[thebassist]

Having grown up in a non-religious westernised household, my early views on the subject of existence and reality were very much in accordance with what is currently scientifically provable and observable. You're born and you die, that's it, and we live in a logical and rational world that follows our current scientific understanding of the world. Although I thought it was interesting to hear about the experiences and religions of people in different parts of the world who had a much more mystical view of reality, full of spirits, powerful naturalistic forces, reincarnation, and other fascinating concepts, I ultimately dismissed all of these stories as superstitious nonsense.

Since my late teens, however, I've had a couple of rather interesting experiences that really made me take a step back from things and start to question if my very atheistic view of the world was in fact flawed.

For the purposes of this thread, I would be interested to hear what kind of interesting experiences that you guys have had, be they near-death experiences, crazy paranormal stories, or amazing synchronicities, anything that goes against our current scientific understanding of the world.

I can personally think of two separate events that have led me to question my previous 'rational' world view. After I finished writing up the first event, this post started getting pretty damn long so I'll just limit it to this one for now, maybe I'll share the second story once this thread gets going.

The first is probably the strangest event that I've had the chance to experience in my life.

It occurred while I was travelling and visiting family members of mine in a certain Asian country. I had arrived maybe a day or two before and was still jet-lagged, so during the afternoon I had retreated to my room, and was resting on my bed. Unless I'm extremely sleep-deprived, I generally can't sleep during the day, so I was just relaxing on the bed, my upper body inclined slightly with some pillows under it. Due to my on-and-off practice of meditation throughout the last couple of years of my life, I'm pretty good at slowing down my thoughts, and allowing my mind to rest as well.

At a certain point of time chilling on the bed I reached a very deeply relaxed, almost trancelike state possibly due to the combination of my jet lag and my efforts to still my mind. My mind was absolutely clear, no thoughts whatsoever. I started to feel a faint pressure on my forehead, or on my temple to be precise. It was a strange sensation, but not unpleasant, so I felt content to simply observe the feelings that arose. Gradually I felt the pressure on my temple increase, as well as a gentle vibration throughout my body. The intensity of both the pressure as well as the vibrations continued to escalate (and to reiterate, both due to the depth of the relaxed state that I was in, as well as a lack of painful sensations, I continued to simply sit back and observe what I was feeling, just like during meditation), until I heard (and felt) a 'pop'.

My vision went completely black, and all of a sudden I felt as though as I was being sucked through some kind of tunnel at a very high speed. It's very tough to describe: my sense of vision was gone (only blackness all around), a sensation of movement and vibration stemming from my temple, and a distant awareness of my body still lying down on the bed where I lay.

Suddenly everything stopped, and I was now viewing somewhere in a completely different environment from where I was staying. I remember the details of this scene quite vividly because it was so beautiful: it was a group of people sitting at a table at the side of a house sitting on a lake during an amazing spring or summer day. The people were young (late-20's ish), and they were sitting together and laughing, enjoying the beautiful day.

To give you some kind of a visual aid, it was a house situated like this, except that everyone was sitting at a table on some kind of a veranda on the edge of the lake, and that it was a beautifully sunny day, and thus the colors of the lake, and the greenery around were much more vivid.


The strange part was that I was observing this scene slightly above and away from where they were seated, as if from a floating camera or a drone. I could still dimly feel my body in the bed in the back of my awareness, but my body was not with me (so different than something would be in a dream), and it felt as if I were viewing this scene from a point source or something like that, rather than my eyes. The only word that would help this description would possibly be I was 'disembodied'.

After observing this for maybe 10-20 seconds, I felt the vibrations return, and they ramped up in intensity (quicker this time) until my vision once again disappeared, and I once again felt as if I was being sucked through a tunnel at extremely high speeds. What happened next was a repeat of what occurred before: I 'arrived' at a new place, once again observing things from an elevated viewpoint without my body being present until the vibrations returned. Unfortunately my memories of the next two or three scenes that I was transported to are very much hazy so I can't really tell you what I saw. After I believe the third place, when returning back to the blackness and tunnelling sensation, it kind of felt like I 'ran out of juice', or that I was tiring from this effort, so the vibrations petered out and my senses returned to body, and I was looking out of my eyes again.

