Can INTP's believe in ghosts?

[Dman]

Being an INTP, we must have logical, rational explanations for events we encounter. However, have any of you ever had an experience such as a "haunting" or "ghost - sighting" that you just couldn't explain with modern science?

If not, has anyone who you respect and trust with having rational thoughts ever claimed such a thing?

I'm curious if anyone who believes it can offer up any type of scientific possiblity for the existence of "ghosts", i.e. extra dimensions, time disturbances, etc.

[Dman]

I should have known better than to post something about ghosts on an INTP site!

It's funny - that we speculate on time-travel, God, teleportation, other dimensions, but not the possibility of leftover consciousness or existences on another level of reality?

I used to automatically dismiss any mention of ghosts or whatever, but at the risk of losing any possible credibility I now believe there may be some inkling of truth to all the stories out there. For those who have never witnessed anything or known anyone they trust to have witnessed anything, I don't blame you for thinking it's a bunch of BS. I did too. But for anyone else, I'd be interested in hearing your take on it.

[Boneca]

I don't say that ghosts do not exist, because I can't prove it any more than I can prove that they do exist.
However, I thought it was more a case of people's brains playing tricks on them. Kind of like how near-death experiences turned out to be hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation, but in this case I guess it'd be some kind of emotional overload. Emotions are just chemical substances after all, and an overdose might have funny effects. ;)

[Dman]

I don't say that ghosts do not exist, because I can't prove it any more than I can prove that they do exist.
However, I thought it was more a case of people's brains playing tricks on them. Kind of like how near-death experiences turned out to be hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation, but in this case I guess it'd be some kind of emotional overload. Emotions are just chemical substances after all, and an overdose might have funny effects. ;)

I agree with you & think that this explains the vast majority of claims that are genuine. However, the problem arises when more than one person experiences the same or similar "hallucinations" - either at the same time or at a different time - not knowing beforehand that it was experienced by someone else too...that's when it gets a little unsettling.

[Vagabond]

The way I see it, being INTP we "must" nothing. And I agree with Boneca to a point - I keep my options open. Prove to me they exist, and I will believe it. Prove to me they do not exist, and that's what I will believe. Meanwhile, I just don't know. I can argue either side though if needed... :devil:

[HackerX]

why must we have immediate, logical explanations for everything?

Whats wrong with, don't know the explanation yet, so lets go off and look into working it out.

Personally I'm quite interested/researched a fair bit into paranormal stuff (though not really ghosts in particular) because a lot of it is "unexplainable" and I've seen some pretty interesting stuff, but also a whole load of crap.

The trick is to never believe what people tell you on face value, and us INTP's do that naturally

[KentOhio]

Having a rational mind doesn't mean we can't believe in unproven things.

[Mysticforce]

No, but it does mean we're going to put them through far more intellectual rigor before we do.

In terms of ghosts (ie the transmigration of souls), I have two problems:

1) The post-death existence of consciousness assumes Descartes mind-body split. I can see no reasonable proof for this myself.

2) Our interpretation of what we see is always culturally informed, so for me it is not difficult to explain how a group of people may all interpret some event as a 'ghost' - it fits their cultural assumptions of what the unusual should be.

[SensEye]

There's been a number of threads about ghosts already. I would not think any INTP's would believe in them but some clearly do, just as some seem to put stock in astrology. It doesn't seem rational, so it puzzles me, but I am borderline P/J and my operating theory is that extreme P-ness can result in open mindedness to the point of impaired logic.

[CeSoirNoir]

I can't say definitely that I believe in ghosts, but I do have quite a fascination about the paranormal...Its fun to learn about and interesting. I have gotten weird feelings around places that are claimed to be haunted, but I'm guessing that it was just my mind creating something up...

[heeroyuy]

1) I'm going to go off on a thought, ignore me if you don't like it, inspired by something I read
2) Ignore my spelling errors, it's late, I'm tired, it's friday; have mercy :)

If we say that ghosts are things we only think of, in our minds, than every thought can be said to be a ghost. If this is true, one can claim that gravity is a ghost. Because we say that ghosts have no real matter, we can then take any principle which was "discovered" but has been held to exist before this, such as gravity, anything at all, and say that before it was thought, it never existed until thought of, as it is a ghost. Gravity is only within our minds, as it is a principle, a concept, just like all the rest of science. It is upheld by the believable, but it is not material. If we follow this we realize that society has simply implanted us with these strong beliefs in these ghosts which inreality may or may not exist. Just like other cultures imprint certain "ghosts" into their people, such as ancient beliefs in gods, etc.

