How do clairvoyants know things??

@GarlicFind I love Derren Brown!

I’ve bookmarked your posts @Scorchio84 and have never heard of tyrophobia so will be looking into that too. If we’ve gone off topic too much, I’d love it if you started a new thread in Sleep ❤️

Phew! My trypophobia or SP? I'm really not covering myself in glory on this thread 😆

So I've always had trypophobia but I don't think I was aware of how common it is other than it being "one of those things" like the way people are funny with tinfoil or cottonballs...until the internet came along 😆How about you?

Thanks. YouTube served up Derren Brown's show about psychics, which I'd been looking for *is YouTube psychic?!!

It's a double episode, but you can skip in & out without losing the sense. It includes the week he spent with the awful Joe Power.

Haha no worries mine is mild!

And you’re right it’s not traditional trypophobia imagery.

When did you develop yours?

Is it @nomas shit sorry, I am up there with you as a trypophobe but I don't see it, I can't even look at honeycombs or eat crumpets so I'm usually hyper aware, sorry for any distress!

That picture is a trypophobe’s nightmare.

There really is @HatStickBoots here's that article I came across last night, I hope I'm allowed post links & that it works...

https://www.tuftandneedle.com/blogs/wellness/what-is-sleep-paralysis

annoyingly it skips part two but the third part is really interesting about SP in different culturals & the Arts

I went to one with dh. The chap said, quite accurately that I was sceptical. Not hard to guess from the look on my face.
He then said my DH would find a job somewhere with “white vans or trucks” which covers 99% of major electronics workplaces in the U.K. in 2016 (I googled it) DH was wearing an electronics workwear polo.
He said I was a “born teacher” (surprise surprise I gave up teaching a year after) and that I had clearly “found my passion” (NOPE: medical care is where I love my life!)
I realised shortly after I had a conversation in the toilets during the break about work with my MIL.
Honestly, I think it’s a major case of being good at reading people’s body language, paying attention to every tiny detail and using statistics in your favour. Once you’ve said “is someone here missing someone with a J in their name? John? Jane?” Someone in the audience will inevitably decide it’s their mum and go “is it my mum? Janet!” And that’s it.
Facebook, Google and a lot of background research, plus hanging around toilets!!

It’s such a fascinating topic! I love it. There’s so much more too.

Fools!!!

I am very religious but I don't believe in any of this.

I am very spiritually attuned so if anything was going to happen I would know.

This reminds me of one charlatan I saw at a friend’s party. She claimed to be in contact with an old lady with curly grey hair so pretty generic and probably matched a lot of grandmas! Then said that the grandmother had been very ill before she died - no shit, Sherlock!

Yes, that's why animals often flee before an earthquake or volcano starts.

During COVID I was bored so bought two readings on this site called Fiverr that were supposedly going to tell me when I'd meet the love of my life - I was (and still am) happily single but figured it would be a bit of fun.

Both claimed I'd meet my match in 2022 - it was obviously 2020 at the time. So not so far away that I'd lose hope if I was pining for someone but also far enough away I'd probably forget about the reading 😂

One of them also wrote 'He will be the opposite of you - he will be popular and well liked.' Okay then!

My Mum saw someone a while ago who said some things that turned out to be true but most of it was relatively vague and could be interpreted however you want. I don't necessarily believe it but do think it's a bit of fun.

This is so funny! Love Ciaran OKeeffe.
It’s funny he’s so gracious and almost apologetic about exposing Derek Acorah as a fake, rather than gleeful, as I’d have been.

This is the Derek Acorah who claimed in the gutter press that Madeleine McCann was dead and he’d been in touch with her. What a sick, evil bastard.

Yeah it really is, so disturbing, it's by Johann Heinrich Füssli's "The Nightmare" & like it's from the late 1700 so SP is obviously not a new phenomenom by any stretch.. the macabre side of me really wants a reproduction for my room 😂He also did a few variations but this one is my favourite

@HatStickBoots your post just gave me goosebumps holy shit!!! Your experience ties in so much with mine, the auditory hallucination with& again yeah stress related, even your description aboout it being able to see your bedroom but grainy, mine is usually kind of a navy/grey hue..

