Unexplainable Experiences

[petek]

I disagree, the only time I would advise someone to reason away things with logic things they don't understand or fear is because they're never going to be comfortable with it. I personally do believe there's more around us than many can see from my own experiences, some of which have been corroborated by others at the same time they were happening and while none of us were in any altered state of mind via drugs, drink, whatever. It's a futile argument though to try and convince an unbeliever that what you saw or experienced really did exist. There is another reason why so many times these experiences happen when you are either asleep or tired and it doesn't have anything to do with dreams, it has to do with your mind being in a relaxed state or for a better term, not being in "reality" and therefore more receptive to things you might otherwise be blocking out while awake. In a case such as what Matt describes above he was sleeping and he did awaken enough to see these figures and watch them, that could be because the mind still wasn't fully in gear and then when reason/logic starts to awaken they start to fade or disappear. Being reasonable and logical isn't a bad thing, you need that to go about your daily life but it doesn't hurt to be able to shut it down either, unless of course like I said before you're not comfortable or afraid of these sorts of unknowns.
But then, once you've experienced one, you know, and you'll always know for the rest of your life so trying to pretend it's all a hallucination or your mind was playing tricks doesn't really work that well anyways, you're stuck with it so may as well accept it.
It's also never certain how much or how long any particular person is going to experience these sorts of things. Some people may have it just happen once in their life, some fairly frequently, some maybe once ever few years or only when something that affects them personally happens, such as the death of a family member or a close friend. A rationalist would put it down to a coincidence but not everything weird can be attributed to a being a coincidence. .
Ok I've blathered long enough.. next....

 

[ironrite]

Parents, Part Two

Back to 1972, my father passed away. He had been ill for some time, so it was expected. I was 17 at the time. I had bought a 1959 Cadillac limousine a few months before he passed away. He didn't like the car at all.

Family started to arrive for his funeral. My oldest sister, her husband and my two nephews, who were very young at that time arrived in from California to Arizona. The day of my Dad's viewing, my nephews thought it was great fun playing in their uncle's big, black Cadillac. I thought, they'll cut their hands or heads off playing with the power windows and such. All of this operated without the ignition turned on. So, I locked up the car so they wouldn't get in trouble. This was in the morning.

That night was the viewing. Several of us went back home to get things ready for all rest of the friends and family. As we pulling into the driveway, we noticed, all the lights in the Cadillac were on. Dome lights, reading lights, etc. All burning very brightly. Now, this was in the days before long life batteries, the car was locked. It was parked under a carport where everybody was walking by it all day. Nobody noticed the lights were on...but it appears somebody was home!!

I disconnected the battery and sold the thing a month later! I finally got the message from my dad. Perhaps my nephews found all the light switches in the car, or was it something else.

 

[pulsatron]

Nightmares after armed robbery

Matt,
I haven't really had any supernatural experiences in that sense however in 2002 the discount variety store I was manager of at the time was involved in a savage armed robbery, in which 2 criminals smashed my office door open while I was having my lunch and basically stuck a large carving knife to my throat and demanded all the money which was locked in the safe,although deep down I wanted to fight them, I just followed the company's procedures in these things and submitted and gave the money to them during this time they taunted me,took my driver's licence and threatened to come to my home and kill me if I reported the robbery to the police.
I went through 5 months of trauma counselling to help recover but for a while I was having terrible nightmares and seeing them leering at me over my bed while I was trying to sleep and always worrying about every phone call and knock on the door.
However I have pretty much recovered from it now and am enjoying a reasonably balanced life, I know this digressed from your initial enqiry but I thought I might just share it with the site, and no I don't really believe in ghosts or the supernatural .
Cheers.
Steve.

 

[toggleswitch]

Hi Carol.

Sorry about my sense of humor. Thought I was being funny.
HA HA

:-(

 

[tomturbomatic]

Nightmares after armed robbery

That's like post-traumatic stress disorder. What a horrible experience for you. I am sorry that you had to go through that, but hope that your mind can heal from that violence.
Tom

 

[Designgeek]

I've had precognitive dreams since early childhood, and numerous instances of other types of psi. First time I told my parents about it, as in, "something I dreamed about the other night just happened today (and the details)," they said "Oh, that's just ESP, it's normal, that happens to us too." So I never got the weird fear-conditioning that some kids I knew got when they told their parents about psi events. Instead I applied my geek sensibilities to it and observed in detail and attempted to look for a decent theory to explain it.

The reason science was traditionally uncomfortable with this stuff is that it appears to partake of the subject matter of religion, notably death and the hereafter, and "prophesy" and so on. And for the longest time there was no good theoretical explanation for any of it. That's been changing over the past decade or two. The best current thinking on the subject is that it's an example of quantum entanglement or "non-locality." In fact, "ESP" behaves in exactly the manner you would expect from a nonlocal phenomenon. I could write ten pages on this subject since I've studied it in depth, but if you're interested, go look up the names "Hameroff and Penrose" and their paper on "objective reduction."

