Paranormal experiences that weren't

[Unauthorized Cinnamon]

I mean, experiences that, were you of a less skeptical bent or had less information, you might have interpreted as paranormal. But, you actually have a mundane explanation for them.

For instance, a couple of times I've been all alone in a room, and I very distinctly felt someone tap me on the shoulder. In the next second I'd realize that it was just a muscle spasm in my shoulder. But if I'd been a more superstitious person, I would probably have thought a ghost was haunting me or something.

[Chessic Sense]

I was sent from the party last Saturday with a simple task- retrieve a book of matches with which to light the hookah. No problem, I thought. I stepped out into the unusually chilly night air, determined to be the hero of the festivities. I headed off to the left at a slight trot.

The street was empty by this hour. Off in the distance, I could hear the faint whispers of other cheerful gatherings and a barely audible female singer emanating from some stranger's radio half a block away. The street itself was deserted, motionless. I jaywalked across the street, under the lights that seemed to change for invisible traffic.

Next to the side walk, a dark green sedan sat parked. The driver, peering somberly toward the building beside me, sighed noticably. He looked at me. I nodded. He nodded back. I glanced quickly over my other shoulder to read the dimly lit plaque on the side of the faux stone structure.

"Klinefelter Funeral Home," I muttered as the air turned stale. I tossed a glance back at the sedan. It was empty now. A beam of light from the streetlamp was all that rested on the driver's seat.

I was convinced that my brain had merely played a trick on me. Surely there was no man in the first place. Surely I had nodded toward an empty vehicle. I still ran.

[salinqmind]

Hookah?

I used to astound my daughter every time the phone rang because I could predict who would be calling before she answered. But we only knew a handful of people who called on a regular basis. That's a pretty common 'psychic prediction'.

[engineer_comp_geek]

When I was a kid, I saw a UFO. We're not just talking one little light in the sky either. We're talking full fledged saucer with lights all around it rotating very plainly in the distance.

I ran inside and told my mom, who of course was like :dubious: but after some prodding she finally came outside and looked. And sure enough, she saw the flying saucer too.

Until it flew our way, and when it got closer we could see that it was a biplane with a scrolling light advertising sign across its bottom wings. :smack:

If it hadn't turned our way, I would probably believe to this day that I saw a UFO.

[wierdaaron]

"paranormal experiences that weren't"?

All of them.

b'dum cha!

[The wind of my soul]

From back in college: My friend and I were sitting in the cafeteria talking and eating our lunches. Suddenly, his glass of water slid across the table, probably six inches or so, without anyone touching the glass or jiggling the table or anything. He started exclaiming about the paranormal experience that had just happened. I pointed out the pool of condensation that had gathered underneath his glass.

[ftg]

So I'm walking back to my car after paying for gas inside at the Kwik-E-Mart humming a tune to myself, get in and start my car and lo and behold on the radio is that same song and it's in sync with my humming! Wow at first but after a few seconds I thought:

The radio inside was probably on the same station.

Fun while it lasted.

[Haunted Pasta]

I have vivid memories of a couple of frightening encounters with monsters from my early childhood that I now know were hypnogogic hallucinations. In one of them I was sleeping in my parents' bed when I saw and watched a tuft of hair obviously attached to someone or something moving back and forth along the foot of the bed, like its owner was crawling from one corner of the bed to the other on the floor just out of sight. In the other there was a huge praying mantis poking its head up from behind my bed chewing on my hair. I remember other childhood bad dreams, too, but these two were unique in that I was aware of my surroundings but couldn't move. With these kinds of hallucinations it's apparently possible to have your conscious brain asleep, yet have your eyes open and your brain processing visual stimuli. So, you see the room and your parents sleeping there as they really are, while the dreaming part of your brain adds in the thing crawling back and forth. And, of course, you get the sleep paralysis, so there's nothing you can do to react to what you perceive to be a terrifying reality.

[Joey P]

This one happened a few years back. My wife and I got into an argument as to why I moved the bed away from the wall. The thing was, I didn't. She accused me up and down of moving it. Of course, I knew that I didn't touch it. IIRC this argument actually lasted a few days (well nights, she noticed it as she was getting into bed). On the third night after she was done being annoyed at me for moving the bed she plopped done on her side.. "WAIT, Get off the bed" I exclaimed. "Okay, now hop back on like you just did" Swoosh, the bed slid away from the wall. Turns out we still had those Muscle Men furniture mover things under the legs and between that and her pregnancy weight and the way she sort of just collapsed into bed it was enough to move it a few inches each time.

