ayesinback wrote: @BearinOz - Wow, that's quite the account. I can't and, frankly, don't want to imagine living so tenuously for so long. And then the superimposed events. It makes me think of the stories of "seeing through the veil."
And if I'm remembering correctly, a small black cocktail dress was significant to one of your comics, wasn't it?
Haha ! yes ! The actual TITLE - and I just went to check its start date, which was 3 years post-transplant, It never really had any association with the experience though.
BearinOz wrote: Hmmm….nice topic for me to drift back onto DUCKY's forums . I've got a few
I'll come back later with a very personal and initially traumatic set of experiences, but first -
When I first started work in Australia (I.T. for local Energy Supplier) we were in a largely open-plan, 50s(?) built place of 6 storeys. The computer section was on the 2nd (#3rd of 7 to Americans). We had a few re-arrangements, as years passed and technology changed. The last change, before we totally moved buildings to a high-rise, involved blocking off the whole floor from the lifts/foyer bit, with panels and glass doors that could be locked, after hours. The things is…the area to our left had been an accountancy dept., and just before I started there, one of them was found dead at his desk - he was single, in his 50s and often worked until 8 or 9, which is what he'd done the night he died. Now the lifts used to "ping" when they arrived, and this ex-London guy, Des (who used to be a roadie for Cockney Rebel) would often look up from our desks at this hatch, where people left work sheets, when one would "ping", in the evening, but no-one got out . You ignore things like that - people often press the wrong floor, then correct. But once the partition was in, and we locked the doors (around 7:30) it got eery, as the door would open, We'd look up, see the button light up, as if pressed, then the lift arrive . Always between 8 and 9-ish. Our colleagues wouldn't work at that hatch, if possible, between those times. Both of us used to get a 'cold' feeling,as if the air had been disturbed…we took to saying "G'night, John", even thought neither of us had ever met him . The others hated that B-)
I like things like that. A bit eerie but harmless.
That transplant thing is interesting. There's a show on new Netflix that looks like it plays on a similar kind of thing. Chambers or something like that.
I've recently had some morphine related hallucinations that range from comical to, I suppose emotional.
I'm on morphine because if my spinal injury and often get little hallucinations and some really odd dreams, and some of you may have read that my back issues started a week after my niece threw herself in front of a train. Most of my hallucinations are brief oddities, like seeing bad CGI giant bees flying in front of me for a split second. One time O was sat on the toilet and the next thing I know I'm at a bus stop being talked to by by Kurt Russell dressed as Elvis. I had a similar one but I found myself at the train station where my niece killed herself and she's talking to me about something, think it might have been dungeons and dragons or skyrim.
I've recently had some morphine related hallucinations that range from comical to, I suppose emotional.
I'm on morphine because if my spinal injury and often get little hallucinations and some really odd dreams, and some of you may have read that my back issues started a week after my niece threw herself in front of a train. Most of my hallucinations are brief oddities, like seeing bad CGI giant bees flying in front of me for a split second. One time O was sat on the toilet and the next thing I know I'm at a bus stop being talked to by by Kurt Russell dressed as Elvis. I had a similar one but I found myself at the train station where my niece killed herself and she's talking to me about something, think it might have been dungeons and dragons or skyrim.
I'm "only" on a codeine/paracetemol combo that's powerful enough to need my doc to ring Canberra, to get a consent code thingy for the pharmacist. I get them in 3-together packs totalling 60 tabs. I only take them when I really need them, and then only maybe twice a day. If I get up to 3x2 in a day I will have nightmares. Horrible, long-lasting "Dante's inferno updated for the 21st century" type ones . I've often had multi-layered dreams, where you realise it's all wrong and tell yourself to wake out of it, but then realise you've only "gone up a level" - 3 down has been my limit. BUT that's still way too many when they're nightmares ! Some of them are recurring ones *. The really annoying thing is that I'm only using them medicinally, whereas when I was a young man, and one year we were getting a regular supply of Opium-laced "Afghan Black" Mary Jane, back in the old country and passing out in vans for hours on end, the opium dreams were always pleasant - it seems so unfair, somehow B-)
* an example is :- we (thousands of us) are in place that looks like the Palace Of Versailles, only it's hi-rise. Each level is a large open room, with tables of food,etc. laid out. There's those double curved ornate stone staircases each end (down one end,up the other). We're all dressed in late 1700s wigs, frock coats and breeches and those buckled shoes -the ladies all in those voluminous dresses - and grabbing food as we need it, in our rush get up the levels, as the place is filling with shit - literally, coming up the double staircases and flowing across the room, ruing the fancy curtains, carpets and flock wallpaper. People are dropping like flies with exhaustion and getting covered and drowned in the sewage .
