A poll for Halloween week

[pegkerr]

Sue at the Leaky Cauldron (sue_tlc) posted this poll, and I'd be interested in knowing what the folks on my friends list have to say about it, too:

[Poll #1079331]

Comments

[dreamflower]

The only ghost I've actually seen myself was our cat. He never seemed to have left our house. I've also *sensed* the presence of my late mother-in-law, though I never saw her.

My husband has had frequent sightings of both human and animal ghosts.

However, we don't believe that they are the spirits of the departed, but more of a kind of psychic memory of them in the places where they were.

[fairestcat]

I haven't seen a ghost myself, it seems to be an oldest daughter thing in my family, those kinds of experiences and abilities.

My mother was 18 the day her mother died. She was at college, in a gym class, she looked across the room and saw her mother standing there and she knew that she wasn't real. Her mother was at a funeral on the other side of the state. She had an aneurysm while driving in the funeral procession and was dead before her car hit a tree (in an Indian Burial Ground. It's one of my more amusing family stories.)

I don't even remember the first time I was told that story. It's been a constant of my life. I think my mother told me initially as a sort of heads-up, a "something like this might happen to you". Nothing ever has, maybe nothing ever will, but that doesn't mean I don't believe it's happened to other people.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

My uncle once slipped while playing frisbee golf in a cemetery and narrowly missed killing himself on a grave stone. (We collect stories about how my uncle narrowly escapes death. there's also the 'upside down, cleaning roots out of an empty septic tank, rope slipped a little' story and the 'flushed a toilet as lightning hit the building' story. I mean, we make allowances for the fact that my aunt, who is the one telling these stories, has her MA in storytelling, and it's still a pretty good bet that someone will be snickering at his funeral--"he died how? Seriously?")

[lmarley.livejournal.com]

This is too great! It should be a whole humorous article. I want to hear more of these, and brava to your aunt the master storyteller!

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

It may be due to the fact that his wife is a professional story teller, but there are piles and piles of stories about him. (For example, he has no sense of smell, so he once baled a skunk without noticing. Everyone else did, but he didn't know what they were trying to communicate to him.) The most recent story involved a wood chipper or hedge cutters that malfunctioned and ended up sending a big ass splinter through the fleshy bit right above his nose, right about the eye level. (He was fine other than the piercing and it's been a couple of months since this happened (some time in spring, i think).) My uncle's got a pretty sizable nose to start with, so when told this story, the correct response is to say, "So, did the doctor say when you can expect the swelling to go down?"

[lmarley.livejournal.com]

Another great one. I laughed out loud.

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

I don't really bellieve in ghosts. But I do beleive anything is possible in this strange universe.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I used to hear 'ghost' horses in the barn I worked at. There was a concrete lip in front of the barn and extending about 10 feet into the barn. There were never any horses on this concrete unless someone was intentionally moving a horse in or out of the barn--the pasture entrance was in the back. But while i'd be working in a stall, there would be the incredibly distinctive noise of hooves on concrete--just a meandering noise, 'I've escaped and am making a slow getaway', nothing hurried or bad--and my friend who'd be working in a different stall and I would come running out of our stalls to intercept the horse. And there was NEVER anyone there. This happened repeatedly in the couple of years I worked there.

A couple years later, after the barn had moved from there to a new location, we were talking about ghosts in a class at school around Halloween, and one of my HS classmates--before I told my story--said she'd once driven past the barn late at night and in one of the fields near the road, but too far away to make out details, she saw a white light moving towards the barn, that she believed was a ghost.

Now, I don't know the circumstances involved with that sighting, and I might have been inclined to dismiss it completely, as from her telling of it, there are many real world things it could have been, even just someone walking across the pasture with a flashlight. But combined with the stuff that I had experienced at the barn, I do find it easier to believe she saw something less than completely/conventionally real.

[naomikritzer]

When I was about six years old, I saw a ghost while getting dressed one morning. It looked like a little piece of white cumulus cloud, and it drifted into the open drawer of my dresser and disappeared. I assumed for years that my mother thought I'd dreamed this, but found out a few years back that she once saw it, too.

