The Paranormal

[Natasha]

When I was about 5 or 6, I was at a cousin's house. To keep me entertained we were playing hide & seek. I counted she hid. Not long after I finished counting, I heard a noise from one of the rooms. The window was open blowing in cold air. So the atmosphere was already set, the chill, the shadows from the trees dancing on the wall. As you can imagine, it would naturally be scary for a child. All of a sudden this dark mass stands up behind the curtains and lunges forwards screeching. I s*** myself. But of course it turned out to be my cousin.

A few strange ghostly things have happened to me that I can't really explain, but I can explain the following. On the way home from my cousin's, I saw a ghostly figure.
I believe what I had seen was a projection of a visual image, stimulated by the terror which was invoked by the shadows and darkness, the same terror I felt when I saw what I thought was a monster behind the curtain at my cousin's house.

The visual projection thing is, I think, the best explanation for what I saw in the above case anyway.

I have had other things happen in recent years, but can't really explain them. They were really random and I discount the visual perception thing in those cases because, they happened when I least expected it, or when I didn't feel fear before hand.

[harry]

Two incidents I cannot explain.
A couple of months ago,my eldest son phoned me.He asked me if I had ever had a ring with a lions head.I had,I aquired it in Berlin in 1946,w hile serving in the British army..The only ring I ever wore.I lost it soon after returning to UK..My son was born in 1950.I am sure,and he is sure the ring had never been mentioned.I asked why he was ringing.He said he had had a vivid dream,in which he was searching a cupboard in our house in UK prior to our leaving for South Australia where we now live,and he had found such a ring,and knew it had been mine.

The second incident occurred in Jamaica,at an army camp in Montego Bay. A Jamaican fellow,my age(20)at the time was employed there.We became good friends. E arly one morning he came and told me he had to go immediately to Kingston.In a dream his mother had come to his bedside and informed him she was seriously ill in Kingston and he was to go there.Show ing my sceptism,he became angry for the only time I knew him,and stated we white people would never understand his kind of people or the power they possessed.

So I believe in the abnormal in those kind of situations,but have yet to hear a compelling reason for it.

[Scorpio]

Hi Beowulf

That was a fun coincidence, incidentally, I only live a stones throw away from Dr Shuker, although I must stop throwing stones at his house. I've never spoken to him but by all accounts he is a very nice man.
Some people, not all, attribute more significance to coincidence than others, it is also my personal belief that they are more likely to interpret what upon investigation is seen to be a mundane cause to being 'paranormal'
Going back to Swan pool. Nick Duffy of the West Midlands Ghost Society informed me that an early morning jogger had seen a Bigfoot walking across the adjoining fields.
Ok. A Bigfoot, in the West Midlands of England?
An alternative explanation is that the jogger had seen an angler, perhaps coming back from his ablutions, There is a corner of Swan Pool where the wind is constantly in your face, it's good fishing though, so anglers wear olive drab one piece quilted suits, moon boots and balaclavas.
The distance of the sighting wasn't known, but it's the interpretation of it that interests me, where I would think fisherman the jogger thought Bigfoot?
Who knows?
All the best.

Cant people from the West Midlands have big feet ?
Seriously though, people are such unreliable witnesses. Psychologists are perfectly aware of this,and anyone calling themselves a paranormal investigator should also be aware. All humans are vulnerable to giving fanciful explanations to strange/alarming phenomena.

[martin wilson]

Hi Scorpio

Well, Tolkien based the Hobbits on the people of the West Midlands, so it's all starting to come together.

I can absolutely assure everybody aural hallucinations are real, and astonishing in their complexity and detail. That's how I met Rob, who has Bipolar 1, and he would assure everybody that visual hallucinations are real.
This obviously is a delicate subject, perhaps it's better to examine consciousness which is not simply awake and asleep.
Simple tiredness can make you see things. hypnopompic and hypnogognic states of awareness, alcohol, narcotics, medication, sleep paralysis, temporal lobe epilepsy, hypnotism, all are differing states of consciousness.
So, whilst I take the Fortean view that the study of the nature of belief and why people believe things is a subject as least as interesting as the study of the paranormal, I still think the strangest place in nature is the one between our ears.
All the best.

[kensei]

Seriously though, people are such unreliable witnesses. Psychologists are perfectly aware of this,and anyone calling themselves a paranormal investigator should also be aware. All humans are vulnerable to giving fanciful explanations to strange/alarming phenomena.

I agree that people are unreliable witnesses, but only to a point. Two people might witness a car crash from two different angles. They might disagree on which driver was at fault, which car was going faster, or maybe even what color the cars were. But they will most likely agree on one thing- that they did in fact witness a car crash.

