Have you ever had an inexplicably "supernatural" experience? If so, please share

[HamdenRice]

It doesn't matter whether it was a religious or non-religious experience, I'm just curious. Perhaps this should be in the skeptics forum, but somehow I don't think it would be well received there.

As a generally skeptical person, there are certain life experiences I've had that I can't explain in any rational way that make me leave open the likelihood that there are things that not only can't science explain right now, but that won't be explained in our current scientific framework (although at the fringes, I think we're heading in a direction that will explain these things).

Anyway, when I was about 12, I was playing a game with my sister who was 3 years older than me. I don't know how this came up, but it was a warm summer night and we were playing on our front stoop. We have a very close relationship, and did at the time, but with the addition of that kind of love/hate you have with your siblings.

Any way, the game was that I would think of a number from 1 to 9 and she would try to guess what I was thinking.

This particular night she guessed 78 out of 80 times correctly. At first it was funny, but then it became scary. At first, she thought I was playing a trick on her by telling her she was right when she wasn't, but as I started getting serious, she realiized I was telling the truth. Moreover, her subjective experience was convincing her something strange was going on: she said she could just see the number carved into the side of my head as though it were a haircut. We started going faster and faster and it became kind of compulsive -- as though we couldn't stop, even though it was getting creepy.

The only two she got wrong were both times confusing a 6 for a 9 or vice versa. Eventually, we got scared and stopped and were never able to replicate that experience.

I've had some very, very weird experiences with indigenous religion in West Africa (ju-ju, or Voo Doo in the Western Hemishpere) but that's maybe for another post.

[Catch22Dem]

1. My cousin and I caught a voice on a cassette recording

We were kids and just fooling around with the cassette recorder, and when we listened back there was a barely audible, and very strange voice in the background. Don't know what to make of it.

[HamdenRice]

9. Holy "Sixth Sense" Batman!

The thing that's weird about that is you had physical evidence of something strange.

When I was in grad school, once, I had a few beers and was lying down listening to my stereo. When the record ended, I just was lying there with nothing playing. Suddenly I heard this voice -- like a southern African American voice talking through the speakers. It freaked me the hell out.

A few years later, I was home for the summer and the same thing happened, and I called my sister over and we listened to the voice coming through the speaker of my stereo.

Then we realized that somehow my stereo was picking up taxi cab to base transmissions. This was in the day before cell phones when cabs had these really strong radios that somehow could be picked up by stereos even when the receiver part was off. I have no idea how, but it used to happen. I realized that that was what had happened the year before.

Not that I'm saying that's what happened with your tape.

[Catch22Dem]

27. That's kinda funny. :)

Our tape was made at our grandmother's farm house. Not another house for at least a mile in either direction. Long before the days of cell phones. Our recorder wasn't a receiver either. It was just one of those flat little recorders like the one below.

[Trajan]

2. No ....

I have searched my mind, and found NOTHING but natural phenomena has been manifest within my world ....

[HamdenRice]

8. The experience in the OP can be explained as a natural phenomenon

in two ways. First, my sister and I could have hypnotized each other, or more precisely, I could have been hypnotized into thinking this was happening and was retroactively changing the number in my mind to whatever my sister had said the number was.

Second, since my sister and I were both very much math geeks, we could have subconsciously latched onto, with the "idiot savant" part of our brains, some mathematical pattern -- like a repeating decimal or PI or something like that.

Between the natural and supernatural explanations, however, at this point I don't make a judgment.

[skepticscott]

48. Or it can be explained

by the vagarities of human memory and the need to remember things in a way that supports a position you're trying to take now, even when it didn't really happen.

[tama]

58. Why should

"telepathy" or "ESP" or something like that be considered supernatural? They are most natural everyday phenomenona and happen all the time. Problem is not evidence but that these kinds of "synchronities" are very difficult or impossible to produce at will but are more common at non-analyzing "flow" states of mind etc.

[katmondoo]

3. Yes It was many years ago during my first marrage

My husband at the time was an alcoholic and I knew one day he would have an accident. It was about 10:00 o'clock at night I was working on a project not thinking of him just concentrating on my work when suddenly I dropped my paint brush (doing art work here) and said to myself "it happened". I became agitated and thought I should drive around and see if I could find him. I passed some bars and was about to give up when I felt just one more road and then that is it. I came to a police barracade and sure enough there was his car totaled, I tried to explain to the police why I was there but it was too wierd. Fortunately I had the registration to his car in my wallet or they would not have believed me. He was taken to a hospital and survived.
I have had several other weird experiences that can never be explained. Not lately though, these things only happen on occasion without warning.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. This has been my experience as well

These experiences happen occasionally and out of the blue. Most times I am quite shocked by the nature of what happens and with whom.

[HamdenRice]

7. I forgot one I had like that till you reminded me

When I was in college, I was riding the bus home to my apartment. I had this very vivid daydream about my father's funeral, even though my father was perfectly healthy. I couldn't stop thinking about the idea of my father dying.

The moment I walked into my apartment, the phone rang. It was my mother telling me that my uncle (not my father) had died.

