Ghosts? Anyone Ever Experience Unexplained Things?

TD77

Inspired
Bored and figured this would be an interesting thread to see if anyone else here has ever experienced some strange and unexplained things....ghostly things to be exact. I’m not a sandwich short of a picnic but I have had some strange things happen in my house.

The kitchen has a motion sensor that turns on the under cabinet lights at night when you walk in. Great little feature to have when you are half asleep, need some light but don’t want to get blinded. Anyway, on three separate occasions the motion sensor was tripped and the lights went on. All instances at night. The sensor is such that it is only triggered by motion 4 feet above the floor.

In addition to this, I was home alone one night and my dog was sitting on the floor and perked up with a low growl. He walked slowly to the bottom of the stairs and was staring at something. He continued with that low growl and I went upstairs and nothing was there. He refused to come up and I had to literally carry him when it was time to go to bed.

the last thing and perhaps the most disturbing is when my youngest daughter told my wife that she saw a man in the downstairs bathroom. This was right after my wife’s brother passed away so maybe it was him. my daughter was a toddler at the time.

Never had any serious thought about things like this until I experienced these things for myself. Anyone else want to come up to the campfire and share anything? Lol. 👻
 
This is probably chaos theory or something and not supernatural but who knows ...

Recently, after changing my tires in my garage I stupidly put the lock nut key in my pocket and forgot about it (senior moment). Later I went for a walk around the block with that jacket on. After returning from the walk I started putting away stuff in the garage and realized the lock nut key was not where it should be. After some thought I remembered I'd put it in my jacket pocket and upon inspecting that pocket I only found a hole a bit larger in size than the lock nut key - shit! Retraced my steps up and down the street 50x over the next few days - nothing. 3 days after, (and by that time well informed from google about what a nightmare it can be to get lock nuts off without the key or special tools), I went to Canadian tire and got some reverse threaded stripped nut removers ready to try my hand at getting these suckers off (could have left them on for the summer but I did not like the idea of getting a flat somewhere and not be able to change it). Anyway, got all geared up around 9pm to try and pry these things off (out of sight from my spouse who was not yet aware of her man's dopiness), but before starting I took a walk around the block, not with any hopes of finding the key as I had covered every inch multiple times and had given up the search - just my usual evening walk. It was dark and I was not wearing my glasses - 1/2 way around the block - looked down randomly - there it is - lock nut key! Devine intervention? Destiny/Fate? Freak random event? dunno, but one moral of this story: don't bother with lock nuts unless you get the ones with the spinning collar - just slows wheel jackers down a little (don't even know why I needed those - it's a hardly driven ford focus that stays in the garage, not a ferrari).
 
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Yes.

Without going into specifics, yes, these things happen.

There are campfire stories, of course, and they can be entertainingly spine-tingling. One suspects that they have grown and been honed in the telling, precisely for a more chilling effect.

But I'm talking about things that have no apparent narrative craft to them. They merely happened, and that was that.

I'm aware of two persons whose lives were saved by (respectively) a mysterious shove-out-of-the-way that prevented an injury, and a mysterious yank-of-the-steering-wheel that prevented a head-on car collision. Both attribute the assistance to guardian angels.

I know of another person who, at a time of uncertainty, received what's called a "locution": A disembodied voice spoke to them in their dorm room late at night, giving a sort of careful wise counsel, in only a few words, somehow without frightening them. This person also interpreted this as an angelic visitor.

And, I know of a third person who has been a witness to something like an exorcism, but involving a place rather than a person. (The term "infestation" was used, rather than "possession.")

All of the above would seem to involve non-human spiritual visitors. (If the term "angel" or "demon" is offensive, I suppose one could say "trans-corporeal or hyperdimensional intelligence" and come out with much the same notion.) At any rate, I'd vouch for the reliability -- the general no-nonsense stability-of-thinking -- of all the persons involved. I know them well enough to do that. And none of them talk about it much. To them, it's just "a thing that happened.."

