Do you believe in the supernatural?

[gumgnome]

But if there's no proof and you acknowledge that there can't be any proof, then it's all just a day-dream. Sure, you can feel that way if you like, but it will only ever exist as a form of self-indulgence which deters attempts to explain itself.

[Matthew]

I defiantly do! Mostly because I think it's cool, also because some stuff has happened to me before.

[Midnight Butterfly]

Oh, I forgot to say this earlier. My house is haunted, always has been since I was a kid. Most of the wierd stuuf has gone away recently but I miss it. My little sister used to cry when something weird happened, but I used to look forward to something happening. Look at it this way, it has always been haunted in the 20 years our family lived in it and nothing has ever happened to any of use, so why should I be scared of it?
Nothing massive has happened, just people seing shadows behind them in the mirror, not just family but visitors have also said stuff.
And a few times I was lying on my bed reading when the lamp went out. I thought the bulb had gone but when I went to inspect someone had flicked the switch, yet nobody but me was upstairs. Same thing used to happen with the TV but no anymore .
The stairs still make noises sometimes, even though not one of the stairs makes a creak when you walk up them. It all good.

[PJ]

i do!

[Silum]

Well, I'm a Christian so I believe in the supernatural as the Bible describes it. Which is very much different than how most view the supernatural, or indeed, how most people view Christianity. Ghosts, ghools, magic, and fairies no, a layer existing in a dimension beyond ours with a level of spiritual warfare..yup.

[AndrewCrossett]

I believe provisionally in ghosts and Bigfoot, due to personal research (in the former case) and a large body of recorded evidence (in the latter.) I am not 100% certain in either case, however.

I believe that "UFO's" as we know them are primarily the result of experimental military aircraft testing during the Cold War. I don't discount the possibility (or even probability) of life on other planets.

The Loch Ness Monster legend is mostly due to the sightings of oversized eels in the loch.

Vampires and werewolves were invented during the Dark Ages to explain away serial murderers.

I believe both "psychic" phenomena and "schizophrenia" are caused by remnants in some individuals of the bicameral minds that all humans had in the pre-verbal era of the species. I'm not convinced that true psychic ability exists, although I'm open to the idea.

I don't believe in any organized religion or in the Bible as anything other than a human work. I believe in the existence of a creator and a "higher power," though I don't know if they're the same being or if it's possible for us to know anything about them. All religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, are simply various means of describing this higher power, and all of them are equal in validity and invalidity.

I don't believe in "magic" in the sense of spellcasting as seen in fantasy stories.

[Malsad]

Jul 6, 2009 19:52:11 GMT -5 Silum said:

Well, I'm a Christian so I believe in the supernatural as the Bible describes it. Which is very much different than how most view the supernatural, or indeed, how most people view Christianity. Ghosts, ghools, magic, and fairies no, a layer existing in a dimension beyond ours with a level of spiritual warfare..yup.

I have a very similer stance, with a few slight changes, such as magic, i belive that such a thing is real in two ways. One being that there are things in the world that science would tell us is imposible and two, that in the Bible it speaks agenst practiceing witchcraft, if such a thing didn't exict then why would it be refered to, and yes i know thatsome of yall will probly say something along the lines of, that the Bible is just a bunch of stories and parables, but i'm not talking to you.

and I also belive that demons can effect reality in various was including possion, mostly because i have seen it with my own eyes

But i still belive that there is a God that is more powerful than all of this, I have seen people live through and walk away from situations that should have killed them instantly, i have seen a missinaries jeep pass through a road in the middle of the nght that had been a death trap and completly unuseable for a decade, and I have meet a man who killed any stranger that atempted to walk into his village to teach the word of God, changed into a new man in God and become one of the most powerfull preachers that I have ever had the chance to meet.

[wenxina]

Just about everything was considered witchcraft, back in the day. Pagan practices have long been condemned by the Church, even in today's more pluralistic societies.
It's all just a way of describing something that's alien to you. If I told you that in some cultures, people eat pickled hamsters, you would probably retch and call it an abomination, which is what the Bible does. It labels certain things abominations because they are different from the set of beliefs that it holds to.

[Mathieu]

Jul 7, 2009 10:55:44 GMT -5 wenxina said:

Just about everything was considered witchcraft, back in the day. Pagan practices have long been condemned by the Church, even in today's more pluralistic societies.
It's all just a way of describing something that's alien to you. If I told you that in some cultures, people eat pickled hamsters, you would probably retch and call it an abomination, which is what the Bible does. It labels certain things abominations because they are different from the set of beliefs that it holds to.

