# What has made you question your scepticism? aka 'Things that make you go hhhhmmmm....' **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 14, 2013, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680 "2013-04-14T14:26:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jayrey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/47e85d/32.png) [@jayrey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayrey)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2013, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680/41 "2013-04-16T02:53:25Z")
> [@LurkerInNJ](#): > > I’ve told this story before, but here goes: > > 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. This. On February 28, 1983, I was staying at my parents’ home because my father was terminally ill. He wanted to die at home, and he had slipped into a coma earlier that evening. The hospice worker told us he could last a couple hours or a couple of days, no way to know. My mother and I stayed up late that night, talking and comforting each other. At 11:45 p.m., we finally went to bed. I was sleeping in the “guest room” which was really my father’s study with a fold-out bed in it. I had barely closed my eyes when I “saw” my father standing at the foot of the bed, looking at me. Then he walked over to his desk and gently, randomly touched at few items on the desk, including the painted rock paperweight I had made for him many years before. I was frozen in place, scared and confused at how he could be there when I knew he couldn’t get out of bed by himself. Then there was a gentle tap on the door. My father disappeared. My mother came in to tell me that he had died five minutes before. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2013, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680/42 "2013-04-16T05:51:37Z")
> [@jayrey](#): > > I had barely closed my eyes when I “saw” my father standing at the foot of the bed, looking at me… …I was frozen in place, scared and confused at how he could be there when I knew he couldn’t get out of bed by himself. Classic example of [sleep paralysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis). ---
**Author:** ![AaronX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7bcc69/32.png) [@AaronX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AaronX)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2013, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680/43 "2013-04-16T06:05:46Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > One can find some amazing incidents in [a previous thread on a similar topic](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=13321495). 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? I was playing with this idea myself! Glad to find a name for it, maybe now I can learn more. > [@PurpleClogs](#): > > 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. I was wondering about this too. Maybe our current world is the “least worst” case our time traveling descendants can manage, and they’re keeping things that way by influencing things behind the scenes. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2013, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680/44 "2013-04-16T14:55:01Z")
I’m searching for a polite way to say this, but I think if you’re going to be skeptical and proclaim your skepticism, you have to be just as skeptical of your own experiences as you are of everybody else’s. It’s easy to dismiss a kook who talks about ghosts and flashing lights and tougher to be objective and do the same when you’ve felt the emotions involved with these kinds of things- but that doesn’t mean your perceptions are any more accurate. All of us get fooled sometimes by our senses and memories. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2013, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680/45 "2013-04-16T15:13:17Z")
Marley, Sure. It made me go “Hmm” for a bit but it’s not like I’m going to be playing Ouija or speaking in tongues. If anypony has an explanation for deja vu, I’d love to hear it. ---
**Author:** ![MysteryFellow63427](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e4f/32.png) [@MysteryFellow63427](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MysteryFellow63427)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680/46 "2013-04-16T15:14:41Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > All of us get fooled sometimes by our senses and memories. The human brain is a bizarre and fantastic machine, but it ain’t no computer. Memories are organic and change over time. Senses definitely aren’t always reliable. There are definitely some fantastic things that I’ve experienced. But when I think about probability, and that someone in their thirties has been alive for more than 1 billion seconds, it doesn’t seem that odd that there would be some unusual events that occur. The natural tendency though is definitely to think “WOW, that was incredible and inexplicable,” rather than to think about the other nine hundred and ninenty nine million times that nothing interesting happened at all. I’ve definitely had deja vu before, but I know it just isn’t possible. To me, deja vu is simply proof of the fallibility of our own minds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-has-made-you-question-your-scepticism-aka-things-that-make-you-go-hhhhmmmm/655680.md?page=2)