Very strange. It "felt" telepathic.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. I've had several throughout my life

I've had precognitive dreams. I've had visions and senses of the underlying unity of everything (none under the influence of drugs; I have never used illegal drugs). The most interesting of these I feel are the tactile sensations I've had, such as the feeling of someone placing their hands in mine when no one was there. One occurred in a lit room with others around but not near enough to me to have touched me, much less hold my hands. The verbal message that accompanied this incident was rather interesting, as it said, "Something wonderful is going to happen. Nur." Two days later I went to a retreat. One of the retreatants was a Sufi named Nur who was there to initiate people into his order. I had never heard of him before, and obviously didn't know he was going to be there. Oh, and another wonderful thing happened at that retreat. I met my husband to be. It was love at first sight, and we have been together ever since.

[HamdenRice]

18. That's a very touching memory! nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

20. it is, isn't it?

:rofl:

You deserve a rim shot for your comment, but I couldn't find the smiley for that!

[angrycarpenter]

6. my cousin

lived with us for a while back in the 70s. She was having severe pain one night and claimed that her twin sister, whom she hadn't seen or talked to in a year, was having a baby. We all were skeptical until she showed up with her new baby a couple of weeks later.

I believe that under the right circumstances siblings can hear each others thoughts.

[Th1onein]

10. My son and I had a pact that he would come back and let me

know, if he died (he had cystic fibrosis), that he was okay. He didn't come back to me, but he appeared to my boyfriend, who knew nothing about the pact, and told him to tell me that he loves me and that he is okay. I don't know why he came to my boyfriend, but I am very analytical, and I would have taken this experience apart, bit by bit, until I didn't believe it anymore, if he had come to me. As it was, my boyfriend experienced this and his entire life changed; the way he treated people, the way he interacted with them, and his beliefs changed, because of this experience. He told me that he knew, because of it, that, without a doubt, there was a heaven.

[HamdenRice]

13. That's very touching

After my parents died, I had intense dreams about them talking to me trying to tell me various things. My father was a great handyman, and shortly after he died I had a difficult home improvement project and he would tell me how to solve some problems I couldn't figure out.

For a long time, I wondered whether it was "them" or my own psychological processes. The problem was that my father was telling me things about carpentry and plumbing that I didn't know; I was like, if that is my own psychological process, where did that knowledge come from? But then I came to this middle ground in which I came to the idea that at a minimum, people do live on in the patterns they create in other people's brains, so yes, in a way it was "them."

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

21. That is very neat

Interesting, isn't it, how that works. I had a pact with my grandmother that she would try and communicate with me after her passing. It happened, sort of--she came to me and didn't realize she had died. I had to tell her. She had the most wonderful expression on her face-amazement and joy at the same time. Only time I know that I was out of my body--came back into it with a thump. Something like that hasn't happened since, though I've sensed loved ones attending their own funeral and watching the proceedings.

[HamdenRice]

23. That's so true!

Shortly after my parents died, and I was regularly dreaming about them, one aspect of it was that they seemed confused that they were dead.

That is a central part of some indigenous African religions -- that the recently deceased probably will be confused about whether they are dead or alive, and in those religions, this is often a source of danger to the living.

Among the Tswana (iirc), if a virile young man dies before marriage, a kind of fetish object is erected on the road into the village, and that is to make the deceased believe that the object is his wife, so he will not trouble the women of the village.

[kestrel91316]

11. At work my employees have occasionally accused me of being psychic

because I frequently predict exactly what one client or another is going to do or say and when, in advance of when they actually do it. I think it might just mean I have got some people totally figured out, but have to admit I am so accurate it is downright weird sometimes.

My niece used to always say who was calling on the phone and what they were calling for as soon as the phone rang (this was in the days before caller ID, lol). She did this until she was 6 or 7 and then I think the weird looks she got for being correct began to inhibit her.

The weirdest thing that ever happened to me was in 1994 when my very first cat died (euthanized for kidney failure). A few nights later I clearly felt HER jump onto the bed not long after I went to bed in the same way she always had. I even felt her walk briskly up toward my head. When I looked in disbelief, she of course wasn't "there". But I know she was there; I know what I felt; I wasn't even close to sleeping yet.

Sometimes I wonder how it is that my educated guesses about what is wrong with a patient as soon as I see them in the exam room are so often right on the money. Is it "diagnostic skill" based on education and clinical experience, or is there something else going on? When I get second opinion cases I often wonder why the heck the other vet couldn't figure out what is immediately obvious to me......

[aquart]

12. Kennedy's assassination. Rattled me for years.

I have friends who flat out tell me I'm remembering it wrong. But I've never told it differently. And I've never understood it. I'm not a bit psychic.

My senior year of high school, I had early lunch and a long afternoon. My first class after lunch was history. Eating made me sleepy, and I put my head on my desk as I had many times before. While sort of awake and not, I saw an image of the Lincoln dream, which I had learned about weeks ago. That's where Lincoln comes to the Rotunda and sees a body lying in state and asks who it is. The guards says, "The President." It is said he had it some weeks before he was killed. I saw a Kennedy brother standing in the doorway of the Rotunda, with the light behind him so I couldn't see who...and he was looking at a coffin lying in state.