I have no close contact with anyone who has been disturbed (or relieved, which I imagine is also possible) by contact with deceased human persons. Those closest was this: My father had a friend from work who moved into an old farmhouse with his wife, and they had some disturbances (noises, stuff moving about) until the wife shouted out to the empty house something to the effect of, "This isn't your house any more! We live here now. Stop frightening my family, and MOVE ON!" ...with the result that the disturbances stopped. But that happened before I was born, I think; and I didn't know them well. They might have been prone to, uh, an imaginative turn-of-mind, without me knowing about it.

That's about it, I think.

At any rate, I try to be analytical about these things. In my view...
1. Most such reports are not, in fact, the result of anything supernatural;
2. Some non-supernatural reports result from imagination; some from misinterpretation of purely natural phenomena; and some are just people telling a story to be entertaining;
3. Nevertheless, this stuff happens, however rarely.
4. It's rare enough that most folk should not expect it to happen to them, personally.
5. If and when such things happen, they often are not particularly spine-tingling or chilling or spooky or malevolent, but more matter-of-fact.

However,
6. A rare subset of this already very-rare category of event is supernatural manifestations of the malevolent kind. For that particular situation, exorcists exist. They do a job, and they're no-nonsense about it, and initially skeptical that anything supernatural is occurring, if they know their stuff. They should be almost dully matter-of-fact about it, and they should not be some yahoo cowboy with a favorite Bible verse, but someone with authority and procedure. (Fr. Vincent Lampert, from what little I know about him, is an example.)
7. Don't go screwing around with occult stuff. It isn't smart. Most people who do aren't negatively affected, to be sure; but that's like saying that most people who live in trailers in Oklahoma haven't personally been killed by a tornado. It's true; but it's beside the point. The point is that if you have the choice, don't put yourself in harm's way.

So. That's my take on the topic, for what it's worth.
 
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One night years ago at band practice and suddenly the TV in the room turns on. None of us were near it. It didn't even have a remote, wasn't connected to a cable box, the power hadn't gone out, no possible reason for it to come on. We all looked at each other... hmmm.

I'd forgotten about it by the time I drove home.

That night, around 200 AM, my girlfriend and I suddenly woke up to a light coming from the living room... our TV had turned on!! Being half asleep, it took me a minute to remember. She'd already gotten up to turn it off, but didn't come back right away. When she did, I looked at her like WTF. She said something about "it was a spirit that wanted to be released, so I did" - then I told her what happened at practice.

Either thing by itself wouldn't have made an impact on me, but having it happen twice the same night, in two completely different locations... definitely made me wonder.
 
Haven't had any ghost encounters or similar, but my wife has a good friend who has uncanny psychic abilities. It's not like something she can turn on or off. Things (or spirits) just come to her and she senses things from them. She can sometimes sense if someone close to her is going to encounter good or bad things in their life. She is also sometimes contacted by spirits of people who've died. I used to take it all with a grain of salt.

This friend had never met my dad, and knew nothing about him. A few months after my dad passed away she called me out of the blue to tell me she sensed my dad was in the room with me. She said he wanted me to know he was OK and everything would be alright. It was all pretty standard general stuff you'd expect to hear from a "psychic". But then she described what he was wearing, and she mentioned details that very few people would know, like the snaps on his shirt and pockets (he always wore western-style shirts) and his footwear (pointed cowboy boots). She even named the colors of his clothing, which again were spot on in describing his favorites. I haven't doubted her ever since.
 
Anything we can't explain we humans like to attribute to the super natural. A thousand years ago lightning, famine, war, pestilence was all caused by divine intervention. Now the divine has been pushed back to the tiniest sub-atomic particle and the creation of the universe. And even that will probably be pushed back further.

Humans are pattern recognition animals. Nature programmed us, and other animals too, to learn. Blue berries make members of the tribe sick or die, blue berries must be bad. Do not eat! We notice things, because noticing things in time was all to often in our species existence the thing that could determine life and death. But this ability, like many of our instincts, can also work against us. Panic might be a great motivator to get you to run away from danger like a dangerous predator, in a crowded confined space it can kill. Our pattern recognition makes us constantly see things that it thinks there are and which we then try to explain. Which I suspect is part of why we think ghosts exist, gods exist, and conspiracies exist. And the other part being that we hope they exist. Because sheer random chance being more scary then no afterlife, or no gods nor conspiracies pulling our strings.
 
