I'm agnostic about it. But I would really like this stuff to be real because it kinda makes the world more interesting that way. :)
We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible.
I'm an atheist but I kinda HAVE to believe in the supernatural since I have had multiple encounters. It really messes with my head. I prefer to look at these things as preternatural instead. At least that way I can believe there is a scientific explanation but we just don't understand it yet.
shareThat's the first time I've ever read an atheist on IMDb type that view.
shareIs that a good thing?
I never believed in ghosts, etc., growing up the son of a fundamentalist minister, though I was forced into a belief in god. I always questioned the inconsistencies in religion, but I didn't have the freedom to truly disbelieve until adulthood, when I began doing research and coming to my own conclusions.
With ghosts, I had my first encounter as a teenager but was able to compartmentalize that encounter and write it off until I started having more and more supernatural episodes. I've now experienced so many things that I have no question of the existence of "something;" I'm just not sure what that is.
I kinda hate it on one hand because it confuses me, but I am so fascinated by it I also am very appreciative that I am one who has experienced it. I guess it's really one of those things -- it's very easy to disbelieve it until something happens to you. People may say that I am imagining things or attributing rational happenings to the irrational, but I am a normal, sober, sane individual and I know what I've seen.
I've been having an ongoing discussion with a number of atheists regarding their beliefs. Many of them that I talked to said they don't believe in anything paranormal, including ghosts. One of them scolded me for assuming that human souls are the basis for ghosts after death. Maybe they're right, I don't know.
ok..I stand corrected on this topic. Apparently some atheists do believe in ghosts and had personal experiences. So do you think the ghost you experienced was a souls from the living, or a demonic?
I once heard a ghost, but didn't see it. It sounds like you had numerous visitations by an entity.
We lived in a very cool old house in Silver lake (Los Angeles). It was an old Spanish style house on a hill. You had to walk down a flight of stairs to get to the main house, but the whole property was fenced with a tall wrought iron fence, which was locked.
There was a small guest house beside the stairs leading down to the house and we had lots of people stay in it when visiting LA. Practically everyone had the same story. Sometime during the night, they would hear someone walking down those steps. When they looked, no one was there (and no one we knew would or could just open the locked gate to come in). One night I slept in the guesthouse and heard the footsteps around 3am. I woke my husband and he and I ran outside. No one was there. I never slept in that guesthouse again!
Its not the creepiest ghost story, but I swear its 100% true.
Oh what a falling off was there.
Thank you for sharing that. I love reading about all ghost stories.
shareYour welcome. The funny thing is that we now live in a 117 year old Victorian home in San Francisco's North Bay area. It looks and feels like the perfect place for ghosts, but in 3 years have never had the slightest ghostly experience.
I'll never forget hearing those footsteps though in that Silverlake house!
Oh what a falling off was there.
In the normal, suburban house I lived in as a teenager, just after we had moved in, my mother and I were alone in my room one night. We both heard footsteps come up the stairs from the basement, walk into the kitchen just across the hallway from my bedroom, open the refrigerator and shut it and then leave again. Nobody else in the house. No other occurrences until I was an adult, some 15 years later, and my partner and I were living in the basement temporarily. My husband has some level of psychic ability which he has proven on many occasions. When he first came to our house, he started talking about a "spirit" by the name of George who was trying to communicate with him. It became a running joke in our family. One night we were both sitting on opposite sides of our air mattress. Suddenly a big impression appeared in the mattress directly between us. It even pushed both of us up as if someone had sat down between us. I jumped up screaming. Then, a couple years later we were remodeling the basement for my mom. He and I tore a wall out and written on the foundation underneath it was "Built by George and [somebody] - 1983." We yelled immediately for my mom to see it. She is as big a disbeliever as there ever was but even she admits now that my husband tapped into something.
