What are your paranormal beliefs?

[Sky]

I would love to live in a world where there are intelligent, man-sized, bipedal apes in the woods.

This is easily the craziest thing in this thread.

Because they're obviously harmless.

If they were kidnapping or killing people on a regular basis, then they'd have slipped up once or twice and we'd know about it by now.

TIL ninjas are bigfeet. Bigfoots. Bigfootii.

[Trippy]

I liked WUA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So did I.

Me too.   

He was fine except for treating the Movies board like Politics. He went mental after I temp banned him for 3 days for fucking up a thread about Battleship and I perma-banned him after that.

[Yegolev]

I figure my life would not change one bit if there really were wood apes living on this continent.  Not until they became a political pawn, that is.

[Paelos]

I liked WUA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So did I.

Me too.   

He was fine except for treating the Movies board like Politics. He went mental after I temp banned him for 3 days for fucking up a thread about Battleship and I perma-banned him after that.

He was nuts, but his worst sins were about Movies for sure. And being an ass. Both of which I enjoyed from a  slant as he went straight down the rabbithole wearing Nerf's armor.

[Signe]

Well, of course I can say that because I don't see people here from a mod's perspective.  If WUA caused me work because he was being assy, I'm sure I would have hated his slimy guts and banned the hell out of him, too. 

[pxib]

I figure my life would not change one bit if there really were wood apes living on this continent.

This is a nice summary of my feeling about the supernatural. If any part of it were to become natural and provable, then it would be no more interesting than the other fascinating aspects of the natural world. Because if the proposed mental powers and cryptids and aliens and metaphysical ideas had notable, meaningful effects on our everyday lives then we'd have evidence of them by now. Certainly somebody would have accidentally come up with a working test procedure.

[Lantyssa]

Like I said I would love to live in a world where there are intelligent, man-sized, bipedal apes in the woods.

Try a lumber camp or Sky's backyard.

[WayAbvPar]

I figure my life would not change one bit if there really were wood apes living on this continent.

This is a nice summary of my feeling about the supernatural. If any part of it were to become natural and provable, then it would be no more interesting than the other fascinating aspects of the natural world. Because if the proposed mental powers and cryptids and aliens and metaphysical ideas had notable, meaningful effects on our everyday lives then we'd have evidence of them by now. Certainly somebody would have accidentally come up with a working test procedure.

I like to think I live in a world that still has wonders to be discovered. I have been partial to Bigfootery mostly because A) I grew up in the 70s when it was a big deal, B) it seems far more likely to me than ghosts or other paranormal goodies, and C) the highest concentrations of sightings is basically a day trip in any direction from where I live.

There are so many crazy attention seekers, hoaxers, and charlatans around that 99% of anything you hear about it is likely to be false. But there is just enough plausible 'stuff' to make it interesting.

[Bunk]

I should send that link to my mother, she was an avid Bigfoot Believer back in the day. It will mess with her head. She hears about and believes are sorts of kookie things. Last month she was warning me about not sticking half an onion back in to the fridge because it absorbed all the germs in the fridge or some such thing. Probably heard it from one of Oprah's doctors.

Also, I also like WUA. And I just wanted to post in a thread that's nine years old.

[pxib]

Try a lumber camp or Sky's backyard.

That was the joke I was expecting.

I like to think I live in a world that still has wonders to be discovered.

There we are 100% in agreement.

I also grew up in Bigfoot country in the 1970s and 80s. My father worked for the California water board, and he'd take us kids along for camping trips when he did sawmill inspections. I've got a picture of my whole family standing in mock terror by the Willow Creek bigfoot statue.

Can't be a real cynic until you've already been an idealist. Bring on the wonders.

[Signe]

I wouldn't mind that, either.  Well, as long as they knew their place and stayed in the woods where they belong and brought me shiny bananas. 

[Soln]

WUA was an expert on everything , but particularly tanks IIRC.  Or so he thought.  He was a pretty funny troll, as opposed to say Dusematic.

[ezrast]

I don't think anybody would be unhappy to see WUA back. He was a benevolent troll. But that's a fine line to walk, and rules are rules. Anyway, it's fitting that his final act was to shit up a thread so hard, everyone decided that talking about the Battleship movie was preferable to whatever else was going on. That takes finesse.

