OT: Ghosts

[monty_rhodes]

For reasons that have been well researched and documented the heyday of ghost stories was probably in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
However, when I was growing up in Rotherham in the fifties and sixties every adult I knew used to recount ghost stories. I don't just mean fictional ghosts. Just about everybody said they had first or reliable second hand experience of hauntings. Several places in Rotherham - including just about every pub around the town centre - was supposed to have a ghost or two.
Now I lived for several years in two supposedly haunted houses and although other inhabitants swore to seeing or hearing ghosts I never witnessed a thing. There's a lane where I live that locals claim is haunted by a headless coachman but I have walked down it alone every night for twenty years and seen nothing supernatural.
Anybody ever experienced anything ghostly?

[mikemiller]

...

[sickly_child]

There is a reason you never saw a ghost Monty.

[monty_rhodes]

There is a reason you never saw a ghost Monty.

That would suggest several dozen adults in my childhood were dishonest or delusional! Hm, now I come to think.

[sickly_child]

That would suggest several dozen adults in my childhood were dishonest or delusional! Hm, now I come to think.

Probably just mistaken Monty.

[Back of the net]

I’ve seen a ghost 👻

[sickly_child]

You think you have.

[sickly_child]

Hume's argument against miracles and superstitious belief.

People are very prone to accept the unusual and incredible, which excite agreeable passions of surprise and wonder.
Those with strong religious beliefs are often prepared to give evidence that they know is false, "with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting so holy a cause".[7]
People are often too credulous when faced with such witnesses, whose apparent honesty and eloquence (together with the psychological effects of the marvellous described earlier) may overcome normal scepticism.
Miracle stories tend to have their origins in "ignorant and barbarous nations"[8] – either elsewhere in the world or in a civilised nation's past. The history of every culture displays a pattern of development from a wealth of supernatural events – "[p]rodigies, omens, oracles, judgements"[6] – which steadily decreases over time, as the culture grows in knowledge and understanding of the world.

[great_fire]

People did seem to believe in ghosts more back then.

Science has given us more explanations for things that were attributed to ghosts back then I suppose.

[caytonmiller]

Only reason I can give is it's the 80s fault. Ghosts were every where until the Ghostbusters came along. Typical, the few spoilt it for the masses