AP Poll: 1 in 3 Americans Believe in Ghosts -- And That's Not All

Source: Editor & Publisher

... Put Conrad, a homemaker from Hampton, Va., firmly in the camp of the 34 percent of people who say they believe in ghosts, according to a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. That's the same proportion who believe in unidentified flying objects - exceeding the 19 percent who accept the existence of spells or witchcraft.

Forty-eight percent believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP. But nearly half of you knew we were about to tell you that, right?

... To put the roughly one-third who believe in ghosts and UFOs in perspective, it's about the same as, in recent AP-Ipsos polls, the 36 percent who said they are baseball fans; the 37 percent who said the U.S. made the right decision to invade Iraq; and the 31 percent who approve of the job President Bush is doing.

... Fourteen percent - mostly men and lower-income people - say they have seen a UFO. Among them is Danny Eskanos, 44, an attorney in Palm Harbor, Fla., who says as a Colorado teenager he watched a bright light dart across the sky, making abrupt stops and turns.

... Spells and witchcraft are more readily believed by urban dwellers, minorities and lower-earning people. Those who find credibility in ESP are more likely to be better educated and white - 51 percent of college graduates compared to 37 percent with a high school diploma or less, about the same proportion by which white believers outnumber minorities.

Read more: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003663683

It's all the same to me.

Or start your own thread.

More people believe in ghosts than they do in Congress...

I believe in ghosts. The fact that science doesn't have everything figured out is well documented through history....

scientists burn people at the stake for pursuing a different theory?

My point was, one thing modern day science has in common with science 100, 200, 300, years ago. Is that they think they have it figured out. Every new millennium has proved them wrong.

Not anti-science at all. I'm very pro-science.

I see great discoveries in our future. The world we think we live in today, will be turned upside down.

Do you people like science? Remember Omni magazine?

Cheers.

"have it figured out". The only people I've heard claim the opposite are creationists :|. It's bloody illogical on its face: why would scientists be researching phsyics, medicine, biology, mathematics, chemistry, computing, weather, geology, and on and on, if they thought they knew everything?

Used to get it as a kid.

Sid

of research and experimentation?

parameters.

open to interpreting real data. Shoddy research is more often to blame for that sort of thing than any prejudice on the part of scientists. You have to actually support your claims with real evidence, and there are alot of people out there who kind of have it backwards. They have a belief, then they set about looking for tangible proof to support that belief. They simply disregard anything that doesn't support it. That's not science.

If you turned up with real data supporting the existence of, say, ghosts, the most anxious reviewers would be scientists.

If you uncover new frontiers and in doing so invalidate the careers of those who have dedicated their lives to now-obsolete research?

You win a Nobel Prize.

to court the undead vote. Oh wait..my bad...not Jacob Marley...Dick Cheney.

There are more people who believe in ghosts than people who think * is doing a good job.

the virgin birth, martians, those little "sea monkeys" that one could order from cheesy kids' magazines, oh, and yes, fairies & witches too.

some of those sea monkeys when I was a kid. Too cool.

Just saying

Well-- Brine Shrimp is just another mythological, unproven idea from sky-god believers...

(O-k-- it tickled me, but that's probably about it...)

If you don't "believe" in things that can't be or aren't explained, then your imagination skills must be rather vanilla.

Who knew? :shrug:

--IMM

One day someone IMAGINED there would be a method to light homes and businesses using something other than fire. There wasn't a real thing known as an electric light, but, hey, that didn't seem to stop Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison, did it?

Neither Franklin nor Edison consorted with imaginary beings. Yet they had anything but boring lives. You forgot Einstein, Washington, Jefferson, Bertrand Russell, Isaac Asimov, Archimedes, etc., -- other boring lives, according to you.

Say hello to Sylvia Browne, John Edward, and James Van Praagh for me.

--IMM

the wonders of nature and science are incredible.

Sid

any ghost story.

Physics is THE explanation for ghosts.

It's been said that ghosts are merely recordings of people played back on the magnetic fabric woven within our atmosphere.

So much for your put-down of my opinion, eh?

actual science.

You might as well say "evolution is the explanation for fairies!"

You've proceeded to the (untested) explanation for something that hasn't been shown to exist to begin with.

