Have you ever had a "supernatural" experience? How did you rationalize it?

[phrenicgermal]

Nothing big. Mostly when I was a kid, I’d have some trinket (like a polished bit of tiger-eye stone) and decide that it gave me powers or something. When I got older and a series of things would happen to work out my way (like a co-worker who had it in for me got fired and the boss who might fire me quit his job for another, and some other things as well) I would quietly think that the power of my will was protecting me from harm, and wonder if I was actually evil when bad things happened to people that I disliked, consequently removing them from doing something against me. Or there was the streetlight that happened to power off (or sometimes on) almost every time I walked under it (which happened to flicker on or off just enough that it usually would do one or the other exactly once when I was close enough to see it).
I was very secretive about this stuff because I knew it would be too difficult to explain to somebody and even if people did believe me then it was best for people to not know about it.
And I had a severe head trauma and fared much better then most people who have sustained one of my severity (it mainly effected me as emotional trauma, and an interruption in my life, etc. Today I am a normal person, who is perhaps a bit old to be an undergrad, that is currently studying mathematics and actuarial science, who pursues history as a hobby, and occasionally does talks on the subject) so I thought maybe I was invincible or something for a bit.

%lt;edit> Oh geez. I probably should have read the entire post before replying, huh? </edit>

 

[mikeyx]

Title is pretty self-explanatory. I've seen many on this board have apparently had some bizarre things happen in their life, but still managed to keep their cool and shrug it off as normal, however unlikely, occurrences.

So I was just wondering about the thinking processes involved, and what you knew (or learned through research) that helped shed some light on it, etc.

I'm asking because I guess I want to build up a "skeptic mindset". I mean, I think I don't believe in the supernatural/paranormal/whatever solely because I'm not terrified of it.

For example, once I was having a couple friends over when all of us started talking about ghosts (it was Friday the 13th and the subject naturally came up). Then at some point we all saw an empty bottle of coke, rested for more than a day on top of a clean, uncluttered, parallel to the ground table, which was on the other side of the room (but still in our view) just hurled itself a couple meters to the wall. They jumped up and were absolutely terrified, pale, shaking. One of them wanted to leave. I was just... WTF? What the hell happened there? I inspected the bottle, checked for air currents, tried to recreate the jump with a sudden, strong blow of air from my lungs, but the bottle would just tip over and then roll over the edge of the table to the ground. All the while trying to calm them. From this day I have a hard time getting my friends to come here, or stay for long. I have no idea what happened there either. Must've been a heck of a wind blow, in a closed room with air-conditioning on.

One of them (present in the bottle episode) recently went to my kitchen to get some water, made some strange noise back there and came back pale and shaking, saying he'd seen a man in my pantry. They ask me how I can live here, if I don't see or hear anything weird, etc. Well, I do. I think I see stuff out of the corner of my eye all the time, everywhere (not just in the house). I hear noises in the house when I lay to bed to sleep. I've had sleep paralysis and imagined it was a very nasty demon pounding in my back, keeping me from getting up. While it was worrisome at the moment, I managed to "awake" my pinky toe and climbed up from there to a world where nothing much was going on. In fact it was daylight. So it could always be whatever. It just doesn't spook me. I guess it's the lack of danger music playing in the background.

So, what I think I lack is the know-how to actually dismiss the supernatural hypothesis. Specially in a way that is defensible to the believers and terrified.

And that is why I ask: how to rationalize it?

I've woken out of a sound sleep positive there was someone in the room with me with bad intent, only to have noone there. The presence however, was vividly real until it wasnt there.

Ive been told this is a kind of out of body experience. Im not sure what it was.

 

[phrenicgermal]

I have sleep paralysis and it's never looked or felt like an out of body experience. It usually looks and feels like an ominous presence in the room. Once it looked and felt like there was a UFO outside my window with the bodies/shadows of aliens against the light. Once it looked like my very much living friend was standing next to my bed pointing at my hand (he then faded). Other times it looked like other people I didn't know who started off solid and then faded into the background. A couple of times I didn't even see anything but heard a spooky narrative coupled with horrible screams.

