For believers in the paranormal

[Heisenberg]

Hello Heisenberg,

Spirit crossover is complicated, not only for us, but them as well. Reproducing an event over and over in a lab setting is almost a ridiculous request. I am not discounting your intelligence, as your intellectual prowess is obvious. I do suggest that you have not done enough experimentation yourself to understand the statement. It is one thing to read websites and listen to podcasts, and quite another to actually do the work yourself. I am very skeptical of everyone else's work, but because of my own, I have to be open to it. There are scientific speech tools we use; spectral views of audio for one. Human voices are in a certain range while most EVPs are outside of the human capabilities. Also, you asked "Why do EVP's never say anything relevant or that would indicate desired communication?" They do. Many EVPs are answering direct questions or making statement about what the researcher is doing. Your comment tells me how little you actually know about it. (again, no disrespect)


You said "Investigators should always have doubt until results are thoroughly tested, recreated, and peer reviewed. Perhaps this is what you meant by 'validated', but it seems you simply mean that hearing, seeing and recording equals validation."

I'll give you one example. I was at a couples home with my gf. We had dinner and played some games. I was in the kitchen helping our host do dishes when I looked into the living room at my sleeping gf and saw a young man's apparition standing over her, looking at her, then he turned to look at me. This went on for about five seconds. after he disappeared I looked at our host and asked if she knew there was a spirit in her home and she immediately becamse startled and asked if I saw "him". I told her to not say anything else and got some paper and pens and we both wrote down "his" description. Perfect mathc. She said she seems him standing over her sometimes while she is in bed. Her husband has never seen him and therefore does not believe his existence. There is no way I could have known about him, or her experience. I have done this many times.

If "scientific method" is what you require, then there is really not much to discuss. You can tell me there is no such thing because you have never had the experience and do not care to actually do any research that may change your mind, and I have zero doubt and will continue to do do actual research that may one day lead to enlightenment for all. You know, until recently man knew the planet was flat. Can you imagine that?!?

The world (not) being flat seems like a non sequitor. I am not saying we should rely on intuition, which is what leads to a flat earth conclusion. I would also not make the claim that there is no such thing as ghosts or a spirit world. My view is that there is no good reason to believe they exist. Still, we can agree that paranormal phenomena deserve investigation. I have nothing against looking for reasons to believe. My problem comes when we start to draw conclusions based on unsupported assumptions. I understand that the supernatural world is, by definition, outside of science, but I still don't see why we can't implement controls, practice consistent logic, and apply occam's razor. Even the event you describe would seem to have many possible natural explanations.

I would be interested in learning more about the EVP's you speak of which imply direct communication. Could you provide any links? I find the idea of EVP's supremely spooky, but so far I have never heard of any that are conclusively supernatural. A direct coherent conversation would do much to rule out pareidolia, assuming we control for hoax.

So again, I have no problem with investigation and reporting, but I see no grounds to draw any conclusions. Despite all the investigation so far, no one has any business claiming anything with certainty. Events still must be classified as unexplained. It all amounts to speculation, and despite the experience of first hand observation, speculation is all we are left with. Without surviving the application of reasonable doubt, we have no good reason why this speculation should cross over to explanation. If we are talking in terms of things we can responsibly claim, even in the face of your personal experience, your guess is as good as mine.

Of course I am always willing to be convinced otherwise.

 

[bundee1]

• The assumption by pbhash, as I understand it, is that ghosts are part of our physical realm, and therefore subject to our understood laws of physics. What he fails to realize is that spirits belong to the spirit world, another dimension. We study quantum physics, string theory, chaos theory, etc and give them credibility, while the spirit world is much easier to access and there is much more proof of it every day.
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I have sensed and seen ghosts in three of my last apartments. Its never a full straight on look at a ghost but a shade out of the corner of my eye and a flash in the mind filling in what it was. These usually occur in the same parts of those apartments.

1st apartment - Tall slim chinese man walking between kitchen and bathroom. I heard flip flops in my apartment when only my girlfriend and I were in the house. She heard them too and saw someone walking so she called out to me but I was in the kitchen.

2nd apartment - different tall man standing in the doorway to my living room. I saw and felt him over my right shoulder. The cats stare in the same direction whenever hes there. My wife and I have heard children playing in the hallway outside our bedroom. My brothers girlfriend (she's Wiccan) had to take care of my cats while I was on vacation and she saw and heard both the tall man and the kids.

3rd apartment - drowned woman in my bathroom. My cat always sits at the bathroom door and stares at the wall. When I sense her my cat turns to the same location on that wall. My brothers girlfriend sensed her when she helped me move in, as did I, but I dismissed it as nerves being in a new place. A few months later, walking to the kitchen I sensed her and glanced at the bathroom I saw her standing there in a striped sweater with her head a little low and wet blondish hair. Freaked me out but....

