Have you ever had a paranormal experience? If so, what happened?
Do you believe in the paranormal, or do you feel it is all hogwash?
Let's discuss!
Sorry if this has been done before.

I've never had an actual experience, but I do believe in the paranormal.

Love paranormal stuff… it's just so interesting! My favorite vacation spots are Savannah, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida, two of the most haunted cities in the United States. C:

I've always had a feeling that someone was watching me pee. And there is always a dreadful smell in the bathroom. And lots of groaning noises, terrible noises. I asked my wife if it was her but she says she doesn't poop so it has to be a ghost.

There's this really fancy hotel in the city which is meant to be haunted. Once a year my parents stay there for their anniversary, and the next morning we come and have a fancy brunch with them.
They put my parents on the second floor, the one that is supposed to be haunted. My parents didn't know this, but only a few days earlier I had been reading a book on haunted locations in the city, including this hotel. So the next morning we came to the hotel and I was sitting in the room on my own watching tv. While I was there, I happened to notice a large red-brown streak on the wall, from nearly the ceiling(much higher than a person could reach) nearly all the way down. When I read the book more carefully, I saw that one of the reported paranormal things in this hotel was blood running down the walls on the second floor. So that freaked me out a little bit.
Also, the previous year I was wandering around the hotel and found a large table in a banquet hall type thing set up very nicely as if for many distinguished guests, but there was no one there, and everyone who comes there eats on the main floor. The next year I couldn't find that place again, no matter where I looked.
None of that is really paranormal, I suppose, but it's still pretty creepy.

I had ALOT of them.

The most recent one was a miraculous healing after I saw a strange geometric pattern with my eyes closed. That day, I went to work even though I was sick. You know, I have the tendency to be some kind of “work hero”. lol!

Anyway, it was 4:10 pm and I really really wanna give up. I had a headache, was blowing my nose every 10 mins, you know, the usual cold symptoms. I just wanna tell the boss if I can just go home. I know my boss is reasonable and I got a legit reason to go home early. But still the “work hero” in me prevailed!

I decided to just close my eyes.

Then I saw a strange geometric pattern of light (it resmbled “branches”). I know I was only seeing part of it. And I kept focusing. With the intent of seeing the whole picture. I was curious.

And then there was flickering lights coming from the right side of my head. As well as a “clicking” sensation in the right side of my head and some kind of pressure on that area of the head that felt like electricity or something. But I wasn't scared. In fact I was feeling some kind of happiness. A soothing feeling.

And then I opened my eyes. Feeling 90% healed up. No more headache, no more coughing, no more runny nose. Throughout the day though, I had to blow my nose once every 4 hours or so. Thats it.

I checked the time and I only had my eyes closed for 5 minutes. It was 4:15.


While such sensations of lights and patterns can be dismissed by the skeptics as a mere hallucination triggered by drugs or certain chemicals in the brain, how can the healing be explained? Normally, it takes 8 hours of sleep to be healed that much from that bad of a cold. How can 8 hours be crammed into 5 minutes?

Its just weird.

Anyway, the point is, this world isnt all there is. And God knows what kinds of abilities a human being can yet discover.

And maybe we are infinite consciousness trapped in a holographic reality.


“Reality is an illusion albeit a persistent one.” ~ Albert Einstein

kyupol
While such sensations of lights and patterns can be dismissed by the skeptics as a mere hallucination triggered by drugs or certain chemicals in the brain, how can the healing be explained? Normally, it takes 8 hours of sleep to be healed that much from that bad of a cold. How can 8 hours be crammed into 5 minutes?

I really think it's going to take more than “I was feeling sick, then I was feeling less sick” to convince skeptics. It's not like you had a terminal illness; the common cold is a very finnicky sickness. I get over a lot of perceived bugs pretty quickly, and I wouldn't attribute any of them to anything supernatural. This, to me, is a classic case of something out of the ordinary happening, but then being percieved as an event you desire and find romantic.

Also, I'm getting a little annoyed with myself for disagreeing so vehemently with literally everything you post.

