RVCA

Unicorns are real guys. Whether you want to accept it or not.

CanwllCorfe

That's usually how it goes. It takes firsthand experience. Although I've personally never experienced anything, I do believe in them. I don't necessarily believe that they're definitely spirits of the dead though. I do believe in the bizarre phenomena that people experience in places that have seen a lot of death, grief, or maybe just a lot of history in general. I'd like to go to Europe one day and check some places out there. Of course, it's easy to say that now in a well lit room while typing on a computer.

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Your eyes were never yet let in to see the majesty and riches of the mind, but dwell in darkness; for your God is blind.

blastingas10

So, if we can't create another universe, does that mean that our universe was not a product of intelligent design?


Maybe "ghosts" aren't spirits of the dead, but I don't know what else they could be.

Guybrush

I've had experiences, but today, I'm pretty sure they were mixed up with wishful thinking, a bias towards the ghost explanation and generally bull****ting myself. I believe had I had those experiences now that I'm a lot more critical, what I thought were ghosts would be explained as something more rational.

So I feel like today, I can understand some of the psychology behind what makes people see ghosts in the first place. Just a willingness to believe can get you far.

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blastingas10

Give me a logical explanation for a rocking chair turning around, facing you, and then beginning to rock back and forth? No, this isn't out of a movie, it really happened. And I never wanted to believe it was a ghost. There's just no other more logical explanation. I never try or want to believe in them either, quite frankly, the thought makes me uneasy.

Guybrush

Well, first I'd like to know more about the situation.

Where did it happen?
Were you scared and/or thinking of ghosts before the incident happened?
Were you sleep deprived or intoxicated when it happened?
Were you alone?

edit :

Also very important; where were you and where was the chair? Were you right next to it? Could you just see it through the doorway from another room?

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blastingas10

Wasn't thinking of ghosts at all. I was thinking about my corn dog that I was eating. I wasnt sleep deprived or intoxicated at all. I was alone. I wasnt scared before it happened, but I sure as hell was after it happened. The chair was across the room to my right, not very far, in plain sight.

Guybrush

Could you describe again where and when it happened and what the circumstance was? Were you just having a snack in the kitchen during midday?

edit : Did it swivel around 180 degrees from it's back facing you to it's front facing you instead? Or was it more slight?

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blastingas10

I was sitting at the kitchen table. It was still sunny outside, around 4 or 5 PM. It was a snack, or meal, whatever you want to call it. And yes, the chair did a 180 and faced me.

Guybrush

Alright. To help explain the chair swivelling around 180 degrees, three explanations immediately come to mind.

1. Someone was pulling a prank on you in order to scare you and made it look like the chair turned on its own, even though it didn't
2. Something was leaning up against the chair and, as gravity took over, made the chair swivel around. Most rocking chair only touch the floor with very little surface and so may be good candidates for swivels.

The third explanation is of course that it didn't happen the way you suggest which means you are not being truthful, either purposely or unknowingly. I'm not accusing you of lying, but it's a valid explanation. You could be lying on purpose, by fabricating the entire story or by modifying it or leaving out factors you know could explain the happening in order to further your argument.

It is possible to unknowingly do this, although the circumstances are usually different. Through suggestion, one can imagine things and alter memories of experiences. I've done a bit of ghost hunting and so I know I've done this myself. Once, me and a friend locked ourselves into an abandoned WW2 bunker for a night. We had locked ourselves in with a chain and padlock and threw the key out through this breathing hole (). After a night's sleep, we were up by the locked door waiting for our rescuer to come. I remember I was looking out through the breathing hole and then turned around to look back into the cave where we'd slept. I thought I saw a ghostly shape in the dark and it scared me quite a bit. I thought it had looked like a lady in a floating white dress, although why the hell would there be a lady in a floating dress in a WW2 bunker?

Of course, we'd been in the dark for a long time and when I saw the light through the breathing hole, that left white spots in my eyes. We were already a bit jumpy and thinking of ghosts and so when I turned around, my imagination turned those light spots into something a little more sinister. As I started to believe my own story that I'd seen something supernatural, my memory started altering, adding detail to the vision of the lady that I'd seen. Today, I believe there was no ghost at all and all that was a fabrication of my imagination based on an accidental light trick.

There was also a haunted house that we sometimes would visit. We'd go there in the evenings and sometimes bring tabletop RPGs to play in the attic. It had the kind of attic where you climb up some steep stairs and then there's a trapdoor at the top. When sitting up there in candle light, we heard sounds of people rummaging around downstairs which really creeped us out to the point where we put heavy stuff over the trapdoor. The more we imagined the noises were the result of hauntings, the more the sounds became like footsteps, etc. And the more convinced we were that it sounded like people, the more we altered our memories of the sounds to fit that story. Of course, it was probably just the sound of the wind in the house which is perfectly able to do stuff like close doors (it was particularly bad one stormy night after all). Or, it could even be someone else (alive I mean) visiting without knowing we were sitting scared in the attic.

I wouldn't say that midday snacks in the kitchen are typical situations where people kid themselves, but perhaps it's possible. I do believe that once you've accepted your ghost explanation, you would become biased and favour evidence that points to that explanation. Your memory of the event might start to alter. F.ex you say it turned to face you. Perhaps it didn't really, it turned - but faced a direction to either side of you.

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