POLL - Are Haunted Houses for Real?

[doublehelix]

Our Bad Science columnist Benjamin Radford recently spent the night in a house that's supposedly haunted (and for sale on eBay) and in the middle of the night he heard a slow, low creaking sound that echoed throughout the house, followed by a leaden thud, then more creaking. "Flashlight in hand, I soon traced the sound to an exterior door swaying in the night wind," he explains.

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ ... -ebay.html

[ghastly]

But why did the door come loose in the middle of the night instead of during the day? A spook did it!

Actually, I gave up haunting houses years ago. There is only sooo much you can dooo with mysterious lights and unexplainable sounds. Nowadays it is much more fun to invent stuff to scare people with over the internet. Obama is not an American. Boo.

--Gasparin

[boogertom]

My opinion is that there are houses where unexplained phenomena occur because I lived in such a place. I don't assume that it was a ghost or a spirit of some sort, I can only say that the events exceeded my knowledge and experiences within the natural sciences( they went beyond thumps or creaks in the night). I also do not discount the possibility that the events were merely a product of my mind, however there was physical evidence of the events.
I also think it is arrogant to assume that we can sense all life forms. We cannot sense theorized higher dimensions yet many in the scientific community are willing to believe in the possibility. Based on that idea, I feel it may be slightly closed minded to automatically assume that the only life that exists is the life we can register with our senses.

[Blackcloud161]

There no haunted anythings.. but there are a lot of gulible ppl.
Harsh to say it but it is true. In the past oh say 200 years there has been NO definitive proof put forth.
the sooner we get out of the age of superstition and hysterical beliefes the better.

[Tarius]

boogertom, I agree with you. Stuff does happen that can not be explained and just simply dismissing it is indeed arrogant.
I may not have ever seen anything myself, but I know that dismissing something based on a single occurence, or in this case, a single nonoccurence, is incredibly unscientific.

Blackcloud161, just what definitive proof are you looking for? People go into these places to try and find out whats going on. Sometimes they come out with odd readings and various things that dont have much explanation, sometimes they dont find anything at all. But either way, they are usually rediculed by alot of people, scoffed at by the scientific community in general, and what ever data they may have taken is not looked at seriously. Even though odd things have been observed and recorded, people still want more proof. Just how much proof do you want? One of the foundations of science is that things should be repeatable. In this case they usually never are, they are random at best.
This is exactly like UFOs, until one comes and lands on the lawn of the whitehouse, some people will never beleive regardless of how much evidence there is. Or in this case until a ghost decides to tell people it wants to be on camera and give an interview.

[Bon]

Our Bad Science columnist Benjamin Radford recently spent the night in a house that's supposedly haunted (and for sale on eBay) and in the middle of the night he heard a slow, low creaking sound that echoed throughout the house, followed by a leaden thud, then more creaking. "Flashlight in hand, I soon traced the sound to an exterior door swaying in the night wind," he explains.

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/ ... -ebay.html

Why a place only and wrote the event? Why not many places and many events? With one single event like this, how is it possible to comment seriously?
For that reason, read here -
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2233[url][/url]

Before he finds something seriously doubtful, he should keep visiting around.
But was it really windy that night to make the door that way?

Anybody who doubts should ask themselves how much they know the world and how they were educated under what influences and got their brains washed to be re-dyed with a certain boring color. Well, ask them to look behind them more often.

[kmagic]

I agree.

My opinion is that there are houses where unexplained phenomena occur because I lived in such a place. I don't assume that it was a ghost or a spirit of some sort, I can only say that the events exceeded my knowledge and experiences within the natural sciences( they went beyond thumps or creaks in the night). I also do not discount the possibility that the events were merely a product of my mind, however there was physical evidence of the events.
I also think it is arrogant to assume that we can sense all life forms. We cannot sense theorized higher dimensions yet many in the scientific community are willing to believe in the possibility. Based on that idea, I feel it may be slightly closed minded to automatically assume that the only life that exists is the life we can register with our senses.