Fair enough.Originally Posted by TiggsTours
One small point. Being open to sensible explanations only is skeptical; being open to any explanation is what I would call credulous.
There are unexplained phenomena out there, and if paranormal explanations can be proved under controlled conditions or provided in such quantity as to make the circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly in favour then who am I to deny that proof.
I have enough scientific knowledge (Open University Science 101) to be able to hazard the possibility of telepathy (the telepath can somehow 'translate' the body's electrical signals) and telekinesis (rearrange E = mc^2 - although until someone invents Heisenberg compensators in real life, I somehow can't see it...) As neither have been proved scientifically, I won't "believe" in them. But I won't deny the "possibility" for the moment.
However, being able to predict the future? Sorry, my scepticism is firmly set aside for unbelief on that one. I can't even begin to imagine a scientific explanation - perhaps someone more familiar with string/superstring theory will be able to oblige (in words of one syllable or less... ).
In the meantime, I'll continue to apply Occam's Razor.
Fair enough.Originally Posted by TiggsTours
One small point. Being open to sensible explanations only is skeptical; being open to any explanation is what I would call credulous.
I'm not open to any explaination, but I am open to listen to it before I dismiss it.Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov
It's OK thanks. I try to bear in mind that in common with most people, my fascination with other people's dreams is inversely proportional to the fascination with my own.Originally Posted by TiggsTours
How can anyone explain this incident then?
A few years back when I was tucked up in bed, my parents were downstairs watching TV. It was a cold winters night and of course, i must point out that they wouldn't have had any of the windows open. They hadn't even cooked anything at that time. All of a sudden, my mum was the first to smell soup....very similar to the one that was her Mum's favourite just before she died of stomach cancer. Soup was all her mum could have and even then, she would be sick.
Then, my Dad could smell it too. Next minute the dog went mad. He seemed to be staring at the wall next to where my mum was sitting and he couldn't stop staring at that area. He started growling and barking and my parents said he looked so frightened. So scared in fact, he ended up scratching at the wall paper! To this day, we believe it was her ghost in our house. Ooooh shiver!
What a fabulous story! I couldn't possibly explain any of it, and wouldn't begin to try, but I am open to the idea it could have been your grandmother's ghost. I don't think it would be anything to be scared of though, I think its lovely to think that she just wanted to pay a visit to her family, to make sure you were all OK. I think its lovely to believe that our dearly departed loved ones still check in on us every now and then.Originally Posted by Donna
Originally Posted by TiggsTours
Why thanks TiggsTours. It does freak me out a little, especially when I'm on my own in the house. I never got to see her though as my mum was just 18 when she passed away.
Another incident though was when my Mum was in bed on her own and something/someone grabbed the covers and pulled them over her head! Think she was trying to keep her warm? My mum froze anyway and couldn't shout out for my Dad because she was in shock.
Actually there are striking similarities to a reptilian brain and the human one, particularly towards the back; in the "primal" area.Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov
By "unconscious mind" i refer to the very same things you do in your last post. (Tiggs speaks of déjÃ* vû...)
By "Access" I mean all the input our senses are bombarded with every nano-second
By "Resources" I mean all of the above input that the mind has recorded from pat experiances and the events that lead to them.
You accept the fact that even with the part of the brain recognising visual input is gone, we can still react to the input from the eyes as long as that input is entering the brain. How is this not a resource?People who've been brain damaged (in certain places) can lose the ability to 'see' one side of the world (the left, or the right). If the person keeps their eye fixed ahead, they can't 'see' a pencil on (e.g.) the left side of their field of vision. Throw something at their face (from the left hand side), however, and they will catch it..~.. This isn't 'access' to a 'resource' however, it's just what was going on in our ancestors' brains before they evolved speech and abstract thought.
The immediate "chills" and "danger sense" are controlled by this part of the brain and I'm sure that adrenalin is designed to stimulate this part as well. Is it infeasable that the signals from here can get mixed up while traveling to your conceous mind and produce warning visions and 'ghosts' predicting danger?
