I found this site Skeptical Analysis of the Paranormal Society...it is worth going through, it has attempted to explain the origin of paranormal stories in a bit alternate way.

Here's what the main writer had to say about the origin of belief in ghosts:

The History of Ghost Stories
Often, when reading accounts of ghosts in various places (like the "Haunted Red Lobster Restaurant" I've mentioned so many times before) I have wondered why, originally, the idea of ghosts first fascinated man. To me, the best evidence for the existence of ghosts was the way they permeated every culture. They crept across the globe. If they didn't exist, then why would so many vastly different cultures believe in them?

The answer may be found in the content of ghost stories. According to About.com's history of ghost stories, the majority are concerned with unfinished business ? most notably, their own proper burial. Virgil's "Aeneid" and Homer's "Iliad" both contain ghosts concerned with their burials. These are two of the earliest examples of ghosts, and even then, their burial was the concern.

It struck me that these ghost stories may function in the same way that urban legends do. Snopes.com says that urban legends "reflect current societal concerns and fears as well as confirm the rightness of our views. It is through such stories that we attempt to make sense of our world, which at times can appear to be capricious and dangerous. As cautionary tales, urban legends warn us against engaging in risky behaviors by pointing out what has supposedly happened to others who did what we might be tempted try."

Urban Legends are complex warnings. Ghost stories may be the same.

According to the Wyoming Funeral Directors Association, funerary rituals date back to the very beginning of mankind. Supposedly, even Neanderthal buried their dead.

Fear was often a driving force in these early burial rituals. Many cultures considered dead bodies to be "unclean" or "polluted". This was an extremely important belief and, in the same way urban legends do, it helped reinforce a belief that would assure the survival of the culture.

The Australian Museum Online has a section devoted to the changes that occur during human decomposition. These changes include an inability to fight off bacteria. Corpses become playgrounds for bacteria, parasites, and larvae. Keeping a corpse around would spread disease, attract predators, and either seriously disable the tribe or wipe it out.

Burial is important.

So when we take a historical view, looking back at early cultures and their ghost stories, concerned with burial, it's possible to conclude that they were designed to reinforce behavior. The best way of getting the word out on something was to create a story everyone would hear and be interested in, to ensure that the dead were buried, and the tribe could continue. Germ theory didn't exist then (it was developed by Louis Pasteur in the 1850's). It wasn't as though the tribe could sit down and say, "Hey, we've gotta bury this guy, because otherwise we are going to catch something."


This is what is added further in response to a question:
The Egyptians also had burial rituals and personified inanimate objects, but I haven't read any Egyptian ghost stories as yet. I will say that before we had scientific understanding, we gave natural phenomena credit for sentience (the weather, for example.)

Why? Because without a sentient explanation, you are seeing something happen without a reason. There must be a reason, and it is the human way to search for it.

How does this relate to ghosts? Well, if what you know is that hanging about dead bodies will make you sick, and you believe completely it has to do with a curse or magic, then there must be someone controlling it.

Curses don't get cast by themselves. The story can never be told unless there is a ghost to tell it, because curses don't have mouths. The dead do. So one must be resurrected to tell this story.

Why they all have the same rough appearance (white, gauzy, cold) is fairly easy to understand in these terms as well. Dead bodies are cold. They quickly become pale because of the lack of blood circulation. It gets grosser if we keep continuing on this path, but you get the idea. The physical appearance of a ghost would be much like the appearance of a recently dead person.

I hope that clarifies a little. As I said, there is no way to prove whether or not this is true as there simply weren't written records to indicate the mindset of man in the stage we're looking for. But the similarity of the reason for the ghosts appearance combined with the physical characteristics is interesting. I'll be doing some more research on this front


Sorry for the enormous post. Although I dont agree or diasagree with any view point at the moment, this is a different angle to look at the ghost phenomenon, and the site is worth a try.

Thats an interesting read but i'm afraid i'm missing the point I guess. it's talkin about burial, disease etc but mentions very little about ghosts and why they may exist. That comment about how they look like gauze and it's because of the lack of blood in the body was kinda funny. Perhaps in the movies they look like that but I have never seen a ghost like that. I've only seen shadow people....but anyway...thanks man! It IS an interesting read

Thanks GI, and yes, the writer hasnt made her link clear....thats why I tried to post such a huge chunk so that it could perhaps become clear.....but yeah its pretty hazy.

What she was probably getting at is, that to encourage the burial of bodies, the guys made up stories about the unburied bodies turning up as ghosts to haunt people.....That's what I made of it.

yeah, that's more or less what i got out of it too.

isn't the paranomal and all it's ambiguity fun?

