For once, I would like to see people try and explain: what are ghosts really? And without sounding like a hippy high on LSD from the 60's. I have heard time and time again explanations involving the following vocabulary:

-energy (word way overused and without any real set meaning)
-vibrations
-ectoplasm (cigarette smoke)
-beings
-age of aquarius (lol)
-soul

... and so on.

I am an atheist, and do not believe in the existence of a soul, but it is fairly obvious that there might be some unexplained things appearing to people now and then around the world. Apart from downright fabrication (most of the reports are this, I believe), gags and hoaxes, and mental illness and/or drug/ alcohol consumption, there might actually be something to it.

Please try not to use 'dead end explanations' such as "it is energy from the next life", as this can have no argument or further understandability.

Anyone want to have a go?

Can't find the link but I saw where a university researcher said the phenomina was real but originated from the observer and not the environment. It had more to do with us than anything from beyond.

I have also considered the way life is tenacious here on earth. Wherever life can exist it does. There are even ice worms in glaciers. If this holds true throughout the universe then that would imply a metric where the universe is predisposed to create life.

There might be a so far undiscovered energy metric associated with life. This would be the method for telepathy, opening many possibilities. Like entities not associated with a physical form. The entropy making the universe tend to create life as a container of this force.

Emotions can be broadcast. I was in a doctors waiting room once when a guy came in and sat down who really hated me. It was over a woman thing. His emotion was like a heavy negative atmosphere in the room. When I saw the doctor he remarked that everyone in the building could feel his negative emotion and knew it was directed at me. He asked but I didn't tell.

When I got divorced and moved I had to leave a cat behind that was really attached to me. It was a scrawney little black cat that was really smart. I had wind chimes hanging on the front door knob so that I knew when the kids opened the door while in my office. Cat hated the litter box and learned to tap the chimes when it wanted out. Never tought it that, figured it out on its own. I had protected the cat from neighborhood dogs more than once.

One night I woke up from a bad dream where I was holding a dead cat and my hands felt all torn up. As I awoke I could feel that the cat was now an empty husk. My hands hurt so bad that I had to turn on the light to see that they werent injured. Later I was informed that a dog had killed the cat. From 130 miles away the cat had reached out to me in his pain. He was angry at me for not being there to protect him.

There is a psychic energy. Disembodied spirits, I dont know. Life energy metric, maybe. That our physical senses cannot perceive the totality of the reality around us, absolutly. We can use infrared and radar to see a little more, but this implies there is more to be seen. Just as in studying physics, I find where we learn a little opens another horizen showing how much more there is to know.

i don't know what it is,up until yesterday i was a skeptic,now i beleive there is something after life,but couldn't tell you what it is.

I had a similar experience with my Dog when I was little, only over about 1 km. I was riding my bike home and all of a sudden I just new my lab had died. We grew up together. I was not even thinking about him, but as sure as anything I knew he had just died. As I got home a few mins later Dad was sitting on the floor in the woodshed with old Princes head in his lap, just patting him. He told me he died a few mins ago. I have absolutely no doubt that he reached out and told me. I have no evidence at all, just the certain knowledge of what I felt.

Another thing, I cant really explain. Can I ask you to pause for a second and think of a loved one still living. You can feel them cant you, you know they are, in the next room, down the road or wherever. But you can feel them in your life cant you. Well I can feel my Dad in the same way, but he died about 4 years ago now. I cant see him, I cant talk to him, yet, somehow he still feels...here. I believe in reincarnation but that is another thread. But I know my dad is still here somewhere, maybe in a little kids body in another part of the world, but I know he is here.

The best explanation is that we all have a soul.
Yeah, you are an atheist. I know of atheists that accept having a soul.

If we do not have a soul...
How can people on Astral projection accurately describe surroundings from a great distance?
How does a person who was clinically dead describe the details of his being revived including conversations and objects on top shelves in the room that were only visible from above?
How would we explain any psychic abilities?

How about the mentioning of the 'spirit body' by some of the visitors?
There is much more.
There is a lot of evidence for it, but nothing for scientific proof yet......what else can I say?

I think that some people have brains that are tuned in to pick up on these things. I wish mine was but it isn't.
One of my daughters is like that .
My eldest daughter died 17 years ago and not long after she had died she appeared to my other daughter and smiled at her and then faded away.
She has also seen our old dog who died about 10 yrs ago.
She has also seen angels and she doesn't take drugs or drink ,she has just always been like that.

this is some old video of what looks to be a ghost ,im sure most of you have already seen this years ago ,but for the people who didnt take a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQQS-0ZOMcg you can even hear the sounds it trys to make. very creepy

But I do not think it is with our brains that allow this.
Our brains are physical 3 dimensional objects, as is with all matter. A spirit is of an energy that is incompatable with the physical world.
I feel that with some people they are more in tune with their own spirit within that gives them the ability to see spirits or perform psychic abilities.

I think your right SOUL-DRIFTER
but I think I should have said mind instead of brain.
What about very young children who see spirits?
They often lose the ability as they get older especially if they are told they are imagining things.

just today, i was at a convienece store, i saw a lady come around a corner in the back of the store she turned and went down the asile,then just vanished! she was'nt foggy or
misty looking she looked solid, i can still see in my mind exactly what she looked liked.
i got gooose bumps for a long time.i cant stop thinking about it!.

Did anyone else see this?

Well, I guess I can't, Senhuan. You're basically asking me to explain a spiritual phenomenon in a non-spiritual way. I understand that you don't believe in a soul: but I think that's what a ghost is.

I had my first near death experience more than 25 years ago, and I learned something: this body is not who I really am. It's a glove, a suit I wear. Normally, the glove is perfect. It fits so perfectly that we're not even aware that we are a wearing a glove. It becomes easy to mistake the glove for the hand. However, I temporarily took off my glove and when I put it back on, it no longer fit quite so perfectly. It was then that I became aware that I am something that lives inside this shell and looks out. It changed my whole perspective on things. Someday, I will take off this suit again and be free of it once and for all.

At that time, I believe I will go to another dimension, not so different from this one. I believe ghosts are those who either (a) don't go to their new dimension, or ( come back. This is not their world, and they therefore cannot interact with it because they no longer have the shell. Think of your body as an interface through which we can interact with this plane of existence.

However, you don't believe in a soul: so what can I possibly say. This is not something that can be explained with science. You could take my body, slice it, dice it, cube it and puree it, and you will not find 'me': but I am in here. There is an exit from this body that leads to the place we go after this. It's a doorway in the back of my mind, but it leads in a direction that I cannot point to. It leads within me, but that direction is neither up nor down, nor in front of me nor behind. It's in a dimension not covered by our 3 dimensional view of the world.

I became aware of the door during my first near death experience 25 years ago. During the last 18 months, I've had 7 cardiac 'incidents'. Three of those have helped me get really familiar with that door and have given me awareness of what might be on the other side. I've explained in other posts that I believe this is a way of gently easing me into the dying process, helping me not be afraid.