Are Ghosts real or fiction?

To answer this simply look at the theory behind conservation of energy. Energy never dies. Scientists have found studies to suggest that consciousness can exist outside of the physical body with many testimonies of OBE. Yes they do exist. The problem with ghosts is that they are not all the same. This has to do with who, how, when and where the death occurred. They are disincarnates, ghosts, poltergeists. Most of the time what people experience are not actually ghosts but psychic residue. Places where there has been bloodshed and negativity abounds this occurs. It's like when a heavily perfumed person enters a room and then leaves. The energy of persons may linger but not necessarily the sentient soul. The energy that is left is often primal and base and that's why many times people might get an off feeling about a place. Sometimes the energy might cause a loop effect influencing people/objects to participate in the same event that caused it like roads where unexplained car accidents keep occuring. Not every paranormal phenomenon is caused by ghost or the undead and that's why it's difficult to understand scientifically. However science has been researching paranormal phenomenon for numerous years now. Although they haven't been able to fully understand everything they don't deny the plausibility of such things.

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I would most certainly say they are real, but WHAT they are is a matter of conjecture. Hauntings can be multiple different things.

You'll get a lot of closed minded naysayers who muster the erroneous arrogance to deny that which doesn't fit their outlook of reality.

The thing is, people have been seeing ghosts or spirits for as long as human beings have been around. The millions, if not billions of people who have seen such things they couldn't explain beyond the 5 Senses, are simply dismissed as liars, crazy and/or ignorant people by those who haven't witnessed the same thing. There've been too many witnesses with too many stories and I've done too much research to dismiss them all a flights of fancy.

In the grand scheme of things,  humans haven't been around for very long and our knowledge of the universe hasn't progressed further then Dark Matter. We really don't know everything, as much as the ignorant like to think we do. Things that have been distinguished as religious affairs aren't welcome in modern science and they're dismissed out of hand, because heaven forbid science give religion any form of credibility. So without religion the idea of a human souls transmigrating after death isn't really welcome. It's not because there's lack of evidence. It's our model for thinking.

The current model of thought that Western Countries go by is called Secular Humanism. This revokes the concept of God or any form of deity, suggesting man is his own god. And with a predominantly left-brained authority,  thinking beyond scientific development into areas of the occult would be unthinkable.

It's for this reason alone that ghosts are dismissed. Sightings continue to happen to this day by random people. It's not reported as much because of strict censorship on the news, but also people are afraid to made fun of and ridiculed for speaking their mind.

it largely remains a mystery for now. i for one hope ghosts do exist!

Don't know enough about them to say whether they're real or not.  Even if they're real maybe they're not what we think, maybe they're not the spirits of the dead, but something else entirely.