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Demons, that is all.
My house had a demonic possession, never been the same since. *shudders*

No stories. Because ghosts and demons are imaginary.

FYI: Shutters are for windows, shudders are for when your imagination gets the best of you.

JWhex wrote:
No stories. Because ghosts and demons are imaginary.

FYI: Shutters are for windows, shudders are for when your imagination gets the best of you.

thanks

Yeeeeah, no I don't believe any stories. Is it within the realm of possibility, but no, no story of a 'demonic possession' has ever had a lick of credibility.

My mom once said that she heard a banging on the door and that when she went up to answer no one was there. This was late at night.

Ghosts stores are captivating regardless of legitimacy (I enjoyed Ghost Hunters)

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Ghosts stores are captivating regardless of legitimacy (I enjoyed Ghost Hunters)

I agree with the first part -- but Ghost Hunters seems silly to me. A bunch of grown men talking to imaginary friends in a room with the lights off. They should do an episode where they all pile in the bathroom and dare each other to say "Bloody Mary" three times into the mirror. So while ghost stories are fun, hearing people tell me they are true is like hearing someone tell me Star Wars is a true story. Needless to say, I have no ghost stories despite living in at least two supposedly haunted houses.

 Manchu wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Ghosts stores are captivating regardless of legitimacy (I enjoyed Ghost Hunters)

I agree with the first part -- but Ghost Hunters seems silly to me. A bunch of grown men talking to imaginary friends in a room with the lights off. They should do an episode where they all pile in the bathroom and dare each other to say "Bloody Mary" three times into the mirror. So while ghost stories are fun, hearing people tell me they are true is like hearing someone tell me Star Wars is a true story. Needless to say, I have no ghost stories despite living in at least two supposedly haunted houses.

It's silly if you watch it as a documentary. I always saw it as fiction... and just pretended that the ghosts were real. Scientifically speaking, TAPS are total quacks. They use silly monitoring devices, make up their own rules (why do ghosts use electromagnetic waves? Do we turn into energy after death? Are ghosts magic or just EM anomalies creating by the cessation of a life form's functions?) and most of their hypothesises (thesi?) are unquantifiable. It's psuedo science at best. In addition, most of their claims are just them saying "Oh, I feel cold!".

But, if you watch it as if they are in their own world some of their stuff is quite interesting. I remember an episode when they were in ireland and were searching for ghosts in some ruins. They saw stuff on a UV recording moving in the distance. Now, they could just be crew members, unknown trespassers or, more likely, animals. But if you get into the mindset that everything they say is true in their own world it's kind of like watching a pretentious Paranormal Ac... watching Paranormal Activity.

Haunted Houses are crap for experiences but often have really neat stories behind them. The only way to really get hauntings is to expect/want them. The mind has a way of playing into your fears.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The only way to really get hauntings is to expect/want them. The mind has a way of playing into your fears.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I do like watching Ghost Hunters every once in a while but instead of watching it like a horror movie like you say (good joke about Paranormal Activity, btw) I watch it as a comedy.

 poppa G wrote:
My house had a demonic possession...

No. It didn't.

Haven't had any because ghosts don't exist.

I murdered a bunch of people and their ghosts keep haunting my house. It's really kind of annoying, lots of banging doors, dishes falling out of their cabinets and smashing in the middle of the night, weird noises all the time, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If I kill some more people do you think the ghosts would cancel each other out, or would the hauntings just get worse?

The amount of people not believing in ghosts is surprising-the last ghost thread had many more believers. My old college was haunted. A friend and I felt the presence of a ghost, while another guy saw it. We weren't told he had seen it, he took us where he did, and both of us had abnormal reaction-I stepped out of the elevator and promptly fell over, never having a day of vertigo in my life. My other friend who wasn't afraid of knife-wielding muggers in the heart of Brooklyn got into the room and bolted for the door, petrified. Yeah, I know it sounds a little contrived and story-like, but it's legit. They're there. Assuming that they aren't and that other worlds, beings, and dimensions don't exist is human arrogance.

 Peregrine wrote:
I murdered a bunch of people and their ghosts keep haunting my house. It's really kind of annoying, lots of banging doors, dishes falling out of their cabinets and smashing in the middle of the night, weird noises all the time, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If I kill some more people do you think the ghosts would cancel each other out, or would the hauntings just get worse?

Oh well, doesn't hurt to experiment does it?

If you close your eyes and speak my name into your pillow 3 times, then exactly 1 week later nothing will happen.



And then you'll become pregnant with my demon child.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
If you close your eyes and speak my name into your pillow 3 times, then exactly 1 week later nothing will happen.



And then you'll become pregnant with my demon child.

Challenge Accepted.

 Krellnus wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
If you close your eyes and speak my name into your pillow 3 times, then exactly 1 week later nothing will happen.



And then you'll become pregnant with my demon child.

Challenge Accepted.