While that image was flashing thru my head, my teacher was speaking. The only part I heard of his sentence was "Kennedy was..." And a thought jolted thru my mind: "Something's happened to the President and nobody's told me?" which was just weird and disorienting, especially because that was the moment my teacher had had enough and threw me out of the classroom, to spend the rest of the period in woozy confusion in the department office. Then typing. Then...I was leaving typing heading to the far stairwell to go to earth science when the hallway erupted starting from the far end. A girl name Joan was grabbing people, shouting at them, and moving on to grab and shout at someone else, and the place was going insane with noise. Finally Joan grabbed me and shouted "Kennedy's shot in the head and Johnson's shot in the arm!" and moved on to the next. As she was still holding me, though, my thought was very high school: "She's read my mind and she's making fun of me." Because it was CRAZY that a thought in my head had become true. But when I got upstairs and saw my teacher's face, I knew it was true.

My sister's explanation (SHE is the one this sort of thing would have been natural to) is that the shock reaction was so strong in Dallas that waves emanated out and I got hit by one. I'd happily buy that, except I sat down one day and figured out that my history class began a full hour before the actual assassination took place. Oh, and some months later I asked my teacher why he said "Kennedy was..." and he said he never mentioned Kennedy during that class.

[HamdenRice]

14. I had an inflammatory experience like that I've never shared

For months before 9/11, I had this intense, intense recurring dream that Arab terrorists hijacked planes and flew them into the Israeli Knesset. I must have had that dream 50 times.

A few weeks later I was in lower Manhattan when the 9/11 attacks occurred.

Obviously there are differences -- the Knesset isn't the WTC, and in my dream the terrorists were based in Sudan, not the U.S.

I have no explanation and accept it could just be coincidence.

[pretzel4gore]

15. you want the Holy Spirit visit you?

In 1980 i was totally into religion, the bible, 'Jesus Rediscovered' St Augustine etc. I read John Bunyan's "Pilgrims Progress' and was thinking about the scene where the character 'Hopeful' explained to 'Christian' (the protagonist) how it came to be he was also journeying to the celestial city (knowing DU and how regressive some of this stuff is seen, i imagine some flaming but hold yer fire; this actually happened, and the context obviously is different now)...Hopeful said he enncoutered 'Faithful' who talked with him and, learning he wanted to become fully a christian, told him how he needed the Holy Spirit, and he taught Hopeful this prayer, which Hopeful was to say, without ceasing, until the Spirit surrendered (?) to entreaty and visted....And that's what happened, Hopeful said. So, in 1980, in Montreal, after several months on a deep sea ship, i was in a sailors hotel in the old town, and decided to try it, to see ....The prayer is fairly succinct; 'God be merciful to me, a sinner, and make me know and believe in Jesus christ, for I see that if his righteousness had not been, or i have not faith in that righteousness, I'll be utterly cast away..Lord, I have heard that you are a merciful God, and has ordained that your son, Jesus Christ, be the savior of the world, and moreover that you are willing to bestow him on a great sinner such as i, and I am a great sinner indeed. Lord, take therefor this opportunity to magnify thy grace in the salvation of my soul, through your son, jesus Christ, amen'
Praying, everyone knows, is a hassle, because your knees hurt, distractions bug you etc, (and maybe there aint a god, or never was a Jesus, and ferchrissake the xians have hurt too many people, and the church was built with blood of our forefathers, and lookit how pigfat them xian bastards are, while our gov endlessly murders)
Anyway, to sum up, I did it and that's that...my advice: unless one's dead serious, do not fukk with the Holy Spirit....it is real

[HamdenRice]

17. I grew up in a charismatic church, so I'm very familiar with

people having first hand experiences with the "Holy Spirit." That was the African American Baptist Church.

The fact that I never really had one of those experiences is what perhaps made me eventually a moderate atheist.

But I don't gainsay anyone's experience. Seeing people seized by the Holy Spirit in church was a regular experience for me on Sundays.

I love the way you put it though!

[pretzel4gore]

19. the reality of it- impossible to describe

another experience that still amazes me concerned a lost seal off a ultraviolet water sterilzer thingy....my job on this boat was maintain the sanitary water system; and while dismantling it for a cleaning, the clear plastic seal that protected the UV end of the lightbulb housing fell and was lost. W/out it, the system was on bypass, and dirty water was going into lake. Anyway, i searched, and a couple other guys searched for it, for a couple hours before the watch ended, and... no dice! It was lost. I was leaving the boat next morning when we got to port, and felt horrible to leave the sanity system not working; so horrible in fact that it was all i thought about for hours (and the fact is, no one on earth cared a whit about it, but myself) Anyway, just before going on watch, my last watch, i suddenly KNEW exactly where the seal was, KNEW. Even before i entered the engroom, i knew it...And it was! To this day, i can recall rushing down the stairs, over to the sanit, climbing up and grabbing the seal, all in one motion. I never even had to look.
Weird...

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

22. Sufis get there through zkr

a ceremony of remembrance where you chant and dance and move for hours. You go from merely being high to a point of absolute clarity to a Place. I think what I call a Place may be what you call the Holy Spirit-it is a Presence and a Place and you are within it It within you. Very much. I've also been there as a supporter for those at Sun Dance--again the Place was there. Same with a Hindu ritual that lasted all night.

