Does anyone believe in the paranormal?

[BusynMember]

I'm a big believer in life after death, another dimension after we leave this earth, reincarnation, seeing those we love when we "cross over" (even our pets) and that we never really die. I also believe ghosts walk on the earth and angels protect us, especially our guardian angel. I believe some gifted folks can talk to those who've crossed over, but that many are frauds and ya have to be careful. This really helps me when somebody leaves this world.
Am I the only kook with these beliefs? Just wondering...

 

[mstang67chic]

I was just talking to a friend of mine today about things like this. I'm a believer and have had some experiences that pretty much confirm it.

 

[totoro]

I respect your beliefs. I think it is wonderful to have that much faith. I wish I had that... or a belief in something. Not that I am looking. I have my beliefs, but it is different. I am always interested in things like this. I am truly impressed.
If it gives one comfort I think there is nothing Kookie about it!!!
We teach K and N all aspects of belief...

 

[mom_in_training]

Ummmmm, NO you are not the only one!!!! I believe that we have spirits among us. Have you ever heard of Sylvia Brown? I have read her first two books and they were awesome. I have heard and read in Sylvias books that when you dream of loved ones and animals that have passed on that this is their way of communicating with you. I also believe in guardian angels. Just my opinion but there are just way to many miracles that do happen here on earth and who but a guardian angel would be responsible for that. Some just chalk it up to having good luck but I don't know. I just talked to my difficult child like last week about her staying on the Queen Mary with me for a weekend. I love that ship along with the history and beauty behind it. I think we are going to get a state room there and its really not that expensive. Here is their link for anyone interested. They offer up tours for paranormal as well that i'm trying to talk my difficult child into, Lol!!! Shes just a lil sqeemish about it though but I think shes game. Lol!!

http://www.queenmary.com/

 

[BusynMember]

I've read Sylvia. I started reading about Near Death Experiences long ago and to me that is the closest thing we have to knowing what happens when we die. I've really branched off and done a lot of research and talked to people who had NDEs.
This isn't exactly a religion...lol. I was actually trying to find others who had paranormal experiences that changed them. Anyone have an NDE?

 

[mom_in_training]

No experience for me as far as NDE. My difficult child did have reacurring dreams about how my Mom passed though. She saw my Mom being shot along with the person that did it and made it out to look like a suicide. NOT!!!!!! But he got away with it. She in her dream heard the arguing and everything that was going on that eventually led up to her passing. My difficult child even has told me that she had seen her grandfather peering out of my bedroom door. She had never even met him and described him to a t. I was like did you talk to him? Darn, I wish it were me, I miss my Dad. She has not had any dreams for quite sometime now at least not bad ones that she mentions but for a period of time was having problems sleeping because she kept having the reacurring one of my Mom but the last that she did mention of my Mom was her (My Mom) just sitting and knitting and asking my difficult child how she was doing and all. So the last dream was a happy one.

 

[meowbunny]

Count me in as one who believes. My father was and I am very "sensitive" to those we care about. He knew when I was in pain even when thousands of miles away. I know when my daughter has been hurt even when she's away from me. The same is true about my friends.

I've never been able to see my father since his death but I've felt his presence on more than one occasion. Once I was driving and I could hear him telling me to take the next exit in his no argument voice. When I got back on the highway, I sat in a traffic jam. It turns out there had been a major accident just seconds after I had left the freeway. Coincidence? Maybe but I don't think so.

My grandmother was considered a witch by those who knew her. In her community, witches were respected. Besides being able to deal with the supernatural to some extent, they were very knowledgeable about what plants helped for what. This made them important healers and helpers.

So, definitely one who believes in the spirit world.

 

[donna723]

Absolutely, I believe! Anybody who lives in a 160-year-old house like I do knows that there is "something". There is just too much evidence, too much to ignore. I believe that children and animals are much more attuned to these things than the rest of us - we lose most of this sensitivity as we grow older and our lives become more sophisticated and more complicated. Those individuals who retain their strong sensitivity into adulthood are the Sylvia Brownes of this world! I know there are a lot of "wannabee's" out there, but I think she's the real thing. She's on the Montel Williams Show once a week (Wednesdays?) and I love listening to her!

I've never actually seen anything in my little house ... but my dogs have. This house was built in the late 1840's and was occupied continually from 1850 until about five years ago by members of the same family! I moved in 4-1/2 years ago. I'm the first one to ever live in this house that wasn't a member of that family! My dogs were always watching things that I couldn't see! My older Boston, Rudy, flat out refused to even enter the big old-fashioned back bedroom. If I was working back there, she and Ragan, my younger Boston, would sit nervously in the doorway, both of them watching something move around the edges of the room! Both of their little heads would move in perfect unison, both sets of eyes following exactly the same thing - and I saw nothing! They did the same thing in the living room several times, sitting on the sofa watching something go diagonally across the ceiling. Sometimes I got the impression they did it on purpose, just to creep me out! After a few months, they stopped doing that and never did it again. I always thought it maybe was a "family member" who just wanted to make sure I was taking good care of the house. There have been a few other unexplainable dog-related incidents, one just a few months ago, but they're more mischievious, teasing kind of things.