Okay, maybe I should go lie down.

Credit where credit is do: Not verbatim, but mostly inspired by a book, if you know it, tell me.

[HeyBooU]

Since I beleive I have had experiences with ghosts and I beleive that members of my family have tended to do a little haunting after they pass away, I very much lean towards the possibility of ghosts being real.

[Chill]

Putting forth the idea for discussion, not saying I beleive or disbelieve ghosts (I find the phenomona fascinating, and people's reaction a interesting look at human psychology), but if there ARE ghosts. There is the possibility that they aren't what we think they are. In other words, perhaps there are not floating conciousnesses or spirits, but something else entirely.

[athman]

Since I beleive I have had experiences with ghosts and I beleive that members of my family have tended to do a little haunting after they pass away, I very much lean towards the possibility of ghosts being real.Similar to me. I have had experiences associated with deaths to those close to me or my family that have made me stop and think. A house guest of ours died violently while on holidays in Thailand. All his worldly possessions were in our house at the time. My wife and I both woke up suddenly at about 3am and then our kids cried out in their sleep in the next room. We knew something was wrong. The next day we found out that he had been killed at that time. I'm generally cyncial about spiritual things but that experience was real, spooky and obviously very sad.

[Pierce]

I find that thoughtful people dismiss the existence of ghosts (and all such spirit forms) -- that is until they experience something which is beyond the bounds of their rational perception of reality. Then comes the problem of "fitting things in." Those who have had no such experiences may continue on in what amounts to a blithe state of denial, chalking things up to vague assumptions of emotionalism, chemically induced tricks of the brain, hallucinations and the like. For those of us thinking types who have had ghostly experiences, which we duly expose to the rigors of our analysis, these "answers" are not at all satisfying.

Given the ethereal nature of the subject, ghosts defy being subjected to empirical examination. In other words, biology is not a subject that will yield any answers about ghosts -- try mixing theoretical physics, religion, and a dose of mysticism. Parapsychology tries to capture the phenomenon in a framework of theory, but has failed to gain either mainstream credibiltiy or a cohesive paradigm.

I've had quite a number of rather unsettling experiences along these lines, so I've pondered the subject a great deal -- enough to realize that personal theories will probably never rise to the level of scientific explanation of what is essentially spiritual in nature. That being said, I have my own ideas about the subject that work for me -- at least I'm not left hanging in limbo (pun intended).

I think of it in terms of dimensions. We live in the continum of the third and fourth dimensions (space and time). Ghosts reside in the second dimension. They are not beyond us, but "below" us (not geographically, but dimensionally). A second dimensional existance is reduced to shadow, visually discernable, but having no substance. In earlier days, ghosts were called "shades" and Hades was the "land of shadows." Interestingly, "Death" (at least in the Bible) often seems to refer to a place rather than an event, and it strikes me that Death and Hades are synonymous. There is a reference stating that at the end of time, Hell (1st dimension) and Death (2nd dimension) will be cast in to the Lake of Fire (the proverbial Abyss or 0 dimension). Also, Jesus' declaration that those who believed in him would not taste Death (until his return), implying that the inevitable downward spiral of the dimensions had been altered -- that he, being given the keys to Hell and Death, had opened a route to the higher dimensions, beyond the fourth dimension -- eternal life (spiritually, not biologically).

As to the nature and behavior of ghosts the most fascinating book I ever read on the subject was a novel by Charles Williams titled ALL HALLOWS EVE. There was a fellow who had more than a casual interest in such matters and a brilliant mind to follow it up.

[athman]

Thanks Pierce, that was a thoughtful response, well put.

Now, on a more light hearted vein, do ghosts believe in INTP's?

[HeyBooU]

Now, on a more light hearted vein, do ghosts believe in INTP's?
Haha, the world may never know.

[Mysticforce]

If ghosts exist I'm sure they would find much more believing people to visit than INTP's.

Perhaps the whole paranormal has us pegged with a large yellow sign that reads: "Unbelievers: Visitation Hours Revoked."

[Chill]

Hmmm, ghosts are 2-dimensional beings.... interesting. I'm going to have to ponder this for while.

[Dman]

That was an excellent response Pierce.

