[OT] Do you believe in ghosts?

[Dr Midnight]

Tetsubo, I'd like to hear more...

I had a friend once who swore she saw a ghost, clearly, in broad daylight, in a house she lived in. One day she and her boyfriend went down some ladder in the lower levels of the house, and they found a crawlspace hidden behind it. In it they found old crayons and a rusty handaxe. That story scares the hell out of me.

Another one is from a guy I know who went into a friend's basement one day to get a bottle of wine. Now, he's been stoning it up since the 60's, but he's not the imaginative type, is pretty sharp, and wasn't stoned at the time. He saw something behind one of the support pillars and walked behind. He said there was a naked three-foot tall humanoid standing behind the pillar, looking up at him, shivering. He stared at it for several seconds, then left the basement.

 

[Sodalis]

wicht:
I think it telling that after a successful movie about aliens, the sighting of aliens goes way up and after a successful movie about ghosts the number of ghosts sightings go way up.

I completely agree with this. When I was younger, my brother in law would like to scare the bajeezes out of me and yournger sibs with scary stories. One of which was thsi little one foot tall demon like monster with long thick hair and long pointy claws.

He said that it would wander the woods around my house and feast on the intestines of campers (i lived on a site that was used for camping, now bull dozed over for houses) in their sleep. Its trademark was an eerie noise it makes before it visited the person, and then stand in front of their face until they woke up and then kill them (pretty sick- i know)

But that night, me and my brothers were scared SH*TLESS- and could not sleep. Finally, I closed my eyes and suddenly I heard a wierd notise just outside my window. I curled up into a ball toprotect mystomach adn then I felt a small entity standing right in fron tof my face. I was scared to open my eyes and so i turned my head the other way. I swear that I heard and felt its footsteps walk around my head and stood in fron to fmy face again. I did this for about an hour until I got so exhausted I fell asleep.

The eerie sound- was just the brids outside my window. I have never paid any attention to it before- and closing my eyes made my hearing more acute. The footsteps- I cant explain- maybe i was expecting it so much that my brain just conjured it up...

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

hmm...

Narcolepsy is a condition in which people are overcome with irresistible sleep attacks that occur unpredictably and at any time of day. These sleep attacks may occur at any time of day, while engaged in conversation, working at a desk, during meals, or while driving. These involuntary naps last for about 10 to 20 minutes after which the person will wake up feeling quite refreshed. The other major, and perhaps most distinguishing, feature of the condition is cataplexy, a sudden loss of muscle tone during excitement or arousal, such as laughter. The loss of muscle tone may be partial or complete. In the latter case, the person may even collapse. Although individuals remain conscious during a cataplectic episode, they may experience hallucinations during prolonged attacks and subsequently fall asleep. Sleep onset REM, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations are often discussed as 'associated features' of narcolepsy. Not all people with narcolepsy experience sleep paralysis, however, and, more significantly, not all people who experience sleep paralysis have narcolepsy.

I got this from a page on the net. Sounds like it could be either, but I agree, Sleep Paralysis seems more likely.

Well, we learn something new every day.

 

[EverSoar]

boo

i have to agree with Kenji

 

[EverSoar]

BOO

i have to agree with Kenjib

i dont even belive in a soul, so therfore its a little hard for one to exist without the other

then again i dont belive in a god, angels ect

opps this is actully Kal Vito. I didn't realise my house mate had used my computer.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

And to add on to what Paul said, I believe sleep paralysis is also the prime cause of most alien abduction cases.

Yes, they can sense when you're paralzyed and that's when they find you and grab you.

I have warding symbols on all my doors and windows and ring a brass bell daily as part of a ritual warding.
---
"Nothing is as terrible to see as ignorance in action."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The irony of your sig line... Excellent.

Anyhow:

I suffer from sleep paralysis. It is so frequent with me that I rarely get frightened by it anymore, even though on occasion I still feel that sense of malevolence. It's old hat now, it goes away, but it takes a supreme effort to wake up from that state.

I actually floated about 3 feet off the bed once. Well, not actually, but since all the genuine sensory input was there, my brain doesn't care to make the distinction.

As far as I am concerned I have a "real" memory of levitating over my bed. It's pretty cool.

I'm very good at self-hypnosis. I used to play a game with my ex-girlfriend. She'd sit quietly and give me about 2 minutes to put myself to "sleep," then she'd ask me questions and chat with me. Then she'd wake me up and tell me what goof-ball things I had to say. It was great. We'd do it over and over in one sitting.

I wish I had as much time to nap these days as I did then...


Wulf

 

[bolen]

The most interesting thing that I have read about the "supernatural" is in a book by Carl Sagan. He had a plot over time and plotted (per capita) the number of sighting of the Virgin Mary and sightings of UFO's (which are similar to Ghosts). It turns out that the sightings of Mary go down and the sighting of UFO's go up (as you might expect) But here's the interesting thing, if you add the two together you find it to be roughly constant.

The book is "Science: A Candle in the Light of the Dark"

 

[rampant insanity]

No

and

No.

That's not to say there aren't supernatural forces at work. I for one refuse to believe in evolution the same way I refuse to believe a million monkeys in a room filled with a billion typewriters who stay there for ten hojillion years, will be able to create War and Peace.

Me? I'm a fan of Intelligent Design, and I say that there is something else out there with the ability to play around with our perceptions. I just don't think they're ghosts. It's just a suspicion I have that there is an uncrossable line b/w living and dead.

 

[RyanL]

That's not to say there aren't supernatural forces at work. I for one refuse to believe in evolution the same way I refuse to believe a million monkeys in a room filled with a billion typewriters who stay there for ten hojillion years, will be able to create War and Peace.

Interesting. Why is the Monkey Concept so hard to accept? If I write a program which randomly produces digits, it will most likely produce the first five decimal places of pi in a reasonably short time. There's no guarantee that the monkeys would produce War and Peace even given infinite time, but you can't prove that they won't.

Besides, we already produced War and Peace, and we did it with much fewer monkeys and much less time.

 

[Tetsubo]

The irony of your sig line... Excellent.

It isn't irony if you feel (as I do) that the spiritual aspect of life is real. Ignorance would than mean ignoring that aspect in the face of personal belief. So I don't think a belief in ghosts to be ignorant Wulf. I also have no problem holding both a belief in ghosts and a firm foundation in scientific thinking. The two paradigms are not mutually exclusive.

I'm also a Pagan and practice magic on a small scale. Doesn't keep me from understanding physics, evolution, The Big Bang Theory or any other branch of science that interests me.

Dr. Midnight- What in particular would you like to know?