Be Excellent To Each Other

I guess this is a follow-on from Shin's thread and some of the issues raised there, but about something entirely different.

I think that many/most people here are very skeptical of much spiritualist and paranormal (and in most cases also religious) belief and occurrences, favouring the hard facts of science by which to measure the experiences that we have.

Yet I think that many people will have had a moment that makes them wonder to themselves if perhaps there are other forces at work, yet we push them to the back of our mind because our logical brains tell us that there is almost certainly a perfectly reasonable explanation, planted in the real tangible world, that explains our experiences.

I was considering what Myoptika said about a spiritualist contacting his grandfather and why someone skeptical about most things spiritualist or paranormal might believe in this one occurrence. Of course, comfort of knowing that your bereaved one has reached an afterlife is almost certainly what draws most people to this example, but I have another experience that still bothers me and which I cannot explain.

When I was at Uni I was mooching around in a class, dressing as a unicorn or some such thing, when a guest theatre group of three people from Leicester were introduced into the room. As soon as they were, I knew that I knew one of them, very well. I mean, as in I saw him every day, but not in TV or in that he served in a nearby shop, but that he was either one of my best friends or family, or something. I know, it is totally illogical.

I felt the feeling that I knew this person so very strongly that I felt quite sick, almost panicky, so I left and had a coffee. I returned some twenty minutes later but was so distracted that dressing as a unicorn, or whatever I was doing, became a fretful and bizarre task, and I was glad for the time for lunch to arrive.

When we all poured to the bar to grab lunch I sat and chatted to a friend that was in the class and told her what I felt, she agreed it was odd, said she didn't recognise him and said maybe I had seen him on TV or something.

After lunch we went back to class and were discussing some staging ideas with the thetre group when suddenly, literally halfway through a sentence, the guy I recognised abandoned his words and said 'look, sorry, but it's driving me up the wall - I KNOW I know you very well and I am really really sorry but I can't get you out of my head and can't think how or why I know you and I just can't concentrate on anything!'.

Well, everyone's interest piqued we discussed where we had worked, etc, but he had never been to London - the only place I had been at this point, and I had never been to Leicester. Also, he had never done any TV work, which wouldn't have explained how he knew me, either - but as we discussed, we felt like we had known each other as best friends/lovers/family.

The two weeks we worked with them were almost painful for me, especially as they ended up staying with me in my house for just over a week, and I was almost thankful when their time to leave arrived, but I felt a terrible sinking feeling when they did, because I hadn't found out what the link was and knew I'd never feel settled about it, but jus staring at each other the whole time was becoming too much for me.

Anyway, it STILL bothers me. I think about it quite often and every time it pops into my head I get that strange sinking feeling in my tummy and my heart quickens a little, and no part of my logical brain can explain it away.

He was 'the one'. You missed him

That's fascinating. Something had to be amiss there, what it could be I can't fathom. I'd have kept the dude's contact details and tried to work it out, somehow. Strange!

OR:

You two happened to be the only ones dressed as Unicorns in a Modern Political History class

"When you hear hooves; think horses, not zebras"

Didn't you think to take his number/email address etc? Do you have any way of contacting him now? You should try it. Ditch craig; he's clearly naff if he didn't give you an overwhelming feeling of being loved like this guy did



Seriously though; I bet you had cyber on msn one day when you were both 14 or something.

Yeah, he said that just before he left, which, you know, didn't make it weirder or anything...

Heh.

Also @ Pod - oh, it'd be extremely easy to contact him if I wanted to - I know they have a website, but I don't look at it lest it freaks me out... We couldn't have used the internet to have chatted before then because I never had a computer until after I left uni.

He gave me his number when he left, but I didn't keep it, I also made one of the zeros in my phone number look like a 6 so he couldn't phone me but if he ever said to me that it was the wrong number I'd say - that's not a six, it's a zero.

I especially do not contact him because of something that happened later that day which wasn't connected by still made it seem at the time like something had come into play, and it put me at my lowest point.

As I say, I know that there must be some kind of rational explanation, but what, I don't know. I have put it down to a strange chemistry, but that itself is somewhat far fetched.

