My Ghost Story

[Donn]

By George! I think we might agree on this one.

It had to happen some day!

 

[Atol]

I like to point out a few things. One that you are told the building can be creepy at times. So you had power of suggestion. Another thing you had You are alone and tired. Which can cause some Hallucination. (vision sound and movements) Combine all of this you get get your ghosts.

 

[Darwin123]

There's no justification nor actual rationale for thinking that ghosts can interact (slightly) with physical matter in your post, at all.
Only apparent irrational belief.

Can you do better?

Well, I noticed things similar but more repeatable.

After an accident at a busy intersection, there is often a wreath of flowers that mysteriously appear at one of the corners. However, that is not all!

After three pedestrians die at a corner without a traffic light, my city generally decides to put up a traffic light at that intersection. Sometimes it appears after only one fatality, but it is almost certain after three fatalities.

Furthermore, I have examined the converse. If a intersection without a traffic light continues to have no fatalities, neither flowers nor traffic light appear.

Spooky!!!

 

[Daylightstar]

... Sometimes it appears after only one fatality, but it is almost certain.
...

But always after the fatality, right? Not during or while the siren sounds, right?

 

[tsig]

I am talking about everyday things. Like a car in the street that others say is not there. When a shadow or sudden movement occurs, there is an immediate thought that it might be a person. This is over in an instant. I am talking about things that are not fleeting.

I am 66 years old. I forget little things related to short term memory. Until I was 45 years old it bothered me that I remembered all sorts of minutia, and found myself happy to finally begin forgetting trivia.

I find my long term memory, and my memory on key events, to be quite accurate. I recently looked up old letters and diaries about some things and am happy to say that I think you are generalizing far too much. I know many people who describe an event we both experienced and their version gets more elaborate with time.

Nice try, but only slightly applicable. Now we get to argue about how long a piece of string is - such as if I forget how much I forget.

What was your point again?

It's well that our understanding of the universe is not limited to your ignorance of it.

 

[Resume]

I am 66 years old. I forget little things related to short term memory. Until I was 45 years old it bothered me that I remembered all sorts of minutia, and found myself happy to finally begin forgetting trivia.

I find my long term memory, and my memory on key events, to be quite accurate. I recently looked up old letters and diaries about some things and am happy to say that I think you are generalizing far too much. I know many people who describe an event we both experienced and their version gets more elaborate with time.

You need to do some more reading on the subject; if you don't like to read, watch some back episodes of Net Geo's Brain Games. Your memory isn't nearly as good as you imagine; no one's is.

Nice try, but only slightly applicable. Now we get to argue about how long a piece of string is - such as if I forget how much I forget.

I find most paranormal enthusiasts insist they have few of the cognitive biases to which humankind is prone; sorta makes the belief thing easier.

 

[Axxman300]

When I was a teenager reading in bed after everyone else had gone to bed, I heard footsteps from the front door walking down the passage on the wooden floors. No creaking, and positively the footsteps of a man. Can only be a ghost I thought. Then I got scared and hoped it would walk past my bedroom.

I can tell ghost stories all night, doesn't make what I saw, heard, or felt a ghost. Right off the bat, limiting the explanation to the paranormal doesn't help resolve the event.

When it got to the cement and carpeted dining room floor I could not hear the footsteps. When the footsteps came into my room with its bare wooden floor, there was no mistake.

Okay, weird, but then you follow with...:

The sounds stopped when a siren sounded. A man had been killed at the intersection.

You've drawn a connection where there likely is not one.

Why would the guy come into your house? Why would he make footsteps?

Assume for arguments sake that ghosts exist. Were the sounds real enough that a recorder could have recorded them? Or were they in my head, and generated by the spirit thoughts of a ghost who perceived himself walking through the house?

They were likely heard only in your head. There are cases where the brain will key off a familiar sound and play a recording instead of "hearing" the event continue. I read about this in connection to mistakes that airline pilots make when instruments make their appointed sounds.

 

[PartSkeptic]

I must admit to a certain curiosity as to how PartSkeptic "sorted things out" to the ghost's apparent satisfaction.

This story is actually a long chain of "coincidences". My late wife had tried to get a "sangoma" (a South African shaman) to "cleanse" the place as a precautionary measure. She had no doubts about these things. But it just kept being delayed because the sangoma kept having issues to deal with.

The night of the Cobra slid past me (twice) close to my feet, I was writing an email to her listing all the strange things that were happening, and saying this is getting beyond "normal". I have the emails with the sequence of events. January 2011.