[kanicbird]

Someone filling up their car at the gas station with the engine running, then when they were finished they got in, the engine shut off and they drive away, then I saw they were driving a hybrid.

[PoorYorick]

I was reading late one night in my grandmother's living room. Although I was the only one up, I heard a mournful sigh behind me. This happened a couple of times within a hour before I figured it out. It was my grandmother's old central heating turning on.

Still creeped me out.

[Waffle Decider]

A while ago, my sister contracted dengue fever and was quite ill for a while. She is the born-again Christian type, and she believes that she had an encounter with God and he taught her to sing and dance in ways that she never could before. I remain rather sceptical of that. I'm pretty sure it was hallucination caused by the fever/virus.

[garygnu]

I've had but one experience I can't fully explain, but I assume it has a natural cause.

Sitting on a hill overlooking Silicon Valley, I noticed two moving lights, presumably airplanes, at the same apparent altitude and distance moving toward each other. When they met, the one that was moving from my right to left kept going, but the other one disappeared.
Fearing I was seeing things, I asked my date if she saw it, and she had.

It must have been the single aircraft's light refracted in a column of air, but even that seems inadequate.

[The Other Waldo Pepper]

So I'm outside, at night, with a good friend, and there are plenty of streetlamps around but a decent enough amount of shade over in that recessed doorway where I just now thought I saw a lurking man -- but, sure enough, now that I'm looking closely, it's empty; just a solid wooden door set in an ordinary brick wall.

No, wait -- I'm still looking right there, I haven't moved an inch, and there he is again. There's a dark but unmistakably manlike figure standing there: standing in shadow, but unmistakably darker than the shadow -- just for a moment and then he's faded away; he was there and now he's not, and that's all there is to it.

And so I'm telling the young woman next to me to take a look, because that's what people in movies always do at this point. And if this were a movie, she'd be that character who of course doesn't see anything unusual. But this is real life, and so she of course sees what I saw: a dark figure, dark even in the darkness but unmistakably manlike, there one moment and gone the next.

She doesn't know what it was.

I want to find out.

She's game.

We advance on the shaded doorway; there's no one there -- and then there is, just for a moment, but then he's gone again. But we were closer this time, and I saw enough to know that it was a ghost. I saw the brickwork before he appeared, even in shadow -- and I swear I could still see it through him, as if he were no more substantial than a shadow himself.

Which, of course, is all he was: just the shadow of a statue from way the heck over in the other direction, which occasionally got thrown in there by the headlights of an oncoming car before disappearing.

[JoseArcadio]

Sleep paralysis/hypnogogic hallucinations; very real and terrifying when they happen. I can see why some people interpret them as visits from ghosts, demons or aliens. This is also apparently the basis of "astral projection" - if you become aware that you're experiencing sleep paralysis you can try to make yourself "leave" your body. I've tried it a couple of times but have only got about as far as half-way towards my ceiling before properly waking up.

The less skeptical might believe their soul is really leaving their body whereas I know it's just a waking dream. Still a very cool feeling.

[Swallowed My Cellphone]

A while ago, my sister contracted dengue fever and was quite ill for a while. She is the born-again Christian type, and she believes that she had an encounter with God and he taught her to sing and dance in ways that she never could before. I remain rather sceptical of that. I'm pretty sure it was hallucination caused by the fever/virus.So if he taught her these things, did you ask her to demonstrate? (Get video.)

[Never Say Dice]

Every time I use the hair dryer, when I turn it off, two seconds later I hear a tap or click in the hall. I look out and nobody is there.
I finally realized that the click was coming not from the hall but from the power transformer box plugged into the wall, and it's the ground-fault-interrupt button disengaging.

[Astroboy14]

I have a couple spooooky UFO stories (cut and pasted from another thread):

During college, myself and a few other "student observers" had access to the observatory on our campus. We had a nice 6" refractor telescope, probably 20 feet long or so... built during the era when they were observing the "canals" on Mars.

