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Have you ever had a paranormal experiance?
Yes 58%  58%  [ 51 ]
No 42%  42%  [ 37 ]
Total votes : 88

Wulfart
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16 Sep 2012, 4:10 pm

I raised a question with a friend about something that had been nagging me for a while. I've had paranormal experiances in the past, but have always been unsure because at the time, I thought I might have been suffering from Schizophrenia. Now I know that I don't suffer from that, but it makes me wonder how many people wtih problems like Aspergers have encountered something paranormal. And how do you handle it if you did?



Fnord
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16 Sep 2012, 4:38 pm

Okay, I'll post this here and then abandon the thread...

<* AHEM *>

There is no valid, empirical, and objective evidence to support any claim of paranormal or psychic abilities or experience. It's all subjective, and open to interpretation. Anyone who claims otherwise is invited to take the "James Randi Challenge" and win one million U.S. dollars if they succeed in demonstrating their abilities.

James Randi wrote:
At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test. Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the "applicant" becomes a "claimant." To date, no one has passed the preliminary tests.



Prof_Pretorius
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16 Sep 2012, 4:47 pm

I've had some brushes with the 'paranormal', not many but they were sometimes dramatic.
When I was young, about the age of 10, my mum would predict who was calling on the phone and sometimes she would know it was bad news. I found this to be unsettling.
I have seen one honest to goodness UFO, and might have caught a glimpse of one of the shadow people.
Beyond that, there have been times I joked about something and been spot on with the details.


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Jediscraps
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16 Sep 2012, 4:49 pm

The OP seemed to be asking if people here have had "paranormal" experiences (ie, subjective).

Fnord first states, "There is no valid, empirical, and objective evidence to support any claim of paranormal or psychic abilities or experience. It's all subjective, and open to interpretation."

Then offers the Randi Challenge.

You start out with no valid way to support the "paranormal" then are offered the challenge.

What if some things that are called "paranormal", is outside of normality because the model of reality makes it into an anomaly?

Under another model, some paranormal claims may not be "paranormal".



Jaden
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16 Sep 2012, 5:17 pm

Wulfart wrote:
I raised a question with a friend about something that had been nagging me for a while. I've had paranormal experiances in the past, but have always been unsure because at the time, I thought I might have been suffering from Schizophrenia. Now I know that I don't suffer from that, but it makes me wonder how many people wtih problems like Aspergers have encountered something paranormal. And how do you handle it if you did?


I've always been fascinated with the paranormal. I even investigate places that I stay from time to time. Even caught an EVP once or twice. It's mostly just a passing hobby.



Hopper
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16 Sep 2012, 5:46 pm

When I was about 11 or 12, there was some poltergeist activity at my Grandparents' house. Well, it became more marked. I think it was a fairly permanent thing - they would sometimes talk about what their 'friend' had been up to.

I don't much care for the sneery skepticism, either. I agree with Jediscraps - just because we can't yet measure it, is no reason to necessarily discount it.

That said, I am on the fence, and very happily. It is the idea of the unknown that thrills me. If it did indeed become known, it would lose the aspect of the uncanny. It's why for me the paranormal is, basically, ghosts and monsters and strange phenomena. All are outside of my day to day experience, but close enough - on the borderland, perhaps, on the cusp - to bring the awful thrill of the uncanny. Aliens and UFOs are too radically different, and so lose that awful thrill, that shudder.



Prof_Pretorius
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16 Sep 2012, 6:37 pm

The challenge from Randi presents an interesting question. He said the winner would have to do something 'psychic' that he could not reproduce with standard stage magic. What then would you have to do? I've seen him perform and he is quite impressive.


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whirlingmind
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16 Sep 2012, 7:37 pm

Paranormal basically means something that is over and above normal (on Wikipedia: designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation"), "para" is Greek for "very". I've had several experiences that could be termed psychic and are unexplainable, but I don't believe we yet fully understand the capabilities of the human mind, so in fact psychic experiences could actually be normal, we just haven't realised it yet.


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Callista
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16 Sep 2012, 8:18 pm

Just because they're unexplainable now doesn't mean there's no explanation. It just means we haven't found one yet. But it also doesn't mean that the explanation will necessarily be particularly interesting when we find it.

The explanations we will find for paranormal phenomena are likely to be that they are expressions of our own cognitive biases, especially our tendency to see patterns even in completely random data. Many paranormal phenomena are little more than noise in our measurements to which we mistakenly attribute significance. Others are misinterpretations of natural phenomena.

To have a "paranormal" experience proven valid (i.e., to be unexplainable by current scientific knowledge, testable, repeatable, and statistically significant), you would have to prove that a heretofore unknown law of nature--with macroscopic, human-observable effects--existed. I think this is unlikely. However, if we were to discover such a law, then it would no longer qualify as paranormal, because we would then be able to observe, test, and quantify it. It would become scientific.


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Jediscraps
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16 Sep 2012, 8:50 pm

I thought laws of nature were not really prescriptive laws but human models to explain. Descriptions of what happens.

