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Atheists :Science and Ghosts ? your thoughts ?

" A chill in the air, low-light conditions and even magnetic fields may trigger feelings that "a presence" is in a room - but that is all they are, feelings ... ....They had to record any unusual experiences, such as hearing footsteps, feeling cold or a presence in the room, as well as marking the location and intensity of the experience on a floor plan..... .....The results were striking: participants did record a higher number of unusual experiences in the most classically haunted places of Hampton Court, areas such as the Georgian rooms and the Haunted Gallery. And in the Edinburgh vaults, the result was the same - the vaults considered most haunted were the locations where the most unusual encounters occurred during the study.... They claim, somewhat paradoxically, that the haunting exist but the ghosts do not. your thoughts ? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3044607.stm Spiritualists interpret this as evidence that the ghosts are there, but another explanation is that the mediums are simply more sensitive to the environmental cues that result in haunted feelings - not sensitivity to the ghosts themselves.

Public Comments

1. My thoughts are: That folks who see ghosts in every corner will find a way to see them, regardless of whether or not they're there.
2. The first quote there pretty much explains it all, although it left out a few factors such as very low frequency sounds. The areas most reputed to be haunted generally have the most factors contributing to these things.
3. You cannot apply science to imagination. That IS what ghosts are after all; the product of overactive imaginations. They do not exist in the real world.
4. "Hairs standing on end and holding back the desire to vomit . . . the shapeless mass that suddenly appeared in his room began to unfold. Malevolently staring at him with a cruelty that belied it's lack of eyes or human features. Bored through him and set his bowels in disarray as he tried to not gibber and scream. Staggering back, he gasped as the monstrous Beans on Toast Ghost shuffled towards him. . . " Sorry, that wasn't quite true. Still scary what? No, I believe Science has it's limits. Then it advances onto another set of rules. Spirits exist all right. Limbo whatever. Perhaps the spirits are avoiding moving on to the next level of their Afterlife. One thing is for sure, once one obtains the Truth behind it all, they are dead already.
5. If someone is looking for ghosts, they will find them, even though there is never evidence. I have offered many times to spend the night at supposedly haunted places, but since everyone knows I am a skeptic, the offer is quickly withdrawn. Perhaps some people's nerve endings in their epidermis can detect variations, but that is not evidence enough. The ones claiming to be haunted have all sorts of tricks which James Randi and Joe Nickell have exposed.
6. "They claim, somewhat paradoxically, that the haunting exist but the ghosts do not." I don't see how that's paradoxical. the phenomena attributed to ghosts, what might be called "haunting", are just ordinary natural phenomena. it's the interpretation that's difficult to justify, not the observation. although, interpretation can influence which observations are noted. I wonder if anyone thinks that MRI machines or air conditioned rooms are haunted, for instance...
7. Whoever said ghosts aren't real hasn't had to live with one. An old next door neighbour of mine came running into our place crying after she experienced it's presence and her boyfriend yelling at it to get out of the bathroom in the middle of the night (as well as the two other times it appeared to him during the day). When they did try and move out it made a huge mess of their packed up belongings. My husband experience it too at night while he was washing up, it came up behind him, and he saw her old dress and boots, then it disappeared into the flat next door. The woman in the flat upstairs managed to get a picture of it's face and it used to make a lot of noise in our flat before we moved in, when it was empty, (but we didn't know about it until after we moved in). I'll never forget that year of my life and feel really sorry for the people that are living there now, unless somehow someone has gotten rid of it.
8. i like the movie "ghost" i wish there were ghosts; but i can't believe in their existence without hard evidence. ...sadly.