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Unexplained Phenomena

Silveresque

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Ever heard of anything strange or supernatural? I tend to be skeptical of these things, but I have heard one story I find it hard not to believe.

My high school psychology teacher once told my class about certain dreams she used to have. She would have a dream where someone she knew died, and then shortly afterward, that same person actually did die in real life. It happened many times, for years even, and the dreams always came true. It got to the point where people were telling her, "If you see someone I know die in one of your dreams, don't tell me." After a while, though, the dreams stopped and she hasn't had one of them since.

I wouldn't believe this story coming from just anyone, but I know that she's not the kind of person who would make up a story like that. She even said herself that she's skeptical about that kind of thing.

Of course I don't believe in the supernatural, but I don't see how it could be a coincidence. I think it could just be something we don't have any kind of scientific explanation for at this point, something we don't know about yet.
 
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Ginkgo

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I've always found it more interesting to examine the people who make claims about the supernatural, rather than the supernatural itself. A fairly large number of people are actively trying to bridge the gap between the natural and the supernatural... Science with fantasy. The only way in which I agree with this group is that I think it's important to develop a personal bond with the things around you, even if they're scientific. Usually, that comes naturally because we are personal creatures. The reason I mention this is that many among the scientific community deny that personal element. For instance, on the record of the "scientific community", animals are generally regarded as automatons, just creatures who do things without thinking or experiencing emotions. That's quite the stretch. Their reasoning is that they have no evidence because emotions can't be quantified. If you ask me, it can be inferred that they have emotions from the evidence that they share the corresponding parts with humans. I mean, if they were to really be strict about it, wouldn't they also claim that no humans have emotions except for their individual selves? That sounds wacky. I know. But that's the way their reasoning follows.

Until i witness something supernatural that shakes me to the core, besides what I consider to be the miracle of our lives and everything that surrounds us, then I'll probably just toss it aside as a fabrication or product of confusion.
 

Thalassa

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I think it could just be something we don't have any kind of scientific explanation for at this point, something we don't know about yet.

This is what I think and I think it's very rigid and closed minded of people to disregard something that happens to so many people, so many SANE people.

People can have connections to each other, through dreams or feelings or "just knowing" and it has nothing to do with "predicting the future" or whatever, and it's what I consider to be a separate form of intuition from Jungian intuition. I have this sort of connection with someone right now, and have had with others in the past.

I also believe that people leave energy behind in places and on objects, I think this is very true, and is what people call "ghosts."

The night a friend of mine committed suicide I dreamed we were in a white train station and that he had to go somewhere on the train. Interestingly, after a self-inflicted gun shot wound to the head, he had not immediately died, so he would have been in a coma when this happened. His parents took him off of life support the next morning after I had found out he had shot himself. I was 13.
 

Silveresque

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Until i witness something supernatural that shakes me to the core, besides what I consider to be the miracle of our lives and everything that surrounds us, then I'll probably just toss it aside as a fabrication or product of confusion.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what to think about this story from my psychology teacher. I can't dismiss it, nor can I completely accept it until I have actually experienced something like it. It's important to be skeptical of such stories, but it's also important to keep an open mind (especially when it comes from a source you trust). So I guess I'll just hold it as a possibility for now.
 

Vizzy

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I'm utterly fascinated with unexplained phenomena and unsolved mysteries. It tickles both my imagination and thinking, and puts life into perspective.
There are some things I find silly (e.g. zombies, religious myths treated as fact...) and some things I'm probably 100% sure exists (e.g. extraterrestrial life) but I don't really take a strong stand on anything else. Ghosts, prophetic dreams, dopplegangers, the spirit world, out-of-body experiences, possession, spontaneous human combustion, fortune-telling - I love hearing accounts regarding these. I may question the evidence and truth - but only for that particular story. If I doubt the validity of a single story, it doesn't ruin the entire belief/theory of, say, the existence of ghosts for me. I don't have the need to choose a side as many people seem to do. It's much more exciting to be in the middle. (I'd be interested to hear what cognitive functions/type people see in what I've just written).
 
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Ginkgo

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Yeah, I'm not really sure what to think about this story from my psychology teacher. I can't dismiss it, nor can I completely accept it until I have actually experienced something like it. It's important to be skeptical of such stories, but it's also important to keep an open mind (especially when it comes from a source you trust). So I guess I'll just hold it as a possibility for now.

Right. At least see it as someone's point of view and adjust later, if you will.
 

