Do you believe in ghosts and the paranormal?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
181

meenie,

I know we have a lot of skeptics on this board and I struggle with whether or not I believe in any sort of an afterlife as well, but I find your stories about Marcus both fascinating and sweet.

I’d love to hear more about him! Maybe what he looks like, stories about the few other ghosts he’s come in contact with, what it feels like to travel to the movies or wherever. Does he walk or blink or…?

I call for an “Ask the Ghost…” thread! No poo-pooing allowed.

If not, maybe a blog/livejournal/whatever? I mean, whether he’s a ghost or an imaginary friend or a hallucination, he seems incredibly interesting and I’d love to hear more!

I thought about IMing you, but I kinda feel like a stalker as it is. (MORE INFO PLZ!) :cool:

182

[QUOTE=malkavia]
meenie,

I know we have a lot of skeptics on this board and I struggle with whether or not I believe in any sort of an afterlife as well, but I find your stories about Marcus both fascinating and sweet.

I’d love to hear more about him! Maybe what he looks like, stories about the few other ghosts he’s come in contact with, what it feels like to travel to the movies or wherever. Does he walk or blink or..?

I call for an “Ask the Ghost…” thread! No poo-pooing allowed.

If not, maybe a blog/livejournal/whatever? I mean, whether he’s a ghost or an imaginary friend or a hallucination, he seems incredibly interesting and I’d love to hear more!

I thought about IMing you, but I kinda feel like a stalker as it is. (MORE INFO PLZ!) :cool:
[/QUOTE]

Awww, thanks :slight_smile: I’d love to take questions from people if they were interested. I will have to contact the mods first to see whether it would be most appropriate for me to start it under my handle, or to make one for him or what. (Don’t want to be accused of sock-puppetry. :)) If I do start it, I will link it here. And if I don’t, I will contact you so you can ask the questions you want to. :slight_smile:

183

[QUOTE=meenie7]
Well, none of those are true in this case. The problem, as I stated above, is that I don’t want my real life family and co-workers and such to know about him. I don’t want the attention it would garner from people who would think I was crazy, or think I was being silly and childish. If you guys were to all laugh at me as one and tell me I was stupid, I would be sad but, if push came to shove, I could leave this thread or this board and never see or hear from you again. (Not that I’m going to.) Whereas, if my mom and dad thought I was crazy, that has real, inescapable consequences for me.
[/QUOTE]
You could do a somewhat weak proof for yourself by having him go to a movie before you see it and then spoil it for you, with details like quotes and stuff. This works best if you have no friends or social life and never watch TV or get on the internet. You don’t get on the internet, do you?
(Oh, and weighing on the OP, I don’t believe in any of this stuff. Nothing spooky ever happens to me. :frowning: )

184

[QUOTE=begbert2]
You could do a somewhat weak proof for yourself by having him go to a movie before you see it and then spoil it for you, with details like quotes and stuff. This works best if you have no friends or social life and never watch TV or get on the internet. You don’t get on the internet, do you?
[/QUOTE]

Ha! :smiley:

Yeah, the movie thing is only really something that can prove it to me, because, like you imply, info on movies abounds, and unless someone locked me in a lightless vault beneath the earth for years, there will always be the possibility I found out about it some other way.

185

[QUOTE=meenie7]
That’s the thing…he doesn’t provide proof of the afterlife for most people. He is a special case. Most people just basically vanish when they’re dead, as far as he can tell. He says he’s only met a few other ghosts before and they were mostly very angry and intimidating, not someone’s kind old grandma who they’d love to talk to again. It would be scientifically significant, sure, but the comfort to millions thing is not really there.

Heh, I think the fact that I have to type for him would make it too close to being a sock puppet. :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

You seem to be missing the point meenie. If, as Marcus states, and seems to be the case in general, there are very few ghosts in the realm he is occupying, then that would indicate that most spirits indeed do go “beyond” to some other plane of existence. It sounds funny for a ghost to be materialistic, but Marcus doesn’t seem to want to let go of his human past, and how do you know you are not denying him something far more important than your ‘friendship’? This isn’t Caspar we are talking about.