One night my buddy and I opened up the observatory to continue a project we had been working on (trying to observe as many of the Messier Objects as we could). We turned on the inside red lights and opened the slit in the dome and kicked back for a few minutes to let our eyes adjust and to allow the temperature to equalize. While we waited, we looked up through the slit in the dome to see what was up... when we saw the weirdest thing! Blobs of white light were randomly appearing and disappearing all over the sky. The best way I can describe it is this: picture 20 or 30 people randomly shining flashlights for just a second or so at low clouds, a poor description, but that is sort of what it looked like. We watched this for a minute or so, neither of us with the slightest clue what we were seeing.

We finally went outside to see if we could get a better grasp of the phenomenon; but had no better luck outside, until after several minutes, we finally realized what it was. It was quite a relief to have an explanation, let me tell you!


It was a flock of Canadian geese circling over the campus. They were just high enough that the campus lights didn't hit their bodies, until one would occasionally dip low enough that their white bellies would reflect the light for just a second...


The second is also Astronomy related; a buddy of mine had recently been given a nice Meade telescope for his birthday. He had never had a 'scope before, so we went off into the desert east of San Diego one weekend so that I could teach him how to "star-hop" his way around.

We had been playing around with the scope for an hour or so when we took a break to stretch our necks (which were getting a bit tweaked from twisting around to look through the 'scope at various angles).

As we sat there enjoying a couple of beers, an extremely bright light appeared on the North-West horizon and slowly climbed straight up into the sky. When it reached maybe 10 or 15 degrees above the horizon, it stopped and just hovered there... exactly the way a brick wouldn't. Both my friend and I saw it, but neither of us made mention of what was quite obviously an alien star destroyer; we both were confident that after a few more seconds it would move and reveal itself to be an airplane, etc.

The light was easily the brightest object in the sky, didn't move, and made no noise. After a couple of minutes, when the light hadn't moved at all, and maximum creepiness had caused the hair on the back of our necks to stand on end, we both simultaneously said "WTF is up with that light??"

My buddy headed for his telescope, and I headed over to the truck where my binoculars were, and we took a look:


It was, of course, an airplane, as revealed by the navigation lights once we had the thing magnified a bit... it had taken off from an airport to our North-West, probably LA or near there, and was headed directly towards us. From our point of view, it had risen directly up, and once at altitude, didn't seem to move at all until several minutes later when it passed directly overhead!

[Waffle Decider]

So if he taught her these things, did you ask her to demonstrate? (Get video.)

Nah. That would seem a bit too, um, confrontational? These are supposed to be stuff for the kids in the Sunday school and pre-school that she teaches in.

[Red Skeezix]

There was a story on This American Life, about a family that were all seeing ghostly apparitions and believed that the "ghosts" were trying to hold them down and strangle them during the night while they slept. Turns out it was just a case of continual carbon monoxide poisoning.

[Red Skeezix]

There was a story on This American Life, about a family that were all seeing ghostly apparitions and believed that the "ghosts" were trying to hold them down and strangle them during the night while they slept. Turns out it was just a case of continual carbon monoxide poisoning.

Its the first story on this podcast, pretty interesting.
Link (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1268)

[Unauthorized Cinnamon]

These stories are really cool. And the funny thing is they still manage to creep me out, even though I know from the outset that they have a normal explanation!

Another, not too creepy one from me - Occasionally I'll notice something moving in my peripheral vision - even if I'm alone in a room with no moving objects. Look straight at the area, nothing. Turn back to what I'm doing, I see movement again. But it's just a strand of hair blocking a portion of my peripheral vision, which moves against the background as I breathe and whatnot, and because I'm not looking directly at it, my brain doesn't process the perspective properly and "sees" stuff moving several feet away.

And of course, one of the greatest stories like this: Vic Tandy getting "haunted (http://www.parascope.com/articles/slips/fs30_2.htm)"

[gigi]

Hookah?

Yeah, apparently the kids these days are smoking them at parties.

[Dragwyr]

I was 18 and working at Boy Scout Camp. It was about 11:00 PM and we were by the lake, walking back to our cabin for the night. We were looking out at the stars and I noticed a particularly bright star. My astronomy knowledge wasn't that good so I asked my friend what star he thought it was. He said he thought it was the planet Venus. Then just as soon as he was getting ready to explain in further detail, the star just extinguished itself!!! :eek: It just went out completely. Both my friend and I started to freak out... and I mean really freak out. We thought we just experienced a UFO.

Looking back on it, it was one of three things: A satellite, the top of a radio tower, or an airplane. I think it was most likely an airplane, but I guess I will never know for sure, but I am sure it was not a flying saucer.

