Experiences with the supernatural

[jansob]

I'm not a believer in the supernatural, but I recently had an experience that reinforced to me one of the reasons WHY people believe.

I was riding my bicycle one evening around 8pm, and I went past a noodle restaurant that has counter seating at the front window (I live in Japan). As I zipped past, I very clearly saw my father eating a bowl of noodles at the counter. My father has been dead for 30 years and was last in Japan in 1945, so this was a bit surprising. I turned around and rode back, and saw an old Japanese man eating noodles. He was bearded, bald and wearing glasses, but that's where the resemblance ended. But I had SEEN my father, every detail of his face...I'd have sworn it. And back when I believed in that sort of thing I'm sure I'd have told people I had seen his ghost. It was that vivid and detailed.

So what had happened? I remembered that that morning I had been talking on Skype to my sister. We had been discussing holidays from our childhood, and had talked in-depth about my father's holiday pranks and jokes. How he had dressed as Santa in his later years, and once had his hat blown off as he opened the door to greet a visitor. Lots of memories of his face and head when he was older.

So my mind was primed with memories, and when I saw someone fitting the basic description out of the corner of my eye, my brain helpfully filled in the rest. I DID see him...or my brain did, but only because my eye saw just enough to trigger a pattern match and memories filled in the details. And in retrospect, the image was FAR more detailed than a peripheral glance could have been.

Our eyes actually take in very little of what we "see". The brain is constantly filling in gaps, because our eyes can't focus on everything, and sometimes that system screws up. My dad was himself a freethinker, so I think he'd have gotten a laugh out of this as well.


Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is usually physics.

 

[Jim]

One time a few years ago I was watching TV... my wife brought me a cold drink out of the blue.

 

[YetiDave]

One time a few years ago I was watching TV... my wife brought me a cold drink out of the blue.

Guess I'll have something to share here too, if my girlfriend ever cooks dinner

 

[oakeshott]

Growing up, one of the houses my dad used to own and live in was an old Southern Maryland home built in 1749. We all casually accepted the presence of Sarah the Ghost. She was part of the family. Mind you, none of us actually believed in her or thought that any ghost whatsoever lived in the house, but a house as old as this one just didn't seem complete without a ghost.

I'm open to the idea that there are things we don't know or understand; seems any reasonable person has to take that as a starting point. Extraordinary claims, however, require extraordinary proof. For instance, I read an article some years ago by a scientist who argued that it was not only possible, but highly likely that there is sentient life elsewhere in the universe. He said the mathematical probability given the size of the universe made it almost certain. On the other hand, the likelihood that those same beings will ever visit Earth is near the vanishing point for similar mathematical reasons. Thus, while he believes there are aliens, he does not believe that you saw or were abducted by one absent irrefutable proof.

There are, however, transcendent experiences that have nothing to do with the "supernatural".

 

[Bossies]

Sagan.

 

[GordyN]

I'm an atheist, non-believer in the super-natural, ghosts, superstition, etc.


BUT.....


When I was learning to drive in 1987 with my dad, I was out one sunny evening on nice stretch of road in an area I knew well. I was going to be turning left on down the road and as I approached it, I saw an old sand coloured Land Rover, with a large horse box trailer on the back. The sun was directly behind it and cast a shadow across the road I was on. On that corner, there was an old red bricked building and as we approached, the Land Rover started to slowly reverse back down the road. I put my indicator on and slowed down, and I was keeping an eye on the shadow of the Land Rover. As I turned the corner, the shadow suddenly disappeared and when I got around the corner the Land Rover and trailer had gone with it. Now, the road I'd turned on to was a straight of about a mile and there were no entrances to turn into. This all happened within maybe 20 seconds. I turned to look at my dad and he had the same expression on his face as I had. We had to stop and try to work out what the hell had just happened - there simply was no explanation. We got out of the car to see if we could hear anything and both gave an account of what we saw to each other, just to be sure, and he saw exactly what I saw. I know what I saw was as clear as anything else, the clarity of it just confounding it all the more. We had never witnessed anything strange, and from that day to this, we never have. It's still as clear to me right now. In that time we tried to figure it out, asked everyone in the area about those vehicles, if anyone had one but they all turned up a blank. It still wouldn't have accounted for what happened.
My beliefs are still as they have been all along, and I'll never be able to explain it so why should I try?

 

[Edcculus]

There was apparently a benevolent prankster ghost in the bakery my wife worked at in Charleston SC. She would get there early in the morning to start getting everything ready for the breakfast crowd. It would blow/knock over piles of paper in the office that were neatly in the middle of the desk. It would also slam oven doors and a few other weird things.

This was in downtown Charleston, where all of the buildings are very old. If you ask around town, almost every old building has some sort of ghost.

 

[Senshi]

How does American food treat you when you come back, Andrew?

When I came back after the couple of weeks I spent in there, the first thing I ate was Little Caesars. My stomach was messed up for days after.

