Ghosts

[tar]

Talked to a woman tonight who had helped out a family living in a prerevolutionary house, whose son was losing it, speaking in demonic tones, weilding a knife, threating the family and such, by performing a wicken ritual aimed at thanking the evident spirit for looking after the property, but telling it, in no uncertain terms, that it was dead, no longer of this Earth, not wanted here, and should leave, go toward the light and so on.

All imagination? Part imagination? Something we create? Something we are taught to ignore?

Reason to the poll, to get a feel for what others have experienced and believe along these lines.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

I checked other because I have experienced things which more ignorant people may call a 'ghost' but which I refuse because it is a non-answer. If you can't tell me what a ghost is, it's merely saying "I don't know what caused that", which I would say anyway and in which case it would be pointless to call it something so misleading. If you mean you think you saw the spirit of someone who has passed away, you will have to tell me what a spirit is; i.e. what is it made of, what is the mechanism for its creation, et cetera.

[tar]

Kyrisch,

Well I do agree, that without a mechanism, a thing cannot be.

But all mechanisms are not necessarily known by human kind.

We may have a solid handle on everything. There have been an awful lot of us, for a very long time, noticing stuff, measuring stuff, recording stuff, studying and thinking about the findings of others and investigating any holes that develop in the common understanding.

Perhaps there is nothing new under the sun. But we are somewhat limited, objectively speaking, and we might not be looking everywhere there is to look. Going over the same ground, so to speak, lifetime after lifetime, learning our planet better and better, and finding out more and more about the things that assist a human in survival and contentment. But all from our perspective, using our senses and the equipment we have developed to enhance our senses.

If humans could see in the microwave frequencies or the ultraviolet ones, we would see stuff that we as a race never have seen. We have seen pictures of things rendered in visible colors, depecting the eminations of certain things in these wavelengths, but I mean, we never, as a race spent every minute of our conscious hours, seeing everything in these wavelengths, so we would notice patterns, see where and when certain patterns were missing or present in a special way and so on. We see the world through human colored glasses and are sensitive to vibrations of stuff, in pretty much the same bands of frequencies that all other humans are sensitive to frequencies. Our experience and knowledge, and the things important to us, are thusly limited.

There may therefore be some mechanisms at play that slip by our notice.

Regards, TAR

[Kyrisch]

I completely agree. I said, foremost, that I would simply say "I don't know what caused what I just saw", as opposed to "it was a ghost". This is a non-answer, not only because we don't know what mechanism could cause such a thing, but because the mechanisms for 'ghosts' are barely coherent.

I'm not saying we know everything or that we should know everything, but when an explanation is suggested (in this case, the explanation of 'ghost'), it should include in it the mechanism or else it is a bad explanation.