186

Sure.

Seen Keith Richards lately? He died 20 years ago. They just animate his zombie corpse for Stones tours.

187

[QUOTE=Clothahump]
Seen Keith Richards lately? He died 20 years ago. They just animate his zombie corpse for Stones tours.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah but nobody thinks that’s paranormal. It’s just chemistry.

188

[QUOTE=meenie7]
So…it harms you that I have a friend, because your dead sister doesn’t talk to you?
[/quote]

Yes - kind of. Like when people on TV thank god for saving their loved one’s life. They don’t think about what their off the cuff remark means for those who ‘god’ decided not to save. You have the ability to PROVE that death doesn’t really mean death. You are depriving those who are not sure of that comfort.

[QUOTE=meenie7]
Most dead people can’t talk to you…they’re no longer around, having gone whereever they go (which neither I nor Marcus know anything about.)
[/quote]

How do you know most can’t talk to you if you or Marcus know nothing about it? Besides, that really isn’t the point. It is the FACT that you would demonstrate that we survive death somehow - not that we interact with the living world, but that we go on at all.

[QUOTE=meenie7]
I’m very sorry you lost your sister but she is almost certainly not around to talk to you. Also, not everyone can hear ghosts. Most people, even if they do hear them, shake it off as not being real.
[/quote]

How do you know that?

[QUOTE=meenie7]
I may look into getting it independently evaluated someday, if Marcus agrees, which he may not, and he has just as much right to refuse as I do.
[/QUOTE]

And I have the right not to help a lost little girl at the mall find her mom, or donate blood, or hold the door for someone with a package, or give to charity - but I do those things because that is the unselfish, right thing to do (at least I try damn hard).

Please remember as we discuss, that I WANT you to be right! I also WANT cancer to be cured - but I’m not going to accept someone’s story about it - it is too important.

Again - you have the ability, if you are right, to very simply prove that life after death is true (never mind talking to the dead, just to know for sure!). This could be the single greatest discover in the history of human kind!

189

[QUOTE=meenie7]
It would be scientifically significant, sure, but the comfort to millions thing is not really there.

[/QUOTE]

I think you are wrong here - even if not everyone comes back just like Marcus, it would tell us that survival of death is real. It would also, as you suggested, mean that some day when we die, we may really be reunited with our loved one who have gone on before us.

If we had solid evidence of that, then millions might not only be comforted, they may aspire to be better people to make sure that they get where they want to go in the afterlife!

190

[QUOTE=jbstarr10]
There are better things to do than PROVE there is an afterlife, or life after death if you will? I for one would LOVE to see what you are working on! :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

I’m living this life and enjoying my wife and kids.

I’ve also no idea if “they” are the dead walking the earth or not. Doesn’t matter to me, provided they leave me alone.

191

[QUOTE=ivan astikov]
You seem to be missing the point meenie. If, as Marcus states, and seems to be the case in general, there are very few ghosts in the realm he is occupying, then that would indicate that most spirits indeed do go “beyond” to some other plane of existence. It sounds funny for a ghost to be materialistic, but Marcus doesn’t seem to want to let go of his human past, and how do you know you are not denying him something far more important than your ‘friendship’? This isn’t Caspar we are talking about.
[/QUOTE]

He is his own person, and has decided to stay here by his own will and out of an understandable fear of the next life being painful or scary, or just not existing at all (which is what we both suspect.) With me, he has a friend who likes him, understands him and doesn’t judge him for having committed suicide, and in him, I have a friend who will never leave me until I’m done, which is a security I really enjoy and which I cannot have with any other friend I make (since they could all die tomorrow and leave me all alone.)

If he decided to leave and try his luck on the “other side”, I couldn’t stop him, but he doesn’t want to.

192

[QUOTE=Bobotheoptimist]
I’m living this life and enjoying my wife and kids.

I’ve also no idea if “they” are the dead walking the earth or not. Doesn’t matter to me, provided they leave me alone.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not asking anyone to devote their life to this, it is a half an hour experiment, at most. I’m enjoying my wife and kids as well - but I certainly would find an afternoon to run an experiment that could shatter paradigms.