[lamaros]

I don't miss him at all.

[Rendakor]

WUA was fantastic; you could always tell when he was trolling and yet it was still entertaining.

[Cyrrex]

WUA was fantastic; you could always tell when he was trolling and yet it was still entertaining.

Yep.  Put me down on the I Loved WUA list as well.

[Rasix]

That's fantastic.  He's not a ghost/yeti/bigfoot/Jesus, so let's move the fuck on.

[ezrast]

Has that been conclusively proven? We might be on to something, here.

[Ironwood]

Seriously, you're lumping 'Jesus' in with that shit ?

 

[Miasma]

Didn't he link a bunch of goatse as his final act or something?  I liked him too but that crap can get innocent people he wasn't mad at fired from work.

I would like to know his thoughts on the star wars movies...

[Khaldun]

The thing about the knocking in that report is a pretty good example of how folks who are interested in this stuff only really consider the singular explanation that they're fixated on.

Suppose I was knocking on trees in the Pacific Northwest, and I heard clear answering knocks not too far away, responding precisely to my pattern. Suppose I'm also 100% certain there are no other people nearby. Suppose I'm sure that no animal could make that noise, and that the intelligence of the pattern in any event rules out animals or natural events.

So maybe I have something that's "paranormal" in the sense that there are no natural or normal explanations. But then why "wood apes"? Could be a ghost. Could be an alien. Could be a demon inside my mind making me hallucinate. Could be leprechauns. Could be time-travellers. Could be a parallel Earth where my doppleganger is knocking on trees and we're hearing each other because of some kind of dimensional resonance.

I'm not saying this just to mock--it's just that once you are absolutely certain for some reason that you cannot explain something naturally, there's a zillion kinds of paranormal or supernatural or cryptid explanations you could suggest with equal (non) plausibility.

[Yegolev]

I believe wood knocking occurs in forests around the world.  It happened in south Alabama but I figured it was just woodpeckers.  I also assumed that the thing shaking trees was a bear.  Of course, there are plenty of colorful names for things that people almost see in the forest.

[jakonovski]

Ok I've never heard of this wood knocking. It's supposed to be bigfoot knocking back?

[Engels]

It is a well known fact that bigfeet are a superstitious lot, and they knock on wood all the time. Duh.

[jakonovski]

Yeah, there might be (triple) trouble if they didn't.

[Margalis]

This needs to be updated for the modern age to include options like "Soylent" and "Gluten."

[NowhereMan]

I think people in this thread would really love listening to Monster Talk if you don't already. That said it's kind of died but if you haven't listened before the archives are pretty big. Lots of Big foot stuff in there including things like interviews with the producers for that Big Foot hunting 'reality' show. If you're a true believer you might get upset but the hosts, I think, try hard not to be dismissive or condescending with their views and genuinely love talking about monsters.

Personally I think examining the social and psychological reasons behind people believing these things as well as trying to chart the folklore development (and of course the actual awesome folkore) is way, way more interesting than say one of those ghost hunter shows where a bunch of nerds poke about while being filmed with NV cameras.

[Amarr HM]

I once lived in a haunted house, quite disconcerting. I think I'm fairly sceptical, but the things I saw there convinced me.

It was a 300 year old gate lodge nestled in a small glade. After we moved in we heard some strange stories about the place. Turned out one of the previous tenants before us went a bit nuts and smashed all the windows in the house. One of our a friends knew him and apparently he was a very normal, placid guy so to speak. We also heard, from a friends mother, that a hundred years before a Doctor performed abortions in the house.

The first thing I noticed after only a couple of days was random objects being in a different place to where I had left them. One night we were in bed and the lampshade started rocking beside our bed as if something had brushed off it. My first thought was it was a draught but there was zero draughts in this house due to the location and surrounding walls and trees. Another thing that was noticeable was the surrounding temperature of the house was deathly cold until you walked a few metres away and you would realise that it was quite a mild day.

