Tales Of The Supernatural

[megasamurai]

I find it interesting how I've never seen a supernatural event firsthand, yet I hear about them secondhand a lot. Missionaries claim that resurrections and other freaky shit happens. Supposedly, most of these events happen in less developed countries far away from me. Also, miracles are like vampires, they seem allergic to photography/video technology. My grandparents claim to have seen a demon as a shadow creature yet I've never seen one in church. Supposedly, someone knew a language they were never taught. This is called "speaking in tongues". One person somehow got supernatural information about where his brother was, and he was 500 miles away. The question I want to know is what is REALLY happening in these stories. I doubt the supernatural is real. Still, Christianity teaching liars get stir-fried, so it might be deliberate. So I wonder, if their mind is playing tricks, what is really happening in each "phenomenon"? 

[Thurisaz]

Some will be fully made-up. Others will be exaggerations of events that merely were weird and then fell victim to the cultists' imagination.

 

And some few may be... "more than ordinary". I won't rule it out with certainty. Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

 

(To be fair, even today, in the age when everyone carries some camera around, a surprising and very short-lived event would still be hard to film / photograph, unless It appeared in front of a surveillance camera maybe )

[wanderinstar]

As a child up through my twenties I had times when I swore I saw what I considered to be evil spirits. The were black creatures without clear definition at the edges, but I did observe the black fuzz-ball move. It was a solid entity so it was definitely not shadow or smoke. I reacted with extreme fear as their presence was very threatening to me. It was as if the whole atmosphere in the room changed. As a christian i was convinced i was seeing demons but in reality I would now bet that what I was experiencing was sleep paralysis. This is dreaming while awake so basically you hallucinate over what you can already see naturally.

 

There are a couple of occasions that this phenomena occurred in the middle of the day, wide awake and I don't know what to make of that but I am more open to the fact that I may have had a mini hallucination rather than assume I saw the spirit of a dead person or demon. Interestingly enough these experiences have slowed down to extremely rare events since I deconverted. Often we see what we want to see and recall events through that lens so this might explain how so many people are convinced they have seen angels, ghosts or aliens.

[ApostateAwoken]

This has always been something that was made me wonder as well.

 

Some claims are knowingly made up, and others have been mistaken. But I do think that some stories may very well be true.

 

One night a couple of years back I was lying in bed when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs from our kitchen. Our whole family was upstairs, so I thought it was a robber. But then when the footsteps made the landing, I couldn't see anything in the dim light. Then, the door to my brother's room (on the other side of the landing) opened entirely by itself. I waited for at least an hour but I never heard any more footsteps (so if it was a person, where the hell did they go?)

 

My family completely blew it off, but that was before my mother heard footsteps herself going down the stairs - twice. Completely freaked her out, and then she believed me. One day a friend of my brother's was alone in the house and he called us (we were out shopping) to report that things were moving in the kitchen but the windows were shut, and obviously we had never told him about the "footsteps". It occurs about every 1-2 years, or so it seems.

 

Now there could be some sort of explanation for all of this, but I'm inclined to remember the complete fear and confusion I felt that night and think it was something unnatural. *shrug* To be fair, I could be hallucinating or exaggerating things, but up until the moment that the footsteps failed to produce a body, I had thought it was some sort of robber. (Wouldn't be the first time.) 

[mymistake]

This has always been something that was made me wonder as well.

 

Some claims are knowingly made up, and others have been mistaken. But I do think that some stories may very well be true.

 

One night a couple of years back I was lying in bed when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs from our kitchen. Our whole family was upstairs, so I thought it was a robber. But then when the footsteps made the landing, I couldn't see anything in the dim light. Then, the door to my brother's room (on the other side of the landing) opened entirely by itself. I waited for at least an hour but I never heard any more footsteps (so if it was a person, where the hell did they go?)