Ive learned to accept them as all around us just people in another form in another universe that runs slightly out of phase with ours. Thats why I can only see them out of the corner of my eye. They exist in the past or picture them as happening a second after you do something, so they are out of sync with us.

Here is a pic of a specter I caught in Salem, Mass


Before you say thats vapor, I had a couple of friends exhale as I took pictures. Their breath doesnt show up on camera.

I believe the universe runs on a certain timing. Being able to interpret and ride that timing is what gives us foresight and hindsight. I was a skeptic for a long time but there have been too many coincidences in my life to be able to explain them away as random.

Basically energy in another form that our eyes aren't equipped to see.

 

[ClaytonBigsby]

Heisenberg, did you have time to check out the link in post #96? Curious for your thoughts.

 

[cannabineer]

That's not a spectre. It's a house. cn

 

[bundee1]

That's not a joke. That's a statement.

 

[Burn A Spliff]

Jesus I'm high.

 

[budlover13]

So, i read through the first 7 pages and as for energy used, is it not commonly stated that when a "ghost" manifests, there is a sudden drop in temperature surrounding the area where it appears? Which would lead one to believe that the energy being used is thermal energy?

Just going off of what i've seen on the ghost-hunting shows i've seen.

 

[ClaytonBigsby]

They also cause fluctuations in EMF (electromagnetic fields). Abnormal fluctuations. That is why investigators go through a site and get a base reading.

 

[Heisenberg]

Heisenberg, did you have time to check out the link in post #96? Curious for your thoughts.

Basically I see no reason that the article qualifies as anything but a guess. I wont pretend I know anything about Plasma Metaphysics; well I do know a few things.

The term does not seem to exist outside of the author, Jay Alfered's, use of it. I find no sites defining and outlining what plasma metaphysics are. I see many places where Mr Alfred lists his credentials, and none of them mention any sort of academic degree, so I am not sure that article amounts to anything but a speculative blog post. I also notice that Jay seems to think plasma metaphysics offer answers to all sorts of phenomena, including, ghosts, angels, aliens, ufo's, biblical miracles, and spontaneous human combustion. Jay also seems to believe a lot of thoroughly debunked myths such as human auras and the soul having weight which leaves at death.

But lets concentrate on his orb theory. Pseudoscience is often indicated by the use of irresponsible assumptions. The first I notice is that he claims there are two different types of orbs being caught on camera. Some of it is dust and other artifacts, but some of them are plasma life forms. There seems to be no way to distinguish among the two, except plasma orbs have layered shells. Have we done anything to rule out the possibility that dust and moisture can produce a layered looking orb? We must rule out the null hypotheses before looking for other explanations. The rest of his speculation stems from this assumption, and goes on to incorporate other assumptions like, 'ghosts have an electrostatic field'. I am not aware (nor is google apparently) of any peer reviewed research which establishes that ghosts have an electrostatic field. Since electrostatic phenomena follow certain laws and behavior, It would seem to be an easy fact to test for.

He gives no sources for this article, so that makes it hard to verify. As a theory, I would need to see much more supporting research, as an article, it smacks of pseudoscience.

 

[Heisenberg]

So, i read through the first 7 pages and as for energy used, is it not commonly stated that when a "ghost" manifests, there is a sudden drop in temperature surrounding the area where it appears? Which would lead one to believe that the energy being used is thermal energy?

Just going off of what i've seen on the ghost-hunting shows i've seen.

Some critical thought about the tools and methods ghost hunters use.


Ghost hunting tools of the trade


In short

The use of any kind of measuring equipment to detect ghosts is fundamentally, and completely, bogus. How can I make a blanket statement like that? Measuring equipment detects what it is designed to detect, whether that's light, heat, electromagnetism, or whatever. Thus it will only detect things that emit measurable amounts of those energies. For us as viewers to accept that some piece of handheld measuring equipment has a useful function in detecting a ghost, we must base our acceptance on the premise that ghosts are known to emit those types of energies in measurable amounts. If there were any truth to this, science would have discovered it long ago. Hospital operating rooms would have ghost detection equipment built in. Mortuaries and crematoriums would have ghost detection equipment at the top of their list. Search and rescue crews would use ghost detection equipment. If ghosts did exist and were detectable, you can bet that there would be huge industries behind it. I can't think of anything that would attract more venture capital dollars from Silicon Valley. However, no rigorous research has ever shown that ghosts can be reliably detected with hardware. It's easy to disbelieve me, but it's much harder to disbelieve the lack of interest from greedy corporate America.

