This is an old question that we’ve all heard many times in our lives. We all know of someone who has a story or an experience with the paranormal; heck, maybe we have one of our own. The notion of ghosts has permeated most every culture on earth for untold ages and remains popular to this day. We see most especially in our entertainment industry the idea of spectral shenanigans, ghostly apparitions, and other paranormal phenomena. On the internet we have countless claims of paranormal encounters, hauntings, and even more extreme related events. Yet even so, with all of our modern technology we can’t manage to pinpoint any real proof ghosts are real. So what gives?

Let me start by saying that I take no concrete position on this subject either way; I just find it all very fascinating. I’ve read many books on hauntings, listened to and read stories of “true” experiences, and I even joined a ghost hunting group for a while. I’ve also had three experiences in my own life that sparked my interest in the paranormal. I’ll get into those a bit later.

When it comes to famous hauntings, most of them can and have been fairly well debunked. I’m not particularly happy about that, but it is what it is. Unfortunately the more famous hauntings are often exaggerated over time causing confusion about what really happened versus what was claimed later on. In my personal view, only a very few of the more well known haunting cases have any real credibility. I’m trying to avoid naming names or places here, but we could use the very well known Amityville case as an example. Horrible things happened in that house with the DeFeo murders and indeed there are suspicious aspects about those murders that have never been fully explained. However the haunting described by the Lutz family is highly suspect. Even people who knew the Lutzes have claimed they talked about making up the entire scenario before going public.

Now as to the many ghost sites on the internet where people describe their own encounters, these are even less reliable than the famous hauntings. Obviously a person can write anything online whether it be true or not. Furthermore when it comes to these online stories an awful lot of them seem to be written by young people or adults describing an event that happened when they were young. The problem with this is that young people tend to be less adept at discerning what is real from what is not. I can remember my own thinking as a child often being based more on what I wanted to believe than what is actually true. In my experience, young girls are the most prolific contributors when it comes to producing online written paranormal experiences.

I mentioned that I had joined a ghost hunting group in the past. I did indeed many years ago. I only went to one of their investigation sites and that was enough. I was sorely disappointed in the type of people who were involved in the whole paranormal investigation thing. I had expected people who were looking to investigate, but that’s not how it went. These people were true believers in ghosts and went to “investigate” to find evidence of their pre-existing belief. Needless to say, that’s not how scientific investigation works. These folks took lots of photos and video to peruse. I was shocked when everything on those images was labeled a ghost of some sort. Shadows, mist, light beams, you name it, they called them all ghosts. It was such a disappointment that the field is full of exactly the kind of people who shouldn’t be involved in any form of investigation whatsoever.

Now as to the three experiences I’ve had myself… Let me say that the following accounts are true to the best of my knowledge and memory. I am not one to exaggerate to try to get others to believe. I will list each event followed by my later examination and conclusions.

1. When I was about eight years old I had a remotely controlled R2D2 toy. This toy was battery operated with the battery compartment being to the rear of the droid itself. One night I was staying at my grandmother’s house and I had brought this R2D2 with me. I had been playing with it that day until the batteries died. After which I removed the dead batteries anticipating my grandmother would have more; alas she did not. So I sat the R2D2 on the dining room table and went to find other mischief.

A few hours later I was on the floor in my grandmother’s kitchen playing with her dog. I could see directly into the dining room from my position. As I sat there with the dog, a beeping sound drew my attention. I looked toward the dining room and the R2D2 that had no batteries installed, lit up, beeped and rolled right off the edge of the table it was placed upon. When it hit the floor it went dark again.

My grandmother was in the back of the house when this happened, so I was the only witness. Since I was only eight, no one really believed me as to these inexplicable events. However it scared me for a long time.

Examination and conclusion:

For years I wondered how this event had happened, but given this was well before the internet, I had no real way of finding out much. As I grew older and did some work in electronics, I found something called capacitance. Certain electronic components can hold an electric charge like a battery. I started to wonder if this had been the cause of my R2D2 scare.

Even so I continued to occasionally look online to find a more complete conclusion to this issue. Eventually I found a forum where people were talking about this exact thing happening to their R2D2 toy. Apparently I wasn’t alone and it was an electronic issue within the toy itself.

If I had not found out this information, I’d likely still be puzzled about the entire situation. You see how easy it is to experience something weird and hold it as a “true” ghost story well into adulthood?

