Any stories of the unexplained?

[CanadaDoll]

[QUOTE: Joie de Vive]
Actually, not necessarily a ghost. I've read accounts, I can't swear by accuracy, of a woman who used to dream of roaming around this big old mansion when she was asleep. Well, from what I remember, she was from the States, and on a visit to the UK, she took a tour of this mansion. She kept saying: "This is my house!! The one from my dreams!" I guess she about scared the pants off the people who worked there, because they recognized her as "the ghost". I don't know what this phenomenon is called, or even if the story is accurate, but it would offer a second, and slightly less spooky explaination....[QUOTE:Joie de Vive]


Maybe she was having OBEs, Out of Body Experiences?[huh]
Either way that's an interesting story Joie.

 

[Gibson]

I've not experienced anything myself but this story was posted a few years ago on a forum I frequent. It gets brought up at least once a year (usually around Halloween or when other "ghost threads" start).

"TRUE STORY
Let me start by saying: No alcohol, drugs or any other mind-altering substances were involved, and I've not told anyone this story except my wife.

In November 1978 in deep south texas, I was driving home around 1:00 a.m. and came to a 4-way stop in a sparsely populated area. As I started to turn right, I noticed about 100 yards ahead what appeared to be a baby around 3 years old standing in the middle of the road wearing nothing but a diaper(remember, this was November) holding on to the collar of a very large german shepard. I was able to guess at the age of the baby, because he/she was about the same height as the dog.

Anyway, I stopped my turn and drove towards this spectacle, as I was concerned for the safety of the child. I wasn't feeling anything spooky(yet). As I approached them, the kid turned away from me and began to run away from me right down the centerstripe AT FULL SPEED with the grace and coordination of an olympic athlete. I say at full speed, because the dog was not trotting, but running with him. The kid was still holding on to the dog's collar.

I stopped the car and when I did, they stopped too. So I started towards them again and when I did, they darted off into the brush. I just blew it off and put the car in reverse to get back through the intersection, and when I did, they came out again. This scenario happened 3 times, each time I was getting closer to them. On the 4th time, all of a sudden, I had the coldest, deepest fear come over me like a blanket, goosebumps covered my entire body and I began to tremble, and as God as my witness, a little voice came into my head and told me to turn around and don't look back. Felt like one of those dreams when you're trying to run and your feet can't move fast enough. I hauled @ss home(about a half mile away), and RAN in the house as fast as I could! It felt EVIL!

That in itself is strange, but here's where it really gets weird. Over the years, I've heard the same story from at least 5 different people who I'd never met before, the latest being 3 weeks ago from an eighty year old distant relation at an aunt's funeral.

In addition, around 1990-92, M.C. Hammer had a video out where he and his band end up in the basement of a spooky house where there was a halloween-type costume party going on with all the devils and demons and such, and in one of the scenes, A KID IN A DIAPER HOLDING ON TO A GERMAN SHEPARD walks across the screen - I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that!"

 

[Dr Doran]

I don't think boyscouts wear dresses though.

Depends on the name of your troop.

 

[Miss Sis]

If I may interject.

Your dream wasn't a typical dream, your Nana REALLY did come to you.

That thing over your friend was her spirit guide, or a family member nothing to be frightened of though it can be frightening. One of my friends has a orange glow around her a lot. Mine is usually yello (so I've been told.)

Rosie, I always knew that WASN'T a dream. I just put that as most people seemed to think that's what happened.

My friend has all sorts of weird things happen to her. She has seen lots of things but she doesn't like it. I told her maybe if she accepted it it might not be so scary but she doesn't want to. The mist I saw round her did not seem friendly. I felt a dread come over me when I saw it and it left when we prayed. I often have feelings about things - whether good or bad. I can say that I have had as many good ones if not more than bad, so that's comforting.

Another time she woke in the night and saw a man standing bending over her sister's bed (they shared a room). She screamed out and at the exact same time her sister woke to see the same figure peering at her and SHE screamed out too. Their mother jumped out of bed across the hallway and turned on the light to see what the hell was going on. My friend said the figure, which was still there, just slowly faded, although her mother didn't see anything. Later a lady told her mother that my friend always has spirits round her, especially lonely souls and lots of small animals as she is such a bright, friendly person. They follow her home!

 

[TheKitschGoth]

Years ago I was staying round a friends house, it was about midnight and there were 3 of us sitting in her living room, we weren't talking much, just relaxing.

In her living room was a painting of a river scene, with a boat and a rundown looking building in the background. It was one of those really amazing paintings where it could almost be mistaken for a photo, and we all got talking about it. Eventually we all decided to go and have a closer look at it, and admire the brush strokes. We must have been sitting staring at it for a good 15-20 minutes, discussing the two girls sitting in the rowboat.. before we realised there were actually 3 of them. We still don't know how we never spotted her, because she was creepy looking, while the other girls in the boat were either facing each other or looking out around the boat, this one girl almost seemed to be looking straight out of the canvas at us, she wasn't smiling and her eyes were just black. We got the creeps and decided to get out of the room.

Later we were discussing the painting when one of us mentioned the man in the picture, and wondered why he was standing outside the building watching the girls. Which was weird, because I could have sworn he was standing on the footpath on the other side of the river to the building, and my other friend swore he was stood under a tree furthest from the building. But we all described exactly the same man.

We went back to look at the painting in the morning. The man wasn't there.

 

[Elaina]

I had one today.

I've been teaching my husband how to mess with EVPs and clean them up to hear stuff, and general tutorial for them, because he's interested.