I don't know what it was, but "ghost" is the only descriptor that seems to fit, and it's not like I woke in the night and saw something while half-asleep, it was right there in my sun-filled bedroom as I got dressed for the day.

[chamisa.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I'm unsure of how I feel about ghosts, though I'm mostly certain they don't exist, and I'm not sure how to categorize this "ghost story", but...

One day in my teeny tiny college apartment, I was washing dishes and my boyfriend (now husband) was hanging out in the livingroom. In this kitchen, the sink was situated such that you had to have your back to the entire room to stand at it.

I suddenly felt a presence, quite strongly. Like someone had come into the room and was watching me wash dishes. It wasn't a malevolent presence at all, it just seemed curious. I thought it was Greg, actually. I turned around and there was nothing there.

"Greg?" I said.
"What?" he said, from the livingroom.
"Did you just come in here and look at me?"
"Nope."
"Um, are you sure? Cause it felt like there was someone standing here watching me."
"Yeah, I've been in here the whole time you've been doing dishes."

So, yeah, I believe that other people believe in and have interacted with ghosts, and I've heard some convincing ghost stories, and I almost want to categorize my own experience as such, and as I said, I mostly don't believe in them, but...I still just really don't know.

[gina-r-snape.livejournal.com]

Once I was walking with a friend down St. Mark's Place in NYC when I saw a homeless woman across the street dressed in rags and carrying a lot of bags stare at me intensely. I looked up at her and she turned around and vanished into the building through the wall.

Once when I was visiting with mysduende, I woke up around 4am and there was the form of a person leaning over me. All I saw was a dark "bust" of a head and shoulders briefly over my face. I breathed deeply and it was gone.

Finally, sometimes I will be laying in bed trying to fall asleep and I will feel one of the cats walk over me. I look up and there is no cat. I think it must be my departed beloved cat Wicca, mother of Faberge.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

Cats: Annoying even after death.

It makes sense. They're not really the sort of animals to let something minor like death keep them from their important tasks. (I now suddenly feel that sunny patches must just be filled with cat ghosts, all the ones that had no other pressing tasks but sleeping in the sun.)

(Also, we had a Rottweiler named Wicca because she was born on October 31st. :)

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

And, interestingly enough and somewhat related, I have certainly read many stories (both fictional and real-life) about how cats seem to be able to see ghosts themselves. Their familiarity with ghosts might suggest why they don't mind coming back as ghosts themselves!

[handgun.livejournal.com]

the ancient egyptians believed that cats were the gatekeepers to other dimensions. perhaps they were right -- that this is why they play a frequent part in haunting tales?

[lmarley.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to sift out all my ghost stories down to one. It's Peg's blog, after all, not mine, but . . .

My third sister is psychic, and has a dozen serious ghost stories. I have two really good ones, and a half-dozen more subtle ones. So here:

I began feeling someone was in the room with me when no one was there. The last time it happened, I was so certain my mother had come in behind me that I started talking to her, and then turned around, and found she wasn't in the room. I found her upstairs, and told her what had happened, and that I had been having these feelings for several days. She said she hadn't wanted to scare me, but that she had been having the same sensations. We thought for a moment, and then realized it was March 9th, my dead father's birthday. He never visited us again, but we were glad he stopped by.

When my son was an adolescent, I watched what I think of as a poltergeist follow him down the hall. It was the only visual experience of the paranormal I've ever had, that I know of (although I've suspected). It looked exactly like a little whirling white cloud. I thought of it as a "swoosh", although I don't know why. There was definite movement in it. It made me charge down the hall after him, saying, "Wait! Wait! What is that?" He turned and said, "Oh, that little white cat? I've seen that several times." --We've never had a cat, ever. I'm seriously allergic.

[odyssea.livejournal.com]

I've had several experiences with phantom scents, but those don't really have a story. However, I had a definite experience when I was in Gettysburg in January.