I'd put it down to some kind of leakage from a parallel universe.

Anal leakage?

I don't believe your psychoses need explaining by any sceptic, the burden of proof is on you not them.

Yes, I'm sure you had that experience but I don't see why a sceptic has to prove the negative. That's the exact kind of stuff that lets religion get away with being the hateful destructive force it is.



And this, as your apparently very close asssociate Derran and you know very well of course has already been explained very comprehensively.

One of the most influencial things that ever happened to me was when I was walking towards a bridge over a canal one day. I was about 15.

I saw a man with his back to me looking like he was going to jump. For some reason it was a terrfying site, and it really scared me. I shouted out to him if he was ok. Which on it's own was a weird thing to do.

And then he disappeared. I ran towards him thinking he had jump till I realised that he had just disappeared.

It was this period of my life when I was really interested in the paranormal, and I was convinced I had seen a ghost of a man who commited suicide.

But I was also getting really interested in science and so once I had regained my nerves I started walking around the area trying to understand what had happened.

Eventually I noticed that if I stood in one exact position, the bridge, the leaves of an overhanging tree the position of the sun, and shadows managed to be postioned in such a way as they looked like the man I saw.

My mind had filled in the blanks of everything else. It was incredible.

If I never had stayed around long enough to find that spot again, I would, without any doubt, to this day, think I had seen a ghost.

Was this the turning point in your life? From then on you vowed that you would avenge factoids and mis-truths by maintaining a website?

spookiest thing to happen to me was when I answered the phone to a wrong number. I'd called it earlier see, thinking it was a friend, and misdialled. There was no answer, so I hanged (?) up. No message, obviously. A bit later, I got a call from the same person, realised what had happened, and explained that I'd dialled the wrong number, sorry. They said "No problem, tom. Bye." and we ended the call.

A few seconds later, I got very unsettled. How the fuck did he know my name? I was sat next to another chum on the bus throughout both calls, and I never gave my name - there was no need to, and I wouldn't to a wrong number anyway. Yet he very clearly called me Tom.

Spooooooky, etc. Although not as funny as the time I got a phone call from someone wanting to know if I was a gay Indian while watching tv with the family. "Who was that?" "... Ah. I think it was the YMCA."

I saw a great little programme ages back, and I can't for the life of me remember what it was. BUt it had a short segment where some people held a fake tour of loch ness, and set them up. They had them all standing on the bank of the loch, and a diver in the lake stuck a straight pipe up out of the water for a second. A bunch of people gasped, and then he pulled it down again. The people on the shore then asked them to draw what they'd seen, and nearly all of them drew the loch ness monster, complete with loopy heads, and a couple of them even added the extra snakey loops.

Then they politely went "gotcha" and had the diver hold the perfectly straight pipe up out of the water again. D'oh.

It happens most with ultra-famous beasties like nessie, obviously, but we're totally wired to see human forms in everything. The majority of cases can probably be put down to something like this.

Not quite parents getting killed coming out of a theatre. But it made me realise I don't trust my eyes at all.

But mainly I was concerned about the train light I had found in a bush.

I don't think phenomena like this will be explained until we have a better understanding of how the human brain works.

Although, in some respects, I think it would be amusing if it is not possible for our brain to comprehend the complexities of how it works.

A lot of religious leaders/psychics/Derren Brown probably hope this as well.

I was saw a classic silver flying disc. In the direction of Stansted Airport. On a very sunny day.

It was very cool to see how the sun could transform a plane. It really looked like a classic UFO.

(Course, it might actually have been a flying disc, but that seems unlikely.)

Well it was a UFO. It was a flying object that you couldn't identify.

Thank you! I've seen dozens of UFOs. Most people have.

Except I did identify it to my satisfaction, so it very much wasn't a UFO, but looked like the classic image of one.

You identified it as a plane even though you say it could have been a flying disc?

No plane that I'm aware of looks like a classic UFO.

One who doesn't believe in the powers of the supernatural would have difficulty explaining just how it is I am so goddamned attractive and sexually potent.

