Paranormal.

[dwchang]

Not really a ghost story or UFO related but crazy non-the-less:

They say twins have a linked mind (ESP, what ever you want to call it). In school people would come up to me and my brother and ask if they punched one of us, would the other feel it? lol... I was never punched cause everyone liked my brother and didn't want to take the risk other then just kidding around about it, when we were younger my brother used to have night terrors a lot. When he first started having them, it would wake me up all the time and I would go to his room to help calm him down. After a certain point I didn't wake up at all and just slept through them. But I did wake up... I used to get up (sleep walk) a few minutes before he would and stand next to his door and wait. then he would have an episode and after he was done, I would go back to sleep and not remember it. The only way I knew about it is when my mom told me the next day.

Joey the dog had night terrors? That sucks.

[EvaFan]

My dads first kid from his first marriage died in its sleep, I think 7 months old. Doctors back then couldn't figure out why. Today were guessing it was a heart failure, the heart just stopped or something. The same thing happened to my uncle's child 4 months old. My fear is that it's in the gene pool somewhere which means it might happen to one of mine.

Anyway weeks after the baby died whenever he passed that room in the hallway he could hear the baby crying at night. He ended up tearing that room apart, the walls, the floor, everything damn near went insane then joined the military to get his life straightened out after going through a divorce.

When I was 6 I had a SEVERE phobia of spiders to the point of schizophrenia. I still do though not as bad as then. I had nightmares, would see dark spider looking figures running across the blankets, floors when the lights were off, would see moving spider webs in the air. I remember screaming a few times just to get my mom to walk me to the bathroom. Then she bought me a nightlight and slowly got past that problem. Still got the phobia though.

I don't believe in the paranormal but I do believe in psychosis. A state of mind that you set for yourself voluntarily or involuntarily to the point of perfectly explainable events become the paranormal, or percept things through the senses that aren't actually present.

I do remember seeing something that is really hard to explain though (Never really did explain it)... Back when I lived in Kansas there was a park in our neighborhood. I was walking home with some friends after going to Braum's for ice cream. Crane Park was abandoned around 9:00 cause curfew was 10 there cept during the summer. Here's some google map Pics:


In the park there are swings (The big red circle), and behind those are animal like things placed on top of springs that rock back and forth like a solo seesaw (The two smaller circles). At the very front an actual seesaw. It was just a normal night. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary night. Me and 2 friends were walking down that sidewalk and we saw both of the animal seesaws springing back and forth without anyone on them. THERE WAS NO WIND! I remember saying vividly that there was no wind. Even the swings weren't moving. So we stood there arguing over who was to go and inspect it then looked over and when we looked back over at some point only the one on the right was now springing back and forth by itself (They were moving back and forth pretty damn fast originally but now only that one was, even if there was wind it wouldn’t of been strong enough to do that, I remember thinking this as well). We talked Dan into going over there. For a few moments he just stood there peering around it then he touched it and it slowly stopped rocking back and forth and went into resting position. After that we walked to my house freaked the hell out. Never really told anyone about this either. Weirdest thing I ever seen.

[ZephyrStar]

AWESOME stuff guys.

I have a few things to add, though these are more scientific than anything, but just the idea and scale of some of them are a mindfsk. Alright, so everybody's heard of the big bang theory, and has probably heard the term "quantum entanglement" thrown around. What does quantum entanglement mean exactly? In layman's terms it means that two particles that are "entangled" can be light years apart but still communicate with each other somehow. Like if I have a photon with a certain spin on it, and it's entangled with another one halfway across the universe, if I flip the spin on one, instantaneously the spin on the other one would flip to match.

So what? Well, if all the matter in the universe sprang from a central event, that everything we know and feel and see and touch and hear was at one point part of the same thing. The theory is that EVERYTHING IN EXISTENCE is entangled, and that this may be the basis for how precognition and other psychic abilities work (if they exist). This could also even support the idea of telekinesis. If thought can somehow affect the quantum states of enough particles, could you make the object those particles are made from change?

There are several ongoing experiments to find out if this is the case, and so far there are interesting results. I remember hearing about one researcher who got a huge group of anonymous people together online to focus all their attention for the period of like 15 minutes on a particular target, I think it was a body of water, to try and change the pH of the water with their intention. There have also been experiments run with 'random' number generators that change their outputs if they are observed by a person directly.

