most haunted...real or not real!

[Mentalman]

Pints - you're an intelligent man. Please tell me you don't really believe that shite. You see something unusual and your first explanation is "it's a ghost". Why pick that conclusion from the infinite number of other similarly ludicrous conclusions? Why is that a better explanation than "it's a Martian" or "it's a trained midget giraffe"?

If there are ghosts, there are flying pigs, fish riding bicycles and Westmeath men with All-Ireland medals.

Best I can do on short notice Hardy, and have an imaginary pint of fcuku on me...

A moment of family shame.

Ah that's rough AZ. He'll be hoping to be lifting more silverware this weekend hopefully.

[leenie]

some v. interesting stories.............

think i am a believer now

[Lar Naparka]

I have a theory that I feel may go some way towards explaining many of the phenomena we would regard as being outside the normal course of events. I'm referring to ESP, the so-called sixth sense.
There's considerable debate about the matter, with some psychologists claiming it is a fact that humans, at least some of them some of the time, do get forewarnings about events that lie in the future. Others disagree and claim nothing has been established so far that would conclusively support this theory.
I'm inclined to believe that mankind did indeed possess this "sixth sense" at a much earlier stage of evolution. But as humans developed and evolved into more complex and self-sustaining types of beings, this extra means of taking in information became surplus to requirements and succeeding generations gradually lost the ability to use it.
Vestiges of it may still remain deep in our subconscious minds and some indeed may have greater ability than others to tap into it.
Again, I don't think anyone can prove or disprove this theory but I've read enough from scholarly sources to make me think that there is substance to the notion.
Animals appear to possess this sixth sense to a greater degree than humans.
There's one well-documented case I recall about a dam burst somewhere in mid-America in the 1930s. [I'm afraid it isn't well-documented enough for me to recall exact details off the top of my head.]
Early one morning in a little riverside town, downriver from the dam, the animals and birds in the area began to exhibit signs of distress much to the puzzlement of the local people.
As the morning wore on, this exhibition of unease got worse and people became alarmed as animals and birds began to leave the town—at least those who were free to do so began moving to higher ground.
The townspeople did the same, without knowing why.
Just as well they did, because the dam burst when it happened released a torrent of water that washed their dwellings away.
Did the animals and birds foretell the future and did their collective sixth sense save the townspeople from catastrophe?
All I know is that newspaper accounts of the time did report than dam burst and the fact that many lives would have been lost if the people had not inexplicably decided  to move en masse to higher ground.

[Zapatista]

Are you on a wind up Lar? Surley there must be some other resonable explanation to this story?

I'm all for the sixth sense thing but an entire town following a bunch of animals up a hill first thing in the morning and not knowing why is a bit mad.

[Mentalman]

Not sure about 6th senses. There seems to be growing evidence that as much as 20% of people are more sensitive than average. The term used is HSP - highly sensitive person. It's a very interesting, in that traits normally seen as negative e.g. shyness, can increase survival, not only of the person but of those around them. Going back to the topic, these people pick up on subtleties often missed by others, audio and visual keys, take in and process a lot more information than the average person. Now the conclusions they come to, if shared, may be seen by them or others as some sort of precognition, but generally it's more than likely (i) they are seeing the world differently, or at least taking more data from it and (ii) people who don't share that capacity try to explain it away as some sort of "special" ability, whereas it's an evolutionarily acquired trait, similar to people who are left handed.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_persons

[Lar Naparka]

No, Zap, I am not on a wind up here.
This story has been widely reported and is out forward as a classic case by people who uphold this view. I can't, off hand, give you sources but I suppose I will be able when I have some time tonight to search Google.
I'm not saying it happened as reported but I have read contemporary newspaper accounts that reported the bursting of the dam and the mass exodus of people and animals to higher ground before the calamity occurred.
Again,  I am not saying that what I wrote about  is the complete unvarnished truth; there has been a lot of ongoing controversy about the incident since but the theory of animals sensing a disaster that was still to happen has never been debunked to my satisfaction either.
What you write, Mentalman is very interesting.
I think there are people who seem to possess some degree of precognition but I wouldn't go further than that. I have an open mind.
There is a link below to an article that some of you may find interesting; again, I am drawing no definite conclusions from it.
I went to school at St. Nathys in Ballaghadereen in the 60s.
There was one lad who wasn't the brightest but he did have some extraordinary abilities.
One day a gang of first years were sent to pick stones out of a ploughed filed.
There were loads of earthworms squiggling about and I remember a group of us passing worms around from hand to hand.  Every time a worm was dropped onto this lad's open hand it shot upwards as if struck by an electric charge.
I'm deadly serious about this. The worm shrivelled up and died every time one was dropped onto one of this boy's hands.
This young fellow said he did not experience anything out of the ordinary. He knew he could do this sort of thing for as far back as he could remember.
He gained a reputation for his ability to get watches to work again after they stopped.
Some priests in the college certainly believed in this and passed it off as a gift from God. No doubt, the fact that it saved them a few bob at times also played a part in their thinking.
I cannot explain any of this and it doesn't bother me much, one way or the other—but it can't be explained by rational thinking..