Fun, eh ? say "Hello" to Kurt Russell as Elvis for me, I'm quite a fan B-)
I've recently had some morphine related hallucinations that range from comical to, I suppose emotional.
I'm on morphine because if my spinal injury and often get little hallucinations and some really odd dreams, and some of you may have read that my back issues started a week after my niece threw herself in front of a train. Most of my hallucinations are brief oddities, like seeing bad CGI giant bees flying in front of me for a split second. One time O was sat on the toilet and the next thing I know I'm at a bus stop being talked to by by Kurt Russell dressed as Elvis. I had a similar one but I found myself at the train station where my niece killed herself and she's talking to me about something, think it might have been dungeons and dragons or skyrim.
I'm "only" on a codeine/paracetemol combo that's powerful enough to need my doc to ring Canberra, to get a consent code thingy for the pharmacist. I get them in 3-together packs totalling 60 tabs. I only take them when I really need them, and then only maybe twice a day. If I get up to 3x2 in a day I will have nightmares. Horrible, long-lasting "Dante's inferno updated for the 21st century" type ones . I've often had multi-layered dreams, where you realise it's all wrong and tell yourself to wake out of it, but then realise you've only "gone up a level" - 3 down has been my limit. BUT that's still way too many when they're nightmares ! Some of them are recurring ones *. The really annoying thing is that I'm only using them medicinally, whereas when I was a young man, and one year we were getting a regular supply of Opium-laced "Afghan Black" Mary Jane, back in the old country and passing out in vans for hours on end, the opium dreams were always pleasant - it seems so unfair, somehow B-)
* an example is :- we (thousands of us) are in place that looks like the Palace Of Versailles, only it's hi-rise. Each level is a large open room, with tables of food,etc. laid out. There's those double curved ornate stone staircases each end (down one end,up the other). We're all dressed in late 1700s wigs, frock coats and breeches and those buckled shoes -the ladies all in those voluminous dresses - and grabbing food as we need it, in our rush get up the levels, as the place is filling with shit - literally, coming up the double staircases and flowing across the room, ruing the fancy curtains, carpets and flock wallpaper. People are dropping like flies with exhaustion and getting covered and drowned in the sewage .
Fun, eh ? say "Hello" to Kurt Russell as Elvis for me, I'm quite a fan B-)
Wow that's vivid, drowning in shit doesn't sound like a fun way to go, it sounds like scrolling through Facebook. 😂😂😂
I would like to reduce what I take to be more functional, but the pain… gaaaah!I turned my head yesterday whilst walking with my Zimmer frame and it felt like someone prodded the base of my spine with a cattle prod before all sensation and strength left my legs. I was quick enough to get to a position to hold myself up by my arms on the Zimmer frame for a few moments until feeling in my legs returned.
More oddness. I think the human mind has all sorts of weird capabilities, that often appear as 'supernatural'… Most of my life I've worked shifts and driven 30-40 mins to work. I've never been someone who could "burn the candle at both ends" and always needed my sleep. Over the years I've had 4 kombis - the ideal surfer's vehicle - but its big flat steering wheel encourages a slouch forward, lean on it position. There were SO many times I fell asleep at the wheel I really shouldn't still be around to post all this crap . On several occasions I was really close to death or maiming, but on quite a few of those, I was woken by my wife shouting my name. Quite a few times she did this, when driving back after a big weekend of surfing down at Byron Bay or wherever : "Bear !" - head up - " Yes dear !" and I'd glance over. Normal. Good . …it was the times when she did it when she wasn't even in the bloody car ! that used to give me the shivers. The most dramatic one I remember, I was within a second of driving right up the arse of a ute (SUV these days), who had stopped on the hiway, with one set of wheels off the bitumen, but about 1/3rd of the tray back still sticking out onto the nearest lane (he'd gone across to a bait shop, on a side road) "Bear !" "Yes d-aaaargh !" and I swerved out, got a loud "BRRRRRRUUURRRT" from the semi driver coming up in the outer lane, recovered into my own lane… and waited for the hairs on my neck to go down, as I drove the rest of the way home. She "did" that about 4 times . I even ended up using the idea in Butterfly Effect, with Kim doing it for Phil . Apparently my Dad had similar instances from when he was young - so he lived to 90 ! B-)
The subconscious often has the voice of someone who has influenced our lives. If there is harmful self talk it's important in therapy to find out whose voice it is so you can replace it with your voice.
