Do you believe in ghosts?
Most people are skeptical. After all, there is no conclusive evidence that ghosts exists. Mediums can be easily sniffed out as charlatans or opportunists, looking to profit off of people's grief.
Yet this little nagging voice in the back of our heads continually asks...what if there's some truth there?
u/TheDashingMan asked:
"Paranormal believers of reddit, what made you believe? (Serious)"
Here were some of those answers.
Just A Reflection?
When I was younger my mom used to invite random neighborhood children over for dinner and parties so they could eat.
At my sisters birthday party everyone was outside getting ready to hit the piñata. My father noticed a girl sitting inside staring out the window at us. We have a large window beside front door. He told me to go inside and ask her to come out and join the party.
I ran up the walkway, looking at her through the window as I went towards the door and then as soon as I passed through the doorway, losing sight of her for a few seconds, she was gone. My dad thought she had fallen. (Theres a couch in front of the window so he thought she fell on the couch).
I looked around for her but couldn't find her so I told my dad. He helped me look for her but still nothing. No one else saw her except me and my dad. My mom said she didn't recall inviting any girls with our description of her. We forgot about it until some years later though I don't really know exactly how many.
My dad and I were sitting in the living room watching TV. From my dad's armchair you can see into the kitchen a little bit. Me and my dad were talking about the show we were watching when he suddenly got quiet. He said my name and motioned for me to come over to him. He told me to look at the microwave. I saw that girl's reflection in the microwave, exactly the same as before. I ran into the kitchen and my dad followed but again no one was there. We were both pretty spooked so we went out for ice cream until my mom came home.
I thought it was a neighborhood kid playing a prank on us the first time. But seeing her the second time unchanged in our kitchen many years later made me start believing in ghosts.
A Benevolent Visit
Shortly after my mother died, I heard her call my name and I turned around and she was standing before me, smiling. Then she simply vanished.
I've never hallucinated before or since, I have no mental problems, etc, so I feel like I have to at least entertain the possibility it was for real.
Moving On
A few years ago my great-grandmother was in her last few days. My family lives a couple of hours away and I wasn't really able to get there. I had just seen her a couple of weeks before that and had personally made peace with the inevitable.
One night I had a dream where my great-grandmother and I had a nice, long conversation in the house that she had lived in when I was a young kid. We talked about her life and experiences, my life, and my future. It was the most vivid and lucid dream I've ever had.
The next morning, my mother called with the bad news that my great-grandmother had passed during the night, probably about 11pm. I don't know at what time I had that dream, but I definitely didn't go to bed before 11.
A Good Ethereal Feeling
When I moved in with my boyfriend he told me there was a (ghost) man that had always followed him wherever he lived. I am a firm believer in the paranormal anyway, but it really didn't bother me after some reassurances that he was benevolent. Not long after moving in, our roommate's girlfriend started staying over more often and this ghost hated her. If she'd use our bathroom the faucets would both turn on full blast. This would always cause her to run out of the bathroom with her pants around her ankles.
The ceiling fans would turn on by themselves, the TV would increase volume on its own. You had to unplug it to get it to stop. We replaced the TV, that one did the same thing.
After a few months of weird stuff happening, I awoke to the feeling of someone sitting at the foot of the bed. I felt the bed compress as though a real person had sat down. I jerked up and looked around and saw nothing but there was an imprint in our comforter where someone had sat. Several more weeks go by and finally the same thing happened again, only this time there was a man there. Big hat, trench coat, looked like he was straight out of a western. After a few seconds he disappeared. I told my boyfriend about him and his response was "Oh good, he finally let you see him".
After that it just became normal. He sat at the end of the bed most nights while I was pregnant and then after the baby was born he must have went in and sat with her. We would still catch glimpses of him here or there and you'd hear footsteps when home alone. We eventually broke up and I gotta say I miss the ghost way more than the boyfriend.