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=20000701-000034&page=2

[pintsofguinness]

Are you on a wind up Lar? Surley there must be some other resonable explanation to this story?

I'm all for the sixth sense thing but an entire town following a bunch of animals up a hill first thing in the morning and not knowing why is a bit mad.

Why would he be taking the piss?  Use google and you'll see countless examples of animals reacting and fleeing hours and hours before any natural disaster. 
I don't know about this village fleeing with the animals but it wouldn't be bad idea! 

[SLIGONIAN]

Listen lads, i always laugh at topics like this, isnt it all relative, I mean everyone out there belives they have a soul dont they and that your soul lives forever. So this is just the human part of eternal journey, its been scientifically proven that were are all energy, ie our aura is our soul, spiirt whatever you wanna call it. Some of us are barely awake in this world, im mean alot of your day is unconcious awareness like a robot you just react to things the same way, like someone pushes your buttons, your no more than a robot.

But there are people out there of a level of conciousness that there experience of life and perception of it is alot closer level to soul rather than this world. So they can percieve energies that are still here but not in there human body. ie ghosts. I have had weird unexplained experiences and being told genuine stories of when people passed away and weird occurances to know that there is definitly some truth in it but beyond alot of people perception so i wont be disclosing it here or anywhere. Its just personal and relative to person.

I dunno if the programme is real because i havnt experienced it, it would be completely different using all your senses instead of just your eyes and ears just.

[Lar Naparka]

I thought that this topic had run its course and was going to sink out of sight. However, as the last poster was a Sligo lad, I thought I'd add this before the thread drops down the line.
An elderly couple lives in my neighbourhood and I call around regularly to keep an eye on things generally and to bring the old boy out to the supermarket or the post office and the likes.
Jonjo, the man in questions, hails from Culfadda, near Ballymote and is as black and white an individual as you could meet; if I used the word, 'precognition,' he'd think I had problems starting the car!
Friday afternoon, I dropped in as usual and JJ was on the point of taking his dog out on a lead to walk around the park nearby.
He had always claimed that the dog could sense when they were going to go out and would commence barking and running up and down the hallway. He would also start jumping up to try and pull his lead down from its peg just inside the front door.
I asked JJ to stay in the hallway, while his wife and I brought the dog into the sitting room and closed the door.
I told him to go to the peg and take the lead off the hook as if ready to go out.  I also asked him to make as little noise as possible and to repeat the procedure a few times if we got no reaction from Buttons, the mutt. About five minutes at most I told him and the pair of them could go. (JJ is not a patient man!)

Amway, I could hear him pacing about outside the door and muttering to himself. Buttons was lying quietly at my feet – the little fecker knew I'd usually be given a cuppa and a few bikkies and was waiting for his share.
He suddenly shot up after about three minutes or so and began his going out routine.
"Janey Mac," I thought, "that dog has sharp hearing. He must have somehow heard JJ taking the lead off the wall."
I pulled the door into the hallway open; JJ was standing outside, with the lead still on its peg at the other end of the hallway.
The reason he has been so agitated was that when I mentioned the term, ESP, he thought I was talking about his free electricity allowance.  He had walked up and down with the blessed lead in his hand, swishing it about and worrying that his allowance was going to be cut. He had taken the lead down two or three times already and when Buttons hadn't barked he decided he had enough and he was on the point of opening the door to tell me to quit the effing messing about.
Now the point of the post is this:
Buttons hadn't reacted when his owner had taken down the lead or carried it about. The split second when JJ raised his hand to push the door open and barge back into the sitting room he came to life!
Also, JJ is quite adamant that he had not yet touched the door when the craic began.
That sequence of events took place exactly as I have described. Unfortunately, I have managed to scare the wits out of my two old friends but Buttons seems totally unconcerned by it all. 

[Zapatista]

That's all fair enough and I can understand why we are so convinced by all this.

My theory is that our minds will justify just about anything unless we really question it. The common conspiracy theory is an example. You take two of three facts and link them together by filling in the blanks in order to explain them. We have a need to explain  things to there conclusion and often take the shortest path to that conclusion. It is the same as many people convince themselves that they are good and anything bad they ever done can be explained. We often apologies for stuff we are not sorry for. We apologies because it is the easiest and shortest option but we are rarely sorry for what we apologies for. We are only sorry we got caught. We can't admit to ourselves that we did something wrong. Our minds convince us that it is justified in order to take away the guilt and bring things to a conclusion.