I got stopped by the police and found that my New Zealand drivers licencs had expired. When I went to pay the fine on the Thursday in the local town, the cop helping me noticed my address. He told me how the man had committed suicide and how traumatic it was for many people.

The next night (Friday) I went to the local pizza place and happened to meet a local who knew the story, and I got more detail. The man had been jilted, and took his pickup to the house which is in the hot Karoo (semi-desert). He parked it there and drank a few bottles of methyl alcohol which would have killed him but he ran the engine with a hose pipe into the cab to make sure.

His friend was supposed to be there the next day to check on the place for the absentee owners, but only went there a week later. The suicide was nothing but rotting flesh, and they burnt the insides of the pickup on the site.

When I got home that night I decided to "talk" to this ghost. Although it seemed I was debating with myself, it seemed that the discussion was being directed to certain conclusions. The suicide imagined he would have a peaceful end, and his friend would find him lying as if asleep.

But the spirit was motivated to stay until his friend arrived, and the spirit watched himself rot, He also saw and experienced the trauma of his discovery and removal. He wanted to set things right with his friend, and have me apologize.

On Sunday a guy called me unexpectedly and asked if I wanted to see his mountain farm because a few weeks earlier I had expressed an interest in buying in with him. When we were coming back I asked if he knew the man who found the body. He said we could go right there.

The gates were locked and the routine was to make a cell phone call. We heard the phone ringing over and over at the back of the house, but no response. Then we started hooting the car horn. The noise attracted the woman next door who came to the fence. The friend then came out. He could not explain why he had not heard the cell phone which was with him.

When it turned out that the woman was the ex-girlfriend, she wanted to hear what I had to say. She was very upset, and said the suicide was haunting her. Lots and noises and chills in her house. I told them the story, and said the suicide wished to apologize to them. The friend did not believe in ghosts. The woman cried. She later told me that the haunting stopped.

I went back to the farm, and it was very different. Peaceful. The next day the sangoma confirmed that her schedule had cleared, and they could get there. Although there were some challenges, they did not occur everyday, and were less unusual.

Those who believe in ghosts will say "Wow, you did have a haunting". Those who do not will say "Imagination, and coincidence - nothing remarkable".

I say maybe.

 

[PartSkeptic]

You need to do some more reading on the subject; if you don't like to read, watch some back episodes of Net Geo's Brain Games. Your memory isn't nearly as good as you imagine; no one's is.

I have watched them, and found that my mind works quite well.

Although I am engineer, I have been involved with labor disputes, and a number of legal actions. I do remember what I say and when. And I find that I can confirm my evidence with video and audio recordings over a period of 18 months. I cannot say the same for other staff. My goodness, some people have bad memories. Even when I review their testimony the day before, it still comes out with errors.

You remind me of the engineer who testified in court as to a traffic accident, and gave fairly precise metrics. The lawyer challenged him to give various dimensions in the court room, and was astounded by the precision.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Well, I noticed things similar but more repeatable.

After an accident at a busy intersection, there is often a wreath of flowers that mysteriously appear at one of the corners. However, that is not all!

After three pedestrians die at a corner without a traffic light, my city generally decides to put up a traffic light at that intersection. Sometimes it appears after only one fatality, but it is almost certain after three fatalities.

Furthermore, I have examined the converse. If a intersection without a traffic light continues to have no fatalities, neither flowers nor traffic light appear.

Spooky!!!

Gee. How droll and dull. My life is far more exciting.

There had been no fatalities at this intersection that I know of until this one. Sleepy little bush town. 1960's.

They decided to put a traffic light up because there were two main streets intersecting.

The siren was the police arriving. When that happened my Mom and my brothers got out of their beds (their bedrooms were in the front of the house), unlocked the front door (those big old clunky locks), and went outside. Excited chatter while I was hiding under the sheet.

I learned the next morning that a man on a bicycle had been knocked down and killed. Black man, black cycle, no lights, who had ignored the traffic light.

The only "suggestion" that something may have been amiss was the sound of a car breaking heavily at first (I thought nothing of it but a person unused to the traffic light being there), but no indication that an accident had occurred. No smashing sound, no scream, nothing but tires squealing briefly.

 

[PartSkeptic]

It's well that our understanding of the universe is not limited to your ignorance of it.

You did pick up that I was being facetious? Trying to joke that I could not remember the point.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Is that a fact? There are plenty of believers in the paranormal who would say that opposite.

Any verifiable or credible instance of a recording of a paranormal sound or visual?

