What's Up With Ghosts?

Steve and I discuss Ghosts. Do they exist? What about ghost hunters?
🪐 SUBSCRIBE / 🚀 LIKE / 👽 COMMENT
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
Website & Podcast: www.theskepticsguide.org/
Patreon: / skepticsguide
Facebook: / theskepticsguide
Instagram: / theskepticsguide
Twitter: / skepticsguide
TikTok: / skepticsguide
✉️ Send your questions to:
[e-mail]
Check out Our Books:
📘 The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake
📙 The Skeptics’ Guide to the Future: What Yesterday’s Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow
www.theskepticsguide.org/our-...
#SGU #SkepticsGuide #Science

[@hypersapien]

I have a chain of logic I use to make ghost-believers question their beliefs. It's not a guarantee to change their mind, but it at least causes them to pause and think about reality. It goes like this: 1) Do you believe ghosts are ethereal, or corporeal? -if they answer corporeal, question why we've never captured ghosts in any form of restraint -if they answer ethereal, which is probably more likely given the mythology of passing through walls and floors, proceed to question 2 2) Are ghosts subject to the laws of gravity? -If they answer no, citing ghosts floating and levitating, then inform them about the speed of the rotation of earth and the orbit of the earth around the sun, and what would prevent the ghost from being catapulted into outer space if not for the force of gravity. -If they concede that gravity effects ghosts, ask them what would prevent an ethereal being that's effected by gravity from being pulled to the center of the earth and getting stuck there. I think these questions force the believer to think of some ideas that challenge their reality. They may likely resort to some special pleading or fantasy to explain their belief, but if they do pause to consider these questions it's a step in the right direction.

[@tryagainx900]

Dude this is brilliant - thank you!! (“Dude” is meant here as an honorific, btw - I believe a person of any gender can earn that title by being sufficiently awesome 😊)

[@seanbradley2712]

Houdini was effective, but he also had help because he was too famous. Rose Mackenberg was his chief detective. In court, she'd testify that people told her a lot of things about herself (that she was a teacher, or a widow - she never married - etc.), but never once had any mystic said that she was a detective.

[@peterjv8748]

I don't know how anyone who truly believes in ghosts can get any sleep. I'd be scared to death anytime I was alone.

[@qpSubZeroqp]

I used to be like this when I was little. I grew up around so many superstitious people. It's probably why I've become such a realist and skeptical in general

[@razzbazle1582]

Exactly!

[@williamrunner6718]

Many of them are!

[@jkfausnight]

I was mowing the backyard when out of the corner of my eye I caught my wife watching me from the deck. I focused on my mowing, but after a while I wondered why she was still staring at me. I felt a very real presence of my wife, as real as anytime I have ever felt her presence. When I finally stopped the mower and looked up to ask her why she was watching me, I realized she was a potted plant about my wife’s height. My wife had been gardening in the front yard the whole time. Our sense of other entities is generated in the virtual reality of our consciousness. So to a believer, ghosts are as real as anything else.

[@jaredhynum4823]

“The virtual reality of our consciousness” Perfectly said… despite what we’d like to think, humans are not objective, infallible machines. Our sense the “obvious” “reality” we perceive is actually entirely constructed. Temperature is not “real.” It’s just an average of the speed of molecules. Sound is not “real.” It’s just an average of the pressure of molecules, over time. Etc, etc.

[@keithdavies6771]

I've seen it with sleep paralysis. I had one time when I saw my wife out of the corner of my eye, and looked to see the form gone. It was easy to figure out, but it very much, in the moment, seemed to be a ghostly figure. I think most people hear creaks, or mice in the walls, and talk themselves into a. frenzy.

[@marklucas2591]

I live full-time in a motorhome and Boondock 98% of the time. In my 13-years on the road I have often camped in or near cemeteries and walked around them on my own in the pitch blackness and I've never come across anything even resembling a ghost.

[@benjaminchambers4361]

Ultimately the decision to believe or not is not a rational one based on evidence or reason and, as the saying goes, you cannot reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into. Believers will never give up this stuff no matter the evidence because they don't care about the evidence

[@iridianatola9150]

That would be so cool if you make a critical research of the Romanticism and the Victorian Ghost stories right before the Ghotic movement started. Ppl has been interested and facinated with Ghosts ever since and there is too little information of the Victorian Ghost stories and the begining of the movement.

[@pumpuppthevolume]

and a deity is a powerful space ghost

[@MicahRibbentrop]

I spent three years wasting my life in the pursuit of ghosts

[@dWerkstatt]

Have you talked to Bob about this?

[@williamrunner6718]

You're I talian right? It's like the evil eye. 🤘

[@peterjv8748]

Yeah, they're always wearing those floppy chef hats and kissing their fingers.

[@ii3325]

Yarp. 😚

[@kimberlycarder1817]

I love this show, but reading some of the comments from this channel has made me realize that some of the people commenting are just as ignorant and close-minded as ANY Catholic zealot I've ever encountered. Hope we all learn something today that makes us a better version of ourselves.

[@nickvegas2459]

Ghosts, sasquatch, gods etc. If you notice, the lower the IQ, the more likely you are to believe in the former.

[@shaunleusby1991]

I don’t care what you guys say. Ghosts are real. I’m going to be a ghost some day.

[@jonathanedwardgibson]

How about Behavior without Biology, or any material connection at all? About a decade ago my 12-yr old son woke me in wee hours complaining, “Poppy is in my head” and “In my dream & won’t leave me alone.” I’m blinking in the light wondering what-the-heck, when the ex-wife, his mother, calls saying her father just died a few towns over. What else could I say, but, “we know.” If that mean, cruel, excuse for a man can ‘cross-over’ and still exhibit well-known wretched character behavior, then I’m paying attention. This shit-head was always teasing and wheedling the kids and act menacing to ‘strangers’ like me the son in-law his dementia got wrong. Here was clear understood behavior recognized by all three of us untethered by neurology. You can infer memory resides non-locally. Check your bias at the door.

[@peterjv8748]

If he was a mean and scary old man then he was probably the subject of a-lot of his nightmares.

[@ii3325]

Sounds like some mild mental trauma staying with the poor kiddo. I had a nightmare about my scumbag brother and he lives in Israel, literally the opposite side of the planet. I mean, had they never met?

[@robertgaines9286]

Holy shit, your kid had a nightmare the same day as the man died! Well there's no way that's just a coincidence. Look into your own bias.

[@polishorca7232]

Very ironic to tell them to “check your bias at the door” after you provided anecdotal evidence that you also simultaneously debunked without realizing.

[@Ralf.Rutkat]

​@@robertgaines9286 Hindsight bias is a thing. Think of all the times the kid may have dreamed about him a lot, but nothing special happened on those days. Everybody would just forget those, right? Coincidence is all it takes to explain it...