Ghosts, Aliens and whatnot

[RDClip]

So, I'm watching some crappy show about ghosts and I been thinking: How may people actually believe in all this X-Files crap?

You know ghosts, big foot, etc.

I think that a lot of the cases are just people wanting attention. Come on, why are the only ones aliens abduct dumbass rednecks?(not offence to rednecks here)

[KiwiKitty]

Seen a UFO, not seen aliens. But I do believe there's life out there other than here... just whether they're travelling here, I don't know, and if they are, I'm not so sure that's necessarily a good thing.

Bigfoot? We're still finding large mammals that no one's seen in centuries or longer, apart from scattered reports and sighting from natives which were ignored or discredited because "nothing that large could escape notice". So why not another widespread family of primates or an earlier hominid?

Ghosts? I've lived in... god, what does this one make it now, 5 haunted houses? Including an ex-girlfriend's place that had footsteps and doors shutting, and the creepiest back half of the house. I hated that place... hated being there by myself and hearing footsteps walking around the hall behind you. Place I was born in was haunted - people saw people, horses, heard whistling, footsteps, etc... and this was in an isolated farm, and wasn't other people. Second place I lived in was also haunted... as was the next door house. Another farm, but that other house just felt so wrong, if no one was living in it, everyone avoided it. Hell, being in it while people were living in it was creepy enough... Here in Australia, a block of flats I lived in for 3 years was haunted to the point that flat 3, the actual haunted one (the other two just got spillover, I think, and the voices and things being moved around was bad enough) couldn't keep tenants after the druggies moved out... my neighbour had spoken with them, and he thought it was only the amount of drugs they were doing that kept them in the flat. Then there was my ex's place, and the place we're in now, but this just feels to be a presence. Haven't seen anything apart from a small white thing that dodges past the couch in the lounge but have had a couple of strange noises and photos that have fallen over when there's no reason for them to have fallen. Speaking of photos, my brother used to have one of his grandmother that would never hang straight. I had experience of this sucker rotating over when no one else was in the house... that was cool ^^ I've also seen shadows in my first school of our bus driver who'd died a few years earlier, been on school camps when bags have been opened and thrown around when no one's been in the rooms (or the building in one case) and used to see people in cemeteries when I was really young.

Thankfully, I don't see people hanging out in cemeteries now.

So yeah. I believe in ghosts and stuff. Experience helps out lots with that kind of thing.

[Invictus]

There's a rational explanation for everything...

...well, that's what I WOULD say, but I like Mulder too much to betray him thus. ;)

[Lateli]

I believe in "ghosts" most definately.. I've seen and heard too much stuff :(

I was in the bathroom once when I was like 11, and someone whispered my name. It wasn't scary, nor did I think anything of it. What WAS scary was standing in the kitchen at like 1am, and hearing someone whispering from the garage, it said, "Hey, over here!" My dog was alert and everything after I heard it, so I know I wasn't the ONLY one.. :(

I've never had any doors slammed that I can't blame on something else, like a fan or whatever.. :/ I do see pretty orbs floating around, like little balls of light. They bounce here, and bounce there, like they're just checkin stuff out. It's weird.

I'm still convinced something is attacking me while I sleep too, I wake up with marks/whelps on my back. Like I was clawed or whipped, they disappear later in the day though.

Oh and those cemetaries are the worst. We have a school here that was built on/right beside one, the school is over 100 years old the cemetary is worse. They recently added on a whole new section to that school. You can tell where the old part ends and the new part begins, when you cross that line, everything feels funny, kinda cold. I don't think anyone has ever walked in the old part of the school, teachers, students, anyone who has to go down there runs. No reasoning, other than the feelings around it are so bad they don't want to be there. Down in the end most close to the cemetary which really is RIGHT NEXT to the school, are basement classes. CREEPY ASS CLASSROOMS! Not only are they old and within a couple yards of corpses, they're weird. There's attic classrooms(Which I hadn't even heard of untill then), and storage rooms that are just kind of like "secret rooms." I wouldn't be surprised if there are some dead people in there they don't know about, because no one goes down there unless they really need to get something, and I'm fairly sure there's rooms down there that no one even knows about. It's just creepy.

Dead people.. I'm also convinced there's dead people in the walls in my old house. The first thing I said when I walked into my room, with no prior thinking about it was, "There's dead people in the walls." It was just the only thing that came out of my mouth :( I still believe it, that house was built by a madman, and there's dead people in the walls.

I guess it could all being explained somehow, like I'm insane or something :(

[pva_glue]

UFO, odds are too small to proove that there isnt any other intellegent life out there, Just think about where you are and earth and milky way...etc.

Ghost? I dont know? I really have to see it for myself, but then again your own imagination make it real.. methink

2cents :)

[baslisks]

Wooo. Yes I sort of believe them and this is where I kind of lose control and am happy I live in a house I saw built myself. No cemetaries nearby EVER and no murders in this area of the town in forever. Alien sightings are next to none and I don't have forests around just farm fields. Yes the one of the most open people to this stuff is away from it all.

[Kash]

People believe in ghosts and spirits and what not because their ego is too fragile to contemplate their nonexistance. It helps them get through the night to think that "they're not ever going to die". People will go to very odd lengths to preserve this bit of childish magical thinking. Proof of ghosts means proof of an afterlife. It's comforting to them.

These beliefs also allow other behaviors that are much less benign. Because some religions teach that the end of the world is coming, this allows the faithful to pollute, consume greedly and treat non believers in the worst possible ways. It's a bit of a "get out of jail free card" to them. Who cares if you pillage all the forests and kill the wildlife? God is going to give us a new planet!

Fancifull notions like these support a fragile and unexamined philosphy. Simply admitting that "we can't understand it" is the first step in suspending logic and allowing an unfettered ego to run rampant with your perception.

[ruaidhri]

My oh my, I always find discussions like this interesting. Personally, I’d like to believe for the very reasons Kash listed. Like religion and belief in God it suggests that all is not lost when you die. Instead, you merely pass through a door from one reality to another. Reason, tells me this is all a bunch of hooey, but looking at this from yet another persepective don’t we all enjoy being mystified and, yes, even scared?

My brother was a firm believer in all things weird. He lived and taught High School in Portland, Oregon and followed reports of flying saucers and Big Foot with a true passion. He also loved Charles Fort, who was a most interesting character from the early part of the 20th Century. If you enjoy the bizarre, check Charles Fort out on Google. Grabbing one site from Google http://www.sacred-texts.com/fort/ , I found the following description:

Charles Fort was a crank in the best sense of the word. Lovecraft and the X-files can't begin to compete with the spooky stuff he uncovered. In the early twentieth century he put together great quantities of exhaustively documented 'puzzling evidence' (in the words of David Byrne), data which science is unable or unwilling to explain. Forts' books gave me nightmares when I read them when I was seven. Strange items drop from the sky, bizarre artifacts turn up in unexpected places, stars violate the laws of astronomy, giant clouds blot out the moon and the sun trembles in the sky. Is the world inside out? Is it flat? Or maybe shaped like a giant spindle?

What does it all mean? He drops cryptic, breathless hints such as "I think we're property." and "I think that we're fished for. It may be that we're highly esteemed by super-epicures somewhere." Whatever you think about this information, you will at some point while reading Forts' books feel like the foundations of your reality are slipping slightly to the south...

Consider yourself warned!

When I was in the service (Coast Guard) I was stationed in the Pacific Northwest. I often visited my brother on weekends and was filled with stories that reason told me were merely superstition or worse. Regardless, on more that one occasion, my brother's passion overwhelmed me causing me to see “proof” in the most innocent of events. In fact, I wrote about one of those events in the Creativity Forum of OP9

http://www.outpostnine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=839.

Do I believe in Ghosts and other things that go bump in the night. Well, I’m not one for believing what I can’t see or touch and even then question if it’s real or if I’m merely being fooled. Yes, it does make sense that other star systems have planets that have intelligent life. Are they visiting here? Possible, but every strange light in the sky doesn’t mean we’re being invaded.

[Snake eyeS]

Your mind is something really weird, it can make you see things, can make you believe things etc. thats why some see ghosts or think that hear their own name bieng called. if you believe in ghosts, you will see ghosts ones in a while.

this site (http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm) tells us a little bit why you nutcases believe you live in haunted houses. i copy pasted the relevant part.

Visiting a place where the movement of the Earth's crust generates magnetic fields can give you the experience. Being in a situation where your brain doesn't get enough oxygen sometimes does it. Certain brain operations bring out the experience. Meditation and intensive prayer can generate it.

This is why some people see ghosts, or Maria, or feel like they are visited by aliens. Something odd happens and your brain will try to make sense of it. Immediately, the rational part of your brain will come up with an ‘explanation’ for the experience. You will sense a ‘presence’ near you. If you’re religious, you might see Maria, or Jesus. If you believe in UFOs, your brain might tell you you’re visited by aliens. If you believe in ghosts, you’ll feel the presence of a ghost of a dead person. But in reality, your mind is just trying to give an explination for the odd thing that just happened. for some of your that would be seeing a ghost.

in a harsh way of saying it: you cant handle the truth.

I would like to believe in Bigfoot, but seeing as people from the USA like to make up things alot(your country has by far the most UFO spottings and every street has atleast 2 haunted houses :confused: ) it would be nice to study a new ape species.

[Praetorian]

I too get those little 'whipped' marks Lateli was talking about, I don't think anything of them. I don't believe in anything supernatural, really. If it exists, it's not really harming me so I really couldn't care. So something is shouting 'Hey, over there!' from my garage? Why should I care? It's not as if the person saying it is charging at me with a knife heading for my throat, thus I don't think of it as creepy. Before you say "BUT LOLZ MICHAEL! U HAVENT EVER HAD NETHING LIEK IT, U CANT JUDGE", actually I have. When I was 13 and home alone, I could clearly hear footsteps and whispers from my roof. My cat apperantly heard it too, as she was looking at the ceiling rather fixed for several minutes. I decided my nights rest was too important, so I grabbed a knife and went to check upstairs uttering a few words saying whatever's there should move away from my attic. After I barged upstairs and turned on the lights - nothing. It might be odd to say it's a fiction of both my cat's and my imagination, but at least I got my good nights rest without any 'fictions of my imagination' being an annoyance in my attic for the rest of the evening. I, with my almost omnipotent knowledge, couldn't explain it. But I'm sure there is an explanation.

And sometimes (very rarely. Like once every so many months) I hear people moving up stairs when I'm in bed whilst nobody is home. I ignore it and I fall asleep.

And it'd be moronic to say we're the only lifeform in the universe. As far as I can tell the universe is pretty much infinite. Would be rather arrogant to say we're the most intelligent form of life in the whole universe. So I'm going to say it. I'm the most intelligent form of life in the universe.

[eyez0nme]

There are no ghosts, aliens, big-foot, etc, etc.

If you can truly search your heart, you knows it is true.

[kensei]

Anyone know the story of Lilith?

[Jormungand]

i saw a half bigfoot half alien ghost

[The Laughing Man]

There are no ghosts, aliens, big-foot, etc, etc.

If you can truly search your heart, you knows it is true.

There's a river in Thailand (I forgot the name), where fishermen occasionaly catch 10-15 foot catfish, and other oversized water creatures which is un-natural for similar species in other areas of the world. If that is possible, then it's not unlikely that there is a bigfoot, a yeti, or Nessie, or aliens, or ghosts.


**Edit in:

The name of the river is the Mekong River

Here are pics of one of the giant catfish that were caught.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/photogalleries/giantcatfish/index.html

[The Laughing Man]

Anyone know the story of Lilith?

I'm very familiar with the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife.

Here's a good read on her:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/Lilith/

Enjoy!

[Dead Sexy Vocab]

I don't really know about Nessie, but I do believe there's life outside of this world.

And I somewhat do believe in Ghosts.

[Benaire]

I too get those little 'whipped' marks Lateli was talking about, I don't think anything of them. I don't believe in anything supernatural, really. If it exists, it's not really harming me so I really couldn't care. So something is shouting 'Hey, over there!' from my garage? Why should I care? It's not as if the person saying it is charging at me with a knife heading for my throat, thus I don't think of it as creepy. Before you say "BUT LOLZ MICHAEL! U HAVENT EVER HAD NETHING LIEK IT, U CANT JUDGE", actually I have. When I was 13 and home alone, I could clearly hear footsteps and whispers from my roof. My cat apperantly heard it too, as she was looking at the ceiling rather fixed for several minutes. I decided my nights rest was too important, so I grabbed a knife and went to check upstairs uttering a few words saying whatever's there should move away from my attic. After I barged upstairs and turned on the lights - nothing. It might be odd to say it's a fiction of both my cat's and my imagination, but at least I got my good nights rest without any 'fictions of my imagination' being an annoyance in my attic for the rest of the evening. I, with my almost omnipotent knowledge, couldn't explain it. But I'm sure there is an explanation.