Excellent! I just need you to sign this document that states all requests for child support must be directed to Satan, for he is the true biological father of the demon spawn, and everything should be set.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
If you close your eyes and speak my name into your pillow 3 times, then exactly 1 week later nothing will happen.



And then you'll become pregnant with my demon child.

Challenge Accepted.

Excellent! I just need you to sign this document that states all requests for child support must be directed to Satan, for he is the true biological father of the demon spawn, and everything should be set.

Send it over and I shall sign straight away.

I have an ex-friend who used to claim his video recorder was haunted because would switch itself off in the middle of the night.

Nothing here.

I don't believe in ghosts, demons, unicrons or other happy friendly sparkly magic horses.

Never seen it, never 'felt' it.

I have relatives who believe - but there's a whole "you see what you expect to see" aspect that goes with it.

Given a 'picture' with elements missing, your brain will fill in the gaps with what it thinks is right - not necessarily what IS.

 chromedog wrote:
Nothing here.

I don't believe in ghosts, demons, unicrons or other happy friendly sparkly magic horses.

Never seen it, never 'felt' it.

I have relatives who believe - but there's a whole "you see what you expect to see" aspect that goes with it.

Given a 'picture' with elements missing, your brain will fill in the gaps with what it thinks is right - not necessarily what IS.

Exactly. And belief doesn't supersede reality.

When I was a kid, I read ghost stories. I had several "weird" moments. But nothing that can't be explained by anything other than overactive imagination.

Even recently, when home alone, I'll occasionally get a case of the creepy crawlies. Its always dark, and windows are open but I can't see out, and I'd decided to watch horror movies. But I don't attribute creepy feelings to ghosts. I shut the curtains and turn something light on TV, and magically, the creepiness... goes away.

I think a lot of "ghosts" and "hauntings" are people focusing on those creepy feelings then attributing any noise heard in a heightened state to the supernatural.

The problem with Ghosts Hunters*, aside from the pseudoscience of pretending equipment legitimizes what they think it does, is that they assume anything they CAN'T explain is supernatural. That is the same thing that believers do, and is the exact wrong way to determine what is and isn't really happening. I find it the height of arrogance for people to assume they have an explanation, magical and mystical, aka "supernatural", that counters everything known to be real, just based on their feelings.

*I used to love that show, when it was guys being stupid running around in the dark, freaking themselves out. It used to be hilarious. Then they started to take themselves too seriously...

Edit - corrections and addition

I spent a night in a grave yard....Afghanistan....grown men....with automatic weapons....NVG's....ability to call on "God" to drop some heavy ass ordinance and fire power...MK19's.....50 cals...SAW's....240's......good solid chunk of metal that was called a 9mm Beretta that can thrown well....frags....incendiaries...never ever again...never....never want to try that again


I could not even imagine writing up an after action report on terminating a "ghost" with extreme prejudice....

Then two months later the US and Brit contingent gets "Kudo" for coming up with an improve zombie defense at Spin Budok in RC South Afghanistan....

 poppa G wrote:
Demons, that is all.
My house had a demonic possession, never been the same since. *shudders*

I saw my old dog walking in the house. Once the lights were on. I was on the phone. He walked in, wagged his tail, woofed, and walked back out. The second time was at night. Getting ready for bed, went into the bedroom and he was laying there, sleeping and snoring like he always did. He just sort of faded out. Both times didn't feel creepy at all, but warm and reassuring that he was ok.

Now in our old house with the Wife there were lots of windows and I always thought we were being watched. But we had a stalker at the time and WERE being watched.

I don't really believe in ghosts or ghost stories, but on the day I received my EGA at the end of the Crucible (in Marine Corps boot camp, you become a Marine about a week before you graduate in a small private ceremony with the rest of your recruit company after completing a grueling 72 hour field exercise known as "The Crucible".) my DI handed my my EGA, shook my hand and moved on, as I returned to the POA my eye was drawn to the berm right on the edge of the parade deck in front of me, a man in WW2 era service dress greens with 1st MarDiv insignia on his shoulder looked me right in the eye, saluted, about faced, stepped off and vanished. I have no explanation other then sleep deprivation and I'd swear before a court it was my grandfather.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Assuming that they aren't and that other worlds, beings, and dimensions don't exist is human arrogance.

You have it backwards, insisting that something only you can see and experience is real, is true arrogance.

Discounting something that there is no physical objective evidence for and is in contradiction to a vast amount of scientific empirical knowledge is what is called "reasonable" not "arrogant".

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
My house had a demonic possession...

No. It didn't.

