We all are aware of the many theories attempting to establish the existance of ghosts ... and in fact, a large proportion of the population seem to to require NO proof whatsoever and simply takes it as given that ghosts DO exist.

I'm interested in obtaining some kind of definitive proof that either confirms their existance or alternatively, debunks them conclusively.
So if you have such evidence, please post ... but please, no foggy photos or "I've personally seen a ghost" ... hard, solid and scientific evidence ONLY !

you'll never get a satisfactory answer. if there was proof out there, (almost) no one would doubt it.

I tend to agree with you which makes it all the more strange and amazing that so many people seem to lend credence to the belief in their existance and yet can provide no proof ... just goes to show people will tend to believe almost anything !

Good luck on that one! I would have to say that you'll have to try to obtain the proof yourself. How the hell does one get solid proof that ghosts exist. The people that study the paranormal (ghosts) don't even know if their doing the right thing, or using the right equipment! You seem to be very skeptical of pictures and video and rightfully so. But we dont have the little boxes like in Ghost Busters that can suck the ghost in and keep it confined. I don't believe that someone like yourself will believe that ghosts exist unless you have your own experience with the supernatrual.

electricity

there's the anomaly!

I DO believe in ghosts, although i very much doubt i can provide any evidence.

My uncle has seen a few ghosts, my father has had a few experiences, as have my mother and my brother. My friend had a very strange experience in his old house which forced him to move out as he felt him and his child were threatened. He is the biggest skeptic on the planet and yet even to this day it still chills him.

I had an experience a few months ago in work, when i fire door opened in front of me.... I originally thought a customer had gone through and downstairs and when i checked there was nobody there. The fire door cannot be opened by a breeze or a change in room pressure.... Was quite spooky at the time.

Another friend of mine used to work in the theatre royal in Sthelens which had its fair share of spooky occurences. He too was a disbeliever until something happened to him.

An area in the Northwest of the Uk called 'Melling' has a large number of ghost stories dating back before WW1, as has Liverpool, Simonswood, Aintree etc.

Obviously these things cannot be handed to you on a plate, you can either take my word for it or not, and i don't care if you disbelieve me.... But i believe my family and friends and my own eyes.

I have a ton of stories but i think i'll save them for a rainy day.

Regards, Mr L

Well, sorry to say if we did have that then there's no reason for any investigations. And no reason for at least this section of ATS. Plus a lot of skeptics would be out of business. Please don't try to rid of us all our mysteries.

Originally posted by afoolbyanyothername
We all are aware of the many theories attempting to establish the existance of ghosts ... and in fact, a large proportion of the population seem to to require NO proof whatsoever and simply takes it as given that ghosts DO exist.

I'm interested in obtaining some kind of definitive proof that either confirms their existance or alternatively, debunks them conclusively.
So if you have such evidence, please post ... but please, no foggy photos or "I've personally seen a ghost" ... hard, solid and scientific evidence ONLY !

What? Scientific proof of the existence of Ghosts? They are Ghosts. By their very nature they cannot be proven scientifically. In order for a ghost to exist, it seems as though it would require a soul to exist. Thus, when the being dies its soul remains and functions as if it didn't die. However, in recurrent haunts, its almost like a powerful emotion ripped the area where it lived/had this significant event in its life. Thus, what one is seeing may be just an emotion that has torn itself into space and time.

No one can conclusively debunk or prove the existence of ghosts. Just as one cannot debunk or prove God.

Mr-Lizard ... I'm not doubting that you've had these experiences but what I am saying is that if there are such entities as "ghosts", then what's the scientific basis and logic behind their existance ? Surely EVERYTHING in this universe has a reason behind it and I can't imagine that ghosts would be a law to themselves and exist purely for the sake of existing.
Therefore, even ghosts would be expected to obey rational and logical "laws" as does everything else in the universe.

Proving the existence of ghosts would be almost as difficult as proving black holes, god or the multiverse exists. Very little is incontrovertable, after all isn't there a Flat Earth Society. If scientific proof is required I suggest that anyone interested look at the research being done with EVP/ITC. This is at least a technique that can be duplicated by anybody with inexpensive equiptment with astounding results.

for any so-called "scientific" proof and evidence to be accepted by the "science community", the first thing need to be done is that the science community stop holding on to their own beliefs/"religion" stubbornly and be more open to the alternative theories

for a start, put real resources in researching ghosts/spirits/paranormal studies etc instead of relying on a TV show...all our governments properly are doing that though, but without the inner circle knowledge you will properly never to get to know these results and "facts" of life.

