I'm actually a paranormal investigator and a cast member on a show about ghost hunting. It's an online/cable access show but it's airing right now in the US in 24 cities in 12 states, and in a month or two we'll be on in 12 cities in Australia. I'm working on my second major in psychology, and I've also taken a 60 hour course on parapsychology with Loyd Auerbach. I consider myself an open minded skeptic.

We've been able to debunk about 90% of the cases we do. Overactive imagination, businesses seeking publicity, misperceptions, sleep paralysis, carbon monoxide, mold, infrasound, high EMFs, hoax. I was interviewed for the show Scariest Places on Earth about 6 years ago and it's fake. Also shows like Ghost Adventures use horrible protocols and feed people misinformation.

We look for normal explanations, and we don't use psychics or use "toys" like K-II meters, dowsing rods, ouija boards, oviluses, Frank's Boxes, etc. We dismiss orb photos, mists, and we're familiar with the different kinds of camera defects like long expsosures, etc. We tag sounds, cross check voice recorders and video, do control silences, and correlate data and personal experiences with other data.

In seven years I've only captured/experienced a handful of things we couldn't explain. It's not like on the TV shows where you're getting 20 things in one night or something on every investigation. Things aren't jumping out at you going RAAWR. I've never gotten anything on camera or video we couldn't explain away. But the few things we HAVE had happen are interesting enough that I want to continue to do it.

I believe that nothing exists outside of science, but there could be some things out of our current understanding of science. Thousands of years ago, everyone thought lightning was paranormal and now there's a perfectly normal explanation. If you study quantum physics there are things happening at the quantum level that would seem impossible. String theory which has evolved into M-Theory supports the existence of other dimensions. Maybe every now and then they crossover just for a few seconds and we get a glimpse. Maybe to them WE'RE ghosts.

If anyone's interested in checking out our show online, it can be found at www.youtube.com/paranormalgeneration

That reminded me of the "Most Haunted" show, a shame isn't aired here anymore. That was good for comedy

If ghosts are ever proven to exist, I'll reconsider being atheist.

This, although it doesn't stop me from getting creeped out at night when it is extremely dark.

Do I believe in ghosts (as popularly defined): Maybe. I don't not believe.

I don't believe I've ever experience anything ghostlly though.

Regarding all the posts on science I'm really tempted to comment, but those posts are pretty close to derailing this thread, so I will restrain and not comment.

Even if ghosts were proven to exist, I highly doubt they would be the same floating apparitions we know them as. Same way I highly doubt that aliens would be the same humanoid Roswell aliens we know.

Those are just appearances humans created in lieu of any factual basis.

I used to, but then I stopped believing in fairy tales.

This. I'm kinda on the fence, I don't really believe in ghosts like someone floating in front of you, but there are certainly strange things that happen I can't explain sometimes.

I went on holiday once and stayed in some apartments that felt so wrong. I felt like I was being watched all the time and couldn't relax, someone jumped off a third floor balcony, landing in the pool, and couldn't say why he'd done it, and a small child nearly drowned in the pool. I had some horrendous rows with my parents over the smallest things there, and towards the end of the holiday I contracted a terrible fever and had to spend nearly 24 hours in bed. I could I was very glad to come home from that horrible place. A spate of bad luck like that? I'm not convinced it was all coincidence. I'd put money on something terrible happening at those apartments before.


I know exactly what you mean. Recently a couple in their late 40s/ early 50s were brutally murdered in the house just down the road from me, and I had to walk past their house nearly everytime I wanted to go anywhere. The atmosphere was stifling as you were in the vicinity of the house, sometimes the air felt so thick I could barely breathe. The police arrested 4 people for the murder and held one. Whilst awaiting trial, he committed suicide in his cell. Since then, the atmosphere around the house hasn't felt so bad, almost like justice has been done. It's very strange.

Well i've never seen a ghost myself sadly, i say sadly not because i enjoy being scared but because seeing a ghost would give me some hope for an afterlife, although my brother did see something strange when he was a child.

He had a fairly serious operation on his kidneys and was recuperating in his hospital bed on morphine when he had a hallucination, he saw an old man at the foot of his bed, the apparition's left shoulder and right leg were solid and showed severe scarring, wheras the rest of the body was very transparent, the old man smiled and in a voice that sounded very far away and robotic said "choose the right path", then he vanished.

