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The power of the mind or external influencing?

  • 12-10-2008 05:22PM
    #1
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 16,676 CMod ✭✭✭✭


    I had a conversation with one of the cool people from Ulster Paranormal at the Paracon last night and it has prompted me to ask your opinions on such matters! :)

    As those of you who frequent the film forum might know, The Exorcist is one of my favourite movies. This is however due to its artistic merit rather than any weird or morbid obsession with demonic possession that you suspect would be my reason!

    Anyway when i was 21 i read the novel for the first time and it is an excellent yet uncomfortable read. I remember one day sitting in the canteen in work reading it (and to this day i still can remember the page!) and while reading one of the graphic scenes, i felt this wave of dread fill me. The canteen was packed and i was sitting alone (i did have friends i tells ya!) yet it made me uncomfortable enough to put the book down and join some colleagues to help clear my head.

    Anyway not long after i was yapping to me Da about the book (he read it when he was a younger). Me Da is the biggest skeptic going. He also doesnt scare easy. He's far to practical and logical for his own good! He used to work in a haunted building off leeson street and despite the things that went on in the building to him and his mates, he always had an explanation. So you get the picture.

    anyway i told him (in jest, otherwise he'd have mocked me!) about my canteen experience. He didnt laugh however, in fact he told me that when he was younger he was reading it in bed one night and he could have sworn the bed lifted itself off the ground. Similar to me, he plonked the book down and slept in a different room.

    Ok, im not suggesting the book is haunted, but im curious to wonder how much of such experiences we could credit to our minds and how much to a combination of it and external forces?

    Anyone else got similar experiences? Or am i just babbling?


Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 4,832 ✭✭✭littlebug


    I read that book when I was about 14 and it scared the bejaysus out of me. I remember I was alone in the house reading a part where there were noises in the attic and suddenly I heard this tapping noise which got louder and louder and closer and closer. I honestly had no idea what was going on and I was frozen to the spot with nothing less than absolute terror:eek:

    .. and then... a pony and trap went past the front of the house :pac: I laughed with relief for the next 20 minutes :D
    The book is incredibly scary (though I was very young reading it)and would fill anyone reading it with the dread that you mention. I don't know about shaking beds though... he may have half fallen asleep and I imagine half sleep combined with the natural dread effect of the book could have an impact!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 27,856 ✭✭✭✭Dave!


    Well think of it this way OP: when you're watching a movie (eg. the Exorcist :p), if something scary happens, you feel scared don't you? Your heart-rate increases, as does persperation, you probably gasp as well if you get a shock. These are all automatic physiological reactions to stress and shock.

    The reason why we engage so much with movies and experience the same emotions that are experienced by the protagonist is likely to be because of mirror neurons. The same neurons that trigger when we witness an action are triggered when we perform that action. eg. a monkey grabs a banana, the neurons fire. The monkey sees someone else grab a banana, the same neurons fire. So this is probably why sport, films, etc., are so effective.

    Well it seems that mirror neurons are also affected by reading:

    "For the recent study, Aziz-Zadeh and Rizzolatti's team located mirror neurons in human subjects using functional MRI, and then compared which cells activated when the subjects observed an action and which responded when subjects read about the action. They found that reading about hand movements activated the same mirror neurons that making the movements did."

    So I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that reading about an eery or graphic scene in a book will elicit appropriate physiological responses and cause you to sh*t your pants! That's what makes a good book so engaging, is it not? :D Maybe I'll give that Exorcist a read!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 994 ✭✭✭kshiel


    Its funny I mentioned this film during the course I was attending. I know I watched the film more times than I can remember but not for the sick, gore etc side but to see the film closer in a more relavant light if you like. Never had happen what you did, well the feeling of dread yes but not to the extent of moving away. I would wonder if or when we think of something of a more negative scale within our minds and we move it into a deeper level of thought we would have a more sub-jective experience (which can by all means feel objective) so there fore we genuinely think we moved or our enviroment moved but when we come back to normal mental state nothing has changed but the experience is certainly very real. So really its the energy conditions of our mental state of which we would project into the enivorment we are currently in that causes us to alter the reality of our perception at that moment. make sense??


  • Posts: 5,780 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Is this the same canteen that i frequently visited. If so this shivver was normal :)
    No but really its the same thing when doing investigations . If a place that you are going to has a spooky past its very hard not to have that on your mind. Alot of the time i feel that its if there is any paranormal activity it is caused by the people or a person there.
    I think as well when you read something like that you do get scared and when you are scared your scences are hightened as you are defensive and you start noticing things that you would otherwise not notice.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 1,322 ✭✭✭Package


    i never read the book but i had an original video of the excorsist. after years i found it again and watched it and lent it to my friends, not telling them of the spooky things that happened to me since finding the video again.

    needless to say, 4 or the 5 people i lent it to gave it back quickly saying some spooky things happened to them, . the following morning i woke up with the sheets of my bed twisted and wrapped around my neck.

    i burned the video in the fire that day


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 16,676 CMod ✭✭✭✭faceman


    Is this the same canteen that i frequently visited. If so this shivver was normal :) .

    Nah it wasnt, but was one of similar size!


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