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Ghostly Encounters

I am ex military and when we post on military forums, we tend to stick to what the topic title says. I guess civilian forums are far more open and ad hoc. I shouldn't try to control the postings here.

"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by becoming a ghost for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard become a ghost for his country." - Ghost of Gen. George S. Patton
 
I should have qualified my last post by saying that I thought confirmation bias unlikely given the specifics of this case, I was more just throwing it out there as a possibility -- because I agree with everything you said! :)

Thank you. And no worries; it was rewarding to have expressed all that.
 
I'm a skeptic but I've been ghost hunting a half-dozen times. And, I mean truly locked in a place that is widely considered haunted by the paranormal community, and we're locked in overnight. These are places like old prisons and psych hospitals.

For all of these cases there were just 3 of us. We go in with a lot of equipment, video cameras, audio recorders, still cameras, etc.

We experienced lots of weird stuff. Unexplained lights and sounds. EVPs. The "typical" stuff if you're a paranormal enthusiast. Now, we debunked a whole lot of those events. A lot of times, something seemed paranormal when it happened but with our equipment, we could figure out after the fact what was going on. Sound can do lots of weird things! Sometimes, it took correlating events at specific times with different pieces of equipment. Either equipment that we left elsewhere in the premises or on us. By comparing different recordings from different locations at the same time, we often could fiure the remaining things out. A drip from one location sounded like a voice in another.

Being skeptics, our goal was to debunk everything that we could. However, there were a few incidents that we couldn't figure out. However, after debunking so much, you really just figure that there must be a normal explanation for those remaining few things. But, my wife and I heard two women talking that we can't account for. We also saw a couple of lights that couldn't be explained. We tried to reproduce it or figure out where the source was, but couldn't. None of that means it's paranormal though, just unexplained.

We never experienced something that was undeniably paranormal, the smoking gun. But, it was a load of fun. I mean, what's not to like about going around creepy old buildings, at night, with just a couple of others, with only flashlights?!

Mr Awe
 
I'm a skeptic but I've been ghost hunting a half-dozen times. And, I mean truly locked in a place that is widely considered haunted by the paranormal community, and we're locked in overnight. These are places like old prisons and psych hospitals.

For all of these cases there were just 3 of us. We go in with a lot of equipment, video cameras, audio recorders, still cameras, etc.

We experienced lots of weird stuff. Unexplained lights and sounds. EVPs. The "typical" stuff if you're a paranormal enthusiast. Now, we debunked a whole lot of those events. A lot of times, something seemed paranormal when it happened but with our equipment, we could figure out after the fact what was going on. Sound can do lots of weird things! Sometimes, it took correlating events at specific times with different pieces of equipment. Either equipment that we left elsewhere in the premises or on us. By comparing different recordings from different locations at the same time, we often could fiure the remaining things out. A drip from one location sounded like a voice in another.

Being skeptics, our goal was to debunk everything that we could. However, there were a few incidents that we couldn't figure out. However, after debunking so much, you really just figure that there must be a normal explanation for those remaining few things. But, my wife and I heard two women talking that we can't account for. We also saw a couple of lights that couldn't be explained. We tried to reproduce it or figure out where the source was, but couldn't. None of that means it's paranormal though, just unexplained.

We never experienced something that was undeniably paranormal, the smoking gun. But, it was a load of fun. I mean, what's not to like about going around creepy old buildings, at night, with just a couple of others, with only flashlights?!

Mr Awe

I'm certainly by no means a paranormal believer, but that's something I'd be willing to try just for the experience of it.
 
Self-trepanning? I never thought him the type.

I thought of a really weird thing that happened to my mom that I've not been able to work out yet. This happend about 15 years ago. She had fallen asleep with her TV and a bedside lamp on and at some point in the middle of the night the noise and light woke her. She said she then saw something up on the wall near the television. At first it looked like spiders, but they would have been huge (bigger than a man's hand) and they didn't seem to have enough legs. Even though she was half asleep, she reached for her camera and took a photo. I've seen the photo, and it shows two strange objects that look like huge brown spiders each with only 4 legs, but they don't look particularly solid or animal or insect like. They look more like your typical lens effect or development flaws (this is what most photographed "ghosts" are, which is why people only tend to get pictures of ghosts when their flash is on). But if it was just a lens effect, then why would she have felt the need to photograph it in the first place? Usually, photos of "ghosts" are the most easily explained "evidence," but the strange circumstances surrounding this instance make it more difficult. I wish I knew more about the physics and the technology involved that could have caused such a strange phenomenon.
To sum up:
-I know the photos were not faked, because even if my mom wanted to play that kind of prank (which would be out of character), she didn't have the physical ability to fake it (she is disabled and could never have created such a set up), and at the time, she wouldn't have had access to any photo manipulation tools that could have helped.
-I know that she's telling the truth about the circumstances of taking the photo, because the program that was on the tv aired only in the middle of the night.
-I know that she must have actually seen the objects, because there would be no other reason for her to take an awkward random photo of haf her tv and part of the wall in the middle of the night.

So, it's a mystery! Anyone have any ideas?

My first guess is an atmospheric disturbance of some kind. Maybe some kind of magnetic or ionizing (or what-ever) discharge from the TV...caused by a freak malfunction? Ionized air can lead to optical effects.
 
