I have a reverse banjo clock from 1916 that belonged to my maternal grandparents. It has two keyholes for winding, one for the clock itself and the other for the chimes. I was in the habit of only winding the clock itself, as the chimes were rather loud. At the time in question, the chimes had not been wound or rung for weeks if not months.
The mechanism of the chimes is that it would chime once on the half-hour, and chime the time on the hour. It would only chime on the hour or half-hour, not at any other time. The last piece of info is that if the chimes spring needed winding, the chiming would be very slow and “draggy”.
As I returned to the house from my father’s wake, the clock started chiming. It chimed very clearly, not dragged out at all, and it chimed 10-12 times (I was so stunned I didn’t start counting), and was heard by my wife and daughter. It was 10:43. I’ve had enough math where I understand the power of coincidence, but the clock should not have been capable of chiming at that time. I have tried to partially wind the chimes, let them run down, move the clock to between the hour and half-hour, move the clock, shake the clock, etc. I’ve never been able to get the clock to chime at a time it shouldn’t.
My father was the type who lothed religion, but always felt that there might be something past death. I feel the same way, especially now.
Such is the goal of the sciences.
A worthy, but ultimately unattainable goal. That goal should, of course, continue to be pursued. With humility.
Yabbut, one of the ways we pursue it is by thinking up possible explanations for things that are currently described as unexplained or inexplicable. If you say to a scientific rationalist type “I had experience X and I can’t explain it”, the scientific rationalist type is going to respond by suggesting ways it could rationally be explained.
Now, I fully concur that there are situations where it’s thoughtless or rude to go shoving one’s hypothesized scientific rational explanations into other people’s accounts of their mystic experiences that hold a lot of meaning for them. And if that’s what the OP meant by “If you dont believe in the paranormal that’s fine, this thread isn’t for you”, then I think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask the scientific rationalist types to abide by that and butt out.
So-called “scientific thinkers” will dismiss all accounts of the paranormal, but I am skeptical of these skeptics. (But not yet quite masochistic enough to present my case.)
Here’s a similar thread from 8 years ago, where I report my own bizarre “coincidence” at the bottom of post #23. (And, more recently I commented on that “haunted orchard” at the bottom of this post.)
Well, since you asked …
I am sure that SOMETHING beyond human understanding is possible but the idea of the paranormal is part of human understanding. There’s even a Wikipedia article about it, whether I “believe in” it or not.
A few more stories that likely have a perfectly natural scientific explanation.
The Store:
I was renovating a store by myself during the day and there were a series of windows (about 5-6) windows with frosted glass jalousies. Is I was walking past the windows, I noticed “my” shadow on the windows, which was odd since the only light was coming through the open front door and plate glass window which per perpendicular to the jalousied windows. I thought to myself, what it was something outside and not my shadow? So I stopped and the shadow kept moving. I immediately walked outside to see if anyone was there, but there wasn’t.
Okay, it could be that someone was there and ran away. Well, the store was on a lot with other buildings that took an entire block and front and rear entrance/exits were high gated and locked with me being the only one on the property. So if someone was there, they’d have had to scale the 8 foot gate in the front (with a 2 foot opening between the top and driveway ceiling) or run a block towards the back and scaled a 6 foot gate within the 2-3 seconds it too for me to look out the door without making a sound.
About six months later, one of the friends of the owners rented a room upstairs (the building used to be a hotel and at least one person died upstairs) and he claimed he saw and heard things when he was alone at night. The final straw was when he fell down the stairs, but claimed he was pushed. He was a stoner, so I only give so much credence to his stories.
That said, once the renovation was done, I stayed many times in the store by myself until early morning, playing video games without any incident.
The Mortuary:
When I worked at the mortuary, for a while I used to do “removals” (picking up the deceased). The main building was being renovated, with only the morgue and the reefer being fully operational (they were separate rooms). I always went on removals with my friend and one morning, about 1 or 2am, we brought someone back and put them in the reefer and had to go to the morgue to complete the paperwork. My friend forgot the keys to the morgue and when he went back to the van to get them, I heard a door slam from inside the morgue. When my friend came back with the keys, I told him I heard a door slam and he said to stop kidding around. Right then, we heard another door slam. We weren’t thinking ghosts, but that a homeless person was inside (a homeless guy was found sleeping in the garage a few months earlier). We checked the morgue and all the doors downstairs, and everything was locked. Upstairs, which was still open had no doors except for the one o the bathroom and it was half open. Also the toilet was running as if recently flushed. The only way out of the second floor (since we were downstairs) would be to jump out the second story windows, which had no glass. And while it’s possible someone locked themselves in downstairs, the doors were always supposed to be locked even during the day since the offices weren’t in use yet.
When we told the story to one of the mortician’s helpers (who was part-Hawaiian) shrugged it off and said he’d seen and heard a lot of things in the building, including someone standing in the second story window when not one else was there.
Dad’s visit.
