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Exorcism..............Is it real or fake ? (pg. 7)
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| afterhrsgurl |
| quote: | Originally posted by sufee_b
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that's an interesting story but what does it have to do with people being posessed...no one in that story got posessed..it still doesn't prove anything |
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| Provocative_boi |
Lets not bash eachother please....If someone is sharing something let them share it...Any stories or events are fully appreciated.
No one should force what they believe on to others.
Yousuf that was awesome story,respect. |
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| afterhrsgurl |
| no bashing..i just thought it would be one where he witnessed someone being posessed that's all...it's still a good story though |
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| Omega_M |
| quote: | Originally posted by sufee_b
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Ok, so you attribute 3 unexplained things to ghosts.
1) Your friends were given the ghostly names they will communicate with, before hand.
2) The board apparently floated.
3) The board apparently helped save the life of a guy with Leukemia.
# 1 and # 3 could have so many alternative explanations. Consider how a though enters into your mind. Do you have any explanation ? How do you think about something ? How do you get an idea ? It is often said that our thoughts are drawn from a universal thought pool. You have to "tune" your brain to receive them. It is similar to catching a particular radio station by tweaking on the frequency dial.
consider # 1. Since your friends were told who they would communicate with, it is highly likely that unconsciously they ended up communicating with the same exact two ghostly names ! Mind plays so many tricks. "Communication" with the ghosts on the ouiji board could be an elaborate trick our subconscious mind plays on us. This is "paranormal" psychology. It needs to be investigated further. I don't see any ghostly influence in it.
now consider # 3. The medium of ouiji board may be a way to tap into the thought pool by bringing together the right elements the makes the brain receptive to new ideas. Your friend could simply, through the medium of the board , have realize someone was going to be sick. It's very similar to having a thought enter into your mind. How does it enter ? I don't know. But it does. So again as you see, there's nothing spooky about the whole process.
# 2, I have no explanation. But could it be possible that the people entered into a state where they hallucinated and "saw" things happen ? It is quite possible that believers and their influence on others creates a "belief field" where everyone believes something strongly. A drug is able to alter your perceptions of reality. But a drug merely triggers the cause. The influences are ultimately due to the release or inhibition of certain chemicals in your brain. It's the mind that plays the trick, not the drug.
Could a collective belief into a phenomenon, coupled by expectations, fear and excitement in some way, have triggered such hallucinations ? It is a possibility is it not ? Could your friends simply have lied about it ? That is also possible. |
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| afterhrsgurl |
| ooh that was deep Omega :D |
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| sufee_b |
| quote: | Originally posted by afterhrsgurl
that's an interesting story but what does it have to do with people being posessed...no one in that story got posessed..it still doesn't prove anything |
youre right it has nothing to do with possession but he (digi nuts) was asking for an example about paranormal activity in general |
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| sufee_b |
| quote: | Originally posted by Omega_M
consider # 1. Since your friends were told who they would communicate with, it is highly likely that unconsciously they ended up communicating with the same exact two ghostly names ! Mind plays so many tricks. "Communication" with the ghosts on the ouiji board could be an elaborate trick our subconscious mind plays on us. This is "paranormal" psychology. It needs to be investigated further. I don't see any ghostly influence in it. |
I do! They did the ouiji, got a couple names (which wasnt john or bob or something) didnt hear those names before hand and a week or two later total strangers said they talked to those two same names before my friends told em...you sound just like the science dude (actualy hes much worse) who eventually gave in
| quote: | Originally posted by Omega_M
now consider # 3. The medium of ouiji board may be a way to tap into the thought pool by bringing together the right elements the makes the brain receptive to new ideas. Your friend could simply, through the medium of the board , have realize someone was going to be sick. It's very similar to having a thought enter into your mind. How does it enter ? I don't know. But it does. So again as you see, there's nothing spooky about the whole process. |
LOL!!!! So its not the cold or flu or even cancer which is very broad, it was specifically Leukhemia! Now thats just an excuse, not an explanation
| quote: | Originally posted by Omega_M
# 2, I have no explanation. But could it be possible that the people entered into a state where they hallucinated and "saw" things happen ? It is quite possible that believers and their influence on others creates a "belief field" where everyone believes something strongly. A drug is able to alter your perceptions of reality. But a drug merely triggers the cause. The influences are ultimately due to the release or inhibition of certain chemicals in your brain. It's the mind that plays the trick, not the drug. |
dude there were 6-7 people there! 3 of them doing..they all saw the same thing..the mind can play tricks but a freakin 2x2 wooden board jumpin in the bleepin air lol..they all hallucinated? gimme a break..like you said, you have no explanation, sounds like excuses..but trust me, youre not half as bad as the other guy was until he finally gave..we've heard it all
| quote: | Originally posted by Omega_M
Could a collective belief into a phenomenon, coupled by expectations, fear and excitement in some way, have triggered such hallucinations ? It is a possibility is it not ? Could your friends simply have lied about it ? That is also possible. |
:cool:
Lied? lol! Absolutely not..they were close friends, nto just some people I see here n there..and like I said the real deal was when the predicted someones SPECIFIC disease 6-7 months before hand |
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| DigiNut |
@Sufee:
That's certainly an interesting story, but is there any supporting evidence whatsoever?