The Same Nightmares
Experiences. My own and other people's. There are things nobody understands that happen. This is one of many stories:
My grandma + uncles bought a house together in 2008 because it was unbelievably cheap. Every man who was married or in a relationship who slept in a particular room in the house would wake up from the same nightmare. We later found out a woman who had been assaulted by her husband's married friends had hung herself there 30 years prior and the house had been going from owner to owner ever since. They (my family) did a bunch of purification rituals and finally ended up locking that room up for good. And that kept it okay for a while but 3 years later, my grandma also passed in the same house so nobody wanted to stay there anymore and they sold it again. For the same unbelievably low price they got it in the first place.
I have many other stories that are just inexplicable if not for something supernatural or other dimensional.
"Nun"sense
3 things for me. two were/ are sightings and one was an experience that saved my life. Firstly was in my first house, i was alone in the house with the bathroom door locked as i was taking a shower. i turn to get the soap and there was someone standing right outside the shower door! I thought my room mate came home and was messing with me so i told him to get lost.... only after finishing my shower i find that the door was indeed locked!
Second was that in my current house we often have "nuns" walking across the corridor from the spare room to our bedroom, still happens on occasion today........
Lastly it was about 5 years ago when something pulled me back from a pedestrian crossing just as a lorry went barrelling through the red light whilst the driver was looking to his left.........i surely would have been severely injured if not killed. there was absolutely no one near me to have been able to pull me backwards....
In Moments Of Need
I have two spooky incidents that happened after my dad died.
First time is that my dad passed away while we were out of the country (it was very unexpected). A couple days before he passed he had issues sending and receiving texts/calls - his phone was always on for business calls/emergencies when we were on vacation/traveling. Several days after we get back home and are planning his funeral with my family. I'm confessing to my them that he embarrassed me at dinner and my last conversation with him was us arguing before he passed and felt horribly guilty.
Just as I explained that, I hear my phone go off and see a text from my dad. We had his phone charging in the kitchen so it was already creeping us out that none of us had touched it for the past few days. I opened the text and it said "I love you, love dad". I obviously lost it and so did my family. My logical mind says that it's just a text he sent while I was testing his phone the week prior that finally went through but his phone was on and connected for at least 3 days back home and the text came at that exact moment.
A month or so after my dad passed, I was driving to the first family get together since the funeral and I was sort of in a funk that this is the first family outing without my dad. As I'm driving through a rural area, I hear my dad's voice yell at me to stop. (He taught me to drive and I was very familiar with his panic yells). I slam on my brakes at an intersection with a green light for me and an 18 wheeler comes barreling through the intersection. If I didn't stop I would have definitely been hit. Once again could be grief and thinking about the times my dad taught me how to drive but still weirds me out to this day. Haven't had any other weird instances since these and it's been almost 8 years now.
Have We Met It Yet?
I don't know how much I believe in most paranormal things, but when I think about the topic, I can't help but think of the mantis shrimp can see. The human eye can sense red, green, and blue, and with varying combinations of those three colors, we get to enjoy millions of colors. The mantis shrimp has 16 different receptors, meaning the mantis shrimp can see in potentially trillions of colors we are physically incapable of even imagining.
I believe that it's not just possible, but almost guaranteed, that there's a huge portion of knowledge we're locked out of because we, as a species, simply are lacking whatever specialized organs that would allow us to study and explain. Problem is, try imagining a brand new sense. How do you explain it to others that have never felt it? If you can't feel it, how do you build a machine that translates it into senses you CAN experience?
There's just so much we don't know that we don't know. Current scientific evidence suggests the paranormal doesn't exist, but I'm willing to say there's every chance that we don't know how to interact with that part of the universe yet and that one day the supernatural skeptics (myself included) may be completely proven wrong.
Poltergeist
When my family and I moved into our new home things started to freak us out. We would hear people talking in other rooms and sometimes we would hear footsteps coming from the attic.
I told my friends when they visited and they laughed at me. The. All of a sudden a lamp turned on and then off by itself. It was weird but we just thought the outlet or the lamp switch is broken. However, when I took a look I found out that the lamp wasn't even plugged in.
Another day my mom was in the living room and 3 windows and a couple glass things broke simultaneously all of a sudden and she heard voices in another room.
Fun With Jane
I used to work at a daycare, and there was a one classroom that always housed the two year olds. Year after year, the kids would whisper in a corner. When asked who they were talking to they would, without fail say "Jane".
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