Encounters with the Supernatural

[Thresher]

When I was a kid I used to freak out my mum by being able to, for a common term I think they use is to 'project' your mind outside your body and wander around. She remembers me telling her all sorts of things like where lost objects where or hear conversations about things the neighbours talked about and had this sense of direction where I could visualise an area from an aerial point of view and never got lost.
It faded for awhile as I tended to do it mostly unconciously as a form of curiosity and as I got older it tended to be a fairly hard thing to do. So around 15 I started reading up on meditation, oriental and some rosicrucian methods and got fairly good at it, but it was mostly a solitary thing and I never met anyone else who was overly into it until I was about 19 and met a friend who used to practice some north american indian shamanism and he knew a lot about spirit travel, guides and other stuff.
Over the years we helped out a small group of friends with a few things but as I got older the strain of looking after them started to take its toll and to some degree it only seemed to delay the inevitable and it was up to most people to find their own way in life, and as people do, they came and went.
I stopped the study of meditation and projection about 6-7 years ago now I guess, just felt I'd done enough and brought into enough good cause and effect for whatever I was put on this earth to do.

Im getting quite old now and I suppose the adventure and drive leaves you after some time, Im also more or less bogged down by the mundane things everyone else has to deal with like work, car payments and bills. Now, I wouldnt call myself a religous person and most people that know me would probably call me fairly practical, but we only see a small amount of the universe with the physical senses we possess.
Think about how much you see and hear in day to day life, its a fair bit and about as much as most people care to deal with. Then also consider how much you cant see, and Im not just talking about an absence of photons which makes it 'dark'. But the things we know are there and to some degree take for granted are there.
Electomagnetics, light spectrums we cant see, radio waves and the like also have some influence on our daily life and their spectrums are far greater then what we can percieve without some mechanical assistance... and thats only with our current levels of technology letting us know they are there.
I spend my days as the administrator looking after the largest wireless WAN in the southern hemisphere and just by looking up you wouldnt see the hundreds of thousands of mobile phone conversations, gigabytes of data and other traffic above your head. I can tell you its there, you can call your friends on a mobile phone using it and surf the net but its not something you can percieve as a human being with 2 eyes, ears, arms and legs.

That said I think some of us can tune in a little to the things we cant normally see, hear or touch, I dunno if we'll ever give it a quantifiable measurement or if it would ever become an everyday thing. But 100 years ago if I said there would be thousands of conversations, data passing over someones head that they couldnt see or hear then they wouldnt believe me. Heck theres probably a fair few people still out there in the more remote parts of the world that wouldnt believe it either in the modern day. Most of those people still have a fairly firm and convicted belief that there are 'ancestors', gods and other beings that we cant see and its not something I'd easily dispute with them either. As a race we've been known to go to kill each other over differing beliefs in things we cant see on more than one occassion so its not entirely without some merit that an invisible god(s) have had a direct impact on our lives.

Most of you probably spent the odd sunday sitting in a building at some stage or another, with some bloke telling you theres an invisible being who loves you and either out of peer pressure from other people in society never questioned it overly much that it wasnt true.

But society and belief in things they cant see is another topic altogether

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

Scary

Okay. I've had many run ins with the supernatural. And I'm pretty skeptical. I like this stuff but mostly because I like trying to figure out explanations for it. But this one is the weirdest. I've tried to pawn this off as related to sleep paralysis* which I have had for some time. But it doesn't fit the pattern of that.

This is rather long and it still freaks me out a bit to this day. I am not sure what it was but I know it scared the heck out of me for a long time.

Summary:
What was it : A humanoid ghostly shape
Where did it appear: Windows, Doorways only when I was the only living thing AWAKE in a given room
Effect on me : What seemed like temporary paralysis/ not sleep paralysis*
Time/Age : When I was 17, the summer after I graduated from high school
Duration : 1 month or so [EDIT sorry I originally said 2 month. My error in trying to recall.]

Ok, so I first saw this thing at a hotel in rural Vermont (I forget the name of the hotel...it was one of those places where families go with their kids a lot in the summer). I was with my family (mom, dad, younger brother who was 12 at the time). I was asleep on the floor near the door of the room. I'd been listening to Pink Floyds the wall on my Discman and had fallen asleep. Suddenly, around 3 am or so, I was jolted awake when my cd player kicked back on with the song that goes "You better run like hell" . Except that rather than play the whole track it just kept skipping to that line. It was freaky. It was like a record skipping, not a cd. I looked up and in the doorframe was this ...thing. It had no facial features and just looked like a looming, ghastly humanoid shape. It was larger than a human though. I felt like it was staring at me but I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything but stare at it terrified. Then I heard my brother cough and stir a little and my cd player shut off again. I was able to move and ran over to where he was sleeping on the other side of the room and curled up with him and I think I stayed awake all night.

