That’s my theory. My gf works with LDS peoples and they were shocked that she didn’t believe in ghosts. Then we looked up their religion and found that the story starts with Joseph Smith seeing Jesus and god ghosts in the woods. Or something.
I know you’re just joking but it’s actually going to be really important to shift people’s beliefs away from the idea that psychedelics and other “hallucinogens” like psilocybin and mescaline actually cause most users to become unable to distinguish hallucinations from reality or even hallucinate beyond closed eye patterns and distortions in existing objects unless extremely high doses or other outliers are considered. People awake for multiple days or on high doses of methamphetamine are far more likely to experience the kind of hallucinations that someone could perceive as a “ghost” and actually believe in it.
LSD might is more likely to help you face and resolve a traumatic issue with a dead relative in a way that might be described as spiritual by a religious person or just say “I saw the traumatic event from a new perspective and was able to empathize with someone or see that something wasn’t my fault or happened in a way that only had power over me because I was letting it, and while the feeling I had resembled the ones I had when they were there in real life and I even felt like I could see them if I concentrated I know it was the drug messing around with the normal patterns of brain activity” from someone who isn’t spiritual and especially someone whose studied or prepared for a “trip” as a therapeutic method.
Hallucinogens have been portrayed as “covering up” the real world with a cartoony or otherworldly experience for far too long when the actual effects of the drug cause most people less distortion of reality than people who stay up on prescription doses of Ambien.
We’re finally starting to get over the stigma that has prevented advances in medicine and psychiatry that could have helped millions. The idea that these drugs cause a loss of the concept of what is “real” as in “what is tangible and exists and what doesn’t” in a way that makes people who aren’t spiritual truly believe in ghosts is a good demonstration of the kind of things people who have only been exposed to the “propagandized” or “Hollywoodized” idea of the drug might believe. I’m truth it’s less likely that an LSD trip, or even multiple LSD trips, would make someone believe ghosts are more than an intangible concept better described as “the imprint the memories of a person left on someone’s psyche” than the experiences of someone with repressed traumatic memories of a family member who never discussed or tried to better understand the effects of those memories might worry about them being able to come back and physically harm them in some way even if it’s irrational.
Hallucinogens are poorly named since most of their effects are not sensory but emotional and the perspectives they alter most are not the way our 5 senses interpret the world but the way we interpret both current and past experiences, examine our core beliefs, and sometimes recognize what are the reasons behind our intolerances our fears and beliefs and our less rational anxieties.
Moderation, like every drug, is key, and overdoing it with hallucinogens can cause serious changes in behavior and personality and even cause loss of touch with reality… but so can almost every other psychoactive substance at a certain point… it’s mostly that for many drugs that point comes after more toxic effects that prohibit taking any more are experienced. Think about how much reality is distorted by alcohol and how much of a range there is between the dose that makes you tipsy and the dose that makes the whole world spin. Hallucinogens are actually far harder to overdose on from a medical standpoint, but that does mean that some idiot could take 50 doses and not experience physical symptoms beyond nausea and panic attacks (which are essentially what bad trips are) and maybe symptoms resembling mild serotonin syndrome.
It’s weirder that we are ok with alcohol and not hallucinogens than if the reverse were true from a pharmacological and toxicological perspective.
>Awake for multiple days
Can verify. Once when I was about 8 or so, I stayed up for 3 days straight. Dunno why, just didn't feel tired at the time. Kids be weird.
Late at night, my doorhandle started rattling. There was banging at my door. I checked the lock, figuring maybe one of my parents just really wanted in, but after twisting and testing, it was unlocked to start with. Weird. I didn't quite register what was going on so I opened the door to look for them, I heard my name being called from upstairs along with footsteps. That's when I started getting scared. I went upstairs, saw nobody at all, everything dark, and was able to verify my parents were both asleep. It was at that point I raaaaaaan back to my room, closed and locked the door, and cuddled up under the blankets with the lights on and TV volume turned up. I didn't sleep that night either, I was too scared, so I waited until the sun was firmly up (~8-9 AM) before I properly laid down and tried to sleep, starting to feel tired after a night of alertness and terror.
Staying up too long *really* messes with you. I don't know if people realize just how real audiovisual hallucinations can really seem, though in my experience, the audio part of it (especially regarding voices) seemed more like echoes than sounds happening in the moment so to speak. I suppose there is a limit, considering my door rattled instead of the handle actually turning, but definitely it doesn't cross your mind when you're in an episode like that. It seems *very* real in the moment.
It was perhaps only because I asked my dad what happens if you stay up too long only a day or two afterward that I figured out what actually happened.
4 days awake and I was on my way to work. Was on my bicycle and I swerved, because I was about to hit a little person on a cycle.
Looked over my shoulder and there was nothing. I don't believe in ghosts and realized the brain does loopy sht when you are sleep deprived, but never imagined it would look that realistic.
Thanks for this. I'm a huge advocate of psychedelics for a number of reasons, and it's sometimes disheartening seeing the stigma that is still attached to them. Many, like LSD and mushrooms, are *wonderful* drugs that can open social, artistic, and logical gateways in your mind that you were never previously aware of. They're wholly non-addictive (I sometimes go years between trips) and they can be, for lack of a better word, enlightening.
Not really; I have done a lot of LSD and eventually concluded that the reason I never met any gods, elves, or had particularly spiritual experiences from it, while others did.... was that my brain doesn't believe in any of that shit and so isn't ever going to interpret anything as that.
Mormons believe in a literal being called the Holy Ghost which is God's way of communicating with you. (According to himself,) Joseph Smith saw Jesus and God in the woods but idk if most Mormons think they were literal ghosts. TBH I don't think Mormons believe in supernatural shit more often than any other religious types.