[pretzel4gore]

24. imagine your inner self being very warm

i think that was the physical part of it, being filled with molten gold, absolutely wonderful- that and the sound of the birds (it occurred about 5 am just as sun was lighting eastern sky)...the chirping and singing of the birds suddenly grew loud, like an amazing symphany; not loud like a stereo can be loud but loud, far away loud, like the city itself was full of billions of songbirds. 1980 was long ago, but ...it's hard to believe anyone could remain within that kind of 'place' for any length of time. You simply could not remain alive after, no matter, it would seem...The sense was the Holy Spirit only approached, then, when i was concerned at disturbing the sleeping hotel(!) due to the 'ecstasy' it fled; sorta a driveby glorifying! Since then, though, i've have never feared dying- i know that's gonna be a cool thing no matter what. But the overwhelming need to try to stop the ugliness of reactionary fascism from prospering on earth due to cud chewing indifference by too many people, especially educated political/media type people, is almost boring in that it never stops, night or day...

[Birdiesmom]

49. Battleship USS North Carolina

The Battleship is deeply moored in mud off the coast of Wilmington, NC, as a history museum and tourist attraction. Myself and ten other persons had arranged a private tour of the Battleship after hours, and were sitting in a room called "The Bullpen" -- the former library of the ship.

Some strange things had been happening with walkie talkies and other electrical gadgets, and we were quietly talking about the possibility that the ship was haunted. The ship's caretaker of nearly 30 years, Danny Bradshaw, had assured us that it was.

Suddenly, as we all sat in various places around the room, in chairs and on couches, we all clearly heard footsteps. They started in the center of the room, next to the table some of us were sitting around, myself included. The footsteps -- very clear, sounding like leather soles on the welded steel plate decks of the ship -- went from the center of the room, between all of us, out the door of the room, down the hallway, and up a flight of metal stairs. The steps were not at all faint -- in fact, several of us commented that the individual making the footsteps had sounded angry or agitated.

We explored the room, floor and hall thoroughly for wires, speakers, electrical lines, and anything else which could possibly have produced the sound. Despite having a radio technician with 30 years experience with us, and other "techies," we were unable to find anything which could have produced the sound of footsteps in The Bullpen.

Yes, we had been told that the ship was haunted, so we were not totally objective subjects for this experience. But I was there, and I know what I heard. It did not "sound like" footsteps. It *was* footsteps. Leather dress shoes. I've heard the sound thousands of times, because my father wore the same kind of shoes in the Air Force Reserve. And the steps passed within three feet of where I was sitting, and within one foot of where some of us were sitting.

We had been over the ship with a fine tooth comb that evening, and Danny Bradshaw was asleep in his cabin -- we could see him from the porthole. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone else was somewhere aboard the ship, but I don't see how it would be possible for them to produce the sound of those footsteps in "surround sound," or rig it in such a way that we couldn't find the wiring or speaker system. Also, what motivation would a military museum have for doing such a thing? Danny received no money for the evening -- it all went to the Battleship Memorial Fund.

[Nay]

16. I've had 2 aural precognitive incidents. IOW, I hear a person saying

something which later becomes true.

The first time, I was pregnant with my son. Princess Diana was pregnant with her first son. I was in no way a "royal groupie" or anything like that, but I lived in Montana and heard a story about Canadian bookies (right over the border) taking bets on what Diana would name the child. One night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard a woman with a British accent say, "We shall name him William." This was months before the child was publicly named, and that name was a 20-1 shot with the bookies. I could have made a bundle if I had believed what I heard.

The second time -- I worked in the stock room of a store. A former coworker, with whom I had a nice and friendly relationship, had moved to another store 100 miles away and we had not spoken or seen each other for a year or two. I was working with papers at my desk when I heard this coworker say, " Hey, do you have any __________, and how much are they?" He named an unusual item that the store, which carried tens of thousands of items, carried only a few at a time. I looked up from my desk, delighted that my friend was somehow back in my store, only to see no one. I had heard him clear as a bell. Not 3 days later, the phone at the front customer desk rang as I just happened to be standing there. I usually never answered the phone, since there were customer service people to do that, but they were busy, and I picked up the phone. You guessed it -- that former coworker said the exact thing that I had "heard" him say 3 days earlier.

I live for the day that I have an aural incident that tells me the winning lottery numbers..... but it seems like only stupid or inconsequential stuff comes through.

[varkam]

25. No.

I've have numerous strange experiences, but nothing that I wouldn't say can't be explained in naturalistic terms.

[moobu2]

26. Everything that occurs always has a natural explanation,

There’s no such thing as “supernatural” phenomena, besides in the movies, in books or in folks imaginations etc.

[knitter4democracy]

28. I've had several. So has my mom.

The craziest one was about my hubby.

We were both at our Christian college, and he had broken up with his girlfriend of two years. We were in the play that fall (Merchant of Venice, actually), and he started hitting on me at try-outs. We started hanging out more, and then he asked me out for that Friday. Thursday night, I remember it so clearly, I was praying before going to bed around 10:30, and I asked God to make it clear if he and I were supposed to be together and get married. I'd dated a couple of losers by then and was tired of wasting my time. When I went through my list (you know, the "what I want in a spouse" list), I realized that the only thing Hubby didn't have was that he wasn't called to be a missionary like I was (a whole 'nother story). So, I asked God to call him as a missionary if we were supposed to be together, since He's in the giving-people-a-calling job, and I went to sleep.

