[jjbrr]

I've never really believed in ghosts and goblins and little green men. No one can convince me that Bigfoot or Sasquatch or Yetis roam the Canadian Wilderness - until we have conclusive evidence to the contrary, I suppose.

So where do these stories come from and why are there so many people who claim to see things that no one can explain?

I'd be interested to hear any of your stories about the unexplainable, supernatural, or just plain bizarre.

I'll offer my contribution:

Like I said, I'm very, very skeptical when it comes to ghost stories and the Loch Ness monster, so for me to claim to see something unusual is, well, unusual. One night when I was about 10 or 11 years old, I woke up in the middle of the night and as I was rolling over in bed, something in the window caught my eye.

As my bedroom was on the second floor of the house, it seemed particularly odd to me that there would be a glowing green orb in the bottom left corner of the window. It appeared to be close to the glass, as if it was looking inside. Just like I learned from cartoons, I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Sure enough I was awake.

I stared at it a little longer, not really interested in getting out of bed to look at it, and finally rolled over to go back to sleep. There was no trace of anything the next morning.

I'm not saying I saw Marvin Martian or anything, but this is an experience that I don't really know how to explain. I'm sure it was just light reflecting off of something or the neighbors messing around with green lights or something. It might have just been my eyes playing tricks on me. Who knows?

Anyway, I still don't believe in the paranormal. Perhaps some of you have stories that might change my mind?

[Gerben42]

I've been interested in the paranormal for at least 25 years of my 30 year-life. What I've found is bad statistics, deception, paranoia, guillability, and just plain nonsense.

I'd LIKE some of it to be true, but it just isn't. I'm sorry.
Some things can not be explained at the moment, but I think there is nothing that is in principle unexplainable.

[PassedOut]

Many years ago I was walking down Michigan Avenue with friends after a great rock concert in the Chicago Auditorium. Miraculously, all the buildings had become semi-transparent -- a truly wondrous sight. Could not account for it at the time...

[babalu1997]

i dont think you will find one to disgaree with you here in this forum

but not long ago, my husband who was outside cleaning a window, was spooked by these glowing blue things.

turns out they were not baby blobs, it was dark inside, and the balck kitten was staring him down, the light from the outside making her eyes glow

he called me to see it.

did look like and alien staring down on me

But i remeber being amused by a testemonial of an alien encounter on tv where the witness started by--

It was cold and i had drunk a half bottle of vodka.....

ah, that explains it, i am sure extra terrestrials like vodka

[barmar]

Brains (not just human, but of all animals) are pattern recognition devices. They work very well when dealing with actual patterns in nature, like the cycles of day/night, months, and seasons. But they look for patterns everywhere, and will often detect them even when they don't really reflect reality, like the Man in the Moon, the face on mars, or all the images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary. We see random patterns, and look for something in our memory to match them up with, because it's difficult to categorize random data.

Another bias is the intuition that things occur as a result of causal agents. It's hard to comprehend spontaneous events (hence the conundrum "What was there before the Big Bang, i.e. what banged?"). Most day-to-day activity is caused by the actions of animals and people. As a result, ancient people extrapolated this to all activity, creating myths of gods who control the weather, natural disasters, motions of the heavens, etc.

These things all create inclinations to see things that aren't there, because it helps explain what you saw.

[PassedOut]

barmar, on Jan 19 2010, 03:44 PM, said:

These things all create inclinations to see things that aren't there, because it helps explain what you saw.

One morning after a party we had a lot of leftover ballons and helium. We had to return the helium container, and it would have been a shame not to use the helium we had paid for, so we inflated a large number of balloons of every color, tied them together, and let them fly. They rose quite high and soon we lost sight of them.

That evening on the car radio we heard a news report that a multi-colored UFO had hovered over a house in the countryside and had sent down a beam of light that set the house on fire.

[kenrexford]

With great intelligence often comes a great sense of humor. I imagine that intelligence and sense of humor grow together.

Thus, I imagine that alien species who have the intelligence to figure out FTL travel also have developed a sense of humor to the point where humor may be a larger part of their lives than it even is for us. Fight for food to survive, and nothing is that funny. Have robots make food for you at your whim, and humor is more available.

So, I think there are aliens visiting the planet with all sorts of weird phenomena to dazzle us with, all the while lurking back with amazing stealth technology and laughing both of their asses off. Of course, they can grow one back, ready for the next joke.

What? You think they'd conduct surveillance of our nonsense and conduct scientific studies and contact our leaders? Why? This would take them all of 5 minutes (download our entire internet) and bore them. Nope. They'd pull pranks on us.

[Al_U_Card]

That explains why girls think that Ashton Kutcher is out of this world....

[jjbrr]

kenrexford, on Jan 19 2010, 05:56 PM, said:

With great intelligence often comes a great sense of humor. I imagine that intelligence and sense of humor grow together.

Thus, I imagine that alien species who have the intelligence to figure out FTL travel also have developed a sense of humor to the point where humor may be a larger part of their lives than it even is for us. Fight for food to survive, and nothing is that funny. Have robots make food for you at your whim, and humor is more available.

So, I think there are aliens visiting the planet with all sorts of weird phenomena to dazzle us with, all the while lurking back with amazing stealth technology and laughing both of their asses off. Of course, they can grow one back, ready for the next joke.

What? You think they'd conduct surveillance of our nonsense and conduct scientific studies and contact our leaders? Why? This would take them all of 5 minutes (download our entire internet) and bore them. Nope. They'd pull pranks on us.

God, also, right?

Dinosaur fossils are a pretty cool prank.

[jdonn]

I think aliens wrote "Cuebidding at Bridge" by Ken Rexford.

[gwnn]

Just because it's inexplicted doesn't mean it's inexplicable.

[y66]

I'm taking barmar's line. It's amazing how often I think I see one of our long departed pets in a familiar place. Just so used to seeing them there. I've never had a pet martian or sea monster. But I don't see why the same thing wouldn't happen with them as well.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Nope. They'd pull pranks on us.

That explains how Dubbya got elected twice.

[Fluffy]

I once had a rare dream, at some point I was completelly sure of both that I was dreaming, and also that a character in my dream I was talking to, was answering my questions but in no way his answers/reactions were related to my brain. It was being "controlled" by an outside source.

Having to be some kind of supernatural being I asked him something about meaning of life or such.

When he was about to answer there was a kind of big BOOM in my head and I woke up, with a kind of feeling of super-pain, but without the pain itself, only the feeling (hard to explain, see below)

I had the impression that something completelly forbidden or completelly impossible had almost happened.



Days later I realised that the pain feeling without pain probably was just that I had released a ton of brain analgesics (endogenic I think they are named), but there was actually no real pain to counter. So I had te counter-pain but no pain. It was a feeling very hard to explain with words, and I doubt I will feel it again ever.

[jjbrr]

You experienced head asplosion. It's a phenomenon consistent with deities and the internet. I'll post a link that references it near the bottom of this page.

[Jlall]

acid

[mike777]

Jlall, on Jan 20 2010, 12:16 AM, said:

acid

First off I have never heard of this term or LSD, orange tabs. sunshine etc......


But I do think I was on that Chicago street at the same time...same concert....unknown to that ultra liberal commie
red Passout at the same time.........


and yes agree with his comments...

[mike777]

PassedOut, on Jan 19 2010, 02:18 PM, said:

Many years ago I was walking down Michigan Avenue with friends after a great rock concert in the Chicago Auditorium. Miraculously, all the buildings had become semi-transparent -- a truly wondrous sight. Could not account for it at the time...

ditto

I was there brother