Have you ever had paranormal experiences?

posted 17-Mar-2007 6:10pm

Yes i have had paranormal experiences and no I won't talk about them. Being a man of science, I don't like being one of "those" people that have dealt with that that cannot be explained by science. While I can't deny what I experienced, that doesn't mean I have to share.

cloudhugger

posted 17-Mar-2007 6:39pm

Yes, I have had a para'normal experiences, the rest of them were very strange.

cloudhugger

(reply to docgbrown) posted 17-Mar-2007 6:42pm

Absolutely. I saw UFO's a few times, one of them was close enough to touch. Oh well, not interesting enough to blab about.

(reply to cloudhugger) posted 17-Mar-2007 6:43pm

Cute

Enheduanna

posted 17-Mar-2007 7:46pm

Orbs? I've seen orbs, but they were normal, not supernatural. And I don't think speaking to the dead is particularly supernatural, either--it's only supernatural if they speak back.
I have never had any experiences that I would describe as supernatural. Something may be hard to explain, but that doesn't make it supernatural.

posted 17-Mar-2007 8:15pm

I think so. Several times. Mostly unexplained things occurring like the attic door found open, hearing foot steps and feeling breath on my skin.

(reply to docgbrown) posted 17-Mar-2007 8:17pm

When it first happened to me I was actually angry and put out. I was SERIOUSLY science minded and I had an experience that really threw me off track. I didn't tell anyone about it for many years.

bill

posted 17-Mar-2007 9:50pm

We have a lawn orb we got at Walmart. Does that count?

romkey

posted 17-Mar-2007 11:05pm

I have The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, does that count?

CCsHottieMami

posted 18-Mar-2007 1:09am

I speak to my great grandma....but she doesn't talk back.

Then people would say I was crazy.

Which I might be.

posted 18-Mar-2007 3:43am

I don't believe in the paranormal. Things have a rational, scientific explanation.

(reply to RGirl) posted 18-Mar-2007 5:26am

Yup. Know the feeling. Where are you at now?

posted 18-Mar-2007 6:56am

I could fill a book with them, and plan to some day.

I've had almost every sort of popular paranormal experience at one time or another. Some of them have been one shot deals, others are fairly constant threads in my life.

(reply to bill) posted 18-Mar-2007 7:00am

Did you get it from a parallel-dimension Walmart?

bill

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 18-Mar-2007 7:52am

It's possible, how can you tell if the Walmart you're in is actually in another dimension?

(reply to bill) posted 18-Mar-2007 8:00am

It simply feels different, as if you could walk through things, or as if everything there was conscious or somehow connected in space-time to places normally far-far-away but now close at hand. If you pick up an orb there and suddenly have insight on how residents of another galaxy create their planets, or what alchemists during the crystal-spheres cosmology period were thinking, you're probably in a parallel-dimension Walmart.

posted 18-Mar-2007 8:32am

If two Walmarts are completely opposite, like a mirror image of each other, is one in another dimension? How do I tell which one is the parallel dimension Walmart? Where are the Orbs? In the garden department with the lawn ornaments?

bill

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 18-Mar-2007 8:56am

I have no idea what you just said!

(reply to bill) posted 18-Mar-2007 9:06am

Leni does.

I was thinking that might make a good start to suitable lyrics for the songs I record - "I was shopping for a lawn orb at the parallel-dimension Walmart.."

(reply to Lahdee) posted 18-Mar-2007 9:16am

Mirror Walmarts are another variety. You are in yet another dimension if they exist, in which case both of them are actually parallel-dimension Walmarts.

Where to find the orbs, depends on which dimension Walmart you are in. Depending on what sort of lawn orb you want, you have to go to either the 'distant galaxies department' (full of iron black-hole suns and wind-chime nebulae), or the 'rennaissance cosmology department', which may contain many herbs with insight into the work 'The Anatomy of Melancholy', scattered with Gargoyles, trellis's explaining kabbalism, and such.

they

posted 18-Mar-2007 9:30am

Yes.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 18-Mar-2007 9:51am

I'm beginning to think the Walmart that never has plastic coat hangers in stock is in another dimension.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 18-Mar-2007 9:53am

> Leni does.
>
> I was thinking that might make a good start
> to suitable lyrics for the songs I record
> - "I was shopping for a lawn orb at the
> parallel-dimension Walmart.."

That would be cool.

posted 18-Mar-2007 9:59am

I have orbs from another dimension. I don't know where they are right now. One is orange and the other one is purple. They are really small like the size of a little bouncie ball you get in toy machines by the bubble gum. They're rubbery with sticky out things all over... We make orb jokes about things and these 2 little round whatever they are, we call orbs.

