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I don't believe in the supernatural affecting the real world in any observable way.

And I have nothing but contempt for people who steal other peoples' money in an attempt to convince us all otherwise. I think faith healers, psychic mediums, and the entire cast and crew of Ghost Hunters should be in jail.

I've experienced several events that were supernatural including seeing a ghost.

I have not experienced anything I would call supernatural.
On a lighter note, did anybody else think of this when they read the thread title?

Sixth Sense came to mind

When I was like 8 I though I had X-Ray vision. Imagine my disappointment when I realised it was simply a side effect of binocular vision, when one eye is blocked by an object but the other has a clear Line Of Sight.

A couple months ago there was a MASSIVE boom in the sky above my neigbourhood. If I was superstitious, I would have ascribed it to a supernatural cause. As it was, I simply assumed it was the sonic boom of a jet aircraft (probably military), kept calm and carried on.

When I attend (my parents' ) Church, I'm always astounded at people's capacity to make up and sing in complete gibberish, making fools of themselves.


If you haven't guessed by now, the answer is No.

When I went to the Las Vegas Open, I opened the door t find a maid sweeping.....then went into the wall

Had a couple interesting experiences:

1) Spend the night at one of those fancy B&Bs that is known for being haunted. We were getting ready to go down for dinner when my wife sneezed. A couple seconds later she said "thank you" because she heard me say "bless you", except I didn't say anything.

2) Was doing some night photography in Rhyolite, NV with my brother. He was photographing the general store there:

He walked towards it to look into the window and was standing on top of one of those covers when he saw a weird shadow come out from underneath the area where he was standing, float out just past the edge, look up at him, and then go back under the area where he was standing. Freaked him out pretty good. Common sense says hobo, but this is a ghost town in the middle of freaking nowhere and it was freezing out.

3) We had a lake that was supposently haunted near where I used to live. We would go there in the middle of the night and you would hear children laugh.

4) Used to hear footsteps going up and down the hall in the night at our old place.

 d-usa wrote:

4) Used to hear footsteps going up and down the hall in the night at our old place.

That was me, sorry.

The closest I've ever experienced was sleep paralysis. If I didn't know what it was I could see how someone would think it was supernatural.

 Kojiro wrote:
The closest I've ever experienced was sleep paralysis. If I didn't know what it was I could see how someone would think it was supernatural.

Sleep Paralysis is a motherfething torture.

 Kojiro wrote:
The closest I've ever experienced was sleep paralysis. If I didn't know what it was I could see how someone would think it was supernatural.

Holy crap, this.

I had this hideous nightmare once that I was asleep on my couch, and all of a sudden there was this orange light outside the apartment I couldn't move. Then the door opened up all slowly and there was this guy in a trenchcoat standing there, but his head was all warty, and he had these fangs, and his skin was this rotten orange color. And I kept screaming and screaming and screaming but all that came out was this hoarse, really soft 'uh-uh-uh' sound. And then I woke up and I was still making the sound. I was only frozen for a couple of seconds, but that's one of the scariest damn things that's ever happened to me.

I could definitely see how someone might think that was some kind of attempted demonic possession or something, if they didn't know better.

I have lots of sleep paralysis stories (apperantly people who get migraines are much more likely to get them) and they are all very supernatural until I really figured out what it was.

Shadows walking throught the room and outside the window. People standing next to my bed. My mini-fridge in college opening up to reveal a portal of flames with a demon crawling out of it.

Now that I know what it is I can usually ignore whatever it is that I am seeing and focus on getting my hand to move until I can wake up my wife so that she can really wake me up. But even with knowing I still get spooked sometimes. The last bad one was about a year ago and it was just scarry because it wasn't that outlandish:

I was laying "awake" in bed and I could hear the garage door opener turn on and then close again. Then I could hear the laundry room door open and somebody entering the house. I'm laying there "wide awake" thinking that somebody is breaking into the house and that I need to get my gun to stop this. I'm trying to get up but I'm stuck, and all this time I hear this guy walking around the living room right outside the bedroom door and hear him going through stuff there. I was freaking out and it took me about 30 seconds to realize that I couldn't move and couldn't speak, and then I figured out that nobody was breaking in and it was just another episode of paralysis.

