True-life paranormal phenomena?

[Jimbo]

Seeing that it's October, and that "ghost hunting" and other paranormal investigations have been experiencing their run in popular culture for the past few years in particular, has anyone on these boards had any personal experiences of the paranormal? It's always interesting to hear other people's firsthand accounts. This includes but is not necessarily limited to "ghosts" or other types of "haunting" activity.

There's a bit of a fad right now around "ghost hunting", where people take different types of spirit-detecting gizmos and other equipment into locations believed to be haunted and try to determine if or how haunted the location really is. This usually takes the crew a few hours to one whole night. Afterwards, many times there is a determination which places are "active" and which they believe are not. Which seems a very over-simplistic approach, IMO, as if the "ghosts" or "spirits" are supposed to perform on demand like trained monkeys, and if they don't, they're not there. This slightly arrogant approach could be akin to setting up fishing poles for a few hours in a couple spots on a lakeshore, not catching anything or even getting a nibble, and then determining there are no fish in the lake. To be fair, some shows have had interesting episodes, though.

The same is true of most of the monster-hunting shows. Except in cases where the "monster" is known from the start to be an out-of-place or super-sized known species of animal, the researchers typically (predictably) come up with even less than the ghost chasers.

But oftentimes in life, the most dramatic things occur when you aren't actively looking for it. Just like in martial arts training, you're often more effective when you aren't trying to force a particular thing to work, regardless if it's appropriate or not. I've had experiences that could be described as paranormal, to the point of no doubting it; but I'd like to hear any others' experiences, if any.

Of course, there are skeptics, which is fine, as long as it's a healthy skepticism as opposed to cynicism. Cynics will say there is no way to prove paranormal phenomena, but they fail to mention there's no way to disprove all cases, either. There really are no real experts, pro or con, on this subject.

[Lucas]

ive experienced two things in my life that i dont understand and cannot explain fully. i was young both times, once a child, once a teenager.

the first time i was 11. i was spending the night at a friends house in the neighborhood. we were in his living room playing video games late at night. he had one of those big livingroom windows that are common. the view from his was the immediate neighborhood then further back a mountain range. suddenly there was a bright green light that started behind the mountains and flashed filling the whole sky and everything. for a moment everything was green, and then it was the next day and we were both waking up on the livingroom floor. neither of us talked about it and we stopped hanging out after that even though we lived a few houses away. but i was just a kid. who knows but weird and, to me, unexplained.

second time i was hanging out with my girlfriend, i was 17. we were at a friends house in that little room underneath the stairs that a lot of houses have. doing what 17 year old kids do ;) and then she was asked me 'do you feel that?' and i was like 'what?" and she says, stop moving. so i did, and there it was, we both felt it. the wall was freaking breathing or pulsing or expanding or something. we both completely freaked and took off. find out later that this friends family, supposedly, has a history of hauntings for years no matter where they live.

ive never made anything of it really. just strange stuff that happened.

[Dragonzbane76]

suddenly there was a bright green light that started behind the mountains and flashed filling the whole sky and everything. for a moment everything was green, and then it was the next day and we were both waking up on the livingroom floor.


Did that come with a free anal probe? :):)

[Jimbo]

Lucas:
Cool story. I find in interesting that in the first incident, neither you or your friend talked about it. In two of the odd incidents that I've experienced, there was one other person present who also experienced it (different individuals in each incident), and after each incident, it really wasn't ever discussed, either. Both of those incidents occurred when I lived in Taiwan. Those incidents take some effort to describe, so instead I'll first relate a couple other incidents.

The first occurred in the States when I was about 4 years old. I was sitting on the floor playing while my mom was ironing clothes. I was facing towards a doorjamb at the end of a hallway and suddenly saw a man standing there, only he looked odd. Describing it now, he looked almost like an image made up of "TV snow". But I could still see features; he wasn't very tall; he had a receding hairline and appeared to have a mustache. Nobody in my family looks like that. He seemed to move calmly or even in slow-motion. I told my mom there's a man over there. She looked at me and said, "No one's there" and kept ironing. I kept telling her and she kept looking at her ironing, then got irritated and said, "I said there's nobody there," and finally turned, but by that time the man had faded away. Then she said, "See, no one's there." Even at 4, I remember being quite a bit annoyed that my mom wouldn't look when I told her to. I also did not know what a ghost or spirit was at that time.

