Why Are Ghosts Seen Wearing Clothes?

[defectron]

I think I know why ghosts wear clothes, personally I think most of the time this isn't a concious decision. I sleep in the nude but more then half the time when I project I tend to be wearing clothes. This isn't a concious decision on my part, their just there for some reason. I think it's probably the same way with the ghosts.

[farewell2arms]

Because it SUCKS being naked in public.

[psionickx]

Because it SUCKS being naked in public.

....either that or some lucky girl is feasting some major eyecandy

[Summerlander]

Here's a possibility for why ghosts wear clothes (most of the time). Because they are mental projections by the people that observed them superimposed on waking perception or perception of reality. If ghost sightings are a kind of short-lived hallucination by the witnesses, then it is not so hard to imagine why they would be clothed. We see more clothed people during our lives than naked people (unless one enjoys nudist camps). It is against the law to walk around naked in public. Also, who wants to be flashed by a "ghost" anyway?

[Beekeeper]

As a person who has been in the audience of a few excellent mediums, I actually wonder why people in spirit don't shed a greater portion of their previous personality, even ones that died a long time ago. I have heard some come through and explain their poor behaviour in terms of mental illness in their physical bodies. It makes sense to me that once released from a defective body they'd want to bring comfort by explaining themselves. If the personality largely develops as a function of ego to ensure adaptation (with varying success) to life on planet earth, however, I wonder why so many personalities come through worrying about inconsequential things such as the fact they weren't buried wearing shoes, as they'd requested, or that they weren't able to keep someone in the manner to which they thought they were entitled or complaining that it's against their religion to speak through mediums. These aren't made up examples.

[Summerlander]

If there is such a thing as an afterlife, when I die and if I am summoned through a medium, I certainly won't be complaining about the way I've been buried. Many of the things that these mediums come out with make me laugh. There are many cold readers out there and the mediums who seem to be genuine and don't display any signs of foul play could still be deluded...

Here's a scenario: what if there is no afterlife. What if we die and that's it. Imagine certain individuals who are convinced that they have certain special abilities but in reality they are nothing but telepathic. Imagine that telepathy is what they are really doing in the waking state (possibly because they possess an unusual pineal gland and have an accute mind's eye/radar that is active even in their waking hours). What if they are merely capturing the thoughts and memories of the bereaved, but their subconscious minds are 'sugarcoating' the extra-sensory perception with their beliefs about an afterlife?

So, what these 'genuine' mediums believe to be real contact with the dead, could in fact be the extraction of mental information from the bereaved...hence the "hits". After all, the bereaved are thinking about their deceased loved ones when they meet the medium...

[Sinera]

So, what these 'genuine' mediums believe to be real contact with the dead, could in fact be the extraction of mental information from the bereaved...hence the "hits". After all, the bereaved are thinking about their deceased loved ones when they meet the medium...

From my 'insane' intuitive knowledge I can tell you: 'Rest assured, there is an afterlife.' (What a nice double meaning in this phrase, I could have also said 'in peace' instead of 'assured')

As regards mediums, maybe you wanna have a little check on the controlled scientific experiments in the "lab" by the University of Arizona.

http://veritas.arizona.edu/papers/Be...2007 vol 3.pdf

"Conclusions: The results suggest that certain mediums can anomalously receive accurate information about deceased individuals.
The study design effectively eliminates conventional mechanisms as well as telepathy as explanations for the information reception, but the results cannot distinguish among alternative paranormal hypotheses, such as survival of consciousness (the continued existence, separate from the body, of an individual’s consciousness or personality after physical death) and super- psi (or super-ESP; retrieval of information via a psychic channel or quantum field)." - Schwartz / Beischel

Later they tested it with several series of controlled experimental sessions, did thorough security checks and detailed statistics by score cards and then even ruled out some other explanations (psi and non-psi, e.g. including telepathy on the one hand or e.g. fraud on the other).

The Windbridge Instutitute does the same experiments and does even 'certify' mediums.

http://www.windbridge.org/sofcrp.htm#mediumship

Personally, I think that indeed many mediums might use cold/warm reading techniques, but if you can eliminate this by thorough testing you can separate the wheat from the chaff a bit.
There are genuine ones with great abilities. However, I agree so far to a skeptic stance that it is always better to retrieve the info or experience it by yourself than by a third party, that's why OBEs are such a cool thing for me, especially if you develop some 'clairvoyant' or other paranormal abilities in physical life by it, too. So you don't have to rely on others.

[Summerlander]

Thanks for that post, volgerle. Yes, perhaps the genuine mediums are indeed tuning into another frequency of reality where the dead dwell and possibly where our conscious awareness travels to when have OOBEs and lucid dreams.

I only used the telepathy card because, after conducting a personal OOBE study (where I was the guinea pig entering the Phase), I found evidence of telepathy - particularly where I visited the living. Contact with the dead in the Phase also provided me with some interesting validations.

But then I wrestle with other possible explanations such as coincidences and the subconscious storehouse showing me what I thought I didn't know.

It seems very likely that the Phase (OOBE/AP/LD) may provide a glimpse of what death is like - especially when we consider the NDEs where the subjects shouldn't have experienced anything as their brains were less active than delta mode (which marks dreamless sleep).

I guess I'm trying to eliminate all possibilities for delusion here. What if the NDE brain is mainly reliant on an active pineal gland and the synaptic connections do their best to keep awareness centred there, and thus the action is hard to detect. The self is then immersed in a hallucinatory world and kept comfy as the brain battles for survival...

But then again, there are the strange calcite crystals found in the pineal which appear to be a biological "sonar" mechanism. If this mechanism becomes active when we enter the Phase, then we have to ask ourselves what is it really tuning into? Another frequency of reality beyond the ultrasonic? And what for? could the pineal be our link between this world and the next? Is that frequency of reality what many people are calling the astral plane?

You know what...I may have to have a serious word with my deceased stepfather next time I project and I'm really gonna grill him about his reality...

[Beekeeper]

You know what...I may have to have a serious word with my deceased stepfather next time I project and I'm really gonna grill him about his reality...

I recently had a mental chat with mine and was given some information that was very specific. I'm journaling and holding on to it for now to see if it comes to pass.

As Volgerie's links no doubt show, if mediums were using telepathy they couldn't provide information that the person being read didn't even know at the time.

[Neil Templar]

I wonder if the Monroe Institute verified any of the information received during communications with the deceased in their Explorer programme... some of those tapes were really compelling.
The one that always sticks in my mind is [Patrick].
TMI said "No, we were not able to get what we would consider concrete validation.", but that doesn't surprise me, considering the part of Scotland and the time Patrick said he was alive. There probably would have been no written records of births and deaths there at that time.