posted
I'm curious if any of you all have any interesting stories about things that cant easily be explained. I've been thinking about this(this being ghosts, spirits, et al) alot lately, and talking to lots of different types of people about it. This seems to be a group of spiritually educated (not just religious), people, and I'd love to know what your beliefs are.
/Pulls out hersheys and marshmallow and starts the twigs a'rubbin/
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Well, on this very night, ten years ago, along this very stretch of road in a dense fog just like this, I saw the worst accident I ever seen. There was this sound, like a garbage truck dropped off the Empire State Building... And when they pulled the driver's body from the twisted, burning wreck. It looked like THIS...
posted
I have seen this question brought up before here. Usually, very few have written of experiences or shown a belief in such. My guess is the reason for this is the kind of people who post at Hatrack. They are more given to rationalizing the more extraordinary into "scientific" possibilities.
This is not to say that I have ever really seen any paranormal things myself. It is more of a fascination with the unknown than experiencing phenom. The most I have ever come across was the possibility of a strange event (could have been either way), or just "the feelings" you get when something doesn't seem right.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I know what your saying, Occasional, but I dont really care if people rationalize their experiences. I just want to hear what they think about them. I myself dont believe in a soul that exists beyond death. However, I have had experiences that are undeniably beyond my ken. I dont know how to explain them, but there you are. I wouldnt presume to say that there is no scientific explanation for them, just as I wouldnt say that I was being communicated with by the spirit realm. I just dont know enough. I dont think anyone does, really.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
For example... I work in a modern skyscraper that is popularly reputed to be haunted. Specifically, my floor, the fourth. It was once the roof of an old movie theater, and something is said to have happened here. I didnt know this when I started working here, fortunatly, because I work grave and have an active imagination excaberated by Mountain Dew. So, anyways, one night I was in a certain cubicle, doing part of my job, and I got the distinct feeling that somebody was watching me over the cubicle wall. I looked up, and surprise surprise, no one was there. But I this distinct mental image of a little girl, holding herself up with both hands on the edge and watching me. I dont believe in ghosts or spirits, so I chalked it up to too little sleep and too much coffee. The next night, I was walking back into my office, and just before I opened the door, an image flashed into my head of a tall, creepy man with a big old hat, standing on the other side, waiting for me to open the door. It was so strong that I raised up the phone I was carrying, expecting to have to defend myself. Nothing on the other side, but then my boss walked around the corner, making me pee my pants. Again, funny and insubstantial. Since that night, I have often felt the idea of a child in my office, blowing on my hair and tickling my neck, or shuffling papers that shouldnt be moving. She never feels malicious, just mischevious. I have also felt that man again, and he creeps me the hell out.
I work with an atheistic Irish man who wouldnt talk religion if his grandma asked him to, but I started telling him about what I was feeling, just because I was going crazy and needed to tell someone. He started to turn white the second I mentioned the man, and just got whiter and whiter the more specific I got. I asked him if he was OK, thinking he'd laugh. Instead, he told me that he felt the same things, but never told anyone about it because he was an outspoken atheist, and didnt believe in spirits. Apparently, his wife refuses to visit him here, because she got so freaked out by something she felt. This didnt reassure me in the least. I'm at work right now, and freaking myself out talking about this, so I'll stop.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I have to admit that I am sensitive to negative spiritual energy. At least two times in my life, and one I can distinctly remember, I had a very distinct feeling about a haunted "area" in a house. It wasn't until a week later that I learned it was considered haunted. Even more specific was that the history showed a very violent past to the exact room I had the most feelings toward. For the most part, however, I am more frightened by real threats. Ghosts are simply spirits to me, and therefore not of any actual threat unless I allow them to be.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
One night when I was in my teens I awoke suddenly, and the instant I awoke, something grabbed me and pulled me down into the mattress. When I screamed bloody murder, my dad came running into the room, whatever it was let go, and the mattress popped back to normal.
Another night I heard my dad let out the same scream. He flew out of bed and ran through the house, turning all the lights on. He never said what woke him up.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I have not had any such direct experience of the paranormal as has been stated here, but two people very close to me have. They are close family members, a husband and wife (currently living also) but I will refrain from saying how they are related to me out of respect for them. They tell of receiving a visit from a heavenly being in the night and being given specific instructions about the spiritual needs of another family member. This was a shared experience. I have no good reason to doubt their testimony on the matter.
