I never mentioned anything to do with those things. I'm speaking more of things on a personal matter, feeling someone touch you, watching you, following you, hearing footsteps etc etc. Plus I did say it's not the finished product behind the idea. There's no need to get touchy about it, I'm not saying none of these things have happened, and I never said I don't believe in things like that. I'm on the fence to be honest, neither believe or disbelieve in these things. Nothing that strong has ever happened, I've never seen a microwave start on it's own, or a door decide to slam itself for no reason. So I think my standpoint is a fair one, how can I either credit or discredit it? I can't.
Spooky, eerie and haunted.
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I never mentioned anything to do with those things. I'm speaking more of things on a personal matter, feeling someone touch you, watching you, following you, hearing footsteps etc etc. Plus I did say it's not the finished product behind the idea. There's no need to get touchy about it, I'm not saying none of these things have happened, and I never said I don't believe in things like that. I'm on the fence to be honest, neither believe or disbelieve in these things. Nothing that strong has ever happened, I've never seen a microwave start on it's own, or a door decide to slam itself for no reason. So I think my standpoint is a fair one, how can I either credit or discredit it? I can't.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get touchy. I was just offended by some comments is all. I just wish that sometimes people would try and look outside of the box. Perhaps they haven't experienced it for themselves, but when they know somebody (me and Faith for example) who has it just makes me wish they'd at least try to understand where we're coming from instead of being so quick to discredit us. *cough*or accuse us being stupid enough to get conned*cough*
That's the thing, I don't think it's all in the mind, there's something out there, and then there's the catalyst that triggers a reaction. Atleast, from the stuff I've experienced. As for the likes of doors slamming and what-not, you've got me there.
I think one of the main problems is there are too many fakes out there. Fake claims, fake "experts" and so on and so on. People get tarred with the same brush too easily.
I think one of the main problems is there are too many fakes out there. Fake claims, fake "experts" and so on and so on. People get tarred with the same brush too easily.
You're making a couple of assumptions here, and I don't really understand the need for such an (seemingly, maybe I read it wrong) aggresive tone.
I'm not closed minded because I've read testimony of paranormal encounters and the accounts and I know someone who believes in the paranormal.
IMPO, I think the testimony is unreliable and vague. However, even if we had testimony from a reliable source, that isn't nearly enough to prove that ghosts exist. How can it be? If the person you trusted the most in the world told you a dragon was outside I think you would need extra evidence. I definately would.
Personal experience is unreliable as well. Heck, eye witnesses have trouble recalling what they saw, how is a personal experience anymore reliable? I grant you that maybe I have yet to experience an encounter but just because other people have doesn't mean I should.
And how many faked ghost videos are on the net these days? I've seen it so many times before that I can;t help being sceptical of video proof, we know how it can be edited. TAPS Ghost Hunters have been criticised by many and I happen to find the crticisms valid ones.
The point I was trying to make about the sad bit is not the believing in the paranormal, I think the sad part is that people can be exploited for believing as such. And I don't think there are good reasons for belief, that's just my opinion and I'm not really bothered whether you like that or not.
Also, something that hasn't been disproved has never been, and never will be compelling evidence for something's existence. It's correct that no proof doesn't mean it's false, but why would someone believe something if there is no proof?
I'm not saying that ghosts and the like don't exist. I am simply in a state on non-belief until it can be proven otherwise. And I'm sorry if my post sounded offensive but those are just my views. I don't mind discourse, I just don't want it to be become some angry argument.
I'd be happy to look at some proof but if I get something and can't explain it, how is it right for someone to just insert an explanation i.e. say it was a ghost?
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Well there are some silly ghost TV programs that make you cringe. Some that are likely to have been made up. There was a terrible one I watched on Channel 4 or five once (British TV) with a famous medium / ghost chaser person (forgotten his name) visiting Egypt. The plan was that he would use his connection with the dead to find out the "real" cause of Tutankhamun's death and solve the debate. In the course of the program he became possessed by Tutankhamun himself, blurted out who killed him, then had an uncontrollable fit and had to be carried out of the tomb (the guy has a fit everytime he is possessed). Things like that are what taint genuine spooky / unexplained experiences with the same brush as being a load of baloney.
I don't think anyone working on that program other than the person himself believed he was actually possessed by Tutankhamun, yet all the experts in the field were made to tell the camera that they finally know the answer and feel so happy. It was embarassing to see.
