Do you think there are ghosts/spirits?

[iff]

I do have a believe in ghosts/spirits and not just because they are good materials for tv dramas and comedies (ghosts, not dead yet, school spirits, ghosts us), or novels (a novel I love includes ghosts, but I can't say what novel it is, as that would be a spoiler ) 

 

So I moderately agree.

 

Edited March 11 by iff

[iff]

I will spoiler this, because of death and all

 

Spoiler

My grandmother towards the end of her life was in a nursing home. When my mother visited on Sundays, granny would keep "where is mary, why isn't mary here?", my mother explaining that mary, my aunt, lives in england.

 

One week, my mother is visiting again. My grandmother tells her that Mary is finally here with the rest her siblings with her. 

 

The previous week, my granny's sister Mary passed away.

 

 

[Siphoner]

I would say that I moderately disagree. I have never seen or had any reason to believe that they are real. If such evidence presented itself though, I would be willing to reevaluate. 

[Andrea KF]

Can't say I'm a believer no. But I can't be sure either. And I kinda want ghosts and spirits to exist. So moderately disagree

[blunose2772]

Had a strange encounter in high school. I was in History Club and our big end of year trip was to a Winston Chruchill Museum. At one area they had a recreation of his office roped off. A friend of mine and I walked up and when we touched the rope both of us felt a shiver down our spines ad i would hear someone talking in the back of my mind. Couldn't understand what was being said. So yes. I believe in sprits. 

[daveb]

Is it a typo that you have strongly agree and strong agree, but no strong disagree?

 

I don't believe in ghosts any more than I believe in gods or other supernatural or paranormal things. Which is to say, I have yet to come across anything that convinces me there a likelihood they exist, much less that they actually do exist.

[Mult]

You've got two "strong agree" there and no "strongly disagree", just btw

 

 

Personally I do not believe in ghosts or spirits

[iff]

9 minutes ago, daveb said:

Is it a typo that you have strongly agree and strong agree, but no strong disagree?

 

 

 

A ghost did it 

 

But seriously thanks, i fixed it

[Liara]

I do not believe in anything paranormal. Death is the final end and nothing more (for me).

[TormentDubz]

I've had small experiences. Nothing serious. I do seek out paranormal activity however

[everywhere and nowhere]

1 hour ago, daveb said:

I don't believe in ghosts any more than I believe in gods or other supernatural or paranormal things. Which is to say, I have yet to come across anything that convinces me there a likelihood they exist, much less that they actually do exist.

I absolutely believe in the existence of a Supernatural Reality. The very existence of the world and of myself convinces me. I don't believe in an accidental coming-to-exist of such a complex, breathtaking, unbelieveably beautiful and not even understood phenomenon as consciousness.

And as for the topic itself, I believe in ghosts. You are free not to believe me, but I have communicated with them to an extent. And since one of these seances, I believe that when we dream of a dead person close to us, it means that their soul actually visited us.

[awadama]

I don't believe in them at all but I like Slimer from Ghostbusters.

[lovely_xm07]

I have to say moderately agree. If you asked me in person though, I’d say no. However, if I’m ever in a position where spooky shit starts happening, I’m out of there IMMEDIATELY!! ‘Cause I really don’t fuck with that shit!! 

[Snao Cone]

Spoiler

Boo!

 

[Olallieberry]

I think there are, but they aren't what people think they are.

 

So I put that as a "moderately disagree."

[Blue eyes white dragon]

I do but not in the traditional way

[Jade Cross Lord Of Toys]

Ive witnessed quite a share of odd circumstances that are strongly linked to the supernatural.

 

Actually not too long ago, I was basically house sitting for my grandmother. During several times I went, I always felt something that did not want me there. Like a heavy feeling to the house, which never occurs when they are around. And on two separate ocassions, objects moved on their own.

 

One was a Chistmas bell hung on the door. The bell sounded as if someone had grabbed it and threw it in the air. The other incident was the coffee maker cup that suddenly rolled out of the machine and broke on the floor

 

Im also no stranger to seeing shadow figures pass by. In fact, a day after my mother'saunt died, a lady whom I did not know and wasnt aware she had even passed away, a show figure of a woman passed by the house corridor with a waving movement

[SkyWorld]

Slightly disagree, but I don’t like to mess with that stuff for the fun of it because it would be a messed up thing to be wrong about. 
 

An interesting “theory” I have heard was that it’s a phenomena with space time, echoes and energy of the past that lingers in a space. Intriguing approach.

[Gloomy]

I voted moderately disagree since I don’t really believe in them but then again who knows. There are probably a lot of things we don’t understand about the universe. I’ve never seen ghosts but one paranormal thing I sometimes experience is dream premonitions, to the point I’ll sometimes be extra cautious and paranoid the day after having a bad dream in case I was foreseeing something bad. Of course I also admit those times my dreams “came true” could have just been coincidences. Or our understanding of the universe and space/time isn’t what we think it is. Again who knows.