You really don't read much outside of your own personal biases, do you?

You can Google it because I don't have time - but you probably won't because you're afraid of your imagination.

And P.S. I didn't say a word about fairies. If you don't believe in the spirit of fairies then I feel sorry for you. You know that you can be both knowledgable about science and open to the idea that mankind really doesn't know squat about diddly, right?

I'm not afraid of imagination - but I'm not willing to mistake it for reality.

When ghosts can be verifiably observed and quantified we can proceed to explanations.

is that there are so many people running around here pretending they're scientists and demanding that OTHERS stop living in fantasies, lol.

There are no decrees or imagined infallibility. All conclusions are tentative, pending new data. And anyone can participate in science - just be prepared to stand up to scrutiny.

You've been throwing around falsification and this quaint notion that "anyone can replicate anything to test for themselves" as if you'd never heard of Thomas Kuhn. Science is not pure: it is subject to the same contaminants of sociology as anything else. From elitism to academic pressure to censorship to rapid paradigm shifts, anyone who has even casually looked at the philosophy or history of science knows damn well that your idol is not golden.

Now, since everyone can test everything for themselves and reassure their solipsistic minds, I'm off to try to solve the flatness problem in the big bang theory by reproducing some inflation models. In my basement, of course.

Go ahead and test away -- but I suggest you expect scrutiny.

The scientific method isn't always, or even often, the way it works. Falsification is subordinate to model replacement. Read up, in between runs with the super collider in your backyard.

:-)

describe how science works, not the primary school simplicity being spewed in this thread.

But one last thing before I go: look around you at the people here who have said they've seen ghosts. Do you fancy them liars? Crazy? Idiots? Not as grounded in reality as you? Science, of any definition, has its roots in observation of phenomena. Who are you to dismiss them? Who is anyone to?

I believe people believe they have experienced a phenomenon.

All the close-minded rationalists will panic if you start pointing out that science has philosophical problems.


The Structure of Scientific Revolutions makes my head hurt.

Phys Rev Lett?
Phys Rev C? D?
Nature?

Sid

Does the self-serving snobbery ever end? How about dreaming up a CV to post next eh?

But it's easier to attack than to face up to the truth, it seems.

that the existence of ghosts had been revealed in a journal anywhere. It was just another excuse for one of you to flex and wait for us all to be impressed. (Psst: no one is.)

ghosts.

Is it unreasonable to ask for support for the claim?

We all know that you live in the faith-based world, where unquestioning loyalty to dogma is of paramount importance, and asking questions makes you about as popular as a cold sore on a first date.

Some of us, however, live in a world where all claims are met with skepticism, where evidence of a claim is required, and where "belief" isn't enough to accept whatever bullshit is being preached.

So, continue to wallow. And I'll continue to ask questions.

Sid

Seems to be a pattern with some people.

that are unrelated, and explain nothing - 'fabric' and 'atmosphere' - is not an explanation. There is no 'fabric' 'woven' within the atmosphere - the atmosphere, of course, is a fluid, so there's nothing 'woven' in it at all, and cannot be used to explain ghosts - it moves in different directions, mixes, diffuses, and is completely unsuitable for holding a 'recording' of a person. And, of course, there's nothing magnetic about it.

Would you like to put forward a non-silly 'explanation' for ghosts?

I think I have a healthy imagination, but I "believe" little for which no evidence exists.

is too close to critical thinking.

Next thing you know you are a thought criminal.

.

Wasn't anything remotely human though. A phantom something or other, I guess. It was there, it "charged me", and then evaporated.

I have never seen anything like this before, and never saw it again.

I don't think ghosts are human spirits for that matter. Whatever UFOs (I don't think they are "aliens") are, ghosts are the same thing. Maybe some kind of "thing" that dwells on the fringes of consciousness. Maybe they need a human mind to have any shape at all. If that's different from imagination, I don't know.

But I do know whatever I saw, scared me shitless.

Made me feel I was in good company ...hehe

I've known at least a couple of rational, intelligent, scientifically-minded people that had some disturbing encounters with ghosts or ghost-like phenomena.

