Taiwan Ghost Stories

I thought it was ruled by Dr. Evil… :shock:

Isn’t there a theory floating around that it’s ruled by some guy with a big beard, all his flunkies floating around on clouds and playing harps. Aparently the story goes that he’s constantly doing battle with some other dude who lives under the ground and has a tail and horns…Although that could be just some kids story I was reading, spiny Norman seems more plausable.

‘’‘It’s just as irrational to claim that ghosts (non-physical beings composed of pure energy) don’t exist as to claim that they do exist. There’s no proof nor scientific or logical arguments either way. It’s an open question’’’

So at once you are saying it’s a physical thing of pure energy and at another you are saying it’s something emotional like love, you sound like Captain Kirk!

The whole point is that if it is real more than one person should be able to see it at a time unless it chooses to reveal itself only on a one-on-one level.

My point about ghosts is that seem to be very personal related, very centred on major events or people in someone’s life. In a rational manner, what is a more simple explanation–that the ghosts are real or that people’s brains are not perfect. I’ve never met two people who claim to have seen the same ghost. I’ve met plenty of people who said they have seen or heard them on their own or in company but I’ve never met two or more people who will stand by a story of seeing a ghost. If you literally ‘see’ a physical
ghost then it should be possible for someone beside you to see the light from the ghost too (or a camera). However if you ‘perceive’ the ghost then other people will not be able to see it or hear it and no detection is possible.

Hypnotism can often result from a stranger suggesting outlandish things to you. You can be hypnotised to a degree in believing false memories. The brain is more malleable than most people realise. You don’t even need to be hynoptised to believe in false memories. Recently I thought I had a great idea for a new product. I was browsing the internet until I came across a similar idea and realised that was where my ‘original’ idea came from. I had forgotten I’d already seen this before and adopted it as my own…it was easy and I never would have guessed if someone had removed the link I had originally accessed.

and i thought that Ming ruled, uhm Flash Gordon must have really got him? or is Norman a puppet. :laughing:

When I first came to Taiwan, I used to wonder about the strange
behavior I saw among some passengers on buses going east down
Hsinyi Road crossing Hsinsheng S. Road. Just past the police station
on the corner were two or three old Taiwanese-style houses. People
would get off the bus, run to the wall and put something there, and
then run away. Later on, some students told me that those houses
were considered haunted.

Later the buildings were torn down and Wang Computers built its
complex there. Other students later conceded that maybe these
stories helped to lower the price of the land. Who knows, but
people really seemed to look frightened or moved fast in that
vicinity for a long time.

Also heard some ghost stories that took place on the Taiwan
University campus as well as a funny “bus story” masquerading
as a ghost story>

I was really curious about the origin of the “pogo stick zombie” also. What I found out was that it originated from the tradition of using “dead walker” (I think that’s what they were called) in the southern mountainous region of china. When some one who left his village for work die some where far away, if the family don’t have the money to hire an cart and coffin to bring his body back, or if the road’s too difficult. they would turn to the “dead walker” whom supposedly has the abilities to make the dead walk. The hop you see in most film actually came from the fact that supposedly since the body’s dead, the only thing it can do to move is to hop (u’ll notice that the legs of those zombies in the film never bend). The person walking the dead would beat a stick and announce him self, and people would avoid him along the way.
Now of course the dead is quite dead and aren’t hopping around for fun, the secret is that there are actually two person, one beating the stick leading the way, the other actually carrying the body on his back with a long dress over them both so that people can’t tell. (this had to be the worst job possible) the two person team would rotate and share the burden. I am not quite sure about the reason behind the elaborate cover, but think perhaps its their own ways of elevating their dreadful profession, not to mention I bet they never get robbed.

What a load of old nonsense. Excellent ! Please post more.

it’s really quite simple, this ghost thing. People SEe ghosts because they have been programmed by their cultural upbringing (in whatever country they come from) to SEE ghosts. But there is no such thing as ghosts. Period. What people are seeing unquote are projections of their own cultural imaginations. I don’t see ghosts NEVER…because I was programmed by my scientist father NOT to beleive in such crap…BUt my very smart and high IQ girlfriend here DOES SEE ghosts every so often because she got that early programming and i can’t deprogram her. I can undress her, I can deconstruct her, I can undo her, but I can’t deprogram her from her ghost beliefs. NEVER.

So now I just listen to her attentatively and with respect when she tells me she sees and has seen ghosts. No big problem, but i KNOW there is no such thing as ghosts.

The mind is a powerful thing, and our early mind programming is awesome. It’s what makes life so interesting, and living in Taiwan as an agnostic atheistic scientific boring hairy barbarian so formidable…

high IQ doesn’t equal commonsense

Of course it was common sense for the Greeks to believe the earth was flat and the sun revolved around us.