 

My family completely blew it off, but that was before my mother heard footsteps herself going down the stairs - twice. Completely freaked her out, and then she believed me. One day a friend of my brother's was alone in the house and he called us (we were out shopping) to report that things were moving in the kitchen but the windows were shut, and obviously we had never told him about the "footsteps". It occurs about every 1-2 years, or so it seems.

 

Now there could be some sort of explanation for all of this, but I'm inclined to remember the complete fear and confusion I felt that night and think it was something unnatural. *shrug* To be fair, I could be hallucinating or exaggerating things, but up until the moment that the footsteps failed to produce a body, I had thought it was some sort of robber. (Wouldn't be the first time.) 

 

Have you ever read a book or visited a website that was devoted to optical illusions?  You don't need to have a full blown hallucination because the human mind is generally very bad as perceiving the rest of the world.  Your mind knows what things look like and sound like.  It will pull up anything it needs (just like it does in a dream) to complete the picture it thinks fits the information from your senses.

 

Have you ever been listening to music on the radio and unplugged the radio?  Every time I do that the music continues for about a second after the power is off.  That isn't because of magic.  It's because my mind had a full second of lag to process the music for my enjoyment.  The seamless perception you have of the environment around you is an illusion.

 

Ever had a leg suddenly fall asleep on you?  It was hurting the whole time but your mind didn't let you perceive it.  Or suddenly in the night you realize you are very cold.  You were getting cold very slowly and you mind just didn't update you on it.  Human perception is tricky.

[ApostateAwoken]

 

This has always been something that was made me wonder as well.

 

Some claims are knowingly made up, and others have been mistaken. But I do think that some stories may very well be true.

 

One night a couple of years back I was lying in bed when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs from our kitchen. Our whole family was upstairs, so I thought it was a robber. But then when the footsteps made the landing, I couldn't see anything in the dim light. Then, the door to my brother's room (on the other side of the landing) opened entirely by itself. I waited for at least an hour but I never heard any more footsteps (so if it was a person, where the hell did they go?)

 

My family completely blew it off, but that was before my mother heard footsteps herself going down the stairs - twice. Completely freaked her out, and then she believed me. One day a friend of my brother's was alone in the house and he called us (we were out shopping) to report that things were moving in the kitchen but the windows were shut, and obviously we had never told him about the "footsteps". It occurs about every 1-2 years, or so it seems.

 

Now there could be some sort of explanation for all of this, but I'm inclined to remember the complete fear and confusion I felt that night and think it was something unnatural. *shrug* To be fair, I could be hallucinating or exaggerating things, but up until the moment that the footsteps failed to produce a body, I had thought it was some sort of robber. (Wouldn't be the first time.) 

 

Have you ever read a book or visited a website that was devoted to optical illusions?  You don't need to have a full blown hallucination because the human mind is generally very bad as perceiving the rest of the world.  Your mind knows what things look like and sound like.  It will pull up anything it needs (just like it does in a dream) to complete the picture it thinks fits the information from your senses.

 

Have you ever been listening to music on the radio and unplugged the radio?  Every time I do that the music continues for about a second after the power is off.  That isn't because of magic.  It's because my mind had a full second of lag to process the music for my enjoyment.  The seamless perception you have of the environment around you is an illusion.

 

Ever had a leg suddenly fall asleep on you?  It was hurting the whole time but your mind didn't let you perceive it.  Or suddenly in the night you realize you are very cold.  You were getting cold very slowly and you mind just didn't update you on it.  Human perception is tricky.

 

 

Haha, that's exactly what made me launch into philosophical skepticism - how can we trust our senses? And I've reached the conclusion that we can't with certainty.

 

It is definitely a possibility that I was imagining something (fear tends to do that to you). Who knows. Anyways, that was just the closest thing I've had to an "experience". My pastor (read: the church I am still being made to attend, being a minor) has tons of tales about exorcising demons, seeing ghosts, etc. which my 11-year-old mind would soak up with fear and awe. Now, I'm not so sure. He doesn't seem the kind to willingly lie, but it would be hard to imagine that. I guess he is intentionally making it up or very confused.