This is a popular question on askreddit, but since Tildes is a slightly different beast I am curious: Have you ever encountered a ghost or UFO before (or something similarly spooky/inexplicable)?
I'm hoping for serious, honest responses - i.e. don't make up stuff just to troll or try to trick people, nor to just exercise your creative writing skills for entertainment. I am optimistic that people can be respectful to those sharing stories that may be difficult to believe, or which might have mundane explanations.
I've had an interest in the paranormal and unusual for a long time, but haven't delved as deeply as might be warranted. I do my best to keep an open mind, have had a few experiences that are on the fringe, and have met and known people who have recounted much stranger things and i always love hearing about them. Since Tildes is at a point presently where there aren't easy throwaways, and where reputation matters to an extent, I would suspect that tales shared here might have a bit more credibility than those shared pseudo-anonymously on reddit.
So, any experiences you've had which just didn't have a completely satisfying explanation? Any spooks or strange places or times or sights? I invite you to share your experiences here. :)
I was walking my dog 7 or 8 years ago, (northern Virginia area) and as I was nearing home again, saw a shooting star. I had never seen one before and was watching it streak across the sky, and then, in an instant, it made a 90 degree turn. There was no change in speed, brightness, or size of the "shooting star", but it instantly changed course by 90 degrees. I have no idea what it was or how it happened. Some googling has said that it could be debris bouncing off the atmosphere, but the fact that it was a sharp 90 degrees leaves that answer unsatisfying.
Reading into this a bit more some people have suggested that a smaller part of the meteor breaks and flies off in a direction whilst the remainder of the meteor burns up instantly, therefore giving the illusion that the meteor took a sudden right-angled turn. However these sequence of events seem highly unlikely so I myself am still not convinced that this is really what happened, very interesting though.
Highly unlikely as opposed to what though? It's far more likely than it being an alien ship for example
isnt the earth bombarded with thousands of visable meteors daily?
even an "unlikely" event seems inevitable... and id love to see the numbers allowing you to claim this scenario being "highly unlikely"
oh yeah, and to add to that the "it clearly cant be this effect we already know about, it must be something else!" pfft
I have witnessed something similar to this as well. It wasn't a typical shooting star though, it appeared to be moving a extremely slow speeds compared to other shooting stars I've seen. I've always assumed it was a satellite adjusting its orbit or something along those lines.
Interesting! This would be consistent with some of the reports I have heard of other UFO sightings in broad daylight of objects performing similar maneuvers. Supposedly a computer could control something akin to a magnetohydronamic aerodyne to do something like this without occupants experiencing excessive g-force, but we don't presently have superdonductors (at least that we know of in the public sector) that operate at high enough temperature to make one work.
(edit: one side effect of an MHD would be illumination, since it's basically swimming through charged plasma using electromagnets)
edit2: since some people like sources, here's info about mhd's: http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/English/the_silence_barrier.htm
No but my girlfriend (now wife) called me at 4 AM on a Tuesday to ask if I was OK. My mom had just died, as in minutes before, and I didn't know until my Dad called me at about 4:15 AM. To be clear, my wife is not a morning person and had no reason to call me at that time.
I've heard of other people sharing similar stories in the past! ESP or just... a feeling. Also synchronicity. What did she say motivated her to call?
Just that she knew something was wrong with me and so she woke up and called. No ghosts in dreams or anything of that nature.
Thank you for sharing your story. It's reassuring to hear incidents like these... that there are still mysteries about us to be uncovered.
Probably the most interesting thing I have experienced directly was observing a plastic measuring cup slide about 6 inches across a table, and then a few minutes after the subsequent freak out move back to its previous position. It was about a 2-cup measuring cup, resting on a pool of condensation (it had had frozen cranberry juice in it). My friend was seated at the table having finished eating her frozen juice, reading the funnies in the newspaper, and i was sitting on an adjacent side of the table.