(reply to Lahdee) posted 18-Mar-2007 10:37am

Hah, no that's probably we run into everyday. It's the one that actually has the plastic coat-hangers which must exist in some other dimension.

posted 18-Mar-2007 10:45am

That's a dimension I prefer not to visit, where the pick up line is 'Wanna see my orbs?', especially when it involves 'rubbery with sticky out things all over'.
Just 20 hours ago, I was cleaning the yard and found two similar orbs, an orange one, and a purple one with a lady bug which always floats upright, along with their supreme commander, a stuffed Target dog.

Iseult

posted 18-Mar-2007 12:03pm

No. Sometimes I notice things on the edge of my periphery, but that's usually when I'm really tired/sleepy and there is a play of light.

Cain

(reply to Biggles) posted 18-Mar-2007 1:51pm

Scully!!

gambler

posted 18-Mar-2007 4:29pm

Yes........ouija board (which I thought was a complete joke, until I used one myself)

(reply to docgbrown) posted 18-Mar-2007 8:51pm

What do you mean where am I at?

lily333

posted 18-Mar-2007 11:12pm

I'm not sure. I recently had a dream that I was talking to a young guy that I used to work with who killed himself a few months ago. In my dream I was asking him if he was sorry he had done it. It just seemed so real at the time that it made me wonder.

(reply to Cain) posted 19-Mar-2007 1:15am

She ended up converted (I think - I didn't see later episodes, but wasn't she the believer by the time Robert Patrick showed up?). I shall remain stubborn until the end!

Zang

(reply to Biggles) posted 19-Mar-2007 1:42am

> I don't believe in the paranormal. Things have
> a rational, scientific explanation.

What about dowsing?

http://surveycentral.org/survey/12452.html

(reply to Zang) posted 19-Mar-2007 1:51am

If it works then it has a rational, scientific explanation and not a paranormal one. My experiences of dowsing with metal rods have been successful - perhaps that's due to the earth's magnetism (I'm no geophysics whizz)...perhaps it's to do with me unconsciously tightening my grip on the rods when I pass over a bumpy bit of ground...perhaps it's just random chance, and if I were to dowse more statistics would show that the apparent success was just an illusion.

But whatever it is, it's not magic, and it's not paranormal...I believe that most studies have found absolutely no evidence that dowsing actually works. It's fun to believe that it does sometimes, but the older I get, the less I am willing to accept things simply because I would like them to be true.

posted 19-Mar-2007 1:52am

And what kind of an encyclopaedic memory of SCdo you have?

Zang

(reply to Biggles) posted 19-Mar-2007 2:09am

Well the Ideomotor effect is certainly real. There's a good article on dowsing here:

http://skepdic.com/dowsing.html

(reply to Zang) posted 19-Mar-2007 2:19am

That's really interesting - thanks

And as for my own experiences of dowsing - I have never done so anywhere that I could not reasonably be expected to subconsciously note where underground features were likely to be. I did it once at an old abbey - but I was quite an archaeology buff when I was younger so it wouldn't have been difficult for me to picture where foundations for ruined walls would be. Another time was on the field at a school I attended - but I knew that the school had extensive air-raid shelters, and I knew where they started and ended, and that they would meander rather than go in a straight line. Maybe dowsing is a good way to allow ourselves to notice features that we might miss if we looked to hard for them, but the studies (such as the ones in the link you posted) don't seem to bear that out. I'll go with the studies over my own anecdotal evidence any day!

(reply to Cain, Biggles) posted 19-Mar-2007 2:29am

I didn't realize you meant Scully of X-files. I am an X-files (X-phile) nut. Yes, she was 'converted'. Ironically, Fox lost belief in his old beliefs by the time she was. I have just finished Season 8 and only have 9 to go. I kind of lost interest at 7 and wasn't really sure if I wanted to keep going but I figured I watched 8 freakin' episodes, what's one more!

(reply to Biggles) posted 19-Mar-2007 4:07am

Well that's cheating. By that definition, nothing could ever be paranormal. ..caused by angels, flying sylphs from another time dimension, or teleported into existence by mental will from another galaxy, but never beyond science.

"but the older I get, the less I am willing to accept things simply because I would like them to be true" - Well then you're going to be out of luck if things exist because people believe they exist, which I believe to be the case.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 19-Mar-2007 4:46am

> Well that's cheating. By that definition, nothing could ever be paranormal.
> ..caused by angels, flying sylphs from another time dimension, or
> teleported into existence by mental will from another galaxy, but
> never beyond science.

How is that cheating? And "by that definition, nothing could ever be paranormal."? Well quite...