And sometimes (very rarely. Like once every so many months) I hear people moving up stairs when I'm in bed whilst nobody is home. I ignore it and I fall asleep.

And it'd be moronic to say we're the only lifeform in the universe. As far as I can tell the universe is pretty much infinite. Would be rather arrogant to say we're the most intelligent form of life in the whole universe. So I'm going to say it. I'm the most intelligent form of life in the universe.

Yes I can see that your a big tough arrogant man and being the second most intelligent form of life in the universe you have little to fear. Obviously while your not a little girl you have the empathy to feel what she will feel, but how can you compare.....? not everybody can be almost as intelligent as I am and claim to be the second most intelligent life form in the universe.

I lack the empathy to feel what little girls can feel. All I know is that ghosts and aliens fear my overwhelming intellect and my mighty mountain of man meat. I really wish i could feel little girls like Lateli ...... i mean feel how they feel.

Oh and another thing if a man came chargeing at me with a knife there wouldn't be alot of fear there wouldn't be time for that. Unless of cause he is charging me from like 1-2 miles away and then i still wouldn't fear as i would be ready for him with a gun by then. Its the unknown that people fear.

P.S. the color of fear is brown

[Myrsilus]

I feel it's foolish to believe that Earth harbors the only life forms in the universe. If one looks into the findings on Mars, there were signs of water and bacterial lifeforms existing on the planet. There's a clue.

Not sure if I believe in ghosts... It may be possible, but I can't remember any significant encounters I may have had with them.

Didn't Lilith become a demon? Maybe I'm not remembering something. I know the gist of the story, but I'm trying to connect what Lilith has to do with this thread.

I am not sure if I can believe in ghosts completely since I can't remember any significant encounters I may have had with them. I hear the stories and sometimes I think I can feel them, but I can't know for sure. I will ask something, though... Maybe someone can explain this scientifically. When I was a little kid (around 4 I think), I used to sleep in my mother's bed. I had violent dreams and would sometimes lash out at her while sleeping, hitting her in the process. Yeah they were dreams and all... But one night I actually woke up from a relatively peaceful dream to feel my arm extremely tensed and shaking violently. When I looked to it, I tried to grab a hold of it to figure out what was happening. It felt a lot like someone was grasping my arm... Anyway I actually began to fight with my arm and somehow it was winning. Eventually I could not hold my arm back any longer and I ended up hitting my mom so hard she wailed.

... perhaps someone can help explain this?

[Lateli]

Idle Arm! Eep.

Ohh, so that's what Lilith is, hadn't heard of her before. Thanks for the link. The way "Anyone know the story of Lilith?" was said, it made me think it was like another "Bloody Mary" type character, :p

And dammit, I don't type like an idiot, I have SOME basic grammar skills :( And I'm not THAT little, I just don't weigh much. :p Silly.

[dome1984]

hm.. i believe in aliens .. i mean.. we cant be the only living form in the universe..

[RDClip]

I agree with everyone that there are aliens. However, I don't believe the abduction stories, crop circles, government conspiracies, anal probing, or whatever some wacko on TV says.

[Alphonse v.2]

There was a law passed in I think 1969 (In America) that anyone attempting to conatct Extra-Terrestrials would go to jail or be senteced to life in an Insane Asylum or something along those lines.

[Praetorian]

Yes I can see that your a big tough arrogant man and being the second most intelligent form of life in the universe you have little to fear. Obviously while your not a little girl you have the empathy to feel what she will feel, but how can you compare.....? not everybody can be almost as intelligent as I am and claim to be the second most intelligent life form in the universe.

Second most?

Also, I'm not big and tough. I'm 170cm you pleb. Also, how was I suppost to know she was a little girl? In fact, I thought Lateli was a 23 year old Swedish guy. Not that I care, even if I were a little girl I'd still not be afraid of voices coming from my garage. After all, they're in the garage. Not, say, next to you, shouting in your ear. With a gun.

[Anubis Nine]

I believe not in sentient thinking ghosts, but in feelings, strong ones, left behind when people die.

I *am* empathic to a varying degree. I can feel what others feel as my own, and unfortunately when I least expect it I can make others feel what I am feeling.

Aside from that and the implications it has on my life. (Which are toning down now that I've got a good idea why things are odd around me) I have walked into old houses and felt bursts of loneliness enough to make me cry, feelings of anger in a graveyard. I have feelings of fear sometimes.

I have never seen a UFO, nor disembodied voices/footsteps.

I also believe in fairies. ^^;

[Lateli]

Second most?

Also, I'm not big and tough. I'm 170cm you pleb. Also, how was I suppost to know she was a little girl? In fact, I thought Lateli was a 23 year old Swedish guy. Not that I care, even if I were a little girl I'd still not be afraid of voices coming from my garage. After all, they're in the garage. Not, say, next to you, shouting in your ear. With a gun.

When people say little girl, it so sounds like you're referring to me as under the age of 10, with pig tails and a sundress too :( The voices aren't scary, I wouldn't go in there with a knife and check though, becayse if something were to be in there, and have a gun, then I'd be screwed :p I guess that doesn't matter, because I was standing right next to the door to the garage and heard it, that means whatever was in there would have seen me anyways.. The dog goes ballistic if something isn't right(Like someone is here, or an animal that isn't normally around ventures close), she just looked, curious.

The cemetary is still a creepy place, and the school next to it too. I'd like to examine the school one day, but I doubt they'd let me in for "ghost" tracking :p

[Dead Sexy Vocab]

Who you gonna call?! GHOST BUSTERS!!!

[MeneerDijk]

I do not beleive in ghosts, i don't think there's any use in their remaining on earth, and we would have found 'tangiable' evidence by now. And not an 'orb' on a picture (i have those, their reflections of the flasher) or a vague shadow resembling a face. I beleive there's extraterrestrial life, but i don't beleive the are visiting earth. Even if they have a head start on evolution i dont think they would have found us and built a spacecraft that can reach us.

And i don't believe in bigfoot, although there are still some species around we heavent discovered yet, bigfoot is a guy in a suit.

In my country there were reports of a sighted puma, wich is unusual. The media went on a feeding frenzy, a lot of contradicting reports where aired. and vague pictures where realeased, the maker claimed they were made intentionally vague to not reveal the location of the panther so people won't disturb search operations... when all the background showed was grass and some trees, why distort the puma itself...it's not like it's identity has to be protected!

My point being, people WANT to believe, and make up shit to BE BELIEVED, because that will make them get attention.

[DarkFire168]

UFO's? Well I believe in aliens, simply because statistical probability says that it's impossible for us to be alone, also it'd be alot of wasted space (get the reference?). :D But I don't think they'd waste their time dropping by this dirt ball. If they've seen our TV signals they're probably scared shitless of us. Look at E.T., Flight of the Navigator, Star Trek and Star Wars for god fucking sakes, hell how about that episode of Farscape where John and the crew were having their heads screwed with by that alien to see how John's planet would react to aliens landing on Earth?

Ghosts? The imprint of lost souls upon this dimension or plane via psyonic wave lengths caused by massive trauma and/or horrific events? Not really, though I do admit, it's still a possibility.

[Kash]

I do not beleive in ghosts, i don't think there's any use in their remaining on earth, and we would have found 'tangiable' evidence by now. And not an 'orb' on a picture (i have those, their reflections of the flasher) or a vague shadow resembling a face. I beleive there's extraterrestrial life, but i don't beleive the are visiting earth. Even if they have a head start on evolution i dont think they would have found us and built a spacecraft that can reach us.

And i don't believe in bigfoot, although there are still some species around we heavent discovered yet, bigfoot is a guy in a suit.

In my country there were reports of a sighted puma, wich is unusual. The media went on a feeding frenzy, a lot of contradicting reports where aired. and vague pictures where realeased, the maker claimed they were made intentionally vague to not reveal the location of the panther so people won't disturb search operations... when all the background showed was grass and some trees, why distort the puma itself...it's not like it's identity has to be protected!

My point being, people WANT to believe, and make up shit to BE BELIEVED, because that will make them get attention.


Ahhh, here' is some wisdom. Believing is hardwired into our animal brains. We have the need to believe. Not unlike the need for food or sex, it's very primal and can run away with our logical human half.

There is a tremendous difference between saying, "yes there most certianly could or even should, be intellegent life on other planets" and saying, "UFO's come to me in the night and perform experiments on me" One is clearly rational and obvious.

To those that depend of personal, non objective, sightings or experiances to "prove" that ghosts or other such supernatural things exist, I would caution you. Eye witness to rather mundane things like crimes have been proven false quite often. In fact, eye witness are very likely to be wrong. This must tell us that human perception is rather flawed, or at least colored by our own interpretation of events.

It's very human to want to believe. Nothing wrong in that. But the mark of intellegence is how you use this innate belief. Thowing it around and believing willy-nilly is nothing more than squandering a usefull ability. Imagine if Bach only used his ability to create advertising jingles. That would be a very wastefull use of a great ability. Tuning the human belief ability into a UFOlogist or a ghost hunter is exactly the same thing. If anything it's worse, one in a hundred million have the skills to become a great composer, but everyone born has the ability to believe. Use it, don't abuse it.

[Roxie]

I don't know really, but I'm scared of ghosts.

Haven't ever seen one, but the idea frightens me.

However, I have had experience with being able to know what people are feeling and thinking. I can't command it or anything, but it just happens.

Anyway, a friend of a friend died (let's call him Tom) last year and it was very sad. I wasn't close the to Tom, but to see my friends in such pain...
He died in the fall.....later that year I began to see butterflies.

ALOT of butterflies. In the dead of winter.
Then I began to smell ciggerette smoke right outside of my door. It wasn't in the bathroom, or the kitchen, the living room, nor the hallway. It just hovered outside of my door. Tom smoked.
Then I got a flyer with his name on it and his (real) name is very unique here.

Very odd experience to say the least.

[Shamu]

I believe in everything. I've seen too much weird stuff happen to not believe in all that stuff...too much to go into, but some pretty strange things.

[dama rei]

If you've ever gone camping in a mountain area ( I was at the guadalupe mountains) You realize that there's sooo much land where a human has probably never set foot in for a very, very long time, if at all.


So yeah, big foot could exist.

[TheWOLF]

Ghosts: yes

bigfoot: not so sure

aliens: y not?

[Nessa]

I believe in alians, ghosts, bigfoot and lot's of other strange things.

I do not beleive in ghosts, i don't think there's any use in their remaining on earth, and we would have found 'tangiable' evidence by now. And not an 'orb' on a picture (i have those, their reflections of the flasher) or a vague shadow resembling a face.

What about moving orbs caught on videotape? I find it kind of hard to believe that they're all relfections of the flash, even on infrared cameras.

[KiwiKitty]

To those that depend of personal, non objective, sightings or experiances to "prove" that ghosts or other such supernatural things exist, I would caution you. Eye witness to rather mundane things like crimes have been proven false quite often. In fact, eye witness are very likely to be wrong. This must tell us that human perception is rather flawed, or at least colored by our own interpretation of events.
To an extent, you're right. Human memory is a very unreliable thing. Small details are open to interpretation and quite often get confused and fudged if we get told something else was the case. A case in point was the guy who was shot in the London Underground as a suicide bomber - the man had no weapon on him, yet passengers in the train reported him as holding a gun.

Still, human memory isn't as unreliable as you're making out, otherwise we'd all forget how to talk, eat, dress, do our jobs... and something unusual and bizarre has a better chance of sticking in your memory relatively unchanged. It's always small details that get changed, to fit with what you later find out or believe you know - it's not like you bump into someone in a hallway and 10 years later think, "Oh my god! I saw a ghost 10 years ago in that hallway!"

Regardless, all your point is really saying here is, if I saw a ghost 10 years ago, I might be remembering it differently now... perhaps so. But that doesn't make the person-shaped shadow I saw behind the laundry door any less real. It doesn't make the shadow I saw of our dead for some years bus driver any less real, either. It doesn't make the presence that yanked my father from bed one night a dream, nor the man standing over mum, nor her seeing her mother when she died at the exact time she died (yay clocks in hospital rooms). It doesn't explain the horse and cart my brother had rush at him from fog one night, either, nor the whistling people would hear (everyone heard the same tune, and apart from one house guest who didn't realise it wasn't my father whistling in the orchard early that morning, no one ever whistled it).

