It must be difficult to “see” things and hope to prevent them but be helpless to do so. I can see how one may wish NOT to have that intruding on daily life @sseamom.
I have no encounters to share, but I have to say I love this thread!
There have been TV shows, Constantine & Sleepy Hollow that were cancelled that gave a taste of what “seeing” visions could be like and it seemed pretty unsettling. The person who saw the vision often couldn’t know if it was current, past or future and not always sure who was involved.
This thread IS interesting. I am very grateful to have not encountered malevolent spirits.
H can “read” faces somewhat. He had relatives who could “sense” and “heal” people. I’ve been reading this thread to H. He also finds the anecdotes amazing.
Man I could write a book about all the supernatural crap my family has experienced - including to my formerly very skeptical father and sister.
I have not seen a UFO but I believe they exist. My parents swear they saw one by Traverse City when I was very young. I think Mr R and I saw one when we were in college but it was so quick that I have no idea. It was just a SUPER bright flash in the sky when we weren’t near anything that could’ve caused it.
Ghosts… now there’s another story entirely. Just a few highlights, mostly connected to my grandma who swore she’d find a way to contact us after she died (I was 3 when she died so I don’t remember her).
-Right after my grandma died, my mom saw her in a mall. Next thing she knows, it’s 3 hours later.
-My aunt and uncle were driving by my grandparents’ old farm house when one of them got a call on their cell phone. They answered, it was a dead silence (no pun intended) on the other end. My aunt then realized it was the number from when they lived there 20+ years ago.
-When my uncle died, who I had never met, I had a flash vision of a man lying on a floor covered head to toe in tattoos. I told my mom and a day later, she got a call saying that her brother had died. The tattoos I described weren’t ones she knew about because she hadn’t seen him in many, many years. They matched ones on his body though.
-Apparently when I was a kid, I would have conversations with someone that no one else could see. Then I told my mom a bunch of stuff about her childhood that there’s no way I could’ve known. (Again, I don’t remember this)
-My mom and I saw my uncle shortly after he died trying to cross a road. My father, a TOTAL and complete skeptic, saw him about a year later also trying to cross a road. Both times after we all passed the man, we looked back and he wasn’t there.
-The house I live in is haunted. Weird things used to (and still occasionally do) happen all the time. Empty bottles would fly across a room no one was in, I’d find random articles of clothing (including a bra hanging from the shower head) strewn about even though I was the only one around, etc. My dad told me that a kid had died where our front lawn now is (drunk driving accident in the 70s right after the kid graduated high school). I always thought he was just trying to scare me or something but my uncles confirmed it and then I found a newspaper article about it. (I live now just a few streets over from where he did in high school).
-When I was in high school, I had been dating this guy for several years. We were going to his mom’s house (in a very rural part of Michigan) one time and we took a route I wasn’t familiar with and got super emotional out of nowhere. Then… for reasons I still can’t explain… I said “[kid’s name] says that he’s OK and wants you to know he’s watching over his sister.”
My then-bf slammed on the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. He looked like he had seen a ghost. Apparently, the kid was a friend of his who was killed in a car accident right by where we were. But he was confused because the kid didn’t have any siblings. Well, when we got to his mom’s house and told her what happened, my ex’s little sister said that the kids’ parents had a baby about a year ago but she didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. (Turns out, 'twas a girl.) My ex suddenly became a believer after that incident.
Honestly, I feel like my mom’s family (and now me and my cousins) are just kind of magnets for this stuff. I have very few people who are close to us who don’t end up believing at some point or another. Weird crap just happens.
It’s also made me into an atheist who believes in some sort of afterlife. I just don’t think it’s connected to a god-type figure. Rather I think it’s just something science hasn’t figured out yet.
Also - ghosts and even the idea of them still scare the crap out of me. If I never have another supernatural experience in my life, that would be WAY more than OK with me. Even just writing these down (thinking about them for the first time in a while) is making me jumpy. Yuck.
My mother-in-law’s birthday was a week after my father-in-law passed away.
We were not really celebrating like usual but had a little get together at her house.
Out of nowhere, a balloon appeared in the sky and landed in her back yard. It said happy birthday. We got freaked out!! We thought my father-in-law sent it from heaven!!
