# Have you ever had a paranormal experience? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 1, 2019, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020 "2019-01-01T01:42:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2019, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/61 "2019-01-06T22:49:38Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > I was a Skeptic members, and was asked to sit in as a Skeptic on a couple of haunted house over nite sit ins. > > Odd noises. Weird unexplained drafts and cold spots. All of whom likely had a mundane explanation. > > But it was 'spooky". You felt the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. > > The scientist in me think that maybe some of those places have some sort of low frequency sounds that makes one uneasy. Such sounds are very real. Or maybe a smell? > > But if you see a “haunted house” show (and many of them use faked noises) and the people are acting spooked, the spooked part may be very real. > > Now here in this house, we had a very old cat pass away. He was still the alpha cat until he died. I still see him out of the corner of my eye at times. He is still in charge, apparently. I think with haunted houses a couple things make sense. An unnamed sort of energy or some such a thing that in effect the surrounding mass has sort of recorded that we can in fact pick up on (same way you sometimes know you’re being watched without any real indicators) and or simple psychology. The most intriguing stories to me are ones that seem not to make any sense given the surroundings. It’s no surprise to me if people claim to see ghosts of civil war soldiers in a house in Charlotte that was a hotel from the time period. It’s more surprising to hear stories like people seeing a woman in white jumping from the roof of the Ironton prison ( an abandoned men’s prison last operating in the 1950s) Or it would seem surprising to hear of a native American ghost marveling at a watertower. Whatever the answer most hauntings seem far more association driven. You don’t really get ghosts walking on stairs beside an intersection where a house used to be. There also seems to be somewhat of a time limit, you never hear about ghosts In loincloth and Spears. Even 1000 yr old castle ghosts seem to be somewhat more ambiguous… Disembodied lights and such. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/62 "2019-01-07T00:00:27Z")
If association with the location of death is the common factor in ghost sightings, why aren’t there more haunted hospitals? ---
**Author:** ![Littleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ccd318/32.png) [@Littleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Littleman)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/63 "2019-01-07T00:06:42Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > If association with the location of death is the common factor in ghost sightings, why aren’t there more haunted hospitals? Lol There’s plenty, they just have to be abandoned first. The association thing seems to be more like location of life though for most stories. Maybe a powerful emotional event sometimes. Largely like a recording of something someone did a million times …at least with apparitions. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/64 "2019-01-07T22:08:59Z")
I love ghost stories. > [@ThelmaLou](#): > > It always astonishes me the lengths that people will go to to show that stuff people say they saw couldn’t have happened, was impossible, you were drunk or high, or there’s a rational explanation, or it was really “this, that, or the other.” As though we really can explain everything that goes on. Paranormal? Why not? Supernatural? Why not? Are we really so sure that NOTHING beyond human understanding is possible? I am absolutely positive that there will always be things that science doesn’t have an explanation for _at the time_. It’s like the number of bugs in a program - once you come up with an explanation for something, that will introduce another dozen things you don’t understand. I’m also 95% sure that there are things which will not be explainable by science because they are too damn rare. Hard to study something that only happens for a few seconds to only a few people and only every once in a while. I am also 100% sure that there is no one person right now that can explain everything that can now be explained by science. As such, if you tell me that “science can’t explain it”, I call BS. You can’t speak for science, only for your own understanding of science. You think that people are going to lengths to find rational explanations for something that happened? That’s what scientists _do_. You want to prove something is outside of scientific understanding, first you gotta let the scientists attempt to explain it. Because if they can explain it and you still hold on to it being “outside of human explanation”, you’re just deluding yourself. I want to believe. But before I can believe an “paranormal” explanation, I want to make sure there isn’t a normal explanation. I would love to believe in ghosts and related phenomena but the more I learn about physics, human perception and psychology, the more I find for mundane explanations for these. I’ve been at the entrance to the chapel at Hampton Court. That area is seemingly chillier than the surrounding area. I’d love to see the physics to explain that (that’s an honest statement - I’m betting that there’s some sort of heat map of the Court which shows that every spot meeting certain criteria are cooler than surrounding areas). That’s as close as I’ve been to an actual haunting. I’d like to believe that after my father died, he exerted some influence that led me to leave the toxic relationship I was in, and find a much healthier relationship. But honestly, it was more a matter of me learning the lessons I needed to learn, and predictable events happening from there. Pareidolia is by far the best explanation of most “paranormal” events - we are designed to see patterns, especially certain patterns like human faces and human shapes, and our “software” to do so is far more likely to err on the side of seeing patterns where none exist rather than not seeing something we need to see. Ursula Vernon has the absolute best argument against Sasquatch. By now, _someone_ would have shot him or sold him weed. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/65 "2019-01-07T22:11:18Z")
