy went on to investigate this effect further, determining that similar infrasound was present in supposedly haunted cellars in Coventry. He even found similar effects right here in Edinburgh. In 2005, he found infrasound frequencies at volumes 200 times higher in 'haunted' locations in Mary King Close than in 'unhaunted' areas. So, next time you’re visited by your neighbourhood ghost, you might not be experiencing the supernatural but just the weird and wonderful effects of infrasound!

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/oct/16/science.farout

The fear frequency
Mark Pilkington
Wed 15 Oct 2003 21.54 EDT

Have you ever wondered what a ghost sounds like? Engineer Vic Tandy may already know. In the early 1980s, Tandy was working in a laboratory designing medical equipment. Word began to spread among the staff that the labs might be haunted, something Tandy put down to the constant wheeze of life-support machines operating in the building.

One evening he was working on his own in the lab when he began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, breaking into a cold sweat as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He was convinced that he was being watched. Then, out of the corner of his eye, Tandy noticed an ominous grey shape drifting slowly into view, but when he turned around to face it, it was gone. Terrified, he went straight home.

The next day Tandy, a keen fencer, noticed that a foil blade clamped in a vice was vibrating up and down very fast. He found that the vibrations were caused by a standing sound wave that was bouncing between the end walls of the laboratory and reached a peak of intensity in the centre of the room. He calculated that the frequency of the standing wave was about 19hz (cycles per second) and soon discovered that it was produced by a newly installed extractor fan. When the fan was turned off, the sound wave disappeared.

The key here is frequency: 19hz is in the range known as infrasound, below the range of human hearing, which begins at 20hz. Tandy learned that low frequencies in this region can affect humans and animals in several ways, causing discomfort, dizziness, blurred vision (by vibrating your eyeballs), hyperventilation and fear, possibly leading to panic attacks.

A more recent investigation took place in an allegedly haunted 14th-century pub cellar in Coventry, where people have reported terrifying experiences for many years, including seeing a spectral grey lady. Here Tandy also uncovered a 19hz standing wave, adding further evidential weight to his theory.

In an interesting parallel, researchers have recorded that, prior to an attack, a tiger's roar contains frequencies of about 18hz, which might disorientate and paralyse their intended victim. Is this the sound of fear itself?

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etc. etc.

But again, either way, its not data that can be repeated with regularity or tested to develop any sort of hypothesis. You may see a chair move a couple of feet without any known stimulus, but since its a one off instance, even caught on camera, doesn't make it proof.

And I think a lot of the "equipment" used is probably bunk as it can be quite nonsensical and sessions could go on for hours before anything happens. Flip side, sometimes they get intelligent responses, but again, it can't be repeated in a consistent manner and tested, so...not "proof". Its ultimately still a personal decision. But I'm still skeptical, like throwing a rock into a body of water not being able to see and hearing it. Was it a pond? Lake? River? Ocean? Sure they got something, but, no clue as to what it was.

And of course, there is the danger of making science into a bit of a religion. A number of Stephen Hawking's points were initially rejected as were some of Einstein's, etc. Some in the community can get very invested in an idea that's ultimately wrong (particularly if its their life's work and being told you wasted the last decade). So, lets keep the door open. We can't prove the "Supernatural" on a scientific basis, doesn't mean there might not be something to it, just we don't know enough yet. As it is we still don't know everything about our own oceans, brains, much less the universe.

And the burden of that proof is on those making the claims.

regarding an apparition. I won’t go as far as to say I 100% believe but I definitely had an interesting experience.

because they don’t waste their time on me.

No axe murderers in the apartment, okay then. Few days later I remembered that my FIL's death anniversary was around this time and checked and indeed, the night the light went on was May 8, Death Day.

He was never a visible ghost but haunted his wife big time for years with electricity, his thing. Everyone in the family saw and heard things in that house. Poor woman woke up in the middle of the night alone in the house with lights blaring in the next room or huge noises from the empty second floor as if a bookcase had fallen, but nothing when she checked in the morning.

FIL was the haunting type. Cranky in life, cranky in death. Shinto priest made a heck of a lot of money continually coming over and waving around branches and chanting to make FIL stop bugging people until even that priest got fed up and suggested family members just go to the shrine and pray by themselves already.

May 8 coming up. Some years nothing happens, sometimes does, electricity-wise. He's losing his powers I assume. Game on, FIL.