Several family ancestors have had such experiences, but most have passed away now and have only left a written account.
posted
I've had little off-kilter experiences all my life. My inclination is to explain them away. However, sometimes they cannot be explained away easily.
For example, one night years ago, in the house where I used to live (and where strange things seemed to happen with distressing regularity), I was in the spare bedroom doing homework. I had a card table set up to work on, as there was no desk in the room. I was sitting there quietly reading when the one piece of blank typing paper that was sitting near a back corner of the desk (but not near enough the edge to just fall) started slipping off the back of the table. I reached out to catch it, but it slipped over the edge before I could put my hand on it.
I leaned down to see where the paper had landed so that I could pick it up. It was not there. I looked all over the room for it, everywhere it could conceivably have landed, and everywhere it couldn't have possibly landed. No blank piece of paper. Ever. It never turned up. Apparently, it dematerialized between the table and the floor.
Maybe there is a logical, rational explanation for what happened, but if there is I've never been able to figure it out.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Bev, that's really interesting. I'd love to know more, but I understand why you left the story as vague as you did.
My joke at the top of the thread notwithstanding, I have had a couple of experiences, all of them when I was a kid or a teenager, that, if my memories of them are correct, are difficult to explain. I don't really buy the idea that these were ghosts, but I don't know what they were. I don't have time right now, but maybe I'll relate them later.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I left it vague because I feel like it isn't my story to share. I really debated saying anything about it at all. From what I have seen of experiences like this, people who have had them are extremely guarded about the circumstances in which they share them. Especially since they consider them to be sacred. I guess it runs along the lines of anybody claiming to have seen an angel is usually thought to be crazy.
Man, if *I* had personally spoken with an angel, I wouldn't be telling everyone. Not unless I was specifically told that that was what I should be doing.
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posted
Yeah, I'd be pretty selective about who I told too. The odd things I was mentioning having experienced up above aren't things that I relate very often, and I don't even consider them sacred. I really wouldn't even consider sharing any of the spiritual experiences I've had on a public forum.
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posted
I am from a culture and a religion that accept the, how can I put it...the unseen as part of reality. I'm, without false modesty, a learned guy, so I'm not the kind of person who will believe in every hocus-pocus shown to me.
Although I am a lazy and lapsed spiritist, I believe in Kardeck's findings about the spiritual world. I've seen a few metaphysical phenoms that, in my opinion, could not be explained by fraud or the known natural laws. As such, and because of personal issues, I believe strongly in reincarnation and one's personal evolution trough them. As I fear to oversimplify, and as I don't possess clarity or knowledge enoug, I'd like to direct any who's interested to learn about spiritism, to sites like this one .
This quoted was lifted from above-mentioned site:
quote: All spirits tend towards perfection, and are furnished by God with the means of advancement through the trials of corporeal life; but the divine justice compels them to accomplish. in new existences, that which they have not been able to do, or to complete, in a previous trial.
It would not be consistent with the justice or with the goodness of God to sentence to eternal suffering those who may have encountered obstacles to their improvement independent of their will, and resulting from the very nature of the conditions in which they found themselves placed. If the fate of mankind were Irrevocably fixed after death. God would not have weighed the actions of all in the same scales, and would not have treated them with impartiality.
The doctrine of reincarnation-that Is to say, the doctrine which proclaims that men have many successive existence-is the only one which answers to the idea we form to ourselves of the justice of God in regard to those who are placed, by circumstances over which they have no control, in conditions unfavourable to their moral advancement ; the only one which can explain the future, and furnish us with a sound basis for our hopes. because it offers us the means of redeeming our errors through new trials. This doctrine is indicated by the teachings of reason, as well as by those of our spirit-instructors.
The best sites and homepages are in french and portuguese, I fear, but I liked the one I pointed.
Posts: 1785 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I haven't. I've never had an experience like that and never seen anything. I've felt "atmosphere," and I've had unexplained things happen, but those are just that: unexplained. Being something of a skeptic, I'm not going to supply a supernatural explanation when I don't have any reason to believe the laws of nature have changed. That does mean living with a certain amount of uncontrollable ignorance, but I can handle that. I'd rather have no explanation than a fishy one.
posted
In the house we owned in Indiana, we had a closet in the master bedroom that I hated. It always gave me an icky feeling and I never knew why. Sometimes at night I "thought" I heard strange noises coming from it. One night I definately heard the sound of a door stopper being twanged. Tres creepy.
quote:Being something of a skeptic, I'm not going to supply a supernatural explanation when I don't have any reason to believe the laws of nature have changed. That does mean living with a certain amount of uncontrollable ignorance, but I can handle that. I'd rather have no explanation than a fishy one
That's me to a T! *bows to Kat*
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
Kat, what I find curious about myself, and probably about your experiences, is how much I believe in the "paranormal" of God and his Angels. Yet, other than what I consider garden variety answers to prayers and a strong testimony from the Holy Ghost, not once have I experienced the unexplicable. Like you, I wonder if it is because of my natural skepticism or maybe a lack of need for such experiences to accept their possibilities.