My struggle has been in trying to reconcile these experiences with a scientific explanation. I have analyzed it for years, and of course I am still open to the possibility that it was not “ghosts” or anything supernatural, but every avenue I’ve examined leads to no better explanation. So I’m at the point where I’ve accepted that it was some type of haunting, now I need to figure out how that can be possible.

I am not a religious person, don’t believe in superstitions, astrology, etc. and did not believe in this stuff either. In fact, I won’t talk about it except in an anonymous forum such as this for fear of being seen as a believer in such things. It’s not a pleasant experience, and the fact that I found out that other people in the house witnessed similar events really drove home the fact that it was not in my head. Now I’m almost obsessed with finding out how it could be possible. It's almost life-changing when your belief system is shocked like this.

Indeed, I also think that it could be a dimensional phenomena – there is a school of thought led by Stephen Hawking that the reason gravity is so mysterious is because it may permeate into other dimensions (hence why it appears so “weak” to us). I’m going out on a limb, but perhaps the energy of conscious thought also has the ability to permeate into these unseen, unknown dimensions – and can continue to exist after the body is deceased, kind of like a tape recording of the brain. Like gravity, how much do we really know about the brain anyways? This could also apply to incidents of ESP, premonitions, etc., assuming those things are also possible.

Maybe I’ve just been drinking too much coffee.

[file cabinet]

there was a dicussion on ghosts more than a month ago you might be interested in peeking at:
http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?t=398

[floyd]

carl jung, an intp, was very interested in the ghost world, he frequently held seances with his cousins growing up. i think parapsychology was probably an intp created field.

[Dman]

It's nice to have some validation on this subject. Being an INTP, the first thing you're inclined to do is dismiss this type of thing when no "proof" exists, but when you are personally affected by it, you really want to somehow prove it to others and understand it.

I spent 7 YEARS denying, analyzing, and second-guessing before finally accepting what happened and the fact that I can't explain it. It helps that there are still things going on in that house that have been witnessed by others. But now it's driving me insane trying to come up with a rational explanation. I fear it's something I'll just have to accept as never knowing the truth. I sure as hell am much more interested in this kind of thing now though (although a lot of it out there is still BS).

[Shai Gar]

i believe in ghosts, i am intp, so yes it is possible

[MonChat]

I just watched a documentary on Unification Theory. According to some scientists, if 'string theory' holds true, there may be as many as 10 dimensions. So the idea of something that exists outside of our reality is certainly a possibility--at least theoretically. If 'living beings' existed in one of these 'other' dimensions, which are not percievable by us, would we call them ghosts?

I guess, one of the things I really need to know is: How do we define "Ghost"?

Also, there are many other 'perspectives' besides the scientific perspective which address ideas such as Ghosts. Even though many of these 'non-scientific' perspectives may contradict what logic dictates they still represent other ways of looking at things which may shed light on possibilities that will later become more accepted when 'science' can grasp the answers. I'm finding that if I exclude illogical possibilities then I'm excluding possibilities in general. Since, all too often, I can't bear the thought of cutting off possibilities I generally put less weight on what seems to me to be "less logical" and more weight on what I see as being logical rather than simply "writing-off" what seems illogical. I would really like to speak to the person on this board that has the quote about Nietzsche associated with their avatar(about there being no facts just interpretations..very very interesting statement). Nietzsche sounds like the type of person that I'd like to be reading. If any of you would be able to recommend a book to help start me off with some Nietzsche I'd be in your debt.

[jetboots]

the existance of them would be equally weird as their non-existance.

[EternalCynic]

Certainly an INTP can believe in ghosts. I am an INTP, and I accept the possibility of ghosts. However if I accept the possibility of ghosts I accept the possibility of God and Angels and Demons and reincarnation, so on and so forth. To me if you believe in any kind of religious dogma (for lack of a better word) you should easily accept the idea of souls and ghosts. Anyway the only reason I believe it is possible because I believe everything is possible, lol, so I'm not a good person to ask on this.

[Dman]

Certainly an INTP can believe in ghosts. I am an INTP, and I accept the possibility of ghosts. However if I accept the possibility of ghosts I accept the possibility of God and Angels and Demons and reincarnation, so on and so forth. To me if you believe in any kind of religious dogma (for lack of a better word) you should easily accept the idea of souls and ghosts. Anyway the only reason I believe it is possible because I believe everything is possible, lol, so I'm not a good person to ask on this.

Why would a belief in ghosts require a belief in religion/spirituality?

