Well since it was Holloween and usually creepy experiences come to light. I thought it would be a great topic to discuss. Have you had any experiences with the other kind? Paranormal kind? Do you believe in this at all?

If you haven't, would you like to experience seeing or having any paranormal experience whatsover?

Lastly, do you believe the quote I used in the topic title: "if you don't see them, they don't see you?" I forgot where I heard this but I'd like to think it's true. That way, if we co-exist with ghosts in our houses, we won't be bothered as long as we don't see them. :)

Personally, I dont think supernatural beings of any kind exist...I mean, the name says it all...supernatural...if they did exist they wouldnt be beyond the capabilities of nature, which is basically what the name implies...

Having said that, it would be nice to be able to see a few ghosts...specifically my grandad...I always liked him and it was a real shame when he passed away...he was great to talk to when it came to sport, especially football...so to see him again would be great...

Lastly, that quote is stupid for more than one reason...first of all, as Im of the belief that supernatural beings dont exist, it really defeats the point of the quote there...but also, there are a number of times when you dont see something, yet that something can see you quite clearly...and vice versa...thats the whole point of camoflage and stuff like that...

I'm different to Neo, in that I believe they do exist, but my reason is that I like to think my Mom is watching over me, since i never got to know her (she died when i was very young).

though i have never had any experience with paranormal activities, i do believe it would be cool to have one, like ghost busters :lol:

as for the qoute I believe that is a false statement, whether or not u can't see them, i believe they can see u clearly, would make the job of guardian angels easier wouldn't u agree?

Nah, I don't believe in ghosts, poltergeists, or whatever else you want to call them. Once you die, your soul goes to Heaven or to Hell; it doesn't stay here in this world.

As for the quote, do you ever watch Red vs. Blue? Because I don't know if it's used elsewhere, but I know it's used there.

Tucker: Caboose! Get behind the rock, they can still see you!

Caboose: They can't see me! I can't see them!

Tucker: That's because you're facing the rock.

I'd really like it if supernatural beings existed. I think that it would make the world a lot more interesting. The proof of this is that humans have created all sorts of myths and legends (and sightings) to spice up their lives. It's fun to be a little afraid at times, and wonder.
But even though I'd prefer it, I don't believe in them. Once, I woke up in the middle of the night and had an "afterimage" of some sort of being standing next to me. It didn't disappear, so I put my hand through it and turned on the light quickly. It was gone. That was one of the scariest moments of my life. I've had lots of "afterimages" and "floating objects" for 10-15 seconds after I wake up since, so now I'm a little more familiar with it and know that they're just creations of my mind coming out of a sleep state. It's always a little bit unsettling when it happens, but I always know what it is now. I'm a scientist, and an atheist (as many or most scientists are). It's not by preference, but I base things off of my experience and understanding and both lead me to be skeptical of such things.

i do believe things like that happens, some people see them and turn into them super freeky/crazy people (i bet).
but i do believe this stuff is around. i never had an experience (specialy not my house but i do like to think my dead cat is around he was da coolest!)

but im not worried about it, i do believe it's somehow possible.

Well... im not to sure but I have had some experiances.....

I use to live in the 2 story house in WV and it had to be haunted or something... everyone in my family use to hear thier names being called from other rooms and like clockwork every 3 weeks a snake would find its way in and trap itself on the staireway... plus a few times birds would fly into the windows and kill themselfs.... god i hated that place.... but that was like 7 years ago....

I hate to be sound sceptical, but I don't think that birds flying into windows and snakes coming into the house is exactly proof of paranormal activity. It sounds more like you just live in a more rural environment.

full of retarted birds XD i saw a TINY bird get lost in a 30-40 MPH gust of wind and smashed into a car XD (i got nained in the head by a a piece of mulch -_-..and an achorne)


anyways
i do believe i have seen some weird things (in other houses) but my house i guess would be safe considering my house beofe built was a vaccant lot and no one has lived in it. (and normally hauntings are in houses with alot of history)

well...actually no... we lived in the city.... you know and we had like 3 feet of grass that was our front yard.... we where the only people that got snakes and birds crashing through our windows...