EMF meters are perhaps the favorite tools. EMF meters detect electromagnetic fields, and are used in ghost hunting on the premise that ghosts emit electromagnetism, though this claim is rarely supported by any suggestion of what the power source might be. There are many different types of EMF meters. More affordable units, such as those typically used by television performers, need to be held precisely for a period of time at each of the three axis to get a reading, and so they are clearly not used on television in a manner that would produce any useful result. When they are, or when a more expensive three-axis meter is used, they are designed to detect the operation of electrical appliances or wiring. Ghost hunters are usually thoroughly accessorized with every electronic gizmo under the sun: radios, cell phones, flashlights, cameras, TV cameras, and other ghost hunting accessories; and all of these will produce a result on the EMF meter. Building wiring or appliances will also be detected. But, even in an environment with no electrical devices at all, the presence of the TV camera alone renders the EMF readings totally useless. Even without ghost hunting equipment, electrical wiring, or a TV camera, a sensitive meter can even detect the oscillation of a steel filing cabinet vibrated imperceptibly by footsteps. In the midst of all the absurd amounts of EMF pollution, the pretense that the alleged EMF field of a ghost (who's not carrying any batteries) can be identified, is foolish.

Also check out, anomaly hunting

Pseudoscientists – those pretending to do science (maybe even sincerely believing they are doing science) but who get the process profoundly wrong, use anomalies in a different way. They often engage it what we call anomaly hunting – looking for apparent anomalies. They are not, however, looking for clues to a deeper understanding of reality. They are often hunting for anomalies in service to the overarching pseudoscientific process of reverse engineering scientific conclusions.

What this means is that pseudoscience almost always works backwards – that is its primary malfunction, starting with a desired conclusion and then looking for evidence and twisting logic to support that conclusion.

With regard to anomalies the logic often works like this: “If my pet theory is true then when I look at the data I will find anomalies.” The unstated major premise of this logic is that if their pet theory were not true then they would not find anomalies. This is naive, however. Another component of this line of argument is the broad definition of anomaly.

In real science an anomaly is only declared so after exhaustive efforts to explain it within existing theories fail. What pseudoscientists do is look for “apparent” anomalies – things that cannot be immediately explained, or (even worse) are just quirky coincidences. Often they also look at the edges of detectability where data becomes fuzzy and anomalies are easier to imagine. Think of the fuzzy pictures of Bigfoot or UFOs, with believers looking at details smaller than the resolution of the images and declaring the presence of anomalies.

 

[Farfenugen]

I once saw the ghost of myself, I was looking in the mirror at the time

 

[ClaytonBigsby]

Heisenberg, I have to agree with you on the Jay Alfered "article". I disagree strongly with the cut and paste about "tools" of the paranormal investigator. The first paragraph that dismisses all tools for use in detecting spirits based on the notion that if they were really capable every hospital and crematory wold have one, is ludicrous. Those places are way too busy to monitor any equipment, and more importantly, what would be the point? htose places are not in the business of proving ghosts/spirits. They serve athe purpose for which they are intended. I happen to be very familiar with both of those businesses. It IS worth mentioning that many doctors, nurses, and crematory operators, funeral homes, etc do report and believe without a doubt in the spirit world. There have been a number of medical professionals who have written books with plenty of evidence to support their assertions.

EMF meters do exactly what you cut and paste said; they detect EMF, hence the name meter. What it does not acknowledge is that ghost/spirit activity is based on ABNORMAL spike in EMF. SUBSTANTIAL spikes that cannot be either explained, or recreated. That is wht the meters are used. As for all of the other equipment mentioned, they too have a useful purpose in the research. What does your author expect; for investigators to base their investigations off of "feelings"? The author fo your cut and paste has their own reasons for their own opinion. Again, for those who have never done any research, it is ridiculous for them to report that there is no paranormal activity when there IS so much evidence. I believe 75% of Americans believe in ghosts, and I believe the number is higher in most other countries. So, it seems to me that the 25% is made up of religious zealots who, oddly enough, believe in God, but refuse to accept a spirit world, or scientific types who refuse to actually do their own research and base their disbelief entirely on the idea that all paranormal experiences can be disputed because they lack rigid sceintific "proof" based on lab results obtained through repeated findings.

Spirits are still people with an intelligence, and not all of them wish to play, or participate in our requests for it. They run and hide, and can be quite mischievious. Rarely you will find one who is willing to, or wants to try to communicate. That is why so many on this side try. When you get results, there is no better high. We are talking about communicating with those who have passed on to another "world". There is tons of video and audio, but people like you choose to not believe it because you were not there. DO YOUR OWN WORK before you criticize and negate the work of others.

