Paranormal Activity
 

I'm guessing that someone did a thread about this awhile ago, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.
The Paranormal: Many wonder if it's a hoax or if it's real. Some people use it to explain something odd that happened. Others say that it was mere chance that something turned out weird, or that nothing happened. What if it IS real? What if it isn't?

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I've never been to one of those supposedly haunted places, so I don't have the right to say there isn't such a thing. I think it would be cool (And scary) if I could experience such a thing though.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I've turned around in the shower and seen something floating before.

I've also spent the night at a friends and on woken up paralyzed to something pulling the blankets really tight around me and releasing over and over again. This happened on more than one occasion at the same house.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I'm fairly certain it's not real. They're usually psychological illusions, as there is a huge lack of evidence to support it. Other times it is likely pure chance that it turned out that way, and if you are suggestable to the idea of paranormal activity, you interpret something completely normal as paranormal.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Good point. But what if there's something that defies all explanation? Could it be defined as "Paranormal"?

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Yes.

You need to be careful though, when you say 'defies all explanation'. I think the whole reason the idea exists is because people think that something defies all explanation (when in reality it can be explained rationally). Either that or they are suggestable to the fact that paranormal activity exists and then let their desire shape the outcome of the event, making it something that it isn't.



For example, let's take the whole haunted house thing. If someone is suggestable, and believes that paranormal events actually do exist, then when they enter the spooky house their mind is already tuned to be looking for things that are 'paranormal'. Therefore they 1. Start to see things that arn't really there, and 2. Turn to the irrational to explain the rational. If you were to go into the house with no prior notion that the house is haunted, you would probably not be scared at all and wouldn't see anything paranormal (though this depends on how easily your anxiety level can be raised by suggestable scenery :p).

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I agree with reach on this one, its all about how prone you are to believing such things. On a vast majority of occasions, things that seem to appear to be works of paranormal activity can be explained logically (like was already said) but when you mix a certain excitement level with a less-than-skeptical person you get "HAUNTED!" as the explanation. If there is some thing that is completely unexplainable then chances are its an oddity in science that has not been completely observed before and only out of rarity did it happen.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I personally do not believe in "ghost" or anything of the sort. I mean, you can google places online and watch their cameras set all over the house, you can watch the ghost hunter show and never see them find anything, and you can hear about other people encountering ghosts but of course it never happens to you. I'm sure with all of the people dying/that have died since humans existed, "ghosts" would be more common.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Human perception is inescapably flawed. We all see things that aren't there sometimes, and if you think about it, you'll realize this too. Don't trust your senses - they will lie to you. Seeing should not be believing.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I believe they do exsist. But thats just my religeon.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Indeed. I, like Lamoc, believe ghosts exist, but it's not because I'm easily susceptible to suggestion. I don't LOOK for paranormal stuff, but weird things have happened to me that noone can give an apt explanation for- wether scientific or not.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

My religeon believes that theres more to life than what we're given. Theres no such thing as god, we are our own god. We choose how we live life and what happens. Also follows the evolution theroy. As well as being more to life than what we see. Such as, we weren't put here to wake up, go to work, pay bills, go to sleep. Eat, work, sleep. We were made for much more and to become much greater than we see ourselfs as. That also leading to the paranormal and unexplained.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I'm not entirely sure how a belief in self-improvement and being put here for some greater purpose need necessarily imply a belief in the paranormal at all...

As for my own thoughts on "the paranormal," the easy way to describe it is that simply because -I- don't have a reasonable, provable explanation for something doesn't mean there is not one, but at the same time, I have a hard time believing anything that has no reasonable explanation that I didn't at least witness myself.

I'm open to the possibility of things "not of this world" manifesting in some way, and even have a few theories how that might occur, but unless or until I witness such a thing myself, it remains just an interesting thought experiment.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

For some reason I find it hard to believe that anything cannot be explained.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

That completely depends on what standards you set for an explanation.
"It's the spirit of someone who died, which remains on the earth" is an explanation for what that apparition you saw was...most people wouldn't consider that a very -good- explanation, but it is still one, provided you accept it.

Most skeptical people would then like to know a little more about what the spirit is, how it exists in a living person, how only some of them seem to remain on earth, and how you can only see them some of the time, and that's where "reasonable explanation" and "explanation" differ.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Not to offend (merely out of curiousity), but what exactly IS your religion?

As for paranormal events, nope. Don't believe in them. Pictures of ghosts? Film issues; lighting effects; lens problems. First-hand encounters? Creations of the mind.

Then again, my primary evidence to back this up is not widely accepted. I, being Christian, realize that after death your soul either heads up or down; there is no being trapped in between.

Now, supernatural (I'm using the word here in the Christian sense) events? Yeah, totally. Demons DO exist, and they DO roam around this earth, just usually not visible to the naked eye. There are times, however, when they'll be seen (and I'm sure they're scary as heck; never actually seen one myself).

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

I'm afraid you can't really have it both ways. Either they are all creations of the mind, or they aren't all creations of the mind. Even if you want to assume the -vast- majority are, you've said yourself that you believe it to be true that in some cases what they see is in fact real.

I guess your view on that (as regards things like purgatory etc.) would depend upon your denomination within Christianity.

Also, I'm pretty sure that definition-wise, while not all paranormal things are supernatural, all supernatural things are paranormal.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Heh, yeah, I caught that afterwards and thought, "Hmm, that might not make much sense". Let me attempt to clear that up.
My definitions are as follows:
PARANORMAL: The regular thoughts of ghosts and whatnot.
SUPERNATURAL: Being of a more powerful being (i.e., God, Satan, angels, etc.)

Now, demons themselves kind of blur the line between paranormal and supernatural (I really don't know how to explain their part any better right now; it's almost 1am). A person can see a demon and classify it as paranormal, which I suppose could work, as it is a real sighting of a real being. But it's also a supernatural thing.

Man, I really need to work on my definitions of these things. XD I really don't know how to better explain that at this point. Maybe someone with a similar viewpoint (and understands what I'm trying to say) could work this out?

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Paranormal as a word means "similar to" or "close to" normal. Implying things which are not normal, but not completely alien to our mindset either.

Supernatural as a word means "Beyond the bounds of nature" implying things which are both not normal, and are outside or beyond what we -could- consider normal.

Re: Paranormal Activity
 

Eh, well, the definitions I gave are what I've always heard the context of, so that's how I see it.

That may explain why it's so confusing. :P