Consciousness Explained, It Goes Much Deeper Than You Think [FULL VIDEO]

I haven't posted here in a long time, and it has been brought to my attention this might be a better way to get through to some people who do not have the bad habit of sitting a couple of hours each evening sorting through the chaff in search of intelligent gems of enlightenment on YouTube.

For a long time I have been trying to understand how our understanding of life, the universe, and everything, ties into the paranormal, and the para-psychological and psychological subjects of OBE, NDE, ESP, inter-dimensional awareness, time awareness, and consciousness, and the scientific fields of quantum theory, holographic theory, torsion physics, and the whole "rabbit hole" in general.  These things are all somehow interconnected, and better minds than mine seem to be of the same opinion, and searching for answers.

Based on the above realization, and the fact that some videos are just difficult to view for people outside of their YouTube existence, I'm going to put the ones I find most educational here, and hope someone will view them, think about things and possibly ask questions, make comments, or bring their own ideas or found gems from other websites.

The subject today is Consciousness, and the accompanying video is one of the best lectures by someone practicing in a field of psychology I have seen recently.  I won't say it isn't slow because it is a real, intellectual lecture by a professional in the field.  Please let me know what you think and if this is a good educational venue for subjects that I too want to learn more about.  Questions and comments are welcome!

Who, What, and When are We Talking To?

Have you ever stopped to wonder what you are doing when you go out looking to catch an EVP, an orb, or an apparition?  Exactly what is it that you expect to find? What are you trying to capture on your audio recording equipment?

People who go to graveyards are obviously trying to contact someone who is dead, right? But do you always get a dead person?  How do you know?

Have you ever considered the possibility that you may be picking up a passive haunting?  Voices that just recur, saying the same thing; apparitions or orbs that never change from one visit to the next; these are not what they appear to be. But what then are they?

Excerpt from AAPI presentation-Hauntings-2008

In its most basic form, there really are only two types of Haunting.  Lesson One for beginners, the most rudimentary lesson, is to determine which type of haunting they are experiencing.  After that things will get a bit more interesting, more convoluted and subjective, but one must always start with the simple and move toward the more complex to gain better understanding.

First of all, we need to define the term “Haunt”. Hauntings are recurring anomalous paranormal activities in one localized area. They may encompass an area as large as several square miles, as in the Custer Battlefield in Montana, or the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg. They may only encompass a small portion of a building or other physical site. Haunted places generally, but not always have strong emotional histories; these may be filled with joy, pain, fear, or death, and sometimes there is no obvious connection with the haunting and any emotional or traumatic event.  Cemeteries can be used as an example of the un-obvious haunting. After all, why would anyone who knows they are dead and buried want to hang around in a graveyard when they could be off gallivanting elsewhere? This is the most common definition, but it isn’t the only definition.

It is possible for things smaller than a house to be haunted. Individual items can be haunted, and they can run the gamut from the rare and exotic through the historic to the mundane. (In recent years there has been a trend toward collecting “Haunted Dolls”.)  As with geographic locations it is most common for haunted items to have a ‘history’ or an association with strong emotional, mental, or physical discomfort.  Sometimes this is only in the eye of the owner and sometimes it is obvious to everyone who comes in contact with the item.

After all, it’s not just the deceased that comes to the graveyard.  Today there may only be one trip made from the funeral home to the gravesite / mausoleum / crypt.  Even if it is a small funeral, say 20 mourners, there’s a lot of emotion and feelings of regret, grief, loss, anger… you name it, among the graveside attendees. 

Where does all this energy and emotion go?  Does it just evaporate up into thin air after all is said and done? Do they somehow suck it all back into themselves before they leave? Does it magically turn into a bunch of dragonflies and butterflies and flowers that will stay in the area?  More likely it gets absorbed: people absorb some of the energy, the emotions and sorrow, and the tears of one become the tears of many.  But it also gets absorbed into the surroundings, both animate and inanimate.  Plants can absorb emotional energy, in fact some studies suggest they can be “aware” and feed or deteriorate in the presence of varying types of energy from humans and other animals.  The headstones, the ground, the building, the urn, the plastic flowers, any trinket or memento left for the deceased, all of these will absorb some of the energy around them, just as they would take up infrared radiation and warm to the touch.  And they radiate this energy out again the same way, over time, the higher the energy input, the longer the output – the ‘imprint’, if you will - remains.