Personally, I think ghosts are in the "ball lightning" category with other phenomena that exist but that we have little or no idea about how they work.

Jeff in his full afro glory.

I think there are many things we have yet to fully understand and those who close their minds to possibilities are like those Europeans who insisted the world was flat.

And yet those Europeans still claimed the world was flat. There are still those who claim the earth is flat. Nothing will stop their believes, including direct proof. That's the phenomena to study, why educated people can believe in stupid shit.

There's lots of science in this, except it always shows that people can believe in nonsense.

--IMM

because I had something "charge" me once too. Real nasty little shade.

IMO there are definitely different kinds. I beleive there are non-human spirits, probably from a dimension we simply can't quantify yet that occasionally, or intentionally make appearances in our world. I also believe some ghosts are more akin to a psychic residue of a moment in time, usually the ghosts death, snapshots of the past that got imbedded in a house or on a battlefield somewhere. Usally seen the same way by anyone who sees it, playing a specific scene out. I also believe that some spirits are lost souls who didn't make a full transition for whatever reasons and actually have a sentience of their own to a certian extent or may simply not be completely cognitive of the fact they have passed on. I also believe the human mind has the ability to create such phenomenom itself, particularly in times of need IE. "I saw my dead grandmother when my mother was sick and she said everything would be ok" I have experienced poltergeist activity too which may be human or non-human sentient spirits.

Anyone else with any interesting theories I'd love to hear them.

...entertained the competing hypothesis that your encounter was the result of a transient neurological event, exposure to an environmental agent or natural phenomena which caused the your experience?

  Just wondering. I have read some interesting pieces over the years about hallucinations caused during a stroke or micro-stroke and their ability to cause extremely real short duration hallucinations, for instance. Also transient events brought on my low blood-sugar (or other biochemical imbalances), reaction to medications or illegal drugs.

  I don't know the details of the particular experience you had (how long it was, what happened, etc.) so I'm just throwing the question out there. I am a very avid sky-watcher and I have seen a few things, for a prolonged period of time, which are not easily classified by my understanding of aircraft, stars or other objects visible from the ground. I guess I tossed that in in case the tone of my question was perceived as a combative or rudely-probing one.

  I'm genuinely curious, if you have the time and inclination to reply.

Thanks,

PB

Scientist, seen a ghost....believe in them. Don't know what they are.

Not everything lends itself to the scientific method. Only what can be measured and repeated.

I really would. I've explored all that stuff, but have never once seen or heard anything that I couldn't explain.

Well, okay, two small things: A UFO that was probably a hallucination, and once a psychic told me something very specific she really couldn't have known.

Still, those two things are not enough for me to go over to the Spooky Side.

"UFO that was probably a hallucination"

Based on what? The assumption that they don't exist? It may not have been an alien spacecraft, but why assume this?

"... a psychic told me something very specific she really couldn't have known."

That's evidence for ESP.

A psychic told a coworker of mine "You don't like the color of your toilet paper.". That's not exactly something a cold reader would like to say, it is way too specific and unusual. It was true, she lived with a roommate that bought lavender toilet paper to coordinate with the colors in the bathroom.

If you look though red glass everything will look red.

and then I woke up.

to know that there is nothing at all that would prevent someone from at one time both thinking logically and believing they have seen a ghost.

I believed I saw a ghost. And then I applied logical thought to figure out that it was nothing more than a rather vivid production of and in my own brain.

I suspect that your "logical" conclusion was based on certain assumptions. How do you know your assumptions are correct?

And yet I've seen a few ghosts.
My parents' house is haunted, and we've all felt or seen things there.
Probably about 80% could be written off as something else, but that 20%... *shivers*

"There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophies"

If scientists thought they knew everything they'd be out of work.

Logic isn't something to be believed in. Logic is something you either use, or you don't. And it's a very narrowly defined term- WAAAAAY overused. Used when most mean "rational."

Anyway, logic doesn't need belief. If you don't think logically- consistently with the way you've defined your own words- you're just going to fuck yourself.

If I remember from my college days, isn't a Logical Statement a statement that is merely both Truthful and Valid? And if that is indeed the case, it appears to me to allow for a myriad of belief systems.

