The Unexplained

[NoJo]

9:22

Arlene died a few hours after I got there. A nurse came in to fill out the death certificate, and went out again. I spent a little more time with my wife. Then I looked at the clock I had given her seven years before, when she had first become sick with tuberculosis... The clock was very delicate and often stopped for one reason or another -- I had to repair it from time to time -- but I kept it going all those years. Now it had stopped once more, at 9:22, the time on the death certificate!

I remembered the time I was in my fraternity house at MIT when the idea came into my head completely out of the blue that my grandmother was dead. Right after that there was a telephone call, just lke that. It was for Pete Bernays -- my grandmother wasn't dead. So I remembered that, in case somebody told me a story that ended the other way. I figured that such things can sometimes happen by luck--after all my grandmother was very old-- although people might think they happened by some sort of supernatural phenomenon.

Arlene had kept this clock by her bedside all the time she was sick, and now it stopped the moment she died. I can understand how a person who half believes in the possibility of such things, and who hasn't got a doubting mind--especially in circumstances like that--doesn't immediately try to figure out what happened, but instead explains that no one touched the clock, and there was no possibility of explanation by natural phenomena.
I saw that the light in the room was low, and then I remembered that the nurse had picked up the clock and turned it towards the light to see the face better. That could easiliy have stopped it.


-- From R. Feynmann, "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynmann!"

 

[Recidiva]

Arlene died a few hours after I got there. A nurse came in to fill out the death certificate, and went out again. I spent a little more time with my wife. Then I looked at the clock I had given her seven years before, when she had first become sick with tuberculosis... The clock was very delicate and often stopped for one reason or another -- I had to repair it from time to time -- but I kept it going all those years. Now it had stopped once more, at 9:22, the time on the death certificate!

I remembered the time I was in my fraternity house at MIT when the idea came into my head completely out of the blue that my grandmother was dead. Right after that there was a telephone call, just lke that. It was for Pete Bernays -- my grandmother wasn't dead. So I remembered that, in case somebody told me a story that ended the other way. I figured that such things can sometimes happen by luck--after all my grandmother was very old-- although people might think they happened by some sort of supernatural phenomenon.

Arlene had kept this clock by her bedside all the time she was sick, and now it stopped the moment she died. I can understand how a person who half believes in the possibility of such things, and who hasn't got a doubting mind--especially in circumstances like that--doesn't immediately try to figure out what happened, but instead explains that no one touched the clock, and there was no possibility of explanation by natural phenomena.
I saw that the light in the room was low, and then I remembered that the nurse had picked up the clock and turned it towards the light to see the face better. That could easiliy have stopped it.


-- From R. Feynmann, "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynmann!"

One of my favorite books, from my hero. I Feynman.

 

[RogueLurker]

Vana: something may just be trying to get your attention. It's not necessarily something negative.

I'm with Cloudy on this.

For my own experiences, I'm usually too obtuse to pick up on natural events - supernatural things would never register with me. But that doesn't mean I don't keep an open mind.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

The ghosts in my house are afraid of me. I'm not kidding.

I have heard footsteps when I was alone, walking through furniture on the floor above. My mother and brother have even seen things. But it always happens when I am in the other room, or not home at all.

The room I used to stay in had moving shadows that the cats were afraid of when it was my brother's room, but once it became mine they stopped being worried (maybe they just didn't like him? ).

My other brother used to hear things while trying to sleep in the room that is now mine, but I have yet to hear anything.

The ghosts in this house are afraid of me, and I take that as a compliment of my ferocity

 

[Recidiva]

The ghosts in my house are afraid of me. I'm not kidding.

I have heard footsteps when I was alone, walking through furniture on the floor above. My mother and brother have even seen things. But it always happens when I am in the other room, or not home at all.

The room I used to stay in had moving shadows that the cats were afraid of when it was my brother's room, but once it became mine they stopped being worried (maybe they just didn't like him? ).

My other brother used to hear things while trying to sleep in the room that is now mine, but I have yet to hear anything.