In the old days, people visited the dead more often and there was a different attitude about going to the graveside of a passed person to visit, picnic, and remember.  That may be why some of the oldest graves and gravestones have the most activity.  But there are a few newer ones like that, too, where people care so much for their passed relative that they visit regularly.

These are all Passive Haunting phenomena, just energy of events gone by radiating out into the world and eventually to fade away.

Sometimes, rather rarely, you will get an Active Haunting in a cemetery, but these are rare.  These are the ones that answer questions and may try to show you something in response to a request with EVP, orbs, EMF, flux, temperature changes, etc.  And some of the reasons they are there, should they answer your inquiries, might surprise you.

• Some of them don’t know they’re dead or don’t want to accept it. These don’t usually stay in graveyards, but more commonly are associated with the sites where they perished.

•  Some know they are dead but are afraid to move on; usually they are found elsewhere as well, but sometimes they follow the funeral procession and end up staying near their grave because they don’t know what to do next, or are afraid to do it.

•  Some, the surprising ones, know exactly why they are there: they are waiting and they will tell you that, because they were the first to pass and they have no intention of moving on alone; they wait for a partner (husband, wife, child, friend) so they can go together.

•  Finally, some are just passing through and you don’t even know if they are human or not. Sometimes you will pick up what might be considered an Elemental or an Earth spirit that is associated with the site itself and has nothing to do with anything else. Sometimes you may pick up things that would more often be associated with vortex and dimensional anomalies.

When you do catch something in a cemetery it is often pretty interesting, but, personally, I wouldn’t go hunting for intelligent ghosts there, they don’t tend to hang around much unless there’s a reason for them to be there.  Cemeteries are good place to train the new ghost hunter on standard safety protocols and how to use their instruments, and contrary to popular belief, you don't always need to go at night in order to get something on camera or recorder.

In the News: Week of August 14-20, 2011

Cryptozoology:

It was brought to my attention today that the latest buzz is the rumor a Bigfoot body has been found in Florida.  I followed Lisa's text information to the News site, which was very poorly done in my opinion, which lead to a website not exactly ready to post on the Internet.  Therefore I sought information from Cryptomundo, a longtime reputable Crypto web presence, only to find that the 2008 Bigfoot body hoax was currently listed on that site. More looking found that the 2007 and 2008 hoaxes have been refreshed in 'webland' and I suspect people aren't looking hard to find the actual dates these pages were posted.

After searching the web for 2011 items, I did find this site: http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com 

These are current posts from 2011 and some of their photos are rather compelling. I would recommend you check this site out instead of following the chain of misinformation from 2008 which has somehow become New news again.  You will of course find errors on some items here too because some people can't tell a bear from a Bigfoot, but that's humans for you. 


Ghosts:


Cali, Colombia and posted the last week of July 2011. A security guard records an apparition on his cell phone. This comes from Paranormal Network Ghost Videos: http://www.ghostvideos.ws


The quality is very low, but this is a newscast item which was broadcast and it is pretty damned convincing on first viewing.  The apparition is apparent and takes a distorted form, moving toward the camera before retreating and disappearing into the opposite wall of the hallway.  If only they had better quality evidence!  Make up your own mind.

Professional or Amature - What's in a Name?

First I'd like to thank A Lady Named Bob for bringing this subject up. 

What is a professional?  Can you be a professional ghost hunter? 

Yes, you probably can, but by accepted definition you would have to meet the following criteria to be considered a Professional:

1. You have pursued your field via long years of intensive and extensive study at academic institutions, and have successfully met all qualifications for graduation at the undergraduate, graduate, and probably post graduate levels. 

So basically, you go to school to become something: teacher, culinary chef, journalist/writer, actor, engineer, research scientist, doctor, etc.