But subconscious warnings from loved ones are out there too. It was definitely my own voice that was calling to me to "wake up because you're driving" when I blacked out at the wheel, went off the road rolled the car three times and smashed into a tree.
When you return to consciousness hanging upside down in the seatbelts with shattered glass and blood all around, things are suddenly all too real. A guy was already there telling me to get out because the car was smoking. Again no phantom voice. :(
bravo1102 wrote: The subconscious often has the voice of someone who has influenced our lives. It was definitely my own voice that was calling to me to "wake up because you're driving" When you return to consciousness hanging upside down in the seatbelts with shattered glass and blood all around, things are suddenly all too real.
Hmmm….it was my very Scottish f-i-l, whose voice told me to "Get up off yer arrrrrse mah boy !", when I first went into hospital with astronomical blood pressure (305/155 - no, really !)
Much of the time, the only voice in my head is my own…but sometimes there's enough for a coffee morning. As I frequently say, though, I always ignore the ones that say " Kill 'em ALL !"
Maybe, in your case, an extra, more authoritarian voice in you head might've been useful ! Still, you survived it, that's the main thing !
I've had some pretty spooky things happen but before I ever talk about them I'm always compelled to add the "I'm a skeptic, but—" disclaimer like most others have also done on here. Seems to be the very first thing we say for most people. We want to make sure we don't look gullible, but we still share these things anyway.
I think about this sometimes. Even when we have our possible explanations for the bizarre, we want to share them anyways, albeit with caution.There's still something sacred about it or something that we want to invest in. What is that?
bravo1102 wrote: The subconscious often has the voice of someone who has influenced our lives. It was definitely my own voice that was calling to me to "wake up because you're driving" When you return to consciousness hanging upside down in the seatbelts with shattered glass and blood all around, things are suddenly all too real.
Hmmm….it was my very Scottish f-i-l, whose voice told me to "Get up off yer arrrrrse mah boy !", when I first went into hospital with astronomical blood pressure (305/155 - no, really !)
Much of the time, the only voice in my head is my own…but sometimes there's enough for a coffee morning. As I frequently say, though, I always ignore the ones that say " Kill 'em ALL !"
Maybe, in your case, an extra, more authoritarian voice in you head might've been useful ! Still, you survived it, that's the main thing !
B-)
My voice can be quite authoritarian. I was a Sergeant in the army. But it was fighting through the fog. And actually being unconscious was good because otherwise I would have tensed up and probably had broken bones. Unconscious my body was completely relaxed so I crawlef out of the wreckage with cuts, bruises and a concussion. And spent a year going to all kinds of doctors trying to find out why I passed out.
I think about this sometimes. Even when we have our possible explanations for the bizarre, we want to share them anyways, albeit with caution.There's still something sacred about it or something that we want to invest in. What is that?
I think it's probably a throw-back to our religious past. I'm an atheist, but we're still in the minority, unfortunately. Science doesn't explain everything, and humans are still very superstitious, so we're caught between worlds, when things like this occur. It's good when you find an explanation for something (1) or are on the 'opposite' side of a weird event (1) - here's 2 kombi stories (1) I used to have 2 options for a trip home from work, late night - the highway, or a country road. I often chose the latter, as its twists and turns helped keep me awake. Being the U.K., there was an old stone 'humpy-back' bridge to go over, on the way. I had my stereo speekers mounted behind the front seats…so I'm going over the bridge one night, with NO music playing, when a voice right behind year says "Hi Dave.." and I literally shout something, probably beginning with "F" - I don't remember - and it's almost new underwear time. I went back to only using the highway for a while, but then I go the 'back' way again, and once more on that bridge I get something like "…yes, I thought so…" Anyway, it occurred a few more times, but I eventually worked out thst each time it happened there was a light on in a nearby cottsge. Glancing at it, I could see someone on the phone….landlines only back then, of course, and the line to his house came off the main pole and passed quite low over the stone bridge. Aha ! so the signal was jumping to the van, just for a second or so, each time. I did hear -"yeah, that's right Dave"- my own name sgain, once… (2) Another surfing mate had a delivery job - bulk shampoos and conditioners and other hair products,destined for ladies' hair dressers all along the S.Wales coast. He was knocking oiff one or two of the stylists too, but that's incidental. He drove like a demon, in order to get deliveries done as quickly as possible, so he could surf after (or between) them. He knew how fast you could take every bend…. SO, after a weekend's