For religious people, but having almost nothing to do with religion
So I've been wondering about ghosts and the like. Being an atheist I am also a rationalist, so I have always dismissed the paranormal. Yet I have had people in freethinkers clubs and personal friends at work tell me about paranormal experiences where they would have no advantage to lying. Things like objects floating in air, convincing ouija board experiences, and seeing ghosts of dead relatives.
Many of these could be explained by lack of sleep, sleeping narcotics, or simply false hope in seeing dead loved ones. But specific ones really can't.
My friend at work and her mother were using a ouija board which told them that their new house use to be an orphanage that lit on fire and killed most of the kids. They looked it up at the library to find it was true, neither of them had a clue.
Another person saw her dead great grandmother in the middle of the night (who she had never seen before) and while looking at a photo album a year later with her mother, saw the woman and recgonized her. It turned out the mother had seen the apparation as well.
So, I'm extremely skeptical, but at the same time there is no motivation to lie about these happenings.
If I was still Christian I would say it was demons; as an atheists I am prone to believe it is all in their heads, but I'm not really sure. I was curious about what you guys think of this subject.