Our personal experiences of the weird

by **Sokolova** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 9:00 am

Dreamsend said he was interested in our personal experiences of 'anomalous' things so I thought I'd start this as an ongoing place to put such things. [Here's something that happened to me. Before that moment I had experienced some odd or anomalous things but I was informally aligned towards skepticism and always pretty much thought such things were down to misperception, temporal lobe anomalies or other small malfunctions of the nervous system. This one, however, was different and made it impossible for me to dismiss it that way. <hr />  It was a while ago, when one of my kids was pretty small. We as a family were visiting the UK - before I moved here permanently. One day we went to an old cathedral city and were wandering around the church. It was a bright crisp cold day in December and the sun was streaming in the windows. There were a few other people there. I was pushing a baby-carriage with the baby inside. the other kids were playing about quietly somewhere in the central passage behind a screen. I was standing in one of the side-aisles talking to my partner. We were facing each other, and behind him was the side wall of the church, with large recessed niches where plaques and tombs were lodged. As we were talking I suddenly saw a small figure standing on top of one of the tombs as if preparing to jump off into the aisle. My first instantaneous, nano-second, thought was that it was my oldest son, aged about 8, who had climbed up there and was about to embarrass us all with his inappropriate behaviour. My mouth was actually beginning to form the first words of the universal Mom-speak 'Get down off there and behave!'. But even before the words had begun to escape, I realised I wasn't looking at my son. What I saw was, as best I can describe, a 'shadow of light'. A form of roughly human shape, but no details. Just a sort of light-colored sillhouette. Imagine soft sunlight on a sandy wall that suddenly takes on an independent shape and moves at will. Then, even as I was just realising what i was looking at, it moved. It stepped off the tomb, and landed on the floor of the aisle, seeming almost to stagger and correct itself the way people do when they take a too-big step. At the same time there was a noise, a kind of rattle, which I instinctively attributed to its 'foot' having hit a water pipe that was running along the wall just beneath the recessed tomb. Then as I watched - it vanished. It just wasn't there any more. The way things just can't be in our world. The whole event, from the moment I first saw it to the moment it vanished must have taken no more than a second or two, but the shock was numbing, and I could feel my rational western mind struggling to encompass the images forced on it through my retinas. While I was still struggling with this, my mouth opened and I blurted almost involuntarily to my partner "I think I just saw a ghost". But even while I was framing the words, my skeptical conditioning was asserting itself dutifully and dismissing the whole thing as a weird little optical illusion. And that is the way I would have left it - except for one thing. See, my partner (who was way more rational and skeptical than I was) proceeded to tell me this story (remember he was standing in front of me, facing me, with his back to the 'event'). He told me he had just heard a rattling noise himself and had turned to see what was making it. He was in time to see out of the side of his eye a person dressed in white who seemed suddenly not to be there any more. In the fraction of a second before I spoke he had assumed the person had moved into one of the side-chapels. So, you see, whatever it was, we two both experienced it. I saw it first on the recessed tomb, and heard the noise as it stepped down before vanishing. My partner heard the noise and turned to see what had made it, and just caught a glimpse of white before the thing vanished. Interestingly though, while I thought the sound was like the pipe rattling against the wall as something kicked it, he thought it sounded like dry leaves scuttling over the floor. Because we both saw and heard something, we couldn't just dismiss it instantaneously as we would otherwise have done. That was the start for me of some deep changes I think. I have thought too that the baby in the carriage must have seen it too, as she was facing the same way as me. I wonder what she thought in her baby mind?  <hr /> Anyhow, that's my small offering to get the ball rolling.I hope plenty of others will tell us their own experiences. Ellie