Word.

[wenxina]

Which is not to say that Christians, or at least early Christians were the only ones to do so. All cultures have some form of xenophobia or another... it's natural to be uneasy around things that are foreign to oneself.
That's where the fear of the unknown mostly comes from. And many of these fears were manifest in a lot of the ghouls that bump in the night.
I will say, Malay folklore probably disturbs me more than most Western ones... ever heard of the toyol? Think zombie fetus that does your bidding and feeds on blood.

[Mathieu]

I heard a lot of stories about people who passed away and sent signs to their family, suposedly to let them know they were well (or at least that's the way it is usually interpreted of course).

When my Godfather died, I was told that all the clocks and watches stopped working in his house. But I didn't see it myself.

I heard a similar story about somebody I didn't know who had promised to send some kind of signal she was well after she'd pass away. The day she was buried, her whole family was gathered in her house and her old clock chimed for the first time in years (it was broken or something) and never chimed again. Just stories that I've heard.

One other story that I heard, and that I have a really hard time believing but also a hard time "not believing" (because my mom told me that one) is that when she was a kid, or a teenager, she once was with her cousins and they decided to talk to the dead. So they were at a table and they asked their late grandpa to move things around, scrabble pieces maybe, to form words and dates. And "he" would answer the questions correctly... but something happened, can't remember what she said, and they never did it again.

So that's why my mom is convinced there's an after-life and she convinced me for a while on that one... but now that I've grown up and that I question things more, I'm wondering if she made that up. But why would she do that?

So I do believe in supernatural a little bit, but I'll be able to answer absolutely the day I'll see one of these things for myself!

PS: Oh also, when I lived with my host family in Toronto... one day I was all alone in the house and things started falling off the shelves in the kitchen for no reason!! I was in my room, and there was nobody else there. There was no way these things could have fallen all by themselves in the first place and no way they could have fallen where they actually ended up. I had no explanation on that one. It was very spooky. And it happened twice. They must have thought I was a liar.

[Midnight Butterfly]

There were a plant in my great uncles kitchen that he always loved and cared for. The plant was perfect and had nothing wrong with it. It was there for a long time and he tended it as usual the day he died and the plant was fine as usual. The morning after my great uncle died the plant was dead. In one day it went from a perfect plant to completly dead.

[Overkill]

Nope, I'm a man of science but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in supernatural stuff. Like a wise man said once; "while i don't actually believe in magic, i don't dismiss that it exists".

[BenTaylor3907]

My views generally change quite a bit. So today, no. I do not believe in the supernatural.
Although I really want to. The paranormal is so interesting. I just haven't been convinced that its real.

[Rebecca]

The subject of ghosts came up with one of my co-workers a couple months ago and she told me two ghost stories that she personally witnessed.

Story #1: She and her boyfriend live in an apartment, which they were concerned was haunted. Apparently, every-once-in-a-while one or both of them would become "possessed" with an angry spirit and they would have a fight, but just a few moments later would snap out of it, and not even remember it.

Sounded like a young couple fighting, trying to explain it away. I'm still very skeptical.

Then she said that somehow she procured a nazar boncuk, which she brought home to hang in the apartment. As soon as she hung it on her door, a flash of light flicked toward it and it flung itself a few feet away and smashed on the floor, without being touched. She then researched this nazar boncuk, and came to find it is meant to protect the owner against evil, absorbing the negative energy. The mythos goes that nazars or "evil eye stones" come to you if you are in danger, and if you aren't in danger, you will lose it or misplace it.

After I heard that, it sounded a bit more "real".

Story #2: Spending the night at a friend's house, the first time she had been there, she got the wind knocked out of her walking in the front door. She really didn't want to go inside. Writing it off as nothing, she went inside, where she saw numerous bowls of salt placed in corners of the upstairs living room. She also noticed the stairs to the attic physically boarded off. When she asked about them, apparently they had been having some poltergeist-like experiences. In the downstairs den, whenever the owners moved any furniture, something would happen to harm anyone going in the room. A few days prior they had moved a couch or something and something pulled the mother's leg off a chair when she was hanging something... really banged her up. They said it was safe now, not to worry.

Again, I'm totally skeptical, probably people just being superstitious, an older woman having balance issues, not convinced yet.

