I talked to a good friend of mine that I don't get to see very often anymore. A fellow psychonaut I would call him, and I don't use that term loosely. But while working on his truck some deeper conversation ensued about humanity and the government and ect. Then there was a lull in the conversation, and out of no where he asked me if I believe in ghost. I said, "Based on the evidence that I have seen, No. But you had an experience didn't you?" And of course he replied, "Yeah."

This is how he layed it out to me. He was going to bed at around 10:45 so he could get up and go to work in the morning. He fell asleep almost instantly. Normal dreaming occurred, but then it shifted to this wierd state as if he was looking through his eyelids. At the foot of his bed stood a hooded figure with an orb in his hand. The figure was glowing, like a florescent light bulb. The figure then raised up the orb and forcefully hurled it into my friends chest. This instantly broke my friend's sleep and he qoke in a panicked state. When he awoke, the figure was still there but it was not glowing anymore. It was all dark and featureless. It slow glided backwards and disappeared into the wall.

It seemed like he was kind of freaked out be this experience and I think I'm the only person he told. I asked him what the color of the orb was and he said it was the same white florescent as the being. I just wanted to get your guys thoughts since there are alot of people on here who are more keen with this kind of stuff than me.

Maybe an Out of body experience without body seperation. It'S said, that you can meet entitys there. Or a hypnopomp hallucination.

OR a ghost.

Yeah, I'm not thinking ghost, I just think that was the best way he could characterize this "being".

sounds like someone dodgy doesnt like him

Interesting story. Could still have been a dream within a dream, or even an after affect of the dream. In the words of Obi Wan - ' Your eyes can deceive you, don't trust them.'

Maybe ghostly experiences are just a common occurance between people who share a similar consciousness or brain chemistry.

Why not? More people see ghosts than aliens or angels or god! The amount of people who have seen them is ridiculously high. So I believe in ghosts. But that doesn't mean I believe they are conscious, or maybe even anything more than hallucinations, or any other explanation that science could come up with.

With your friend, however, his 'visiting' isn't very concrete. My scepticism would be inclined to think it was a product of the mind considering he had awoken (or had he?) from sleep. Although, of course, the ghost could have been a genuine phenomena. Although I've never heard of genuine sitings holding orbs etc- usually they are just people going about as they would have in life. In any case, he shouldn't be scared about the experience- there is no point being ruled by superstition. If the dead do still linger, we are all probably rubbing shoulders with them constantly.

I saw a ghost when I was about 7 years old. It was of a monk dressed in black robes, with only darkness where his face should've been. He was standing over a metre above the ground, I would say hovering but that would imply movement, and seemed to be watching me. This was in the middle of a sunny summer day, and he was as concrete as I was. I was paralysed with fear for what seemed like ages, then finally was able to snap out of it and ran away to tell my friend and mother. I was sound in mind and never had any mental problems. When I was older, I found out from a book that this type of ghost is called a 'guardian' and is associated with graveyards. I had seen the ghost in the corner of a garden with a graveyard the other side of the garden wall, 4m from where the ghost was. I also found out later that there used to be a building where the ghost stood (almost 300 years ago), which perhaps 'explained' why it was in the air- on the first floor of that building. The change in ground level over the years could account for the rest of the height between floors.

Three days later, I woke up in the night to find it standing at the foot of the bed I was sleeping in (with my mother and sister). It was watching me again. I pulled the cover over my head and hid. Eventually I fell asleep. That house was over 300 years old. This time could be explained as some sort of waking dream, although I feel that I ws awake and have never been confused between sleep and waking life at any other time. Actually, once last year, I woke up and saw my sister in my room, but she disappeared slowly, only a vision... but this is since I discovered aya, so one could say that my brain has been encouraged to be creative! I've never had any other similar confusions.