We are happy to believe in a sixth sense as it will answer the many questions we would ask ourselves otherwise. Once we pin it to a sixth sense we can conclude and move on. The mind is a strange place and this conclusion we reach could be merely a trick of the mind to put and end to the questions and allow us to continue with our lives free from hang ups and searching for answers. The sixth sense we have and see in others could be a diversion. We don't need to know the truth in order to be happy we only need to accept the explanation. In Irish politics many of us accept the explanation as it is the easy option and requires no thinking. When the explanation has been accepted we can put the issue to bed and continue happily. When we don't accept it we get aggravated and are unhappy. There could be a default setting in the mind to explain things in order to keep us happy and we call it and explain it as a sixth sense.

[Gnevin]

I find it shocking in this so called scientific age we have people who still believe in ghosts,don't believe in the evolution or the moon landing. As Zap says their is clearly a need in some people too create links and realities even to the extend of denying all the facts before them .

[Hardy]

Agreed Gnevin. You'd imagine the enlightenment had never happened; people are willing to accord the same credibility to Uri Geller and The National Enquirer as they are to Newton, Galileo and Einstein.

I hope I'm never (innocently, of course) charged with a serious crime, if the ability of some people to reach conclusions from tenuous evidence is general in the population.

Juror 1: We know he was in the county on the night in question.
Juror 2: And the defence didn't present any evidence that anyone else was in the county that night.
Juror 3: Guilty, then.
Juror 4: I'm not so sure ...
Juror 1: He's definitely guilty - I have a sixth sense about these things.
Juror 4: Well, why didn't you say so?
All: GUILTY!

[baoithe]

Agreed Gnevin. You'd imagine the enlightenment had never happened; people are willing to accord the same credibility to Uri Geller and The National Enquirer as they are to Newton, Galileo and Einstein.

I hope I'm never (innocently, of course) charged with a serious crime, if the ability of some people to reach conclusions from tenuous evidence is general in the population.

Juror 1: We know he was in the county on the night in question.
Juror 2: And the defence didn't present any evidence that anyone else was in the county that night.
Juror 3: Guilty, then.
Juror 4: I'm not so sure ...
Juror 1: He's definitely guilty - I have a sixth sense about these things.
Juror 4: Well, why didn't you say so?
All: GUILTY!

Not to be pedantic and certainly not to completely disagree with what you're saying in general Hardy, but as fas as I'm concerned the Enlightenment was not so much synonomous with advances in Science. It is more known as an age of philosophical and intellectual development and it is primarily chronicled as the genesis of the "nation-state" as we know it today together with modern socio-political ideologies (e.g Rosseau's Social Contract).

[Hardy]

I'd say, though, that the advancement of science was one of the products of that philosophical and intellectual development to which you refer, baoithe. The enlightenment marked the birth of rationalism and science is the ultimate expression of rationalism. I'd suggest the enlightenment period marked the turning point when man began to look for rational explanations for how the world works rather than being satisfied with magic and the intervention of gods.

[Zapatista]

Agreed Gnevin. You'd imagine the enlightenment had never happened; people are willing to accord the same credibility to Uri Geller and The National Enquirer as they are to Newton, Galileo and Einstein.

I hope I'm never (innocently, of course) charged with a serious crime, if the ability of some people to reach conclusions from tenuous evidence is general in the population.

Juror 1: We know he was in the county on the night in question.
Juror 2: And the defence didn't present any evidence that anyone else was in the county that night.
Juror 3: Guilty, then.
Juror 4: I'm not so sure ...
Juror 1: He's definitely guilty - I have a sixth sense about these things.
Juror 4: Well, why didn't you say so?
All: GUILTY!

That is simplifing the whole thing but I accept it as an explanation and so am happy to agree

The opposite of this effect is depression. The questions keep coming and the default isn't working right.

Why am I here?
Do I have a purpose?
Why does no one understand me?
Why does no one think i'm pretty?

If you a asking these questions and no answer will satisfy you you become depressed. Many people do ask them and the most crazy answers are often accepted.


Why am I here? - to serve God.
Do I have a purpose? - to serve God
Why does no one understand me?- God understands me.
Why does no one think i'm pretty? - My mum says I'm pretty.

In this case I'm happy. If the default is not working I can't accept these answers and feel useless and unwanted. My mind is not keeping me happy and I am depressed.

The enlightenment brought a new level of acceptence and brought it to a wider audience who weren't happy with the God explanation. I don't which is the right answer if either are.