[Miss Grey]

It's complicated... because I don't believe, but I like to pretend. After one of my cats passed away, occasionally at night when I was in bed I would feel this pressure on my legs that felt like a cat walking up them. I would tell myself it was her visiting me, even if this wasn't possible. It helped me grieve a little.

 

Oh, and one time my mum and I heard a loud smash in the kitchen and went running to see what it was, only to find nothing at all had fallen or moved. 😳 Very odd.

[Luftschlosseule]

Also voted for complicated.

 

Modern science as we know it is so young. So we've probably just scratched the surface and people in 100, 200, 300 years will laugh at what we thought today as primitive. There is just no telling what will be discovered.

 

Additionally, every single culture has their own ghost stories. So either it is a fundamental human need to feel like people stay beyond death, or there is some truth to this.

 

Until the time more knowledge is gained, I am gonna sit here and have fun reading ghost stories.

[Frameshift07]

I'm just not convinced, as much as people might insist I'm closed minded or boring. I'll avoid using the words "science" and "spiritualism" to avoid an us vs them thing, but the last few centuries have had people invent a plethora of tools and instruments to measure and record the world with (e.g. cameras), and explanations to unexplained phenomena. Claims that Mr. Ghost Jones is back at it again destroying old houses in the dead of night didn't get corroborated by these instruments, they just got awfully uncommon around the time that cameras started being put everywhere and engineers identified that structures like houses undergo fatigue if left unmaintained for years.

[KVA1983]

Moderately agree. I've seen a few odd things that I couldn't explain rationally. 

[lilihierax]

On 3/12/2025 at 10:35 AM, Snao Cone said:

  Hide contents

Boo!

 

AHH!!

[Dagomir]

"I'm not convinced" is probably the most adequate answer I can come up with. I gues it would be "It's complicated" for the purposes of this poll. What @Olallieberry @Luftschlosseule and @Frameshift07 said.

[Soul Searcher]

On 3/12/2025 at 3:09 AM, everywhere and nowhere said:

I believe that when we dream of a dead person close to us, it means that their soul actually visited us.

I too believe in this. This is actually a comforting thought, and reminds you that you are never alone. 

 

 

 

On 3/12/2025 at 5:40 AM, Lord Jade Cross said:

During several times I went, I always felt something that did not want me there. Like a heavy feeling to the house, which never occurs when they are around.

 

While I cannot be certain if it actually relates to supernatural or not, I kind of acknowledge that houses or rooms in general, do acquire the energy of the people and the atmosphere within it. 

 

See, a couple years ago, when I was in my first job, I would frequently visit my aunt's house during those times.  I would always spend the night in my cousin's room. he smokes, drinks, and often has rough and vulgar conversations with his friends in that room. While he does not do that in my presence, the room has witnessed a lot of negative things there. And I have always had a fitful sleep there, often restless.

 

One day, however, there was an electricity issue in the house, and we four people (me, my aunt and both of my cousins) had to sleep in my aunt's room. My aunt is very religious, always praying to God, going to temples, following the holy scriptures, and doing basically everything of that manner. The room was cramped with 4 people, the AC was not working in the heat, and we only had a ceiling fan working on backup. And that still was the best sleep that I have had in years. Including my own house.

 

Now, I cannot explain why that happened. Maybe it was supernatural, maybe not. Maybe i was too tired and slept it off peacefully. But this got me believing that houses acquire the energy of what happens in them. 

[Soul Searcher]

I am of the opinion that anything that people deem Supernatural are just phenomenon that cannot be explained by science just yet. I don't think I have really experienced anything of this manner, but I have heard many many anecdotal stories by people regarding such things happening to them. 

 

While it's hard for not to be sceptical and dismiss such things as figment of imagination or your brain conjuring up such things when I hear of them, I recognise that sometimes thing happen in such a manner that we don't have any explanation for them. Unless I get irrefutable proof that Supernatural things exist, I will chalk them up to being things unexplained by science.

 

This got me wondering- even if we do get that proof, won't that supernatural things actually become a part of science- something that we learn and experiment in order to understand the phenomena behind them and create laws and principles to better catalogue them? 🤔

[everywhere and nowhere]

1 hour ago, Soul Searcher said:

I am of the opinion that anything that people deem Supernatural are just phenomenon that cannot be explained by science just yet.

I used to believe something like this, but now I prefer to evade such views for reasons best summed up in a diary entry of mine (this is just about 1/4 of the whole).

Quote

(July 22nd, 2015)

To make matters worse, a hypothetical scientific acceptance of the reality of mystical experiences does, in my view, have its hidden reverse: a broader cultural problem which is known as God of the Gaps. Science can theoretically, for lack of a better one, accept a traditional explanation - but the price of this stance is becoming a theory of a God of the Gaps. "Sticking" supernatural powers in every place where science is unable to explain something - and watching these islands shrink with the rising level of knowledge. The theory of vis vitalis as necessary for synthesis of organic compounds - while this vital force was not necessarily supernatural, it could be just as well explained as biological in its nature - but it is a good example of how scientific progress not even disproved, but demolished a theory. Synthesis of urea experimentally proved that vital force as understood in this theory didn't exist at all.

