Poltergeists!

Logically you would have to consider the possibility. But they aren't like that at all. They do not play jokes on people. Of course there's a double problem here. I'm asking you to listen to a story of a story, so it's one more step further removed from the skeptical ideal.Is there any other way to explain the milk bottles normally? Any possibilities you can see, besides someone playing a joke or being dishonest in some way about what they say happened?

This belief is your problem right there. If you could somehow ignore your sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, by what means could you then learn anything about reality?Though many skeptics seem to embrace the label, I've never liked it, plus the word has picked up some pejorative baggage in the past couple decades. It almost implies a kind of hostility toward new knowledge, and this isn't true of skeptics. I much prefer the term scientist or perhaps the phrase "scientific in outlook."But getting rid of the skeptic label probably isn't possible, so I'll just say that people who call themselves skeptics are only doing what almost all other people are doing, trying to make sense of the real world. The only difference is that skeptics require that the real world be consistent and make sense across all the data.--Percy

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I keep wondering what would happen if I decided that the best way forward is to choose to be more rigidly skeptical.

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It is funny, but I never think that having a skeptical attitude towards claims makes me "rigid". After all, skepticism allows me to be open to the possibility that something supernatural is going on, but that my standards of evidence are high. If the controlled testing procedures that Rrhain described above yielded promising results, I would be excited and intrigued and I'd want to test some more. It would be incredibly cool!However, as I watch you repeat the same flawed arguments for your claims, in spite of counterevidence and in lieu of good quality positive evidence, it is really you who is appearing to be rigid. You don't seem to be very open to the possibility that nothing supernatural is going on, and are employing all sorts of flawed reasoning to maintain your belief. To me, that is rigid thinking.

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Why should I let myself play the fool? Let's say I decide there's no evidence of anything spiritual, transcendent or supernatural and so decide just to forget about all that, because it clouds my judgement. I should feel that I'm free, that I can see clearly, and that I can appreciate the amazing universe for what it truly is, yes?

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In essence, yes.

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What I find is that the very thought of this makes me feel upset and resistant. I don't want to believe that reality is only what we experience through our senses, and what we can learn through scientific methods as they are currently understood and employed.

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I certainly understand that reaction. I have felt that way several times in my life as I let go of beliefs that were simply untenable in the light of critical examination of the facts. But I was, and am, more interested in learning to think well as opposed to simply feeling good.

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I've had a mystic inclination all my life. When I was young I wanted to be a nun. Since I stopped being Catholic, I've never really stopped searching for some deeper spirituality that transcends religion. It's what I need to do to feel fulfilled. Dismissing all of this would, I seriously believe, make me feel very depressed.

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I really don't see why you have to dismiss your search for a deeper spirituality if you also recognize that there is no positive evidence for poltergeists. I don't understand the connection.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Is there any other way to explain the milk bottles normally? Any possibilities you can see, besides someone playing a joke or being dishonest in some way about what they say happened?

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Nobody here can say, since there is too much that we don't know about the layout of the room, the floor, the bottles, the shelf, etc.Not to mention the people involved.OTOH, there have been several times that I have dropped thick glass bottles on the floor and they have not broken and they have landed upright with no teetering.

Yes. Someone develops two personalities temporarily. Mental illness, not dishonesty. This happens, and it fits the poltergeists that attach themselves to adolescents very well. They are, in a sense, possessed. If the new personality does something, the normal one cannot remember doing it, and is not lying when he says someone else has done it. In a sense, it's true.We know that the human mind sometimes behaves very strangely. You can meet someone who's just been watching a T.V. programme, and he'll talk to you perfectly rationally about it, and then about a few things in current affairs, then he'll inform you with complete sincerity that he's Napoleon, and then go off and do something practical, like washing the dishes. You'll be flabbergasted, probably.That's schizophrenia of some sort, and not quite the same as what I'm suggesting for the poltergeist syndrome. The poltergeist kids seem to recover completely, so it may actually be a good thing, bizarrely. A way of coping with stress or trauma that is perfectly unintentional on the part of the person involved.The two personalities do have a relationship, and the false one who puts the milk bottle down hears the clink, then communicates it to the other later on, which is like saying "go down to the kitchen, and you will find evidence of our mum in the environment we most associate her with". It's interesting, because this "ghost" was clearly helping your husband cope.I'm only offering a possible explanation for what happened to your husband. I'm sure there are others. But there's no lying or practical joking involved.