(Other than noise(s) that needs imagination).

 

[Donn]

This story is actually a long chain of "coincidences".

Odd, that. It's almost as if there was time to marinate the tale in bias before it was cooked to perfection.

My late wife had tried to get a "sangoma" (a South African shaman) to "cleanse" the place as a precautionary measure.

This is like hiring a politician to tell the truth.

The night of the Cobra slid past me (twice) close to my feet,

Here's the funny thing about travel: one goes and one returns. If you pass a point, you do so twice — incroyable. The snake came into the house, past your foot, sniffed around and then left, past your foot. Who can explain it?

The rest is more of the same.

Why do some people, this is rhetorical, lead tv-script lives full of extra-agency urgency? I know someone who cannot go a week without a pet psychic treating kittens over the phone — at stunning rates of income. The drama is high, all the time. The meanings in everything are vibrant, punched, amped.

If a few birds circle in the sky, you build your city beneath them. The goat's liver has spoken. I weep for us.

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

This story {...}

Cool story, bro.

 

[Resume]

I have watched them, and found that my mind works quite well.

Says almost everyone, especially those who can be fooled.

Although I am engineer, I have been involved with labor disputes, and a number of legal actions. I do remember what I say and when. And I find that I can confirm my evidence with video and audio recordings over a period of 18 months. I cannot say the same for other staff. My goodness, some people have bad memories. Even when I review their testimony the day before, it still comes out with errors.

Do you understand the difference between this and relating an experience in which your emotions and your memory/cognitive/confirmation biases come into play?

Probably not.

You remind me of the engineer who testified in court as to a traffic accident, and gave fairly precise metrics. The lawyer challenged him to give various dimensions in the court room, and was astounded by the precision.

First of all, nice anecdote; fits in perfectly with the anecdotal nature of paranormal clamis. Second, you remind me of every paranormal claimant who insists they're are certain they are not prone to the cognitive errors and biases to which all human beings are subject.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Saw an article where Steven Hawkings and others are worried about artificial intelligence. It reminded me of Frankenstein, and I looked this up.

Now here is an example of waking dreams and night terrors. I am afraid the story has us all beat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
"How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?" -- Mary Shelley

During the rainy summer of 1816, the "Year Without a Summer", the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. Mary Shelley, aged 18, and her lover (and later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until dawn.

Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves by reading German ghost stories translated into French from the book Fantasmagoriana, then Byron proposed that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one evening in the middle of summer, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things".It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream".

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.​

 

[Maurice Ledifficile]

Saw an article where Steven Hawkings and others are worried about artificial intelligence. It reminded me of Frankenstein, and I looked this up.

Now here is an example of waking dreams and night terrors. I am afraid the story has us all beat.

There was a lot of opium smoked at Lord Byron's house in those days.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Here's the funny thing about travel: one goes and one returns. If you pass a point, you do so twice — incroyable. The snake came into the house, past your foot, sniffed around and then left, past your foot. Who can explain it?

The one and a half meter snake had come into the house in the evening and hid in the kitchen. I was at a desk with my back to the kitchen door openings. The house had no "doors" to close off any room, just the door openings.

The snake came up behind me and then slithered past me towards the bedroom. I noticed the movement in the corner of my eye and ran ahead of it, and chased it. It went back to the kitchen. I opened the back door and tried to get it out the house, but it had hidden in the cabinets.

I blocked off the kitchen with a board, and returned to writing. The snake pushed past the board, and again come up behind me but this time to the left. I jumped up and opened the front door. It tried to slide past the opening but I managed to scare it so it went outside.

I had an advantage in that I had spread boric acid powder over the floor to stop the ants invading the house. It therefore had no traction and was not prepared to go on the attack.

As to why it came in the house. They look for warmth, and the bedroom was the warmest room. Thank goodness I saw it. Climbing into bed with the second deadliest snake in South Africa could have been nasty for me. People in the area kept long poles with a trident on the end just for when this occurs.

 

[Donn]

The one and a half meter snake….

Well, there you go. As paranormal as a brick. As weirdly coincident as a clock.

I've also had a cape cobra come in the front door. It left the same way with me tapping the floor with a walking stick.

I did not call the Sangoma.

 

[tsig]

Well, there you go. As paranormal as a brick. As weirdly coincident as a clock.

I've also had a cape cobra come in the front door. It left the same way with me tapping the floor with a walking stick.

I did not call the Sangoma.

Obviously the snake is your familiar and you are a powerful mage.