Im wondering if any scientists have seen ghosts? If so does it put them in an unusual situation because their job is to prove something exists by being able to reproduce it in laboratory conditions?

Myself and my brother have seen ghosts and experienced other weird phenomenon since an early age (UFOs, poltergeist activity, deja vu) and recently my brother who is studying to become a medium had 2 sceptics turn up from the local university in a bid to prove that mediumship and spiritualism was just fake.

The 2 sceptics sat in the middle of the circle which consisted many mediums. The medium in charge of the group asked for each of them to give the sceptics a message. When it came to my brother, not only did he accurately describe one of their grandmothers, right down to her very short size (around 4 foot), but he also told one of them their surname (and at the first attempt of trying). No questions were asked to give any clues either. The sceptics went away with a different viewpoint than when they came no doubt.

So Im wondering if anyone here is a scientist and has seen ghosts? And what is your verdict to what they could be?

I await responses.

Is difficult to answer. I have experiences I do not believe for scientific explanation. I do not make scientific argument for ghost. However, I do not believe science have all answer for all current questions.

300 years ago, science do not have answer for why sun shine, but sun shine.

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So descredo no incrivel

Beauty I’d always missed
With these eyes before,
Just what the truth is
I can’t say anymore.

-- Moody Blues

Good point Monique

I don't believe there will be much of a response to this thread because most scientist will use any excuse to prove that it was just a rare scientific occurrence. Do I believe in ghosts? Not exactly, but I have an open mind.

I'm not sure how many scientists are on the board. From observation, there are not many.

Can we just talk about weird personal phenomenon(s)? We have had other threads with the same subject, but I'm too lazy to do a search.

I have a PhD in chemistry, I guess that makes me a scientist.
I've never seen anything that I even remotely thought of as a ghost.
I can not speak for the rest of the scientists on the planet.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

I'm not really a scientist, and I've never seen a ghost, but I am mighty skeptical about your anticdote and its claims of accurate cold reading.

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"The plan does not involve mayonaise."
"... I knew there was a catch."

You can't take the sky from me.

Question is Swift, do you find your observation to be biased? Do you think that you may have dismissed something that someone else would have taken as a ghost phenomenon? Although you can say right now that you don't think you have, it is a difficult thing to say that you have never witnessed an experience because there are a lot of explanations for rare occurrences like this.

I think it is just to difficult to say, because I think everyone's decision is biased due to experiences that you may have had before. If you think you had an experience before, then the likelihood of another experience increases because your looking for such a thing subconsciously, although you may be unaware of it. If you never thought it to be a possibility for such a thing to happen, or think that ghosts are hocus pokus, then your probably not going to have an experience.

Of course there is no answer I can give you to that, since you'll say I'm biased . But I can not recall anything in my life that I even remotely thought of as supernatural, ghostly, metaphysical, or beyond the normal laws of the physical world. I am not making a biased explanation of something I've observed, I've never observed anything that I think anyone would call a ghost. Now maybe the guy in the car next to me at the traffic light is a ghost, but if he is not semi-transparent or moves through walls, there is no external indication to me that he is a ghost.

It is like Wednesday's line from the end of the first Addam's Family movie, as to what she is dressed as for Halloween... "I'm dressed up as homicidal maniac, they look like everyone else"

But before you completely dismiss my biased, scientist view of the world, keep in mind that there have been times in my life that I would have really loved to have seen a ghost, angel, space alien, etc. - so even looking for them I never saw anything that resembled one.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Wow...not only is this thread about ghosts...it's also about mind-readers.

...just an observation...

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Not quite, what they'd need are good observations. Laboratories are quite helpful at getting good observations, but are not a requirement in science. For instance, we can't put the Sun in a lab but scientists can study it just fine.

Moonrock (on the Nemesis thread) said...

Now why is that? Seems to be a very convienent "flaw" in the medium's powers.

Why would you assume that Randi has not attended a "proper spiritualist service" where there was a "proper medium"??

OH...and I'm postitve that his "hat" is safe.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Also from this post:

If there is something to this, that shouldn't be a problem for a properly executed experiment. As long as you can show results above chance level where the subject knows things that he couldn't have learned by conventional means, that would be a positive outcome. Randi or not, if you think you really have something, I'd suggest you persue experimental research.

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Ok. I already posted about the ghost at work, so I'm "out there" in some people's eyes....and yes I'm a scientist. So, I'll tell another. I was at home in Medford. Warm, lazy Sepember afternoon, sun shining in through the window, I'm reading the Boston Globe on the futon (foam bed). In the corner of the room, where it was shadowy...little lights began dancing on the ceiling...kind of like what you see when sunshine reflects off water that has a breeze rippling the surface....but there's no water, glass, or mirror producing it. I got goosebumps...it was eiree. Then I heard footsteps in the backhall. I went out and looked...it was still full of storage boxes from the couple downstairs, and I mean full, if there was a fire, we were jumping from the porch roof. Nobody there. I returned to the futon. As I sat there, there was suddenly the impression of a person sitting next to me....a distinct rump-shaped depression in the futon, four, five inches deep, and ~ 18 inches wide..and as they(it) got up...it slowly faded like a footprint in wet sand. I don't laugh at anybody who sees one. Stephen O'Meara , editor of Sky & Tel collects observatory ghost stories. Not in the domain of physics, or science, not everything is...

