What just happened?! I don't know what to make of this.

[Believers]

I've had the strangest experience tonight and I don't know how to explain it.

I volunteer with a charity, and tonight myself and 3 others from there went out to a pub I've never been to before for a pre-Christmas drink.

At one point I went to the toilet and as I was on my way out a woman was on her way in. We exchanged pleasantries and went on our separate ways.

About 5 minutes after I'd joined my friends, this same woman came up to us, and sat next to me on the banquette thing. She took my hand and said she had to tell me something.

It was all a bit odd, but I figured she'd maybe had a drink, and I had no objection to her joining us. But then she said to me that she had xxx with her and he wanted me to know that he was happy, that he loved me and that it was time I moved on. She was crying as she said this and I started crying too because xxx was the name of my late dh.

I have no idea how she could've known any of this. None of us knew her, I'd never been to that pub before, dh's name isn't wildly unusual but not that common either, why did she come and find me after our brief encounter in the toilet etc.

I can't get my head around it! Any ideas?!

My son aged about three became quite frightened and distressed/anxious in the car one day..We were in South Wales.
I asked what was wrong?
He said ''I don't like mountains''
When I asked why not, he said ''When I was little, a mountain fell on my school''

Now, where had he got that from??
In those days, there was absolutely no internet, but I did remember hearing about a disaster in Wales, the Aberfan Disaster, but didn't know anything about it in detail.

Years later, when I had access to internet, I googled it, and it was truly ghastly.
Happened in the 1960's

But why would a three yr old say such a thing?
It's such a strange thing to have said, and his fear was very real, anxious eyes and worried face.

These people get a kick out of pretending to have powers.
Bit like putting on a white coat and pretending to be a doctor.
It's abusive and insulting.

Yes. Grief vultures is right

I appear to have a mn twin name!

Just saying in case anyone is confused by someone with a very similar name, who has very different views than me.

I had a weird experience with my son. My brother killed himself. My son was 2.5 at the time, so obviously we didn't tell him what had happened, and at that age he didn't understand death anyway.

We were in town a few weeks later, Christmas shopping, and he was chatting away and I was distracted and just saying "yes" as frazzled mums of toddlers do (I was also pregnant, so knackered) when I actually listened he was saying "Uncle P is happy, Uncle P is happy" over and over. It was quite spooky, but also comforting.

He's 23 now and hasn't shown anymore psychic powers.

Playing the devil’s advocate here… it was the same with black holes and we only had their existence confirmed a couple of years ago. Before then, there were very strong indications but no proof, yet all of us believed firmly, even if we didn’t understand anything about astrophysics, that they existed. 😁

This REALLY not comparable to black holes.

The question is @Believers , is she right? Have you held back from moving in? Is it time? Did you need to hear it?

I believe and you don't, but ask yourself if it's something you needed to hear and accept the universe is complicated x

I'd take it in the spirit it was intended. She wanted to pass on a message from your late DH and it was kind of her to do so.

I firmly believe that these people perceive information from the spirit world and have a sixth sense that others don't have: extra sensory perception or ESP.

Except that in Aberfan it wasn't a mountain, and it didn't fall on the school really - the slurry simply slid down and engulfed it.

Much more likely that your son had seen or read or heard something about mountains that worried him, and this was revived by being in a different and much more hilly area of the country.

I've a friend who does tarot readings and is clairvoyant. One day I saw her and as I left she looked concerned and said to try not to gain too much weight. 6 weeks later, my thyroid medecation was unavailable. She had no way of knowing, the contamination at the factory was never reported in the press.

Its extrordinary what goes on around us all the time that we cant see.

Such as? And with what evidence?

This. I saw it done once.

I've had a similar experience, someone came out with something they absolutely could not have known, a very private converstaion between me and a person that had died shortly before. The person who said this to me had no way of knowing, they were distant to me and did not know the person who had passed, and they had no vested interest in telling me what they did.

There was no other explanation that she had medium tendencies.

Sort of is.
If you took a TV back 500 years it wouldn’t work. No current, nothing transmitting. Does it mean the TV isn’t a real thing because you can’t prove it works in 1622?

I had someone amongst other things, describe my future husband including when I’d meet him. I wasn’t dating or even thing about it (literally just had a baby). Nothing like my babies dad. Three clear facts, no other details that I may have filtered out. Written down. Told me lots of other correct info too but I use my DH as an example of how it wasn’t fishing etc.

believers exactly the same thing has happened to me, a lady who was a friend of a friend told me that she was experiencing the presence of my deceased grandma who passed away under tragic circumstances when my mum was very young. This lady told me her exact (unusual name) there was absolutely no way she could have known this before had as my friend of 35 years had no idea.
I can’t explain it, I just accepted what she said.

Not everything is provable or knowable by the scientific method. Scientific experiment relies on several factors: repeatability, independent control of variables, a disprovable hypothesis, etc.

