Who else has had real spirit experiences?

If you are talking about ghost, I have had several.

i thought i had a couple…but @Girl_Powered made it clear in another post that there is no God (spiritual world). so i guess i havent…or neither have any of you. ;) lol.

Me. I have. Very nice, too.

like everyone, @Girl_Powered has the right to be wrong.

Define “real”

One time i was in my room and i had just finished watching ghost hunters and i said “If there is any ome in the room now make your presence known” and the TV just clicked off. Dont know how that happend though

i have throughout my life, between me and my siblings, i was the only one to see them.

I never have; every time I think I have a weird experience, it ends up being normal. I tend to be a big skeptic who doesn’t believe these kinds of things are real and that there are alternate explanations for the things people think they saw, heard, and felt. Doesn’t mean I’m out to convince people it’s not real. I mean, if I had a supernatural experience, I wouldn’t deny it. Most of the stories I write contain supernatural elements; I find it interesting, I just don’t really think it’s real.

Not many that didn’t involve a hangover, but I have had “strange” things happen. I get a lot of Deja Vu, and occasional premonitions. Nothing too freaky.

I like to watch the X files to get my share of ghosts and spirits.

I just know this thread is going to get me to lecture people about jumping to unjustified conclusions.

I died once.

No light tunnel, no whole life movie flash, no angels, no voices, no out of body experience, nothing, nada, zilch…..just the screen going blank.

How’s that for spiritual?

A couple weeks after my grandpa died I was on the computer and all of a sudden I could smell his aftershave, just for a second. I told my grandma I thought Pops had come by to check and see if I was alright.

My father had a heart attack, and his heart stopped in the hospital. When he was revived, he didn’t tell anyone of his experience for years.
What he saw was a long hallway, and a door at the end. He felt compelled to the door, but before he reached it, the doctors restarted his heart.
My father was, what I would call, a moderate Christian. After this experience, his spirital life was profoundly changed.
I know this isn’t exactly what the question is looking for, but @TaoSan‘s remark reminded me of this.

I think it all comes down to what explanation you want to believe in. I have had experiences that are strange and hard to explain, but it doesn’t mean that there were spirits involved. It would be convenient to do, but convenient doesn’t mean it’s true.

Just as we have optical memory we have scent and auditory memories. And as such we have optical, scent and auditory illusions with strong triggered memories, and we don’t always have justification for why these memories are activated. Sounds of moving furniture, and a sound of someone calling out can just as well an illusion.

I lived in a house where I had two incidents sounds of moving furniture. I think that was a case of auditory illusion, and that I was receptacle to that cause I didn’t like the place in the first place.

Sometimes I get shivers or a bad feeling about a room or a place. Another person would maybe call that spirit sensitivity. I call it bad decorating.

@TaoSan How’d you die?

I don’t care much for spiritual in a religious way, Fyrius. I’m a skeptic and I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits, but then I had an obvious experience. One that you can’t explain (honestly). I don’t believe in any gods or angels or demons. But spirits are real. I’m not to sure what makes them hang around certain areas more, but they are pretty prevalent on native reservations and places where the culture really believes.

I believe in the firm use of the powers of deduction when it comes to this sort of thing. Usually, noises, feelings of fear and paranoia, and odd electrical occurrences can be all linked to something happening in the environment. They can be debunked (just like those on the SciFi show Ghost Hunter’s are so fond of doing.) That being said, there are still allowances for paranormal activity. Things that cannot be explained off using logic or the environment as factors. I have personally had a few experiences that had no logical basis, despite my efforts to debunk them. And, as such, I certainly believe there are some things in life I just cannot explain away such as the possibility of ghosts or spirits. I think science needs to look further into the manifestation of energy phenomenons like EMF fields, et all.