Mattywashboy, here's some specific advice for you:

First, I'm quite certain that a part of you is rather more curious about this than scared, even if you're not consciously aware of it. So, next time you encounter one of those hooded figures, I want you to look at it directly and say "I know you, now take off your mask!" or some words to that effect. And then observe, in much the same way as you'd observe the behavior of a neighbor's pet or a harmless little critter in the garden.

You'll most likely discover that the person behind the mask is a representation of a part of yourself or someone you know, or of a symbol of some aspect of human behavior that you have been having internal debates about. And something about what you discover will help you deal with the issue constructively. Feel free to let us know what happens, or not if you prefer.

By the way, I don't think these experiences you're having involve psi phenomena or a separate "entity" of some kind. I think what's going on here is a classic instance of an internal issue being represented as a visible symbol with sufficient emotional content to make you pay attention until it's resolved. That doesn't increase or decrease its meaning or importance, or the validity of the feelings you're having about it. But you may feel some reassurance to know that your own mind has many ways to take care of you and see to your own best interests, even if sometimes that means making you uncomfortable.

 

[mickeyd]

There is hope, Matty

Having the luck to grow up in a household similar to DSGK, where the para normal was expected, I can sympathize with Matty, while concurring with D.

I have to go out right now, and I'll come back to this exotic and mesmerizing thread later, but I have stronger advice.

The research I've studied, urges that you go beyond confrontation to actually ATTACK the predator physically with whatever weapon suggests itself, including hands and fists. You may not succeed the first time; just keep at it until you vanquish the foe. After many failures, I have enjoyed stunning success witht this method. But you have to attack. Often before you strike, the predator will turn away and flee. You'l be so happy, relieved, and confident when this happens. Matty, you can do this.

My source is Dr. Ann Faraday, PhD Life-long dream researcher and one of the queens in the field.

Mikey

 

[mattywashboy]

the advice and support i am getting is FANTASTIC from you all, i was aprehensive when starting this thread coz i was unsure of the reaction. My pointer hovered over the 'post to discuss o mat' button way too long.
For those of you who are advising me to stand up and face it, when i wake up i'm like all people when they wake up suddenly, not fully registering their surroundings, i sit up and if i see a figure my first instinct is to run, which is what i do, by this time my housemate is usually out of bed after hearing me hit the floor and run and is there to grab me before i'm halfway trhough the neighbourhood. I think Petek has the right idea in saying that logic comes later, maybe if i stop myslef from running and just face them maybe i will see more detail that can help identify them. It does seem that as i wake up fully the figures disappear (paul gets me in a bear hug and being a big fella it does wake you up fairly quickly). Its an odd thing to describe and i thought it might have been something to do with the old house, but we moved recently and it still happens here, also when we go on camps it happens there. I'm glad i'm finally getting to the bottom of it.
Thankyou to all who shared their experiences and i urge more people to keep on posting on this thread.
I will keep you posted as to the progress and give a report if i have another 'night terror'.
Matt

 

[petek]

First off I don't think Matt said this thing was a predator only that he is frightened when he see's it, so why attack it when you can try to figure out what it is and why it's there. It's all a matter of accepting things, strange as they may be and learning from them. I didn't publicly post my experience with a similar dark figure. I'm very open to these sort of experiences and in the one case of it happening to me I wasn't alone when it happened, a friend of mine was there and experienced it as well. He was terrified and I was to say the least fascinated and awestruck watching it. These things don't exist in our reality and can't hurt you so if you know that beforehand if and when it does happen sit back, pay attention and enjoy the show.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I guess you could say I'm a sceptic about these kinds of things. I fully accept that they appear quite real to those who see them... but to date there has been no proof that ANY claimed paranormal events are real.

The human brain, after all, is just a mass of gooey tissue, made up of proteins, lipids, salts, etc. That it works at all is something of a miracle. That it occasionally goes a little out of whack, and conjures up people and things that aren't really there, shouldn't be any surprise.

PS-My parkeet has night terrors. In her case, they are real. I have two cats. ;-)

 

[bingwsguy]