(And on the subject of the big bang, most people visualize a ginormous explosion taking place at some central point. The "new" model of the big bang says that the universe is already as "big" as it is going to get, but that matter sprang up everywhere in the universe all at once. This is supported by the idea that everything in the observable universe is moving away from everything else at an exponentially increasing speed.)

(Another neat article I read on slashdot a while back said something to the effect that a huge area of the universe was discovered moving in a particular direction much faster than normal, and that the only thing that could account for this would either be LOTS of dark matter or dark energy, or a super huge object outside of the known universe O_O;)

[Ileia]

Haha, that reminds me. When I was flying back from Vegas I was browsing through the Sky Mall catalog and they had a "telekinesis obstacle course" advertised in there. Wonder if I can find it...


Oh, hey, yeah. I want this for Christmas.

http://www.skymall.com/shopping/detail. ... -102962692

[godix]

Not that it's that important, or relevant to the thread, but I'm absolutely convinced current science is wrong on how the universe works. We're close enough for most purposes, but we're still missing something fundamental. Kind of like how Newtonian physics is close enough for most purposes, enough so we still use it in many cases, but it's still wrong. Once Einstein realized that our understand of physics changed entirely. A couple reasons I believe that's gonna happen again -

Our current theories say there has to be X amount of matter/energy for galaxies to work as we observe them working. We can't find X amount. So we call the theoretical required amount we can't find 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. That would be fine if it were a reasonably small percent, we can't observe everything after all, but these days they're claiming that 95% of the universe is dark. Since theoretical predictions expect twenty times more mass/energy than we can find, I think it's time to question the theories.

Another example, the Pioneer anomaly. The brief overview is that four different spacecraft have very small unexplained differences in velocity from what theory predicts. They are small enough, and we have few spacecraft far enough from the sun to detect this, that we can't be sure the effect is real or what causes it. However it is possible that there is a flaw in our theories, and this is one possibility being actively explored. Just because the detected effect is small doesn't mean the explanation can't revolutionize physics, after all Einstein was proved right by a relatively small discrepancy between Mercury's motion and Newtonian predictions.

Of course there's also the entire attempt to get Einsteinium physics and Quantum physics to work together nicely. Lord knows what physics will be like once that elephant in the room is solved.

So basically, before you start getting too much into your pseudo-scientific explanations it might be a good idea to remember the science isn't proven, can change, and given the unknowns scientist still are working on probably will change.

[Angelyco]

The house I lived in when I was about 6 - 12 yrs old was haunted. No weird noises or things getting moved around or anything, but I saw two ghosts. Totally serious.

Once, I woke up in the middle of the night, don't remember what woke me up, but the hallway light was on, as it always was at that time because I was afraid of the dark. From my bed I could see out into the hallway and into the living room. I saw this little girl with long blond hair standing in the hallway. She smiled and leaned sideways a bit and waved at me. I could see through her. I remember that I wasn't scared, though.

The other time was a few years later and it scared the freaking hell out of me. I was finally old enough that I was sleeping with my bedroom door shut and all the lights off. I was just lying in bed waiting to fall asleep when I saw my closet door open, a man stepped forward and looked at me for a few moments, then stepped back into the closet and the door shut. I got mad, thinking it was my older brother playing a joke on me, so I was yelling and turned on the light and opened the door. Nothing there. My brother was downstairs the whole time.

I think I had tried to tell my mom about these at one time but she has really bad ADD and forgot all about it, if she was paying attention at all in the first place.

[ZephyrStar]

So basically, before you start getting too much into your pseudo-scientific explanations it might be a good idea to remember the science isn't proven, can change, and given the unknowns scientist still are working on probably will change.

I absolutely agree with you. I think it is a bit of a stretch for us to still be trying to make Newtonian physics still apply. The standard model seems to be an attempt to tie everything together, but I don't think it's going to end up working in the end. I guess we'll see what the LHC gives us on that. Science has plenty of critical minds, but most of the time they only see what they want to see.

[ZephyrStar]

The house I lived in when I was about 6 - 12 yrs old was haunted. No weird noises or things getting moved around or anything, but I saw two ghosts. Totally serious.