I don't believe any of it can hurt you, but I've known too many people who have had things happen not to believe. My former boss, who lived in a house about the same age as mine, had all kinds of weird thing happen. Every morning about the same time he'd see, out of the corner of his eye, a tall elderly man in an old fashioned business suit walking down the central hallway towards the front door! If he purposely sat and watched for it, he'd never see it. He finally got so used to it, he'd just say, "Good morning" to him and go on about his business! And years ago my brother and sister in law lived in an upstairs garage apartment a block from the beach in New Smyrna Beach, FL where they were constantly having weird things going on - footsteps coming up the wooden outside stairs, stopping outside the door ... nobody there. Or they'd hear footsteps going down the hallway at night and then my nephew (6 months old at the time) would wake up and start crying! One BIG reason they moved!

Yep, I am definitely a believer!

 

[Steely]

It is a hard subject for me. Paranormal, I am still shakey about......maybe I do not know what that means exactly.
However..........I believe that some of life takes place in a sphere we are not always aware about. Dreams have told me many, many things. I have to give them credit - because they have arisen even when I have not wanted them to - and been visionary, futuristic, and accurate. Shakes me to my core every time. Ever seen the show Medium? Yeah..........those kinda dreams.

So, yes, I believe in something like this - even though I may not want to.

 

[mom_in_training]

OMG Donna, I soooo want your house. Lol!!! I have always been intrigued with older houses and have always thought that one day I will have a Victorian house. We have an old part of town where I live and I think the oldest house there is like 130 years old. Most in that community are the old craftman style or victorian. Sooo pretty. Older houses are very mysterious and it seems that most of the time people stumble across the strangest things like hidden doors (In walls) Knew someone that did in their 100 year old house.

 

[klmno]

Interesting question MM! I definitely believe in a higher power, and guardian angels, and "messages" being sent to us (whether or not we accept them), and that there are times some people can "see" things that others can't. I believe in miracles. I believe that if there is a true mutual love and one person dies, there will always be some connection and "inner voice" from or with that person. And that many times this is apparent through dreams or just opportunities in our daily lives or just a sense of comfort that we feel. I believe there are times when a person gets a signal of what will happen in the future. I believe in mother's instinct- a whole lot!!

Is that paranormal?

 

[Sara PA]

My son sees ghosts. I know it seems like a kid who spent a number of years as a sometimes-psychotic difficult child and who has temporal lobe seizures isn't the best example, but he's seen the ghosts when he was quite normal and lucid, before The Bad Years. They weren't hallucinations unless multiple people can have the same halluncination. He sees them clearly enough that he doesn't realize they aren't "real" which is why we found out he sees them -- we had an argument about whether or not there was a woman sitting in a display at a historical house in Philadelphia. There wasn't. He insisted there was. Ten years later the house appeared on the Haunted House tour with a description of the same woman my son described. He has seen others. I was with him once when he saw a man step in front of the car. Fortunately I was driving because had he been, he would have swerved to miss the person, probably causing us to crash. Instead he just yelled in horror because he thought I hit someone.

I recently asked him how often he's seen ghosts and then realized that he has no idea. He didn't even know he saw the ones he saw until someone told him.

 

[donna723]

Meowbunny, I've had that same kind of thing happen ... only a very few times, and then only with family members. We lived in Florida when my first child, my daughter, was born and my parents lived in Tennessee. By the time she was nine months old, they still hadn't seen her. I was sound asleep one night and was startled awake by what sounded like someone shouting my name right in my ear ... it was my dads voice! I don't know why really, but within a week I had bought a plane ticket to Tennessee and brought my daughter up to meet her grandparents for a week. She was the first granddaughter and my dad adored her! We left to come home on a Friday and less than two days later he died of a massive heart attack. I don't think any of it was a coincidence!

Years later after we had moved to Tennessee, my daughter had finished nursing school and moved back to Florida to work there. One night as I was sleeping I heard her voice shouting "Mama!" in my ear! She was going through a very rough time back then. She would never admit that something bad or frightening had happened to her, but I know it did.

