Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
You don't speak for anyone but yourself. So move on if you don't care. Noone makes you hang out in this forum getting all upset. That's your choice.
Why do ghosts wear human clothes?
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You don't speak for anyone but yourself. So move on if you don't care. Noone makes you hang out in this forum getting all upset. That's your choice.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Reported for insult...
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
When you asked me for examples in post 25, I made it very clear in post 26 that we are only on step one.
If you're not ready to learn about the fallibility of human perception, there's no point in proceeding to step 2.
I'm not. You are self-admittedly unaware of the highly fallible nature of human perception, processing and our dependency on memory recall. I didn't say that; you did.
Don't take any of my word for it. You shouldn't be needing me to tell you any of this. If you have anything to do with the study of human eyewitness account, you are obliged to be well-read on how the process works.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Still waiting on studies showing normal people can hallucinate people before them. Everything else you post is tapdancing.
There is nothing to be unaware of because your claim is fallacious. No normal person hallucinates or imagines a person in detailed clothing walking before them. It doesn't happen.
Detailed???
I have never yet seen any photo of any supposed supernatural/paranormal event that was detailed.
And yes, every one is capable of hallucinating. Especially those claiming they have seen ghosts and goblins, or Bigfoot and Aliens.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
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Details? I can't remember the last time I hallucinated, probably as a teenager when I had too much to drink...Otherwise I don't hallucinate...dream? certainly, and sometimes quite realistic.
Is that enough detail?
Oh, and the photos proved nothing except that photos can be faked.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Again, hallucination is a word you are using incorrectly. It is not helping convince anyone that you understand perception.
Still at step 1. Did you do the blind spot test? Do you acknowledge that your mind inserts things into your perception so that your vision appears uninterrupted?
That is a rhetorical question. You won't answer it because you know that it is a demonstrable and irrefutable property of human perception.
You asked a question about why people see things. I have, at length, addressed that question well within the basic science of human perception.
The fact that you outright deny it is your undoing. You deny well-established fact.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
You are alleging normal people can see people before them that aren't really there. As I already posted, that is the definition of hallucination.
Still waiting for that study proving sightings of full body apparitions are hallucinations. And no I never asked you how people see things. I asked you to show how people can see things that aren't there. As in full body apparitions. You have completely failed to do that. And you continue to fail. Nothing you have posted explains why people see ghosts, not to mention being able to photograph them as well.
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Then your claim that other normal sober people hallucinate is unsupported.
Magical Realist:
Basically, if it comes down to "It happened because I say it happened" and that's the best you have, then you shouldn't expect anybody to place any great weight on your claimed happening.
If you want people to believe that something happened, you need much stronger evidence. For example, independent witnesses, physical evidence - that kind of thing.
And there's the old adage: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. This is where the ghost-hunters all fail.
You're right. There is no probably no evidence that on 16 March, 1995 you lost your car keys for a while and then found them under an unwashed shirt. Does that mean it didn't happen? No. But it does mean that the event is not amenable to scientific investigation (or police investigation for that matter).
Basically, if it comes down to "It happened because I say it happened" and that's the best you have, then you shouldn't expect anybody to place any great weight on your claimed happening.
If you want people to believe that something happened, you need much stronger evidence. For example, independent witnesses, physical evidence - that kind of thing.
And there's the old adage: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. This is where the ghost-hunters all fail.
You have things the wrong way around. The onus of proof is on the claimant. It is up to those who have seen full body apparitions to show that they have a mystical ghostly explanation, as they claim. The mundane explanation (e.g. hallucination) is the default. The fantastical explanation is the one that requires the extraordinary evidence. After all, we have ample evidence that humans are prone to hallucinating.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
No..the onus is on you to show that people hallucinate full body persons in front of them. I have already provided evidence that they see them, that they wear period clothes, that they are often transparent, and disappear. That's the definition of a ghost. If you are claiming they didn't see this but hallucinated it, then just show that normal undrugged sober people hallucinate such things. There should be some well-known experiments proving this by now. Where are they? Better yet, provide some personal experiences of you hallucinating people in front of you. If it happens all the time, then it should be happening to you as well.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
No..that people describe things that happened to them is always sufficient to believe them. Nobody but a prick would go around demanding everyone to provide evidence of all the things they say they have experienced. That's just stupid. Eyewitness direct experience is the gold standard of what happened in every case, from the news to history to autobiographies. And it's sufficient for the paranormal as well. We believe what people say they experienced when there is no compelling reason to doubt them.
With respect, you must be a very easy target for con men, advertisers, politicians and the like. I find it hard to believe that you take everything that everybody tells you as the gospel truth. In fact, the evidence on sciforums speaks against your claim, because you so often fail to believe in things like science, while at the same time going out of your way to believe in any woo that you find on youtube. This screams "bias!" at me.
I agree.
You see, it doesn't matter too much to me whether you actually lost your car keys for a while back in 1995. If you believe you did, that's probably going to be good enough for me, under most conditions.
But when you claim that supernatural people exist who can appear and disappear at will, defy the laws of physics, give messages from beyond the grave, etc. etc. then chances are I'm not going to just take your word for it. For that extraordinary claim, I'm going to ask for extraordinary evidence. It would be no different if you claimed you could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Most people, I have observed, do not have superpowers. If you were to say you have such powers, I think it would be reasonable for me to ask you to give me a demonstration, don't you?
No. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Different witnesses consistently give different accounts of the same events, for example. Eyewitnesses often report what they think they saw rather than what actually occurred.
Do you ever think it strange that a biography of a person can disagree with elements from that person's autobiography? Why do you think that might be? At least one person must be wrong - the biographer or the autobiographer - and perhaps both are wrong. How could we resolve such a dispute, I wonder. What would you suggest?