 

[Heisenberg]

Heisenberg, I have to agree with you on the Jay Alfered "article". I disagree strongly with the cut and paste about "tools" of the paranormal investigator. The first paragraph that dismisses all tools for use in detecting spirits based on the notion that if they were really capable every hospital and crematory wold have one, is ludicrous. Those places are way too busy to monitor any equipment, and more importantly, what would be the point? htose places are not in the business of proving ghosts/spirits. They serve athe purpose for which they are intended. I happen to be very familiar with both of those businesses. It IS worth mentioning that many doctors, nurses, and crematory operators, funeral homes, etc do report and believe without a doubt in the spirit world. There have been a number of medical professionals who have written books with plenty of evidence to support their assertions.

I think the point was, if we are confident enough to say that ghosts emit certain energies, and we can detect these energies, there would be a clear market for specialized equipment and other services. You suppose a hospital would be too busy to detect someones ghost instead of spending effort trying to revive them? The fact that no specialized equipment exists supports the idea that we can not detect ghosts. It is interesting that many medical professionals believe in spirits, but only on an anecdotal level. Without something more, they are just guessing. It's an observation, enough to warrant study, but nothing we could base any sort of conclusions on.

EMF meters do exactly what you cut and paste said; they detect EMF, hence the name meter. What it does not acknowledge is that ghost/spirit activity is based on ABNORMAL spike in EMF. SUBSTANTIAL spikes that cannot be either explained, or recreated. That is wht the meters are used. As for all of the other equipment mentioned, they too have a useful purpose in the research. What does your author expect; for investigators to base their investigations off of "feelings"? The author fo your cut and paste has their own reasons for their own opinion.

The article was speaking pretty specifically about ghost hunting shows, which were brought up, and I think we can both agree do very little real investigation. If EMF meters do show abnormal spikes, how do we go from unexplained to explained by ghosts? What justifies this huge assumption that ghosts manipulate energy in any way? Nothing beyond speculation and instrument noise. No one is expecting investigators to rely on feelings, we are simply asking that they adhere to standards, which include being careful, thorough, and consistent. Joe nickle and Ben Radford are good examples of actual scientific paranormal investigators.

Again, for those who have never done any research, it is ridiculous for them to report that there is no paranormal activity when there IS so much evidence. I believe 75% of Americans believe in ghosts, and I believe the number is higher in most other countries. So, it seems to me that the 25% is made up of religious zealots who, oddly enough, believe in God, but refuse to accept a spirit world, or scientific types who refuse to actually do their own research and base their disbelief entirely on the idea that all paranormal experiences can be disputed because they lack rigid sceintific "proof" based on lab results obtained through repeated findings.

Our problem is not so much that paranormal reports lack scientific proof. Events could occur to convince me of paranormal activity that are not grounded in rigorous science. I could think of several scenarios that would count as proof without ever going inside a lab. The problem is that the proof presented doesn't come from being outside of science, it comes from twisting and misusing science. Essentially, science is a way to be sure of your approximations. A path that gives you the greatest amount of objective confidence in your assumptions. Science has good reason for it's strict rules, and that reason is to avoid error. The evidence presented by ghost hunters do not circumvent these rules, they break them, and they do so to such an extent that they become no more reliable than the guess of a layperson.

Spirits are still people with an intelligence, and not all of them wish to play, or participate in our requests for it. They run and hide, and can be quite mischievious. Rarely you will find one who is willing to, or wants to try to communicate. That is why so many on this side try. When you get results, there is no better high. We are talking about communicating with those who have passed on to another "world". There is tons of video and audio, but people like you choose to not believe it because you were not there. DO YOUR OWN WORK before you criticize and negate the work of others.

This is special pleading. Rationalizing why paranormal activity should be excused from normal reasoning. We do not chose not to believe, we say the arguments for belief are not convincing, and it seems it wouldn't be that hard to come up with something more. You have no good reason to say spirits are intelligent, playful, uncooperative, or even that they exist. It's all a guess, and although it's a romantic, intriguing and eloquent guess, there is good reason why it is not recognized by science as anything more.

I support researching paranormal subjects. I agree with keeping a very open mind when searching for new information. I believe in exploring all explanations. I do not agree that any of this has lead us to anything conclusive, or quite frankly, even given use the faintest of arrows to follow. I do not apologize for being critical of research, for rejecting incoherent logic, and remaining doubtful until the scales are tipped otherwise. This is not because of simple contrariety, this is not just systematic distrust, I have asked that you provide any links to something you consider proof, or present your own findings. Claiming that I can not discount others research only because I have not done my own is a cop-out, and suggests that paranormal phenomena are immune to objectivity.

 

[ClaytonBigsby]

I'm with you on some of your scientific argument; but again, I have plenty of evidence, and so do many other people. I have ZERO desire to PROVE to you anything. What I will do is support your research and assist you in it, if you would like.

 

[Heisenberg]

I'm with you on some of your scientific argument; but again, I have plenty of evidence, and so do many other people. I have ZERO desire to PROVE to you anything. What I will do is support your research and assist you in it, if you would like.

