Reply to: More than meets the eye...

[alluvial]

How can I follow Herbet....?

Anyway, I've had a fair few myserious things happen to me, most can proobably be explained by coincidence or strong liquor.

However, when we moved into our current house, we had a lot of strange things happen to us, lots of items would dissapear even when you'd just put them down, somtimes only to reappear a few feet from where you'd put them. There is a glass cabinet that my wife inherited and it was lockable with a small key. The key disappeared shortly after we moved in.
The first night we spent in the house, we'd put our then two year old son to bed and he was sound asleep and my wife then went to bed whilst I watched some TV. Later I went up to go to bed but went for a tom tit first. Sitting there, I heard the sound of small footsteps running along the landing outside and worried that my son was awake and would fall downstairs (our previous house had bedrooms downstairs) I did a quick wipe and rushed out. My son was fast asleep still in his bed as was my wife.
Anyway, we continued to hear a lot of footsteps in the house usually on the upstairs landing but also sometimes going up and down the stairs. It never really worried us though, as for some reason we knew that there wasn't any malevolence involved.

After a couple of months, we had new carpet for the lounge where my wife's cabinet sans key was. I cleared all the furniture out, rolled up the old carpet, then the underlay and there, in the middle of the room was the missing cabinet key. Just conincidence you may say. But the found key also had the small piece of red cord tied to it that the original had.

The phenonema continued for a few years and then gradually stopped and I haven't heard anything for quite a long time now. Although there was a time a couple of years ago when I walked into the kitchen, after dark and as walked through the door, there was a little old lady standing there. She smiled at me and then was gone. That one spooked me for a bit.

[EternalOptimist]

Many years ago I went off to be a soldier. It was tough saying goodbye to everyone, especially my pet Rabbit, Herbert.
Years later I came home on leave. It was a cold wet pitch blank night when I got off the bus, a mile from home.
As I walked down the lane towards the river I became aware of a 'presence'. I stopped, nervous then I heard a sound. I looked down and there he was. Herbert, my pet rabbit. He looked younger and full of life, as if he was a young reborn bunny.
As we got closer to the river he became agitated and started to make little squeaky noises. I knew something was wrong. I stopped and looked around. Then I realised that I was about to walk off the edge of a huge dam. It must have been built whilst I was away. Herbert had come out in the rain and saved my life.

When I got home, I looked around, but he had gone, probably back to his nice warm hutch. I got indoors and told my mum and dad how Herbert had saved my life. They looked shocked
'but.... but it couldn't have been Herbert' said my mother, with tears in her eyes. 'Herbert is dead'.
'we ate him last Christmas with some baby potatos and some gravy'

[SimonMac]

Transformers, robots in disguise.
Transformers, more than meets the eye.

You are Megan Fox and I claim my five knuckle shuffle

[DimPrawn]

What a load of old claptrap.

Sasguru is going to make mincemeat of this thread. Where's the statistical analysis? Where's the mention of Bayes in talking about probable outcomes etc?

[MyUserName]

I don't suppose you could share it with the CUK lottery syndicate...

LOL - If only. I *think* it had to be dice games but I am not sure. It was a good few years ago. However, I am guessing if it actually worked then the book's author would currently be basking in their billions even after being banned from every casino in the world.

[mudskipper]

I got loaned a book on Christian black magic years ago and found a 'spell' which would cause you to always win at games of chance. I made a dice game up (we both roll two dice and the highest roll wins) and challenged my housemate. I said the spell and targetted myself. We rolled and I rolled a double 6. We both kind of stopped in our tracks and then did it again, I rolled a double 6 again. We did it a third time and I lost.

I am quite a skeptic and think it was nothing more than chance and good timing but I felt a little uncomfortable until I managed to lose a game.

I don't suppose you could share it with the CUK lottery syndicate...

[MyUserName]

I got loaned a book on Christian black magic years ago and found a 'spell' which would cause you to always win at games of chance. I made a dice game up (we both roll two dice and the highest roll wins) and challenged my housemate. I said the spell and targetted myself. We rolled and I rolled a double 6. We both kind of stopped in our tracks and then did it again, I rolled a double 6 again. We did it a third time and I lost.

I am quite a skeptic and think it was nothing more than chance and good timing but I felt a little uncomfortable until I managed to lose a game.

[MarillionFan]

I'm supposedly reknown for picking up on ghostly happenings / premonitions.

I have an extensive library on esoterica and collect antique books on folklore, magic, witchcraft. I got my first book on the subject at 10 and it stems from something that happened.

My father died when I was four and I subsequently got his room. Shortly afterwards our house had a poltergeist. Things would go bang, things move, disapear all alledgedly centred around me. A dark shadow would appear above my bed and no-one else would sleep in the room. It put the willies up my brother / sister etc and this later about a year.

Over the years I would see things that others would not and to be honest I never paid any attention. I was sent to see a child shrink for a while.At ten I met a gypsy at one of the fairs. My parents had been antique dealers and my mother still did it. At the fair the gypsy noticed I had some warts on my hands. They were pretty bad at the time and she offered to buy them, rubbing a half pence over them she explained to throw the money away and they would transfer to the next person who found the coin. Within a week they had all gone and the specialist my mother took me to was perplexed. I got my first book then.