As to beliefs about the afterlife? I have none. I grew up on a farm. I'm very pragmatic on the nature of life - we're bags of meat that are pretty on the outside and once you die, that's it. I don't believe in God. I've got no urge to believe there's anything after death, not reaching for anything.

I personally think ghosts are in effect a recording on the planet's magnetic field that we don't understand - and contrary to someone else's earlier post, just because we don't understand something isn't reason to rubbish it - it's very arrogant to believe we understand everything or know everything (and likewise know there's no chance of something being the case - there's just too much we don't know and things we think we do because of the way our brains are structured). I've got no proof as to my theory, and I never will because it's not something I study, but it fits the descriptions of most ghosts, and the ones I've experienced.

It's very human to want to believe. Nothing wrong in that. But the mark of intellegence is how you use this innate belief. Thowing it around and believing willy-nilly is nothing more than squandering a usefull ability. Imagine if Bach only used his ability to create advertising jingles. That would be a very wastefull use of a great ability. Tuning the human belief ability into a UFOlogist or a ghost hunter is exactly the same thing. If anything it's worse, one in a hundred million have the skills to become a great composer, but everyone born has the ability to believe. Use it, don't abuse it.
Wow. So... people who are trying to research phenomena that have been reported since we've kept records are stupid or a waste? I'm so sorry to inform you that people have indeed been reporting UFOs for thousands of years, and ghosts for the same length of time... they may not be what many thing, but there is something there. I wouldn't be surprised if some UFOs are actually alien craft - some appear to be structured vehicles, which could even be terrestrial, considering the number that cause radiation-induced sickness and burns. Likewise, some reported UFOs appear to be some kind of electric or plasmic atmospheric event we can't yet comprehend.

However, with respect to UFOs, please forward your information that people are believing in bunk to your nearest government - the paper they'd save in studying these things themselves would save several forests a year. And yes, governments do study UFOs, there's simply too much paperwork to believe otherwise... and too much that suggests they consider them to be a defence risk. So if organisations with more brain power than you or I and more equipment than we know about and inflated budgets think UFOs, whatever they end up being (that's why they're called UFOs... we don't know what they are and they fly) are a defence risk, in addition to statistics relating to number of stars and photographs, eyewitness reports, materials recovered that lab study shows were not made on Earth, etc etc, that should be enough for even the most ignorant person to think perhaps there's something there with UFOs.

Ghosts, though, are more something you have to experience for yourself. Whenever I've had an experience - and my direct "I've seen something" experiences have been extremely limited - I have been wide awake (apart from voices which woke me up in bed one night, who I first thought were my flatmate and his friends) and alert, and not thinking about ghosts or anything even close. I've also seen a lot of photographic evidence that's fairly convincing - and no, not orbs or streaks of light, but people, reflections of people, and other things that yes, are now more easily faked with photoshop, but which in the old days used to fool people ar Kodak. And video evidence, of course.

You're right, though - belief is a powerful thing. It's what keeps civilisation, religion and economies going when all logic says they should crash and burn. Do some people see ghosts and UFOs because they want to? Hell yeah. But not everyone. Not most people. Most people don't want to see ghosts or UFOs or Bigfoot or anything - they want to be comfortable in their worldview. There's evidence for the existance of both, too, but people who don't believe ignore it - hell, people still think there's no conspiracy to cover up what governments know about UFOs, even though now there's thousands of pages of documents released under FOI requests that show otherwise. People say if UFOs - the structured alien craft type - crash, and are recovered by, in most cases the US army or air force, why are there no witnesses who've come forward? Again, there are many who do. There are many who give names, dates, ranks, jobs, etc that match with records, and report of UFO crashes they've been present at, or aspects of dissecting UFOs or, yes, aliens. And there's more than you'd think.

What you're implying is really rather arrogant and uninformed. I and many others have seen and experienced things you haven't, so rather than accepting that fact, you're stating because it doesn't match with what you believe, we're wrong and stupid and wasting a talent for self-delusion. I'll be the first to tell you I don't understand the processes behind the things I've seen and heard, and I'm betting you can't either, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen.

[RDClip]

About the Government studying UFOs, they probably do. In the 1970's they researched psychics, spending millions of dollars; what did they find? That psychics aren't reliable souces of info. Let's face it the US(and all governments) are really good at wasting money on stupid things.

[setrict]

The obvious answer is that bigfoot is a dead alien that now haunts people, and what people see now are his pals beaming down occasionally looking for his remains to take back to Kashyyyk.

Alien's. The universe is a big place, and I hope it's got more than one lousy planet with life on it.

Bigfoot: I think it's probably people's imagination at this point given the lack of evidence. If there was anything to it we'd have pictures, and skeletal remains by now.

Ghosts: No idea, but I'm skeptical. I've never seen, heard, or felt a anything like a ghost or haunting. As a kid my friends and I would often roam through a cemetary at night trying to avoid the roads (curfew/police), some people would get freaked out and think they saw something but most of us never did. No chills, no paranoia, no goosebumps, no noises.

Telepathy/Empathy: Yes. I'm sure there is a good scientific explanation for it but I've definately had a far share of these experiences. Like thinking of a friend you haven't talked to for some time just before the phone rings with them on the line, knowing when family members were in accidents/trouble and having it verified when calling to check on them. Out of the blue getting the urge to get off the interstate and take the side road, and then seeing a wreck that would have blocked your way had you not. Palm readers, astrology, etc are just gimmicks... but I think there may be -something- involving unknown perception.

[Kuhool]

Ahhh, here' is some wisdom. Believing is hardwired into our animal brains. We have the need to believe. Not unlike the need for food or sex, it's very primal and can run away with our logical human half.

There is a tremendous difference between saying, "yes there most certianly could or even should, be intellegent life on other planets" and saying, "UFO's come to me in the night and perform experiments on me" One is clearly rational and obvious.

To those that depend of personal, non objective, sightings or experiances to "prove" that ghosts or other such supernatural things exist, I would caution you. Eye witness to rather mundane things like crimes have been proven false quite often. In fact, eye witness are very likely to be wrong. This must tell us that human perception is rather flawed, or at least colored by our own interpretation of events.

It's very human to want to believe. Nothing wrong in that. But the mark of intellegence is how you use this innate belief. Thowing it around and believing willy-nilly is nothing more than squandering a usefull ability. Imagine if Bach only used his ability to create advertising jingles. That would be a very wastefull use of a great ability. Tuning the human belief ability into a UFOlogist or a ghost hunter is exactly the same thing. If anything it's worse, one in a hundred million have the skills to become a great composer, but everyone born has the ability to believe. Use it, don't abuse it.
good to know you're more intelligent than everyone, super-human eh.

[Kash]

To an extent, you're right. Human memory is a very unreliable thing. Small details are open to interpretation and quite often get confused and fudged if we get told something else was the case. A case in point was the guy who was shot in the London Underground as a suicide bomber - the man had no weapon on him, yet passengers in the train reported him as holding a gun.

Still, human memory isn't as unreliable as you're making out, otherwise we'd all forget how to talk, eat, dress, do our jobs... and something unusual and bizarre has a better chance of sticking in your memory relatively unchanged. It's always small details that get changed, to fit with what you later find out or believe you know - it's not like you bump into someone in a hallway and 10 years later think, "Oh my god! I saw a ghost 10 years ago in that hallway!"
Read those two paragraphs over and tell me you're not contradicting yourself. Those guys in the train station didn't have to wait "10 years" inorder to manipulate their memory!

Those people in the train station were on the look out for suspicious, potential terrorists. And they found one! Even if they had to invent one. Same thing goes with ghosts et.al. If you've been conditioned or softened up into believing that such nonsense is factual, then you will attribute various unexplained things to "ghosts" as well. Go ahead and read what you wrote about UFO's being "unidentified", and then go back over your ghost comments. You're contradicting yourself again.


Regardless, all your point is really saying here is, if I saw a ghost 10 years ago, I might be remembering it differently now... perhaps so. But that doesn't make the person-shaped shadow I saw behind the laundry door any less real. It doesn't make the shadow I saw of our dead for some years bus driver any less real, either. It doesn't make the presence that yanked my father from bed one night a dream, nor the man standing over mum, nor her seeing her mother when she died at the exact time she died (yay clocks in hospital rooms). It doesn't explain the horse and cart my brother had rush at him from fog one night, either, nor the whistling people would hear (everyone heard the same tune, and apart from one house guest who didn't realise it wasn't my father whistling in the orchard early that morning, no one ever whistled it).
No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you're conditioned to believe that "cats will steal your breath whilst you sleep", then the next time you wake up with a cat on your chest, it was trying to kill you. I don't want to piss you off, but no matter how I debunk your ghost stories with numerous plausable and non spiritual explanations, you'll no doubt be upset. Suffice to say that people fall out of bed during distrubed dreams all the time. If you care to give up anectodal evidence at least attempt to cite someone that was fully conscious at the time. But this all begs the point.

All of our human senses are otherwise detectable with outside equipment. Camera's take pictures that represent what we can see. Recorders do the same for our ears. There are even electronic noses that measure concentrations of various chemicals. To assume that there is some supernatural sense that exists that can't be arbitrairly measured is going out there on a limb. Otherworldly events that seem awefully common place in your family should be recorded. There has been plenty of time for people to document this activity. Too bad the only documents out there have been proven to be bogus and the proponents fakers of the highest order. Where is the objective lens? A dozen people recorded planes crashing into the WTC when they didn't know it was going to happen, where are these unbiases lenses in respect to ghosts?

As to beliefs about the afterlife? I have none. I grew up on a farm. I'm very pragmatic on the nature of life - we're bags of meat that are pretty on the outside and once you die, that's it. I don't believe in God. I've got no urge to believe there's anything after death, not reaching for anything.
Oh that's not contradictary at all. Don't believe in gods, but ghosts are legit? Frankly they're part and parcel of eachother. Was this paragraph supposed to support your opinion?

I personally think ghosts are in effect a recording on the planet's magnetic field that we don't understand - and contrary to someone else's earlier post, just because we don't understand something isn't reason to rubbish it - it's very arrogant to believe we understand everything or know everything (and likewise know there's no chance of something being the case - there's just too much we don't know and things we think we do because of the way our brains are structured). I've got no proof as to my theory, and I never will because it's not something I study, but it fits the descriptions of most ghosts, and the ones I've experienced.
Great, you have a crank theory. How about you produce the slighest bit of evidence to support this? People used to believe that grain caused rats and that meat left in the open spontainously created flies too. There's plenty of reason to not agree with theories that have no support. You say that ghosts have been around thousands of years. This is true. There have been plenty of innane beliefs in the dark ages. Ever hear that the world was flat? Magnetic fields holding the souls of dead people?

The flaw in your argument is saying that "Not understanding it" = "knowing everything" There are plenty of things we don't understand, plenty of things that we're trying to explain. But if something is so commonplace as ghosts are, in your opinion, they damn well would have an better explanation than something rare like solar eclipses. How did us poor stupid humans with poorly structured brains manage to contemplate the universe and still can't wrap our paltry brains around something so damn common as the undead that pull daddy out of bed in the middle of the night?


Wow. So... people who are trying to research phenomena that have been reported since we've kept records are stupid or a waste? I'm so sorry to inform you that people have indeed been reporting UFOs for thousands of years, and ghosts for the same length of time... they may not be what many thing, but there is something there. I wouldn't be surprised if some UFOs are actually alien craft - some appear to be structured vehicles, which could even be terrestrial, considering the number that cause radiation-induced sickness and burns. Likewise, some reported UFOs appear to be some kind of electric or plasmic atmospheric event we can't yet comprehend.
yes, people who waste their time researching ghosts (and not researching why people tend to believe in fanciful things) are wasting their time. People have studied witchcraft and magic for a long time too, too bad we haven't managed to work that flaw out either.