2. You have met the qualifications and requirements of the union, guild, state or federal board, or other self-governing body for your specialty or field of endeavor, and have been granted license or permission to practice your profession – i.e. you have passed all the tests.

You pay your dues, join the club or union, get a certificate or license, and find a job or start your business.

3. Because of your expertise you are expected to conduct your business and/or research responsibly and ethically.  It is expected you will adhere to the best practices for your field because you are qualified and certified.  Utilization of independent judgment is expected.

You are supposed to know what you are doing. And after all of this education, you really should know right from wrong, and be able to "do the right thing", whether or not it benefits you financially.

4. You speak the lingo of the field.  You know and use the specific and specialized terminology for your profession. Also, in some fields, you publish at least a paper every few years just to prove you are up on your qualifications and education.

5. Finally, while many individuals pursue a career out of a yearning or love to do that kind of work, some pursue it out of a yearning or love of the potential for income.  Professionals may or may not have the "fire in their belly", and that fire may or may not die as years go by.

Here are some famous professionals (by definition) who followed the general rules above:

• Florence Nightingale – Nurse, Educator, Activist
• Louis Pasteur – Chemist/Microbiologist
• David Livingstone – Physician/Missionary
• Niels Bohr - Physicist
•  Isaac Newton – Mathematician/Physicist
• Marie Curie – Physicist/Chemist
• Nikola Tesla – Electrical Engineer
• Arthur Conan Doyle – Physician/Writer (He was a professional physician, started writing and selling stories in college, and became a well known Spiritualist and Paranormal Researcher)

Now, here are some famous professionals who didn't follow the rules, but are still considered professionals in the end:

• Peter Jennings – News journalist (high school dropout)
• Steven Spielberg – Director/Producer (studied but never graduated)
• Bill Gates – Microsoft Founder  (studied but never graduated)
• Jane Austin – Novelist  (in her day women just didn't go to college)
• Nicholas Copernicus – Astronomer (dropped out of Canon Law studies in Bologna)
• Charles Darwin – Naturalist/Scientist (Med School dropout who studied Divinity at Cambridge)
• Thomas Edison – Inventor (grade school dropout, home schooled, prodigious reader, suffered from deafness)
•  Albert Einstein – Theoretical Physicist (Considered retarded in elementary school, but received a diploma in teaching; he worked in the Patent Office because he couldn't get a teaching position.  He finally got his physics degree while working in Patents, but wrote on the subject from childhood.)
• Ben Franklin – Printer/Publisher (Inventor, Scientist, Philosopher, Politician  – Renaissance Man!)
• Orville and Wilbur Wright – Bicycle Building & Repair (two men who wanted to fly like birds)
• Arthur Conan Doyle – Spiritualist Researcher (He was a professional physician, started writing and selling stories in college, and became a well known Spiritualist and Paranormal Researcher)

The list goes on, but lines between professional and amateur get blurry.  During their early lives many professionals were considered amateurs in their fields.

What is an amateur?  By definition of the word alone, it is French for "one who loves" something.  Amateurs aren't generally educated in what they pursue, but they love the subject so they become self-educated in it.  In general, amateurs live by other means and pursue their "love" as a hobby.  But that doesn't mean they aren't serious!

We don't take amateur scientists too seriously these days, but, if you look at the lists above, you might notice that there are some very famous people who got their start as amateurs!  During the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th centuries, it was very fashionable to have a serious hobby which would be considered amateur scientific endeavor.  We may "Pooh! Pooh!" these types today, but a lot of good solid science, invention and discovery has to be attributed to people and their hobbies.

Having said that, if you want to think of yourself as amateur because you don't ask for pay for your passion… OK.  But, if you do study, research, think, consider, think again, and continue to pursue education and information in the name of your "hobby" and it does provide you that "fire inside", then you could be blurring the line between professional and amateur.  The final result is really how the world will view you in the end, not how you define the importance of your pastimes.