Well, the next night, we were driving to the movie theater, and Hubby started talking (something he doesn't do much) of why he was pre-med and what he wanted his future to be like. Ten minutes before we got to the movie theater (45 minute drive--freakin' college was in the middle of nowhere), he turns to me and says that he thinks God wants him to be a missionary. Apparently I went green. I remember stuttering out a question why he thought that, and he said that he'd been praying the night before and had all of a sudden added something to the prayer without realizing it that he was supposed to be a doctor to those who have nothing and need him. When he asked God if that meant as a missionary, he said that he felt this huge rush of love and that it was right. I remember asking then what time he'd been praying, and after giving me an odd look, he said that it was at 10:30, the same time I'd been praying.

I don't remember the first half of the movie, I was in such shock. I hadn't told a soul about the prayer, not even my best friend, and he told me later I was the first he'd told about it, too. I knew then that we were getting married, but I didn't tell him until he told me a month later that he thought we should get married. It took us almost three years to get married--had to finish college and the first year of med school first--but we've been together for 11 years this summer. During our rough times, I remember those prayers and how we're really supposed to be together.

[HamdenRice]

31. My S.O. does medical missionary work in Central America and

it was a major factor in confirming my love and respect for her, and my desire to be with her. She was raised a devout Catholic (she's Puerto Rican). When she was a young adult, she became a Sikh and was deeply into meditation for over a decade (this was all long before we met), but eventually went back to being Catholic.

Shortly after we started dating, her then boss, a Greek dentist, offered her an opportunity to join the Greek Orthodox Church's medical mission, which he participated in -- it's open to the non-Orthodox -- which goes to Mexico and other parts of Central America to work in orphanages, carrying out much needed emergency dental work.

Seeing that she had that kind of heart was a deal clincher for me and we've been together for 13 years!

[knitter4democracy]

33. The OCMC does great work.

We've considered going on one of their medical trips before. They won't take us until Hubby's med school loans are paid off and we're debt free, so that'll be awhile. I'm hoping to get to go on one of their trips soon, as I'm getting itchy travelling feet.

[Zebedeo]

40. What a wonderful experience

Your story is inspiring. God Bless you and your husband.

[Evoman]

29. No...and how would you know if you had anyways?

I mean, how does one exactly decide when they have had a supernatural experience. If there is anything that can be said about human beings, it is that we are quick to jump to conclusions and often need very little investigation to make up our mind.

Just because you don't understand a certain phenomenon, doesn't mean that it isn't entirely natural.

I think that all phenomenon are natural, but that often times, people don't know enough to recognize them as natural.

That being said, I have never had a supernatural experience. I haven't even been close. But then, I am wayyyyy more skeptical than the average person, and phenomenon that one person may have accepted as supernatural, I probably would have searched and searched until I found a likely explanation.

[ironbark]

30. Yes...often...my wife knows what I'm thinking

Even before I do.

It's supernatural and spooky. ;-)

[trotsky]

32. Nope.

But I'm glad to see you contributing to discussion at last. If you keep it up, maybe that will be my inexplicable experience.

[Meshuga]

34. I thought I saw a ghost once

When I was a kid I went to spend some time at a friend's vacation home out in the middle of nowhere. The place was beautiful with a lot of woods but pitch black at night. We were sitting outside at night and I was looking in the dark when I saw what I thought to be someone standing by a tree. I stopped looking because I was freaked out but a second later my friends aunt started freaking out because she saw her father who had been dead for a few years.

I almost shit my pants! And I couldn't sleep all that night scared of the haunted house. But looking back there are a few factors that lead me to believe that there was not ghost. I was a kid with an older brother who loved to scare me with ghost stories and my friends aunt was mentally challenged and had some issues. It was coincidence but it made me almost crap my pants.

[HamdenRice]

36. The kid across the street from me saw ghosts

I'll never forget him. His name was Kevin Mins or Kevin Minz, and he was my first best friend when I was about 5 or 6. His family was considered odd already because the neighborhood was a heavily civil service, 2 parent, working class neighborhood, but his father was a jazz musician and a single dad.

He was a nice kid who was a lot of fun, with a great imagination, but in retrospect I think he was somewhat troubled. He often talked about seeing the ghost of his dead grandmother, passing through walls, floors and ceilings.

The strange thing is, as I recall it, most parents (or at least my mother) seemed to treat the entire thing as though he really did see ghosts or that his grandmother really was trying to contact him. But this was in an environment in which church going Baptist parents claimed things like Jesus appearing in their bedrooms at night and having conversations with them.

I remember I lost his friendship by repeating off hand, in a child's innocent way, that he was poor, something I had heard from adults (like we weren't!). He rarely played with me after that and the family moved shortly thereafter.

[knitter4democracy]

38. I lived in an apartment with a ghost cat once.

It was the oddest thing: I'd be sitting in the living room, grading papers, and I'd get the strongest sensation that a cat had just walked into the room and was staring at me. I'd turn, and no cat was there. It happened over and over again, so I started talking to it, and it seemed happier after that. Even Hubby, who seriously questions everything, felt it one night (and no, he wasn't trying to get laid) and asked me why he thought there was a cat there.

I did think of getting cat food or something, but then I realized it seemed fine with some attention. Weird.

[Jokerman]

35. I won a hundred bucks in the lottery once.

I thought maybe it was a gift from god but the check came from the state.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

37. After my father died, my mom gave me the wooden dresser-top box

that I had brought him as a gift from Japan several years before.