People can go a bit too far with it just to make a program and get some money. He couldn't pretend not to have any connection with King Tut while he was there, as it would leave the viewers unhappy and his future programs would be axed.
Aside from the TV thing... I am pretty open minded about the subject. I believe in some cases it can be people choosing to see what they want to see, or fear to see. In others, however, it can be so spontaneous and unexplainable. I'm open minded in that I don't need to see something to believe it, because frankly we can't see / known everything. One of the defining aspects of these weird moments is that we can't see / know what is causing them, and hence we feel weird or are scared and spooked.
I don't believe ghosts can be chased around and caught on camera. It would be awesome if they existed in a form similar to that in Ghostbusters, and that we can see most of them and they look really bizzare and slime everyone. But I think ghosts, if they exist, are probably invisible to the naked eye, or only slightly visible in certain situations or conditions.
I've heard theories before. One of them was that they are recordings made on the planet's magnetic field that play images of times past a bit like a video tape. This is only a theory and not one that even attempts to explain how they can interact with the living / open doors etc.
If they do exist it might just be remnants of the energy of a dead person. Not sure if this would be a conscious collection of energy, but maybe something left in the air that can cause weird feeling atmospheres. We don't really know though.
As for the alien abduction thing... Some of it has been proposed to have been caused by the effects of sleep paralysis. This is pretty much when people aren't really dreaming, and are conscious but can not move and are in a hallucination. You may have heard of the "Old Hag" that sits on peoples chests and strangles people. It is the same concept. People see these things and genuinly feel them, but it is all in their head. It's a mystery why we have them in its own right, but some people sadly are tortured by those extreme types of nightmares and can actually wake up feeling physically harmed. Some people claim that alien abduction stories could be explained by people hallucinating being sat on by aliens or being examined by aliens, while in a state of sleep paralysis.
Others put it down to drugs... Others put it down to insanity. Others claim to have genuinely been contacted by aliens and abducted, and it is a mystery to the people involved and people who seek to find out the cause for them.
I can understand people who are sceptical and only believe what they see in front of them, but I'm a believer in what we don't yet know as much as what we do. We suck in that we don't know everything at all. A lot of things still confuse us and we now have no explaination for anything like this. In the past people wouldn't hesitate to put anything freaky like this down to ghosts or demons, and it would be considered odd but semi-explainable. However now to do this a person would be deemed insane by many people. Times have changed, but we still don't have an actual scientific answer for what all this means. Some people genuinely experience unexplainable situations, and I won't shrug it off and call them a lunatic if they tell me about it because there are many things in our world we still do not fully understand.
I don't think anyone working on that program other than the person himself believed he was actually possessed by Tutankhamun, yet all the experts in the field were made to tell the camera that they finally know the answer and feel so happy. It was embarassing to see.
People can go a bit too far with it just to make a program and get some money. He couldn't pretend not to have any connection with King Tut while he was there, as it would leave the viewers unhappy and his future programs would be axed.Aside from the TV thing... I am pretty open minded about the subject. I believe in some cases it can be people choosing to see what they want to see, or fear to see. In others, however, it can be so spontaneous and unexplainable. I'm open minded in that I don't need to see something to believe it, because frankly we can't see / known everything. One of the defining aspects of these weird moments is that we can't see / know what is causing them, and hence we feel weird or are scared and spooked.
I don't believe ghosts can be chased around and caught on camera. It would be awesome if they existed in a form similar to that in Ghostbusters, and that we can see most of them and they look really bizzare and slime everyone. But I think ghosts, if they exist, are probably invisible to the naked eye, or only slightly visible in certain situations or conditions.
I've heard theories before. One of them was that they are recordings made on the planet's magnetic field that play images of times past a bit like a video tape. This is only a theory and not one that even attempts to explain how they can interact with the living / open doors etc.
If they do exist it might just be remnants of the energy of a dead person. Not sure if this would be a conscious collection of energy, but maybe something left in the air that can cause weird feeling atmospheres. We don't really know though.
