Anyone seen a ghost lately?

[Tallison]

Or can readily conjure one? Wish I could. Do you know what your dead uncle is up to at this very moment? Give him some privacy. Can you telekinetically brew decent beer? Wish my neighbors could. Can you always get a hit out of bong? I bet some of you can.

If so, consider undertaking the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge by applying here...

http://www.randi.org/research/challenge.html

...for a chance at $1 million in Goldman Sachs secured bonds. Since the foundation's establishment in 1987, no applicant has passed preliminary testing. It's a great organization that promotes critical thinking and an understanding of scientific method across the country and beyond. That funny, tingly feeling I get as a nurse when a person crosses over in front of me? However real to me, the phenomenon ain't observable, mesurable, testable, nor reproducible, and hence ain't scientific in nature. Now, to a person whether that diminishes the value of the phenomenon or the value of scientific investigation may reveal a lot about his or her intellectual and/or emotional, spiritual agenda. Maybe I'm off here, but I doubt it.

Peronally, I think the awards like this should go to Erwin Schrodinger and his theoretical cat for showing how bizarrely measurable reality does behave sometimes.

[Wetzelbill]

1. hmmm.... I have a weird ghost lady who lives in my closet

Yup, I wish I was kidding too. There was an old lady in my apt complex who drowned two kids in the pool. She was suspected of child murders in Romania and her family brought her over here. I heard they called her the Gingerbread Woman. We used to have a hot tub in our complex too, but they took it out because it would get inexplicably cold all of a sudden, then hot again, then really cold. It was freaking people out. Some people say we're built on an old Indian burial ground. But, anyway, I heard this old lady talking in my closet one night. My brother and I. It was effed up. I'm dead serious too, she was screaming around at us and everything. It might be the Gingerbread Woman. I close that thing every night. I still sleep in there, but it's creepy. I got a Ouija board last year and tried to contact whatever was in my apt. No go. I feel weird presences in here though. It's odd. My brother has contacted some people and stuff though. It made him cry he got so emotional over one person. An 8 year old kid. There is something going on in my complex though. Not the least of which is in my closet. :)

[mvd]

2. Creepy story

Closet stories always have an extra scariness. Personally, I've never seen one. My house is fairly close to the graveyard of one of the earliest Lutheran churches, but it's very peaceful.

I've been in some haunted places (Colonial Williamsburg) and possibly haunted houses (aunt and uncle's house.) The new residents of my aunt and uncle's house reported hauntings. But my aunt and uncle never experienced anything in a number of years. Neither did I.

I'm not very psychic either.

[Wetzelbill]

3. I've seen some weird things over the years

ghost-like stuff. Things I cannot explain. I'm a skeptic. Always have been, yet I can't deny some weird things I've come across. I'd like to say that my mind or my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I just can't. I have little fear of anything like that. But it is creepy. Makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. I can't say for sure, but I suppose there has to be some sort of paranormal activity out there. I would think the evidence for it is probably overwhelming.

[mvd]

5. I agree

Even though I haven't experienced anything, my dad felt a cold spot in my grandfather's house after he died. When he was young, an old fan in an ambulance went off when it was apparently broken. And my mom got a bad feeling in the Schifferstadt House in Frederick, MD. I don't think everything can be explained. I don't think I could live in a haunted house. It's usually the live ones you must worry about (ghosts often take the personalities of the people they were in life, but very few seriously harm you.) The unknown factor would be too much, though.

[Tallison]

12. What kind of evidence?

Anecdotal, subjective, sure. Empirical, objective, how could there be?

[Benfea]

4. Never.

I consider any sort of supernaturalism to be the height of primitive naïveté.

[skooooo]

6. Ah! Benfea is a sophisticate!

[Benfea]

7. *spills beer* *scratches belly*

Sufistiwhat?

[dysfunctional press]

8. the only place that ghosts truly exist-

is in the imagination of the weak-minded.

[johnnie]

14. And they absolutely don't exist

to the closed-minded.

[Sequoia]

15. and they only appear to the open-minded.

Sadly, ghosts can't go through reincarnation it seems.

[SmokingJacket]

9. I don't officially believe in them.

However, I enjoy thinking about them. I once stayed in a house that I knew was built by a woman who died before she could live in it. She wasn't that old, not much older than I was, and the whole thing freaked me out to the point that I became convinced the house was haunted. I had major heebie jeebies.

Of course, what I was haunted by was the specter of my own future death.... and that IS spooky...

[Tallison]

11. I had a similar experience...

...in an old turn-of-the-century house in Charlttesville in which a woman had allegedly hung herself in grief. It was even listed in a Virginia's Most Haunted-type tour-guide. Of course, after moving in, any bump or noise I couldn't explain that occurred within it my mind construed as paranormal. Amazing how adversely compelling to our emotions our fears of not knowing can be.

[leftofthedial]

10. yeah

looked in the mirror

[SofaKingLiberal]

13. Several times

while under the influence of various substances.