I like to learn about ghosts and goblins, UFOs, Bigfoot, etc. This, despite the fact I have never had an encounter on a personal level of anything I could not understand. Perhaps it is this very lack that has made me so curious about the unknown.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Arsed. This is not a thread to be reading when alone in a basement computer room late at night. Folks, its called the imagination and dreams. The human mind is extremely over active. Alot of the above could simply be explained as: You were dreaming. I've done that too. Sometimes dreams can seem so like reality its hard to tell the difference , especially in that state where you are first waking up. I've had dreams before where I wake up again and again and again... all the time dreaming. I'm never sure quite when I'm truely awake... until I don't wake up again and then go back to sleep. I've had dreams where there were figures standing over me and such and I've though they were real and yelled bloody murder. Only to wake up and discover: oh just a dream. Some of them I was't sure they were just a dream until my parents wandered in to find out what I was yelling about.
So lets see, of the above mentioned unexplained phenomenom, which could have been dreaming (not saying they were, its just a possible explanation):
quote: One night when I was in my teens I awoke suddenly, and the instant I awoke, something grabbed me and pulled me down into the mattress. When I screamed bloody murder, my dad came running into the room, whatever it was let go, and the mattress popped back to normal.
Another night I heard my dad let out the same scream. He flew out of bed and ran through the house, turning all the lights on. He never said what woke him up.
Skillery, you were probably dreaming. You thought you woke up, but hadn't really. You probably didn't really wake up till your dad came running in, when it let go of you. Your dad was probably also dreaming.
As for the others, there are perfectly good explanations for them if you think about it long enough. Though they may be as simple an unsatisfactory as something called: imagination and the human mind playing tricks on itself.
And as for area's being haunted. They gain that reputation and then once you get there, you're expecting things to happen. After all its a haunted building, so your imagination is happy to obliage and make use of any stories about the building to give you a similar expierence.
Whats more likely: your imagination's acting up or a building is truely haunted and there is a spirit stalking you?
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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quote:Whats more likely: your imagination's acting up or a building is truely haunted and there is a spirit stalking you?
Actually, I'd be interested to hear your reasoning as to why one is any more likely than the other. It seems an evaluation of either one would be based on existing preconceptions, which as you just pointed out are likely to color the results.
posted
That's what I hinted at before - angels, devils, ghosts, oh my.
The phenomenon can be interpreted a dozen different ways, each processed through the participating human's filter. Bev's personal, religious experience could be my great uncle Edgar's ghost feeling frisky.
Which is to say, I have no way of knowing what her experience is as it is uniquely hers, so her calling it Divine Intervention and my naming Edgar share a certain amount of equal validity.
And the idea of ghosts or other "paranormal phenomenon" should be held to the same level of scrutiny and skepticism as anything else we vigorously debate.
posted
Okay, here's one of the odd things that I've experienced. It happened when I was pretty young--5 or so. It was night. My family (father driving, mother in passenger seat, me behind the driver's seat and my older brother behind the passenger's seat) was driving home, I think, along a fairly rural highway in NE Kansas. It was a bit foggy. We saw headlights coming toward us. At first I just assumed that it was an optical illusion--from a distance, cars in the opposite lane often look like they're in your lane at night. It became clear that it was in our lane. In the moments before impact, I saw that it was a blue van. My mother, brother and I screamed. My father slammed on the breaks. It hit us, and dissipated. My father stopped the car and, panicked, asked us what we were screaming about. He hadn't seen anything. The other three of us had seen the same thing. I remember this fairly vividly, as does my mother. My brother's memory of it is hazier, and my father doesn't recall it at all.
