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 Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:05 pm
I was wondering about everyone's feelings about the supernatural. Ghosts, demonic possession, etc.
I'll be honest: I'm fairly skeptical. I don't rule out the possibility that such things might exist, but I've never had any personal experiences that have convinced me that such things exist.
"But Enj, are you saying that everyone who claims to have had some sort of supernatural experience is just lying?" No, I'm not. Well, I'm sure some of those people might be lying for attention or whatever, but at the very least, I do generally believe that they believe they had a supernatural experience, I just think that more often than not, there's some sort of logical, non-supernatural explanation for what they experienced. The human mind can be a fickle friend, and especially in states of heightened emotion and adrenaline, it can play tricks with us. Let's say that you and your friends have heard stories about an abandoned building being haunted, and you all go there to check it out one night. You're in a creepy, old abandoned building, after having heard stories of it being haunted, it's dark, the only light you have is your torches...when you hear an odd sound or see a strange shadow on the wall, it's pretty understandable that you may chalk such things up to supernatural activity, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is supernatural activity. It also doesn't necessarily mean it's not, but I think you understand the point I'm trying to make.
I guess it's just the kind of thing that I would need to experience myself to truly believe it, and I just haven't had one of those experiences. Maybe some day I will, who knows.
Anyway, where do you stand on the issue? Have you had any supernatural experiences that you'd like to share?
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:14 am
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:36 am
Well, I've had a personal experience...kinda. A friend of mine at a church camp I went to, while we were there, all of a sudden just started screaming and freaking out. So all of the adults gathered around her and prayed for almost three hours. It was really scary. I don't think she could've or would've faked that.
Plus, the Bible does talk about people who are possessed by demons. However, when it comes to ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or all of the rest of it, I have to say, it's all made up.
Just my personal ideas and thoughts. Hope it gave you some insight!
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:52 am
I have had a lot of expierence with the supernatural...things that I never want to see or hear again....I dont know what its about...but....I for some reason have a strong affinity for it....and am plauged often by other peoples problems....some times I run into someone and I just feel this terrible dread......and I ask them if anything is bothering them....they tell me they feel pain or they havent been sleeping. and I pray for them and the feeling goes away and eventually they tell me that they feel better....
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 11:58 am
I think there are places which attract more evil spirits than others. A relative of mine and her mother saw a figure who looked like a woman. I don't remember the details of why, but she was outside the house with her mom and a woman appeared. She wore a dress and was walking, but her form was not touching the ground. When looked from an angle, she looked like a human, but when looked from the other side, she was a hideous creature. Also, she was transparent. Her face was..well, just horrifying to look at. They ran back into the house after seeing it.
As for me, I believe it to be a demon. The Bible says we die once, and we stay dead. So, that's why I think it's a demon. Also, I think one time I saw a woman in the shadows of my old residence. I was at the bottom of stairs and wanted to go to my room, but I felt something watching me. I don't know why, but I was fairly certain I saw a woman at the top of the stairs. Mind you, the lights were off. I don't know how I would have seen someone because it was so dark, but that's how I feel.
Another time, I remember trying to go to sleep and when I closed my eyes, I kept seeing a man in my mind. Rather, it looked more like a beast than a man, and I began to feel very afraid. However, I took time to pray and read the Bible, and the image left me.
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 5:35 pm
 When I was little I would fall asleep and I would wake up with gashes on my feet. They would just appear out of nowhere, it was really painful and made it hard to walk sometimes. It only happened when my meth addicted brother came around. If you take a picture of my brother he has black orbs and black shadows surrounding him in the picture. We believe that he has demons following him. Then during my freshmen year of highschool if i went to bed upset or just even sightly mad I would be held down by a black mass and it would shake me. I wasn't able to get up or scream for help. it happened like four different times.
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Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2013 11:43 pm
Despite my staunch stance as a rationalist, I have experienced enough in my lifetime to not discredit the existence of the supernatural.
I make no assumptions of what things are, and I think that our ideas are tainted by cultural beliefs. Whatever these things are, I've seen them, and experienced their presence. A name, I do not give, and an explanation I do not have.
I merely know there are more things than the living.
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Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:01 am
Thanks for sharing.
I grew up in a very old, very large house, and at times I would get that creepy feeling of being watched, and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Sometimes I'd hear the stairs or floorboards creaking as if someone was walking on them, but there was never anyone there when I'd go to investigate.