For instance, when I was spending the night at a beach house. My still living cat was at home 70 miles away.
I could have sworn I felt her jump up on the foot of the bed.
There were no animals in the house.

Ghosts are not real. As a scientist. However, if you want or need them to be real. I can understand that.

Once you die, you get planted. Lights out. It’s over. You had a good run: there’s no coming back. The blood stops being oxygenated by the plural alveoli, heme doesn’t reach the brain, consciousness slips and fades, those four O2 molecules bonded to each hemoglobin that we’ve trusted since birth just don’t work anymore.

But! If you’re like most of us who desire to explain consciousness, personality and sentience for a passed loved-one, please do keep your belief system intact such that you can find comfort as you can.

I know that a scientist will probably disappoint you, but take a moment to consider the philosophical side of trying to explain rationally observed phenomena.

When you stop, you just stop. Maybe….

When I had just finished my second undergrad degree I was working as a biomedical engineer doing really keen work on MS, FAS and MI stuff. I was dating another young professor at the college I taught at who was adjuncting (despite I had been converted). I was at work trying to reprogram a 3D rendering and modeling program that reconstructed microsections of fluorescent imaging cryomicrotomy experiments to determine efficacy for both pre-clinical treatments and revolutionary diagnostic evaluations through the technology we had developed. One of my PIs was working late, a man I loved, loved very, very deeply. (He always had a gallon of 94.5% USP punctilious ethanol under his desk that he’d daily add to his coffee. It steadied his hands during small animal surgeries, which was my job to assist with). Anyway, he was already in his 80’s when I worked under him, we had a GREAT team of scientists, physicists, engineers, machinists (we built our own stuff); and chemists and biologists. Now anyway, I’m a professor dating another professor who is supposed to be on a flight from Fort Collins (where she earned her doc) and I’m working on my 15th hour going over code and saving images in series and in the midst of all that I’m checking flight schedules and arrivals and I’m worried because there’s no arrival info for her flight.


His next words revolutionized my perspective about life, as a dumb, young, lovestruck idiot waiting for his girlfriend to fly home from an academic conference at her Alma Mater as a 20-something, just tenured professor: this 80-something guy; my mentor, a man I loved just as deeply as my father, whom I’d go to with chemistry questions, math questions, life questions simply and passively looked at me and simply said (probably at that time accepting his own fate), as I sat in front of that $25,000 computer wondering if her flight crashed and being not only perplexed by her delay and my inability to determine whether she was safe, simply said the words “meh, dying is something people do”.


That moment challenged my ENTIRE PERSPECTIVE on birth, life, purpose, death and dying. No kidding. I sat there for a full five minutes and considered what EXACTLY it would mean to ME if, by no fault of mine, she were to crash, burn and die. His tally, as yours, are commensurately opposed. His assumption was “is the important person to you, if she died, still somehow going to still be important to you after her (assumed) death?

What his message revolved around what “it meant to me”. The importance I had placed upon it. Ghosts, as a cultural phenomenon and personal perspective, seem to exist to honor a deceased loved one: a means to remember, honor and love someone, like I loved Clyde.

He passed-away, probably not super-peacefully from DVTs several years after I went to Grad School.

And having learned of his death, the comfort he tried to provide my acute anxiety by telling me that “being born and dying” are part of the “ultimate human condition” was 1) a great life lesson (if not the greatest) and 2) reason to let me believe he was at peace with his own passing.

I lament that was such a long story, but my mentor, Clyde Barlow, was ONE HELL of a leader, a teacher and an inspiration. I truly loved that man: we were great chemists and biophysicists together.


One of the funniest stories he told me was that as a post-doc he was stuck in the fourth floor of some random hall at U Penn in the ‘60s and he’d toss chunks of elemental Potassium out the upstairs window into the snowbanks as fellow chemists would stroll by. I told him that I had done the same thing! I even used to put dry ice from Carolina deliveries into 0.400 mL Eppindorf tubes and drop them into lab-mates garbage cans (E-tubes can fragment, so to save eyeballs, always look for the shocking and unsuspected sound and not a first-aide kit). But if you’re trying to load a gel and an Epi-bomb goes off, you’re pouring a new gel. “Lab pranks”.

But, like he said, dying is “something that people do”. Grieving, appreciating, honoring and revering are also things that people do and I’m hoping I’m smart enough to realize THAT WAS HIS ENTIRE POINT! And, if it wasn’t, it is RIGHT NOW my entire point.