I was still in a deeply relaxed state, so I blinked a couple times and spent some time trying to make the sense of what the fuck just happened (although I should note that I wasn't freaked out or anything like that, just very interested and confused). It definitely wasn't a dream, as I was very much awake and aware throughout the whole experience, so to be honest I'm not sure what it was. In the mystical arms of many of the world's religions they speak of the third eye (located between our two eyes) as some kind of inbuilt feature of all humans that allows for perception of otherworldy things, so after having conducted some basic research about the subject, this is the closest explanation that I could find that would match with this experience of mine that all started with feelings of pressure and vibration in my temple. No matter what the case may be, it certainly added to my feeling that there are still a lot of things out there that cannot be rationally explained within our current scientific understanding of the universe that we live in.

I should note that I hadn't done any kind of psychedelics since 6 months before this episode (I'd done acid maybe 2 times, and never experienced anything close to as weird as this), nor have I ever 'looked for' some kind of weird experience like this. I'd meditated on and off for the last couple years before this, around 15 minutes a day whenever I did it, and beyond that nothing else to prime me for something like this, so it was definitely a random, spontaneous event.

I was very much hesitating on posting this thread due to the rather fantastical nature of this experience (inb4 thebassist is the ultimate 5-year sleeper cell troll), but I figured it would be worth a shot to see if some of you guys have also had some interesting experiences that you'd like to share, and I promise that I'm telling the absolute and utter truth.

Although this is by far the most dramatic thing of this nature that I've had in my life,
I've had a couple other strange events that I would be unable to explain, and have heard all kinds of interesting and weird stories from friends of mine who would absolutely never lie to me.

So, with that out of the way, I would be interested to hear from y'all about your experiences with the strange and inexplicable, be they stories of amazing synchronicities, ghosts and spirits, mystical experiences or anything (even some small mundane thing that you find interesting).

I'm looking forward to hearing your stories!

[LINUX]

I banged a 9 while rolling on ecctasy. I was in a different reality also. I'd like to revisit sometime.

[Vienna]

That sounds extremely interesting and bizarre. Thank you for sharing and summarizing it in such an eloquent manner.

Never had an otherwordly experience like that... Had a weird experience one time when I was really sick though.

I was 14 or 15 at the time and layed in a sofa, under a mountain of blankets, with a high fever.

I was not asleep but rather drifting in different levels of wakefulness; I was aware of where I was and my condition at all times.

After an hour of being immobile I started getting a weird sensation that the sofa was extremely huge. Like stretching out and beyond in all directions around me. Every time I shifted my position an inkling, it was like floating right on the surface of an endless ocean, with my motion sending ripples across this expanse. The back of the sofa, which was maybe 1 cm from me, felt like it was in China.

Since I experienced this, mentally observing how it felt during the experience and having full control of my body, I cannot explain it away as a simple dream, or lucid dream.

Weirdest "sober" experience I've had. I suspect my brain was a bit overcooked which made for interesting firing, or mis-firing, of sensory neurons and the brain's interpretation of them.

Or perhaps just a bug in the Matrix.

[UlteriorMotive]

When I was younger myself & 2 others friends saw a ghost.

All 3 of us saw the exact same thing and we had not been drinking / taking drugs that night.

We were down the road from friend 1's house when we all heard a horse walking close by. Bearing in mind it was around 3AM and there were no farms or places that kept horses local to him.

The horse appeared from the next right turn in the road in-front of us with a man on sitting in the saddle seat. The horse and the man were completely white with a slight transparency to it. Friend 2 asked if we could see what he was seeing and we all concurred.

After watching it for around 10 seconds it went behind a van and in a bolt of white shot up the road.

I don't know if what I saw was genuinely a ghost or maybe something else but to this day I can't explain it.

[debeguiled]

Good account. I am pretty sure of all the psychic phenomena, remote viewing and out of body experiences are among the least controversial, because there are so many individual accounts of them.

What is more interesting to me is, how has this experience changed your world view?

[thebassist]

(05-03-2017 02:15 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  

Good account. I am pretty sure of all the psychic phenomena, remote viewing and out of body experiences are among the least controversial, because there are so many individual accounts of them.

What is more interesting to me is, how has this experience changed your world view?

Good question.

I guess a direct consequence of this experience (and some others) is that I realize that there is still so much of the world that we do not know anything about, and will possibly never be able to explain according to our current scientific conception of reality. While I obviously have a lot of respect for all that we have discovered about our world through the power of the scientific method, I have lost my previous atheistically-influenced, arrogant belief that science can explain everything about our existence.

I discovered that my previous map of reality doesn't fit the terrain, so I find myself asking a lot more questions about 'facts' that I used to take for granted.

Take death for example: not that I used to think about this question all that much as a teenager, but I had simply accepted the fact that we die, and that's the end of it all. Of course we've all heard of stories of kids who remember past lives, but I used to just dismiss or ignore a lot of these stories.