As for the alien abduction thing... Some of it has been proposed to have been caused by the effects of sleep paralysis. This is pretty much when people aren't really dreaming, and are conscious but can not move and are in a hallucination. You may have heard of the "Old Hag" that sits on peoples chests and strangles people. It is the same concept. People see these things and genuinly feel them, but it is all in their head. It's a mystery why we have them in its own right, but some people sadly are tortured by those extreme types of nightmares and can actually wake up feeling physically harmed. Some people claim that alien abduction stories could be explained by people hallucinating being sat on by aliens or being examined by aliens, while in a state of sleep paralysis.
Others put it down to drugs... Others put it down to insanity. Others claim to have genuinely been contacted by aliens and abducted, and it is a mystery to the people involved and people who seek to find out the cause for them.
I can understand people who are sceptical and only believe what they see in front of them, but I'm a believer in what we don't yet know as much as what we do. We suck in that we don't know everything at all. A lot of things still confuse us and we now have no explaination for anything like this. In the past people wouldn't hesitate to put anything freaky like this down to ghosts or demons, and it would be considered odd but semi-explainable. However now to do this a person would be deemed insane by many people. Times have changed, but we still don't have an actual scientific answer for what all this means. Some people genuinely experience unexplainable situations, and I won't shrug it off and call them a lunatic if they tell me about it because there are many things in our world we still do not fully understand.
Not of Rust
My wadis is swollen with the deluge
My family has a few stories of paranormal encounters - I'm as skeptical as anyone but what tends to sell it a little more is the fact that most of the sightings were by cousins who were to young at the time to have any concept of what they were describing.
For example, my wife's cousin's son (who was all of 3 or 4 at the time) for months would talk about seeing a man with blue face in a heavy coat standing by the basement door. They did some research with the county records and found that one of the previous owners hung himself in the basement. Also, their neighbors use to call about the noise of someone running up and down stairs at night (this was an old, old duplex so they shared a wall) - problem was that it tended to happen when no one was home and they had no pets.
I typically don't get freaked out by places but there are a few that just seem to have an overwhelming aura.
Mental Hospitals/assylums get me bad. We had one in the town I recently moved from that was adjacent to a park that my wife and I used to train for a marathon. In fact - one of the walking trails could take you through the hospital grounds. On one of our runs we decided to go through and were just completely freaked out. Obviously, institutions like this are not generally well maintained so that contributes. But the place just felt like there was no sense of life in the air. I felt like I was in Silent Hill.
Another is a place called the Buckhill Inn which is up in the boonies of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It's a huge old Inn that's been closed for decades and is starting to crumble. It sits up on a hill and when you take one of the primary roads in, it just appears suddenly from the horizon, and looms over you like a big, giant assload of death. I went by it when I was in college and had no desire to go inside - it just reaks of death. If some of you are old enough to remember a series on MTV called Fear where they'd have contestants stay the night in famously haunted places and have to do tests of courage and what not - this was one of the places they went. It was the place with the (true) story of the bride who was staying here the night before her wedding, and right before departing for the church, she was down on her knees in her room praying all clad in gown. In mid-prayer someone came into the room and killed her with a blow from a claw hammer to the back of the head (one of the tests of courage was one of the contestands had to - in complete darkness - get down on their knees in her exact position and sit there for an hour with no radio contact).
For example, my wife's cousin's son (who was all of 3 or 4 at the time) for months would talk about seeing a man with blue face in a heavy coat standing by the basement door. They did some research with the county records and found that one of the previous owners hung himself in the basement. Also, their neighbors use to call about the noise of someone running up and down stairs at night (this was an old, old duplex so they shared a wall) - problem was that it tended to happen when no one was home and they had no pets.
I typically don't get freaked out by places but there are a few that just seem to have an overwhelming aura.
Mental Hospitals/assylums get me bad. We had one in the town I recently moved from that was adjacent to a park that my wife and I used to train for a marathon. In fact - one of the walking trails could take you through the hospital grounds. On one of our runs we decided to go through and were just completely freaked out. Obviously, institutions like this are not generally well maintained so that contributes. But the place just felt like there was no sense of life in the air. I felt like I was in Silent Hill.
Another is a place called the Buckhill Inn which is up in the boonies of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It's a huge old Inn that's been closed for decades and is starting to crumble. It sits up on a hill and when you take one of the primary roads in, it just appears suddenly from the horizon, and looms over you like a big, giant assload of death. I went by it when I was in college and had no desire to go inside - it just reaks of death. If some of you are old enough to remember a series on MTV called Fear where they'd have contestants stay the night in famously haunted places and have to do tests of courage and what not - this was one of the places they went. It was the place with the (true) story of the bride who was staying here the night before her wedding, and right before departing for the church, she was down on her knees in her room praying all clad in gown. In mid-prayer someone came into the room and killed her with a blow from a claw hammer to the back of the head (one of the tests of courage was one of the contestands had to - in complete darkness - get down on their knees in her exact position and sit there for an hour with no radio contact).
