Ghosts

[mindless1]

Maybe so....but it occurs when I am sleeping so I would consider it a nightmare.

[Albert Mond]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

Yet you dedicate the rest of your post to talking about definitions.
If your definition of "ghosts" is a 'trace of something' then we can use that word for literally anything.

Besides the fact that you just butchered the definition I used as reference, there's the fact that "Ghost" and "Spirit" are often used interchangeably.
A Spirit, in the Paranormal sense, isn't necessarily a returned dead.
"10. paranormal supernatural entity: a supernatural being that does not have a physical body, for example, a ghost, fairy, angel, or demon"

[Godslayer Jillian]

It's still arbitrary.
Instead of saying "what the fuck is that? Let's call it a ghost"
This thread is saying "what the fuck is that? Must be a ghost"

There's a chasm of difference between both.

[Drake Dun]

Okay, I think I've been patient enough. Let's do a post-mortem on this thing.

It started when I responded to Alarica's post about haunted houses. I quoted her description of one event, and offered sleep paralysis as an explanation. You came out of right field swinging at the fences with misguided, patronizing blather about how you're "a better skeptic than [me]". You fired off snotty accusations that I had applied one explanation to a variety of experiences, based on an obvious misreading of my post. So you began the conversation with a shitty attitude, and error - not an attractive combination.

For my own part, I quietly overlooked your invitation to petty dick-measuring contests and pointed out in flat, clinical English that you had misunderstood me. The mistake, once called, was so obvious that you didn't even try to defend it. Instead, you cheerfully agreed that the "incident itself [was] unquestionably an incident of sleep paralysis", and made a half-baked attempt to pretend that the issue had been my lack of an explanation for sleep paralysis. That was in naked contradiction to the stuff in your first post about "seeing things while fully awake" and "hallucinogenic properties". So you dropped that whole line of argument like a sack of rotten potatoes and came up with some canard about how maybe the sleep paralysis itself was being caused by ghosts.

I decided to let you off the hook for the shell games. I responded to the canard in calm, neutral terms, making the case that natural explanations are preferable to supernatural ones. You didn't have anything substantive to say in response to that, either, so you conjured up some silly quibble about how there could be multiple causes of sleep paralysis, completely missing the point that the argument I had just made applied with equal force regardless of how many phenomena or causes were into the picture. It was in that same post that you hit us with this little gem:

Also, why is said woman getting sleep paralysis in a supposedly haunted house?

That was such a stunningly bad piece of thinking that I had to read it over several times before I could convince myself I wasn't misunderstanding you. It made a sick joke out of your claim to be any kind of skeptic at all, let alone a better skeptic than me. Nevertheless, I fought down the instinct to castigate you, and responded once again in a flat tone, pointing out why the argument was not a compelling one. Again, no response from your side.

It was at about this point that I responded to the post of another user (the one about electrical phenomena). That was a windfall, because it gave you a whole new front upon which to launch sniveling attacks in an attempt to distract attention from the intellectual thrashing you were getting. Perhaps having noticed by now that playing hide and go seek wasn't winning the day, you thought you would give equivocation and word games a shot. So you nitpicked my definition of "ghost".

Notice that neither at this point, nor at any point before or since, has anyone, including yourself, been confused in the least about what I'm talking about. Notice also that you had yourself used the term "ghost" to describe concious entities earlier in the course of the same thread. You must and do concur that my usage of the term is a correct one. So the very best you could ever have had is a case that my use of the term was correct, but I was drawing its meaning up a little two narrowly, albeit without producing confusion. In other words, semantic masturbation.

To add comedy to tragedy, you botched even that, and just for good measure you thought you would throw some dishonesty into the mix. You shlepped yourself around the Internet shopping for definitions, carefully ignoring all the dictionaries which give as their primary definitions descriptions of "souls of dead persons" and so forth, until you found one that you thought you could bend to your purposes. You still had a problem, though, because the definition was pretty hard to misinterpret in the way you wanted to, and worst of all, it included an example of usage: "the ghost of a smile". Hey, no problem - you redacted that, and proudly posted your own hacked version. Plainly speaking, you lied.

I had put up with the the bad thinking, bad arguments, and bad attitude, but I have a peeve about dishonesty. That little stunt annoyed me enough that I sent you a private message suggesting - again in reserved language - that you drop it. I then responded to the thread, noting that context matters with definitions. You claimed your definition was in context. I demurred, and dropped a not very subtle hint that I had noticed your attempt at deception. You knew you couldn't defend that, so you stayed true to form and pretended it had never happened. You re-asserted that the definition was in context and elucidated your point about a wider definition for "ghost". That time your post was innocuous, so I decided to let bygones be bygones one last time.

You couldn't let it go, though. You had to toot your horn to Jillian about your imaginary victory. That's just about enough. In this thread you started with false pride and error, transitioned to evasion and casuistry, and finally retreated into dictionary la-la land before reducing yourself to outright mendacity. If you look over the course of our conversation, what you'll see in your posts is aimless meandering almost totally disconnected from any relevant topic. The only common thread holding it together is your desperate attempts to find something, anything to prove me wrong on.