At some point in my search for answers, I noticed a lot of interesting similarities between certain ancient mystic schools of thought: for example in the texts of the Gita in Hinduism, the western Gnostic Corpus Hermeticum, or the Sufi texts in Islam, all of whom share beliefs in the immortality of the soul, the concept of reincarnation, the existence of a transcendental reality hidden from us in our existence on this Earth, and other fascinating concepts. Ultimately, it makes me think that there is a chance that somehow, somewhere along the way, we modern humans have lost our understanding of the nature of our world and the deeper purpose for our existence.

While I will most likely never find the answers to many of these questions (or maybe I will after I die haha), I'm simply going to keep my mind open (avoid dogma as much as possible), see whatever life throws my way, and enjoy the journey.

[britchard]

Foreseeing events is the main one for me, it happens quite regularly (maybe 5 or 6 times a year) but I haven't had any experiences with ghosts or spirits yet, although I do believe in the supernatural.

There is a strong pattern to my foresight of events. I will have a seemingly innocuous dream or daydream, then anywhere between a week and a couple of months later the exact thing will happen to me.

I'm not talking about foreseeing sports results or pieces of news, it is almost always conversations between other people. Sometimes when the start of the 'deja vu' kicks in, if my memory of the dream is really strong, I can say what the participants in the conversation are going to say before they even say it.

[thebassist]

(05-03-2017 03:28 PM)britchard Wrote:  

Foreseeing events is the main one for me, it happens quite regularly (maybe 5 or 6 times a year) but I haven't had any experiences with ghosts or spirits yet, although I do believe in the supernatural.

There is a strong pattern to my foresight of events. I will have a seemingly innocuous dream or daydream, then anywhere between a week and a couple of months later the exact thing will happen to me.

I'm not talking about foreseeing sports results or pieces of news, it is almost always conversations between other people. Sometimes when the start of the 'deja vu' kicks in, if my memory of the dream is really strong, I can say what the participants in the conversation are going to say before they even say it.

Wow that seems quite frequent indeed.

It seems to suggest that there is something out there that our minds are tapping into while we are asleep. The prophets of the Bible or other similar types must have somehow had a stronger connection to the flow of events (if we're going to call it that) to get such amazing revelatory visions. Fascinating stuff.

Although I get the sense of deja vu every so often, there's only been a small handful of times where I could see the precise 'overlap' between my dream from earlier and reality.

Definitely a trippy experience.

[Hammerhead]

It seems like what you experienced was Astral projection. When I was a kid I saw a re-run of the show "Sightings" where they talked about this. This lead me to to research it on the primitive internet of the day. I got pretty good at triggering these on purpose. Currently the best way I've found is to listen to binaural beats tracks on YouTube. There are some specifically for Astral projection. Your description is is line with things I've seen. They are hard to describe you just have to try it.

[malakaix]

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine.

That experience changed everything for me.

It's too complex to describe in detail but the most important aspect that changed was the illusion of separation, this dissolved into a singular awareness and with it so did all abstractions. It boarded on full-blown solipsism. Which scared the ever-living shit out of me. It took a lot of time and reading to integrate and understand, there's a curious side of me that wants to go back but I know it's an endless rabbit hole.

[thebassist]

(05-03-2017 08:14 PM)Hammerhead Wrote:  

It seems like what you experienced was Astral projection. When I was a kid I saw a re-run of the show "Sightings" where they talked about this. This lead me to to research it on the primitive internet of the day. I got pretty good at triggering these on purpose. Currently the best way I've found is to listen to binaural beats tracks on YouTube. There are some specifically for Astral projection. Your description is is line with things I've seen. They are hard to describe you just have to try it.

I've also read some things about astral projection (I've never actually gotten there myself, though I tried a couple of times), so I don't think it's that. I think debeguiled may be on to something in bringing up remote viewing, that seems to be closer to my experience. From what I've read about astral projection, you always maintain some type of form as your etheric or energetic body, even when you leave your physical body during projection (although feel free to correct me). During that episode of mine, I had no sense of having any kind of body, physical or nonphysical, attached to my awareness, I was literally seeing things as if from some kind of point-source.

I'll go ahead and share another story that I just remembered.

A couple years ago now, a high school buddy of mine committed suicide. We had been good friends all throughout high school, but we had been slowly drifting out of touch ever since graduation (we moved to different countries), the last time that I'd met up with him and talked with him being during the summer around a year and a half before he killed himself.