> "but the older I get, the less I am willing to accept things simply
> because I would like them to be true" - Well then you're going to
> be out of luck if things exist because people believe they exist,
> which I believe to be the case.

And it must be the case if you believe it to be the case - does it work like that too?

(reply to Biggles) posted 19-Mar-2007 5:17am

That would make sense too, I suppose. I'm the main one I know to have things like my gas and power going out during ecclpses, while the next door neighbors are unaffected, so you could be right on that one.

With the powerful way things work in my life, I'd be in pure hell if I believed in some things our extremists believed in.

lildonz07

posted 19-Mar-2007 6:05am

Great, thank you all for your comments.

(reply to RGirl) posted 19-Mar-2007 7:31am

I mean where are you balanced between your science mind along with your awareness of your anecdotal paranormal experience(s)?

Cain

(reply to Biggles) posted 19-Mar-2007 10:32am

I dunno - I've just bought the first two series on DVD. But definitely Scully in the early years!!

posted 19-Mar-2007 10:43am

Just dreams with certain people coming back from the dead which I interpreted as advising me on certain matters.

mandy

posted 19-Mar-2007 2:54pm

Yup

(reply to kitti723) posted 19-Mar-2007 4:49pm

I get ones coming back from childhood. You remind though, I have to call my bro and see if he too had dreams about our step-dad. I had two two days in a row a couple weeks ago, one in which we met in a ghost-town, and one in which I was cleaning up an apartment after his death, digging though a cigar box of momentos, like an ad for a quartz-tuner radio.

It amazes me that people I hardly knew 30 years ago suddenly show up in my dreams.

(reply to docgbrown) posted 19-Mar-2007 7:09pm

Oh. I oscillate quickly between believing in the paranormal and laughing at those that do. I haven't settled into the implications of the experiences I have had. As soon as my brain says it was a 'ghost' I laugh about it. I just say it was an 'unexplained' incident, ignoring the other possibility but at the same time keeping it available as an answer. It's a very contradictory stance. I say this happened and them turn around and say it isn't possible.

(reply to RGirl) posted 19-Mar-2007 8:24pm

The parallel dimension model really helps for understanding such stuff. That way, a TV actor in a show can advise you on what to buy at the grocery tonight (integrated creation in the moment), and at the same time still be the product of months of scriptwriting and production entirely unrelated to your life.

It can be both a ghost and a shadow of a cat. What matters is that every realm you inhabit make sense unto itself, with a system of self-referential relations and continuity, and not whethar that realm relates to other realms, any more than dreams relate to life.

The more you believe possible, the more becames possible. You'd never learn the language of an animal if you weren't first prepared to believe that animals could have their own languages. General cosmic reality is similar in that manner.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 19-Mar-2007 10:49pm

I used to keep a book on dream interpretation next to my bed and every morning I awoke I would analyze my dream and highlight it that way if it was a reoccuring dream I would know that I had dreamt it before. Why is it so easy to forget your dreams almost immediately unless you record them?

(reply to kitti723) posted 19-Mar-2007 11:41pm

Alternate realities and acid trips can be the same way. You can't get there from here, in the way of thinking, but once you are there you think 'Oh yeah, I recall this now'.

(reply to RGirl) posted 20-Mar-2007 2:48am

I see and can relate.

Zang

(reply to Biggles) posted 20-Mar-2007 2:54am

The archaeologist I was dating a while back told me her own experience with a dowser. She was convinced too. And of course she also had a fine scientific mind and is normally skeptical. I suspect that there are good reasons why dowsing is often one of the more "accepted" paranormal practices. There are a few different complex mechanisms coming into play; the ideomotor effect, subtle information gathered by the subconscious, post hoc fallacy, confirmation bias...

(reply to kitti723) posted 21-Mar-2007 2:02am

I keep a dream journal. I have been disappointed since we moved here in August because I suddenly cannot remember my dreams. I get only the smallest glimpses of them and it seems that I have been basically dreaming the same dream for weeks. I used to have such full dreams and remembered every detail when I awoke. I don't know what is causing this and it is really bothering me.

posted 21-Mar-2007 6:20am

Perhaps you're sleeping better now. I've heard of people keeping the blankets off to stay in touch with their dreams.

(reply to RGirl) posted 21-Mar-2007 1:42pm

If you just moved maybe you aren't completely comfortable with your environment and aren't getting good enough sleep.

(reply to kitti723) posted 21-Mar-2007 8:51pm

I didn't 'just' move. Unless you consider August 'just'. I wonder if because I live in a rural area I just don't have as much excess input from my environment.