Quinlan

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Bigfoot is interesting, hairy wildmen myths and encounters are almost universal and occur even in places where undiscovered apes make no biological or geographical sense (New Zealand).

Some claim that all of these creatures must have a common origin and I think they do, there origin must be inside the human mind, something leftover from when we actually did share our world with large, hairy powerfully built "ape men".
 

Silveresque

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This is what I think and I think it's very rigid and closed minded of people to disregard something that happens to so many people, so many SANE people.

People can have connections to each other, through dreams or feelings or "just knowing" and it has nothing to do with "predicting the future" or whatever, and it's what I consider to be a separate form of intuition from Jungian intuition. I have this sort of connection with someone right now, and have had with others in the past.

I also believe that people leave energy behind in places and on objects, I think this is very true, and is what people call "ghosts."

The night a friend of mine committed suicide I dreamed we were in a white train station and that he had to go somewhere on the train. Interestingly, after a self-inflicted gun shot wound to the head, he had not immediately died, so he would have been in a coma when this happened. His parents took him off of life support the next morning after I had found out he had shot himself. I was 13.

Wow, that's an amazing (and very sad :cry:) story. I've actually experienced a similar sort of connection with someone before (though it's possible it's an odd coincidence). One night I had a dream about a childhood friend who had moved away a couple years prior. We were just playing video games and laughing and having a great time, like how it used to be. Then that day, he showed up on my doorstep to say hi because he had come back to visit his friends. That was the first and last time I can remember ever having a dream about him.
 

iwakar

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I have experienced unexplained phenomena. I can offer no explanation, just my personal experience. They are deeply personal events tied to the house I lived in as a child where my uncle killed himself.

I also believe in bullshitters transfixed by the unknowable and the mysterious glow their tales cast upon themselves.

My personal experience trumps my cynical perspective of supernatural attention whores, but it (understandably) can't do the same for others. As a result of this futility, I stopped sharing my experiences long ago.
 
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Ginkgo

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If you can't explain everything you see on a daily basis, then do you experience unexplained phenomena routinely?
 

iwakar

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If you can't explain everything you see on a daily basis, then do you experience unexplained phenomena routinely?

I confess that I have no idea how my parent's cappuccino machine works, but I believe in it!

:coffee:

Relevance? ... arguable, but questionable. ;)
 

Tiltyred

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I've experienced some ... I guess you would call it telepathy ... but not in a long time. I dreamed that my boyfriend and I were in a grocery store and there was a ginger cat in the store and he said something about "La Peliroja," which is "the redhead" in Spanish. The next day, he showed up at my door with a box of henna in his hand, and we got in the shower and put henna on each other's hair. With this same person, I used to work a night shift and it was long and slow most nights, and I was ruminating over a fight we'd had. The next day he asked me why I was so mad at him at 5 in the morning. And once I was on foot, lost, in the middle of the night, no money for a cab, and some lady I'd never seen before showed up in her car and told me to get in and she'd drive me home. I noticed she was in her nightgown and slippers and I asked her why she was riding around in her nightclothes. She said she had been sound asleep when something told her to get up and drive down the street, so she did, and as soon as she saw me, she knew why. There are some other things, but those are the sharpest, to me, most clearly "something going on." I do dream about people sometimes and they come to see me the next day. But it hasn't happened to me in a long time now, which I'm kind of glad for.

Oh, I know another one -- but this is of my dad -- I was dating someone that my dad was not aware of, had never met, didn't even know I was dating him -- he proposed to me one night. He was very drunk and it was out of the blue, and he told me all this stuff about how he owed a house in another state and he had all this money, all very improbable and kind of disturbing, I think I said I'd think about it, I can't remember -- but the next day, my dad asked me who is Harold? I said it was this weird guy I'd been seeing, but he goes by Hal, why? and my dad said he had woken up in the middle of the night with something yelling in his head "NO HAROLD! NO HAROLD!" (I didn't marry Hal.)
 

OrangeAppled

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I might guess that the woman in the OP had unconsciously picked up on indirect signs that these people might die (maybe through things people said or did regarding these people), and then her subconscious fed the fear of their death back to her via a dream. Dreams tend to be expressions from our subconscious of what we fear/hope, and it may appear to be a "prediction" when/if it actually happens, but really it's just that your fear/hope was founded in reality; you simply did not consciously note the info in reality that made up the fear/hope.
 