When I was younger and living with my mom and my brother, I was home alone in the basement playing my guitar. I heard footsteps above me going from the laundry room to the kitchen so I called out to see if it was my mother or my brother. No one answered so I went upstairs to look and no one was there. I went to the garage and there were no cars at home. As I came back in, I looked at the clock and saw that it was 6:20 pm. My father died months ago and he would always get home at that time where he would go from the garage, through the laundry room, and into the kitchen.

I never thought much about ghosts but that gave me chills. The creaking of the floorboards above me were very clear and distinct as they went across the ceiling above me. It wasn’t a scary feeling when I looked at the clock and realized the coincidence. Instead, it made me think of my dad and how I missed him.

So ghost, not a ghost, easy scientific explanation... I don’t have any answers, but the experience does make me wonder.
 
When I was younger and living with my mom and my brother, I was home alone in the basement playing my guitar. I heard footsteps above me going from the laundry room to the kitchen so I called out to see if it was my mother or my brother. No one answered so I went upstairs to look and no one was there. I went to the garage and there were no cars at home. As I came back in, I looked at the clock and saw that it was 6:20 pm. My father died months ago and he would always get home at that time where he would go from the garage, through the laundry room, and into the kitchen.

I never thought much about ghosts but that gave me chills. The creaking of the floorboards above me were very clear and distinct as they went across the ceiling above me. It wasn’t a scary feeling when I looked at the clock and realized the coincidence. Instead, it made me think of my dad and how I missed him.

So ghost, not a ghost, easy scientific explanation... I don’t have any answers, but the experience does make me wonder.
It great that it wasn’t a scary feeling for you. I’m sure things like this are very common. 😉
 
It great that it wasn’t a scary feeling for you. I’m sure things like this are very common. 😉

If it were a random occurrence, it might have scared me (like being worried about burglars or something), but it was still day time and I love my father. I would have been happy to know that he’s still “around“ but that was the only time it happened.
 
If it were a random occurrence, it might have scared me (like being worried about burglars or something), but it was still day time and I love my father. I would have been happy to know that he’s still “around“ but that was the only time it happened.
I’d like to believe it was him. None of us really know what happens after we are gone. My mother was visited by her father after he was killed by a drunk driver. She was 18 at the time. She told us she awoke one night days after it happened and saw him standing in her room smiling. Who knows if it was a dream or really happened. Either way she found comfort in it at the time. I’m of the belief that we carry on after we are no longer physically here. And not necessarily a religious belief.
 
I’d like to believe it was him. None of us really know what happens after we are gone. My mother was visited by her father after he was killed by a drunk driver. She was 18 at the time. She told us she awoke one night days after it happened and saw him standing in her room smiling. Who knows if it was a dream or really happened. Either way she found comfort in it at the time. I’m of the belief that we carry on after we are no longer physically here. And not necessarily a religious belief.

Well since you mentioned the word “comfort,” I’ll admit that there are times when I’m alone and I’ll reflect on this incident. It does bring me comfort to believe in the possibility that my parents may be around.
Thanks for sharing your cool stories!
 
Hey, @Muad'zin,

I agree with 90% of what you say, here...
Anything we can't explain we humans like to attribute to the supernatural. A thousand years ago lightning, famine, war, pestilence was all caused by divine intervention. Now the divine has been pushed back to the tiniest sub-atomic particle and the creation of the universe. And even that will probably be pushed back further.

Humans are pattern recognition animals. Nature programmed us, and other animals too, to learn. Blue berries make members of the tribe sick or die, blue berries must be bad. Do not eat! We notice things, because noticing things in time was all to often in our species existence the thing that could determine life and death. But this ability, like many of our instincts, can also work against us. Panic might be a great motivator to get you to run away from danger like a dangerous predator, in a crowded confined space it can kill. Our pattern recognition makes us constantly see things that it thinks there are and which we then try to explain. Which I suspect is part of why we think ghosts exist, gods exist, and conspiracies exist. And the other part being that we hope they exist. Because sheer random chance being more scary then no afterlife, or no gods nor conspiracies pulling our strings.
...but I hope you won't be offended if I push for additional information, or minor corrections, on two points?