that also the place were I developed my Arachnophobia, when i woke up and ther was like 4 black widows in my room, 1 of which was on my arm... ever since then i freak out when i see spiders... i tell you that place was cursed...

yes, i see that can could be a super natural place but
3 feet of grass, you are literaly in a Jungle (the birds are just dumb! it happens alot) snakes..they love the 3 feet grass, so do spiders. and your house just had bad protection from animals (i get 50 lady bugs in my house each year and have no clue how they get there!)

also i wont be surprized if you had plenty of mice :D



but im also looking in the view of someone who doesnt believe in ghosts, but that 3 foot grass has a HUGE part in those animals (but the birds are still stupid and was no effect from the 3 foot grass)

Im not talking about 3 feet high grass... in mean my yard was only 3 feet long... and the rest was concreat....

XDDDDDD

ohhhh

yeah then something is wrong
but also snakes like to bake themselves on ashfault and concreat since it gets really warm and them poor bastards are cold blooded

true.... but then we shouldent be the only ones with that problem

and then there is the whole our names being called from empty rooms, it happened once when everyone was eating dinner... me, my brother and my Mom heard it and my sister and Dad did not... at first we though someone broke in, but then why would they call our names out and there was no one in the landry room where we heard it come from.....

I know that house was an old house and that other people lived in it before us but i dont know if anyone had ever died in there... but i always thought it was haunted...

Mass halucination due to an undetectable gas leak?

I don't know. All I know is it doesn't really sound as something I'd automatically mark down to paranormal activity.

I believe in them...

Simply because of an incident that happened when I went to my first church camp several years back...

Pretty freaky to me.

I want to go live in your old house. I love snakes.
I'd set up a video recorder in the laundry room, catch some paranormal activity, and sell it to the Fox network.
"They'll buy anything." -Bart Simpson

you know..... that makes me wonder what the incident was.....

*Lights a camp fire and pulls out a flashlight*

no! they will make a reality show out what you send them (that be by far the dumbest show ever..like the rest of the reality shows these days)

but yes! TELL US THE STORY! sounds good!



oh, i also use things fron the 6th scene alot XD like when it suddenly gets super cold (well...about 5 degrees cooler) and im inside a house. as well as the tingly thing down your spine (i just pass that off since my body is messed up phisicly)

It's probably too late already. I've seen a few shows like this just from the televisions that are on in the gym at my school. Some woman walking around a house with a camera following her and saying she feels a "presence" every once in a while. Ridiculous. There are pictures, and movies of some of the craziest and most unlikely things you could imagine. You'd think if ghosts were real we'd have at least a few reliable ones by now, with security and personal cameras nearly everywhere nowadays. Like I said, I'm not biased against this stuff, in fact I wish such things were real, but I can't find a reason to believe in them.

Wow that's the exact same explanation about people who get abducted by aliens. At least that's what the psychologists on the documentary I've seen, said. Fascinating. I think you're very brave to touch the white thingie. I would be scared shitless. >_>

I find the skeptics amusing. I mean yes they might just be our imaginations going wild but I don't see the reason why people would make it up. There are actually quite a number of people I know who have professed to me they've seen things yet they refuse to share because they don't want to make a fuss about it. Because if you fuss about them, they sort of get attracted to you. Or something like that. It's as if they're still alive. Actually it makes sense that they stay for their unfinished businesses and feel or act as if they were still alive.

In fact, just like what redeye mentioned, I had similar experience when I was talking about the ghosts my uni peers say they see. Suddenly I had that cold feeling and she tells us, some came closer but not to worry because they mean no harm. Who knows... she could have made that up but I felt that cold feeling down my spine and didn't tell here about it. I'm not that much of a believer yet but there are things I've experience that makes me believe otherwise at times. Things I never even asked so nooooo I don't want to invite them, they just simply come to me.

Venom, do tell your experience!

Actually it was black. I sat up in my bed and looked into my dark room and it was about two feet in front of me. The (crappy) attached image can give you an idea.

At first I thought that I was dreaming, but then I realized that I wasn't and I got scared. I sat there for a moment and it didn't move so I swiped at it hard, fully expecting to hit it, but my hand didn't connect with anything, and I sort of fell over. On the way back up I quickly switched my bedside lamp on and the room was empty. At the time I was convinced it was real, but now I have a different perspective.

