My goodness, and so much as I believe in: “extra sensory perception (ESP), haunted houses, ghosts, mental telepathy, clairvoyance, astrology, communicating with the dead, witches, reincarnation, and channeling.” Especially the witch thang, ... I must really be out there on the lunatic fringe. I prefer to call myself eccentric.  %-P

As far as the witch thang goes, all I have to do is walk down any street in Salem and they’re right out there in genuine flesh and blood. I don’t even have to squint to see them. They look pretty real to me. ;)

I followed you over here from that comment thread… I left a comment, too. [Sheesh!] So much for open minds…

Hi Karen. I went back over to read—you made some nice points. Some of the folks are not too receptive, are they? I’m not sure why they can’t grasp the idea that some things can’t be explained by science yet.

How boring people who believe in nothing except that which they can touch and feel must be.  I believe, I believe.......  In fact, on Chronicle the other night they were talking about a village in upstate NY that sounded like a neat place to visit--if only I could have remembered where it was!!

I haven’t had the experiences (actual) that you have had Kate, but often have the sense that those who are no longer here are with me, helping me, guiding me, watching over me and mine......impossible to explain, but as I said above, I do believe......

Sorry, but I have to heavily disagree with you Cyn.  Boring?  I would say, how sad are people that cannot enjoy this wonderful, natural world we live in, and have to have some sort of paranormal belief to make up for what they cannot see or explain in the real world.  It infuriates me when someone calls me boring, or similar things just because I don’t share in paranormal beliefs.  Isn’t a sunrise enough?  Is a waterfall not beautiful? 

Now as for the people who are guiding and supporting you, cyn, that is real.  But why can’t it be real in your head?  When my father passed on, I distinctly heard *his cough* several days later in an adjoining room to where I was sitting in the house he last lived in.  I knew darn well he wasn’t in there, nobody coughed, and his spirit had not returned to speak to me or any old crap like that, but the memory of it served well enough to comfort me.  Aren’t memories enough?  Does what is real to one person’s mind have to be real to everyones?

As for scientists not paying it much mind, science requires evidence, and repeatable, realistic tests.  Most paranormal/parapsychological researchers present very little of either.  Show me some evidence, not anecdotal stories, and I’ll pay attention.  Most respectable scientists would not discount that such things could be, but would still rather spend their time one something they can reliably test.

Finally, nothing wrong with witches or wicca.  I’ve just never seen one that cast a spell that actually worked.  I’ve had many a ‘witch’ (warlock?) attempt to cast spells on me.  Not a single one has ever worked.  Maybe they’re not doing it right? 

Done unloading.  Sorry if I offended anyone.  Have a good day.

Captcha word is love.  And how.

Just guessing, Dave, but if it was a warlock, it wasn’t a genuine witch. And if trying to put a bad spell on you, definitely not. I don’t think the witch’s spell is very much different than prayer. Some believe in the power of prayer, some don’t. That’s fine.

So, anecdotal or not...how does one explain the lights and the water faucets? Science hasn’t come up with any explanations yet, but it was real. It’s not exactly something I was hoping for and I couldn’t stop it. But there it was and we learned to live with it. In some people’s minds, that would make me a believer in the paranormal. Well no. It just makes me a person who lived in a house where the faucets and lights were very often on in the morning with no ‘logical’ explanation. Nothing more, nothing less.

A couple hundred years ago, the unexplained happenings in my house would have been ascribed to the devil. Most unexplained or ‘unnatural’ things were. I don’t think that approach has changed very much. But now, instead of blaming the devil, we tend to think the person who experiences the unexplained thing is kind of nuts or clinging to some kind of fantasy world. Just two extreme ends of the same paradigm, it seems to me.

Can we say the lights and faucets weren’t part of the natural world? I’m no longer able to say that they couldn’t be. I kind of think the natural world may well be comprised of things we don’t entirely understand, but part of the natural world, nevertheless.

heh...old Fagin turned up again with my word.

Hey Dave--wondered where you have been lately!!  No offense taken at all--this is what, after all, makes the world go round--imagine if we all believed in the same things??  Now that would be boring!!  However, I do disagree.  Absolutely a sunrise or sunset is gorgeous and a waterfall is wonderful, but that doesn’t mean that I do not believe in other things as well.

As for hearing your dad’s cough--how do you know he wasn’t there?  Isn’t it equally as believable that his spirit was with you and the cough was real--impossible to prove it was more than a memory.  There is a feeling--a real feeling--you can get sometimes and that is what I am referring to.  Most of the time, it is memories that I rely on and that comfort me when I find myself missing my dad and my brother and grandparents, etc.  But every now and again there is something far different...maybe it is my overactive imagination--I have always had one--but it is far different than just a thought.  I dunno and it really doesn’t bother me one way or the other.  Maybe those of us who really believe (to a degree) in some of the paranormal are simply more open to it and those of you who do not (and I am married to one!!) block it and therefore.......  You know, it’s the old, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it thing again.  Or how many angels do fit on the head of a pin.

When I read Kate’s story, I just nodded my head, sounds perfectly believable and plausable to me, not surprising at all.  So I guess there are those of us who believe, those who don’t and then a fair amount who fall somewhere in the middle.......

It’s a fun discussion though and if I offended you by saying how boring, I am ever so sorry. Obviously, it wasn’t the first time you had heard it.  I tell my husband this all the time.  He is a true doubting Thomas and insists he never even dreams!! Can you imagine??  And I cannot imagine a life without dreams and such........Oh well, back to reality which means WORK!!

