just wondering what people think about the topic. it's on my mind tonight, a cousin is visiting from england, and he claims on three occasions in his (fairly) new house to have woken up with an old woman standing next to him or lying on the bed facing him. I know about hypnagogic hallucinations. I wake up from being almost asleep fairly often to see huge insects running across the wall but what is less explainable is how his friend apparently saw the woman first, and informed him about it after it had happened to him. it then happened to 2 more friends staying the night on different occasions. I know it could all be a lie, etc. it just seems that, while there's no proof for things like this, there's too much evidence to dismiss it. it really makes you think. One time I woke up to a figure standing beside my bed. hallucination? very possible. but just maybe it wasn't...why randomly wake up? i feel very vulnerable at times, knowing we have no real power to prevent these sorts of things, and don't understand them fully even. anyone could wake up tonight to a horrifying experience...
sorry, drifted a bit off the casual raising of the topic and background, to a more involved and assumptive inclination lol

Jeremy Irons is NOT the reincarnation of Rudolf Steiner.

Nopenopenopenopenope!

Yep. I've seen one

I've never seen one, but am open to the idea. Tempted to go on a ghost hunt or stay in a haunted place before, but haven't yet.

I'm pretty open to the idea of them.

Sam and Dean need to take the Impala to the UK for a while.

Haven't seen one personally, but my dad claims to. He's not usually the kind of guy to believe in this stuff, but apparently he sees one around the same time every year. He wakes up during the night and he knows he's awake (I know in a dream you think you're awake, but come the morning, you know you're not. In the morning he knew he was awake so it wasn't a dream), he sees a little girl. He then turns away and turns back to find she's gone. I have no reason to disbelieve him, so it's proof enough for me.

Occam's razor... hallucinations require less assumptions to be made than an afterlife that happens to conform to our expectations of it. Ghosts are appealing because they would prove a human-centered universe.

multiple hallucinations of exactly the same thing without previous suggestion from others is a bit more unlikely. and seeing a ghost at only one time of the year? perhaps environmental factors could enduce a particular effect on some people at different times.

but in general, waking up and seeing something by itself doesn't constitute proper evidence, otherwise i'd be haunted by foot-long beetles.

It's possibly cultural. 1000 years ago in Europe people saw angels and demons. Today they see UFO's, ghosts, etc. It's been shown that in the absence of any stimuli, the brain creates it, probably for evolutionary reasons (it's safer to "see" something and be wrong than not to see and be dead).

LOL. Those old monks' diaries crack me up.
When the guy lives alone in a cave, talks to nobody, prays all day, eats poorly - only some fruit from nearby tree, has candles burning in a small unventilated space, and this all continues for months... And then, suddenly, demons come to seduce him and appear before him? NO SHIT! His brain is already so exhausted and sick that I wouldn't be surprised by little green men showing up.

YES THEY DO.

Unfortunately they won't. Dean will refuse to fly.

it annoys me when people lump ghosts and UFOs in the same category. a corporeal alien being, whose origins could be traced scientifically, is much more likely to exist than an ethereal being whose existence can only be explained by magic.

Does Greensweeper Grinsweeper count?

Reminds me of the time when I got sleep paralysis and I heard this maniacal laughter.