The Ghosts We Think We See

http://www.parapsych.org/pa_abstracts_2006.html

APPARITIONS AND CASES OF THE REINCARNATION TYPE
Erlendur Haraldsson1
1Department of Psychology, University of Iceland,
Reykjavik, Iceland
"...Disproportionate frequency of appearances to strangers and relatives of persons who died violently
In Iceland, we have collected 450 detailed personal accounts of alleged contacts with the dead. Most of them are apparitional, and two-thirds with a visual component (Haraldsson, 1991, 2006). Among them 70,4% are of persons who had died naturally, and 29,6% violently (accident, murder or suicide). Only 7,86% of the population died violently in the relevant period compared to the 29,6% of the apparitional figures, which is almost fourfold. Similar findings have been observed before, but new is (as far as I know) that apparitions of a violent death were much more likely to appear to strangers than apparitions of persons who suffered a natural death, just as persons suffering violent death are more likely to appear in mediumistic communications, and are often found in as previous personalities in CORT.
Persons who suffer a violent death are two times more likely to appear to their relatives than persons who suffer a natural death. More interestingly, two-thirds of all apparitions of persons who suffer a violent death, appear to strangers, namely persons who did not know them when they were living. Thus, persons suffering violent death appear proportionally more often to their relatives than person who died naturally, but particularly often to strangers, who know nothing or near nothing about them and have no motivation to hallucinate them. These apparitional experiences have an invasional character.

Besides imagining seeing ghosts, as this article presents. Here is another spooky thought. It is very difficult to separate between conceptual things and real things. Ghosts, gods, holy ghosts, devils, santa clause, goblins, witches, heaven, hell, souls. Is it possible these exist within our consciousness only, but don't really exist at all? Have we taken words and created ideas and then aggrandised them, gave them power and somehow created concepts different than just the words alone? Are we living a conceptual dream? Are we really just chimpanzees? When we die, do we really return to the void that we knew before we were born; never to be again? YES....Happy Halloween.

I have read that reports of paranormal activity are more common in places where there is a lot of seismic activity (volcanoes, earthquakes etc.). This is certainly true of Iceland where there is a lot of seismic activity and widespread reports of paranormal experiences over hundreds of years. A very common experience reported is when you see someone approaching from a distance a while before they actually could be.

Think about it if anyone had some type of mind power...what do you think would happen to them? The same thing that happens to anything we fear or are interested in. We kill it, tear it apart, dissect it. and then worry about the aftermath..same thing with the environment...we use what we want for our own purposes...glad I am not a ghost ..lol

It's an axiom of the phenomenological approach that all we can know is the world of appearances. In short, there's no 'proof' that anything exists outside my own mind. Not ghosts, not quarks, not pulsars, not black holes. What do *you* choose to believe in? What 'appearance' is enough for you to consider something to be 'scientifically proven'?

The main flaw with this article is that it is doing what it is saying that people's brain are doing, "Filling in the blanks." It's taking things that are just as unproven and saying these are the reasons.

A reputable scientist will usually speak NOT in terms of what is or isn't real, but rather in terms of what is or is not proven. When I say "there is no conclusive proof for the existence of ghosts" I mean exactly what I say -- I'm not saying "those who believe in ghosts are imbeciles", only that it is not proven.

Yes, there are a large number of anecdotes about strange phenomena which seem to hint at supernatural forces; but they come nowhere near scientific proof. The phenomena described - smoking ovens, teleporting photos, quirky behavior in pets - are all over the map. The only commonality they have is that each is an odd and unsettling event. One might as readily conclude that this confluence of oddness CAUSED the death of the person in the photo, as conclude the reverse.

The new discovery about the human appendix is indeed genuine, but the lesson there is the dynamic nature of the scientific method. Any premise (such as 'the appendix is useless') endures only until and unless good evidence to the contrary is produced, as it has been here. This was, in fact, a fairly easy premise to debunk; it was necessary only to show that the appendix (ANYONE'S appendix, at any point in time) was performing a useful function. And it's repeatable: if we wait a thousand years, we can still examine another human appendix and recover this same information; we will not be forced to accept at face-value an ancient written record of long-lost and irreplaceable microscope slides that demonstrated this fact to a singular, revered, anointed biologist.

It makes one superstitions to "believe in d??j?? vu" ? Deja vu is a real mental phenomenon; there's nothing supernatural about it. It's like when people ask "Do you believe in UFOs?" I answer "Yes, I think there are some flying objects that are unidentified. That doesn't make them alien spaceships...."