I put it on top of my own dresser empty, not having decided yet what to keep in it.

I went off to work one day, and when I came home, the lid of the box was on the floor upside down. Taped inside the lid--and previously invisible, since I hadn't opened the box-- was a birthday card I had given my dad a few years before, one I had made with a cartoonish drawings of a Viking (my father was of Norwegian descent).

The cover had been on securely. There were no earthquakes that day. I had no pets at home. There were no signs of anyone having been in the apartment where I lived alone. No reason why the lid should have come off the box and landed upside down on the floor in front of the dresser.

Spooky.

[moobu2]

39. You may have unknowingly knocked the box off yourself

Someone (living) obviously did.

Sorry, I know you loved your father, but since he was deceased, it's just is not possible for him to have anything to do with this.

The lid was laying on the floor exactly where it would be laying if someone (living) had knocked it off, because that's what happened.

[mr blur]

41. There are no supernatural experiences.

There are only natural experiences and delusions. You know, like religion.

BTW, if you're looking for a fight, I suspect you'll be disappointed. We have better things to do, really. Sorry.

[uberllama42]

42. Now, now, now, that's not fair

How could you possibly conclude he's looking for a fight? :eyes:

[Disturbed]

43. I heard two voices.

I used to go digging for old bottles by myself at no longer used dumps in my area. One day as I was doing this I heard two people speaking in Southern accents. I actually looked around & of course saw no one. I didn't hear what they were saying. Their convo lasted about 30 seconds then stopped. I cannot explain this. I went to the same place a few more times but never heard them again. I did find several old bottles, still intact, which are in a cabinet. I look at them sometimes & still wonder about this event.

[moobu2]

44. Hearing voices which aren’t actually there isn’t all that rare.

[New Dawn]

64. According to the definition of atheism, we can still believe in some supernatural phenomenon

Atheism simply means not believing in a deity or deities. That means that anything else could be believed in by an atheist (i.e. occult, souls, afterlife, etc.).

There are, however, some atheists who do not believe in any supernatural phenomenon at all. They are called materialists, which should not to be confused with the definition that means "greedy". For example, Karl Marx was a materialist in the sense that he did not believe in any supernatural phenomenon, but he wasn't greedy, being a Communist.

Edit: I mention this because of your atheist avatar image.

[GoneOffShore]

45. No - Just a lot of confirmation bias

Plus situational bias.

Stop eating the magic mushrooms.

[Marrah_G]

46. I've had many

I don't like to discuss them though, especially in this forum since they tend to be met with ridicule. I'll take a chance here.

The most un-nerving was in 1998- ( I hate even saying this because it sounds so kooky) I had "vision" sort of like a daydream, hard to explain, and I saw what I could only describe then as "the big buildings" in NYC collapsing. It scared me enough to call my friends in the city who worked in Manhattan and warn them. I am sure they thought I was nuts. My friend Ginger did however get freaked out enough by my call that she took a transfer to another office many months later. At the time I told them I thought maybe it was an earthquake, because in my mind I saw missiles (planes?), and I thought that was completely impossible. So I went with the slightly less absurd explanation. Had I not told a group of friends at a dinner party a few days later I would surely think myself insane. When the towers came down I thought I would pass out.

I can't tell fortunes, I can't tell my friends what's going to happen to them next week, these things happen randomly and without warning.

There have been other things, events on a national scale that have also come to pass. Unfortunately, seeing these things doesn't seem to have any purpose since I can't do anything with the information except plan ahead for my family.

There have also been some things on a more spiritual/religious level that have solidified my belief that we have alot to learn about our world and things we can not prove yet.

I've also had a few unexplainable incidents with paranormal or for lack of a better word, ghost activity.

I have joined a paranormal research group though, in hopes to find some answers for myself.

Now I am going to warily hit the send button......

[Chovexani]

59. Hmm.

I try to stay grounded about these things, and strike a balance between calling bullshit and allowing people to own their UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis)--so long as they are not trying to pass it off as The Truth For Everybody, Everywhere, All the Time, particularly when it contradicts established lore on a subject. I've seen things that would scare the shit out of the most hardened skeptic. I've heard stories that made me laugh my ass off they were so implausible. And everything in every grey area in-between. I try to err on the side of open-mindedness, if only because I've personally had experiences even other Pagans would balk at. Which is why I tend not to talk about them even to other Pagans. Suffice it to say, I find these conversations pretty amusing. That's the tricky thing about UPG. One person's hallucination is another person's epiphany. Maybe the Gods are trying to tell you something through a losing battle with a questionable burrito, who knows?

Personally, I think the lessons you draw from a "supernatural" experience are far more important than the experience itself. People who poke around looking for explanations as to why the watch works kind of miss the point--which is what time it is. That's not to say that WHY the watch works isn't important, just that it's not the end all be all.

[Zebedeo]

47. At the risk of incurring derisive ridicule from certain posters

I will share a true story about events that occurred to my wife and me while on a trip to New Orleans, the city in which I was born. All of this happened before I became a Christian.