Here is the nubbin of your argument, you even state it, "they may not be what many thing, but there is something there." I'm assuming you mean, "what many thinK". Whey does there have to be something there? We have delusions and illusions and ill formed perceptions all the time! The guy lost in the desert only thinks he's seeing an oasis. There's not anything there but a mirage. A halucination. It's part of that provincial gray matter you mentioned above. Someone see's a UFO? you say there HAS to be something there! No, sorry, there doesn't. I'll agree that people have been reporting unusual lights in the sky, that's called astronomy. Really, it's no different than earlier astrologers seeing the planets moving in retrograde and believeing they're gods! They move differently than the stars! It's the gods! How is that different than someone saying, "I saw something I can't explain in the sky. It must be a flying saucer from another world!" For all the dolts claiming to see extraterrestials, where is the proof? Oh yeah, a conspiracy! How about Television cameras? There are more than just a few stations around the globe. Where are the aliens landing and giving up the "take me to your leader" speech? You'd think after 50 years of getting the cold shoulder from the worlds governments they'd figure out that going to the mass media for once might be a good idea? If they can build faster than light craft, they should be able to circumvent some beaucrats and fixed wing aircraft, if half of the reports of their technology are true!

Does extraterrestial life exist? Probably. Do they visit earth and act like drunk frat boys doing low flybys on desert roads and probing our ass's? No. Sorry, that's just silly and there's no proof. If it happened once, I just might believe it. But more idiots are claiming to have had interspecies anal romance than ever claimed the earth was flat. They both belong in the same remedial perception class.

However, with respect to UFOs, please forward your information that people are believing in bunk to your nearest government - the paper they'd save in studying these things themselves would save several forests a year. And yes, governments do study UFOs, there's simply too much paperwork to believe otherwise... and too much that suggests they consider them to be a defence risk. So if organisations with more brain power than you or I and more equipment than we know about and inflated budgets think UFOs, whatever they end up being (that's why they're called UFOs... we don't know what they are and they fly) are a defence risk, in addition to statistics relating to number of stars and photographs, eyewitness reports, materials recovered that lab study shows were not made on Earth, etc etc, that should be enough for even the most ignorant person to think perhaps there's something there with UFOs.
Project bluebook has been closed. Any further disinformation coming out on UFO's is purposfull. Our airforce would rather have people reporting aliens than showing off pictures and videos of their latest spy plane or some groovy missile tests.

UFO's are a defense risk? So... The US spent 100billion creating the stealth bomber to sneak up on aliens? Sorry. Our Defense department puts its money where it's mouth is. If flying saucers were a risk, we'd not be dumping buckets of cash on aircraft carriers. I guess it's just a wild notion that if we needed a presence in earth orbit, the space station wouldn't be langushing with narry a spare part or someone to take out the garbage.

I'd love to see what objective proof you have that there are materials not made on earth! This is really getting funny. Yes, please show me where any credible lab has said anything such. Don't you think Nasa might have mentioned it? There is no proof of flying saucers. There is a big fat wish among plenty of people that want to believe there are extraterrestials. It would make them feel less alone. It would give them hope and purpose. It would make them feel better about their lives here. So they attribute every blip in the sky to grays or reptillians or whatever. You've actually hit the nail on the head in your first paragraph on this subject. There is various atmosphereic phenomina that can create moving lights. There are lots of miss reports. That being, someone says, I saw little green men and it was actually the men in blue. Quite right, unidentified, not craft sent from another planet. But before you make absurd claims that there is alien wreckage, you better be able to back it up. Everyone to a man, that has said so in the past has proven to be a crank and a fake.

Ghosts, though, are more something you have to experience for yourself. Whenever I've had an experience - and my direct "I've seen something" experiences have been extremely limited - I have been wide awake (apart from voices which woke me up in bed one night, who I first thought were my flatmate and his friends) and alert, and not thinking about ghosts or anything even close. I've also seen a lot of photographic evidence that's fairly convincing - and no, not orbs or streaks of light, but people, reflections of people, and other things that yes, are now more easily faked with photoshop, but which in the old days used to fool people ar Kodak. And video evidence, of course.
No, Ghosts aren't something you have to experiance for yourself. It's called peer review. I could say I've invented cold fusion. But until I can prove it, and have some objective person repeat my experimnet, I'm a crank. You can say all you want that there are ghosts, and that you've seen ghosts or whatever, but until you can demonstrate one, until you can get a scientist to measure one it's all in your head. You can quip off "video evidence of course". but that's not an argument. It's a belief.

You're right, though - belief is a powerful thing. It's what keeps civilisation, religion and economies going when all logic says they should crash and burn. Do some people see ghosts and UFOs because they want to? Hell yeah. But not everyone. Not most people. Most people don't want to see ghosts or UFOs or Bigfoot or anything - they want to be comfortable in their worldview. There's evidence for the existance of both, too, but people who don't believe ignore it - hell, people still think there's no conspiracy to cover up what governments know about UFOs, even though now there's thousands of pages of documents released under FOI requests that show otherwise. People say if UFOs - the structured alien craft type - crash, and are recovered by, in most cases the US army or air force, why are there no witnesses who've come forward? Again, there are many who do. There are many who give names, dates, ranks, jobs, etc that match with records, and report of UFO crashes they've been present at, or aspects of dissecting UFOs or, yes, aliens. And there's more than you'd think.
OK, now I have to take you to task for for just talking out your ass. A couple paragraphs you've stated that there is proof that there is material from space ships that has been proven to not have been made on earth, and now there's a conspiracy to cover this up? Either it's a shit worthy conspiracy or you're wrong. Which is it? You can't have it both ways. Is there proof? Is there a cover up?

The truth is, there is no evidence. Perhaps you should look up that word, and modify what you're trying to say. Evidence of an autopsied alien or big foot would be a nice taxidermy and some DNA evidence. Not Johnathan Frakes and a what if series to boost is flagging career. If you actually call that evidence, I feel foolish even answering you.

See, it just doesn't make sense. If there were plenty of evidence of aliens, and our government wanted to spend a ton of money defending it, then they'd show said evidence and tax the hell out of us. There wasn't any cover up of soviet missiles in Cuba. They splashed photos of that all over the TV at the time. And if there is some dark conspiracy, Why is there all this "proof" as you say there is? Alien Autopsies? Hard proof of materials not made on earth? That's one great conspiracy! Looks like the only thing not out in the open is... Ummm... crash wreckage, bodies and any tangeble evidence.

yeah, people have said that they worked for the airforce and covered up UFO's. Of course they have, go ahtead and buy their book. Hell, I could write a spooky story or two, maybe throw in some tales of the time I spent on a nuclear sub and have plenty of nimrods believeing everything I said. No that it would be true. I'm really sorry to tell you this, but there are plenty of liars out there. I'll stop calling them liars when there's aliens walking out of a craft on the whitehouse lawn. Hell, it doesn't even have to be the whitehouse, it could be the Corn Palace for all I care! Don't show me the money. Show me the Alien! Don't show me some blurry pic that's been enlarged too much, show me the alien! Shit, they've come all this way, ain't they at least going to go to disney world? Nope! They're just here to grab some cow assholes and probe a few rectums and they'll be engaging the ol' warp engines! Lotsa assholes to probe, not much time. Hella job those aliens have, portable proctocology lab without so much as a "hey how are ya!"


What you're implying is really rather arrogant and uninformed. I and many others have seen and experienced things you haven't, so rather than accepting that fact, you're stating because it doesn't match with what you believe, we're wrong and stupid and wasting a talent for self-delusion. I'll be the first to tell you I don't understand the processes behind the things I've seen and heard, and I'm betting you can't either, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen.

Perhaps I am arrogant. It's better than gullable and stupid. Uninformed? I'll take skeptical rather than swallowing the latest Johnathan Frakes sideshow.

Last comment. No one is saying "it didn't happen". What I'm saying is that you're using a leap of faith to assume that, "something happened" = UFO or ghost or what not. Sure something happened. I'll grant that. But it was really rather mundane. Sorry, the story has a boring ending. Get over hollywood. Let the clutch out on your analylitical mind. Just because something happend you don't have to prove your gullibliity by saying it was a flying saucer. Unidentified is good enough. Leave the hollywood, mystical bullshit and the conjecture behind.

[Nekesu]

X-Files is bullshit, all TV is, duh. But do i believe in UFOs? Sure, saw one once, but not all crazy about it, who knows what the hell i say, all i know is it was many times bigger than an airplane and had several lit "windows", then a second or two later it was gone. But I think we should at least partially beieve in other worlds and other beings, cause there isn't just us, thinking that is stupidity, we're pretty insignificant in this universe.

[Kash]

good to know you're more intelligent than everyone, super-human eh.

Thanks for noticing. I've been saying this for quite sometime myself.

[DarkFire168]

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you're conditioned to believe that "cats will steal your breath whilst you sleep", then the next time you wake up with a cat on your chest, it was trying to kill you. I don't want to piss you off, but no matter how I debunk your ghost stories with numerous plausable and non spiritual explanations, you'll no doubt be upset. Suffice to say that people fall out of bed during distrubed dreams all the time. If you care to give up anectodal evidence at least attempt to cite someone that was fully conscious at the time. But this all begs the point.



Hm hm, last part is true. People do fall out of the bed because of dreams all the time. They also just plain roll around.


All of our human senses are otherwise detectable with outside equipment. Camera's take pictures that represent what we can see. Recorders do the same for our ears. There are even electronic noses that measure concentrations of various chemicals. To assume that there is some supernatural sense that exists that can't be arbitrairly measured is going out there on a limb. Otherworldly events that seem awefully common place in your family should be recorded. There has been plenty of time for people to document this activity. Too bad the only documents out there have been proven to be bogus and the proponents fakers of the highest order. Where is the objective lens? A dozen people recorded planes crashing into the WTC when they didn't know it was going to happen, where are these unbiases lenses in respect to ghosts?


Who knows, maybe ghosts can't be photographed by normal lenses. After all, can you detect thermal shifts with your camcorder? No, no you can't. Does that mean shifts in the heat around a persons body or in the air don't exist? No, no it doesn't. Because we know they exist. You may not be able to obtain proof with a camera but you can with other types of equipment. Now I know what you're going to say, "But 'lenses' was just a word to symbolize some kind of third party impartial proof!", well don't that just bugger all, I already knew what you meant. And maybe we simply don't have the right tools to measure or record these kinds of things yet. Remember, we didn't always have telescopes, satellites, cell phones or even a simple abacus.


Oh that's not contradictary at all. Don't believe in gods, but ghosts are legit? Frankly they're part and parcel of eachother. Was this paragraph supposed to support your opinion?


So people can't have contradicting beliefs? That's a new one. As far as I knew, a persons personal beliefs were allowed to be convulted as they desired, no matter how contradictory they became. I mean, look at christians. They preach about love and acceptance and whine about how everyone is anti-christian and all that now, but then they turn around and kill you for not accepting jesus.


Great, you have a crank theory. How about you produce the slighest bit of evidence to support this? People used to believe that grain caused rats and that meat left in the open spontainously created flies too. There's plenty of reason to not agree with theories that have no support. You say that ghosts have been around thousands of years. This is true. There have been plenty of innane beliefs in the dark ages. Ever hear that the world was flat? Magnetic fields holding the souls of dead people?


Wait, you mean rats aren't attracted to grain, becuase it provides a nutritous food source for them? So all those problems with rats in grain silos must fall under the "crank theory" category. I've never heard that load about "spontaneously generating flies" but maybe it has to do with flies being attracted to rotting, bloody carcasses? Hmmmm, maybe?


The flaw in your argument is saying that "Not understanding it" = "knowing everything" There are plenty of things we don't understand, plenty of things that we're trying to explain. But if something is so commonplace as ghosts are, in your opinion, they damn well would have an better explanation than something rare like solar eclipses. How did us poor stupid humans with poorly structured brains manage to contemplate the universe and still can't wrap our paltry brains around something so damn common as the undead that pull daddy out of bed in the middle of the night?


Wait, she said that? She said, if you don't understand it, you know everything? I thought that was you. I mean, you are being a stuck up, know it all jackass about this. And since when have human beings managed to fully understand the universe. As far as I know, we haven't, what with it being an unanswerable question as we currently don't have the tools to figure it out.


yes, people who waste their time researching ghosts (and not researching why people tend to believe in fanciful things) are wasting their time. People have studied witchcraft and magic for a long time too, too bad we haven't managed to work that flaw out either.

