Scientific explaination for having a bad feeling?

[pspaddict]

About a year ago my mother went to San Francisco on vacation with a few friends. They got a few rooms in a hotel at the top floor. One of her friends felt uncomfortable on that floor, said she had a bad feeling about it. So much so that she requested they move to a lower floor. The clerk told them that a few murders had occurred on the top floor decades ago.

My question is do crime scenes leave an invisible mark that'd give someone the hibby jibbies? Keep in mind I heard this story from my mother, who didn't get the bad feeling, and the clerk might have just been having some fun with my mother's friend's feelings. But I'm curious if it's possible to prove that something is left behind when something awful happens, something we can trace.

[thatguywhojuggles]

blood stains on the wall would be something that could be left behind. If I saw blood stains on the wall, I'd probably have a bad feeling.

But you're talking about something non-physical?

[cyborg]

A lot of people have died in a lot of places.

[Gravy]

My question is do crime scenes leave an invisible mark that'd give someone the hibby jibbies?It would be difficult to test for such a phenomenon because of all the subjective factors involved. For the sake of heebie-jeebie testing, what would define a "crime scene?" The place where first-degree murder, manslaughter, rape, savage beating, imprisonment, attempted murder, mild assault, threat, reckless endangerment, armed robbery, grand theft, petty theft, illegal smutography, mass-murder plot, or embezzlement conspiracy occurred? What about interspecies crimes?

Would there be a difference in the heebie-jeebiosity of a room in which a murder, a suicide, an accidental death, a natural death, and a nosebleed occurred?

What if someone was poisoned in a room but died elsewhere? What if someone was pushed out of the window from a high floor: would the heebie-jeebies be in the room, where the victim splatted, or both? In the case of a deliberate drowning in the hotel swimming pool, spa, or bathtub, would the heebie-jeebie cause affix to the water, to the structure, or to both? Would three murders be heebie-jeebier than one: are criminal heebie-jeebie causes cumulative, or would one crime erase or mask another? Would a bloody murder be heebie-jeebier than a suffocation?

Do heebie-jeebie causes stay current with local laws? For example, if a certain sexual act was criminalized in a place where it had always been legal, would the cause of heebie-jeebies be retroactive or would they start afresh from the statute date? And if the opposite happened, would the cause of heebie-jeebies be erased? Are heebie-jeebies only caused by knowingly criminal acts? By guilty consciences? What about really, really bizarre acts that aren't defined by any legal code?

What defines a "heebie-jeebie?" An unusually strong feeing of unease? A sense of foreboding? Some other kind of anxiety? What physical symptoms do heebie-jeebies cause? Tingling, itchiness, rapid heartbeat, nausea, flatulence?

How many causes might there be for such feelings, such as the dislike of the decor of a place, an unpleasant or unfamiliar odor, a chilly draft, a fear of heights or confined spaces or open spaces or strangers' germs or bad nautical art; a resemblance to another unpleasant place or a reminder of a past experience or of a scene in a horror movie; an allergy, an illness, or some physical condition unrelated to the physical surroundings? How susceptible is the subject to the heebies-jeebies? Do the same stimuli always produce the same heebie-jeebies in a person?

Can a hotel eliminate or ameliorate heebie-jeebies with antiseptic, fluffy towels, and mints on the pillows? Is a sleazy motel that advertises "Color TV" but that is crime-free less likely to produce heebie-jeebies than a 4-star resort that has a foundation of 6 parts concrete to one part mobster?

Think about the vagueness of your mother's friend's feeling. The "top floor" made her uneasy? The whole top floor? How far and through what media do criminal vibes travel, and by what are they contained and retained? Would the floor below be okay, even though it shares common structures (and probably ventilation, plumbing, and electrical systems and conduits) with the floor above? Would a room directly below a murder room be less likely to cause heebie-jeebies than a room far down the hall on the murder floor? Would there be any residual criminality in the stairwells, the elevators, or the lounge where the murderers downed their double whiskeys before committing their foul deeds?

It's a complex subject, heebie-jeebies. All I know is that the clerk should be fired, and persons subject to heebie-jeebies should travel with a UV lamp and a spray bottle of Luminol.

