Do you believe in ghosts?

[Galuf]

Yeah i do. No experience or anything i just do. They are one of my worst feaes though. Or used to be. I used to be so paranoid at night. And i couldnt go downstairs till morning. But im allright now. Also my friend used rto live like 10 houses along from me but there is a dark alleyway that leads to a field behind. Whenever i walked past that i had to cover the side of my face. Weird i know. But its gone now mostly.

Watching my sister play Project zero (fatal frame) didnt help none lol

[Bubba]

I don't know about ghosts as floaty apparitions, but I definitely believe in a spiritual presence. Like Fynn, I have first-hand experience.

I could regale you all if you like?

[Mirage]

In no way do i believe in ghosts. Having seen things I can't explain doesn't change anything. Argument from ignorance isn't a thing I like doing.

[FFNut]

I put unsure, growing up I had a friend who said his house was haunted. He would have doors slammed tv and lights would just turn on, things like that. However I always said he was full of it and it only happened once while I was over there and I laughed when he said the ghost. Just never believed in them.

[Crop]

Not even a little bit. I would absolutely love to experience something supernatural but I never have and I doubt I ever will.

[FFNut]

Not even a little bit. I would absolutely love to experience something supernatural but I never have and I doubt I ever will.

I never believed eves I did either, my friend claimed he had but I said they are full of it. I don't believe in ghosts.

[Aulayna]

I do.

[Midgar Mist]

I don't know about ghosts as floaty apparitions, but I definitely believe in a spiritual presence. Like Fynn, I have first-hand experience.
I could regale you all if you like?

Yes, please do. I'm uncertain about ghosts but my mind is open. I believe aliens have a chance of existing cause of all those stars, but they could just be as dumb as we are. Also my Dad thought he mightve heard a ghost once, he turned around and no one was there!

Ok Bubba, regale us when ready

[Mirage]

I don't really think believing aliens could exist is in the same category as believing ghosts exist

[Raistlin]

There are no such thing as ghosts. But the concept is fascinating and as a child I desperately wanted ghosts to be real. I've been on many a ghost tour and haunted house trip, and I went to college at one of the most "haunted" campuses in the US. All for naught, of course. Ghosts do not exist, and cannot unless we quite literally ditch everything we know about physics and chemistry.

Ghost "sightings" or encounters are an interesting peek into human psychology. We have an inherent desire to want to explain everything, and "I have no idea and may never know" is extremely unsatisfying. But for the life of me, I cannot personally understand why people immediately leap to "ghosts." For instance, one day a couple of years ago I heard a strange noise, and walked into my kitchen to see my colander sitting perfectly upright on the floor. I had thought I had washed it and put it away the night before. This stood out to me only because I remember thinking "huh, I bet this sort of thing would cause a lot of people to say 'ghosts did it' or some such nonsense." But it could be my faulty memory; maybe I left it sitting on the counter to dry. And maybe it was perched precariously, or a bug or a draft caused it to unbalance. Maybe I went temporarily insane and knocked it over myself without realizing and/or remembering it. Or maybe a wormhole opened up and some alien force from light years away decided to smurf with me. All of these explanations are more plausible than ghosts.

Why "ghosts"? The idea that unknown sounds or sightings have to be forces from the dead is entirely arbitrary; why couldn't it be virtually anything else? If it has to be pseudo-supernatural, why not gods, demons, pixies, leprechauns, aliens, or invisible pink unicorns? This attribution to mysterious forces beyond the grave is entirely fabricated and arbitrary -- a combination of wishful thinking about the afterlife and ingrained cultural mythology.

Ghosts do present an interesting thought experiment, though. Here's a question: do ghosts have mass? If yes, then the slightest breeze should send them flying. The general idea seems to be that ghosts do not in fact have any mass and are instead made up of something else (left entirely unexplained). But what are the consequences of that? If there is no mass, then the object is not affected by gravity, and nothing to hold the ghost to the Earth. Instead, the ghost should fall through the Earth as the planet hurtles through space around the sun, and we should "see" a constant wave of ghosts in our trail. Of course, the rebuttal to this thought experiment is inevitably some variation of "but magic," which just reinforces the idea that it's all made up to begin with. Where is this mysterious "ghost energy," and why can it interact with our senses while simultaneously being entirely undetectable by objective measurements?