[edit on 29/6/09 by IchiNiSan]

afoolbyanyothername,

I have 100% proof that there are ghosts, I am glad to show you a ghost , This will scare the heck out of you , You cant take a picture I have tried and so have many others ,But you can see them interacting any night or day you visit a house a about 3- 1/2 miles from where I live , everybody knows about this place and lot of people saw the ghosts , It is 100% that you will see these things that are called ghosts ,all you have to do is stay in the house for a hour or two by yourself and the s--it will hit the fan pal , You need more proof U2U me and I will get you there, its in Westchester County NY, I will not take any responsibility for what goes down you must be prepared for anything , Word to the wise this place has cost people there minds and well being , The cops will tell you leave that place alone if you know whats good for you , I will tell what rooms and what to do to bring them out but thats on you if you do it I wont be there or be a part of it I am now blessed by a preist after my last vist 6 years ago and wont dare go do that again You can see for your self and let me know , I aint going in I been there few times and Its a bad dream you are warned and on your own if you presue this, But if you want 100% proof its there ,

I just don't see why proving the existance of ghosts should be that difficult.
Everything uses energy of some kind and ghosts have to use energy to make themselves seen, to communicate, to perform actions ... so why not start by researching where they draw their energy from, how they draw this energy and how they use this energy to do things. I can't believe for one minute that ghosts have discovered a unique form of energy totally unknown to science. Therefore if they use familiar forms of energy, then understanding how they do this is a major step forward.

You should get in touch with religious folks, as they tend to see ghosts a lot.

I'd love to help you, but I just don't know how. I've seen about twenty ghosts in my life, but never the same one. But well, here's the thing.

We had old outdated wiring and a carbon monoxide leak in the house at one point. So, I'm thinking EMF and CM build up. Well guess what? The CM leak was repaired and then the wiring was rewired. So, never seen anymore ghosts after that. Tada! Well seen being the key word here. But I did still see ghosts while the wiring was out of date even though no CM leak anymore.

Why do people always think old houses are haunted? Well which houses have the oldest wiring? EMF fields anyone?

However in later years, off in a grave yard both me and a friend heard the horse hoofs that people talk about. I think they may have described these on Ghost Hunters, but this was long before that show. I do like that show though, but in the end I guess this is something a lot of people have experienced and not just us.

Anyway, all that happened is we heard these weird horse hoofs in the middle of the night. So we started chasing after them. After all, we were ghost hunting. What else would you be doing in a grave yard in the middle of the night?

But it was impossible to catch up to them. I guess ghosts don't like being chased. Probably used to having people run away from them, but that's not really our style.

It sounded like a horse that was just hoofing along very very slowly, but every time we tried to take a step towards where it was coming from (and we were running) the sound would move about 20 to 40 feet down the road. The faster we went, the faster they went, but the actual colpity clop never got any faster. It was like the thing was teleporting down the road or something.

By the time we got to the road where it started, it was gone. On basically a dead end grave yard road? Where did it go? Who knows?

Later we got out the notebook though and took note of all the stuff that was around us, did some maths, did some geometry, and some stuff.

Basically we realized the horse could have been on the road behind us instead of in front of us where a small building was between us and the horse. It could have produced a similar effect. It was a country road after all. This is where people still ride horses BTW lol. Fun Fun.

Anyway. we realized the sound could have come around the right side of the building that was behind us, echoed off stuff that was in front us, and then when it hit our ears it would have sounded like it was in front of us, not behind us.

After it had walked far enough towards the other side of the building the sound could have echoed out from the other side instead producing the teleportation effect making it sound like the sound had moved father down the road.

Because when the horse was dead center most of the sound would have simply been blocked by the building itself. Hence the horse never sped up, but the sound seemed to move when it started coming around the other side of the building.

However, in the end, we never seen a horse on either road. So it was still a bit freaky!