Let's work down the chain here:
1. You're recounting a story that your friend(s) told you. Most people hear what they want to hear. Trust me when I say that I believe you're being completely honest about what you remember, but since this isn't coming from the horse's mouth, there's already a degree of uncertainty from the "transmission" of that information. I can try to tell the exact same 30-second joke I heard from my friend, but I will tell it differently from the way he did, and I will tell it in a different way every time I tell it, guaranteed.
2. Your friend told you this story based on his own memory. The human memory is extremely unreliable, especially when it comes to dramatic events as opposed to simple facts. This isn't something I'm making up, it's scientifically proven. Memories can even be planted or conflated with dreams; remember all of the child abuse cases where they convicted people based on various types of "memory recovery", where it later turned out that they couldn't possibly have committed the acts in question?
3. I'm willing to bet that they came up with lots of fairly generic names (you say they weren't "John or Bob", but what were they? Does anyone even remember?) and talked about the names with the people they met, and they eventually managed to stumble upon a few in common. I'd consider you to be, essentially, a total stranger, but it's very likely that we know at least two different people with very similar names. Perhaps a different spelling, subtly different pronunciation, or even a different gender, but those are details that can go unnoticed if you're the type of person who tends to scrutinize every coincidence.
4. Ouija boards are inherently suspect because, as you yourself have admitted, it's extremely easy for one person to take control and spell out whatever he is thinking, consciously or unconsciously. This particular occult artifact has been tested thousands of times, and nobody has ever been able to produce one iota of evidence under controlled conditions that it is actually receiving or channeling any kind of other-worldly signal. If they've really broken this streak, then James Randi has $1 million for them if they can do it again (and plenty of other organizations are offering 10 to 100 G's). But let me guess: it was a one-time miracle and can't be done on command?
5. The leukemia message is certainly eerie, trippy, whatever, but we're missing a lot of information here. Maybe this friend was known to be at risk for leukemia or other types of cancer (just because he wasn't sick at the time, doesn't necessarily mean that a doctor would never have mentioned the possibility during a regular check-up). Perhaps they'd read an article or seen a TV show on leukemia the day before, and the fact that it happened to this one friend was pure coincidence; the message itself is interesting, but the fact that it was "connected" to the soon-to-be-sick friend is unremarkable because they were friends, and hence, it was very likely for the Ouija player to be thinking about him anyway.
Or... maybe - and this is much more likely in my opinion - it didn't actually spell out leukemia, it was a memory artifact. It seems entirely plausible to me that he spelled out some other disease or just said "he will be ill", and when something happened 6 months later, it suddenly became "he will have leukemia". I'm not suggesting that he consciously lied in the story, at all - it's simply very common for these types of things to happen. People substitute specific memories for much vaguer ones that are hard to recall the details of. This can be amplified when you have 3 people who all only have a vague memory of the event, reinforcing each other's beliefs about the forgotten details.
6. The levitating board could again be a memory artifact, or perhaps a major exaggeration that eventually made its way into the standard story. My theory is: they had a light board that got knocked a few inches back due to a breeze or vibrations. As they talk between themselves and eventually recount the story to others, the inches become half a foot and the direction becomes up.
Maybe one person or even two people did not even see the board move, but accepted it without argument when the third person said that it did. Admit it, you've done this before: "Whoa, did you see that, she just flashed everyone!" --- "Uh... I mean yeah, of course I saw it! Sweet!"
You're asking us (and your friends are asking you) to believe that the board actually jumped 6 inches in the air without any human influence, but there's no evidence that this happened as told, and merely because one of the three considered himself a skeptic before, does not mean he is immune to suggestion and peer pressure. Not to mention, the fact that he was willing to come back repeatedly to the place for these Ouija sessions leads me to believe that he wasn't exactly a hard skeptic.
So to summarize all this: it's an interesting, dramatic, and moving story, but you are telling us a story that one of your friends told you, who in turn had no evidence to show that the story was true, except for two friends corroborating the story, one of whom was a firm believer in occult phenomena. You said yourself that you came along for some of these Ouija sessions and never found them particularly interesting, yet you believe that a miracle happened at one of them in spite of your own experience; why is that?