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A third rate theory forbids.
A second rate theory explains after the fact.
A first rate theory predicts.
A. Lomonosov

I don't want to sound too arrogant here, my experience is that it's the people who believe in ghosts who tend to see them. Whether that person is a scientist or not is neither here nor there - one doesn't determine the other. In fact, I don't really see why scientific qualification is relevant. For example, do we care more if it's a biologist or a chemist who claims to have seen a ghost?

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

As explained in earlier posts this is not what science does. Science is a process for determining the best explanation for observed phenomena in ways that are reproducible. Science also is the investigation of the natural world.

Uh, where does one study to become a medium?

Did you ask them, or is that another assumption on your part? It would behoove you to study something called "cold reading" to understand what went on there, if your story is accurate. I notice there are no names, dates, or locations given here. The term "anecdotal evidence" would be too kind to describe this variety of information.

Scientists "see" many things they don't understand. That's where the scientific method kicks in. It provides a methodology for truly understanding what the observations mean, and also has built-in safeguards that keep (most) scientists from jumping to conclusions.

BTW, the use of the scientific method isn't restricted to scientists. It's used by engineers on a regular basis. It's also used by many non-technical persons as a component of critical thinking. In fact it's a key component of critical thinking, which uses logic and analysis to keep a person from falling into a morass of logical fallacies.

Too bad those who accept mediums, psychics, etc., don't employ critical thinking in their evaluation of such tenuous phenomena.

On the other hand, given the tendency of folks who truly believe that ghosts exist to see such things, I would wonder, do ghosts see scientists?

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Halfway between where you study to be a small and to be a large?

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Yo! Supersize me!

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Well theres quite a lot of questions to answer here, so here goes...

No, as I said, no questions were asked of these two individuals before the readings. Cold readings are done by supposed mediums craftily asking questions and working off that information to get to an answer. That was not the case here. Please dont confuse the showmanship of mediums that you see on the TV as what goes on down a spiritualist church - they are two different things. In fact a true medium would never charge for a reading.

Im sure a good medium would be more than happy for anyone to sit in on one of their readings in the right conditions. Its a bit like trying to get a racehorse to run on a treadmill when obviously it is more at home on a racecourse.

Mr. Randi is too arrogant to even consider visiting a spirtualist church.


Again, this type of ability cannot simply be turned on at will. Sometimes a medium could talk for hours with messages and other days hardly get anything.

In other words you mean that you have to have an open mind to probably see ghosts and in a way your right. A good saying is 'you have to believe to see it'. Although, there are many cases where people have experienced ghosts without even thinking about them or having a belief beforehand.

As I said in my earlier post, myself and my brother have had an interest in this type of phenomenon for many years. My brother was the one who always saw ghosts and he decided to go to our local spiritualist church to find out more. Although he didnt get a reading that night, he was approached by the medium at the end of the night, who happened to be the main medium from the church in the next town to ours. She told him that she could see a very great light surrounding him and that she would like to personally train him to enhance his obvious gift. Since that day a couple of years ago I would estimate that my brother has seen at least 50 ghosts. Dont believe that ghosts are always transparent or black and white either, he has seen fully materialised ghosts and in colour too. He has also accurately described ghosts that he has seen in friends houses that turn out to be deceased relatives and on one remarkable occasion managed to accurately describe a place where two of our friends had gone on holiday. During the night a bottle top had been removed from a bottle of water by the bed and thrown across the room, which both our friend and his wife heard. It was not until the following morning that they discovered the bottle top which had been crushed.

Now heres one for the sceptics. On returning home my friend rang us up and asked us to go around as something odd had happened on their holiday (as described above). When my brother arrived they had the bottle top, a jug and a bowl on the table. They wanted to fool my brother and told him that they would describe the odd experience once he had picked out which item was connected to the experience. My brother picked out the bottle top straight away and went on to describe that they had stayed at a hotel with towers on each corner. He was spot on and even described the decor in the room. Now is that cold reading?

It was obvious by the look on their faces that they were shocked by my brothers reading. They were both parapsychologists by the way, from the local university. I know what cold reading is and this was not the case here. As I said, the guys sat in the middle of the circle saying nothing and each member of the circle had to give a reading - no questions asked. Ok so you want names and dates. The Spiritualist church is in Cheltenham, UK. The experienced happened around October this year and my brother accurately told one of them that his surname was Campbell. Obviously the parapsychologists put critical thinking to what happened and they couldnt explain it!