The only thing non-paranormal explanation that I've ever been able to come up with was that somehow the fog was acting as a mirror or a lense, and was making the image of a distant vehicle appear to be directly ahead of us. That sounds plausible enough, until you consider the fact that we saw it a long way off, and watched it approach us. How would this fog-lense, if such a thing can actually exist, have remained stable for that long? It seems unlikely.
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posted
Which is why I hastened to explain my description was intended as a different interpretation of the same event and not a challenge to your religious experience.
posted
Beverly, I commend your discretion!! (I once had a very religious dream, and told my mother, who then told her pastoral ministries class, a member of whom taught at a local private high school, and told all of his classes. My name wasn't mentioned in the last telling, but things like that seem like they ought to be private)
Posts: 3493 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
How was my explaination any less discrete than your saying here that you had a religious dream? I made no mention of who they were and gave very little detail. That's the beauty of the anonymity of the internet. Few here know who I am, and I have told no one who they are. But I feel that it happened is significant and was pertinent here.
quote: Actually, I'd be interested to hear your reasoning as to why one is any more likely than the other. It seems an evaluation of either one would be based on existing preconceptions, which as you just pointed out are likely to color the results. Dagonee
Ok, this is going to be rather long winded as such things tend to be, so bear with me.
Through out human history there is a clear pattern of people trying to explain that which they don't understand with the 'spiritual'. The ancient greeks couldn't figure out what the sun was. The knew it came up in the morning, went down in the night and brought light and warmth. They came up with the god Apollo to explain it. The sun was him, travelling across the sky in his golden chariot every day. In early tribal civilizations, when the average live expecancy was about 40 or 50, the occational person who lived to 100 was often considered magical or a great wizard. Today people often jump to blame simple things on paranormal phenomeonom or UFO's and aliens. It is not uncommon for overflying airplanes or weather balloons to be called ufo's. Rumor's fly, believed by many that stonehednge was built by aliens (despite the fact it has been shown that people could have built it using the technology avalible around the time of its construction). Many of the things blamed on the paranormal have now been shown to have simple explanations that adhere to our current understanding of the laws of nature. While many have yet to be explained, never once has one been proven to have been caused by spirits or aliens.
We know it is possible for people to have halucinations that are indistinguishable from reality to the person halucinating. Paranoid schizophrenia(sp?) is an example of this. Thus showing that the human mind is entirely capable of completely overriding and fooling our senses. Making us think things are real that are not.
So putting these two things together, the fact that we have a history of explaining things we don't yet understand with the spiritual or paranormal (often only to have a rational, logical explaination surface later) and the fact that the human mind is capable of creating a complete virtual reality for itself completely inseperable from reality then I'd say that it is far more likely that it is just the imagination.
Also, something I didn't mention in my previous post, but which is definately a factor in this sorta thing: the human tendancy to exaggerate, embellish or out right lie when telling stories of experiences. I'm sure we've all exaggerated or slightly altered stories of trips, or hikes, or outings and such when telling them to friends in order to make them more interesting. Often people do it with out even thinking of it. And in the case of the paranormal, such things are a major consideration(I'm not saying that anyone who has shared a story here has done these things, just in general when dealing with this area).
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posted
I haven't had anything happen to me like most of what has been described here...
the closest would be when reading "Dulce et Decorum Est..." in English Lit and around the beginning of the second stanza a vision of a WWI soldier went through my mind clearer than I have ever seen any imagining...it shook me up so much I had to walk out of class...despite all rational thinking I can't help but wonder if I didn't see an image of someone who was actually there...
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2004
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It was a floor. Not cluttered. Carpet was red, so a white piece of paper would have been pretty obvious. If there had been a stray piece of paper on the floor, I would have been able to find it easily.
Oh, and sorry it took me so long to answer your question, but it was getting late when I wrote that last night.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Kat, what I find curious about myself, and probably about your experiences, is how much I believe in the "paranormal" of God and his Angels. Yet, other than what I consider garden variety answers to prayers and a strong testimony from the Holy Ghost, not once have I experienced the unexplicable. Like you, I wonder if it is because of my natural skepticism or maybe a lack of need for such experiences to accept their possibilities.
I like to learn about ghosts and goblins, UFOs, Bigfoot, etc. This, despite the fact I have never had an encounter on a personal level of anything I could not understand. Perhaps it is this very lack that has made me so curious about the unknown.
I've thought about this a lot since I posted. I really don't believe in the paranormal - both by inclination and on principle, if something I don't understand happens, I'm more willing to believe that my too, too human flesh is missing information and/or had a fallible day rather that all the laws of physics have dissapeared.
