| Author | Message | ||
     Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
I don't expect a definitive answer to that question but I was wondering if our daily exposure to the dark side of fiction makes us more open and therefore likely to believe in ghosts, spirits etc, etc. Or if, in fact, that open minded nature is what brought us to horror in the first place. I have had no experiences, other than some strange 'feelings' associated with certain places but remain open minded despite the constant scientific debunking, like Mulder I want to believe...I think. One things for sure Aleister Crowley would be more fun at a party than Richard Dawkins  So what do you think? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.102.160 |
I have to say I don't think they exist. I'd love it if they did, but no... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
I'm certain they don't exist, but it's this certainly that drives me to ghost stories and their ability to make me suspend disbelief. It feels good in our smug age. | ||
| Clive (Clive) Username: Clive Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 81.104.165.168 |
From my own experience i'm pretty certain that they do exist just not in the traditional way they are usually presented (a dead persons spirit forced to wander the earth etc). Like my belief in Gods on Goddesses, which i believe exist but not really in any way apart from us. I think they are all in our heads but our heads tend to be far more bigger and complicated and connected to the rest of our environment than we, or current science, give them credit for. All my beliefs in this are from years of experimenting and exploring and i wouldn't expect anyone to take me at my word though. People should form their own conclusions from their own experiences i think. Thats one of the problems i have with religion. Spirituality should be a personal exploration and journey not a communal one based on anothers thoughts and ideas. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.73 |
I think the experience of having encountered ghosts is real but that the ghosts themeselves are probably not real. My own experience of ghosts felt conclusively real at the time but has no corroborative evidence beyond the coincidental and circumstantial. Terrifying as one aspect of it was, I'm glad I experienced it, however ambiguous it may ultimately have been. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
My one experience with what I thought might have been a ghost occurred when I was very, very young, but despite that I have strong doubts that supernatural entities exist in this world. Mainly this is because I've been to as many so-called haunted places as possible, I've visited hundreds of ancient monuments or esoteric sites where eerie powers are allegedly at work - and I've never felt anything at all. Maybe that says more about me than the multiple dimensions of existence, but that's no consolation. I'd love to see definitive proof that ghosts exist. But I haven't seen it yet, and I'm not holding my breath. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 62.30.117.235 |
I have quite bad sleep disturbances at times - generally when I've stayed up all night on the Xbox and thrown my internal clock out of whack - and I get such vivid hallucinations in half-sleep that I can easily see why someone who only experienced such a thing once in their life would be convinced it was an actual supernatural event. When a baby floats past your bed at night it freaks you out - when it happens again the next day but it's a toaster or an ironing board floating past you quickly realise what's going on... | ||
| Clive (Clive) Username: Clive Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 81.104.165.168 |
>>I have quite bad sleep disturbances at times - generally when I've stayed up all night on the Xbox and thrown my internal clock out of whack - and I get such vivid hallucinations in half-sleep that I can easily see why someone who only experienced such a thing once in their life would be convinced it was an actual supernatural event. << Oh yes, thats quite common isn't it along with sleep paralysis. I used to have phases of that years ago, particularly in times of stress. Quite a few times i had the little demon monkey type enter the room or pin my arms down whilst i was unable to move. I can see how those experiences, which have more to do with our own troubled and tired minds can give birth to some mythologies. Henry Fuseli's 'The Nightmare' portrays this wonderfully. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.169.163.57 |
I can't remember whose (paraphrased) quote this is (Ramsey? Lord P?), but "It's hard to sustain a belief in the supernatural when you spend so much time making it up yourself" really resonates with me. I'd dearly love to believe - and I do when I'm absorbed in a book or a film (or a dream) - but I've never seen or felt any real presence. | ||
| Clive (Clive) Username: Clive Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 81.104.165.168 |
