Since I have started a new job as a ghost tour guide, I was just wondering who here believes in ghosts or spirits?

According to my script, ghosts cannot be communicated with; they are videos that keep replaying. Spirits can be communicated with and their presence can be felt (ie cold spots).

If you do believe, why? If not, why not?

Personally, I'm open minded but sceptical. I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in life after death but I would love there to be something. I personally favour the idea of reincarnation. However my rational mind rules over the side of my mind that runs away with fantastical ideas, and so I remain firmly rooted in scepticism.

An interesting point to note is that most people I work with are atheists and started there as sceptics, but now they fully believe in the existence of ghosts and spirits, because they have experienced so much unexplained phenomena.

Extremely skeptical, leaning toward no. Every ghost story I've heard comes with a rational explanation that people generally don't want to believe because they either want to believe they're able to communicate with their dead loved ones, or they usually just enjoy the mystery of it.

Not in every case, but you know.

They're one of many things I hope are real ;D

I don't know if I believe they actually ARE, but it would be nice if they were. I've always been of the belief that anything is possible.

I believe in ghosts/spirits (or as my friend and I call them, "boogities" lol) I used to be firmly skeptical, but I have had my own personal experiences that have convinced me beyond shadow of doubt of their existence. You can never really believe it until it happens to you, though, because there are so many fakers out there.

I believe in them only because I've had experiences.

same here

I am open-minded but definitely skeptical as well. I have had some insane unexplainable experiences, but I don't know if ghosts would be the first thing I would jump to. There is also the fact that if you already believe something, you are going to interpret whatever you see in the way that you want. Reality is also based completely on perception... so if someone believes in ghosts... they are real to that person, whether they actually exist or not. I digress. I was trying to get at the fact that I am very skeptical of my own experiences, because I am aware how cool I think it would be if those experiences were due to "other worldly" beings haha.

On the science side of things, on a very basic level I know that like everything, brainwaves are a form of energy and energy is never created nor destroyed. So the idea that someone's consciousness could uptake a different form is not far-fetched for me, however I don't know that I believe people hang out in their human form because of unfinished business. I don't know if I would say I believe in reincarnation, either, but merely that your consciousness disperses into the world, so that you are not collectively "you" anymore, but still your consciousness is out there to be used in any other energetic process in the world... hell, in the universe!

Totally unscientifically, I do think if a "spirit" were to take on a ghost-like form, I feel that it would have to take extreme will/intention on the part of the deceased because working from the model of entropy, it seems it would take quite a lot of work to keep brain waves together once your brain is turned off. So I think that would only happen if the deceased did want to communicate with someone. I don't know if it would be possible to communicate, or if that even makes sense lol, but that's just what I think... and like I said, I have had many unexplainable experiences which turned me from a non-believer into a hard skeptic of spiritual/magical forms of life.

That actually sounds like a sweet job.

However I remain skeptical. My mom and grandma believe in ghosts/spirits and angels and all that crap, because they've 'experienced it.' However I've been in my grandmothers house and have never experienced any 'weird stuff.' So, I don't know. I would probably change my mind if I did experience something, but it would be tough because (like anon mentioned) a lot of times the experiences have rational explanations.

i believe in all that stuff.. not so much angels.

i agree with Beautiful Lies, sounds like a fun job. i would love to do something like that.

Where are you giving ghost tours? I went on the ghost tour in Edingburgh (Black Mausoleum I think it was?) and nothing happened so I was a bit disappointed. But, my mother-in-law went on the same tour years ago and got bruised and scratched while there! She was afraid to let me go on it because I was 5 months pregnant at the time. I wanted to go because I "wanted" something to happen to me so that I could "believe". :)

In Stratford, here.

I don't believe, I never have, I have been on a few organised ghost trails etc with people and while in places, such as the ghosts trails in York, the Double Dead tours etc in Edinburgh. Personally I find them amusing more than anything, the people who carry them out are always so funny and so unbelievable! So hopefully you aren't one of those, they normally resemble roy cropper!

I have an uncle who extremely seriously believes in ghosts and spirits, he goes out most weekends taking photo's of 'traces' which leaves white orbs on the photo, which in reality is particles of dust etc with light bouncing from them, or in one case, what was clearly a smudge of mud on his lense.

I believe in ghost and spirits. I experienced some stuff that cannot be explained.

@.love.struck.: If they can't be explained, why is your default position the existence of ghosts? Honest question.

I believe in ghosts and spirits and angels and reincarnation and heaven. Well I guess I believe in souls and that after you die your soul either hangs around here, if you have 'unfinished business' or something is keeping you here like maybe you want to watch over a loved one... Then you either move onto your next life or hang out in heaven with your bitches and hos. Depending on how old your soul is. That's just what I like the thought of and I have no reason or 'proof' or whatever. I just don't believe that this is all there is.

I did a ghost tour in Melbourne a few years back. It takes you into a building that used to be a Cobb & Co Depot but was turned into a steel foundry in the 40's. {Its now basically a shooting gallery for junkies}. There is an open area- and a mezzanie where the foreman and offices were- between the mezzanine and foremans office was a narrow catwalk that was attached to the far wall. Part of the tour you walk UNDER that catwalk and around to the back of the building- which is done prior to hearing the history of the place.
I walked under it with my then boyfriend (who is a massive unit) and felt a solid WHACK on my left shoulder - it was sore for two days. Colin felt nothing.
When we got out - the guide told us a worker had gone crazy in around 1951 and seperated the foreman from his left arm by way of an axe. The foreman was saved but the worker committed suicide in the rear yard. I checked newspaper archives- this actually happened.
There was something malovolent in that building thats for sure.

Do you mean he chopped off the foreman's left arm at the shoulder with an axe? I was confused, I thought the man was attached somehow to the foreman, which I wasn't sure if that was a name for a piece of equipment or what, and blahhhhhh boggled me.

Yep he choppped off the foremans arm....freaky place.

Also do the candlelight tour of Fremantle Prison if you can, I did it last time I came home and the gallows are awful!!

I've been considering it but hadn't heard a recommendation yet (well I dont know anyone who's done it). I probably will now :D

Do it for sure- its seriously creepy. I grew up in Freo and the prison was still operational when I was a kid- was only decomissioned in 1991. Scary bloody place!! That and the old asylum.

Where's the old asylum? Do they run tours of it?

Its now the Fremantle Arts centre- right opposite the Freo pools there. Not sure re tours but you can get in there easily - it was an asylum when it was first built and has some creepy history. My dad took a pic when I was a kid and there was a female in Victorian dress in an upper window - I would LOVE to get my hands on that photo now.

Hm there's an old boarding school about an hour from Perth, you know, where they used to take Aboriginal children to try to bring them up white and Christian. I can't think of the word for those places right now. They don't do tours of the place or anything but you can hire it as a venue to stay over night with a group of people and apparently it's very scary and very odd things happen in multiple rooms. Damn my shit memory because I can't remember the name of it, nor what exactly it was that my friend experienced there lol.

When I was in year 12 we went to York on a camp and stayed in a hostel that had been a convent and christian school - that might be the place you are thinking of? We were too scared to stay in the hostel rooms and ended up all bunking down in the chapel :P much to the teachers disgust.

@~*Pagan*~: The old asylum gives me the creeps!!! There's one room in there I can't enter, I start freaking out lol!