Just because we do not know how to measure it, does not prove or dissprove it's existance. We know the organ: it's the brain. Perhaps the signals do get intercepted all the time - it's just that our brain filters out all that as background 'noise'. Some may get through like a sudden craving for pineapple chunks or an unexplained feeling of trepedation/joy/... or or any number of other 'spontaneous' things we think or do. Who is to say that they truley originate from our own brain? They may have been triggered by someone else.~ Secondly, for somebody to persuade me that such things are possible they have to explain (or at least, suggest) how. How is the information transmitted from one side of the world - or even just one side of London - to the other? Why can't such information be intercepted? Why can't we find the organs responsible for transmitting and receiving such data within the human body?...
celular level is huge - why do they need to interfere on that level? it's just the impulses that fire between neurons - how big are they? Does a "ghost" have to have the same physical scale as a person?...they {ghosts} acquire an amazing ability to interfere at the cellular level inside our very heads! {~scoff}
Trying to keep her warm would be a lovely way to think of, I'd go for that one.Originally Posted by Donna
Perhaps I can interest you in a letter I had this morning from a Miriam Akanebe, whose father, tragically killed in the latest revolution in a small African country, visited her in a dream to tell her that he'd stashed away $300 million. Unfortunately, she can't leave the country and urgently needs help to get hold of the funds so she can pay for a space mission to rescue her brother, who was press-ganged into joining the national expedition to Mars on account of his telepathic powers being able to reduce the communication times. You'll get a 10% cut, and it must be real, she's given me a solicitor's address and everything.Originally Posted by donna & TiggsTours
Here's one I've had myself.
I used to work as a Medical Receptionist in a doctors surgery. It was my job to unlock everything first thing in the morning.
I grabbed the keys and opened the doctors rooms first then made my way down to the nurses rooms. I always did the front and side entrances last.
As I came out of the nurses room I happened to see a woman sitting on her own in the waiting room through the doorway that led into the waiting room. She has a black coat on and white hair.
For a split second, my first thought was, 'who is she AND how the hell did she get in?' This was no real person...oh no...she actually disappeared and I was a little shook up but didn't say a word to anyone in case they thought I was nuts.
It was only until a couple of days later that one of my colleagues 'Carol' mentioned it, that I told people I had seen her too! I felt so relieved to know that it wasn't in my head after all. Apparently she sits in the same seat all the time and.....she matches the same description of the practice managers mother. She always sat in that chair just before she died of cancer.
Who really knows what other things are out there that our unmapped brain can tune into that our concious being can't. I used to work in a nursing home, and there were so many things that happened there that nobody could explain, it was quite common for a patient who was near to death, but still very sharp mentally, to start saying they could see people in their rooms. We had one patient who was not suffering from dementia (I think she had parkinsons, I can't really remember) who was always telling us that her dead son had been to visit earlier that day. She was very aware that he was dead, and very insistent that he had visited.
I like to think that, because these people were near to death themselves, they were more in tune with that sort of activity.
i want more ghost stories not more debate on whether they are real. If you dont believe in ghosts you dont need to read the stories, go debate it in another thread and label it DEBATE:- are ghosts real?
(my bold)Originally Posted by swinging bee in the first post on this thread
Nah, this is the debate thread, you need to start a Ghost Stories thread
My bold! and how this hread started was with storiesOriginally Posted by swinging bee in the first post on this thread
We can carry on doing both then
I'm still waiting impatiently for someone (ESG? David F?) to come up with some physics
As far as near-death experiences are concerned - the ultimate cause of death is brain death. When someone is that close, their brain is almost certainly not functioning correctly and I think a far more logical explanation for visions/experiences is malfunction of sensors in the brain. Parkinsons is a disease of the nervous system so could also affect the brain.
well if someone can link me to ghost stories, i will quite happily shut up!Originally Posted by LMC
After I re-read your and my posts I realised that you and I were coming from rather closer together than I had thought.Originally Posted by Gadget
I absolutely agree that the probability that hitherto-unplumbed depths of the mind/brain could be responsible for stimulating spooky experiences is around about 100%. I don't accept that they are responsible for 'paranormal phenomena', in the sense that I had thought you intended, that is the resource being - e.g. - some way of detecting otherwise imperceptible entities.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
That's ama-a-azing!! It can't be a coincidence that this happened the very day we were discussing paranormal phenomena on the Forum...Originally Posted by LMC
Funny, we wouldn't accept the word of people in those circumstances as to, e.g., how we should invest our pension funds. But if they 'see people who aren't there' - gosh! there's something inexplicable going on.Originally Posted by TiggsTours
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