So how does that work in with God and his angels and miracles? The thing is, I DO believe in miracles, and I believe in the power of God. I've never had a vision (and if I had I wouldn't be posting it on the internet), and I'm not usually one of those people who seem to get answers to their prayers easily - I didn't really pray for a very long time because I didn't feel like I was getting much - but I have seen some miracles, and I know that I've seen and felt and understood more than I can explain by sticking to this world, and it was because of the Spirit.
I mean, I believe in answers to prayers, and I believe miracles can happen, and I believe that the Lord will not leave us comfortless, and I even believe that people who have died can come back if they have an important job to do (restore the Priesthood, etc.), but I don't think there's any ambiguity about it when it happens, and it would never be spooky.
I think that's why I'm trying to keep something of an open mind - I'm not going to say that something absolutely cannot be when I don't know the limits of what can and cannot be. But in making the choice between The-Laws-of-Physics-Are-Still-True and I'm-Fallible vs. I'm-Infallible-and-The-Aliens-Have-Chosen-Me, I'm going to have to go with my own imperfection. There's lots of evidence of that.
posted
"Arsed. This is not a thread to be reading when alone in a basement computer room late at night. Folks, its called the imagination and dreams."
Ah, but my dear, rational Alcon, if everyones experience is simply a product of our "overactive" imaginations, then what is there to be frightened of? Seriously, believing wholeheartedly in something with very little proof to back you up is just as dangerous as DISbelieving something completely with very little proof to back you up. Rationality is a useful tool for us humans, until we start using it to beat things we dont understand about the head with.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote: "Arsed. This is not a thread to be reading when alone in a basement computer room late at night. Folks, its called the imagination and dreams."
Ah, but my dear, rational Alcon, if everyones experience is simply a product of our "overactive" imaginations, then what is there to be frightened of? [Wink] Seriously, believing wholeheartedly in something with very little proof to back you up is just as dangerous as DISbelieving something completely with very little proof to back you up. Rationality is a useful tool for us humans, until we start using it to beat things we dont understand about the head with.
If you drop a ball 9 times and each of those times it falls to the ground in the same way, would you consider that enough proof to say for sure that on the tenth time the same thing will happen? What about 99 times and then on the 100th consider it certain that the same thing will happen?
99 times stories of the paranormal are full of holes and don't add up at all if anyone actually bothers to examine them closely.
We know for a fact that the human mind and senses are failible. And there is a ton of proof to back this up. Just run a few websearches for various mental disorders. We have no proof for spirits, or ghosts or aliens. So whats more likely? The human mind is goofing up again, or its a ghost?
posted
I don't generally believe in things like this but this one I have never been able to explain away:
When I was younger and in our old house, I used to think I could hear or see a little girl walking around the house, talking to us all in whispers and guiding us around. I tried to talk to her one night out on the second-floor balcony. I wish I remembered more, but all I've ever been able to recall clearly has been the faint silouette of a young girl in a nightgown and that she told me her name was Kate.
A few years ago I mentioned Kate to my mother and she just blanched. I'd never known about it before, but my mother had miscarried a little girl between my younger brother and I. They had planned to name her Katherine.
Posts: 1548 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I wasn't sure if I should type this here, but I'll do it anyway. I can't wait for it to be analyzed to death, but that's what Hatrack is for.
I have never really had anything like this happen. I have had times where I suddenly felt really creeped out, but every one of them happened AFTER I started thinking that something weird might happen, not the other way around.
That said, my mother-in-law is different. She's got something kinda weird going on that no one can really explain. It's not like she has weird stories of things happening to her that no one else can say they also saw. Instead, weird things happen around her and people that are near her become believers kinda fast, because if they're there, they experience it too. Meaning, some of her weird things have witnesses.
So I don't know if it depends on the person and I really can't explain any of it, nor offer a very strong opinion one way or the other. I just know that my husband has seen things happen around his mom that he can't explain, and I trust him to be objective.
One of the weirdest things happened when she was a kid. She got ran over by a car. It rolled up her body, over her ribcage, and the guy driving the car stopped with a wheel on her head, and her head was turned to the side. The strangest thing about it is that she doesn't remember feeling any pain, which could have been blocked out. But her mother came outside and saw Jeannine under the tire, and Jeannine just waved at her from under the car like nothing was wrong. Her mother was screaming and the driver realized what happened and moved the car off of her head. Oddly, she didn't have any injuries from this; it was like it never happened.
