This forum is populated by a bunch of people who are mostly (rightly) operating from a sceptical evidence based scientific world-view. In my 30+ years I’ve never seen a ghost or UFO etc or directly experienced anything to make me really question my viewpoint on life.
I’m almost finished a book published in the 1980’s on UFO’s (‘Above Top Secret’ by Timothy Good) which is a mostly sober account of the worldwide UFO phenomenon up to that time. Its a topic I’m agnostic on, I’ve never seen anything myself but I find it difficult to believe that so many professional and reliable people (discounting the masses of ‘woos’) could be mistaken about what they state they observed. I believe they aren’t necessarily alien spacecraft (unlikely in the extreme) but people really have on occassion observed something that there currently isn’t a good explanation for.
This thread is for those occassions or bits of information that have made you go, “Actually that is a bit odd”.
For myself its been a handful of really strange coincedences and a couple of odd occurrences.
A few years ago I was driving on my usual route home, one section of which is a series of gentle curves over low hills and through a forested area. This can easily and safely be driven at the marked speed limit of 60 mph and being blessed/cursed with a heavy right foot I always take it at that speed. One pleasant summers evening I was doing so when I had the sudden thought, ‘Hmmm…maybe I’d better slow down…’, there was no reason to do so, traffic was light and conditions were good, I had no sense of impending doom. However I did slow off and coming over the brow of the next hill I came across a car full of teenagers who had the outstanding idea of doing a three-point turn in the centre of the road over the blind crest of the hill. I came to a safe halt close to them (I can still remember the open mouth of the passenger) whereas if I had been doing my usual speed I’d have been straight into the side of them. I can’t help but think someone was either looking after me or them.
I always found the idea that people can have dreams that are indistinguisable from waking reality to be ridiculous until I had one such dream myself (I was the member of a resistance cell in an occupied vaguely Eastern European vaguely Cold War-esque country and was betrayed on a mission to assassinate the local collaborating mayor). In duration and realism it really spooked me and if nothing else it left me with new respect for the power and abilities of the human mind.
And at the risk of mentioning religion and politics I always found it a bit strange that the Soviet Union, premier athiest nation in the world, ceased to exist on Christmas Day. (yes I realise that its a 1 in 365 chance and that at least nominally athiest Communist China is still going strong)
Basically what have you experienced that have if not shook your world-view then at least given you pause.
btw please keep it civil, its a lot more fun and interesting to discuss things in a polite manner than with insults and mockery.
Being madly in love with another person sometimes makes me feel like life is more than just the sum of its parts. Not sure it really makes me question my skepticism, but to really be in love you can’t afford to be very skeptical I suppose.
In addition to the 1 in 365 chance thing, there’s also the issue that, depending on how you define as the Soviet Union ceasing to exist, the event occurred anywhere from Dec. 8 (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus sign the Belavezha Accords declaring the dissolution of the USSR) to Dec. 26 (The Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet formally recognizes the dissolution of the USSR, then disbands).
I’m not really a believer in ghosts. I think most of the ‘reports’ are people just looking for attention. However, I’m not a hundred percent convinced they don’t exist because of my mother. Ever since I can remember, she has told me about how she grew up in a haunted house. She saw the ghosts directly and on multiple occassions. Normally, I’d attribute it to memories being altered and strengthened with time. But both my other aunts AND my highly religious, very serious grandmother agree that my mother’s telling the truth. Apparently they all experienced these ‘ghosts’ at the home. So, I don’t know. Clearly the entire family believes they saw ghosts, so I can’t just assume they’re all lying. While this never made me believe in ghosts completely, it has made me pause in completely calling them fake.
Nothing stops my skepticism. I assume nothing is proven or disproven, and I’m skeptical about that too. So no matter what I hear, my first though is “bullshit”. However, I think everything will happen as science predicts except for once in a lifetime, maybe the lifetime of the universe. But I know the exception will always occur at least once, so I’m not getting caught by surprise.
