Ghosts - Or Survival After Death

[Audit]

The only ghosts I'll believe in are the tortured souls of the damned cursed by a malevolent god to spend eternity stuck following the autistic around.

 

[Postal Dude]

I've heard theories that many early sightings (like, back before television basically) of poltergeist/ghost/namekian/whatever the fuck you lunatics are seeing are 'cause of the average human brain being woefully understimulated. Back then, without all our cell phones and 30 minute commute through traffic and whatnot it seems the most riveting entertainment people had was playing hopskotch or watching the occasional public hanging, so I don't blame them for going a little barmy. These days it can be chalked up to plain old carbon monoxide toxicity/grief-induced psychosis/lying though.

 

[Yop Yop]

I myself am curious about your encounter.

When I was younger, my father moved us to New Orleans. He was a fucked up kind of guy. After a while, he started getting into this Caribbean voodoo religion called Santeria (like the the Sublime song). In the religion there are many gods, and I suppose those who practice it place altars for some gods in their house. My father, had placed an altar of the god elegua in our house. Elegua is the God of paths I believe. Basically he tries to tempt humans into doing evil, but our job is to resist his temptations and do good in the world. The alter is typically a small head shaped rock with shells for eyes and feathers for hair.

The night he brought it home he described it to me and my sister. And I didn't think anything of it at all, being a child. Anyway, a few nights passed and all was chill until about a week in. One night, I had my first bout of sleep paralysis. After fighting it, I woke up. When I awoke, I sat up in bed. I had this charizard nightlight plugged into the outlet so there was some light. I was in my top bunk, sister sleeping with my parents. I sat up, and I looked on the floor. I saw a pure black man, head that looked like the altar rock, playing with my fucking Thomas the tank engine trains. I looked at it, it looked at me, I shat myself and jumped off the bunk bed towards the door and ran screaming into my parents room. I don't remember after that.

When I woke up, I walked into the living room. My mom on the couch, dad on the computer. My dad said, describe the ghost you saw. So I did. He had pitch black skin, a cowboy hat, red vest, some type of cowboy chaps, and some boots. My father than displayed a picture of the God on the computer and it was, I shit you not, exactly as I described. In fact, if you google elegua you will see a few depictions of him as I just described.

You are also suppose to give sacrificed to him. Such as coins, spitting wine on the rock (it smelled like shit tbh), and coconuts and I guess chickens too. One day my father bought some baby chicks and we put them in a cage on the patio. Me and my sister used to play with them. On thanksgiving, we went to see Monsters Inc. after the movie we came and wanted to play with chicks. We approached the cage and we saw the chicks had been... Exploded. Fucking blood and shit everywhere. My mom said that the wild dogs had eaten them (there use to be packs of wild dogs in Louisiana at this time). However, the cage was locked, and the meat was still there. Just exploded about the cage.

Shortly after that my mom and him divorced. And we haven't spoken with him since. I spoke to my mother about it once in HS and she told me to shut up and never speak of it again.

I've also had sleep paralysis pretty frequently since then. I'm still a skeptic. I know I was a child, and I could've very well imagined the ghost I saw. But that doesn't explain how well I described him, nor the exploded chickens.

 

[TheScooper]

When I was younger, my father moved us to New Orleans. He was a fucked up kind of guy. After a while, he started getting into this Caribbean voodoo religion called Santeria (like the the Sublime song). In the religion there are many gods, and I suppose those who practice it place altars for some gods in their house. My father, had placed an altar of the god elegua in our house. Elegua is the God of paths I believe. Basically he tries to tempt humans into doing evil, but our job is to resist his temptations and do good in the world. The alter is typically a small head shaped rock with shells for eyes and feathers for hair.

The night he brought it home he described it to me and my sister. And I didn't think anything of it at all, being a child. Anyway, a few nights passed and all was chill until about a week in. One night, I had my first bout of sleep paralysis. After fighting it, I woke up. When I awoke, I sat up in bed. I had this charizard nightlight plugged into the outlet so there was some light. I was in my top bunk, sister sleeping with my parents. I sat up, and I looked on the floor. I saw a pure black man, head that looked like the altar rock, playing with my fucking Thomas the tank engine trains. I looked at it, it looked at me, I shat myself and jumped off the bunk bed towards the door and ran screaming into my parents room. I don't remember after that.

When I woke up, I walked into the living room. My mom on the couch, dad on the computer. My dad said, describe the ghost you saw. So I did. He had pitch black skin, a cowboy hat, red vest, some type of cowboy chaps, and some boots. My father than displayed a picture of the God on the computer and it was, I shit you not, exactly as I described. In fact, if you google elegua you will see a few depictions of him as I just described.

You are also suppose to give sacrificed to him. Such as coins, spitting wine on the rock (it smelled like shit tbh), and coconuts and I guess chickens too. One day my father bought some baby chicks and we put them in a cage on the patio. Me and my sister used to play with them. On thanksgiving, we went to see Monsters Inc. after the movie we came and wanted to play with chicks. We approached the cage and we saw the chicks had been... Exploded. Fucking blood and shit everywhere. My mom said that the wild dogs had eaten them (there use to be packs of wild dogs in Louisiana at this time). However, the cage was locked, and the meat was still there. Just exploded about the cage.

Shortly after that my mom and him divorced. And we haven't spoken with him since. I spoke to my mother about it once in HS and she told me to shut up and never speak of it again.

