Rational explanations

the_monkey

Hi,

Was just having a browse through this thread : http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056831498
Now before you jump down my neck , I am a cynic yet get a little creeped out reading some of these stories.

I am aware of course that some of them can be lies - but I don't want to go there, I want to assume
the people really believe them - and suggestions of a rational explanation for them.

I know the human mind is amazing and when you are alone in a dark house (or whatever) it can really
play tricks on you - as well as real sounds like old pipes or whatever creaking.

Also if you pre believe in this , does it make it easier to hallucinate ??

Take the Loftus hall story, someone mentioned how the Tapestry room has the horrible
feeling of malovelance in it.

Whatever - but looking at the pic on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Loftus_Hall_2003.JPG

Looks creepy ? or is that cos I expected it after reading about it ?


Just curious what people think on here- for rational explanations.

Dades

the_monkey wrote: »

Whatever - but looking at the pic on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Loftus_Hall_2003.JPG

Looks creepy ? or is that cos I expected it after reading about it?

I'm a bit freaked out looking at that picture. Can you imagine what it costs to heat that place? :pac:

But what else is there to say? These things are all products of our imagination, fed by years of myths and scaremongering.

doctoremma

Suggestible people with an open mind about ghosts and ghoulies definitely experience more 'paranormal' activity.

Will hunt for a reference (while secretly hoping that Oldrnwisr jumps in with one to hand and saves me the job).

I've posted about my own experiences numerous times before, but I'll give a quick re-cap now.

I frequently experience sleep hallucinations — some times it can happen every night for several weeks, while it also might not occur for months at a time. It generally occurs just at that moment I'm about to drift asleep or if I awaken during REM sleep. I'll wake up, or at least I'll become conscious and be able to use all of my senses, and see, most frequently, spiders, rats, snakes, or other unpleasant creatures, often numbering in the hundreds, and sometimes very large, scuttling across the floor and walls; not only that, but I can sometimes hear the clatter of their feet on the wooden floor boards. Less frequently, thankfully, I'll wake up and see a figure: a person, usually a woman, standing in a corner of my bedroom or at the foot of my bed staring at me. I can see the figure as clearly as I would a real person, and I can hear its actions — its movements and breathing, for example — as if it were real. The hallucinations don't always manifest in the form of insects and figures: I'll often be lying in bed trying to sleep, but unable to because of the sound and flickering light coming from the television in my room, and get out of bed to switch it off, only to realise that it is already off, and then suddenly remember that I turned it off an hour or so ago. I sleep with a torch underneath my pillow because shining its beam on the apparition is the only way to "get rid of it." The whole experience is as if part of your mind is still dreaming, because you're not yet completely awake, but you're also conscious and alert, and due to this conflict of information — the information your senses are feeding you and the contents of your half-asleep consciousness — your brain amalgamates the two and makes as much sense of it as possible, with the consequence being the world of what you sense and the world of your dreams becoming one.

If I were a less sceptical and inquisitive person I would, by now, be convinced I have some connection with a supernatural realm, or believe that I'm the subject of a continual haunting, or be confident that I possess psychic abilities. I understand the cause of what I see and hear, and I find the whole experience quite enjoyable, to be honest, so I have no reason to believe that the paranormal has any part to play in it. Because of what I experience, I can tell when another has experienced something similar, even if that person doesn't have a genuine, rational explanation and believes the cause is paranormal or supernatural in nature. A lot of the events detailed in that thread (it's a great thread, by the way) can be explained as some variant or form of sleep hallucination. As a rule of thumb, immediately disregard any story told by a person who was in bed at the time of the phenomenon — I'll never be able to trust such stories because I have first hand experience of the fallibility of our own brains in moments of sleep and half-sleep.

the_monkey

gvn wrote: »

I've posted about my own experiences numerous times before, but I'll give a quick re-cap now.

