John Edward - psychic or what?

[zooterkin]

You guys know I'm not using this as an example of psychicality (yes, I just made an awesome new word), but as an example of coincidence - right?

Oh, definitely. I've had similar experiences, but I don't believe they indicate the existence of the paranormal.

And good lawds, y'all. I had no idea every skeptic had to like Annie Lennox. I shall turn in my card immediately.

Oh, no need, it's nothing to do with being a skeptic.

Also, of course I wasn't aware of glass having been broken there recently. If I had been, don't you think I would've put on SHOES? That's just crazy talk.

It was a weird coincidence. I love weird coincidences. I've spoken often about mine, because I am one of those people who says weird crap all the time (having no filter), and therefore mine are often hilariously awesome and sitcom-worthy. Take off the filter, and you'll have a lot more than a Big Mac to hang your hat upon.

The comments weren't really aimed at you, but were meant to indicate possible lines of enquiry to those who might take your story as cut and dried, with no possible explanation. Twelve year olds do not always act fully rationally, anyway. The broken glass was there, it must have got there somehow; maybe you were aware of it subconsciously. Perhaps you heard it break, some time before, or noticed something missing around the house. I'm not really trying to explain things or get to the bottom of what happened in this case, but giving some ideas how one might approach such a story; too often they are presented as a fait accompli by believers.

 

[RemieV]

Oh, definitely. I've had similar experiences, but I don't believe they indicate the existence of the paranormal.


Oh, no need, it's nothing to do with being a skeptic.



The comments weren't really aimed at you, but were meant to indicate possible lines of enquiry to those who might take your story as cut and dried, with no possible explanation. Twelve year olds do not always act fully rationally, anyway. The broken glass was there, it must have got there somehow; maybe you were aware of it subconsciously. Perhaps you heard it break, some time before, or noticed something missing around the house. I'm not really trying to explain things or get to the bottom of what happened in this case, but giving some ideas how one might approach such a story; too often they are presented as a fait accompli by believers.

But that's the thing - any explanation would be silly - because I wouldn't want to cut my foot open. The actual fact is "Hey, that's a hilarious coincidence. Bet you'll never sing THAT song again!"

 

[zooterkin]

But that's the thing - any explanation would be silly - because I wouldn't want to cut my foot open. The actual fact is "Hey, that's a hilarious coincidence. Bet you'll never sing THAT song again!"

The brain is a funny thing. I think it's completely possible to have been aware of the chance of broken glass at a subconscious level that triggered the urge to sing the song without having made the link at a fully conscious level that would have led to a chain of reasoning that would have caused you to put shoes on.

 

[pakeha]

...That is the one and only time I have EVER sung that song. Does this mean that I psychically knew that I was about to step on broken glass? I'm going to guess not. But that's way, way more compelling than a Big Mac.

More compelling than a free Big Mac?
A free Big Mac?
What galaxy do you live in, Rem?

...
If the woman came back because she was really attracted and wanted to stay, she would have come back and stayed and we'd have gotten intimate. It did not happen that night or ever and she left immediately.

It's not missed signals. It's not my memory of anyone's missed signals. There would be a different outcome of the night and our relationship.

...

Oh, you ARE funny, batvette.

 

[RemieV]

More compelling than a free Big Mac?
A free Big Mac?
What galaxy do you live in, Rem?
...

Alright, fine. The only thing more compelling than a free Big Mac is a free Taco Bueno taco. And that's because I moved from Texas to Vegas and Taco Bueno doesn't exist here. Maybe my psychic powers will cause someone to build a franchise...

 

[pakeha]

Maybe JE could be roped in to communicate with the dead rellies of the franchise owners.
Via nudges from the Other Side, maybe the franchise owners could be manoevered into opening a Taco Bueno within a 5 minute drive of your home.

Of course, I'll want a % of the profits from the first ten years' sales.