That gak is horrible. It's become bearable now that I can realize it for what it is and I'm usually with it enough to ignore the dream that is happening while I'm awake and paralized. But if you don't know what it is...then it is torture.

There are a lot of opinions about sleep paralysis being the source of "alien abduction" and "floating ouside the body" type experiences that people swear are real. And after having experienced them I can understand why somebody might think so.

Oh yeah it is utterly terrifying. In my experienced I was lying there looking at an empty doorway which slowly filled with a pale woman. She had messy black hair and empty eye sockets and stood there like a medicated mental patient. Then her head slowly turned to face me. She shrieked, pulled back her lips to reveal needle- like teeth and charged me. I tried to move and scream but I felt like I weighted a ton and couldn't even flinch. She got to me and I snapped out of it. She vanished and the light in the room seemed to change but I still couldn't move for a few seconds. Then my leg lashed out violently and I kicked my partner rather hard. She was quite annoyed until I explained then she mocked me. She's had it several times and I had never fully understood the terror previously.

I had one of the crew of one of those ghost hunting shows (trust me, you've heard of it) come through my gas station when they came to the town I lived in. Everytime he tried to swipe his card at the register I pulled the cord out of the credit reader behind the counter so the connection had to reset. Eventually, he had to go out to his car to find some cash because he "just couldn't figure out why his card wouldn't work." I wanted to deny them service entirely, but my manager wouldn't let me. I have a serious irrational hatred for those guys.

I don't know if this counts as a supernatural event but once I had an out of body experience. I was walking along an oval a little stoned with 2 friends when all of a sudden my visual perspective was from about 20 meters above my head and about 10 meters behind, looking down on the 3 of us walking along. It stayed like that for about 5 seconds before my perspective moved back to normal. I have no idea how stoned you would have to be to have your visual perspective change so much but I definitely was not that stoned (only 2 cones). Funniest thing is, at that time of my life I didn't believe in anything supernatural or not explained by science - I'm a lot more open minded about those things now.

I was pretty quiet for the next hour I can tell you.

 Corpsesarefun wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have experienced the fivefold ministry, and have manifested two of the gifts myself.

Personally I cant really consider myself a man of faith, because I know God and have seen His power, for me unbelief is unbelievable. I can appreciate that not everyone is a fortunate.

Other than that I have met a man raised from the dead, that ought to count.

Care to explain that in more detail?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fivefold_ministry

Fivefold Ministry is a branch of the Charismatic Movement, an extension of Pentacostalism. If you've ever seen those churches where people speak tongues and what not, it was probably a Pentacostal church.

This one time dead crows kept falling out of the sky, right beside me, and no one else. It wasn't supernatural, just weird.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
This one time dead crows kept falling out of the sky, right beside me, and no one else. It wasn't supernatural, just weird.

Sounds like you gathered some string, a shovel, and cheese for the Daedric Prince of Madness

 LordofHats wrote:

 Corpsesarefun wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
I have experienced the fivefold ministry, and have manifested two of the gifts myself.

Personally I cant really consider myself a man of faith, because I know God and have seen His power, for me unbelief is unbelievable. I can appreciate that not everyone is a fortunate.

Other than that I have met a man raised from the dead, that ought to count.

Care to explain that in more detail?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fivefold_ministry

Fivefold Ministry is a branch of the Charismatic Movement, an extension of Pentacostalism. If you've ever seen those churches where people speak tongues and what not, it was probably a Pentacostal church.

Basically true though the Charismatic church and the Pentecostal denomination are two different things. though one is heavily linked to the other. Pentecostalism is a style of worship, and also a loose denomination, Charismatic refers to any church that practices the charismata (spiritual gifts), this can and has included mainstream Protestant churches and even some Roman Catholic churches, though that is very rare. A number of Pentecostal churches are likewise not Charismatic, though this usually relates to the spiritual standing of the pastor and church leadership.