by **Dreams End** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 12:41 pm

Thanks, Ellie. Fascinating story, and coming from you who don't seem prone to flights of fancy, it is even more interesting. I was thinking about your posts about "hope" and "feeding the demons" in the comments section. I had a different take on all of that. Ever since I was a teenager, I've been struck by a predominant sense of meaninglessness to life. I was a huge fan of Samuel Beckett, for example, as the life around me seemed so "absurd." I couldn't connect with the petty day to day stuff most people seemed so wrapped up in. I "adopted" Christianity for awhile, but probably my internal beliefs would not have gotten me in the door at most Christian churches. And while I sometimes had a sense of "something moreness" during my time as a Christian, it was pretty abstract and didn't really require much suspension of disbelief. the fact that I could take so little of the scripture narratives literally (after rather close study) and the fact that I found the American church to be, for the most part, dominated by rather conformist forces or, worse, ideologies that emphasize "personal salvation" almost entirely so that the social gospels were almost ignored completely (following Paul and not Jesus, was how I put it) I just got frustrated and gave it up. Most of the discussion about paranormal forces on this site does tend toward the negative...which is one reason I started the "are you a good witch or a bad witch" thread, which devolved into something different than what I'd meant it to be. There were interesting and heated discussions, but the central question was supposed to be...hey, we see how these bad guys may be incorporating "demonic" forces into their world plans...isn't it possible that we can also take advantage of unseen forces for good? That's what prayer is, after all. But I find the Christian "metaphysical" view to be really limiting...I'm talking mainstream Christian, anyway. It really doesn't seem to have much to say about the weirdness that is interesting to me. So, yeah, we concentrate on the "shadow forces" but I find this, in some really twisted way, I guess, almost to be comforting. That is, I'd really like to believe that there is a reality above/within/parallel to??? ours and that somehow we might have access to that reality. It helps me separate from my rather usual mood of existential crisis. And it's not just that I "wish" there was this deeper reality...it's almost like I'm hardwired for it. And yet, I'm also very skeptical, so much so that my wife always insists I simply don't think any of this stuff is actually possible (like your ghost story.) This is not true, but I do often tend to look for more prosaic explanations first. (Unless you and your partner were dipping into some happy juice, I can't really think of one for your story!) So, in some really twisted way of my own bizarre logic, I find this site comforting...and not just because of occasional positive messages posted here, but because it suggests that I'm right...there is more to life than the absurd emptiness I sense around me. I'll end with some gathering "weirdness". I've been experimenting. I've decided that the easiest way to experience this other reality is to spend some time completely immersed in a nonsketpical outlook...being really open. I've had a few interesting results. One of the things I keep doing is saying...okay, it's not supposed to rain today...I'm going to see if I can "call" some rain. What's weird is this is just done really quickly...a real quick visualization. The rain has come almost immediately. Now, in my region, the air is humid and unstable for the whole summer, so I'm not going to send this off to Randi just yet! But it's been kind of interesting. And I think the tricksters are involved as well. Yesterday, I was putting sealant on our sidewalk. I wanted to let it have at least 2 or 3 hours to dry and the weather report indicated sunny until later in the afternoon. I finished a section and came in and said to my wife I was going to look at the radar on weather.com to see how much time I might have. There was no rain anywhere in the vicinity on the radar, but she said "It's raining now." Sure enough, it rained pretty hard. The rain shower was so isolated, however, it didn't even hit our entire yard. And I kid you not...the section of sidewalk I hadn't gotten to yet was dry as a bone, but rain had fallen on the section I had just finished. This made me laugh. Total coincidence? Probably, but it was still funny and one of those reminders that ones own petty plans are not always that important in the cosmic scheme of things.

by **Sweejak** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 1:02 pm

My father is on his death bed and my mother had a visitor who is reputed to be a little psychic. She stops looks over at my father and tells my mother: "I am aware of a presence at your husband's bedside. It is a Russian Monk. He conveys to me that his name is Batholome. He knew your husband as a little boy, 9 or 10 years of age. He wishes to ask your husband for forgiveness for not always teaching him correctly." Later my mother asks my father whether he ever knew a monk by name Batholome. He said, "Oh yes! This is Father Bartholomaeus! Yes, I knew him as a little boy." "Was he a good monk?" I asked. "Oh, Yes, he was good."