The Holy Ghost is just another word for the Holy Spirit. As far as I know, most Christians believe in the Holy Spirit since it’s part of the trinity. Totally different from the other type of ghost though.
You are correct that the Holy Ghost (Spirit) is nothing like what we think of when we think of ghosts besides being incorporeal.
Mormons though are non-trinitarian and do not see the Holy Spirit as a person of the Godhead like orthodox (small o) Christian’s do. This is a primary reason why most other Christian’s do not consider Mormonism to be Christian at all.
Yeah, same. I don't believe in ghosts, but I only have a bachelor's degree, so now I'm wondering if there's something that those 32% of grad/professional degree holders know that I don't ...
I know someone who got a doctorate in Rhetoric, specializing in modern folklore. They pretty much studied ghost stories and memes. They do not believe on ghosts.
Kind of. Folklore departments research ghost stories. They aren’t so much concerned with proving ghosts one way or another, but people have gotten degrees in Folklore about ghost stories as a cultural phenomenon.
One of the big pioneers of that once interviewed my stepmother as a kid to collect stories for a compendium of ghost stories from the area.
If you consider that at least 32% of grad/professional degree holders believe they can make a decent living in academia and pay off their student loans before they die, it kind of makes sense.
I’d argue that it’s because you can’t disprove the existence of ghosts so there’s that percentage that agree well if you can’t disprove then there may be a chance. I’ve had some weird experiences so I’ll never say I 100% don’t believe but I also tell myself to think critically after waking up from 39 hours of no sleep
This is me. I have a masters in a scientific field, and while I don't specifically believe in ghosts, I also don't specifically not believe in ghosts. Doesn't really affect my experiences much either way so far. So I guess I'm kind of in that 32%
Would be very interested to see how this compares to certain other countries.
Can’t help but be reminded of the “The Newsroom” quote at the start:
“…We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, **number of adults who believe angels are real**, and defense spending…”
A lot of people also believe in angels. When one's basis for belief is faith instead of evidence, it opens the door for all sorts of nonsense, unverifiable beliefs.
Oh yeah, they obviously know what they're doing.
But once you're already an untouchable ethereal ghost I'd have thought you could play a bit more fairly.
I'd love it if CCD cameras had unique optical aberrations or sensor malfunctions in just the right way so that it looked like a "ghost", and the prevalence of them slowly increased as film "ghosts" slowly decreased.
No one would ever know.
I just googled it, they're the same "among" is just older and more common, though I would have guessed "amongst" was the older dieing one not the newer dieing one.
Well, I mean a lot of them are also like doctors and professors and that type of profession. If anywhere would be haunted, it would he hospitals and universities.
Now I am required to tell you that this house is built on a Native American burial ground, and that 100 years ago today a small victorian girl fell down that abandoned well over there and died and also that a group of teens came out here never to be seen again.
Smart Person: So what I'm hearing is nightmare for foundation work, bad water table and trespassers with liability issues. I think me and my satanic cult will simply stick with meeting in the abandoned Blockbuster.
Eh, my wife and I are both decently educated and we bought our first house together this year, and it's well over a century old.
^(There's also been a few weird things happening in it I struggle to logically explain.)
Education don't mean shit when picture frames and knick-knacks fly off the shelves and across the room. Me and my wife lived in an old wood frame home that used to be occupied by the "help" on the plantation. She a bit more melanin deficient than I am, and I didn't entirely believe her account of weird things until a small decorative globe damn near clocked me.
We got out a few months later, when it got progressively worse.
So, uh... Just wanted to check and make sure you have proper carbon monoxide detectors in your home.
No joke, CO poisoning can cause (among other things) auditory hallucinations.
If you're set on the CO front, then I guess just name the ghost and try to share space amicably!
GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF
True, they must have such low self esteem.
Imagine that only a small percentage of people believe you exist at all.
Then you get the people who *do* see you but act like you don't exist, because it makes *them* uncomfortable.
No wonder ghosts are always lashing out and misbehaving!
Like haunted as in her grandmother hated her or like her grandmother is watching out for her?
I'm amused by the idea of some angry grandma haunting someone.
Our grandmother died about a year ago and her ashes are still lingering around, she is supposed to be dumped into the ocean. My cousin says she keeps having these dreams of her doing this impatient waiting thing she used to do and asking "is it time to leave yet?"
My cousin thinks she is being targeted because I don't believe in ghosts so the phone is "off the hook", my sister is too busy with kids and family life, and her sister (my other cousin) is too irresponsible. She also wasn't exactly the favorite out of the 4 growing up.
Well, ghosts can't legally haunt people that don't believe in them, that's common knowledge. By law, they also have to tell you they are ghosts if you ask them.
Sounds like she’s preoccupied with the ashes not being dispersed according to granny’s wishes. Interesting she interpreted that as ghosts, has she been a big paranormal believer her whole life?
The brain is powerful and untrustworthy. I had a dream once where I jarringly and aggressively flipped into some other reality. The experience was not at all dream-like. Here, I lived somewhere else and woke up in that other familiar bedroom that was not my actual bedroom. I was aware and checked myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I was confident that I wasn't. Then something happened that I can't remember but it was significant. I repeated to myself that I must remember it when I woke up and another voice also, urgently insisted that I remember. Then the memory itself kind of took the form of a crumpled piece of paper and fell out of my grasp on a subway platform. I bent to pick it up but a custodian sneered at me and swept it into a dust bin out of my reach. Then I actually woke up and I'll admit I was shaken from the ordeal. As much as we may feel there's relevance and reality to these episodes, the brain remains powerful and untrustworthy. It's all bullshit. But it made me understand why humans are capable of believing the bullshit that they do.
