Marguerite
Active Member
Sorry you had a rough birthday.
Some thoughts on hauntings - I am a sceptic, but I have alsos had experiences I couldn't explain any other way. However, I've never had an experience worthy of being afraid.
Stuff going missing (such as the medications) and the door unlocking itself - there can be a whole lot of things tat could have a rational explanation, a totally innocent reason. But if you're spooked by something, it's easy to "blame the ghost" when it could be perfectly natural "oops, it fell out of my bag," or even the patter of little difficult child 'poltergeist' feet. I read a lot about ghosts and witches when I was a kid and one thing thta fascinated me, was that poltergeists are often found in houses where there is a disturbed child. The claim was not that the child was doing this to scare the family (perish the thought!) but that the disturbed child somehow was the source of a ripple in the psychic energy and attracted mischievous spirits.
I've known a few mischievous spirits in my time. One of them is my neighbour, a real ratbag. He joined a UFO watcher's club back in the 70s and kept them happy by staging hoaxes. Of courdse he never 'fessed up, he just set up a fake UFO sighting and then sat back and enjoyed the fireworks - literally! He told me about one in particular, even named the place. I went home and checked one of my obscure little reference books on my shelves ("Close Encounters of an Australian Kind" by Ross Bakersfeld, I think it was) and there it was, in the "still unexplained section". My neighbour doesn't read books and would not have known I had that book. The description of the sighting matches his hoax method. He would get a large balloon (there were special ones you could get, a higher quality latex usually red in colour, I remember my sister buying one back in the 60s). He would fill the balloon with hydrogen (which he could extract using electrolysis of water; or get a gas cylinder of it, which was fairly easy in those days). He would attach a length of fireworks fuse to the balloon, and along the fuse he would wrap strips of magnesium ribbon. Different lengths of magnesium at interrupted intervals. He would also rig up a small torch bulb and battery to the balloon. Then he would go somewhere likely (well in the open) preferably on a still clear night and when he was on his own, he would light the fuse, attach the battery to 'on' and let go the balloon. The battery would ensure the balloon glowed a dull red, but the size of the balloon being larger than usual, it wouldn't automatically be recognised as a kids' ballloon. Also, once it was high enough in te sky, there was no frame of reference to know how big it was, so people's minds would make the assuption that it was a craft.
Then it would begin flashing. An intensely strong light would shiine for a second or two, then stop Then agian. Then stop. He said people around would say, "It's signalling to us!" and frantically grab for teir torches, and start flashing their torches back, trying to make some sense out of the length of each set of flashes and the intervals betwwn them. People's own beleif systems would work in his favour and he was getting off on other people's gullibility (I said he's a ratbag!).
The grand finale was when the thing apparently disappeared at high speed in a flash of light, leaving a sonic boom. That of course was the fuse finally burning through to the balloon and igniting the hydrogen. If the balloon was far enough away (a hundred metres or so) the delay in the sound of the explosion would seem like a sonic boom in the wake of a high-speed airship.
Simple to do, but nobody in their right mind would ever do something like this, the simplest explanation is that it was a UFO. Only I have spoken to the guy that did it.
People do stuff like this and really get off on the belief they see in others. Also, it is human nature to try to find a conneciton between observations, some sort of cause and effect. we also tend to see faces where no visual patterns exist (it is imprinted into our brain wiring in infancy). The kids MAY have seen a pattern of shadow as you drove up and assumed it to be a person. Or they may be stringing you along.
A few years ago, there was a lot of stuff in the news in Sydney, at Coogee Beach. At a certain time of day, the Virgin Mary was being sighted by people. Even atheists and non-Catholics were seeing her and it was a puzzle. The sceptics came in and idenfitied the reason - light from the sunset was reflecting off a nearby window onto a road sign (or similar) and it was sufficiently similar to a face, to trigger the "it's a face!" recognition in people's brains. Then word got around and if someone says to you, "Doesn't that look like a face?" you will see it. It's like a lot of optical illusions. A friend of mine lives in Coogee and saw it herself, she sent me photos.
Here is an article - the "Spike" referred to is the nom de plume of the columnist in that newspaper.
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/mons1/sacred.htm
I'm not saying that hauntings don't happen. husband used to live in a Sydney terrace house, in a room which always seemed to be the most tranquil in the house. We believe that it was occupied by the ghost of a little old lady reported to have been axe-murdered in there. But despite such a ghastly death, any sighting of her (never visual, always a sense of her presence) was calm and tranquil, a sense of comfort and peace.
After my father died, my mother reported feeling his hand on her shoulder, especially if she was reading a letter. She said she often felt him nearby. She moved out of the house but in the delay between her moving out and the house selling, husband & I stayed there. I heard my father's bare feet walk across the lino floor (from the fridge to the cupboard, to get his nightly glass of whisky). I heard him at the side gate. There were lots of little noises around the house and I would look to see who it was (expecting it to be my sister arriving, or someone else) to find there was nobody there.
I've also had my own "Virgin Mary" experience - one night on the farm, a glowing figure stood in the paddock. I was terrified, rooted to the spot - until my brother in law was able to show me that it was just moonlight reflecting off the side of an overturned water tank!
Once my brain adjusted, I could see the tank and nothing else. But before that, I could see a human figure in every detail.
The brain really does play tricks on us.
So even if you have a genuine ghost, don't be too hasty in seeing it as malevolent, or in blaming it for avery little thing not working right. I still suspect you may have a couple of flesh-and-blood poltergeists, even if they're unwitting ones.