I am an amateur at many things and a professional at a couple, but, I pursue my hobbies with professional vigor; I research and study and try to improve my understanding and technique.  You don't need a piece of paper to tell you that you know something, you just need to be able to use what you know to do what you need to do in order to research and discover for yourself.  That's an amateur behaving professionally.


Do you believe in ghosts? 

I kind of do because there is enough evidence out there to make  them a possibility, and I have had some experiences that can only be explained by saying, there is something more - something unseen and extraordinary living in the universe with us. (Well, maybe living isn't the right word, but… you know what I mean.)

With every breath of our lives we see the knowledge of our universe and our place in it expanding.  We also see more questions because it's really like a giant labyrinth: all the twists and turns and long corridors have doors on every side and in every dead end.  You open a door and suddenly you learn something new and wonderful, but you also see more long halls of closed doors ahead through that portal you've just opened.  For every answer we find, a thousand new questions just burst forth to confuse and confound the issues yet again.

A person has to be very careful about how they approach this kind of thing as well.  In our modern day, American culture, psychics, mediums, ghost hunters and the like are considered aberrant by many; we are just a step away from being the old medieval witches, and some states go out of their way to prosecute anyone who dares stand out and say, "I can do these things", or "I like to hunt for dead people".  (If you want to be a psychic medium or a professional ghost hunter, you need to know the laws of the state you plan to live and work in, especially if you want to make a living doing so.)  For example, Colorado is lenient, Montana is catch-22, and North Carolina is absolutely Inquisitional!)   If you want to fulfill your curiosity, you can look up the various laws concerning paranormal hobbies and psychic abilities on a state by state basis.  The problem is that everything is frequently classified in with the old "Fortune Telling" trade.  Even among legitimate paranormal organizations there is a great ambivalence.

As an example in Ghost Hunting and other paranormal stuff, AAPI, has opted not to take any form of remuneration or to ask for such for any part of their services because of the stain scammers have brought to the field.  We will accept donations (usually stuff or equipment we can use), but they must come by free will, not any feeling of gratitude or fear.  We feel it is an outright Flimflam to demand money of people to investigate possible haunting, let alone claim to be able to get rid of the problems if we find them.  Life just doesn't work that way.  Also, too may Con Artists over the centuries have scammed too many people out of their life savings.  Our motto is: "If they ask for money, RUN AWAY!!!"


I know we could all use the cash for tools and supplies, gas and housing when hunting away from home, but there is something very unethical and immoral in making money off of peoples fears. Taking people on a Tour or a Ghostwalk, or compiling and writing books about investigations, or selling stuff on your website to those who chose to buy it (and it better be real stuff), or doing the long lab hours of analysis for those who don't know how or don't want to learn how (for a fee) is one thing, but charging people to learn the hobby is wrong.  Serious people spend their money getting their own tools and taking classes to make themselves better hunters; they don't make 'coffee money' charging others for the privilege of watching them hunt.  (That would be considered a tour, and we even teach people how to use the tools on the tours we give, so ….) I know we would like to get remuneration for giving tours somewhere, but we are NOT going to SELL ghost hunting as a tourist attraction!  There shouldn't have to be a reward (a t-shirt with our logo) for all paying customers who complete the tour!  (Blah! Blah! Blah!)  Having been a teacher, I would much rather run an educational Ghostwalk, something that lets people learn and come to terms with their own fears about the unknown.  It's a lot more fun and a whole lot more interactive believe me!  (I also find the ghosts are sometimes more cooperative as well.)

I personally think less highly of those "proclaimed and self-proclaimed" psychics who want to see the money first before doing their mystical thing.  I know from personal experience that probability is against the fortune teller.  A reasonable psychic can always pick up things from the past or present, but the future changes with every decision and breath we take, so future predictions can never be more than 50 or 60% probable.  Now, if a number of people all give the same prediction, watch out, something big is bucking the probability and it will happen.  Studies have shown this works!  But individuals cannot create this kind of channeled, pre-determined event.  This is something that is picked up by sensitives – a biggie, like 9/11. 
 