Wow those are some incredible stories there, Basch. I remember that MTV show called Fear. In fact, hubby and I used to lay in bed and watch it together when we were still just boyfriend and girlfriend. Used to freak me out at times too. o_o I wonder though what people can say about EVP (electronic voice phenomena)? How do you explain that? I mean sometimes the way those voices sound are completely inhuman and you can't mimic those over a tape recorder.
My sister and her friends belong to the Indiana Ghost Trackers. When I lived there, I went on a couple of hunts with them. We took along a Sony Clear Voice and just kept it going while we were nonchalantly chatting about whatever. When we were done and got back to the house, we were going over the stuff we recorded and there was a voice on there in the background that kept making this really high-pitched crying sound. It didn't sound like an animal and there was no animals around on our hunt, nor did we hear that sound once while we were out. That's another thing I can remember. EVP,IMO, can be incredible.
My sister and her friends belong to the Indiana Ghost Trackers. When I lived there, I went on a couple of hunts with them. We took along a Sony Clear Voice and just kept it going while we were nonchalantly chatting about whatever. When we were done and got back to the house, we were going over the stuff we recorded and there was a voice on there in the background that kept making this really high-pitched crying sound. It didn't sound like an animal and there was no animals around on our hunt, nor did we hear that sound once while we were out. That's another thing I can remember. EVP,IMO, can be incredible.
Not of Rust
My wadis is swollen with the deluge
Derek Acorah. He got his first big break as a medium on the UK show "Most Haunted" and eventually did a couple spin off shows including the god-awful one you're referring to.
He's a pisser - complete fake but at least entertaining. During season 6 of Most Haunted they were visiting Bodmin Gaol and some of the crew played a trick on him suspecting he was a fake. They started talking amongst themselves about an inmate named Kreed Kafer (an anagram of "Derek Faker") hoping that he would overhear and try to work it into his reading. Anyway, during filming, Acorah claimed to be in contact with......you guessed it - Kreed Kafer. He even became possessed by him which is his specialty.
I've skimmed most of the posts following Shu's first one, so no in-depth reading. Just felt I should clarify that up top.
Being a skeptic is markedly different from being "closed-minded." I'm not saying it's completely impossible for these things to happen. I'm just saying until you can prove it, with some sort of scientific, objective evidence, I'm hard-pressed to accept that there are ghosts when it's more likely a rational, simple, non-paranormal event.
This is not to take away from anyone's experiences. Your events are your events, and your interpretations are your interpretations. This isn't Communist China, you're entitled to your opinion and belief. It has simply been my experience that Ockham's Razor always prevails. That is my opinion and belief.
I saw a show on vampires once. One of the ways European villagers "proved" a corpse was a vampire was by saying that a vampire's hair and nails continue to grow after the human has died. So if they suspected a dead person of being a vampire, they would exhume the body and voila.... the hair and nails were distinctly and recognizably longer than they had been at the time of death. To the people of the time, this was proof vampires existed.
What they didn't understand then that we do now, is that hair does in fact continue to grow for a time after the body dies, regardless of whether one is a vampire. Also, the skin recedes, specifically away from the nail beds. So the nails aren't actually getting longer. It's simply that more of the nail is exposed.
But because people at the time did not understand these phenomena, they attached something paranormal (and in this case, sinister) to it. But their assumptions were incorrect. I think, in a lot of ways, this still applies to much of the reported paranormal activity in current times.
On the topic of "Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not there":
While this is true to an extent, the other side of it is that just because it can't be proven to not be there, doesn't mean we should accept that it is.
If I gave you a magic rock that I guaranteed kept away flying tigers, you would have no way of disproving me. Doesn't mean I'm correct.
On the topic of Ghost Hunters:
I love that show. Mostly because I would venture to guess that 98% of the claims are shown either to have a scientific, rational explanation, or are inconclusive. Very, very rarely do they come out and definitviely say "This place is haunted." I think the Eastern State Penitentiary one, and the big ship.... Queen Anne I think.... maybe I'm blending episodes though, now that I think about it. Anyway, point being, TAPS debunks many, many more than they confirm.