The next week back at home, I saw it again in my bedroom window. The same feeling of horror swept me and I couldn't move. It stopped when my dog came into the room.

The next day I was at my friends house. We were sitting on his bed listening to a cd or something and he was sort of leaning against my shoulder falling asleep. All of a sudden I felt the heaviness of when someone falls asleep and they sort of , I dunno, just feel heavier on you. Seconds later the thing appeared in his window and I froze until my friend woke up. This guy was really into paranormal stuff so I told him. He said he was going to talk to one of his friends and see what they thought it was.

The next day my boyfriend at the time, who was also really into supernatural stuff was over my house and we were watching tv in my parents basement. He was determined to catch a glimpse of this thing and so we tried to "trick it" by having me pretend to be asleep. Well that was dumb cause nothing happened. I guess you can't outwit the dead? Anyway, eventually he gave up. That night it appeared in my window. This time I was able to move and I moved to my parents living room couch. It appeared in the doorway leading to the outside. This time my dog came in the room and started growling and barking like she saw something. The thing went away.

The next day I was with my friend again and he gave me some sort of little pouch with some stuff in it. It looked kinda hokey new age esque but I was ready to try anything so I took it. He also gave me an explanation of what he thought it might be and what was in the pouch that would ward it off. I forget what he called it. It had a long complicated name that I think started with 'H'.The stuff in the pouch was Native American in origin.

I don't know if it was that I convinced myself it was gone or what but it never came back. I wore that pouch around my neck or tied to a belt loop for about a year after that.

I still have nightmares about this. There really aren't words for the horror I felt in the presence of this thing. I have tried to pass it off as tricks of light and such but I have seen tricks of light and mind and never been so utterly horrified.

*Sleep paralysis is a relatively common and harmless problem where a person is physically asleep but their eyes are open and they can see. Because your entire body is asleep, you can't move except for your eyes and your head sometimes. It's really REALLY scary if you don't know what it is. The first time I got this was last spring during a very stressful point of my life and I thought I was dying. Often in this state you hear voices or see a menacing shape above you. Usually once you figure out what it is though, the fear factor goes way down. Some people try to control it because it's an interesting state to be in. *


Car Crash

Other weird things that have happened with me are, when I was 10 my cousin and I were walking around the neighborhood going to have lunch at a pizza shop and all of a sudden I got this strong urge that something bad would happen and we needed to get home. So we changed course and ran all the way home. 2 hours later a car crashed through the living room of a house a few houses away from mine.

Emerson College
I went to Emerson college and at one point stayed in Charlesgate dorm. Charlesgate is one of the "most haunted" buildings in Boston. There is an extra floor, hidden from the outside where all manner of bad stuff used to take place. Anyway, during my one year there, on the hidden floor I routinely saw doors and windows open and close for now reason, even when they were in places where there was no chance for a draft. I saw flashes of light dart back and forth playfully (one of the ghosts was supposedly a little kid), saw a "ghost" of a small girl (she was cute and harmless looking) , heard the sounds of children giggling and bouncing a ball in the stairway which was often deserted. Granted all of these things COULD be attributed to other things, but who knows. After the ghost story above, anything seemed possible.


How am I even still here??
I have also been in several instances where to be blunt, I should have been killed and to this day have no idea why I was not only not killed but barely even scathed. I will list a few of them. Some of them are too personal to list here but if you want to know, email me and I'll tell you the rest. This boggles my mind more than anything else.

*As a baby, twice in one year, my ceiling caved in. Both times large sharp chunks of plaster ripped through the pillows in my crib where my head would have been and had been moments earlier.

*As a toddler in a large "home fix it" type store, a model door on display fell over and landed on top of me. Virtually everyone said that there was no way a 1 1/2 year old could have survived that . I broke my leg. My parents were more freaked out that I survived and was barely injured and didn't want people to think I was some sort of freak so they didn't sue or anything to keep it out of the news.