So despite my friend's misgivings, she and her boyfriend end up sleeping downstairs, down the hall from the den where the "angry spirit" was. My friend being worried anyway couldn't sleep a wink. During the night she heard a scuffling on the carpet that nearly made her jump out of her skin. There was a cat that had been sleeping with her, but at the scuffling, the cat ran off. The scuffling kept happening through the night, keeping her awake worried. She tried to wake her boyfriend to get him to come with her upstairs, but he was annoyed at being awoken. Then apparently she heard footsteps and "felt the presence of someone standing over her". Freaked the eff out, she couldn't move. Then the blankets were RIPPED OFF HER BED sending her in a screaming fit. Her boyfriend woke up and was annoyed at her hogging all the covers, not believing her. After that it was quiet, but she still couldn't sleep.

In the morning, she looked down the hall and there was a big chest in the hallway, just in front of the stairs. The chest had been moved in the den the previous day.

That story really gave me chills when she told me

[shivi]

yes I do believe the supernatural was Santana's best album ever

[Silum]

Jul 7, 2009 10:47:16 GMT -5 Malsad said:

that in the Bible it speaks agenst practiceing witchcraft, if such a thing didn't exict then why would it be refered to, and yes i know thatsome of yall will probly say something along the lines of, that the Bible is just a bunch of stories and parables, but i'm not talking to you.

Make sure you take it in context though. In the same way that God orders us not to worship after idols and golden statues...not because the god of those pagan religions will somehow do something, but because it detracts from worship from him and it leads on a path away from Him.

Everything on this earth is created by God and so witchcraft would have to come under that aswell. That's not to say that demons do not have a hold on this earth and can manipulate the way we see things...but its certainly not that same. If you believe God is soverign then witchcraft just cannot exist, it goes against the order that God has created. What does exist is peoples temptation to lose sight of Him because of worshiping things such as witchcraft...or the giant golden statue etc.

[glorylover]

I've always believed very heavily in the supernatural as people in my family have a history of supernatural events behind them, this house and my grandmother's house next door have always done strange things....
I was staying over in my Granny's house one night when I was about 13, I was in bed in the big front bedroom and all was quiet. I was just settling down to sleep when I heard something, it sounded just like breathing coming from one corner of the room, and then it got louder as if it was closer to me, of course I freaked out and screamed for my Granny...

More recently in my own house we heard my mum shout for us from upstairs one day, she came downstairs shaking and pale, she told us that as she left the bathroom she looked across the hallway into her bedroom and she says there was a figure of a man standing by the bed.
My brother swears he saw a man sitting in one of our chairs in the living when he came downstairs late one night, he's a big fella and its hard to scare him, but I swear he was SCARED....but when he and I went back downstairs to check there was nothing there...

There have been a lot of other things, but I think those are the only times that I've ever felt threatened, or really scared by whatever's here...

So for the reasons and experiences I've described I most certainly believe in the supernatural.

[Mathieu]

You guys have truly spooky stories here. Gives me goosebumps.

[CowboyGuy]

When I was young (like 5 or 6) my Mom's boyfriend Scott said that he and his family all had spirit guides, Native Americans who would appear to them in dreams and tell them things. That these spirits followed them through generations from their ancestors who were white settlers in Arizona.

There was a time that I'll never forget. We went to Arizona to visit Scott's mom, and pick up a puppy that her dog had in a litter. She gave us (my mom and I) grey suede satchels with fringe and bead-work on the front. In the bags I found a few stones, and smelly herbs or leaves wrapped with string. I don't quite remember. She told my Mom that you burn the leaves after mashing them with the stone, then hang the bag in your doorway before you go to sleep to invite your 'spirit guide' into your dreams. My Mom was sarcastic about it, and asked "Oh right...where is your spirit guide?" to which Mrs. Saterla replied "Standing right behind me..." She was seated in a rocking chair. A few minutes later one of her dogs got up to leave the room and I noticed the dog walked way around the back of the chair, as if there was something unseen taking up that space!! I was scared, and wanted to go home. The next day, we got our new puppy and drove back to San Diego. Sometime later, my Mom asked Scott about that story before bed. He told her that when he was younger he used to go on spirit walks with his 'indian' and would pass out or be in a trance for hours. When he would wake up he would have no recollection of what happened to him! My Mom didn't like this story and tried to go to sleep. The lights were off, and it was dark in the room when my Mom says she heard a low, guttural, growl from the corner of the room by the closet. In her quietest whisper she said, "Did you hear that?" to Scott. He did hear it, and told her to "Sssh", and go to sleep. Apparently they were both completely terrified. And no, the puppy was not in the room.

Sometimes I am unsure if I believe in the supernatural, but stories like this make me second-guess myself. I'm a very face-value type, and have to see things to believe in them. But the way my Mom tells that part of the story...I know she isn't lying. Now-a-days she thinks that those things are demons messing with people.