If these other people have evidence, they are taking the same attitude as you, and keeping it private, which is once again the opposite of scientific transparency. I don't expect you to prove anything to me, but I also don't expect you to blame my stance on an unwillingness to search or believe, and if you do not present or even point to this evidence you tout, then I also do not expect that you'll change my mind.

 

[mindphuk]

I'm with you on some of your scientific argument; but again, I have plenty of evidence, and so do many other people. I have ZERO desire to PROVE to you anything. What I will do is support your research and assist you in it, if you would like.

This is not how science is done. If there is empirical evidence then it needs to be presented for peer review. The scientific community requires rigorous standards and publishing the material for everyone, including you, me and Heis, to examine the evidence for ourselves and see if we can come to a different conclusions. In fact, that's the job of the person doing the investigation, to rule out other factors by limiting variables and questioning your own results. The honest truth is most paranormal investigation does not meet the rigorous standards and it is not up to others to replicate a poorly designed study, it is up to the original researchers and go back and fix the mistakes that are discussed during the review process. Instead of fixing mistakes, most paranormal investigators dismiss criticism and fight and argue their study was valid. This is when it becomes pseudoscience. Real investigators like James Randi, Joe Nickell. Micheal Shermer and many others going back to Harry Houdini that didn't find anything that couldn't be explained and exposed numerous hoaxes.

 

[ClaytonBigsby]

So, let's say a UFO shows up over the Super Bowl. Let's say it's like the one in Independence day. CLEARLY nothing we made here. Video, witnesses, etc. Your science would argue it did not happen because it cannot be recreated in a lab environment, and accordingly, there has to be a scientific explanation disproving it was a UFO. I get it; doesn't mean it didn't happen.

 

[cannabineer]

Supernovae cannot be recreated ina lab environment either. However they can be observed repeatedly, and seen by independent researchers as well as any amateur with a big mirror. Enough observations of supernovae have been made that we can, with much confidence, assign properties and mechanisms to their subtypes.

If the big UFO from ID4 parked itself over a city, the video footage from fighters splattering into the shield would make a pretty good case for it to be U, F and an O. cn

 

[Heisenberg]

So, let's say a UFO shows up over the Super Bowl. Let's say it's like the one in Independence day. CLEARLY nothing we made here. Video, witnesses, etc. Your science would argue it did not happen because it cannot be recreated in a lab environment, and accordingly, there has to be a scientific explanation disproving it was a UFO. I get it; doesn't mean it didn't happen.

An event such as this has never happened in the paranormal field. As I said earlier, many scenarios could occur that would sufficiently prove some sort of paranormal activity. We are appealing to reason, and in regards to the event you describe, it would not be reasonable to say it didn't happen. In the face of multiple collaborating witness accounts, multiple independent video and audio evidence, satellite and radar and which ever other evidence we could find resulting from the UFO interacting with reality, the default position then becomes that it did happen. Our rational arrows point to it being true. Science would not be able to draw any conclusions because science likes to be precise. But science is not our only tool, skepticism demands rationality.

What paranormal investigators speak about though is far from indisputable and in fact exists only in the fringes of science. The spirit world seems to lack the ability to overcome the slightest of controls. If mediums could communicate something definitive (like Houdini's secret word), if out of body experiences observed something impossible to know otherwise (random number generator), or if Elvis told us to go look in his peanut butter jar to find a song he wrote, it would go a long way towards taking ghosts out of the fantasy realm in into reality.

And again, science isn't stepping in and saying ghosts can't be real. Science is saying, the evidence that results from paranormal investigations comes from bastardizing the process by disregarding the very rules that define science. If something greater than science occurs to convince us then so be it, but until then the supernatural cannot use natural explanations and expect to be exempt from natural standards.

 

[Brick Top]

Those who do not already believe me to be insane, soon will.


I will not say that ghosts exist and I will not say that demons exist. But I will say that something does exist, possibly separate types of entities, that do seem to fairly closely fit the terms some people would use for either a ghost or even a demon.

The last seven years of my mother's life she lived with me. She died in my home, in the bedroom that I then moved into.

About six or seven months later my sister asked to borrow one of my mother's table clothe and napkin sets. I said sure, I knew exactly where it was. I went to where it had been for seven years, and it was gone, as were the rest of her table clothe napkin sets.

I searched my house and in a guest bedroom I found all the sets other than the one my sister wanted to borrow. They were in boxes with notes taped to them telling their size and specific cleaning instructions. (These are like really old hand made sets that had been something like her grandmothers.)

I searched everywhere again, looking anyplace and everyplace until I was positive it could not be in my house. Shortly before my mother died a much younger cousin visited her and I thought that maybe mom gave the set to her or had lent it to someone and I didn't know about it.

I told my sister that I didn't have it, sorry.