(WARNING: I'm about to be pedantic. Probably nobody here gives as much of a crap about this as I do, since it's sort of a hobby. Anyone who is bored by history should just skip this and go to the next-posted ghost story.)

Re: "A thousand years ago lightning, famine, war, pestilence was all caused by divine intervention.": We want to be careful that we don't attribute beliefs to our recent ancestors that were only held by our extremely distant ancestors. What you say is likely true ten thousand years ago, or five. But a thousand years ago the standard astronomy textbook for the educated in Europe was Ptolemy's Almagest (which correctly describes the distance of the spherical earth to the stars as being "so vast as to make the earth itself seem a mathematical point of no size"), and various Bestiaries (like that describing the rhinoceros of India, from which the Greek "mono-ceros" was translated to the Latin "uni-cornos," birthing the medieval unicorn tapestries), and the Code of Justinian (with its trial-by-jury and legal proceduralism still referenced in the Napoleonic code and thence to today's European courts). All these were legacies of the Roman era widely consulted in Charlemagne's push for literacy in the 800's. Before that, even in the era of pagan Rome, you'd have had guys like Marcus Aurelius and the neo-Platonists attributing all of the above to natural forces. The neo-Platonists were Classical Theists, and saw God (singular) as the ultimate cause for the ability of natural forces to -- sorry to use philosophical jargon, but if I'm pushing for accuracy I have to say things accurately -- instantiate the Platonic forms of their substantial types, but that's a rather more abstract kind of causation than the more cartoonish Zeus hurling thunderbolts! Then of course Christianity is legalized by Constantine, and 75 years later, made official under Theodosius. That brings in the Genesis 1 Judaic notion that the natural visible world is just stuff, rather than gods: The sun and moon aren't divine, but are merely "lights" to be hung in the sky by God for the convenience of illuminating the day and the night. By the time Augustine of Hippo, a former neo-Platonist, is writing on such things around 400 A.D., the view that every lightning-strike is the capricious act of an individual deity is culturally gone, especially from the educated class, except as a mock-superstitious joke or a legacy of earlier pagan etymologies. Of course everyone in that period thinks that God can intervene in nature to smack someone with lightning, but they presume that normally He just grants natural forces their intrinsic natures, and they do what they normally do by carrying out what is natural to them.

Sorry, that's a lot of detail! ...but my reason for raising it is that so many folks believe a sort of historicist Urban Legend about the medievals: That they thought the earth was flat, didn't know the size of the universe, and perceived nature as non-intelligible. But not only were they not like that, but they actually made that same criticism of the barbarians who'd been invading them for the previous 500 years! It's one of the things they considered "barbaric" about them.

Re: "And the other part being that we hope they exist. Because sheer random chance being more scary then no afterlife, or no gods nor conspiracies pulling our strings.": First, of course I recognize the paraphrase of Rush's "Freewill" ;) ...but I'm not sure the attitude you describe is psychologically accurate of people "a thousand years ago" or more. In fact that notion of what's more scary (or less scary) is mostly American, and less than 150 years old. If one presumes a sort of non-judging "grandfather in Heaven" (as is popular in modern "Moral Therapeutic Deism," to use Christian Smith's term for it), then the existence of God becomes merely comforting, full-stop. But that's not the idea that was common from 400 A.D. to 1000 A.D., at all! The God of the "patristic era" is the "righteous judge" of the Psalms and of Jesus' preaching on Gehenna, bringing with Him a crushing weight of moral obligation: "Be ye perfect as your father in heaven is perfect." Folks in that era thought sheer random chance, and oblivion instead of an afterlife, would be far less scary than hell (!), and the segment of the population who took religion seriously (never 100%) thought going to hell was a realistic possibility. So we don't want to ascribe the attitudes of 20th/21st century post-Christian North American youth culture to the Roman, Byzantine, and Carolingian eras. Before that, of course, was the era of Greek, and then Roman, polytheism. Their "afterlife" was a dusky amnesiac Hades; and the interaction of the gods with men was largely capricious. To the degree they believed in nature being predictable, that brought them hope; for apart from that, nature could be viewed only as a meaningless and unjust threat from the gods. The sheer arbitrariness of the gods' behavior left them looking over their shoulders all the time, periodically sacrificially appeasing the gods like a woman trying to placate an abusive boyfriend. That's why Owen Barfield and G.K. Chesterton describe the whole attitude of classical literature towards "life and the cosmos" as a sort of "resigned pessimism": There's no point to it, it usually sucks for no reason, and then you die.