I've also had sleep paralysis pretty frequently since then. I'm still a skeptic. I know I was a child, and I could've very well imagined the ghost I saw. But that doesn't explain how well I described him, nor the exploded chickens.

Yeah I know what your talking about the religon isn't related to voodoo but it is a african religon found in latin-america and west africa.

Also I guess the alter looked similar to this?

 

[Zarkov]

I’ve seen one.

I've also seen @An Ghost once.

 

[TinBean]

When my Dad died I had a bit of a shared experience with him. Sorry, don't know how to tell this without talking about myself. I hadn't even known that was a thing where people had shared near-death experiences or passing experiences. And I didn't get the whole way. Maybe because I was so distraught at the time. But I went through part of it and it's really hard for me not to believe in life after death now. And then this thing happened with butterflies that was really wild. And then I found a weird butterfly coin in my bed that I've never seen before. My logical brain still tells me a lot of explanations for things. But I tend to think it was legit.


Why would the limits of reality be those things we can perceive with our senses or create devices to "sense"? We know we cannot see all colors and hear all sounds. There are potentially many things that exist but you cannot see them or hear them. They would require some other sense and our bodies do not have that sense. We we've only had cars for under a hundred years or about a hundred years. How long have we had spacecraft? How long have we had antibiotics? We think we're so Advanced and we're really not. The things that we can do now would have been thought to be witchcraft and impossible fictions a few hundred years ago. I don't think we need to get all woo and we do not need to get all mystical. I just think it's part of reality that we can't perceive at this point in our history.

I also took a class in undergrad on science and parapsychology. The professor was a really cool dude who used to be involved in some studies that were done a long time ago. When we went into the statistical probabilities of some kinds of things happening it didn't line up with there being no psychic ability for example. So I think there's probably something to that as well simply because the math showed that there was. That doesn't mean I think people like Sylvia Browne are legitimate. I think she was a liar. She may have had some kind of insight at some point, but most of it was a lie. And she hurt some people.

As for Santeria and Haitian Vodou, there is something there. I know someone who had a similar kind of experience to the guy above and in the context, without getting into it too much, there really wasn't a good explanation for the sequence of events. And the guy who had the experience was a flat out non believer. A grown ass man. Wouldn't sleep in a particular room for a while.


I think the far edges of science are getting closer to explaining, or at least acknowledging, much of this.

It's perfectly okay for people to have their own beliefs and I'm not trying to convince anyone. I just thought I'd share my perspective since you asked. I look at it like this. We live in an amazing reality in an amazing world in these amazing bodies. The way they're ordered from the tiniest little subatomic particle up to the entire organ systems working together. And just the way the universe works from the tiniest tiniest bit to these massive structures. And one thing that I like is that we're nowhere close to really understanding it. People think we are. But that's just like a caveman pounding on his chest thinking he has the power of the Gods because he lit a fire. I think there's more to know what I suspect we will never figure it all out. And I think that's kind of cool.

So, I am not 100 percent convinced of anything. But I think a lot of this is somewhere between possible and probabal. Sorry if this is poorly organised. Have a bitch of a headache today that just will not quit.

 

[Some JERK]

If even 0.8% of people who ever died became ghosts, there would currently be more ghosts than living people on Earth.

 

[Plague Spectrum]

I know this is dumb but I no doubt believe in ghosts. :powerlevel:I live in an very old house that’s been constantly restored and renovated over time that many have lived in and about 3-4 have died in:powerlevel: specifically the living room of my house. It can get cold easily, objects you left there are sometimes moved without the knowledge of others who live with me of its whereabouts, random chills running down your back and this one side table that we had to move because everything on it would be knocked over constantly without explanation. So yeah there’s my dumb ghost/paranormal activity story.

 

[:thinking:]

Ghosts are probably mirages of a kind we do not understand yet.
Or people are just seeing patterns where there are none.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)

 

[TinBean]

Ghosts are probably mirages of a kind we do not understand yet.
Or people are just seeing patterns where there are none.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_(mirage)

I do think that explains some of it. Something about the way the human brain functions where we pick out human voices and human faces and random patterns where there is no human voice or human face. I think some of it is probably like an echo. Especially when you keep in mind the nature of time from a scientific perspective and time place I think the energy, and energy is real, that gets put out when there's a traumatic event can get kind of trapped in the atmosphere in people. I don't know why some people can and some cannot. Maybe part of that has to do when things are optimal for it, such as barometric pressure. Then I think others are legit prior humans. Stuck somehow or a fraction of their non-physical selves becomes splintered off.

Anyway, the idea of residual hauntings, when an event leaves an imprint that replays, could be similar to the mirage you mentioned. I'm sure you've seen those cities in the sky photos and there's a good scientific explanation for how water and such in the atmosphere makes it appear these cities are in the sky on very rare occasions. It could be something that we don't understand yet about time and energy that causes these events to seep through and then that would be like a mirage.

 

[An Ghost]

Tfw your autism is so bad that even after your mom cuts your head off with a bow saw you crave consistency still and come back as an ghost and still demand chicken tendies.

Try cutting my head off now bitch.

 

[TheScooper]

Tfw your autism is so bad that even after your mom cuts your head off with a bow saw you crave consistency still and come back as an ghost and still demand chicken tendies.

Try cutting my head off now bitch.

But I would have to use a ghost saw.

 

[Sex Cannon Lupa]

Ghosts are real... and they're RACIST.

tl;dr - loudmouth shuckin' and jivin' nigga livin' his best life thinks ghosts are racist and leaves. Zoomers in comments immediately demand an end to afterlife racism.