Anonymous wrote:I never believed in ghosts -- sort of agnostic about it, like: there's no evidence, I'm personally skeptical, but who knows. But then my brother (totally normal guy, with whom I'm very close) told me that my mom had very hesitantly confided in him that she's seen two different people after they've died, which I guess would be in "ghost" form. And my mom is the most skeptical, no-nonsense, with-it, eye-rolling, cut-the-crap woman ever. She has never mentioned ANYTHING about this to me, and my brother said it only came up after a long conversation about something related (spirituality or something), and she seemed really torn about mentioning it, like he was going to think she was crazy. And she asked him not to repeat it, for that reason.
Of course, we tell each other everything, especially about our parents, and this unnerved him a bit, so he did tell me! And it really floored me. My mom absolutely would not make something like this up. I fully believe she saw it, or at least that SHE believes she saw it. I don't quite know how to interpret it beyond that.
And if you want the spooky details, one was a murdered coworker she saw show up in her workplace, and one was her own parents showing up at their gravesite.
It freaks me out to think about it, actually, because I sort of pooh-pooh these things, like, oh, people have overactive imaginations or there must be some other explanation. But I KNOW my mom, and her imagination is not overactive... at all... And I can't think of how to explain visual sightings of dead people. Hallucinations, I guess? Except she's in perfect health and has never hallucinated anything else? I just don't know... It's changed how I think about ghost stuff, though. I'm still "agnostic," I guess, but now I personally know one person who I truly believe is not lying or exaggerating about this kind of thing...
If the ghost is someone you actually knew, I'd say it's a good bet it's a case of the mind playing tricks on the observer. (Anyone who's ever lost a pet knows they "see" them out of the corner of their eyes or imagine it's time to feed them, etc.) If it's someone totally unknown to you before the sighting, like the kid kit by a car in front of the house.....?