I used to work in a building that was haunted. It was built on a civil war arsenal. We had a couple of cats who would just watch things go by when there was nothing there. I finally saw a ghost one night after walking my dog. She saw him too. He was wearing a uniform. The next day I went to tell one of my coworkers and and before I could even describe him she asked me if he was tall and thin and wearing a uniform. She’d seen him too but was too afraid to say anything because she thought we’s all think she was crazy. It explained a lot of weird things that had been happening ever since we moved into the place. We often had weird bad smells wafting by, phones ringing that weren’t hooked up to anything, radios turning themselves on, things getting moved around, etc. One day we discovered that one item had been removed from each of our desks and placed on the the floor in the front right side of each of our desks. (Took us a while to figure that one out!) The weird part was there was a voice that would speak through our PA system sometimes. It said, “My name is Hoffman.” and other little things like, “You heading out?” but my favorite was when I was working really late one night and no one else was in the entire complex. It was about 2:00 am and I heard, “You like root beer?” I was a bit freaked but answered, “Yeah…” and then he said, “We should get some.” I promptly went home after that. I never used to believe in ghosts before all that but I know they’re real now!

@loser Great story!! Goosebumps…

@Likeradar

Got stabbed in the chest with a 5 inch blade several times. Lung collapsed completely, massive internal bleeding. I went flatline on both EKG and EEG for about 90 seconds. I really shouldn’t be here lol! Funny side note, I got that EKG printout framed and hanging over my desk, whenever I get to bitchy about life it gets me grounded again, hehe.

@TaoSan Holy crap! Lucky guy!

@Likeradar

No luck, pure spite, hehe

@TaoSan God has a plan for you most defineitly!

i remember one sad night when i was 11 my mom had just died. (at the age of 32) she would always get on us about preserving energy, which meant turning off the lights when not in use….....well, this particular night we (my 4 siblings and I) were scared as hell after the coroner had removed my moms body from the house thinking her ghost was gonna come back and scare us. immediately we began to cut on all the lights in the house so we can see what was going on. we also tried to stay up as long as possible so we could see the sun rise and not have to face the evening too long….....but, appearently we couldnt beat the night and fell asleep while watching television, layed out in the middle of the livingroom floor in front of the floor model television. we all layed together side by side because we were scared, eventually waking up the next day with a big blanket draped over us and all the lights in the house were cut off. BY THE SWITCH! after we all woke up together looking at one another we tried to figure out who covered us up with the blanket and cut the lights off, soon coming to the conclusion that none of us did it because we were all too afraid to get up out of our spot. til this day we still say it was our mom before she moved on. i even tell my Lil ones about that night. mom wasnt playing about them lights even in the afterlife!!

i haven’t personally had any experiences past a Ouija board one or two, but i’ve heard some interesting ones from people i know well.

my mother absolutely does not (or claims to not) believe in any sort of spirits, etc. that being said, her ex husband killed himself a long time ago – this guy is my brother’s father. she knew this guy in new york. anyway, some years later after she’d moved down here to florida, my brother woke up in the middle of the night or something and told my mom he’d seen his dad. my mom was skeptical of course, since my brother was young and silly. but she found a cigar, or a cigar butt on the floor where my bro said he saw him, and no one else in the house smokes cigars. i don’t know what to make of the whole thing. but even after my mom tells me the story, she says she doesn’t believe in spirits, but she sure seems to . i don’t know.

also, my friend had this strange dream where she was hearing voices calling her name repeatedly, in a pretty eerie way. she woke up, and the entire shelf on her wall fell sideways, and everything on it just flew off the side and fell on the floor. i think that is pretty fucking creepy.

make what you want of things, but i do think that there are spirits and things of that nature. i don’t know how often they actually come in contact with regular living people, but i do think it happens. some ‘spiritual encounters’ are just things we interpret to be spiritual because we want to confirm what we already believe, but i certainly think there are things that can’t just be excused as confirmation bias.

@loser your ghosts sound like cool dudes.

@Kayla654321: “I don’t care much for spiritual in a religious way, Fyrius.”
It seems I’ve gotten a reputation for atheism, to a point where I can’t voice any sceptical thought without other people getting religion involved… Know however that I’m a sceptic first, and my atheism is a result of that persuasion. Religion is just one symptom of the bad habits I oppose.

