The Paranormal

[Freecare Spiritwise]

It's almost too strange to be fiction. Thousands of people with experiences too bizarre for most people to fully comprehend, all telling the exact same story. It's a very interesting subject, and most of the accounts suggest that the "visitors" aren't necessarily visiting - that they've been here all along. Really interesting - I'm not sure how much of it I believe. The truth is supposed to be stranger than fiction, but man this is some strange shit.

One of the local mean girls borrowed my copy of communion, then the girls got into a fight and I've been told I'll never see it again, so I downloaded it - very hard to find for download. It's a perfect wife's out of town stay home sick in dreary weather kinda movie.

[Ariannda Kusanagi]

Sinaiel, he is indeed Mormon

[Klast Brell]

I've seen/felt/heard weird things I would call ghosts. But then, who knows what other explanation the instances could have had.

Menstruation.

I almost got coffee up my nose laughing at that.

[Klast Brell]

If any of this stuff was true it would be testable, reproducible, patented and some big wall street corporations would be raking in money hand over fist using it.

[Alluveal]

Freecare, I'm a fan of Strieber. Didn't like the movie, though. I've met Whitley a few times (at the book reading for his sequel to "The Hunger" and for a short period through a friend who appeared in one of his books.) He's really a down to Earth, humble guy. I miss him subbing for Art Bell on Coast to Coast.

I think what I always found interesting about Strieber is that the government was extremely interested in him. He filed some kind of suit way back when. All of his mail was being forwarded to the defense department. The friend I spoke of above is one of 3 letters that he received in a month's time. Somehow, it managed to get through.

To me, that says that "something" is going on. I have no idea what, but the whole abduction phenomenon has always been interesting to me. When I lived with the same friend, I used to have the most terrifying dreams. I would sleep walk, wake up in the middle of the night pointing to the wall (where I had a poster of the constellations.) Weird weird weird dreams. When he moved out. They stopped. He said I was sleepwalking one day, sitting in the living room. He said, "hey, what are you doing out here, go to bed."

I told him, "The people are coming."

And he kind of scoffed and said, "c'mon, they won't get you. Go to sleep."

Me, "Naw, they're coming for you. They don't come for me."

LMAO. Don't remember a moment of that and regardless of how "spooky" it seemed at the time, it was funny as hell. At least I know they're not interested in me, eh.

[Harlowe]

It's almost too strange to be fiction. Thousands of people with experiences too bizarre for most people to fully comprehend, all telling the exact same story. It's a very interesting subject, and most of the accounts suggest that the "visitors" aren't necessarily visiting - that they've been here all along. Really interesting - I'm not sure how much of it I believe. The truth is supposed to be stranger than fiction, but man this is some strange shit.

See now that causes me to draw an opposite conclusion - thousands of western world people with the same story. We've all heard the alien stories from the time we were kids, so most people know what it is, how to describe the event, the aliens, what happens. Why aren't they abducting other cultures, let alone not doing it with the same anal voracity they are here? You know...it just seems highly, suspect to me.

Dreams can seem pretty real as well.

[Taxious]

If any of this stuff was true it would be testable, reproducible, patented and some big wall street corporations would be raking in money hand over fist using it.

My best friend is really into the "psychic" stuff and although I've never told him I don't believe in it, it's interesting to see/hear what he comes up with. Klast, according to him, there is a general rule of thumb where you can't use your powers for personal gain. (fame, cash, etc..) It all seems to revolve around controlling energy more than communicating with the dead, or anything like that.

The thing that gets me is that he's the smartest person I know. Very charming, funny, and religious. I remember asking him one time if his "powers" conflict at all with his Christian beliefs. He felt as though God had given him these abilities and that it didn't conflict at all. "God is still #1, I can just do some things."

Personally, I believe that there are a lot of things we don't know, so I try to not be set in (or completely reject) anything.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/

I'm too lazy to upload the actual journal article but thats a good summary of it. It was a pretty interesting read - I was skeptical but nothing was super off with the experiment.