I have personally been to the spiritualist church on a couple of occasions. The first time the medium told me that I would be going on holiday in November. I dont get too many holidays, in fact I hadnt been on holiday for the past 6 years before that reading. I couldnt take her reading because as far as I knew I wasnt going anywhere. However, one month down the line my friend rings up and asks if we would like to go on a lads holiday in November. What are the chances of that?

She also accurately told me what happened with the family business and other stuff which she simply couldnt have got from cold reading because I was careful just to answer yes or no.

I have seen cold reading and they are nothing like what a proper and legitimate medium can do.

The big problem with people who dont believe is that they think that they can ask for a relative to come through and they will. Thats not how it works. Consider a medium being like a radio. They can only pick up whats being transmitted and sometimes get many stations coming in all at once. I went to see Derek Acorah (a well known medium here in the UK) and remember him saying that there were more spirits with him up on stage than there were in the audience of maybe 800 people. A medium cannot ask for a certain spirit to come through, only those spirits who wish to make contact will come though the medium.

I just wanted to apologize after reading what I wrote, I didn't mean to sound so cocky about scientists, but SOME scientists do TEND to use other explanations, and that is what I was trying to say...And a special apology to trinitree, sorry if I offended you or anyone else...

It appears you've completely bought into this particular way of looking at things. Given that, any attempts to bring these views back to reality would be ineffective.

Let us know the next time you successfully cross a river on a bridge designed by a medium. Or better yet, inform us of your luxurious retirement enabled by a medium who gave you winning lottery numbers.

Meanwhile, it's tiresome talking about the same old, many times disproved, offal.

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A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

I do not hold my mysticism to scrutiny of science. I do not make science a spiritual path.

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So descredo no incrivel

Beauty I’d always missed
With these eyes before,
Just what the truth is
I can’t say anymore.

-- Moody Blues

And its pretty obvious that you dont actually read what people write. Bought into a particular way of looking at things? My brother has been going to spiritualist church for almost 2 years and every week something incredible happens.

For every true medium there are probably 3 who are trying just to make money from it. You could say the same for car mechanics but it doesnt mean that good mechanics do not exist.

Like I said, medium readings by proper mediums are far different than those you see on TV. If you havent gone to see them at work how can you be so critical?

If its all a load of hogwash please give me your explanation how my brother could describe where my friend went on holiday right down to the decoration of the room, also explain how a medium predicted exactly about a future holiday that at the time of the reading hadnt even been booked or anticipated, which was actually arranged by a friend. Perhaps you would like to explain how my brother accurately told a pub landlady about the ghost of a cavalier in her pub, or the ghost of an old man sitting in the corner wearing a flat cap? All verified by the landlady and landlord.

We are dealing with reality here. No need to bring my views back to reality because this is all true - whether you wish to believe it or not.

Hey...I've got a "saying" for ya...and from what I've seen, it applies to those who "see" ghosts...

Fake it till ya make it.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

Why do many people on this board think that any theory that they dont agree with is simply made to make money?

Because people can often not deal with the unexplained as a option, and quickly view everything as a joke, whether or not it is right now is up to the individual....

People have the right to be skeptical.

Then you should have no trouble presenting evidence to prove that 'reality".

We're not just going to "take your word or it", you have to (as I stated above) show us evidence of this "truth".

Belief is fine, you can believe anything you want. But, if your claim is that there is a "reality" to what you believe you will then have to demonstrate that reality with objective evidence.

Just "saying it is so" is not enough.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

I have no problem with people being skeptical, but when they start poking fun at a subject that they obviously know nothing about it gets very irritating.

Heres another example of good mediumship.

One week the circle were doing readings for the others sat in the circle. My brother picked out a lady and told her that the spirit of her mother and her sister were stood behind her. He also got the image of a white gladiola which at the time the lady couldnt really understand what it meant.

The following week the lady rushed up to my brother and told him that she now knew what his reading meant. Her sister had travelled from across country to visit the family and as it was her mothers anniversary decided to pop into a local garden centre to pick up a bunch of flowers. Unfortunately the garden centre was closed by the time she got there but as she was leaving she spotted a white gladiola by the exit which she picked and took to her mothers grave. Her sister had not related the reading that featured the white gladiola until after she had heard the other sisters story about being too late to buy a bunch of flowers.

Fine what evidence do you want? Perhaps if Andy Lloyd wasnt banned then he could come on here and tell you about the bottle top incident as it was he who was staying at the hotel?

But you believe that man went to the Moon by being told and seeing a few photographs and files that could be bogus for all you know, so whats the difference?

Other than you actually being here when this type of thing happens how do you suggest that I prove that it is happening? The reason you asked the question is because you know other than you being here I cannot prove it which fits into your agenda nicely.