I have to say this is so very cool.
please look at this light now…:::::::::FLASH::::::::::::::::
Fermentation?
Almost certainly. If you look at a bottle of ketchup that’s been around awhile, you can see small voids, especially near the bottom of the bottle. These are CO[sub]2[/sub] bubbles caused by some bacteria or another making vinegar and producing the gas as a byproduct. I learned about this at my first restaurant job, lo those many years ago. Ever since, I check ketchup bottles for bubbles when I buy them.
How about this people. This is a thread asking for experiences that people can’t get an answer to. The comments demeaning other’s experiences don’t belong in this post, because they weren’t asked for and are not wanted by the people telling the experience. Feel free to start your own threads on whatever you want and post there. Don’t come to this thread determined to ruin it for the people giving experiences.
Hah!
I started a thread a couple of months back in which I asked about all those unrefrigerated bottles of ketchup left out on restaurant tables after they’d been opened, expressing my fears that this might not be a Good Thing. I was assured that the ketchup wouldn’t be adversely affected. Now here’s proof from two of you that fermentation does indeed take place.
I too am one of those people who simply can’t wear a watch. They just stop working.
My sister and I have twin stuff happen. Giving each other the same gifts for birthday or Xmas, having the same tastes. Things were particularly weird after we went to college because we wouldn’t see each other for months and months and then have these coincidences on top of coincidences. It still goes on, but less noticeably now that we live relatively close together and spend more time together. But those years when we hardly saw each other were the strangest.
For example, we both loved the same songs off albums we’d never listened to together. One time at a party, I played my favorite song from the Jackson 5, and as it started to play my sister ran in saying it was her favorite Jackson 5 song. We both got made fun of by our friends for practically living on quesadillas during college - we discovered this when one of her friends made fun of her for it in front of one of my friends. We both drank Wyder’s cider - although I preferred raspberry and she preferred pear. We once gave each other photo albums of the two of us for Christmas - with the same photos in them. One year I gave her the book Les Miserables and she gave me the soundtrack to the show. We both discovered Taoism independently. We both are hardcore atheists. We find more and more things as time goes by.
I also heard voices in my head on two occasions. Both times drugs were involved. So this could be explained by drugs, dreams or psychosis, but they were so intense…
Once it was when I was trying to go to sleep and having trouble. My mind was restless, and I was kind of rolling with it when I had the sensation of opening a ‘door’ and there were two voices talking. After a few seconds I realized…they were talking about me. As I realized that, one of them said…“She can hear us! How did she get in here?” and then the ‘door’ closed and I lost them.
Another time I was coming down off a binge and sitting in a chair. I closed my eyes and I started to hear a voice, whispering in my ear from right behind me. It was saying terrible things about me, calling me a slut and a druggie among other things. I listened for a while because it was so bizarre, but then I started to get scared and forced myself to open my eyes.
Disclaimer: I don’t necessarily believe any of these are unexplainable by science. But they are all pretty weird.
Because you have not personally experienced an unexplained event does not give you the right to dismiss what others say they have experienced. If no one you know has experienced a spontaneous remission of cancer, that does not mean it does not exist.
The anecdotes described here are merely that; recollections of personal events that they have not been able to find logical explanations for. No one is claiming magic, pixies, space aliens or visits from the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They are all saying that something happened and they don’t have the necessary information to determine the cause. Since these events occurred with out any foresight or planning and are not repeatable, they cannot be investigated from a scientific standpoint.
I realize that you call yourself a Cynic, but you should try to be a little open minded.
Unexplained is not the same as unexplainable. As a matter of fact I have had a few similar experiences to what’s being described above, I just don’t see any reason to ascribe them to magic.
The OP asked for experinces which can’t be explained by science. That’s not the same as asking for experience which people simply don’t know the explanation for. In point of fact, every single even described above can be plausibly explained without having to grasp at the supernatural.
There’s a difference between being open minded and being irrational.
You’re correct. He has that right regardless of his personal experience. It’s called the right to free speech.
<hijack>
Ketchup in restaurants totally skeeves me out. I worked at a Chili’s and later at a steakhouse where the practice with ketchup was:
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Collect all non-full bottles from the tables at the end of the night.
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Pour new ketchup from a giant dispenser into each of the bottles (putting new ketchup on top of old).