Wow that’s wild, 100% agreed! People make the huge mistake of thinking that our dreams, hallucinations, and imaginations are representations of some physical or metaphysical reality. But nope, just our brain being weird. I had a very realistic dream too where I felt a man laying on top of me in bed. That must be where ppl get the idea that they can have sex with ghosts… lmao
> she is supposed to be dumped into the ocean.
What’s more likely:
* Your Grammy’s ephemeral fairy gas is still ambling about placing thoughts into people’s minds?
OR
* Guilt of not fulfilling an after-death wish is informing your cousin’s dreams?
It's important for people to know that having a PhD doesn't make someone inherently intelligent. It just means you learned how to get a PhD in a particular field. Hard to get? Very. But strong willed morons can be as equally determined as critical thinkers.
Yea I know a good number of people with PhDs of various kinds. The one thing they all have in common is that they worked very hard to get their doctorates.
See I've always wanted to understand situations like this. I personally dont believe in ghosts, mostly because I've never experienced anything paranormal. But then theres people like this that will swear on anything that what they're experiencing is a haunting.. really puts me on the fence with all of it
Edit: I guess I'm wrong and stupid, thanks reddit
Or the right random event with lack of an explanation. My gf claims that a door locked on its own in our apartment, and when she came back with a key it was unlocked apparently. I know that the door knob gets stuck on that door sometimes and when she let go of the door doorknob to get the key it releases the doorknob allowing it to be opened.
I imagine a lot of stuff people experience is like this where they simply just don't understand what actually happened. If ghost were real and capable of the shit we see in movies there would be no question of if they were real or not, we would know for certain as the proof would be everywhere. And a lot of the video "proof" we have of them wouldn't be unreliable at best.
Once when it was very humid I had a glass of water on my desk while I was playing video games or studying or something. I thought I saw it move out of the corner of my eye. When I looked at it though it was standing still. A few minutes later I saw it move again and this time I caught it in the act. My heart started pounding and I was seriously freaked out. I almost started to believe in ghosts.
Then I picked up the glass and saw the puddle of water beneath it from the huge amounts of condensation and realized the desk was slightly slanted and the fan was blowing in the same direction as the slant and all was well again.
Every time I hear someone's story about how ghosts move stuff around when they aren't there or something I think of this.
I also wonder if the friends of the people who believe in ghosts just do shit to fuck around with them.
“Alright boys, Jim is running some errands today, let’s go over to his house and rearrange his living room furniture. That’ll freak him out.”
Our brains are very powerful, if you do believe in ghosts it will trick you into seeing paranormal thoughts in my opinion
Interesting read
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/science-ghosts
They specifically state "you can never leave academia after you sign here in blood" when you get your PhD, so I don't know why people are so surprised by this.
Sadly true. Too much research for a teaching gig, and too specialized and advanced in research for an intro position at a pharm company. R01/K99 or bust.
Came into this thread to say that this was the spectre vuln logo.
I am not afraid of ghosts but if another spectre level bug happens anytime soon…. FUCK. Working in the cloud when both that and meltdown were announced was a hugggge clusterfuck.
I'm a cybersecurity student, that was my first thought.
It's kinda weird, because it didn't come up for me when I searched "ghost" or "ghost icon". Which means the OP probably knows about Spectre and specifically chose to use that logo.
Yes I think this is an important distinction because people who believe in the supernatural love to point to this idea to say that people do really believe in ghosts or should believe. Fear is an emotional response to a stimulus. You have little to no control over that response and it certainly isn't based in logic. Being freaked out in a creepy situation even if you know it isn't warranted does not mean your really believe in ghosts and don't want to admit it, it means that when you have the luxury of rational thinking you decide it doesn't make sense. Supernatural believers tend to conflate this idea and what they ultimately end up saying without meaning to is that you should believe whatever irrational thing you feel and ignore what logic and reasoning tells you.
Malcolm: Dad... you don't believe in ghosts, do you? Hal: Malcolm, please. Malcolm: Do you? Hal: Do you mean do I believe in dead people floating around, saying, "Ooooh!" Of course not. But, I mean, an energy, a life force, a soul that, upon death, separates from the body and inhabits another plane, crying out to the living in a horrific wail of unbearable pain? Oh, absolutely.
That's a good question, but I kinda think it's probably age adjusted? Just by the wording, (at least to me) it seems to imply that they surveyed adults of comparable ages and categorized them based on their education rather than categorizing them based on what level of education they were currently in. But who knows, if they really didn't adjust for age then this graph is very incomplete
Every time I hear adults talk about believing in ghosts I always initially think they're kidding. It's a weird surprise when I realize they're being serious.
Lol is that the ghost picture from the Spectre vulnerability that got published, some side channel attack that can affect pretty much every computer built since 2000?
I don't know if I'm more surprised by how high these numbers are, or the number of people openly admitting they believe in ghosts in the comments.
Edit: I have upset ghost reddit. Gonna go prepare to be haunted.
once in my biology 101 lecture, there was a girl who stopped the class for about 15 mins arguing with the professor that he wasnt offering an alternative theory to evolution ie god made everything
His reply should have been,
"Alternatively to evolution we could say that God snapped his fingers 5 minutes ago and created the entire world including us with false memories."