A much more likely cause to ghost "sightings" is simple psychology: we, as human beings, tend to see what we want to see (or expect to see). And we also have a tendency to remember only strange things that stand out, while disregarding other data. Our brains are strange and unreliable and powerful enough to make us sick or cure us, so the idea that it can make someone see something weird that wasn't actually there is entirely unremarkable.

TL;DR: ghosts are cool but not real (or, at least, as equally likely as invisible unicorns).

[Madame Adequate]

There are some possible explanations for ghosts which would not seem to be less plausible than, say, an alien wormwhole, or going insane in such a precise manner. I mean, a pile of mass, given energy, can have sapience, in the form of humans. Is it totally impossible that energy without mass could?

Granted that none of these things are at all likely and I have no reason to believe in ghosts, and so I do not, but I'm not quite as willing to rule it out as you.

[Zanmato]

There are no such thing as ghosts. But the concept is fascinating and as a child I desperately wanted ghosts to be real. I've been on many a ghost tour and haunted house trip, and I went to college at one of the most "haunted" campuses in the US. All for naught, of course. Ghosts do not exist, and cannot unless we quite literally ditch everything we know about physics and chemistry.

Ghost "sightings" or encounters are an interesting peek into human psychology. We have an inherent desire to want to explain everything, and "I have no idea and may never know" is extremely unsatisfying. But for the life of me, I cannot personally understand why people immediately leap to "ghosts." For instance, one day a couple of years ago I heard a strange noise, and walked into my kitchen to see my colander sitting perfectly upright on the floor. I had thought I had washed it and put it away the night before. This stood out to me only because I remember thinking "huh, I bet this sort of thing would cause a lot of people to say 'ghosts did it' or some such nonsense." But it could be my faulty memory; maybe I left it sitting on the counter to dry. And maybe it was perched precariously, or a bug or a draft caused it to unbalance. Maybe I went temporarily insane and knocked it over myself without realizing and/or remembering it. Or maybe a wormhole opened up and some alien force from light years away decided to smurf with me. All of these explanations are more plausible than ghosts.

Why "ghosts"? The idea that unknown sounds or sightings have to be forces from the dead is entirely arbitrary; why couldn't it be virtually anything else? If it has to be pseudo-supernatural, why not gods, demons, pixies, leprechauns, aliens, or invisible pink unicorns? This attribution to mysterious forces beyond the grave is entirely fabricated and arbitrary -- a combination of wishful thinking about the afterlife and ingrained cultural mythology.

Ghosts do present an interesting thought experiment, though. Here's a question: do ghosts have mass? If yes, then the slightest breeze should send them flying. The general idea seems to be that ghosts do not in fact have any mass and are instead made up of something else (left entirely unexplained). But what are the consequences of that? If there is no mass, then the object is not affected by gravity, and nothing to hold the ghost to the Earth. Instead, the ghost should fall through the Earth as the planet hurtles through space around the sun, and we should "see" a constant wave of ghosts in our trail. Of course, the rebuttal to this thought experiment is inevitably some variation of "but magic," which just reinforces the idea that it's all made up to begin with. Where is this mysterious "ghost energy," and why can it interact with our senses while simultaneously being entirely undetectable by objective measurements?

A much more likely cause to ghost "sightings" is simple psychology: we, as human beings, tend to see what we want to see (or expect to see). And we also have a tendency to remember only strange things that stand out, while disregarding other data. Our brains are strange and unreliable and powerful enough to make us sick or cure us, so the idea that it can make someone see something weird that wasn't actually there is entirely unremarkable.

TL;DR: ghosts are cool but not real (or, at least, as equally likely as invisible unicorns).

That's the best answer so far.
Besides, I am a rationalist, so it speaks for itself.

[Midgar Mist]

I don't really think believing aliens could exist is in the same category as believing ghosts exist

I shamelessly threw it in there :-D

[SammieBabe]

Nah. Never had any experiences with "ghosts" and despite my best friends efforts, I never "see them" or "hear them" when she makes me watch those stupid ghost hunting shows.

[Psychotic]

I saw a ghost when I was a child and I still don't believe. I can remember the encounter vividly but I've put it down as an overactive imagination.