So loads of small events, that were easily dismissed or brushed off, occurred - until one night while on my laptop I heard my wife go into the bathroom behind me. I heard the hall door close behind her, a few minutes later she was shouting and screaming. I ran to see what was up and found the hall door locked with my wife on the other side. I noticed it was locked on my side via a big old latch. So I forced the latch open by pressing on the door with my shoulder and started asking my wife what happened. It dawned on me that something external must have done this as the door was heavily warped and the only way to close this latch was to lean against the door and press down the latch like I had opened it. I then tried to pull the door from the other side forcefully to see if I could recreate the incident, but no, it was impossible. Whatever did it had to be from opposite side of the door pressing on it to force the latch down.

After that I was convinced something was in the house with us, the only time I actually saw with my own eyes was a door being slammed shut on it's own or a window open. Needless to say we moved out after a few months.

[Yegolev]

I grew up in a haunted house, however the hauntings went away after we replaced the kitchen cabinets and remodeled the bathroom.

[Amarr HM]

Sounds scary, hope you weren't too scarred by the original decor.

[Engels]

Ancient building's doors stick and have wildly fluctuating temperatures inside vs out? I guess it was one of those 'had to be there' scenarios....

[Amarr HM]

That's the thing the door was already warped from being old and fluctuating temperatures, this is what made it impossible to secure the latch without force applied to the top of the door to straighten it towards the frame.  It was a big old iron latch like this, I took a while to test every possible scenario there was no way my wife could have made it drop. Her version was that she heard it shut while she was in the toilet and thought I had done it to her as a prank (it was a halldoor).

[Malakili]

The real question is why you leap from "I don't know how this happened" to "the house is haunted"?  It's ok to not know how something happened.  That doesn't mean it could only have had supernatural causes.

[Rendakor]

I guess it was one of those 'had to be there' scenarios....

Entire thread summed up in one sentence.

[NowhereMan]

To sound a bit like a broken record, one of the hosts of that podcast used to be a believer in the paranormal. Grew up in an Evengelical Christian household and lived in a 'haunted' house and lots of other things. He lost his religion basically around adulthood but still believed in the paranormal and had a load of stories about 'inexplicable' things that happened in his home that proved it was ghosts. Now, these weren't the only explanations but the others were all kind of unlikely and there were just so many of these events...

Except step 1 of the thought process should be 'Is this possible within the limits of the universe that we know of?' If not then you are immediately putting the probability of that cause (say for example, the psychic resonance/immortal soul/bad juju of the recently departed) in as a pretty tiny possibility. Without going into any other detail, is it more likely that several unlikely events happened or that there is not properly documented phenomena that has escaped the purview of science for the last century or more going on in this extremely localised environment.

In your particular case, a different possible interpretation (I want to stress, I'm not saying that I'm defintiely right in this interpretation. I don't think your house is haunted but maybe I am wrong and it is. What I want to know is if you think this interpretation is possible) would be:
Bad things happened in the house. Of course they did, it's an old house. How many houses are there where bad things happened and they're not haunted? Probably a shit load more.
Previous tenant had some sort of breakdown. Have you looked at mental health statistics in this country? People always seem normal and mellow until something happens, do you have any idea if this was restricted to his time in the house? It could be a perfectly normal but very unfortunate mental health issue.
Weird noises, temperature variations, etc. Now the thing is if there are temperature variations, some sort of micro-climate thing, that could actually be causing many of these other issues. Unusual or large temperature variations are not kind to building materials, especially wood and other older used ones.
The Bathroom incident. You've got an old wooden door in an old wooden (I'm guessing frame) that you are exposing to sudden heat and moisture from the shower. Is it at all possible this resulted in a change and movement that caused the old lock to fall in place and jam the door somewhat?

So at this point I feel I'm going psycho on your post, apologies. I want to be clear I'm not saying none of the things you experienced didn't happen, this is purely about the explanation for them. One of the things about haunted houses is that seemingly unlikely things (like the temperature, noises and doors locking) happening in large numbers can all stem from a common cause. Like I said, you might be right but I'd urge you to think about whether haunting is really the most likely explanation for a series of unlikely seeming events.

That all said, 'I lived in an old house with an unusual micro-climate that meant things made weird knocking noises and even cause doors to lock by themselves' is a way worse story than 'I lived in a haunted house'.