Here is the nubbin of your argument, you even state it, "they may not be what many thing, but there is something there." I'm assuming you mean, "what many thinK". Whey does there have to be something there? We have delusions and illusions and ill formed perceptions all the time! The guy lost in the desert only thinks he's seeing an oasis. There's not anything there but a mirage. A halucination. It's part of that provincial gray matter you mentioned above. Someone see's a UFO? you say there HAS to be something there! No, sorry, there doesn't. I'll agree that people have been reporting unusual lights in the sky, that's called astronomy. Really, it's no different than earlier astrologers seeing the planets moving in retrograde and believeing they're gods! They move differently than the stars! It's the gods! How is that different than someone saying, "I saw something I can't explain in the sky. It must be a flying saucer from another world!" For all the dolts claiming to see extraterrestials, where is the proof? Oh yeah, a conspiracy! How about Television cameras? There are more than just a few stations around the globe. Where are the aliens landing and giving up the "take me to your leader" speech? You'd think after 50 years of getting the cold shoulder from the worlds governments they'd figure out that going to the mass media for once might be a good idea? If they can build faster than light craft, they should be able to circumvent some beaucrats and fixed wing aircraft, if half of the reports of their technology are true!

Does extraterrestial life exist? Probably. Do they visit earth and act like drunk frat boys doing low flybys on desert roads and probing our ass's? No. Sorry, that's just silly and there's no proof. If it happened once, I just might believe it. But more idiots are claiming to have had interspecies anal romance than ever claimed the earth was flat. They both belong in the same remedial perception class.



Hm, I actually agree with this part of your rant.

All in all though, you come off as a jackass yelling at a little girl because you don't agree with her point of view.

[Pretentious]

Meh, I'm 50/50 on the ghosts thing myself. Well, 75/25 would probably be a better ratio or something. Aliens, though, I DO believe in. As shallow a reason as it is, to think that the planet we live on is the only one in the universe with intelligent life is, well, crazy. And a tad egotistical too.

Telepathy/Empathy: Yes. I'm sure there is a good scientific explanation for it but I've definately had a far share of these experiences. Like thinking of a friend you haven't talked to for some time just before the phone rings with them on the line, knowing when family members were in accidents/trouble and having it verified when calling to check on them. Out of the blue getting the urge to get off the interstate and take the side road, and then seeing a wreck that would have blocked your way had you not. Palm readers, astrology, etc are just gimmicks... but I think there may be -something- involving unknown perception.

Those would be precognitive visions, not telepathy (which is crap like being able to communicate with thought) or empathy (which is being able to feel another's emotions, or something to that extent).

[KiwiKitty]

*cough cough* Thanks, Darkfire, but I'm actually a 28 yr old man ;) The nickname is a long story.

Some of the points Kash made are valid; one of these days, I'm going to start writing down books, authors and page numbers instead of just remembering the information, and rather than say what the conclusions reached there were, just reference the source and save a lot of typing and backing and forthing. And then a hell of a lot of time digging up references on the net, like tonight.

As to the materials checked in labs, I never claimed they were componants of a structured alien craft, but the materials researched in the case I was talking about are mostly detailed at http://ufocasebook.com/ubatuba.html which does a pretty good job of describing what I read years ago. There have been other cases I've read about, including one famous hoax. Yes, it's possible the fragments are from some kind of meteorite, but my understanding of asteroids and other bodies are that they're nowhere near pure metals but at the very least a mix of a number of types of materials. Not evidence of non-terrestrial manufacture (and before you jump on me, I'm not meaning machined manufacture, but the process by which the material was formed), but a good chance.

Heck, for all your talk about aliens, I thought I did state I think most UFOs (that weren't IDed later under investigation, which I should prolly have added, but that I think is implicit in using the term "UFO") would turn out to be atmoshperic phenomena we don't know about, but reading back, I hadn't quite made that clear when I was saying some appear to be structured craft and others appeared to be atmospheric effects... my apologies on that. However, a lot of structured craft ARE reported, and surprisingly enough, very few are saucer-shaped.

As to the objective study of ghosts, there are actually a lot of ghost hunters who do objective study. They do study the people who see ghosts - and tend to find they're just like everyone else, from all walks of life. They also study the related phenomena that go with hauntings - recording sounds, thermal images, temperature readings, whatever they can think of to try and record whatever people are seeing or feeling or otherwise experiencing. Quite often, ghost hunters don't believe in life after death or other things, but like Newton are studying and trying to understand something that is happening and observable - in the sense that millions of people worldwide over the centuries have seen or otherwise experienced a ghost or haunting. There have been things noted in ghost sightings that appear to be replicated with the equipment - temperature drops the easiest recordable.

Most reported ghosts aren't transparent or floating or wearing bedlinen or clanking chains, the vast majority look like solid people to the point people sometimes don't think anything of it until the figure walks through a wall or something else. Most people who see these ghosts are wide awake, conscious, and quite often thinking they're seeing an actual person.

Perhaps, as anecdotal evidence, I should have noted that the people who would hear footsteps, doors being knocked on, whistling, et al, were all wide awake at the time. In one house we lived in, our family and a number of friends have heard footsteps come up the stairs, onto the front porch and crossing to the door when someone opened the door from inside to let the new arrival in. No one there. That sort of thing happened a lot in that house. The same happened in my ex-girlfriend's house - and we were all wide awake then, multiple witnesses. No one would lead the others, no one would put the suggestion they're hearing footsteps out there, people would just act as they normally did when they heard footsteps approaching the door or coming up the hall, or at most ask, "Did you hear that?" or answer the door. And they sounded exactly like someone walking on whatever floor the sound was coming from. The time I mentioned my father was pulled out of bed, he had been woken up prior to that, and fought to remain in bed. So yes, the people in these anecdotes were awake, conscious and aware of their surroundings.

You also seem to imply I said the Earth's magnetic field traps people's souls - which I didn't. I said I think ghosts are recordings on the magnetic field, like a video recording or perhaps photograph, via a method we don't understand. If other evidence comes to light that suggests something different, or someone finds the reasoning behind ghosts sightings, I'll be happy to accept my views were wrong. But saying they're wrong, and that millions of people are wrong in general, because you don't believe in ghosts is just rediculous.

As to UFOs, too many sources to name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object has more than a few interesting bits culled from a lot of sources, though: specifically, the sections on official government studies (the US section has a real abbreviated paragraph at the end that talks about the files released under FOI requests, a number of which show up in books by Tim Good and others from the UK which do show there is a continuing quest for information going on behind the scenes) and physical evidence. Not only is it directly implied in a number of reports and files released under FOI or the 30/50 yr rule in the UK, but it is also stated in several that UFOs can and have posed a threat to British and US airspace. If anomalous radar returns displaying rapid changes in speed and height or witness reports weren't considered a threat to national security, air force jets of those nations wouldn't have been directed to intercept UFOs in the past.

They haven't? Go read up on Thomas Mantell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mantell ). http://www.military.state.ky.us/kyngemus/mantell.htm also states this in a much more abbreviated fashion (this page is part of the Kentucky National Guard E-Museum). For a UK version, check out http://ufocasebook.com/bentwaters1956.html or http://ufos.about.com/library/weekly/aa030298.htm for a case from Iran in 1976. UFOs were seen and tracked and interceptions attempted above Washington DC in 1952 ( http://ufologie.net/htm/usa1952.htm for one source, google Washington UFO flap and you get a bunch of returns) and of course, for a crash of a UFO outside of the US and handled by another government, do some reading on the Varginha "crash" in brazil ( http://www.mufor.org/vargin4.html ).

Some light reading. I picked these ones because there are military and in many cases intelligence reports on them, and after investigation were found to be unexplained. They're not the only ones, but are the ones I recall off the top of my head.

Hmm. The memory thing. I knew in typing that, you wouldn't think about what I'd said. No, it didn't take 10 years for people to remember seeing a gun. But what did they see? They saw a man run into a train station in terror, being chased by who were later IDed to be police, who held the guy down and shot him in the head. People really don't want to think this stuff was done without due cause, and when told he was a terrorist (false, as it turned out, he bolted because non-uniformed police ran at him waving guns and telling him to freeze. The reports we had here said they didn't show ID to say they were police, either, and he panicked and bolted - I would too if several guys waving guns started running towards me and shouting) one witness imagined a gun in his hand - I'm guessing because no one wanted to believe the police would shoot someone without being drawn on first. The witness there most likely wanted to see a reason this man had been shot, and so his brain supplied one. Likewise, when being questioned, the brain can supply answers that aren't part of the actual memory because of the way memory works - if the expectation is there something has happened, the brain supplies that information to say yes, it did.

That is a lot different to experiencing something. What you are implying is I and others saw nothing, but later remembered we did for some god unknown reason. Not the case. I have seen things (granted, nowhere near as much as some) that were unexaplainable (people's silouhettes behind frosted glass doors when no one else is in the house, for example) and later remembered that incident. Apart from the incident at school, I can't remember what the outline looked like, nor the clothes I was wearing nor the time or day. This is the memory thing in action. The basic events are the same - I saw a person's shadow behind the door, where there was no one, as I was heading outside to go play, but the small details are different from time to time I remember it.

Just like in the train station, witnesses all reported seeing the man run terrified into the station, get held down and shot in the head. It was the small details people got muddled up - some said he had a small bag, others a bulky one (as I recall from the news, he didn't have either). One man on a train said he had a gun - he didn't. The basic events aren't different, just the details.

I could go on a lot more, but I think this post is long enough as is. If you want to discuss further, I suggest we either cut them down to bite-sized chunks of posts, or maybe go to PMs or something. Or agree to disagree.

Darkfire covered a lot of the other points, more concisely than I could.

Edit: Ack, sorry guys, this is waaaaay longer than I thought ><

[Jon885]

I'm not sure. I will leave it to the intellectuals to decide this matter, because all these subjects are far beyond my comprehension. Skeptics and some more open minded people both make valid points.

By open minded people I'm not talking about some guy that holds a seance. I'm talking about people that show scientific evidence of their beliefs and are genuinely interested in seeking the truth. People that have no hidden intentions like making money.

[DarkFire168]

No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that if you're conditioned to believe that "cats will steal your breath whilst you sleep", then the next time you wake up with a cat on your chest, it was trying to kill you. I don't want to piss you off, but no matter how I debunk your ghost stories with numerous plausable and non spiritual explanations, you'll no doubt be upset. Suffice to say that people fall out of bed during distrubed dreams all the time. If you care to give up anectodal evidence at least attempt to cite someone that was fully conscious at the time. But this all begs the point.


My cat actually is trying to steal my breath. She plopped her big fat stomach across my face while I slept and I was nearly smothered. Evil cat.

[Trump]

Perception is an amazing thing. Everyone perceives the world differently and if you choose to explain your sensory anamolies with ghosts and spirits, that's fine with me.

[PopCulturePooka]

I believe in fairies, goblins and the existence of the fair folk.

Yayyy!

[raydude]

Regardless of whether one believes in ghosts or not, there is a tendency to attack the believer or middle-of-the-road skeptic as being uneducated or in some way ignorant. To me that is just as fruitless and unecessary as attacking someone for believing in God.

Both ghosts and God can't be proven to empirically exist. Yet many scientists, engineers, and otherwise highly-educated professionals believe in one or the other or both.

I am an aerospace engineer. I grew up in Hawaii. I heard all the ghost stories and boy if you ever want to hear ghost stories go there. There's ghosts all over the place and more popping up all the time if one believes all the stories one hears. Anyway, I've always wanted to disprove some of the myths. I never did though. Call it "playing it safe". I have had some strange encounters growing up which scared the beejesus out of me. That was when we used to live in a two story house in Salt Lake in Oahu. As I grew older I rationalized them as just weird things that could have been explained.

Then I met my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time I met her. She believes in ghosts and says she has an affinity for sensing whether one is "in the area" or not. Her apartment in DC was apparently haunted at the time. She would tell me about hearing someone call her name and she would think its me, but I'm not there. Or feeling a presence. She's a nurse practitioner, highly educated, professional. Who am I to question her? So I paid it no mind until I slept in her apartment one night while she did the night shift.

Holy crapola, I felt something, and it wasn't good. After that I would never sleep by myself there unless the light was on. I was so happy when she moved out. And happier still now that we're married and in a ghost free house.

Could I have tried the scientific method? Sure, why not. I could have set up some video cameras, gotten some thermometers, and tried to analyze the haunting. But when push come to shove and something feels ungood I just want to never seek that feeling again. You go do it if you want :).

[Iseult]

She was already your girlfriend when you met her? You move fast!

I neither believe nor disbelieve. I am pretty sure that we don't know all there is to know about what exactly constitutes the spark of life within us, and within all living creatures. Maybe it does hang around after the host body dies; I don't know.

I've experienced things that I can't explain rationally. I don't have the information I'd need. That doesn't mean they were paranormal, and it doesn't mean they weren't. It just means I don't have enough data.