I frequently experience sleep hallucinations — some times it can happen every night for several weeks, while it also might not occur for months at a time. It generally occurs just at that moment I'm about to drift asleep or if I awaken during REM sleep. I'll wake up, or at least I'll become conscious and be able to use all of my senses, and see, most frequently, spiders, rats, snakes, or other unpleasant creatures, often numbering in the hundreds, and sometimes very large, scuttling across the floor and walls; not only that, but I can sometimes hear the clatter of their feet on the wooden floor boards. Less frequently, thankfully, I'll wake up and see a figure: a person, usually a woman, standing in a corner of my bedroom or at the foot of my bed staring at me. I can see the figure as clearly as I would a real person, and I can hear its actions — its movements and breathing, for example — as if it were real. The hallucinations don't always manifest in the form of insects and figures: I'll often be lying in bed trying to sleep, but unable to because of the sound and flickering light coming from the television in my room, and get out of bed to switch it off, only to realise that it is already off, and then suddenly remember that I turned it off an hour or so ago. I sleep with a torch underneath my pillow because shining its beam on the apparition is the only way to "get rid of it." The whole experience is as if part of your mind is still dreaming, because you're not yet completely awake, but you're also conscious and alert, and due to this conflict of information — the information your senses are feeding you and the contents of your half-asleep consciousness — your brain amalgamates the two and makes as much sense of it as possible, with the consequence being the world of what you sense and the world of your dreams becoming one.

If I were a less sceptical and inquisitive person I would, by now, be convinced I have some connection with a supernatural realm, or believe that I'm the subject of a continual haunting, or be confident that I possess psychic abilities. I understand the cause of what I see and hear, and I find the whole experience quite enjoyable, to be honest, so I have no reason to believe that the paranormal has any part to play in it. Because of what I experience, I can tell when another has experienced something similar, even if that person doesn't have a genuine, rational explanation and believes the cause is paranormal or supernatural in nature. A lot of the events detailed in that thread (it's a great thread, by the way) can be explained as some variant or form of sleep hallucination. As a rule of thumb, immediately disregard any story told by a person who was in bed at the time of the phenomenon — I'll never be able to trust such stories because I have first hand experience of the fallibility of our own brains in moments of sleep and half-sleep.

Great post !


and yeah, the other thread is really entertaining me !!

Andrewf20

OP, im certainly fascinated by Loftus hall myself. Some pics of inside it here. http://www.abandonedireland.com/Loftus_Hall_4.html Click on the pic links on the left for more photos. No photos of the tapestry room though. Id consider myself agnostic but I would refuse point blank to spend a night in there alone 3 floors up. The place completely creeps me out looking at it.

Daftendirekt

"Hallucinate" is kind of a strong word, IMO. If you're already inclined to accept supernatural explanations, and you find yourself in a creepy old building, then it's very easy to turn every creaky floorboard or every shadow into a ghost.

On top of that, I think many people want there to be something paranormal going on. After the fact, in the observer's mind, an innocuous event can become much more sinister and inexplicable than whatever it was they actually observed.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story! :pac:

the_monkey

Andrewf20 wrote: »

OP, im certainly fascinated by Loftus hall myself. Some pics of inside it here. http://www.abandonedireland.com/Loftus_Hall_4.html Click on the pic links on the left for more photos. No photos of the tapestry room though. Id consider myself agnostic but I would refuse point blank to spend a night in there alone 3 floors up. The place completely creeps me out looking at it.

Totally agree, I think to spend a night there I'd want to be with some friends (cynics!!) a big dog and some beers !!!

I am looking at those pics ... my god i can see why they say its haunted ... :O

oldrnwisr

doctoremma wrote: »

Suggestible people with an open mind about ghosts and ghoulies definitely experience more 'paranormal' activity.

Will hunt for a reference (while secretly hoping that Oldrnwisr jumps in with one to hand and saves me the job).

I believe this is what you're looking for Emma.

Field dependence, suggestibility and belief in paranormal phenomena

To quote:

"In Experiment 1, 91 subjects underwent an hypnosis session to determine their suggestibility. They also completed a paranormal belief scale and a computer test of field dependence. It was shown that suggestibility and field dependence had positive and significant correlations with the belief in paranormal phenomena."