Matt,
My first posting told you of "strange" things that happened to me, which I honestly believe were more spiritual, but now I will tell of my partners night terrors. I have known him for 15 years, and he has had these night terrors since he was a child. With him, they come and go. Sometimes he can go for 6 months without having any. Then, out of the blue, he will be plagued by them night after night for 6 months. There have been many times I was actually afraid of him when he would wake up screaming, or swearing, or sometimes punching me, squeezing my arm or leg so hard, and one time choking me. Sometimes he will wake up thinking there are spiders all over the room, other times he sees people on the ceiling or in the corner, and one time (he would kill me if he knew I told this) he got up and peed in the hamper while sleep walking.The only thing that can calm him down is to grab him in a bear hug and actually try to restrain him while talking to him and reassuring him he is ok. I actually had to change my work schedule to go in to work at night, because I was always tired in the morning from no sleep. He went to a sleep clinic to be evaluated. He had to go and sleep there overnight, hooked up to all kinds of monitors. They detected very irregular sleep patterns, but did not find it alarming enough to go further...he obviously had a "light" episode that night, because if they saw what happened at home they would be more concerned. After that, he did not pursue it further...he just got discouraged. I really believe it is something that happened to him as a child that has made him afraid, but I can't be sure.
I really can't give you any advice, because I am no expert, but I can tell you that I know all of it is very real and I understand. I hope you can get to the bottom of it, and keep me posted.
Joe

 

[Designgeek]

Sudsmaster, your information is out of date. This isn't about ghosts and goblins, it's about physics and neurobiology. Check out the following and get back to us....

For anyone who's intersted in theory, go here:

The Science of Consciousness Conference

www.consciousness.arizona.edu

And here:

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/

Look up Hameroff's paper on "orchestrated objective reduction", typically abbreviated as "orch-OR". See also the article about same, here, and this in fact is a very good place to start:

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/wiki.htm

Note, Penrose is a mathematician; Hameroff's background is as an anaesthesiologist who got interested in the problem of consciousness as related to anaesthesia. Their theory is presently regarded as one of the most complete and elegant theories of consciousness, and some of its testable predictions have been validated independently.

Also go here: http://consc.net/chalmers/
Chalmers was offered the chair of the philosophy dept at Oxford but he decided to go to Arizona to do CS, and now he's at the Australian Nat'l University doing philosophy.

One of his most interesting papers is here, but be forewarned, this is dense stuff and definitely not "lite" reading:

Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness

 

[sudsmaster]

Gee, Designgeek, one of your links backs up what I've been saying:

"Hobson maintains that dreams are noise whose bizarre character stems from the same neurochemistry responsible for hallucinations"

As for the rest, I may or may not delve through it. But I sincerely doubt any of it contains any peer-reviewed scientific experiments that prove that ESP, paranormal, ghosts, etc actually exist, except perhaps in the minds of the believers.

 

[Designgeek]

Suds, I've said in more than one place, including possibly around here, that dreams, like LSD imagery, are the result of neural noise. In the case of LSD, the noise is caused by the increased flow of random information across synapses (the compound mimics other neurotransmitters, etc.). In the case of dreams, the noise is caused by random impulse transmission during the "re-uptake" function that "cleans up" stray neurotransmitter molecules during sleep. (During the waking state, reuptake gets behind, stray neurotransmitters build up, and this causes some of the phenomena associated with tiredness. During sleep, with inputs attentuated and thought process slowed down significantly, reuptake gets ahead of output and you wake up feeling "refreshed" i.e. your brain having been cleaned up.)

However, the brain, being optimised for pattern-recognition, turns the noise into stories we call dreams, or acid trips as the case may be. (BTW I am *not* advocating the use of psychedelic drugs, they are in fact rather risky and there are far safer ways to explore one's mind nowadays).

But here we encounter an interesting question. Whence come the story plot, characters, setting, and so on...? Logically this stuff is signal (information) superimposed onto noise, and empirically we know that most of it comes from clearly discernable sources such as memory in waking life. But here is an intrinsic opening for other sources of inputs: direct perception being an obvious case. For example the other morning I woke up from a dream about friends who had gone through a house fire, to discover real-world fire engines at a real house fire across the street; clearly I had perceived the sirens and translated them into dream state input. Well, once we have the capability to introduce perceptual input into dreams, and we have a neural mechanism for quantum entanglement, what we end up with is a physical explanation for "ESP." And what works in one state of consciousness also works in others though differently.

As for "proof" that ESP is an actual occurrence: see Jahne & Dunne, _The Margins of Reality_, which covers the subject in more than sufficient detail. And please don't commit the obscurantist error of dismissing it a-priori. Read the research and get back to us.

I'll tell you this from personal experience: Once I got accustomed to the "oh, that's ESP and it's normal" feedback from my parents, I started thinking critically about those precognitive dreams and factored out all the possible cases of "inference from subconsciously-perceived patterns of events" and started looking for a mechanism. I was quite uncomfortable with the logical implication of complete predestination and determinacy. After all it's perfectly normal to prefer living in a universe where free will really means something! So here was this uncomfortable empirical fact staring me in the face, and that's what got me interested in dealing with the issue scientifically. I wanted to find explanations that were rigorous and stood up to scrutiny. I wasn't about to accept a deterministic universe if there was some other alternative. And at this point, I think the alternatives (Hameroff & Penrose, et. al.) are pretty darn good: low-level nonlocal signal that occasionally gets above the noise floor.