There was no wind, nothing unusual was going on, the measuring cup just apparently spontaneously slid across, away from her, to the right and back about 6 inches. She didn't see it but I watched it happen, and began making a fuss. Her dad came in, looked at it from the side of the table to my right, said it probably just slid on the little pool of water that had dripped from the condensate, and then went back to whatever he had been doing. I stood watching it for a couple of minutes, and then at one point it slid back to where it had been originally just as fast - away from where the dad had been. Nobody had leaned on the table, nobody touched the cup.
The house this took place in had a reputation for being haunted, was pretty old, used to be a church and also one previous family had lost a young boy in a tragic accident. The family living there while i was present all had had one experience or another, and even some of the neighbors had had ghost stories that I heard second-hand.
One such story from the family actually extended into the time i was staying in this house. The kids had a k'nex set that, when properly assembled, was in the shape of a car and could transform into a motorcycle. They had trouble with it, and it could either be a car and not quite turn into a motorcycle, or it could be a motorcycle and not quite turn into a car. It's been a while now so i can't remember if it actually disappeared, or if it just happened overnight, but when they came across it somehow it had been fixed. They told me this story as one example of something spooky that had happened.
Now the creepy part: during my stay at this house, the air conditioner went out, and repairmen were called in. While i was out of the house at my classes, they went into the attic to fix stuff. Nobody had been in this attic in ages. While they were up there, they found a handful of k'nex pieces that went to the aforementioned model, sitting on top of one of the air ducts.
Spooky, right? There were a few other incidents, things that were not so profound, some a little bit more so but which didn't happen to me directly.
Don't want to write this as a first level reply but just know that I love/hate this topics. Can't avoid reading them and then I get spooked the rest of the evening. Damn. Thanks for creating this topic. But also fuck you. I'm confused.
If you're religious, then the important thing is to affirm that God is with you, keeping you safe.
If you're a skeptic, then the important thing is to affirm that reality is exactly as you see it, and you are safe.
If you're not sure what is real, then know that ghosts only seem to be able to affect minute things, and have nowhere near the power over reality that a corporeal human does.
And if you're a new-ager then know that all of the above is true.
;)
edit: as for ufos, just know that close encounters of the third kind are damned rare.
I'd add to that if you've taken psychedelic drugs then you already know that there is an objective reality and that humans are incapable of seeing it as all our incoming data is filtered through the imperfect human body.
I firmly believe that all paranormal phenomenon is a mix of the body's misperceptions and actual phenomenon that has not yet been described by physics, or if it has, is not known or understood by the reporter.
I don't think that folks can really internalize that without experiencing acute visual hallucinations.
re: the moving cup, this happens with cups of tea. There's probably a scientific answer about changing states and expanding air, but that is not my area.
Even if this does explain it, its still spooky.
In the particular case shown in your video, my guess would be moisture around the bottom rim of the cup creating a weak gas seal and then the heat from the tea expanding the gas and evaporating any additional liquid trapped under the cup. Once the pressure under the cup reaches high enough to displace a portion of the moisture seal, the bowl spins and slides around on the moisture barrier as a result of that pressure release. I have had that exact same thing happen when microwaving bowls of soup, although slightly more violently in that case, creating a "pop" as the gas escapes and the bowl slides.
that makes sense... but it doesn't calm our fears regarding the frozen fruit bowl. :)
Well IMO those cases are probably similar as well. Extreme temperature differentials cause convection within liquids (circulation from hot to cold) as well as pressure differentials with gasses and when combined with the reduced friction (due to buoyancy and surface tension) from resting on a lubricating layer of liquid, it could explain why some bowls (particularly if they are extremely hot or cold) can slide around a table "all on their own" under the right circumstances.
With my limited understanding, this does make sense.
Science - 1, Ghost - 0
Neat! I still wonder why it would have moved back to its original position a few minutes later, but that is really cool. Thank you. :)
yeah, that's really weird. Have you tried to recreate it?