It came as quite a shock to everyone in my high school circle of friends, given that he was always such a happy-go-lucky kind of guy in person, and simply the fact that it was the first time for all of us to have lost someone who had been so close to us, who was our own age (just starting our twenties). It was the first time in our lives that we really had to contemplate the significance of death, the fact that someone we knew had completely ceased to exist, coupled with the fact that most of us were not keeping in regular touch with this guy we used to be so tight with back in the day, leading to all kinds of question marks as to what could have been done.

Even after the immediate period following his death I continued to think about him every now and then, wondering how things could have spiralled out of control so badly, and hoping that he had found some kind of peace wherever he is (if an afterlife exists), a respite to the pain that he was going through in life.

Around 6 months ago or so, I entered a really amazing dream. In my first moments of awareness in the dream, I realized that I was walking on a gravel path in the middle of a field of grass. It was an absolutely incredible day: the sun was shining in the middle of the clearest blue sky, making all of the colors in the environment seem that much more vivid, and I remember feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin, and feeling the crunch of the gravel under my feet as I walked.

(Something like this, but much clearer sky, brighter sun and colors)


Slightly ahead of me was a small group of people (maybe 3 or 4): they were just talking together and enjoying each other's company. I realized that I recognized the faces: they were high school friends of mine, and I started when I noticed that there, walking on the rightmost side in the group of people, was my friend who had passed away. I remember it being slightly jarring to see him there, it was quite confusing to me at the time.

In the next moment of awareness, I was walking, and I realized that my friend was now walking next to me. He started talking to me, I don't remember what he said, all I know is that my first reaction was to almost burst out crying in the dream, as I was barely able to handle the reality of seeing my buddy who was gone next to me and talking to me. Next I got an almost strange sense that he was slowly pulling away, as if to gently leave me, since his presence had stirred up a lot of painful and suppressed emotions inside of me.

With a lot of effort, I managed to control that sudden upwelling of emotion that his appearance had caused, and I restarted our conversation. I don't remember what I said, it was something lame, but in any case it must have been an indication to my friend that I was back in control of my emotions, and I felt his presence return to me. The rest of the dream was just a blur of happy feelings: we simply walked together, the two of us, making stupid jokes, laughing, enjoying the amazing day, and each other's company. Talking to him was very interesting (not that I remember anything that we said): he just seemed so happy and peaceful, there was almost a kind of radiant glow about him.

When I woke up I was overwhelmed with the flood of bittersweet emotions flowing through my system. There was the shock of actually seeing him again (the last time I had seen him had been that summer a year and a half before he passed away), and all of the repressed feelings that his presence elicited in me, coupled with the joy in seeing him so calm and happy knowing how much he must have been suffering in life.

It felt to as if he had come to visit me, to give some sense of closure and reassurance, as if he was showing me that he had indeed come to a better place and left behind his pain. I guess if I were to imagine heaven, it would probably look something like the place where we had been walking and hanging out together: a place of warmth, happiness, green grass and blue skies.

Obviously it is possible that it was indeed 'just a dream', a psychological manifestation of my desire for closure and the need to process the feelings that I had been suppressing towards this event in my life, and that this idea of mine that it was indeed my friend who had come to say goodbye me is nothing but a construct of my own narcissistic mind, but I would still like to believe that it was the former.

[sterling_archer]

I had and still have sometimes premonition visions, I have seen shadow men and various weird beings when on border of dream and wakeful state. I experienced this projection you also experienced OP, but it was very short for me.
But correct term is not Astral projection. Astral body is tied to Astral, a plane of reality. When you "project" this body you are in fact lucid dreaming.
When someone thinks of projecting a body and then traveling with it on physical realm, that is in fact "out of body experience (OBE)" sometimes called Etheric projection. In occult, Etheric body is made of Ether, layer between Astral and physical universe.

[sterling_archer]

@thebassist, it is possible that it was "just a dream", but keep in mind there is reason why many ancient cultures had centered a lot of their work on understanding the dreams. South American natives had made greatest breakthrough in understanding with their practice of Nagualism.
Carlos Castaneda introduced Nagualism to the West and I did some practice according to his work and had very interesting experiences. In fact these experiences, done just while you sleep made me question reality more than hundreds of books that I read.

[thebassist]

(05-04-2017 04:04 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

@thebassist, it is possible that it was "just a dream", but keep in mind there is reason why many ancient cultures had centered a lot of their work on understanding the dreams. South American natives had made greatest breakthrough in understanding with their practice of Nagualism.
Carlos Castaneda introduced Nagualism to the West and I did some practice according to his work and had very interesting experiences. In fact these experiences, done just while you sleep made me question reality more than hundreds of books that I read.