So, I got fed up a few weeks ago and said "Look, this is how it's done. Mike and I'll show you" (Mike is my treadle sewing machine, whom my cat loves.) So I turned on my cheap recorder, went back to sewing and let it go. It taped for 22 minutes. 4 minutes into it, you hear a man saying "thank you" and then 19 you hear in a class A "here kitty kitty." (This was as clear as someone talking in the room. Nothing was going on but this light noise from the machine.)

Today, I get my mail and I've got a very nice recorder and microphone....for winning an amateur EVP contest I neither knew about or entered (and I know my husband didn't either, he's embarassed he's interested) on an EVP that never WAS on the computer to begin with, and an entry date a day after I recorded over the tape for something else.

 

[Dr Doran]

I had one today.

I've been teaching my husband how to mess with EVPs and clean them up to hear stuff, and general tutorial for them, because he's interested.

So, I got fed up a few weeks ago and said "Look, this is how it's done. Mike and I'll show you" (Mike is my treadle sewing machine, whom my cat loves.) So I turned on my cheap recorder, went back to sewing and let it go. It taped for 22 minutes. 4 minutes into it, you hear a man saying "thank you" and then 19 you hear in a class A "here kitty kitty." (This was as clear as someone talking in the room. Nothing was going on but this light noise from the machine.)

Today, I get my mail and I've got a very nice recorder and microphone....for winning an amateur EVP contest I neither knew about or entered (and I know my husband didn't either, he's embarassed he's interested) on an EVP that never WAS on the computer to begin with, and an entry date a day after I recorded over the tape for something else.

I have figured out what an EVP is from the context of several of your posts, Elaina, but can you tell me what it stands for acronymically?

 

[Elaina]

It stands for Electronic Voice Phenomena. Basically means you record on tape recorders (digital or mechanical and if using tapes open them and use them only one to avoid tape bleed through), and pick up "voices" outside the useful level of human voices (definition of "useful human voices" is 300-3500 Hz, where as EVPs often range from 30-300 Hz and over 5000 Hz). A true EVP's guidelines MUST fall under 300 and over 3500. The majority of them are recorded as a question and answer session (the person asks, waits and asks more) then answers are heard on playback. I personally have had no experiences of a verbal answer in real time, nor have I seen it in practice (I'm not talking psychics doing it, just normal people), although there are examples that do exist as if this is happening. Then there's classifications which are ranged from Perfect- or A-(higher range Hz, usually over 50 Hz and perfectly clear to everyone), Good-of B- which is lower/higher and you have to listen several times and/or amplify/clean out sound (minor work done to the EVP itself), Poor- Or c- where something is heard, but not what, and amplification/noise filtering can sometimes make it somewhat understandable (these are often the heavily metallic sounding ones manipulated to within an inch of their lives, and IMO absolutely junk) and the Reversed (R). I hate reversing them, I can say something and play it in reverse and someone is going to hear I planned on killing my cat, although I'm in the minority on that thought. [huh]

The theories of explanation are radio waves (similar to the radio from fillings phenomena, CBs, medical devices, microwaves), fakes, human psychology (hearing words when none exist), electronic device failure and feedback, and even some have attributed it to space noise. I don't know what causes it (but obviously I have theories), I don't know if it's real, but it certainly is interesting to me.

As to the one I did appearing in a wav file when I had not changed it, or keeping the actual tape, there is even explanations for that. While I'm usually fastidious about it, there is the possibility that my husband got up, put it on the computer and entered it. He claims to not have, nor do I remember him getting up to do it, but I do have to allow that to exist. Or my son did it (and he can, we've done it every Halloween for fun, and it's the only time he's allowed to mess with it: it's a matter of plugging the recorder in, turning on my program and hitting save) and sent it on my email to someone else who entered it, or the tape itself was actually sent in, and I mistaken recorded over another tape I have used in the past, and failed to notice it.

I do know this is more then you actually wanted to know.

 

[Dr Doran]

It is certainly not more than I wanted to know, and it is very interesting. The other explanans would be subvocalizations by the persons present. Here are a few things that make me think this is possible:
1.) I don't know about you, but sometimes I mutter to myself ALMOST silently.
2.) My wife sometimes, when she is in a flurry of distracted schoolwork, asks me a question and then asks it again because she honestly does not know whether or not she voiced it the first time.
3.) Many people move their lips when they read. This practice has become a marker of idiocy in the popular culture ... I do not really know why, as it seems perfectly fine to me. I suspect if a sensitive machine were recording, it would pick up subvocalizations that the reader had no idea he was emitting.
4.) Finally, I have met people who cannot suppress things like "ulp!" or "oh no" when something surprising happens -- for example, a friend of mine at school invited a particularly odious fellow into the room we were in, then realized I hated the odious fellow, and ACTUALLY COULD NOT SUPPRESS saying "Oh sh#$!" This must occur in the (almost-) silent realm too.
So couldn't people be VERY silently thinking to themselves and their vocal cords vibrating an amount small enough to not be noticed by themselves but large enough for a sensitive machine to hear it?
Just curious -- I do not rule out the presence of unhappy, frustrated energy from unhappy people remaining postmortem on a site, although I personally suspect (no evidence, just a suspicion) that if this energy CAN linger, it does not possess sapience nor does it have knowledge of its own existence.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I took this photo at Disneyland on October 8, 2015. Perhaps somebody can tell me what I'm seeing. Notice the trio dressed in the pirate costumes. Over the shoulder of the one on the left is something that looks kind of creepy. It doesn't appear that they're wearing feathers in their hats and it doesn't look like the woman's hair. Again, can somebody tell me what I'm seeing.