Unfortunately no. I have not been back there in years. :/
One of the theories i have about this sort of thing is that if we assume that some of these spooky things are actually spooks and not something else, then they must operate in a capacity where an alternative explanation is possible (however unlikely), because individuals' freedom to choose what to believe must be honored. This is a convenient hypothetical law that allows the skeptics to believe that anything unusual exists only in the imagination. SO, it may be that the reason for lack of evidence for fantastic phenomena, or reproducibility in lab settings, etc. might be because to prove something funky is happening would violate peoples' beliefs too powerfully.
It would also explain why wizards and witches are so secretive. :P
ha. I can only hope that I gain a superior understanding of physics when I reach the astral plane.
I remember when I'd be assembling my lego's I'd often find one of the pieces that I was looking for, put it behind me so that it wouldn't get mixed back in with the pile. Then when I'd found the next piece and went to get the first one it wasn't there. It wasn't even there when I stood up and looked around, it had just vanished. this happened a couple of times.
Now I also know that those pieces are called k'nex. I never knew what they were called.
Haha, I've had that happen for sure. That "It was just there!" experience. :P
edit: also this is k'nex: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=k%27nex&iax=images&ia=images
I've worked in aged care for about 8 years now, a few things have happened while on night shift but that could be put down to being over tired.
The thing that really gave me chills happened while on morning shift, I was assisting a resident with a shower when out of the corner of my eye I saw a co-resident looking in at us (I had the door cracked open because the fan didn't work and it was hot AF) I stuck my head out to ask them to leave the room only to find it completely empty with the main door closed and everything still in place how I put it before showering.
The part that made me most uneasy was the co-resident that I saw wasn't able to walk and was bound to a wheelchair, but when I saw them, they were standing and peering in.
that day still makes me feel off
Hmm. That is indeed strange. If we adopt a materialist view, then you probably just were tired and hallucinated it. If we adopt a spook filter, then i wonder if that was some sort of astral projection, if the resident was near the end of their life and wanting to get up and about. Oh or maybe it was a shapeshifter that adopted the person's appearance.
when it happened I didn't put all that much thought into it because it spooked the hell out of me lol
Its been so long I can't remember when the one looking in passed away, I feel it was at least 6 months before they did though.
I wish I had seen UFOs.
I Want to Believe.
But I have seen plenty of things which I could see people confusing for UFOs. Usually they involved the twilight effect, where the sun has set where you are, but directly above you is still in the sun. Weather balloons and the ISS are crazy when this occurs.
I used to live next to a NOAA station, and yes, weather balloons right after sunset could easily be confused for something like a spaceship. It is already getting dark where you are, and as the balloon rises it suddenly hits the sun again while getting jerked around by winds going different directions at various altitudes.
Get an app like ISS Spotter and find a time where it will be overhead 15-90 minutes after sunset. The effect is insane. It will be brighter than anything in the sky aside from a full moon, and it seems to change direction above you because the earth is a sphere.
When I was a little kid, walking from my room to the bathroom at night would terrify me. It got to the point where I would stand inside the bathroom utterly terrified of walking back into the darkness. I would have sworn I heard voices, but that was all no doubt a result of my nerves and imagination!
aww. :[
I assume that you eventually mustered up the courage to open the door and run to your room and jump under the covers. (I've done that maneuver a few times, though i don't know if I ever heard voices at those times).
Indeed I did. I became a man, those nights. A tiny, frightened man.
Yes. Back when I was a child I was walking my dog at night and saw the ground shimmering. I looked up and saw some glowing purple object flying through the sky. Looked a bit like a shooting star but it was neon purple. No clue what the heck that was.
That sounds like a really cool experience. I am really curious about what the shimmering ground was like. Was it like purple-y light emanating from the object hitting the ground?
Yeah exactly that. I wish I had recorded it but I was too busy just gaping at it.
Edit: Course it would've been recorded with a flip phone which probably would've looked awful.
