Have you ever had a paranormal experience?

Yes. Marriage. Other than that. No.

I’m not sure.

I used to live in an apartment in an old building in a neighborhood that some people say is the most haunted neighborhood in my city. Yeah, whatevs.
Before I lived in the apartment, a friend lived there. She came home more than once to her blowdryer being on. How do you leave a blowdryer on? After she moved out and I moved in, I woke up in the middle of the night to running water- the bathroom sink was on full blast. Also, I had a gentleman caller spend the night, and the next morning he said when he came back from the bathroom at night he swore he saw me sitting up in bed, but when he tried to talk to me he realized I was laying down, sound asleep.

So, who knows. I don’t believe in ghosts, etc, but I don’t not believe.

Not yet but I’d like to have one. I still have time before I give up my own ghost.

Is that like abby normal?

I really think that my house is haunted. These past two years if I’m home alone with all of the televisions turned off, etc – I swear I can sometimes hear a woman sobbing really quietly. It is the most disturbing thing. Also my house “settles” a lot, which I guess is the reason I think my door closes and opens by itself.
So freaking creepy.

When I was younger (maybe 10–12 yrs old) my family lived in a very big, very old farmhouse. It was beautiful. Hidden doors everywhere, scary spiral staircases, two ways in and out of every room. It was pretty amazing. Eventually though, things got a bit scary for me. I would hear voices. I would smell strange things (tobacco smoke). A few times I seen doors slam shut and lock. And many times a very strange feeling would come over me. It was like a chill that ran through my body and gave me goosebumps. I was young so I figured I was just being a paranoid little girl but years after moving out of that house my mother told me of her strange experiences also. Apparently she had seen and heard many of the things I had. Neither of us were “believers” before living in that house. But now, we are pretty confident that what we experienced in that house was some sort of paranormal activity. Recently we discovered that the house used to be a funeral parlor many many years ago. Very creepy.

I wish.

no

No, I have not. Like I always say, I find it interesting, but I’ve never actually experienced it. I think a lot of so-called paranormal experiences have other explanations. I also think some of them simply don’t have any explanation. The novel I’m writing right now deals with the paranormal…

Yes…...dozens. But the truth of the matter is that all those “strange evil” things are not things that should be sought, courted, played with etc…because the energy stays with you and may be detrimental to your life.

I’ve only had one distressing thing happen to me….but I will say that I have had dozens of good paranormal experiences…..positive ones that did not involve ghosts, demons or hauntings. I’ve never gotten the point of that….because basically you are messing with low level entities that you are inviting in. Low level entities lurk in the astral…and can wreak havoc. When this happens, you need to have a house clearing. That is, you have to cleanse the house with prayer and sage and send the entity away. This usually works. Someone above wrote about hearing a “sobbing woman” and that may mean that she is trapped still between this plane and the higher plane and needs to be guided there. It can be disturbing if you are living in a house that has those energies, but they can be shifted.

It’s interesting that because of the media….people assume that paranormal means hauntings, demons, things that go bump in the night….not so.

Positive paranormal experiences…..? Remembering past lives, having something miraculous happen….seeing UFO’s….or meeting someone that changed your life….dreams that came true…..finding something that you thought you had lost forever….being led to a certain street and finding a house that you had been looking for…

To me, the haunting stuff….aka “Blair Witch” stuff…is really interesting, but it does not enhance your life in any way…except for a thrill. Levitating Buddhist monks in Nepal…now that’s a paranormal experience that comes out of practices that enhance your inner well being. Going to Lourdes and immersing yourself in a pool of water and being cured of cancer….that’s a paranormal experience that leads to good. Meeting a stranger in a cafe who gives you amazing information and when you turn to thank them, they have disappeared….that’s paranormal in the positive.

Paranormal means “secondary (different) to the normal”. So that means anything that happens that is outside the basic reality we experience….and that isn’t all Halloween stuff.

I guess I feel there is enough in life to haunt us, possess us and frighten the beejeebies out of us….why go looking for more bad stuff? If you want to see paranormal and incorporate it into your daily life….positively…start reading about positive paranormal stuff. Don’t dwell on the negative. If your house is “haunted” get it cleansed as its important for you to have a clear space to live and work in…..truly.

Many years ago, when I first started investigating the positive paranormal and was about your age I read the books of Ruth Montgomery. That started me on a journey that continues to this day. (Not that I am ancient…I just feel that way.) But now there are millions of books available on every subject imaginable.

Life is too short to have some silly demonic trickster in your house. It’s not a game to be messed with.

If what people are looking for is “fright” and adrenaline….just watch the news…:)

Sometimes when I’m about to fall asleep I hear something I call the demon voice, even though it’s all kinds of sounds. It can be deep voices or shrill voices, random loud noises, and the only thing that’s constant is that it’s nothing intelligible and always really freaking loud. I’ve wondered if my brain is just giving me auditory hallucinations when I’m really tired sometimes. I keep getting visions of this crawling, zombie-like creature dressed in rags that wants to scratch me up with its claws. I don’t think any of this stuff counts as an experience, and I definitely don’t think it’s proof of anything paranormal; I probably just have a really active imagination. It’s just so recurring that it really freaks me out.

No, and neither have you.

Probably.

Yeah, I’ve had a few. These experiences got me into paranormal investigation.

