For Real skeptics (not non believers or believers),can you please give opinions?

I know you asked for no believers but since skeptics don't follow that rule when they are asked not to answer, I wont either. ;)

The point is simply there is no way to prove it. Welcome to my world and a whole lot of other people's world. Problem is, half of it happened in your head. Even though the result of the words were quite significant especially for the situation your wife has found herself in, no one can back track and test your brain waves and see if something irregular was going on behind the scenes while you were receiving the spirit communication. I don't even know if they can test for such a thing and certainly we can't go back into time and be there with you.

There is a reason why there isn't proof of the paranormal and that reason is bigger than you or me and bigger than a group of people who would truly love to show non believers what is going on in our worlds. That is just not the reality of the world that we live in right now and it just has to be accepted.

I doubt your wife's Dad is a ghost, he probably is just trying to tie up some loose ends to make sure everything goes the way he wants it to go. Even if you had a camera, I doubt you would see anything in pictures because when you channel spirit communication, the spirit doesn't have to be there in the room with you.

I know how you feel, I know what you are going through but I think it's more important to focus on the fact that you have been able to help your wife out by being open enough for her father to get your assistance. I believe you because I have experienced something quite similar. It's a long story but it had to do with a probate case and legal paperwork and some underhanded things going on to cheat the widow and her child out of her money. Her husband communicated to me and told me the exact papers I needed to get out of his office to disprove their claims. She allowed me access to his office and all his files that were tied to the case and sure enough, everything he told me was true. She even video taped a lot of it (the channeling part) and sent off everything that we had gathered to her Aunt that's a lawyer. She confirmed that it was indeed valid paperwork and proof but she questioned how I knew.

My friend (who has passed away now) knew that I had no way to know those things. I had only known her for a couple of hours when her husband started communicating with me. Other people can say that I dug through her trash or went through her husbands office while she was sleeping or some other underhanded thing...if you are not open minded enough to believe that the paranormal is a possible explanation, then you would prefer to believe the worst about people, call them thieves, con artists, liars. That to me is not being open minded or skeptical. That to me is being close minded, not even considering an explanation that has anything to do with the paranormal. My friend was the greatest example of a true skeptic, a very smart and logical woman. In all things paranormal she always asked question after question, wanted to know how it worked, wanted to catch things we were experiencing on tape. But she didn't flat out deny the possibility of the paranormal. Instead of turning her back on it, she stared straight at it and examined it all. That is what a true skeptic would do. Those non believers that consider themselves skeptics probably don't realize how often they turn their backs.

The most you've done with this question here is to prove that some that say they are skeptical of the paranormal are actually in absolute disbelief of it. And what else is interesting is if you would have said that God told you where the key was because you prayed on it, there are skeptics that would totally believe your story, even though they are skeptics of things like ghosts and psychic abilities. They would only disbelieve your story because you said it was her Dad and that can't be true because ghosts don't exist, only demons acting like ghosts and a demon would have no reason to help out your wife. The irony is just amazing.

I can't begin to imagine how many thumbs down this answer is going to get me.

...Depends on my mood during the disaster honestly. If I'm not feeling so good about going out, I'll probably call out to God in desperation at the last moment, usually for the same reason as the first answerer(Christianity somewhat embedded along with other mystical thoughts), and probably also for that desperation I mentioned. I'd like to stress I never give any deep thought to this though and don't put any effort into what the god looks like, which of the many religions I've attempted to adapt he might be from, or what he/she/it will even do, it's seems like a last minute thing I'll do though. Like taking one last look at the house before you else before you leave to go somewhere, it's possibly about a lot of things, the house, who's in it, what the house was, but really you're just looking at it to see what would happen if you looked at it or simply out of habit. Good Luck! :)

Hi Tom, finally someone in this section that is not just banging on about things that go bump in the night!

I usually like to pay out a little on the kids in section that just hear a noise in the middle of the night after being on their "play station" for umpteen hours playing zombie shoot ‘em up games and claim there are ghosts in their room!! Because that is what many of the nitwits in section do. Their little brains are so hyped from all the media devises available to them that it is little wonder they jump at shadows and hear things in the middle of the night.

But your experience is far different from that and does make me, a stanch non-believer, wonder what or how this is happening to you. Proof, as you put it, in this case is surely nigh on impossible.

I know I am of not much help here, but I thought it worth comment as your experience seems to be a little different from many of the things claimed in this section and are far easier explained. As I said before, if a person is subjected to many hours of media, of course the power of suggestion will come into play. I find it humorous when someone says "I was in bed and saw..." No, that was a dream.

Having said that though, could it simply be that you did see the key earlier and that you knew that your brother in law was pilfering items? Therefore in order to safeguard these items, you had a sudden thought that you should actually lock the door "right now" in case you forget to later?

You see I have had a similar thing, in some ways, happen. Although the house in question (and part of a will dispute) is some 5 hours drive, we 'felt' that my brother in law was pilfering items, but we had no proof! My wife woke in the middle of the night and told me that she needed to "get the key". I said "what key?"

She said "the key to the house". I then replied, "but we don't have one, we have looked everywhere."