IMO they are mutually exclusive.

[EternalCynic]

Not require one or the other, accept the possibility of. If you believe in some invisible man in the sky dictating what you do, I don't see why the souls of the dead walking the earth should sound so silly, and vice versa.

[QrioCT]

i think there is no way you can really prove or disprove this by logic, because the "experiences" often depends on people's perception of it. like you probably would feel spooked out by a "haunted house" after somebody tells you that someone died in it or something, but not before. So it could be that it's not the reality that's giving us the idea of ghosts, its us.

but there is no real logical proof that they do not exist other than the fact that they are rarely seen, and the fact that we are made to believe strongly and firmly that they do not exist because how society says only fools and children do. so i think the logical/intp response is to be open to possiblities despite what the society tells us if we don't find logic backing up the society's claim.

[carol collins]

I trust my experience. Seems to me that there are alternate realities, and that communiction, albeit flawed, does occur across "boundaries." Precognitions occur; "extreme" cooincidences occur, and in the face of repeated examples of these, I no longer refuse to consider possibilities that, years ago, would have seemed cockamamie.

[Dman]

(NOTE: Ok, here is a description of the events I encountered. I wrote this down a while back in “story” style for my own therapeutic benefit, hoping it would look more reasonable that way and to help get it off my chest and into words. That’s why it may seem “canned” or contrived at points, but it is all absolutely true.)

This took me more than 7 years to finally analyze and discuss the events that happened to me over a couple of months during the winter of 1996. I didn’t even tell my wife until a year ago.

In fall of 1996, my wife and I married after 3 years together. Right after our marriage, we were looking to buy a condo but hadn’t found the right one yet. My wife’s grandparents, who always travel to Texas for the winter (we live in Oregon) offered to let us stay at their house while they were gone. We readily accepted, knowing it would give us more time to look for a condo. I have no idea what the history of the house is, other than that her grandparents had moved into it only a year or so before. It’s a normal looking, one-level suburban neighborhood house, built in the late sixties. The only unusual occurrence that I was aware of was that they had a lamp that would come on by itself quite frequently. It was one of those lamps that you just touch the base, and it turns on (or off). I thought nothing of it at the time.

The first couple weeks were uneventful. We set up our living quarters in the spare back bedroom. Being a busy young couple, we hardly spent any time at the house except to sleep. Then my troubles began.

One night, I abruptly woke up in the middle of the night. I don’t know what woke me up, but I had the feeling that something was not right. My heart began racing, and I listened intently, thinking that maybe someone broke into the house and that was what woke me up. I listened as hard as I could, but didn’t hear a single sound. I continued straining to hear, unable to calm down, as I looked toward the bedroom door and into the hallway. Although I couldn’t hear a thing, I just had the strong feeling that someone was coming down the hall very slowly. Just when I was about to give up and try to go back to sleep, I saw a head peek around the doorway looking into the room. I flipped out. My first thought was to grab something to hit the person with, so I frantically grabbed the closest object I could think of: my old BB gun that I had put under the bed. I jumped towards the light switch, turned it on, and ran into the hall holding my BB gun like a baseball bat. In the hallway I found… nothing. I quickly turned on the hall light and every other light while I ran around the house. My wife, woken up from the light, asked what I was doing. Feeling kind of foolish, I said I thought I heard something. She laughed, saying I looked ridiculous standing in the hall in my underwear with my BB gun. I proceeded to check all the doors & windows, which were all locked and shut tight. I wrote it off to an overactive imagination, and tried to go back to sleep.