Personally I don't think we're ready, as a species, to communicate with alien life. Anything's possible, though.

edit: and by anything's possible I mean that science is far from perfected. The only way science works is because people keep testing theories that everyone else thinks are dead. Remember when everyone was certain the earth was flat? That the continents didn't move? That the world was 4000 years old? We had science back then, too, and people still got stuff wrong.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Harlowe,

Yeah I hear you, but there's just some compelling accounts by very credible people. We're not talking about wack-jobs here, it's pretty much all "normal" people and sometimes the accounts are corroborated by multiple people, even total strangers.

In the case of Strieber (big fan too Lulu) you had an already famous author who happened to document everything in meticulous detail and lots of what he said was corroborated by others: friends, neighbors, etc.

Again, if most of the people who have experienced these abductions saw an 8 foot black man rob a bank, the cops would be looking for that guy. This same person who's testimony would be credible enough to send a man to the electric chair is not credible if he sees something way way outside the realm of normal human experience. So I guess I'm saying that I don't think all of them are liars or hallucinating.

Strieber initially treated his experiences as hallucinations and went through the standard medical tests. IIRC the doctors treated it more like a rape case and sent him to a hypnotherapist to try to uncover whatever trauma he had been through.

So again, some very credible work has been done in this field.

And abductions aside, there's been other interesting UFO events like mass sightings and such. I've personally seen 'em and I know lots and lots of others who have too. I remember in the early 70's when I was a kid with the whole neighborhood standing out in the street in the middle of the night watching stuff in the sky that didn't look like anything from this world.

So I think with such a long history of possible events and thousands of witnesses, these phenomenon should be looked at much more closely.

[Harlowe]

I think with the mass sightings, it seems more plausable that we are dealing with Military high tech/testing. In fact IIRC that is how numerous stories were debunked.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Some, yes, but the military doesn't normally fly huge numbers of secret test craft over highly populated areas - heh, and certainly not in Mexico. Most sightings are debunked and rightly so, but some are remarkable.

I did see a UFO up fairly close when I was a kid staying at a 1,000 acre date ranch in Palm Springs. It was literally a stone's throw from the missle base (29 palms?). There's also a connection to the military in many abduction cases. People have reported military observers during their experiences.

Really the most interesting aspect of the cases to me, and then I'll shut up about it (at least aliens), is that in almost every single abductee story the victim is shown doomsday type images of war and natural disasters and given strong warnings related to mankind's personal responsibility for the planet. The images are often different, but the message of imminent peril is always the same.

So years ago I took the challenge, I did my homework, and now I believe. But it doesn't really change anything. Most of the american public believes in aliens but yet we still haven't been invited to any good alien parties and we still have to pay our mortgages and yell at our kids, so from a practical standpoint until they land at a Miley Cyrus concert or something, it's all just academic. If they're real, it appears they don't want to be fucked with, and if they're not then science needs to make us some better drugs.

[Select]

(2) creating offsping from aliens and humans.

That I find the craziest. It makes me think back to old mythology. Centaurs and harpies. Manticores were really tigers. The "red man's face" they had were just a typical tiger's that people's fears and imaginations distorted.

Really the most interesting aspect of the cases to me, and then I'll shut up about it (at least aliens), is that in almost every single abductee story the victim is shown doomsday type images of war and natural disasters and given strong warnings related to mankind's personal responsibility for the planet. The images are often different, but the message of imminent peril is always the same.

Then why, oh why hasn't it been the greatest leaders with the most influence? All at once? Or us as a whole? If they're so good at disappearing and not being fucked with, they could be in and out of here with a message easily. And the people they "abduct" end up being traumatized and suppressing the memories. Wow, good job there spreading your message to a useless, traumatized citizen.

I do believe they're out there. (WoooOOOoooo~) But not like this.

[Klast Brell]

You mentioned drugs. A co worker of mine almost bought some infomercial wonder drug. One of those coral calcium, pomegranate extract, miracle cure of the week things. She asked me if I thought it worked. I said something about the same as what i mentioned earlier. "If it really worked doctors would prescribe it. "

[Select]

Hm. I'm skeptical about wonder of the week pills, but I am a fan of supplements. I'm on a few. Fish oil/flax oil, cod liver oil, ginkgo, multivitamin of course, and a few other things. Though, my doctors have said "Good girl" when I mention them since they help with MS, which pretty much is prescribing them. So, different ballpark?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

If it really worked doctors would prescribe it.