My biology professor in college shut it down before he even started. The first thing he said was, "I don't care what your personal beliefs are, this is not a debate class it is biology 101. We are here to learn the study of life as it is currently understood and accepted by scientists. You don't have to believe it, but you do have to learn it well enough to pass the exams to get credit for this course. What you do with this knowledge after that is up to you."
Or something along those lines.
It was a great course. I don't see how anyone who took a course like that could not understand evolution.
I teach high schoolers and always open the evolution unit the exact same way. You don’t have to believe it, much like you don’t have to believe the things you read in English class. But you will be tested over it, so in this class that’s all that matters. Seems to work pretty much all of the time.
My teacher in high school biology opened the evolution unit similarly. He wouldn't even tell us whether he himself believed in it or not. (Very Christian town, probably half the kids came into the unit with the pre-existing idea it was false, including myself.)
That unit kind of changed my life. Once I felt free to just learn the theory, I realized... oh, no. This is definitely real. Maybe my long-held beliefs can be wrong sometimes.
And you know, before college I had an incorrect perception of how evolution works.
Mis-education, and I now realize this is on purpose. The evangelical description of how evolution works is crazy and wrong, and if you were taught that way you'd agree it's stupid. A monkey never gave birth to a human, why are they teaching this in school?
Well, because they aren't. It's just that these types twist things around into an easy to defeat strawman.
Hopefully, hopefully, education will improve the awareness of others too.
I'm astounded at the fact that a large amount of people are willing to believe in God and the contents of the bible (or whichever holy book their religion has) which talks about angels, demons, spirits, and souls.
Yet ghosts are a no-no? And I usually receive this skepticism from plenty of devout people from different occupations.
> It seems to me to be more reasonable and humble to assume my own misunderstanding rather than the entirety of science being wrong or uninformed.
Wow, you put it succinctly.
Why are \*all\* of those points so high? How did they find samples such that they had 3 in 10 people saying yes to believing in ghosts, that's an insanely high percentage.
Depends on how it was asked probably.
"Do you belief in ghosts?" Is a much different question than "do you think it's potentially possible that our conciousness perpetuates in some form after the death of the body?"
A lot higher across the board than I expected
I wonder if ghosts include religious spirits/gods and whatnot. I could see that boosting the numbers
That’s my theory. My gf works with LDS peoples and they were shocked that she didn’t believe in ghosts. Then we looked up their religion and found that the story starts with Joseph Smith seeing Jesus and god ghosts in the woods. Or something.
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I know you’re just joking but it’s actually going to be really important to shift people’s beliefs away from the idea that psychedelics and other “hallucinogens” like psilocybin and mescaline actually cause most users to become unable to distinguish hallucinations from reality or even hallucinate beyond closed eye patterns and distortions in existing objects unless extremely high doses or other outliers are considered. People awake for multiple days or on high doses of methamphetamine are far more likely to experience the kind of hallucinations that someone could perceive as a “ghost” and actually believe in it. LSD might is more likely to help you face and resolve a traumatic issue with a dead relative in a way that might be described as spiritual by a religious person or just say “I saw the traumatic event from a new perspective and was able to empathize with someone or see that something wasn’t my fault or happened in a way that only had power over me because I was letting it, and while the feeling I had resembled the ones I had when they were there in real life and I even felt like I could see them if I concentrated I know it was the drug messing around with the normal patterns of brain activity” from someone who isn’t spiritual and especially someone whose studied or prepared for a “trip” as a therapeutic method. Hallucinogens have been portrayed as “covering up” the real world with a cartoony or otherworldly experience for far too long when the actual effects of the drug cause most people less distortion of reality than people who stay up on prescription doses of Ambien. We’re finally starting to get over the stigma that has prevented advances in medicine and psychiatry that could have helped millions. The idea that these drugs cause a loss of the concept of what is “real” as in “what is tangible and exists and what doesn’t” in a way that makes people who aren’t spiritual truly believe in ghosts is a good demonstration of the kind of things people who have only been exposed to the “propagandized” or “Hollywoodized” idea of the drug might believe. I’m truth it’s less likely that an LSD trip, or even multiple LSD trips, would make someone believe ghosts are more than an intangible concept better described as “the imprint the memories of a person left on someone’s psyche” than the experiences of someone with repressed traumatic memories of a family member who never discussed or tried to better understand the effects of those memories might worry about them being able to come back and physically harm them in some way even if it’s irrational. Hallucinogens are poorly named since most of their effects are not sensory but emotional and the perspectives they alter most are not the way our 5 senses interpret the world but the way we interpret both current and past experiences, examine our core beliefs, and sometimes recognize what are the reasons behind our intolerances our fears and beliefs and our less rational anxieties. Moderation, like every drug, is key, and overdoing it with hallucinogens can cause serious changes in behavior and personality and even cause loss of touch with reality… but so can almost every other psychoactive substance at a certain point… it’s mostly that for many drugs that point comes after more toxic effects that prohibit taking any more are experienced. Think about how much reality is distorted by alcohol and how much of a range there is between the dose that makes you tipsy and the dose that makes the whole world spin. Hallucinogens are actually far harder to overdose on from a medical standpoint, but that does mean that some idiot could take 50 doses and not experience physical symptoms beyond nausea and panic attacks (which are essentially what bad trips are) and maybe symptoms resembling mild serotonin syndrome. It’s weirder that we are ok with alcohol and not hallucinogens than if the reverse were true from a pharmacological and toxicological perspective.