surfing down West Wales, he and a couple of mates have had a few beers - a complete skinful in his mates - they set off home in the kombi. The 2 plastered blokes decide they want to sleep it off in the bunks in the lifting roof. You could pop the roof up, roll out the bunks, they'd get in,then you could drop the roof, without clipping it properly down. Of course this altered the weight distribution…you've guessed it - one misjudged bend later, they'd run off a bend, into an over- grown farmer's track/gateway. Trying to reverse, the wheels just spin….so mate Mike, climbs out if the back tailgate and wanders off, gets the farmer out of bed, who fires up the tractor and comes to haul them out. All too easy. By this time the 2 drunks have woken, and as Mike tries to hand the farmer a 10-quid note (about $50 in today's coin of the realm) a voice from inside says "WTF's going on?" and the farmer looks inside…and there's no-one there ! He's off ! Dressing gown and slippers flapping, as Mike chases him to give him the tenner….but he's on the tractor and away . SO -WE all know exactly what happened, but I wonder what the farmer still thinks happened ! B-)
PIT_FACE wrote: I've had some pretty spooky things happen but before I ever talk about them I'm always compelled to add the "I'm a skeptic, but—" disclaimer like most others have also done on here. Seems to be the very first thing we say for most people. We want to make sure we don't look gullible, but we still share these things anyway.
I think about this sometimes. Even when we have our possible explanations for the bizarre, we want to share them anyways, albeit with caution.There's still something sacred about it or something that we want to invest in. What is that?
I think it's because we want to share the feelings the experience gave us: that moment when we suspended our disbelief and just surrendered to the idea of that fantastical situation being REAL… It opens a window onto a bigger, more interesting world of wild possibilities. Sharing it makes it real again for a moment. Maybe others can feel a hint of it or be impressed by it too as we were at the time? Maybe they'll even validate us and add to it.
At this point in my life, I know none of the experiences I have are supernatural, so there's no "Skeptic, but" for me. I know my mind has just miss-interpreted things, missed something, or conflated reality with fiction.
Someone once said that the supernatural is just nature we don't have an explanation for yet.
I once had a "mothman" encounter. I was driving along the highway at speed at around 11 pm. It's a lonely four lane highway with nothing built up along the route. Suddenly right in the windshield there are these HUGE wings. The wings filled the whole width of my car (1975 Plymouth Duster, not a compact by any means)
And there were eyes and it wasn't a bird's body, it was more substantial.
I was spooked, pulled over and looked around and there was nothing. Just call it a close encounter and I went home.
Years later I'm reading up on Mothman and how it was mostly owl sightings. I spent a lot of time in towers overlooking gunnery ranges at night and had seen some owls, as well as a turkey buzzard in Virginia whose wingspan was wider than the single lane road my wife and I were on.
There are huge birds. If one gets low and spooks you, the tendency is to exaggerate size and shape. And those eyes. Owls have square heads and you won't see a beak necessarily. They have squat bodies and massive wingspans that would fill the windshield of a Plymouth Duster. And if holding prey would seem very oddly shaped in the darkness.
It was an owl. But it was breathtaking to see it that close.
bravo1102 wrote: Someone once said that the supernatural is just nature we don't have an explanation for yet.
Emily Dickinson: “The Supernatural is only the Natural disclosed.”
I am a skeptic about just about everything. If a subject comes into my purview, and it depends on what it is, I'll google it, read books, talk to people, and, most importantly, try to experience it myself directly when safe/possible.
Science is a good starting point, but it can only extend as far as our history of unbiased experimentation covers. And a true state of impartiality, when the constructs, observations, and reports are done by humans (and often have fiscal ramifications) is a worthy goal that is not always attained.
But many believe that our current science is the best information we've got. Some rely on that belief so heavily that it resembles the faith of the religious. Especially so when it comes to western medicine.
So the best I can do is to try to learn what information has already been reported, try to keep an open mind, and use my own sense and experience for what concerns me.
Odd things, outside-the-box, Extra Ordinary have certainly come my way. Are they super natural? Well, is nature ordinary? I don't think so. For all our technology, we still cannot determine with reliability the local weather outside 48 hours. We cannot predict a drug's effect for a specific individual when equipped with only an empirical study done on a population a generation ago. We still debate nature to nurture.
We have yet to plummet our oceans, our molecules, our own galaxy. So to me, science is a great idea and very often valuable, but it's not the be-all, one-stop. It's still in its babyhood.
