Why People Believe in Ghosts
Sometimes people believe in things that make no sense to others.
Sometimes, the things that people believe in make little sense to others. Scientists have difficulty understanding how certain people could possibly believe that the world could have been created in 7 days. Conversely, many Christians simply don’t understand how so many people in the world are blind to the truth, “how is it possible that all the proof is there, but people just don’t see it?”, is a common question heard from both sides of the spectrum. One of the things that most of the people I have ever talked to about this topic claim to believe in is; the existence of ghosts. All over the internet there is “proof” of ghosts existing, which causes scientists to bang their head up against the wall and again ask the question, “Why do people believe it?” Indeed, why do people believe strange, off the wall things?
According to the Skeptics Dictionary, “a ghost is an alleged disembodied spirit of a dead person. Ghosts are often depicted as inhabiting haunted houses, especially houses where murders have occurred.” One explanation as to why people like to believe in ghosts is; they like to think that there is an afterlife, so when they die it isn’t the end, and they aren’t just a body rotting in the ground. Also, they like to believe that it is possible to see or maybe even interact with loved ones they have lost. Those are both very powerful reasons to believe in ghosts, and therefore it is quite difficult for skeptics to refute those professed beliefs and the arguments that go along with them. When someone “knows” that death isn’t the end, they are going to defend that belief with everything they have, even if their argument doesn’t make much sense.
It is quite difficult for skeptics to refute the existence of ghosts simply because of ghosts’ nature. For instance, ghosts like to do their work during the night, because it is difficult, if not impossible for people to see them during the day because of their physical makeup. Also, ghosts don’t like to work in conditions where people might see them, because they want to retain the mysteriousness that makes them so scary. Now, reading this someone might say, “what?” That makes no sense, if they didn’t want to be seen why would they only work in the nighttime, when they were most likely to be seen? Indeed, that is the skeptic’s question, and another reason why the argument on the side of the believer makes little sense.
Scientists have basically disproved the existence of ghosts by doing scientific studies and other research. In one particular study which was detailed by BBC News, researchers took a group of people in to a place that they had studied before hand, and had found environmental reasons for “ghosts”. These reasons were draftiness in certain areas of the room; strange noises caused by the way the air moved and other such things. Nearly all the people reported the existence of ghosts in the certain areas that the scientists had previously researched. This leads them to believe that one of the major causes for people reportedly feeling or seeing ghosts is environmental.
Because of that theory, researchers also believe that mediums, or people who claim to interact with the dead, are simply people who are more sensitive than others to environmental factors. So those people were more likely to have feelings of being haunted then others, because they could feel draftiness and hear strange noises better than other people who were placed in the same situation.
When talking about ghosts, one particular incident comes to mind for me. I was driving home with my boyfriend up in the mountains, because I live in Squaw Valley. Anyone who has driven in the mountains knows that the roads are rather curvy, and there is very little traffic. So, we were driving and we hadn’t encountered another vehicle for quite some time, when suddenly we went around a curve and another car was sitting there getting ready to turn on to the road we were on, so it was at a “T” to us. At the point where our headlights met it looked like there was someone standing there wearing blue pants, but nothing else. We both saw this “phenomena”, and at closer inspection it was clear that there was no one there.
Now, my first reaction was, “Isn’t it crazy how the light can play tricks on our eyes like that?” My boyfriend’s response was “That was no trick of the light, it was obviously a ghost”. I didn’t respond at that point, but I was thinking how coincidental it was that a ghost just happened to be standing right at the point where our headlights and another car’s headlights met. Also, I thought it was pretty odd that a ghost would be wearing just a pair of blue pants and nothing else. And, when I thought about it more, all I saw was the “blue pants”, so it kind of looked like they were floating in the air. I wonder who killed those pants, and why they wanted to come back and haunt people.
Anther incident that is clear in my mind related to ghosts is something that happened with my cousin. We were all sitting around telling ghost stories, like kids do and he told this story about how he saw a ghost standing about 5 feet in front of him. He just stood there and looked at it, and it looked at him and then it vanished. He said he was very certain it was a ghost, because it was looking right at him. We were all in awe by this story, because it was the best one we had ever heard.
A few years later my cousin got baptized as a Christian, and somehow we got on to the topic of ghosts again. He said that ghosts simply did not exist, God brought everyone to heaven or sent them to hell, and no spirits remained here on earth. I asked about the story he had told us a few years ago, and he responded with “it was merely a trick of the light. I didn’t actually see a ghost”. And I asked if he was sure about that, and he responded with the same amount of certainty as when we asked him if he was sure about seeing it before. In his mind he rationalized the situation, and it completely changed for him. That particular incident helped me to understand the power our minds have, even when we are 100 percent sure about something.