It's true that dreams have always been the subject of a lot of interest and curiosity since the very beginnings of mankind: a sort of medium through which messages or experiences from outside of this world can be transmitted to the human mind. As far as scientific research goes, we still have no real idea about why we dream, or they are simply dismissed as some kind of result of neural or mental static that occurs during REM sleep, which is in my opinion not a particularly satisfactory explanation.

I'm not familiar with the work of Carlos Castaneda, I only remember mentions in my readings of him being some kind of faker or bullshitter, so I stayed away from his writings.

I'd be curious to hear about some of the more impactful experiences that you've had, if you care to share.

[sterling_archer]

There were couple of distinct reactions on his work. On one hand scientific establishment uniformly started to regard him as fringe pseudo scientist, and others started to regard his work as simply fictional novels. There is also one stream that started to basically worship him and actually made cult around him. This cult had very weird ending with some key figures simply vanishing. Funny story is that if you believe in things he talked about that vanishing is not so weird anymore.

Regardless if his character Don Juan Matus is real or not or whether CC was his pupil, things he described have been real practice of these native Mexican sorcerers since Mayas and Aztecs and they work.

Send me PM regarding experiences.

[Vill@in]

I admit I'm usually a skeptic when it comes to subjects this. I know, or like to think, there is always a scientific and rational explanation to everything. And I still do for the most part. But I do believe that sometimes 'weird' things happen that we just can't explain. Whether or not there is a rational explanation to those events is unknown. But I think for most of us, sometime in our lives, these weird things do indeed happen. People like myself tend to just shrug our shoulders and file it away. We may not KNOW the exact reason why it happened, but we know there MUST be a reason for why it happened we just choose not to analyze it too much as it will just fuck up our total understanding of everything. As I get older I tend to find myself doing this and even have a hard time thinking of stuff that happened that had no explanation. But your latest post on the suicide of your friend @thebassist jogged my memory on one of these events that happened to me and revisiting that memory just creeps me out.

This happened either in the late 90's or early 00's. We were at a friend's wedding and I believe it was at the reception where this happened. Anyway, I'm with my group of friends and we run into another group of acquaintances that we knew but weren't really close friends with. In that group there was a guy that I thought, for some STRANGE reason, had died recently. I turned to my friend and I said "I thought that guy died?" Looking back it's an odd thing to say about someone....and I guess I was kind of joking but I was more serious than anything. My friend turned to me and laughed "Obviously not, as he's standing on the other side of the room." The thought stayed with me for awhile and I kept thinking "Why do I think that guy had died?" and I couldn't answer it but it was just an odd feeling that I got about him. I guess the best way to explain it I just thought it was fact that he should be dead. Sounds morbid and I cannot explain why I thought this. It bugged me for bit but after awhile the booze kept flowing and I didn't let something strange ruin my night. Overall it was a good wedding and good reception.

A week or so later that particular guy died. It was either a drug overdose or car accident. Cannot remember the exact details.

After it happened my friend and I talked about what I had said at the wedding. It was one of those uneasy, unexplainable stories. We just kind of shook our heads in a "that's really fucked up" kind of way.

[Easy_C]

Mine weren't quite so dramatic. There's been a couple of times now where I was praying/meditating on some problems I had. What happened was difficult to explain but it was as if I suddenly "knew" something without any kind of communication being sent through language....almost like copy-pasting information onto a new hard drive for lack of a better analogy.

Those things I "knew" were going to happen then did. The first time involved something in the Army (I knew I would be hurt in combat but survive months before I even deployed) and the other warned me that meeting the right woman was just around the corner.

[debeguiled]

This has the possibility of becoming an epic thread.

What I have found is that many many people I know, especially the ones you least suspect, have stories like this, which they never tell for fear of being made fun of or losing face or respect.

Wouldn't it be crazy if there was proof, all around us, of things we could never have imagined, that many people are experiencing every day, but that no one is willing to talk about because it is too embarrassing, or too incongruent with the image each person has created for themselves?

I've got a couple too, but I am thinking still of the best way to describe them.

@thebassist

Regarding dreams, it is so easy to dismiss something profound that happens when you are asleep as "just a dream." I think the best way to go about discussing dreams that affect you in a strange or spiritual way is to ask yourself if the dream that affected you is similar to normal dreams you have. I have had a few dreams that seemed closer to visions than dreams, and were nothing like the normal dreams I have.