Don't get me started on "the willies."

[casebro]

What if your mother's friend had read about the murders, and remembered them? No paranormality involved, she just didn't like being on the floor where the violence had happened.

[Gravy]

What if your mother's friend had read about the murders, and remembered them? No paranormality involved, she just didn't like being on the floor where the violence had happened....or if she was the killer!

[skeptifem]

its not really all that special when those bad feelings often happen when nothing has gone wrong. its just anxiety imo. people dont tell stories about being really uncomfortable without the payoff because its boring, and probably forget about them anyway.

[juniper_ann]

its not really all that special when those bad feelings often happen when nothing has gone wrong. its just anxiety imo. people dont tell stories about being really uncomfortable without the payoff because its boring, and probably forget about them anyway.

This was my thought. Maybe the friend gets "bad feelings" frequently and assumes that all of them are due to outside causes. When no one can back her up on this, she just assumes that it's something no one knows about (or she forgets). When someone confirms it, well that's proof!

For instance, a few years ago, I was walking from the library to my dorm, when I got a "bad feeling" about my roommate. I didn't really believe in "bad feelings," but this one was persistent. I double-timed back to my dorm, only to find my roommate looking especially well and cheerful, studying on her bed. Now, my roommate was deeply depressed at the time, and had already admitted to having been suicidal in high school, so it kind of made sense that I would be worrying about her. Maybe the bad feeling was the "worry about my roommate" part of my brain going off at random. Also, this bad feeling had a pretty good chance of being confirmed--even if she'd been moping around like usual, I may have taken it as a sign that something bad might have happened if I had not gotten home in time. I guess I was lucky.

Oh, and nails3jesus0, that is the weirdest avatar I've seen yet. Good job!

[Miss Anthrope]

Yes, confirmation bias is the key here. When someone says they have a bad feeling, and someone comes up with coincidental validation, it sticks to the memory. How many bad feelings came and went with nothing?

[Gravy]

An ex-girlfriend called me out of the blue after several years. She said she'd had three dreams about me and was just calling to see if I was okay. I said, "Sweetie, when you're having dreams about someone it means something is happening with you, not with them." Yes, we got back together. Briefly.

[baron]

The subconscious mind is constantly experiencing and processing information about your environment. Much of this goes unnoticed. If it didn't, you'd go mad. It is perfectly possible, and indeed normal, for the conscious "you" to experience emotion that is the result of an observation made by your unconscious, without you being aware of the specific nature of the stimulus.

Just because you are not consciously aware of why you are feeling a certain way doesn't mean that there is a paranormal explanation.

[sophia8]

I've told this story before, but here goes again:
Around forty years ago, a man died in the kitchen of the house I now live in. He was poisoned by weedkiller - either accidentally or deliberately was never really clear. Either way, his death was unpleasant and slow; if the new agers are correct, it should have left an indelible psychic imprint on the room.
Yet I've had psychics and clairvoyants sitting in that very same kitchen telling what a lovely house I have and what a calm feeling they get from it. And, needless to say, I've never had any "heebie-jeebies" whatsoever.

[Gravy]

I've told this story before, but here goes again:
Around forty years ago, a man died in the kitchen of the house I now live in. He was poisoned by weedkiller - either accidentally or deliberately was never really clear. Either way, his death was unpleasant and slow; if the new agers are correct, it should have left an indelible psychic imprint on the room.
Yet I've had psychics and clairvoyants sitting in that very same kitchen telling what a lovely house I have and what a calm feeling they get from it. And, needless to say, I've never had any "heebie-jeebies" whatsoever.I'll bet when you're all alone sometimes you get the jeepers creepers, though, don't you? Don't you?

[baron]

I have no idea of the stats but I'd say most houses have had people die in them. Take any house and it's almost certain that someone will have died on, or very near, the spot where it stands. My flat is built on the grounds of an old hospital and mental asylum, built in 1812 and only knocked down very recently. After almost 200 years of operation, having an average permanent population of over 3000 mentally imbalanced folk, I should say a fair number of bizarre and traumatic incidents and deaths occurred over the years, yet it's probably the most peaceful and pleasant part of the whole city.

