Your paranormal experiences

[Yggdrasil]

If you two are finished your reach-around, would you kindly take your circus somewhere else?

I'm sure there are others who would like to share their experiences of the paranormal without being harangued and labelled religious by a pair of desperados.

And why is their circus less vallid than your circus?

This is an open forum. They have the same rights you have to turn this into a circus.

[Doc Durian]

And why is their circus less vallid than your circus?

This is an open forum. They have the same rights you have to turn this into a circus.

I made a thread in earnest, and have attempted to stay the course of it despite their threadjacking of it for seemingly antireligious goals.

You do understand the difference?

[Yggdrasil]

With all due respect,

I think what you don't understand doc, is that the burden of proof lays on your end.

I suggest to read my post about that, somewhere in this thread.

So far your entire argumentation relies on logical fallacies.

If that upsets you, the problem is not on my end.

[Doc Durian]

I think what you don't understand doc, is that the burden of proof lays on your end.

I suggest to read my post about that, somewhere in this thread.

So far your entire argumentation relies on logical fallacies.

If that upsets you, the problem is not on my end.

Not upset... but rather amused.

No one has yet to prove my experiences didn't happen nor that my explanations of them were the product of "logical fallacies".

What I have seen, however, is a number of futile attempts to lump the paranormal into a religious concept because it makes scientists uneasy admitting their own ignorance on a subject matter. There also appears to be subtle disdain for religion seeping through their baseless rebuttals.

I suggest you read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan" to understand why the human condition finds it so difficult to accept the improbable.

[IndiReloaded]

Okay. Doc, you know I love you so I will put this thread back on track as well.

I actually think its *very cool* you have had these visions that manifest as actual physical symptoms/effects. Same for BlueSum and anyone else that has seen ghosts/spirits/boggarts/Jesus (all the same type phenomena to me).

In fact, I can truly say I wish I had a similar experience to tell. Or could be present when someone else does. Like I said, the closest I came was chasing down monsters in my bedroom at night with a stick as a kid. I was really disappointed to find it was just clothes on a chair.

So, what kinds of things can I do to encourage such things? Apart from drugs, I don't do that stuff. Mbe ghosts just don't find me that interesting?

Of course, we have a cat. Mbe she frightens the kami away?

[IndiReloaded]

Not upset... but rather amused.

No one has yet to prove my experiences didn't happen nor that my explanations of them were the product of "logical fallacies".

But Doc, if I told you I could get you into an MRI machine and cause you to feel the same 'presence' while stimulating a particular part of your brain, would you let me?

The reason I ask is that there is a researcher in Canada who has done *exactly* that. Sorry, I've been holding out on you a bit.

What would you say then? Do you want a link to those papers?

[Doc Durian]

Okay. Doc, you know I love you so I will put this thread back on track as well.

I actually think its *very cool* you have had these visions that manifest as actual physical symptoms/effects. Same for BlueSum and anyone else that has seen ghosts/spirits/boggarts/Jesus (all the same type phenomena to me).

In fact, I can truly say I wish I had a similar experience to tell. Or could be present when someone else does. Like I said, the closest I came was chasing down monsters in my bedroom at night with a stick as a kid. I was really disappointed to find it was just clothes on a chair.

So, what kinds of things can I do to encourage such things? Apart from drugs, I don't do that stuff. Mbe ghosts just don't find me that interesting?

Of course, we have a cat. Mbe she frightens the kami away?

I'm not expert on these matters, Indi, so I can only tell you what I've done surrounding or leading up to these instances although it seems to be meditation/ascent-descent into sleep state centred predominately, so brain wave manipulation might be a start.

To be honest, most paranormal entities steer clear of me but when one is about, I feel some degree of anxiety in the air. I hate it when I can hear them talking to me, not always nice things. It's usually inaudible... kind of like really fast subtitles in your mind answering your comments before you have the chance to vocalize them. I usually don't bother making them vocal, it just seems to keep them there longer, except with my grandparents who I didn't want to leave but they had to.

My father carried on this way similarly with his deceased uncle, when my father was a small child. Every night, without fail, Great Uncle Charles would sit on the end of my father's bed and talk to him every night for some number of years.

My own sister as a toddler (when barely able to speak) used to babble back and forth to a set point in her bedroom (an old painting of a flower pot my great grandmother had painted) and when we asked her who she was talking to (us thinking it was cute) she'd point to the spot and say "grannpaw man". Incidentally, grandpa was born in that room and had passed away when she was only 6 months old.