As mentioned previously, I've had the great good fortune to know some very good psychics.  I have also met some real LOSERS!  If you want to prove yourself as a psychic ghost hunter then just tell us where to point the cameras and the equipment.  Getting direct results based on your directions is a very good proof of psychic capability.  And I still say anyone can learn how to do it in varying degrees.

Finally, for a dose of reality on psychics, I always like to recommend the Southpark episode where Kyle learns the 'tricks of the trade' and goes head on with John Edwards.  Everything they say in there is true and you should consider the possibility when dealing with professional psychics (especially if they seem shady or too good).


Is it wrong to charge a fee for ghost hunting? Can you be a 'professional' ghost hunter and NOT charge a fee? 

How about Psychics, Mediums, Intuitives, etc.? Should they or can they be a part of paranormal research? Can you use a living thing as a tool, like your recorder? Can the sucess of an intuitive be corroborated by recorded or other observed proof?


Is there some kind of line of demarkation between moral and immoral practices in paranormal research? What is the dividing line between amateur/professional and passion/study/hobby?

Can you even be a professional without some kind of private or government grant to help support your research?

Belief, Subjectivity and Objectivity, and Experience

The methodology of science stands fast and firm on its pedestal of 'Objectivity'.  The idea – hypothesis – must be proven to be possible using quantifiable, standardizable, measurable, repeatable experiments.  The expected outcome must be the same at every test; plug in the right stimulus, physical environment and energy, and you will always get the same result.  

So they say who follow the Scientific Method but, the rule of Objectivity has yet to make a perfect human voice.  Using observation via endoscope and x-ray, we know exactly what the vocal mechanism looks like at rest, when breathing, talking, eating, and singing.  We can observe the changes in the shape of the mechanism when the singer hits that magnificent high note or the booming, chesty low note, and we can attempt to recreate the best sounds of the voice with mechanical interference to retrain minds, muscles, and nerves to move in a manner that will produce the best sound. 

I was a classically trained singer; I had this system of objective training used on me – it didn't work.  My mind could not tell my pharynx to open the larynx 2.5 millimeters and tilt forward 3 degrees in order to transition from a high note to a low note.  Half of the muscles involved are involuntary and they don't listen to this techno-babble!  They don't do measurements.

What did work for me was subjective; my teachers said think about being an organ pipe growing larger to accommodate that deeper sound; relax and feel the resonance spread from behind your eyes to the back of your jaw.  You can't measure this.  It is a different thing for every student.  But it works.  If you 'make it so', see and feel it in your mind, your body just figures it out.  It's not scientific by today's definition, but it once was all the rage of the enlightened world of music in the 18^th century.  We call it the lost art of Bel Canto singing.

So what does this have to do with the paranormal, ghosts, parapsychology and science?  It's my way of using an illustration to explain a dilemma.  You see, there is more than one type of science.  You may have already begun to suspect I was headed here when I followed up the objective quest for categorization and classification of things using scientific methodology with the mind experiment and the multiplicity of quantum physics.

Humans seem to have a natural urge to put things in some kind of order or perspective in relationship to their position in the universe.  We have a need to know that the set of all elephants is not the set of all pianos.  We appear to be born with a need (probably a very healthy one) to learn the difference between apples and oranges, tigers and cows, candy and poison.  But we also have a very great proclivity for seeing only this either/or, on/off, black/white, good/evil, binary universe.  In our early history it was most likely a very healthy survival mechanism – us against them – kind of thing.  Unfortunately, the universe is not black and white; that would be far too simple.

Now we are back to the Paranormal and the Metaphysical; the pseudo-science, things not always quantifiable with the knowledge we have today.  (Stop me anytime and get your voice into this!  I really would like some feedback, just to make sure I haven't gone insane or something thinking about this stuff too much!) Are there such things as ghosts?  Do your ancestors watch over and protect you from somewhere beyond physical death?  Are there such things as deities and where do they reside in the universe?  Is there a spiritual plane of existence beyond the physical universes and, if so, what is it?  Can one transmute lead to gold with the right formula, ritual and incantation?  How?  Why?