I guess it's more the amount than the contents. Filling up on burritos, pizza and delicious beer will deliver a KO to anyone's gut.

 

[Musikmann]

I used to be a pretty strong believer in a lot of the supernatural theories. But that was before I took an upper level college class offered by the psychology department (PSY300 - Paranormal Psychology). We concluded that over 95% of the various phenomena can be explained scientifically. However, there are a very few events that still defy the laws of nature.

 

[Musikmann]

No one has won it yet http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html

Since you mentioned James Randi, he had a counterpart in history. Harry Houdini spent a considerable portion of his time debunking the so called "Spiritualists" of his time. One rather famous encounter was between him and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an ardent believer. As a result they became bitter enemies.

 

[Polarbeard]

I believe that there's much more to a human being than flesh. I'd even say that a person mostly it's made out of his or her mind and feelings. Scientifically that's absurd because there's no way you can prove the existence of the soul, still most people seem to have one. I'm a firm believer in that passing away doesn't stop the soul of the deceased to care about those loved ones still living and that that concern sometimes can be misinterpreted by the living. Some of those who loved me unconditionally have passed away, but they still live with me. Now you may mock me if you like.
Regards

 

[Luke49783]

I believe that there's much more to a human being than flesh. I'd even say that a person mostly it's made out of his or her mind and feelings. Scientifically that's absurd because there's no way you can prove the existence of the soul, still most people seem to have one. I'm a firm believer in that passing away doesn't stop the soul of the deceased to care about those loved ones still living and that that concern sometimes can be misinterpreted by the living. Some of those who loved me unconditionally have passed away, but they still live with me. Now you may mock me if you like.
Regards

I actually completely agree with this.

 

[Kit Walker]

I once had an experience with a UFO -- a bright sphere moving swiftly across the sky in front of my car.

Then after about 15 seconds, the plane rolled out of its bank and I could see that it was an unpainted, high-winged, all metal aircraft coming into the local airport. The sun's reflection off that wing was awesome!

 

[luvmysuper]

There are more bizarre sounding things that are perfectly possible by all laws of physics than one can possibly imagine.

If you have not read this book, do yourself a favor and GET IT.

 

[oc_in_fw]

I used to be a pretty strong believer in a lot of the supernatural theories. But that was before I took an upper level college class offered by the psychology department (PSY300 - Paranormal Psychology). We concluded that over 95% of the various phenomena can be explained scientifically. However, there are a very few events that still defy the laws of nature.

And that is only because we still don't know everything there is to know about any science.

 

[oc_in_fw]

One time a few years ago I was watching TV... my wife brought me a cold drink out of the blue.

Jim, I have been married 20 years- I have a very hard time believing your sentence

There are more bizarre sounding things that are perfectly possible by all laws of physics than one can possibly imagine.

If you have not read this book, do yourself a favor and GET IT.


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[ouch]

Mrs. Ouch has extensive hands on experience in dealing with the supernatural.

 

[August West]

If I told you it would burn off both your ears.

 

[bamafan64]

Total non-believer here. But my late ex-father-in-law, an Anglican priest, did have to perform an exorcism in the attics of the ancient school he was headmaster of in England.

In the 1700s, a drunken headmaster had locked a recalcitrant boy in the attic; the head then went out fox-hunting, fell off his horse, and broke his neck. The kid starved to death locked in the attic.

For two hundred years, no-one could stay up there. Cold winds, doors shutting for no reason, windows opening for no reason, anything piled or stacked scattered across the floors. Loud noises at night, frightening the boys in the dorms the floor below.

My ex father-in-law sought and received permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury to perform an exorcism to placate and drive off the poltergeist. The order for the ceremony used to be in the back of the Book of Common Prayer.

Reported to me as a very difficult service for him to perform. Bell, book, and candle, etc. Peace and quiet ever after.

I still don't really believe it, but maybe… Certainly less strange than μετουσίωσις.

I know that in the 1960s, witchcraft became more popular in the UK and the Anglican Church mandated there be one priest trained in exorcism in every diocese. Our priest back when we were in the Anglican church told us this, but he would never go into any details and avoided the subject for the most part. Now that I'm Catholic, our church has the same policy, if I remember correctly, with one exorcism trained priest per diocese. Our current priest doesn't like talking about exorcisms, either, oddly enough.

 

[Bossies]

I finished reading The Demon Haunted World earlier this year. I didn't want to mention it here because I feel it's a little heavy handed.

My favourite part was the Baloney Detection Kit.

"The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:
Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").
Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
Quantify, wherever possible. If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
"Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, is it testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

Additional issues are:
Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
Check for confounding factors - separate the variables.

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric:
Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
Argument from "authority".
Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
Confusion of correlation and causation.
Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"

Above all - read the book!"

Some further reading on this: http://people.senecac.on.ca/beth.agnew/FineArtofBaloneyDetection.pdf