Wow. I used to have that sort of thing happen to me a LOT when I was a little kid (maybe between 6 and 10). I would often dread going to bed because of it. Of course, I never told my parents.

 

[phrenicgermal]

Of course, it's easy to have supernatural experiences while under the influence of LSD or psilocybin, but this is one I still can't explain.

It was Halloween, and 3 of us were making the rounds through the downtown area of our Florida town, which is notorious for its Hallow's Eve festivities.

At one point, we crossed a street, and halfway across, reality dissolved. Time vanished. Our individual identities disappeared. We were all of one mind. I could still perceive myself and each of my friends (one man, one woman, none of us romantically involved) but it was as if we were various aspects of a single mind. It was immensely expansive and euphoric. There was no perception of a physical reality.

It's impossible to say how long this lasted, or that it lasted any period of time at all, but subsequently (if that term makes sense in this context) reality reassembled itself and we were still in mid-stride.

No one spoke, but my experience was that we were all aware of what had happened. We continued on our way -- we were, after all, in a downtown crosswalk on Halloween night -- until we reached the sidewalk, where we all stopped.

We were walking to a club and had been walking steadily up til then, but we all stopped and turned toward each other and simply stared.

"Wow", said my male friend. "That was like the ultimate acid orgasm".

Yes, we'd all dropped at the same time, but an acid trip isn't precise enough to propose that we all had an exactly timed simultaneous peak.

We laughed, shook our heads, and kept going.

As for how I rationalize it; I don't. It's just something I can't explain.

That is a really amazing narrative. I'm actually picturing these several friends having this experience while crossing a street in downtown something florida. In the mental picture it's more like dusk and there is an orangish glow. It's slightly cool and the crisp clear air is carrying faint voices of other haloween people in the background laughing and shouting. None of the buildings are that tall, but it's not a bad neighborhood. I think there is a bar and a music shop (instruments and sheet music) in the background. When you step of the kerb it begins, slightly surreal. The camera comes in at this angle where we see everyone's face at once but at a profile, a bit like that bone beatles poster (not Abby road, this one http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/151/ACL-603~The-Beatles-Posters.jpg), and it slows for a moment, and we can see everyone's experience of this reflected in their faces. As quickly as it comes it returns with the camera maneuvering back to complete a final shot of the friends finishing their journey across the street, more innocently then it began, and having already left this 'zone' as it were.

I'm sorry. I'm quite sleepy right now and I was dropping into a sort of micro-dream state while reading and I tend to have very cinematic dreams.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Did you just skip the part where I specifically said the following:

The only thing that can be examined right now is my memory, and as we all know that is not reliable.

I apologize. I did indeed miss where you said that. (I'm not sure how you can examine your memory though.)

It is, however, in direct contradiction to the following which I only partially quoted in the interest of saving space (my bolding):

From where you guys stand, any of the following would suffice:

- they imagined the whole thing;
- his friends tricked him;
- his memory is embellishing the event;
- he is a troll.

To me, all of those are insufficient; at least in the way they were presented.

_____________

I'm going to read up on memory plasticity, by the way. Seems like a very interesting read, thanks for the suggestion.

It is fascinating. I'm from a large family (I have 9 siblings), so I have frequent opportunities to compare memories of shared events. It's odd how even when two of us have extremely vivid mental images of the same event that they often can't both be correct. It's very difficult to admit that my memory is as likely to be faulty as theirs is.

By the way, confabulation really isn't the same as lying or intentionally stretching the truth.

 

[XLDS03]

I will work alone at night and often think I hear my name being called out. One particular night got my hair to stand on end. I heard a high-pitched voice of a man garble something unintelligible from down the hall. So I walked down the hall to check. Nobody. As it turns out, what I was hearing was the squeaking of the elevator door, rubber against metal. Sounded pretty scary, actually. What's disturbing is that several years ago I would've tried communicating with the "ghost". I might have recieved an answer.