A few years later, my husband and I worked at a B&B owned by an elderly gay couple. We knew them very well. One of them passed away and shortly after things started happening in the house. Radios and televisions would come on by themselves - usually tuned to the channel he always watched. Things would fly off the wall when I was there by myself. Then, after we had moved out, I was there visiting the surviving owner one day. As I walked out and through the living room, there was a man sitting in the deceased man's favorite chair watching TV. I thought I recognized the back of his head and turned to look and it was the deceased man. My jaw dropped and I stammered out "Hi." He said, "Well hello there." I said, "How are you?" He said, "I'm just great." I said, "Okay, well...bye." I was in shock. All sorts of things were running through my head. Was it a lookalike? So outside was the caretaker of the house and I asked him if the owner had any guests or visitors that day. He said no. Then later I called and asked if he had had any visitors and he said no too.
Another time, we lived on a very dark, winding country-like road and we were driving home at like 3am. In our headlights we caught a young boy riding a bicycle in the opposite lane. It was very strange and mysterious and we were like what the hell is that kid doing out here in the middle of the night. Forgot about it until several years later I was looking at a Haunted Cincinnati website that listed local ghost legends, and it turns out that the road we lived on had a legend of a boy on a bicycle whom you could summon if you flashed your headlights or something like that. We hadn't known the first thing about it.
There are more, but as you can see, I have no shortage of encounters in my life.
I consider myself an intellectual and scientist and I've always practiced meditation, but it wasn't until I got phenomenally better at it that reality itself started to get a lot weirder.
After several experiences that I would classify as non-dualistic and formless (to use Buddhist terminology), there is no doubt that our physicalist paradigm is a limitation framed by an inadequate epistemological framework.
So now I practice meditation, magic, and entity work (including Goetic "demon").
I'm not big into the Christian paradigm (like in this movie and most others), but there is truth to the power of names and how control can be exercised through knowledge of names and an honest sense of spiritual authority.
I lived in one particular house a few years ago where we always suspected there was some sort of supernatural activity going on, we'd leave items in places then come back to find them gone, we'd leave a room to find out the door had closed on its own, seeing figures and shadows, that sort of thing.
However, one incident topped all of these. I was lying in my bed one night reading just before going to sleep, when all of sudden the room temperature seemed to drop, shortly followed by that gut feeling you get when you suspect that something isn't quite right. Curious as to why this all happened so suddenly, I lifted my head to scan the room to see what was up, only to encounter a large black hole situated at the foot of my bed hanging slightly ajar from the far wall. I had no idea what the hell this thing was, I can only describe it as an absence of anything, like there was nothing there, it felt so cold, and truly evil.
Thankfully, not being completely paralyzed by fear, I remembered reading somewhere once that ghosts, spirits and whatever else can only mess with you if you invite them in, so I yelled at this thing to "go away, you're not welcome here" as well as other rude expletives, after a while, this thing converged in on itself and that horrible feeling seemed to disappear along with it, still have yet to explain what is most likely the strangest thing that's ever happened to me.
Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years.
I believe in the paranormal. I'm just not sure how much power they have, for example if they can move real objects or the more extreme possess people.
I think, maybe some paranormal entities could move objects if they are powerful enough. There's always the idea of a ghost that is so angry or even a ghost that was been dead for 100's of years gaining enough power to move things. I think that one is possible.
I'm not sure I believe that people can be possessed. That seems a bit too much to me.
I try to keep an open mind so I don't like to say whether anything is real or not
Supernatural simply means that it just can not be (rationally) explained yet.
Do you know that today science could not even fully explained gravity or even electricity/magnet forces? let alone spirit, soul, life force etc.
But that doesn't stop us to take advantage from their useful effects/implementations.
Not sure what to believe but it is a fascinating subject. That's for sure:)
shareI don't understand why the thread turned into a "Do you believe in God?" discussion? Is it a requirement to believe in god if you believe in supernatural, vice versa? I know, in a way god could be considered as 'supernatural' because it is beyond scientific understanding, but when someone believes that things such as ghosts exist, doesn't make them automatically a believer of every other supernatural being that exists in the pop culture ever.
shareThere is an old saying, and I paraphrase, "What is magic? Man doesn't truly know the meaning of the word. If a caveman noticed images and sounds coming from a television set, would he not have called THAT magic? What we call magic (the supernatural) is simply something we have yet to understand." I suspect the saying was inspired by the words of Sci-Fi writer, Arthur C. Clark who said something similiar.
When I'm good, I'm GOOD. When I'm bad, I'm BETTER.