I’d also like to clarify what it means to be a sceptic. Contrary to what most people seem to believe, being a sceptic does not mean being biased towards materialism. Being a sceptic simply means being difficult to convince.
Sceptics will gather around whatever world view a conservative interpretation of the evidence leads to; thus, if sufficient evidence of ghosts presents itself, it’s quite possible to believe in them while remaining a sceptic.

With that said, I’ll fulfil my prophecy now and get it over with. Let me address the following to you as well as to @loser and @fedupwitcaddys:

Inexplicable events do not prove the existence of spirits or ghosts. That’s jumping to conclusions.
The only thing something completely inexplicable proves is that your views are inadequate and deserve reconsideration, but that should leave you with a hole where the debunked views used to be. There’s no reason to immediately fill up that hole with belief in spirits or ghosts. The debunking of one view does not prove another, unless they’re complementary assertions like “P is true” versus “P is not true.” This is not our situation.

You all say you have been convinced of the existence of spirits/ghosts. So, what exactly are they like? How do they work, what are their properties, what can they do, what can’t they do? You probably think it’s unfair of me to ask so much, but if your evidence justified believing that spirits or ghosts exist, and not anything else, you must have very detailed knowledge of the phenomenon.
The common definition of “spirit” or “ghost” is a set of ideas. Every single one of these ideas has to be proven true in order to be able to know that they exist. It doesn’t suffice that something weird happens; you need to prove it was caused by an immaterial sentient being (with any other properties you may ascribe to them). Otherwise any other speculated explanation would be just as adequate, from telekinetic aliens to microscopic robot agents from the future.

Furthermore, on proving supernatural things in general, here’s a rule of thumb to keep in mind.

“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish.” – Hume (1748), On Miracles

In other words, belief in supernatural things such as spirits or ghosts is only justified if any conceivable alternative explanation would be even more unlikely. This is why you should always think of the infinite set of other conceivable explanations and try to exclude the alternatives with reasonable degrees of certainty before you accept any explanation.

Bottom line: It’s okay to say an event is beyond explanation, but if it is, leave it unexplained. Don’t fill up the hole with anything you can find.

So much for this session of Scepticism 101. Class dismissed.

Wow, how self-important is that.
@Fyrius You are not the teacher here. This is a collection of opinions, thoughts, and experiences. You should not put yourself in that role.
I don’t completely understand gravity. No one does. I am pretty sure it exists, though.

Hello again, my trolling friend.

Isn’t the premise of Fluther to teach each other about our fields of expertise? Scepticism and how to interpret facts is mine. I’m sharing my knowledge of the common pitfalls of this subject matter so as to help people avoid falling into them.

They’re real, I tells ya! Real!!!

The premise of Fluther is sharing knowledge. Sharing knowledge shouldn’t be done like you are talking down to someone. It’s insulting to have someone say they are your teacher, when no agreement has been made as to that.
The topic probably has few experts, so no one should present themself as the Authority. The contributer’s are discussing something unknown, and shouldn’t be berated for talking about mysterious things that happened. My father told me about something remarkable that happened to him. I didn’t stop him from talking about it, and demand proof.
US spelling is skeptic, btw.

@ Fryius I used to think that way. Just wait until you see one for yourself…

Maybe when I die, I can come back and haunt fyrius. Wouldn’t that be cool?

@filmfann will you be naked?

Everyone knows ghosts wear sheets! But, if it bothers him…

Now that’s a disturbing prospect. You’re enough of a pest while alive and on the other side of the world.

Disclaimer: I do not consider myself a specialist in paranormal matters, only one in valid deduction. I do believe I’m sufficiently educated in the methodology of the one field of human endeavour that specialises in drawing valid conclusions to consider myself so.
Authority is uninteresting anyway. Isn’t it more important what I actually said?

And I’m quite aware of the American spelling of the word sceptic. I’m also not American.