Another incident occurred when I was in Taiwan, around 1991. I was sleeping alone in my rented room; there were 3 other rooms on the 6th floor, but I was the only person in town that night. Sometime in the night, around 4 a.m. or so, I heard a scratching sound. Now fully awake and fearing a c0ckroach might be in the room (a phobia of mine), I turned on the light and sat up on the edge of the bed, looking towards a desk about 5 feet away. On the desk were two stacks; one of local newspapers, and another of local news magazines. Each stack was about a foot or so high. Suddenly, "Whack!" The newspaper stack was slapped as if someone slapped a palm straight down, then "Whack!", the magazine stack was slapped in a way that several of the magazines flew off the desk onto the floor about 4 feet from the desk. It happend very quickly, whack-whack! I sat there for a moment, then looked around for an explanation. The windows were closed and the fan was not on. After a couple minutes, I said, "Okay, fine." And I laid back down! I wasn't freaked out by it, but I did keep the light on the rest of the night, and took maybe an hour to get back to sleep. Strangely enough, it was the last night of Ghost Month. That was the only time anything 'paranormal' happened in that room, and I rented it for a few years.

[mickey]

Greetings,

My interactions have been with recently departed souls on the metaphysical plane. It is not creepy in any sense. It is beautiful.

mickey

[Jimbo]

mickey:
Did these occur during a meditative state?

[mickey]

Hi Jimbo,

For some of them it is not so meditative. It is more like an inner eye experience. For others it is like mediumship, where I would say something to the departed's intended target (out of the blue) that would remind the target of them. When I connect the target to what is really going on such as "she is just letting you know that she loves you and that she is alright," I receive this incredible burst of energy. For one I got this clear image out of the corner of my eye. She was a client that I worked with and she showed up at my place. She slowly leaned forward to see if I could see her and smiled. And then she was gone. Her image was not ghostly at all. It was a flesh and blood image, very strong. By the way, every anniversary of her passing and on her birthday, she lines up these beautiful chicks for me to marry. Two years ago, on the eve of the anniversary of her passing, I awoke to find myseld well wrapped and tucked on my blanket. It happened twice that night.


mickey

[AdrianK]

Please tell me you're joking.

[sanjuro_ronin]

One man's paranormal is another man's mushroom trip, right uki !
:D

[SimonM]

I am a rational skeptic. I tried experimenting with believing in supernatural phenomena but no matter how hard I believed in them I still found no compelling
evidence of their existence and now discount them barring something that can't be explained naturalistically.

[Jimbo]

I am a rational skeptic. I tried experimenting with believing in supernatural phenomena but no matter how hard I believed in them I still found no compelling
evidence of their existence and now discount them barring something that can't be explained naturalistically.

Fair enough. It's better to have a healthy skepticism than to just believe everything out of hand.

What type of experimentation were you conducting? I've actually experienced quite a few "paranormal" incidents, but I've never needed to try any experiments to make something happen. If it happens, it just happens. Although the story I gave about the stacks of papers and magazines violently knocked off the desk in front of me isn't close to the weirdest incident I've had, I mention it because it could not be explained away by a breeze (windows & door were closed, and the night was still); not by any electromagnetic anomalies; and it certainly wasn't in my imagination. I could probably have asked for it to happen again right then and there and almost certainly nothing would've happened again.

I've had brief periods where odd phenomena happened almost daily, but mostly I can go for months or years without any such incidents. They never seem to happen when you're looking for it, at least in my experience. But I have had several things happen that left zero doubt; it was no longer a matter of belief or disbelief, but knowing, esp. when two of them were simultaneously experienced by others who were present.