From: philipm@papillon.ucsd.edu (The Philster)
Newsgroups: alt.paranormal
Subject: Ghosts
Date: 3 Sep 92 19:18:57 GMT
Organization: DIP Laboratory, UCSD/SIO, La Jolla CA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: papillon.ucsd.edu

A little change of pace here...

I'm curious to hear your opinions (or facts) on this widely-experienced phenomena. I know of
 many individuals in my personal life who have either seen ghosts, experienced hauntings, and
 been in the midst of other supernatural events. The most common occurrence is a visitation by
 relatives who had died at that moment. This happened when the visitee was unaware of the 
person's death. This is hard to explain in terms of standard arguments.  

Medically, researchers say that specific regions of the temporal lobe, when stimulated, can 
produce hallucinatory experiences (including seeing ghosts, aliens, religious figures, etc.). Also,
 I've read that one researcher stimulated the brain with electromagnetic fields with high frequency
 fluctuations. This created similar results. The temporal lobe's reactions are most sensitive to 
factors such as oxygen deprivation, lack of proper nutrients (e.g., glucose, electrolytes, etc...
basically anything which is essential for proper function), changes in 
magnetic/electromagnetic/electric fields (this area is still vague), and others.

I always keep this info in the back of my mind when someone describes their experience. 
However, how does one explain such events as mentioned above (the visitations by dead 
relatives at time of their demise)? In addition, there are a variety of other phenomena not 
explainable. Hauntings (and there are actual documented cases) are not uncommon.

Personally, I do have belief in some occurrence beyond the "mind-specific" explanation. I have
 some experiences of my own which affect my belief.

The answer, I think, can be found in nature. Somehow, we cannot perceive all aspects of our 
surroundings. Since we are limited in sight (a particular range of wavelength), sound (40-10,000
 dB, I believe), and our other senses only give us an indication of an object's presence when a 
particular threshold has been reached, there is no reason to doubt that the combination of these
 limitations is somehow restricting us from total lucidity, i.e. experiencing everything there is to
 experience.  What about our brain? Although the folds of the cerebral tissue allow us to store
 more and more information in a compact way, we only utilize about 13-15% of its entire neural
 function at any given moment. Is there a correlation between our senses/the ability to perceive
 and brain function? Most likely.

There are so many questions left unanswered...why doubt? What also intrigues me, as I continue
 to ramble on, is natural phenomena such as strange objects raining from the sky (frogs, fish, 
automobiles!, and more). How can rocks fall on one house for three days? This is all 
documented...what an insane world, we think. But it is actually us who are insane, freaking 
out because we lack the capability to completely integrate everything and understand.

Philip Misiowiec
(my opinions are not representative of the UC Regents and any of its
facilities)

p.s. Sorry about the format...my editor is at fault.
Newsgroups: alt.paranormal