
The Coker Hill Haunting 2: The Events - IntronExon
http://www.strangehistory.net/2018/03/03/coker-hill-haunting/
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SlowBro
I don't understand why many people (myself included) fear ghosts?

If I heard something go bump in the night it would freak me out. Yet I've
never read of a historic event of haunting where the ghost (or whatever
phenomenon) actually did anything terrible. Tipping stuff over, opening doors,
or in this case knocking on wood, isn't exactly threatening. Yet if that were
me I'd split out of that house faster than you can say Casper :-)

I don't think it's the fear of the unknown. I see unknown stuff all the time
that's not at all frightening. There's something about poltergeist (or
poltergeist-seeming natural phenomenon) that's just too much.

My wife and her sister both claim to have seen the same ghost from separate
rooms. In a house where someone was known to have died, one night she saw a
man wearing older clothing standing in her bedroom doorway, looking at her
with a puzzled look on his face. She blinked and he was gone. Her sister from
her bedroom saw the same man. Only once, and it never happened again.

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choeger
Maybe this is a case of mixing cause and effect. It might not be you fearing
the ghost but rather your fear creating it in the first place.

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SlowBro
Except the order is backwards. Stimulus then response. You’re going along just
fine then _bam_ a noise and you jump.

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choeger
Not necessarily. First of all you might not be aware that you are not "fine"
at all. On a subconscious level you might already be fearful. And then of
course your perceptions might trick you. While you might certainly think that
the noise you heard was the first thing you noted, there could have been
several other inputs that set you up so that the particular noise sounded more
suspicious or louder or unlikely...

~~~
SlowBro
No I'm saying the surprise comes from nowhere. Anyway, it's theoretical for
me. I can't say I've ever seen any ghost, just been spooked by noises when I
was otherwise perfectly happy.

Question remains though: Why do many fear ghosts? There's really nothing
frightening about them that I can see, and I don't believe fear of the unknown
is the cause.