Once, I woke up in the middle of the night, don't remember what woke me up, but the hallway light was on, as it always was at that time because I was afraid of the dark. From my bed I could see out into the hallway and into the living room. I saw this little girl with long blond hair standing in the hallway. She smiled and leaned sideways a bit and waved at me. I could see through her. I remember that I wasn't scared, though.

The other time was a few years later and it scared the freaking hell out of me. I was finally old enough that I was sleeping with my bedroom door shut and all the lights off. I was just lying in bed waiting to fall asleep when I saw my closet door open, a man stepped forward and looked at me for a few moments, then stepped back into the closet and the door shut. I got mad, thinking it was my older brother playing a joke on me, so I was yelling and turned on the light and opened the door. Nothing there. My brother was downstairs the whole time.

I think I had tried to tell my mom about these at one time but she has really bad ADD and forgot all about it, if she was paying attention at all in the first place.

That's pretty wild stuff o_O

[JaddziaDax]

I don't have any good ghost stories... I haven't had any experience with them... I know I have sometimes thought I might have felt a "presence" but I'm not sure to write it off as my own imagination, or an actual event. However I've never had objects move/appear at random, or actually heard/seen anything.

I used to have a friend who loved looking up "ghost pictures"... It was fun looking at them with her, because a lot of times in the images people would see a piece of dust out of focus in the picture and say it was a ghost... "orbs" they call them. All of the "orb" pictures I've ever seen were actually out of focus dust pieces caught in a flash, in a dimly lit area. A lot of times she would also mistake photoshops for the real thing >.< even when it said it was fake in the caption XD.

I find the whole idea fascinating, but I don't know if I actually believe in ghosts - my rational mind says "no", while my curious mind says "it's always possible - because not everything can be explained.. yet".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've seen what I think were "unexplained lights in the sky" though... However, I've never seen any "flying saucers" or other actual objects other than random strange lights. But then again a trip to Devils Tower might have put my mind into a state thinking it was aliens. Not to mention the fact I was around 15 when it happened.

My dad and my sister and I used to take road/camping trips in the summer back when I was in high school, Yellow Stone, Mt Crazy Horse, Devils Tower, Mt Rushmore, etc.

Devils Tower is really amazing though. It's a volcano. It's core solidified, and then rain/wind eroded the outside of the mountain over several years, so all you can see of it is one gigantic stone core sticking out of the ground. It is really cool.

Well, a certain Mr Spielberg made a film using this geological phenomenon as a setting. The local KOA just so happened to do a "screening" of said film every night we stayed there. They would project it on to the wall of their office building so you could watch the movie and see the actual tower in the background. It was really neat.

On the way home from this specific trip, somewhere in Nevada, we stopped at a campground for the night. My sister and I wanted to take a walk or something so we set off and wandered around the place. I don't remember the exact circumstances but I do remember, around dusk, looking up at the sky, above the horizon to see this really bright light hovering. I thought it was a star at first - but it was brighter than any star I'd seen. It stayed there for a second and then quickly dropped to the horizon.

The easy explanation is that it was an airplane, but it seemed brighter than any airplane lights I'd ever seen, and plane lights usually blink - this was a very steady light, no real twinkle or flashing of any kind. In truth it could have been a shooting star/space trash falling from the sky, but it was still a rather neat experience that scared the crap out of me. XD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The only other thing I can think of is this: My sister's daughter was born about a year or so after my grandmother died - both my niece and grandmother were born in November, and well when she was a baby - she looked almost EXACTLY like a baby version of my grandmother. She looks more like a clone of my sister now, but it used to kind of freak me out.

[ZephyrStar]

That specific geological location is supposed to be pretty popular for UFO sightings.

My brother saw something he couldn't identify and told me about, he was at a restaurant, sitting outside, and there was a storm front with really towering clouds moving in. The coulds had a very black edge, and against this he saw a light. He described it as a sphere, with some glow to it, but not very brightly lit, and that it was pacing the edge of the storm as the storm moved in. He said that it didn't flicker or move, except along with the cloud, then it just faded out.

The most logical solution would be ball lightning or a balloon of some kind, but he clearly states that it simply vanished, and that it was pretty low considering it was under the cloud cover. He also looked up ball lightning to see what it actually looks like, and said that if it was, it wasn't like anything he had looked up. It didn't flicker at all, just a steady glow. I guess I can't speak for him since I didn't see it, but this was his description.