It turned out that one of the houses in the neighborhood was having a kid’s birthday party and the balloon got loose and landed in my mother-in-law’s yard. Still, it was surreal.
First Thanksgiving after my father-in-law passed away— he passed away in the early November so it was only three weeks after he passed — my mother-in-law threw a big party for all the extended families. She wanted to be surrounded by a big crowd.
The house was full and we were having a good laugh, good conversation. All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door. We all got quiet thinking who would that be at this hour on Thanksgiving night. Everybody who was invited was there and we were not expecting anybody else.
One of us got up and opened the door. There was nobody.
Well, we went to visit my terminally ill SisIL and then flew back home. The sky was clear and beautiful and weather was perfect. As we were landing there was a sudden turbulence just before we touched down—surprising because it was so clear. At that same time, my BIL sent a text that SIL had just died. We figured she was just saying a final farewell. The flight crew seemed surprised by the sudden bumpiness.
HiTo, I just looked at your picture and was startled. The framed picture directly across from me is nearly identical!
We bought it in Italy about 8 years ago.
Love these stories.
So – here on CC, we’re all smarter than average and very logical. What’s our explanation for this type of stuff happening??
H’s dad died before the kids were born. My parents moved cross-country when D was 18 months old, but visited when middle son was born right before D turned 3. When D was about 3 1/2 and oldest boy 4 1/2, I went into her room to put her to bed. She looked at me and said, “Don’t worry, Mommy. Bobbop (my dad) will be ok.” I said what do you mean and she responded “Grandpa X (H’s dead dad) told me that Bopbop will be ok because we need a grandpa in heaven and a grandpa on Earth.” I tried to call my parents but they were 3 hours behind, so I just figured they were out. The next morning, I got a call that my dad had had a massive heart attack the night before and had coded 7 times. When I asked about the timing, it was exactly when my D made the comment to me. My dad and late FIL never met. My dad lived another 14 years. D has no recollection of this or of telling oldest son not to be afraid of thunder because it was just Grandpa X bowling with the other people in Heaven. My son remembers her telling him that, however.
Wow - thanks for all the stories! I love hearing them…
@oregon101 - My previous workplace was an old house that used to be a hospital, too. Some of my coworkers claimed to have seen the figure of a man who paced the hallways on the third floor. Others said they could hear his footsteps at night, when they were working late. Our admin refused to stay alone in the house past 5:00 PM. I never saw or heard anything - but I was always out of there by 4:00.
@Leigh22 @cameo43 - My sister and I had a Ouija board for a short time when we were kids. My usually mild-mannered grandmother saw it once while she was visiting and pitched a fit - she threatened to cut her visit short unless we immediately got rid of the Ouija Board, which we did. I guess that experience stayed with me, because I would never let D play with one either.
My husband just reminded me that he often saw the Paulding Light when he was a teenager (https://www.freep.com/story/news/columnists/john-carlisle/2016/09/04/mysterious-paulding-light-upper-peninsula-michigan/89275134/) - but he never thought it was supernatural or ghostly. For him and his friends, it was mostly an excuse to go out in the woods and drink beer.
Oh, and @Massmomm - I’m a pretty religious person, too. I believe in God and an afterlife, although I personally have never experienced divine intervention (…that I know of!)
Some people are sensitive to spirits to different degrees is my thought. Some people are intuitiven have precognition. Some people can effect mild change in their environment. I think the UFO sightings must be random though, not related to a personal ability.
I used to often , often, pick up the phone and the person I was about to call was already in the line. Doesn’t happen with cell phones. I set off battery operated toys when I walk past them. and once I was upset and thinking hard about my roommate at midnight, staring at my clock, wanting to call her but knowing it was too late (she had just gotten married)…and a couple of days later we were having coffee and she said “the weirdest thing happened the other night…it was midnight and G and I had just (blank) for the second time…and the radio suddenly turned on the alarm clock really loud!
My brother can always guess the sex of the babies in our family by dreaming, shortly after 6 weeks.
He is 8/8 so far.
