How to tell if it's Paranormal or not

ladybirdirl

I was just thinking about the scientific versus spiritual side of paranormal & it got me thinking... how are conclusions of paranormal activity reached?

i.e. If a complete newbie thought they were experiencing something what would be the mjaor pointers for any investigators

Those that come to my mind are

Cold Spots
Strange/out of place smells
Apparitions


Anyone got anything else to add.......I'm not much good with the science stuff so would be interested to hear any of that or even any of the ritualistic stuff like seance magic etc


Ladybird

stevenmu

From a scientific point of view, to determine if something is paranormal, every possible normal explanation must be examined and ruled out. If all posssible normal explanations are ruled out, then the experience is paranormal. For example at the charleville trip recently a group of us very clearly heard voices. We checked where the rest of the group was and they were nowhere nearby, but when walking past a part of the castle where some of the residents live we heard voices coming from in there. We could not be sure they were the same voices, but with such a likely normal source for the voices we had to assume that they were it and that the voices we heard were not paranormal.

It can be much more complicated though, just because a normal explanation is not readily available does not mean that there isn't one. For e.g. with hearing voices, its possible for someone's imagination to pick a pattern out of random background noise and convince them that they in fact heard a voice, this happens quite a lot with EVP.

Unfortunatly, because we can't precisly define the paranormal or understand it's mechanics well enough to test for it, the determination of whether an experience is paranormal or not generally comes down to a subjective decision by the person experiencing it.

iamhunted

This mightnt be of any use but its something Ive noticed when listening to audio recorded at investigations.

ive found with the few 'real' (well as far as I can work out anyway) EVPs, when a volume filter is applied to make the sounds louder, the EVP itself doesnt get louder yet any other sound does. Ive tried this with a normal recording and one which may well be an EVP and the normal sound amplifies with the background fine whereas the EVP stays the same though the background noise with it amplifies.

I cant say thats a definite rule and I know - it only really loosely ties in with the OP but if that newbie refered to was listening to audio then it might be of use

Ghost Girl

It's classified as paranormal if there is no other explanation for what has happened. Of course this does not mean that what has happened can never be explained. Trust me, if some thing paranormal happens to you, you will know it.

Are dreams or premonitions paranormal?? There were times in the past when I wasn't sure if my dreams were really premonitions, until the night I woke up in a sweat and told my then boyfriend my dream, every specific detail about a persons suicide, to be told three weeks later, what I dreamed actually happened. The person I had the dream about was a kid I went to school with years ago, and had not seen since primary school. sorry rabbiting on here....