[Quartermaster]

I remember, a few years ago, back in the 10th grade I was walking home. It was about 4:30 or so in the afternoon, and the sun was still out shining brightly (as it tends to do in Arizona).

In my room, I have a window, a bed at an L to the window, and a blue curtain in front of the window. Light is able to travel in on the sides, so whenever I didn't open the curtain that morning I would come home to a dark room with a tinge of blue around the sides. Showing in ascii:

....[window]...
B...(curtain)...
E
D
..............X
Where X is the entrance.

Anyway, I walk in, I'm a little tired and I'm facing the window as I walk in. Out of the corner of my eye, at the exact moment I flipped on the light I saw a humanoid shadow figure standing a foot or so above my pillow on my bed. I immediatly looked straight at it, and it didn't flinch or disappear, or move relative to my eyeball/head movement (signifying it wasn't a result of looking directly at light or whatever). It didn't disappear, despite its seeming shadowed-makeup. Before I flipped the light on I noticed the light from the window was shining directly behind it, and not showing up through it or fading it's absolute blackness in any way, something a regular shadow wouldn't be able to do. It stood there for a second and didn't disappear or fade away, it simply took a step through the wall, into what would be the computer room (where I'm at right now, actually....)

To this day I have no idea what the hell it was.

[LJustus]

To this day I have no idea what the hell it was.
Swamp gas, obviously. :)

Perhaps, a weather ballon then?

[Quartermaster]

Maybe it was a weather ballon reflecting light from Venus amplified by swamp gas and casting a perfect 3D hologram of a humanoid shadow in my room.

[Kash]

All in all though, you come off as a jackass yelling at a little girl because you don't agree with her point of view.
Thanks for noticing, I try my damnedest. But you're quite wrong, not only about the little girl part, but also that I'm "yelling" because I "don't agree with her point of view". It's called debate and it's an adversarial method. Just because I don't endorse the "hugs and kisses why can't we all get along" doesn't mean that I'm mad or that I don't agree. This is a great topic to argue on. If strong opinions offend your delicate sensibilities, I understand the cafeteria is serving milk toast downstairs. (Yes, I know the correct term is milquetoast, that is suppose to be a joke)

can you detect thermal shifts
excellent point! But then, of course you can detect thermal shifts with things like thermo-sensitive photographic equipment. Some of it is as damn cheap as a roll of IR film. But the point that we know that thermal shifts exists proves that we can detect them with various things. Hell, I even admit that thermal shifts exist! I live in a drafty old house, I wear a sweater. But just because I feel a draft I don't jump to the odd conclusion that my dead aunt is breathing down my neck. Likewise, anyone that runs about an old house with some sort of thermometer and cites this as proof probably needs a little schooling as to what "proof" is and "causality".

Remember, we didn't always have telescopes, satellites, cell phones or even a simple abacus.
Very good. I agree, however all this does is rationalize why we should be kind in thinking of our provincial ancestors who did believe in ghosts. True, we will develop more sophisticated equipment but I really hope you're not pinning your argument on, "someday they will be proved". Unfortunately for those that would accept this pseudo argument, it's really rather easily rebuffed. Rather than our knowledge of "ghosts" becoming greater as our technology advances, it is proving more trite. It was once believed that stars were holes in the celestial sphere. Technology proved this wrong. Later some wise guy surmised that stars were things like our sun, and slowly as our technology grew this became better and better understood. As technology advanced understanding of stars grew. Why haven't the "telescopes, satellites, cell phones or even a simple abacus" expanded our knowledge base in regards to ghosts? The answer is simple, ghosts = holes in the celestial sphere.


look at Christians.
I prefer not to, thank you very much. And yes, a person's philosophy may be as odd or contradictory as they like. When the post about it on a public bulletin board, then it's not private anymore and the rest of us can point and giggle. If you don't like being told the emperor has no clothes, don't walk yer nekked ass around in public. (you picked up on the lenses metaphor, good for you! I'm sure you'll get this one too.)

I've never heard that load about "spontaneously generating flies"
Feel free to look it up, I mentioned it as I believed that most people know of the rather outdated notion of "spontaneous generation". It was claimed to be science a few hundred years back. Yes, your answers are more correct, rats eat grain, flies eat rotting meat. Thank you for proving my point.

as we currently don't have the tools to figure it out.
I'll argue that even if it means a dozen more ad homonym comments. This sentance is really the crux of the "puny human" argument. See here, it's commonly accepted that Columbus showed to the powers that be that the world was round. Too bad for Columbo that this was well documented by Greeks a few thousand years prior. For you to say, "we can't understand it there for it exists" or that you should accept it as a possiblity is intellectually disingenious. Go ahead and take that leap for yourself, but understand that there are plenty of minds that aren't willing to admit defeat and go home quite so quick.

We'll never understand cancer. Fuck it, let everyone die!
AIDS is a plague from the gods, if we fight it, we'll go to hell!
If man was meant to fly, we'd be born with wings.
You'll fall off the edge of the earth if you sail that far!

Hm, I actually agree with this part of your rant.
Thank you. Was it the "interspecies romance" part or the "interstellar drunk frat boys" that sold you?

And now I shall address Kiwi and make her cry like the little girl she's not.
(that's another joke.)

[Kash]

Don't worry about long posts, it keeps the posers out! I appreciate the links and the throughness.

*cough cough* Thanks, Darkfire, but I'm actually a 28 yr old man ;) The nickname is a long story.
And a good one no doubt.

As to the materials checked in labs, I never claimed they were componants of a structured alien craft, but the materials researched in the case I was talking about are mostly detailed at http://ufocasebook.com/ubatuba.html which does a pretty good job of describing what I read years ago. There have been other cases I've read about, including one famous hoax. Yes, it's possible the fragments are from some kind of meteorite, but my understanding of asteroids and other bodies are that they're nowhere near pure metals but at the very least a mix of a number of types of materials. Not evidence of non-terrestrial manufacture (and before you jump on me, I'm not meaning machined manufacture, but the process by which the material was formed), but a good chance.
Just FYI here's a meteorite that is pure metal. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solar/picsol/casasgrandesclose.jpg
I took 5 minutes to look for a pic of a pure magnesium meteorite as was listed in your link, but didn't find one in the five minutes I looked. I do have some issues with that link. Here we have metalic evidence of a UFO. (I'm going to use UFO as meaning extraterrestial craft as contrary to it's actual meaning. just for simplicity sake albeit wrong)
here's the rub (from the site, my bold)
The significance of Dr. Barbosa's and Mr. Teixeira's findings is that it is impossible to produce any element, terrestrially, that is absolutely spectrographically pure.
Everything in space is created by stars. The earth is blown apart star stuff. every metal that exists was created in nova's and supernova's. No matter how rare, a Magnesiusm meteorite is consistant with Stellar furnaces. Secondly, The quoted sentance is just wrong. HERE (http://www.bulliondirect.com/catalog/showProductDetail.do;jsessionid=6481977A9D3E91FF4E 1CCFCADFD8527A?id=823412204) is some equally pure metal that's much more interesting. If you really require pure magneasium, I can find it.

Secondly, bits of pure metal don't mean a UFO. Conventional aircraft are made of relatively pure metals as well. The assertation that "I saw a UFO explode and here are bits to prove it" is just a bit absurd. Sure, something exploded. It was more likely a mundade aircraft or perhaps a rareish meteorite. It was actually an "unidentified flying object".

Heck, for all your talk about aliens, I thought I did state I think most UFOs (that weren't IDed later under investigation, which I should prolly have added, but that I think is implicit in using the term "UFO") would turn out to be atmoshperic phenomena we don't know about, but reading back, I hadn't quite made that clear when I was saying some appear to be structured craft and others appeared to be atmospheric effects... my apologies on that. However, a lot of structured craft ARE reported, and surprisingly enough, very few are saucer-shaped.
You did, but it's much less fun if I agree with everyone else. I'll go so far as to say that ALL the reported UFO's explainable without having to dip into "faster than light craft from another civilization."

As to the objective study of ghosts, there are actually a lot of ghost hunters who do objective study. They do study the people who see ghosts - and tend to find they're just like everyone else, from all walks of life. They also study the related phenomena that go with hauntings - recording sounds, thermal images, temperature readings, whatever they can think of to try and record whatever people are seeing or feeling or otherwise experiencing. Quite often, ghost hunters don't believe in life after death or other things, but like Newton are studying and trying to understand something that is happening and observable - in the sense that millions of people worldwide over the centuries have seen or otherwise experienced a ghost or haunting. There have been things noted in ghost sightings that appear to be replicated with the equipment - temperature drops the easiest recordable.
I do question the "objective" part of your assertation. They would be objective if not for "trying like hell to prove that they exist". If these researchers were objective I'd expect them to emphasize their results and not some anecdotal aspects of their research. Such as; "after years of researching numerous reports we can't support the factual existance of spirits. Aside from some unusual or stastically unimportant abnormalities". Instead what I do find is "researchers" clinging to the few unremarkable abnormalities.

Most reported ghosts aren't transparent or floating or wearing bedlinen or clanking chains, the vast majority look like solid people to the point people sometimes don't think anything of it until the figure walks through a wall or something else. Most people who see these ghosts are wide awake, conscious, and quite often thinking they're seeing an actual person.
Really? Then where is the beef? Instead we have researchers frothing at thermometer! We have proof that is less than demonstrative, and yet you can say "most ghosts..." I might beable to handle, "people who think they see ghosts..." And there it is, perception at the heart of the matter. The dying man in the desert really thinks he's seeing an oasis. The lunatic really thinks he's hearing voices. The tripping hippy really sees pretty colors. And this doesn't even beging to address the host of begnin causes of various halucinations. But this is a contition of false reality. This is more in the mind than in the world.

Now, how does one that sees a appartion cope with it? Is one more likely to admit, "shit, there's something wrong with my perception, perhaps I should seek out a cat scan to rule out any neurological possiblilities" or do they say, "you can't disprove a negative! I saw a ghost!" Just as drunk people refuse to admit their impared perception those suffering from a deluded reality in seeing spirits are wont to admit it as well. At least the hippy understands where his visions are coming from.

Perhaps, as anecdotal evidence, I should have noted that the people who would hear footsteps, doors being knocked on, whistling, et al, were all wide awake at the time. In one house we lived in, our family and a number of friends have heard footsteps come up the stairs, onto the front porch and crossing to the door when someone opened the door from inside to let the new arrival in. No one there. That sort of thing happened a lot in that house. The same happened in my ex-girlfriend's house - and we were all wide awake then, multiple witnesses. No one would lead the others, no one would put the suggestion they're hearing footsteps out there, people would just act as they normally did when they heard footsteps approaching the door or coming up the hall, or at most ask, "Did you hear that?" or answer the door. And they sounded exactly like someone walking on whatever floor the sound was coming from. The time I mentioned my father was pulled out of bed, he had been woken up prior to that, and fought to remain in bed. So yes, the people in these anecdotes were awake, conscious and aware of their surroundings.
Oh yes, you've convinced me totally. None of those things could have been caused by ordinary things. Don't get me wrong, unusual noises exist, it's just that their explanation are more mundane than supernatural. Foot steps upstairs does not equal ghosts in much the same way that bits of metal falling from an explosion in the sky does not equal little green men.

You also seem to imply I said the Earth's magnetic field traps people's souls - which I didn't. I said I think ghosts are recordings on the magnetic field, like a video recording or perhaps photograph, via a method we don't understand. If other evidence comes to light that suggests something different, or someone finds the reasoning behind ghosts sightings, I'll be happy to accept my views were wrong. But saying they're wrong, and that millions of people are wrong in general, because you don't believe in ghosts is just rediculous.
I didn't imply it, I said it. Quibble if you will over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but soul, ghost, or spirit recordings are all just pseudonyms on the same delusion. No, just because millions of people think one way, doesn't make it right. If that's the case, why are you reading? Most of the earth is illiterate, why not take their lead? Simply because a majority of idiots think one thing doesn't make it true. All that does is prove herd mentality, I'll not argue that point. Millions of muslims think it's perfectly rational to kill your daughter if she's had premarital sex. That makes it all right by your line of thinking. Millions of Chinese kill their female children because they'd rather have a boy, and their procreation is limited. I suppose, in light of the majority of people doing this, it must be OK?

Indeed not. The world is divided into leaders and followers. Most would have never thought it rational that we could send men to the moon. If majority ruled, we would have never tried. If you truely believe that, why aren't you living in a cave, hunting your own food and grunting. I'm pretty sure that language was a new fangled idea at some point that others scoffed at... or grunted at anyway. Your argument has a fancy latin name "Argument ad populatum". It was a well known fallicy before anyone ever claimed to see a flying saucer.

