Things that go bump in the night....

[caddyman]

Having been reading Lucya’s blog, syndicated on LJ As badwitchblog, I got to wondering about people’s attitudes towards ghosts and the supernatural generally.

I am generally sceptical about the entire business, but I do acknowledge that strange things do occur and that it is sometimes somewhere between difficult and impossible to think of a rational explanation. This does not, of course, mean that there is no rational explanation simply that it has not been found yet.

The interesting thing about belief, or lack of it, in the supernatural, is that it seems to operate separately to religion. I know more than one person who believes in God (the supreme supernatural entity!), but dismisses ghosts, goblins, fairies, sprites et al as flights of fancy. I don’t want to get into that, but as a matter of interest, I would like to know if you have religion of some kind. For the purposes of this entry, it doesn’t matter if you are (in no particular order) Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Pagan or any of the other nine generally recognised world religions. It would just be interesting if you were to indicate belief in a deity or deities.

Even better, if you have any ghostly or strange experiences, it would be fun to read about them: annoyingly, I don’t as such. I have been in a few rooms with strongly unwelcoming atmospheres, but the nearest I ever got to a ghostly encounter was when I was about six or seven years old. I woke up one night and it seemed to me that there were two golden figures standing at the foot of my bed; one tall, the other short¹. There was no feeling of threat and they neither spoke nor moved. I thought they might be my Dad and little sister, but they didn’t respond when I spoke and I just lay back down to sleep. When I looked again (I think) a minute or two later they were gone. And that’s that: the nearest I have to a ghost story and it’s a damned boring one at that!

What strange experiences do you have?


[Poll #1253523]

¹They were not camels! (NWO in-joke).

Comments

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

After my grandmother died my grandfather had a spinal arterial thrombisis that left him paralysed from the waist down. The Doctors wanted to keep him in the gereatric hospital but he was so determined to get out of "the workhouse" that he taught himself to walk again. Because he had no feeling in his legs he had lots of accidents; falling down the step in the sittingroom, dropping a bottle of milk on his foot and breaking a bone, that sort of thing. One day Mum and I were out in the garden playing with my children and doing a bit of weeding when we both heard my grandmother call my mum's name twice. It was loud and urgent. Mum took off towards the house at a gallop and I followed behind having gathered the baby up from the lawn and chivvied the other two in front of me - gardens are not for the under threes without supervision.
When mum got to Pop (grandfather) he was sound asleep infront of the open fire. At some point he had removed the fireguard and put another log onto the embers and then settled back and gone to sleep. The wood had spit out a hot ember that had landed on his trouser leg and burnt through it and his woolly sock and was burning a hole in his leg.
The burn was small and after a trip to the local doctor it healed quickly. If Granny had not called us it could have been so much worse. We both heard her very clearly and my daughter, who was nearly four at the time asked where the lady's voice came from ..."did it come out of the sky?"
So yes I know spirit is there, I know that they watch over us, I don't believe they can see our future anymore than we can but they are there.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

When my father in law died his two daughters were discussing the Will and at one point where they were mentioning options they wouldn't do the bread-bin in the kitchen they were sat in slammed shut, startling them both. On returning to this house one of them found the postcard he had sent them had detached from the magnet holding it to the grid and was laying in the middle of the dining room floor. It had never moved before, nor since.

It was sufficient for them...

Personally, I don't believe in it, if only because I'd much rather retain my privacy thank you very much.