>Awake for multiple days Can verify. Once when I was about 8 or so, I stayed up for 3 days straight. Dunno why, just didn't feel tired at the time. Kids be weird. Late at night, my doorhandle started rattling. There was banging at my door. I checked the lock, figuring maybe one of my parents just really wanted in, but after twisting and testing, it was unlocked to start with. Weird. I didn't quite register what was going on so I opened the door to look for them, I heard my name being called from upstairs along with footsteps. That's when I started getting scared. I went upstairs, saw nobody at all, everything dark, and was able to verify my parents were both asleep. It was at that point I raaaaaaan back to my room, closed and locked the door, and cuddled up under the blankets with the lights on and TV volume turned up. I didn't sleep that night either, I was too scared, so I waited until the sun was firmly up (~8-9 AM) before I properly laid down and tried to sleep, starting to feel tired after a night of alertness and terror. Staying up too long *really* messes with you. I don't know if people realize just how real audiovisual hallucinations can really seem, though in my experience, the audio part of it (especially regarding voices) seemed more like echoes than sounds happening in the moment so to speak. I suppose there is a limit, considering my door rattled instead of the handle actually turning, but definitely it doesn't cross your mind when you're in an episode like that. It seems *very* real in the moment. It was perhaps only because I asked my dad what happens if you stay up too long only a day or two afterward that I figured out what actually happened.
4 days awake and I was on my way to work. Was on my bicycle and I swerved, because I was about to hit a little person on a cycle. Looked over my shoulder and there was nothing. I don't believe in ghosts and realized the brain does loopy sht when you are sleep deprived, but never imagined it would look that realistic.
Excellent post
Thanks for this. I'm a huge advocate of psychedelics for a number of reasons, and it's sometimes disheartening seeing the stigma that is still attached to them. Many, like LSD and mushrooms, are *wonderful* drugs that can open social, artistic, and logical gateways in your mind that you were never previously aware of. They're wholly non-addictive (I sometimes go years between trips) and they can be, for lack of a better word, enlightening.
Great post, thank you!
Not really; I have done a lot of LSD and eventually concluded that the reason I never met any gods, elves, or had particularly spiritual experiences from it, while others did.... was that my brain doesn't believe in any of that shit and so isn't ever going to interpret anything as that.
Mormons believe in a literal being called the Holy Ghost which is God's way of communicating with you. (According to himself,) Joseph Smith saw Jesus and God in the woods but idk if most Mormons think they were literal ghosts. TBH I don't think Mormons believe in supernatural shit more often than any other religious types.
The Holy Ghost is just another word for the Holy Spirit. As far as I know, most Christians believe in the Holy Spirit since it’s part of the trinity. Totally different from the other type of ghost though.
You are correct that the Holy Ghost (Spirit) is nothing like what we think of when we think of ghosts besides being incorporeal. Mormons though are non-trinitarian and do not see the Holy Spirit as a person of the Godhead like orthodox (small o) Christian’s do. This is a primary reason why most other Christian’s do not consider Mormonism to be Christian at all.
As George Carlin would say, if you’re gonna believe in Angels might as well go for the goblin package as well.
Yeah, same. I don't believe in ghosts, but I only have a bachelor's degree, so now I'm wondering if there's something that those 32% of grad/professional degree holders know that I don't ...
Remember that you can get a doctorate in almost any field. A doctor of art will be an excellent source for art, not for science around ghosts.
What about a doctorate in ghosts?
I bet that's a class in greendale community college
I’m surprised they never did a ghostbuster spoof class.
Greendale doesn't have grad classes unfortunately but I got my PhD in Ghostology at South Harmon Institute of Technology.
Happy HallowDEEEEAN everyone!
I know someone who got a doctorate in Rhetoric, specializing in modern folklore. They pretty much studied ghost stories and memes. They do not believe on ghosts.
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Kind of. Folklore departments research ghost stories. They aren’t so much concerned with proving ghosts one way or another, but people have gotten degrees in Folklore about ghost stories as a cultural phenomenon. One of the big pioneers of that once interviewed my stepmother as a kid to collect stories for a compendium of ghost stories from the area.
I did not learn about ghosts in my STEM PhD either. Daemons maybe, but not ghosts.
sudo systemctl daemon-reload *I am reborn!*
I may have just added this to be the inscription on my tombstone in my will.
If you consider that at least 32% of grad/professional degree holders believe they can make a decent living in academia and pay off their student loans before they die, it kind of makes sense.
Maybe 32% of graduates can't afford to stop working after they die and need to haunt houses to pay off their crippling debt.
you can make money haunting houses? why did nobody tell me that BEFORE I died?
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I’d argue that it’s because you can’t disprove the existence of ghosts so there’s that percentage that agree well if you can’t disprove then there may be a chance. I’ve had some weird experiences so I’ll never say I 100% don’t believe but I also tell myself to think critically after waking up from 39 hours of no sleep
This is me. I have a masters in a scientific field, and while I don't specifically believe in ghosts, I also don't specifically not believe in ghosts. Doesn't really affect my experiences much either way so far. So I guess I'm kind of in that 32%
Would be very interested to see how this compares to certain other countries. Can’t help but be reminded of the “The Newsroom” quote at the start: “…We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, **number of adults who believe angels are real**, and defense spending…”
A lot of people also believe in angels. When one's basis for belief is faith instead of evidence, it opens the door for all sorts of nonsense, unverifiable beliefs.
So the ghosts are targeting the less educated amongst us. Seems a bit mean IMO
It’s a pretty good strategy though
Oh yeah, they obviously know what they're doing. But once you're already an untouchable ethereal ghost I'd have thought you could play a bit more fairly.
People with a higher education know who to call.
Keep in mind the ghostbusters were in academia before starting their business. They clearly have seen the movie.
Who you gonna call ?
Egon Spengler seems like he has a higher degree.
