They say "ghosts are real" but I don't believe it. What is your opinion about ghosts?

I don’t know, I had one experience that oddly felt like my grandfather winking at me in my home. My husband believes, as he and his family supposedly lived in a haunted house.

In the end, I kind of want to believe but like crystals and moon water, I don’t take it seriously at all, just entertainment.

I don’t dismiss the possibility they exist – certainly it is quit possible. I wish that there was some sort of of proof (other than peoples’ anecdotes, which can’t be verified) that they existed.

I believe in a lot of thing that may not be real like creepy pasta and sometimes ghosts.

I’ve talked to a number of people that have claimed to have seen ghosts, but usually the story starts with “I was just waking up when…” so I don’t give full credence to those claims even though the people I respect greatly. However I have heard a ghost. It was dribbling a basketball by the sound of it. I was already awake, getting ready for work when I heard the sound that sounded exactly like someone bouncing a basketball on concrete. It was about 4 in the morning so I thought it was odd and went to look out the front of the house to see who it was. As I neared the front door, the position of the sound seemed to move to behind me. No one out front, so I followed it again. As I got near again, it seemed to be coming from a different direction. I realized I wasn’t going to find it. It did not sound like anything like pipes rattling or steam venting or any of that nonsense. Eventually it stopped. I told my wife about later that day and she said she never heard anything like that and was doubtful of my story.
I heard the same sound numerous times over the next few months, not always at the same time of day…sometimes in broad daylight, other times at night. I could never find out where it was coming from. Eventually my wife heard it one day and asked me what that was. I told her it was the basketball playing ghost, which is what I had termed it. She went through the same useless efforts to find the source and had the same useless results. I do know that a boy killed himself in that house 20 years before (or something like that). Maybe he was still around.
I have no idea if it is still going on since we have since moved (not because of that).

My opinion is that they parallel religion in that they are certainly real enough for those who believe in them, and there are unquestionably enough believers to sustain their enduring tradition.

The chance that ghosts do not exist approach statistical certainty, especially when you throw in Bayesian prior probability factors.

I don’t see any reason to believe in them. When someone passes one of many available tests, I will reconsider.

Ghosts are not real.
Phase shifted, extraterrestrial infiltrators, on the other hand…

I thought that I saw cartoon cat one time.

I think this is a spirited discussion.

My grandfather believed the dead could return in some form and he had quite a large collection of books on seances and spiritualism. I don’t dismiss the idea out of hand though the sceptical part of me asks why ghosts are never seen nowadays when nearly everyone has a mobile phone that could capture proof of their existence.

Ghosts, like “God,” don’t exist.

Proof? @kritiper

I don’t doubt that people have seen ghosts, because I have seen one myself.

The thing is is that they’re very plausibly hallucinations, and far less plausibly apparitions of dead people.

From a scientific aspect, I have to go to the Law of Conservation of Energy. We have energy animating our bodies throughout our lives. When we die, that animating energy has to go somewhere. It is just as conceivable it goes into the collective energy of the universe and that in some cases maintains enough residual to show up as a “ghost”.

What @Caravanfan said. The odds of ghosts being real is up there with angels being real.

@elbanditoroso The Laws of Physics is proof enough for me. Not to mention what my eyes don’t/can’t see.

Or it just goes out, @seawulf575, like unplugging a lamp. There is no residual energy after you unplug a lamp.

@seawulf575 The “animating energy” results from metabolism, which is why we need food, and how our bodies are around 98.6F.

When metabolism stops, and you die, the body goes to the ambient temperature, and the heat that was once there has gone to the external system.

None of that lost heat energy carries enough information to form a “ghost”.

@Kropotkin yes, metabolism is the burning of fuel to keep things going. But let me ask you…are you worried about Covid-19? How about handguns? Are you worried about right wing terrorists running around? How about Trump claiming voter fraud? Are you worried about anything at all?
If any or all of these answers is yes, if you are more than a fence post, then you have something driving you. Something that lets you evaluate things, interpret things, fear things. If all you are is metabolism you are truly a jellyfish, not just a Fluther jelly.

We worry about these things when we’re alive, not when we’re dead. There are no such things as ghosts.

@seawulf575 Brain metabolism is 20% of the body’s metabolism.

Worrying about stuff consumes a lot of energy. As does convincing yourself that you’re more meaningful than a jellyfish, or any other living organism.

@Kropotkin You didn’t really address my comment, did you? Nice side-step. Nice attempt at rewriting my answer so that you avoid actually admitting you were wrong. Metabolism is nothing more than the conversion of food within a cell to perform vital processes. It doesn’t address the higher order things such as preferences, likes and dislikes, etc…those things the brain does with that 20% of the body’s metabolism. You know…the things that make you different from every other living thing on Earth. You are not exactly like every other human, you are not like a dog, you are not like a bird, an earthworm, a tree…nothing else is just like you. So what makes you different from every other thing? They all have some sort of metabolism so gee…shouldn’t everything be the same?
As for me believing I am more meaningful than a jellyfish or any other living organism, you are attempting to rewrite my comment. A jellyfish is somewhat unique in that all it does is exist to feed itself. It makes no decisions, it makes no choices, it really doesn’t even have a brain. It takes in food and it metabolizes it to help it grow and eat some more. Period. That is what you were describing when you make a statement that all life is is metabolism.

@seawulf575 There’s nothing special about ‘higher order things’, which are accounted for by the brain.

Everything is slightly different to each other, even within the same species and close relatives, because of genetic recombination, random mutation, and epigenetic effects (same genes producing different traits). Even in asexual species that basically make clones of themselves, there’s still some variation through random mutation.

Regardless, if ghosts are some manifestation of “animating energy” escaping at the point of corporeal death, then there should be ghosts of various (all?) other species.

@Kropotkin another thought with the metabolism argument, or @Dutchess_III saying we just turn off like a light switch is: what about the Conservation of Energy? Where does all that energy go to when we “turn off”? Metabolism is chemical reactions inside a cell. As with all chemical reactions, they will continue as long as there are reactants. Us eating food and drinking water provide those reactants. But when it stops, what becomes of the energy? In a chemical reaction the energy is spent forming new products of the reaction. So why does metabolism just stop? We are still feeding it so it should be able to go on. If it is cell degradation, then what is being created? Something has to maintain conservation. What form is the energy taking?
As to if ghosts of all species can exist, it is possible. There are numerous reports of “ghost pets” or other animals still haunting places. Do an internet search and you will find page after page of reports and stories about them. I guess there could be “ghost trees” but then, how would you tell? It’s not like a tree interacts with you on a regular basis.

It. Just. Stops.
Why is that so hard to grasp?
Why aren’t you struggling with the concept of a worm or a dog just….dying? Dead. Gone.

The body does not produce nebulous “energy”. It converts chemical compounds into other chemical compounds, with the by-product of heat.
You are not producing Ki, which you can then channel into a Kamehameha.
Upon ‘death’, circulation stops, which means cells do not get supplied with nutrients and oxygent anymore, which means metabolism does in fact stop.

The End. All she wrote.

A dead body provides energy for scavengers like vultures and for numerous microorganisms that participate in the process of returning “dust to dust, ashes to ashes”.

@seawulf575 The processes of life convert energy and rearrange matter. There’s never a net creation or destruction or energy.

I’ve had enough experiences to not question the presence of things unseen.