The truth is out there. Or is it?

[Dreamer128]

WASHINGTON - Those things that go bump in the night? About one-third of people believe they could be ghosts. And nearly one out of four, 23 percent, say they've actually seen a ghost or felt its presence, finds a pre-Halloween poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos.

One is Misty Conrad, who says she fled her rented home in Syracuse, Ind., after her daughter began talking to an unseen girl named Nicole and neighbors said children had been murdered in the house. That was after the TV and lights began flicking on at night.

"It kind of creeped you out," Conrad, 40, of Hampton, Va., recalled this week. "I needed to get us out."

About one out of five people, 19 percent, say they accept the existence of spells or witchcraft. Nearly half, 48 percent, believe in extrasensory perception, or ESP.

The most likely candidates for ghostly visits include single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter.

Those who dismissed the existence of ghosts include Morris Swadener, 66, a Navy retiree from Kingston, Wash.

He says he shot one with his rifle when he was a child.

"I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a white ghost in my closet," he said. "I discovered I'd put a hole in my brand new white shirt. My mother and father were not amused."

Three in 10 have awakened sensing a strange presence in the room. For whatever it says about matrimony, singles are more likely than married people to say so.

Fourteen percent — mostly men and lower-income people — say they have seen a UFO. Among them is Danny Eskanos, 44, an attorney in Palm Harbor, Fla., who says as a Colorado teenager he watched a bright light dart across the sky, making abrupt stops and turns.

"I knew a little about airplanes and helicopters, and it was not that," he said. "It's one of those things that sticks in your mind."

Spells and witchcraft are more readily believed by urban dwellers, minorities and lower-earning people. Those who find credibility in ESP are more likely to be better educated and white — 51 percent of college graduates compared to 37 percent with a high school diploma or less, about the same proportion by which white believers outnumber minorities.

Overall, the 48 percent who accept ESP is less than the 66 percent who gave that answer to a similar 1996 Newsweek question.

One in five say they are at least somewhat superstitious, with young men, minorities, and the less educated more likely to go out of their way to seek luck. Twenty-six percent of urban residents — twice the rate of those from rural areas — said they are superstitious, while single men were more superstitious than unmarried women, 31 percent to 17 percent.

The most admitted-to superstition, by 17 percent, was finding a four-leaf clover. Thirteen percent dread walking under a ladder or the groom seeing his bride before their wedding, while slightly smaller numbers named black cats, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, Friday the 13th or the number 13.

Generally, women were more superstitious than men about four-leaf clovers, breaking mirrors or grooms prematurely seeing brides. Democrats were more superstitious than Republicans over opening umbrellas indoors, while liberals were more superstitious than conservatives over four-leaf clovers, grooms seeing brides and umbrellas.

Then there's Jack Van Geldern, a computer programmer from Riverside, Conn. Now 51, Van Geldern is among the 5 percent who say they have seen a monster in the closet — or in his case, a monster's face he spotted on the wall of his room as a child.

"It was so terrifying I couldn't move," he said. "Needless to say I survived the event and never saw it again."

The poll, conducted Oct. 16-18, involved telephone interviews with 1,013 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071026/...ghosts_ap_poll

[Iron Greasel]

Nope. Well, as long as you don't count things like electric lights, semiconductors, magnets and the stock market as magical. All ghost stories can be explained with science and everyday physics can be explained with magic. In the end it boils down to whether one wants to believe in a universe ruled by unreliable magical pixies or one ruled by cold, soulless mathematical principles.

[JrKASperov]

Haha, science explains everything? R00FLES!!!

It cannot even explain itself.

[Firestormalpha]

I've said it before I'll say it again. Today's "science" is based on so many assumptions and unproven givens that hardly anything presented as fact truly is. What scientist are afraid to admit is that they really don't know squat. They have some good ideas, and some bad ones. Some decent theories, but very little that is solidly proven.