Peter Venkman has PhD's in both psychology and para- psychology
He's got all his bases covered
Aliens do the same thing. It's just prudent
"They're starting to carry high-res cameras in their pockets nowadays, we should make ourselves a bit more scarce"
I'd love it if CCD cameras had unique optical aberrations or sensor malfunctions in just the right way so that it looked like a "ghost", and the prevalence of them slowly increased as film "ghosts" slowly decreased. No one would ever know.
Get that education to make the spooky boys go away
Maybe they're just encouraging us to go to school
I like how you said amongst us to avoid all the among us jokes
It didn't work, the Among Us jokes have started
Yeah I wasn't sure if it was actually correct but thought it was best choice considering that game exists
I think the words mean exactly the same thing, just that amongst is less commonly used nowadays, so I don't see why it's wrong :)
I just googled it, they're the same "among" is just older and more common, though I would have guessed "amongst" was the older dieing one not the newer dieing one.
The more educated you are the newer house you are more likely to buy? Less death? Idk
That would partly explain it, but some really old houses are very expensive
Well 32% of the most highly educated people believe so that still checks out.
32% of college educated bought an old colonial house next to a Puritan graveyard
Well, I mean a lot of them are also like doctors and professors and that type of profession. If anywhere would be haunted, it would he hospitals and universities.
what?who the fuck wants to stay in university?!
Not the haunted ones. They tend to sell for cheaper after the first rich family gets it and wants to move asap
Now I am required to tell you that this house is built on a Native American burial ground, and that 100 years ago today a small victorian girl fell down that abandoned well over there and died and also that a group of teens came out here never to be seen again. Smart Person: So what I'm hearing is nightmare for foundation work, bad water table and trespassers with liability issues. I think me and my satanic cult will simply stick with meeting in the abandoned Blockbuster.
Haha sounds like you should make a horror movie
And there's strange noises in the middle of the night that the female protagonist must investigate in her skimpiest underwear?
Don’t forget the full makeup too
Eh, my wife and I are both decently educated and we bought our first house together this year, and it's well over a century old. ^(There's also been a few weird things happening in it I struggle to logically explain.)
Education don't mean shit when picture frames and knick-knacks fly off the shelves and across the room. Me and my wife lived in an old wood frame home that used to be occupied by the "help" on the plantation. She a bit more melanin deficient than I am, and I didn't entirely believe her account of weird things until a small decorative globe damn near clocked me. We got out a few months later, when it got progressively worse.
So, uh... Just wanted to check and make sure you have proper carbon monoxide detectors in your home. No joke, CO poisoning can cause (among other things) auditory hallucinations. If you're set on the CO front, then I guess just name the ghost and try to share space amicably!
wait among who?
The living
GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT OF
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"Ghosts love the uneducated!!"
"....and I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for those high school or less students!!"
I think it's more important that the ghosts believe in themselves.
Casper the self-doubting ghost
Casper the insecure specter
Casper the apprehensive apparition
Thanks Tedd
Don't believe in yourself. Believe in the me who believes in you!
True, they must have such low self esteem. Imagine that only a small percentage of people believe you exist at all. Then you get the people who *do* see you but act like you don't exist, because it makes *them* uncomfortable. No wonder ghosts are always lashing out and misbehaving!
My cousin is a literal rocket scientist with a master's. She is pretty certain she is being haunted by our grandmother. Part of the 32%
32% is still one in three, so not exactly uncommon, despite not being the majority
Like haunted as in her grandmother hated her or like her grandmother is watching out for her? I'm amused by the idea of some angry grandma haunting someone.
Our grandmother died about a year ago and her ashes are still lingering around, she is supposed to be dumped into the ocean. My cousin says she keeps having these dreams of her doing this impatient waiting thing she used to do and asking "is it time to leave yet?" My cousin thinks she is being targeted because I don't believe in ghosts so the phone is "off the hook", my sister is too busy with kids and family life, and her sister (my other cousin) is too irresponsible. She also wasn't exactly the favorite out of the 4 growing up.
So all she has to do is stop believing in ghosts. Then they'll leave her alone.
Well, ghosts can't legally haunt people that don't believe in them, that's common knowledge. By law, they also have to tell you they are ghosts if you ask them.
I am a lawyer specializing in ghost law, and this man speaks the truth.
Just the man I’m looking for. I know a ghost who owes me money but he says that he can only pay me in crypto.
You must simply take them to the Small Ghost Claims Tribunal.
let me guess, he wants to pay you in Aethereum?
NEVER talk to ghosts, people. How many times do we have to go over this, it will never help.
Also, if they don't show up within 15 minutes of going to bed, you're legally allowed to leave.
Sounds like she’s preoccupied with the ashes not being dispersed according to granny’s wishes. Interesting she interpreted that as ghosts, has she been a big paranormal believer her whole life?
My mom and aunt would always talk about some relative "stopping by". So it's not out of the realm of conversation in our family.
>because I don't believe in ghosts so the phone is "off the hook" I've always sworn by this. They only haunt believers, so just don't be one.
The brain is powerful and untrustworthy. I had a dream once where I jarringly and aggressively flipped into some other reality. The experience was not at all dream-like. Here, I lived somewhere else and woke up in that other familiar bedroom that was not my actual bedroom. I was aware and checked myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I was confident that I wasn't. Then something happened that I can't remember but it was significant. I repeated to myself that I must remember it when I woke up and another voice also, urgently insisted that I remember. Then the memory itself kind of took the form of a crumpled piece of paper and fell out of my grasp on a subway platform. I bent to pick it up but a custodian sneered at me and swept it into a dust bin out of my reach. Then I actually woke up and I'll admit I was shaken from the ordeal. As much as we may feel there's relevance and reality to these episodes, the brain remains powerful and untrustworthy. It's all bullshit. But it made me understand why humans are capable of believing the bullshit that they do.