My mum still occasionally catches a spirit out peering through the top boarded up story of the abandoned homestead across the field separating both properties. Always parting the curtains, staring out for awhile, and then closing them. My grandmother was born in that house and the top story is nailed shut (floorboards are rotted and no one has lived up there in 30 years plus). Mum being a sluth, used to stake the house out and sit there watching intently for days waiting for the "burglar" to come out so she could call the police.

I don't know if it's a predilection or something else...

But it can and does happen.

Read up on it, if you're interested.

[misombra]

my hippie friend sent me to see this one guy who is supposed to be a medium. somebody who talks to dead people or can hear dead people and connects them to living people. what a fuking hoax! a total joke. and a pretty lame magic show.

[Doc Durian]

But Doc, if I told you I could get you into an MRI machine and cause you to feel the same 'presence' while stimulating a particular part of your brain, would you let me?

The reason I ask is that there is a researcher in Canada who has done *exactly* that. Sorry, I've been holding out on you a bit.

What would you say then? Do you want a link to those papers?

I'll read the papers as an amusement, but see no benefit from partaking of such an experiment. I trust in my experiences and those of my family.

The paranormal does exist, it is legitimate, and it's probably never going to be totally accepted by the populace.

That's ok though... it keeps life on this earth simple and without unnecessary grief. Can you imagine if the boundaries weren't recognized between the various dimensions?

Chaos would ensue.

[Doc Durian]

my hippie friend sent me to see this one guy who is supposed to be a medium. somebody who talks to dead people or can hear dead people and connects them to living people. what a fuking hoax! a total joke. and a pretty lame magic show.

I wouldn't go either. There's plenty of carpetbaggers in every aspect of life.. I'm content with myself.

[IndiReloaded]

I'll read the papers as an amusement, but see no benefit from partaking of such an experiment. I trust in my experiences and those of my family.

The paranormal does exist, it is legitimate, and it's probably never going to be totally accepted by the populace.

If you believe this, tho, why wouldn't you want it actually *explained*?

I mean, imagine if we discovered a new energy & we could make radios that would let us converse with dead people? What if they weren't really dead? Parallel universes and all that stuff?

I'm sounding like a bad sci-fi book, on purpose (there was an old book called 'Annas Brain', where the scientist-dad did exactly this), but what I can't understand is why you wouldn't be open to the possibility of testing these things?

Is is b/c you are, perhaps, secretly afraid they will be proven just a figment of your imagination? I really don't see why you would be, its just a revision of what we already understand. I totally acknowledge your experience; it is your explanation that I am skeptical of.

In the process of investigating such things, who knows what other very cool things we might learn?

[Gribble]

So how come these entities refuse to interact with me? Can you explain that one, Doc?

[Doc Durian]

If you believe this, tho, why wouldn't you want it actually *explained*?

I mean, imagine if we discovered a new energy & we could make radios that would let us converse with dead people? What if they weren't really dead? Parallel universes and all that stuff?

I'm sounding like a bad sci-fi book, on purpose (there was an old book called 'Annas Brain', where the scientist-dad did exactly this), but what I can't understand is why you wouldn't be open to the possibility of testing these things?

Is is b/c you are, perhaps, secretly afraid they will be proven just a figment of your imagination? I really don't see why you would be, its just a revision of what we already understand. I totally acknowledge your experience; it is your explanation that I am skeptical of.

In the process of investigating such things, who knows what other very cool things we might learn?

I understand where you're coming from, Indi, I truly do... but I don't think any good can come from dabbling in this subject.

Even if science could gain a proper understanding of the paranormal which some of us experience, I'm not entirely sure I would trust science to not bugger it up. ie...Can you imagine the weapons they might try to come up with? Just for starters.

Having said that, I don't doubt that a scientific "explanation" would be produced discounting mine after such experiments at any rate. Science seeks to refute. If that experiment had no clear cause, another one, and another one would be proposed until such time as the paranormal could be dismissed. All the while, across the entire expanse of our human condition, we'll continue to have these events... and we'll never have a consensus.

We weren't meant to. That much I know.

Thank you for your replies though. It's interesting.

[Doc Durian]

So how come these entities refuse to interact with me? Can you explain that one, Doc?

I don't know Gribble. I don't know why they seem to make occasional appearances with myself and my family either. Science may well suggest that it's a biological aspect to us, and seek to show a medical/scientific reason why some do and some don't.

Others may feel that you aren't capable or aren't ready to experience such.

Like I said, I just don't plainly know. I can only postulate about that.

My feeling, and I've always felt this strongly.. is that we were not meant to.

But that's just my feeling. I can't back that up, other than say that I walk away believing this nearly each and every time... except when deceased family members visit... that seems like a rare grey area to me.

[ecojeanne]

i think it's because he's a narcissist, why would they go near such a thing?!