It's multiple personality disorder. You probably know people who are schizophrenic, but it's rare you'll meet someone with multiple personality disorder. Your point stands of course, just a personal crusade of mine to inform: I have been made aware of schizophrenia in some very close friends of mine - they fear telling people because of this common misconception and the stigma attached to it.

I was CofE, then I ran through a gamut of religions. I was a spiritualist (I communed with ancestral spirits at one point - though I'm sure nobody here would believe that), I did spiritual healing, remote viewing experimentation, I did pet telepathy, Buddhism, Islam, and more.I didn't stop cold-turkey. I evolved through a sort of pantheism that came to me during a meditation period. I referred to it as satori. It was a powerful religious experience where I felt the awe and majesty of the universe. To me it was a divine experience. Slowly I realized that to reject spriritualism wasn't to reject that experience - just the explanation for it. You can still have transcendent experiences that give you a feeling of something much bigger than you, I get them every night when I see the night sky, or when I contemplate on the nature of the sun.My experienced is not made shallow by the fact that I am contemplating real things, quite the opposite. I know I am facing the awesomeness of reality as a limited, but wonderful, ape can experience it. I feel sorrow that I cannot experience all parts of reality and I give thanks that I have the opportunity to experience at least some of it - unlike the moon which does not (at least, I don't think it does...).There is so much wonder and beauty in reality, and it is far more fulfilling than hoping there is more to it. After all - there is quite literally more than enough reality for a human to experience. No - it doesn't lead to truth in every case. It can't. Then again - no system of knowledge seeking can do that. However, scepticism has the advantage over any other knowledge seeking system - if you adopt it in totality you are less likely to accept false things as true. Personally, I think this is a much better way to live life. After all, what are the chances we would stumble on an important truth without scepticism? Possible, I suppose, but humans are so flawed at intuitively interpreting reality, the probability of gross error is too high.

Years ago, I had a girlfriend that had a brother with MPD. I met him a couple of times. It was kind of scary seeing and talking to 2 different persons who occupy the same body. Interestingly enough, one of them had prescription glasses and the other didn't.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Seconded. My reaction would be something like "at last, people are taking the idea of ghosts seriously, instead of just manipulating a folk belief in order to put one over on people!"

Those are probably the correct terms, I agree. Some of the confusion is understandable, though. I used to know a schizophrenic who would talk about his family a lot. Sometimes, it would be his real family, but sometimes I would be being told about another "fantasy" family that didn't exist.His shifting reality would give me the impression that I was talking to two different people, depending on which family I was getting, which also seemed to depend on noticeably different moods.What I'm getting round to, in relation to the topic, is that you can never have a serious discussion about the supernatural or paranormal without bringing hallucinations and conditions like epilepsy and schizophrenia into it.If someone started a topic on the prophets and visionaries of ancient religions, I'd be tempted to take it in the same direction.As a small child, I had some hallucinations that I remember well, and I've also had deja vu experiences. I doubt if there's such a thing as a person with a glitch free brain. It might be a good thing for your schizophrenic friends if everyone realized that describing someone as having or not having a neurological condition may just be a matter of degree.