I don't believe in Ghosts or ESP... real or imagined

But I bet you half suspected I knew, now didn't you?

Knows that there is much more evidence that ghosts and UFO's exist, than that Jesus Christ ever did. Yet, predictably, Jesus-believers are treated with kid gloves by the press, their beliefs never questioned but quite simply taken for granted, while those with beliefs in ghosts, UFO's, etc., anything that disturbs Christianity's apple cart, are treated as nutjobs. Sound familiar?

Why the fuck are you attacking Christians? It's the same jerks who piss on religious people's beliefs who think people who believe in ghosts and UFOs are uneducated etc. They treat us ALL like nutjobs for believing in anything they don't.

Attaching double standards, maybe, and the fact that christians and people with "faith" get an easy ride. Absolutely true.

And yeah, just blurting out for no particular reason negative shit about Christians in some tortured connexion to the topic at hand, that's an attack in my book.

The press has double standards for believers. Those with conventional belief systems (i.e. Christianity) get a total pass for their belief in supernatural events. They are allowed without question, and on no evidence whatsoever other than "faith" (and accounts written many years after the supposed event by non-observers), to believe that a man rose from the dead after three days. But, those who take seriously in any way the actual evidence for UFO's, ghosts, etc., are fair game for ridicule in the press. Unfair, unequal, and unbalanced treatment. Typical press behavior.

there's no evidence for any of it.

Sid

.

I heard my two deceased dogs playing...then I looked up and saw them as ghosts. (That's how I knew the noise was caused by my two dogs.)

deceased greyhound several times after she passed. I heard her tag jingling too each time I saw her.

how many of you are gonna watch them Wednesday LIVE at that spooky abandoned sanatorium.

Do you watch Most Haunted on the travel channel? They had a live deal from the Winchester Mansion last week.

It wasn't as good as some of their past ones, but from how little the GhostHunters got when they went there I wasn't expecting much. A few noises, stuff like that. It was fun enough to watch though :)

(I saw something about another Most Haunted live from Transylvania to air on Halloween morning, but haven't seen anything else about it, might want to keep an eye out though!)

Most of it is faked. They've admitted it. They don't look for explanations and their main medium is a complete drama queen fraud.

I LOVE TAPS though....they are about 25 minutes from here.

But David Wells, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting briefly, doesn't do all the silly theatrics where he's possessed by every spirit in a hundred mile radius. Plus, I trust that Ciaran O'Keefe keeps them mostly on the level. He's rather stodgy, and played a big hand in forcing out their former fakey medium.

The other one saw satanic devil worship around every turn and was constantly possessed (by the same voice apparently).

The blond is annoying and often detracts from things with her endless shrieking. I would like to see a little less background noise and drama. I know alot of people like it, but personally it grates on me.

after his debunking. The shows we get over here are behind the UK and David is wonderful. :)

on edit..of course the ones done live here in the US are current. :)

It seems like the shows they hype up the most are the ones where nothing interesting at all happens. But I still love the idea of Roto-Rooter ghost busters, and they have had a few things happen on the show that freaked me out, though I don't really trust their findings, given that there are so many TV people with a vested interest in having something happen on camera. And, while the main "characters" seem pretty grounded, there sure are a bunch of people (mostly those they investigate) who are desperate to believe just about anything (orbs are bullshit, and I wish they would just stop mentioning them). What was I saying?

I missed this past show and watched it last night. I'm looking forward to their live event. The Stanley Hotel last year was amazing. :)

wrestling guy tag along. I mean he seemed to take it seriously and all, which was appreciated, but it seemed like the network decided to plop him in there to advertise their other shows. Other than that though it was really cool!

because they are just Unidentified Flying Objects....they could be anything, not necessarily alien in nature, might be a weather balloon.

Oops did I let my tin foil hat show again? B-)

I once saw a flying object I was unable to identify- UFO.

I would've figured it to be higher.

And it's actually rather funny that most of the pagans I know are quite well educated. And they also believe in witchcraft and spells and such.

