QotD: Ghost Stories

1 May 2008 at 15:08
8 comments

Do you believe in ghosts? If so, have you ever seen one?

As I don't believe in an afterlife, and as I am an atheist, no I don't believe in ghosts. I have however met a couple of ~~liars~~ people in my time who claim to have seen/communicated with them. They said a lot of things, though.

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qotd,
ghost story

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I don't know the whole area is so intriguing. I thought I heard a ghost once but it was just a workmen on the roof talking on a mobile! (I wasn't expecting him to be there, so, disembodied voice... yes, must be a ghost.)

My Gaga said she would come back and show me if ghosts existed and she hasn't come back as far as I'm aware. Of course I have had that hair on back of neck feeling from time to time but who hasn't? But there is one thing I find odd about that (apart from HELLO?! YOU TOLD A THREE YEAR OLD CHILD YOU WOULD BACK AND HAUNT THEM?!!) which is that when I was very small I thought she died because she'd been hit by a train. To the extent that I could imagine it all very clearly and was horrified at the idea of her coming back cos she would be all gory.

When I got older (in my teens - she died before I was five) and thought about it properly I realised that can't possibly have happened and that she must have got ill suddenly and unexpectedly and passed away. Then I mentioned it one Christmas recently and found out she actually got run down by a bus in Leeds. So I was half right. But my mum (whose Great Aunt she was) won't talk about her at all so I don't know where the train thing came from. Maybe I just overheard the adults talking and they thought I was too little to understand.

Sorry that was a bit boring! I'm bored. When I had that sleep paralysis episode in my bedsit if it weren't for the fact I'd been reading up on sleep paralysis and that during it my phone charger was plugged in but when I woke up it wasn't I honestly would believe I had felt and heard a ghost. It was amazing. Very odd.

I'm not bored at all. I enjoyed that. It only dawned on me recently that I can't possibly believed in them - I've always wanted to really. When my auntie died I remember 'speaking' to her to ask for a sign - anything - but nothing arrived. Not sure if I did the same with my granddad as it only hit me years later that he'd died (I was young and shielded from it all, which I still feel was the wrong decision to take on my behalf. I was 11 or so). I'm glad I've never had sleep paralysis, although quite often when I'm trying to lay in and knowing I should really get up I have half-awake nightmares where I imagine I can hear something but just can't open my eyes... I've had them so often I'm getting used to them (eventually I expect I'll just ignore them and snooze).

I used to be fascinated by ghosts when I was younger, but I guess that without a belief in an afterlife I can't.... Now, aliens on the other hand!

Don't read up too much about sleep paralysis cos it can trigger it (I'd spent a while perusing the fortean times message board thinking 'that sounds mental' before it happened to me.)

I like to think that death is like what happens to mayflies (is it?) when they spend a long long boring time underwater and then hatch out and get wings and stuff. But they can't fly back under the water to tell their friends about it. They just have to wait for them to join them. (Of course the whole fact that mayflies only live for a day sort of ruins this BUT ANYWAY.)

I'm 27 and I've still (touch wood) never been to a funeral. I also was shielded. I don't think I would do the same for my kids, because it is really really confusing. But then when you're grieving yourself I suppose it is impossible to think clearly.

Oh, it turns out I meant dragonflies!! I'm such a pessimist. Mayflies.

Oh I thought it was mayflies. That's a very sweet analogy.

My great granny was a medium and my mum spent a lot of her childhood hanging out with the table tappers - mum was very close to her granny and had a keen sense of the dramatic so was pretty influenced by it all and she told me that she would come back to visit me. I was horrified by this - I'm really not sure what I think of any of it - and had to plead with her that she wouldn't come back because it would freak me out from here to the end of the world and back. After she died I spent a lot of evenings lying on the sofa or on my bed, very quietly, saying that I didn't mind if she came back and that I wouldn't be frightened (believe me when I say that bereavement turns you more than slightly bonkers). Anyway, she never came back and given that my mum never needed asking twice I am now quite convinced that there is no after life.

Oinker - It is a cute story and I will probably use it, but it's not much good if you're Hindu or atheist or whatever and don't believe in that sort of an afterlife.

Porkette - I feel we should hear more family history. I love all that spiritualism hocus pocus. My great granny was a wrestler.