The point is, there are sightings and paranormal experiences that happen to people even in groups. Sometimes two or more people sees the same thing and they have their eye (ear) witness accounts. Just like me and my friend will still tell you today.

But you still just never know. There's so many things that could be the actual cause you can just never know for sure if it was a trick of nature or a real ghost. After all, it's hard to do scientific tests on ghosts when they run away from you.

The best evidence we really have for ghosts is eye witness testimony which we have a lot of, video, and thermal. Maybe EVPs . But none of that is good enough to prove anything conclusively because you can't retest it and confirm the results.

Also, eye witnesses aren't reliable. Digital cameras and digital compression such as YouTube compress stuff so badly that you see things in the picture even if they weren't there. Even worse is people that don't know how to use digital anything and not compress it eight times before they upload it to YouTube where it gets compressed again.

Also, if someone could please explain to me why people can email me full resolution bitmaps of their diabetic cat, but when they see a UFO I get 320X200 jpeg shots? Why does everyone's camera turn to crap as soon as the ghost shows up? Anybody? Can Ben Stein answer that question? I don't think so.

On the video and the thermal it's the same things. You can see things, but it's usually hard enough to make it out that you can never really say conclusively if it was really a ghost or it was some unknown cause like an IR reflection from your retarded friend off the bathroom wall.

EVPs haven't really been debunked. We know they're there. We know they exist, we just don't know what they are. However, I've seen on the net a few times where even though we know they're there, we've pretty much debunked the idea that anyone can tell what they're actually saying. Let 100 people listen to an EVP and you get 100 different translations.

So the evidence is always inconclusive because you can't catch the stupid ghost and test it all again to see if the evidence holds up. All you can say is if you personally believe it or not.

However, if you wanted to do real scientific testing my best bet would probably be to focus on EMFs like other researchers are doing. CM exposure is too dangerous to try, but exposing people to EMFs doesn't seem to bother them too much except they feel like they're being watched mostly.

If we want to explain ghosts, from my experience, understanding the effects of EMF fields on people's brains is probably the best place to start.



[edit on 30-6-2009 by tinfoilman]

tinfoilman ... good graveyard story and a very good attempt at analysis afterwards. Just goes to show what can at first seem to be of paranormal origin later on has a more mundane explanation. Given the choice of ghostly horses trotting thru graveyards or sound reverberation around buildings creating the horse hoof effect, then I'll go with the more scientific explanation.

And yes, also agree that when it comes to the multitude of alleged ghost photo's, that the camera does seem to turn to crap and all you get is blurred, out of focus and foggy images supposedly being the ghost. But then why is it that many people claim to have seen a ghost clearly ? Is it to unreasonable to expect that by now with all the billions of cameras (still & video) in the world, that at least 1 good, clear and undeniable photo gets taken ? Just ONE photo, people ... that's all I'm asking for !

My own theory...

Ghosts are the remnants of formerly - conscious energy somehow 'trapped' in our reality.

Almost the equivalent of an echo or a double exposure on a photograph, something that has long ceased to exist but still manifests itself somehow.

I am of the theory that a ghost will eventually 'fade' and despite what many people believe, i don't think they are 'spirits', more so an energy that hasn't eroded...

Like when people sometimes claim to pick up long forgotten radio broadcasts somehow 'bounced' through time. The person on that radio broadcast are long dead and forgotten, but their voice is still on that frequency.

I also believe buildings can somehow 'store' that energy /frequency or whatever it is....

Very hard to explain, but i've thought about it for a very long time and this seems the most rational and plausible explanation.

I DON'T believe in spiritualism or mediums or seances.... I think these people are confidence tricksters.

BUT i do believe energy (images / sounds) can be stored... and i DO believe that people are ACCIDENTLY reactive to such manifestations and can somehow tune in.... I only speak from personal experience. In my above post i mentioned my uncle.
He has had dozens of experiences and i guess he must be sensitive, but he cannot make things happen at will (like many so called spiritualists can claim)... He is just lucky / unlucky....

So my conclusion:

We are receivers and somehow things are accidently transmitted to us. Some times these transmitted energies are stored and released.... but will eventually fade.

I hope i'm making some sense here....?