[Antranik1]

The subconscious mind is constantly experiencing and processing information about your environment. Much of this goes unnoticed. If it didn't, you'd go mad. It is perfectly possible, and indeed normal, for the conscious "you" to experience emotion that is the result of an observation made by your unconscious, without you being aware of the specific nature of the stimulus.

Just because you are not consciously aware of why you are feeling a certain way doesn't mean that there is a paranormal explanation.

This is a very good explanation of intuition. You may think you're psychic for a moment because you know what's going to happen in a situation, what's really happening is you're piecing together tons of information in the background and forming your intuition. Our minds are awesome!

[skeptifem]

Oh, and nails3jesus0, that is the weirdest avatar I've seen yet. Good job!

i wanted a phlebotomy themed avatar, lol.

[Boo]

An ex-girlfriend called me out of the blue after several years. She said she'd had three dreams about me and was just calling to see if I was okay. I said, "Sweetie, when you're having dreams about someone it means something is happening with you, not with them." Yes, we got back together. Briefly.

A variation on this. I have been dreaming about an old friend that I was quite close to several years ago over the last three nights. Last week I recall seeing someone that looked quite a bit like him. In addition to that I have been working with a patient who had a medical condition that my friend has and there were a few other minor incidents that occurred to remind me of him as well. It would have been surprising if I had not dreamt about him. When I woke up with the dream still fresh, my mind started to put all of the connections together and I was able to reason out why I had been having the dreams.


I still sent him an e-mail, just to let him know that I had been thinking of him and hoped he was doing well.





Boo

[Cheeley]

I spent about 3 years living in a house where the previous tenant had died of an accidental overdose. Actually, I believe that the bed that I was sleeping in was the one which he died. It didn't particularly bother me, I had brought my own sheets :)

I didn't share this information with my housemate, as she loved the house and I was aware of her woo-woo beliefs (clairvoyants, crystals, homeopathy), and I figured that she would be upset by the information. Near the time that I was moving out, I mentioned the unfortunate demise of the previous tenant, and she responded along the lines of "Ooh, I knew that there was something eerie about your room", and reeled of a list of funny feelings that she'd had about it. Needless to say, she had never mentioned anything eerie about the house in the couple of years before I had told her.

I'd bet that most houses that people live in (particularly rentals) have had their share of deaths & tragedy. If there were 'psychic impressions' left every time something tragic occurred, we'd all be living in perpetual misery wouldn't we??


Oh, and hello, by the way. First post!

[Professor Yaffle]

I lived for a year and a half in a house, and on the the day I moved out, I found out that a previous occupant had hung himself in the garden. Never had any bad feeling about the place before that.

And conversely, my mam once phoned me up at an unusual time because she had had a dream that I had died in her arms. She doesn't believe in that sort of thing, but she felt she had to phone and check I was ok because the dream had upset her so much. I was just fine.

[Jaggy Bunnet]

About a year ago my mother went to San Francisco on vacation with a few friends. They got a few rooms in a hotel at the top floor. One of her friends felt uncomfortable on that floor, said she had a bad feeling about it. So much so that she requested they move to a lower floor. The clerk told them that a few murders had occurred on the top floor decades ago.

My question is do crime scenes leave an invisible mark that'd give someone the hibby jibbies? Keep in mind I heard this story from my mother, who didn't get the bad feeling, and the clerk might have just been having some fun with my mother's friend's feelings. But I'm curious if it's possible to prove that something is left behind when something awful happens, something we can trace.

Two questions:

Does the friend suffer from vertigo?

Was the lift working?

I think there are a fair number of explanations I would consider further before getting interested in "hibby jibbies".

[Winterbreeze]

In my dreams, I've almost died or died alot.
Even at my ex gf's dream I died.
In many ways, nothing specific.

I have bad feelings sometimes too, most are with no reason.

It's something within us, not around us.
Nothing psychic, just anxiety and our head playing on us.
It's that people don't know how to translate it so they think there must be a hidden cause or reason, may it be psychic or destiny/fate, god, ghosts, demons.

No need to get excited about everything, if a plan fell for everytime someone had a bad feeling about flying, no plan would ever be on air.