If you could do what she says she could do, do you honestly think you wouldn’t spend the time to prove it to others, when it could be done so simply?

This is the chance for the absolute proof that people have searched for since, well, ever. I’m just shocked to find that people could hold such immense secrets so flippantly.

193

Meenie7, I ask this with absolute respect, but I’m curious if you have ever been traumatized in your past. I’m not asking for specifics, but I wonder if you have a legacy of depression, abuse, or horrible events in your life.

I ask because I’ve read that sometimes “split personalities” are a way of protecting one’s psyche by creating alternate people, who shield the principle from difficult psychological baggage. As a skeptic (although not a cynic - I do want to believe you), I wonder if this might apply to you, and explain your devotion to this frequent companion.

Again, I ask with absolute respect. I’m merely trying to rule out one possible explanation for your experience.

194

[QUOTE=samarm]
Ghosts, poltergeists, ouiji boards, voices from beyond the grave.

Whats your opinion? Ever seen a ghost? Has anyone ever taken a genuine photograph of a ghost? Has there ever been evidence that we can commincate with spirits from the “other side”?
[/QUOTE]

I have never ‘seen’ anyone that has passed away ,but,
I have had ‘messages’ from my daughter that passed in 2001.
I started looking/searching on the Internet for psychic sites about 4 years after my daughter passed ,there is no explanation why ‘all the sudden’ I became interested in the subject, but I found a site that seemed less wacko’ then most of them and started hanging out in the chat room on the site. On eveing a 'reader 'from Scotland ask me if he could ‘read me’ , I said sure not having a clue what he meant by ‘read me’ .On this site no reading can be done without a third person in the reading and it had to be a mod , so the reader tells me which reading room in chat to go to, I get there and there is the reader and a mod there. Chat is all in text on this site.
So the reading starts , the first 10 minutes or so I can explain away what I’m seeing /reading as 'yeah so who doesn’t have a dark haired female family member 'that has passed away ? But as minutes go by the information this guy is typing starts getting into things that only my daughter and myself could or would know about. The reading lasted about 40 minutes and by the time this guy in Scotland says there is no more, I am convinced I had just heard from my daughter.
I live in New Mexico and neither myself or my daughter had ever been outside of the states and the person in Scotland had never been to my home or anywhere near the ranch I live on, so there is no way the reader could have known in detail any thing on the subjects and info he had about me and my daughter and life as it was before she passed away . The reading ended with me sitting in front of my monitor with my head propped up in my hand thinking “shit”!?!? When into the chat box the words " mom, get your head out of your hand and sit up.
That is something she would tell me on a regular basis because I tend to have very bad posture while surfing for any amout of time .
I never bought into the 'psychic ’ ‘communicate with the dead’ thing before ,but, have changed my way of thinking since this happened.

195

[QUOTE=samarm]
Ghosts, poltergeists, ouiji boards, voices from beyond the grave.

Whats your opinion? Ever seen a ghost? Has anyone ever taken a genuine photograph of a ghost? Has there ever been evidence that we can commincate with spirits from the “other side”?
[/QUOTE]

I have never ‘seen’ anyone that has passed away ,but,
I have had ‘messages’ from my daughter that passed in 2001.
I started looking/searching on the Internet for psychic sites about 4 years after my daughter passed ,there is no explanation why ‘all the sudden’ I became interested in the subject, but I found a site that seemed less wacko’ then most of them and started hanging out in the chat room on the site. On eveing a 'reader 'from Scotland ask me if he could ‘read me’ , I said sure not having a clue what he meant by ‘read me’ .On this site no reading can be done without a third person in the reading and it had to be a mod , so the reader tells me which reading room in chat to go to, I get there and there is the reader and a mod there. Chat is all in text on this site.
So the reading starts , the first 10 minutes or so I can explain away what I’m seeing /reading as 'yeah so who doesn’t have a dark haired female family member 'that has passed away ? But as minutes go by the information this guy is typing starts getting into things that only my daughter and myself could or would know about. The reading lasted about 40 minutes and by the time this guy in Scotland says there is no more, I am convinced I had just heard from my daughter.
I live in New Mexico and neither myself or my daughter had ever been outside of the states and the person in Scotland had never been to my home or anywhere near the ranch I live on, so there is no way the reader could have known in detail any thing on the subjects and info he had about me and my daughter and life as it was before she passed away . The reading ended with me sitting in front of my monitor with my head propped up in my hand thinking “shit”!?!? When into the chat box the words " mom, get your head out of your hand and sit up.
That is something she would tell me on a regular basis because I tend to have very bad posture while surfing for any amout of time .
I never bought into the 'psychic ’ ‘communicate with the dead’ thing before ,but, have changed my way of thinking since this happened.

