Paranormal feelings

I'm not convinced the events he describes ever happened in the first place. We have only his word for it, and we all know he has a penchant for ghost stories. The nurse isn't on the forum posting the story. What we have is an obviously biased person feeding us a story with no independent evidence to back it up. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to be extremely skeptical about it.

But let's assume this happened. There's a phone in the room where Magical Realist was that would produce the called ID "Lisa". For all we know, Magical Realist himself used that phone to call the nurse's cellphone, just to mess around. On the other hand, there would be no need for him actually to do anything in order to tell his story of communication from the Beyond. It would be far easier just to make it up.

But let's assume that Magical Realist isn't making it up and didn't make the call himself. Then what are the chances of somebody else in the hospital (or wherever this was) using that particular phone to call a nurse who also worked at the hospital? Nothing has been said so far that rules out that possibility.

But let's assume that no human present used Magical Realist's Mum's phone to call the nurse. Then is there a chance that some other number registered to a "Lisa" could have called the nurse's phone? Certainly there is. Magical Realist asserts that the nurse didn't personally know any other Lisas, but that doesn't rule out the possibility of an unlikely coincidence.

But let's assume that no human anywhere is actually responsible for that supposed call. Could it possibly be a computer glitch in the phone system, then, since that particular phone had very likely been used to phone the nurse before. Or did somebody push "redial" by accident? There's no way for us to know without further investigation.

But let's assume that we can somehow rule out all of the above as explanations. Can we conclude it could only have been a ghost who made the call happen, then? Certainly not. All we could say, with the given evidence, is that the event is unexplained. Given that there's no evidence that ghosts of any kind exist, it would be sensible to assume that the possibility of a ghost being responsible would be very low. So, maybe a passing cosmic ray glitched the phone system in just the right way to produce an unlikely coincidence, or something. There's simply no way to know.

But what about Magical Realist's story that about his prior discussion with his Mum, in which he says she agreed she would "do something with technology but nothing too scary"? Isn't this just the kind of thing she might do? Answer: once again there's no way to tell. We have no information about Magical Realist's Mum. We don't know if she loved phones. We also have no information about what technologies ghosts are able to affect from Beyond the Grave. Oh wait! I forgot for a moment: we don't even know that ghosts exist at all!

Also think about the whole "doing something with technology but nothing too scary" thing. There are a lot of things that would fit that description. The TV suddenly turns itself on? Must be MR's Mum's ghost. MR's work swipe card stops working mysteriously? Must be MR's Mum's ghost. MR has a bank error in his favour due to a computer glitch? Must be MR's Mum's ghost who is responsible. MR's fridge breaks down? Must be MR's Mum's ghost messing with it in a non-scary way. You get the picture. The fact is: MR could put any unexplained not-too-scary technological event down to his Mum's promise to visit him as a ghost.

Now if MR's Mum had told him "At exactly 12 noon on the day after I die, I will cut the power to the entire hospital for a period of exactly 43 minutes" and his Mum also had that recorded in her registered will before her death, and the advertised power cut actually happened and was documented appropriately, then we'd be dealing with events that would require some serious thought.

We only have MR's word for what the nurse knows or doesn't know, remember. Nobody has interviewed the nurse, least of all you or me. As for the first name thing, I have some names of contacts in my address book on my cell phone, filed under first names only. If they call me, only their first name comes up, because that's what I put into my phone to identify their number.

If MR was a trustworthy, unbiased commentator on topics such as this, it would be fine to take what he says at face value, and it would indeed be unusual and possibly noteworthy. But you and I both know that MR is about the least biased commentator on ghosts and paranormal we could possibly find, so he is absolutely not to be trusted on such matters. A prudent person would set the evidentiary bar very high indeed before being willing to accept any alleged paranormal experience to be fact, if told by Magical Realist (and I, for one, am a prudent person).

Yes, that's accurate, assuming it actually happened as MR says it did, which I doubt. See above for all the reasons I have a problem with MR making that assumption.

Even existing requires some energy. If you can see a ghost, then it must be emitting or reflecting light, which requires something to do the emitting or reflecting. The existence of whatever that "something" is would require energy, unless it is somehow able to break the established laws of physics.

Absolutely. It's called confirmation bias. We tend to look for evidence that supports what we already believe and to ignore or downplay evidence that goes against that. This is why MR is willing to ignore all alternative explanations other than his Mum phoning him from the Other Side (if the events even happened as described).

I have no idea. I try not to draw definite conclusions about things in the absence of evidence. I have suggested some possibilities, above, but I can't confirmed if any of them is right, based on the available evidence.

It is important to appreciate that I'm not even ruling out the possibility that it was just what MR says it was: his Mum's ghost making a phonecall. I'm just estimating the probability of that explanation as vanishingly small, albeit non-zero. I'm quite willing, however, to consider any additional supporting evidence for a ghostly explanation, if any were ever to come to light.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. I'd say the claim that ghosts can make phonecalls to the living is an extraordinary claim, wouldn't you?

 

Accounts of all kinds of nonsenses abound.

There's no good evidence for that claim.

Impossible! Power supplies are 100% reliable. We all know that electricity supply never has glitches or failures. That's why being an electrical repairman is not a real job.

Maybe pigs fly through the air when we're not looking!

 

There's no evidence that there are any haunted locations.

But maybe you're thinking of old houses with bad wiring - that sort of thing. They can often have flickering lights.

 

Oh dear. I now learn that I'm mentally ill and paranoid because I don't believe Magical Realist's ghost stories. Whatever shall I do? Can you recommend a good psychiatrist, Magical Realist?