by **ZeroHaven** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:10 pm

I guess what you see as weird I see as natural. I have my personal proof that "ghosts" exist and can affect the real world. My grandmother performed one last gesture during her wake. (<a href="http://www.paranormalsoup.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10358" target="top">Story here if interested</a>) During college some of my more adept friends and I did experiments over the phone. One guy was a natural remote viewer, and could rather accurately describe odd objects I would select and stare at. His ability depended on having previously come into physical contact with a person. He described it as literally looking through the other person's eyes. We exploited this skill on occasion to locate other friends when they were unreachable by phone. He wasn't from the area so he would describe what they were seeing, I would figure out from his description where they were, and we'd go and surprise the target person. Another skill only three of us had was to project a ball to each other. It involved visualizing a simple orb near the target. After the first attempts we discovered we each naturally projected a different color. We used it as a request-for-call system for about a year, until our group fell apart due to circumstance. We experimented with other shapes but it didn't work very well because the size would get grossly distorted for some reason. (The viewer guy couldn't do it or see them at all.) I actually have used the request-for-call very rarely over the years with one of the guys, but nowadays it's email. He doesn't like to use or develop his skills, so I keep it down to once every few years. There's reasons I can't just write directly. I know this is all "me me me".. I guess I'm just spewing my stories to let you know that it is possible to access your other senses. The problem I've found is it's damn difficult to develop them without feedback. Just like our normal senses demand feedback and validation: "Has this gone bad? Here, smell it." "Did you see that?" "Wow, feel this. Doesn't that feel soft?" -- If you're interested, a few months back I spent two days reading <a href="http://www.nderf.org/NDERF_NDEs.htm" target="top">these NDE experiences</a>. Thousands of near-death stories from regular folks. I can't imagine that many people just making it up. <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **Sweejak** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:14 pm

On another board we ran a RV experiment. Results were "interesting".

by **Sokolova** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:21 pm

Hey Dreams End You know, I do know what you mean about finding it impossible to believe in anything beyond the consensus reality. I was immersed in the 'rational' outlook of the 20th C, and I had little understanding of anything else - including how irrational the 'rational' often is in its determination to exclude everything that does not fit its paradigm (but more of that another time). That thing that happened to me back then (no we were not imbibing, smoking, or otherwise ingesting anything except air!) was the start of a gradual shift inside my head. About four years later, an avalanche of the most bizarre things happened to me. Things I knew were not imaginary, and which I still can hardly talk about and will probably never explain. Things which questioned everything I thought I knew about the nature of reality. They grabbed me and forced me to confront the limits of my own mind. I had to see how, even when confronted with the absolute proof of something 'weird' , I couldn't actually believe it. I was locked up inside a system of belief without even knowing it. It was tearing me to shreds. My left-brain, the rigid, constructing aspect, was twisting and fighting, trying to find a way of rejecting the obvious facts in front of me. And I had to realise, I was married to a system of 'belief' even though I had never known it. For about eight years I struggled to come to terms with what happened. I tried looking for answers, trying out different psychical 'explanations' for what might have been behind the series of bizarre things that befell me. I tried 'alien abduction', 'reincarnation', Theosophy, and a host of other 'isms'. I ended up rejecting each one, no matter how much I wanted to think it was the answer, because I couldn't silence the little voice in me that was telling me that, even if these things might hold a germ of truth, they became a lie as soon as they became a dogma. Gradually I began to realise what the problem was; I was striving simply to replace one rigid paradigm with another; to replace skepticism with 'aliens' or something else. And I knew - just knew in my heart- that no rigid man-made paradigm was ever going to contain what had touched me. Eventually I came through this struggle to a place where I don't any longer feel any intellectual resistance to what happened. I have gone beyond needing to dismiss it or explain it. At last I can simply accept it, on its own bizarre, unknowable terms. I'm glad of that, and glad I resisted the temptation to graft on any of the 'isms' while I was at my most desperate and vulnerable. And I've come to think that the hardest thing seems to be to touch the Weird and not be crushed by it into taking some kind of shelter from the storm; finding some kind of label to attach, and thus shielding ourselves with dogma.I began to realise that the biggest challenge might be - can we encounter the Strange and not take refuge either in fake 'skepticism' or in some other ideological fortress? I fear that almost all our discourse with the weird turns into an act of substitution and avoidance: of shielding ourselves from the fact that we don't know by creating a fake image; giving it a name, an agenda, a face - any face, any name, any agenda - and discussing that instead of the infinitely possible, infinitely deep and shifting reality underpinning it. To that extent, I think (in all humility) that some of our our skeptical reaction to most of the 'weird' stories out there has some basis. I think most of the stories that occur within recognised paradigms - especially the growing mythology of 'aliens' and their technology and agenda - are more construct than truth. I accept the phenomenon of missing time, but I think the hypnotically induced 'recollection' of small grays and all the associated panoply plays more like a developing rumour or mythology. I think it's man-made . Or more man-made than anything else. I don't think aliens are abducting us to take our DNA. I don't think witches or satanists are summoning demons. I don't think fairies live under the hill. But I know that there is a Strangeness out there, because I have seen it. I think the truth might be something like the Metaphor that the brilliant Starroute talked about. I think maybe it discourses in metaphor and also takes forms that we ourselves expect; that its ability to be seen by us is limited by what we are. So, if we expect blackness then that is what we find, and if we expect the Virgin Mary then we see her. In a sense it's a looking-glass maybe, but a liquid one of infinite depth. But that again is just human interpretation and worthless as soon as it begins! Dreams End, I admire your brave intellectual determination to go beyond the known. If I hadn't been pushed I would never have taken that journey. I was too cosy. Too smug. I think the rain shower is telling you you are tuning in. But take care. Ellie