I think an interesting experiment would be to talk to all three people one-on-one, ask for specific details about the event, and see who can really remember what happened and how consistent the stories are with each other. |
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| sufee_b |
| quote: | Originally posted by DigiNut
@Sufee:
That's certainly an interesting story, but is there any supporting evidence whatsoever?
Let's work down the chain here:
1. You're recounting a story that your friend(s) told you. Most people hear what they want to hear. Trust me when I say that I believe you're being completely honest about what you remember, but since this isn't coming from the horse's mouth, there's already a degree of uncertainty from the "transmission" of that information. I can try to tell the exact same 30-second joke I heard from my friend, but I will tell it differently from the way he did, and I will tell it in a different way every time I tell it, guaranteed.
2. Your friend told you this story based on his own memory. The human memory is extremely unreliable, especially when it comes to dramatic events as opposed to simple facts. This isn't something I'm making up, it's scientifically proven. Memories can even be planted or conflated with dreams; remember all of the child abuse cases where they convicted people based on various types of "memory recovery", where it later turned out that they couldn't possibly have committed the acts in question?
3. I'm willing to bet that they came up with lots of fairly generic names (you say they weren't "John or Bob", but what were they? Does anyone even remember?) and talked about the names with the people they met, and they eventually managed to stumble upon a few in common. I'd consider you to be, essentially, a total stranger, but it's very likely that we know at least two different people with very similar names. Perhaps a different spelling, subtly different pronunciation, or even a different gender, but those are details that can go unnoticed if you're the type of person who tends to scrutinize every coincidence.
4. Ouija boards are inherently suspect because, as you yourself have admitted, it's extremely easy for one person to take control and spell out whatever he is thinking, consciously or unconsciously. This particular occult artifact has been tested thousands of times, and nobody has ever been able to produce one iota of evidence under controlled conditions that it is actually receiving or channeling any kind of other-worldly signal. If they've really broken this streak, then James Randi has $1 million for them if they can do it again (and plenty of other organizations are offering 10 to 100 G's). But let me guess: it was a one-time miracle and can't be done on command?
5. The leukemia message is certainly eerie, trippy, whatever, but we're missing a lot of information here. Maybe this friend was known to be at risk for leukemia or other types of cancer (just because he wasn't sick at the time, doesn't necessarily mean that a doctor would never have mentioned the possibility during a regular check-up). Perhaps they'd read an article or seen a TV show on leukemia the day before, and the fact that it happened to this one friend was pure coincidence; the message itself is interesting, but the fact that it was "connected" to the soon-to-be-sick friend is unremarkable because they were friends, and hence, it was very likely for the Ouija player to be thinking about him anyway.
Or... maybe - and this is much more likely in my opinion - it didn't actually spell out leukemia, it was a memory artifact. It seems entirely plausible to me that he spelled out some other disease or just said "he will be ill", and when something happened 6 months later, it suddenly became "he will have leukemia". I'm not suggesting that he consciously lied in the story, at all - it's simply very common for these types of things to happen. People substitute specific memories for much vaguer ones that are hard to recall the details of. This can be amplified when you have 3 people who all only have a vague memory of the event, reinforcing each other's beliefs about the forgotten details.
6. The levitating board could again be a memory artifact, or perhaps a major exaggeration that eventually made its way into the standard story. My theory is: they had a light board that got knocked a few inches back due to a breeze or vibrations. As they talk between themselves and eventually recount the story to others, the inches become half a foot and the direction becomes up.
Maybe one person or even two people did not even see the board move, but accepted it without argument when the third person said that it did. Admit it, you've done this before: "Whoa, did you see that, she just flashed everyone!" --- "Uh... I mean yeah, of course I saw it! Sweet!"
You're asking us (and your friends are asking you) to believe that the board actually jumped 6 inches in the air without any human influence, but there's no evidence that this happened as told, and merely because one of the three considered himself a skeptic before, does not mean he is immune to suggestion and peer pressure. Not to mention, the fact that he was willing to come back repeatedly to the place for these Ouija sessions leads me to believe that he wasn't exactly a hard skeptic.
So to summarize all this: it's an interesting, dramatic, and moving story, but you are telling us a story that one of your friends told you, who in turn had no evidence to show that the story was true, except for two friends corroborating the story, one of whom was a firm believer in occult phenomena. You said yourself that you came along for some of these Ouija sessions and never found them particularly interesting, yet you believe that a miracle happened at one of them in spite of your own experience; why is that?
