Ghosties And Ghoulies And Things That Go Bump In The Night!

[Jet Gorgon]

I was in a bar/restaurant in Udon once... Steve's Bar? David Copperfield was working his magic on the TV. Service came to a halt as every waitress and member of the bar staff stared transfixed at the screen. The owner and his Thai wife's adopted daughter came in from school, a lass about 12 and watched open mouthed.

"Phee Mor?" I said.

Man, she never doubted it for one moment.

Mor = ?

[wolfmanjack]

A ghost would be created by the death of a person and the spirits are entities that started out as spirits. My wife is afraid of ghosts but not spirits. She claims to have seen many ghost at our home. The funny thing is, I have never seen or heard any. Her mother stayed with us for over a year and she never saw any. None of he maids have seen any. We have around 20 thais living on our property and none of them have seen any. The witch doctors from northern thailand that came to our house to check say there are none. But the one supposed witch doctor from Isaan that came to our house say there are loads of them. To get rid of them we were supposed to tear our house down and move it to a new spot with the door facing a different direction or we could pay her 100,000 baht and she would get rid of them. I told her to get lost.

A monk that was sleeping at the burn people place near our home told us that there were many ghosts living there and if we wanted to see some we should spend the night there with him. My wife refused but I did so. He had me carve a penis and he made some magical inscriptions that were supposed to protect me from the ghosts. We stayed awake all night and did not see a single ghost. He said they were afraid of the falang.

Having said that I do believe in God. Therefore I must believe in the devil along with the associated good spirits and evil spirits. I do not disbelieve in ghosts but have never seen one even though my wife claims that I am surrounded by them all the time.

[wolfmanjack]

Another thing my wife had me try was to turn my back to the pedestal that they place the body on to burn. Then bend over and look at the pedestal between my legs. This has to be done at night. I did this and all I got was a headache from being bent over so long. My wife claims it is a sure fire way of being able to see the ghosts though.

[Bananaman]

Despite being the OP, I'm actually on the fence somewhat on this issue. Whilst I do accept that certain inexplicable phenomena might have some spiritual foundation, I'm also highly dismissive of every Tom, Dick and Harry who claim to have had some kind of an apparition or spiritual encounter. My Thai ex was in hospital some years back and claims she woke up and the spirit of the woman who died in the room before was stood next to her bed talking to her. Since I knew what an unbelievably overactive imagination she had, I found it very difficult to take a word of it seriously. I'm open-minded on the subject but do feel that it's much easier to believe that that vine branch that the wind is blowing against your bedroom window is really a spirit come a-knocking, if you've grown up to believe that ghosts/spirits do exist and even more so if somebody tells you that a previous occupant of the house died on the premises.

[sceadugenga]

I was in a bar/restaurant in Udon once... Steve's Bar? David Copperfield was working his magic on the TV. Service came to a halt as every waitress and member of the bar staff stared transfixed at the screen. The owner and his Thai wife's adopted daughter came in from school, a lass about 12 and watched open mouthed.

"Phee Mor?" I said.

Man, she never doubted it for one moment.

Mor = ?

Doctor....phee mor= ghost doctor or someone who controls spirits. That's Lao anyway, same same in Thai I think. Accent's different.

Bit like up here, the Lao speakers say baw, (The word for no or ending a question) but in Vientiane it's a definite bor. That's the way these elderly ears here it anyway.

[autonomous_unit]

I remember watching some edutainment program in the US... cannot remember the name as it was on a hotel cable TV and not something I'd seen before.

They talked about some famously haunted caverns in the UK, and one room in particular where many who tour it will sense the presence of someone "watching them" in the dark. What made this interesting was that they found that even non-believers had the experience if they were left in there alone for a while. So they reproduced the visual and audio environment (of this cavernous space) in an immersive virtual reality environment on a computer, and many users had the same experience there.

I'm firmly in the non-believing camp because I have a suspicion that there are many kinds of physiological experiences that we share, but which are no more real than other perceptual illusions which can be replicated scientifically but which have no basis in actual physical effects in the environment. They exist in our brains, in the way we process sensory information. We are deeply flawed and limited as observers, and taking too much stock in our perceptions is a path to believing in many erroneous things.