**PSA** - if you are ever in a situation where you think the house you are in is haunted, get a carbon monoxide detector. CO poisoning at subclinical levels produces fairly realistic delusions. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/66 "2019-01-08T02:45:29Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > **PSA** - if you are ever in a situation where you think the house you are in is haunted, get a carbon monoxide detector. CO poisoning at subclinical levels produces fairly realistic delusions. There is an episode of This American Life on NPR regrading that. In the early 20th century, the family in a house heard furniture moving, and had ghosts sitting on their bed and talking to them. They had gas lights. Carbon monoxide poisoning produces auditory hallucinations. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/67 "2019-01-08T17:07:17Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > I’m also 95% sure that there are things which will not be explainable by science because they are too damn rare. Hard to study something that only happens for a few seconds to only a few people and only every once in a while. This is the problem with things like ghost lights. You got two factors working against figuring out what they are. First is they are so rare, they are hard to study. But I feel the second factor is even more the problem. The people best equipped to find the cause believe the lights are a hoax, so they won’t spend any effort to figure them out. Or, they wouldn’t want their reputation ruined by being seen investigating “ghosts”. I believe there is a perfectly rational, science based cause for ghost lights that makes perfect sense and explains everything, and someday, just like the alternate ending to Big, someone will find it.🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/68 "2019-01-08T17:56:22Z")
The actual problem is that no amount of investigation will dispel beliefs in things like ghosts and/or ghost lights because the believers will say either that the “debunkers” didn’t do it right, or that while they may have disproved one case, all the others _haven’t_ been disproved so it is best to keep an “open mind”. Any claim that serious study into paranormal claims is needed is quickly followed by these excuses when a serious study is put before them. Oh, I almost forgot the other excuse used by true believers: Skeptics have their own paranormal ability that blocks paranormal and/or psychic events. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/69 "2019-01-08T18:47:49Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The actual problem is that no amount of investigation will dispel beliefs in things like ghosts and/or ghost lights because the believers will say either that the “debunkers” didn’t do it right, or that while they may have disproved one case, all the others _haven’t_ been disproved so it is best to keep an “open mind”. Any claim that serious study into paranormal claims is needed is quickly followed by these excuses when a serious study is put before them. > Oh, I almost forgot the other excuse used by true believers: Skeptics have their own paranormal ability that blocks paranormal and/or psychic events. My point was that if ghost lights science based caused is discovered, then they won’t be paranormal any longer! They’ll be like St Elmo’s Fire. Scientific, repeatable, understandable. Anybody that would still believe they are paranormal after that can be dismissed like your average moon hoaxer. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/70 "2019-01-08T18:55:51Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > My point was that if ghost lights science based caused is discovered, then they won’t be paranormal any longer! They’ll be like St Elmo’s Fire. Scientific, repeatable, understandable. > > Anybody that would still believe they are paranormal after that can be dismissed like your average moon hoaxer. You mean like when the people behind the “Bigfoot” hoax confessed, and everyone agreed that it proved that actual Bigfoots(Bigfeet?) didn’t really exist? Sorry, but woo doesn’t work that way in most cases. ---
**Author:** ![Rebo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rebo/32/13005_2.png) [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/71 "2019-01-08T21:08:53Z")
[I’ll just leave this here.](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=540269&highlight=creepy) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/72 "2019-01-08T21:16:02Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > You mean like when the people behind the “Bigfoot” hoax confessed, and everyone agreed that it proved that actual Bigfoots(Bigfeet?) didn’t really exist? > Sorry, but woo doesn’t work that way in most cases. No, it doesn’t, and I’m not sure why you’re being so obtuse. I could explain my position again, if I thought you’d pay attention. ---
**Author:** ![Frank\_Burly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frank_burly/32/24_2.png) [@Frank\_Burly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank_Burly)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/73 "2019-01-09T00:54:32Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > **PSA** - if you are ever in a situation where you think the house you are in is haunted, get a carbon monoxide detector. CO poisoning at subclinical levels produces fairly realistic delusions. It’s also known to make people vote Republican. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Razncain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9d8465/32.png) [@Razncain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Razncain)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/74 "2019-01-09T02:01:31Z")
> [@HoneyBadgerDC](#): > > I had a dream about about Natalie wood the night she died. In the dream I was in adjoining white room which could have been a cabin on a ship. I heard fighting and was trying to nock down the door to help when I woke up. Only time I have ever dreamed about a movie star. My wife freaked out when we got up and turned on the news and heard of her death. I told her about the dream before we got up. Looking back on it I am now wondering if I didn’t get up and flip on the TV and have a cigarette and heard a news flash. I really don’t think that was the case but I did sometimes get up at night and flip the TV on for a few minutes. I had a dream where Elvis Presley had died. I believe I was working night shift at the time, so slept in the day time. The dream consisted of me reading the newspaper headline and it saying that he had died. The next day, either my mom reading the newspaper or we was watching the news (forget which now) we learned that he had died. I told my mom that I dreamed that very thing. I was blown away…for about 10 seconds, anyway. My mom solved the mystery when the first thing she asked was, "Did you have your radio on? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/75 "2019-01-09T02:26:31Z")