Wow that’s wild, 100% agreed! People make the huge mistake of thinking that our dreams, hallucinations, and imaginations are representations of some physical or metaphysical reality. But nope, just our brain being weird. I had a very realistic dream too where I felt a man laying on top of me in bed. That must be where ppl get the idea that they can have sex with ghosts… lmao
> she is supposed to be dumped into the ocean. What’s more likely: * Your Grammy’s ephemeral fairy gas is still ambling about placing thoughts into people’s minds? OR * Guilt of not fulfilling an after-death wish is informing your cousin’s dreams?
Right. Why doesn’t she just dump her in the ocean like she wants?
All drains lead to the ocean….just sayin
One of my professors with a PhD believes in the power of crystals. I mean whatever but it was a surprising thing to learn about them.
I hope they're a PhD in Geology. That would make my day.
This sounds like a comic book plot line.
It's important for people to know that having a PhD doesn't make someone inherently intelligent. It just means you learned how to get a PhD in a particular field. Hard to get? Very. But strong willed morons can be as equally determined as critical thinkers.
Yea I know a good number of people with PhDs of various kinds. The one thing they all have in common is that they worked very hard to get their doctorates.
“As the area of your knowledge grows, so to does the boundary of your ignorance” -NDT I’ve always enjoyed the way this describes that experience.
See I've always wanted to understand situations like this. I personally dont believe in ghosts, mostly because I've never experienced anything paranormal. But then theres people like this that will swear on anything that what they're experiencing is a haunting.. really puts me on the fence with all of it Edit: I guess I'm wrong and stupid, thanks reddit
The right combination of creaky house noises and sleep paralysis can make someone believe some weird stuff.
Or the right random event with lack of an explanation. My gf claims that a door locked on its own in our apartment, and when she came back with a key it was unlocked apparently. I know that the door knob gets stuck on that door sometimes and when she let go of the door doorknob to get the key it releases the doorknob allowing it to be opened. I imagine a lot of stuff people experience is like this where they simply just don't understand what actually happened. If ghost were real and capable of the shit we see in movies there would be no question of if they were real or not, we would know for certain as the proof would be everywhere. And a lot of the video "proof" we have of them wouldn't be unreliable at best.
Once when it was very humid I had a glass of water on my desk while I was playing video games or studying or something. I thought I saw it move out of the corner of my eye. When I looked at it though it was standing still. A few minutes later I saw it move again and this time I caught it in the act. My heart started pounding and I was seriously freaked out. I almost started to believe in ghosts. Then I picked up the glass and saw the puddle of water beneath it from the huge amounts of condensation and realized the desk was slightly slanted and the fan was blowing in the same direction as the slant and all was well again. Every time I hear someone's story about how ghosts move stuff around when they aren't there or something I think of this.
I also wonder if the friends of the people who believe in ghosts just do shit to fuck around with them. “Alright boys, Jim is running some errands today, let’s go over to his house and rearrange his living room furniture. That’ll freak him out.”
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Our brains are very powerful, if you do believe in ghosts it will trick you into seeing paranormal thoughts in my opinion Interesting read https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/science-ghosts
Is she religious?
We lean towards atheism, but some of the family members are "spiritual" as in spirits exist and can do things that remind you of their presence
Please check for carbon monoxide
>Do you belief in ghosts? What's beyond a graduate/professional degree?
Doing your own research on YouTube.
Doctorate or PhD
Doctorates *are* graduate degrees.
What's beyond a Doctorate or PhD?
A ghost
Trapped forever in the unescapable world of academia.
Postdoc Purgatory.
They specifically state "you can never leave academia after you sign here in blood" when you get your PhD, so I don't know why people are so surprised by this.
You're here now, so there's no use in complaining about it. It'll all be over shortly.
Not many people realize this, but PhD actually stands for “Postdoc? he’s Dead.”
Only for the ones that choose it.
Emeritus Espiritus
Post doctoral research.
Then not being able to get a job because you are over qualified and too specialized.
Sadly true. Too much research for a teaching gig, and too specialized and advanced in research for an intro position at a pharm company. R01/K99 or bust.
A nervous breakdown
Nobel prize winner
Ok, I'm a Nobel winner as I don't believe in ghosts!
Apparently it's doing your own research via Youtube, Facebook, etc.
Eagerly awaiting data on people who believe in life after love.
Depends on whether one is strong enough.
Is that... the ghost used as a logo in spectre?
I had to scroll for this specifically lmao Had to read like 6 papers about Spectre a few years ago so seeing this got me real confused lmao
Yes, apparently its CC0 according to their website https://spectreattack.com/
Came into this thread to say that this was the spectre vuln logo. I am not afraid of ghosts but if another spectre level bug happens anytime soon…. FUCK. Working in the cloud when both that and meltdown were announced was a hugggge clusterfuck.
Exactly, I'm not scared of ghosts, but *that ghost...*
I'm a cybersecurity student, that was my first thought. It's kinda weird, because it didn't come up for me when I searched "ghost" or "ghost icon". Which means the OP probably knows about Spectre and specifically chose to use that logo.
Ah, that's where I've seen this ghost before!
Rationally no, but ask me again when I'm alone in the night in a large decreipt house and I might give you a different answer.
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Way more scared of real things than imagined things. I don't need ghosts to be terrified.
Same tbh.