Well of course i know what you're thinking, morphine does that to people! and of course you are right, but there was one odd thing about that event, and that is that the description of the old man my brother gave was the spitting image of my grandfather whom he had never met, my mother and i recognised the description immediately as he had endured war wounds in both his left shoulder and right leg, so it was an odd coincidence for him to have a hallucination like that.

Our mind plays tricks on us very, very often. As well as our memory. It's extremely common. What you remember and experienced as "a white figure" or "dark shade" or whatever, is actually just your eyes getting used to a quick movement and your brain not quite following. So yeah, ghosts aren't real.

Exactly, there are many scientific explanations to what people think of as the paranormal. It could be literally your eyes playing tricks on you or maybe your breathing in carbon monoxide from a badly ventilated fire place. There are certainly experiences that can't be explained right now, but who knows what we will discover in the years to come? I personally will wait for a scientific theory rather then yell ghost if I see something that I can't explain.

Yes, I believe in Spirits. A Ghost is a type of Spirit.

To me, I believe the Human Soul may become a Spirit after Death if they the Soul choose to stay on Earth and not go where they usually go in the After Life.

Also, I believe my current house is haunted as I've seen Human Shadows move without any humans connecting to those Shadows... in the middle of the night with lights off.. I call these Shades.

Do I believe in ghosts? No, not at all, but I do get frightened if I hear a noise in the middle of the night, but it's usually my paranoia. I do believe in the super-natural, and sometimes that freaks the crap out of me.

I don't know if this breaks forum rules, but the question has piqued my interest. What do you believe happens to you after you die?

I know a friend like him. MY friend said our life just ends. Blank. Blackness. Etc. The body rots while Soul is black. Nothing. Empty... Creepy.

Why is it creepy? Think back to the time before you were conceived. You didn't exist. Was that unpleasant? Why would returning to that state be creepy?

It probably does. Yes if you were conscious after you died and it was just blackness it would svck. But you won't be aware of it because you don't exist anymore. Just like before you were born.

I personally find the aspect of living in a permanent afterlife and not ever truly dying much more disconcerting.

Me too. It would be incredibly dull living forever anyways. I think most of the people that believe in an afterlife are just afraid of dying and ceasing to exist.

I think the belief of an afterlife correlates with narcissism.

Weird, I just got a really metallic taste in my mouth.

Just a while ago my friend brought a music player from an old music box to my house. He told me he found the music box which included a porcelain ballerina type figure with blacked out eyes in a crawlspace in his mothers attic. He told me that he became fixated on it for a minute, he could not take his eyes off of it. My other friend that was with him backed this up and he is not one to lie. So when he finally snapped out of it he destroyed the music box smashing it to bits and throwing the entire thing in the garbage. Weeks later his mom came up to him and said "I found this in a box of your old things down in the basemant" and presented the music playing part of the box to him. That would be this part.

http://photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/2475/3252music_box.jpg

Anyway we decided to see if there was anything strange about it. We where trying to contact a spirit that we always hear in my house. We wound up the music box and told it to stop the music for a yes. We asked "Is anyone here" and the music immediately stopped, we asked to start it again but it would not start until my other friend started challenging it he said "Oh I bet you can't make it play again your just-" and he was cut off when the music started again. A few days later we decided to record us with the box, we turned off the lights and lit some candles. We asked many questions and got responses. The music would stop and start with yeses and noes. We had incense burning, we asked it to manipulate the smoke, every direction we told it to go it went without hesitation. We asked it to manipulate the candles and they started to flicker and the smaller ones extinguished. When we played the video back we heard strange clicking noises almost like a type writer sound. We realized the sounds where coinciding with answers. The clicks would get faster for yes and slower for no.

Just figured I would share one of my experiences. We did control tests with the music box to make sure it didn't just stop as a result of faulty mechanisms. We also wound the box up all the way repeatedly. We concluded through questions that the spirit attached to it was very angry that my friends had destroyed their box, and I don't know why but I felt like it was a woman. My friend also felt physical contact during the recording.

All of my Family has experienced encounters as well. My aunt has seen black figures, My whole family has always talked about apparitions in my grandmas house. My niece used to talk about her "Friend" when she was little she called him "Sosa" and we once asked her who he was and she quickly said "No one, he is no one". We could never get her to explain anything else about this figure. She used to talk to nothing as well.

still have the videos?

Yes I have The Video.

Could you upload it? Pretty please with a cherry on top?