Part of what makes us have such keen senses, e.g. being able to "sense" someone in a room behind you because of slight changes in the accoustic environment, lighting, or odor, also make us prone to mistakes when confronted with noisy and ambiguous signals. We humans like to find order in disorder. Shapes in the shapeless. It's how we're built.

[sceadugenga]

I remember watching some edutainment program in the US... cannot remember the name as it was on a hotel cable TV and not something I'd seen before.

They talked about some famously haunted caverns in the UK, and one room in particular where many who tour it will sense the presence of someone "watching them" in the dark. What made this interesting was that they found that even non-believers had the experience if they were left in there alone for a while. So they reproduced the visual and audio environment (of this cavernous space) in an immersive virtual reality environment on a computer, and many users had the same experience there.

I'm firmly in the non-believing camp because I have a suspicion that there are many kinds of physiological experiences that we share, but which are no more real than other perceptual illusions which can be replicated scientifically but which have no basis in actual physical effects in the environment. They exist in our brains, in the way we process sensory information. We are deeply flawed and limited as observers, and taking too much stock in our perceptions is a path to believing in many erroneous things.

Part of what makes us have such keen senses, e.g. being able to "sense" someone in a room behind you because of slight changes in the accoustic environment, lighting, or odor, also make us prone to mistakes when confronted with noisy and ambiguous signals. We humans like to find order in disorder. Shapes in the shapeless. It's how we're built.

The juries still out with me, I think any one who's spent time in Asia has experienced things that just don't quite have a 'normal' explanation.

[Jet Gorgon]

I understand your reasoning, Auto and Scea. Not being a scientist, I tend to use my brain's right side more; I am sure there are things round us that we cannot feel or touch. The monk story is interesting. I remember the monks going to a renovated resort for blessings, and they stayed all day to banish some bad spirits. Guess when you go into the spiritual/mediation lifestyle, your surroundings and perceptions change? It's a never-ending challenge. Sure I agree, many hokey witchdoctors about. Did you read about that seer who predicted the Oscars as well as a bunch of other inane star stuff, including Anna Nicole's death (mind, that was way out of line; no fortuneteller should ever announce or tell their patron that they will die or suffer harm).

I think we will always have two camps: believers in supernatural and the non. I heard the world is still flat.

[November Rain]

I've seen many ghosts starting in childhood through to adulthood. I've also had a lot of inexplicable experiences. I'm farang.

[kmart]

I'm going to be singing that annoyingly catchy "Ghostbusters" theme tune all day now.

Never seen an actual ghost yet though.

[Jet Gorgon]

I'm going to be singing that annoyingly catchy "Ghostbusters" theme tune all day now.

Never seen an actual ghost yet though.

Endure does good scary ghost sounds (bwahahaha or something like that) but no images. Just watch Sixth Sense, Kmart. Same idea.

[autonomous_unit]

Yes, I think having "spiritual" beliefs will cause you to interpret many things in a spritual way. If I feel tingling on my skin or a temperature change, I start to think about the physical and physiological explanations that are behind it. When I experience something "spooky" I want to deconstruct it like an artist and a scientist, to understand how it came to be and perhaps even how I could reconstruct it for fun... and I have certainly had spooky experiences on a cold foggy night, or in a muffling snowfall in a closed rocky valley, etc.

I would not lump together meditation and spirituality. Meditation on the way your own mind works and the many ways you respond to a physical or social environment can send you to the place where I am at, but not if you are predisposed to pinning everything on external agents. I don't mean to be disparaging (in case the following sounds that way) but homonculus arguments from philosophy 101 ("the little man", wherein someone's explanation of the mind requires an assumption of a smaller intrinsic observer inside the mind) are a useful example here. I think many spiritual interpretations are rooted in the application of this fallacious model as well. Not only can we anthropomorphise external physical processes, but also processes that are better understood (in my opinion) as parts of ourselves.

I think we are born with boundary issues! We struggle to understand the broad uncharted territory that lies between our innermost thoughts and the external world, comprised of parts of our brains, nervous systems, hormones, etc. I think a belief in spirits is an "easy out"... the parts that are hard to comprehend are assigned an identity and thought of as other conscious entities, much like ourselves, because that is something we like to think we understand. Ironically, I think this stems from the very fact that we do not really understand ourselves...