Yo, so just wanted to spark some discussion on this strange and malaise concept. I don't care if you use your own religious perspectives or personal beliefs to form a response, just try not to argue about it obviously.

Not something I really care a lot about and not a subject that I ever really invest in, but I just wanted to see what people think about the existence of a non-material reality (often interacting materially, mind you). Yesterday was Halloween obviously, so my curiosity has been spiked a bit. I have a friend who's fairly.. erm.. sensitive to this kinda stuff and we were talking about the supposed 3 AM "witching hour". Now, I don't really find validity in the theory that for some reason dark spirits are most common at this time because they are mocking the hour of Christ's death at 3 PM. Given the whole time-zone thing, just doesn't seem legit at all. However it is odd how many times, between the both of us, that electronics and stuff will randomly turn on at around that part of the night. How many times my friend wakes up from nightmares at around that time is quite odd as well. But I digress!

In my opinion and experience and conviction, I do believe in such an existence. I know my friend has dealt with a camper at a camp he worked at who had no known psych problems but was quoting scripture that most felt he had no business (as in was ignorant of) knowing trying to blaspheme. The guy (teenager) was also having strange movements. As in one moment he'd be fine and then he'd just collapse as if thrown. Then the lights in the whole camp went off and flickered and when they turned on he was crawling on his back. Sounds totally far-fetched right? Almost too.. movie-ish. But it was more than just my friend who saw this so I'm inclined to trust him. And we know it wasn't an elaborate hoax or anything given the discussions councillors and other campers had with him after. Then on top of that we have my friend talking to this guy about it, trying to encourage him and then a black cat (so typical, right?) stops, looks at them and then just makes a beeline for the lake. Which is.. odd. No real opinion on that besides dafudge?

Anyways, what do you think? Anybody ever have any strange happenings? I hope interesting discussion can come from this and that none of you will get the mods to close this thang right away.

I am very fascinated by the paranormal and I have an open mind. I'm also a huge skeptic though, so it'd be difficult to convince me that it actually is a real thing. I think that anything paranormal can be explained scientifically, but we have yet to understand why these things happen. Is it psychological, or maybe it actually is real? Maybe a mix of both? I have no idea, but it's definitely a topic that interests me.

I made a paranormal thread a year ago, and if my memory serves me right the majority of people here have a "*groan* Ghosts aren't real and people who think so are stupid!" attitude. They're no fun.

I don't believe in anything paranormal. I think such "sightings" are just the mind playing tricks on you, like how we sometimes see faces in patterns.

Same here. You can't trust your brains, they are constantly trying to deceive you

As for other existences, i do like the "multiverse" idea, that there are infinite amount of different universes in addition to this one.

But in the end who knows? All i know for certain is that i've never experienced anything that i would call paranormal. Though as per the first sentence, if i did i would think it's my brains going crazy

I liked the movie though

If it is true, the paranormal are a very sly and sneaky bunch.

There has only been one instance where I couldn't explain anything. A small light in the sky was sort of drifting to the left, and the day seemed to bright for such a thing to be in the sky, so I watched it slowly make its way to a cloud and it disappeared before it got there.

Without a shadow of a doubt. One quote I always loved was "The universe isn't stranger than you imagine, it's stranger than you can imagine"

Here's my stupid theory: Paranormal activity is purely a mental projection. But we would see other people's projections, and not our own. This explains why we can't see them with our own eyes, but we can with technology.

But really, it's all a bunch of hoaxes developed by fearful people (Is there any other kind?). But maybe my dumb idea could work for a horror story. Hollywood loves making idiotic movies nowadays, so I would be a fountain of ideas for them.

I think a lot of people can be very convinced from some experience they had and become easy believers.. Eventually getting tangled in their own web maybe out of desperation or bereavement

It's not really a frightening thing to me anyway...

For two hundred years all manner of possible paranormal phenomena have been subjected to testing according to the scientific method.

Results: Instances of paranormal activity and paranormally gifted individuals: Zero. (Lots of scammers, gullible people and misunderstood perfectly normal things though.)

Therefore it is safe to say that there is no such thing as ghosts. Or anything else of the sort. Telepathy, for example, is physically impossible due to the individually unique neural architecture of a living brain. Homeopathy is just bunk, it has no basis in natural law. Astrology and tarot are nice, complex arrays of symbols and patterns that allow the (sub)conscious mind to reach conclusions via association but there is nothing supernatural about them. etc, etc, etc.

The one mentioned by the OP is a typical example of selection bias. Guy throws what sounds to me like an epileptic fit. The lights flicker at the same time.

Perhaps, maybe, correlation is not causation and there is something wrong with the power supply. It is noticed because it occurs at the same time as a distressing fit of another individual. Would the lights flickering have been noticed had it not happened at the same time as something remarkable? Do they do it more often? Have they been checked?

I'm reminded of the example of the German psychologist who had pork chops for dinner. They were just being served when the household was disrupted by an explosion in the gas pipes some way away. Everything got back to normal soon enough though the houshold cats were very distressed by the whole thing.

Some time later pork chops were served again. The cats went in a panic. Not knowing what gas pipes were, they had associated the explosion with the pork chops.

*reads replies*

I'll just be viewed as a nut case.

No such thing as the paranormal. As Merari pointed out people have been noting down and researching the paranormal for over 200 years now, with zero evidence to show for it. And then there is the matter of just how fickle and easy to trick our brains are.

I have friends who swear by that they know haunted locations. I've told them that the first thing I'd do if I could go to a "haunted" place would be to do everything they said would get the ghost to act, so I could once and for all prove there was no danger, and every time they've had an opportunity to re-visit those places and possibly bring someone else along (for example my friend had to look over the horses of a supposed "haunted" farm for a weekend and I offered to help) they've declined to take me along. I have a feeling they really just want to hold on to the belief that there is something paranormal going on.

As far as hauntings go I don't think it's too far out to believe that whatever happens in a house or city or planet is written in that place. Unless the akashic records are just mad science I definitely pick up on vibes from places or houses.