One thing that clued me in to it not being real was that I thought about the eyes. When it happened, I was sure that it had eyes, and I thought that I could see them. But now when I think back on it, I realize that it didn't actually have eyes, rather my mind was filling in a gap and telling me that it had eyes, so I only thought that I saw them. It's like when you're in a dream and "know" that you live on the moon. Or "know" that a sweater in a dream is red. But of course it's not really.

These things still happen to me, but it hasn't been a human (or alien) like shape since. Sometimes it will be just a box shape, or a ball, or the ceiling will look distorded when I wake up. Some object from the room will be floating in front of my face for example, and I can put my hand through it. I know that I'm awake, and I know that it's because my mind is still coming out of the sleep state in which it was creating such images in my dreams. After 10-15 seconds they fade away and I'm fully awake. And I never hallucinate during the day. That's how I know that what I saw that time wasn't real. That time it just happened to be in the shape of a being. I don't believe I actually had any sort of an encounter.

What you're saying does make sense. And like I said this was the same explanation the psychologists used. You're having a sleeping disorder where you are in between sleeping and waking, which explains why you are able to fill those so called gaps. So yes, you made a good justification of why this is happening.

But I'm going to stretch the topic a bit because this is still part of the paranormal, I think. Concerning aliens or better yet, these visions that our mind simply make up. How is it possible that people come up with the same descriptions of things they've seen? I'm talking about the alien abductions again btw. Some believers mention how the accounts of those abducted are almost similar. They see the same figure (you know how aliens are described), then they see this light that take them to a supposed space ship where they are brought to an even more gruesome figure.

Yes I agree their minds could have just made them up but my question is how come they're all too similar? Don't say I'm naive, as this is probably due to the media's portrayal of aliens but aren't we still suppose to have different interpretations of things and therefore, our imaginations should also form different figures and not the same as others? How is this possible then? This goes the same for ghosts yet when those who say they really have the gift, say otherwise. I'd like to elaborate on this but let's talk about the sleep disorder first.

Im moving this to the debate corner because thats what its becoming...

First to address Elza's questions...Just because people have different perceptions on things, doesnt mean that they cant all say something the same...and it also doesnt mean that perceptions cant be modified by outside sources...this is why advertising and the media is such a powerful tool...The answer to your question is that because we've never actually proven they exist, we dont really know what they look like...the same goes for aliens...

Our brains basically work like a filing system...In order to identify something later, you need to store previous information in memory...but in order to do that, we need previous information to start with...so, if we dont know what something looks like, how can we identify it at some future time?

This is where media protrayals come into play...and Im not just talking about tv and stuff...I mean everything...books, plays, radio shows, everything that we take information from that has been man made...because, if you dont know about something, you go to one of these sources to find out about it...

Therefore, whenever someone has found out about ghosts, they have found out about them, not by seeing them in a natural environment, but in a reference of some sort...I mean, if we didnt know that one of these things was a supernatural occurance, how could we call it one?

Basically, what Ive said there, is that people identify from past experience, not from on the spot analysis...which means that if they "see" something, its not necessarily because they have seen it, but because their mind has pictured something it identifies as a supernatural being...

Now...

I have an interesting question about aliens...if they really have been here...why have we only ever heard scratchy stories about 1 or a small group of people who have managed to see these things? If that many people have seen them, why do we not have photos, or other evidence of their arrival etc? It really doesnt make sense to me why, if they had really made it here that many times, that some would have made a major appearance at a major city or something...

Now, as far as ghosts and stuff goes...the whole idea of a ghost is someone's perception...why would a person's personality take the forum of that person necessarily? And what really confuses me is why, if a person wanted to contact someone after they die, would they wank around with stupid "signs" like touching them on the shoulder and then disappearing or making the room cold and blowing out candles? Whats that gunna tell the person? Nothing...

Therefore, unless someone can come up with a valid reason for these to questions, then Im going to stay as a non-believer...

