Yada Yada, this is a subject of some interest to me as there are loads of ghost stories in my family. As a kid, I believed in pretty much any and every strange phenomena there was. I have even experienced one or two things that are definitely weird first hand, and have shared them with others in different places. I even wrote some articles about them.
Yet I remain a skeptical atheist. I am, however, open to the possibility that there's something more to it than just psychological and neurological phenomena. That could make me a good person to talk to in trying to understand our doubts. Sorry about the LOOOOONG post, though. It's complicated, at least for me. So it takes a lot of explaining. I have changed the color of the highlights in case you want to skim through it.
When it comes to stories about scientific evidence supporting these experiences, I wonder where you got that information. I am not aware of any REAL cases of this. I have heard claims by those out to sell paranormal literature or badly produced TV shows (all the "ghost" shows out there that I've seen are, to me, just embarrassingly awful). From my perspective, this is a bit like learning about evolution from creationist literature. If all you know - or even part of what you know - comes from that, you probably have a lot of misinformation without realizing it. All the scientific evidence I know of about the paranormal has debunked it. If you would like to tells us more in the way of examples of scientific evidence, I would be interested in hearing more.
As to other personal experiences in general, you may not be aware that - to a scientist or a skeptic - these are, at best, merely interesting. They do not constitute evidence, they merely warrant investigation. It sounds like these experiences carry a lot of weight for you. For the most part, they don't carry any weight with skeptics for the same reason they don't carry weight with scientists or many kinds of investigators. Even historians only give ancient writings limited credit for accuracy unless the claims made in those writings are supported by other sources. That is because humans are shockingly unreliable witnesses for all sorts of reasons. Bear in mind that someone experiencing hypnogogic delusions during sleep paralysis (which appears to run in my family), a vulnerability to chemicals or electrical fields in older structures, or other neurologic disorders, might experience these things with crystal clarity. Yet their experiences, while very real to the one experiencing them, would not reflect actual events. Bear in mind that many of these experiences are thoroughly unimpressive once you've seen them first hand or really thought about them. (I have first experience with that.) Yet in the moment, emotions were running high and they seemed more impressive at the time. Third parties reporting on these events get PAID to make them exciting, so they will often punch them up, alter details to make them seem more plausible, and even lie. Many famous stories were started by people who claim to have seen them firsthand, only to admit decades later that they made them up. YET PEOPLE STILL BELIEVE THE STORIES EVEN AFTER HEARING THIS. Again, humans are truly terrible first-hand witnesses and even worse second or third-hand witnesses.
Even worse, once someone comes out as an "experiencer" of these events, they are committed. They have told the world they saw a ghost, they died and came back to life, they were abducted by aliens, etc. Once this is done, it is very hard for that person to admit they were wrong even if they are proven wrong. They have committed to something in the face of doubt and even ridicule and every time they have been forced to defend their belief, they are anchored deeper into their story. They will find it extremely hard to back away from that even if they are truly proven wrong because they won't want to believe they made a mistake.
Many in my family have experienced things like these. Especially ghost hauntings. I also know many Witnesses who once shared their experiences with demons with me. Here's the thing about that.
Three out of every four of these stories are TEXTBOOK cases of sleep paralysis. That was very powerful for me right there when I began researching them in earnest. You see, I was an atheist before I stopped believing in these stories. So I felt like they needed resolving, at least for me, one way or another. Still, the other one out of four stories holds that door open, at least a little bit, that there might be something here other than psychology or neurological problems. Here's what I have to say about those stories. I will share some of them with you if you want, BTW, but this post is way too long as it is.
I cannot investigate any of these stories. They happened long ago, and I don't even have access to the locations where they happened. So they remain interesting, but as a skeptic, I realize that these stories do not prove ghosts exists. Far from it. They are merely unexplained. Most of them I did not even experience myself. As I told you, witnesses are terribly unreliable. Even me. So all I know is that some weird stuff happened whose explanation is simply unknown.
What I do know about them is that objects moving of their own accord or several people feeling a cold "touch" of a hand does not prove ghosts did it any more than a fortunate coincidence proves God is real. It suggests something weird happened, but why must it be a ghost? That is an assumption. It is a leap based on a cultural presumption that we have no reason to assume it is true. If we NEED to attach an explanation, despite our inability to prove whether it is correct or not, why not say it was invisible aliens testing us? We have decent reasons for thinking aliens should exist. That's a far-out sounding explanation, but it's more likely - rationally, at least - than the spectral remains of dead people screwing around with us out of confusion, anger, or an inability to move on. Ghosts may sound more reasonable at first because they're a more familiar concept. But do they make more sense? I don't think so, and I think the alien idea is pretty absurd. Even more likely, what if it's time travelers messing with us? Maybe another civilization that's a million years older than ours, where humans have died out and been replaced, is coming back and investigating the past and running tests to see how smart we are. Again, that's pretty crazy, yet it seems more rationale than ghosts. Aliens might exist, but we are definitely here. Why couldn't super smart descendants exist who want to know about the past? If we can imagine how a time machine might work, they could surely build one.
Both of these explanations are huge leaps and yet they are simply ludicrous. If you tried, you could think up other explanations. People used to be blame elves and goblins and evil shamans and witches for this sort of stuff, too. But the rationale is as bad as assuming ghosts did it. Why assume anything at all instead of admitting we just don't know for sure?
Again, all we know is that we have no explanation for these experiences. Assigning any explanation when we can't even investigate these stories is a huge presumption to make. It will lead us down the wrong path almost every time.
I hope this helps you understand our position, or at least mine, a lot better.
Isaac