Yikes, my word is blood--hope I haven’t drawn any!!

I understand what you’re saying about feeling a presence, Cyn. That has never happened to me, but I know people for whom it has. It doesn’t seem to be a life changing event or a big huge deal....they note it and carry on. With some puzzlement, of course, but also a sense of comfort.

It is a big old interesting world and we don’t have a lot of the answers. But the questions surely do exist.

Some people are open to the questions. Some, not so much. Others can work themselves into full-fledged outrage, including pounding the shoe on the table, insisting that such things do not exist and those who think they do are craaaazy or dumb.

In the final analysis, it’s not going to matter whether you’re a shoe pounder or ambiguous or a total believer. That’s not going to change reality, whichever direction reality may fall. So, for me, the ‘open to the possibilities’ camp is a comfortable place to sit. Works for me, doesn’t for others. That’s okay.

Hm.  Let me try to respond to this coherently, point by point.  I just got out of a 1.5 hour meeting and I’m a little fried. 

Kate, you first.  Your blog, after all.  There’s wiccans, there’s witches, there’s warlocks, and then there’s SCA members.  I used to hang with some weird folks.  I see nothing wrong with prayer.  I pray daily.  That’s a whole other topic.  (Thanks for the blog-fodder.  I feel a ‘prayer’ post coming on.) Also, I know several wiccans I respect and enjoy talking to.  A difference of interpretation of the term ‘witch’ is happening here, most likely.

As for explaining the lights and faucets, I would have more questions than I have space here in an attempt to gather enough info to explain it.  In my experience there’s always a logical, if sometimes difficult to reach, explanation.  Your experience may vary.  But without such knowledge or testable evidence, I would definitely NOT come out and ascribe that to paranormal activity, whether I could explain it off hand or not.  I’ve seen plenty of things I could not explain… right away.  I wouldn’t try to disprove anything, but neither would I accept an explanation, paranormal or otherwise, without sufficient evidence.  For me, there isn’t enough evidence here to substantiate any claim of paranormal activity.  Again, your mileage may vary.

I guess my response is, I’m perfectly open to the questions, but I don’t like to have them answered for me.  If someone wants to believe in paranormal stuff, that is their right as a person.  I think that person is shortchanging themselves out of a learning experience into how the world really works.  I’m open to the possibility that there is paranormal activity, but I’ve never seen any hard, direct evidence for it.

Cyn, good to speak with you.  I tend to hibernate at times when things get hairy.  It’s been busy around here…

How do I know it wasn’t my dad?  Because he’d been dead and buried for weeks.  (Maybe that’s morbid, but it’s true.) It would be rather difficult for me to hear him cough.  If you’re referring to my dad’s spirit, then I would ask, why would a spirit need to cough?  Does a spirit have a throat and mouth, lungs and a diaphragm with which to cough?  Physical / visual / aural manifestations of the deceased are extremely common and everybody has them. 

I had a dream a few weeks later that I got a mysterious voicemail on my cell phone.  When I called the number (which was 555) I was very pleased to speak with my father for about three minutes.  Those were three very precious minutes to me.  I woke up crying with joy.  Do I believe that it was my father attempting to contact me from beyond the grave?  No.  It was a dream.  A very nice dream, but just a dream.  Why does it have to be more?

I love the examples of the tree falling in the forest, and the angels on the head of a pin.  The difference is that those can be tested.  Well, if you can bring down a few angels anyway.  Tree in the forest… anyone ever heard of a tape recorder?  I’ve got the pin right here.  What are the standard dimensions of an angel?

I’m open to the possibilities.  I would just prefer evidence over explanations.

Well, I’ll tell you Dave, after living with unexplained occurrences for a couple of years, it really does rearrange one’s perception of reality.

Water faucets: Water not just gushing out, but the knobs turned all the way on.

Lights: light switches turned ON. Dimmer switches turned ON and the dial turned all the way UP. Lamps with switches turned ON.

I went around in the mornings and turned everything off. The old fashioned way.

I’m not a ghost chaser or a paranormal freak, but someone has to come up with a really good explanation for how water faucets and light switches and lamps get physically turned on so that I had to physically turn them off.

I mean, it really does rearrange my perception of reality. In my world, it takes a physical force to turn on water faucets and move light switches from the off to the on position. Just sayin...I can’t give anyone a reason why it happened. It just did. I don’t know how to explain it in everyday terms. I’m not saying there wasn’t an explanation, but rational and logical lines of inquiry came up appallingly short. We even had the house inspected for weirdness in wiring and plumbing irregularities. And trust me, I was married to a rationalist of the first order who I’m sure secretly thought ( or was fervently hoping) that I was the one doing it all—because lights and water faucets just don’t turn themselves on in the middle of the night, dammit. ‘Cept they did.

And I haven’t even mentioned the delightful episode with the alarm system that did unaccountable things after which the inspection yielded the slightly snarky remark from one of the techinicians (who virtually crawled over every inch of the house), “Ma’am, I think you have a ghost.” And the look he got that could have melted spoons....

It was an interesting time, I’ll tell you.

What a fascinating post, Kate.  People do tend to have closed minds ‘until’ something happens to them.  Then it’s a different story.

I was on the fence about ghosts too - until I encountered one as well as a girl.  I’ve told my story to people who looked at me like I was on drugs.  Oh well....you had to be there, I suppose.

And I was....

LOL! Yes, “being there” does seem to be the necessary catalyst.