I have a few stories, though nothing really amazing, but unexplainable enough for me.
The first one is perhaps the most bizarre, and the few times I tell it people are more apt to say my memory must be wrong rather than try to explain it.
Back in elementary school I ate lunch. Or rather, like most kids of the day way back when, I ate everything but the vegetables. I can't remember what I had for lunch this day, but I remember what the vegetable was: peas. Now this was before sporks were all the rage, so I was eating with a fork (either plastic or metal, metal I think, plastic became a more prominent thing in lunch rooms around late elementary to middle school for me ). So I had peas, a fork, and some time to kill. It should be apparent I didn't eat the peas. Instead I squished them on my tray. Here's where the weird part came in; the more I squished, the less pea material there was. In only a few minutes there were no peas left, not so much as a stain. I thought it was strange, but only later in life did I learn you can't really squish something into oblivion. Yet I can't explain this. They didn't fall off the tray, no one ate them while I wasn't looking, and I'm not misremembering, even if it was well over a decade ago. Not a stain left I say. So, what happened to the peas? Where did the squished green stuff go? Parallel universe? Broke down to it's bare atomic parts? Am I really badass enough I can squish matter into oblivion?
That's my first and earliest story. Not the most fascinating thing, but still unanswerable by everyone I've asked so far.
Any ideas?
I'll tell my other two stories later. They both deal with UFOs, which is funny because I don't believe in aliens (least not the space kind).

Okay, I've told this story before on the forums, but I think that was a few iterations of the forum back, so I might as well tell it again.

Anyway, when I was a young kid visiting my grandparents' house I would get these… weird feelings. Like, I would just start to experience emotions that I didn't really have any reason to experience. I would start to feel angry while watching a show I liked or start to reminisce about people I had never met. It was always very vague and very brief, so I never mentioned it to anyone. Then one day we were visiting and nothing happened. I didn't notice it at the time, because like I said, the whole thingw as very subdued. Though at one point my parents mentioned that there had been an exorcism performed on my grandparents' house (and subsequently, an explantion on what an “exorcism” was). It actually took me a littl while to put two and two together; mostly when my brother and I were talking about paranormal stuff years later (he's a big believer, I'm a bit of a skeptic). Anyway, he was older than me, so he remembered the whole thing better, and when he described the symptoms of what the haunting was like I realized that they matched up with my memories.

My whole family has a lot of superstition, and I think it largely has to do with coming from the Rez (er, the Indian Reservations, specifically the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico). It's a very… supernatural kind of place. It's hard to explain, but spending enough time out there just makes this sort of thing feel more… plausible.

I am totally not someone who believes in paranormal things like holistic healing and acupuncture and ghosts and such.

One could say “That's a pretty broad brush you have there, crablegs.” Well, I used to believe in certain things. And later I decided that one must at least be accepting for the sake of open-mindedness. But being open-minded doesn't mean accepting things unconditionally at all, really. So, I opt to accept none of it on good faith alone.

I say this ‘cause there isn’t a dissenting opinion 'round here yet!

I've had one that I've told a few members about. Most stories I hear I'm pretty skeptical about, but since I've actually had an experience, I'm not so quick to dismiss what people say as untrue.

While I was about six, I was visiting my grandparents' house in Northern Virginia one summer. I was sitting with my family in the downstairs den while we were eating ice cream and watching a movie. Finishing my ice cream, I went upstairs to get seconds and after putting my bowl on the kitchen counter, I went over to the sliding glass door and looked into the backyard. To the right, pacing toward the area in front of me was a white figure. It was humanoid, but in a nebulous hue of white. I could see its figure well enough to tell that it was slightly slouched and looking downward as it walked and it held its hands behind its back. I was petrified for proabably at least five seconds before I broke out in a sprint down the stairs screaming hysterically. My mum calmed me down and we went upstairs together, but the figure had left by the time we returned.

About eight years later, we moved into that house with our grandparents. I'd only experienced a couple more happenings which weren't as solid as this one and which I figure could have been my imagination (but very well could have been actual experiences). While we were living in that house, however, my mum had several experiences which really freaked her out. Nonetheless, I loved that house and wasn't particularly afraid while I lived there and my grandparents, who are quick to disbelieve and very skeptical, lived in that house for decades and hadn't had any encounters, or don't believe that they have.

Here's the house. I wish I had a better picture, though. : \

Vakanai
So, what happened to the peas? Where did the squished green stuff go? Parallel universe? Broke down to it's bare atomic parts? Am I really badass enough I can squish matter into oblivion?
That's my first and earliest story. Not the most fascinating thing, but still unanswerable by everyone I've asked so far.
Any ideas?

Stuck to the bottom of the fork?

Hippie Van
Stuck to the bottom of the fork?

