Loosecollector

That's basically where I land. I used to love Unsolved Mysteries and affiliated books. Fire in the Sky terrified me as a 5th grader in that part of Arizona. We used to be playing late at night (yeah '90s kids!) and one of us would always yell out. Oh my God Fire in the Sky and pretend to be seized up by something tractoring us and everyone would scream. I don't believe in The X-Files or Betty and Barney Hill or nordics or lizards, but I do think the truth is out there. Universe is too big.

I was an ardent believer in Nessie as a kid to the point all the research categorically had to disprove it.

I've also had several experiences that might have been ghosts. Or they might have been early examples of my bipolar or sleep paralysis before I knew either of those was a problem. Really vivid and detailed, so still unnerving in the moment no matter what.

I now believe it is sleep paralysis but there was one time in my twenties when I was living with that abusive girl I've mentioned, we were in bed and I woke up in the middle of the night with an old woman at the foot of the bed. Just staring at me. I couldn't scream. My tongue was frozen. Couldn't move. The whole room was this vivid glowing dark blue. Felt like forever. My heart was racing.

I then had that occur again in another apartment, and it some graphic terrifying dream about a murder before I moved in. But probably sleep paralysis.

I've read enough about sleep paralysis that even UFO and folklore monsters who mount you and suck your breath out at night... It all makes sense.

But at the same time, somebody wants to hunt for Nessie or believe in the mothman, I don't care. As long as they're not doing any harm. We let people believe in Jesus and God (ohhh). And they do way more.

I don't know. Christmas is like this collective hallucination though. Everybody's buying in. Who cares if Santa is real or not if you're getting that Nintendo under the tree, or a few extra action figures in your stocking that Mom and Dad definitely would not have gotten you. That's fun. Why would you want to ruin that for people. Let people have their harmless fun and magic.
 
AceofKnaves said:
Dracula’s grave is empty.

Really: it is.

There are so very very VERY many possible explanations as to why that is, most of them incredibly mundane.

But Dracula’s grave is empty.

And we’ll never *really* know why.

I fucking hope Bigfoot is real.
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That's because I cut him up and threw him in several different manors all across the country.

I wouldn't go looking for them though. It's a horrible night to have a curse.
 
Damien said:
Not a judgement on anyone else - just talking about how my brain is wired. I remember reading about Nessie as a kid and my entire thought process was 'it would be cool if that were a real thing... but it isn't.' Not remorseful either. Just kind of 'the world would be cooler if fantasy were reality, but fantasy is fantasy and I'm fine with that.'
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I had a longer post, but this largely sums it up. I recall when I stopped believing in Santa vividly specifically because it involved my mom and grandmother, the two most important, trusted people in my life at that time, using the phrase "we don't want to ruin the magic" instead of answering a direct question. I can't say for sure that was the start, but it's certainly the first time I remember calling bullshit on something and finding out I was right to question.

It would definitely be cooler if bigfoot was real, but there are plenty of other things in the woods that'll eat you just as well. As for sightings, I find the majority of sightings of bigfoot, aliens, and angels have a common denominator. The person doesn't know what they saw, and thus, they draw a mental picture in the gap because "I don't know, and I probably can't know" is such an unsatisfying answer. But I've trained that out of myself as best as I can. I don't know is a good answer, and it is a complete answer all on it's own. And a lot of times I don't know presents it's own kind of magic (see my post about neanderthal paintings int he tattoo thread), and I find that magic is far more robust.
 
Damien said:
I am what you might call a pathological skeptic. I don't believe in God (or gods), I don't believe in fairies, ghosts, cryptids, lizard people, psychics, astrology, or luck/bad luck. None of it. And I've never seen or heard anything in my life to convince me to give any of those things even the briefest entertainment as reality.
Not a judgement on anyone else - just talking about how my brain is wired. I remember reading about Nessie as a kid and my entire thought process was 'it would be cool if that were a real thing... but it isn't.' Not remorseful either. Just kind of 'the world would be cooler if fantasy were reality, but fantasy is fantasy and I'm fine with that.'
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The paranormal and supernatural has been so entrenched in my family my whole life, things that just can not be explained, things that we have tried to figure out that just has no Earthly rationality.

Hell, in this very house we are in now, I have physically had things thrown at me. Watched a pen fly across the room and slam against the wall behind me. And it is only my wife and I, and believe it or not, she doesn't throw things at me. Lol

I have heard footsteps walk across our attic floor.

I've SEEN things with two other witnesses. An apparition of a small face.

I just can't dismiss the possibility of something, whether it have a scientific explanation or if there's something more incredible at play.
 
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When I'm a ghost in the future I'm just going to bug people for their Wi-Fi passwords in the middle of the night and binge watch things when they're not home so they think that their significant other is watching without them, and then I'll get to watch the drama.
 
RicksNerdLife said:
The paranormal and supernatural has been so entrenched in my family my whole life, things that just can not be explained, things that we have tried to figure out that just has no Earthly rationality.

Hell, in this very house we are in now, I have physically had things thrown at me. Watched a pen fly across the room and slam against the wall behind me. And it is only my wife and I, and believe it or not, she doesn't throw things at me. Lol

I have heard footsteps walk across our attic floor.

I've SEEN things with two other witnesses. An apparition of a small face.

I just can't dismiss the possibility of something, whether it have a scientific explanation or if there's something more incredible at play.
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I haven't thought about it in a long time, but there was definitely a presence in my house when I was growing up. I'm not going to go into details right now (and someone of it I just don't remember as well as I use to), but there were strange events observed by everyone in my family at different times and there was often a presence just off in the periphery of your vision.