When our ancestors were living in caves and hunting mammoth they asked things like this.  And they probably looked around and tried to find an answer.  That answer developed into myth and religion.  Belief.  

Belief is subjective, you can't measure it except by means that are so extreme they are life-ending.  Belief in its most subjective form becomes religious dogma; it is never questioned, just believed to be so.  But Belief can also be based on objectivity; the probability that something must be so because the observations and tests and anecdotal evidence are consistent and recurring over time, space, and generations. 

 

What are ghosts?  

Can one be psychic? 

Is time real?  

Can one reincarnate? 

Is there other life in the universe?

We don't know yet.  These could  all be a thousand different things depending on what evidence, both subjective and objective, you choose to believe.  And now we are where we were last time: can belief make it so?

We all live with ghosts in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not.  As humans we have prodigious memory capability, which science is still trying to explain.  Think back to the earliest thought you can find; how old were you?  Three?  Four?  Two?  One?!!

Do you ever remember being scared of something unknown, such as the dark?  Your parents gave you a night light and told you it was just your imagination, right?  Mine did.  I was probably three going on four at the time and I know I was that age because we moved into the house I grew up in just after my third birthday, and my brother and I shared a room for half a year.  He got his own room when I started letting him out of his crib so he would shut up at any hour of the night he woke me up.  My parents didn't appreciate a toddler wandering the house at 2:00 AM therefore the pantry/laundry room was moved to the basement and the room redone for my brother. 

Shortly after that I became afraid of the dark and was given a sweet little lamp, (Mary and her little lamb) with a nightlight bulb in it.  That was fine in the bedroom, but my parents would leave the bedroom door open at night so they could hear me from their bedroom, and I could see the antique piano in the dining room from my bed.  Sometimes I could see things – shadows – moving around between my doorway and the piano.  It would freak me out.  I really did believe in ghosts when I was four!  It certainly kept me in bed when I was awake, although I was a formidable and fearless sleepwalker.  Until I was 10 or 11, my parents' friends would use this fear of the dark and ghosts to keep me out of trouble when we visited.  One of their friends brewed his own wine and beer in his basement, so they told me the Boogie Man would get me to keep me out of the back stairs and away from the brewery.  Another refilled his own bullets in his basement.  He told us kids that a big black demon lived down there and if we were noisy or went down and bothered it, it would demand he feed one of us to it and, since it was a demon, we would go straight to Hell!

Now I know that the shadows were caused by the wind shifting the tree branches outside the living room window.  We had a big streetlight on the corner and it could light up the whole living room at night if the curtains weren't pulled all the way shut.  It is always windy where I grew up, so the wind was always tossing the tree branches around and making moving, menacing shadows in the living room and the dining room.    

Now I know that my parents' friends were just trying to keep us kids out of trouble and safe with these terrorizing stories about monsters, but it did mess me up mentally.  I thoroughly believed in ghosts and monsters and demons.  I don't think it is a particularly nice thing to do to a child, telling them such things and then telling them there are no such things as ghosts and that it's only their imaginations simultaneously.  Children's brains aren't quite ready to try and reason through that set of contradictions.

By the time I hit 12 years of age I had become an obsessive bookworm.  I had also become a "Show me!  Prove it!" person.  I had moved away from animal stories and adventure stories, and I had begun to read Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, the early Isaac Asimov (Lucky Star), and a juvenile science fiction writer with the nom de plume of Andre Norton.  It was 1966 and we were going to send men to the moon!  My parents had already let me stay up all night the year before to watch the Ranger unmanned lunar landing pictures come back and be broadcast.  I had begun to get into science, astronomy, biology and the like.  I believed in the possibility of UFOs because I was hooked on the Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone.  But I was also learning to question.  I was learning the difference between reality and fantasy and trying to quantify all of my experiences in a practical and logical way.  I had realized that the shadows in the dining room came from the trees outside.  The nightlight was by now a reading lamp on my dresser.  I told myself I no longer believed in ghosts or the supernatural.  I had better things to believe in.  It was the year Star Trek began on TV. 