The next day I came home from work, changed, went downstairs and sitting on the top of my bar, that was otherwise totally empty, was a box. It had a handwritten note taped to it telling the size and color of a table clothe, how many matching napkins there were and it had washing instructions. I figured without thinking, while searching, I had picked one up, carried it and set it down on the bar and forgot about it. I was going to just go put it with the others, but something told me to see which one it was.

It was the one my sister wanted to borrow. The one that was nowhere in my house the two days before when I searched and searched and searched ..... and now, there it is, on top of what is always (if not in use) a totally empty kept-dusted bar.

There is no way I missed it in my searching. There is no way it had been sitting on top of the bar for around 6 to 7 months.

That was the first odd thing.

Then I would come home and walk into my kitchen and I could hear, just barely, a woman talking. The first few times it happened I thought I left a TV or radio on or hit snooze instead of off or my cat walked across a remote control, etc. But as soon as I would step out of my kitchen, the voice would stop. There were no radios/stereos/TV, etc, on.

I always back into my driveway. When I would pull up front and go past a little to then backup I would look down my driveway at mu house. Now and then there would be a woman in the kitchen looking out the window. If I stopped and got our or went ahead and backed in, either way she would be gone and no one was ever inside my house when that happened, I searched it room by room.

One night long after moving into the bedroom my mother had been using I had just climbed into bed and wasn't even nestled in and was thinking about how bright it was in my room because of a full moon and no clouds, and what looked like a pretty woman of about 20 or 22 years old danced into my bedroom, doing something similar to a South Pacific Islander type dance.

Frankly, I was a bit taken back by the site.

She/it danced around to my side of the bed, stood there dancing, but she/it looked like a mist up that close. Part of me said don't do it, but I reached out to see if I could touch her/it. As soon as I tried she/it vanished down through the floor like water down a drain, minus the swirling part.

Some time later I had taken in a stray puppy. I had him fixed and because one of his nuts hadn't dropped they had to locate it and take it out of what I guess would be called his abdomen. That night he was laying on his back sleeping and I thought it was a perfect chance to get a few pictures of his operation, so I took four pictures from slightly different angles.

I loaded them on my computer and was upset because in the picture that best showed his stitches, the length of the incision, etc. there was a smudge or something. I enlarged the picture and found that the smudge was a circle with what looked like a fairly young woman's face, and she looked somewhat familiar.

I cropped the picture so you couldn't tell the background was a dog's abdomen and sent it to my sister and my godmother asking if they could identify who it was a picture of. Both said it was my mother, my sister said maybe in her early to mid-20's and my godmother said it was my mother when she was about 26 years old. She said she'd never seen the picture before and asked where I found it. I told her and she totally freaked.

She's so religious that she's like one step away from handling snakes. She said when you die you don't have a choice if you hang around or not and it could only be a demon trying to trick me and said; "don't listen to whatever it tells you." For a joke I was going to say, well it doesn't say anything, but the dog's won't shut up. But I thought it was a bit 'Son of Sam" so I passed up making the joke.

The next odd thing, and the one that has happened the most, and happened again just two or three days ago, happened. It was winter, it was windy, I had every door not only closed but also locked. And every window was closed and latched. I let one of my dogs out the kitchen door and I started to cook supper.

About ten or fifteen minutes later he runs into the kitchen and gets a drink.

I figured that I was wrong, that some door had been left unlocked and or maybe left slightly open and he found it, pushed it open and came in. I went around my house and every door was tightly closed and locked, even the kitchen door I let him out of. Even knowing I would be letting him back in soon when he scratched, I locked the door. I have four ground level windows. I figured one of them must have broken and he jumped in downstairs. None of the four were either broken or unlatched.

So every door and window to my house was as tightly sealed/locked as is possible, and my dog somehow managed to get inside. It was hard to believe he did not have help of some sort.

It has happened too many times to list, or even guess the number, but once it happened to one of my friend's and his dog. It was maybe August, a friend from Cal. was here for a week and he brought his dog. It was a hot summer day, we were watching some movie, he got up and he let his dog out and sat back down and went back to watching the movie. About five minutes later his dog walks up and noses him for some attention. He asked me if I had let her in. I said I hadn't moved a muscle, that I couldn't have gotten up and gone to the door without seeing me so he had to know I didn't. He said another door must be open. I told him to not bother to look, that they would all be closed, maybe locked, and the same with the windows.

He checked and he found what I told him he'd find. He is the excitable type and between freaking and telling me to get some Ghostbusters in to document this stuff so I could make money off it he just wouldn't shut up about it. Finally I said it happens often it's no big deal, let it go.

Two nights later in the middle of the night he was horrified by something he described as The Grim Reaper, minus the scythe, and with glowing red eyes. He slept the rest of the night in his truck and left the next afternoon and has not come back since and he said he will not visit again as long as I live here.