The one that convinced me was when I got touched. I was a teacher’s aide at a preschool and we were doing a spring cleaning day with the parents. I was standing in the middle of the room, leaning over a bookcase, no one or nothing around in my immediate area.

There was a little boy wandering around, so when I felt fingers brush across the back of my leg, I turned my head to look, expecting to see him. There was no one there, and realizing this, I looked around in alarm. The little boy was across the room and there was no one around me.

I later asked a teacher if the place was haunted and she said that it was supposed to be. That, amazingly enough, it had been built on a Native American burial ground – they found human remains when expanding the back playground fence a couple of earlier, had to stop digging, and bring in an archaeologist and anthropologist.

Creepy!

(Reprinted from this thread)

No. I’ve never had anything happen to me that couldn’t be explained by either high school science education or high school psychology. That’s why I dont belive in: Ghosts, UFOs, werewolves, god, santa claus, conciousness/mind being something outside of physics and chemistry, government conspiracies, one true love, crystals, astral healing etc.

My mother claims she saw ball lightning frequently as a child, but that’s about as close as it gets.

I however do belive firmly in math, statistics and facing up to what your reason tells you is true (no matter what society (or goofballs) tries to imbue your head with).

It would be awesome to have something happen to me that couldn’t be reasonably explained, but 27 years has not given me anything to work with at all, which i find kind of sad. I guess i will have to be content with every day mysteries such as why my socks never pair up.

I have no beef with people not being able to find scientific explanations for weird phenomena. And I would not deny that it is possible that occasionally things happen that our current knowledge of the universe cannot explain. This is not so inconceivable. There are plenty of things nobody understands yet. Quantum physics comes to mind as a good example.
But when people relate their “paranormal” experiences, their reasoning often goes something like this.

Observation: Something happened that I don’t understand.
Conclusion: MAGIC.

And that makes me a bit frustrated.

Disappointingly, no one has ever had a paranormal experience, unless it was an internal hallucinatory experience.

There is no paranormal, sorry.

@fyrius
I agree wholeheartedly, and the sad thing is that “conclusion: MAGIC.” isn’t really a conclusion at all, but just a poor excuse not to investigate the cause further.

Saying “magic” or “paranormal” doesn’t really add to anyones understanding of anything, it’s just giving up on trying to find a reasonable explanation.

@Fyrius @pdworkin @nisse I mostly agree with you guys, but how do you (or not you, but people actually explain some of the things people have claimed to see, like water being turned on in the middle of the night or seeing a door lock itself?—I’m not saying I necessarily think the answer is magic/ghosts, I just don’t know what it is…

@nisse
It gets sadder still. It would be relatively desirable if it would stop at “it’s magic so I can’t understand it.” But it is never just magic, it’s always a highly specific kind of magic. Ghosts, aliens, monsters, angels, demons, deities. Whenever people jump to magical conclusions, it’s almost always a conclusion they find very intuitively sensible but that actually comprises a complex collection of assumptions they just take for granted without a second (or even a first) thought.

They’re moon spectres. They’re restless spirits of dead native American warriors. They’ve come back from the other side (of course there’s an “other side”) when a medicine man cursed this house. They’re at their most powerful during a full moon while Jupiter is rising. Don’t use a crucifix, it’ll only make them angry. You can ward them off with a piece of polished amirite in the shape of a butt plug.

And that brings me to a question that is not asked nearly enough in this world: How do you know that?

@Likeradar
I don’t.
The main point I’m trying to make here is that it’s better not to have an explanation than to resort to magical thinking.
Furthermore, it is not the sceptic’s job to provide an alternative explanation. If there is no immediately visible alternate explanation, that does not mean MAGIC is right.

If I’d want to give it a serious effort, I’d need more specific information than the people involved can probably give me so many years later, and quite possibly a lot of expertise I don’t have, for example about how taps and blow dryers work, and about plumbing and electricity networks.

Water being turned on in the middle of the night, plausible explanations:
– Someone else turned it on and then left.
– The person turned it on themself and then forgot.
– It wasn’t really turned on and the person is lying or exaggerating to amplify a good story.
– The person turned the water on themselves and is now amplifying a good story.
– The person dreamt the water was on and is now confusing his dream with reality
– Leaky faucet that broke just that night.

Door locking itself, plausible explanations:
– Someone else locked it and then left.
– The person locked it themself and then forgot.
– It wasn’t really locked and the person is lying or exaggerating to amplify a good story.
– The person locked themselves and is now amplifying a good story.
– The person dreamt the door was locked and is now confusing his dream with reality
– Electric door lock.

The point is as long as the extraordinary claim is less probable than the probability that the person is lying (or decieving himself) you shouldn’t be willing to accept it.

I think I used to live in a haunted house. When I was 6 years old I remember how I couldn’t go down stairs because something “invisible” kept me from going down, like some kind of force that wouldnt let me go down.. I can remember those times very well, I even remember asking my mother to walk down the stairs with me because the invisible thing only came when I was alone.. Of course trough time I always believed that these events were just “children imagination” or perhaps dreams.. the thing is that about 2 years ago I talked to my father and told him about these strange experiences I would have while we lived in that old house, and my father actually surprised me by tell me that, he and my mother would wake up every single night to check what the hell was going on downstairs, he said they would hear like there were people having a party downstars, like with music and people chatting and all.. so..perhaps it wasnt’t just my imagination..=)