Do you believe in the paranormal ???

[bombadil.360]

All I can do is speculate.



You tell me. Are all those people who think they're Napoleon actually Napoleon?

If you are going to claim they were ghosts, will you please define ghost for me? Because my understand of the word is that it is the "spirit" of a dead person. Is that what you mean by ghosts?

hey, I'm no Napoleon, but Chavez does reserve an empty chair at the dinner table served with food for Simon Bolivar!

if we start defining what is or is not a ghost is will just open a big can of worms...

lets say I tell you a ghost is a disembodied soul, then you'll ask me to define soul, or to empirically prove that it exists, etc... not in the mood to play those games man.

to quote from an excellent spanish horror movie: a ghost is an event disposed to repeat itself. un fantasma es un evento dispuesto a repetirse (el espinazo del diablo)

peace!

 

[Anti]

if we start defining what is or is not a ghost is will just open a big can of worms...

lets say I tell you a ghost is a disembodied soul, then you'll ask me to define soul, or to empirically prove that it exists, etc... not in the mood to play those games man.

Well, you're right. Because I have never personally seen any evidence of a disembodied soul.

It's not a game. It's called rational thinking.

EXAMPLE:

There was a loud sound outside my house. Maybe it was a dinosaur! Or maybe the world was ending. Or maybe a plane was flying overhead.

So I go out and look. And there's a plane going overhead. And the sound is receding as the plane gets further from me.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary and I see no dinosaurs.

Explanation: It was a plane I was hearing. I've heard other planes in my life and this experience was very similar to that. I can be relatively certain what I heard was a plane.

Mystery solved.

Ok. So you say you saw an older lady and two children walk into a room and then when you checked some time later, you did not see them. Then you assert they were ghosts.

If you know you have no evidence that they were ghosts, why assert that they were? Why not simply assert that you had an experience that you can't explain? Stick to the facts.

Or demonstrate the existence of a disembodied soul.

 

[bombadil.360]

Well, you're right. Because I have never personally seen any evidence of a disembodied soul.

It's not a game. It's called rational thinking.


Or demonstrate the existence of a disembodied soul.

I called it, didn't it?

can't demostrate the existence of a disembodied soul, but did demostrate with anticipation what your reaction would be, through rational thinking nonetheless did I predict the future? or do I know to perfection the implanted mental maps you are using now?

 

[staypuff]

Wow man that will get your arm hairs standing lol What did the chick say was she there motionless like a statue lol ?

couldn't find that long thread where tons of members here told some amazing first-hand ghost stories... found other short-lived threads but none as good as that one I remember...

anyway, I'm drinking some vodka and and chatty so I'll re-type shortly my experience seeing what I believe were ghosts...

so I was invited to go jam at a dude's house, this was about 12-14 years ago... anyway, I arrived at this dude's house with my electric guitar, amp and pedals. I got there early and was waiting for the other random musicians to show up with their gear... the house is a modern three story house, you enter through the middle floor, where you have the kitchen, dinning room, and other house shit, then the floor downstairs has this big saloon, two bedrooms and an exit to a backyard... I hear people arrived with a drum-set, more amps, basses, even a fucking cello! hell yeah, anyway... people started bringing all the gear downstairs, and I started hooking everything up, when they finished bringing everything down, they went upstairs to the kitchen to prepare food, snacks and drinks, and I stayed downstairs putting the drums together and all... I then sit down after finishing, and where I was my back was against the glass-door that went into the yard and I was facing the stair-case and the entrance to the bedrooms which were in front of the staircase... I clearly saw this older lady (55-65 years old maybe) with two children come down the stairs and they went into one of the bedrooms. the children could have been between 5 and 8 years old, the lady and them were all dressed normally, nothing strange about them. 2 minutes after I see them go into the room, the dude of the house comes downstairs and I tell him something like: "dude, I think your mom is here, is it cool we are here?" and he's like: "wtf, my family is in Spain now, I'm all alone here", so I tell him about the lady and the two children I had just seen go into one of the rooms; so we decide to go into the room thinking it could be thieves but we went in and no one was in there!

I may add that this particular neighborhood where this house is at is right behind this big funerary home...

there was this girl there too, I don't remember now if she saw them too or if she was the one who proposed that they might have been ghosts or both.