Picture this...it's almost sunset on a freezing winter day at the Gettysburg battlefields. The roads are clear, but there are still patches of snow in out of the way areas. Though the park is packed in the summer, there is hardly anyone there at the end of a long, cold day.

After visiting a number of sites (personal favorites), we got to Little Round Top and the 20th Maine monument. The monument is located a ways from the road, down a winding asphalt path. It's out of sight from the road, so when I got out there, I was all alone.

As part of a project to restore the battlefield to its appearance at the time of the battle, the brush in the area has been clear cut, meaning that you can see pretty far in most directions, including over towards Devil's Den, the four way intersection at the bottom of the hill, and the horse path behind the monument.

As I stood out there, enjoying the chance to be out at the monument without a crowd, when I heard a man talking. He had a deep voice, with a northern accent, but I couldn't make out the exact words he was saying. My first thought was that someone else was coming to view the monument, taking a path up from the intersection. After a moment, I realized that no one was coming. Not only was no one coming from either path, there was no one down by the intersection, no one on the horse path, no one anywhere. The only other people in the park that day were still over at Devil's Den, where I could see them.

I made a run for the car, where I asked my mother if anyone had come by, on foot or in a car. No, she told me, there was no one else there at all. I can't be one hundred percent sure, but I'd like to think that someone from the 20th Maine made an effort to communicate from the other side. I try to be open to anything that might be out there, especially at a place as active as Gettysburg.

[qwyneth.livejournal.com]

I've never seen anything, though I know people who have. There is a strain of some sort of psychic or extrasensory ability that passes through my maternal line. My family's stories are much better, but they aren't mine to tell, really.

I tend to sense presences. I've felt both good and bad, though usually they are more benign that "good." There was one time, however, when my parents were about to move into a house. They'd already put down the first month's rent, even though the house was really terrible--it was in poor condition, expensive, and didn't have the number of rooms we needed. The first time I walked in I was scared of it. I sensed something formlessly terrible, and was afraid to be alone. When we got upstairs to the room that would be mine, I zeroed in on the attic door and the closet. My grandmother tried unlocking the attic, which scared me but I couldn't get out words to get her to stop. Weirdly, it didn't open. I forced myself to open the closet, and then I blacked out for a short period of time. My mom says I was kind of in a trance, and said, "Something bad happened here." I then remember fighting to get the door closed, and racing out of the room.

My mom does tend to exaggerate, but I clearly remember being absolutely terrified of the house. She was so scared by my behavior that she gave up the first month's rent to get out of it.

[crowley.livejournal.com]

This was a few years ago, just before I moved out of my parents house and across the country.

We had a Lab mix named Blaze that'd been with our family since he was a puppy. He was about 14 or 15 years old and had been having a few medical problems although nothing that had seemed too serious.

One morning after a evening out with my boyfriend, I was getting ready for work and saw Blaze in his usual spot next to the couch. I said good morning to him and went on my way to work. That evening when I came home, his food and water dishes were sitting on the kitchen counter. For some reason the sight of those items gave me a chill and I went to my parents to demand an explaination. Turns out Blaze had taken a turn for the worse the day before and they had him put to sleep the day before, while I was out.

To this day I swear he was in the living room with me.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I think Carl Sagan had an excellent description of the phenomenon of ghosts in A Demon-Haunted World.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I didn't take the poll because yes, no and even 'unsure' don't address my actual sense of the question.

I believe there's something that we experience that some people call 'ghosts' but it's nothing like ghosts are portrayed in any media I've seen. I certainly couldn't say exactly what it is. I've had a subjectve experience of the presence of loved ones who have died, but it's not like actually seeing or speaking to a living person.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

no, but i've heard them.

[teacherla.livejournal.com]

I have a pretty strong feeling that something exists, which for lack of a better word I'll call "presences," but I'm not too sure that the presences are people or, rather, that the "people" we perceive are the spirits of the dead. But I've heard too many ghost stories not to believe that people haven't had compelling experiences. Myself, I've never seen a ghost, but in a couple of places I've had pretty strong sensations of presence. Neither harmful nor positive, just coexisting. No idea what or who.