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

world out there I believe. There's a lot more out there than just our tangible physical surroundings. I've never seen a ghost per se, but I did experience something that was unexplainable a few years back. Some objects that had been relocated and placed somewhere different from their original location when I woke up one morning. And this could not have been done by another person at all.
Also, I distinctly felt the eerie presence of someone else in the room with me for a moment the nite before.
I won't go into the whole scenario behind this occurrence, but I'm a rational person, and this experience gave me an uncanny feeling. It was one and only incidence that I had.
Another strange situation involved my Uncle who had observed a UFO at a fairly close range in the Province of Saskatchewan, on the prairies. He was a farmer and a young man at the time, and the horses that were with him got really spooked by this object and became frantic. This object just basically appeared stationary above them for a short period of time, and took off. That's all I was told about his experience.
If you ask, I'm sure you will find at least one person you know who has seen a loved one after they have passed on, or experienced something unexplainable by physical laws and limitations.

...but this is what I think - our definition of reality is pretty much limited to our senses and the things they can perceive and interpret. Scientists have developed ways (math) and instruments to detect things outside of our normal sensory range (infrared light or ultra low frequency sound, for example), but with the exception of a small number of scientists and specialists, most of our world is defined by what we can see, hear, smell, taste and feel. To think that the universe can be completely defined by what we are capable of perceiving, with or without the aid of instrumentation, seems either naive or arrogant. This is not to say that we should consider all possibilities equally valid without verifiable evidence, rather it is an acknowledgment that there is at least as much that we still don't know about the universe as we can prove true.

Have you ever met anybody who claims they are an irrational person? Moreover, do you believe that people can be delusional? How would you know?

Key question: Do you think that everything that you believe is true? (Careful here, if you answer yes, what are the implications for everyone else?)

--IMM

.

Ghosts don't exist. UFOs don't exist. Spells and witchcraft don't exist. ESP doesn't exist. Invading Iraq was wrong. Bush is doing a bad job. A missile did not hit the Pentagon. WTC7 was not a controlled demolition. That is all.

and the OP was pretty good too :)

Sid

turn and the door open a little when we were younger. I know that the man who built the house died there of natural causes but I dont know what turned the know? Something else is out there besides us?

I went to my mother's house. As I reached for the front door knob, it turned and the door opened. I thought it was my mother, but she was in the back of the house. Sort of blew my mind.

No one else had ever lived in that house, as my mother and step-father moved in right after it was built. And no one had ever died there.

When it happened to me, it turned real slow and the door slowly opened a few inches and went back but didnt close. I grabbed the door and pushed it open thinking it was my brother messing with me and there was no one there. When I across the hall to my room where he was, he was just sitting there looking at the door with his mouth open. He also had things happen in that room prior to this but we all just found reasons to explain it away but not this time.

I was preparing the memorial for a relative of mine with several of his friends. We heard a knock at the door and went to see who was there. There was nobody there, nor was there anything close to the door.

The night he passed away a good friend of his was in Europe and was asleep. He was awoken by a voice saying "I love you".

I've heard three first-hand accounts of radios turning on without someone living turning them on. Each time it was shortly after someone close had passed. For all three of these incidents, there was a link to the deceased person.
1. The woman who passed used to play the radio which annoyed her coworker (who told me this). After she passed, the radio turned on.
2. A woman at work said the radio in her bedroom turned on "by itself" to a country radio station. Both she and her husband heard this. Neither listen to country music. A friend of her husband had recently died. Her husband said he liked country music.
3. A relative of mine used a portable radio to play music for another relative in the hospital and nursing home. After he passed she heard a sound and finally found out it was the radio. She had not turned it on.

I myself have witnessed two different TVs turn off without me turning them off. One time one of these TVs turned on "by itself".

That's just a start.

This is the problem with reports about polls that don't contain the poll itself (at least, I didn't see it at the link). Chances are, they just asked "Do you believe in ghosts?" But, the question could also have been "Do you believe in some sort of supernatural phenomena, like ghosts or miracles?" And, unless they specifically defined what they mean by ghost, it can be interpreted in a number of ways. While I don't have any reason to believe that the souls of dead people somehow become trapped on Earth in some incorporeal form and occasionally manifest, I have personally witnessed things that I couldn't explain (even after several attempts to do so) which some people might interpret as ghost activity. In that sense, I believe in "ghosts." A similar ambiguity exists with regards to UFOs (which doesn't have to mean alien spaceships to everyone who says they've seen them) and witchcraft.