My normal dreams are fragmented, hard to remember, and the me who lives in dreams normally tends to be a lot more passive than the me in real life, doing things and going along with things that I never would in life. It is almost as if the self I have in dreams is fragmented in the same way reality is fragmented and surreal in dreams.

On the other hand, dreams that stay with me, dreams that feel spiritual or extra-normal, are much more consistent in narrative, and I feel fully awake, alive, and myself. A long time ago I read about the Senoi people who had a concept called "big dreams" that referred to this kind of dream. It feels like more than a dream, and in terms of significance, it can almost feel more real than real life.

There are even precedents in the Bible of God talking to people in dreams, like he talked to Pharoah in the old Testament, or Joseph in the New Testament.

So, the precedents and traditions are there as far as dreams having the potential to expand people's idea of what is possible.

From my own experience, I would say, as long as you are telling the truth, that I believe it is possible that your friend could have been visiting you in your dream, although I don't expect anyone else to believe it just because I believe it, because these sorts of things are far more powerful when they happen to you.

I have had conversations with a good number of people who had these sorts of experiences with loved ones after they died, and my experience of God is that when he reaches out to people, he goes out of his way not to freak them out too much at first because they will shut down.

For example, with an atheist, he won't just appear to him out of cloud and say, you are wrong about everything because here I am. He is much more likely to reach out to him through someone he is more familiar with, like a trusted friend, just kind of comforting the person and tossing out a little hint that things are not as they seem.

[Mercenary]

(05-04-2017 02:57 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  

...and my experience of God is that when he reaches out to people, he goes out of his way not to freak them out too much at first because they will shut down.

Yes.





...

[Elster]

On Castaneda,a brief comment so as to not derail thread too much:

Amongst his circle of "disciples" as another famous guy whose a large quantity of people who have been followers,ironically enough, now consider him a bullshit artist, that is, Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Many of the things he and others accused Castaneda of doing-mainly getting drunk on their own glory,is something he has done himself...

[sterling_archer]

True, Castaneda has become a "ideal Nagual Sorcerer" because of his work and boasting. But still, he is responsible for introduction of actual ancient magic tradition (one of the oldest in the world) to the West, USA in particular, than after some time Europe and Far East. There are various forums now focusing on his work, with most of them being actually skeptical of his abilities. I find that very smart, as there are many examples in occult where practitioners give more credit to someone than they deserve.

[Rigsby]

Apart from the latest advances in man's understanding of the Quantum world, I have some personal experiences that lead me to conclude that there is so much more to life and the universe, that we are effectively living in the dark ages.

What I'm about to share with you will be met with disbelief. That's ok. I wouldn't believe this stuff either. So I encourage (and expect) you to take one of three positions:

1: That I am lying and making it up (for whatever reason).
2: That I am telling the truth but confused or mistaken.
3: That I am actually insane.

To counter this, I will give three accounts of events that can be corroborated by a third party - my brother. I'll give you the top 3 of things that have shaken our reality. It's up to you how you interpret them.

CASE 1:

When my bro and I were about 13/14 years old, we came back from abroad and spent the night in our grandmother's house. It was an old house. The floorboards would creak with the typical strange noises that those old houses do. There had always been funny goings on there (the place was haunted), and we were used to the shenanigans the spirits would play. There are good and bad spirits, and there was nothing bad there. But what happened that night, no one could have been prepared for.

As we were dropping off to sleep after a game of Top Trumps, the usual noises came. They always came when the lights were off. Used to it. But this time it was a bit heavier than usual - there were 'people' walking feet away from us around our bed. We could hear the fucking footsteps. Ok, this happened sometimes on a bad night. We both tried to ignore it, pretending to be asleep. But it got louder and louder until it wasn't funny any more. One of us said to the other: 'can you hear that?' - 'yeah'.

I was frozen with fear. I have always had a deep fear of ghosts. But it got worse. There was a noise outside the bedroom door - someone standing on the floorboards and making them creak, plus, with the added horror of the fucking door knob moving. It just kept creaking. It was one of those old round brass things that made that unmistakable sound. I was scared witless. Literally paralysed with fear.

There was a light switch on one of those 'strings' that hang down just above the middle of the bed, but I couldn't move. My brother, more fearless than I (and a lover of ghosts) reached up and turned the light on. CLICK.

The footsteps in the room stopped but the 'person' outside the door kept creaking the floorboards and the fucking door knob was moving. It didn't open. It just moved left to right. Right to left. WTF?

Again, my bro, not as much of a coward as I was in such matters, leaped out of bed, stood there for a second, looking at me: 'what should I do?'. Fucked if I know. He stood there for a good few seconds. The door knob kept moving. He opened the door. No fucker there! He looked at me. I looked at him. And that was that. Not the easiest night to get back to sleep that one. We slept with the light on of course so the ghosts wouldn't bother us again.

