Do fundies believe in ghosts? Do you?

[StarrieEyedKat]

I believe in ghosts. I don't see why a belief (or lack thereof) in god would cause one to not believe in ghosts. I mean, I get why crazy fundies wouldn't, because they're crazy, but I'm an athiest that "believes" in ghosts, and I know christians that believe in them too.

[Buggaboo]

No reason to believe in ghosts. May as well believe in magical drunken pixies zooming around the world on electric gin bottles.

This is really quite disrespectful to those of us who do believe in them, or at least have an open mind to the idea.

If you don't believe in something, that's fine, but don't mock people who do.

Maybe you have the luxury of keeping a closed mind because you've never experienced something, that is not the case for all of us. I've experienced it all my life and come from a family of people who can see / sense spirits.

[clibbyjo]

This is really quite disrespectful to those of us who do believe in them, or at least have an open mind to the idea.

If you don't believe in something, that's fine, but don't mock people who do.

Maybe you have the luxury of keeping a closed mind because you've never experienced something, that is not the case for all of us. I've experienced it all my life and come from a family of people who can see / sense spirits.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Same here. Everyone woman in my family and most all of our kids are intuitive.

[Buggaboo]

I am a professional intuitive psychic. I have removed ghosts from houses, one trying to push me out the door as I was doing it. I was just in someone's attic yesterday telling her about the girl who lives there.

Me too, as you know.

The bottom line is, everyone has had different life experiences, and those experiences shape our beliefs. So if you haven't had an experience with the paranormal and/or you choose not to be open to getting one, that is your prerogative. I can live and let live. But to mock someone else's beliefs and life experience....that's small minded bullshit and frankly it is the same kind of disrespectful intolerance shown by fundies.

[clibbyjo]

Me too, as you know.

The bottom line is, everyone has had different life experiences, and those experiences shape our beliefs. So if you haven't had an experience with the paranormal and/or you choose not to be open to getting one, that is your prerogative. I can live and let live. But to mock someone else's beliefs and life experience....that's small minded bullshit and frankly it is the same kind of disrespectful intolerance shown by fundies.

Exactly. :clap:

[Buggaboo]

And I can tell you from having had the unfortunate experience of growing up in a psychic family in a small town -- most fundies do not believe in ghosts. They believe that if a spirit contacts you then they are a demon.

I know this because I had people tell me when I was younger that my mother was going to hell because she was a medium. Sorry that attitude pisses me off to the hilt because I've had to deal with it all my life. :evil:

[emmyfair]

Because of my experiences as a child with the paranormal, I was exorcised. I grew up believing I was pure evil and destined to burn in hell for all of eternity. I think my experience illustrates the clash between fundies and the paranormal quite nicely.

Yes, I do believe in ghosts.

[Eoywin]

I'm a Christian and I believe in ghosts. I've had too many experiences not to believe. And I live in a haunted house so we are always having things out of the ordinary happen.

My husband was a skeptic until this incidents started happening in this house. He's now a believer. Thankfully, our ghost is pretty friendly and we don't feel scared or in danger.

[Aeryn406]

I absolutely believe. I've been studying the paranormal for 10 + years and have sensed things in almost every building I've ever been in - whether I've been on an actual investigation or not. I've had family spirits visit me fairly often and it doesn't matter if I'm home, at my office, out shopping, etc.

I've also had physical things happen at home that I know were paranormal - the sound of my outside door opening & closing when it was tightly locked, the sound of my cellar door closing as it was within sight of me and already shut, footsteps walking around my 2nd floor when I lived alone, someone calling my name when I was alone, and my dogs reacting to & chasing a friendly spirit cat that I know lives with us. Too much to discount as trickery or my own imagination, but YMMV. :)

[Anxious Girl]

I believe in ghosts. We have 1 in my house, we just don't know who it is. ;) We either think it's the guy that died here, my great-grandmother on my mom's side (I was her favorite great-granddaughter, :oops: or my grandfather on my dad's side.) From my experience, even though the older generation Roman Catholics believe that they're ghosts and spirts, they don't believe that they're pyschics because psychics are against the Church for some odd reason; but the younger generation, like my parents and I, believe that there are real psychics out there along with ghosts and spirts. And now I'm rambling...