So was my house haunted? Maybe. But at least speaking for myself, I need more than just an uneasy feeling and creaking floorboards in an old house. Old houses make sounds. I'm sure that anyone who has spent any significant amount of time in old buildings is aware of the fact that they're often...well, pretty noisy sometimes. So creaking floors in an old house isn't exactly news-worthy.
As for sometimes feeling like I was being watched, well, I've always been a fairly anxious person by nature, so I don't find that to be especially convincing.
As I said, I definitely think the existence of supernatural entities is possible. I'd just need to experience something more convincing than an old house creaking and my anxiety-prone brain making me feel uneasy.
And keep the stories coming! Skeptic though I may be, I still very much enjoy hearing about other people's experiences. And for what it may or may not be worth, I don't think any of you are making this stuff up, and I think it's totally possible that the things you described could very well be bona fide supernatural experiences.
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thrashmetaljunkie Captain
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Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:15 am
I have had too many experiences with the supernatural to count. I have witnessed and taken care of demonic possession (through the power of Jesus, of course). I have been in places where doors would open or close by themselves. No wind, no rational explanation to be found. I've seen people tripped by things that weren't there. I have friends who were hunted by shadowy figures in their sleep. I have pictures of people that weren't there. I can't believe in ghosts and demons because I KNOW they are there. Unfortunately for me, I'm the one people come to when they have issues with these things. Some you can ask to leave. Others you have to pray away. Some take a minute, some take hours. The worst things I've experienced are from when people decided it would be "fun" to use a ouiji board. Then they call me to help them clean their mess. With all this said, if you were to ask me that vampires and werewolves and the like are real, I'd give you a funny look. I don't believe in such things. There is no evidence for any of them that i can find. I haven't seen any, either. For these things, i remain quite skeptical.
Though I may seem crazy, I always look for a rational explanation before determining if it is supernatural or not. More often than not, there is a rational explanation. However, I have seen plenty of cases where none could be found.
If you guys would like to see a picture of people that weren't there, i can post it for you.
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Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2013 10:00 am
I guess the closest thing I've really had to any sort of supernatural experience was a dream I had.
My best friend died several years ago, and losing him almost destroyed me. We'd been friends since I was 14. He was my first love. And even though he was (mostly) heterosexual and we were never together romantically, I never stopped loving him deeply. And I didn't even really want to be with him romantically, because the friendship and platonic love we had for one another was so profound that I always felt that becoming romantically involved with him would cheapen our relationship somehow. I think these days people don't appreciate platonic love as much as they should. Romantic love is sort of the be-all end-all of human interaction in most people's eyes, and I think that's kind of sad. I loved my best friend every bit as much as I loved my partner, it was just a very different kind of love, but every bit as profound.
Theo, my best friend, had a lifelong struggle with opiate addiction, and in the end that was what killed him. For quite some time, I'd been expending ridiculous amounts of time and energy basically just trying to keep him alive. I actually lost track of how many times I saved him from an overdose.
One night he called me and wanted me to go to a party with him, but my partner and I had a "date night" planned, and lately I'd been so preoccupied with looking after Theo that I had been neglecting my relationship with my partner, so I told Theo I'd have to pass on the party and said I'd head over to his place in the morning.
That morning, I woke up to someone pounding on our door, and it was Theo's girlfriend, who told me that Theo had died the previous night. Fatal overdose.
I completely fell apart. Not only had my best friend, one of the people I loved most in the world, passed away, but I felt like his death was my fault. If only I'd just gone to the party with him, or at the very least stopped by his place later to check on him, I probably could have saved him.
I went into a downward spiral. I tried to kill myself (and failed, obviously), I started using heroin again (after having been clean for over a decade), I refused to even talk about Theo...it was definitely one of my darker times in life.
One night, somewhat over two years after Theo's death, I had a dream about him. It was incredibly vivid, and I don't usually have vivid dreams. I also remembered it from start to finish once I woke up, which is something else that hardly ever happens to me. I told Theo how much trouble I was having living without him, and he basically gave me a verbal butt-kicking. He told me that it wasn't my fault he died. It wasn't my job to save him, and you can't save people who don't want to be saved. He admitted that he had become a lost cause before I'd even met him, and that even if I had saved him the night he died, it only would have been postponing the inevitable. He told me that his dying was a piss-poor excuse for me throwing my own life away and that if I really did love him, I'd get my act together, live my life, and be happy. That's what he wanted for me. He said, "Enj, we both know that you're better than this. You have a job doing what you love, you have wonderful people who care about you. You have a chance to live the life you've always wanted for yourself. Please don't throw that away on my account. Remember when we swore that we'd die for each other? Well, now I'm asking you to live for me. I'm sorry that I had to leave, but you're strong enough to get through this. You're much stronger than you think. You're stronger than me, and you always have been. I love you, and I know how much you love me, but it's time to let me go. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, wake up, and grab life by the balls!"
