Guybrush

You have to be critical to what you hear as well. It's an annoying thing to be told, I'm sure, because in the end - the argument implies you basically can't trust anyone. But the truth is in some cases, "thought I saw" quickly becomes "saw" somewhere down the line of storytellers.

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Something Completely Different

Sneer

I've told this before, but it seems appropriate to the thread, between the ages of 16 and 18 i experienced 5 events that are utterly unexplainable. Believe me, ive sifted through my rational reference points, my past experience and flirted with every logical possibility, but i always come to the same conclusion.

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Freebase Dali

If you're ever up to it, I'm interested in hearing about those events.
Even though I'm a skeptic, I'm constantly trying to challenge my beliefs as a way to test how strong they really are. So rest assured, I listen with an open mind. I just always end up internally debating with ideas until they eventually break down into something that fits my ideology.
Being able to debate them with others is a welcome change.

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SugarRush

I guess it makes most logical sense to believe that superstition is just a comfort, since most things that we just can't explain we tend to try to provide paranormal explanations for. In my opinion, this is evidenced by religion, when they conjured god, and such.
As science slowly progresses we are slowly discovering more and more explanations for things that were previously believed to be that of God's doings. Now some of these appear rather ridiculous when we look back in retrospect.
Now sometimes people may seem to attribute superstition to strange events that cannot be explained. Most of these are easily disproved with a little knowledge of abnormal psychology and such. And others that right now may appear to unexplainable may be better explained as more neuroscience research comes up. Currently, the question "How does the brain work?" is one of the hottest topics in research right now. But because the brain works in such an intricate manner it is nearly impossible to answer that question, but enough is known that nearly all abnormal phenomena a can be explained in conclusive scientific way. So, it would be interesting to hear your stories Stu, and see if they can be explained by recent advances. Because I honestly can't possibly believe in all this superstitious crap.

Sneer

Well it all centred in my old house, specifically my room (always good...), i'd been living there since i was 4 months old and experienced nothing to my knowledge until i was around 17.

My cat had been acting strangely a couple of days before it started happening, one night we heard it screetching and hissing, went upstairs to see what wa wrong and we found her hiding behind my mums bed trembling hardcore.

Then a couple of days later it was just me and my sister, we were both downstairs watching TV when suddenly i heard an almighty crash from my bedroom. I ran upstairs not knowing what to expect and found my tv pretty much in bits on my bedroom floor. What was inexplicable about this was that my TV was on a shelving unit secured to the wall by 7 inch nails - the shelf was completely intact so the only way it could of fallen was by being pushed off. Yet my sister was the only other person in and she was in the same room as me.

The very next day i came home to an empty house and found my wardrobe had been pushed over onto my bed, now my wardrobe is pretty big, nobody in my house (i lived with 3 women, me dad was hardly there) would of been able to move it plus why the hell would they?!

Later on that night i AGAIN heard a crash, this time my mum ran up with a golf club bless her and found my bottom rung on the bookshelf had been smashed - like somebody had dropped a heavy object on it. There was hardly any books on it so it couldnt of been the weight.

Nothing else happened for a few days and then i went on holiday to Ibiza with my mates for my 18th. While i was gone my mum had a huge argument with my dad and consequently slept in my room for the night. She was awoken in the early hours by what she thought was somebody whispering to her, she focused her eyes and saw a silhouette standing by my wardrobe looking at her in bed. She thought it was my dad and told him where to go but it just stood there silent before just seemingly disappearing. She was ****ting it and never went back in my room.

I came home after a week and all was ok for a few days after. Then one night i was trying to get to sleep when i suddenly felt my mattress sloop down as if somebody was sitting on it, i shot up and turned my light on but there was nobody there - yet there was a clear indent on my mattress where somebody had just been sitting, and it was slightly warm to touch.

After that nothing happened for months. Then one eve in january i think a couple of mates were over before we went to a gig, it was a free house so we went over the road to get alcohol. NOTE no alcohol had been consumed at this point. Upon returning, me and one of the guys were ahead of the others and i took out my keys to unlock the door. As i went to put my hand on the door handle it suddenly shook violently like somebody was trying to open it from the otherside. We recoiled away in horror thinking there was a burgler, then, armed with bottles of beer (seriously), we stormed in and searched the place. Absolutely nothing. The dogs were in their basket happy as larry (and no, they were far too small to reach the handle, even by jumping up) and the place was spotlessly tidy and kept. No sign of anything.

Two nights before we moved out, my big sister ws down for a visit and we were all in the kitchen eating dinner when suddenly she shrieked and dropped her fork in her food... it turns out as she was eating she had seen a dark haired boy peering around the bannister watching her as she ate. She said his eyes were undescribably hollow and dark and that he ran back up stairs when she saw him. My sister is a complete sceptic, she has no belief in the paranormal and thinks people that do are irrational. So for her of all people to experience this after what happened previously really made me think.

I have not fabricated or exagerrated any of this, i have no reason to. The fact 5 separate people (me, my mum, 2 of my sisters and my freind), 2 of which had no idea of previous events, experienced phenomena is startling to me. The majority of them were also sceptics.

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