And that is exactly how it happened. We go over the story every xmas to check the facts. Sometimes I relay the story back to him, sometimes vice versa. Sometimes we get bits wrong. We do our Error Correction. And the story lives on.

We thought it might have been our Gran sleep walking or our Mum (no dad there that night). But no, it was one of the spirits.

That house always had a funny thing of if you leave the door open when you go to sleep, it would be closed in the morning. If you left it closed, it would be open in the morning. Like I said, you kind of got used to it.

Two young children (siblings of my mother) died in that house. My mother felt a chill whenever she used to walk through one particular door way. She found out decades later, that was where her sister died - in the door way. So the whole door thing makes sense. Not sure what they were trying to tell us though. Unbelievable. I know.


CASE 2:

Same house. Years later. Going out clubbing. Being a selfish bastard. Blaring loud music to get me in the mood. Hair dryer going to dry my long hair I had just washed. Bit of a fracas earlier with my bro who was watching TV. Can I turn the music down? No I can't. I'll be a prick and turn it up!

Then came the roar. RRIIIIGGGSSSBBYYY! Like a lion. Oh fuck, my bro is pissed off. I turn the music off ready for one of those things that brothers do (fight). He is downstairs. I walk out to the top of the landing where I am upstairs. He is standing at the bottom of the stairs. I front him: 'What?'.

He looks at me, ashen-faced: 'I heard it too'. He says quiet as a mouse. Not the Lion I just heard. I went cold. Something very very fucky was going on here. It just wasn't right. I had heard HIS voice, but worse, HE had heard HIS voice.

He swears to this day that he did not shout up the stairs. That he heard his own voice crying out, but it wasn't him that said (shouted) it out. Some kind of Telekenisis? Whatever.

I turned the music down. Almost off. I went out that night. I don't remember where. I don't remember what happened. But I will never forget that experience. Strange enough for you? It gets better.


CASE 3:

This one is probably the most unbelievable of all.

I had one of those dreams one night (the kind that isn't a dream - astral travelling - call it what you will). I was living in London at the time. My bro was in the house we have been talking about. It's a portal there btw - the surrounding area - it's a little backwater, but it led the field in technological developments that came to change the whole world a century later.

So we are separated by distance. I have this dream. I don't remember much about it except that a UFO came down and me and my bro were playing in the field outside my gran's house. It wasn't just a dream of course, it was real. As the UFO came down, it wanted to take us both away with it. For once, I was braver than my brother. I decided to go. My brother was scared and stayed in the field. The dream ended. The experience ended. Weird and real as fuck.

I just had to.

Bring Bring, Bring Bring.
'Hello, this is your bro'.
"Don't say anything. I had it too".
'What?'.
"That UFO, I didn't want to go. I just remember it taking you then I woke up".

I'll just leave that there for you to digest.

The chances of two people (let alone brothers) having the exact same dream, PLUS, remembering it, are virtually nill.

If you don't think I am outright lying to you by this point, well, you're naive is all I can say. I know I'm not confused. And remember these three stories can be backed up. I may be insane. But does that mean that my brother is as well? I welcome rigorous questioning on these three cases.

I will just say that I swear to you that I am not lying. I can't say if I'm confused or if I'm insane. I can't say if my bro is either when it comes down to it. But this is not something I have made up. I will stake my reputation on it. This isn't a joke or a wind-up. It's not allegory. It's just relaying of remembered events. It's not like you forget shit like that.

There is no explanation known to man or science itself that can explain these events.
And at the end of the day, I consider myself a scientist first and foremost, and respect others most who I consider same. (Not the joke propaganda Bill Nye type of science whore, of course, who isn't a scientist at all but just a rent-seeking paid-up shill [not too unlike a lot of other 'scientists' when it comes down to it]).

There are more things in heaven and earth than were ever dreamed of in our philosophies.

We are in the dark ages.

If you thought I was a bit of a fruit-bat before, it doesn't get any better from here...

[debeguiled]

Rigsby.

What if I told you.

thebassist is your brother.

In deep cover.

And this thread is a trap?

And it is too late now?

[Rigsby]

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself...

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/text...ion/s.aspx


Of all the places I have lived in and dwelled and laid my head, I can usually tell within an hour or two, or day or two at most if they have 'spirits', and if so, whether they are of the good or bad kind. Very few places have bad spirits. But some do.