All throughout the world, in every culture people have come up with theories related to ghosts or other spirits that remain here on earth after death. There are many reasons for that, some of which I have already mentioned. People want to believe that there is life after death, inexplicable environmental factors cause people to blame “spirits” because they don’t know the true cause, and of course, people are afraid of the dark and what could loom there. Perhaps someday people won’t be so quick to link things they can’t explain to ghosts, and they will simply say “I don’t know how that happened”. But people don’t like not knowing things, so it isn’t very likely to happen soon, or ever for that matter.
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User Comments
Cly
On June 22, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Excellent articale.
Cly
On June 22, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Goodness I meant article!
js
On July 24, 2008 at 5:18 pm
sorry to break it to you. But ghosts ARE real. Some people just like to believe they AREN’T.
Kel Lim
On September 21, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hmmm not the best article I’ve read on the subject
Cynthia!
You state:
“Scientists have basically disproved the existence of
ghosts by doing scientific studies and other research. In
one particular study which was detailed by BBC News,
researchers took a group of people in to a place that they
had studied before hand, and had found environmental
reasons for “ghosts”.”
Sorry but that’s complete rubbish!, scientist have NOT
disproved that ghosts exist….all they have done is
suggested other factors which may explain some of the
phenomena,there is big difference!
I for one am not a religious person, nor do I particuarly
long for “life after death”…..and yet I have experienced
phenomena which doesn’t fit into any scientific
explanation, be it environmental, hallucination, low
frequency sound, dream states etc etc….so yes I do
believe in ghosts.
My belief has nothing to do with “wanting” ghosts or the
afterlife to be true, it is just based on personal
experience and other personal first hand accounts that I
have been told about.
I have to agree with js, ghosts, based on my own
experiences, and NOT long held belief sytems or desires,
ghost are most probably real.
Whether you discover them yourself Cynthia before you
leave this Earth is another matter.
brian
On October 12, 2008 at 10:57 am
you all know it, ghosts do not exist
geemann
On December 26, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Ghosts obviously do not exist, they are just simple tricks of the mind. Anybody who truly believes in Ghosts is delusional, and there is no way to cure a delusional person simply because they truly believe what they see is true. Same with people who have “seen” a UFO… There are no such things as ghosts and UFOs, so people who believe in them need to stop trying to convince us that they are real.
KT
On February 8, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I do believes in ghost sometimes by chineses culture especially during 7 month hungry ghost festival..but sometimes i do think that why must i believe ghost does exist even though i can’t see it myself. And yet people’s around you might said ” U probably the luckie wants coz people can only see ghost when their luck are bad” blah blah..If ghost does not exist why do people keep talking about it?
johnt
On March 13, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I have had the experience with some rather “ghostly encounters”. Whether they were actual ghosts, spirits. etc. I cannot say.
I woke up one morning and there was a figure moving at the foot of my bed, near the entertainment center. I actually thought it was my wife and asked her what she was doing. No answer. I got up to she what she was doing, cut on the light and nothing was there. I wondered how she left without me seeing her.
I found my wife two floors down. She had not been in the room. Wow, what a surreal phenomenon!
The next time I was sitting downstairs, smoking a cigarette when I saw someone enter the room through the reflection on my large TV screen (which was off). Again I thought it was the wife. I turned around, nothing there. I called out to the wife who was asleep. She awoke, and came to where I was. When she walked into the room, I saw the same type of reflection. The difference was, she was wearing white and it showed up as a light color instead of a dark one.
I have been asleep in the same house and been wakened by someone touching me. No one was there upon my awakening.
I know the subconscious mind can play tricks on you and light and other environmental factors can create the illusion of seeing something that is not there.
I am a rational person by nature, and skeptical of things that I cannot verify by tangible evidences. But these incidents were and are REAL!!
I do not propose to know what caused them, what apparitions they were, only that they existed and were made manifest to me. I do not know what they were or why I experienced them through site and/or touch.
I did not feel any threat of harm or malevolence.
ksb
On March 18, 2009 at 5:28 pm
You are so WRONG! I used to be like you until I had a ghost encounter. It was someone I loved who died, they came back and did little things to get my attention, so I would research it and I finally figured out that they wanted me to stop grieving for them, they were ok, and I had to move along. This has just happened to me, and I am now a believer!
penguino
On May 7, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Sometimes people need to realize that there are things greater than what we can see, feel, touch, taste, hear etc. something so inexplicable that it would boggle your mind. If people have paid attention, science does not explain life. Life is something we all deal with. Science, many people trust it with their lives, i do. but it doesn’t explain the irrational, which we all know is out there. ghost fall into this category.