One of the first web pages I put up when I started college in the 90's, after getting internet access and web space through school, was about these experiences. I've had a Polaroid since childhood that may be a picture of this ghost/entity, whatever you want to define it as.

I can say it never felt malevolent or scary, it was just there doing its own thing from time to time. Yet, whenever I think about it, my body involuntary reacts, a chill runs down my spine. It's been so long since the last time it happened that when your post triggered the same reaction, it took a second for my brain to catch up why it was happening.

I don't know if I believe in Big Foot or Loch Ness, but I definitely believe there is more to this world, to the universe, than what we think we know.
 
Alt said:
Why would you want to ruin that for people.
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Oh, I actively want to ruin that for people.
Legit. I have an ENTIRE fucking thesis on why we need to destroy this entire mentality.

JakeEkiss said:
. The person doesn't know what they saw, and thus, they draw a mental picture in the gap because "I don't know, and I probably can't know"
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Yep.
We also have to always allow for something that tends to make people uncomfortable to -really- acknowledge: People are liars. I know you want to believe that the person sincerely thinks they saw something. But they might just be lying. Why? Who knows. People lie for all kinds of reasons and for -NO- reason. But they lie. Constantly. And even the most sincere-sounding person on earth could just be fucking lying to your face.
 
I believe there is far more to our universe than we know, so I keep an open mind. Do I believe in sasquatch? Well, I think there are definitely strange things people have encountered that they haven't been able to explain away easily. Does that mean they saw a big missing link creature? No, but it doesn't mean they didn't either. I find it unlikely, but hey...maybe they did! Or maybe they saw something completely different that still can't be explained easily. Or maybe they were drunk and mistook a bear for an ape man. Or maybe they were just full of shit. I'd say most of them ARE full of it, but I can't discount all of them.

I do know that I personally have experienced things that I can't explain easily, mostly involving what people would refer to as "ghosts". Were they spirits of deceased persons? I don't know...they could be some weird natural phenomenon science hasn't explained yet. Maybe it's a parallel universe bleeding over into ours, or maybe I hallucinated the whole thing. The first couple times I encountered these things, I thought it was just me imagining it, or something of that nature. When others were with me and witnessed the same thing unprompted...well, that was when I started to believe there was more to it than just me having some sort of mental break. I've learned to take a stance that is neither complete sceptic or believer. I try to view these experiences without a bias either way...I let my inner Mulder & Scully debate in my head, and I just try to listen to both sides because the fact of the matter is I'm not likely to get a confirmation either way. The universe is full of weird shit like quantum entanglements, dark matter, and other stuff that would have once sounded like superstitious mumbo jumbo. I think we still have many mysteries that have yet to be unraveled by our limited technologies, and so I just take note of these things and file them away in my brain as "I don't know".
 
I'm in the "there's a lot of shit we can't explain and explanations people come up with are probably wrong because we don't understand it yet." Seems like reality is always much more mundane than we want it to be.

On the topic of Santa, I cried like a little bitch when I found out. I think I was a bit sad about the spell being broken, but I was sad and angry that my parents - the people I trusted for literally everything up until that point - lied to me. Knowingly and consistently. That shit broke me.
 
"I have heard footsteps" is a super common experience, I'm sure I've even had that experience once or twice.

This is a classic example of what I mean, there's an assumption in here that is nearly invisible because of the way we think. What folks heard was a series of sounds that seemed like they moved from one area to another. They interpreted those as the sounds of footsteps. Nothing wrong with that assumption usually, it's based on information people have parsed before, it will be accurate most of the time. It's "this is like that, therefore it is probably that". Good for day to day. But when people parse that information in an unusual context, it becomes less reliable.

Someone heard some sounds that reminded them of a thing they'd heard before, in a place that thing should not have been.

That may be the sum total of the facts in play. But because that is a story without a narrative, without an explanation, people fill in the gaps. And from that a noise becomes a footstep, and because a "footstep" must have a foot, a noise now becomes a ghost. But we haven't actually confirmed it's a footstep. And since the event is in the past, we can't go back and be sure what it was.

We don't know. We can't know.

The human mind has a tendency to take "I don't know" and then translate it to "therefore I DO know, and it MUST be X".

Like, I could tell you about stuff I've seen that you would say "oh, you saw a spaceship" and I would say "no, I saw SOMETHING hat appeared to be airborne, and I have no way of finding out what it was". Even if we establish it wasn't a random minor hallucination (a thing that happens to many people because brains are weird and sometimes just glitch), we'd still have to rule out all the possible things it could have been (planes, fireworks, drones, weather phenomena, animals, etc). And if we established it was none of those things (already impossible), we'd have to rule out all he other impossible things it could have been. Why would it have been aliens and not angels for example? Why not ghosts? Why not fairies?

"I have seen odd stuff" can be a complete statement. To say more is me inventing where I cannot verify. It's me making up a story to give that experience narrative and explanation. And of course, I'm happy to make up stories in lots of ways every day. I make up stories about how the friends I talk to think about me, because I can't know what they actually think. I make up stories about how the world is working around me because I can't actually sit and monitor every interaction at a micro level to be sure. But there is a difference to me between those stories, and the ones that if true would fundamentally change the nature of the world. Ghosts are not a passive belief. You can't believe in them without also believing in other things. And that web of beliefs has knock-on effects to your thinking overall.

edit: and none of this is to say "ghosts/aliens/bigfoot don't exist", it's to say "that is very far down the list of things that could explain these experiences". It's the horses not zebras thing.
 
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