I took part in a study years ago, it was organised by some college over here, I'm sure Istill have the back & forth emails seeing as I never delete my emails 🙈& also like you I've read up on it over the years so what you said is very interesting about it being a dream overlaid in reality

I found an article last night while looking for that painting,haven't read it yet but I will after school & I'll see if I can link it

Sorry for the derail @Homer2

When I saw the first post about sleep paralysis I thought of this painting and was going to post it. When I had my first experience of it, I didn’t know what it was. It happened during a period of extreme stress and I had gone back to bed, late morning with the most awful migraine. I must have fallen very quickly into a deep sleep and don’t know for how long before I was disturbed by the sound of a floorboard creaking outside my bedroom door and then the noise of the door being opened. That particular door needed to be pushed firmly closed until you heard a clicking sound and then couldn’t be pushed open by one of the cats. I purposefully made sure it was firmly shut so I could have peace. I heard the noise of it being opened suddenly, as it did when turning the knob it needed a forceful shove with a shoulder to get it open. At this point I was trying to drag myself to consciousness because I knew someone had come in but my whole body just wouldn’t move, I felt completely fixed to the bed. I was desperate to tear my eyes open because I was well aware of someone moving closer and then standing over me. I was screaming in my mind and trying to move my head. I could “see” my bedroom as though through a grainy, monochrome veil. Everything was there but was like an imprint over something else, something like a woodland. Lots of research on the subject afterwards mentioned the ability to see your dream overlaid onto the reality. I couldn’t see who was looking at me but it wasn’t a dark or ominous presence, it was light. I was aware of “It’s ok, everything is going to be all right,” and then a hand on my forehead… I appeared to be sitting up! A forceful push which made me fall backwards, back into my body, back into a deep sleep which I woke naturally from without the migraine into the peaceful, early afternoon light of my bedroom. My door was firmly closed. Everything felt good and I’ve never forgotten this experience. It has happened since but not for years and it was always when I was completely fatigued, with a migraine and unable to stay awake during a morning or afternoon.

This is an interesting watch - Derek Acorah being revealed as a fake on Most Haunted. I agree with Ciaran's distinction between being a sceptic and being a cynic. I'd love for supernatural stuff to be true! I want to believe...but not without evidence, please.

@Scorchio84 that painting is spot on, isn't it!

Oh, but this is death rebranded as ‘floating about blissfully in some kind of strangely non-specific pastel-coloured afterlife of peace and harmony’.

There are lots of posts on this thread along the lines of: “I’m sceptical/non-believer/atheist, BUT…”
then go on to describe how they’re convinced by a psychic they saw who knew things no one could know.

In 2014 I went to see Derren Brown on stage as DD was a big fan. He did a psychic medium thing as part of the show. He told one woman about her late dad: his name, nickname, appearance and hobbies (motorbikes). The woman was crying at the end.
DB was at pains to point out he had no ‘gift’ and was cold reading. Not sure how it’s possible to be so accurate about nicknames, hobbies etc. but it is a trick, just like making a card disappear or sawing a woman in half.

I'm always a bit bewildered by people thinking their loved one is sending a message to say they’re OK. They’re not OK. They couldn’t be worse. They’re dead!

That's the core of it. If anyone had demonstrated psychic abilities in test conditions, we could accept there is this phenomenon and we do not know what causes it. Probably wouldn't assume something that defies every known law of physics but we would know the phenomenon itself exists.

But as nobody has ever managed to do it under test conditions, there is simply no phenomenon to explain.

The fascinating thing for me about sleep paralysis is that what you ‘see’ or sense in terms of a malevolent presence is strongly culture-specific. Like if you’re from a culture that believes in vampires or haunting by wives who died in childbirth or demons or whatever, that’s what you’re likely to ‘see’.