One night I was enjoying some bong hits and the movie "Dracula," the old Bela Lugosi one, was about to start. I was along downstairs/basement (walkout basement design) and feeling silly I yelled upstairs and asked 'Misty' if she wanted to come watch the flick with me. 'Misty' is what I nicknamed whatever it was I saw dancing and whatever it is I think is hanging around here. I said I thought it might be her kind of movie, but I didn't see her. After it ended the Mel Gibson flick "The Patriot" was going to come on next. I had only seen previews and it looked good and for a joke for myself I again asked 'Misty' if she wanted to come down and watch a movie, and said I heard it was really good.

I never saw anything but in less than a minute the room went from feeling 70 degrees to feeling about 45 degrees. I didn't feel a breeze so I didn't think there was some major draft. I looked at the thermometer on the thermostat and it read 69.8. On the other side of the room (30' away) I have an indoor/outdoor thermometer and it read 70 degrees. But the room was very cold.

I put on some sweat pants and a sweatshirt and lay under a blanket watching the flick wondering if 'something' was in the room with me. As soon as the credits began to roll the room went back to feeling it's normal temperature as quickly as it lost it earlier. I haven't asked for company when alone and going to watch a movie since.

One of my favorites was very late one night I was reading online and I heard a tapping/knocking noise. I didn't think much of it and expected to hear one of the sliding glass doors downstairs, where I was) to open. What would be my closest neighbor, across the street and up a bit, and I were half 'a thing' at the time and it was not at all odd for either of us to show up at each others house at any hour of day or night. I didn't hear anyone come in or try to come in but I heard the knock and figured the door was locked. I got up and went to let her in and the door was unlocked and no one was there.

I went back to my reading thinking it was thumping made by one of my dogs while it scratched itself. I heard the same tapping, and by then I was sure it was the same each time and I thought someone is playing a game with me, so I grabbed my Glock 45, turned on all the spotlights around the house and went for a walk to see if I could see anyone, and if not so they could at least see me and see I was not amused and if they had more than games in mind, I wouldn't be an easy mark for them.

I went back to reading and there was the same tapping. I sat there (well, here to be more exact) and listened. I would hear the tapping and then there would be a short break and then the same tapping again. It sounded like it was coming from the door to my computer room. I got up to try to pin down the tapping but as long as I was up, there wasn't any tapping. When I sat down again the tapping would begin again.

Up until then it was a little creepy, but not like send a shiver up your spine creepy ... and then after hearing the tapping again and thinking about it and what I was reading about and that shiver shot up my spine.

The tapping was always the same, three fairly quick taps followed by three slower taps followed by three fairly quick taps again. Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot ... it was S.O.S. .......... the site I was at listed each Congressional Medal of Honor recipient in WWII and told the story of what each did to earn their Medal of Honor. The tapping only ended when I left the site. I have never heard it again since.

I'm sure that all of you know how it feels to be in bed, under the covers, and have someone come sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress goes down and the sheet and blanket(s) are pulled tighter over you. That has happened to me four or five times, but of course no one was there.

My favorite is long, but the short version is I was giving my sister my mother's old bedroom furniture. I had it in an unused room and hardly dusted it more than maybe twice a year since my mother died and I moved her things into the unused room. I told my sister to let me know when she wanted it and said I would buy some Murphy's Oil Soap and wash it and clean it up nice for her. She called a few days later and said she would come the next day. I had bought the Murphy's Oil soap and put it on a shelf in a basement bathroom closet. I went to get it, it was gone.

I knew I bought it. I knew where I put it, but I thought maybe I used something else from the shelf since and when I put that back it hid the Murphy's Oil Soap. I took everything off every shelf and put it on the vanity counter. The Murphy's Oil Soap was not there.

I looked everywhere in my house were I keep any cleaning products, thinking that for some reason I might have moved it and forgot moving it. It wasn't in any of the other places. I thought maybe I bought it but only thought I put it in the closet and it was still in my vehicle or put somewhere it didn't belong. I looked in my vehicle, nothing, I looked with food and other things it shouldn't have ended up with. It wasn't there either. I knew I bought it, I had the last shopping receipt and it was on it and I was positive I brought it home, unpacked it and put it in the closet.

I called my sister and said I had lost the Murhpy's Oil Soap so I couldn't clean it, so I would buy more and I'd clean it and she could pick it up another time. She said don't bother, she would wash it all if it needed more than just dusting.

While waiting for her I put everything back on the shelves in the basement bathroom and I stared at the one shelf wondering why the Murphy's Oil Soap was not right there were I was looking when I went looking for it.

Three runs/loads later and my sister was on her way home. I watched her pull out and went in my kitchen door, and my cat came with me. I walked through my house to the stairs to the basement and my cat came running as fast as he could, ever hair on it's back standing up and it's tail like a bottle brush. He ran behind me and then looked back and panting like it was both winded and horrified and it was like it was looking to see if whatever has scared the heck out of it was following.