I don't know if you're annoyed by my skepticism or if this is some kind of pathetic monkey politics, but you've finally dragged things out to a sufficiently ridiculous extent that I think it's in order to call out your bullshit. If you wanted to inflate your self esteem by taking someone else down a notch, you picked the wrong victim.

You might even say that you never had a ghost of a chance. And that's in context.

[Albert Mond]

TL;DR.
Your tears of defeat smeared that all over the bloody page.

[Alarica]

Just seen an article and thought I'd throw it in. Can't seem to link it but its on sky news webpage under news, if anyone is interested. Caffeine has been linked to people seeing 'non-existent' people. This could explain MY ghostly sightings, but not my kids. Maybe I'll lay off the coffee for a while lol.

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by Albert Mond

TL;DR.
Your tears of defeat smeared that all over the bloody page.

Well, I've been thinking about it the past few hours, and in one sense you did defeat me. You got under my skin and I turned nasty, which is a habit I'm trying to break. Looking back at my wall of text, it was rather more drama and a great deal more scorn than necessary.

Another thing I realize in retrospect is that it was mostly the initial wild boast about being a better skeptic that annoyed me. Even the thing with the missing example was nothing worth getting excercised about. In the future, I'll appreciate it if you don't begin conversations that way. Once you get going with that stuff you've set yourself and the other guy something to prove, not about any question of fact worth the effort, but about hooz da boss. Basically, it guarantees that you, or the other guy, or in all likelihood both are in for a bad time.

I hate making enemies even out of assholes, and I don't think you're an asshole, so I certainly don't want you for one. My apologies.

By the way, what did that emoticon look like before my tears of defeat smeared it all over the bloody page?

[mindless1]

Originally Posted by Alarica

Just seen an article and thought I'd throw it in. Can't seem to link it but its on sky news webpage under news, if anyone is interested. Caffeine has been linked to people seeing 'non-existent' people. This could explain MY ghostly sightings, but not my kids. Maybe I'll lay off the coffee for a while lol.

I have had sleep paralysis and it's stopped, it seemed to be activated in my imagination though when I bought this little trinket thing at an indoor flea market. This section of occult items had a glass case with various necklaces with corresponding tags which had some supernatural meanings. Mine was 'This cross is to be thought of as the bridge between this world and the next.' I wore the cross, and it caused chest pains. So I stopped wearing it, then I began having sleep paralysis. Not like normal sleep paralysis, like TK and things moving around, ghost apparitions, pin prickling, like the sense that someone was ripping my skin apart with a needle. It hadn't stopped until I reconciled that it was all in my mind.

The thing is, you would think I was being haunted. It takes a small amount of belief, what bugs me is how a small amount of belief would have activated a poltergeist....well, I um was also into Ouija Boards and was at the time feeling depressed about death etc. That might have activated it somehow.
It still doesn't explain it, or make sense. There was no ghost but the mind is capable of convincing you of things which aren't true....then it just got so intense, I remember I slept on the couch at my uncle's house and I swear to God the tv lit up when I was asleep and I was looking at it, then went into these fits of shock. It was like I was being electrocuted. So I am sure there is some psychological explanation to the electric shocking and how that might relate to sleep paralysis which cause the delusions of seeing that ghost.

I think it's best to assume that everything starts at the mundane human level, also that we have more power than we think we are capable of:: whether or not there are Ghosts.

[Alarica]

I think if I really went over every experience I have had, I can pretty much pass them off as being caused by caffeine or the tremendous amount of drugs I was taking for pain, sleep deprivation etc. HoweverI cannot think of a single thing that caused something I experienced a few weeks ago, because I was sat here at the computer, with my web cam on, chatting to a mate. Was drinking water, had eaten a good dinner etc.
I notice how you mention the occult, and when I have time it is something I look into. It does play a large part in messing with the mind. That was pretty much the basis for voodoo wasnt it? If you believe in it, it affects you. I dont know much on it, so dont quote me on it!! I have a friend who wholeheartedly believes in in all, to the extent I gave her a black candle and a few words, and miraculously she was feeling much calmer after using them.

[Ethawyn]

I live in berkshire london. though i am german, i live in a small castle i inherited it from the infamous knight sir lielostian the third. i see this thing walking around that has a goat for a face and a human vody with a spear t with three points, know any ways to cast it away of course if you were german like me rhe first thing you would say is mein gott, meaning my god. I feel like i am being drawn to a certain room. and i hear laughter and screaming i hear a woman crying for help . one time a whiskey bottle was floating and waving in mid-air and was thrown at me and i woke up at a chamber that appears to have no door. I had to call for help they arrived with axes and broke in but suddenly i fainted and woke up after a coma three years later, now i'm twenty and i am still haunted by this entity.I came out and saw a woman on river and she was bleeding trough her stomach.She was a woman that seems to be a teen but in her early years may have been abused please help.

[Ethawyn]

k, i do a bit of cursing myself in different languages, I KINDAaccidentally spoke this love bind spell on accident when i was not yet a believer up to now she shows up only, she's not alive.

[Alarica]

Stop drinking. Think of your liver.