When I was about 10 years old, I was being driven back from school past an old Victorian warehouse. In a little top window, I saw someone watching me. The young man was very pale, sad, and I thought at the time dressed Victorian. I felt immediately that this was a ghost, but remained sceptical throughout my life because there was still a chance that it was a living person. The first encounter, with the monk, though, was undeniably no trick of the mind, but a genuine phenomenon ('supernatural' or no).

Many people claim to have seen ghosts. I know a girl who was visited by her grandad's ghost after he died. He came and sat on her bed and had a conversation with her. She wasn't even on anything! I've met a few other people who have had inexplicable ghostly happenings. Maybe some of them are compulsive liars, attention seekers, hoaxers, or mentally ill. But I am none of the above.

I was already developing atheist tendencies when I saw the monk, but my first encounter made me think that there might be more to life than science can currently explain. I'm totally open to scientific suggestions, in fact I actively search for them.

I have read that old houses emit inaudible low frequencies, which makes people feel the uncomfortable feeling that they attribute as being a 'presence'. I watched a documentary where they monitored people in 'haunted' Scottish catacombs- the people felt presences and got very scared. Then they made a computer simulation of the catacombs... and found that people watching those got scared and felt presences too! Suggesting that it was a spatial effect creating these feelings. However, I've come across no provable theories for when people actually and unquestionably see ghosts, rather than imagine them or think they saw something out of the corner of their eye. I have heard theories about electromagnetic fields causing hauntings. I'd love to hear of any other possible scientific explanations. Conventional science stays well away of investigating ghosts, I think they're scared of being associated with anything like that, it's almost a taboo in these times. And I doubt there's any money in it.

Ive had an experiene, believ it or not, almost identical to that on one occasion. The orb was moe like an unfolding lotus flower and was glowing. I was seeing all of it through my eyelids while in sleep paralysis. I get paralysis alot, but only once have I seen this entity. I felt he was helping to attune me on some level rather than harm me. He was a helper of some sort..dont know about "ghosts" though..

I have seen these "beings" my whole life in that twilight state. I just accept it as normal phenomenon in my life..It will only happen to me when trying to fall asleap or working with entheogens so its not a problem for me. I dont specualte too much on the "reality" of these things, weather aspects of myself or not, they are there all the same.

Experiences of seeing other people or ghosts or beings have been related to various forms of psychosis and the brain abnormalities are clear. So why not look at all these types of hallucinatory experience in that regard? As a temporary change in consciousness that is capable of manifesting hallucinations. Looking at it this way is not only useful because we can gather evidence about why it happens and maybe learn a bit more about ourselves and our world but also because it can explain all types variations on the same theme. Meaning hallucinations of other beings can all be explained by the idea that seeing them is caused by something going weird in your brain.

Once we can rule out the brain accounting for these phenomenon then looking at it in terms of people see different beings because of something going on externally deserves more attention. Just saying I believe in ghosts because I saw it or someone else saw it doesn't mean its real. We all know people can become delusional and it can even be transient. Also just not believing in ghosts doesn't make them not real. There is only way we can find out :arrow: more data.

I read a book about satanic ritual abuse called michelle remembers, and in it during their satanic rituals where they would summon demons, the satanists would go up to the demon, each taking a turn like communion to receive knowledge from the demon, who was holding an orb each touching the orb to receive the "blessing".

A week later my cousin was telling me a story about his sister, my other cousin and she had been messing around with ouija boards and tarots and apparantly she woke up in the middle of the night with a cloaked figure holding, you guessed it an orb and it wanted her to take it, she freaked out and went and woke her mum but it went away. Was a kinda weird coincidence because I hadnt mentioned that part of the book to my cousin.

I said I believe in ghosts, but meaning that I believe people see something, rather than making it up. I DIDN'T say I believed they were the spirits of dead people! That would be unscientific because we don't have proof. Just want to make that clear.