[Jinger Jar]

I think I want to believe in ghosts because it means that their might be SOMETHING that happens after we die (and I believe that something could be defined by science eventually), but I am a skeptic. Until I see with my own eyes I will never 100% believe. But that little part of me that wants there to be ghosts LOVES reading about paranormal experiences and watching Ghost Hunters (although I miss the older Ghost Hunters - I want more houses and regular people, and I Grant!)

I read through this thread and loved it - some are completely ridiculous and abviously made up, but some are very very interesting.

http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-di ... 08202.html

I know a guy who's a traveling ER nurse and typically works the night shift. He's got a few stories about things he's seen and heard over the years that he can't explain. The creepiest one for me was the night he noticed the ER had an "extra" patient in an exam room. This hospital was rural and small, and there was just one doctor and a handful of other people on duty. The exam room should have been unoccupied, but there was a shirtless, elderly man sitting on the exam table. My nurse friend asked the guy when he'd checked in, and the man told him he'd already been seen by a doctor. My friend went back to the nurse's station to find out when the doctor has seen this patient. The doctor hadn't seen anyone in that exam room that night. My friend went back to find out what was going on with this guy and - you guessed it - empty exam room.

:o :o

[clibbyjo]

I believe in ghosts. We have 1 in my house, we just don't know who it is. ;) We either think it's the guy that died here, my great-grandmother on my mom's side (I was her favorite great-granddaughter, :oops: or my grandfather on my dad's side.) From my experience, even though the older generation Roman Catholics believe that they're ghosts and spirts, they don't believe that they're pyschics because psychics are against the Church for some odd reason; but the younger generation, like my parents and I, believe that there are real psychics out there along with ghosts and spirts. And now I'm rambling...

I have given readings to many older Catholics and a friend of mine has a nun as a regular customer. :dance:

[Anxious Girl]

I have given readings to many older Catholics and a friend of mine has a nun as a regular customer. :dance:

Damn! Lucky you! I love nuns! :D I wish my grandparents were less supersticious about the Church's feelings towards psychics, 'cause I have a feeling that my great-grandparents would love to talk my grandmother up a storm... (They grew up in rural Italy, where the local Church was the social life because they were hour/hours away from major cities.)

[browngrl]

I don't know what fundies believe but I believe this: there are many things in this world that we do not understand yet. I think that ghosts are one of those things. Are ghosts any more unbelievable than entanglement (i.e. Einstein's "spooky action at a distance") or chimeras (a single organism - even a person- composed of two or more distinct cell lines) or gamma ray bursts or how one fertilized ovum can grow to become a conscious person etc. I find the supernatural fascinating precisely because I don't understand it. So, bring on the ghost stories!

edited for riffles - but I am tired and hungry so I might have missed other spelling grammar mistakes

[themadapple]

I don't believe in god. As for spirits, ghosts? Perhaps, perhaps. The only presence I've ever perceived is that of my father. Even with all of his troubles, he was a free spirit at heart and is not tied to one place. I've attributed a few crazy antics to him. Methinks death doesn't always bring peace or contentment.

Of course, it could be coincidence or all in my head, but who knows? At the very least, I think there are many mysteries.

[Roycroft]

I'm basically a ghost agnostic; I'm open to evidence either way. I've never experienced anything personally, but people I know and consider to be levelheaded have told me about their experiences.

And I love ghost stories. :)

[Mela99]

I think there is too much mystery in the world for us to not believe that there may be something we cannot see. I also think there is something to the idea that some people die so broken and sad that they don't want to move on until they've fixed it, or tell someone.

Life is energy, and when we die, the energy has to go somewhere. Who is to say where it goes or why?

The old courthouse in DC is supposedly haunted by Mary Surratt, the one who was unjustly executed with the Lincoln conspirators.

[Buggaboo]

I'm basically a ghost agnostic; I'm open to evidence either way. I've never experienced anything personally, but people I know and consider to be levelheaded have told me about their experiences.