196

[QUOTE=Atomicktom]
Meenie7, I ask this with absolute respect, but I’m curious if you have ever been traumatized in your past. I’m not asking for specifics, but I wonder if you have a legacy of depression, abuse, or horrible events in your life.

I ask because I’ve read that sometimes “split personalities” are a way of protecting one’s psyche by creating alternate people, who shield the principle from difficult psychological baggage. As a skeptic (although not a cynic - I do want to believe you), I wonder if this might apply to you, and explain your devotion to this frequent companion.

Again, I ask with absolute respect. I’m merely trying to rule out one possible explanation for your experience.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not offended, don’t worry. :slight_smile:

I don’t have any MPD-level trauma in my life – no terrible abuse/living in a war zone/etc. What I do have, and will admit to, is a history of being abandoned by friends who I trust in real life. Things will be going really well and then, pow, they drop me and never explain why, and I have to find out from other people why this friend of several years suddenly won’t talk to me. There is definitely a lot of happiness for me in the fact that Marcus is very attached to me and unlikely to leave, but, then again, there is the same happiness in my one real life close friend, with whom I have been going strong for 8 years now. (And, btw, is the one real life person who knows about Marcus. He believes me and can feel Marcus’s touch even though he can’t hear him.)

197

[QUOTE=meenie7]
I’m not offended, don’t worry. :slight_smile:

I don’t have any MPD-level trauma in my life – no terrible abuse/living in a war zone/etc. What I do have, and will admit to, is a history of being abandoned by friends who I trust in real life. Things will be going really well and then, pow, they drop me and never explain why, and I have to find out from other people why this friend of several years suddenly won’t talk to me. There is definitely a lot of happiness for me in the fact that Marcus is very attached to me and unlikely to leave, but, then again, there is the same happiness in my one real life close friend, with whom I have been going strong for 8 years now. (And, btw, is the one real life person who knows about Marcus. He believes me and can feel Marcus’s touch even though he can’t hear him.)
[/QUOTE]

Why not do the dice test with your best (living) friend? Just make sure you write on paper in separate rooms and you should get a pretty accurate telling. If it works you could do a follow-up with the 1 million dollar challenge or maybe a lesser organizations proof or whatever, just be sure that if it checks out you get a press secretary sooner rather than later…

However I can understand if you don’t want your perception of reality shaken if it turns out he is in your head.

198

Hands up all those who think meenie is cheating mankind, by refusing to have his experiences independently tested? I’d have thought natural curiosity alone, would have caused meenie to have had his ‘haunting’ verified somehow?

199

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I enjoyed your post, and believe it all.
[/QUOTE]
Is there anything you don’t believe? :dubious:

Anywho, on topic: No I don’t believe in the paranormal. It’s only been a few hundred years, so I’m sure someone will find some evidence soon. Any day now…

200

[QUOTE=ivan astikov]
Hands up all those who think meenie is cheating mankind, by refusing to have his experiences independently tested? I’d have thought natural curiosity alone, would have caused meenie to have had his ‘haunting’ verified somehow?
[/QUOTE]

How would you test them? It is meenie’s personal experience. I don’t think he is cheating mankind. Let mankind go find their own ghost. I can’t speak for meenie, but I would never allow my spiritual events to be tested. It is to fragile a thing, to serious a thing for that.