Nope, checked.
Damnable peas, disrupting my view of what happens to squished things.

just remembered something my friend told me about a year ago…

she used to have tons of paranormal experiences when she was younger. apparently, one ghost, a little girl, would constantly wake her up in the middle of the night and make her flush the toilet. (for some reason?) eventually she got tired of this little girl waking her up and told her to leave, and she did.

she still has experiences occasionally, just not as frequently as back then… some of her stories really freaked me out, though. spooky. :o

I'm a card carrying member of CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) and an confirmed skeptic, however Shakespeare had it right as always: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”

Witness: My wife and I love ghost walks. We go on one whenever we travel somewhere. Gettysburg is well known for its ghosts (I have all the Ghosts of Gettysburg books signed by the author) So we were on the ghostwalk and they were telling the story of the Jenny Wade house (the only civilian killed in the Battle hit by a stray bullet) Jenny Wade is famous for her hatred of cameras and it's known that they just stop working or the pictures taken at her house do not come out. I had a new camera, top of the line and had been working well the entire vactation, having shot more than 10 rolls (they all came out nicely)

I took a picture of the bullet hole in the door of the Jenny Wade house. Then went to take another and the camera had frozen. The film would not advance or rewind. (I was halfway through the roll) I opened the back of the camera and everything was fine, except the film would not move. The roll would not come out.

I had a professional photographer look at it and he could find nothing wrong except that the camera was frozen. Cameras do freeze up, but to freeze up at a place notorious for destroying cameras? Usually the camera can be disassembled and the problem diagnosed. Mine was and everything was fine, except film could not be made to advance or rewind. The cams were fine, just inexplicably frozen.

Hippie Van
When I read the book more carefully, I saw that one of the reported paranormal things in this hotel was blood running down the walls on the second floor. So that freaked me out a little bit.

Er, which hotel were you talking about again?

In my day job I'm writing a book about the urban legends and ghost stories of Indiana Univeristy for a small book publisher (the book will be out in 2010- if you have a story let me know). Up until I moved this year I was a member of Indiana Ghost Trackers- Lafayette. I find people's experiences with ghosts interesting, and love hearing about them. I do believe in ghosts, but when I'm out on a hunt I do as much debunking as I can, believing that only 95% of reported cases can't be debunked.

What have I experienced? My first experience with a ghost was watching the full-bodied apparition of my grandfather walk up the stairs from the first floor, down the hallway towards me, pass me, and walk into the linen closet 15 years ago. He was glowing blue! I remembering thinking “why is Grandpa walking into the linen closet?”. I should note that my grandfather died six years before I was born, so I never met the man, only saw him in pictures.

Earlier this year I was on an investigation at a local funeral home in Lafayette. The second floor of the building had a bathtub that had a curtain surrounding it. I was with my team doing an EVP session when suddenly the curtain of the tub wipped wide open. My team and I looked around trying to figure out how that could have happened, but couldn't find an answer. None of the team members were standing close enough to the curtain to open it. Just before this happened I had felt a cold push on my arm, but didn't think anything of it until later.

kyupol
The most recent one was a miraculous healing after I saw a strange geometric pattern with my eyes closed.

I was sick with a fever on Saturday. I laid in bed but wasn't getting better. Suddenly, I felt all better, so I got up and started doing things again. Yup, pretty much better.

So yeah, the worst symptoms can subside suddenly. You probably did a meditative exercise after a long day, and it helped with/ coincided with your symptoms subsiding.

I saw lots of ghostly shadows as a kid. Lived right next to a graveyard; it was literally the hill right outside my bedroom window. Last time I saw a ghost was a year ago. I saw a man for an instant, when I was opening a door, right around the time he expired (I found this out later) inside the building I was in. I guess he took a look at me “on his way out” because I was helping him out shortly before he died. He was just standing there, staring at me for an instant, then gone. Felt more like an “idea” than something substantial.

There are no ghosts, just demons. Once you die, you die, there's nothing in between.

Walrus
There are no ghosts, just demons. Once you die, you die, there's nothing in between.

Walrus shares his true sophisticated philosophies. Deep notions are deep.

I have something to tell you guys…

I've been dead 8 years. All this time I've just been a ghost in the net pretending to still be alive…
O_O



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lol! Yeah, wouldn't that be groovy? If there were ghosts, I imagine the new technology would make for some interesting events.