If that were all that happened, I would have quickly forgotten about it (besides the fact that my wife kept teasing me). But unfortunately there was more. We like to watch TV in bed at night before we sleep, so we had our TV at the foot of the bed on a small dresser. I was a night owl, so I usually stayed up a good couple hours later than my wife watching TV. One particular night, I was awake watching TV (like usual) while my wife slept next to me. Something in the corner of my eye, in the corner of the room towards the ceiling, caught my eye. It appeared to just be a little fog, about the size of two basketballs. At first, I thought it was an image burned into my eye, like when you look at the sun and then look away but still see an image of the sun. So I casually glanced to the other side of the room, expecting “it” to follow the motion of my eye. It didn’t. It stayed right where it was. Now it had my attention. I still wasn’t spooked at this point, thinking it must be some weird reflection from the glow of the TV. It was kind of distracting me at this point, so to prove it was the TV, I turned it off. The “fog” was still there. Now I was starting to feel uneasy. It just sort of hovered there, like a miniature cloud. I tried closing my eyes and trying to ignore it, but I would get very uncomfortable knowing it was there. In order to try and take my mind off of it, I turned the TV back on. While trying my hardest to watch TV and ignore it, it began slowly drifting towards the center of the room, over the TV. It would just slowly drift back & forth like this. Needless to say, I left the TV on all night for a mental distraction and somehow eventually fell asleep. This continued almost every night for the next several weeks. I hated that thing and was becoming chronically tired because I was staying up so late, unable to sleep with that little “fog” cloud hovering around, and trying to distract myself by watching TV late into the night. It never came towards my end of the room, but always stayed at the end that the TV was at, usually drifting slowly from the right side of the room to the left, near the ceiling. Occasionally there was another smaller “fog” about soccer ball sized (but they weren’t perfectly round), that accompanied the larger one, that did the same thing only moving at its own pace. I was terrified, but I would not tell anyone or even admit to myself that it was a “ghost” because I felt that would be like admitting I was crazy. As a matter of fact, at that time I had always thought people speaking about “ghosts” were referring to transparent looking people, not blobs that were foggy looking. I didn’t think of them as ghosts at the time; all I knew was that it made me extremely uncomfortable and unwilling to analyze it in my head.

The height of my fear came one night, when I had tried turning the TV off and going to sleep about 4 times but couldn’t sleep because of the intimidating “fogs”. Finally, getting irritated, I thought to myself “this is ridiculous, I’m just going to turn the TV off, ignore those stupid things, and go to sleep.” I turned off the TV again, laid down and closed my eyes, and just as I began to drift off I heard a voice hiss, sarcastically, right in my ear “Yesssss, so our guesssst can resssst”. I sat bolt upright, completely out of my wits. It sounds like something corny from an old horror film, but it sure scared the hell out of me. The voice came from my right ear, but almost like from inside my ear, I can’t quite explain it. I was panicked and did not sleep the rest of the night. I tried to convince myself the next day that I was just freaked out and imagined it in my head, but it didn’t really seem that way at all. It was then that I really began to believe, against all of my rational, logical thought processes, that the house might be “haunted”.

Only a couple weeks later my wife’s grandparents returned early due to an accident with their travel trailer. We moved into our own condo shortly thereafter, and I’ve never had any experiences like that again. However there are a couple things that have happened that made me think that it wasn’t just my mind playing intensely real tricks on me. For one thing, a couple of years after we moved out, my wife told me that her grandmother mentioned that she woke up one night to a man standing at the end of her bed. She screamed, waking up grandpa, who turned on the lights and searched the house. They found nothing, and all windows and doors closed & locked. They are not the type of people to believe in ghosts or even talk about such things. They figured she must have imagined it, although she swore there was someone there. The other thing is the lamp and their big TV in the living room. To this day, both of them come on at random times all by themselves, when no one is in the room. My wife mentioned to me that the last time she visited her grandma she heard the TV come on in the other room, and assumed it was grandpa. When she got up to go say hi, he wasn’t in there. She went down the hall to look for him, and he was sleeping in his room, where he had been for a couple of hours. When my wife asked about the TV, grandma just said, “oh that funny thing just does that sometimes”. When I finally told my wife about the foggy blobs I was bothered by, she said she never saw anything but always had a strong feeling of being watched while we lived there.

Does any of this prove anything? No. It could be that I imagined all of my experiences, and grandma’s experience was random coincidence, and the lamp and TV (on different electrical circuits) just have some funky interference or electrical problems. I suppose it would be more interesting if I did some research on the house and found out somebody died in that room or something, but at this point I haven’t pursued the subject any more than writing it down.

The problem I have is that my mental condition was just as sound then as it ever has been, and the fact that the experiences were happening on a nightly, consistent basis rules out any one-time bizarre fatigue or something I ate rationalization. The experience also terrified me so badly that I actually suppressed it and refused to deal with it or analyze it, which is extremely unusual for me. It was just as real as any other daily experiences I have. Again, I acknowledge that this does not prove anything since the majority of the witnessed events were only encountered by me. But from my perspective, I have no reason to doubt what happened, only questions as to what it likely was. Imagine if you saw an actual alien spaceship with your own eyes, no doubt about it, but no one else did. Does that mean it wasn’t real? It may seem easy for an outside observer to write it off as my imagination, but the point is to envision yourself in my place. Can there be other possible, somewhat reasonable explanations?