I'm a skeptic but I've been ghost hunting a half-dozen times. And, I mean truly locked in a place that is widely considered haunted by the paranormal community, and we're locked in overnight. These are places like old prisons and psych hospitals.

my wife and I have always wanted to go on one of those faked TV versions like Most Haunted, just to see how long we can get away with playing Doctor and Companion before any of the crew figure it out...
 
May i suggest to folks that they visit any abandoned hospitals near their location. it is a very interesting experience. I have been to one and while i did not see or hear anything spooky, it was still a very eerie place to be in.

But please don't go alone. I went with my GF and some friends. My experience was more like a social occasion but in a very spooky place. It is good to be scared sometimes.
 
My first guess is an atmospheric disturbance of some kind. Maybe some kind of magnetic or ionizing (or what-ever) discharge from the TV...caused by a freak malfunction? Ionized air can lead to optical effects.
Interesting idea...do you think that's possible like that indoors in a lit room? It was an oldish house with notorious wiring issues. My sister lives there now, I think I'll try to come up with a way of asking her whether she's experienced anything out of the ordinary in that room without being too leading!
 
May i suggest to folks that they visit any abandoned hospitals near their location. it is a very interesting experience. I have been to one and while i did not see or hear anything spooky, it was still a very eerie place to be in.

But please don't go alone. I went with my GF and some friends. My experience was more like a social occasion but in a very spooky place. It is good to be scared sometimes.

We were in these buildings with permission. It was fun. I can't really say that we were scared. After all, we are skeptics and we'd need a huge amount of evidence to convince us otherwise. Although, it was interesting how some of our skeptic friends got nervous and didn't want to participate!! Come on guys, what are you afraid of!

If do something like this, you WILL experience events that seem paranormal. Unexplained sounds, lights, EVPs, etc. We certainly did but, with a little effort and lots of recording equipment, you can debunk almost all of them. The ones that we couldn't debunk were, by far, not sufficient to convince us of the paranormal.

However, it was very interesting to observe firsthand the types of incidents that are commonly accepted by paranormal enthusiasts as being paranormal. The trick is to also go in a small group. There were never more than 3 of us. That reduces the amount of noise contamination.

Mr Awe
 
I just had a thought. What if irrefutable proof that ghosts exist were discovered? Do you think the number of suicides would skyrocket? After all, proof of some sort of existence after death might be all that's needed to convince the really depressed.

I doubt it, because most depressed people who commit or attempt to commit suicide want to escape the emotional pain they experience, and continuing as a ghost might mean continuing to experience the unbearable pain.

Years ago, my (then-)husband worked in an old building -- three floors of work space, a fourth floor that used to be an apartment but was now just storage, and a basement. The woman who originally ran the organization had lived in the apartment for many years and eventually died there...

My husband sometimes worked very late, alone in the building. He knew that no one had come in, because after everyone else had left, he set the alarm, but he'd still hear footsteps going up the staircase. Eventually he counted the footsteps he was hearing and then went and counted the actual steps... Yup, apparently the old lady was still around and walking from the basement to her fourth floor apt in the evenings.

Same building: there were two back doors, about 20 feet apart, both alarmed, each visible from the other. One night my husband and his coworker were the last to leave the building. They set the alarm and went out one back door together. Before they got to their cars, my husband saw the other one swing open and then close again (w/o triggering the alarm). He didn't say anything, but the co-worker obviously saw it, too, because he turned to my husband and said, "We did not see that." They never said another word about it to each other.
 
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^I read about a famously "haunted" building once where footsteps and voices on the staircase were one of the main attractions. It, too, was an old building where someone had been reported to have died, and where people alone in the building at night would hear steps on the stairway.
It turned out that the staircase in the building next door was right next to the staircase in the "haunted" building, and, sure enough, it was the family next door that everyone was hearing!
 
^That makes sense -- in fact, it seems kind of stupid that people didn't figure it out right away -- but it doesn't apply here. This staircase was in the center of a large building, and there was no family next door.
 
I'm not the type of person to go looking for ghosts or wanting to believe in them, but for the past 11yrs I've yet to have a non-believer to explain this:

How was it that there was a scent of roses in my grandma's house about a year after she died, with no flowers - real, fake or dried - anywhere in the house?

Only happened that one time and never again afterward, even with doors and windows opened. I don't even recall her keeping roses in the house while she was alive. The ONLY "rose" connection I can think of inside the house was in the bedroom behind a closed door - a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe with my grandfather's pic at the base. BTW - I don't care much for flowers or the scent of most of them, so it's not like it's something that would be on my mind or that I would expect to smell, especially in a house which no one had been in or out of more than 2 or 3 times in one year.


EXPLAIN

:vulcan:
 
I'm not the type of person to go looking for ghosts or wanting to believe in them, but for the past 11yrs I've yet to have a non-believer to explain this:

How was it that there was a scent of roses in my grandma's house about a year after she died, with no flowers - real, fake or dried - anywhere in the house?

Only happened that one time and never again afterward, even with doors and windows opened. I don't even recall her keeping roses in the house while she was alive. The ONLY "rose" connection I can think of inside the house was in the bedroom behind a closed door - a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe with my grandfather's pic at the base. BTW - I don't care much for flowers or the scent of most of them, so it's not like it's something that would be on my mind or that I would expect to smell, especially in a house which no one had been in or out of more than 2 or 3 times in one year.


EXPLAIN

:vulcan:


Air-Freshener-Rose-300ML.jpg
 
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