I agree.
When it comes to the existence of ghosts, there are compelling reasons to doubt. The same can be said for bigfoot, alien spaceships, psychic powers, astrology ... all the woo, basically.
No. See my previous post.
Right. That's the definition of a ghost. It's what is expected when you report a ghost. So, if you don't report those things, the ghost people won't take you into the fold. Right? Which means.... what? Anything?
The scientific literature is full of studies about human perception, including hallucination.
It doesn't happen to me all the time. How about you? Do you see ghosts regularly, MR?
If your claim is that people see ghosts all the time, regularly, lots of people, then maybe we have something to explain. But if it's just a few people, or a few occasions, or a tiny fraction of the population who may have some mental issues, then it seems that the call for a supernatural explanation is somewhat reduced, wouldn't you agree?
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I believe what people say they've experienced when I see they have no agenda or reason to be lying about it. That's just normal sane living. It may make me gullible, but at least I'm not an obnoxious nut who is obsessed with proving everything he hears. That's the risk you take for being able to get along in our society. It's call good faith.
But that's just it. When something is reported often by people, we accept it not as extraordinary but as rather mundane and as evidence of a real event. The reports of paranormal phenomena are both numerous and worldwide, crossing all cultural and class boundaries thruout history. And the reports show the same patterns over and over again. Traits of an objective phenomenon that actually occurs in typical and predictable ways. That people DON'T report being able to leap over buildings hardly ever WOULD make that rather doubtful and demanding of extraordinary evidence. So yes, when a claim is extraordinary in that it is hardly ever made by sane people, then I would demand corroborating evidence. But ghosts are not that extraordinary. They are certainly more common than ball lightning, which we have all readily accepted.
Eyewitness accounts are very reliable when it comes to seeing an actual person with certain clothes walking in front of them. The unreliability comes in with details like what they looked like. That's to be expected. When you experience a ghost otoh, you KNOW you've experienced it. There is little confusion about what you saw.
I 've never heard of autobiographies disagreeing with biographies. But if they did, I'd certainly go by the autobiography.
The number of sightings demands that it be taken seriously as a phenomena. Why are people seeing the same things over and over again? How is that more than one person can see the same thing? Why are things not only seen, but heard as well? Details like these show it is not some alleged visual hallucination. If you were prone to hallucinate anyone, it'd be someone you knew and missed. An old flame maybe or a childhood buddy. You wouldn't hallucinate total strangers with period clothes who intimidate you and scare the daylights out of you.
What are you talking about? These are the things commonly reported by people all over the world. Nobody would make up something so outlandish and then tell other people about it. And they certainly don't hallucinate such things either.
Hallucinations by normal sane people of full bodied persons in period clothes walking before them and then disappearing? No..I'm afraid not.
I have never hallucinated a person before me in my whole life because it doesn't happen. Ghosts on the other hand? Well, I haven't seen one of those either yet mainly because I don't hang out in haunted locations late at night. But then I haven't seen ball lightning either.
Exactly. It is the preponderance of paranormal reports that demands we take them seriously. There are 3500 paranormal investigator clubs in the U.S. alone. That means a whole lot of people are reporting paranormal phenomena. It also means people are scientifically measuring and recording this phenomena all the time in nearly every major city. Ofcourse often times it is debunked as raccoons in the attic or pranks or perhaps mental illness, But to dismiss it as always hallucinations is ridiculous. It just happens way too often.
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Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The trick here is simply the art of distraction. When one sees a ghost before oneself, there is no distracting trickster changing anything on them. It is a simple naturally occurring event, much as you'd see anything else before you. You can't use a stage trick as evidence for a misperception where no trickery is present.
Magical Realist:
I'd say the same, except when they claim to have experienced incredible events which for other reasons are unlikely to be true.
I think you'll find that in reality there are very few obnoxious nuts obsessed with proving everything they hear. Apart from anything else, that would require way too much effort.
I think if you pick 100 random people off the street, only a small minority will claim that they have ever personally seen a ghost.
Similarly, reports of alien encounters these days tend to include descriptions of gray-headed bald aliens with big black eyes. Does that mean all these people are seeing these aliens? Or could it be that people are indoctrinated to report grey aliens with big black eyes? Or even to see grey aliens with big black eyes under the right circumstances (e.g. a particular mental problem).
Dead people who continue to live on, who are partly transparent, who can walk through walls, who can appear and disappear, etc.? Not that extraordinary? Really?
No. I'll bet you didn't even spot the "obvious" changes of clothes in the video I posted above, until you were told about them.
That is a trap. You see what you expect to see. If you think you're going to see ghosts, probably you'll see ghosts.
That would be a mistake. Autobiographies are often self-serving, and the memories that people have are subjective and often unreliable.
Sure. It's an interesting study into human psychology, mass delusion and the like.
You seem to be claiming that people never hallucinate anything. Is that what you think?
So you're among the vast majority of people who have never seen a ghost. Hmm...
No. It means that people like to club together with like-minded people, and just about any excuse will do. Very little of this "scientific measuring" you mention is actually reliable. Noneof it convincingly shows what it is claimed it shows.
I agree that it is not all hallucinations. It's just not supernatural beings. Probably mostly raccoons.
And "eyewitnesses" of ghosts, of course, are never distracted, but are always perfect observers who never make mistakes or see things that aren't really there, or don't see things that are there.
That's true universally, is it? Nobody has ever faked a ghost. Well, thanks for letting us know, Magical Realist.
There was no "trick" in the video I presented to you. The change in the colours of the t-shirts and the tablecloth etc. were all right in front of your eyes. You just didn't notice them.
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