Yes, I know a lot of 21 year olds who think they know everything. That’s really when learning begins.
Regarding the Hume quote, what about those miracles, recognized by the Vatican, allegidly performed by now recognized Saints?

@filmfann Well, the vatican only has credibility if you subscribe to the whole package of religion, and hardly speaks for anything or anyone outside that realm.

Personally I place spirit encounters in the same drawer as alien encounters. If you want to believe in it it’s fine. It’s quite exciting to read about and I liked the stories on this thread. I would love to encounter a ghost. My mother claims to have done so, but it’s highly questionable.

I guess I would have to have the experience myself. It would give me a confirmation to that we are more than beautiful and fantastic machines. If you see one, send it my way. That goes for aliens too.

@filmfann
What about them? The quote applies to them too.
Are you saying these alleged miracles constitute an objection to Hume’s point? Do you think the Vatican’s acceptance of a miracle means it actually happened? Do you think the Vatican knows or cares much about valid deduction?
I doubt it.
The proper spelling is “allegedly”, by the way.

And I’d like you not to mock me for my age. I do not think I have all the answers. I know I have a lot to learn, and I’m working on it.
I am already an academically educated guy. I take pride in being intellectually honest, I keep an open mind to the ones with whom I disagree, I often reconsider my own views, I pay attention to whether I’m being reasonable and if proven wrong I will change my views practically at the drop of a hat. From what I’ve seen of you so far, I’m fairly certain I could teach you a thing or two in each of these respects.

I’d like to meet a ghost some day too. It would have profound repercussions for my world view. And that’s always awesome. :D

Then I hope you meet a ghost while you are still alive.

It would have profound repercussions for my world view.

That’s what I always feel will happen to me since I really don’t believe in ghosts; but if I saw one, I would be open to it and it would definitely change my worldview.

Me too.

I’d mainly want to know what they are and what they are like, so I can reshape my world view properly, instead of immediately subscribing to random cultural views of what ghosts are. Like white transparent dead people hovering in mid-air, trolling the living for the lulz.
If I ever meet a disembodied spirit, there would be so many questions I’d want to ask it.

I was too freaked out to ask questions. Mine just wanted root beer.

Very Long Post Coming…Sorry!

@Fyrius
No one is ever really convinced of ghosts until it happens to them for sure, especially if you’re a skeptic. I’ll tell you what happened to me, and you most likely will debunk it, but that’s fine.
———————————————
So I was talking on the phone with two of mi amigos. It was a three way call. And one of my friends Bianca started screaming and freaking out—keep in mind, this was when we were all younger and didn’t know how to, for lack of a better word?, recreate what happened. Anyway, me and Jesus were asking her what was wrong and yadda yadda. She said how this picture fell off her wall then typical ghostly things kept happening for a good fifteen-thirty minutes afterward (stuffed animals moving, chills, closet door sliding, doors opening). Finally I told her,” well if there is really a ghost tell it to call us.” OBVIOUSLY the ghost didn’t have a voice, but here is what happened. Bianca, still a little shaky, says out loud to call all three of us. We waited a couple minutes and then she told us to hold on because someone was beeping through. No one was there. Immediately after Bianca came back on the line, Jesus said someone was on his other line. No one was there. By now I was thinking it was some prank on me they were pulling and I was just playing along. Then there was a beeping on my other line and I was ready to hear something like,“AHAHA GOT YOU!” or stifled laughter or some bs. There was no one there except it also sounded empty. Like, echoey? I swear I’d never heard anything like that before and since. It’s damn eerie. Then I switched over and we all decided to go because we were spooked.

About two days later after we all had talked about what happened between ourselves and a few other friends, after we got over the initial ‘holy shit’s and ‘that was crazy’ routine, my curious pal Bianca decided to text it again (I left that part out. She had contacted the spirit with her phone! Pretty insane right?). We were at school and I saw her text “fred”. That was his name according to him. I saw her text, him, put the phone in her bag, and then a minute later it buzzed and I saw her take it out. There was a response and it was from her own number.

