I’m just going to come right out and say it, because it’s true, and voicing it might help. It’s a creepy sort of night. The super dark, wind blowing, kind of creepy that gets the imagination running out of control. Which, since I’m being honest, doesn’t always take that much. As in, right now. I’m getting seriously spooked very quickly here. You know that feeling, the one that you’re being watched even though there’s no one else around? The feeling that gives you goose bumps on your arms, and raises the hair on your neck; that’s the feeling I have right now. I could almost swear that I heard soft footsteps making a crackling sound on the grass too. I stop, listening hard (as opposed to any other type of listening, I suppose) to try and figure out if I am really alone. It was a stupid dare really; wandering alone in the graveyard to prove….what exactly? I don’t remember now, because my overactive brain is nearing the hysterical point and I’m ready to bolt. So what happened next, you ask? I screamed like a school girl and ran, sure that I had seen a shadow move right in front of me. Now that I’m in the safety of my car and driving away, I can reasonably say that I must have imagined it. However, imagined or not, I won’t be doing that again!
Some people firmly believe that ghosts are real. Whether it is born of superstition, religion, or an overactive imagination, there is a growing population joining the ranks of confirmed believers. The imagination can get out of control fairly quickly when certain emotions and the proper atmosphere factor in. However, there is simply no evidence available to factually confirm the existence of ghosts. There is real evidence that will help you look at the issue realistically and scientifically, an...
... middle of paper ...
...y would possibly discredit had they looked at the issue with logic and reason. My suggestion would be to question everything, and then make educated deductions of your own. Don’t blindly believe someone who claims to be scientific, but instead come to your own conclusions based on real evidence, and not fabrications. Ghosts and hauntings are simply a romantic notion.
Works Cited
Norman Wilner Special to the, Star. "The great ghost hoax." Toronto Star (Canada) n.d.: Newspaper
Source. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
"Paranormal." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Radford, Ben. "Ghost-Hunting Mistakes: Science and Pseudoscience in Ghost Investigations."
CSI. Skeptical Inquirer, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. November/December 2010
Radford, Benjamin. "Are Ghosts Real? Science Says No-o-o-o." LiveScience. TechMedia Network,
29 Jan. 2013. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
As I interviewed Annie Filban about her personal experience with spirits, I found to my judgment that it seemed she based a lot of her belief in her story upon faith. Even though she believed something was in fact out of the norm, and was making peculiar movements and noise in her home, she was still skeptical with some of her statements. Filban responded on different occasions to “I don’t know” and “I guess,” which lead me to believe her belief is not based upon evidence as much as it relies on her faith.
I was told a story about one of Cloudcroft's more famous ghosts when casually lounging in the undergraduate student physics lounge at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a group of students during a lunch break before class. This occurred during early April, 2005. I inquired whether anyone knew any ghost stories or folklore. A friend of mine volunteered that she knew several ghost stories from her travels. The storyteller was a 23-year-old Caucasian female from an upper-middle class family in Baltimore. She currently lives in Crofton, MD, and is a physics and astronomy major.
“The strange thing about the paranormal is that no matter how often [a person proves] it, it remains unproven” (Chopra). Given personal experience and evidence by professionals that have dedicated their lives to find answers regarding the paranormal and the afterlife. There will always be skeptics so long as there are humans with their own thoughts and opinions. Despite what skeptics say,ghosts exist; there are several eyewitness accounts, religious traditions, and traditional cultural stories that support the paranormal.
Given the title of this work, you may mistakenly believe (as did at least one prior owner of the book copy I had read from, if their annotations are any indication) that this is a literal investigation into all things paranormal and society’s investment of that which goes bump in the night. In “Ghostly Matters: Hauntings and the Sociological Imagination”, Avery F. Gordon offers academics and ethnographers – those whose profession it is to unearth the secreted relationships between the signifier and the signified, the subject and object, the real and unreal - a disturbing ghost story that should leave those of us in the field who came claim these titles with both the deepest of darkest chills and, through a new method of revealing and acknowledging the ghosts we feel, the hope for something akin to redemption. (In this way, perhaps, Gordon accomplishes many of the same feats as Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe).
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet’s father is intended to be seen as a real ghost. Around 1600, when the play Hamlet was written, many people believed in mystical creatures like witches, monsters, and most importantly: ghosts. With so many people believing in these characters, it makes sense that Shakespeare portrays the ghost of Hamlet’s father as a real figure. Many examples support this, such as when the guards in Act I scene i see the ghost, which proves it’s not just in Hamlet’s imagination. But some people can not see the ghost, such as Hamlet’s mother in Act III scene iiiii. Hamlet sees the ghost but she can not. This could be used as evidence to say the ghost is not real though. Shakespeare shows us though this information, the high complications oh having ghosts in a story.
Radford, Benjamin. "Are Ghosts Real? Science Says No-o-o." LiveScience. N.p., 19 Jan 2013. Web. 13 Nov 2013. .