Science is an appallingly bad, and in fact an utterly useless, tool for investigation spiritual and psychic phenomena.
Firstly, these things are by their nature unrepeatable - can you imagine a scientist asking a dead relative to pass on several messages, on demand and in a lab, just to prove they can? The dead relative would have no interest in this, nor would the medium.
Secondly, many spiritual and psychic events only happen because of highly charged emotions and the fact that they are personally significant and meaningful to those involved. Such as the phenomena when a twin suddenly knows that their twin is in great danger. Would a scientist take one twin and put them in genuine real danger just to see if the other twin realises? Without genuine meaning or significance, the phenomena don't happen. This is why meaningless test activities, such as guessing what is on a card before it is turned over, produce such poor results.

What I find curious is just why so many people are so very, very firmly 'non-believers'. What emotional need is this position filling? If something isn't proven, surely the best approach is to have an open mind? I think the absolute sceptic stance comes from fear of the unknowable and/or total belief in the power of science.

But electricity, wifi and aeroplanes are not special powers that some people claim to have and not others. We haven't proved a hitherto unbelieved power of thought that, by itself, creates light, the ability to fly, and the ability to transmit massive amounts of information.

What is going on with woo is that this is something humans thought up centuries ago to explain a lot of things that they simply didn't understand. Religion is another strand of the same thing. Over those centuries there have been endless opportunities to investigate and produce proof, and indeed people have tried very hard to do so. Yet they have not been able to.

If you are going to bring scientific examples into it, it would be more appropriate to wonder how a science so sophisticated that it can split the atom, produce wifi, produce cures for hundreds of hitherto incurable conditions, "see" into people's bodies, send people deep in to space ... has never found any basis for mediums' claimed powers, or communicating with the dead in any other way?

Absolutely. Reading this thread and some of the stories are fascinating.

I know it’s no use trying to tell the out and out sceptics, but just because something hasn’t yet been scientifically proved doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

My DM - a hyper-sensitive type anyway - was occasionally acutely telepathic - down to specific details, over very long distances - but only AFAIK when someone close to her was in great distress. So that ability could never have been proved under lab conditions.

And before anyone says it, no, she wasn’t wise after the event - she’d be worried enough to tell us in detail, only for whatever it was to be confirmed quite a bit later - in the days long before the internet or routine long distance phone calls.

My post at 10.05. How could the psychic have told me something that no one knew at the time? Guessing I had a sister, yes, guessing she was getting married, yes, guessing the country the groom was from, not likely, guessing something was going to happen in that country that would mean he couldn't leave, not likely, guessing my sister would go to his country and marry there, not likely. Putting it all together it just seems inexplicabe to me.

I'm Catholic, took some persuading, and guilt tripping, to get me to go to this psychic evening as I don't believe in such things and believe it is wrong to dabble but I still can't understand it decades later.

What she could have usefully told me was he was a bastard, they would divorce and he would abduct the children and we wouldn't see them again for many years. Now that would have been useful. Maybe I needed to go back for that information.

That lady could have been like my Mum.
My Mum gets messages for people from deceased loved ones.
She does not do readings or ask for anything.
She gets a message and she might approach the person very respectfully and ask if they would like to hear it. They choose.

Oh! But I have been her biggest critic over the years. You know what it's like with your Mum and we have had a very tricky relationship (not about this).
Huge sceptic. Huge rationalist.

Then I've seen it happen a handful of times, on a train, carpet shop, market..
It's unexplainable any way than mediumship. Much as it pained me at first I've got off my high horse about it.

You received a lovely message I think.

No one is saying that we know how or why people see things others don’t. It doesn’t have to be religious or woo. They are just the human reactions to things too big to explain.

I fully expect we will have a scientific reason for it given enough time.

I totally agree.

What I find curious is just why so many people are so very, very firmly 'non-believers'. What emotional need is this position filling? If something isn't proven, surely the best approach is to have an open mind? I think the absolute sceptic stance comes from fear of the unknowable and/or total belief in the power of science.

Why does non-belief have to fill an emotional need? Do you believe there are pink elephants with purple spots floating around in the sky? If not, is that due to an emotional need, or because they aren't there?

It is obvious that there is an awful lot out there that is currently unknowable, as scientific advances have demonstrated. That doesn't mean it's scary, it means it's a fascinating world. But the point is that mediumship isn't an unknown, because these claims have been around so long. There's nothing to be fearful of in itself, and even if there was, mediums have been closely investigated for years and there has never yet been one who has been able to demonstrate that they have produced information they could not have gained from other sources. Claims that they can't be tested by normal scientific methods are a total cop-out; of course they can. When subjects swear blind that the medium couldn't have known or guessed XYZ, it has always been demonstrated that actually, they could.

It's pretty clear really that it is much more likely that it is continued belief despite the absence of any provable evidence that is filling an emotional need.