We stayed in an bed and breakfast that was an antebellum era brownstone just outside the French Quarter. Our room was haunted by the ghosts of slaves who had died there. There were many events that occurred over the course of this one weekend. The included the following:

1. Items moving from the refrigerator into the freezer and back without either my wife's or my involvement.
2. Lightbulbs repeatedly unscrewing themselves.
3. A wardrobe door unlocking itself and then opening, repeatedly.
4. A ghost in the approximate location of the wardrobe door, visible only in the mirror that was across the room.
5. My wife and I both fell asleep in the middle of the day, only to wake up and find that the room had filled with natural gas.
6. A stack of old newspapers that I was looking through on Sunday morning (before we had opened the door to our room). As I looked through the stack, I was astonished to find, halfway down the stack and in between two old papers - today's paper!)
7. One of the stories in one of the old newspapers was about the house of Madame Delphine LaLaurie. It described how she and her physician husband had kept slaves in their New Orleans home and how they had tortured them and used them in ghastly medical experiments.
8. While walking around the French Quarter, I was suddenly immobilized by a terrible pain in one of my Achilles tendons. It was not a normal pain, but a debilitating agony that made taking one more step impossible. I stayed there while my wife went to get help. After a few minutes, the pain completely went away.
9. We went to Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo, and considered buying an "evil stay away gator toe," but decided against it.
10. My wife wanted to switch to a modern hotel, but I didn't want to, because the bed and breakfast was prepaid.
11. On the plane when we were waiting to take off to go home, it was discovered that a man seated across the aisle from us and one row up was dead. The man was traveling alone. When the paramedics came, they could not find any i.d. on him. He was dressed in a business suit. He had no wallet. The only thing in his pockets was a business card from a funeral home.
12. After we arrived at the Memphis airport to change planes, and as we were waiting for our flight to board, an African man walked by us. He was dressed in a business suit and was carrying a large spear. A real one. In the airport. He stared menacingly at us. We to this day have no idea how this man was allowed to have a spear in the airport.

There were other events. My wife counted more than 20 of them and wrote them down. We have not been back to New Orleans since, and my wife refuses to ever go there again.

[HamdenRice]

50. If any place is weird, it was New Orleans!

The first time I went there was in the early 80s with my then girlfriend. I went back for a conference around 1985.

I went to the Marie Laveau house which was then in the French Quarter. While the guide was telling me about this fascinating voodoo queen, a bolt of lightening struck the building across the street (it hadn't been raining or anything), and blew off a long crucifix which fell to the ground, point first, and lodged in the middle of the street -- kind of like a scene from The Omen!

A creepy place, but I love it!

[AccessGranted]

62. New Orleans

My significant other and I went there about 5 years ago for a vacation. I loved it, but it has a very, very strange vibe indeed. We went on a ghost-hunting tour at midnight by horse-drawn carriage and went on a cemetary tour, but that's not what made it weird. We did all kinds of things, but just felt freaked out the entire time. It just "felt" strange there, but those are some of the nicest people on earth there.

[Meshuga]

51. I like your decision Zeb

Facing the ghosts not to lose your prepaid money. :-)

But I would not be as courageous so I would probably be out of that place in a heartbeat! :scared:

[Zebedeo]

55. Yes, my fear of losing money

outweighed my fear of ghosts. Go figure.

[AccessGranted]

63. Wow

When I stayed in New Orleans I stayed at a bed and breakfast on St. Charles and it was weird as hell.

[Realityhack]

52. No. I see that as a logical imposibility.

I don't see anything as being outside of nature. Therefore a 'supernatural' experience is impossible.
An inexplicable experience certainly is possible and we may never know exactly what lead to a particular experience. Certainly we DO know a lot about various psychological phenomena that lead to seemingly 'inexplicable' experiences.

As for the rest of your post...

...that make me leave open the likelihood that there are things that not only can't science explain right now

No shit. If that is the only reason you think there are things Science can not currently explain you are woefully ignorant.

...although at the fringes, I think we're heading in a direction that will explain these things

Um.. what do you mean by the 'fringes' of science. Typically that ends up meaning psudo-science but I suppose it could refer to the cutting edge of science.

[tama]

57. What is strange

is how many confuse the current state of scientific ignorance (theories) with nature, claming that what cannot be explained by the standard theories (classical mechanics of laymans physics) is "supernatural".

[MikeH]

53. I personally have never had a "supernatural" experience

I myself have never personally experienced anything that could be considered "supernatural", or that would indicate the reality of anything "supernatural", psychic, or paranormal.

However that does not mean that I regard as a certainty that such things are not real, and I do not want to make any statements or judgments regarding other people's experiences.

I consider myself to be a skeptic in the sense that I do not want to accept something as being true or certain based on insufficient evidence. For me this includes both the assertion that the "supernatural" and paranormal, and psychic experiences, are for real, and the assertion that such things are definitely not for real.

I have some philosophical reasons for being open to the possible reality of the "supernatural" or paranormal. I used to be a Christian, though I am not any more (and I have my reasons). When I was a Christian, one of my favorite writers was the noted apologist C. S. Lewis. I no longer accept his arguments regarding the person of Christ or tenets of the Christian faith, but I have liked and still like his arguments that our sense of reason, and our sense of right and wrong, must be rooted in some intelligence higher and greater than our own, and in some reality higher and greater than ourselves and the natural universe. He particularly makes this argument in the first six chapters of his book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracles_(book)">Miracles.