Therefore, if science cannot explain an occurrence of mine, it does not invalidate the occurrence to me. It might be supernatural. If one has an open mind, the supernatural is not impossible. If one adheres to scientific thought, we have no evidence that the supernatural does not exist.
We remain with a set of beliefs that, I hope, can be flexed or even changed as new evidence arises
PIT_FACE wrote: I've had some pretty spooky things happen but before I ever talk about them I'm always compelled to add the "I'm a skeptic, but—" disclaimer like most others have also done on here. Seems to be the very first thing we say for most people. We want to make sure we don't look gullible, but we still share these things anyway.
I think about this sometimes. Even when we have our possible explanations for the bizarre, we want to share them anyways, albeit with caution.There's still something sacred about it or something that we want to invest in. What is that?
I think it's because we want to share the feelings the experience gave us: that moment when we suspended our disbelief and just surrendered to the idea of that fantastical situation being REAL… It opens a window onto a bigger, more interesting world of wild possibilities. Sharing it makes it real again for a moment. Maybe others can feel a hint of it or be impressed by it too as we were at the time? Maybe they'll even validate us and add to it.
At this point in my life, I know none of the experiences I have are supernatural, so there's no "Skeptic, but" for me. I know my mind has just miss-interpreted things, missed something, or conflated reality with fiction.
As much as I want to agree with you it also feels arrogant to think that way, in the same way a religious person will tell you without irony that God created everything and that Jesus loves you. There is so much we still don't understand and while the brain interpretation thing is by far the most likely explanation for many of these things, I think in some cases there may be something else at play, I won't speak for any specifics because I wouldn't dare try and explain anything and I'd have no proof or reasonable explaination. I prefer to just keep an open mind.
Remember Occam's razor was invented by a monk in the 12th century.
He was talking about the grandiose explanations some were using to describe simple things.
William of Occam said the least complicated answer was often the most accurate one.
So rather than postulate a world full of spirits and ghosts, it may be simpler to conclude that the settling structure of my house and whistling of the wind cause the noises in my house.
Rather than invent a whole extraterrestrial civilization that is observing us, it might be better to conclude the lights in the sky are things we already know about. Rather than going on the trail of a large hominid hiding in the US, it might be better to conclude that people just mistook already existing animals.
William of Occam didn't talk about science, though his work anticipated the scientific method. Then there was a friar a few centuries later who all but codified the scientific method but he was still living in the middle ages and people just didn't use logic or reason back then , only faith and magic.
So of course Elizabethan playwrights made Friar Roger Bacon into a sorcerer. Well I got a paper out of it for my magic and witchcraft class. How an early scientist became identified as a magician because there was really no such thing as science yet.
Fortunately both William of Occam and Roger Bacon lived before the Inquisition routinely burned people for unorthodox beliefs. Only certain heresies were death sentences. Questions were still tolerated.
Indeed but the simplistic answer is often taken as the correct answer and further investigation isn't carried out. I'm more talking about things that don't have an answer yet, rather than giving fantastic answers to simple things.
You take some "haunted" work place. Say there is an eerie feeling that many people experience. a few people look into it and can't explain it and a story of ghosts comes about. A few ghost hunters come round and find nothing for obvious reasons but can't explain the feeling. It's unlikely some scientists are going to come round and find the answers, and even if they tried they probably wouldn't find anything. It gets written of as either a ghost or people's imagination. What if it IS more than that? Be it psychic residue, genetic memory, or our amygdala processing sights sounds and smells that we aren't consciously aware of.
Anyway my original point was we know we don't know everything and what we "know" today could be wrong in a few years time.
You take some "haunted" work place. Say there is an eerie feeling that many people experience. What if it IS more than that? Be it psychic residue, genetic memory, or our amygdala processing sights sounds and smells that we aren't consciously aware of.
Anyway my original point was we know we don't know everything and what we "know" today could be wrong in a few years time.