That was very strange behavior for him. He's more like a laid back dog than a cat. If I do a little shooting he'll come along and lay there and never flinch at a single shot, he goes swimming, be it dogs or deer, any animal (other than snakes, he doesn't much care for them) can walk right up to him and he says calm and sniffs them. I had never seen the cat scared a single time before in my life, and I knew him since the day he was born.

I get downstairs, with my cat almost hanging from me, and I notice the light is still on in the basement bathroom. I went in to turn it off and I noticed the closet doors were still open so I went to shut them and right there straight in front of me, dead center on the front edge of the shelf I had put the Murphy's Oil Soap on when I bought it, was the brand new bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap I had bought.

A silly game or prank by someone or 'something'? An attempt by 'something' to keep me from giving away my mother's old bedroom furniture? One of the acid flashbacks I was promised back in the 70? You explain that one to yourself.

A sister of a guy I know is allegedly "psychic." She claims she can tell if and who is hanging around a house. She said she'd love to come over and tell me if it's my mother or someone else. We went up the deck stairs, I unlocked and opened the kitchen door for her to walk in, she got no more than halfway through the door and almost jumped back out. She was making a scary looking face. I asked her what was up and if she was going to give it another try. She said she didn't know what she had felt and that she had never felt anything at all like it before and that she never wanted to feel it again. She said there was no way she would go in my house and she almost ran to her car to leave, and she did not drive off slowly.

A friend's house was having unusual activity so I hung around and I noticed a few things, one you couldn't miss, we nicknamed 'her' "The Exorcist Chick." Most activity seemed to be around a teenage girls bedroom and the hall outside it. You could walk past her room and see through the door and see "The Exorcist Chick" sitting on the bed looking back at you. The experience could be a true brown trouser's time for someone if they were not at least somewhat prepared. Even then it was more than just unnerving.

Almost as entertaining was part way down the hall there would at times be a white gate that had never been there in the past, and normally wasn't, and it somewhat glowed.

Two teams of professional 'Ghostbusters' went through the house, at different times of course. The first group let me join them. I am a dowser, but I can find/locate virtually anything, and in many cases locate it precisely and even at times identify what it is.

Before the 'Ghostbusters' arrived I used my dowsing rod in the hall and at one location I always picked something up right about where the white gate would be seen. There is a railing there since it is like the edge of a loft, and I set a pencil there.

When the 'Ghostbusters' arrived and set up, they had several piece of electronics that could pick up the slightest electrical charge and it would time the duration and a beep would go off when something was picked up. I suggested putting one next to the pencil.

For the most part the night was a bust. A few odd sounds that when listened to with all the background noise removed might have been a slow talking garbled sounding voice. One light turned on by itself. There were two raps after questions were asked. But the one half-highlight of the night was after the 'Ghostbusters' had tried all their electronic gadgetry and had tried to talk to, talk with, tried to reason with 'whatever might have been there, tried to get it upset and piss it off so it would show itself or speak clearly or do something one of the guys got out a Bible and started reading from it in the girls room, where "The Exorcist Chick" was only seen and the beeper on the electronic device on the railing by the pencil to mark where the white gate was went off like mad. There were a series of short beeps and then one loud long duration one where the needle measuring electric activity stayed pegged until the beep started to get softer.

The 'Ghostbusters' said the white gate was a gateway to 'somewhere," likely somewhere not nice, and the different beeps were different 'things' that had been hanging around their house heading out through the gateway, and that the last long loud one was either something very powerful or something that for some reason paused before passing through the gateway.

I wasn't there for the second team of 'Ghostbusters' but was told they had a couple fairly clear recordings of voices, but that was it.

In the end both teams of 'Ghostbusters' said if you're religious, get your house blessed. What you got, ain't good. They had the house blessed and everything has been Kool and the Gang ever since.

I have lived with the occasional inexpiable occurrence since 1994. To me it is more or less commonplace and if nothing happens for a while I get bored and start to wonder if something will happen again and if so what it will be, and when? I somewhat look forward to new things.

So, there you have it. Believe all of it, some of it, none of it, I don't care. The reason I don't care is that I know it, and much, much more, is absolutely true.

But with all that, and more, I do not have any reason to be more prone to formulate or accept any single reason/cause over any other. I don't have a clue what 'it' is." But after 18 years of living with 'it' and experiencing 'it' elsewhere, there is an 'it.' 'Something' absolutely exists.

From where, for what purpose, for what length of time, why is there clearly a highly limited number of 'them' and why do 'they' only make themselves known to a certain few? I don't have the slightest idea.

All I do know for certain is this. I got me one or more of my own.