And I have seen one UFO and one ghost. The UFO was definitely weirder and more disturbing, because i was with my college bf, driving from our apartment to the gym, and we passed a field. It was just before sunset, so plenty of light. There was a ball, a completely spherical object, sitting in the field. It had a dull metal sheen. Around the middle was a circle of what was not-quite lights, they looked like the same metal, but different colors, green and red, same dull sheen. My bf slowed the car almost to a stop and said What the F…and the thing just hopped over a small hill in the field and was gone.
It HOPPED. Straight up and over the hill and down, and that is when we realized that it wasn’t a smaller thing very close to us, it was a larger thing a little bit farther away. But it wasn’t really big. But it was definitely bigger than a weather balloon. My bf sort of freaked out and floored it and we NEVER spoke of it again, although I really wanted to call the air force in case more people reported it.
The ghost was much less dramatic. I was sitting with a friend having some wine in his parent’s 200 yr old farmhouse. I could see shadows passing in front of the lights in the kitchen, and I asked if anyone was home. He just said “no”.
I went to set my glass down on the small table next to me, and I saw a woman sitting on the other side of the table. She looked so normal that I set my glass down and turned back towards my friend, then did a double take/ and she was gone. When I turned towards him again, he was smiling like the Cheshire cat. “ So you saw her? Not everyone does” and I described a woman in a long dress of no particular color, drinking tea. He said that was “her”, but she wasn’t always drinking tea.
@VeryHappy - I can’t claim to speak for everyone, but I consider myself pretty smart and I’m a scientist, so yeah, pretty logical. I am skeptical when it comes to most things - outlandish advertising claims, the latest “miracle cure,” political promises, and even stories of the supernatural.
At the same time, I also think there are phenomena that occur on the fringes of what we currently understand to be “real” or “true.” Maybe those phenomena include ghosts, precognition, UFOs - all things for which we currently have no explanation. That doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t true; it just means we haven’t explained them yet.
Actually, to me, UFOs are the most explainable. Maybe they ARE really alien space craft (although, if they are, why don’t they make actual, definite contact?) At the very least, they’re just “unidentified.”
Well, seizures can be detected on the outside of the body, by electrodes attached to the head, even though there is bone in between. Electrical impulses definitely make it to the surface - so it isn’t such a leap to think that some people might have surges of electrical impulse that can go a bit farther.
I actually have more of a problem with precognition, because I don’t understand theoretical physics well enough to understand the possibilities. I don’t think my brother sees the future sex of the child in my example -
I think he picks up on something real. He can’t, for example, tell if you are GOING TO get pregnant, or what sex your FUTURE children will be, but he does know when you are pregnant, even if you don’t tell him.
I completely agree.
When I was in third grade, I had a dream about my classmate. In the dream, he had a brain surgery or something. The bandage on his head was smeared with blood.
I thought it was silly to worry about him - it was just a dream - but I had this weird feeling so I hurried to school the next morning and looked for him. He was not there.
He came in late during the second period. He had a bandage on his forehead above his eyebrow. He said he went to see a doctor for the skin infection.
It was only a skin infection but I had to wonder if there was any connection between my dream and what was going to happen in real life.
Long before caller ID as a child and still today I know who is on the phone. Used to freak people out as a kid answering “hi Grandma/Aunt Nancy/whatever.
I can will my daughters to call me.
I held my two week old niece in my arms and knew that the baby had a brain tumor. Husband said I was imagining things. She was diagnosed about a month later.
In college told my parents there would be a problem with the plane I was flying on the next day. My mother scoffed and told me to turn on the TV news. Told her a cop had been killed which turned out to be the headline. She was up all night worrying about my flight the next day. Turned out that all it was was a needed return to the gate for an electric repair and two hour delay. But she did make me get on the plane!
I’m loving these stories, I often wonder if very young children see another world. When my oldest was a baby, under a year, he was sitting in our sunroom. He was looking up towards the ceiling and smiling and babbling, like he was really seeing something. He never did that again. I often wondered if he did.
Like another poster, I will “hear” thoughts, my own voice but not from my own stream of consciousness. It’s Tells me something. Perhaps this has happened 10 times or less in my life. But shen it happens now, I pay attention. Some would say it’s self-talk, but it just doesn’t seem like it. We had a minister at our church, now retired, that called these episodes “God-incidences”.
I wonder about the voices my son with schizophrenia hears. He claims they can’t be HIM because they have a sense of humor!