As to UFOs, too many sources to name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object has more than a few interesting bits culled from a lot of sources, though: specifically, the sections on official government studies (the US section has a real abbreviated paragraph at the end that talks about the files released under FOI requests, a number of which show up in books by Tim Good and others from the UK which do show there is a continuing quest for information going on behind the scenes) and physical evidence. Not only is it directly implied in a number of reports and files released under FOI or the 30/50 yr rule in the UK, but it is also stated in several that UFOs can and have posed a threat to British and US airspace. If anomalous radar returns displaying rapid changes in speed and height or witness reports weren't considered a threat to national security, air force jets of those nations wouldn't have been directed to intercept UFOs in the past.
Good, I'm glad that they're scrambling jets when they see something on the radar. That's their job. But I never disputed that. I claim that if UFO's were a bonifide threat, then we'd be spending buckets of cash to defend against them. That's not the case. From all the ancetotal evidence, which is quite crack pot, they're more interested in cattle mutulations and probing ass's than they are in attacking the earth.

Yes, by all means, let's have a conspiracy to cover up the fact that aliens prefer hot dog ingredients instead of Tbones. Let's cover up that they prefer to play doctor while you're asleep. Maybe they're the ones responsible for the date rape drug? Sarcasm aside, the guys that watch radar screens are supposed to call the jets when something odd happens. But something odd doesn't equate to little green men either. All this begs the obvious. If intellegent life came here from such a long ways away, why not stop and say hi? Why not stop and ask for a burger and some plutonium or whatever they run those marvelous ships. Perhaps if they learned to drive them at a lower speed, they wouldn't be crashing them all the time?

They haven't? Go read up on Thomas Mantell ...
Some light reading. I picked these ones because there are military and in many cases intelligence reports on them, and after investigation were found to be unexplained. They're not the only ones, but are the ones I recall off the top of my head.
excuse my edit, But you missed my point again. Time after time, they scramble, someone sees something that you regard as "unexplained" and somewhere that makes a leap of faith to men from mars. It seems to me after looking objectivily that after years of chasing radar shadows, or high altitude atsmopheric phenomina the governments have concluded that there's not a threat. Yes, some good men came back and said, "I don't know what happened, or what that was", but that's a long leap to "proof" of aliens visiting earth. My original assertation was that they're not a threat. We're still pointing bombs at earthlings. I think this backs up my idea. If there was a bogeyman from space, we'd be pointing bombs that way. We'd be spending much more money on gizmo's that would bring down these elusive highflyers and not just chase them around at the limits of perception.

Thanks for the links, but I'm not aruging that people don't think there are UFO's, I readily admit that! You're living proof! I am arguing that they're making a mountain out of a molehill. Even if a pilot, or an astronaut said, "I saw a flying saucer and I'm convinced there are aliens", that's not proof either. Proof means that there is evidence that is verifiable by independant third parties. Yes, that means that a skeptic gets to sniff the proof. Call me goofy, but just because it's a government sourse, doesn't mean I'm going to believe it. On one hand you're telling me that they're covering up proof, and now you cite their pilots as evidence. Which way do you really want it?

And for heaven sakes, don't even suggest to me that they might be fibbing to hide somesort of secret military project. I'm sure they'd not do that in public. Not our government!

- if the expectation is there something has happened, the brain supplies that information to say yes, it did.
That's kinda what I've been saying all along. Will you please get back on your side of the fence, it's hard to argue this way.

That is a lot different to experiencing something. What you are implying is I and others saw nothing, but later remembered we did for some god unknown reason. Not the case. I have seen things (granted, nowhere near as much as some) that were unexaplainable (people's silouhettes behind frosted glass doors when no one else is in the house, for example) and later remembered that incident. Apart from the incident at school, I can't remember what the outline looked like, nor the clothes I was wearing nor the time or day. This is the memory thing in action. The basic events are the same - I saw a person's shadow behind the door, where there was no one, as I was heading outside to go play, but the small details are different from time to time I remember it.
No, I'm not implying that directly or as a sole cause. I'll agree that this is often the case. Often what you're doing is demanding an otherworldly explanation for mundane experiance. You see something in a frosted glass, others see the virgin mary in a haze on the window. It's frost or it's haze. These things do funny things with light. That's probably the end of the story. What's very common and very human is to create a spectacular ending. We really don't want to be mundane. We'd like to be extraordinary. Feeling we have proof positive that ghosts exist is just one way to placate the ego inside us. "god loves me", "I saw a UFO", "there are spirits in my house" is so very much more interesting to add to our personalities than "Noone loves me so I believe in fictional spirits" or "I once saw a bright light out of the corner of my eye" or "My old house creaks and makes other weird noises".

I could go on a lot more, but I think this post is long enough as is. If you want to discuss further, I suggest we either cut them down to bite-sized chunks of posts, or maybe go to PMs or something. Or agree to disagree.
Hey man, this is what the internet is made for. I don't think they're charging you by the word. We can agree to disagree, but where is the fun in that?

Are you growing weary of discussing aliens and spooks? Fine, let's move on to something less controversial like Religion or politics.

[DarkFire168]

Thanks for noticing, I try my damnedest. But you're quite wrong, not only about the little girl part, but also that I'm "yelling" because I "don't agree with her point of view". It's called debate and it's an adversarial method. Just because I don't endorse the "hugs and kisses why can't we all get along" doesn't mean that I'm mad or that I don't agree. This is a great topic to argue on. If strong opinions offend your delicate sensibilities, I understand the cafeteria is serving milk toast downstairs. (Yes, I know the correct term is milquetoast, that is suppose to be a joke)


The little girl part: >.< ouch.
The debate part: I'm not offended by it at all. I know this is a controversial topic and that people are meant to argue. I know it's good fodder for that kind of intellectual debate. I don't endorse hugs and kisses at all, I think people need to quit being politically correct pussy whipped punks. But all the same, you did come off rather harsher than necessary, you don't need to seem like you're looking down on them for believing something different than yourself, this does not lead to a good intellectual debate but simply name calling and bashing. I was just warning you so it didn't degrade into that because thus far, this is a good bash free topic. Cept for the christians. They can be bashed as much as anyone wants because, well christians = teh suxorz. That was a joke. Calm down and take a deep breath those of you who have already taken your bibles up in arms to chastise me.


excellent point! But then, of course you can detect thermal shifts with things like thermo-sensitive photographic equipment. Some of it is as damn cheap as a roll of IR film. But the point that we know that thermal shifts exists proves that we can detect them with various things. Hell, I even admit that thermal shifts exist! I live in a drafty old house, I wear a sweater. But just because I feel a draft I don't jump to the odd conclusion that my dead aunt is breathing down my neck. Likewise, anyone that runs about an old house with some sort of thermometer and cites this as proof probably needs a little schooling as to what "proof" is and "causality".


All I'm saying is that you don't know if your correct, I'm not saying that they exist or that they don't. I personally don't believe in them. But I'm not gonna dismiss something as a possibility completely. I haven't even done that with god yet. I'm simply stating that you don't know so don't come down on everyone who believes in something as ignorant.


Very good. I agree, however all this does is rationalize why we should be kind in thinking of our provincial ancestors who did believe in ghosts. True, we will develop more sophisticated equipment but I really hope you're not pinning your argument on, "someday they will be proved". Unfortunately for those that would accept this pseudo argument, it's really rather easily rebuffed. Rather than our knowledge of "ghosts" becoming greater as our technology advances, it is proving more trite. It was once believed that stars were holes in the celestial sphere. Technology proved this wrong. Later some wise guy surmised that stars were things like our sun, and slowly as our technology grew this became better and better understood. As technology advanced understanding of stars grew. Why haven't the "telescopes, satellites, cell phones or even a simple abacus" expanded our knowledge base in regards to ghosts? The answer is simple, ghosts = holes in the celestial sphere.


I'm not pinning my argument on anything. I have no real argument, I was just pointing out how your post had holes in your flaws and in other ways made you look assinine.


I prefer not to, thank you very much. And yes, a person's philosophy may be as odd or contradictory as they like. When the post about it on a public bulletin board, then it's not private anymore and the rest of us can point and giggle. If you don't like being told the emperor has no clothes, don't walk yer nekked ass around in public. (you picked up on the lenses metaphor, good for you! I'm sure you'll get this one too.)


=P The emperor isn't naked if he thinks he isn't. Nudity is only a convention we go by dictated by society. If we don't believe the amount of clothing we're wearing is nude or obscene (even if we're not wearing any clothes at all), can we truly be naked? Or is not the only form of true nakedness bearing our souls and minds before the public?<--- Get the reference/metaphors?


Feel free to look it up, I mentioned it as I believed that most people know of the rather outdated notion of "spontaneous generation". It was claimed to be science a few hundred years back. Yes, your answers are more correct, rats eat grain, flies eat rotting meat. Thank you for proving my point.


I googled it, I just can't seem to find anything about it.


I'll argue that even if it means a dozen more ad homonym comments. This sentance is really the crux of the "puny human" argument. See here, it's commonly accepted that Columbus showed to the powers that be that the world was round. Too bad for Columbo that this was well documented by Greeks a few thousand years prior. For you to say, "we can't understand it there for it exists" or that you should accept it as a possiblity is intellectually disingenious. Go ahead and take that leap for yourself, but understand that there are plenty of minds that aren't willing to admit defeat and go home quite so quick.


I never said "we can't understand it therefore it exists" I'm saying that because we can't understand it we shouldn't completely dismiss it as incorrect. You just proved my point. Alot of people couldn't wrap their head around Copernicus' Heliocentric theory (the damn church for instance =P) and they ignored it as being fundamentally incorrect because they 1) ignored the proof that existed (not saying ghosts or anything have any proof mind you) or 2) dismissed it because they didn't think that the proof was correct. Your'e doing the same thing by instantly saying "There's no way you can be right. I refuse to accept it. You're ignorant." So by your own admission you're just dismissing something you can't prove as wrong without compromise. Which any scientist worth his test tube wouldn't do. So =P


We'll never understand cancer. Fuck it, let everyone die!
AIDS is a plague from the gods, if we fight it, we'll go to hell!
If man was meant to fly, we'd be born with wings.
You'll fall off the edge of the earth if you sail that far!


This proves my point further. If people just gave up when something seemd unprovable then they wouldn't be very good scientists would they?


Thank you. Was it the "interspecies romance" part or the "interstellar drunk frat boys" that sold you?

And now I shall address Kiwi and make her cry like the little girl she's not.
(that's another joke.)

I just always believed that. I don't think they do fly by's just to anal probe someone or screw with peoples corn... though maybe alien hashish and alcohol are just THAT good. =P

[Kash]

Shit, I just lost the first half of my post. Oh well, suffice to say it was excellent.

I googled it, I just can't seem to find anything about it.
Funny, it came right up for me. http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm Perhaps the ghost of Francesco Redi is haunting your computer?


And as to the rest of your post. Dismissing things not in evidence is a very common and logical thing to do. Although the converse of this seems to be liberal and open minded, the opposite is actually true. You're right, that I have been staunch in my opposition to the idea. However, if you read closely above, I'm sure you'll see that I've already admitted that there most likely is intellegent life somewhere in the universe. Albeit, I probably made a snarky comment about how none can be found here. I'll conciede the point that there is some non zero probability that I'm wrong just as soon as those on the other side of the coin take a long hard look at Occam's Razor.

You contend that "we just can't understand" either aliens or ghosts. But your flaw is assuming something without evidence. Truely, how can you understand what does not exist? Don't even compare the scientific study such as you mention heilocentric models, to study of ghosts. There are plenty of bits of evidence that would lead one to believe in a sun centered model. You sir, are compairing apples to oranges. Astronomy to astrology. Where is any progress in the understanding of spirits? It doesn't exist. Today we are still obliged to take the word or mediums and priests. Neither of which have very good track records. If this were a legitimate study, there would be a growing base of knowledge with which to study, hypothosize and test.

Yeah, test. What do your mediums do when you drop that little word? Where are the "researchers" when you want to perform a controlled labratory test? It is not for me to disprove a negative, rather the supporters of spook stories to bring something other than "my dad fell out of bed, in a drafty house with frost on the windows."