Over the years there was to much to mention and I don't pay attention but others do.

When my daughter was born and she came home a few days old, she was in a cot at the bottom of the bed. We were due to go to Scotland a week later to visit family and her grandmother. In the night I woke up. Someone else was in the room, the hairs stood up, a feeling i had had as a kid lots of tomes and I when i sat up I could see a shadow hunched
over the cot. I jumped out of the bed and approached. The shadow was a person and as i recognised it, approached it and it faded over about 30 seconds. I got back in bed and went to sleep. I noted the time . 3am.

In the morning the phone went and it was my wife's mother. Her mother had died during the night and she was upset she knew her grandmother was desperate to see the baby.I then told them what I'd seen the night before. Id woken up and when I approached the cot that's who I'd seen, she'd turned and smiled before fading. Time of death was estimated at around 3am.

[Old Hack]

Well that makes sense. Religion is pretty much a universal belief - the nature of the god/gods differs but perhaps it is a fundamental characteristic of human nature that requires some sort of super-being to provide a meaning to life.

My FiL is a retired Canon, and I am agnostic, in many ways. I have some interesting conversations with him, in which he'll admit to using the bible as a guide, as a handbook on life, literally teaching through metaphors, and although he hates the way I put it, will often admit, that he readily didn't think things happened, but that they were stories on how you should live. I have since found a dutch 'church' who teach Christianity in this fashion.

When my eldest boy was three he quite calmly told both my wife and I about the ''old lady who would come into his bedroom at night telling him to get out because it was her bedroom, and the 'old man', who would tell her off for doing so.

Considering I fecking HATED that room, it made my skin crawl just being in there at times, it just put icing on the haunted cake.

When my wife and I sat down and talked about the things we'd noticed going on in the house we had had very similar experiences - dark shadows whizzing past the back bedroom doors and down the stairs, a shape appearing the corner of the sitting room and other weird tulip.

We don't live there now.

We live in a converted barn, and we, regularly, see a lot of 'movement' in one particular room. It's a room that had a well in that we capped. We also have a room, in which the eldest says she doesn't feel comfortable in, on her own. Strange really. Nothing malignant, so we've not really been that bothered by it, but I am looking forward to moving.

[bless 'em all]

I went, with a very good friend, and his 4 year old son, to the graveyard his dad was buried in. As we got there, the young lad looked around, looked puzzled, and asked his dad why all the people were staring at them. I still feel a bit shaky remembering that, and it was 8 years ago.

I'm a rational man, but ever since that day, I have had a bit more of an open mind about things...

When my eldest boy was three he quite calmly told both my wife and I about the ''old lady who would come into his bedroom at night telling him to get out because it was her bedroom, and the 'old man', who would tell her off for doing so.

Considering I fecking HATED that room, it made my skin crawl just being in there at times, it just put icing on the haunted cake.

When my wife and I sat down and talked about the things we'd noticed going on in the house we had had very similar experiences - dark shadows whizzing past the back bedroom doors and down the stairs, a shape appearing the corner of the sitting room and other weird tulip.

We don't live there now.

[scooterscot]

The question is...

What have you ever encountered that might lead you to think that there is more to life than meets the eye?

Have not yet encountered anything that would allow me to believe my experience of life is different from that of the next person. There are moments when images, even events, come to my mind 'pop', only to have the reality come to life before me weeks, months or years later. But I don't think of this as mysterious, but rather consequence of the random world we live in, in which I played a part in controlling events leading up the event I thought about earlier.

Yes there's much I don't understand about nature, but I refrain from labelling these experiences to bring some sense of comfort, but rather I think that truly if the universe is infinite, than all experiences are possible. Is our consciences capable of navigating this? Now there's a thought.

[mudskipper]

Synchronicity by C. G. Jung is one of the more fascinating books that I've read, which seems very relevant to this thread. I'm coming round to the idea that a lot of what happens in life can be a metaphor. I found myself having far more sympathy for religion once I considered religious teachings as metaphors rather than things to be taken literally (e.g. the idea of God as an archetype/symbol rather than an actual white-beareded old man sat up in space looking down on us).

Well that makes sense. Religion is pretty much a universal belief - the nature of the god/gods differs but perhaps it is a fundamental characteristic of human nature that requires some sort of super-being to provide a meaning to life.

[Jeff Maginty]

..

[mudskipper]

I went, with a very good friend, and his 4 year old son, to the graveyard his dad was buried in. As we got there, the young lad looked around, looked puzzled, and asked his dad why all the people were staring at them. I still feel a bit shaky remembering that, and it was 8 years ago.

I'm a rational man, but ever since that day, I have had a bit more of an open mind about things...

Some great examples at Parents of Reddit, what is the creepiest thing your young child has ever said to you? : AskReddit

Did a ouija board a few times as a teenager. Scared the tulip out of me.

Oddest thing that's happened to me was dreaming that my goldfish was floating, all bloodied and mangled, at the top of the fish bowl. Woke up in the morning and found the fish dead. Which was a bit creepy, but put down to coincidence. Later that day we got a letter to say my mother's best friend had been murdered - stabbed in her bed. Still feel cold thinking about it.

[mudskipper]

Transformers, robots in disguise.
Transformers, more than meets the eye.