[teacherla.livejournal.com]

Er..."not to believe that people HAVE had compelling experiences." Sorry.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

My belief in ghosts boils down to this: there could be ghosts; I have no personal experience with any, but many friends of mine have. I stay firmly in the "I don't know" camp.

That said, I toured the Museum of the City of London when I was in college, and I saw the Newgate Prison debtor's door. Of course, as an English major I was completely hopped up on Defoe and Dickens and all that, so I just HAD to touch it. And I got a weird, cold tingle, not like a static electricity shock, but a strange vibrating sensation. And a sense of recognition to go with it. You never saw anyone back away from something so fast. Not really a ghost story, but weird, and I've never had anything like that happen before or since.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has a pres-school daughter that sees "Buffalo." There are good Buffalo, and there are very bad Buffalo, and both of these types of Buffalo are utterly unrelated to the shaggy-coated cow-like creatures that once filled the American West.

Most of us were inclined to treat this somewhat lightly and with good-natured humor until she went on a family vacation and pitched a temper-tantrum screaming fit and refused to enter the Tower of London because of all the Buffalo there.

[cesario.livejournal.com]

That's very strange, you know---spectral cow and buffalo are among the more common kinds of invisible animal friends for children to have. It would be hilarious if it weren't specific and therefore creepy.

I'm not sure if this is a proper ghost story or not.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

When I was seven, my father died on Halloween night. I have this vividly clear memory of waking up, looking at the clock by my bedside and noting the time (2:11). I then looked down at the foot of my bed and saw what was clearly an apparition of my father standing there. He was translucent, gleamed faintly, and just wasn't at all solid the way that physical things are.

He didn't scare me at all.

Once he realized that I'd seen him, he said, "I have to go now. But I want you to remember that I love you, and I didn't want to leave." And then he was gone. I went back to sleep, and the next morning, my mother came to me to tell me that my father was dead. I remember looking up at her when she said that, and saying back, "I know," because I did.

***********

Was it really the spirit of my father standing at the foot of my bed? I don't know. It could have been something that I just conjured up in my seven-year-old head to make me feel better. The memory feels right; it has all the fuzziness and clarity of all my other memories. I know that my response to my mother was "I know" because she remembers that as well. And even if it was something that my head conjured up out of thin air -- well, isn't that sort of the definition of a ghost?

I don't think that hauntings and ghosts are as common as a lot of True Believers think they are, but I do believe that there are things we can't explain. I don't think that science has come anywhere close to explaining the world, and somewhere in that unexplained area, I leave open the possibility of things stranger than ghosts.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Y'know, it should be hard to screw up a question to which the possible answers are Yes, No and Maybe, but this poll manages to do it. *bleh* My answer is a firm "Maybe" but I am not the least bit unsure how I feel. There is enough evidence that something like "ghosts" exist that I cannot dismiss the possibility outright. However, there is not enough evidence to convince me, either.

Our schools should make themselves useful and start teaching kids from an early age how to write poll questions. This would be handy for a wide variety of career options (teacher, political operative, journalist). And since an ever-increasing number of people seem to be using polls as a primary communication methodology on the Internet, we should learn how to do it better.

[naomikritzer]

You know, it is incredibly hard to write a good survey. I had to write one for work a few years after I graduated from college, and there was simply no good way to ask some of the questions they wanted to ask. (Including some totally innocuous questions, like they wanted to know if people were junior, mid-level, or senior staff, except the job titles were not consistent from group to group.)

My father holds a PhD in Political Science and is highly regarded in his field, and has certainly done survey-based research, so I called him for advice. He was helpful, but his help consisted largely of him saying, "You're not stupid, this is way harder than it looks."