 

[staypuff]

How would 2 people that just witnessed what I may call a paranormal encounter be classified in the eyes of science ? Will they be called liars or be made to believe that there both suffering from temporary hallucination without the drugs ? Giving that both were present and can give details in which the phenomema occured ? Does this get placed into the do not discuss taboo zone/ can't be explained..... crap even though it was witnessed by more than 1 person at the same time ?

 

[bombadil.360]

staypuff, a respectable scientists would not even try to empirically classify such event, as it strays-off the scientific realm. if he did, he would then fall into the error of Scientism.

keeping such in mind, also trying to use such stories to convert someone into believing in the paranormal is also an error and even unethical.

all we can do is share such stories and be in awe of the mysterious nature of life.

 

[ThirstyKenny]

Hi guys here's another one for you. I was in my early 20's and a bunch of us were living in this old rundown house. It was a real dive but had elec,4 walls and a roof so it did us for a time. People had died in the house-expected, being the house was so old. One night we were in our rooms just relaxing and a voice came out of the stereo speakers that said "DONT!!" The mates came out of there rooms and we asked each other if any of us had said this. Nope it came from the stereo as we all suspected. The bizarre thing about this is the stereo was turned off at the wall. The next days we got raided by 3 cars of detectives. I can't explain this, there may be a logical explaination but i haven't figured out one in 30 years.
Arms are full of goose bumps writing this

Kenny

 

[Anti]

I called it, didn't it?

can't demostrate the existence of a disembodied soul, but did demostrate with anticipation what your reaction would be, through rational thinking nonetheless did I predict the future? or do I know to perfection the implanted mental maps you are using now?

How does one tell the difference between something which does not exist and something which cannot be apprehended?

How can you tell the difference between spirit money and non-existent money? You can't see spirit money. You can't see non-existent money. You can't hold spirit money. You can't SPEND spirit money. How do we distinguish spirit money from non-existent, imaginary money?

Things that appear in the world can be recorded. The conditions they appear under can be studied and predictions can be made about when they might appear again. Evidence can be gathered.

But until this is done, ANYTHING we say (it was a ghost. It was Jesus. It was the green lady. It was a gremlin. It was the boogeyman.) is merely SPECULATION. If we accept our own speculation prior to confirmation, we are going to change our PERCEPTION of the evidence. We are going to interpret things to fit our preconceived and accepted notion. Our MEMORIES will be edited to match the narrative we decide on.

 

[bombadil.360]

How does one tell the difference between something which does not exist and something which cannot be apprehended?

How can you tell the difference between spirit money and non-existent money? You can't see spirit money. You can't see non-existent money. You can't hold spirit money. You can't SPEND spirit money. How do we distinguish spirit money from non-existent, imaginary money?

Things that appear in the world can be recorded. The conditions they appear under can be studied and predictions can be made about when they might appear again. Evidence can be gathered.

But until this is done, ANYTHING we say (it was a ghost. It was Jesus. It was the green lady. It was a gremlin. It was the boogeyman.) is merely SPECULATION. If we accept our own speculation prior to confirmation, we are going to change our PERCEPTION of the evidence. We are going to interpret things to fit our preconceived and accepted notion. Our MEMORIES will be edited to match the narrative we decide on.

we use spirit-money all the time, thanks to Nominal Value lol...

all you are saying about proof, evidence, speculation, perception and memory only applies to the empirical method in relation to pure sciences and to nothing else.

you also understimate the intelligence of people; granted some people will fool themselves by deciding how to portray information in order to reach a personal agenda; mostly done in politics, science and organized religion btw; but there's tons of people out there, if my intuition serves me right, I'll say you included, could give a flying fuck at the end of the day about any of that shit if what you know to be true has been found to be true honestly and without any decorations.

having said that, out of all places, a bunch of ganja smokers will agree that no matter how much empirically any dishonest person tries to portrait the cannabis experience as a bad thing that should be illegal, such will never register as truth to us who know otherwise through a process where we basically yoke with the nature of this plant.

take such example to areas where you still think people need to provide you with empirical evidence and proof before you believe... you don't have to believe in shit, but sure need to let go of that need to control what people may or may not be able to know beyond what is commonly accepted.

 

[gaiusmarius]

another cool thread, never had any ghost experiences myself, but it's sure fun reading about others experiences...