Marg
Some thoughts on hauntings - I am a sceptic, but I have alsos had experiences I couldn't explain any other way. However, I've never had an experience worthy of being afraid.
Stuff going missing (such as the medications) and the door unlocking itself - there can be a whole lot of things tat could have a rational explanation, a totally innocent reason. But if you're spooked by something, it's easy to "blame the ghost" when it could be perfectly natural "oops, it fell out of my bag," or even the patter of little difficult child 'poltergeist' feet. I read a lot about ghosts and witches when I was a kid and one thing thta fascinated me, was that poltergeists are often found in houses where there is a disturbed child. The claim was not that the child was doing this to scare the family (perish the thought!) but that the disturbed child somehow was the source of a ripple in the psychic energy and attracted mischievous spirits.
I've known a few mischievous spirits in my time. One of them is my neighbour, a real ratbag. He joined a UFO watcher's club back in the 70s and kept them happy by staging hoaxes. Of courdse he never 'fessed up, he just set up a fake UFO sighting and then sat back and enjoyed the fireworks - literally! He told me about one in particular, even named the place. I went home and checked one of my obscure little reference books on my shelves ("Close Encounters of an Australian Kind" by Ross Bakersfeld, I think it was) and there it was, in the "still unexplained section". My neighbour doesn't read books and would not have known I had that book. The description of the sighting matches his hoax method. He would get a large balloon (there were special ones you could get, a higher quality latex usually red in colour, I remember my sister buying one back in the 60s). He would fill the balloon with hydrogen (which he could extract using electrolysis of water; or get a gas cylinder of it, which was fairly easy in those days). He would attach a length of fireworks fuse to the balloon, and along the fuse he would wrap strips of magnesium ribbon. Different lengths of magnesium at interrupted intervals. He would also rig up a small torch bulb and battery to the balloon. Then he would go somewhere likely (well in the open) preferably on a still clear night and when he was on his own, he would light the fuse, attach the battery to 'on' and let go the balloon. The battery would ensure the balloon glowed a dull red, but the size of the balloon being larger than usual, it wouldn't automatically be recognised as a kids' ballloon. Also, once it was high enough in te sky, there was no frame of reference to know how big it was, so people's minds would make the assuption that it was a craft.
Then it would begin flashing. An intensely strong light would shiine for a second or two, then stop Then agian. Then stop. He said people around would say, "It's signalling to us!" and frantically grab for teir torches, and start flashing their torches back, trying to make some sense out of the length of each set of flashes and the intervals betwwn them. People's own beleif systems would work in his favour and he was getting off on other people's gullibility (I said he's a ratbag!).
The grand finale was when the thing apparently disappeared at high speed in a flash of light, leaving a sonic boom. That of course was the fuse finally burning through to the balloon and igniting the hydrogen. If the balloon was far enough away (a hundred metres or so) the delay in the sound of the explosion would seem like a sonic boom in the wake of a high-speed airship.
Simple to do, but nobody in their right mind would ever do something like this, the simplest explanation is that it was a UFO. Only I have spoken to the guy that did it.
People do stuff like this and really get off on the belief they see in others. Also, it is human nature to try to find a conneciton between observations, some sort of cause and effect. we also tend to see faces where no visual patterns exist (it is imprinted into our brain wiring in infancy). The kids MAY have seen a pattern of shadow as you drove up and assumed it to be a person. Or they may be stringing you along.
A few years ago, there was a lot of stuff in the news in Sydney, at Coogee Beach. At a certain time of day, the Virgin Mary was being sighted by people. Even atheists and non-Catholics were seeing her and it was a puzzle. The sceptics came in and idenfitied the reason - light from the sunset was reflecting off a nearby window onto a road sign (or similar) and it was sufficiently similar to a face, to trigger the "it's a face!" recognition in people's brains. Then word got around and if someone says to you, "Doesn't that look like a face?" you will see it. It's like a lot of optical illusions. A friend of mine lives in Coogee and saw it herself, she sent me photos.
Here is an article - the "Spike" referred to is the nom de plume of the columnist in that newspaper.
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/mons1/sacred.htm
I'm not saying that hauntings don't happen. husband used to live in a Sydney terrace house, in a room which always seemed to be the most tranquil in the house. We believe that it was occupied by the ghost of a little old lady reported to have been axe-murdered in there. But despite such a ghastly death, any sighting of her (never visual, always a sense of her presence) was calm and tranquil, a sense of comfort and peace.
After my father died, my mother reported feeling his hand on her shoulder, especially if she was reading a letter. She said she often felt him nearby. She moved out of the house but in the delay between her moving out and the house selling, husband & I stayed there. I heard my father's bare feet walk across the lino floor (from the fridge to the cupboard, to get his nightly glass of whisky). I heard him at the side gate. There were lots of little noises around the house and I would look to see who it was (expecting it to be my sister arriving, or someone else) to find there was nobody there.
I've also had my own "Virgin Mary" experience - one night on the farm, a glowing figure stood in the paddock. I was terrified, rooted to the spot - until my brother in law was able to show me that it was just moonlight reflecting off the side of an overturned water tank!
Once my brain adjusted, I could see the tank and nothing else. But before that, I could see a human figure in every detail.
The brain really does play tricks on us.
So even if you have a genuine ghost, don't be too hasty in seeing it as malevolent, or in blaming it for avery little thing not working right. I still suspect you may have a couple of flesh-and-blood poltergeists, even if they're unwitting ones.
Marg