You can't prove i didn't no more than I can prove I did.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I don't really believe in ghosts or ghost stories, but on the day I received my EGA at the end of the Crucible (in Marine Corps boot camp, you become a Marine about a week before you graduate in a small private ceremony with the rest of your recruit company after completing a grueling 72 hour field exercise known as "The Crucible".) my DI handed my my EGA, shook my hand and moved on, as I returned to the POA my eye was drawn to the berm right on the edge of the parade deck in front of me, a man in WW2 era service dress greens with 1st MarDiv insignia on his shoulder looked me right in the eye, saluted, about faced, stepped off and vanished. I have no explanation other then sleep deprivation and I'd swear before a court it was my grandfather.

Whoah, that's pretty cool! Real or not!

Man you guys suck the fun out of this kind of thread. As someone said earlier - ghost stories are fun to read if you're in the mood.

Personally, my last workplace I was told was haunted in the way most people like to say their workplace is haunted. The IT guys even had a name for the ghost - Toby. Any time something wasn't where it was supposed to be, it was Toby, rather than some thoughtless employee moving something and not telling people.

They changed shifts for everyone to make sure someone was in the office until 6pm every night, and I drew the short straw of Friday night. So not only was I the last one out of IT on Friday, because it was Friday, everyone left early to hit the local bars, so I was generally the last one in the entire building.

Anyway, with about half an hour to go, I heard someone rummaging through stuff downstairs. IT was above the warehouse area, and the floor was gakky old wood that sound carried through. Where I heard the runmmaging, there was one way out - up some stairs that came out at a door behind me. I didn't really pay attention, since it could have been any old animal down there - maybe a rat.

Then I heard the downstairs door slam. Like, slam. Hard enough that if it had a window, it would have broken. Then I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, loudly. I turned and looked through the window on the upstairs door, and there were no lights on in the stairwell, nor downstairs, so there definitely was no one down there. As the thudding footsteps got near the door, they just faded away. Then the hairs on the back of my neck pricked up.

I booked it. Grabbed my bag, turned my PC and the printer off, and got the feth out. On the way out, there actually were two people left in the building, two sales people, who were working late. They asked why I was still there, and I told them I was meant to be back until 6pm on Fridays. They just said to go home, there was nothing to do anyway. I intended to. I asked them if they had been downstairs - they hadn't, there was no reason to. All work downstairs had stopped at about 3pm when all warehouse staff left, and there was no night shift.

Yeah. I'm glad I don't work there anymore.

 Manchu wrote:
They should do an episode where they all pile in the bathroom and dare each other to say "Bloody Mary" three times into the mirror.

That's standard protocol for when you wake up still drunk from the night before.

 -Loki- wrote:
Man you guys suck the fun out of this kind of thread. As someone said earlier - ghost stories are fun to read if you're in the mood.

Not really as it's just people making things up, something that is true or possible is more interesting to me.

As a child with an extremely vivid imagination, I could never sleep with the lights off. I grew out of it, but during a 3 moth study abroad in experience in Buenos Argentina, I had one of the scariest experiences of my life. It is an extremely old city. Mix that with the dirty war not even 50 years ago, and you have a setting for some wicked stories. Anyway, I stayed with a host mom in an apartment in a quiet neighborhood. We were the only ones in the apartment. It was very late and she was asleep. I walked down a long hallway to the kitchen to grab some water before bed. When I flicked on the light switch, the light bulb in the kitchen ceiling came on very brightly and then went out violently. The way it happened and the fact that it was very late at night scared me. I ran into my room and closed the door. It was closed tightly, but not locked. Then as I stood there, the door opened all by itself. I was so scared that I reverted back to my childhood self, jumped under the covers and later fell asleep.

I was convinced that it was a ghost, but the reality is that the light practically blew up because the electric current in Argentina is stronger than the U.S., so when you blow a fuse or blow out a light, the effect is stronger there. Also, it was an old building so the door probably opened due to differences in pressure between the hallway and my bedroom. Completely explainable. Then things got actually scary.

The next day I joked with my host mom that her house was haunted. Apparently, South Americans are extremely supersticious and it is very taboo to talk about ghosts in someone's house. This was also before I had found out that her husband had passed away a few years prior. Within a day, the study abroad director was at my house having a serious conversation with me. I thought she was going to tell me that I was just being immature. Then she goes, "some people are much more in tune with the spirit world". They even made me go to what they called a therapist, but she did all this weird stuff with techniques I have never seen before in the States. I just shut my mouth, apologized to my host mom, and realized that there are people out there much crazier that I am.

And this all happened because I was startled when I blew a fuse in the kitchen.

 Cheesecat wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Man you guys suck the fun out of this kind of thread. As someone said earlier - ghost stories are fun to read if you're in the mood.

Not really as it's just people making things up, something that is true or possible is more interesting to me.

Mine isn't made up, though I'm not sure I'm going to convince anyone. I'm also sure there's a perfectly logical explaination, even if it's as simple as one of my collegues who left decided to play a trick (though I don't know how they got in that room when the only entry and exit is the door near where I sat).

It's still fun reading some peoples accounts of stuff that's fethed with their perceptions of the world around them when it happened.