 

[staypuff]

staypuff, a respectable scientists would not even try to empirically classify such event, as it strays-off the scientific realm. if he did, he would then fall into the error of Scientism.

keeping such in mind, also trying to use such stories to convert someone into believing in the paranormal is also an error and even unethical.

all we can do is share such stories and be in awe of the mysterious nature of life.

I mentioned science because, I for one have heard people that are skeptic always to say that it is not scientifically possible for the paranormal to exist. Also you are right that all we can do is share stories and sit back and either accept it to be true or not, but explaining to a non believer what you have witnessed to be an error is a bit far fetched considering it falls on how open and sensitive one is on that subject. In the end a person who believes like myself isn't going to depend on science for the answer because in my eyes they exist and in others they will laugh it off as BS

Gias have any ghostly stories for us

 

[staypuff]

Hi guys here's another one for you. I was in my early 20's and a bunch of us were living in this old rundown house. It was a real dive but had elec,4 walls and a roof so it did us for a time. People had died in the house-expected, being the house was so old. One night we were in our rooms just relaxing and a voice came out of the stereo speakers that said "DONT!!" The mates came out of there rooms and we asked each other if any of us had said this. Nope it came from the stereo as we all suspected. The bizarre thing about this is the stereo was turned off at the wall. The next days we got raided by 3 cars of detectives. I can't explain this, there may be a logical explaination but i haven't figured out one in 30 years.
Arms are full of goose bumps writing this

Kenny

Cool ass story bro thanks for sharing

 

[SeaMaiden]

Well, you're right. Because I have never personally seen any evidence of a disembodied soul.

It's not a game. It's called rational thinking.

EXAMPLE:

There was a loud sound outside my house. Maybe it was a dinosaur! Or maybe the world was ending. Or maybe a plane was flying overhead.

So I go out and look. And there's a plane going overhead. And the sound is receding as the plane gets further from me.

Nothing seems out of the ordinary and I see no dinosaurs.

Explanation: It was a plane I was hearing. I've heard other planes in my life and this experience was very similar to that. I can be relatively certain what I heard was a plane.

Mystery solved.

Ok. So you say you saw an older lady and two children walk into a room and then when you checked some time later, you did not see them. Then you assert they were ghosts.

If you know you have no evidence that they were ghosts, why assert that they were? Why not simply assert that you had an experience that you can't explain? Stick to the facts.

Or demonstrate the existence of a disembodied soul.

There was a loud sound coming from outside, it sounded like an explosion. We called 911 to report it. I knew it came from the north. We went outside to look for the fireball--nothing.

Turned out it was a meteor(ite). Only one photo was taken of it, but folks have been scrambling all over the debris field looking for meteorites. Experience: EXPLAINED.


Another experience. At the family home in Puerto Rico (this home is at least 400 years old, resides in the town where resides the oldest church in the entire western hemisphere, Porta Coeli), sleeping in what used to be my great-grandfather's room. Woke up to POUNDING on the doors to the balcony that faces the plaza. Thing is, those doors hadn't been opened within my memory (I'm almost 50yo), they've been painted shut and my grandmother has had the sign "NO TOCAR!" on them for decades. Scared me because I thought someone must have gotten drunk and climbed up onto the balcon.

The moment I sit up, it stops. Ok, well...WTF? thanks for waking me up. Now I've gotta pee. I get to the doorway of the bedroom and am hit straight in the face with cigar smoke. It was as though someone was standing there smoking a cigar in my face. I wrinkled my nose and say, "Ugh, that stinks!" The smell goes away.

I go pee, come back, tuck myself back under the covers, thinking about what a pain it's gonna be falling back to sleep when I can hear all these town sounds, and I feel the sheet over top of me being slowly tugged off. I said, "Please, let me go to sleep" and it stopped.

I can't explain it, but I know what happened, I know what I smelled and felt, and it wasn't a mouse. The house has bats in it, wasn't bats (they were all out feeding).
The next morning I told my grandparents what happened. My grandfather's jaw was working, I knew I'd probably pissed him off. My grandmother listened to me very carefully and said, "It was a mouse." "Mamai, a cigar-smoking mouse?" "No, Don Cornelio used to sneak cigars on the balcon when Dona Mani was alive, maybe you smelled the residue of cigars. It was a mouse that pulled the sheets."

Never mind that he'd died decades ago, that cigars hadn't been stored in the armoire or dresser since his death, that I've always stayed in that room and have never once smelled those cigars, or that I have no recollection of anyone smoking cigars in that house.