[astro]

At age 17 heading down the highway with a car full of other teenagers on our way to some early morning bass fishing. We turned on the radio and the most eerie, otherworldly sounds we have ever heard started coming over the radio. We were all goosebumps as it lasted several minutes as we listened for alien commands or ... something.

Announcer came on and said it was an orchestra tuning up.

[Heart of Dorkness]

I went outside one night to walk my dog, glanced up, and happened to notice the sky was glowing neon green and orange. And throbbing, and sort of melting. My thoughts went something like "Godalienswarghostshallucinationangelsbrainaneurysmuniverseexploding? Godhallucinationuniverseexploding? Universeexploding? ...? ...?!? Oh, northern lights!" I had heard of the aurora borealis, and knew that it was very occasionally visible in Michigan, but I had always envisioned something more like a sunset, or the glow of a distant city, something barely visible along the horizon. This was the entire freaking night sky. I briefly considered running around knocking on neighbors' doors to let them know what they were missing, but finally, I just laid down on the lawn and watched until it disappeared.

[MarmaladeBay]

Another, not too creepy one from me - Occasionally I'll notice something moving in my peripheral vision - even if I'm alone in a room with no moving objects. Look straight at the area, nothing. Turn back to what I'm doing, I see movement again. But it's just a strand of hair blocking a portion of my peripheral vision, which moves against the background as I breathe and whatnot, and because I'm not looking directly at it, my brain doesn't process the perspective properly and "sees" stuff moving several feet away.

I think this might be better explained by minor hallucinations caused by caffeine. I get these when I drink too many Cokes. It's usually just little spots or flashes in my peripheral vision, but it sounds a lot like what you're experiencing too.

[MarmaladeBay]

I was driving down a curvy residential road at dusk one night just after the rain had stopped. Through some trees, I see two glowing, light-blue humanoid figures standing in someone's front lawn. My thoughts? Ohmygod aliens, obviously. But then as I continue to drive, the figures levitate over to the drive way, and then into the road. Now I start to freak out and I get ready to swerve, hit the breaks, whatever. Oh SHIT I'm gonna hit the aliens I'm gonna start an intergalactic war and it's gonna be my fault and I'm too young to be so vilified and why me, anyway?

And then they just drove right by me. They were the reflection on the wet pavement of some SUV's blue headlights. :smack: But hey, at least I didn't start an intergalactic war!

Also, one time I was walking around a neighborhood with some friends and there was a rock floating in midair. It didn't take me long to see that it was hanging from a tree branch by a thin wire, but for some reason it was incredibly freaky.

[Trepa Mayfield]

There was a story on This American Life, about a family that were all seeing ghostly apparitions and believed that the "ghosts" were trying to hold them down and strangle them during the night while they slept. Turns out it was just a case of continual carbon monoxide poisoning.

You forgot to mention how they would have all died if they hadn't happened to mention it to their home renovator buddy.

:eek::eek:

[Red Skeezix]

You forgot to mention how they would have all died if they hadn't happened to mention it to their home renovator buddy.

:eek::eek:

Well it was dangerous, but certainly not paranormal.

[tr0psn4j]

I once saw a missile launch and thought it was a UFO. Granted, it was an unidentified flying object to me, until I heard a news story about it on the radio.

[Maiira]

I work at a museum exhibit that many say is haunted. The layout of the exhibit is maze-like and confusing, and the lighting is such that it wreaks havoc on your peripheral vision. I've had many an instance where I've seen something odd, thought "what's that??" and spun around only to find that it was the light reflecting off a case, or some such thing.

[Khadaji]

I work at a museum exhibit that many say is haunted. The layout of the exhibit is maze-like and confusing, and the lighting is such that it wreaks havoc on your peripheral vision. I've had many an instance where I've seen something odd, thought "what's that??" and spun around only to find that it was the light reflecting off a case, or some such thing.
The peripheral-vision thing plays havoc with me often. There is a spot on my wall in my home office that was patched by the previous owner and is just a little off. Quite often I am sitting working and think that I see something moving out of the corner of my eye, only to find it is just that damn spot again.

[Ship Of Dreams]

I've seen lights up in the sky at night before which I'd thought were very strange and could be UFOs. Nothing close up, but I'd just see something amid the stars that seemed to be flickering red/blue/green light. Upon a little research, it seems such lights were just Venus, I think, which can give the optical illusion of flashing lights at times.