It was also the year I met Michelle.  She was my brother's age, a magnificent horsewoman, and, I thought, a bit crazy.  Her family was a bit dysfunctional so maybe that was the reason (I thought), but friends accept each other for what they are and go from there the way I was raised so, I just have a friend who is a bit crazy.  I can put up with her "seeing things" in cemeteries and on the streets, and telling me that people we saw walking by were happy or sad, or sick, or dying.  Within a couple years we were more like sisters than just best friends.

And just when I had gotten myself comfortable with her being just a bit crazy like some of my great uncles, who drank too much and lived like hermits on their ranches and farms, it happened.  You know that quantifiable truth that turns your opinion to something being more probable because of the evidence? 
 
We rode past the cemetery a lot, and she would sometimes stop and talk to nothing on the other side of the fence.  I would just sit, let the dog pant and rest under the horse and let the horse graze – mentally sing "la-la-la, I'm ignoring what's happening. La-la-la…" 

Then one day, she got in a bit of an argument with nothing, and nothing apparently started to leave.  She told it to come back and listen to her.  Then, at the same time, both horses brought their heads up and alerted to... NOTHING!  The dogs got up too and all four animals tracked NOTHING! from right to left across an open area of gravestones and into the trees while Michelle talked to it.  Then everyone relaxed.  I was apparently the only one not aware.  It freaked me out!

Michelle used to tell me I could do this thing too if I would just quit being afraid of it.  But she is still really gifted.
So, by 14, I had picked up an additional hobby… parapsychology… the research into why and how some people can see things that aren't there, communicate, understand, see the future and the past, and know when someone is hurt miles away before it happens. My friend could do some of this and I needed to know how and why and if I really could do it also.

That was forty plus years ago.  Because of my life experiences as a small child I feel I am a "Believing Skeptic".  I want to believe there is more in the universe than what we see.  I have to believe that there is more based on what I've learned from science in the last half century, but I want some objective proof. 
 
Show me a man levitating and I, like the infamous Randy will also try to look for the trick to disprove the feat.  If that man can come to my house at a time set by me and levitate on command from a surface I provide, then I may believe.  But if he cannot do it except under his own conditions then I must doubt his authenticity unless there is enough investigation and control to provide that he is not a very good magician but a real PK expert. 
 
Having been a musician and an educator I can tell you that illusion and magic are real.  Composers are magnificent illusionists; they can make you cry or laugh with a few bars of well written music.  They can make your heart race, your adrenalin run.  They can turn the world's worst film into something passable and they can turn a reasonably good film into something extraordinary using only sound.  That is magic.  It is also an art and a science.  

Our life experiences predicate our beliefs and our beliefs help create our life experiences.  It is a strange circle, but it is who we are as individuals and groups of the greater societies of the human race.

So, now I've talked all the way around this circle of thoughts on the paranormal, parapsychology, science, and ghosts. I really would like to know what the rest of the world thinks and why, from everyone - skeptics, believers, and the undecided.  Do ghosts exist and what are they?

We have a century of serious research in the field of parapsychology in the USA.  Unfortunately, most of our researchers are now dead, retired, struggling as non-profit organizations, or doing their work in other countries where their research is taken more seriously by the governments and educational institutions.  To get a degree in Parapsycology now, you really must study abroad, although there are certificates available here from some institutions, not all of them legitimate.  Lloyd Aurbach teaches a certificate class in paranormal/ghost hunting in California.  Many spiritualist groups have classes, some of which offer certifications.  

We also have some of the most severe skeptics of the paranormal, parapsychic, and metaphysical in the USA.  The overall attitude is that you have to be crazy to believe this stuff!  There seems to be no middle road any longer.
So, we listen to radio programs late at night, like Coast to Coast, which host these "crazy" people, some of them truly "crackers", some of them with impressive credentials and evidence, and some of them just searching for the truth and presenting evidence as and where they find it with no real final explanation - only questions and their beliefs, (kind of like me!).

Do you believe in ghosts?