This is not an either/or, it's an and/both. So in a way I could also agree that it's "all in the mind:" I'm in your mind, you're in mine, and we're all connected whether we like it or not.

 

[petek]

So is that like the collective unconsciousness ?

BTW but on the same tangent. When it comes to lucid dreaming do any of you find it quite common for yourself. I do many times.

 

[DADoES]

Friend related this afternoon nap-dream to me couple days ago:
<blockquote>I dreamt I had retired from the usaf and all of a sudden I had lost memory of the last 5 years.. I'd climbed up a tower and shot some people that deserved shooting, they'd shot me and put me in a nut house... as they explained what happened on a long drive in the country, I remembered right up to the point I did the shooting. I was okay with the law, innocent because of insanity.. had a bunch of other weird scenes that didn't relate, think it was because I had the tv volume up.</blockquote>
History channel turned on in the background, running something on WWII.

He said: subliminal script feed.

 

[sudsmaster]

Designgeek,

Thanks for the references, but I don't think I need your permission to contribute to this thread. Therefore, I will feel free to post my opinion, like anyone else here, whether or not I read all the putative research links you've posted.

If there is ANY definitive peer-reviewed scientific proof of ESP or any other paranormal claim, please just post that link and nothing else. Your Jahne and Dunne reference appears to be a book, not a scientific paper.

My conclusion, so far: there is no proof, it's more of wishful thinking on the part of those who want to find patterns where none exist.

 

[sudsmaster]

PS-Here's an excerpt from a review of the Jahne and Dunne book from Amazon.com:

This book recounts very interesting research into the ability of humans to influence random events such as coin-tossing. This is extensively documented in technical detail, with graphs of many hundreds of thousands of trials, over which strong statistical significance shows up even though the influence is less than 1% per trial and therefore not casually noticeable.
There is also an intriguing those less detailed section about remote viewing, in which one person can describe the surroundings of another person at a different location in space or even time. Again the statistics indicate a significant effect.

However, the credibility built up by this is severely dented by the rest of the book, which attempts to outline a theoretical basis for this in terms of a 'quantum mechanics of consciousness'. This eyewash is just embarrassing to read - e.g. many pages expended on arguing for the existence of physical analogs such as 'consciousness distance', 'consciousness mass' etc. on the grounds that we sometimes speak of being 'deep in thought', 'light-hearted', etc. The quality of this reasoning speaks for itself. A few pages later and these spurious variables are being incorporated into quantum-mechanical equations. Oh dear.

Unfortunately this shows the danger of scientists wandering out of their field into discussions of mind and metaphysics, which are topics in philosophy - a subject in which these authors are complete amateurs without appearing to realize it. Their blunders are so elementary as to be laughable to anyone with a knowledge of metaphysics.

The extensive bibliography cites endless references to Freud, Jung and other people in loosely related subjects without including a single mention of anyone who knows about philosophy, with the marginal exception of William James (who is a century out of date anyway).

 

[mickeyd]

This is an amazing and mysterious world we live in, full of contradictions and ambiguitues. Keats worked out a theory called "negative cabability" in which he postulated that some people are able to hold confortably in their consciousness, two thoroughly contadictory and opposing fields of thought, simultaneously. Poets, film makers, dreamers, and washing machine lovers seem to have little trouble doing so. To borrow The Laundress's signature rhetorical device: "one" can fully enjoy the theory that dreams are the effect of random, neural, electrical activitiy, just as easily as one can celebrate the notion that dreams are gifts from another dimension of reality. We have all had the dream where something in the physical world--the fire engine, for example--works its way into-- or actually creates !--the dream. But many of us have also had dreams of startling and unforgettable insight that seem to have come from Elsewhere. Modern Quantum Physics insists that the farther inward we go into the analysis of matter, the more outrageous the findings. Everything seems possible--even God!

In one of the last chapters of Ann Faraday's work, she talks about a tribe of people whose entire culture is based upon their ludic dreaming. (Lucid differs from vivid dreaming in that lucid dreamers are able to control the dream, which takes years of practice and most people are unable to achieve it.) I have not succeeded.

When the dreamers get up in the morning, they share thier night time experiences. Later, as part of the day's work they use a variety of artistic modes to fashion a gift from the dream.

Faraday's book "Dream Power" which I read in graduate school has stayed in my memory a lot longer than the work of Jung or even Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams." Hers is the work that recommends facing and fighting any dark or predatory presence one meets in dreams. The bad guy will then either flee, or submit and reveal something.

Matty, you might love this book. Try the library or amazon.com. I gave my copy away ages ago.

Quantum Physics and Designgeek agree: We are all connected to each other, and issue from the same life force, whatever it may turn out to be-- perhaps a humongous washing machine!!! Wouldn't that be sweet?

Mikey

 

[petek]

so any old Herman Hesse readers here ?