If any of you have any explanations for any of these happenings, please! I’m all ears
=p =l

Not going to lie, that is weird.

But as a short summary of my own Very Long Post up there: a proper interpretation of anything weird like this is not that it’s a ghost, but that it’s an unknown phenomenon, which may or may not be anything like what we call ghosts.
Invisible people may be our first association when we see something weird, but that’s just our brains looking for deliberate agents (“people doing stuff”) everywhere. We’re all innately predisposed to mistake shadows for burglars, but never to mistake burglars for shadows. It’s a result of the fact that in nature, where predators can lurk in every shadow, a false positive can only startle you for nothing whereas a false negative can get you killed.

I’m a bit confused about the story though. You say your friend contacted this “Fred” with her cell phone. How did she do that? Did she call a certain number? What number did she send her text to?
A response from your own number could just be a message saying your text couldn’t be delivered or something. What was in the response?

I could try debunking the rest of your story, but I can only give you my contrived speculations, and I figure that doesn’t really help. If you want to know what really happened you’ll need to find out more details and look at them with an open mind.
For example, how was the falling picture attached? Would there be any way to find out the number the ghost called from? Was a window opened anywhere when your friend felt chills and noticed doors moving? In what way did the stuffed animals move; did they move as a whole or just a limb, and all in one direction or in a more complicated way?

I love it when Atheists tell people to have an open mind.

Well, you’re one to talk.

to be honest I’m an atheist too, so you can just imagine the trouble I had when all this spirit business started happening.

@Fyrius

That’s a good question about the cellphone thing. When she first tried to contact him, she used one of those handheld messaging type devices. The ones where you buy two at a time and two people can use it from across the room. Do you know what I’m talking about? And I have no clue how those work. All I know is that after she asked him things on there, it texted her phone from her own number. I guess he got tired of using that tween messenger thing? hahaha

And according to her, the stuffed animal floated across the room.

@filmfann

In that case, the only one who can have an open mind is an agnostic.

@Kayla654321: You mean a walkie talkie?
In that case, that’s a simple radio wave-based device. Since there are so many things that use radio waves, and it will receive anything broadcasting at the same wavelength, it’s rather easy to receive something other than the other walkie talkie with one.
I remember hearing radio channels on a walkie talkie as a kid. I remember eavesdropping on bits of what we assumed was police conversation with one. I’ve even heard an anecdote of admittedly questionable reliability of a kid who accidentally contacted an aeroplane with one.
So it’s not hard to explain hearing things from a walkie talkie without anyone talking into its counterpart. If that was one of the things that spooked out your friend, that’s one less mystery.

If she mentioned her cell phone number to “Fred” and he answered her questions by texting her, it could just be a random neighbour with another walkie talkie and a cell phone, who was bored and/or lonely enough to answer. Or in the mood for a prank.

Stuffed animals floating around would be harder to account for, without resorting to explanations like hallucinations or dreamed memories mistaken for real ones. The laws of gravity are usually rather serious about their job.
Maybe we could make sense of it with some more details. Like the kinds of toys, how many, did they float around at the same time, did they keep floating for just a second or longer, around what height, what kind of room was it in, what time of the day, et cetera.

But by all means, if it’s too much of a bother to find out about that, never mind.

@Fyrius If that girl has an obnoxious brother and his friends, it’s likely less of a mystery. It might also be a “funny” hoax of the friends of @Kayla654321 that has gone a bit far.

Or there is a ghost named Fred.

@Fyrius

No :p
I know what a walkie talkie is and yes I’ve heard people before through the radio waves…Once I heard it on my T.V.! But these things weren’t walkie talkies. I don’t know what they’re called! They are just these strange texting devices that are just meant to be used across the room or at least not very far. When I witnessed her talking to “Fred” it was during class. I also don’t mean to sound mean when I say this but not too many of her friends are or were quite smart enough to pull a techie type prank like this ha. And to satisfy some of your curiosity, the floating toy was a stuffed Tigger. :D
It just moseyed across the room in midair.