Scientist used to be much better about things. IF they didn't know, they didn't know. If they had an idea, they'd test it in a real experiment, not some math equation designed to give them the results they want.

Some things can't be effectively tested with existing technology, but they say they know things for certain about them anyway. Say the internal structure of a distant planet, all we have is surface data to work with yet they're quite certain they know what's underneath it.

[JrKASperov]

Let alone all the technical details involved in scientific realism; are entities denoted as "unobservable" real?

As for "magic" or "spirituality" which is as far as I know not well-defined, it provides a way of explaining things which is highly unsystematic, and thus leads to inconsistency (a highly varying number of "spiritual" explanations for example ghost appearances). It fails as an alternative to science from a scientific point of view.

P.S. As a follower of Jesus, I naturally believe in a "spiritual world" in the sense of angels and demons.

P.P.S. Ironic avatar at the moment

[Firestormalpha]

I'm not so much dismissing the flaws in magical/spiritual explanations for things as I am focusing on the flaws with sciences today.

[Jaradu]

What exactly are the flaws in science?

[Firestormalpha]

read previous posts for a few of the issues, I'm not planning to repeat myself.

[Jaradu]

Oh, I did read the previous posts, I just thought the claims were a bit vague and possibly unfounded. Could you be more specific, ie. what are the 'good' ideas and theories, what are the 'bad' ones?

The composition of stars and planets is studied in various methods, eg. spectroscopy and seismology. Sure, the data is subject to revision as technology improves, that's the great thing about science.

Science investigates difficult questions about unknown fields, and scientists are human, so it is inevitable that scientific findings will not be perfect. However, science works by investigating more and more, which means results get checked and rechecked with further findings. The reason some findings change is because they get corrected. This process of correction helps make science one of the most successful areas of human endeavor. The people who cannot be trusted are those who are always right. As more evidence accumulates, scientific findings become more and more certain. Theories that have withstood several decades of study may undergo more refinement of details, but it is almost inconceivable that they would be overturned completely.

I don't know of any field of science that has 'filled in the blank' just because they hadn't got a clue (with the possible exception of Al Gore, but he's no scientist ). The results lead to the equation, not the other way around.

[Luvian]

There are two kind of people that believe in this this kind of "supernatural". Deluded people wanting to believe and crazy people.

I've known a woman that saved humanity. The devil was opening a portal to hell in her living room but using her drug addled white trash uneducated willpower she singlehandedly pushed him back and closed the portal.

My grandmother is convinced she can lay on hands. Even thought it never made any results she persist in believing this. She also told her daughters all kind of messed up stories as they were growing up. As a result my mother spent most of her childhood sleeping with the light on and a towel wrapped around her neck to protect herself against vampires. Something that my grandmother approved of. She also convinced them our mountain chalet was hunted by a ghost.

The number of people that have such stories is ridiculous. I know people who supposedly had multiple such encounters. Actually most of those people tend to have multiple ones. Come on. One of four people believe they had such an encounter. That's just crazy.

The truth is that most people are crazy. My father once went out for a while with a woman that thought the world government was after her and that my father was a secret agent sent to infiltrate her life. Needless to say he dumped her fast. In my opinion what's even crazier than believing in such conspiracies is that such people think they are important enough to have people plot after them.

Then my last neighbour thought I was part of an secret thieves' network and after a while of accusing me and dropping long ranting letters on my porch about me supposedly stealing her bike and I don't know what else she eventually knocked on my door and begged me to recruit her in the network because she wanted to be an international thief too...

Then there's that guy I hung out with for a while that eventually killed his neighbour, hid the body in his closet and then boiled the head and showed it to his friends.

If I'd just stop to try and remember I could probably fill a book with all the supernatural, alien or just crazy stories I heard in my life. I don't think I've even encountered a family that didn't have it's crazy story to tell. Get a group of people together, give them a beer, lower the light, change the direction of the conversation a little and you're guaranteed a couple hours worth of such stories.