Hehe, maybe you can draw or paint it some day to share with your kids at least. "Kiddos, you know we're good friends with the Pleadians now, but here's a picture i drew of the first time I saw one of their ships before formal contact!" :P
In college, I lived in a building that was reputed to be one of the most haunted buildings in my city. It had been a convent for many years, then had had part of it converted to a nursing home facility for elderly nuns, and then later that area was converted to dorms for students after the university acquired the property. Plenty of people had stories about ghosts, ghouls, and things that go bump in the night; these ranged from cold spots that were never in the same place twice, to seeing a shadow round a corner in the distance, to a full-on spectral apparition that gave no hint of its supernatural origin apart from its extremely dated manner of dress.
Naturally, as somebody who doesn't believe in ghosts, and knowing the proclivities of my fellow dorm residents, I dismissed these stories as products of overactive imaginations, the result of too much drinking in a high-stress environment, or, for some of them, outright lies. I quite happily wandered around at night with no problems, whether it be in the basement or in some of the sealed-off corridors, and never once encountered anything I couldn't explain.
At least for a while. And then I started hearing footsteps every now and then. Not often, just occasionally at first. I assumed for a while that they were other students, walking around corridors and that the concrete and stone was echoing those distant sounds back to me. But I started to notice that if I was sitting in a chair in one of the study areas, the footsteps would come right up to the end of the corridor, and stop.
Over a period of a few months, I started to hear footsteps most times when I walked around by myself. Naturally, I quit doing that, and I stopped hearing footsteps. I'm pretty convinced that what I heard was actually auditory hallucinations, and that my brain wasn't comfortable with being alone in some of the places and invented a reason for me to leave, but who knows.
Fascinating. I really like the way you've described this... I can almost feel myself there. :P Thank you for sharing!
If it's true that you were not comfortable being alone in those places, what do you think might have prompted that? Have you had similar issues in places that are not ostensibly haunted?
I'm not a huge fan of dark places to begin with, I mostly wandered around because I was tired of homework and didn't have much else to do. I did hear some footsteps around that time when I was walking around my parent's subdivision late at night, and, as far as I'm aware, that's not haunted. :)
A blue light appeared on the wall in my home in the night. It was pitch black outside. A friend and I saw the light - I asked him seriously if he saw it and if he was messing with me- he was serious and saw it as well. We investigated it and stood between the light and the windows in the room - we tried to cover every angle and it still shined on the wall. We stood right up to it and blocked the view from the windows and it was still there.
wait a second, your friend standed between the window and the wall, thus should have projected a shadow, and instead you only saw the light on the wall, no shadow?
Shadows and blue light on wall,
Hmm. Maybe something like a stray drop of glowstick liquid? That's the first thing that comes to mind that could do something like that.
Much brighter. The room was lit and the blue light was bright. Nice thinking though.
ohh good idea. I like that one. Maybe the friend put it there beforehand.
Oh or also, glow-in-the-dark paint, which absorbs light and then radiates it out. My mom painted some stars on my sister's bedroom ceiling with that stuff - but it isn't blue, it's kind of greenish-yellowish.
Huh. That is kind of cool. I don't think I've heard of one like this before. Was it kind of circular? Blurry edges or pretty sharp? Do you remember if it was warm to the touch at all or anything else out of the ordinary about that time or location?
Circular! I can't say for sure, but maybe a bit blurry edges.
I'm really curious about this so i have a ton of questions - please don't feel obligated to answer them. xD
how big was it?
did it move?
how long did it last for?
Maybe 6-10 inches (12 - 25 cm). Was stationary. At least two minutes, maybe up to five.
Thank you! I wonder what it was.
Sure! Me too.