[jimbowley]

Dman, for me the thing that most needs explaining is why you didn't wake your wife up so she could see the floating blobs?

[melancholeric]

My wife?s grandparents, who always travel to Texas for the winter (we live in Oregon) offered to let us stay at their house while they were gone.

Have you ever asked them if they have experienced anything like that?

( Probably not, considering that this is obviously not such a thing you'd love to talk about. I suggest you to ask them anyway. There may be something going on in the house. Or you could ask about the history of the house. )

[Miss Anthropic]

That sound that you described as right in your ear? Like it wasn't spoken out loud exactly, but you heard it in your head processed just as if your ears had perceived the words out loud? (That is my way of distinguishing between the thoughts in your head, and "hearing" something inside your head) That is clairaudience. Cool story Dman. I totally understand you!

[Dman]

Yes, I know, waking my wife *in retrospect* seems like something I should have done; I never even considered it until I wrote my story, and I too thought "why the hell didn't I wake her". The reason (which I try to explain in the story) was that I was in denial about the situation. It's very difficult to describe, except that I refused to believe what I was seeing/feeling/hearing. By waking my wife, I would be acknowledging they truly existed. Plus, I did not want to scare her.

I guess secretly I was hoping it was my imagination, so that I wouldn't have to deal with the alternative (supernatural). I know, it sounds like a cop-out & if I could go back in time I would definitely wake her up, but I was in a different frame of mind when I was actually experiencing it. Does that make sense? In fact at the time I thought my frequent turning the TV off and then back on at night would bother her, but it never woke her up. I was afraid if the TV woke her up, I would have to tell her why I was turning it back on all the time, and I couldn't bear to admit what was happening. Plus, we didn't have anywhere else to live at the time, and couldn't abandon her grandparents house, at least without saying "the place is haunted" and looking like a couple of goofballs. When I did finally tell my wife, she also asked me why I didn't wake her, but understood. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was too scared/shook up to be analytical enough to think "hmm, I'm going to need a witness to this". I justed wanted it to go away, imagination or real.

As for her grandparents, yes, I am trying to think of a way to "sneak" something into the conversation that may open up this topic (they still live there). I just haven't figured out how yet or mustered up the courage. Now that I've been talking about this on this forum though I feel a stronger need for closure, so I'll certainly post any information I get out of them here when/if that time comes.

[Dman]

That sound that you described as right in your ear? Like it wasn't spoken out loud exactly, but you heard it in your head processed just as if your ears had perceived the words out loud? (That is my way of distinguishing between the thoughts in your head, and "hearing" something inside your head) That is clairaudience. Cool story Dman. I totally understand you!

Thanks for understanding.

What's funny is that without the visual observations of those foggy things, I probably would have dismissed it all as in my head, even with how real it was. The head I saw peeking around the door can be explained as overactive imagination, it was dark, no lights on. The "clairaudience" (never heard of that, I'll have to google it - thanks) although just about made me mess my pants, could also by itself be written off to imagination; I've never heard voices in my head before (or since), but in a heightened sense of agitation and fear, who knows? It's really the "blobs" that I have the most difficulty with. I stared right at them, saw them move, whether the light of the TV was on or in the dark, night after night. They were there, absolutely no doubt in my mind. Then, when you put all the other little pieces together, it starts adding up to "maybe there's something going on here".

[Pierce]

Seems you've developed a slight crack in your cosmic eggshell. Sounds like a genuine haunting to me. Thousands of stories just like yours have been documented over the centuries. So, you are not alone. Also, I think once you have this sort of experience, you are more apt to have it again, as the subtilties that others dismiss become glaring to you.

I've had many such experiences, and they are definitely disconcerting. I did the same thing you did, writing a "fictional" story to get it out of my head and evaluate it. You have three choices: deny, explore, or leave well enough alone. Choice #3 is the most appealing, since you don't have the thing following you around. Unfortunatly, your INTP penchant for wanting to explain everthing poses a problem with that.

I suspect that waking your wife would not have helped much really. She may have witnessed the same thing; she may have experienced "it" differently than you; or she may not have perceived anything unusual at all. I've had it go all three ways at different times. At any rate, you are still left with your personal, vivid impressions to deal with.

With this sort of thing, I think people find the answers they want to find: what do you want the outcome of your query to be?