...

None of that is to deny your basic premise, @Muad'zin. :) Yes, we're pattern-recognition creatures. Yes, we sometimes psychologically prime ourselves for wish-fulfillment (or, fear-fulfillment). Yes, we can assume that most reports of spooky goings-on are going to turn out (if it were possible to examine them adequately) to have resulted from imagination, or prevarication, or self-deception, or misunderstanding. And if you replace "most" with "all," I won't get persnickety about that (even if I think I have good reasons to disagree).

It's really more the Urban Legends about history you were using as supporting evidence -- the popular notions about how people felt about topics like God/gods and nature, and what kinds of views brought them hope or fear, in previous centuries -- that I was keen to push back on. If you read what they said for themselves, it turns out they were quite reasonable, and far less superstitious than pop-culture caricatures give them credit for. They lacked the technology for investigating certain things, of course! ...but they did as well as anybody could expect with the tools they had available, and it looks very much like they'd have thought about the natural world much as we do, if only high-powered telescopes and microscopes had existed at the time.

Okay. Done now. Sorry for the length.
 
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Hey, @Muad'zin,

I agree with 90% of what you say, here...

...but I hope you won't be offended if I push for additional information, or minor corrections, on two points?

...

Okay. Done now. Sorry for the length.

All cool Doc, but do you believe in ghosts? :)

As an agnostic panentheist, this is an enjoyable thread! Thanks, TD77, for starting it!
 
I once as a teen saw an Ouiji board that emitted an extremely strong presence that I can only describe as living chaos. My little brother had picked it up off it's shelf in the store and said it gave him a headache.

Recently had an acquaintance of mine hand me a book that was related to the occult. My vision started to go black, so I handed it back to him.

I woke from a nightmare one time only to find myself looking up at a hideous imp-like creature staring down at me. I screamed and jumped out of bed, and it was gone. This was likely just a phenomenon related the brain not being fully awake, but it was freaky non-the-less. The other two experiences, I have no rational explanation for.
 
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I have a story. Years ago my roommate and I each had a dog a Labrador and Shepherd. They both were mellow and very sweet.
One night a friend of ours said she was coming over with her girlfriend for a visit. They knocked on our door and both of our dogs ran to the door barking, growling, teeth gnashing... trying to bust through it. .. we hand to pull them back with leashes and put them in our rooms, the entire time they were freaking out.. we opened the door and our friend said they would have to leave, she said her friend was a Wicca Witch... I’ll never forget it, it scared the crap out of me... as soon as she left they were back to their clumsy dopey ways..
Scary... I’m getting the willies typing this now ...😳
 
I've experienced my fair share of unexplainable things.
The one that always stands out was when my Dad passed in 2000, he had gone in for an angioplasty on 2 arteries and when they collapsed the ballon on the 2nd one he had a massive heart attack, they had to open him up and do a quadruple bypass ( I guess things were worse than even the Dr's could initially tell). He never woke up and was on life support for around a week, My sisters had flown down to FL to be with my Mom and me and my brother sadly had to stay in NY. They pulled him off the o2 and he wasn't able to breathe on his own.
When my sister called to tell us the news I answered the phone iii the kitchen and was facing my brothers room as I called for him to pick up his line, I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind me very comforting and reassuring as if my Dad was saying it was all ok and he was in no more pain.
 
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