I'm open to the idea that they're hallucinations, but they don't fit the familiar model- they're distinct one-offs. All the (entheogen-induced!) hallucinations SWIM's ever had have involved multiple disruptions- patterns, webs, shimmering, outlines, lights, sounds, otherworldliness etc. Never a trip of an entirely normal day, but then seeing a person that wasn't there at one point! Can any substance do this? From what I've heard of accounts of datura etc, even that kind of realistic hallucinatory disruption involves multiple hallucinations and other effects outside of what an individual recognises as the norm. And deliriants have other effects too, they don't involve just one distinct and short lived hallucination alone, do they?

And if they were hallucinations, wouldn't people be randomly hallucinating other things? Other than dead people! Ok, UFOs, that's one, but that's it really, and a lot more people see ghosts. A few people have been recorded seeing angels (eg Blake), fairies etc but not many. But if a ghost is a random hallucination- CONCRETE ANDCLEAR AS DAY AS THEY CAN BE- one would expect normal people to be hallucinating all sorts of random things every now and then. Lobsters and other stuff out of place with the surroundings. Or at least, if the brain for some reason was only hallucinating entites, then people in other attire other than the usual old-fashioned stuff. Modern people floating through walls and in the air etc, not just Tudors! It's not like I saw a visual disruption which then formed into a monk by my thought patterns ("this must be a ghost" ). I just looked up and to my surprise there it was. Incidentally, I was literally paralysed with fear as soon as I saw it, probably only for a few seconds but it felt longer.

The only explanation that SWIM has heard for seeing ghosts that he finds believable in any way is that perhaps they are 'imprints' somehow. Something to do with electromagnetism, or spacetime, or parallel universes or something, that makes you see someone that was there once and isn't any more. Maybe the dimensions that apparently exist but we can't see exert some influence that plays these 'recordings' of past lives somehow like a glitch. I can't explain it any more than that. But something like that seems more plausible to me than my brain deciding to see a historical archetype floating in the air (and everyone else seeing historical people too, or UFOs) while all I was thinking about was running with one foot then the other towards a hide-and-seek hiding spot. I had no interest in ghosts or monks. There were many things I often thought about that I would be more likely to hallucinate randomly. Ice cream, or He-Man.

Proof!

http://www.youtube.com/w...;feature=player_embedded

Yes, I've seen that. It's not comparable. One person thinking they might have seen a little man in the tree in the dark and going along with it because its fun and they're on camera. It could be just a branch that looks right in the twilight, or simply that someone thought they saw something then everyone else enjoyed the thought of it and played along. I doubt in that instance one person ACTUALLY saw clear-as-day a little red-haired fellow in a green suit with shiny golden shoe buckles. Everyone sees things that look like something else for a moment, then realise their mistake. A little different to seeing a monk right in fron of you floating above the ground on a sunny summer's day. There was no mistaking what I saw. And to be honest I'm offended that you'd think I and other people are like those idiots. I didn't want to see a ghost. It really pisses me off when people ridicule people just because they've seen something they don't believe is possible to see. It's an ignorant response.

But I'm glad I have seen such a phenomena now because maybe it's taught me not to be an annoying ignorant person who dismisses anything that has been observed, but hgasn't yet been explained scientifically.

I think he was just making a joke ohayoco.

It's a touchy subject. Pff no-one ever wants to talk seriously about ghosts here. Just aliens all the time!

apparently in the amazon the natives get abducted by men in flying river boats...we see flying saucers..

God Damn leprocauns!

Be grateful you're not one of those in the uncontacted tribes. What must they think of aeroplanes and helicopters? Especially when they get buzzed by the ones getting pictures of them to prove their existence. These pictures show them either aiming their bows or running away or hiding. They must be living in horror of the evil metal bird monsters!
I guess that's a good metaphor for the alien-believers. Maybe us earthlings are one big 'uncontacted tribe'!

Did someone say Ghost?

Hehe totally meant as a joke. I consider aliens, ghosts, little green men all in the same category. Hallucinations.