[SensEye]

I re-iterate my earlier post on this thread. There seems to be something about the normally rational INTP psyche that loses it when it comes to ghosts. The obvious explanation is that Dman was suffering from some sort of hallucination/over active imagination. This is supported by the fact that nobody else had these experiences plus even he only had the experiences when he was alone. I'm sure in his mind they seemed real enough, but there is no call to go running off to the supernatural as the most likely explanation.

[Pierce]

So, you're not the only one under scrutiny, I'll offer up a couple of my experiences, too.

When I was a teenager, I enjoyed long solitary walks. On a moonlit nights, I'd walk up lonely mountain roads and think. One such night, I climbed up to stand on an old tree stump. In the distance, perhaps a hundred feet away, I heard a twig snap -- at least that's what it sounded like. It was a loud, crisp snap as of a large animal or man stepping on a dry, brittle branch. Seconds later, I heard a similar sound to the right of the first sound and I assumed the creature had moved. Then another sound, behind me... it could not have moved so fast, as I would have seen it (it would have had to dart right past me), or perhaps there was more than one. Within a couple of minutes the sounds closed in on me, circling me. I was anxious to see the creature and strained my eyes in all directions, but, though the night was bright and I could make out the details of the landscape, I could see nothing moving. Soon, the sounds were at the base of the tree stump where I stood, circling around me, loudly popping like caps rapidly firing. "It" was so close and the night so clear I could not have missed seeing it, but I saw nothing. A mounting terror that I had up to now resisted, seized me and I leapt off the stump and ran as fast and far as I could. All curiosity fled me and I had no desire to investigate further.

The second story is terribly close to home and bears some small similarity to yours, only... well, judge for yourself. My first wife (we were married 20 years) would "see" eyes staring at her whenever we were intimate. The eyes were very disconcerting to her and often interrupted our lovemaking (much to my dismay). I could not see them at first -- then I vaguely thought I did, but later dismissed it as prompted imagination. Many long talks ensued, discussing the various possibilities, psychological, spiritual, anything I could think of. Did she recognize them? No. Were they hostile? No. Did they try to communicate with her in any way? No. Did she notice them at any other time? No. Did she ever experience anything like that with anyone else? No. The probing questions led nowhere. I became frustrated and eventually, she stopped talking about them... I thought it was over, but she told me years later that they never stopped. Every night we made love was a haunting for her, the poor girl. Unfortunately, that little bit was the tip of the iceberg with her. Was she psychologically troubled? Yes. Did she see "eyes." I'm sure she did. Were they inside her head or outside? I don't know. Were they the eyes of an incorporeal being, or a product of her troubled mind? I don't know. Did I spend years studying, and consulting PhD psychologists? Yes. Do I have any non-spiritual, rationally satisfying answers? No. Ultimately, the answers I found were spiritual, not rational, although, within the framework of my spiritual paradigm, my answers are quite rational.

Certainly, these two events can be reasonably explained away -- I know the rational "explanations" well. But they don't satisfy me at all. Rational people who've never experienced anything like this blithley dismiss it as irrational, or emotionally or chemically induced hallucination. Their thoughts are quick, but not deep. When you live with it, day in and day out, the rational pronouncements ring hollow, empty of any real substance. After staring at a thing, mysterious and unresolved, repeatedly, over time, eventually you stop wondering whether you are awake or asleep, or whether your mind is playing tricks on you, or whether your imagination is overactive. Denial is no longer a sanctuary. If your life is well ordered and you are plagued by no mystery or paradox, then sleep happily in your rational dream as long as you can.

[Miss Anthropic]

I re-iterate my earlier post on this thread. There seems to be something about the normally rational INTP psyche that loses it when it comes to ghosts. The obvious explanation is that Dman was suffering from some sort of hallucination/over active imagination. This is supported by the fact that nobody else had these experiences plus even he only had the experiences when he was alone. I'm sure in his mind they seemed real enough, but there is no call to go running off to the supernatural as the most likely explanation.
You won't understand unless you happen to have the fortune/misfortune to experience something like that. That is what people who have never had an "experience" say. "I'm sure in your mind it was real...." That is so patronizing.

[Geoff]

Re the Dman experience.

I watched this interesting documentary that set out that low frequency harmonics cause disturbances to brain wave patterns. In this one documented example there was a 'haunted' lab, and people working in there kept seeing (wait for it) 'balls of fog floating in the corner of their eye and disembodied heads floating at the tops of the ceiling'.