On another occasion I saw an alien grey staring at me through the window. I got up and shut the blinds. What actually happened is that an unused car was parked just outside, it's rear window and side window visible. The "eyes" of the face were clearly visible while the tan color of the car provided the less visible tan "skin". I told some lady at work about it. She introduced me to the wonderful world of David Icke. No thanks.

How about this: I had a hypnotic regression to a past life. It was too expensive which is why I went under. I better get my money's worth. It was a good lesson, though. I remain unconvinced. By the way, I came out famous. Who would've guessed?

Woo-woo ain't cheap.

Andy

 

[XLDS03]

Given that it's getting fairly late I neglected to see that this has gone on for three sections. I'm responding to the OP about having "supernatural" experiences and finding rational explanations for them. Did I get that right, cresur?

Andy

 

[cresur]

I'm responding to the OP about having "supernatural" experiences and finding rational explanations for them. Did I get that right, cresur?

Perfectly. Thanks for your input, your elevator case was particularly interesting. Also, I've been curious for quite some time now to try an hypnotic regression to a past life, just to see where my imagination takes me. I wish I'd say I was Jesus just to see the look on the hypnotist's face.

 

[XLDS03]

You'd probably be the tenth Jesus the guy found... I can imagine you saying "Just kidding!" in the middle of your regression! lol

I was lucky to have a hypnotist responsible enough to add a disclaimer that what I just experienced might have been a metaphor constructed by my brain. I don't think he could easily dance around meeting two Marie Antoinette's in six months.

Then there was the fact that he had me sign a liability waiver stating that this was for entertainment purposes only...

Yeah. That put a damper on the magic.

Andy

 

[Timothy]

There is an old thread that details members' initially woo experiences and the subsequent mundane explanations:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36129

My favorite ghost story is the third post.

 

[cresur]

Then there was the fact that he had me sign a liability waiver stating that this was for entertainment purposes only...

Paradoxically, that took all the fun out of it.

And Timothy, thanks for the link. Your story was great, and I particularly liked the last line of your post.

 

[Brattus]

Once while I was working on a job site alone in a vacant apartment. I heard someone whispering my name. I heard this several times. I was cleaning grout using acetone and forgot to open the windows and run an air mover to ventilate the apartment.
I was getting high on the fumes and slightly halucenating and I didn't even realize it until I walked outside the apartment after hearing my name whispered once again.
But then again I have never been the sharpest tool in the shed.

 

[AliasN]

Double post.

 

[AliasN]

I have sleep paralysis[...]A couple of times I didn't even see anything but heard a spooky narrative coupled with horrible screams.

My god, how absolutely terrifying. I can see people with magical thinking really being freaked out by that, or children who really don't have the skills to deal with that. Yipes.

The one sleep paralysis episode I've had was very scary, too. I was sleeping on my bed and could hear very clearly someone coming up the stairs to my bedroom, then I felt the weight of their body displace the mattress as they sat down, and then couldn't move as whoever it was pressed down on my chest from above. I looked up and could see the fingers of whoever it was just above my eyes holding my head down as well. I really struggled to wake myself up, even though it felt exceptionally vivid and not like a dream at all.

Once I woke up, I realized it was what I'd heard people call sleep paralysis. Since it's not something that had ever happened to me before, I assumed it might have something to do with my vomitting librally earlier that morning (I had food poisoning from a party a few days before.) I assumed that dehydration and a generally weakened state might have brought about the episode and I thought no more about it.

The way I generally deal with the unexplanable is just as others have said: Just because I don't know the explanation doesn't mean it is unexplanable, and it certainly doesn't mean it's supernatural.

 

[neltana]

I have had supernatural seeming events happen in my life that I can't explain. Just like the OP, I don't think they were actually supernatural events.