Yeah thats why Im here

because you're ambigious? how the HELL do you spell that?

ambitious? I think?

Because the ambiguity is fun...hahahaha

No Catseye, although you are the current word game champion, you got that one wrong. Lol

Hey, I tried

Maybe youre right, ya never know

Lets keep it on topic people

I like the idea of a thread that is from the skeptics side of the fence, lets hear some debate on the for and against on subjects of paranormal subjects, i'd like to get stuck in myself too.

Lets keep the ball rolling eh?

Ok, Ill dribble it further.


A big factor that feeds the skeptical mind is that why cant everyone experience ghostly phenomna....

People die everywhere, and all the time, in all regions (and so do animals)...So ghosts should be manifesting everywhere, appearing to atleast much more people if not all, than they currently seem to appear to.
Explanations like sensitivity, and having the gift of seeing them are there, but they dont have any explanation behind them, AND also neither can they be proved false currently.....

This all leads the skeptical investigators (too many websites to quote) to suggest that ghosts may be a phenomenon related to LOCAL factors around the person who is seeing the ghosts, like:

Electromagnetic fields
Infrasound
Strong need to believe in afterlife
Sleep Paralysis

Etc. So I suppose each of us should try and consider these factors while they judge the appearence of ghosts....

I have at least 6 spirits of the Dead reading this along with me and they are very real and want everyone to know there is truly Life after Death, and if spirits want to come back for a visit and be nice or mean that is their choice but make no mistake about it they are real.

The Spirit has the same intelligence and memories good and bad that they had when they walked the Earth, and it can be a waste of good intelligence and ideas if they can't find someone to believe in them and accept them as their realtives and others without physical bodies but still capable of directing General Motors or be President or anything they were when they walked the Earth.

Of course the only way to prove that is if you find some of the Spirits to talk to and write about and hopefully one day when you get to the Spirit World and know what I know you can come back and talk and write through humans here on earth without them running away screaming because you are a dead person.

okey, Mr. Superkick, stay strong...
be sceptical... maybe you can talk some sense in for our mad believers...
sometimes it is a trick of the eye, sometimes it is really too real to ignore...

I havent called or believe anyone to be mad at this point, lil dreamer.

You have to share your experiences, and look at them more objectively, and think about them....thats the whole point of this debate.

Rosemary may really be seeing ghosts, or she may be going through some special problems, but she doesnt seem mad to me. In fact I know of a Nobel Prize winner who saw things that werent there....

Who's that?

John Nash....amazing person.
A movie was made on his life, "A Beautiful Mind"...although not everything that was shown was accurate factually.

Which leads me to the point....that stories like that of John Nash have really changed my (and Im sure others') perspectives on pscychological problems....its really relevant to this dicussion here, how someone could be so intelligent and brilliant yet simultaneously be having problems to grasp whats real and whats not.

I remember that movie!! I had no idea what it was about so I thought that it was some sort of Action/Adventure then WHAM it's just him. Amazing. I have a brother that has schitzophrenia and I remember one time that he stopped taking his pills and he was certain that people were outside and they wanted this tape that he had and he could hear them talking and was also certain that they wanted to kill him to get the tape and kill my mother and me as well. Very scary for all involved and now I am very off the topic, too. So...anyway..

I'm going to have to read that.
I have heard the name in reference to a movie.
I will keep an open mind, but I personally believe many people out there on the street who are homless and hear voices and talk to themselves could in some cases just be psychic arguing with benovelant spirits and not know it.
I have been trying to get people to check everything out and know the difference.
Are you Scitzo?
Or are you Psychic?
That is the Question.
I am Psychic and I know the difference.

Good luck Rosemary.

Dont worry Cheryl, you are not far from topic You see, what if Nash had described what he was seeing as : "I see the ghost of a little girl, a strange young man and an even stranger man in a suit, who tells me about conspiracies against the country?"

He would have sounded like....you guessed right, Rosemary. Except that he had a proven case of schizophrenia, and he got better as he took medication for it....In fact he is still teaching at Princeton University, you can look him up on the net.

Yes that experience with your brother must have been scary, I hope he is better now?

Did the man really have the medical problem or did he let others who didn't understand about spirit communication batter at him and talk and convince him that he had such a problem?

I have no medical problem, what I have is people who cannot prove what I am doing and so because of their lack of knowledge and belief they say these things because they have not had the experience.
Not trying to be pigheaded here just trying to say you can never know these things or prove them unless you keep an open mind, search for your own truths then share those truths with the world the way I am doing.