Being a skeptic is markedly different from being "closed-minded." I'm not saying it's completely impossible for these things to happen. I'm just saying until you can prove it, with some sort of scientific, objective evidence, I'm hard-pressed to accept that there are ghosts when it's more likely a rational, simple, non-paranormal event.
This is not to take away from anyone's experiences. Your events are your events, and your interpretations are your interpretations. This isn't Communist China, you're entitled to your opinion and belief. It has simply been my experience that Ockham's Razor always prevails. That is my opinion and belief.
I saw a show on vampires once. One of the ways European villagers "proved" a corpse was a vampire was by saying that a vampire's hair and nails continue to grow after the human has died. So if they suspected a dead person of being a vampire, they would exhume the body and voila.... the hair and nails were distinctly and recognizably longer than they had been at the time of death. To the people of the time, this was proof vampires existed.
What they didn't understand then that we do now, is that hair does in fact continue to grow for a time after the body dies, regardless of whether one is a vampire. Also, the skin recedes, specifically away from the nail beds. So the nails aren't actually getting longer. It's simply that more of the nail is exposed.
But because people at the time did not understand these phenomena, they attached something paranormal (and in this case, sinister) to it. But their assumptions were incorrect. I think, in a lot of ways, this still applies to much of the reported paranormal activity in current times.
On the topic of "Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not there":
While this is true to an extent, the other side of it is that just because it can't be proven to not be there, doesn't mean we should accept that it is.
If I gave you a magic rock that I guaranteed kept away flying tigers, you would have no way of disproving me. Doesn't mean I'm correct.
On the topic of Ghost Hunters:
I love that show. Mostly because I would venture to guess that 98% of the claims are shown either to have a scientific, rational explanation, or are inconclusive. Very, very rarely do they come out and definitviely say "This place is haunted." I think the Eastern State Penitentiary one, and the big ship.... Queen Anne I think.... maybe I'm blending episodes though, now that I think about it. Anyway, point being, TAPS debunks many, many more than they confirm.
J
John Marston
I remember when i used to live across town in this on story house, at first everything was fine up until a certain day. I can't exactly recall when it started as this happened too many years ago but when it did i really wanted to leave.
One night my room was a mess, i didn't feel like cleaning it because i had gotten a new gba game and i was having a blast with it. I paused it for a minute because i noticed a shadow on the wall. It started to bother me so i started cleaning and moving things to see if it would go away.
By the time i had finished, it was still there and i know it wasn't my shadow because mine wasn't cast on the wall that and it's not tall. While this one was taller than mine by a couple inches.
It was a person's shadow yet no one was in the room with me, it stayed in that spot for i don't know how many days. I remember one morning i woke up i felt like someone was choking me.
So i brought it up to my mother and we moved, haven't had anything like that since.
One night my room was a mess, i didn't feel like cleaning it because i had gotten a new gba game and i was having a blast with it. I paused it for a minute because i noticed a shadow on the wall. It started to bother me so i started cleaning and moving things to see if it would go away.
By the time i had finished, it was still there and i know it wasn't my shadow because mine wasn't cast on the wall that and it's not tall. While this one was taller than mine by a couple inches.
It was a person's shadow yet no one was in the room with me, it stayed in that spot for i don't know how many days. I remember one morning i woke up i felt like someone was choking me.
So i brought it up to my mother and we moved, haven't had anything like that since.
The only thing I can recall happening to me that was like this was when I visited Scotland a few years ago--I visited the ruins of an old priory that was full of graves that were set into the floor, and even though it was daytime I got a really creepy, unusual feeling from it, like there was some sort of presence there or something. It was a historical site so it was cool to visit, but I made it a little quicker than I would have otherwise because of this. On the topic of paranormal things in general, I'm not sure if I believe what goes on in a lot of the programs on TV, but I wouldn't discredit people who claim to have seen things because I know a lot of people in my family who say they have seen or heard ghosts. My dad and his first wife actually had to move out of a house once because they heard noises on the stairs and in the attic all the time when there was nothing there. And I actually lived with him in an apartment once when I was little where he says he saw something too, but he didn't tell me until after we moved out, so that kind of makes me believe him 
Creepy.
Creepy.