When my mom's old boyfriend died they had been apart for years but she says that she felt something strange happen when he supposedly died. She felt like someone was watching her and it wasn't until the day after that she learned that he had died. For the next couple of days she felt strange and eventually went to a psychic to try and figure what was bothering her. The psychic, without knowing what my mom was coming to her about asked her if someone she knew had recently died to which she answered yes. The psychic then eventually out of the blue asks her if that persons name was "X" which was correct. The psychic then told her that he was there with them and said some more things that were true, my mom was baffled, she hadn't told her anything but the psychic was able to guess that a person close to her had just died, his name and more. After that visit the feeling of being watched went away.
I'm kinda skeptical about these things but my mom is so convinced that I am as well sometimes. She's also talked about hearing hello's coming from the door when she's relaxing in bed and just today she told me she thought someone was knocking at the door when no one was.
I like to believe that there is something else out there and that some can notice it more than others. I know it sounds strange but I've sometimes heard taps in my room at night that aren't my monitor cracking and they just keep going until I acknowledge them. I once told the darkness in my room to stop with the tapping because I couldn't sleep and then it stopped.
lol, those pesky ghosts. My friend's family had a similar thing happen, where a supposed ghost kept messing with them in various ways - strange odors and what appeared to be "ectoplasm" smeared all over the walls of one room after some renovations. The mom got angry and yelled and swore at the ghost and the problems stopped. Then a few months later she apologized to it, and they started to have more benign but unusual interactions happen every now and then.
Whatever is responsible for these sorts of things, I think they sometimes do understand us.
Before my parents purchased my childhood home, the previous owner's wife killed herself by walking into a nearby river and drowning herself.
Growing up, we'd often have stuff on shelves fall off, hear weird sounds, etc --- fairly standard 'ooh, must be a ghost' stuff. However, my sister would often feel someone sitting on the edge of her bed stroking her hair, only to wake up to find nobody sitting there.
Over the years, there were a few times where older folks from around the neighborhood would remark that the house was haunted, which is how my parents learned about the tragic fate of the previous owner's wife.
The previous owner and his wife lived in the one house, and their daughter lived next door (at that time.) Every so often our neighbor would talk about weird stuff that was happening around her house, mostly cupboards closing, stuff falling off of shelves, etc. She attributed it to her drunk of a husband who died many years earlier.
Anyway, my sister moved out in the late 90s and it seemed that the ghost also decided to pack her bags. I moved out a few years after that, and during the time there wasn't anything weird happening to us or the neighbor, and it's been quiet since.
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing this! I've heard of some instances where people seem to be followed by ghosts from one house to another - which would suggest (if the stories are true) that the phenomenon is not necessarily tied to a specific location permanently.
Of course I've also heard theories about poltergeist activity being a psychokinetic effect (usually unconscious) from a living person.
Has your sister mentioned any unusual activity since then where she is?
None at all. On one hand I don't believe in ghosts and such, but that can be difficult to reconcile or explain these events.
This jogged my memory, actually.
When I was in my late teens I had a really spooky experience with a Ouija board while on vacation with a friend. When I got home I found ours and put it in the trash can in the alley. A few days later I found the planchette on my bed. Logic suggests that it fell out of the box and I hadn't noticed... but it had been a few days. Odd stuff.
Oh man, of all the spooky stories I've heard from people, the worst ones usually involve a Ouija board. I've never used one, and at this point I doubt I ever will.
And I know what you mean. I go though phases where I don't believe in ghosts or supernatural stuff, and then I think of all of the stories that I've heard directly from other people who I knew to be trustworthy, plus all of the stories I've heard from people online, and all of the legends and mythology - not to mention all of the occult stuff. Oh that also reminds me, my mom and her sisters observed some poltergeist-like activity in my grandparents' house after my grandpa died... so i mean, yeah i get you... it's hard to reconcile sometimes. :/
The scariest thing about that Ouija board incident was when we asked their name and they replied, 'Fred.' It was such a simple, nothing name, but we noped the hell out after that. What really got to me was that my friend was more scared than I was and couldn't sleep that night.
I spent a decade as a christian in a fairly charismatic circle. We'd see crazy shit all the time... and it became normal.