I feel that if the concept of people being unreliable witnesses was applied to everything the way it is applied to claims of the paranormal then there would hardly be any point to people giving eyewitness testimony about anything ever, in court or otherwise.

[Ginger]

I feel that if the concept of people being unreliable witnesses was applied to everything the way it is applied to claims of the paranormal then there would hardly be any point to people giving eyewitness testimony about anything ever, in court or otherwise.

An excellent point, IMHO.

[Scorpio]

Has anybody ever taken part in a paranormal investigation ?
I dont mean the shambolic things that you see on popular tv shows ( with people fumbling around haunted houses in the middle of the night with a tv crew ), but a orderly investigation with multiple visits to a single location with decent equipment in an attempt to collect useable data ?
i would dearly like to hear about the experience.

[Pcdunn]

Has anybody ever taken part in a paranormal investigation ?
I dont mean the shambolic things that you see on popular tv shows ( with people fumbling around haunted houses in the middle of the night with a tv crew ), but a orderly investigation with multiple visits to a single location with decent equipment in an attempt to collect useable data ?
i would dearly like to hear about the experience.

I belong to a message board at The Atlantic Paranormal Society.
It has a section for "Serious Investivators" which is were many people who do just what you suggest above discuss methods. You can locate the message board here:

http://www.taps18forum.com/

Most posters are fans of the TV show "Ghost Hunters", but no one is affiliated with it. We're all just trying to figure out some things, yet be practical about it.

[Scorpio]

Thanks for that.

[martin wilson]

We had Most Haunted for a while, some dodgy practices were exposed online by Casebooks very own Mike Covell I believe, apologies if I'm wrong.
A babble of demonic voices coming from my airing cupboard turned out to be an old Randall 4033 timer with worn bearings, and according to a member of a local forum, sadly since closed down, quite common with the old electromechanical central heating timers.
The replacement is a Horstmann digital, which doesn't seem particularly paranormal, just quietly gets on with it.

Trying to generalise about the paranormal is like trying to knit a jumper with two not especially committed greased eels, but I believe one essential in any investigation is be here now.

All the best.

[Wolf Vanderlinden]

Hi Scorpio.

Has anybody ever taken part in a paranormal investigation ?
I dont mean the shambolic things that you see on popular tv shows ( with people fumbling around haunted houses in the middle of the night with a tv crew ), but a orderly investigation with multiple visits to a single location with decent equipment in an attempt to collect useable data ?
i would dearly like to hear about the experience.

I worked in a haunted building for several years. We didn't investigate the haunting phenomenon so much as we lived with it day to day. We once tried to leave an audio tape recorder running overnight. It plugged into a wall socket for power and had a set of batteries, which I put in fresh at the start, as a backup. It worked fine when we tested it and fine after we retrieved it the next day but didn't work at all during the night.

If you want to read some excellent books on paranormal investigations that lasted weeks and even months, read anything by Richard Palmisano (from the Searchers Group.) Amazing stuff.

Wolf.

[Beowulf]

When I was a little girl, about 4 I think, I would sleep with my mom, like most kids do. My mother pointed out, so I would not be scared, that the springs in her bed were picking up a radio station. Still clearly remember putting my ear to the mattress and hearing the station playing, jingles, commercials, very obvious not paranormal. But very weird.

[Beowulf]

I have a book where Yoko claims she has seen John Lennon's ghost at their piano and around the apartment in the Dakota. So if that is true how can you say 'imagine there's no heaven' evidently there is some form of afterlife. Wonder what she makes of that.

[kensei]

I have a book where Yoko claims she has seen John Lennon's ghost at their piano and around the apartment in the Dakota. So if that is true how can you say 'imagine there's no heaven' evidently there is some form of afterlife. Wonder what she makes of that.

Well, people blow that one line of that song out of proportion. John was not saying he believed there was no heaven. He was just saying imagine there's not, just as he was also saying imagine there's no country and no possessions. Imagine how that would bring people together, sharing all the world. Plus, if John's ghost is still hanging around home it doesn't mean there's no heaven, he just might not have chosen to go there yet.

[GUT]

Well, people blow that one line of that song out of proportion. John was not saying he believed there was no heaven. He was just saying imagine there's not, just as he was also saying imagine there's no country and no possessions. Imagine how that would bring people together, sharing all the world. Plus, if John's ghost is still hanging around home it doesn't mean there's no heaven, he just might not have chosen to go there yet.

Spot on just as he said

Nothing to live or die for
No religion
etc etc etc

Things that do exist that HE thought the world may be a better place if they didn't.

Now I love most of John's music but I don't base my beliefs on it.