And when I woke up, I felt so peaceful. For the first time in a long time, I really felt like I was going to be okay.
I'm not really sure if that qualifies as a supernatural experience, but that's the closest I've had.
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2013 4:28 pm
Me and my man went to a graveyard by my house and they had some of it fenced off. there was a hole in the fence that you could crawl under and so we did. there was an unearthed casket from the 1800's and we were going to cover it back up with dirt cause we thought it would show respect. Well when we got on our knees we felt this breeze then we heard something running at us. Needless to say we ran like crazy and haven't been back since.
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Posted: Thu May 02, 2013 9:56 am
Subliminal Aftermath Me and my man went to a graveyard by my house and they had some of it fenced off. there was a hole in the fence that you could crawl under and so we did. there was an unearthed casket from the 1800's and we were going to cover it back up with dirt cause we thought it would show respect. Well when we got on our knees we felt this breeze then we heard something running at us. Needless to say we ran like crazy and haven't been back since. I grew up in Paris, and often my friends and I would go to the catacombs under the city. (This was back when it was still relatively easy to get into the catacombs; more recently, they've sealed off most of the entrances and the only way to get down there is to go on a guided "educational" tour. Respect for the dead and all that.) To be perfectly honest, we'd usually just get high and tell ghost stories. I'm ashamed to admit that on at least two occasions, I heard a strange sound, screamed like a little girl, and bolted for the surface. lol But I don't consider that a "supernatural experience." I was intoxicated, surrounded by human remains, and listening to ghost stories. Scaring ourselves was sort of the whole point. The odd sounds that I heard could have been any number of things that were not made by anything even remotely supernatural.
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High-functioning Werewolf
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Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 2:43 am
I believe I've had personal experiences. To me they are very real. I'm not out to convince anybody, but I know what I saw and I can't really think of any earthly explanation for it.
For a year in college, I lived in an old 19th century apartment building. One time I saw a small white cloud hanging in the air about 15 feet in front of me in the hallway. It didn't have a form or anything, but it seemed to be swirling around a little bit. It was there for about 10 seconds, then it vanished. Just blinked out. I didn't feel afraid by it or anything. Just a little weirded out, because that was my first time SEEING anything that could be considered paranormal.
I had auditory hallucinations when I was younger. They were so frequent and realistic that even now if I hear something that's not right, I can't really say it was a personal experience unless someone around me hears it too.
Which did happen once, but I generally prefer not to think about this one. It was pretty weird. I was exploring an abandoned town called Moonville one night with a college friend of mine, and as we were walking through the tunnel which used to serve as the train station, we both heard this horrible LOUD squealing noise coming from the forest. We turned tail and ran a half mile back to the car (Moonville is not easy to get to or find) and we didn't talk about it until we were safely back on campus. Once we had calmed down a little bit, we concluded that the squealing noise sounded an awful lot like a breaking train. So yeah. Weird.
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Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 12:10 pm
I have auditory hallucinations sometimes, too. They're more frequent and pronounced when I'm sleep-deprived.
They're not like "The voices in my head told me to run butt-naked through the centre of town during rush-hour" or anything like that. Just little things, like thinking I hear my mobile ringing when it's not, or hearing garbled music that sounds like it's coming from far away, or hearing the bell on one of our cats' collars when all the cats are asleep and not moving at all. Rarely I'll think I heard someone call my name.
That sort of plays a role in my skepticism regarding the supernatural. I pretty much always assume that any sounds I hear that can't logically be explained is just my crazy talking. For all I know, I suppose it's possible that I actually have experienced something supernatural and just chalked it up to my somewhat fragile grip on reality. *shrug*
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Posted: Sun May 05, 2013 9:21 am
I've had some supernatural experiences. Of course, I do not believe in ghosts, and these experiences were quite demonic in nature.
I don't like to talk about them, though. All I will say is that the LORD has seen me through each of them. Praise and glory be to the most holy God. heart
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