I think an interesting experiment would be to talk to all three people one-on-one, ask for specific details about the event, and see who can really remember what happened and how consistent the stories are with each other. |
Digi,
I understand everything you are saying, and trust me they have all been brought up before...put it this way, the science freak I mentioned was all over it and in fact sounded just like what you wrote...the guy is so much into science, well thats what he does and all he does. It sounds funny be did not go university and no post secondary education and does not work... for the past 4-5 years he has been working on a major science experiment, it sounds funny but its true....as for memeory youre right but when 3 people say the same thing, over and over, year after year..well. you get my point
And like I said before besides the Leukemia thing I really didn't think much of it. Certainly if the things were true (points 1 and 2) yes its weird but again I wasn't there...But the leukhimia thing was the real kicker for me.. And if he had it, or the doctor suggested it or whatever around that time, it would have been all over the family and friends because not only are they friends but their mothers/families have known each other abour 20+ years and trust when I say something as big as cancer or even the slightest suggestion would not have been kept secret...the families are really close (mothers). Although I'm not that close, certain family memebers of mine were...
But as a "memory artifact", I don't think thats a valid explanation because whatever it was, the fact remains the next day I was told that story and he specifically said leukemia..and about 7 months later he was diagnosed with it...in fact the testing began about 6-7 months after that. Plus I must've told 3-4 other people that story who knew the guy (after the ouiji thing, not when he was diagnosed) and they were all extremely shocked of course and started frequenting the place soon after they found out it was true...see if the board said "ill" like you said you even just cancer, that might still be a little suspicious but the fact that it spelt out exactly the diagnosis, is just tooooo coincedental for many of us.
Also if you want to talk to all three that could be arranged, one of them (the main guy) is a TA as well...or better yet going to the place :tongue2..and remember...this place does have eerie stuff about it which is why it was featured on that show, twice..one time i went there people came all the way from Buffalo!... plus theres a lot of other stories from that place that I havent mentioned that are really "coincedental" but again i wasn't there. |
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| Omega_M |
| quote: | Originally posted by sufee_b
LOL!!!! So its not the cold or flu or even cancer which is very broad, it was specifically Leukhemia! Now thats just an excuse, not an explanation
dude there were 6-7 people there! 3 of them doing..they all saw the same thing..the mind can play tricks but a freakin 2x2 wooden board jumpin in the bleepin air lol..they all hallucinated? gimme a break..like you said, you have no explanation, sounds like excuses..but trust me, youre not half as bad as the other guy was until he finally gave..we've heard it all
Lied? lol! Absolutely not..they were close friends, nto just some people I see here n there..and like I said the real deal was when the predicted someones SPECIFIC disease 6-7 months before hand |
You offer no proof whatsoever for the existence of ghosts. You now believe in them simply because you trust your friends who claim to have witnessed some unnatural phenomena. People will believe the priest's words simply because they trust him blindly. So how is your case any different from theirs ? Gimme a break.
I offered perfectly logical explanations. They are much better than your ghost theory. Why ? Because you can think, debate or improve upon them or reject them. But you can start a process of investigation, unlike crying out "ghosts!!" which incidentally is not an explanation at all. It leaves you with more questions than answers. You don't believe in mass hallucinations. But believe in ghosts. It's just your belief. There is no other basis for you to reject my point of view whatsoever.
Dunno if you have read it, if not please do read this paper : The Case of the Ghost in the Machine.
| quote: | | ...as he was writing he became aware that he was being watched, and a figure slowly emerged to his left. It was indistinct and on the periphery of his vision but it moved as V.T. (the paper's author) would expect a person to. The apparition was grey and made no sound. The hair was standing up on V.T.’s neck and there was a distinct chill in the room. As V.T. recalls, "It would not be unreasonable to suggest I was terrified". V.T. was unable to see any detail and finally built up the courage to turn and face the thing. As he turned the apparition faded and disappeared. There was absolutely no evidence to support what he had seen so he decided he must be me cracking up and went home.... |
Interested ? Read the paper to find out more. This paper was published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol.62, No 851 April 1998. |
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| Zentac_75 |
*Beats the dead horse*
NIGGA PLEASE!!!
I love fantasy..I'm intrigued by the stories..but hey are ALL STORIES... I'm more likly to believe that the mother who burned her 3 kids alive, or the one who drowned her 5 kids in the tub is possessed by a demon than some 'crazy' who is screaming and frothing at the mouth. (I've made scarier noises on the toilet after a night of drinking and dangerous dans *shout of to chinamon for the suggestion*)
If you believe, its your faith...but I don't belive in organized religion... nor do I practise it, so I can't belive in exorcism.
ASIDE: If you are of another faith...how can you belive in a catholic exoricism??? vice versa...Cosmic Fur was right when he stated if you belive in possesion you believe in a divine power granting a mortal the right to expel such a demon, with all the divisions of religion in modern times...how can one honestly justify their belief in an exorcism ??? (I hope this makes sense I don't want to elaborate further)
In regards to personal experience DIGI NUT said it all.
"BELIEVE NONE OF WHAT YOU HEAR AND HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE" |
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