And I most certianly did not prove your point, rather I think you didn't understand the assertion. Someone suggested that we humans can't understand some things. Reread my sentences and I think you'll get them a second time around. Astronlmy developed as a result of studying the sky and counting the motions of the heavenly bodies. If we take your model and demand, humans can't understand everything" and "supernatural phenomina exist outside our abilities to measure, excepting of course, they can pull you out of bed and make the stars and planets move" there would be no reason to question anything. Suggesting, as you have, that things may exist with out any logical proof is really nothing more than mental masturbation. I suggest that blue zombies on the astral plane are thowing lightning bolts that make my eye twitch. Have you ever had your eye twitch? See? That's proof that blue zombies exist! Now prove me wrong.

We can go round and round with your liberal idea that just because there isn't any proof, doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. But then, we'd be discussing religion and not aliens.

[DarkFire168]

Shit, I just lost the first half of my post. Oh well, suffice to say it was excellent.


Funny, it came right up for me. http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio114/spontgen.htm Perhaps the ghost of Francesco Redi is haunting your computer?


Ouch, first half of post losing sucks.


And as to the rest of your post. Dismissing things not in evidence is a very common and logical thing to do. Although the converse of this seems to be liberal and open minded, the opposite is actually true. You're right, that I have been staunch in my opposition to the idea. However, if you read closely above, I'm sure you'll see that I've already admitted that there most likely is intellegent life somewhere in the universe. Albeit, I probably made a snarky comment about how none can be found here. I'll conciede the point that there is some non zero probability that I'm wrong just as soon as those on the other side of the coin take a long hard look at Occam's Razor.


What? When did we get back to aliens? I told you that we had the same idea about aliens...


You contend that "we just can't understand" either aliens or ghosts. But your flaw is assuming something without evidence. Truely, how can you understand what does not exist? Don't even compare the scientific study such as you mention heilocentric models, to study of ghosts. There are plenty of bits of evidence that would lead one to believe in a sun centered model. You sir, are compairing apples to oranges. Astronomy to astrology. Where is any progress in the understanding of spirits? It doesn't exist. Today we are still obliged to take the word or mediums and priests. Neither of which have very good track records. If this were a legitimate study, there would be a growing base of knowledge with which to study, hypothosize and test.


I never said we couldn't understand ghosts and aliens. I'm not assuming anything without evidence. I do not believe in ghosts. However I'm not completely dismissing the possibility like you are. I'm saying, I do not believe in ghosts, however, they could be real for all I know as I as of yet have no evidence for or against them. You are saying, There is no such thing as a ghost. Ghosts are remmanants from our historical and less scientific past. If you believe in ghosts you are inferior to me and are ignorant.


Yeah, test. What do your mediums do when you drop that little word? Where are the "researchers" when you want to perform a controlled labratory test? It is not for me to disprove a negative, rather the supporters of spook stories to bring something other than "my dad fell out of bed, in a drafty house with frost on the windows."


What? I have a medium? *Looks around for a guy in a big poofy hat.*


And I most certianly did not prove your point, rather I think you didn't understand the assertion. Someone suggested that we humans can't understand some things. Reread my sentences and I think you'll get them a second time around. Astronlmy developed as a result of studying the sky and counting the motions of the heavenly bodies. If we take your model and demand, humans can't understand everything" and "supernatural phenomina exist outside our abilities to measure, excepting of course, they can pull you out of bed and make the stars and planets move" there would be no reason to question anything. Suggesting, as you have, that things may exist with out any logical proof is really nothing more than mental masturbation. I suggest that blue zombies on the astral plane are thowing lightning bolts that make my eye twitch. Have you ever had your eye twitch? See? That's proof that blue zombies exist! Now prove me wrong.


I think that your words can be interpretted in two different ways and I interperetted them in the incorrect way. But you did prove my point. I have been saying this entire time that just because you have no proof of something doesn't mean it isn't possible for it to be true and to say that having a lack of evidence = something doesn't exist is fallacy on the part of any scientist. We don't understand cancer, but does that mean we should stop studying it looking for a way to stop it? Since we haven't found out how to stop it or understand it, should we stop studying AIDS? If we had left it at "we don't have wings we weren't meant to fly" would we have planes now? Where would we be if we hadn't learned to keep on trying to learn? We'd be in the dark ages again and we wouldn't be having this conversation, and I would most likely have not been born. The first step on the road to ignorance is to stop trying to strive for new knowledge.


We can go round and round with your liberal idea that just because there isn't any proof, doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. But then, we'd be discussing religion and not aliens.

I wasn't discussing aliens! WE AGREE ON ALIENS FOR FRACK SAKES! I was discussing GHOSTS AND OTHER SPIRITUAL/WHATEVER PHENOMENA!

[Betrayer of the Light]

While I do love cryptozoology I seriuosly doubt the exisatnce of Bigfoot like homonyms in the present time. If they did exist, which probably would've been like thousands of years ago, they would have been in Africa or Asia.

I can't honestly say I've ever heard or seen anything that I could call a ghost. When I was younger I heard creaks coming from an empty room or upstairs. I don't know if my parents ever heard them. However it's been quite sometime since I've heard them and I now sleep upstairs and have never heard anything. Ghosts come in various forms so I'd rather not get into that. For instance there's the wisps, most of which are probably gas but some can't really be explained. There's poltergeists, which are usually associated with violence and throwing of objects however since I'm lacking in my knolwedge of them I'm not sure if htey refer to any invisable ghost that moves objects around and such. You've also got the transparent/white figures, usually walking down a staircase, or just walking around and such, vanishing after a while. Also you have the ones that look like everday people until they vanish or walk through a wall or something. Then there's the unexplained noises. My cousin's cousin actually showed me a picture he and osme friends had taken of somekind of fog/smoke above a gravestone, could've been hoaxed though.

UFOs and USOs(sp?) I do believe, but that they're secret crafts, the govermnent wants to keep secret so not to fall into enemy hands. They're is a possiblity though that they are extratesstrial crafts, if I recall correctly there were reports of unknown underwater objects in Russian waters, and supposedly disspareared after a while nad even some records of them destroying Russian submarines. Also, in many paintings( either medieval or rennaisance, not sure) there are discs in the sky in the background of the paintings, sometimes with a person or two looking at them.

[Lateli]

Pictures with unexplainable stuff in them reminded me of this photo. This photo is like almost 2 years old. Don't mind how terrible I look, I was in picture taking mode(One eye closed, one eye squinty, it's a wonder my tongue wasn't hanging out.), and I had a rough day (I had to spend it with my family, hah.)

Things to be noted, this was one of about 40 pictures, it was the ONLY one with the smoke in it. No one was smoking, or had been smoking. (Oh yeah, that's half the picture the other half is just my lil sister opening up a present. The smoke just surrounded me.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v187/Larkia/Ghostglomp.jpg

[DarkFire168]

Oh come on, we know that's just your crack pipe smoking...

[Katiekoneko]

When I worked at a photolab Id always look for weird photos and stuff
didnt get that many tho

[Trump]

That looks like a development error, (a bubble on the film or something) or a strange light reflection. Almost as if you are looking through plastic wrap. Maybe the static from opening all the presents caused something to get stuck to your camera lens and as you bumped the camera if fell out. I'd have to say it does not look like smoke.

There are so many things it could be besides a ghost ... chances of ghosts even existing are so slim.

[Roxie]

chances of ghosts even existing are so slim.
and you know this how?

[Katiekoneko]

That looks like a development error, (a bubble on the film or something) or a strange light reflection. Almost as if you are looking through plastic wrap. Maybe the static from opening all the presents caused something to get stuck to your camera lens and as you bumped the camera if fell out. I'd have to say it does not look like smoke.

There are so many things it could be besides a ghost ... chances of ghosts even existing are so slim.


Well whenever we had development errors at my work
they werent WHITE
they cant be
if any light is let in it will turn black green or red
never white.

Im not saying that that couldnt be something other than a ghost. But why is it SO SLIM?
I just dont need a picture to tell me
when I see someone in my room
and things move around my room on their own or hear scratches on the walls or the lights flicker and when I ask them to stop they do...
Or "someone" keeps knocking on my door when I was at my sisters and I could see their feet underneathe the door crack at the bottom and when I opened the door no one was there..

I believe.
You don't have to. But I believe theres something.

[DarkFire168]

That looks like a development error, (a bubble on the film or something) or a strange light reflection. Almost as if you are looking through plastic wrap. Maybe the static from opening all the presents caused something to get stuck to your camera lens and as you bumped the camera if fell out. I'd have to say it does not look like smoke.

There are so many things it could be besides a ghost ... chances of ghosts even existing are so slim.


Oooo oo! Now disprove God oh mighty one! That's one I've been waiting on for a while.

[raydude]

"If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are;it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white."
William James

Therefore, to disprove the law that no ghosts exist, all you have to do is prove one single ghost does.

[Kuhool]

unfortunately, ghosts can't exist, because they're scientifically inexplicable as a spirit from a past life carried on, or some form of demon posing as a deceased person.

but i do believe in them, but this is just the way it is with the world today. you know what, i've learned that arguing or debating will get you no where, no matter how wrong you are, you will be right as long as you back up your points, and vice versa. debates never lead to truth, you're only trying to make your opinion stronger than another. no one debates with facts, it's always with opinions. ALWAYS.

http://www.psywarrior.com/argue.gif

and their arms will never change direction, just like the opinions of those on here.

[Lateli]

Actually about that picture.. My mother took it, and there's no way it could be a developement error as it was took on a digi, no film or developement involved.

And what the hell it doesn't look like smoke? Am I blind or something?

[Katiekoneko]

Yeah
it looks like smoke
and even if it was a developement error it wouldnt look like THAT
So I find that picture CREEPY
and I like that you posted it!!

[Kaji]

I used to regularly hear something that didn't exist calling my name growing up, but haven't since I was about 7 or so. I'm Catholic, but beyond that I really don't believe in ghosts, even if I do get uneasy feelings every now and then. I do hear what the girl was saying on empathy though, I can't so much as discuss surgery as a rule because my mind creates sensations similar to those being described/visualized.

On an amusing note, Asians as a collection of cultures tend to believe quite strongly in ghosts. Good thing the Taiwanese on my campus don't know that the building a third of them got placed in used to be a nursing home about 20-30 years ago (meaning several people have died in each room of the building), and that there's also a morgue still in the basement, although it hasn't been used in years. (and no, I'm not making this up, either)

[Nessa]

I'd like to see the people who demand hardcore proof that ghosts exist show some hardcore proof that they don't.

Who's to say that ghosts can be measured and analyzed in a controlled environment with all the technology we have? I think ghosts can do whatever they please if they want to, so there's no definate means of measuring them or forcing them to come out of hiding when you want them too. You can't confine them and you can't predict them. All you can do is be at the right place at the right time.

[Kaji]

While I don't believe in ghosts, one of the comments along the way intrigued me. Kash pointed out how we've found ways to replicate all the senses, and by his statement implies that if there for some reason was a sixth sense, we'd have figured out how to replicate it by now, too.

When you think about it though, we don't know what causes life yet. We know plenty about what puts it to an end, how to remove it from something, but we know nothing about how to put life into something other than through natural reproductive processes. Once something's dead, it's permanent. So what happens to whatever force it is that animated the thing in life?

[Trump]

The reason I say it is highly unlikely ghosts exist...

As a general rule (observation of things) the simplest explaination tends to be correct. All of the things that would have to happen for the existence of ghosts makes it VERY far fetched. Somehow the spirit has to not go wherever it goes when people die, and then on top of that has to come up with some way to manipulate the physical world and our senses in ways that we can't duplicate (telekinesis, telepathy, whatever). So there pretty much has to be a simpler explanation.

What people describe as ghosts can almost always be explained away by other things, and I like to play devil's advocate. Scratching in the walls, flickering lights? That sounds like animals living in your walls to me, a rat or something. And perhaps just coincidence that you your voice makes it move away from the wiring for the light when you ask it to stop? *shrug*

I don't want to argue the existence of ghosts with you. If you think you saw a ghost there is nothing I can say to make you believe otherwise. Just try to keep an open mind. Since you obviously strongly believe in ghosts, that's the first thing you think of when you see that picture. On the other hand I just say "huh, funky picture". I might idly ponder a piece of lint floating through the air in front of the camera, but I likely wouldn't consider a ghost before moving on with my thoughts.

[DarkFire168]

Occam's Razor isn't always correct. In fact, when relating to the fucked up thing we call the human race it's almost always wrong. Simple =/= right automatically.

[Katiekoneko]

Theres nothing in my walls.
And since when do rats talk and say my name?
*lol*
oh well!!

[DarkFire168]

I'm sure there's SOMETHING in your walls.