I am a hardcore skeptic and out-and-out atheist. I have twice seen the same ghost.
Anyone who works in or around theaters will probably have a few good ghost stories, they're all 'haunted.' Both of mine were at the University of Victoria. I once watched a guy - who I thought was a friend of mine at first glance - walk along the control level, where the lighting and sound booth is located, and disappear behind it. I went up to get him, 'cause I thought it was my friend, and when I got to where he'd been there was just a dark hallway and a cold spot.
The second time was in one of the other theatres in the building. I was working late one night, just putzing around with some lighting instruments when my mind started wandering over who else might be in the building. I went through the list of people who could be there are shortly realized I was probably alone in the building. I got totally creeped out and started to get the eff out quickly. I got into the back hallway and watched as the same blonde guy I'd seen the year before walked down the hall away from me and then into the dressing rooms. Without opening the door.
When I spoke to one of the profs about it, she described - without prompting - the appearance of the guy (even including the line "he looks a lot like Tanner, actually" the friend I'd initially mistaken him for) and said "Oh that's ______. He was a student here when he died. I like that he still comes around."
Other theatres I've worked in have pretty classic haunting stuff going on, the night janitors always complain that the folding seats (in rows they aren't standing in) will go up and down while they're trying to clean. At the MacPherson there is a room the janitor will straight-up not go into. The Mac ghost is, by all reports, foul-tempered.
The best story happened to a good buddy of mine. He was working at the Belfrey, a converted church. He's working away pretty much right under the main stage one night when he hears this heavy-ass dragging sound above him. He goes up into the theatre and checks on the set. The set for this show was a huge trunk filled with costumes and props which weighed several hundred pounds when full. Around the trunk the stage was dusted with sand which was swept and raked into japanese-garden patterns every night after the show.
The trunk had been dragged five feet across the stage and there wasn't a footprint leading to it or from it.
I do not believe that there are spirits of dead people haunting theatres, however the prevalence of theatre-ghost stories has led me to a hypothesis. Modern physics has demonstrated that 96% of the universe is invisible to us (dark matter and dark energy). It stikes me as likely that we interact with this material and energy in some way. When you consider how closely out physical make-up matches that of our planet - and subsequently the universe's (inset Tyson's "most astounding fact" video here), it seems implausible that we are utterly cut-off from the vast majority of the energy and matter in the cosmos.
Ghosts frequently manifest in places and situations where people have or are expending large amounts of energy: old buildings, places of tragedy, theatres. The most plausible explanation that I can come up with is that this energy can - from time to time - result in seemingly unexplainable phenomenon or perception of phenomenon: unexplained motion of objects, changes in temperature, unusual feelings or sensations, sounds, or even apparitions.
Do I think I saw the spirit of a deceased student? No. Am I prepared to accept that my ocular nerves were stimulated by a swirl of dark energy which my highly-evolved brain resolved into a familiar pattern and that the consistency of experience of this pattern between separate brains has more to do with the brains than the pattern? Yeah, I'll buy that for a dollar.
That is my un-testable, unprovable, materialist explanation for ghosts so I can sleep at night.
tl;dr: Seen ghosts, decided it's dark energy. Otherwise I get the heebie-jeebies.
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