So the answer is not to negotiate the area of "permissible" mystical interpretations, but a strict delimitation of science and religion. It's not even about a supposedly inevitable mutual hostility, it's the only solution to the problem: science by its nature cannot look at spiritual/religious phenomena in a "religious" way. (...)

A better stance of science would be friendly agnosticism: recognising that science is not prepared to speak about "mystical" subjects. In the same way, in fact, spirituality lacks tools for analysing the area of natural sciences - and for this reason I'm equally opposed to ideas such as "quantum psychology" (a term which I prefer to use as a general name for this kind of pseudoscientific thinking) or theories of discoveries of modern physics being confirmed by study of consciousness. This is too a not very polite breach of someone else's territory, on top of that based on a highly unprofessional "understanding" of physics and therefore potentially discrediting for its proponents.

So I have become, indeed, rather a pessimist in this area and when a clear conflict seems inevitable, I feel that I must choose a side - and I tend to choose the spiritual, because it just sits better with my sensitivity, my conscience, my sheer unwillingness to consider the supernatural just a figment of the human mind. On the other hand, my nondenominational spirituality, my pursuit of the mystical "essence" detached from "mythological" deposit, protects me from becoming openly anti-science: I'm no anti-vaxer, no climate denialist. (However, the closer we get to the area of social sciences, the less am I willing to consider current knowledge to be set in stone. Homosexuality used to be considered a disorder, now it's considered normal variance - and similarly I feel "permitted", for example, not to believe that HSDD is actually a disorder.)

Although my stance, particularly what I wrote in the second quoted paragraph, has more recently been weakened somewhat by my reflections on "the hypocrisy of children's literature" and cultural status of magic. Contrary to traditional view of magic as a dangerous, impure rival to religion, I think that at least belief in magic reinforces religion rather than weakens it. In contemporary world, organised religion has been put in the precarious position of the only exception to an overall rationalist worldview. This is something I don't want to accept and I admit that I don't really have a good answer other than "this is what I believe".

[Ortac]

2 hours ago, Soul Searcher said:

I am of the opinion that anything that people deem Supernatural are just phenomenon that cannot be explained by science just yet. I don't think I have really experienced anything of this manner, but I have heard many many anecdotal stories by people regarding such things happening to them. 

 

While it's hard for not to be sceptical and dismiss such things as figment of imagination or your brain conjuring up such things when I hear of them, I recognise that sometimes thing happen in such a manner that we don't have any explanation for them. Unless I get irrefutable proof that Supernatural things exist, I will chalk them up to being things unexplained by science.

 

This got me wondering- even if we do get that proof, won't that supernatural things actually become a part of science- something that we learn and experiment in order to understand the phenomena behind them and create laws and principles to better catalogue them? 🤔

This is kind of my viewpoint as well.

 

I used to believe in ghosts and spirits when I was much younger and I was fascinated by all the stories, but as I got older and wiser, I released that I was being irrational. I was blindly accepting these stories as true without any rational evidence just because I thought they were cool.

 

When it comes to ghosts and the paranormal, I often hear it being talked about in terms of believer versus sceptic. Now that irritates me a little bit. Because sceptic does not mean disbeliever; it does not mean being dismissive of someone's claims or experiences and asserting outright that they can't be true. Being sceptical is actually the middle ground; it is about thinking rationally and questioning things and looking for evidence.

 

When I started doing that, I released that there was no real evidence that ghosts and spirits are real, and that it is more likely that there is some other explanation for experiences people have had, even if we don't know what that explanation is yet.

 

 

 

[Frameshift07]

4 hours ago, everywhere and nowhere said:

To make matters worse, a hypothetical scientific acceptance of the reality of mystical experiences does, in my view, have its hidden reverse: a broader cultural problem which is known as God of the Gaps. Science can theoretically, for lack of a better one, accept a traditional explanation - but the price of this stance is becoming a theory of a God of the Gaps. "Sticking" supernatural powers in every place where science is unable to explain something - and watching these islands shrink with the rising level of knowledge. The theory of vis vitalis as necessary for synthesis of organic compounds - while this vital force was not necessarily supernatural, it could be just as well explained as biological in its nature - but it is a good example of how scientific progress not even disproved, but demolished a theory. Synthesis of urea experimentally proved that vital force as understood in this theory didn't exist at all.

So the answer is not to negotiate the area of "permissible" mystical interpretations, but a strict delimitation of science and religion. It's not even about a supposedly inevitable mutual hostility, it's the only solution to the problem: science by its nature cannot look at spiritual/religious phenomena in a "religious" way.

Very eloquently put.

 

5 hours ago, everywhere and nowhere said:

A better stance of science would be friendly agnosticism: recognising that science is not prepared to speak about "mystical" subjects.

The scientific method doesn't have a stance. It's, well, a method, a tool. It's like saying a camera has a bias. It's worked very well so far and it let people like Einstein predict phenomena like gravitational waves and black holes years many decades before we could build instruments sensitive enough to confirm them for a fact. It can only be so effective by being as far as a concept can get from having a stance.