When cresur said that, folks seemed to get sidetracked and seemed to be attacking what they assumed he would say next ("maybe it was a supernatural event" or something like that) rather than engaging his original question. I think this is unfortunate, because I think it is a really good question.

He never asked "why did this thing happen, do you think it is really supernatural?" All the responses ridiculing him for not considering x, y or z missed the point. He asked how you handle moments of not knowing...the veritable crisis of faith (as in, "faith that science and rational thought can explain the world around us" not faith as in religion).

To truly answer that question, we need to posit that you, the person having the experience, can't see a rational explanation, at least for the moment.

I shall skip the details of my "supernatural-seeming" experiences, since they don't matter. The point is, anyone can encounter something that they can't explain right then.

So, allow me to restate his query somewhat: what do you do, as a skeptic, when you encounter something that strikes you as having no rational explanation? How do you keep it from bothering you.

Some have suggested saying "I don't know." My tactic is pretty similar...I tell myself "when I need to figure it out, I will." In other words, I assume an investigation would probably bear fruit, but I'm not going to bother unless I need to. If one coke bottle falls off the table, this lets me go "huh?" and go on with my day. If it happened 3 or 4 times, then I'd dig out my investigator's hat.

 

[Blodwin]

About 25 years ago I had an experience which a religious person would probably have interpreted as some sort of revelation. I was working late in the office on my own, mind drifting, when I suddenly experienced an intense feeling of understanding. It was like that pleasurable pang you get when you stumble across an elegant solution to a problem you've been working on, but it was much, much stronger, and I felt that life, the universe and everything suddenly made sense. My first reaction was just "Wow!", it was very exciting, and I tried to identify the idea that had inspired the feeling. That was when I realised that there was nothing behind it, their was no idea, it was just the "understanding flag" being triggered in my mind randomly for some reason. A brain glitch. The feeling gradually faded over the next 15 mins or so, but it was initially so intense that I can still recall the moment with great clarity and I doubt that I'll ever forget it.

Despite a Christian upbringing I've been an atheist since I was about 12 years old as the god stories seemed far too silly to be true, and I have always tended to prefer rational explanations for events. But at the same time I've been aware that there's much we don't know and I have been open to alternative ideas if they can be demonstrated (as the years go by I can't help noticing they never are). The point I'm making is that my first reaction to the experience wasn't to try to debunk it, it felt very real and I was genuinely excited that I had crossed some sort of threshold. It was only when I examined my thoughts and tried to identify the idea that I found it was hollow, which was actually something of a disappointment.

It has made me wonder how many of those religious conversion moments one hears about are caused by this type of glitch. It's similar to that deja vue moment that many of us experience occasionally when the brain gets a spurious "I've seen this before" signal. Just imagine if you're already religiously inclined and are hit by this experience while meditating or pondering the existence of your god, it'd be hard not to resist.

One thing I have got out of the episode is when a religious person is trying to sell their particular brand of wishful thinking to me and they say "But if only you had experienced the joy of understanding God's love!" or whatever, and I can reply that I have and I found there's nothing there.

 

[baron]

I discounted every explanation regarding the bottle because I had already given much thought to each one that was presented but there was always something that didn't quite fit, and all of you failed to present them in a way that filled all the gaps to my satisfaction.

A loop of fishing line, which can be placed in a second, is essentially invisible and can be hidden instantly after having been given a quick pull by your sneaky mates. It explains all elements of your story, especially why it happened when your friends were over and in the midst of telling spooky stories and who seemed so eager to jump up and express horror before finally blowing it completley by going overboard reporting yet another "ghost" in your pantry.

 

[cresur]

neltana, thanks for flawlessly and effortlessly expressing the idea I tried to communicate for the first 2 pages of this thread, to no avail.

So, allow me to restate his query somewhat: what do you do, as a skeptic, when you encounter something that strikes you as having no rational explanation?

...