I guess it was dopamine that caused an oven to spew black smoke in the house of a recently deceased person when it was not EVER on; caused a picture stored in a drawer for 40 years to appear in a dryer full of clothes AFTER the drying cycle was over, in perfect condition; caused a dog of mine to get on my bed and wake me up to watch him staring at a family picture on a dresser, in the same hour that a family member died (unbeknownst until the next day)....hmmm... I could go on, but it would just be the chemicals in my brain! ;0

It seems that all the ???believers??? who read this article were a bit insulted at the insinuation that they have higher-than-normal dopamine levels! As a skeptic I would like to respond to a few of the posts below:
1) MFL_123 says there is an argument by design that we are hard-wired to believe in the spiritual and supernatural. Although this argument could be made, it would also fail where all teleological arguments fail- just because something is complicated, or because humans (or anything) seem designed for something, doesn???t mean that we are designed for that purpose at all. Your particular arguments suggests that because many people believe in the supernatural then possibly we are designed to believe. This is like saying that a magnifying glass makes a superb device for killing ants, therefore it must???ve been designed for that purpose or that humans excel at killing each other so we must???ve been designed for that purpose. In addition, even if an argument is internally consistent that doesn't mean that it is sound... some external evidence sure would help.
2) pat_wenders says that today???s scientific establishment is controlled by the belief that the only things that exist are observable by the 5 senses. Scientists use many tools to investigate things that are not observable by the five senses. Reason and logic are two that come to mind, but there are hundreds of easy examples of tools that scientists use to detect things that we are incapable of detecting with our senses.
3) Many posters argue that they have seen or experienced something supernatural so these things must exist and scientists are ???close minded??? for not believing in ghosts, spirits, etc. Our senses can???t be trusted! Scientists try to use reason, logic and objectivity to separate our senses from testing procedures. Amazingly all scientific testing methods have failed to find evidence of ghosts, spirits, UFOs, etc. People still believe in psychics despite the fact that not a single psychic was able to predict the terrorist attacks of 9/11! Anytime I observe something unexplained I think of the Duhem-Quine Thesis and remember that we are simultaneously testing all hypotheses and tools: the most logical process is to then question the most subjective and insecure methods and then proceed to the most objective and secure. In this case the 5 senses are always going to be the most subjective, insecure and unrecordable.

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ridiculous...all of it...none of you have ever seen,heard or talked to a "ghost" maybe some sort of demon...but no "ghost" no reason for them..makes absolutely no sense...even if you believe in the here after or the there after...it still makes no sense...no need for it...in our world, universe, sprit, mind's...everything has a reason...
start truly listening....you might be surprised as to who is trying to talk to you

I just love skeptics,,So closed minded,,I for one do believe in spirits,, they are all around us, Wheather they know we are here or even if they care we are here is another question, I had an experiance with objests moving that really shouldnt have right in front of me in the middle of the afternoon, I was drinking or smoking anything I shouldnt have so lets not go there , I tried to re create it but couldnt.. So I think it maybe was a playful solletting me know it was there

MFL_123, very good point, however the closed-minded wouldn't want to propose such a logical arguement; it would go against their security blanket of denial. It might even suggest *gasp* the existance of a supreme consciousness, hence *design*. (Then they wouldn't be the supreme know-it-alls they believe themselves to be...) You're just way to logical ;) Again, very good point.

I also laughed at this article since multiple experiences among multiple people at the same
time contradict this article. This is where the primitive side of our evolution bares itself in thinking the only thing that exists is what can be scientifically explained by the 5 senses as another reader commented.

There's an 'argument from design' that could be made, too: it's possible that our brains are hard-wired to believe in the spiritual and supernatural, because they were *designed* that way. It's tough to prove or disprove this line of argument. But it's an internally consistent argument.

Good to see folks are thinking for themsevles out there. Funny how some believe that a neysayer has credibility to say the supernatural isn't real when they haven't actually experienced themselves. As a God/Christ loving scientific thinking man, I can say they are real. (Observed more than a handful of times and co-observed with multiple people so I could no longer doubt my own senses.) Where's the ignorance here? I laughed at the article... derr.

This suggests that people who are more inclined to believe in the supernatural may have higher dopamine levels. That would surely explain the giddy, vacant expressions of mega-church goers and those people with the pyramids on their heads! HAH!