by **GDN01** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:39 pm

I've had a lifetime of weird experiences. I could write here for hours, recounting them! Which has made me wonder - are some people more susceptible to paranormal activity, and if experiences, activities, can increase that susceptibility. Here's some of my stories. The house I lived in from the age of 5 to 9, in KY, was the site of poltergeist activity. As I have shared before, it was while living in this house that my sisters and I encountered a woman through the public library who introduced us to the ouija board, seances, as well as involving us in at least one experience that fits the descriptions of RA. My sisters and I had many strange experiences in our home. Our dolls would move on their own. Stereos would turn on by themselves. We would hear footsteps on the stairs from the basement when no one should have been in the basement. The most terrifying event happened one day when my sister and I were the only ones home - I was 8 and she was 9. I was in the kitchen and my sister was downstairs. I had picked up the phone to call a friend and had my back to the kitchen when I heard a door slam shut behind me. When I turned around, I saw the refrigerator door open by itself. And we had an old refrigerator that had a crank handle on it. You had to pull the crank open to release the door, it would not swing open. At this poing several large items from the refrigerator flew across the room, stopping in mid-air and gently dropping to the floor. None of the glass jars broke. I began screaming and my sister ran upstairs. She tried to calm me while picking up all the things off the floor and returning them to the refrigerator. I was nearly hysterical and pulled her out of the house and refused to go back in until my parents came home. My parents would dismiss our experiences at the time, but when as adults we asked them if they had ever felt something was wrong with the house, they confirmed our fears and said at the time, they had thought by admitting that something scary was going on, they would have made us more afraid because we couldn't just up and move. The most recent weird experiences involve the house I currently live in. I believe we have a ghost in our house and I think she lives in the closet in my bedroom. I've heard movement in the closet - it is a large walk-in closet, and would get a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. I asked a friend to house and dog sit for me once, and didn't tell her about my concerns. When I returned, my friend told me, "You have a visitor in your home. A lady with orangey-red hair. A ghost who stays in your closet." My friend has refused to ever stay at my house again. This ghost lady is mischeivious, but not threatening. She moves things around. I frequently can't find things I need, only to have them reappear later. This happens too frequently to be me just being absent-minded, although that's what I thought was happening at first. The one experience that freaked me out the most happened over the course of one evening - my birthday this past year. I was out with a friend for drinks and when it came time to pay, I couldn't find my atm card. I knew it had been in my purse. My friend paid for us, then took me back to my car, which I had left at my office. I got in my car, drove to the store, got out and bought a coke with the change I had, got back in my car and drove home and went to bed. I got up the next morning to go to my office and try to find the lost atm card. When I opened the door of my car I immediately saw in the driver seat of my car a stack of papers and objects. 3 pieces of paper, a red plastic store card, and my atm card. There is no way I sat on this pile of stuff 3 times, and never saw it. These things had not been in my car the night before as I got in and out several times. When I went back into my bedroom, I noticed on my bedside table a cell phone that does not belong to me, a cell phone I had never seen before. The battery was dead so I had no way to turn it on and see if I could figure out who it belonged to. I asked my kids if they had any idea who it belonged to or where it came from - and they didn't. One day, my daughter and I were in the kitchen preparing breakfast. I was grinding coffee beans and had the little brush in my hand as we were talking when I felt the brush leave my hand. I didn't drop it, it was removed from my hand. I immediately said, "Where did the brush go?" My daughter said, "You just had it in your hand!" We began looking all over for it and could not find it anywhere. We laughed that the ghost had taken it and I said, "Ok lady - give it back!" And we heard a clink on the floor behind us. We turned around and there was the brush on the floor. My sister was here a couple of weeks ago, and I have told her about my ghost lady. My sister spent the night and had set a few wooden cigar boxes on the piano bench next to her suitcase that she wanted to take home with her the next day. When she got up the next morning, the cigar boxes were gone. We found them behind a chair and under some papers, several feet away. No one had been in the room with her, and the cigar boxes, all night. And there is no way they could have fallen and rolled to the location where they were found. I've told this ghost lady to leave several times. She scares my kids. When I do this, she becomes less active for awhile, but keeps coming back. Again, I don't feel threatened by her - but I do wish she would leave.

