Archeology and ghosts

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by RalphH

... snip .... My 3 year old believes in the tooth fairy because she can't easily explain how a tooth disappears and a coin appears it any other way, but her inability to explain the phenomenon doesn't make the tooth fairy any more real.

My tooth fairy put in one tooth, and charged me £1500. Am I doing something wrong?

[Jaden]

I’m mildly interested in ghosts as the next person, but much more apparent and strikingly real to me is the forces of what the ancient Greeks called “hubris” - a counter strike type of event that occurs whenever a human being assumes greatness not in accordance with reality whereby the human condition almost must be accepted to have sometimes severe limitations, leading to a realization that being humble and wise, careful, insures against events of fate that can act as a sort of punishment. That’s the kind of ghosts I deal with - unseen but felt.

[RalphH]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

My tooth fairy put in one tooth, and charged me £1500. Am I doing something wrong?

No, but the markup the tooth fairy is making on teeth as astronomical! My kids will confirm that she buys in her stock at £1 a tooth. I'm in the wrong business!

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

My tooth fairy put in one tooth, and charged me £1500. Am I doing something wrong?

I don't think so, mine charged me about $7k USD for one molar removal, surgical bone graft and implant . Nothing quite compares to tooth fairy surgery

[Herb Hunter]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

On Sunday, I travelled for about an hour to inspect and buy a used DAW.

The gent selling it lived in a small hamlet some way off the main roads.

I had instructions to get to a church then hone. In fact when I did that he emerged from the bushes and guided me into his drive.

His thatched house was hidden from the road/track, and in the midst of some woodland. ...

That was an interesting story and it must have been fun to see the house and setting. Do you have any photographs of the dwelling?

[Herb Hunter]

These three posts bear repeating:

Originally Posted by Neil K Walk

Personally I think it's all superstition. The imagination is a powerful thing.

Originally Posted by Silurian

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence"

Christopher Hitchens.

Originally Posted by RalphH

I feel compelled to just float the possibility - however small - that strange odd men that live alone in the woods and jump out of bushes at people might hear things for rather more mundane reasons.....

Aside from that, he is clearly into music/sound recording/etc if you were there buying equipment for him. Did he have a recording for you to listen to and if not why not? The first thing I would do if I started hearing voices in strange accents, but couldn't quite make out the words would be to record it and see if I could make it more intelligible.



Why does an explanation have to be easy to be true? A detailed explaination of Einsteins Theory of Relativity is not easy, but that doesn't mean it hasn't stood up to every experiment we've devised to test it against. "Cause magic" might be easy to say, but a detailed explanation of how exactly that works is surely harder than any scientifically based explanation.

To say something is "beyond our understanding" is a complete cop-out and arrogance in the extreme imo. It's basically the same as saying "I don't know / can't work out the answer, so there can't be one". Wade, I know that is not what you said. That's another position altogether - one I also hear from time to time. Just wanted to head off you thinking both paragraphs related to what you said

We humans have an amazing capacity to assign supernatural causes to things we can't immediately explain because we don't like to admit that we just don't know/aren't intelligent enough to get to the answer. To me a scientist is someone who is able to recognize their ignorance and work forwards logcally from there, not jump to an unsupportable answer just for the sake of having one.

At one point the sun couldn't be explained so it was a god. No evidence for that, but at least it was an answer so it was accepted. My 3 year old believes in the tooth fairy because she can't easily explain how a tooth disappears and a coin appears it any other way, but her inability to explain the phenomenon doesn't make the tooth fairy any more real.

[Herb Hunter]

The Population Reference Bureau in Washington has estimated that about 107 billion people have lived since 50,000 years ago . That would mean, if ghosts existed, that the world would be teeming with phantoms and yet no evidence whatsoever has ever surfaced for them nor of the supernatural realm.

[ziapack]

I am aware of a rock about 4 miles from my house that sits out in the middle of some open grassland. There are unexplainable properties about that rock, that have lead me to believe it is haunted. I'll explain....

I live in an isolated rural area in the foothills of a mountain chain in the high southwestern desert. The rock, which is the size and rough shape of an old 50's style refrigerator, is located in an open grass meadow that is probably a square mile in size, and bordered by Pinon and Juniper forest. It is a solitary rock, nothing else like it in that general area. About a mile from the rock is a small spring, the only "live water"(natural occurring above ground water) in probably a 30 mile radius. Because of the water, there has been people in this area dating back to the Anasazi, maybe some 3,000 years ago. There is a 'feeling and presence' of people that is palpable, due to the history of the area. The rock has a partial petroglyph, on the west facing side of what I think is an antelope, half the image chipped off way before my time. I was first introduced to the rock some 55 years ago by my grandfather, and have observed it throughout the seasons for that time.

The rock is surrounded by obsidian chips, and arrowheads, and fragments of arrowheads, I would assume a regular work area for obsidian nappers over hundreds of years. The rock itself is granite and most likely part of a greater shelf that lays below the surface. When I was first introduced to the rock, I was horseback riding maybe 30 yards ahead of my Granddad, and when we got about 20 yards from the rock, the mare I was riding who was generally level headed went ballistic, bucked me off and bolted. My Granddad had a good laugh, said he thought that would happen, that he had never been able to get that close to it. Over the years since, I have never been able to coax a horse near it, and like my Granddad have experimented with friends and family to see how their horses may respond. You always want to keep quiet, so your not giving out a pre-existing thought process, that someone will inadvertently trigger to the horse. Always the same response.