So, at 2AM (or something like that), my wife got out bed, went into the kitchen, opened one of the cupboards. Grabbed the key that was hanging on a nail on the inside support rail. I said how did you know where that was, and guess what her reply was. She said, "Mum just told me." as matter of factly. Then went to sleep. Her mum had died some 8 months prior. Next morning she did not remember a thing about it and did not believe when I told how we found the key. Now to this very day she still swears to me that she had absolutely no prior knowledge of where the key was. Now, can she prove that? NO! Is it possible that she was told? May be. Is it also possible that she even saw the key at some stage and it came back to her in a dream? Also possible. But it remains unexplainable...

(oh and btw, the B-in-L did pilfer stuff until we drove the 5 hours to lock the door...)

There are of course over-looked possibilities that may have only been avoided to prevent reports of abuse and consequent deletion of answer and loss of points (however little that actually may mean). The possibilities are of course:

1. you are imagining the voice of your father-in-law, or

2. this entire story is contrived

Now, I am not accusing you of either, but from my perspective and without some type of independent evidence, verification is simply not possible. The question you have can not be answered! How could it? There is nothing physically impossible in the details of the story. The thoughts that may or may not have been imposed upon you can in no way be confirmed as actually happening, its just a claim that is without corroboration.

EDIT: Tom, I did give my answer as I intended and left nothing out. There are some users here that would report an asnswer if they believed I had insulted you by suggesting that the story was fabricated.

1. As far as you claiming to have told your wife things about her father you could not have known, nobody here can know the truth of this.

2. Asked and answered, there is no way to provide proof of something that allegedly took place in someone's head!

Additionally, I did not miss #3 (reality) as it was already implied AS a possibility from the outset. I mentioned them as "over-looked" possibilities. A better word may have been "unmentioned" possibilities, I'm certain other posters considered them.

To answer your Question, No, nobody can unless they say they can and then you will want proof to believe what they have told or shown you. Who are you trying to prove this to and why is their opinion so important? The metaphysical world is something that most of us have forgotten and those of us who haven't don't need proof to believe of it's existence. Maybe you could hide the key in a new hiding spot and tell someone, you will tell them when you pass over where it is hidden and you will reveal it when you are there. then they will finally believe you,... all those scientists.. The only method I can think of is if everyone tells the truth about everything, then everyone will believe your story.

It is impossible to test that empirically. When something strange like that happens and cannot be explained, you can do one of 2 things--make your own conclusion based on your perceptions, ie "it was a ghost!" or make no conclusion at all, ie "huh, well that was weird". We can't know everything even about the physical universe, let alone what is beyond it. To quote A Serious Man, "Accept the mystery"

Assuming you were to test this, there could be no scientific test that would show that "something" was there. First, "something" is not testable. You need to have a specific hypothesis in mind, and your hypothesis must be scientifically testable. In other words, it must be falsifiable. In order for that "something" to be falsifiable, you would need to select an objective, observable and repeatable quality about it and design a test around that. Yet, almost by definition nothing is known about a "something" that we can define a test around. Okay, so I'm beating a dead horse here -- "something" isn't testable.

You could, however, design a test where you find hidden things. If you were successful, this could show that you have an ability to do this beyond random chance. That would get you part way there, but then there wouldn't be any scientific way to show where that ability is coming from, whether spirits or your own psychic ability or hypothesis X, whatever that might be.

EDIT: It's not that science lacks a method, it's that the experience itself isn't amenable to an objective analysis, and objectivity is a cornerstone of natural investigation. It goes back to the very epistemology (how do you test something) and ontology (what does it mean for something to exist?) of the scientific method itself. This doesn't necessarily mean that an experience not amenable to this framework wasn't real, but that it cannot be known to be real within such a framework. But if you discuss this experience in a scientific forum, do expect to be asked for the objective evidence -- the underlying connotation of this request is that your experience isn't amenable to confirmation via scientific investigation and so the conclusions you drew from your experience aren't reliable to an outside observer.

None of this story sounds like it involves a ghost at all, except for the wife making the decision that your ability to find the key quickly must have been the ghost of her father. Sounds like you looked in the most logical place you could think of and found the key. Nothing in this story sounds like it involves ghosts in even the most remote way.

And even if it was a ghost, there is absolutely no way to prove it in any scientific way, sorry. It will remain merely anecdotal proof unless the ghost of your father in law decides he wants to help you prove it.

Proof of spirits is near impossible, unless you can get the spirits to cooperate or to act in a regular manner. This is why evidence of ghosts, deities, or other entities is not part of the James Randi Challenge.

To continue beyond proof, the entire experience does not make sense. Why would your father in law not want his children to have items of value from the house? Didn't he love his kids? The siblings taking stuff was bothering you and your wife because your trying to get as much valuable stuff yourself, but it shouldn't be bothersome to him.

I'm probably one of those nasty skeptics that you don't want to answer but...

To put your story in a nutshell, you decided that you wanted to lock the door, went to look for the key and happened to find it in the first place you looked. Maybe you had even looked in that drawer before and seen a key but not taken much notice of it at the time.

I don't know how you can hear a thought and have your wife think it sounded like her father when no one actually heard it - how many ways can you think 'the key is in the drawer'?

The only way I guess you could prove something more than chance was happening is have a video camera on you the whole time you're there and announce your intentions before you perform every action.

No, a real skeptic can not give an opinion, only other possible explanations for what's happened. I mean no offense, but all we have here is a ghost story. We might as well have an opinion on what Scrooge was really seeing that Christmas eve.