:D

I've got that movie coming up on my Netflix queue.

I've recently watched all the episodes but the last.

"Vyv, have we got a video?" :D

Rik Mayall never got the recognition he deserved. Bottom was pretty funny too.

Thanks for the reminders :)

Sid

I'm still trying to catch up on my Kids in the Hall.

However, my polling results may be skewed by sampling error.


edit spelling

I have had tooooo many experiences to say it isn't so.

I think there are many reasons for that. 1) the denigration of intelligence in our society in favor of athletes, celebrities, etc. Scientists are "eggheads". 2) a general lack of respect for critical thinking and an educational system that is deliberately designed to crank out good cubicle workers but not thinkers. We are still arguing about whether evolution should be taught in schools. and 3) excessive religiosity in our society. Our politicians all have to go around proclaiming their faith, while atheists are demonized as not being "good" people.

I am a highly educated, exceptionally logical professional and I have seen convincing evidence that the paranormal--especially ghosts--exist. I don't *believe* in unusual paranormal events. I accept their reality because of evidence.

So take your gigglefest elsewhere, please.

Lisby

:eyes:

But what do I know, I'm just a "stupid scientistic materialist pig" to the woo woos. :eyes:

PB

and rivers?

That's honestly the bottom line of it. They want to pretend that they're the doorkeepers to all knowledge, and that anyone who isn't in their honours biology class is a mouth-breathing rube. That's not to say that all (actual) scientists are like that of course, just the twerps who have discovered their bully pulpit.

(Just look around on this thread for all the evidence of hubris you'd ever need to see from them.)

The beauty of science is that it doesn't rely on authority but on evidence, verification and reason. Anyone who cares to put in the time and effort can replicate anything in science to test it for themselves.

Those are qualities sadly lacking in the fun-but-no-scientific-rigor world of the paranormal.

:eyes:

You got "convincing evidence"? There's a cool million in it for you.

Sid

Germs and congenital defects my ass!

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77rtheodoric.phtml




Sid

Especially when it looks like we're sliding into an era of tumult and privation. A lot of people are primed for new Juju Men who'll fix things with penance and scapegoating.

That is all.

;)

And our imaginations are running wild!!

:rofl:

I mean regularly. Would you believe a lot?

eom

In a couple more centiroes, I predict witch (Liberal) burning will be making a comeback.

The Postmodernists, who the woo-woos often use as a philosophical backing for their BS, are a fifth column desiring to destroy the legacy of the Enlightenment with a bombardment of profound-sounding meaningless gibberish.

I hadn't heard about this poll and thought who the hell doesn't believe in goats?

I have never, ever, ever seen anything or felt anything paranormal or ghostly. I've had friends invite me over to haunted houses. NADA. I even went to a psychic fair once...my skepticism killed the abilities of those around me. Aliens avoid me like the plague. I live in a world devoid of supernaturalism.

And, I may be wrong in this, but I think you do too.

Nothing exists outside of nature.

make it into the same poll, and i know that's already been expressed, but i thought i'd say it again. why conflate the two? it seems like a biased poll in that sense.

"rednecks believe in UFOs, guess what, the also believe in ghosts, what small-minded idiots!!"

but, some people believe in ghosts -- so what? does it make them idiots? obviously it does to some here, i'm just not comfortable casting aspersions on people's beliefs like that. There's no proof of ghosts -- there's no proof of god either...well you know where i'm going with that.

my question i guess, is this: am I an idiot for not thinking that because a section of the population believe in ghosts are idiots? or ufos? or god? how can we be so fucking intolerant as to sit around here and call people's beliefs, however preposterous they seem to you, idiotic? maybe i'm missing something.

but i guess now this poll is a sign of the coming dark ages...yeesh. alarmist much?

*shaking head*

edit to add: the "idiot" meme is in the other ghost thread, here http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2140737

Someone points out that James Randi has a million bucks waiting for the person who can produce that proof, suddenly the aforementioned proof simply fades away.

all by itself but only after they were asleep. I could never find a reason for it -- like lines running under the floor or well, anything. :shrug:

is very cool though!