Do you believe in ghosts or the paranormal?
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Thus the problem, a true testimonial looks exactly the same as one that can be made up on the spot, they simply aren't verifiable. Their's no way to tell the real from the bad.Aqua Trenoble said:
Which is why they can't be used as evidence, even if you personally know them to be true(ie, you witnessed them) theirs no point trying to use them to convince other people.
Watch the videos I posted near the top of this page, they talk alot about which kinds of evidence can actually be used and verified. And why most evidence given for paranormal activity is so readily dismissed by science. Keep in mind the video is mostly about forms of evidence, not about whether paranormal activity is real or not. Though they reference the paranormal as examples.
No. Not only because of the myriad other valid explanations - schizophrenia, hallucinations, et cetera - but because the only provided "evidence" is so wildly and ludicrously inconsistent that the explanations involving mental instability are supported not just by the claims of seeing sparkly winged angels, but by the basic eschewing of simple logic.
Nope.
I do, however, like the idea of ghosts very much. It's a nice way of looking at the afterlife, and it's my favorite of the undead monster category.
I do, however, like the idea of ghosts very much. It's a nice way of looking at the afterlife, and it's my favorite of the undead monster category.
Aqua Trenoble said:
A few questions.
1: are you sure you actually had a illness? The mind sometimes makes you feel ill, even if there's nothing wrong with you (the nocebo effect, the placebo's mean brother). Did a doctor tell you?
2: are you sure you just didn't get the placebo effect? You may still be ill.
3: Was the illness mental?
It's smart to exhaust every single possibility before getting to the supernatural. Get other people to help too, because you probably wont find every possibility alone.
If you and a bunch of other people can exhaust everything, and then pass it to people who actually went to school for this sort of thing, get enough proof and James Randi has a million dollars for you.
Don't try to give me any evidence though. From my point of view it's either a placebo or you're just lying. There's no way you can prove it on an internet forum, and i will not believe you.
I try to be a rational person and don't like believing in things that don't physically make sense... however, I'm still convinced that I have seen a ghost and have believed in ghosts ever since I was very young. Almost completely because I want to believe they exist. The stories entertain me and I don't have any evidence to prove that it's all mental so as of right now I'll say yes I do but I kind of don't really any more. But I did see a ghost or what I still believe to be a ghost and as of right now I'll have to mark it down as something unexplainable.
I suppose that it's reasonable to be skeptical. So:Burst6 said:
1. I very definitely was ill. My lymph nodes were swollen, I had a damn sore throat, and I was coughing a lot and even short of breath. If I was imagining all that then please put me out of my fictional misery.
2. I am most certainly not still ill. My lymph nodes are fine and I've had no resurgence of any of the symptoms in the intervening months.
3. The illness was in no way mental or imagined. Other people commented on it and I even have a good idea of where I got it, as I was hanging out with a sick friend not long before I too became ill.
There are no other possibilities. I cured myself through force of will and that's that. I've even done it before that, though those examples were far more subtle. And I really don't want to replicate the phenomenon, either. Aside from the obvious downside of being sick again, it took a lot of energy to fix myself.
I don't even particularly care if you believe me, I just am giving a personal experience and seeing what people make of it.
Same world you live in. Until the spiritual and paranormal can actually be explained in rational, structured experiments, and "psychic ability" can be replicated, it's all hokum.Aqua Trenoble said:
Arguably we all live within our own personal worlds with their own events and rules, but I digress.TypeSD said:
If you refuse to accept even the possibility that there's more than science and logic then you're missing out on some really rad shit. That's all I meant.
One would be surprised how truly powerful the human mind is. If we believe in the paranormal, the mind is likely to trick the senses into seeing, hearing, feeling, or smelling something that isn't there.
As a Catholic, however, I try to keep the mindframe that anything could be possible. If ghosts do exist, I'm not sure if they'd have hostile emotions toasted humans, or be able to hurt them for that matter.
EDIT: Damn you, Automatic Spellcheck on my iPhone! I would fix the toasted thing, but I'm going to leave it there because it's amusing.
As a Catholic, however, I try to keep the mindframe that anything could be possible. If ghosts do exist, I'm not sure if they'd have hostile emotions toasted humans, or be able to hurt them for that matter.
EDIT: Damn you, Automatic Spellcheck on my iPhone! I would fix the toasted thing, but I'm going to leave it there because it's amusing.
I would like to state that I am a man of science and rationality. I believe in supernatural occurrences simply because that's the way my world works and because the explanations ring true for me.
I also would like to state that I am really damn tired of this whole mess.
Thank you.
I also would like to state that I am really damn tired of this whole mess.
Thank you.
Aqua Trenoble said:
I fail to see why you feel the need for there to BE anything else. Isn't the physical universe enough without, let's not pull any punches, fairy stories?
Yeah, I beleive do to personal experiences of my own.That does not mean, however, that if everytime something wierd happens it is paranormal. If a door suddenly closes, I'm not going to just believe its a ghost or demon. I check to find what caused it to close. If I can't find any non-paranormal reason for it closing, I consider the possiblity of it being paranormal.
Of course, if a full figure apparition appears right in front of me out of nowhere, I will do two things:
1. Definantly call that real
2. Do something that F.E.A.R 1-3 taught me: FUCK. EVERYTHING. AND. RUN.
I would talk about the personal experience but I don't feel like painting a bigger target on me than I already have.
Of course, if a full figure apparition appears right in front of me out of nowhere, I will do two things:
1. Definantly call that real
2. Do something that F.E.A.R 1-3 taught me: FUCK. EVERYTHING. AND. RUN.
I would talk about the personal experience but I don't feel like painting a bigger target on me than I already have.