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Wipe off the bottles, refasten the caps and return them to the tables.
I saw five bottles explode from the gas build up of the old ketchup at the bottom. It’s just gross beyond words.
</hijack>
The only experience I can think of was probably a coincidence. When I was in high school, my right ear began hurting. The pain grew over a couple of days, and everything sounded like it was coming through cotton balls, until the third night. That night I was trying to sleep and the pain was intolerable. I was exhausted and wanted to cry from hurting so much. I went down to the couch in the living room (always my spot to huddle when sick) and prayed for the first time in a long time. In line with the religion in which I was raised, I prayed to understand myself as unharmed and unharmable. After about 5 minutes, I was overwhelmed with the sense of being loved – just surrounded with love, and I relaxed. At that exact instant, a rumbling began in my ear and after a few loud cracking sounds, the pain vanished completely and I could hear just fine again.
That ear still gives me some trouble in clearing when I SCUBA dive, but otherwise seems fine. My guess is that an infection or something kept it from equalizing for a few days.
Oh, for the love of…
Why argue? The OP was just looking for a fun thread. Why must people jump into every damned thread looking for an argument or debate? Honestly. If you don’t want to discuss issues that “cannot be explained by science” (which in my opinion just means science cannot, at the moment, fully explain it, not that it’s “Magic” or “Leprechauns”) then I suggest that when you see a topic entitled
**Have You Ever Experienced Something That Cannot Be Explained By Science? **
You avoid it.
It is NOT entitled
**
Do You Believe There Are Things In Life That Cannot Be Explained By Science?**
So stop hijacking.
These are always harmless little threads which I – who has never seen a ghost or spookie thing of any sort and doesn’t believe in them – always enjoy. Diogenes always feels compelled to be The Voice of Reason; you can set your watch by it.
Yes, yes, we’re fighting ignorance and all. But can’t we have a little entertainment, too?
Despite desperately wanting to, I have never had any kind of supernatural experience. However, a co-worker (let’s call him Rob) told me a story the other day, and Halloween is coming, so:
Rob’s sister died last week, and he had gone to her house to look after her pet dog. On the night she was cremated, the dog went missing, and though Rob searched, he was unable to find it. The next day, he went out and searched again, and when he arrived back at the house, the dog was on the doorstep. Dead. Rob seemed to feel that his sister had taken her pet.
My husband seemed to feel that the family had probably poisoned the dog to avoid having to find it a home, but that’s no fun to think of at all!
Nah, I welcome both kinds of comments myself. SDMB isn’t a therapy session or self-help group.
I listed some strange episodes I’ve experienced, some others criticized my interpretation, I clarified my intention and criticized their arguments, and we ended up discussing the meaning of the term “existence” in a semi-productive way. Why try to stifle such a process? 
-FrL-
I’m pretty sure the person you were talking to wasn’t speaking about legal matters.
-Kris
No problem. I understand everyone has a right to free speech. I’m talking here about courtesy and manners. If a bunch of people are talking about how much they love strawberries, does that mean you have to jump in and basically tell the people they are weird for thinking that way? This thread was not a poll or debate. The OP said:
It was asking people to provide their experiences. If you do not have an experience to share (either your own or one that was related to you) then there is no need to be impolite.
And the words “supernatural” and “paranormal” really only mean “attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces” and “beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation” respectively. Many people hear those words and think of the MUFON members and Chariots of the Gods whackos. “Cryotozoology” also falls into this category but, keep in mind, for all of the yeti and Nessies there are okapi and coelacanth.
If I saw a piece of paper move on a table across the room and there was no wind and no one touching it, I could effectively call it a “paranormal” event until I was able to complete my investigation because the movement appeared to go beyond the range of normal experience (personally, I wouldn’t but you get my meaning, I hope). Upon further investigation, I might find that someone had shot a blast from an air cannon or had developed a static charge to attract the paper or some other explanation.
The experiences recounted here have not been scientifically investigated because they are not repeatable phenomena that can be reproduced under laboratory conditions. These were one-time, unexpected events.
The abiding rule on SDMB is “don’t be a jerk”. Jumping in to a thread just to pick on people and their experiences pushes it. Again, this is not about his right to free speech, it is about the right of everyone else to not be demeaned for someone else’s enjoyment.
