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Could ghosts actually be a life form?

Actually, I read somewhere that infrasound is a myth. Don't remember where, though :/ .
 
Ghosts kinda suggests a Matrix style living to me. You not apart of the world, but you can interact with it. Certainly enough interest in it around the world, even a job to some.
 
Battery estimation in cameras or otherwise is always a bit flakey with or without ghosts.
Also, Brian forgetting to charge the batteries and blaming the ghosts sounds like something that has a lot of chance of happening.
The electro-magnetic ghost ensemble of theory is based on recognizing patterns in amplified noise captured with misused instruments.

<bunk>
In the spirit of keeping it light and just for the guilty pleasure of speculation, I'd add that Ghost hunting would be a very efficient way of becoming insane if ghosts were real. I like to think of ghosts as restricted to the spiritual realm. If you see one, it's not through your senses but into your consciousness. If they existed, they'd be basically indistinguishable from hallucinations and absolutely impossible to physically prove, thus making the active search for them as futile as mentally hazardous.
</bunk>
 
Bob Klase said:
The writers of Star Trek used to suggest it about 10 shows a year.
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Which is all very nice. But if you have a living "entity" (isn't that Star Trek lingo) that is all energy and not matter... And is not associated with any particular matter... Then you just have radiation, don't you? Waves/photons traveling at the speed of light. Not very useful for staying in an old building to scare people. Not to mention how hard it is for you to get evolution going enough to be called a life form in the first place. :p
 
There are no such things as ghosts. People that believe that ghosts are real are either delusional, ignorant or non compos mentis. Any so-called 'evidence' for the existence of ghosts is either non-existent, deliberately faked or irrelevant to the claim.

However, show me a ghost, in a face-to-face meeting with me, and I will believe.

No pictures, videos, anecdotes or fallacious reasoning, please.
 
Fnord said:
There are no such things as ghosts. People that believe that ghosts are real are either delusional, ignorant or non compos mentis. Any so-called 'evidence' for the existence of ghosts is either non-existent, deliberately faked or irrelevant to the claim.

However, show me a ghost, in a face-to-face meeting with me, and I will believe.

No pictures, videos, anecdotes or fallacious reasoning, please.
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Yep seeing is believing. Say you saw it face to face and you became an instant believer and for example said it on JREF, you would get ridiculed. Just like the others who have currently seen and believed.
 
Cainkane1 said:
If you read historical ghost stories many sightings were made during times of thunder and lightening.
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A thunderstorm can occur at any time of day but I'm betting that these storm related ghost sightings invariably happened at night. In other words, I'm betting thunder/lightning isn't the common thread/factor in ghost sightings. Many people are afraid of the dark (or at least extremely wary of it) and millions of years worth of evading nocturnal predators tells them that there is some justification for that fear.

Jack by the hedge said:
Thunderstorms (particularly at night) are scary and put people on edge. It wouldn't surprise me if people were more inclined to imagine they see stuff when they're tired and frightened in the dark.
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That and the perhaps more subtle aspect of lightning flashes messing with a person's night vision, thereby causing them to see things that aren't really there or mistake a commonplace object for something more mysterious?

I used to believe in ghosts and even visited cemeteries at night and attempted to capture EVP with my tape recorder. I get why people are thrilled/frightened/comforted by the belief in ghosts, but there really isn't any compelling evidence I'm aware of that supports that belief, despite what those clueless baseball cap wearing cretins waving their stud finders around and whispering "what the hell was that?!" might tell you.
 
rorylee said:
Yep seeing is believing. Say you saw it face to face and you became an instant believer and for example said it on JREF, you would get ridiculed. Just like the others who have currently seen and believed.
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So why is it that on these stupid ghost shows they always have a "witness" who claims to have seen a ghost in perfect human form with hair and clothing and facial features, but when these yahoos go mucking about in the dark with their cameras the best they can ever come up with is a vague wispy smudge?

Steve S
 
Cainkane1 said:
Ok would this be scientifically possible? Could a living thing made up of energy live and reproduce and develope a type of intelligence? If so then these creatures would not be the souls of the dead but a life form.
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Only if you completely discard the scientific meaning of "life".
 
Cainkane1 said:
... scientists roll their eyes and when they say anything at all they describe paranormal activity as nothing more than superstition and overall bullcrap. They are probably right. Very possibly absolutely right.
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I just can't help myself. I have to correct errors.
 
Cainkane1 said:
Watching Ghost Hunters and other ghost hunting programs one fact has always intrigued me. Batterys go dead and unopened packs of batteries arte found to be dead when opened. Supposedly this is because ghosts use this type of energy to exist.
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On our tour of the Queen Mary's "Ghost and Legends" yesterday, I took a few photos before we got to the tour.
When we down in the bowels of the boat into the spectral apparition areas, my camera wouldn't take any pictures!
"Battery Exhausted" on the LCD.
Yeah, right.*
Didn't get any photos of the ghosts in the swimming pool, or the power room, or "Half-Hatch Harry" with -that- camera.
The camera on my cell phone worked just fine, as did the cameras of other people on the tour.
*The batteries did recover enough for a couple flash photos in the engine room.
They do that. :)
 
*Puts physics professor hat on*

Seeing as how matter is just a form of energy (via good ol' E=mc2) and all known life forms are made up of matter, therefore all known life forms are also made up of energy.

Thus, the OP is moot, except to say that ghosts are a bunch of hooey :p
 
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I did rather like the "ghosting" effect in the Dr.Who episode "The Library"- the personal electronics a person carried were so closely linked to the brain as to keep the consciousness operating for a minute or so after the person was organically dead.
That was rather spooky.
 
They may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
 
While looking through the back pages of Squid Fishing Monthly, I came across an ad for this new innovation from Duracell, obviously designed to cash in on the "my batteries went flat so I couldn't photograph the poltergeist" phenomenon.

On the face of it, it looks like a good idea for any dedicated ghost hunter to stock up on them, I look forward to seeing some positive results.

Duracell-Ghost-Hunter.jpg


PS: Sorry, but they closed the UFO thread. :D
 
steve s said:
So why is it that on these stupid ghost shows they always have a "witness" who claims to have seen a ghost in perfect human form with hair and clothing and facial features, but when these yahoos go mucking about in the dark with their cameras the best they can ever come up with is a vague wispy smudge?

Steve S
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First thought on the question - from what we know about ghosts in general from stories n so on. We know they can 'SEE' you.

Now if i was a ghost and could see you with a camera walking around, i wouldn't want to be caught on tape just as a thief doesn't. Though people might get lucky now n again and who knows ghosts could be telepathic as well.
 
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rorylee said:
First thought on the question - from what we know about ghosts in general we know they can 'SEE' you. some have faith in their existence and some are not convinced by the lack of empirical evidence. There is overlap between the two groups.
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If "we" meant humanity in general my correction is more accurate. If "we" meant a subset you need to specify which subset as "we" within a skeptics forum will generally refer to skeptics unless stated otherwise.
 
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