I saw an object that looked like a silver flying disc. Given the nearness of the airport and the position/brightness of the sun, it is logical to assume it was a plane. I consider this to be a reasonable identification and therefore do not consider my sighting to be unidentified.

I offered it up as another example of light conditions and other elements fooling the brain into seeing something other than what was there.

I do, as a good Fortean, accept that there is a very small chance my identification is incorrect, which is why I offered a glib comment to that effect at the end of my post, but that does not invalidate my interpretation of the sighting as being of a plane reflecting sunlight.

See. People can convince themselves that products bought via spam email works.

He also says that as he is a Daywalker.

So you identified it as a plane, not based on what you saw but on the the likelihood of what it probably was?

If so, it could be argued to be a UFO.

An interpretation is not the same as an identification.

It's all down to electromagnetic waves.

When you look into the sky at night and see flashing lights moving across the sky together do you not identify that as a plane, rather than unidentified flying objects?

That question isn't relevant.

If I looked into the night sky and saw something that didn't appear to be an aircraft, nor did it appear to be anything else that I could positively identify, then, to me, it's a UFO.

I could postulate the object to be X based on the context in which I saw it, but it wouldn't necessarily make it so.

Someone next door might see the same object and know exactly what it is. To them, it would not be a UFO.

Unless it was a flying saucer.

My Nan's sister swears blind that a UFO landed in a field behind her house and took samples of grass and soil, etc.

I don't think you can blame mis-sighted aircraft for that. Sherry, perhaps, but not aircraft.

She is deadly serious about it, too.

And, within reasonable limits, I know what I saw. A plane with light shining off it. Hence, to me, it's not a UFO, but could be to someone else.

I though your story was, you saw an object flying in the sky that had been distorted so that it no longer looked like an aircraft, which you assumed it to be given the context in which you saw it?

This evening I saw a big ball of flaming gas completing its inevitable path across the sky. This flaming ball then seemed to disappear behind the hills on the other side of the valley as it it reflected light from the under side of some cumulo-nimubus clouds.


It was, consequently, unremarkable.

And remember, folks, scepticism is a methodology, not a dogma. It has no preferred conclusions, but takes us where the evidence leads.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and to consider a sighting to be a UFO instead of an earth-bound phenomena is definitely an extraordinary claim. Do we see the evidence?

A UFO sighting is not an extraordinary claim, it is a perfectly normal one.

I've seen lots of flying objects that I couldn't accurately identify.

Really? I have not.

Plane, bird, plane, helicopter, bird, crisp packet, bird (specifically a seagull), plane, plane, cloud.

You've never seen a distant light moving at great speed at night? YEah, it's probably a plane, but if all you can see is a light, it's still technically unidentified. I've seen loads of such things at night. Sometimes you could see the outline of a plane, and sometimes the shape of the lights conforms to the shape of a plane, but sometimes you can't see it as clearly, and/or it's moving at an unusual speed. No, that doesn't mean it's a spaceship or whatever - it's probably a passenger plane or a military craft of some kind, but they're still unidentified if you can't say for sure what they are.

Re Mimi's story: Perhaps he was your Nemesis. Your Moriarty. The funny feeling you experienced was because your lives had not yet rolled-out to the initial point of conflict. You weren't supposed to meet him yet.

Realising this, you could save yourself a lot of future hassle by getting him first. Go and blow-up his caravan, or whatever.

When I'm walking the dog through woodland, it's not uncommon to catch a glimpse of something flying through the air that I couldn't identify.

Ooohhhh... But how did you know he was in a caravan?

Good lord! It's a device which is propelling itself through the sky, dear! What on earth could it be?

Leaves. you see more of them during the autumn

RAAAAAWKK

Or to put it another way, you've got fuck all to add to the discussion.

Are moderators not supposed to stop trolling, or is this twat a special case?

I thought the Bits n Bobs thread was meant for people with nothing to say?

Good lord, aren't you a terribly erudite chap.

Also regrettably somewhat dense, it seems.

So you believe you are contributing to the discussion?