Each year my church had this old couple who were touring faith healers or something... their message wasn't clear, but the week they were around was insane from a spiritual perspective.
At the time I had been struggling with a shitload of warts on both hands. It was really embarrassing and I'd tried everything outside of getting them burnt off. I said to my buddy, who was a bit older than me and was raised around this stuff, that I should probably go up for prayer or whatever. I showed him the warts and he told me a story about when he was a kid, he had a bunch of warts on his hands. His Dad prayed over them and the next day they turned black and fell off.
I was thinking, 'ok, I've seen some weird stuff over the course of these meetings over the past few years, but that sounds silly.'
He said that we should just pray over them now and that I didn't need to go up front if I didn't want to.
Jump ahead about sixteen hours --- I get out of the shower and all of the warts have turned soft and white, almost like a blister. I scrubbed my hands in the sink and all of the warts fell off without any scarring or marks to indicate that they were ever there.
There are a few experiences like this that are extremely difficult to reconcile now that I've stepped outside of the faith. I tend to chalk it up to the power of the mind, but if there is some exterior force at work, I'm willing to give it credit.
Something that I dislike about the Ouija board (apart from the higher than usual level of poltergeist activity and crude/abusive communication that comes through it) is that, if it is actually something else communicating, then it is doing so by manipulating your own body which you have essentially invited it to do. If spooky magic/paranormal stuff is real, then traditionally that sort of thing is a big no-no. Especially if you're just opening the door to anyone who might be around with no means of filtering for bad actors. If that whole world of unseen entities is real, then it's not someplace the naive should be poking at blindly thinking it's fun and games.
That is a fun story about the warts. Some people are very sincere in their belief in the power of prayer, and the power of belief - and the tangible results they've gotten from it. This reminds me a little of a periscope Scott Adams did recently about the placebo effect. You might find it interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WODWGR-e1DI
ha. I love Scott Adams.
The wart thing is crazy, eh? Honestly, I have no issues with placebos if the result is beneficial. My mother and her friends have had excellent results from copper rings and bracelets for arthritis... is there any science behind that? No. Do they feel better? Often... so that is good enough for me.
I used to be more hardline against placebos, but it was actually S06E24 of M*A*S*H that sparked my change of opinion.
I referenced the video because Scott himself talks about how he had experimental surgery to help him be able to speak because he had a brain condition that prevented it - except the surgery was on his throat. He talks about how his belief in the efficacy of the surgery may have played a significant role in his ability to recover, that the surgery itself was a kind of permission slip to get better.
I'll have to check out that episode.
That video was fantastic. His logic is sound.
Honestly, I wouldn't doubt that this is the case. I've seen some pretty amazing healings take place in real-time at events similar to that service.
All of those wasted years speaking in tongues for nothing :)
I've turned skeptic since college, but I did have one experience in high school that I can't explain. My friends and I were out walking in the wee hours of the night (around 2am) and decided to walk into the city cemetery. About a quarter of a mile in, we reached a crossroads and all stopped walking at the same time. We were spooked, and turned around. I checked the time on my old flip phone and it said 5-something am, which didn't really seem possible based on when we went out and how long we had been walking. I checked it again and it went back to around 2:30, which made more sense.
I'm pretty sure he was fucking with us, but my one friend was saying that he heard a voice calling him to turn back
O_O
That... is really spooky. Like, even as a skeptic that sounds like a confluence of really fucking spooky stuff, right? If it were in a science fiction/horror movie, you've got everything - walking in the dead of night, cemetary, crossroads, possible time warp (or interference with electronics), all of you stopping at the same time, one of you hearing a voice saying to turn back.
If you suspend disbelief temporarily, what is your theory on what may have happened?
Spooky explanation: Attempted possession / crossing over sort of deal
Less-spooky explanation: some sort of EMF weirdness that confused my phone's time zone and also gave us the heeby-jeebies
Skeptic explanation: One of us stopped first, spooked the rest of us (but felt like we all stopped at once), and the phone was a piece of garbage that had some sort of software stupidity. That one friend was fucking with us (which doesn't seem out of character when taken in context).