And I love ghost stories. :)

Thank you. And I want to be clear, I have NO problem with that! I have no problem with open minded skeptics, or any skeptic for that matter, as long as it's expressed respectfully!

[mockingbird]

Fundies would have to believe in ghosts to think they are evil, right? I mean, you can't characterize something as good or evil if you don't even think it's real... too much logic?

My mom went to a talk by a Catholic theologian who thought that maybe some people serve purgatory on earth and that is why they are ghosts.

As a kid I was obsessed with watching Touched by an Angel and reading stories about "hauntings" where people were visited by a good spirit whether they thought that was a ghost or angel or whatever... the angel stories were always one of my favorite things about Christianity. I spent the last 3 years volunteering in grief and hospice work and I heard way too many stories from people not to believe that there is some paranormal activity out there. I am naturally skeptic, but still think there are experiences you can explain and ghosts could exist. I had one experience that I could probably classify as paranormal. I like the theory that it is something that could someday be explained by science, like leaving traces of energy.

[Arete]

I don't believe death is the end. Best I can describe my feelings is that we are energy at the core, and some people have the ability to cross back and forth between the veil seperating life and death. I don't believe in hellfire. I think if you are on the scale of a mass murderer your existence ceases with death, you are not allowed to go forward. If you need some work but are "salvagable", your parked "in between" until you get your act together. Maybe that is what the "scary" ghosts are. If you lived an ethical life, I think you get to join in some sort of greater consciousness.

I've only had one experience in my whole life to this point that could be considered paranormal.

[Boogalou]

This is really quite disrespectful to those of us who do believe in them, or at least have an open mind to the idea.

If you don't believe in something, that's fine, but don't mock people who do.

Maybe you have the luxury of keeping a closed mind because you've never experienced something, that is not the case for all of us. I've experienced it all my life and come from a family of people who can see / sense spirits.

You do realize where you are, right?

[RachelB]

I'm a practicing Christian, but not fundamentalist.

I lived for a year with my grandmother, just after my grandfather died at home-- hospice made it possible for him to die in a familiar place, rather than in the hospital. I wasn't able to be present at my grandpa's deathbed, because my parents didn't want to let me know he was dying until I'd defended my thesis. (The first thing my advisor told me after I finished the defense was that I needed to call home immediately.)

Anyway, I felt my grandfather's presence in that house very strongly during the year I lived there. Every so often, my grandma, or my aunt who lived upstairs, would wake up having just heard him call her name. Sometimes, when I was in my room by myself, writing or reading, I'd feel what felt like a hand resting gently on my head, or an arm resting gently across my shoulders.

This is going to sound like wishful thinking, but-- that whateveritwas was comforting. It helped me feel forgiven, as if he'd known how much I wanted to be there to say goodbye, you've had an incredible life, you are so loved, and I hope whatever else there is beyond this moment, you enjoy it . And it helped me feel as if he was pleased that I was there helping to look out for my grandma while she was grieving. It was a great sweetness to me in a difficult year.

[lilwriter85]

I get flak for it, but I'm an atheist who believes in the possibility of paranormal phenomena. I don't necessarily believe that grandma has come back from the dead to walk around the house at night. There is evidence that there is something going on, and instead of dismissing it we should study it and learn more.

I love watching Ghost Hunters, and sometimes I think they are borderline on what they define as paranormal, but they have also caught some pretty interesting evidence in their investigations I wouldn't dismiss completely.

I'm also an atheist and I also believe in the possibility of paranormal phenomena. I also like watching ghost related shows. I don't watch Ghost Hunters that much, but I like Celebrity Ghost Stories and My Ghost Story.

[Dev83]

I made a ghost stories thread in Chatter, so get cracking people! ;)

[clibbyjo]

Boogalou

Reply with quote Post Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2012 5:22 pm

I don't think its the same. We have known members who are psychics here. I personally have probably given 200 readings to FJer's. Saying something rude about our members jobs is not the same as snarking on fundies.

I don't care if people believe in ghosts or not, but I do find it offensive when people act like my job is not real. I feel the same about all the homeschooling posts because I do not want to be lumped in with the sucky ones.

I am sure if I told you your job was stupid and acted like it was a joke I would assume you would't love that.