*As a toddler again (about 3) I fell down a steep flight of stairs, landed on a metal heating grate that was turned all the way up. My parents rushed me to the hospital but my mom slipped while carrying me. I fell from her arms and landed on the sidewalk a few feet away and hit my head. My mom broke a few bones. Through the whole ordeal, I walked away with a Band-Aid on my forehead.

*Working in a pet shop, one day I was stung by a Lionfish which is very poisonous. It had no effect on me whatsoever.

*My second year of college I was skateboarding at the bus stop. I was hit head on by a speeding car, thrown a distance, and walked away with a sprained ankle.

It's kind of weird is all.

Interesting thread. I like this stuff. That story about the guy and the kids with no pupils was really freaky...

 

[Afrodyte]

This is very interesting stuff, so I'm keeping it on the front page. Fortunately, I myself have only had terrifying encounters in my dreams. Although that "run like hell" thing of the previous poster chilled me a bit.

 

[Dakkareth]

All this stuff makes me think of my Call of Cthulhu D20 Sourcebook

I may or may not have experienced some minor stuff, but I'm on the one hand very fixated on logic and scientific explanation and on the other hand I'd like to have 1337 p0w3rz, so there's no telling, what's real, imagined, wishful thinking or explained away.

But reading such threads is always interesting

 

[Wombat]

Closest thing I had to a supernatural experience was visiting The Devil's Den at Gettysburg.

This was the single saddest place I have ever been to.

I swear they are still fighting there -- there is a feeling of sadness, terror, over-exhiliration, cussedness, and pure misery.

I don't care to repeat the experience.

 

[dave_o]

*My second year of college I was skateboarding at the bus stop. I was hit head on by a speeding car, thrown a distance, and walked away with a sprained ankle.

Djeta, when I was hit by a car, skating, I broke my wrists and my tailbone. You should come skate with me...

...and stay traffic-ward.

I sorta have the same thing, only, I actually get hurt - and heal miraculiously within days/moments/etc. It's my mutant healing factor!!1

 

[Hopping Vampire]

about 13 years ago, when i was 10ish, we lived in an apartment complex in goldsboro NC on Lockhaven drive i belive (near a rather unsavory part of town) called bramble wood. the 2 story townhouse we lived in was haunted. we never really looked into the past history of that particular apt. BUT: my mom was attacked by a spirit there. she had bite and Nail marks to prove it. she also was visited by her recently deceased grandmother. at night in my room, by brother and i would see a man standing in the corner. the man fit the same description of the spirit that attacked my mother. my bro, sis and i would be watching television in the downstairs living room, and we would hear footsteps upstairs ( my mom was at work at the time). and lastly, we were all out to dinner, and we came home and the bathtub was running, it overflowed and caused extensive damage to the upper floor.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Ah, things that defy proof... I love 'em. BTW, it is my personal belief that science is being very narrow minded when it refuses to acknowledge the existance of things that cannot be objectively proven (preferabley in a laboratory setting).

At this point, I've stopped thinking it's odd when these sorts of things happen.

For instance, when my wife was pregnant, I had arranged at my job to take a couple weeks off for paternity leave. One Friday, two weeks before her due date, I came home and told her flat out, "I'm not going back to work on Monday. You're going to have the baby this weekend." I knew I was right. She thought I was being silly (if she was going to go into labor shouldn't SHE be the one to know it?). She was feeling the labor for hours, but still denying it, when her water broke and she had to admit I was right.

Two weeks ago she returned the favor. I'd been out of work for two months and desperately trying to get a job. I'd been applying to around 8 to 10 places a week, with absolutely no luck. Our money was beginning to SERIOUSLY run dry. We were contimplating moving and having us both get "anything" jobs full time to make ends meet. Then she tells me, out of nowhere, "This is the last week it's going to be like this. Something is going to happen this week." Sure enough, I got a job - from the FIRST place I applied to back when I was first unemployed. To think I wasted 2 months sending out resumes and going to interviews. I coulda just applied for one job and goofed off for 2 months, waiting for them to get back to me.

I've gone on a shamonic journey (a type of meditation) and met my spirit animal - a turtle. It told me how to pull myself into a shell, but I told it I was already too good at doing that. So instead it told me how to hatch from an egg. All from a turtles point of view, mind you. It didn't even speak English, now that I think about it. I think for the space of the meditiation I was able to speak turtleish.

