I don't believe in ghosts...I think it's possible though that beings from other parallel worlds could be perceived briefly.. Their influence though is not negative as some believe but generally positive..

-Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

I don't believe that Ghosts are the spirits of people who died. That is because I think the soul is just a metaphor for the summation of neurocircuits creating consciousness and cognition. The Soul is not an entity as such but our view of the consciousness of a living complex brain.

People see things. Some see what we call ghosts (human looking shadowy figures.) Some see Jesus, Muhammad, the Virgin Mary, Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, or JHWY as a burning bush. Some see space aliens, UFO's, Nessie, Bigfoot, Abraham Lincoln in the White House, alien abductions, and Chesapeake Snollygosters.

What are they seeing? I really don't know. They could be merely seeing some composite of visual memories generated by the marvelous human brain. They could be some glimpses of people or things from another dimension that we usually cannot see. Many have postulated that there may be many parallel dimensions and universes that coexist with us but generally never interact. Perhaps occasionally a door or window opens to a parallel dimension and we see its inhabitants (and they may see us as "ghosts.")

My final answer is "I don't know."

Amergin

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Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and neither do you. There is no evidence of God so belief is optional.

I have never seen a ghost, but I would certainly like to! My wife claims to have, and I have never had reason to doubt her honesty, I just can't substantiate either her claim or ghosts in general.

I don't know either.

-TC

I tend to agree with this kind of explanation. I've known people who can see or hear those on the "other side." Some have this gift from the time they're small children. Others may experience this kind of phenomena shortly before death. Larry King had an interesting show just a couple weeks ago with two small girls who have this gift. Perhaps the veils between our reality and other realities are not as solid as they appear. I have not seen anything like a ghost, though I feel I received a communication from both my aunt and my grandmother after they died. My own experience, as well as hearing about the experiences of others, leads me to believe that there are indeed other realities. Infact, our own reality may be more like a state of consciousness, or energy, than anything solid or "real."