 Jimsolo wrote:
, and the entire cast and crew of Ghost Hunters should be in jail.

I generally agree, but I did see a pretty good episode of that show where, the owners of an infant/small childrens store (they sold cribs, strollers and other "baby shower" type stuff) thought their place was haunted.... There was one "key" location: the office just up at the top of some stairs on an outer wall of the building, that wall facing into an alley-way where their dumpsters and whatnot were.

Well, the building was older than electricity so all the major lines were running around this office space, as well as a poor job of insulating the building created an environment where people could/would be easily spooked... The "ghost hunters" determined that the "voices" were actual people having normal conversation in the alley afterhours... and the major electrical lines create an electromagnetic area where the general power of it can cause feelings of paranoia in a person, should they be in this "field" for an extended period of time.



...Usually yeah, people are completely wasting their money hiring a medium or other "supernatural practitioner"... unless its for a party.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
, and the entire cast and crew of Ghost Hunters should be in jail.

I generally agree, but I did see a pretty good episode of that show where, the owners of an infant/small childrens store (they sold cribs, strollers and other "baby shower" type stuff) thought their place was haunted.... There was one "key" location: the office just up at the top of some stairs on an outer wall of the building, that wall facing into an alley-way where their dumpsters and whatnot were.

Well, the building was older than electricity so all the major lines were running around this office space, as well as a poor job of insulating the building created an environment where people could/would be easily spooked... The "ghost hunters" determined that the "voices" were actual people having normal conversation in the alley afterhours... and the major electrical lines create an electromagnetic area where the general power of it can cause feelings of paranoia in a person, should they be in this "field" for an extended period of time.



...Usually yeah, people are completely wasting their money hiring a medium or other "supernatural practitioner"... unless its for a party.

They came to my hometown (not where I live now) and set up a repeating image to mock the memory of a loved local figure in order to 'provoke a spirit reaction.' It was pretty sick. I always thought they just went into houses and pretended they saw ghosts so they could draw a pay check. If I had known ahead of time what they were planning on doing, I would have tried to stop them somehow. It was extremely disrespectful.

I won with Orks... Does that count?

For a brief period I thought the martial arts school I taught at was haunted as I'd hear indistinct voices at night after we were closed. After a few months I realized the cause was an AM radio tower about a mile away, if I touched any of the metal shelving racks that were in the building or the computer monitor it created a circuit that'd allow for a very faint signal to be heard. The same would happen if you touched certain areas in the wall where the studs were as we'd used metal studs rather than wood framing when we renovated the building.

For a while both myself and my instructor thought we were either going crazy or that the other one of us was pulling a prank of some sort. Even knowing what was generating the noises we still found the situation really strange at times.

I have several, but I don't have time to share them here. Ill get back later, when I get home.

Wow, you guys have had some *strong* sleep paralysis episodes. I only ever had a few, and the only hallucination I ever had was a dark cloudy sphere with a vague aura of malevolence. Otherwise my episodes were just about me lying there unable to move for a brief time.

My feelings about the supernatural...well, I'm strongly skeptical of the vast majority of stories. Those that can't be explained by sleep paralysis and other sleep disorders and dream states can mostly be explained by an active imagination. HOWEVER, I'm also not going to claim that I know the nature of the universe (or that our species has the universe figured out either), and accept the possibility that things could happen that are very difficult to explain.

Maybe a better way to explain it is to say that I'd love to spend a night in the most haunted whatever. Because I really, truly don't think anything "supernatural" will happen. But I'll allow my opinion to be changed.

Regarding the ghost hunter types...yeah, I'm not too fond of them. I feel a little differently toward fortune tellers, etc., though. As long as the money being exchanged is a reasonable amount, I have a hard time getting upset about them apparently giving their customers something that they need.

I saw that diseased coyote thing in texas people called El Chupacabre. Pretty sure it was just a diseased coyote but does that count lol

I haven't had anything like a supernatural experience, but my father has a ghost story from his time in Vietnam that I have no reason to doubt.