Ever had a supernatural experience?

MarketRabbi · May 3, 2004

Quote from axeman:

Excuse me... but what are you talking about?

Where is the "coincidence" part of this story??
Are you saying that your grandma dreamed that her
brother came to her and told her the he is dead,
and then LATER she found out that he really was?

Explain.

peace

axeman
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Axeman, that's exactly what happened. (With my great-AUNT )

All the best,

Phil

MarketRabbi · May 3, 2004

Quote from rowenwood:

My Jewish relative, you're fucked.
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Rowenwood, my friend, that's not a very scientific answer, is it?

All the best,

Phil

axeman · May 3, 2004

Many supersitious beliefs arise from a basic misunderstanding of simple statistics.

Its called "confirmation bias". You typically see shoe and people
like marketrabbit doing this all the time.

http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

peace

axeman

axeman · May 3, 2004

Ok.... now im gonna ask you the same question I asked SHOE.

People all over the world dream about friends/relatives dying.
Or something similar... a dead relative comes to them in a dream.

Simply probability tells us that X% of the time, THEY WILL BE RIGHT. The HAVE to be.

So now you must provide me with evidence, that THIS case
lies OUTSIDE of the expected statistical norm, and is therefore
not mere coincidence.

Can you do that?

Clearly.... anytime someone has a dream like this that turns
out WRONG, instead of right, it is quickly forgotten and not
reported nearly as often as when they are RIGHT.

Read the article about confirmation bias I just posted.
There is nothing strange going on here as far as I can tell,
just human nature.

peace

axeman

Quote from MarketRabbi:

Axeman, that's exactly what happened. (With my great-AUNT )

All the best,

Phil
More...

rowenwood · May 3, 2004

Quote from MarketRabbi:

Rowenwood, my friend, that's not a very scientific answer, is it?

All the best,

Phil
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"You can call me a car lover because I love it in the motel."

ShoeshineBoy · May 3, 2004

Well, you guys accomplished your goal: it appears you killed the thread. You filled it with pages and pages of irrelevant debate and trash talking. Well done...

rowenwood · May 3, 2004

I've a penis.

Nordic · May 3, 2004

Quote from hapaboy:

A few days ago I turned on the radio and a show called "Coast to Coast" was on. The discussion was about ghosts. My first instinct was to laugh it off, but then I remembered a supernatural occurence of my own:

When I was 15 years old my family was living in Cairo, Egypt. One night my parents and sister were out, and I was alone in our apartment.

Back then I was a major Stephen King fan, and I was reading Salem's Lot, a vampire story. The paperback I was reading had on its cover the green face of a little child, and from the corner of its mouth was a trickle of blood.

Anyway, I was sitting in the living room with my feet propped up on our coffee table. Immediately above the coffee table was a small chandelier, which was attached to the ceiling by a two-foot section of brass chain.

I had been reading for about an hour and arrived at a particularly scary point of the book. I was pretty worked up, and I was getting scared to simply turn the page, afraid of what was to come.

Then this sequence occured, very fast, all within 30 seconds to a minute:

Suddenly the room became cold, and, I don't know how to explain it any other way - I felt a presence. I was certain that someone - or something - was in the apartment with me. Close to me.

I slammed the book shut, and sat there for several seconds staring at the cover of that child's face with the blood trickling down one corner of her mouth.

That little girl's face started to, well, throb. Like her face was trying to detach itself from the book cover and leap up at me.

Horrified, I threw the book down on the coffee table. As I did so, the room got even colder.

Okay, here's where it got REALLY weird:

Not only did the room get cold, but a wind started to blow around me. Mind you, the windows were shut and the AC wasn't on. It was dead still in that apartment.

I had the distinct impression that this chilling wind wasn't in fact a wind, but the actual shape/form of that presence that was in the room with me. I could actually make out a subtle form of something, very indistinct. When I looked at the wall where this shape was, for example, there was a distinct difference between the normal shape of the wall and the portion where this shape was. This all happened very fast.

Suddenly, this shape came right at me and THROUGH me. I felt icy cold, like I had suddenly been thrown into a tub of ice water.

(Now, up until this point, you could probably make several assumptions about the phenomena I'd witnessed. But you'd be wrong. First of all, I wasn't on any drugs, legal or otherwise, when this happened. I hadn't been drinking any alcohol. I wasn't sick.

Assume, however, that I WAS in someway, not myself. Maybe I ate something bad for dinner, for example. In any case, it would not explain what happened next: )

A split second after that icy shape went through me, I looked up at the chandelier. I just KNEW it was going to fall. I knew it so matter of factly that I actually said out loud: "THE CHANDELIER IS GOING TO FALL."

Right after those words escaped my mouth, that chandelier indeed came crashing down on our coffee table, narrowly missing my feet.

Man, I jumped like the Hounds of Hell were on my tail. I ran around the apartment and turned on all the lights in every room. My heart was beating like a triphammer.

Okay, now maybe you're thinking that the chandelier fell because it was old, that it was just coincidence. But no. That brass chain connecting the chandelier to the ceiling? It was shiny and brand new. Part of the chain still remained imbedded in the ceiling. The link of the chain that had been connected to the part still imbedded in the ceiling had these incredibly smooth.....cuts. Something had sliced that chain like a hot knife through butter.

My parents came in the door a few minutes later, and the first thing they saw was that chandelier strewn across the coffee table. They laughed off my story but were unable to explain why the point at which the chain had detached itself was so smooth. Nor could they understand how, or why, I would have said "the chandelier is going to fall" out loud just prior to its doing exactly that.

So endeth this (true) tale.

I expect jokes and insults to follow, but hopefully amid all of that there will be a sharing of other TRUE experiences. I have another experience to tell of, not as exciting or dramatic as this one, but I will post it later.
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I'll say one thing, your above description "grabbed " me like a good book

MarketRabbi · May 3, 2004

Quote from axeman:

So now you must provide me with evidence, that THIS case
lies OUTSIDE of the expected statistical norm, and is therefore
not mere coincidence.

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Hi Axeman,

Let's think a minute here. The different types of dreams one can dream are basically infinite. But infinite is a pretty big number, so let's say that there are one million different dreams a person might dream any given night. Now, between the age of 10 and 80 there are 25,550 nights. 25,550 nights went by w/o her dreaming that particular dream. And only right after her brother died, did she dream THAT PARTICULAR DREAM, rather than 999,999 other dreams. Oh, and a dream so vivid she wrote a letter about it.

So, in order for you to be right, you'd have to prove to me that dreams vivid as to make one write a letter do actually happen often. Problem is, I've never heard of another letter like that being written. Have you?

I'd say statistics are rather on my side.

All the best,

Phil

ShoeshineBoy · May 3, 2004

Quote from rowenwood:

I've a penis.
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That's great. Another relevant comment. Thx for adding that to the thread...

Any other witty comments you'd like to share?