ghosts: is it stupid to fear them?

He has a strange growth on his left foot...

I love the idea that balloon could be haunted.

I'm always trying to get my friends to pay me to spend the night in a haunted house, but they're too cheap.

There's got to be some haunted places that are free to spend the night in. I once camped at Edge Hill (in the UK) hoping to be woken by the sights and sounds of battle. But I was 350 years too late.

The balloon seems to have been looking for sounds by the look of those drawers.

so this lady who can't really afford to house herself has nonetheless quit her local authority tenancy with us because her and her kid are being haunted, seeing spirits, there's poltergeist activity, etc.

Kinda sad but mostly o_0

she sent me a letter of explanation along with the card of the professional she had consulted, which was pink and read

*name*- beautician/ reiki master/angel healer/spiritual cleanser

weird

I know a girl who is a make-up artist/reiki master/allthoseothermadeupbullshitthings

What is it with the beautician connection? Odd.

salon selective and ghost protective

sorry

i dunno e maybe they come in a combined course that doesn't have the rigorous entry requirements demanded for hairdressing psychics

So wait, does she heal angels, or use angels to heal other people? Or to heal ghosts? The ambiguity here is really bothering me.

I feel sorry for that lady esp if she can't afford other housing. :(

btw the last time I saw the girl I mentioned she started going on about how she'd realigned her bosses energy the day earlier or something like that and I had to excuse myself mid-story because I was starting to crack up.

boss's

there were 14 separate entities in the house apparently. I nearly said that was a breach of tenancy on insurance grounds but y'know lady was upset

i think you are qualified to ask angels to heal the person paying which seems a nice job

I nearly said that was a breach of tenancy on insurance grounds but y'know lady was upset

Irl lols

Given the amount of crazy coming from her, I would have been SO tempted

well the trouble is that the waves of crazy only come off the story, what comes off the person is actually waves off terror and panic and i felt sorry for her more than anything else. Couldn't even try to talk her out of it, you don't listen to clerical staff when you're convinced you've got ghosts.

the people that interest me are the ones who see lots of ghosts but are totally matter of fact about it -- my dad had a carer who was like this, she said his house was massively haunted and they wouldn't even let her into one room but w/evs *shrug*

she was an excellent carer, funny and shrewd and sensible -- and she's not the first person to think the house is haunted, it's big and roomy and full of inexplicable noises (and haha i'm alone in it at the moment) -- the people we bought it from asked us (years later) how we were getting on with the "dark gentleman", but no one in the family was ever spooked for a moment

i just tell people that the ghosts fled to the wood when we moved in, and are nervously waiting till we leave for good -- sometimes when everyone's out they creep back in and turn the lights on and off a bit, when no one's looking

My wife is a big believer in the spirit world. Whenever she hooks up with some sort of self-identified practitioner of spiritual arts I always check to make sure that whatever they are teaching is essentially harmless.

The main acid tests are whether they are seeking money in more than very nominal amounts, or seeking any kind of power or influence over the personal lives and decisions of the people they are consulting with, and whether they are planting ideas that will have obvious harmful results, if believed and applied as true. So far, the vast majority of the amateur practitioners she has encountered meet these criteria. They are hobbyists sharing their hobby, not Svengalis seeking followers.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that a belief in ghosts or other disembodied spirits is always going to be a part of human culture, because such idea are by-products of certain innate ways that we make sense out of sensations, which are hard-wired into our brains. You can learn to override them, but you cannot rid yourself of them. It is the default tendency.

Because we're never going to "cure" people of these ideas, I have come to see the value in finding harmless rituals and explanations for managing these ideas as they arise, so that they are channeled into safe, reasssuring activity. The big danger is how easily these ideas are manipulated into harmful tools in the hands of the unscrupulous, the power-hungry, or even the sincere, but naive believer -- but that danger is never going to be defeated - only marginalized.

http://cd.pbsstatic.com/xl/37/3037/9780152163037.jpg

Favorite book abt ghosts ^^

haha yes i had a big fight with a friend a few years back, who was all "the dark is rising! all this new age superstition! astrology, aaargh!" -- he is a management consultant and i told him i didn't see how his job wasn't exactly the same thing, this did not please him

I don't think it's crazy to believe that ghosts do exist but maybe only some small % of people are sensitive to them

but hey I've never seen one *knock on wood*

I decided as a child that ghosts would hold no more dominion over me than nightmares and that only by caring about ghosts do we give them any power to do anything not to mention actually harm us. I think my decision rather quaint now but I think it's as valid, metaphysically, as any other way of looking at ghosts and I figure my life has been ghost-free because I have always been basically indifferent.