Katsu
Earlier this year I was on an investigation at a local funeral home in Lafayette. The second floor of the building had a bathtub that had a curtain surrounding it. I was with my team doing an EVP session when suddenly the curtain of the tub wipped wide open. My team and I looked around trying to figure out how that could have happened, but couldn't find an answer. None of the team members were standing close enough to the curtain to open it. Just before this happened I had felt a cold push on my arm, but didn't think anything of it until later.

Y'know, I've been living in a funeral home for the past 3 and a half years and nothing even remotely supernatural has happened. It's actually kind of disappointing. I mean, sure, there's some creepy stuff around (like the red “EXIT” light at the bottom of the stairs that makes it look like a gateway to some Halloween Theme Park Hell from the hallway), but no sounds or sights that couldn't be explained through very mundane means.

Inkmonkey
very mundane means.

That's what the ghosts want you to think o_o

Ozoneocean
That's what the ghosts want you to think o_o

It's no fun if we make it obvious; you'd just be saying “oh yeah, ghosts again, whatever…”

Actually I'm a real sceptic but that said, I've had quite a few odd experiences that I couldn't easily explain. I tend to think there are things going on we don't understand, but that doesn't mean they're “supernatural”; they're probably just natural and we haven't figured it out yet. Take this daft but true ghost story for instance - it really happened.

Shortly after starting my new secondary school, me and my friends exchanged the usual round of school ghost stories; you know the type of thing - the mysterious footsteps down the art room corridor, the distant sound of a choir singing in the metalwork department at dawn, the ghostly cows on the tennis courts…

The what? The story went that on a foggy day a ghostly herd of fresian cows could be seen on the lower field tennis courts. Apparently, the tennis courts stood on the site of the mass grave in which the bodies of a slaughtered herd had been buried after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, in the 1940s I think. The school was built on farm land, so that could be true, but as a ghost story, it wasn't the scariest!

Anyway, a couple of years in, as low lying fog rolled in across the fields and we were walking to our next lesson someone said “tennis courts” and there they were, happily grazing on the concrete surface - a herd of black and white fresian cows. Over 100 people must have seen this, but afterwards they refused to disbelieve the evidence of their own eyes. Sure, there were cows, they strolled across from the neighbouring farm, nothing wierd, we saw them.

But how did a herd of cows open two five bar gates, and the tennis court door (surrounded by six foot high wire fencing) to seek out a prime grazing patch of solid concrete and how did they disguise their brown hides as black and white (it wasn't a dairy farm any more)?

Mass hallucination? Some day I'm going to check out the facts of this: if the history of the farm supports the story, that would be interesting, but it still sucks as far as scary stories go!

Put me down as another skeptic.

I've never had an experience that I could not explain without invoking magic or spirits. I tend to think that we all have a lot of very emotional and even spiritual experiences that are not meant to be interpreted literally. For me, the paranormal would kind of takes all the magic out of life.

My family has more “ghost stories” than I do, most of them are from a house they lived in before I was born. My mom saw a floating baby, my dad saw people running down the stairs when no one was there, and my sister had her legs grabbed hard while she was lying in bed.

I have only had two weird experiences, and they're probably not “unexplainable”.
I'm sure I've told these stories before, but here they are again. =P

Once was when I was younger, my sister and I both had the same room and we were lying talking in our beds. Our room was RIGHT beside the stairs mind you, nothing really blocking view of the stairs.

We heard a couple of steps at the bottom of the stairs and then it stopped for a second. Then suddenly the steps turned into loud stomping up the stairs and we ran screaming into another room because of it. No one was supposed to be downstairs, so we thought maybe someone had broken in. I had actually been looking back though as we ran into the other room. Nothing had come up the stairs. =O

Of course, it could definitely had been someone who actually broke into the house and fled when we freaked…but I would've thought I would've saw someone's head or something considering it sounded like they came far up fast. Heck though, if someone did break in I'm glad nothing came of it. =/


Now the other story which was just…random? One morning I woke up to what sounded like a person going “psst” loudly. Since I had just woken up I thought I had dreamt it, but a moment later another loud “psst”. Perhaps it was something outside, I only doubt anyone in my family would try to get my attention that way, even if they were being dumb.


Actually in the house we're living in now, everyone has said to see a glimpse of a white figure walking by, all at the exact same area; from the kitchen to the outside door (me too). Nothing really scary, just a double-take “what the?” moment. Or if not that we would hear someone walking in that area. Though this hasn't happened for some time now.

