The reason why ghosts scare me, is this:

A couple of years ago, me and some friends thought it was funny to call on a ghost (you know, sit in a circle with with candels and stuff).
So, we got ourselves a book from the local librairy, and started to call on it. (I don't know what to exactly call it, but you know what I mean)

And at the moment we started it, all candles went out.
We thought it was the wind, so we didnt bother looking.
Then, at a certain point, one of the girls with us started breathing real heavy. We thought she was just wanting to scare us, so we went on.
At a certain point, it was starting to sound like someone was strangling here (yes, I know how it sounds...).
We all paniced, because her had was all blue and purple, so we broke the circle, and at that point she fainted.

Thats why I'm afraid of them, because in some cases they apperantly do hurt someone...

We never talked about it again :ermm:

I don't believe in ghosts, because it's just silly IMO. It's all in the mind, like Boofo said the mind is a powerful tool.

Of course when it's late, and I've spent hours on the computer...I think I see something in the shadows or hear something upstairs. But after I focus my brain I realize it was nothing but a figment of my imagination.
:classic:

Like I said, I don't believe in them, although I have had instances where if I DID believe, it would have made more sense at the time. After evaluating what happened, there was a rational explanantion. Example:

My mother died around Mothers' Day in 1997. I took it pretty hard at the time and quite a while afterwards. I still have my days of not coping very well. Every once in a while, I think I see something out of the corner of my eye, like in my periphial (sp?) vision and when I turn to check it out, I think I see something moving like ducking into another room. I will go check it out and it will be nothing. Now, I know no one is here as I live alone at the present, but I find after thinking about it that I was thinking of my mother and my mind wanted to believe she was here, in one way or the other. I made myself WANT to see something that I knew wasn't there. ;)

Life is more rational than many people believe. Sometimes it's easier to believe in something else instead of looking at it in a rational way. Rationality always makes sense and it is always constant.

Now, if anyone understands any of what I just said, please explain it to me. I think I was just having a moment of incoherency here. ;)

I think you should lay off the shrooms :D j/k

Yeah I do although I haven't had a personal experience like yours. I had an odd experience though that I will share however.

When I was about 5 or 6 years old (1984 or 85 that would make it), I was playing with the girl across the street in front of her house one night when she looks up the block and says "look its the king and queen of the fireflys".

I turn around and at the top of my block are two beings. They had 3 sections to them, a head section, a middle section and an end section kind of like ants in an upright almost C shape. They had a neon like glow to them and they both floated a foot or two off the floor. I think they had thin "insect" like wings. I couldnt really see them except to see the blur of something moving really fast. They were maybe 2 or 3 feet in hieght.

These beings flew down the block about as fast as I could turn my head. The flight was completely silent and I'd have to estitimate thier speed at approx 80-90mph.

They turned the corner and after a moment, I ran over but they were gone. The girl and I never talked about it and she moved maybe a year or two later. Im not sure where.

Some other people moved onto the block and I was actually chatting with one of the guys about paranormal experiences and told him this story. He then tells me that the summer before he was sitting outside in his dad's van listening to some music waiting for his family and he saw the same being (only one this time) fly down the middle of the street and then fly up and over the highway which runs parrallel to our block.

A third friend of ours that also lives on the block came out at the end here and without hearing the description of the beings goes on to say that he saw the same thing some time before the first friend but after my experience. Two beings that flew down the block and turned the same corner. They flew literally right past my friend but his parents who maybe 10 feet behind and hadn't turned the corner yet didnt see them although they would've had to.

Needless to say, after that, I am open to the idea of ghosts and other things.

The power of suggestion can also be a mighty thing. ;)

pfft... its no suggestion when 4 people see the same the same thing at three different times and one is able to describe those things I saw without hearing the description. =p

Yeah, if I ever saw that.. I would seriously fall over dead. That would freak me out so bad.. hahaha.

I'll make this story short. There was an old abandoned house close to our house where exagerated ghost stories have come from. (one of those, the wife/husband went crazy and killed them all and buried them in the basement stories) The house itself was just creepy.. anyways we went exploring and saw a tree branch as if someone where pulling down on it.. then let it go. We were all freaked out by it so we left. The kid who owned the car stopped to get gas and we all got out to go get candy/drinks/etc and all over his car in the dirt there were hand prints of what appeared to be little children. Later to find out what really happened at the house was a little boy was sexually abused and murdered.

That's def not the freakiest thing I've experienced, infact that one is pretty mediocre. It's just the best example I could think of to how someone can't believe in something like that.. I mean, it does take the personal experience in order to actually understand.. but I'm telling you, I was there and I experienced it first hand. It wasn't my mind playing tricks on me cause it was in plain light and everyone else saw it too.

I'm not saying that you guys don't really see what you think you've seen. But there are things like the power of suggestion and mass hysteria that could be an explanantion to some of these things as well as anything else. ;)

Hmm, I'm guessing you just don't want to believe :p