Joe
On May 31, 2009 at 8:00 am
You are a complete idiot Cynthia. You completely lack the understanding of how the world works and what it is composed of. You like many others need to think “outside of the box” and realize that many things cannot be explained scientifically. Do you know what you should do Cynthia, go outside in a forest at night, draw a pentagram light a few candles and say “I summon all of the dark spirits from this forest into my life.” I am 100 percent positive that you would have a completely different view on life.
baz
On July 10, 2009 at 5:21 pm
my cousin experiences a presence every single day he believes its the presence of his dead brother who died 5 years ago in a car crash.crash i have bin there as a witniss many times , lights switching on and off, footsteps in the kitchen, i witnissd the door opening and closing without any draft all the windows where shut, one time the tv the playstaion and a johnnycash cd all came on at the exact same time we were sitting in shock , as it usualy takes a few minits 4 playstation 3 to load
Matt
On August 9, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Joe…just thought I’d tell you that I followed your advice and nothing happend. When you truly overcome irrational fears such as “dark spirits”…mystical little actions like the one you suggested become like any other task. There are no dark spirits, devils, angels, etc and you should learn to trust your critical thinking abilities and train your mind to understand the true wonders of this amazing (and often more mystical and stunning) universe.
Also, enjoyed the article Cynthia…it’s always nice to hear an intelectually honest mind deal with subjects like “ghosts”.
siddyT
On September 13, 2009 at 7:12 pm
When people say ‘think outside the box’ when talking about ghosts and afterlife,they are pretty much saying ‘I dont want my death to be the end! I cant handle dieing! Ghosts are real and Im hoping that means when I die there is something after it’
Get used to the fact that when you die- THAT IS IT! people who say that things that have happened to them have been the work of ghosts are just lazy and cannot be arst to find out the real reason they happened.People that believe in ghosts are just people too stupid to try and understand science.
Oh, by the way- I died 10 years ago and im writing this from beyond the grave oooohhhhhh!
David
On October 17, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Great article. I agree with you that ghosts are simply irrational explanations for rational or natural phenomena.
The persistent belief in ghosts by some of these people is sordid, to think that dead people roam around the earth in a sort of limbo is simply ridiculous.
I pity them.
Benjamin Franklin
On October 24, 2009 at 2:40 am
What I find amazing is that there are so many posts here like David and siddyT (among others). I suspect people like that would have gladly stoned the countless scientists throughout history that had sought the invisible atom, the properties of gravity etc. The only reason they would say they would do no such thing is because those things are already proven, and they would look as stupid as they are for saying so (turnabout being fair play…how’s the shoe fit, kiddies?)
Another thing that bothers me is that not all BELIEVE in ghosts. I know they exist because of a handful of personal experiences, some of which were shared by others present at the time they ocurred. I won’t say what those are, but if they were just mere evironmental effects, then the laws of nature must be able to temporarily suspend themselves (which they don’t). If they were just mere psychological effects, then no less than four people experienced the exact same delusion, just like that for no reason at all (bear in mind that even in primitive cultures (and hence more susceptible to “unreason”) must engage in intense ritual for several hours before the tribe all experiences more or less the same visions/messages from their deceased. I mean, given that even primitive man found it so difficult to commune with the dead, why would four people born and raised in modern Western culture just have a “mass hallucination”?)
Third, skepticism is too often a misused word. Worse yet, that butchered meaning is then grafted onto to science to create a hideous monster that defines “real”. All I will say on that matter is that there is famous quote out there in history of science that goes like this…
“If it’s settled, then it’s not science. If it’s science, then it’s not settled”.
Skepticism actually means to keep to an open mind, not simply reject what seems rational to reject. A skeptic will start out from a clean slate, to the best of his/her ability. They will then try to see how well an explanation holds up, and THEN draw a conclusion. Skepticism would be DREADFULLY boring, science stagnate, if we were required to accept/reject on the basis that it didn’t agree with what was already established as “safe to think” (and quite a dangerous place society would be, at that!)
Fourth… well, bully for your Christian cousin who changed his story. I guess that means that all converts have to say about anything is gospel, then (and converts can come to brainwash themselves to say some pretty crazy stuff, bear in mind, like, for example… They didn’t find Harry Potter to be a story about pure evil, but ever since they seen the light… EVIL EVIL EVIL! Know what I mean?).