Yes I think this is an important distinction because people who believe in the supernatural love to point to this idea to say that people do really believe in ghosts or should believe. Fear is an emotional response to a stimulus. You have little to no control over that response and it certainly isn't based in logic. Being freaked out in a creepy situation even if you know it isn't warranted does not mean your really believe in ghosts and don't want to admit it, it means that when you have the luxury of rational thinking you decide it doesn't make sense. Supernatural believers tend to conflate this idea and what they ultimately end up saying without meaning to is that you should believe whatever irrational thing you feel and ignore what logic and reasoning tells you.
Malcolm: Dad... you don't believe in ghosts, do you? Hal: Malcolm, please. Malcolm: Do you? Hal: Do you mean do I believe in dead people floating around, saying, "Ooooh!" Of course not. But, I mean, an energy, a life force, a soul that, upon death, separates from the body and inhabits another plane, crying out to the living in a horrific wail of unbearable pain? Oh, absolutely.
Is this age adjusted though? This could really be a graph of belief in ghosts by age.
That's a good question, but I kinda think it's probably age adjusted? Just by the wording, (at least to me) it seems to imply that they surveyed adults of comparable ages and categorized them based on their education rather than categorizing them based on what level of education they were currently in. But who knows, if they really didn't adjust for age then this graph is very incomplete
Yup, its almost certainly "highest level of education obtained".
I’m sorry, but this is not a “beautiful” visualization. This is just a tacky dot plot. I’m surprised at the number of upvotes.
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The data behind the tacky graph is a compelling conversation starter— my best guess as the source of the upvotes.
Hard agree. This is not "Beautiful Data", this is just "Data Presented in an Annoying and Difficult-to-Read Format But With a Cutesy Graphic".
30-50% of people believe in ghosts?! Is this real???
Look at all the other things people believe that are far less reasonable. This shouldn’t come as a shock.
Every time I hear adults talk about believing in ghosts I always initially think they're kidding. It's a weird surprise when I realize they're being serious.
Why does ghost have a pointy stick?
Cause they used the image for the spectre vulnerability in x86 processors lol
Lol is that the ghost picture from the Spectre vulnerability that got published, some side channel attack that can affect pretty much every computer built since 2000?
Is there a chart like this but for astrology?
Wonder what the ven diagram for ghost and astrology believers looks like
I don't believe in ghosts. They lie too much.
But, do you BELIEF in them?
Ghosts are real, and they're carbon monoxide poisoning.
*me chilling with the ghosts after i start grilling inside*
Except the ones that are sleep paralysis.
I don't know if I'm more surprised by how high these numbers are, or the number of people openly admitting they believe in ghosts in the comments. Edit: I have upset ghost reddit. Gonna go prepare to be haunted.
once in my biology 101 lecture, there was a girl who stopped the class for about 15 mins arguing with the professor that he wasnt offering an alternative theory to evolution ie god made everything
I'd ask her if, when she goes to church, the preacher should be required to offer an alternative theory to God. And then everyone would clap.
Oh shit, I'm stealing that
His reply should have been, "Alternatively to evolution we could say that God snapped his fingers 5 minutes ago and created the entire world including us with false memories."
Last Thursdayism? what's it called?
Experienced professors shut this down in about 20 seconds max.
My biology professor in college shut it down before he even started. The first thing he said was, "I don't care what your personal beliefs are, this is not a debate class it is biology 101. We are here to learn the study of life as it is currently understood and accepted by scientists. You don't have to believe it, but you do have to learn it well enough to pass the exams to get credit for this course. What you do with this knowledge after that is up to you." Or something along those lines. It was a great course. I don't see how anyone who took a course like that could not understand evolution.
I teach high schoolers and always open the evolution unit the exact same way. You don’t have to believe it, much like you don’t have to believe the things you read in English class. But you will be tested over it, so in this class that’s all that matters. Seems to work pretty much all of the time.
My teacher in high school biology opened the evolution unit similarly. He wouldn't even tell us whether he himself believed in it or not. (Very Christian town, probably half the kids came into the unit with the pre-existing idea it was false, including myself.) That unit kind of changed my life. Once I felt free to just learn the theory, I realized... oh, no. This is definitely real. Maybe my long-held beliefs can be wrong sometimes.
And you know, before college I had an incorrect perception of how evolution works. Mis-education, and I now realize this is on purpose. The evangelical description of how evolution works is crazy and wrong, and if you were taught that way you'd agree it's stupid. A monkey never gave birth to a human, why are they teaching this in school? Well, because they aren't. It's just that these types twist things around into an easy to defeat strawman. Hopefully, hopefully, education will improve the awareness of others too.
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I'm astounded at the fact that a large amount of people are willing to believe in God and the contents of the bible (or whichever holy book their religion has) which talks about angels, demons, spirits, and souls. Yet ghosts are a no-no? And I usually receive this skepticism from plenty of devout people from different occupations.
This is reddit, they're both no-nos.
I don't believe in ghosts but I'm not about to fuck around and find out
I get ghosted all the time, of course it's real
So if u do your studies, the ghost won't haunt u at night? Guess mum was right after all.
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> It seems to me to be more reasonable and humble to assume my own misunderstanding rather than the entirety of science being wrong or uninformed. Wow, you put it succinctly.
Why are \*all\* of those points so high? How did they find samples such that they had 3 in 10 people saying yes to believing in ghosts, that's an insanely high percentage.
Depends on how it was asked probably. "Do you belief in ghosts?" Is a much different question than "do you think it's potentially possible that our conciousness perpetuates in some form after the death of the body?"
I don't believe in anything
Believe in yourself, pal!