 

[Robin1]

Remie, perhaps if you had trusted your intuition ,your gut, you would have purposely looked down because of it and spotted the glass before you cut your foot.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Remie, perhaps if you had trusted your intuition ,your gut, you would have purposely looked down because of it and spotted the glass before you cut your foot.

You mean like had she said to herself, "Self, that's a sign from departed Aunt Tillie or the FSM or the Cosmic Muffin or Hairy Thunderer...."? Since there's no actual departed Aunt Tillie, FSM, Cosmic Muffin or Hairy Thunderer, I think the above interpretation is correct. Young Remie (she's young compared to me, so never no mind if that sounds condescending - it's not intended that way) was walking barefoot and part of her mind realized that that's how one cuts one feet - on broken glass - and another part of her mind plucked out the earworm of the song (it's amazing how we can all sing at least a verse and the chorus of the songs we dislike the most), so with nothing to read or any DVDs to watch on the way across the yard, she started singing the lyric.

That's my version. Yours smacks of a latter day reading of Divine Intervention - probably not something that's going to be real popular on a board full of agnostics, atheists and critical thinkers.

 

[dafydd]

YOU ARE WRONG and why is this so difficult to grasp?
If the woman came back because she was really attracted and wanted to stay, she would have come back and stayed and we'd have gotten intimate. It did not happen that night or ever and she left immediately.

Therefore telepathy.

 

[Parsman]

My favourite personal example of a coincidence. In 1988 I lived and worked in London for a year. I shared a flat with 3 other people who moved down from Scotland at the same time. A couple of friends of one of my housemates arranged to visit her. She was going to tidy the house the day they arrived so I decided to clear out for the day. I decided to visit Camden, which was the other side of London and a completely different tube line away. I had never been before and I never went again during my stay. Now, as I am sure you know the Tube in London is incredibly busy with hundreds of stations on a wide variety of lines serving hundreds of thousands of people. The station at Camden seemed especially busy. As I decided at the end of the day to head back home I headed down the stairs into the station, only to see the two friends my housemate was expecting heading up the stairs the other way. They had got lost and turned around on the Tube and were heading for the surface to try and get their bearings. I gave them a shout and we hooked up so I could get them to their destination.

Am I misremembering slightly? Probably. Did something very similar to this happen? Certainly. What were the odds? Enormous! Was this supernatural or pure coincidence? You be the judge (but I vote for the later)

 

[Resume]

Oh, you ARE funny, batvette.

And it seems, incredibly naive.

 

[Resume]

Remie, perhaps if you had trusted your intuition ,your gut, you would have purposely looked down because of it and spotted the glass before you cut your foot.

Again, what do one's intestines have to do with this? Perhaps her unconscious noted the broken glass, though a bit too late.

 

[Garrette]

My coincidence from yesterday, though a bit different from what has been presented so far, simply to show that coincidences really do happen all the time.

Our televisions are each attached to a small cable box required for viewing even network stations. Yesterday morning I woke up to find that three televisions (yeah, we have too many televisions) were each unable to display any stations; all of them showed the "No Signal" sign. I fiddled mightily with one of them and found nothing amiss. I fiddled a bit less mightily with the second and still found nothing amiss. I didn't even try with the third.

At this point I figured it must be a cable company issue, so I called. They walked me through a mostly embarrassing checklist of things to look for.

1. The box on the television I hadn't looked at was simply unplugged.

2. The box on the television I only fiddled with a bit had been disconnected from the television by my son who had connected his XBox.

3. The box on the television I had worked most on had apparently suffered some minor internal glitch or power surge and worked as soon as I unplugged it from the wall and then plugged it back in.

And that was it. Three cable boxes that had never experienced a problem before suddenly suffered completely different problems all on the same day. My natural conclusion, the one that still seems the reasonable one, the one that it had to be a cable company issue, was totally wrong. Instead, each box had a mundane, easily fixable, local issue. What are the odds?

 

[Resume]

One night I had a dream about a former work associate named Olivia. In a sort of hypnogogic state I wondered how I was going to explain the coincidence when Olivia called me at work later that day.