And doctors won't prescribe it until it's proven to work. At some point someone has to swallow the red pill and somone else casually observes whether it's fatal to the person or not. Who got the first vaccination when it was totally untested and theoretical? And I bet people said the same thing 500 years ago when the best medical advice was usually to drain most of your blood. "If draining all my blood didn't work, the doctors wouldn't do it, right?"

Also, many of our medicines were used as folklore remedies for thousands of years before they were blessed by science. Really, everything that's proven was at one time unproven.

I like that infomercial that claims to make a man "larger in certain places" but they won't say what those places are, and with my luck I'd end up with bigger feet or something.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Hm. I'm skeptical about wonder of the week pills, but I am a fan of supplements. I'm on a few. Fish oil/flax oil, cod liver oil, ginkgo, multivitamin of course, and a few other things. Though, my doctors have said "Good girl" when I mention them since they help with MS, which pretty much is prescribing them. So, different ballpark?

I have diabetes and my mom keeps trying to get me to take all these natural remedies. But I lean more towards Klast's viewpoint with that. Klast has more faith in modern science than me, and I don't think modern medicine is perfect, but my doctor is really really smart and I trust his judgement. Again, medical science isn't perfect (as my doctor will freely admit) but it's the best game in town, and there's something to be said about taking advice from someone who has devoted their life to the study of human health.

Maybe I'd be more open to remedies that are less mainstream if I had a condition that the doctor couldn't help me with. And there are doctors who favor a more natural and less medicated approach so if you're not happy with what your doctor is telling you then it's easy to find a new one.

And moving back on topic, do I believe that psychic energy can cure the sick? I believe that a person's mental state has a profound effect on the body, but I don't really believe that hanging crystals or chanting is going to cure a serious illness. But then again some of the hippy psychic new age types I know do seem to be healthier...

[Alluveal]

I think with the mass sightings, it seems more plausable that we are dealing with Military high tech/testing. In fact IIRC that is how numerous stories were debunked.

I agree that most UFO's likely fall into this category. I mean, it's still a UFO to us (we have no idea what it is,) but the alien life scenario will be extremely rare in my eyes.

[Alluveal]

I have quite a bit of faith in modern medicine, but I don't include all "pills" or "drugs" in that. I think pharma-companies are the devil on so many levels.

[Ddrak]

Pharma companies behave in many of the same ways the diet-supplement companies behave. Doing tests without control groups, not publishing unfavorable test results, not publishing test plans *prior* to testing, testing for one thing and not finding it so moving the goalposts to claim success, etc. etc.

This behavior shouldn't be confused with science though. "Bad Science" has lots of awesome examples.

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Science is just a methodology - that's all it is. It's a damn good one, but when all you have a is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, so I think someday advancements will come through advancing the methodology and not just the technology that's created by following the methodology.

There might be other technologies possible through other methodologies/processes. There might be subjective truths that will never be reproducible.

Most of the advancements of mankind were made by intuitive leaps, which there's no real formalized methods for. Science didn't give us relativity - it (eventually) verified the truth of it - but science doesn't create - methods don't create. Humans create.

So there might be other systems of thought someday to place in our toolbox next to proven methods that we already have. And what may seem like fantasy today might be accepted as fact tomorrow - just look at history. We like to pat ourselves on the back for being so clever but what we don't know would fill volumes, and every generation thinks it's hit the pinnacle.

Most of our electronics technology is based on the transistor. Grats us, we invented an on/off switch and made it really super small, and we've spent 80-ish years perfecting it, and we congratulate ourselves for creating quad core processors and high pressure espresso machines. But what are we missing? What's right in front of our faces that we can't see becuase we're trying to pound a square peg into a round hole?

So I guess what I'm saying is that mankind makes the biggest advances when people keep open minds and are unrestrained from dogma. In Zen it's called the "beginner's mind". We approach all these problems carrying the baggage we all have, and then someone like Einstein comes along and turns are accepted beliefs upside down.