I used the word 'haunted' earlier in passing. It paints a picture, but some places just have a presence.

I'll try give a few quick examples.

CASE 1:

A mate of mine who used to play bass in my band (when we were kids), lived in a beautiful house that stood out as being grander and better than all the other houses surrounding it. No one lived in that house very long. It was always up for sale. He showed me outside and the wall, where if you looked closely, the stones had faces carved on to them. Unusual for our part of the world. One night he was visited by 'The old hag'. It shook him the fuck up. We had a band practice in that house but it just wasn't right. We didn't belong there. It belonged to the ghosts.

My father told me years later, very randomly, that he had in fact done a 'hobble' (a one-off, off the books job when you already had 3 other jobs in the 70's) in that house, and 'what he found, shocked him', kind of thing. Not really. He just thought it was weird when they ripped out the fireplace, bits of hair and all kinds of voodoo shit were in the back of it. It was him that told me: watch. no one lives in that house very long. He was right. Always up for sale. Always going for a silly price. Always on the market a year later. Ho hum.


CASE 2:

When I lived in North London, one of the chaps I lived with decided to move on and get a place with some of his old friends. It was a great scene. Everyone knew everyone. Lots of age boundaries being broke, lots of race boundaries, hell, even gender boundaries (was a coupla lesbos in the mix). It was a fun time. Everyone was high on life.

Anyway. He moved out and moved in to this great new property in up market Mill Hill might have been (yeah, jewish, but very very generous with it). He couldn't believe that they had found this property (about 5 of them sharing - male/female) for such a 'good' price. Come up, we're gonna have a party...

A few days later. He comes back. Looking drained. 'Oh man, you won't fucking believe this - the place is fucking haunted'. We laugh. Yeah right. Stop smoking so much dope you fucking dope fiend! 'No, really. Come up. We are all going to be moving out next week'.

What the actual fuck?

They were totally freaked out. They had the money. They all worked. They had mummy and daddy to back them up otherwise. Cash was not the problem here. Also, they were all school friends so there were no personality conflicts. They were shit-fucking-scared. They had moved in to the North London equivalent of the Amityville horror!

Every one of them corroborated each others stories. One girl - Sarah - got particularly freaked because every time she took her glasses off, they ended up in the room next door. She would spend half her life looking for them. The house was cold. It was a new house, but it had that old floorboard creak I was alluding to earlier. Shouldn't have happened there. Basically it was a case of classic poltergeist activity. But a bit more malevolent than usual.

We went for the party. It had those wisps of cold that breeze through the air. Everyone was freaked out. They moved out a week later at a not unsubstantial financial loss. I could not sleep a wink there that night. May be suggestion. Who knows. But I felt it. It was there. It was one of those places that had 'souls'.


CASE 3:

This is another odd one.

I became acquaintances with a girl (woman) who was a right piss-head hard-core alcoholic. She liked a row too. Not many fucked with her. She was alright really, but just keep on her good side.

Got chatting. Met her boyfriend. Nice Irish guy who worked in IT doing servers. Homeless. Till he met mad 'Trish'. Had a good old piss-up with them. They didn't have much money. Very apologetic. But I did. So I paid for the drinks that night, mug I am. Eventually got around to the fact that her flat (again in North London) was haunted.

She had a kid as well (teenager). I asked Irish boy about this, he said, earnestly: 'oh yeah, it's true, fucking pain in the arse that is'. Didn't think much more about it.

A few weeks pass. I go round to their place - they have money now and want to pay me back and have set up a nice BBQ on the block. Didn't really go in to the house, except for waiting here and there for people and to have a piss.

I ask them if they were just having a crack with me and they say no. They look genuinely worried and say they are desperately trying to get out from there as they are definitely afraid. But the housing people don't believe them. They were scared.

I could feel it though. I can always feel it. There was a sense of sheer fucking malice in that place. I nearly shit myself taking a piss. The fucking thing was breathing down my neck and it knew I knew. It was fucking horrible.

Keep in mind these are hard people. The girl Trish had done time if I remember right. She was quiet as well, not many words. She wasn't joking. And when I went in there, I knew as well, it was 'real'.




Again, all of this could be made up. And these can't even be backed up - I've lost touch with those people now.

Make of it what you will.

[Rigsby]

(05-05-2017 06:26 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  

Rigsby.

What if I told you.

thebassist is your brother.

In deep cover.

And this thread is a trap?

And it is too late now?

I would cry 'Hallellulehah' (try spelling that when you're drunk), and say, at least it all makes sense now. Kind of. I can finally go to sleep. With the lights off.