Some have suggested saying "I don't know." My tactic is pretty similar...I tell myself "when I need to figure it out, I will." In other words, I assume an investigation would probably bear fruit, but I'm not going to bother unless I need to. If one coke bottle falls off the table, this lets me go "huh?" and go on with my day. If it happened 3 or 4 times, then I'd dig out my investigator's hat.

Well put. Exactly what I was trying to get across.

 

[aggle-rithm]

About 25 years ago I had an experience which a religious person would probably have interpreted as some sort of revelation. I was working late in the office on my own, mind drifting, when I suddenly experienced an intense feeling of understanding. It was like that pleasurable pang you get when you stumble across an elegant solution to a problem you've been working on, but it was much, much stronger, and I felt that life, the universe and everything suddenly made sense. My first reaction was just "Wow!", it was very exciting, and I tried to identify the idea that had inspired the feeling. That was when I realised that there was nothing behind it, their was no idea, it was just the "understanding flag" being triggered in my mind randomly for some reason. A brain glitch. The feeling gradually faded over the next 15 mins or so, but it was initially so intense that I can still recall the moment with great clarity and I doubt that I'll ever forget it.

Despite a Christian upbringing I've been an atheist since I was about 12 years old as the god stories seemed far too silly to be true, and I have always tended to prefer rational explanations for events. But at the same time I've been aware that there's much we don't know and I have been open to alternative ideas if they can be demonstrated (as the years go by I can't help noticing they never are). The point I'm making is that my first reaction to the experience wasn't to try to debunk it, it felt very real and I was genuinely excited that I had crossed some sort of threshold. It was only when I examined my thoughts and tried to identify the idea that I found it was hollow, which was actually something of a disappointment.

It has made me wonder how many of those religious conversion moments one hears about are caused by this type of glitch. It's similar to that deja vue moment that many of us experience occasionally when the brain gets a spurious "I've seen this before" signal. Just imagine if you're already religiously inclined and are hit by this experience while meditating or pondering the existence of your god, it'd be hard not to resist.

One thing I have got out of the episode is when a religious person is trying to sell their particular brand of wishful thinking to me and they say "But if only you had experienced the joy of understanding God's love!" or whatever, and I can reply that I have and I found there's nothing there.

That's the scary thing -- you can't trust your own brain. You can be absolutely certain about something, and yet be dead wrong.

This is especially true of memories. I have a good memory, and an annoying habit of saying lines in a movies I've seen before just prior to the actors speaking them. Sometimes I am absolutely SURE of what the next line is going to be, and find immediately afterwards that I am wrong. Very disconcerting, but common.

 

[Soapy Sam]

"I don't know" is an acceptable response, but to many it's an unsatisfying one.

Some events are probably just unrepeatable flukes, a coincidence of unrelated causes which lead to an odd result- (eg, a police helicopter goes over, really low, just as your spin drier kicks in. The combined vibration makes a container of fluid briefly resonate. It rolls off a table and brings down a bat that was leaning on the wall, which smashes...etc. Emerging from the toilet , you just see a baseball glove fly past your nose . No amount of rationalising will ever explain this to your satisfaction, because you lack the data. You never heard the helicopter, you didn't see the bottle- you just saw the flying glove.
Stuff like this (trivial causes conspire to produce improbable event) happens every day.

We can come up with a generic explanation (something fell...) , but that will convince some and not others. There are people out there who saw two airliners hit the WTC on live TV, but still don't believe it- you can take scepticism further than rationality.

If we are rationally sceptical by habit, the more outlandish explanations simply never enter our head. We stop at "something fell", even if we don't know what. The habit part comes from experience and education and reading. (ie we don't need to experience every event ourselves, we can read others' experience. Problem is, if we are fed a diet of woo thinking, we are more apt to seek a woo explanation.)

I never saw anything I consider paranormal, because I'm not looking for it and so default to non paranormal explanation. If- and only if- I find this inadequate would I seek what I feel a less likely explanation. So far, this has never happened.