And it happened again, with my son, less than three years ago. Long story, some of you older ones already know it, but he went through a really bad time and made a very serious suicide attempt. He's fine now, thank God, but he took a huge overdose of prescription medications, came about as close to dying as you can come without actually dying - his heart stopped in the ER and had to be shocked back, life flighted, on a ventilator, the whole sheebang! He was in the seventh floor ICU on life support for several days and as he slowly came out of it, the doctors were keeping him heavily sedated because they wanted to keep him on the ventilator long enough for the pneumonia he'd contracted to clear before they removed the ventilator. I was staying in the ground floor lounge area that the hospital had for families of patients in the ICU. The fourth night I was there it was about midnight and I was laying there, wide awake even though I was exhausted - and I heard him! I heard this sound like a loud angry garbled scream, choking and sputtering, and it was my sons voice! I KNEW it was him! And less than five minutes later the ICU was calling for me to come up ... he had come out of the sedation enough and had manuvered the restraints enough to pull the ventilator tube right out of his throat! I rushed up there and he was sitting there in bed, dazed and confused, groggy and in pain from pulling out the tubes in his throat, but he was awake and he was OK! And I had heard him pulling out that ventilator tube! I was on the ground floor and he was up in the seventh floor ICU and I HEARD him!

 

[donna723]

MIT, my house is just little, not a big Victorian or anything, but it is a very neat little house with two fireplaces and tall skinny windows. Rumor has it that it was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, and supposedly there were tunnels going between this house and several neighboring houses of the same vintage, all of which are gone now. There's no real basement or cellar but underneath it, one side is dug out deep enough to stand up in, and there's weird shaped depressions in the yard in places, some that you can only see when it rains enough that the water stands in puddles. You never know ...

 

[PersonalEnigma]

I don't know what to think. I'm not sensitive either way... On the other hand, the house I live in was built for the previous owner's mother who immigrated with them in the 60s. When she died one of the kids and their family moved in. We are the first non-family members to live here. When we first came I always had the impression of the house being hostile to me. I really never felt happy or comfortable here. My hubby had many dreams of a woman yelling/screaming. The TV did odd things, channels switching, etc and there have been times where it sounded like someone knocked at the door when no-one was there. Also my difficult child had nightmares when he was really little of a "white ball". I don't know if it was something he saw on TV or if he'd seen something that really scared him.
Along our laneway there is a section that is really creepy. There is an old apple tree that is mostly dead in the middle of the cedar woods along the lane. On the other side are the "sentinels" as I call them - several tall trees that seem to guard the laneways. One time a girl who stayed with us for a while told me that she had heard footsteps behind her along the lane. She stopped and they passed her and turned into the woods. She also said she heard something that sounded like a shotgun being primed.
Everything is creepier around August/September. It's been much quieter lately though. Our house no longer feels negative the way it used to (maybe the old lady has finally given up) and even the woods doesn't seem as creepy. We did make a lot of changes to the property and somewhat to the house when we moved here, so maybe we stirred up some old spirits. Who knows.

 

[mom_in_training]

Donna, the same thing happened to me but only after the fact. Flew to Alabama within hours of my Moms passing came home 3-4 days later. The first night home I was just starting to go to sleep and I heard my Moms voice call my name out really loud like it was right in my ear. I sat up and had to collect my thoughts for a minute. That would be the only time that happened to me. We brought some of her ashes back too and I had them in my bedroom. The strangest thing used to happen with the ceiling fan in the kitchen. The lil pull chains would start moving like in a swinging position but the strange thing was that they are about 3 inches apart (One for the light and the other for fan speed) and they would both start doing this swinging thing but they would be going the opposite direction of each other and at times they would swing so fast that they would hit the glass globes. Yikes!!! I got used to it after about two months and thought that it had something to do with my Moms ashes being here. It was weird, I just chalked it up as my Mom having allot to say and that was our sign. After we disbursed her ashes (By the Queen Mary) in the ocean the swinging of the pull chains subsided. It was weird because my fan was not off balance at all and at first I checked it thinking that it was. Hmmmm.

Small house or not, Its still way cool to have a piece of history like that.

 

[BusynMember]

My cousin had an eerie experience.
Her mom passed when her son was three years old, a bright and perfectly normal easy child (who is now in the Service and married--never mentally ill). A day after his grandmother passed away, he came downstairs and said to his mother (my cousin), "Grandma talked to me." Of course my cousin was freaked and said, "Oh?" (what else can you say?) He nodded and said very casually, "Yeah, she said 'Don't worry, Kim. Just be happy. I'm still watching you." Then he skipped off to play. He always insisted he heard her, even when he was older he remembered.
My daughter had a similar experience. She saw my grandmother watching her from outside the window of her math class, which was a hard class for her. It was just for a moment, but long enough for daughter to explain what she wore and her smile. She said, "It felt like she was sending me good vibes or something, encouraging me." She said that she was wearing her hospital volunteer smock and described it. The eerie thing is, my daughter had never seen her great-grandmother wearing a volunteer smock, but she the description pegged right down to the salmon color. My grandma had always been a proud volunteer at a local hospital.
I do, do, do believe that we all live on after we pass from this world to the next. in my opinion there is too much evidence. I talk to those who have passed to the next dimension...lol...and I believe they hear me. Cart me away, now, I guess

 

[susiestar]

I have been a believer for much of my life.

