Show's like Ghost Hunters feed on teh stupid, which gets ratings. Teh stupid need to drink gatorade and buy toilet paper as well

has died, I can tell you that to encounter a ghost is shocking because it is a very exceptional event. "Ghosts" aren't supposed to be here, they're supposed to be there. For comparison, angels tend to announce their presence with the reassurance "Fear not", implying that most people confronted with an angel are scared shitless!

me doing that.

the problem I had after my dad died and my stepmother let me have some of his ashes, which are in a tiny brass urn on my bedroom dresser.

For a while I felt sort of...well....weird.

"Dad" being there and all...

Any bad/weird shit goes down in my house, I'm gone.

I had an "encounter" a few months ago at work. I was carrying two 35lbs jugs of fryer oil into dry storage, located in the basement of the restaurant. I had to turn sideways to navigate the doorway, it was rather narrow. As I was putting the oil away, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye but didn't think anything of it. When I turned around, a 4' high stack of buckets that had been against the wall were now smack dab in the middle of he doorway. I would not have been able to navigate the doorway if they had been there previously, and stacked buckets don't slide 1' laterally by themselves, and I didn't brush against them. Definitely raised the hair on the back of my neck.


peace,
Noodleboy

That's why.

It would mean the afterlife exists, which would be great.

Sadly, all evidence points to just the opposite.

If we didn't know the identity of the ghost, we'd probably have no way of knowing whether they were a nice person when they were alive or not. That is, unless you are working on the presumption that the ghost has been identified with doing nice deeds or takes on a nice demeanor when it appears

It's important to note that not all people are afraid of ghosts and some can recognize when they are friendly and react calmly to them. My dad has had some experiences in this realm and has been totally calm and relaxed about it whereas I have been quite frightened when the same happened to me (of course I was much younger then, I don't know how I'd react now)

I think it's because ghosts represent the unknown and, even though we can sometimes have some sort of interaction with them, we don't know quite what we are interacting with and how the entity that we are interacting with functions. We rely on our huuman senses and yet we are dealing with an entity that is not human (or at least human in the earthly sense of the term) and therefore is beyond our understanding.

When I encountered the ghost of my grandfather when I was ten, I was scared out of my wits. I loved my grandfather and would have loved the chance to have been able to see him again (he died without us having seen each other for a long time) but I guess I was frightened because (1) my rational state of mind knew that he wasn't supposed to be there and (2) because of the suddeness of his materialization and because I wasn't in control of the way that I was interacting with him.

or very, very little. I don't know if I'm in the minority, but I doubt it. I think people are afraid not so much of a ghost, but because it's a part of the unknown, and it's the unknown that really scares them, not the presence of some person who passed away.

I think that's always true.

It's been different, though, since the beginning of Xtianity, because according to what a very devout friend of mine said, when you go to "heaven" you're not supposed to come back in one form or another. Ghost-hood is like a punishment or some sort of rejection, I guess. Before that, ghosts were the "ancestors" or the spirits who helped you in your life, often times being minor deities, helping you in battle or war.

Then you had Victorian England and there was a time when everyone and his mother were "mediums" (always appropriate as they were never completely "all there&quot . According to them and other charlatans of the day, ghosts were "trapped" in the astral plain, and therefore "haunted" people on earth because they didn't realize they were dead.

People like M.R. James. a professor and writer in the late 19th century wrote some really spooky ghost stories and freaked out a lot of people because his style was so calm and measured, without hysterics.

Why now? Still, I think it's part of why we have so many people not understanding the unknown, and how, with even a little bit of knowledge, people will realize that ghosts are not very harmful, and often are with people they loved in real life because they want to protect them in some way.

(I don't necessarily believe in "ghosts" per se, but I'm willing to bet there is something we haven't quite figured out yet--people get arrogant and try to make others believe that nothing is there, but I've had a number of incidents over the years to have me question what is and what is not a given.)

He was friendly, as I recall.

I have watched many of my hospice patients in their final days to hours interact with family members who have died. They see them and hear them. It could be hallucinations. I believe that people's relatives sometimes help them transition. There is no way to know for sure. But, it is a fairly common experience.

seriously stupid host with a night-vision camera. Any belief I might have about ghosts evaporates upon watching it (which I don't).