No. Let's face it, what we know is really damn boring and there's nothing new under, above, or beyond the sun. If things become true when you believe in them, what reasons are there to not believe in something new?TypeSD said:
Aqua Trenoble said:
Boring? I think that says more about either
what you know about the universe
or
what you can understand about the universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi_Educational_Foundation#One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge
Win this. Come back when you do. Here's my unbelievably accurate prediction. You can trust me, I have a crystal ball badge. You won't. No one will.
Oh and that'll be $200.
EDIT: To James Randi, I'm starting compound interest from now until my prediction is proved.
"http://www.emedicinehealth.com/swollen_lymph_glands/page6_em.htm#Swollen Lymph Glands Treatment"Aqua Trenoble said:
Swollen Lymph Nodes heal on their own? Anti-biotics can speed up recovery and mask symptoms, but you don't have to do anything to get better.
>"There are no other possibilities."
Their are many possibilities, the most likely being that you were on the mend anyway, and just happened to coincide with you deciding to tank your illness.
Occam's razor, why select the explanation with the most assumptions, and least probability?
What you are claiming your mom can do is considered alternative medicine and probably spiritual healing as well.Aqua Trenoble said:
Testimonials (a.k.a. anecdotes) are not considered evidence. Evidence would be empirical, double blind studies for example. These types of studies are done all the time to test new drugs, etc. They are also used to test alternative medicine, new age healing, etc. and every time they show no effect (outside of a placebo effect which basically means it's useless).
Dammit, I'm not trying to prove anything! I just want people to realize that there can be so much more than just what you perceive. But I guess everyone's too busy trying to prove me wrong to learn anything.TypeSD said:
Aqua Trenoble said:
Sir, I take grave offence to "trying". Sure, I can't "perceive" Infra-red light. It's ALL AROUND US. However, there are rational, empirical, REPEATABLE tests to prove it's existence.
There aren't enough stories on this thread, I'm posting one of my own (it's more of a strange coincidence than a ghost story though) 
and then one of my Nan's.
Around ten years ago - when I was little, I was lying in bed drifting off to sleep when I hit that kind of drowsy, half asleep moment of nodding off. During this stage, I felt my leg slip down the side of the bed (wall side) as it seemed my blankets had become untucked somehow. Barely a second later it felt like something grabbed my ankle - and I mean properly, like real pressure all the way around. Needless to say I was scared shitless and have diligently tucked my sheets in on that side every night since.
Fairly recently, I started sleeping at the opposite end of my bed and I found myself in one of those lucid dreams (the kind though, where you can think but you can't particularly control anything). In the dream, I was standing outside my Mum's bedroom door and was fumbling around in the dark for the light switch (it's around the corner on the right-hand-side). Part way through fumbling I thought, 'I'm going to get grabbed aren't I?' And I was. What was odd though, is that I definitely felt pressure round my wrist in my dream - it was the thing that jolted me awake but unlike before, it felt like a hand: I could feel the different fingers around my wrist but it didn't have any temperature to it.
So I woke up. Naturally I thought myself a twat for grabbing my own wrist in my sleep, but when I went to check the placement of my limbs I found my left arm was on the mattress but my right had slipped down the side of the bed. So it was roughly in the same place as my ankle was all those years ago. That coincidence kind of weirded me slightly as I hadn't thought about the former story in years. How did my brain know that my arm had fallen down in the night? Why does it have to scare me all the bloody time?!
Has anyone else had this when they were sleeping - all the old hag symptoms seem to be pressure on your chest.
My Nan's story:
My Nan said that she was travelling home one day from work in the dark (they lived in the country so it was pitch black) and she noticed a small, bobbing light following her. She started to become frightened as it seemed to be following her and was gradually getting closer and closer. Turns out it was a man on a bicycle with a cigarette in his mouth.
and then one of my Nan's.Around ten years ago - when I was little, I was lying in bed drifting off to sleep when I hit that kind of drowsy, half asleep moment of nodding off. During this stage, I felt my leg slip down the side of the bed (wall side) as it seemed my blankets had become untucked somehow. Barely a second later it felt like something grabbed my ankle - and I mean properly, like real pressure all the way around. Needless to say I was scared shitless and have diligently tucked my sheets in on that side every night since.
Fairly recently, I started sleeping at the opposite end of my bed and I found myself in one of those lucid dreams (the kind though, where you can think but you can't particularly control anything). In the dream, I was standing outside my Mum's bedroom door and was fumbling around in the dark for the light switch (it's around the corner on the right-hand-side). Part way through fumbling I thought, 'I'm going to get grabbed aren't I?' And I was. What was odd though, is that I definitely felt pressure round my wrist in my dream - it was the thing that jolted me awake but unlike before, it felt like a hand: I could feel the different fingers around my wrist but it didn't have any temperature to it.
So I woke up. Naturally I thought myself a twat for grabbing my own wrist in my sleep, but when I went to check the placement of my limbs I found my left arm was on the mattress but my right had slipped down the side of the bed. So it was roughly in the same place as my ankle was all those years ago. That coincidence kind of weirded me slightly as I hadn't thought about the former story in years. How did my brain know that my arm had fallen down in the night? Why does it have to scare me all the bloody time?!
Has anyone else had this when they were sleeping - all the old hag symptoms seem to be pressure on your chest.
My Nan's story:
My Nan said that she was travelling home one day from work in the dark (they lived in the country so it was pitch black) and she noticed a small, bobbing light following her. She started to become frightened as it seemed to be following her and was gradually getting closer and closer. Turns out it was a man on a bicycle with a cigarette in his mouth.