Mind playing tricks
It’s funny. Having read a few of the stories on here, I’m quite surprised by the amount of people who’ll go to quite extraordinary lengths to explain away ghost stories and the like by coming up with sometimes quite ridiculous explanations that while they may fit into their rather limited grasp of science, don’t actually explain the phenomenon. I’m not talking about sleep apnoea, or an over-active imagination reacting to creaking windows or whatever. I’m talking about the kind of person who’ll say that flickering lights or skipping CDs are the fault of the now-deceased not having time to fix them. Or that regular footsteps upstairs are the result of cats knocking over boxes.

Those of us who’ve had a genuine experience have already tried to find a rational explanation for it. Really, we have. Not everyone who’s had a supernatural experience is a histrionic hippie half off their nuts on ganja and crystal worship. Some of us are actually quite rational, intelligent people. Part of what makes these things so scary or uncomfortable is that you can’t explain it away. On some level you just know that something’s really wrong. It’s really difficult to explain to people who haven’t had an experience. Until you actually have one, it’s difficult to accept something so far out of the ordinary.

Yes, sometimes your mind does play tricks on you. For example, I had a dream last night, coincidentally involving a B3tan, I won’t say who as it is irrelevant. She was making a poster. When she finished, I was abruptly woken up by a loud noise that sounded like a cassette tape being rewound. It was loud enough that I woke and said “what the fuck was *that*?!” I lay there, half awake for maybe ten minutes at two am and then heard weird noises from outside on the street. I couldn’t really explain it, as I live on my own and certainly don’t have any tape decks in the house. What probably happened was that my mind was over-analysing stuff because I was a bit freaked out at being awoken by a noise in my dream. Perfectly rational explanation to a fairly weird experience.

When you have a genuinely strange experience though, you’re usually wide awake and alert. At least, I was. I am a little bit offended by the attitude of certain people that because they don’t believe in ghosts, never having seen or heard one, they don’t exist and that everybody who has is either mental, paranoid, stupid or a mixture of all three. I’m not suggesting that people go around all agog and taking the word of every paranormal Derek Acorah style charlatan that pops his head up and shouts “boo”, but let’s have a little bit of open-mindedness. I’d much prefer to have a nice, cosy, scientific explanation for the stuff I’ve seen, as would everybody else who’s seen something similar. Let’s try not to insult everybody’s intelligence, eh?

/rant
( Kroney, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 11:41, 8 replies)

Liked your rant
And I guess youre right.
I do fit into one of those categories where, anything I may have experienced is probably pretty much explainable. Ive never really had a huge wow shit what the hell was that moment?

It is true about being awoken by a noise in your dream. Ive been woken up a number of times by a loud knocking on the door. Ive woke up at a start wth the knocking still echoing in my head. Heart beating like crazy, adrenaline rushing through. And of course there was no one there.
(Miggyman, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 12:00, closed)

It's not insulting anyone's intelligence
But I just can't believe in ghosts. We are animals, same as the next, and I can't comprehend how we could possibly live beyond the grave so to speak. There are so many scientific phenomenon that we have no idea about- we still have no real idea about how a whole host of matter behaves. To me, unexplained phenomena are much more easily explained by things we don't understand rather than it being a ghost. I know how easily I can hallucinate, sounds as well as sights, and I can much more easily attribute it to that.
( Madam Marlboro wonders if you've found her yet, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 12:02, closed)

Yeah, but...
"I can't explain x without recourse to y" tells us much more about your imagination than about the world, though. It's not a matter of insulting anyone's intelligence - it's just a matter of criticising a number of prima facie implausible claims. Offense seems to be an odd response to this.

Don't get me wrong: I'm enjoying this QoTW immensely. There're some terrific stories here. But I'm not prepared to believe them simply on the strength of the narrator's belief.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 12:17, closed)

I'm not suggesting
that I "cannot explain x without recourse to y". I'm saying I, and indeed others on here have as well, have already attempted to explain away phenomena with some kind of rational basis and have come up empty. Please, if you would read through my previous post on page one or two and give me a scientific explanation, I would like to hear it.

Imaginations can play tricks with us. There is no doubt of that. i would quite easily discount anything I had experienced while half asleep, or under the influence of one substance or another. I have no problem with people disbelieving my story, either.

The issue I take exception to is people saying "ghosts don't exist, you're wrong. it was the cat."

Doesn't help anybody.
( Kroney, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 12:24, closed)

@Kroney
I'm saying I, and indeed others on here have as well, have already attempted to explain away phenomena with some kind of rational basis and have come up empty. Please, if you would read through my previous post on page one or two and give me a scientific explanation, I would like to hear it.

That I can't give a rival explanation of my own for a story isn't sufficient to mean that it'd be illegitimate to doubt other explanations. (Roughly: I don't know what the 4003^rd digit in the decimal expnasion of pi is, but I can say with reasonable certainty that it's not "w" and that anyone who thinks it might be is wrong.

What I don't think I'd be entitled to do is to suggest that, actually, this or that is the case - shooting from the hip like that is asking for trouble. Nevertheless, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - more than simply a lack of ordinary evidence - and I've not seen any of that.

The issue I take exception to is people saying "ghosts don't exist, you're wrong. it was the cat." Doesn't help anybody.

You're kind of right: it often doesn't help. But, again, even allowing for the argument that there is a possibility that ghosts exist - that is, that there's independent evidence for them - it would still remain the case that, for any phenomenon, a mundane explanation wholly rooted in the world of medium-sized solid objects would be far more likely to be correct.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 12:40, closed)

Again
and for the third time, the belief that the phenomenon is rooted in something empirical is not the problem. Nor do I question it. What the individual chooses to believe on that basis is up to them. It's the attitude of some of the posters that I don't like.

Whether or not you agree with me on that particular point is irrelevant. It's still rude and unnecessary.

Edited for clarity
( Kroney, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 12:45, closed)

Rude and unnecessary?
I'm not sure I wholly see what you mean.

In terms of necessity, after all, it's not necessary to post the stories to begin with. You post a story on a site with a reply facility, you ought to be prepared for replies. So that part of your charge can be met with a simple tu quoque.

Of course, I think people can get carried away with rudeness - but I don't see anything particularly problematic about some rudeness or about rudeness per se. Rude can be funny and clever, too; and if someone's being an imbecile, then there's no wrong in saying so...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 13:02, closed)

Hehehe
I believe you're referring to a reply to one of my posts at one point there :P

I would say I haven't really had that many strange experiences in my life, but I have had a few and approach them with an open mind.... I cannot explain them and could attribute them to ghosts or ufo's ect, although I also readily admit that I might be wrong and there may be more mundane explanations. I suppose it's a bit of an agnostic view.... I can't be sure of what I've seen so I can't rule anything out either way.

I can't understand the attitude that everything is explainable and we know everything though..... people who have never experienced anything like this sometimes find it hard to grasp what it can be like to be faced with something unexplainable.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 18:35, closed)