Canis Lupus

Regarding the Loftus Hall one, you do realise the place was torn down and rebuilt? There was a guy on the original thread who said the tapestry room felt like 'evil' etc. Oddly enough he hasn't been back to the thread since it was pointed out it's not the same room but hey, maybe the devil moved back in once it got built again. :rolleyes:

Personally I love a good horror movie and I like being scared but when people start talking about ghosts and bad energy and stuff like that as real then my brain tends to start boiling.

doctoremma

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I believe this is what you're looking for Emma.

I may abandon NCBI and simply tap your brain from now on. Can you run BLAST alignments in your head?

magicbastarder

oldrnwisr wrote: »

field dependence had positive and significant correlations with the belief in paranormal phenomena."

this man was very field dependent, and look what happened to him.

Sarky

doctoremma wrote: »

I may abandon NCBI and simply tap your brain from now on. Can you run BLAST alignments in your head?

Quoted because I get it.

ShooterSF

I never intend to buy a house in the near future but I'm always tempted my the idea of grabbing a cheap murder house if it came up in real life. The idea of profiting off other's superstitions in an ethical way intrigues me.

lazygal

There's a house near us that was a scene of a very well known murder and its going quite cheap considering the salubrious nature of the area and the size and condition of the property. If we were able to afford it we'd snap it up. I don't believe in spirits or negative energy or any of that nonsense.

iguana

gvn wrote: »

Less frequently, thankfully, I'll wake up and see a figure: a person, usually a woman, standing in a corner of my bedroom or at the foot of my bed staring at me. I can see the figure as clearly as I would a real person, and I can hear its actions — its movements and breathing, for example — as if it were real.

I get these too, I had an awful lot of them in my mid-20s at any point when I was very stressed. Mostly what happens is I have a nightmare where something/someone is trying to kill me, and as is common in such dreams at the point where they kill me I wake up. But then I look and the thing/person is in my room advancing toward me. The first time it happened was utterly terrifying, waking up to that feeling of relief after a bad dream about a murderous evil doll. Then realising that the doll had 'followed me out of the dream' and was starting to advance across the bed toward me, brandishing a knife, blood dripping onto my sheets. I started screaming my head off. My husband (then boyfriend) woke up and tried to wake me and even though part of my brain was aware he was trying to help me and was my best chance of waking up properly, that part of my brain had no control over my body and I started thrashing about, kicking and punching him. Poor guy was nearly as frightened as I was.:o

I've had similar experiences a number of times. I can definitely see how someone could convince themselves that they were being haunted/possessed by dreams like that. Or I could see why the family/partner of someone experiencing such night terrors might convince themselves of that. Funnily enough at the time I was still quite interested in paganism/wicca and would have identified as such if talking about religion but I never thought it was anything other than a stress induced brain malfunction where the dream continued on after I woke and sort of superimposed itself over my waking awareness. I guess that at that point, even though I wanted to believe in the supernatural when it came down to it I actually couldn't.

Michael Nugent

gvn wrote: »

I frequently experience sleep hallucinations — some times it can happen every night for several weeks, while it also might not occur for months at a time. It generally occurs just at that moment I'm about to drift asleep or if I awaken during REM sleep....

The whole experience is as if part of your mind is still dreaming, because you're not yet completely awake, but you're also conscious and alert, and due to this conflict of information — the information your senses are feeding you and the contents of your half-asleep consciousness — your brain amalgamates the two and makes as much sense of it as possible, with the consequence being the world of what you sense and the world of your dreams becoming one.

I used to experience a variation of that when I was in College. I would sometimes sleep on the couch downstairs if I had been working late and had to get up early, and I would wake up and see things on the television news that were very similar to what I had just dreamt about.

I eventually realised that somebody else had gotten up before me and turned on the television, and the audio from news items on the television were entering my dreams, and the words were being spoken by characters in my dream, then when I woke up and the same news items were repeated, as they were regularly during the show, I recognised them from my dreams.