Lex Talionis

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Well, it is not a hidden fact that our scientific knowledge is hardly all-encompassing. There are innumerable phenomena that we do not come close to understanding, and who knows how many that we are not even aware of—especially in the field of neuroscience. From what relatively little we do comprehend regarding brain function, it is already quite apparent that our perceptions can be altered by even minor fluctuations in normal brain activity. Therefore, it would be entirely fallacious to conclude that because no rational explanation exists (and I believe that in the overwhelming majority of cases a rational explanation does exist) we should attribute the expression of unexplained phenomena to superstition.

In addition, that there have been numerous reported cases of "supernatural" experiences by otherwise "sane" individuals does not in any way justify the acceptance of supernatural causality. "Strange" experiences are not limited to those who are insane; what differentiates the sane from the insane, in my view, is the defiant refusal or inability to accept contradictory evidence by the latter. Sound mental health does not, in and of itself, preclude the possibility of giving in to irrational explanations, and it most certainly does not prevent us from entertaining such notions.
 
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Ginkgo

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Well, it is not a hidden fact that our scientific knowledge is hardly all-encompassing. There are innumerable phenomena that we do not come close to understanding, and who knows how many that we are not even aware of—especially in the field of neuroscience. From what relatively little we do comprehend regarding brain function, it is already quite apparent that our perceptions can be altered by even minor fluctuations in normal brain activity. Therefore, it would be entirely fallacious to conclude that because no rational explanation exists (and I believe that in the overwhelming majority of cases a rational explanation does exist) we should attribute the expression of unexplained phenomena to superstition.

In addition, that there have been numerous reported cases of "supernatural" experiences by otherwise "sane" individuals does not in any way justify the acceptance of supernatural causality. "Strange" experiences are not limited to those who are insane; what differentiates the sane from the insane, in my view, is the defiant refusal or inability to accept contradictory evidence by the latter. Sound mental health does not, in and of itself, preclude the possibility of giving in to irrational explanations, and it most certainly does not prevent us from entertaining such notions.

I agree.
 

INTP

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When i was about 10years old, i went to hungary with my mom. we were in some small town and decided to go take a walk in a forest. we saw this small tree that was waving one of its branches(like 25cm from side to side). both of us went like wtf, and spent like 15-20 mins trying to figure out how this branch was waving around, there was no wind that could had done this, we werent jumping on its roots or anything and when i stopped it, it slowly started doing it again. as far as i know, trees arent supposed to be moving.. i think it was birch or aspen.

Also when i was little my mom had a dream where lots of people were drowning, next morning she heard about this ship sinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia , 852 people died.
 

Fluffywolf

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My father and a friend once visited someone that claimed to be psychic. To put it to the test, my father gave him one deer antler he found in the woods and asked him if he could say where the other one was. The man took the antler in his hands and started to focus, told my father he saw fire, lots of fire. And a very big oak tree, the antler supposedly was still lying next to that oak tree.

My father found the first antler in a forested area where there had been a big forest fire a few years back, being part of the local fire department he knew that right away, so he was intruigued by the story about the fire the guy had seen, without knowing where my father found the antler in the first place. But he was still skeptical, my fathers friend was curious so tried to look for the other antler, and found it a few days later right next to a large oak tree, one of the largest in that area.

That's how my father tells the story. But personally I'm skeptical. My fathers friend is a rather peculiar person and I wouldn't be surprised if he set it all up for my father to believe.


As for myself, I experienced a very vivid dream that seemed to come true that same morning, even more so than your average deja-vu. At least that is how I remember it now. But I came to believe that it could very well have been a very abstract dream, and the real life experience filled up the gaps for me. Making me think that was exactly what I had dreamt, without it actually being true. The dream was just a similar experience or had a similar emotional response and my memory buffers just shorted out and were overwritten. I believe the same can be said about other deja-vu feelings. When there are certain similarities, our minds may create links and actually alter memories. Making us think we've seen/heard or been there before, without it actually being true.

Also when i was little my mom had a dream where lots of people were drowning, next morning she heard about this ship sinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia , 852 people died.

I also think this is pretty much the same as my dream. Your mother likely dreamt about something that had a similar emotional response, but she couldn't quite remember it, then heard about the accident with people drowning and her mind remembers it as if that was what she dreamt about.

Unless she told the dream in detail before learning about the accident. Then I don't have an explanation. :p
 

Tiltyred

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I'm ok with not knowing how or why.
 

Saslou

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I'm ok with not knowing how or why.

I agree.

I'm happy knowing/believing what i do and feel no need to make others understand.

My psychic is coming round tomorrow to do a reading for me :D
 
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