I could definitely see electromagnetic stuff making you all feel strange and affecting your phone. Kind of interesting if it was near the cemetary, but that might just be coincidental...
Interesting that you mention a possible attempted possession - that hadn't really occurred to me, though my guess was sort of similar to a crossing-over deal. I was thinking of something along the lines of: you or all of you died shortly after going through the crossroads, but weren't actually ready so you got zapped back, someone fucked up the time a little bit, and then you all had a brief shimmer of memory of what was about to happen and felt weird, and some good samaritan spirit/angel called out to your friend just to be extra sure you didn't end up repeating whatever happened in the other timeline.
Anyway, thank you for sharing your story!
Many years ago I was sitting chatting with a friend and we both saw a figure in an old-fashioned white dress, walking slowly towards us over the grass. She was visible for a handful of seconds before shimmering away to nothing. The area had been an old stately home before being torn down to build houses, and was supposedly haunted by a lady in white. Everyone who lived there had heard some stories of people seeing similar things.
It was early in the morning, around 5am, and we'd been up all night taking quite a wide assortment of drugs - but not anything which is usually particularly hallucinogenic for me, and when I do hallucinate people it's usually in a very different style. Although I still believe that to be a far more likely explanation of why we saw something that wasn't there than a visitor from beyond the grave.
Very intriguing. Thank you for sharing this! So the question that comes to my mind, and I'm sure has come to you as well, is: if this was due to drugs, then why would you both see her? Do you think you both had heard the stories and that somehow affected your experience? Was it a novel situation for you to be there at that location?
I've been party to drug-induced group hallucinations a couple of times, it's rare but it does happen. The other two people with us that morning didn't see anything and I'm not sure they were aware of the stories.
It wasn't a novel location at all, rather the opposite - it was the little patch of wasteland where we used to hang out when we weren't at home (which was a lot of the time because my parents had this crazy thing where they got really mad if me and my friends sat around their house smoking weed).
It was pretty weird. I don't think it was a ghost but I don't have a really great explanation for what was happening.
Huh. neat! I don't think I've ever heard about group hallucinations. I wonder how that works.
Thank you again for sharing. :)
I hope I'm not derailing this discussion, but I have a moral question: Say I theoretically have a "haunted" object that I claim has psychic/spiritual/paranormal powers and I sell that object on eBay or such. And bear in mind I'm 100% making these powers up but writing a good "story" about them. Ebay requires that I add a disclaimer to the story that I am only selling the tangible object and nothing intangible, but it write it in a way that it is clear the object DOES have esp or psychokinetic powers. Am I fulfilling a genuine need humans have for a deep connection to the supernatural, or am I exploiting the gullible? And would you do it?
Gotta say, that sounds like exploiting the gullible. But it's arguable that if we assume supernatural stuff is fake anyway, your made-up mysticism is no different than any other object the buyer feels is supernatural.
Very grey area. Grey... like a ghost!
I feel that if you are making it up, you are exploiting the gullible.
I mean, go for it, free money. But its different if you actually believed in it and were sharing.
It's an interesting scenario. I think there's enough strangeness around that you might not necessarily need to create some for people, but i suppose it is possible that things like this are useful for keeping people's sense of imagination and respect for the unknown active and engaged.
It also depends on what model of reality is true. If it is true that magic is real, that thoughts formed with energy and intention can manifest results, then your story may be persuasive enough for individuals to literally enchant it with something akin to what it is advertised to have simply by believing your story. However, if this model of magic/reality is true, then your own knowledge of the original mundane nature of the object might be sufficient to prevent any such spooky aspects. SO in that case, it might be better to sell an object that you yourself are not actually certain about it's hauntedness.