I’m sorry for your loss. Grieve well. Appreciate and honor as best you can.

Ghosts, I imagine, are part of our grieving process - culturally. I don’t believe Clyde has a ghost, but I’d really like to share at least one more morning with him calibrating linear motors and trying to photograph high-contrast stains.

If it makes you feel any better, thanks for the memory. I miss that guy. He legit taught me everything I knew by explaining what we could figure-out together - we were developing new frontiers!


Thank you for reading my verbose message and if ghosts bring you peace in the face of loss, sure thing. I support that (which explains the “maybe” - it’s only up to you).

I’d frankly like the idea that Clyde might still be around saying “Eesh, I dunno, go get your sliderule, dumbass.”

So, you see, I’m conflicted. Every scientist is conflicted until those data get printed! But as far as ghosts go, I believe they exist in our minds by virtue of the simple fact that sometimes letting go of people we didn’t want to lose is too difficult for the moment we lost them. And that can be okay.

It wasn’t one word. It was an essay with Ulysses/Infinite Jest/War and Peace-like energy. Thanks for reading.

I guess I somehow had an original thought. Go figure?

Plenty of that in this thread. Seeing loved ones is one thing, but random people who have any connection to one's life are another. I consider this a fun topic. Never seen one myself, but know plenty of people who have.

Is completely up to your philosophical background and belief system. Most cultures honor their ancestors by mitigating their deep personal losses in developing methods to keep loved ones around. Loss is hard, man. We all get that - and beyond that - our own space at the time when we lose someone can leave us vulnerable… (hmmm…do I want to use the word vulnerable? Maybe I don’t, but I’m going to leave it here for editorial reasons. Still, in my mind, I find the belief in ghosts simply a belief, maybe iffy on the idea of vulnerability).

Ghosts are like childhood monsters (the ones under the bed or in the closet). There’s a complete anthropological and psychological discipline defined to address the artifact, similar to UFOs. I mean we have entire TV channels devoted to Sasquatch, ghost hunting and debunking UFOs - it’s a deeply-rooted cultural phenomenon. My friend Bob wrote an entire book titled Where Bigfoot Walks devoted exclusively to this subject. (He’s a thoughtful guy, a great author and an excellent lepidopterist and botanist).

Ghosts, just like childhood monsters, don’t physically exist except for the purpose we evolved their existence to fulfill - and that is extremely personal and revolves completely about our safety and the safety of our genetic longevity.

The fact they’re either familiar or unfamiliar to you is not important, but why you are experiencing the phenomenon may be - it’s up to you.

Here’s my salient point: it really only matters to you and if it does something good for you and isn’t a crime, go for it. If, however, you’re disturbed by the phenomenon or it causes harm to someone else, I’d suggest seeking out the counsel that makes the most sense to you to ameliorate it.

The belief in ghosts is complex and ranges from benign appreciation of our deceased elders to a deep fear of imagined apparitions who’d like to do us harm. That fear is easily explained as a consequence of humans not having always been apex predators: yes, I know that our eyes are positioned to be able to quickly locate prey binocularly, but we weren’t always that the top of the pack, and at some point in our evolutionary past we developed a deep reactionary fear of things we can’t see or understand (or things like lions or sharks that might eat us) that to this day remain as vestigial as our tail.

Think about your fear of heights (despite standing safely) or swimming in deep water far away from shore (despite being an excellent swimmer, perhaps).

Ghosts, like many things, are simply coping mechanisms.

Think about this: every emotion you’ve ever had evolved from millions of years hundreds of thousands of living ancestors’ experiences and they exists only to keep you safe.

Now, there’s a fun fucking paradox to keep the ol’ noodle thinkin’!

Lot of words to say what's basically conjecture. After a very long post expounding on the idea it's all because we want to see loved ones again.

You just need to read.

Oh well.

If you’re too simple to understand the logic just go home rather than be reductionist. But hey, you can type! And if you believe in ghosts, great!

Sorry I wasn't wowed. Good luck next time.

Good luck.

And one or both of us misunderstood what the other was saying. It’s not a big deal, just move-on and be happy. No reason to be negative, but I’ll support a positive challenge. Simple as that.

I kind of read your responses, you know. Kind of -- um -- negative? Lots of smart people on this site. Most of them don't take themselves seriously. Good luck.

And you might enjoy not practicing the art of orthopodietry. Just sayin’

Best to ya!