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2. When I was in my twenties, myself and a friend were in a very old graveyard at about two in the morning. Why were we in a graveyard at 2AM? Just young people’s fascination with things you’re not supposed to do I suppose. Now this graveyard was surrounded by woods on three sides and had no lights other than a solitary street lamp near the entrance. The oldest graves extended into the rear woods, and those rear woods went back for at least a mile.

As we sat talking we heard a horrible scream from those rear woods. It sounded like a woman screaming but it had a very distinct staccato quality to it; almost like someone yelling through an electric fan. We both stood up and stared directly into those woods expecting someone or something to come crawling out. It became dead quiet for what seemed like several minutes, then we heard what sounded like running through dried leaves in the woods on the left side of the cemetery. The running sound stopped as abruptly as it had started. At this point we were quite ready to leave and did so post-haste.

Examination and Conclusion:

Once my wits returned I began to wonder what had really happened in the cemetery. I looked up animals that make sounds similar to a human scream: foxes, wild cats, cougars, various birds, etc. None of the examples I listened to were anything close to the sound I heard. It was that inexplicable staccato effect that they lacked.

I thought it must have been people playing a trick on us. That is the most likely answer, but who was in the thick woods behind a cemetery at 2AM? Further, who would be in those woods with some device to modify their voice with a staccato effect? The running sound on the left side of the graveyard could be attributed to an animal.

I am undecided on this event. Likely it was some crazy person in the woods, but that sound was so unnatural that it will probably always bug me.

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3. This situation happened when I was very young and I scarcely remember it, but I’ve asked those who were present and older if my account is accurate. It should be very close to what happened.

Let me start by describing where this event took place. The first few years of my life were spent in a small house in a rural town. We lived on a road called Rural Route 2 and it was nothing but dirt. There were three houses in a cluster and nothing else for quite a way.
Our house was in the middle with my paternal grandparents living next door to the left and my great grandmother and great uncle living to the right. There was an old abandoned house next to their house.

All these houses were on one side of the road. Across the road was a massive cow pasture. The only street light was at the end of our driveway, everything else was in total darkness. No one at all lived past my grandparents’ house. Everything else around was just woods and pasture.

This was back in the seventies before internet and in the age when TV signed off at around midnight. As such, adults would more commonly get together at night to play cards, boardgames, etc. On this night my maternal grandmother had come over and brought her next door neighbor Bill H. This Bill fellow wasn’t normally over at our house, but he wanted to play monopoly with my family, so he came that night.

So the adults started their game while my sister and I milled about trying to keep from falling asleep. Around about 11PM everyone in the house heard a woman’s voice cry out “Bill… Bill?” The voice came from outside. We all heard it and everyone immediately went to the front door to look outside. Looking all around, we couldn’t find anyone. So everyone went back inside and the monopoly game resumed. Not five minutes later the voice returned, “Bill!” closer now than it had been before. Again we all went outside to find nothing and no one; dead silence prevailed. After looking all around the small house and finding not a thing amiss, everyone came back inside. It was decided among the adults that there had been enough monopoly for one night.

Examination and Conclusion:

With this one I have no idea. Knowing the remoteness of this locale and the fact that no one who lived nearby knew a man named Bill would be present baffles me. Furthermore, my relatives who lived in that area didn’t know Bill at all. Who then was calling him from the dark? No one recognized the woman’s voice nor did anyone ever hear it again.

I’ve wracked my brain over this one and can’t really come up with anything that makes sense. Was it someone who knew Bill and was looking for him? Not likely given there was no car present. Maybe a lost person with dementia who just happened to be looking for someone named Bill? That’s quite a coincidence and not likely due to the remoteness of the location. Plus they moved very fast to be hidden when we went outside.

In any case, with this one I just don’t know.

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So, now that I’ve given my run down on some small portion of this issue, I’d like to say also that while things do happen that can’t immediately be explained, it is wiser for us to consider all possibilities than to jump to a mythological conclusion. I mean ghosts might be real, but I’ll bet my goat that 99% of the claims about ghosts are at best misunderstanding and at worst straight up lies. Bear in mind that I do not bet my goat lightly.

Let us then learn to be wise and use discernment instead of knee jerk responses. That goes for both the true believers and the automatic skeptics. As humans we have a very limited sensory perception and as such we have to be humble and consider all possibilities.