I’m not a skeptic, but I’m also not gullible and my first response to something is usually coincidence.
However, similar to the OP’s story, one time I was driving in the far left lane on an urban expressway. Traffic was moving fast-- prolly 50-60 mph-- and there was a big, flatbed truck in front of me a couple of car lengths. I didn’t have a premonition, or a vision, or really even a thought…I just moved to the right for no particular conscious reason. The instant after I moved over, a huge piece of iron, like a part of an I-beam or something, FLEW off the flatbed and bounced on the road to my left where I had just been. It would have gone through my windshield and probably through my head if I had still been in that spot. I do believe that our senses take in much more information than we are consciously aware of.
Sometimes I get to wondering if I might be inside a “Sim.” Every now and then, there will be some very tiny “glitch” in reality – a flickering of light, a sound that isn’t right – that makes me go “Hmmmm…”
My “rational mind” says hogwash, and tells me to stop musing on ideas that are outside of my power to investigate. But the “instinctive mind” hiding underneath – the Cave-Man Og who lives buried beneath the apparatus of rationality – can’t help but wonder.
I’m skeptical about UFO’s and little green aliens and all… But back in college I had an Astronomy prof who had a very interesting theory he shared with the class one day and I’ve never been able to shake it.
He hypothesized that sometime in the distant future we discover time travel. Future people come to visit present people, but are aware they are unfamiliar, and a bit scary. Future people look different (evolution), dress differently, speak a different language that hasn’t been invented yet, and their technology is far advanced. They’re totally “alien” to us, even though they ARE us. So the future people simply observe from afar, never directly interacting with us, thereby causing the occasional sightings. They already have historical records, so they have no real need to interact, only observe and perhaps be entertained by us. Like fish in an aquarium.
My mom told me this one. It was an afternoon, shortly before the time I’d usually be arriving home from school. She heard the sound of a child entering the house, sobbing, and running up into one of the bedrooms. She went up to see what was the matter, and there was no one there. I arrived home later, at the usual time, with no problems. Normally I’d say, well, she was napping and had a dream. However, when she went to the room, the family cat went with her, and at the doorway raised its fur and arched its back, hissing. The cat refused to go in the room for a full day afterward.
I’ve had some wierd coincidences happen in my life. One that I’ve mentioned earlier on this board involved sleeping in a building that had been part of prison/concentration camp during WWII. This was during the Yugoslavian Muslim/Serbian war. My group stayed there because the buildings were intact and big enough to hide our vehicles and the place was absolutely desserted. We didn’t know it’s history. Everyone was terrified and had been for quite a while, but that night I got a really good sleep. It felt like we were as safe as we were going to get and there was this feeling of comfort all through the night. Later we found out about the place’s history from the locals. They said it was haunted by nasty and vindicative spirits. It’s the only thing in my life that’s ever made me wonder about ghots.
He described the dream he had to me, and it entirely matched my own. I wish there had been some way to independently prove it, but we corrupted the whole shebang when I started describing my own dream to him and our memories got contaminated by each other’s imagery.
When I was a teenager, one summer morning I was in my room making my bed. When I looked up after tucking in a corner of the sheets, I saw my grandmother standing right in front of me. I was so happy to see her and wondered why no one had told me she was coming to visit.
I immediately stopped what I was doing and ran towards her to give her a kiss when she vanished right before my eyes. We got a long-distance call a short time later, letting us know that she had passed away earlier that morning.
One can find some amazing incidents in a previous thread on a similar topic. My own story is #23 in that thread – I still find it an unbelievable coincidence though it seems boringly mundane compared with most of the other stories.
One strange-seeming but almost plausible idea might explain why we are often miraculously saved from death: Quantum Immortality
However – as I understand it – this wouldn’t explain why other people are able to report their miracles to me; their near-fatal collision would have been fatal in most of the worlds I inhabit, no?