I realize that not everybody is going to accept the above reasoning, but I myself do. I would consider myself to be a Deist; i.e. I consider myself to be just on the believing side of agnostic, but do not adhere to any of the "revealed" religions (Christianity, Islam, etc.), and do not accept any of the alleged revelations from God (the Bible, the Koran, etc.).

Accepting the possibility (though not absolute certainty) of some higher or greater reality than the natural, material universe, I am open to the possibility (but again not absolute certainty) that "supernatural", paranormal, and psychic experiences might be for real.

[Birdiesmom]

54. Battleship USS North Carolina

I posted this in the wrong place earlier --

The Battleship is deeply moored in mud off the coast of Wilmington, NC, as a history museum and tourist attraction. Myself and ten other persons had arranged a private tour of the Battleship after hours, and were sitting in a room called "The Bullpen" -- the former library of the ship.

Some strange things had been happening with walkie talkies and other electrical gadgets, and we were quietly talking about the possibility that the ship was haunted. The ship's caretaker of nearly 30 years, Danny Bradshaw, had assured us that it was.

Suddenly, as we all sat in various places around the room, in chairs and on couches, we all clearly heard footsteps. They started in the center of the room, next to the table some of us were sitting around, myself included. The footsteps -- very clear, sounding like leather soles on the welded steel plate decks of the ship -- went from the center of the room, between all of us, out the door of the room, down the hallway, and up a flight of metal stairs. The steps were not at all faint -- in fact, several of us commented that the individual making the footsteps had sounded angry or agitated.

We explored the room, floor and hall thoroughly for wires, speakers, electrical lines, and anything else which could possibly have produced the sound. Despite having a radio technician with 30 years experience with us, and other "techies," we were unable to find anything which could have produced the sound of footsteps in The Bullpen.

Yes, we had been told that the ship was haunted, so we were not totally objective subjects for this experience. But I was there, and I know what I heard. It did not "sound like" footsteps. It *was* footsteps. Leather dress shoes. I've heard the sound thousands of times, because my father wore the same kind of shoes in the Air Force Reserve. And the steps passed within three feet of where I was sitting, and within one foot of where some of us were sitting.

We had been over the ship with a fine tooth comb that evening, and Danny Bradshaw was asleep in his cabin -- we could see him from the porthole. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone else was somewhere aboard the ship, but I don't see how it would be possible for them to produce the sound of those footsteps in "surround sound," or rig it in such a way that we couldn't find the wiring or speaker system. Also, what motivation would a military museum have for doing such a thing? Danny received no money for the evening -- it all went to the Battleship Memorial Fund.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

56. I witnessed a miracle over the weekend.

I thought there was only enough gas in the lawnmower to do half the lawn last week. But the Lord kept the lawnmower going for two full lawns.

I'm creating a new holiday and have decided to call it Lawnukkah.

[moobu2]

60. And to think

Out of the 6 or 7 billion people on the planet, and all their problems, God thought about your lawn… a true miracle indeed…PTL. Maybe you're a saint and didnt know it.

[AccessGranted]

61. The House That Wept (For Real)

My neice and her husband were going to buy a house. It was a mini-mansion with a ballroom and an olympic-size pool and it was super-cheap, priced waaaaaay below market for the area. It had been empty for about a year and a half. My neice is a realtor, so she got the key so that she and her husband could go look inside. About 5 minutes after they walked in (on a clear sunny day, the entire house began to leak with water from the walls and ceilings for no reason and the inside of the house got really cold. It got so bad, they had to leave Her husband owns a construction company and checked to see where the water was coming from, but there was no logical explanation.

A week later my neice took me to the house and we were there for about 10 minutes and the same thing. On a dry sunny early spring day, water just started pouring from the walls and ceilings. She wanted to leave, but me being curious about the supernatural and bold wanted to stay. The longer we stayed the more water came from the walls and ceilings and it got to be more and more. After a while, it was literally gushing from every room. Yet, the main water line in the house was shut off. The air inside the house became frigid, colder and colder. It was about 65 degress outside.

We left and went outside to walk around the house and we went to ask a neighbor about the house. We were out of the house for about 20 minutes. When we went back in, everything was completely dry as if no water had ever leaked. So we stayed inside and the same thing happened again.

The neighbor has told us that a family - a mother, father and 2 small children - a boy and a girl, had the house built. They lived there for about 3 years and suddenly disappeared abruptly in the middle of the night. Nobody knows where they went. Nobody saw them move anything out of the house. Nobody saw a moving truck.

When we went inside the house it was complete empty except for an antique grand piano in the ballroom - nothing else. The second time we went in after speaking with the neighbor, there was suddenly an old wooden baby bassinet in the kitchen on the counter near the sink that wasn't there before. Okay, it get's worse, we went outside and called her husband to come over.

He brought their almost 3 year old daughter with him, whose quite well-spoken for her age, and we all went back in the house together. Well, we tried to. At the doorway, their daughter got hysterical and started screaming that she couldn't go in the house and that she was afraid of it. My neice tried to calm her down and asked her why she was scared of the house and the child said that the house was a "monster" and she kept screaming until we all got in our car and left. She said she hated it and that it was scary. We left and never went back. Creepy.

[Evoman]

65. Where was this house? Is there a listing for it on the internet?