As I mentioned previously, I am just as willing to accept that it's my brain playing tricks on me as I am something more... esoteric. But I would like to qualify by saying that after all my studying and reading of mythology, Joseph Campbell and Jung regarding collective unconscious, I find myself wondering this--if there is no such thing as ghosts, why do all the world's cultures have words to describe them and stories about them?

 

[staypuff]

Great story Seamaiden have greaty memories of la isla del encanto

 

[HempKat]

Well I'm more of the frame of reference of "what if we got it all wrong?" view. I mean in the illustration anti gave of the loud noise, plane, dinosaur, world ending, there is always another possibility and that is what if it's something never before experienced and as such is not understood by our senses and/or scientific equipment?

What I have noticed of most every ghost story based on someone's eyewitness account is that whatever is witnessed doesn't necessarily fit with what's going on but does seem normal for the environment. Like the story of the old lady and the kids coming down some stairs and going into a room. Now lets say that lady and those kids lived there at some point, going down some steps and into a room seems perfectly normal but doing so when some virtual stranger has just set the room your crossing thru up for a live musical performance and not at least speaking to the strange man or commenting on the state of the room seems odd. However, what if what we percieve as ghosts aren't the spirit of a departed individual that still contains a certain degree of awareness and will but rather just a psychic impression of some major event from the past? What if we can't prove with scientific machinery that this impression is there because we have yet to figured out how to test for psychic impressions? Just because you don't have machines capable of gathering empirical evidence of something doesn't mean that thing doesn't exist. It simply means you can't prove or disprove it's existence.

The more interesting question though is does it matter? If you believe to the very core of your being some thing then are you going to stop believing it because someone tells you what you believe isn't true and they have machinery that supports what they're saying? Like for example most people believe that the sky is blue. We look at it and we see it's blue and so we agree and for us this is indisputable. Now what if someone came up to you and says, "Well no the sky is actually red" and when you doubt them they show you this device which has sky analyzer stamped on it and it has a readout that breaks the sky color into all the various colors and under blue it indicates 0% and under red it indicates 100%. Are you going to suddenly decide that you and everyone that's ever mentioned or depicted blue skies in art are all suddenly wrong or are you going to continue to believe and see that the sky is blue?

 

[HempKat]

Personally the psychic impression thing to me makes alot of sense. It would explain the ethereal nature ghosts are said to have, it would explain why some people see these things and some don't. It would even explain why two people experience something but not the exact same thing and yet why others might percieve the exact same thing (people experiencing something different have a greater or lesser ability to pick up psychic impressions). It would explain why we have no means of testing for it since if we don't even fully understand what it is how could we possibly design a machine to test for it?

We do know enough about the human mind to know that we only understand a very small bit of what it's capable of. There are just far too many who feel they have experienced one form of psychic event or another to dismiss it as something that has no merit. It may not be anything like people want to make it in sci-fi or fantasy but I certainly think there is enough to feel that there is something to it that maybe one day we can figure it out and have a better understanding.

 

[waveguide]

i have no interest in debating or contributing to the thread topic myself as imo the crucial discernment each individual makes isn't edified in forum discussion or hearsay..

..this thread regularly appears in virtually every forum that retains users, and while in some cases it may be incidental discussion, i have also observed that this technique is routinely used by masons as data mining and in establishing rapport with potential.. resources.

as always, exercise caution when disclosing information online.

 

[lost in a sea]

you have "observed" that "masons" "data mine" by asking people about their opinion on the paranormal ??

seems unlikely that it would be masons doing it somehow, and what they gain by collecting data about peoples opinions on the paranormal is beyond me.. there are plenty of freaks on the internet though.. payed to be that way..

masons are dumb, servile and brainwashed as bad as the average eMpTy tV victim..

but government spies aren't..

 

[staypuff]

If you have nothing to contribute then why post lol ? The initial reason why the thread, was created was to see the amount of people that believe in the paranormal or not and even share some stories if they would like nothing more nothing less. U can lay off the hard drugs man im no mason on some quest to data mine info LOL...

 

[lost in a sea]

gotcha staypuff!!

now scuttle off back to the lodge and while your holding the grandmasters willy and getting flagellated you can tell them that the folks over at icmag wont give up our precious opinions on ghosts and stuff..

nice try,, i'm going to lie on the vote now..