Question: "Is Witches,monsters and ghost real?"

Oliver George answered on 19 Jun 2014:

I’ll break this down into three sections to make it easier to answer.

Witches: There isn’t much evidence for witches being real. At least not the magical kind like the witches from Hamlet or Maleficent. There is a religion known as Wicca though. Some of their more enthusiastic members may consider themselves to have magical powers and describe themselves as witches (but they probably aren’t ;)).

Monsters: If we’re talking about Monsters like Sully from Monsters Inc or the Dementors from Harry Potter then no, they don’t seem likely to be real. There are some creatures out there which do look pretty monstrous though! A good example would be the Aye-aye (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aye-aye), a lemur from Madagascar. They have creepy long fingers that they use to find their prey. The local people are terrified of them because of their creepy eyes and fingers. They are thought of as bringers of bad luck and a symbol of death. As a result the Aye-aye is now endangered because of hunting.
Another weird animal is the poodle moth (), a moth which looks an awful lot like a pokemon! Not too much is known about them though.
I don’t know how you feel about spiders but this one is a heck of a beast. The Goliath Birdeater (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliath_birdeater) is the second largest spider in the world. In the UK spiders eat birds. In South America it’s the other way around! It also eats snakes and lizards. Certainly not the kind of thing you’d want in your bedroom!

Ghosts: According to the Daily Mail, yes. I’m a little more skeptical than them though. :p The human mind is an amazing thing and can produce extremely convincing hallucinations. There’s this peculiar condition called sleep paralysis. This happens when someone is halfway between being awake and asleep. They are unable to move but feel an intense feeling of dread or terror. I’ve actually had this happen to me a couple of times and I reckon that if I wasn’t the skeptical scientist I’m meant to be that I’d have believed that I’d encountered a ghost. I think it might be worth asking Charli about how the brain can trick us into thinking we’ve seen a ghost. She knows way more about brains than I do.

To summarise then: some people think they’re witches (but they aren’t), monsters are real and ghosts are probably a quirk of how the brain works. I hope you found that as entertaining to read as it was for me to write. And as always, if you want to know more about anything I’ve covered then just ask!