Other oddities....herd animals will not graze within 30 yards of the rock. Deer, antelope, cattle, horses, nothing will venture any closer while grazing. It's just a rock, nothing spectacular about it other than being solitary, the grass grows high within that 30 yard diameter and stays grazed outside that area. People don't seem to be aware of anything different, my dogs are not wary of it. It is just there. I have never seen sign of prairie dog and gophers within that radius, nor do rabbits enter within the zone.

I have heard about every explanation over the years as to why that rock has the effect it does on herd animals and vermin, none as fun as my theory. I figure there is some old obsidian napping hunter ghost that sat down there way back when and is still enjoying the view, scaring off prey. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

[Silly Moustache]

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet.

Folks, I'm not promoting the idea of spirits, ghosts or whatever.

But .... I have a rather different concept of being haunted.

My Dad and I always had a "difficult" relationship. However, in the late '70s he developed Alzheimer's and it fell to me to care for him. Strangely as matters got worse, our relationship improved, to the point where he started calling me "Dad!"

My father was a chain smoker.

We haven't smoked since we moved into our house in 19 eighty, but oftimes we both smell tobacco smoke and I say "My Dad's here!" Janes smells it too and agrees.

After his death, I often "felt" his presence, and I'm not being overly "magical" as I think that we often experience such things for purely human reasons.

So, you could say that i was "haunted" but in a positive and pleasant way.

So much so that I wrote this song (lyrics reprinted below video)

[fazool]

Originally Posted by Herb Hunter

The Population Reference Bureau in Washington has estimated that about 107 billion people have lived since 50,000 years ago . That would mean, if ghosts existed, that the world would be teeming with phantoms and yet no evidence whatsoever has ever surfaced for them nor of the supernatural realm.

I'm not arguing and don't want this to become a unwelcome discussion. I will propose two thoughts:

1) if a person has schizophrenia and they have a full experience of interacting with another person, but it was all in their head and not in the "real world", did they have the experience. I'm not asking if they imagined it. I am asking if the EXPERIENCED it. Thought #1: there is more to the experience of reality than what most believe.

2) There is, essentially no such thing as mass. An atom is 99.99999% empty space but it holds a shape because of the energy in its particles. Quantum physicists have essentially determined that as you look at smaller and smaller particles, the smallest constituents are simply made up of energy. There is no "stuff" in there - everything that makes up our world is simply energy.

I am not arguing in favor of any belief but that I personally believe there is a lot more (of and to) just this interaction with each other and our world.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Hamlet.

Folks, I'm not promoting the idea of spirits, ghosts or whatever.

But .... I have a rather different concept of being haunted.

My Dad and I always had a "difficult" relationship. However, in the late '70s he developed Alzheimer's and it fell to me to care for him. Strangely as matters got worse, our relationship improved, to the point where he started calling me "Dad!"

My father was a chain smoker.

We haven't smoked since we moved into our house in 19 eighty, but oftimes we both smell tobacco smoke and I say "My Dad's here!" Janes smells it too and agrees.

After his death, I often "felt" his presence, and I'm not being overly "magical" as I think that we often experience such things for purely human reasons.

So, you could say that i was "haunted" but in a positive and pleasant way.

So much so that I wrote this song (lyrics reprinted below video)

Beautifully played - very clear with warm yet defined midrange, tight bass, dancing trebles - often sounded like a chorus of two guitars - and the lyrics also addressed some issues I’ve shared my father - great performance, two thumbs up!

[David Eastwood]

Originally Posted by Jaden

I’m mildly interested in ghosts as the next person, but much more apparent and strikingly real to me is the forces of what the ancient Greeks called “hubris” - a counter strike type of event that occurs whenever a human being assumes greatness not in accordance with reality whereby the human condition almost must be accepted to have sometimes severe limitations, leading to a realization that being humble and wise, careful, insures against events of fate that can act as a sort of punishment. That’s the kind of ghosts I deal with - unseen but felt.

Trying to unravel that sentence is giving me a headache.

Virtually every online dictionary defines hubris as "exaggerated pride or self-confidence", or some variation thereof.

I don't see the connection. I may regret asking this - but would you care to elaborate?

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by Herb Hunter

That was an interesting story and it must have been fun to see the house and setting. Do you have any photographs of the dwelling?

No, that wouldn't have been polite.

[robj144]

Ok, this is weird. I am now a scientist and still don't know what happened.

When I was a kid, my friend and I were doing something in my basement. My friend and I clearly heard someone walking on the floor above us and didn't think much of it until after a while I realized my parents weren't home and no one was home (they left for a bit to do some errands). When I realized this we became quiet and listened some more and we both (we still talk about) CLEARLY heard fairly loud footsteps. We both grabbed a "weapon" (a bat and some long iron thing) and slowly walked upstairs. We checked every room and closet and there was no one there and we didn't hear anyone open the front or back door either.

Have no idea what that was, but the fact that two people heard the same thing is strange.

[robj144]

Originally Posted by fazool

I'm not arguing and don't want this to become a unwelcome discussion. I will propose two thoughts:

1) if a person has schizophrenia and they have a full experience of interacting with another person, but it was all in their head and not in the "real world", did they have the experience. I'm not asking if they imagined it. I am asking if the EXPERIENCED it. Thought #1: there is more to the experience of reality than what most believe.

2) There is, essentially no such thing as mass. An atom is 99.99999% empty space but it holds a shape because of the energy in its particles. Quantum physicists have essentially determined that as you look at smaller and smaller particles, the smallest constituents are simply made up of energy. There is no "stuff" in there - everything that makes up our world is simply energy.

I am not arguing in favor of any belief but that I personally believe there is a lot more (of and to) just this interaction with each other and our world.

But mass is energy.