At age 13 we moved. First & only of my gma's kids to move more than 30 mins away. She absolutely hated it. I kept seeing a very thin man in coveralls walking through the house. For the longest time I thought it was a previous owner. Then one day my bro burst in on me while I was on the john. He had the big butcher knife because he had just "seen" the man I saw. We talked for quite a while (AFTER I got out of the bathroom!) and he had seen the man quite a few times. He thought it was some neighbor. After several more weeks, and more "visits" I described the whole thing to my mom.

She said it was my gpa - but he died before I was born. The ONLY photos of him are of special occasions. NONE in his coveralls.

The last time I saw my Gma alive I was visiting from college. I came downstairs for something late at night and he was holding her hand. He smiled at me and I knew she would be with him soon. The next day she went into the hospital. I snuck in the evening before I flew back to college. He was with her there also.

The house my parents bought when we moved has a "ghost". I saw her many times. Usually when my bro and parents were having a fight. After we moved in with my folks so husband could go to grad school, Jessie and thank you started to talk about the "White Lady". She was always gentle and sweet with them. She used to sing to them. And wehn difficult child would be sitting on his bed saying gruesome things to Jess in the middle of the night (thin wall, heating duct between rooms) the White Lady once came to difficult child and yelled at him. difficult child screamed, and then Jess told me what had happened.

The White Lady had been there for a LONG time, she died in the house. She is still there, my niece talks about her occasionally.

No NDE's for me, or any of the rest of the family that I know of.

husband has made some amazingly accurate predictions about OUR family future, usually in dreams. Most just stun me, but they do tend to come true, and usually they start with someone OUTSIDE our immediate family.

Susie

 

[hearts and roses]

Count me among those who believe-definitely! My loco sister and I are very open to this and we have both experienced many things that others would think it crazy. She has always been most open to it, because in my earlier years it scared the bejeezuz out of me. With age and some research I was finally able to accept it and now I'm more open to it and not afraid.

My difficult child dog alerted my gfgdd to a ghost in her room a few years ago. Gfgdog kept looking up in one particular corner of the room and crying. Not barking, just kind of whining and crying. She didn't want to leave difficult child when I called her out - she was protecting her. We actually had to move difficult child (and gfgdog who stayed with her) into another room (she slept on my floor) because the ghost would not leave her room, despite many cleansings. It was not a harmful ghost and it's presence was not filled with malice. It was a young girl, gfgdog likely brought her home with her and it settled in difficult child's room because it felt most comfortable there. At least this is what I was picking up.

I went to see a psychic and metaphysical healer and she said that the presence in our home was a mother who had lost her daughter (that would have been about difficult child's age at the time) and she was finding comfort in difficult child's room, almost kind of waiting for her daughter to be with her. Then she told me how to do a home cleansing in a respectful way and to ask this woman to leave our home, nicely. She had me call upon the Arch Angel Michael to help guide her to her daughter. Anyway, I won't tell you everything I had to do, but it worked. I FELT her leaving my home. I FELT her pass me at the back door. difficult child felt it and difficult child dog was fine after that.

**Edited to add: The healer/psychic told us that our gfgdog had intuition and was VERY open and possibly may be bringing home spirits with her when she's out for a walk - how's that for a difficult child?? Haha.

Then a few months later, just after our Hallloween celebration, gfgdog alerted us once again. This time, the presence was in the hallway only. I had to do another cleansing. Since that first time, I've had to do 5 about cleansings. Now I just do them automatically with the seasonal change.

My friend told me that we're too open. Flat out she said that it's okay to be open but that we had to make it clear that our house isn't a bus station for lost ghosts.

Also, all of my sisters and I all felt my dad come to visit us on the night he died. We never spoke of it to one another, as we each thought the others would roll their eyes or think we were crazy, but then one night it came out and we couldn't stop comparing notes. And my loco sister woke up the moment my granfather took his last breath - she ran into his sick room as he exhaled and she is the one who had to wake my mom to tell her grandpa had passed on.

I definitely believe that there are unexplainable things that take place. For instance, when my mom woke up completely disoriented and told me she saw my dad, my grandma and grandpa, my aunt, and her oldest dearest friend, I knew that she didn't just have a dream. She told me how all underneath her was covered in wavy white sheets and that they were calling for her to come and hang out with them. She said she had never felt such peace and she wanted to go so bad, but something was holding her back - and then she woke up. All that morning at work, I felt my father and my aunt all around me. It was like this strange presence. I truly feel they were coming to prepare my mother for a loss of something. I don't know exactly what yet, but I know it was there and it was true.

I find everyone's stories so fascinating!

 

[BusynMember]

I hope more check in with stories. I love hearing them.