Of course, she called.

 

[Garrette]

One night I had a dream about a former work associate named Olivia. In a sort of hypnogogic state I wondered how I was going to explain the coincidence when Olivia called me at work later that day.

Of course, she called.

If you were intimate with her afterwards it wasn't telepathic, but if you weren't it was.

Were you and was it?

 

[Resume]

If you were intimate with her afterwards it wasn't telepathic, but if you weren't it was.

Were you and was it?

Yes, so no. Or I might have that backwards. I failed the Silva course. Failed to take it that is.

 

[tsig]

Why are you still chiming in? Why is it so important for you to control my beliefs? Why can't you just walk away and establish you and I do not agree? What's with this bizarre badgering trying to convince ME what I witnessed should change? I am making no claim other than I believe this thing I witnessed, the "explanations" so far virtually all depend on my story changing for someone else's rationalization to fit in it. The changes are always far too much of a leap for me to accept as reasonable.
YOU ARE WRONG and why is this so difficult to grasp?
If the woman came back because she was really attracted and wanted to stay, she would have come back and stayed and we'd have gotten intimate. It did not happen that night or ever and she left immediately.

It's not missed signals. It's not my memory of anyone's missed signals. There would be a different outcome of the night and our relationship.

All you are proving at this point is that "skeptics" have surely stood in the way of every and any attempt to objectively analyze this. Does it scare you? Do you have some agenda in seeing it never be developed? There are a number of crackpots out there who theorize forums of "skeptics" like this may be so called CIA/FBI "honeypots" to control and silence any proliferation of these things. I still think they are crackpots but this behavior is simply bizarre. There are a handful here who are not satisfied with merely agreeing to disagree or offer progressive discourse, but not allowing others to hold their own beliefs, and pretending great importance should be attached to irrelevant references.

Ha. CIA. No I think they have standards not being approached here.

The "closed minded skeptics stifling research" ploy and the "government shill" gambit followed by a general insult.

Nice combo there.

 

[meg]

And I had to eat the Big Mac...somebody went to a lot of trouble to get me one, and it would have been rude not to : )

Or maybe a minimum wage worker got his/her wages docked, or had to do some more training, or otherwise got punished for putting into your bag what was meant for the next car.

So which McDonalds employee do you think you "connected" with? The order taker? The maker of the sandwich? The cashier? The fry cook? The manager?

Or is McDonalds all just one big unknowable blob in your mind, that the universe uses in order to grant those unspoken high calorie wishes to overweight Americans?

 

[dafydd]

All you are proving at this point is that "skeptics" have surely stood in the way of every and any attempt to objectively analyze this. Does it scare you? Do you have some agenda in seeing it never be developed? There are a number of crackpots out there who theorize forums of "skeptics" like this may be so called CIA/FBI "honeypots" to control and silence any proliferation of these things. I still think they are crackpots but this behavior is simply bizarre. There are a handful here who are not satisfied with merely agreeing to disagree or offer progressive discourse, but not allowing others to hold their own beliefs, and pretending great importance should be attached to irrelevant references.

Ha. CIA. No I think they have standards not being approached here.

You're going a bit over the top there, old bean. You come here with the usual run-of-the-mill telepathy story and we just point out that there are other explanations.

 

[sleepy_lioness]

My coincidence(s):

A few years back, while living in London (a city of 7 million inhabitants) I went through a traumatic break-up with my then partner. We agreed never to see one another again. At the time she worked in PR and I was a student.

Over the next couple of years I rebuit my life and made some new friends, one of whom was training to be a social worker. And on her course was - my ex. Who'd never shown any interest in social work when I'd known her.

Fast forward a couple more years. I was by now working for a large company in central London. One day I was featured in the inhouse magazine. Next thing I knew I had an email from my ex, who was temping in the same company, in a building down the road (having abandoned both the social work training and PR). Neither of us had any idea the other worked for that company until she saw me in the magazine.

What are the odds?!