Alone, it doesn't seem that odd, but when you add up all the things over the years, one starts to get a weird feeling. And they're not all "guardian angel" type stories or whatever, either. Some are more creepy.
I have noticed that a disproportionate amount of creepy feelings people get are in the middle of the night, and right when they wake up. I think many of those are caused by night terrors. But I would be the last person to discount them; I personally believe that some creepy things do happen, just not to me.
As I've said in another thread, I always get a really creepy feeling right before absolutely nothing scary happens. That's the extent of my scary feelings.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:I'm curious if any of you all have any interesting stories about things that cant easily be explained
I do.
Many years ago, when I was in college, I was driving back to St. Louis, from my parents' home in NY, by myself. At 2:00 am in the morning, the car started acting up, and I thought I'd better take the next exit, and go find a gas station.
I took the first exit I saw. The car was not sounding very happy, and I figured I really didn't have the luxury of waiting to see an exit sign that actually [i]indicated[/that there would be a gas station or hotel at the other end. I would up winding through heavily wooded back roads for miles. It was raining, and it was difficult to see more than 10-20 feet in front of the car. But the one thing I didn't see was a gas station. Unfortunately, I didn't see any hotels, either--or, for that matter, homes, schools, or any other signs of habitation.
But there was one house...set back from the road, with all its lights off, and with its front door hanging off its bottom hinge. I knew the house was there because my car's engine decided to quit right in front of the driveway to the house. The car was a stick-shift, so I was at least able to coast about 2/3 up the driveway before is stopped for good.
I waited in the car for a good 20 minutes or so, trying to think of what to do--I'd probably just sleep in the car until morning, and then try to fix the engine myself (if I could). But I grew impatient. Foolishly impatient. The rain let up a little, and I decided to explore.
I grabbed my flashlight from under one of the piles of stuff I had crammed in to the back seat of the car, and walked over to the house. The house was obviously old, and had been abandoned for decades--the metal was rusted wherever I saw it, the wood was in an advanced state of rot. But there weren't any spider webs to block my path as I climbed over the heavy, half-fallen front door and walked into the open foyer.
I should have known to have gotten a new flashlight before I left home. The switch was broken, and I had to whack the flashlight every few minutes just to make it stay on. I entered the foyer, and pointed the flashlight upwards. There, on the ceiling, illuminated by the wavering light, was something so shocking, so horrible that it defied all human description.
I ran screaming from the house. I ran past my car and into the rain-soaked steet. As my luck would have it, a semi-tractor-trailer truck was pulling by just as I got to the curb. The driver, seeing the abject horror scrawled across my face, stopped his truck and helped me climb in. And it would have been okay, except when I caught my breath, and took a look over at the truck driver, he looked something like this.
posted
Oops. Sorry if I misunderstood Toretha's sentiment there. I guess I assumed she meant to say "recommend" discretion without thinking about what "commend" means.
I abjectly apologize for being an idiot.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Through out human history there is a clear pattern of people trying to explain that which they don't understand with the 'spiritual'. The ancient greeks couldn't figure out what the sun was. The knew it came up in the morning, went down in the night and brought light and warmth. They came up with the god Apollo to explain it. The sun was him, travelling across the sky in his golden chariot every day. In early tribal civilizations, when the average live expecancy was about 40 or 50, the occational person who lived to 100 was often considered magical or a great wizard. Today people often jump to blame simple things on paranormal phenomeonom or UFO's and aliens.
I agree with you about the source of most UFO stories, Alcon, but I think that people are too quick to think they know the reasons behind the "god myths" of ancient cultures. I mean, maybe the Apollo story was invented to explain the sun. But MAYBE there was an historical person named Apollo whose stories grew to become larger-than-life and eventually included the sun, or MAYBE it simply started as a children's story whimsically made up by a parent, and it grew to become largely accepted.
I'm just not all that impressed by smug, grade-school explanations of ancient myths. Human beings are more intelligent and discerning than we sometimes give them credit for, and you'll note that the ancient Greeks were also perfectly capable of coming up with rational explanations for the same phenomena, and usually treated the stories as what they were — stories.
I've never had any creepy experiences that I couldn't explain. I had night terrors as a kid, and some pretty vivid fantasies about monsters in my room, but I always knew they weren't real. It was the irresistible feeling of fear that I was afraid of; never the possibility that the images I saw might actually be true.