by **GDN01** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:49 pm

ZeroHaven - I have been able to make things move without touching them as well as having precognition. For me, when I have attempted to "develop my senses" and make more use of these abilities, the level of paranormal activity in my life has increased, and it has been scary. I have not experienced it as benevolent. So, I have stopped making an effort to develop these senses - and actually have tried to turn them off. I don't like the feeling of being bombarded by things I can not control and have sometimes had a sinister feel to them. I wondered if this is why your friend decided to stop using his senses.

by **Dreams End** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 3:00 pm

GDN01 Kentucky, particularly Ashland Kentucky, figures prominently in the book "Sinister Forces" by Levander (I have a little review on here somewhere.) His idea is that some places have more such activity and that because of the "Indian burial mounds" around there, some spirits have been disturbed in some way. He also notes that Manson was born there...but he hasn't really tied it all into any kind of cohesive theory. If I have any ghosts, they live outside my house! The only unexplained similar event is that while mowing the lawn a bolt came missing that attached the upper to the lower portion of the handle. Thing is, it was screwed into a palm sized plastice piece so that it could be tightened (or loosened for storage purposes.) It's a pretty large piece and without it, the handle just falls apart...and yet I could not find that piece anywhere. I never did find it, in fact, despite having mowed repeatedly. I have ruled out that it simply fell out on its own, but I haven't ruled out kids in the neighborhood playing a rather odd prank. I had left it unattended for a few minutes.

by **Sweejak** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 3:34 pm

I have not read it. <a href="http://www.firedocs.com/remoteviewing/answers/crvmanual/CRVManual_FiredocsRV.pdf">www.firedocs.com/remotevi...docsRV.pdf</a>

by **GDN01** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:01 pm

Dreams, the town I was living in had been settled by Native Americans. I saw a map once that laid out the settlement that covered most of the current town. I've been trying to find something online to verify this, but have come up empty-handed. I'm not sure there is a connection to my experiences and that being Native American territory - but it has crossed my mind!

by **ZeroHaven** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:11 pm

bless you sweejak! I've been trying to find one for.. ages. GDN01 - i'm grateful my stuff doesn't disappear as drastically as your experiences. very mild indeed (though still not normal). On the Ghoststudy board I've noted the KY area does have a large amount of investigative groups, because there's a lot of action there. Investigation is something to consider; most of them should be find-able online. A quick view of their site will let you know who's reliable. The most common advice I've seen is to calmly instruct the spectres - "Do you see the light? Go into the light. Your loved ones are waiting for you." - I hear it works more often than not. <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **Sweejak** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:17 pm

Shall we try an online RV experiment? I don't really know jack about it. I could maybe bring in a third party to concuct it.

by **Jill Burdigala** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:18 pm

Dreams End, your post about Kentucky reminds me of something interesting I read a while back in a book about Indians -- it was an anthropological book and had no mystical or paranormal import -- but the author mentioned that the southern Ohio - West Virginia area appeared to have been abandoned by Native American tribes for a couple of centuries around the time of the European arrival. He said Indians would occasionally pass through there but there appeared to be no evidence of long term settlement and no one knew why. Kentucky sometimes used to be called "the dark and bloody ground" because of all the fighting between whites and Indians there, and I've heard some people say that all that killing and misery exerted a sinister psychic influence on the area. I live in Ohio, which is another big state for Indian mound builders. It has always seemed to me (and to others) that there's a great deal of weirdness here, too, but whether that has any correlation to Indian mounds or if in fact there's really any truth to the impression that it's weirder here than elsewhere, are things I've never looked into.

by **Dreams End** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 4:30 pm

Yeah, Levander says there's kind of a "triangle" kentucky, ohio, WV area that this is particularly true for. He claims that Kentucky was originally to be called "Transylvania" or maybe that was just one of the counties...now I don't remember!

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