'Psychic residue' is something I've thought about. In both my "haunted workplace" incidents, and my transplant ones, my logical brain looks for explanations, which science doesn't fully have . For the latter, I found out that there are essentially 'brain' cells in the gut mechanism…could some memories have been recorded on tissue that was deposited in me, on transplant. A male nurse told me he'd heard several similar accounts, during his time working renal wards. For the workplace one, could some kind of electrical interference, or shorting have been occurring, due to either the load changing, as people left for the day, or associated with the locking of the security door. When we moved buildings, I argued we needed a UPS system to protect the mainframe, but they muttered about "People's confidence" in the power supply, if they knew we had one. "well don't tell 'em !" wasn't good enough B-) ..but a senior engineer changed their minds, using key words like "fire" "insurance", etc., as we were right above a sub-station. Anyway, when the UPS was installed, it often failed - but only ever on weekends, and only on ones we weren't working. The suppliers' engineer (a woman, I was pleased to note) kept being called in, but couldn't figure it out. Anyway, one weekend the wall one side of the UPS room blew out…and it was discovered there was a faulty 440v connection in that wall, that was fine as long as current was being drawn. I kind of 'appropriated' that idea to fit my "G'night John" incidents. But still, it was only hypothesis. I can't prove anything, either way.
There's one universe (well the one we're in, for us), so everything that occurs within it must at some level, have an explanation. Quantum mechanics or string theory or whatever may one day give us answers to "supernatural" occurrences
Genejoke wrote: As much as I want to agree with you it also feels arrogant to think that way, in the same way a religious person will tell you without irony that God created everything and that Jesus loves you. There is so much we still don't understand and while the brain interpretation thing is by far the most likely explanation for many of these things, I think in some cases there may be something else at play, I won't speak for any specifics because I wouldn't dare try and explain anything and I'd have no proof or reasonable explaination. I prefer to just keep an open mind.
Interestingly it's actually the complete reverse ^_^
It's arrogant to assume that you can explain unknown happenings with fanciful explanations involving hauntings, spiritual energies, aliens, fairies, gods, etc. and extremely close minded too because you're jumping on prefabricated, half formed myths to explain something rather than using a more scientific and open-minded process that looks at the basics first: Are my eyes ok? Did I get enough sleep? Are drink or drugs or my emotional state affecting my perceptions? What books, games or movies are like this situation that I might be influenced by? Was my memory absolutely correct or could I have conflated or exaggerated certain aspects in the re-remembering? Could the thing have been caused by any number of normal environmental, human, or animal factors that I wasn't aware of at the time?
Basically, all the millions of absolutely real, cold hard facts that we know about AND the unreliability of our own senses, memory and brain which are real things that we can look at and falsify verses a mythical idea like ghosts for example that has zero existence in the real world and 100% based in lore and literature. It's unfalsifiable and therefore untestable. To be really charitable and scientific we would say that there is no good verified evidence that ghosts exist.
I feel my point is being missed. I'm not disagreeing about ghosts, I'm not saying things would be supernatural or require fanciful explainations, I'm saying there may be other scientific explainations that are missed because of assumptions. That and I found your wording too strong. While I agree that choosing ghosts as an explaintion is akin to choosing religion for answers to why we are here, there's still too much we don't fully understand and such strong wording bothers me.
To be really charitable and scientific we would say that there is no good verified evidence that ghosts don't exist.
Fixed.
I understand that there are many people who default to "Ghost!" as an explanation when it's actually something else. Yes, logical questions must be asked if you really want to know the truth
But science does not explain everything. Science is a process and one can follow that process and get stymied before the process ends.
As Doyle put it: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
There's no proof that the supernatural does not exist. An open mind would therefore conclude it's possible.
There's no proof that the supernatural does not exist. An open mind would therefore conclude it's possible.
You don't prove a negative. The burden of proof lies with those who say it does exist. Prove that it is a ghost and not creaks, moans and indigestion.
A. Conan Doyle was taken in by a large number of fakes and it was up to magicians like Harry Houdini to apply the scientific method and Occam's razor to get at the truth. That work continues with James Randi, Joe Nickell, Massimo Pagliussi among others. They do the research that uncovers the sham that most ghost legends really are. I love ghost story books but many of the stories twist and omit bits of the real background or make up stuff. (As do cryptozoology, UFOology and so on)
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" Carl Sagan.
—
Night vision devices are inexpensive these days and one can get really good military equipment. Passive sights go back to the 1970s. So folks are getting them and looking up. Well the mysterious lights in the sky are joined by a whole fleet of things zipping around and making seemingly impossible maneuvers. They can't be birds or bugs they're too far away. I spent ten years of my life looking through night sights, thermal, passive, infrared. You're warned in training–" there's no depth perception. Things will look farther than they are. You have to rely on rangefinders for any estimate of distance. Period." Insects have multiple wings that allow for hovering and even reverse. And they'll look like they're in the sky far away unless you know what you're looking at. Birds floating on thermals can seemingly hover and make right turns. No ET wars in the heavens, just birds and bugs scant meters away.
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