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know it is hard. That's why I think it would be worthwhile to try to teach more people how to do it. I would HOPE that there are classes on how to write test questions in the educational curriculum, but all sorts of people who didn't think they were going to be teachers end up trying to do it, and usually doing it badly. This is one reason I generally ignore internet memes and quizzes. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to get sucked in by quizzes in print media - newspapers and magazines aimed at women are particularly fond of this - and usually just end up getting irritated.

It also helps to know something about the subject. I still remember one very elaborate racism survey in MS magazine that was ruined by coming up with their own idiosyncratic categories for "race" that left out entire segments of the human population (the only way you were allowed to be black was if you were African-American. Black people from other countries simply didn't exist. Arabs were assigned their own race, but Jews were not. And Persians? Kurds? I'm pretty sure that the person who made up the survey thought that all foreign Muslims were "Arabs.")

It seems like the most common, and unnecessary, mistake is trying to add "flavor text" to the questions. If the answers you are looking for are Yes, No or Maybe, just say that. Adding cutesy phrasing or emotional overtones just muddies the water and makes it more likely that the real answer for many people turns out to be "none of the above." Same for ranking things on a scale. Just give the scale, don't label the choices with things like, "Makes me jump for joy" or "Turns my stomach."

[mplsvala.livejournal.com]

I had the same problem with the poll questions as Sharon mentioned. I went with the maybe, but I didn't agree with the wording. I am sure that I do not have enough evidence to reach a meaningful conclusion and have no real personal experience to draw upon to make a guess.

I said no on the second one and reading other responses, I see that I could have just as easily said yes if I had considered the following experience to be a ghost visit.

Not long after my dog Shadow died, Buddy and I were heading into the house late one night after a car outing. After letting Buddy in the gate, I latched it and headed toward the house. I was stopped by hearing Shadow's nails clack on the pavement and the jingle of her tags and thought she was coming around the back of the van. (Buddy also responded by turning around and going back to the gate.) Without thinking I appologized for forgetting her and went back to let her in. When I reached the gate and started to open it, I realised that she was gone and I couldn't be hearing her. The noise stopped instantly and Buddy and I were left staring at the alley in puzzlement. The sounds were an exact match for what I had heard multiple times daily for years, but no obvious alternate source seemed to be available. I chalked it up to a trick of the wind, but that is not very satisfying. I could just as easily attribute it to cognitive inhibition, in that I fully expected to see her rounding the edge of the car until I remembered that it wasn't possible at which point the sound stopped. Perhaps I would have seen her as a ghost, if I had been open to the experience.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

The really interesting thing about this experience is that Buddy responded as well.

[elements.livejournal.com]

My mother saw the ghost of her grandfather, just minutes after he died but before she knew he was even likely to pass away then. That's the only real experience I have any personal connection to, but my mother swears it happened, whatever exactly it was. She was jolted awake by it.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

This is the kind of story that makes me think there is probably SOMETHING to the ghost phenomenon. I have my doubts that the Something is the persistent existence of disembodied minds with memories and sentient behavior, however.

This particular one, where a dying person appears to a sleeping or drowsing loved one at the moment of death, recurs so often that it's hard to ignore. The fact that it's essentially a pretty boring ghost story makes it more believable. If it was made up or embellished, you'd expect something more - a message from the beyond, not just a fleeting one-time apparition.

[kev-n-r.livejournal.com]

I've had a ghost in my house since I moved in. My first roomate wouldn't sleep in her basement bedroom because she felt creeped out by it. My next roomates never went downstairs much so never commented much other than noticing cold drafts and such. My third roomate (who was male vs. initial female one) would get punches in the middle of the night.

His gf moved in and suddenly she had radios turned on by the ghost, DVD's start without hitting play, lights turned on for her. This friendliness encouraged us to give "her" a name: Penelopy or Penny for short.

I dreamt of Penny several timees. She's a young girl, maybe 12 or so, just old enough to have crushes. An older male ghost resides upstairs and I think he's not all there. I seen him, more than once as a misty shadowy figure. Penny is scared of him, so she doesn't come upstairs much (except around the 2:34am mark, which is when she visits me in my room.