When a friends Grandfather passed away (she said he was crying until the very end, not wanting to die) and I went to pick her up the next morning, she said she saw him at the foot of her bed, staring at her. Her mother came out and said the she saw him in the kitchen that night too. Then my friend’s auntie (who lived upstairs) came out and said she saw him walking to the bathroom the previous night too. My friend and her Mom where scared, but the Auntie just said, “It’s just Dad, it’s nothing to be scared of.”
I’ve had a few odd experiences but that reminds me of one. A few years ago I was working in a job that as part of it required traveling to outlying areas. For safety reasons we always worked in pairs and although the team in total had about sixteen members people tended to naturally pair off and usually worked together forming tight bonds. I’ll call the team member I worked with Jan, because that’s her name, we had one call in the morning and later that afternoon as we were driving to another I had the sudden realisation regarding the first call, thinking to myself “Damn, I forgot to get the paperwork signed”, without looking up from her mobile Jan answered, “Don’t worry, we can call back and get it signed later.”
Now I’m sure people will say I had said my thought out loud but I’m 100% certain I didn’t.
On another occasion I was driving home from work by myself on a nice summer’s evening. Part of the journey was through an old plantation of trees on a country road with winding but open corners and undulations. You could easily drive through that at the speed limit of sixty with no problems and I always did. This plantation had and has something of a sinister reputation, there have been spates of fatal traffic collisions over the years with some horrific incidents, usually caused by young drivers racing at high speed and losing control into the trees. On this evening I was driving casually at sixty through the plantation when I had the sudden thought, “You know, maybe I’d better slow down”. There was no particular reason for it but I did, a couple of corners later as I was doing forty I came over the brow of a hill on a corner and there in the middle of the road was a car full of teenagers doing a three-point turn. If I had been doing sixty I would have been straight into them. I don’t know if someone was looking after me or them.
Some interesting stories in this thread!
Many instances of a bad feeling for no particular reason that stopped something bad from happening.
Quite a few of just knowing something no information to go off of, like the song naming story.
My Three year old mystified, locked in focus and in distractable, looking over toward his baby brothers grave after the funeral with his eyes obviously tracking movement of several things/ people that were not there.
I often do six impossible things before breakfast.
No, but I’ve had a pair of normal experiences.
I woke up once upside down in bed fully dressed with muddy boots on when I was 6 .
I had apparently recovered my fishing pole from a creek a few hundred yards from the house that I had lost a few days before.
I once woke up on my back when I was 12 on the carpet beside my bed with the ceiling light directly over head changing it’s brightness in rhythm with the woman’s voice it was speaking with. I said something to upset it and it screamed, making the light glow very bright and burn out, while giving me a mega headache. I then crawled back in bed. The light was indeed burnt out the next day.
Best for last …
…
I once foresaw a new poster on a messageboard getting banned after reading just a couple of their first few posts…
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.
When I was six my grandparents owned the second oldest house in a small town of about 35k people in Ohio.
The house was split into three apartments ,one was ours, it had been a ballroom at one point.
Had a clawfoot tub. Had collapsed gate towers in the backyard which was formerly the front.
A long staircase down the front yard, formerly the rear.
An odd staircase that went through the house, from front to the rear porch. It had not rigid Ally done this, something in the re models done over many years.
The basement was half dirt, half stone, and had the remnants of chains attached to one wall.
It had an un-finished tunnel 10-20’ long at the back corner of the basement. This was not uncommon in the area and in fact several homes had tunnels connecting them under the river.
Everyone who had ever lived there or been there much had a ghost story about it. The neighbors wouldn’t allow their kids to come over to play.
I vaguely remember seeing a boy, girl and small dog going through the wall at the end of the odd staircase.
Years later and having long lived elsewhere 30 miles away or so when I was 12 or 13 I had a continuing series of dreams over the whole summer in which I was a neighbor boy near that house and would play with a boy and a girl who lived there.
In the last dreams the girl was sick and not allowed to come out or be seen, then they were burning her things outside at the end.
Her name was Aubrey Pittman (the road shared the name Pittman)
Another year later and my grandmother was visiting from FL she and my mother suddenly had become interested in the old house and scheduled a visit with the current owners.
This led to finding a relative of the people who had originally lived there. The relative was happy to share some old photos and history so we went to visit.
Sure enough, the Pittman families daughter was indeed named Aubrey, though it was unknown how long she lived just that she wasn’t in any geneology as a parent.
I’m sure I have a few others but I’ve blabbed enough here.
? Why might that be?
When I was young, maybe 7 or 8, I used to be able to create energy balls. I would lay under the upright piano, close my eyes, raise my arms and I could feel a ball that had weight and some kind of power. If opened my eyes, it disappeared. Looking back, I probably just dozed off, but for a couple of years, I could do it consistently everytime I laid under the piano in that exact same spot. It didn’t occur to me that it was an energy ball until I saw Dragon Ball Z decades later. I played Street Fighter 2 in the 80’s, but didn’t associate the harouken with my ball, because mine took time to grow like the Kamehameha.
Were I too see a dead relative, I would immediately ask them about the afterlife.
I don’t actually exist.
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.