The whole lack of evidence issue aside, something that really makes me skeptical about aliens is how human they look. Even other species on earth, that evolved directly from one another don't look much like us. It flies in the face of all probabily that aliens would stand upright. How many earth species can you think of that stand on two legs besides man? Not many, and they move around in a way that is completely different from how we do. How about eyes? There are few things as complex as an eye. What are the chances of that physiological feature evolving separately on a completely different planet? And being located in an eye socket in a head. Just having a head like ours is totally improbable. Add a nose, a mouth, fingers, skin, and the numbers involved in the probability of these aliens existing must be getting close to the number of atoms in the universe. The fact that they look just like us is the greatest evidence for me that they were created by us. At least ghosts have an excuse to look like us.

I think lack of scientific evidence is ONE reason I don't believe in ghosts and aliens, but there is also no CONCRETE evidence for the existence for a God (at least, not that is widely accepted). Therefore, to deny the existence of such creatures purely on lack of evidence, for me, would be hypocritical (not so with the people who are skeptics, and also atheists).

So, another explanation is in order. As far as ghosts, as I've already stated, I believe the souls of the dearly departed go to either Heaven or Hell, and are not allowed to linger here in the living world. There are only a few cases in the Bible where the dead have appeared to the living, and all of these were rather unique instances, and even in these cases, the dead did not stay for any extended period of time.

This is not to say that I don't believe in ANY paranormal activity. While most of the events I believe to be either hoaxes, hallucinations, or misinterpretation of improbable, but not impossible, circumstances, I WILL admit that a small amount of these cases could be the result of true supernatural occurances. These I would probably mark down to the work of demons, as there are Biblical accounts of demons possessing people, and also accounts of angels walking amongst humans. And since demons are just fallen angels, it stands to reason that demons have this ability as well.

As for aliens...well, other than the ones sneaking in from Mexico, I don't believe in 'em. I think God made life an attribute unique to Earth, and if he'd put beings elsewhere, I think he would have told us. Granted, I'm not God, so I can't say for certain what he'd do, but I can make educated guesses.

I know all this is just based on my faith, and not evidence, but hey, I believe what I believe.

Haha, I somewhat agree with you but I heard an explanation about it. And although I said I agreed with you, I also perceive that maybe it's because they can't directly contact us. And because we don't have the same gift as those with stronger mental ability (it's probably called something else but somewhat close to mental ability. I heard this on another documentary but I can't remember!>_>), which help them see these ghosts. I'm trying to avoid supernatural because as someone said (you, I think?), if it's supernatural then as human beings we are incapable of wielding a power that is related to it.

So, what do the ghosts do? They try to make their presence known by making things fall over, making the room cold (which I think is because they're dead and their bodies are cold. at least that's what I think), etc. They give signs, things that will make us remember who they are. After all, how do we know the one haunting us is our dead aunt and not some random one? Then we go to those with the abilities, I was talking about, pyschics and the like.


Danimal, you made a good point about aliens looking like humans. I am not exactly certain if I believe in aliens either. Ghosts are a different story however. I have nothing more to say since Neo already answered my question about people having similar visions. I always thought that was questionable. Maybe I should look it up in a psychology book to be even more convinced.

While, I have qualms about believing everything the bible says, I agree to a certain degree that some of these cases are true (exorcisms and the like). The bible supports all of this, I know. ;)

I think there are some things that shouldn't require evidence, that's what faith is about. You believe something in you heart and no scientist can sway you against it... although it could be wrong.

What was that equation that predicted how many planets in the milky way galaxy that could support life?????? i cant remember who made but it made since to me... i think it came out to be about a cupple hundread thousand planets that could have some sorts of life......

i dont know about humanoid aliens but i do think there are other lifeforms in the universe..... think how bouring it would be if we were all alone... only us moving from planet to planet until the sun burns out and every thing becomes dark and cold....

You are assuming, of course, that this universe is going to last long enough for the sun to burn out. Or for us to spread to other planets, for that matter.

but of course..... damn people in the 50's, they said we would be living on the moon by now and have robot servents and flying cars.....

ne way... if god did make the universe i dont see why he would have made it so big if he dident want us to spread our wings and fly... but then again maybe we will be concourd by aliens and turned into slaves ......