I think other than a few people too, most people who have experiences don't WANT to be able to prove they're real. Because if they are real, and someone like you would say they're real? While other people would no longer think you needed a straight jacket (a good thing), you'd still have this "little" problem of having unwanted ___________ invading your privacy, your personal space, your life. Trust me, it's easier thinking (hoping) that you just have an active imagination...
What a second. What? I thought you said it WAS real. Whether or not you get something on tape you're still going to be dealing with it, no? I'm in the Kubick camp that horror movies are uplifting as they would be evidence of something beyond death. If you really see plates flying off shelves and crashing into walls and cats flying around the joint, time to celebrate I say.
I'll share another little story. Absolutely nothing supernatural, but maybe you'll get the point. When my oldest was about two, our family room was at the top of our second floor stairs (now her bedroom). Other than some of the experiences I have mentioned, nothing "natural" happened in the home that was out of the ordinary. One evening I was sitting on the couch typing away on my laptop, when I saw a shadow outside the door to the family room. I looked up, and after about a second, I saw this huge bat fly around the corner (up the last few stairs), toward the family room, then turn around and fly back down the stairs.I thought "holy CRAP!" and got up and shut the door to the stairs. I then tried not to think about it, and didn't tell my wife...as the For Sale sign would have been out the next morning. Weeks went by and nothing unusual happened. So after a while, I stopped thinking about it. Water under the bridge. Then one night, I went downstairs around 10pm to get a snack, when I got "buzzed" by a bat that was flying between the dining room and living room. I immediately thought about that night in the family room, then did what I needed to do to capture and get that bat out of our home. That was about 6-7 years and about 8-9 bats ago.
My point? That night in the family room, I saw a bat. I had never had an experience with one before, and it scared me. However, after shutting the door, and having several days pass, I started trying to talk myself into the idea that it might have been my imagination, or I might have thought I saw something that was just a big bug or ??? casting a shadow just right via it's position next to a hallway light, or ??? Thing is, I knew what I saw. Only I tried to trick myself into believing otherwise.
That's what I was getting at. If you see something you "know" can't be real/there (ghost, demon, ???), you'll look for any and every opportunity to have your world view/order preserved or restored. Because life is 1000% easier that way. It's when your beliefs and your world view/order is smashed into about 1,000 pieces that life gets hard. Also see: what would happen to Hoart Petterson if he had an experience that he could not easily explain away. Explanations that he knows aren't just trying to convince himself that he didn't just see a bat fly up the stairs, anyway.
amazing(ly ridiculous). joe isn't calling you close minded, but i am.
this i understand and agree with to an extent.ETA a question: jdogg, do you feel that everything within the universe must fall within the rules of logic or are there exceptions? i know you touched on it a bit, but i'd like to your thoughts on this.
We also each sniffed the same glue at the same time...then somehow came up with nearly identical stories being shared (at first) with third parties without first comparing notes.
We've had quite a few strange things happen in our house over the last few years. Nothing mind-blowing and we've discovered logical reasons for some of them. For others, not so much. I'm content to just say "Huh, that's really strange," but my wife is, and always has been, the type to believe in spirits, psychics, and other supernatural stuff. If there's no explanation for something she tends to jump straight to ghosts. I usually just smile and nod when she starts in about it.
I just saw something that appeared three-dimensional that didn't cast a shadow that I couldn't explain. I wasn't just about to fall asleep. I hadn't fallen asleep and just woken up. I had no alcohol (2-3 drinks per YEAR) or drugs (never tried anything stronger than caffeine) in my system. It was simply an interesting experience.
As for that "demon car" story that was getting ridiculed in the other thread...about the closest I've come to seeing something which kind of illustrates what I was going through at that period of my life is the early scenes from the movie "Exorcism of Emily Rose" when the girl was off at college and she was having students' faces change into something that was NOT the people themselves...but something "temporarily" occupying their body. I'd be walking down Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis as one of many examples, and I'd have one of those "Highlander" moments, where I immediately, for no reason (whether alone, on a date, with a group of friends, whatever) would have my hearing change (feel the change in air pressure around me) and immediately be compelled to look in a particular direction...and when I looked, there was "evil" staring back at me. Let me tell you, it's not just other people judging your sanity when reading those types of experiences! I seriously wondered whether I was losing my mind. The interesting thing, however, is that one of my professors on-campus was experiencing very similar things at the same time, and one of my former girlfriends ended up transferring from the school after having similar experiences her freshman year. Only none of us knew about the others' experiences until well after college...because we didn't talk about it much (for fear of not wanting people to think we were nuts).
Think about what would be required to capture evidence that skeptics would be forced to at least admit that they had no easy explanation for...much less have them proclaim it as "truth." You really think my crappy little webcam on my laptop could capture said evidence? No...to get to the type of evidence that Hoart is requiring? Some major time/bucks on some major equipment would be necessary.