It really freaked people out and people wouldnt work there. Eventually they had their what was a 'faulty' air extractor fixed and the problem went away. What was happening was that something in the partly broken fan was creating those 'uncomfortable' low frequency resonances that can so disturb the mind. It seems as if in some people this can cause low grade hallucinations and visual auditory disturbances.
This is not to say that this was behind your experience, but there is a remarkable similarity in the description of the floating balls!

-Geoff

[Dman]

Well, after posting my story here the other day, I was encouraged to ask my wife the other night if her grandma has ever spoke of anything “unusual” besides that which I mentioned in my story (this is only the 4th or 5th time I’ve talked about this with my wife). She told me that her grandma mentioned that she often feels like someone is watching her, and that she hears funny noises sometimes (remind me to ask my wife to clarify – I forgot to ask her whether the noises were in her head or sounded elsewhere, I assumed she meant elsewhere in the house). My wife said she was surprised that her grandma had said those things at the time (I don’t know the context of the conversation either) since as I mentioned they are not the type of people to believe or even talk about stuff like that. Again, no smoking gun, but it kind of creeped me out to hear that anyways. My wife also brought up the lamp and the TV coming on by itself again, saying she doesn't know how her grandparents can so readily dismiss it. She has a point; but I'm no expert on TV's. What could logically explain the thing randomly, fairly infrequently, turning on by itself? If it's something that can be checked, I'll check it. I would actually be interested if they got rid of it and bought a new one, and then see what happens.

There could be more to come, I guess her uncle is temporarily staying with her grandparents (which is scary in itself, actually kind of pathetic, but that’s another story!), in the same room we had been in. My wife is going over there for dinner next Wednesday, I’m going to have her ask him if he has noticed anything “unusual” in the bedroom, or house. I don’t know where he stands on believing or not, but it will be interesting to hear if he has any “stories”. I’ll admit that I will be disappointed if he doesn’t. I’ll try to get some information on previous owners of the house too, if I can.

I suppose I should accept the fact that no matter what, I cannot convince everyone that what I witnessed was real, or outside my imagination. But I do feel compelled to say that to me, accepting the possibility that it was my imagination is just as unlikely as saying it was “supernatural”. The stuff I experienced I didn’t even know was fairly typical “haunting” stuff until after I started looking into it. I thought ghosts were transparent people, and I never heard of shit whispering stuff in your ear, and getting uncomfortable feelings, etc. Yeah, the room was real cold too, which I found out was common. In fact I initially wondered if maybe that’s why people think they see ghosts is because it has something to do with the temperature affecting your brain, causing you to feel funny and hallucinate, but that would mean we would hallucinate ghosts when we were skiing in the mountains all the time too, right?

This does not mean I absolutely believe in the supernatural, it only means I do not absolutely reject the possibility, as I once did.

[Dman]

Re the Dman experience.

I watched this interesting documentary that set out that low frequency harmonics cause disturbances to brain wave patterns. In this one documented example there was a 'haunted' lab, and people working in there kept seeing (wait for it) 'balls of fog floating in the corner of their eye and disembodied heads floating at the tops of the ceiling'.

It really freaked people out and people wouldnt work there. Eventually they had their what was a 'faulty' air extractor fixed and the problem went away. What was happening was that something in the partly broken fan was creating those 'uncomfortable' low frequency resonances that can so disturb the mind. It seems as if in some people this can cause low grade hallucinations and visual auditory disturbances.
This is not to say that this was behind your experience, but there is a remarkable similarity in the description of the floating balls!

-Geoff

Hmmm... that's really interesting. I'd be willing to investigate that, although I'm not sure how...I wonder if there's a cheap gadget that can measure low frequencies like that. If that turned out to be the case, I would be ecstatic. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, some type of hard evidence one way or the other.

Whether something provides more evidence for a supernatural occurrence or against is irrelevant to me, I just want a more concrete answer other than it was all in my head. The reason I have difficulty accepting that answer is because it was so real to me that if it was all in my head, then every experience I have - including typing this post - could just be part of my imagination.

Sorry for the long posts.

[Seraph]

I read a book about "real-life" hauntings written by some psychic lady a couple months ago. It was pretty good; she offered a lot of proof of past-lives theory, which I tend to want to believe. It's always nice to know that if I fuck up this life, I have another shot at it next go-around.