Ever had a spooky experience that you can't explain?

[pmckean]

In an earlier thread I described a childhood experience where I thought I saw a ghost. Due to an accident of fate I was later able to fully explain the incident to my satisfaction.

I've always wondered, though, what I would think about that event had a perfect, logical explanation not just dropped into my lap, like the last piece of a jigsaw. Would I still have the skeptical bent I have today, or would I accept this kind of phenomena without question? I just don't know.

So, you're intelligent, rational people that think beyond simplistic metaphysical explanations for apparently unexplainable phenomena. Have you ever had an experience - seemingly paranormal - which you were never able to explain, although you accept that there most likely IS a rational explanation which doesn't rewrite the laws of physics?

For refererence, I'll repost the original story underneath this post.

[pmckean]

When I was a kid, about the age of 9, I had an experience that kickstarted my skeptical thinking.

I was leaving the Cubs (like Junior Scouts) one cold, dark, Scottish evening, and I had to pass the Old Kirk's graveyard on my 20-minute hike home.

I always used to glance nervously into the graveyard as I passed, and that night was no different - except that this time, when I peered between the gloomy tombs I spied an ethereal, spectral glow, drifting from stone to stone.

I stopped, transfixed by terror. In those few seconds before I bolted, running all the way home, I swore I could see detail in the apparition - the faint, flickering figure of an old, stooped man. I was terrified, and never slept a wink that night.

A few weeks later, I was given an assignment in school. With a friend, we were to visit the graveyard during daylight hours, and find the oldest tombstone there. It was with more than a little trepidation that I ventured in, and I could feel the terror rise as dusk gradually descended....

And that's when the elderly graveyard attendant popped out to see if we were vandalising his carefully tended graves. He brought his oil lamp with him, which he always used to illuminate his path when he traversed the plots at night. Everything clicked, and in an instant moment of revelation, I learnt that not everything was what it seems!

Worryingly, though, had I not gone back, I think I would still believe to this day that I'd witnessed the spirit of an old gentleman, bound to the grounds of a little village churchyard, and I may not have developed my current, irritatingly smug, reductive materialist worldview!

As irresistible as the supernatural is, never rule out the mundane.

[blutoski]

We had a 'haunted TV' when I was a kid. Changed channels at random, volume would go up and down. But only when I was in the room. My friends and I concluded that there was a ghost following me around.

I later discovered a natural explanation.

Hint: in those days I was playing with a mini-slinky.

[casebro]

We had a 'haunted TV' when I was a kid. Changed channels at random, volume would go up and down. But only when I was in the room. My friends and I concluded that there was a ghost following me around.

I later discovered a natural explanation.

Hint: in those days I was playing with a mini-slinky.


Early remote controllled TV's used Paranormal communiucation. It's also called Ultra-Sonic. Hmmm, I wonder what the trade marked names were? Ghost Shifter, maybe? I'll bet there were crystals in the remote too- Gallinium Diodes? and some copper, it seems to attract woo, as well as electrons...

[blutoski]

Early remote controllled TV's used Paranormal communiucation. It's also called Ultra-Sonic. Hmmm, I wonder what the trade marked names were? Ghost Shifter, maybe? I'll bet there were crystals in the remote too- Gallinium Diodes? and some copper, it seems to attract woo, as well as electrons...

Exactly! When we bought the TV, used, it didn't come with the remote, so we didn't know it was just sensitive to sound for several years.

[Rolfe]

Well, there was my Weird Story (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=10253) about the biology lesson that apparently never happened.

Rolfe.

[JohnF_73]

I had at least one experience as a child which stayed with me. I was about 6 and woke up one morning. I saw what I thought was a ghost hovering above the bed. Like any kid, I basically pulled the sheet over my head and hoped it would go away.

But later that morning, my Dad came into the room to tell me that my Aunt had died during the night.

Now, did I make the woo assumption that what I had seen was my dead aunt? No, I didn't. (So proud of my young self).

For one thing, the 'ghost' looked nothing like my aunt. It looked like the stereotypical bed sheet thrown over somebody. (The only difference being that the holes in the head went completely through the 'sheet' so I could see the wall paper.

Anyway, I had it my mind for years that it was something weird. Not necessarily supernatural anyway. It was years later, when I read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan, that I learned that visual and auditory hallucinations are much more common than people think. (And thankfully, not a sign of craziness).

So I was finally able to lay that particular 'ghost' to rest. A combination of halluncination (hypnogogic maybe) and co-incidence, which merely cemented in my memory at the time.