There was this time when I would hear white and black people speaking Tagalog. When my mind switches to a different state, I could literally hear everyone speak in Tagalog (my 1st language. English is my 2nd language).

Then when I go like “wait a minute. A white person speaking Tagalog with the correct grammar and accent?!? This cant be happening!!!” Then I snap out of it and I hear the English.

Any explanation for that? No I don't do any drugs. I had a recent medical checkup and I'm healthy. That's weird.

And then I remember reading about some guy smoking ayahuasca then he starts to hear voices from a “being of light”. The language is in English. And then it went on explaining how the brain has a way of downloading information and translating it right away into a language that you can understand. It doesnt matter what language you speak. The extra-dimensional being will be speaking your native tongue. Because the brain is like a computer and its just downloading the info and translating it. Just like how those 1s and 0s can become pictures or text on your computer screen.

And if you read the bible, there's the part where the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and made the apostles capable of speaking in different languages in order to spread the word of God. (Acts 2:1-12)

1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

This is interesting. :)

I like Ironscarf's cows the best.

StaceyMontgomery
I've never had an experience that I could not explain without invoking magic or spirits

I have, but I don't. If I can't explain something that happens though, that's ok, I just put it down to “I might find out later”. I don't look to ghosts or whatever of course, I just reason that it's something ordinary, but I don't know what it is because I'm not seeing the whole picture yet.
And maybe I never will, on some occasions.
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The problem with ghost stories as explanations for things is that people think everything can and should be explained. Most of the time it's better just to assume that the event had a mundane cause, that you'll be able to know the full explanation if you have the patience and time to investigate, and if it seems spooky then that's down to YOU, not the event.

kyupol
speaking in his own language.

Well at least they got the notion of “speaking in tongues” right in that version. You have some twits that gargle away, imagining that the “Holy Spirit” is talking through them…
Fair enough if they believe in such things, but it'd be good if they didn't make utter double D tits of themselves mistaking “speaking in tongues” (different languages), for their tongues speaking.

#&^%%$*! They need a "tongue lashing". :P
…On second thoughts, they'd probably get that one wrong too… Ewwww!

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On the theme of the supernatural though, I think that even though whatever happens in all probability is never supernatural, it can be more fun to think of it that way :)

I remember one night a couple of years ago, it was pitch black outside, rain was pouring down and the wind was howling. There was a terrible crashing thump on the roof, some more thumps, and then a blood curdling scream! It was a truly terrible sound…
I rushed outside into the storm with a torch, got up high and aimed it at the roof. I couldn't see anything except a pair of baleful yellow yes starting back at me.

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All that is 100% true, I'm not exaggerating at all.

Of course at the time though I knew it was likely a cat fight, I did own a tomcat after all, and those eyes would be just cat eyes reflecting the light, like cat eyes do. :)
But it was fun to imagine that it was a big, black demon brought by the storm, comming to rend me limb from limb! ^__________^

kyupol
There was this time when I would hear white and black people speaking Tagalog. When my mind switches to a different state, I could literally hear everyone speak in Tagalog (my 1st language. English is my 2nd language).

Then when I go like “wait a minute. A white person speaking Tagalog with the correct grammar and accent?!? This cant be happening!!!” Then I snap out of it and I hear the English.

Any explanation for that? No I don't do any drugs. I had a recent medical checkup and I'm healthy. That's weird.

I think it's just one of those things. Like, you don't tend to notice yourself blinking unless something happens to remind you of it, or breathing for that matter. When you walk you don't think of it as parts of little actions that add up to walking; it's just the propulsion of your body from one end of the room to the other. Tagalog is your primary language, but you speak English well enough that your brain translates it as quickly as you hear it and by the time you stop to think about it all you've commited to memory is the Tagalog. Alternatively you weren't hearing him very well in the first place and your subconscious tendency is to interpret “background chatter” as Tagalog unless you're given reason to pay specific attention to it.

When I was about five years old, I saw a glowing green man in my grandmother's stair well. I couldn't see through him but there was something off.

I have always assumed it was a ghost since most of my family has seen them. But he could have been a burglar that hosed himself with glow in the dark paint. (Which is something I did once.)

kitsunekage
When I was about five years old, I saw a glowing green man in my grandmother's stair well. I couldn't see through him but there was something off.

I have always assumed it was a ghost since most of my family has seen them. But he could have been a burglar that hosed himself with glow in the dark paint. (Which is something I did once.)

That sounds like something out of Scooby Doo. XD