Many people of high IQ believe in a God, however all these various high IQers can’t seem to figure out which version they prefer, they only know that their version (e.g. version 2000years) has to be better otherwise they think, I kinda made a f*ck up my whole life believing in the wrong version!

Most people don’t think rationally while thinking they do, probably me included or I wouldn’t be in Taiwan.

My girlfriend believes her dead grandparents walk around her house at night, when she talks about it even I get the creeps. I don’t believe in it rationally but my brain is not able to shake the fear that she ‘might’ however unlikely be telling the truth.

headhoncoII: her dead grandparents don’t walk around the house at night. period. they do walk around the house in her Taiwan-enabled imagination and it seems real to her. And its reality even scares you. I can understand that too. I feel the same way sometimes. Even though I know it’s all mental projections. Just like UFOs and gremlins and the Devil. And yes, that great uber projection in the sky … Mr God Himself.

As long as nobody is getting hurt … i guess it doesn’t matter. Come to think of it, I saw Santa Claus last night on our roof. Really. And I smiled.

it’s true that there are no scientific proof that ghost exist, but neither are there any proof that they don’t exist either. There’s an interesting article in last week’s New York Time, on the changing attitude towards god, in the scientific world. Some thing to the effect that as more and more of the underlying laws of nature become known, its become increasingly difficult to assume that every thing came into being purely accidentally. And the underlying parameter needed to create a universe such as the one we live in is so specific, that the chance of it to have occur randomly is very low. does this provide proof for the existence of god? no, not really but it does point out that there seem to be some kind of intelligence involve in the original creation event (big bang or what have you) sounds familiar?

I one had a guy in my genetics class who was the son of presbyterian ministers. He was convinced in the influence of God on our everyday lives and how we were somehow created by God. The same guy was studying evolutionary genetics and doing experiments in the lab every day with DNA. He went on to get a PhD in fruitfly genetics (I think).

I’ve never been able to understand how he could reconcile the two viewpoints…he could study the subject, do really well in exams but hold two completely opposing worldviews at the same time.
There was no point talking to him about it as he would just smile knowingly when you mentioned it to him.
Actually I met a devout muslim who was also studying for a PhD who tried to get me to read the Koran everytime I met him!

Yes lately creationists have taken a different tack and are harping on about ‘intelligent design’ in the universe. This is exactly the same thing Darwin faced when he was asked to explain how the wonderful complexity and supposed ‘perfection’ of the human eye could be created by anything but a ‘super being’. He and others later on were concisely able to show that the eye moved through hundreds of intermediate stages from a patch of nerve cells like on a flat worm to the lens type device we possess. He was also able to point if the eye was so perfect why does it have a blind spot right in the middle where the optic nerve goes? Why does the retina detach? Why are the blood vessels in front of the retina where they obscure details rather than behind it? Why do so many kids in Taiwan wear glasses?

If this sounds familiar its because I saw it on the discovery channel and it was a great example to refute this type of argument.

Many religious types also point to the ‘complexity of DNA’.
Sure DNA is complex.
So is a rock. A rock has billions of molecules all stuck together , however it wasn’t designed by anything. The rock doesn’t always have the ordered state that DNA but that’s because it’s not capable of replication.
DNA of itself is not THAT complex. After all it only consists of four large molecules strung along in a line in different orders. It just happens that the information you can hold and create from different combinations of this four letter code is almost boundless. The vast majority of our DNA doesn’t code for anything…its just repeats of sequences that don’t code for protein and results of replication errors going back millions of years. Its hanging around and not really doing a whole lot.

Now, just like in Darwins time new discoveries are being made about our universe. This argument about the seeming ‘intelligent design’ of the universal constants existing in the universe can easily be reversed. Just like the chicken and the egg, this type of life couldn’t have existed without this type of universe. If another universe existed the life that evolved there would be exquisitely suited to that universe, not ours…I mean it seems so obvious doesn’t it? That we exist precisely because we are evolved from this universe and subject to its laws. If you also look at the different theories abounding many scientists think that infinite universes may exist, if that is indeed true than it is not a probability but a certainty that infinite different types of life exist in the universe with infinite earths and infinite us!!!

Finally if we are the result of an intelligent design I have to ask ‘what is so intelligent about it’. At most they set the initial constants and left us on our own…since by current theories nothing can be known before the Big Bang it’s impossible to know.

well it certainly is difficult to assume. but if it did not occur randomly, what caused it? surely the chance of the random occurence of that force would be even less. in other words, who created the creator? where does it end?

these scientists must be smoking too much crack if they think they are going to be able to rationally explain if there is a god or not.