Do You Believe in Ghosts?

@SW-User Same.

@SW-User I agree. It seems to works even better if several people are together with the same propensity to do that so re-inforcing each others' nervousness.

There is a report in my local paper about one such group planning to make some sort of video or something of themselves believing in ghosts in the empty rooms of a 19C military installation known among local children as the "Ghost Tunnels". (The magazines are buried in big earth banks,)

I don't discount people feeling odd or worrying sensations, or hearing unsettling noises, in dark places in the still of the night, and I have done so myself; but I think it's just a mixture of imagination and our senses slightly distorted to by our natural survival instincts.

@ArishMell yes, a sort of group-mentality.

[quote]I don't discount people feeling odd or worrying sensations, or hearing unsettling noises, in dark places in the still of the night, and I have done so myself; but I think it's just a mixture of imagination and our senses slightly distorted to by our natural survival instincts.[/quote]
i agree with this very much. i've experienced similar while watching a video of someone trying to hear from the ghosts of murder victims with some sort of contraption that's supposed to be able to pick up the voices of ghosts. they suggested what words the sounds made and it actually scared me, a perfectly sane and logical person.

@SW-User What was shown in the video seems a bit like a modern version of the seances that were popular in the late-19C. The escape-artist and stage-conjuror Harry Houdini showed those to be fraudulent, using stage-magic tricks and something like the group-mentality you suggest.

Oddly, I have felt much less at ease at night in man-made places like old buildings or dark former railway-cuttings used as paths, than in fully natural locations. I think the fear was more of what sort of real threats I might meet, such as strangers or dogs that might attack me, than anything else.

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I know someone who used to stay for weekends in an outdoor-pursuits club in a moderately remote rural location. He said many members found it unsettling to stay alone there, such as on a Sunday night after everyone had gone home. It was not "haunted" or anything, but most of us live in at least suburban areas and are just not used to countryside darkness and noises - even worse when the neighbouring farm had peacocks. If you've ever heard one of those call out you'll know what I mean. It's a blood-curdling screech!

He told me one night alone there himself, he heard heavy, laboured breathing apparently from a partition next to his bunk in the large dormitory. Some people would have fled gibbering but my friend was made of sterner stuff. He had access to a store behind the partition, and soon traced the "breathing" to the effect of the wind in the eaves, on a loose flap of roofing-felt. He wedged it tight and had a peaceful night.