I do have a very strong sense of place, though. I think I'd be more likely to believe in Lares than in Manes

I've encountered a few things over the last 30 years that were o_O enough for me to not discount the existence of ghosts and supernatural metaphysics. None were particularly dangerous, though, so I've tried to be "live and let unlive" about it.

like Wm, I've seen/experienced some things happen that are ... decidedly ghostly and OOOOooooooOOOOOOoooooish. But I (refuse to? won't? can't?) allow them as truth, so I'm kind of in an agnostic on he whole subject, primarily because I don't like the implications of my intuition.

heh... on the other hand, I'm agnostic-leaning-toward-belief. The "don't care" trumps belief/unbelief.

the christmas after my mum died, there were all kinds of silly incidents -- some sausage meat got mislaid and turned up on a chair where it totally would have been noticed, the fridge wouldn't work, various other minor annoyances, none of them inexplicable, but funnier and in character if it was my mum doing it, to remind us that christmas only went smoothly if she was in charge

so we totally started talking about it as she was doing everything, as a kind of family hommage to her mischievousness i guess -- the non-supernatural explanation was just more boring, and we missed her

Ah, nothing better than a welcome ghost

I guess I can never square with the supposition that if there are ghosts, they are watching us masturbate

Why did that just conjure up the word 'ectojism' in my depraved mind?

the people that interest me are the ones who see lots of ghosts but are totally matter of fact about it

I found out this summer one of my family friends has seen ghosts and had premonitions. When his wife was saying "my husband sees dead people" I thought oh he was a science teacher, he came across a corpse or two in his work, but no, she meant ghosts!

"he was a science teacher, he came across a corpse or two in his work" <-- ?!

re: the ghost of mark s' mum, there were a few odd things going on in my old house, and I suspect my mother thought it was my father.

Well, we dealt with frog corpses in middle school.

the sixth sense would be a trillion times better if he saw frog corpses

that is such a sweet story btw, mark.

I like this ghost: Highgate Chicken Ghost

The ghosts also have seriously spooked the proofreading on that page

The "don't care" trumps belief/unbelief.

This reads much more obnoxious than I meant it to. More "didn't incorporate into daily life" than "didn't care".

Right now I'm intermittently hearing a kind of very distant groan, I think from next door -- the walls are quite thin in places. It's like the scene in The Secret Garden where Mary Quite Contrary is repeatedly told that the crying she can hear is just the wind on the moors, and one night she pads along corridors and through doors to investigate, and it's actually a boy in enormous pain in another wing of the house, that everyone had been keeping secret. Except there's no wind here, and no moors. And I'm not going to bother investigating: this is just a house full of inexplicable noises. (There's an inaccessible cellar with a stream running through it... )

Mark, I'm afraid you're living in Gormenghast

I am grateful for ghosts in American consciousness because cartoon ghosts are hilarious

http://www.gifs-paradise.com/animated_gifs/ghosts/animated-gifs-ghosts-06.gif

Very distant Titus Groan. There is actually a bit of the roof where a horse could swim, a kind of dip between four bits of pitched roof. But it would leak away before we got the horse up there.

I don't believe in or think about ghosts and I don't get spooked easily. But early this morning whilst asleep I had the distinct sensation of being dragged out of bed by 'something'. As I reached the floor I felt this something envelop me in a hug and while trying to turn around and see just what it was I woke up and found myself on the floor, though admittedly not in the same spot that I projected myself being while I dreamt. I was still tired but disturbed enough to stay awake.

I knew there was a perfectly non-supernatural explanation for this, but I still took the time to make phone calls and confirm that all my close friends and family were still living. Then I perused the house for any other signs left by my cosmic culprit. I finally sat back down on my bed and announced to no one in particular that I was really tired and if there was some unspeakable horror that happened and I needed to bring the perpetrator to justice so your soul could depart or whatever, then I really needed more information otherwise I needed to get some sleep. After five minutes of no response, I went back to bed.

I think you had an attack of sleep paralysis.

hate hate hate sleep paralysis, went through a recurring phase during a p stressful several years ago

I had a nasty sleep paralysis moment just the other night. Woke up around 4 or so, was face down and tried to shift over to my side but there was a weight pinning my lower back and legs down. I couldn't roll over. I was scared for a second then muttered "Fuck off!" and instantly was able to move. Creepy.