I didn’t pick on anybody or their experiences. I only object to anyone saying there was “no scientific explanation” for those experiences. Of course there was.
Of course, a term’s denoting something nonexistent is different than a term’s being meaningless. I agree the term “telepathy” denotes something nonexistent, but is the term meaningless? Is it gibberish? Even from a scientific standpoint?
If a scientist did an experiment in which he asks one subject to think of a particular object, and then asks another subject, in another room, to name whatever object he thinks the first subject is thinking of, and if the second subject gets it right 80% of the time, and if this works even when we change who is in the first room, and when we change the location of the first room, and it works only when we ask the second subject to identify some particular person’s thoughts, rather than when the second subject is asked to identify a picture or something, and if other scientists perform tests with substantially similar results on that second subject, then wouldn’t these scientists put forth the hypothesis that the second subject is capable of telepathy? Haven’t I just given some good verification and disconfirmation conditions for the term “telepathy?” Doesn’t that suffice for establishing that the term “telepathy” is meaningful even from a scientific standpoint?
-FrL-
I’ve had a few, but here’s a couple of favourites, and actually one of them is my father’s. Note that my father is an atheist and doesn’t believe in anything “supernatural”, deeply uninterested in the subject.
My father’s dream
Short background: His father was a war vet (WWII) and emotionally abscent, unable to connect to his kids. Instead, my father got to know a man who had a workshop, where he hang around for a couple of years during his teens. Later, he moved to another country, got himself wife and kids and having troubles supporting them and no thought whatsoever of the man in the workshop.
One night, he dreamt that he was walking down the road, and approaching him from the other way, was a man with a bad limp. My father saw that it was the man in the workshop, who he hadn’t seen or really thought much of the last ten years.
The man said: “Hello, old friend. Are you afraid of me?”
A bit startled by the strange question, my father said: “No… of course not.”
The man patted him on the shoulder, saying, “That’s good”, and continued limping his way down the road.
This was such a strange dream that my father woke up my mother and told it to her, just so surprised.
Later that year, while we were visiting my grandparents in the land from where my father had moved, my grandmother asked my father if he rememberd the man in the workshop.
“Yes”, my father said, thinking it was a strange coincidence that she would mention him now; had never talked about him before.
She said: “He died earlier this year. He had a thrombus (?) in his leg this winter and got a terrible limp, and later he died.”
Wakinyan’s prayer
I’m not really a christian, and don’t believe much in the bible, and I don’t pray. However, I’m a believer of sorts, and it has happend, probably three or four times the last fifteen years that I’ve actually prayed to God, because… I just needed to do something. This is one of these occations:
At the time, my nephew was three years old, and his parents were beginning to get really worried, because the little boy didn’t develop as other children, and even though they didn’t admit it to themself, really, the boy was different. Nobody knew what it was, but now (two years later) he has been diagnosed with autism. What we knew at the time, was aside of unusal behaviour, that he didn’t learn to talk and so forth. One of the characteristics, which is noteworthy in this story, was that he never looked at you, he barely, if at all, noticed your presence.
Because I felt so much for the boy, was really worried for him and my troubled brother, I prayed for the boy. In desperation I asked God to help him. “Please help the boy”, I prayed. “Help him talk and let him grow up as a ordinary boy, and relieve my brother from all his worries.” If nothing else, I did it to relieve the pressure I felt, and to help the frustration of not being able to do anything for them.
Next time I was visiting my brother’s, I sat down in the sofa, waiting for my coffee. The autistic boy was playing on the floor, and I gave him a glance. Now, something strange happend: He looked at me. He looked straight in my eyes. This was surprising enough, but then he rose, came over to me (never happened before or since), looked straight in my eyes, and stroke me over my head a few times. His look was sad and, really, compassionate. Then he just got back to his toys and continued playing in his own world.
I just sat there, staring, looked around, like: “Did you see that, did anybody see that!?”
I believe that that’s the only time he has ever looked at me straight in the eyes. It’s typical by the way, for autistics to avoid eye contact. It was as if he – judging from his sad, compassionate expression, and gesture – was saying: “Thank you, uncle Wakinyan, but it won’t do any good. It’s alright.”
I still get shivers when I think about it.
I swear my purse swallows whatever object I need most at the most crucial moment and spews it back out after I’ve forgotten about it. They ARE evil, I tell you!