As long as information is the priority here: the APA redefined the condition in the 1990s as Dissociative Personality Disorder. The change was made in the interest of accuracy.A widely held misperception persists that DPD involves 'two or more persons occupying the same body.' Superficially it can appear that way. That's not how it works. Research shows that DPD has much in common with other conditions involving dissociation, even though they do not manifest that symptom.What you see in DPD is not multiple persons but a single personality that has been fragmented. Usually there is the main personality (low affect) that wears the individual's name. Other personas operate outside that personality's conscious awareness but are often aware of each other. These personas or 'characters' originate in episodes of dissociation.In DPD the main personality assigns certain aspects of itself to these distinct characters rather than owning (integrating) all of them as part of itself. It's more like having Grumpy, Happy, and Doc occupy the same body, not complete personalities. A complete personality emerges only when all the fragments are taken together.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

Let me see . . . so presumably I could still go on "ghost hunts." My mindset in the past has always been excitement, and a desire to experience something. Then disappointment when it didn't happen. I could still go as a skeptic though, is that what people here are saying? Change my mindset. Not expect anything unusual to happen, and do my best to find a normal explanation for anything that happens. If I really do experience something extraordinary, and get evidence for it, then it would be a pleasant surprise.But surely going on the ghost hunt in the first place involves some element of hopefulness, otherwise why go? Or, if I decide there's no good evidence that ghosts or poltergeists exist, I might just lose interest altogether because that evidence is so hard to get. I'm not sure if I want to dismiss that source of fascination from my life. It's hard, but I keep thinking and I'm open to what is being said here.My husband and his family, though, all mentally ill? Nah. I'll admit the mind can play some strange tricks, but it's pretty far-fetched to posit that the three of them were temporarily insane for 2 or 3 years. Good thing he doesn't know what's being suggested about him here LOL.

Wow Modulous, thanks for sharing that. I wouldn't have guessed. Can I ask what made you decide to reject spiritualism as an explanation? Or were you going from one ideology to another in an attempt to find spirituality of some kind?I was considering taking a course on Reiki. I'm not sure now. I might still decide to do that but I'm going to have to think it through in light of what's been said here.I was relaxing earlier tonight by listening to a tape of one of Joseph Campbell's old lectures. He was a famous researcher of comparative mythology. In this lecture he was introducing Buddhism, specifically the Theravada branch. He talked about transcendence and moving beyond pairs of opposites. Learning to recognise Buddha-consciousness and then joyfully participating in the sorrows of the world. I can't help it, this kind of thing intrigues and moves me. How does skepticism fit with it? Am I only succumbing to a religious delusion if I start to personify it? There's no empirical evidence that there is a "transcendent," though I choose to believe there is. I would have thought that this would be considered just as illogical as wanting to believe in poltergeists.

That's not what I was suggesting, if you're referring to my post. Only one would have the "poltergeist syndrome", and whether your husband or his sister had it, it seems a fairly mild one.In general, I think that poltergeists really are an extra person in the house. Think of that video you linked to. I think that the youngest daughter did have the poltergeist syndrome.Important to this is that she sort of has an extra personality, but her normal self is not aware of this. So, there's a new and invisible person in the house, and this confuses everyone. That case became famous because they started faking poltergeist type things.You say further up the thread that poltergeists are known to fix on one person. The difference between your way of looking at it and mine is that I think that there's nothing outside that person.The adolescents this happens to are doing nothing intentionally, and they also would perceive the ghost as coming from outside. When they do things in ghost mode, they will not remember when back to normal.So, someone has put the vacuum cleaner on the patio and a roll of toilet paper in the toilet bowl, and everybody in the house is wondering what's going on, including the kid. And things are being moved mysteriously in the kid's bedroom more than anywhere else.Imagine waking up in the morning and half your books have been taken off the bookshelf and piled on the floor, and no-one else has been in the room. Must've been a ghost, there's no other solution.Except for weird syndromes of the mind.And we know these happen. For real Linda. Very weird, but not supernatural.

Ducks are fascinating.Nature's all-terrain vehicle, on land, on the water and in the air. Musical. Tasty.Delusion-free.

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place” -- Joseph Goebbels
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