I Require A RATIONAL Explanation for Levitation

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm in china right now and youtube is banned
So I can't really check what these people are doing.

We used to lift each other -above our shoulders-
-WITHOUT- feeling any pressure on our fingers.

As soon as everyone would open their eyes, the person
would suddenly become heavy and fall.

Question: What caused the sudden change in weight?

Have you consider that your perception might be fallible?

Have you ever been to a magic show and seen a professional magician vanish something? Just because it looked like something vanished, doesn't mean that is the case.

Similarly, have you never experienced optical illusions (one category of perceptual illusions)? Some of them can be astounding. In this one, for example, purple dots seem to vanish--gobbled up by a green dot. In fact, the purple dots never vanish, and there is no green dot at all!


So you are concluding prematurely that there was a change in weight.

What would you need to do to reach the conclusion validly that a person's weight is changing?

 

[Sir Robin Goodfellow]

This one is old, old, old. Samuel Pepys wrote about it in the seventeenth century, and it was an old trick even then.

 

[MrBooglemaumau]

We used to play a variant of this party trick...2 people would lift a person sitting on a chair with their index fingers only...

 

[Tricky]

It is so easy to test this. Put them on a scale (or two scales, letting them lie on a board between them.) Utter the incantations. Look at the numbers on the scale and see if they decrease.

 

[Nonpareil]

We could never manage to do this by ourselves.

Did you try it by yourselves? Even if you did, and you genuinely couldn't do it, I doubt that it's anything more than the power of suggestion at work. As you stated in your opening post, you believed that this girl's prayer was black magic, and that it was what enabled you to perform this act. If you genuinely believed that, your belief might have prevented you from doing it if she wasn't around.

If it was simply a case of dividing the weight around, then one girl wouldn't make a difference.

On the contrary. One girl makes a huge difference. If the little girl that you were levitating weighs, say, eighty pounds, if you try to lift her with four people, each person has to support twenty pounds of weight. But if you try to lift her with five, each person only has to support sixteen pounds.

We would not -feel- any physical force being applied when she used to be with us.

I think that this is genuinely your memory playing tricks on you.

As soon as everyone would open their eyes, the person
would suddenly become heavy and fall.

Question: What caused the sudden change in weight?

There was no change in weight, only a change in your perception of it.

 

[The Norseman]

I remember participating in this one at a party in my early twenties. When it was time to concentrate on being lifted, I went into full-relax mode instead. They were rather annoyed with me, but I thought it was pretty damn funny.

I'm sure you achieved this "full-relax mode" by imbibing the Special Secret Anti-Null-Gravity Liquid a few minutes prior, while the others chanted the magic words, "Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"

 

[I Ratant]

Confused...
Are the explanations satisfactory?

 

[brenn]

This thread is on par with, "I saw a magician saw a woman in half and put her back together and he really did it and it wasn't a stage trick" - "so, how did he do it."

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

I rather doubt you raised them over shoulder height, even assuming child size, a three foot fall wouldn't be all that comfortable.

 

[StuBob]

I'm sure you achieved this "full-relax mode" by imbibing the Special Secret Anti-Null-Gravity Liquid a few minutes prior, while the others chanted the magic words, "Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!"

Okay, this is just too wierd. How'd you know??? Thorson, is that you?

 

[The Norseman]

Okay, this is just too wierd. How'd you know??? Thorson, is that you?

Nah, sorry, that's not me. See, I was out traveling the astral plane with the help of some Super Special Mellow-Weed and Twilight Zone reruns when I felt the psychic energy fluctuations and swirling arcane waves of the party just before it *really* got going. After I looked back on the event, I knew it was going to happen, though; it was like a past-life, destiny and deja vu all rolled into one.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It is so easy to test this. Put them on a scale (or two scales, letting them lie on a board between them.) Utter the incantations. Look at the numbers on the scale and see if they decrease.

I was trying to be Socratic by asking the OP what would be necessary to reach that conclusion. I would hope he or she comes up with something like what you suggest.

I think it's more important to get them to ask that what-sort-of-evidence-would-I-really-need question to realize that childhood memories of anecdotes isn't it.

 

[dafydd]

I did this a lot when I was young.We had a whole ritual involving saying one by one "he/she is sleeping,he/she is dead " and some other stuff.I never thought it was levitation,just weight distibution.Nothing spooky about it.We used to get the Ouija board out too,and somehow it was always Hitler who contacted us.

 

[aggle-rithm]

If you're using levitation to lift someone up a couple of feet, you're doing it the hard way.