> [@bowlweevils](#): > > You are what is known scientifically as a negapsychic. At least according to the horror roleplaying game I played in the 1980s that was not Call of Cthulhu but shall remain nameless due to memory failure. _Beyond the Supernatural_, by Palladium Books. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/76 "2019-01-09T04:31:12Z")
Nope, never had any paranormal experience. glad of it too, I’d be scared out of my mind. ---
**Author:** ![blood63](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/97f17d/32.png) [@blood63](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blood63)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/77 "2019-01-09T19:17:36Z")
> [@Dragwyr](#): > > There are a lot of personal experiences that happen to people. I don’t deny that the experience happened, but they always seem to never be one that is repeatable and testable. Therefore, I don’t believe in paranormal events. I think that every paranormal event is an event that was either coincidental, or something that can eventually be explained by natural means. > > That being said… > > This is what happened to a friend of mine and I when we were working at a summer camp. We were walking back to our cabin at about 10 pm. As we were walking down by the waterfront, they sky was clear and we were looking at the stars. We saw one that was especially bright and I asked my friend which star that was. He said he thought it was Venus, and just as he was giving his reasoning for thinking that, the star suddenly went out. It was very clearly there, then it just blinked completely out. > > We both freaked out and wondered for the rest of the night what had happened, conjecturing that it could have been a UFO, an alien spacecraft or something. > > Today I look on that event and still don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m certain it was not a UFO or some sort of alien spacecraft. I have some hypotheses, but to be honest, I prefer to not know. Its my way of keeping some sense of mystery in my life, I guess. Satellites can be very bright and can disappear very quickly as they lose the angle of the sun. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/78 "2019-01-09T19:49:36Z")
> [@blood63](#): > > Satellites can be very bright and can disappear very quickly as they lose the angle of the sun. [Satellite flare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_flare) ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/79 "2019-01-09T20:47:23Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > It always astonishes me the lengths that people will go to to show that stuff people say they saw couldn’t have happened, was impossible, you were drunk or high, or there’s a rational explanation, or it was really “this, that, or the other.” As though we really can explain everything that goes on. Paranormal? Why not? Supernatural? Why not? Are we really so sure that NOTHING beyond human understanding is possible? > [@ThelmaLou](#): > > A worthy, but ultimately unattainable goal. That goal should, of course, continue to be pursued. **With humility.** (My bold) Since the discussion is broadening, I think this deserves a response. First, on the question of humility. What changed in the Enlightenment was that we refused to continue to be cowed by those making dogmatic claims, those arguing from authority; we would no longer be bullied by bullshitters and we would challenge delusion - including self-delusion. And those who view scientists as arrogant are always those who lack evidence to support their claims. But the essence of the scientific method is to be ruthlessly humble in the face of _evidence_. And that’s the kind of humility that’s worth having - it has given us modern medicine, space telescopes and iPhones, not to mention a true understanding of where we came from and the nature of our universe. Second, the widespread misconception that scientists are resistant to the idea of anything that doesn’t fit the current paradigm is unfounded. Data that doesn’t fit current theories are what scientists live for - Nobel Prizes follow from anomalous results. A skeptical urge to find _convincing_ proof should not be mistaken for lack of enthusiasm for the anomalous. Third, if you think scientists lack the imagination to countenance the bizarre, take a look at quantum mechanics. QM is _far_ weirder and more profoundly counterintuitive than any proposed paranormal phenomena. ---
**Author:** ![StraightTalk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/straighttalk/32/9982_2.png) [@StraightTalk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StraightTalk)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2019, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020/80 "2019-01-09T21:10:23Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Still my favorite “ghost story”! > > As for me, no, not a one, but unlike Mulder, I do NOT want to believe. I like going out in the country at night, and exploring old buildings, and I don’t want to think there are bigfoots in the woods, or ghosts, either in the woods or in the buildings. I DO NOT want to be camping and suddenly see a light in an abandoned house! > > I used to be in fear of the closed off rooms of our house when I was a kid, and to this day I still have dreams about strange things behind those doors. To believe there were really ghosts would be too much! > > Why aren’t people more upset when they think they are being visited by the spirits of their deceased relatives? That means the same relatives can see and hear everything you do, all the time! They see you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake. > > And they are judging you. > > Just like Alexa. Yeah… If mom is “out there”, I just hope she’s not in my bedroom on date night. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-you-ever-had-a-paranormal-experience/827020.md?page=3)