Thats a good quote Kate and i can understand that but there is another side of people creating fiction that is similar to or re-affirms their world view. Didn't Robert Aickman write something along the lines of how he didn't feel he was writing about the supernatural as that was how he'd always seen the world anyway. And the pagan world view of Algernon Blackwood or the kooky animism of John Cowper Powys are certainly reflected in what they write. I think i lean more towards those positions really and for the most part always have done since i was very small. Well, apart from a period from my teens to my mid 20s when the huge amount of anrcho-punk i was into left me incredibly sceptical about religion and sprituality. I still hold a lot of those views but i couldn't help myself and the way i viewed the world so experimented for 15 years or so and took it from there. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
It always surprises me how many of the great writers of weird fiction decry any belief in the supernatural - H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, etc. As a Fortean, an agnostic and someone who has thought long and hard about the implications of an infinite universe (the only kind there can be) I keep an open mind to all possibilities. I saw a vision of an angelic woman dressed in white sitting on my bed with her profile towards me when coming out of sleep one morning when I was 15. She vanished in the split second it took me to glance at my digital clock display (7:32). Was it a ghost or my guardian angel - maybe? I personally rationalised the event as most likely to have been a hypnopompic hallucination and any other Fortean would agree. But what surprised me most was my reaction - not one of surprise (or indeed arousal  ) but of calm acceptance of what I was seeing followed by a rush of sadness when she vanished. I then drifted off to sleep again but never forgot the experience. The dictionary definition of "ghost" is: the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons. That isn't what I saw but there is a ghost story in our family. I had an uncle who died young in the early 70s leaving my aunt with 6 kids to raise. The youngest of these (Bernadette) was just a toddler when he died and one night shortly after my aunt was lying awake in bed and saw her wander past her door towards the kitchen in the early hours. Getting up to follow her she heard the sound of the kitchen tap running and wondered how on earth she had reached it so quickly. She met my cousin coming back with a glass of water in her hand and asked her how she had been able to get it. My cousin replied "Daddy lifted me up". A true story... | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
Spooky story Stephen. I also verge to the Fortean and can't help think that science comes across as arrogant on accasions. I was shown how to dowse water and leylines (stop laughing at the back) years ago. Don't know what happened or why but I do know something did. Since then I have shown a few others and it works every time. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've had the dowsing experience too, Colin! Have you ever tried the pendulum and coin experiment? The easiest way to prove to someone that something is going on involving invisible and so far undetectable energy and the body's reaction to it. I also read Tarot cards and know for a fact that they work - as explained at length on another thread here somewhere. I've also had experience of spookily prophetic dreams that came true the next day - though always about something only important to me and that would be laughably trivial to anyone else (usually to do with my collector's impulse). I try to rationalise these as "meaningful coincidences" but they happen so damn often I feel sure there is more going on than I can possibly explain. The scariest experience of my life was interviewing a sincere catholic priest back in the late 80s who had assisted at the joint exorcism of three students who had been "messing about with a ouija board" and he admitted to having been psychologically scarred by the experience and taken to the drink afterward as a result. I looked him in the eyes and I believed him... I also know hypnotism works having witnessed my sister, best mate and a cousin make complete buffoons of themselves in public and deny vehemently afterward that they had lol. Tis a weird and wonderful universe out the! | ||
| Matthew Fryer (Matthew_fryer) Username: Matthew_fryer Registered: 08-2009 Posted From: 90.195.182.241 |
I used to believe in the existence of the supernatural, but not anymore. To be honest, it was more fun when I did. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The word "supernatural" is inaccurate as everything the universe contains is, by definition, natural. Paranormal within the parameters of limited human perception is closer to the mark. | ||
| Colin Leslie (Blackabyss) Username: Blackabyss Registered: 02-2010 Posted From: 86.164.67.73 |
I am sure everyone has had a deja vu experience or that feeling when someone is following you or about to phone and you know it. I'm pretty sure that in the future scientists will be able to explain all this as some newly discovered brain activity. I am convinced that our ancestors must have had much more powerful senses (or more animalistic at least) than we currently employ to survive. Maybe our "paranormal" experiences are somehow related to this Alternatively it's all just smoke and mirrors |