One time, I woke up suddenly, lying paralyzed on my stomach in bed, with the distinct feeling that something was sitting on my back, and the sound of growling loud in my ears. I fought back against it in my head, snapped into normal wakefulness, and it was gone. But I was totally freaked out.
Soon after, though, I saw a documentary on alien abductions which examined the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. Basically, if you snap into consciousness during the wrong phase of sleep, there are chemicals being secreted in your head that paralyze you to keep you from thrashing around, there are processes going on in your ears that make you feel like you are moving, or make you hear a loud rushing sound (sometimes interpreted as growling, or as an engine roar), and you can sometimes continue to see dream images. Suddenly, my experience made perfect sense
Another time, I was dreaming about talking to some dude, and I suddenly opened my eyes and saw the dude sitting across the room from me in the real world. I glanced up at the ceiling, and the guy FLEW up there to stay in my range of vision. Then I shook my head, blinked my eyes, and he was gone.
I explained this by remembering the experiences I had falling half-asleep in college. In the right frame of mind, I was able to put my head on my desk, close my eyes, and become absolutely CONVINCED that my eyes were open, and that I could see everything in the room. It was basically a self-induced lucid dream, and it was probably the most entertaining pastime I have ever had I could practically do it at will, and my favorite part was convincing myself that I was sitting in another part of the classroom, then opening my eyes and getting shocked at where I really was. And yes, these were very, very boring classes.
So I became aware of the fact that I could be absolutely convinced that my eyes were open and I was seeing the room around me, when REALLY, I had my eyes closed, and was dreaming. I imagine that this is what happened when I saw the flying dude in my room. I thought I had opened my eyes, but really, all I had done was become lucid in the middle of an ongoing dream.
But I've known people who have had weird, unexplainable experiences, and all my life, I've longed to see whatever it is that they see, so that I can judge it for myself, instead of having to decide whether or not to trust the other person's account. But this crap just never happens where I am Of course, if it did, I'd probably be paralyzed with fear and scarred forever ...
[ August 14, 2004, 03:19 PM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Hey! Steve! Get your own large marge picture! That was the one I used in *my* joke (first post on the thread, I might add).
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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One night , when I was lying in bed, I could have sworn that someone, right next to me said my name. It was the creepiest thing.
Posts: 1 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I've had a few experiences like that, RE Peter. I can't remember specifics, but I do remember occasions where I was absolutely convinced that someone called my name, when noone had.
While I haven't had any real experiences, I've had some creepy-weird dreams. On in particular: I was falling asleep watching tv in a recliner, and I had a very real dream of driving my chevy on a highway I usually take coming home from church, only it was nighttime. This was right before the exit that takes me in the direction of my house, and there was a big semi truck in the right lane a few yards ahead of me. Suddenly, something makes the semi swerve *right in front of me*.
At this moment I wake up really suddenly and the phone rings. For the two seconds before I really woke up I was absolutely convinced that my brother (who drives the chevy fairly often) had gotten in a huge wreck, but I convinced myself otherwise after a few seconds when I actually woke up. Nothing at all was out of the ordinary.
I explain this away very well: I hate (hatehateHATEhatehate!!!) truck drivers, especially on this highway that I had the dream about. They're doing construction on it and it's really narrow and has odd lane shifts every few miles and it's an absolute nightmare when there's a big rig in the lane next to you, because there's a cement wall right next to you on one side and a truck six inches away on the other side. Posts: 4089 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Ah, I thought that you probably just hadn't seen my post--that's one of the only two halfway decent (tiny thought it is) pictures of Large Marge on the Internet, and is the better of the two, so I figured that the odds were good that you'd just happened to use the same one. Great minds and all that.
Well, a series of stories with that picture as a punchline would have been pretty funny if I hadn't spoiled it by highlighting it so early on. Sorry about that! If you want we could delete this, your last post, and my post pointing it out. Hatrack's almost a ghost town at the moment ::cue spooky music::, so I doubt many people have seen the exchange.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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One time, soon after watching The Ring, I accidentally fell asleep on my couch in front of the TV. I started having a dream that Samara was coming after me and Heather, and then I was suddenly woken up by my TV going to static in the real world.
TOTALLY freaked me out Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I *so* don't think I could handle watching that movie....
I was obsessed with reading about it back when it came out, and I remember going to the official website. Even the site freaked me out! Especially the time I went to it and my sound was accidentally turned all the way up....
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