Of course that's just one theory of magic/reality. If the world is pure materialistic, no magic, no hauntings, then is it valuable for people to believe in such things, and is there a need for new tokens to fulfill that? I suppose what's most important at that point is how your personal integrity fares. Is the world a better place if you are actively contributing to the amount of lies in it? Does that even matter to your own set of values?
I would not do it.
My first husband and I were driving home to Wisconsin from Michigan on a boiling hot summer night with our infant daughter in the back seat when our fuel pump began to die. This was in 1971, long before 24 hour gas stations were common. We were driving a 1964 Rambler. The drive was long and we were too poor to stay in a motel. The car choked and shuddered all the way through Chicago. well after midnight. As we approached the Wisconsin state line, and the engine gasped because it wasn't getting any fuel, a figure appeared on the right side of the road. A hitchhiker. He was wearing long sleeves and long black pants in the eighty five degree air. A hood covered most of his head. But his face and hands shimmered pale green and his eyes meet mine and as they did he opened his mouth, revealing the most frightening set of teeth imaginable. I seem to recall a howling noise but to this day I am not certain that there was any sound. His eyes were hot red, like two burning cigarette embers. As the car slowly rolled to what we feared would be a stop, he stepped toward us from the shoulder. I turned and lifted my baby from her car seat, sliding over toward the driver's side door as I did. I did this without even being aware of what I was doing. My husband had his hand on the door latch. As the creature's hand extended, the fuel pump leapt back to life and we left him behind us, in a pool of fog. To this day I am convinced I saw a vampire.
Wow. That sounds terrifying! Were you all okay afterward? What did your husband think about the incident? You said he had his hand on the door handle - was he about to get out and fight this thing, or was he not aware that it wasn't a normal person?
I was meditating on a bed at my friends house maybe 6 years ago, when I felt some fear come up. There was this sense that someone else was in the room with me. A big part of meditation for me is letting go of fear, so I did my best to acknowledge it, and go back to focusing on my practice. Well, then the bed started shaking. Still kept my eyes closed. Then it felt like it was slamming up and down on the ground, like it was being lifted maybe 6+ inches off the floor and being dropped. I kept my eyes closed. I focused.
It stopped, and I still have no idea what had happened. My friend was asleep two stories up with his wife and young children, out on a 500-acre property - no one else around.
Whoa... That sounds pretty intense. Thank you for sharing this!
I am curious what sort of meditation style this was, if it has a name or origin. I find it really interesting that a big part of it was about letting go of fear, and then right as you're doing that you have something happen that would probably cause a considerable amount of fear for the average person in normal circumstances, almost like you were being tested.
I wonder, if it was a sentient being responsible for the shaking if maybe they just didn't like meditation, or maybe it was a mischievous poltergeist who just thought it would be funny to mess around with you. OR maybe it was sort of telekinetic manifestation resulting from the state of focus you were in.
In any case, it seems like a strong possibility to me that the meditation and the shaking were not entirely unrelated in that particular incident.
When I was a kid, my parents went out to a dinner party kind of thing and I, knowing there would be nothing to do there, convinced them to let me stay home. The house was fairly big so there was a lot a kid could be scared of, but I had lived there for a long time and I was mostly used to it.
At some point of the night, the phone rang. I got up from my chair and went to the phone, thinking it would probably be my parents checking in on me. Our phones had those little displays that would show you the number of the caller. As I grabbed the phone, the number on the screen caught my attention. It was our phone number. The same one I was about to pick up.
I never picked up the phone. I put it back in place, ran back to my room turning on every light switch I could reach on the way and didn't leave it again until my parents came back.
It's not very paranormal now that I think about it and there are many possible explanations for this, but it sure as hell scared the shit out of me.
aww! That makes me want to hug kid-you. I'm not 100% certain, but it seems like my friend's dad or brother told me about a similar incident a long while back, and the audio coming through the phone was just like static and faint radio noises or something. I'm probably mixing up my memories though!
Thank you for sharing this!