But anyway…there’s my little ghost story. Not necessarily trying to convince anyone of anything, just sharing my weird experience. I love to hear other peoples’ stories too. That cigar one is especially spooky. He could have burned the house down! :p

Edit: I looked and it was something like this—- > http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GadgetGuide/story?id=3832331&page=1

@Kayla654321, what I notice about your story is that everything depends on Bianca’s word. She is the only one who claims to have experienced anything.

Jeruba,

Yeah it seemed that way until I saw the cellphone thing for myself in person.

Cellphone too. She controlled it. You can arrange to have a message delivered after a delay.

The problem I find with the question is, “real spirit experiences”.
I will go as far to say, we know something is going on. Not sure if it is a “real spirit experience,” or just mental projection.
If you want to believe it enough then you will see it. Even on a sub conches level.
I firmly believe there are no such thing as “real spirit experiences”.
Because of that, even when I am in a location known for hauntings.
The only spirit I come across is at the local pub.

Sub conches means under the sea shells, right?

Yes, that is where you will find the little ghosties.

@fedupwitcaddys There were other adults in the house, I assume…..
Well, my house is well over 100 years old. It’s a story and a half, my room is downstairs, my kids’ rooms were upstairs above me. Soon after we moved in I was awakened at about 4 a.m. by someone walking about upstairs. I got up to check on the kids…they were sound asleep. I just thought, “Well, maybe someone was sleep walking or something.” I ALWAYS look for the logical first. Well, it started happening every night, at about 4 a.m. For the first week I’d go check, the kids would be sound asleep, and you know, you can tell when someone is really truly out and hasn’t moved! I didn’t feel any threats, or afraid, so I quit checking on them when the dude started walking around, but I’d lay quietly and listen very carefully. It sounded like a large person with very heavy boots on. Then “he” got to the point where I’d hear him coming down the stairs, and just as he’d get to the bottom, it’d be gone! This was an every day deal, starting at 4am.
If there ARE such things as ghosts, I’m thinking that was the ghost of the farmer who originally built the house. This house is on a large corner lot, easily 20, 30, 40 years older than any other house around. I’ll bet at one time everything I see out my windows…other houses, etc., were part of his farm land. And I think he got up at 4 a.m. for to milk the ghost cows.
Now, all my super smart, geeky, scientific, atheist friends are going to point and jeer at me and I DON’T CARE!!

(points and jeers at @Val123)

In all seriousness, I think you’re making an important mistake at the following point:
“Soon after we moved in I was awakened at about 4 a.m. by someone walking about upstairs.”
Correction: you were awakened by something that sounded like someone walking about upstairs.
You probably didn’t even notice it, but you’ve already drawn a very strong conclusion here; there’s someone walking around upstairs. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions like that. First observe objectively, then try to interpret.

@Fyrius Of course I came to the conclusion that someone was walking around, because there were two kids sleeping up there and I could hear someone walking around in their room! In my daughter’s room to be exact. And when you have kids, and they, or someone is apparently up and walking around at 4 a.m. on a school night, it’s best to check it out. Checking on the kids in unusual circumstances is just one of the silly kind of things Moms do.
Or are you saying I should have waited until I was SURE it was a crack head with a gun or something before investigating.

@Val123
I hope you’ll excuse me for approaching this with the objectively rational mind-set of a scientist rather than with the protective instincts of a mother.
It’s understandable that you’d jump to this conclusion, and for all practical purposes you were probably right to in the given situation. But it’s still a conclusion that is jumped to, rather than reached through any reliable process of examination, which is what is relevant in this situation, a discussion about experiences with a phenomenon of questionable veracity. :)
Particularly after you found out there was no one walking about up there, or at least not a physical person for whom it would make sense to tread on the ground, you should reconsider the assumption that what you heard were really footsteps.

@Fyrius OK.