One night around 10pm at the local University, my wife and I were walking back to our car after a concert. We'd walked that way several times before and knew the shortest way to get there. At one point we had to cross a street and continue down a wide, paved pedestrian path. As we crossed the street, my wife slowed down and stopped before we continued on the path. "I have a bad feeling," she said, "We shouldn't go this way." I gave in mainly because I was enjoying the walk. So we turned left and followed the street, planning to go around and get at the parking lot from the street. We'd been walking a couple of minutes when a couple police cars tore by us going the other way. We turned to watch them and - yup - they turned and started on down the pedestrian path, lights flashing. We don't know what it was that was going on down that path, but whatever it was would have had about 2 minutes alone with us before the police got there.

If you are pagan or know much about paganism or wicca, you'll understand the next bit better. My wife got into wicca several months before I did. I was sitting at my computer pondering the issue - whether I should join in or not - when the Goddess quite clearly called my name. I've never heard a human put that level of meaning behind a single word. It was beckoning, amused, wise, powerful and a good many other things I lack the words to describe.
The Goddess spoke to me one other time on a Samhain night, when I was doing a meditation into a water-filled iron cauldron. We (my wife and I) put a drop of oil in it and watched the shifting patterns. Eventually, we both tranced and I heard the Goddess explain to me the nature of faith in Her. I remember exactly what she said, but I consider it rather private and won't write it here.

My experiences during pagan rituals, meditation, and similar activities are too numerous to mention.

UFO: When I was a kid, probably around 10 years old, my friend and I were having a camping-style sleepover in my back yard. After a while we decided to lie on our backs on the grass and look up at the sky - deliberately looking for UFOs. We did the normal stuff - saw a few planes and pretended they were flying saucers and whatnot. Then we both saw the same thing: Three bright points of light sped out from equadistant points on the horizon. In less than two seconds, they met in the center of the sky forming a precise equilateral triangle, rotating slowly. Then, just as quickly, they sped off again, just like they had come.

I've also had a lot of the "common" experiences. Like thinking about a person and then suddenly they call up on the phone or I get an email from them.

On the topic of black and white / color TVs (forget who brought that up...): My wife's family, when she was growing up, had a black and white TV. One day her parents splurged and got a color TV of a very similar shape, color, and size. They didn't tell her because they wanted it to be a surprise. When, after three days of normal family TV-watching she still hadn't said anything, they pointed it out to her. Her respone: "Haven't we always had a color TV?"

edit: Just remembered another strange thing. Remember old-style BBSes? They were totally text based and the fastest modem was the blazin' 14.4 baud monster. Well, there was a local BBS that all the computer-oriented middle and high-school kids hung out on. There were the usual chat rooms, trivia chat games, files depots, etc... There was also a place for people to post their original poetry or artwork (most of it was written because it was hard to get pictures into a computer back then. Not to mention the download times....). A friend of mine kept bugging me to post some of my poetry. I kept telling her no because I thought somebody might copy it. One day, she calls up: "You finally posted a poem! It's really cool! I like it a lot!" I hadn't posted a poem and I told her so. Very confused, she told me to log on and take a look. I did, and there it was: one of my poems. Posted in my name (nobody knew my password). To top it off, it was a poem I hadn't shown anybody else yet. The only way I could rationalize it was that somebody had broken into my house, copied one of my poems, hacked into my account, and posted it in my name. This seemed pretty darn unlikely. I never did figure it out.

 

[Krieg]

I'm definitely intrigued by the number of folks who have experienced the "streetlight" phenomenom. I may have to start doing some research into streetlight failure rates...

Anyways, I've experienced some of the standard "events" most notably sleep paralysis & haunted houses. At some point I'll sit down & write about the possible El Chupacabra meeting I had in Central America while in the Marines. However there is one unusual experience I've had that I still find interesting.

"Psychics" regularly tend not to touch or even talk to me.

I've had psychics/mediums refuse to shake my hand, turn away upon meeting me, leave the room when I enter and even ask me to leave the premises of their place of business. I have seen signs of discomfort & even fear from them when I am around.

I'm generally a skeptic but I do tend to have an open mind...I have no problems believing that UFO's exist, but seriously doubt they are manned spacecraft from other planets etc etc.

Anyone have any insight of why psychics seem to avoid & even fear me?


Anyone have any insight on

 

[LGodamus]

Krieg the only reason I know of that a psychic would be that uncomfortable with you is that you may have a tainted aura. Some psychics believe you can carry around negativity that adversely affects those around you. who knows though