A ghost, according to the article “History of Ghosts” on History.com, is a person's spirit once it has separated itself from the body after death. Also known as specters, ghosts continue existing even after the heart stops and the corpse is cold, and they fall under the category of paranormal phenomena. When something is considered paranormal, it simply means that science has no explanation for it. So if science can't explain it, it can't be real, right? Not necessarily. It just means that it hasn't been proven a fact, it's all in theory. But Jack Porter makes a valid point in his article, “The Study of Paranormal Phenomenon is a Legitimate Science”, when he says, “It is important to remember the Big Bang is a theory, but that is still considered science.”
...r lived in the house experienced some type of paranormal activity. The information was concluded was doubtful in many ways. The evidence about the woman hanging from the tree behind the house would be doubtful. Anything could have happened behind the house on the tree. The person could have just be seeing things or having a flashback about something that happened previous years ago.
aranormal activity has been a cause of fear and excitement throughout history. The unknown attracts the curiosity from those who wonder whether the supernatural is real or a figment of the imagination. Ghosts are one of the supernatural beings whose existence is questioned every day. Many want to deny the existence of ghosts because they are terrified of other phantoms who may exist and ignore the evidence that has been brought forth throughout the years. However, ghosts are supernatural pheromones whose existence still impacts today’s society.
A ghost is a soul that appears as a dead person or is against a living person. Most people still believe in ghosts even though they have not seen one. The first sightings of ghosts date back to 856 A.D (Stories, 2014). Ghosts mostly make loud noises and disturbances to let people know that they are in the midst. In the first century A.D., the great Roman author and statesman Pliny the Younger recorded one of the first seen ghost stories in his letters, which became noticeable for their bright story of life during the peak of the Roman Empire. The world around us has become more technical with the findings and history of ghosts not cited correctly (Stories, 2014)). The place ghosts come from or occupy varies depending on their spiritual abilities. Ghosts feel more comfortable in a place that is unrestrained and enables them to move freely (Zamora, 2014).
www.theatcoghost.com--A site detailing directions on how to see the ghost with an accompanying message board in which individuals recount their own experiences of attempting to witness the ghost.
Paranormal Activity is similar to pseudoscience and involves experiences outside of science (Hines, 2003). However, there is another side to these strange occurrences which includes UFOs, alien contact, and the appearance of unusual creatures. According to Imbrogno (2008) “No matter how skeptical you are, there are three things that cannot be denied: that reports of paranormal experiences exist, that they persist, and they are increasingly occurring on a global scale” (pg.16). According to Hines (2003) “Paranormal phenomena includes extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, and so forth” (pg.20). The term UFOs, unidentified flying objects, is the reported sighting of any object or arrangement of lights that do not have a logical or natural explanation. The first reported incident in America occurred in 1947, when an amateur pilot, Kenneth Arnold, made claims of a sighting while flying his small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington which caused the U.S. government to begin searching for extraterrestrials (Stephey, 2009). Moreover, Chinese texts from the 4th century make claims of a “moon boat” that visited once every 12 years hovering above the country to become the earliest sighting in recorded history (Stephey, 2009). Although issues such as speed, shape, and size continues to differs, the U.S. Air Force commissioned Project Blue Book, an official record of sights that occurred in the U.S. from 1952 to 1969 logging over 12,000 sightings or events involving UFOs.
The Nelly Butler hauntings is referred to as the first recorded ghost story in American history (LiBrizzi 5), and possibly the most exciting hauntings to date as there are still many unsolved mysteries. The apparition appeared on more than 30 separate occasions to over 100 witnesses in Sullivan, Maine, just over fifteen years after the American Revolution (5-6). Although the Nelly Butler apparition is one of the most convincing ghosts of all time, it was subject to suspicions of fraud. These claims turn out to be groundless as the evidence reveals the ghost to be genuine.
The article “Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality: Ghosts, Vampires, and Zombies”, written by Costas J. Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi. The authors try to explain or prove that ghosts, vampires and zombies do not exist through scientific methods and explanations. The authors main argument to show that these claim are false, they say” we point out inconsistencies associated with the ghost, vampire, and zombie mythologies as portrayed in popular films and folklore and give practical explanations to some of their features” (Efthimiou and Gandhi “Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality: Ghosts, Vampires, and Zombies”) Their argument is obvious that they will point out the
I looked up at the black sky. I hadn't intended to be out this late. The sun had set, and the empty road ahead had no streetlights. I knew I was in for a dark journey home. I had decided that by traveling through the forest would be the quickest way home. Minutes passed, yet it seemed like hours and days. The farther I traveled into the forest, the darker it seemed to get. I was very had to even take a breath due to the stifling air. The only sound familiar to me was the quickening beat of my own heart, which felt as though it was about to come through my chest. I began to whistled to take my mind off the eerie noises I was hearing. In this kind of darkness I was in, it was hard for me to believe that I could be seeing these long finger shaped shadows that stretched out to me. I had this gut feeling as though something was following me, but I assured myself that I was the only one in the forest. At least I had hoped that I was.