And finally… I don’t know how to explain the blue pants you and your boyfriend saw. I don’t have your eyes and memory, so I can’t say one way or another. But (and I’m assuming you meant denim jeans) if you saw something shaped like blue jeans, down to the seams and stitches… Chances are that is what you saw. Perhaps it was the remains of an old scarecrow, or Halloween dummy that someone thought would be cute to leave up. Maybe it was someone that you ran over and, to clear your guilty conscious, you just spun it out as a good reason not to believe in ghosts. And of course, maybe it was a ghost. I’ll assume you were driving by at a good clip, so given that flash of time, there’s no real reason to rule out anything (unless you have a neurotic impulse to convince everyone how sound of mid you are, but neurosis is never good reasoning).
Oh, and one more thing. I swear this will be the last point!
Why do you even care what other people believe? Early in your rant you said scientists (though I doubt they unanimously would agree) are baffled over the weirdo’s weirdness in believing. Being that this an emotional matter for you (feeling irked by other people) and the uh… scientists… I would say your campaign against belief is not logically driven, but rather driven by your own personal bias (feelings), which is NEVER scientific and rational. Ever. If you don’t realize and accept that, then you’ve fail to understand anything at all about science and reason.
But I lied. I have ONE more thing to say (THIS is the last one… scouts honor! lol)
The human mind has an overwhelming desire to… know. While I would not have an interest in the paranormal (a word I don’t like, but for lack of a better one…) if I hadn’t my own experiences to drive my interest, the reason mankind pursues the paranormal, among many many many other things, is because he wants to know. To know what? All kinds of things. To know, and that’s all a brain needs to know in order to get busying knowing! : )
I hope this has been enlightening for everyone.
Cynthia Bewley
On October 24, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Dear Benjamin Franklin,
I find it absolutely fantastic that I have, for once, had an enlightened person on here putting in their word toward truth and justice and all that.
I suppose I should clarify (and no, I am really, honestly not being sarcastic). I wrote this “article” for a psychology class in college. The instructor was of the biological psychology discipline, which essentially means, he does not believe anything that is not “scientifically proven”.
This particular instructor told us all to come up with a phenomenon that we believe to exist, and talk about it in class. He then essentially made fun of everyone, and told us that our final (which was 50 percent of our grade) would be based on writing a paper to give evidence to the contrary, or to try and disprove whatever phenomenon we had earlier professed that we thought was true.
My phenomenon was ghosts. Here I was, stuck trying to find evidence to disprove something I believed to be true, and when I was done this paper was what I had. The stories I told about my cousin and boyfriend are entirely true, however, these two stories don’t necessarily mean that I don’t believe ghosts (or other types of supernatural beings) exist.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I got an A on the paper. Even though it is, at best, mediocre, and even though it doesn’t really contain any sort of “proof”. My instructor simply agreed with my thesis, and therefore gave me an A. So, I decided to put my paper on here and see how many people hated or liked it, based simply upon their own opinions. And so far, as you pointed out, that was everyone who had posted comments.
So thank you Mr.Franklin.
Noel
On November 2, 2009 at 6:19 am
Honestly, most people do not WANT to believe in ghosts. They simply do because of their own personal experiences. The majority of people who do believe in them were once skeptics or just indifferent on the subject. I’m sorry, but does anyone want to hear a disembodied voice speaking to them, and think they’re crazy? Does anyone want the horror of seeing someone they know is not real? Most people don’t realize what they see are ghosts until later.
Ghosts do not “only work in the nighttime” (what an airheaded, ignorant statement). And I’m sorry, sweetheart, but draftiness and strange noises have nothing to do with people believing in ghosts. Their belief comes from hearing actual voices in the room with them speaking full sentences, seeing full-bodied apparitions for themselves, and witnessing objects move and fly across the room. All this in the presence of others who see it as well. And sometimes what they witness is even captured on film or audio for all to see! This has nothing to do with strange sounds or draftiness. The ignorance of that statement overwhelms me. And Mediums don’t just “feel” a haunting. They see and speak with the dead. They learn and know things from the dead and relay it to their loved ones – things they had no way of knowing. They are also Clairvoyants and have a remarkable ability for premontion. Look up “Rosmary Altea” and you’ll see the indisputable evidence for this ability.
Just because you mistake something simple and ordinary for a ghost, does not mean all cases of seeing a ghost are the same thing. That’s completely narrow-minded.
I suggest you do more research on a subject before you go writing an artical about it. Your statements are so off-base from what ghosts are said to be and the way they behave. Take an open-mind for once and search for the evidence of ghosts and Mediums. You would be very surprised the truth out there admid all the fakes.
Metoo
On November 11, 2009 at 6:02 am
Nice article.
Phenomenons that can’t be explained are, well, just phenomenons that can’t be explained.
Stop linking the unexplained to supernatural.
Metoo
On November 11, 2009 at 6:03 am
Nice article. Phenomenons that can\’t be explained are, well, just phenomenons that can\’t be explained. Stop linking the unexplained to supernatural.
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