It is required that it is repeatable as well. But what if there is phenomena that does happen in reality but which is difficult to cause to be repeatable in a controlled environment? Something different than adding this chemical to that chemical causes this reaction (this can be repeatable). What if there is phenomena that happens which is not able or easily repeatable? My point is that if something happens which is not easily repeatable does not mean it did not happen.

The problem gets even more problematic in that who gets to be the arbiter of reality?

Have you heard of Thomas Kuhn and scientiific paradigms? I have not read his book but have read some things about it.

Quote:
However, if we were to discover such a law, then it would no longer qualify as paranormal, because we would then be able to observe, test, and quantify it. It would become scientific.


But, the question would be more about which paradigm, or model this would be.



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16 Sep 2012, 9:46 pm

Because of my uncle Larry I do. He had a stroke and was declared braindead and taken off life support after a huge family fight when I was 4. Well, he used to always call my house to talk to mom at 3pm almost every day. In the week after he died, the phone kept ringing at 3pm, mom would pick up and nobody would be there except static noise.

Then one day mom's car radio kept changing, and at first she thought it was a fluke but then she realized that she wasn't touching it. Then she realized that it was his favorite song (a country song which hasn't been a hit in a good solid 20 years) and that it was in fact his birthday. "Ok Larry, listen to your song, it's your birthday, but when it's over, the station is going back!"

I had another experience when I was 16, alone in the school auditorium. Saw an apparition of an middle aged guy in the back of the auditorium who looked like he was dressed from 50 years ago (that school also ran very heavy rumors of the auditorium being haunted-- it wasn't just me). Come to find out, two people (a custodian and a nurse) died in my high school during a tornado in 1957. There was another few experiences I and people I know had with what seemed to be him too.



Ilka
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16 Sep 2012, 9:52 pm

My husband, my daughter, and I had paranormal experiences in the past. Not anymore thank God. About 10 years ago we had a "presence" in our apartment. I could feel it, and my husband could feel it also. My daughter could see it. She wanted to play with it. I convinced her not to. Told her "it" wanted to be alone. Which was the case. It felt terribly sad and lonely. It was always in the dark, lonely corners of our apartment. We told a friend and he did something (we do not know what), and we did not feel the presence anymore. It was a very weird experience.



SavageMessiah
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16 Sep 2012, 10:18 pm

Spirit-boxes (real-time radio frequency sweeps with complete sentences and phrases across dozens of channels in recurring individual male/female voices, answering direct questions) and shadow figures are enough for me.

I've seen two shadow figures myself.

One going down a small town street at 2am. Figure was walking up ahead on the sidewalk, in the same direction of travel as my vehicle. As I got closer, the figure did not illuminate but remained solid black. It then turned abruptly left and disappeared as I got within 1/2 a block. As I got to where the figure turned left, there were NO gaps between the buildings, and all the doors were locked and the lights were all off.

The other was on my street around the same time of night, when my wife and I were out walking. At a distance of 50ft ahead, an adult sized figure went sprinting across, but was frozen in a "sprint stance" with his head turned towards me and my wife. As he disappeared into the lawn next to that particular house, there was no sound on the pavement or the grass. (The figure was dark but had grey outlines. There were porch lights on nearby and their light was blocked out).


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Callista
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16 Sep 2012, 11:22 pm

Jediscraps wrote:
I thought laws of nature were not really prescriptive laws but human models to explain. Descriptions of what happens.
The laws are real, as real as anything in the universe is. Just because something isn't material doesn't mean it's not real--the laws of nature are one example (very basic abstract concepts such as logic and mathematics are others). The words and equations we use to explain them are human inventions, but if we were to talk to aliens from another galaxy, once we got past the linguistic and cultural barriers, they would have discovered those laws of the universe just as we have. They'd know what "pi" was, though they wouldn't call it pi; they'd know that gravity works on an inverse-square law, though they might not call it "gravity"... They would have an explanation of how an atom works, though they might never have come up with the idea of explaining it as a tiny solar-system structure or a nucleus surrounded by probabilistic electron clouds.

You do have to take for granted that the universe you see is the same universe everybody else sees; but once you've accepted "I am not a brain in a jar" as axiomatic, then you can pretty easily conclude that the laws of nature are as real as the universe itself.


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Jaden
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17 Sep 2012, 1:06 am

SavageMessiah wrote:
Spirit-boxes (real-time radio frequency sweeps with complete sentences and phrases across dozens of channels in recurring individual male/female voices, answering direct questions) and shadow figures are enough for me.

I've seen two shadow figures myself.


Spirit boxes are awesome, although I don't have one of those lol.
I've seen a LOT of shadow figures, had one stalking me for a while (not the best situation to be in).



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17 Sep 2012, 1:15 am

Well, my answer would have been an unequivocal yes, but then I found out I suffer from seizures and hallucinations. Some of my paranormal experiences aren't so easily explained away, but some of them are. So I am a bit unsure now.


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