The ghosts in this house are afraid of me, and I take that as a compliment of my ferocity

Yeah, I never, ever SEE. I feel. So it's a lot harder to put it into words. "There's this...thingy and it's a thingy...and this thingy..."

Not so clear.

 

[Boota]

I usually don't talk about this, and I never try to convince anyone who refuses to acknowledge even the possibility.

I've seen spirits my whole life. I try to forego the term "supernatural" because it seems perfectly natural to me, considering it happens to me several times a day. I don't believe in angels or demons. I've never seen anything to make me believe they are anything but subcategories of spirits in general. Spirits are like people, some are good, some are bad. They have their own motivations.

The swingers club where I do security is haunted. The spirit there slams lockers, opens and closes drawers, shakes beds, turns lights on and off. My girlfriend and I work there during the week, while it's closed, and on occasion spend the night. This spirit, although I've never gotten a clear look, is definitely a man and he does a lot more to her than he tries with me. His intentions are harmless, it seems, and I don't get a bad feeling from him. (When I'm around something with bad intentions I can feel it, even when they won't let me see them.) That said, he seems to be getting more aggressive and I may have to do something about it if incidents continue to increase at the rate they are.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

When I was in my teens, my elder sister brought home a ouija board. My two sisters played with it a lot, however, the one time I touched it, the board flew across the room

 

[Recidiva]

When I was in my teens, my elder sister brought home a ouija board. My two sisters played with it a lot, however, the one time I touched it, the board flew across the room

Yeah, the one and only time I ever actually saw something was with a buncha kids and me heedlessly calling in "whatever."

And what I saw was really fucking scary.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I predict the mail (which is easy).

In Portugal?

 

[rgraham666]

Closest I've come to something supernatural was a dream when I was about 11.

Like all my dreams it wasn't very coherent. I knew I was fighting, running from place to place inside a large building made of stone blocks. The occasional window was a slit and through them I could see the sea. I woke when I looked down and saw I was wearing a surplice, white with a large red cross on it.

That wasn't the strange part.

A few years later I was reading a book on Malta and the battle between the Knights of St. John and the Turks. There was a picture of a room in one of the castles involved.

I'd seen that room in my dream.

Freaked me more than a little.

Other than that, I seem to be completely blind to that sort of stuff. Just as well. I have enough trouble with the material world.

 

[tickledkitty]

I've seen and felt some strange things all my life too, although I rarely talk about them.

The strangest was during a time of intense emotion in my family. My mother and I were leaving her house to go shopping. As she was coming out her back door, she lost her balance and fell off the top step backward (4 or 5 steps up from the ground, which is concrete). Directly under her was a large whiskey barrel filled with plants on a wide concrete sidewalk. As I watched her fall, it seemed to be happening in slow motion, and it appeared to me that someone I couldn't see caught her and moved her over the barrel and the concrete and laid her in the grass. I'm not sure how many feet that was, but she could not have pushed off to propel herself that far, especially given the fact that she didn't know she was going to fall. She also had the feeling that someone caught her, and she was just as freaked out about it as I was. She was not hurt at all, just shaken up.

 

[Belegon]

I 'm open to explanations... and to the possibility that some things are beyond our current level of knowledge.

I've had times of 'knowing' like some here have already described... I've also had times I felt things there was no explanation for...

The only thing I really know about it all is how little I know...

Be careful, Vana I'm glad you are protecting yourself.

 

[starrkers]

One day, during a cloudless afternoon in Southern California I saw a big, bright, red flaming ball in the sky. I watched it for several minutes and glanced away only because my dog was bugging me. When I looked up, though, it had completely vanished. A flaming, gaseous red ball in the sky completely vanishes. Strange. Then I ran inside to check the news to see what it was. No one reported it and there was no mention of it anywhere, as if I was the only one to see it.

I've seen something very similar, only it was late at night. A large, bright, flaming ball travelling across the sky at a great speed. It was bright enough to cast shadows. Then it just stopped being there.
We (my husband saw it too - we were travelling in the car) thought it was a plane crashing or some such similar, except it was too spherical and it disappeared. There was no news report or any other mention of it anywhere.