Something really strange just happened

[InSwamTiddler]

I’ve NC for this as I’m not sure what to make of it and I’m really confused.
Back story - I was raised Catholic, but I’m atheist now. I work in a science based field and for as long as I can remember I have believed in the factual, empirically provable reality of things. I don’t believe in God or the afterlife, or ghosts / paranormal stuff.

Nearly 9 years ago my dad died. He died very suddenly and unexpectedly at a young age in my childhood family home.

Due to some circumstantial things, I’m currently living back in my family home.
My mum has mentioned a few times over the years that she’s felt my dad’s presence here and I’ve always been openly kind to her about it, but thinking “nope. Your imagination is going crazy because you’re grieving”. She’s mentioned she’s felt pressure on the bed as if someone has sat down on it next to her for example.

Anyway, this morning DP has left for work and I was still in bed. I was listening to him brushing his teeth, then popping the kettle on so I was definitely awake, but a little drowsy.

I felt him get back into bed with me and thought “what’s he doing?”... it’s not unusual for him to pop back into the bedroom and give me a hug or kiss before leaving the house.

I felt the heaviness of him pressed against my back and his arms wrapped around me. There was a heat between my shoulder blades I have never felt before but I wasn’t scared but I knew it wasn’t DP then. I heard the front door open so DP was leaving the house. Then my whole back went tingly a bit like pins and needles but not in an unpleasant way.

When it was happened I felt calm and warm but I’m freaking out now and can’t stop crying. Sounds silly but I feel like it may have been my dad.

I was 100% awake, not dreaming. I leant over and flicked the lamp on straight after.

Does anyone believe in this stuff? I never have but now I’m questioning everything.

That's interesting, bigcuddly... Do you think we should react to and treat others' declared political and spiritual beliefs differently? The one requiring more sensitivity than the other? I have all the spirituality of a paving slab, so it would be easier to upset/offend me through my political beliefs, than my spiritual. And wouldn't criticising someone's political beliefs and hoping to change them also be a declaration of "I'm cleverer than you?" Well you are right about politics - I was thinking politics is ok to discuss because I was thinking of people who are interested in debating politics. Challenging someone's political beliefs when they are not up for it is probably just as bad.
If someone is up for it, debates on politics can go on endlessly without oneupmanship though.

As is telling someone they have no right to an opinion on something if they haven't a degree in it! I didn't say anything about having opinions (in fact I was supporting validating people's beliefs... no degree required..) I was commenting on claiming superior knowledge without some justification. Most professionals not only do degrees and further qualifications but also work for years in their field before they start giving advice out...

I apologise if I am being rude though.

I was commenting on claiming superior knowledge without some justification. Most professionals not only do degrees and further qualifications but also work for years in their field before they start giving advice out...

Yes, that's fair enough, actually, not rude. My misunderstanding.

“I don't want to rain on your parade, but you don't come across as knowing very much at all about the things being discussed on this thread,”

What makes you think that?

one adult is taking the role of "I am more intelligent and know more than you" and the other you think should take the role of "Yes, you are"?

I was supporting validating people's beliefs

Well, sometimes a person knows something the other person doesn't I notice people in this country are very chippy about this and perceive it as being 'talked down to'. And it's not a matter of having postgraduate degrees in something one of the glories of Mn is the availability of people who may know more than you about something, whether it's vegetarian food in Paris or how to alleviate the symptoms of balanitis with home remedies.

There were people on this thread describing the classic (and very frightening) symptoms of sleep paralysis without knowing what they were, for instance, and ascribing a supernatural explanation to it. I don't think there's any value in blindly agreeing with that interpretation when there's a perfectly explicable non-supernatural explanation that can be offered in its place, and which is thoroughly evidenced.

Like the woman who believed she'd seen ghostly horsemen when the Household Cavalry exercise at dawn in the vicinity.

Obviously, it may be a relief or a disappointment to the person who has believed they experienced a supernatural event, but they should have all the information, surely?

I lost my partner 4 years ago & I'm convinced he is still in the home we shared. I started a new relationship a couple of years after he died & whenever he stayed over at mine the bedroom door would bang all night, never did at any other time. One night I was in bed & heard a crash in the kitchen, I went in & found a tin of corned beef in the middle of the floor, my late partner was the only one who ate it & the tin must have been at the back of the cupboard, I still don't know how it got out on to the floor. Not long before he died I lost my engagement ring, we searched everywhere for it, after he died I was talking to his dad on the phone, after the call I walked in our bedroom & my ring was in the middle of the floor, I'm convinced it was him letting me know he was ok.

I'm hoping to move in the new year & much as I love him, I'm going to sneak out the door & hopefully leave him to the new tenants.

Suggest that folks using the word atheist check the dictionary.
On the subject I think it's a close connection to a loved one, I often feel my Dad when I am ironing (playing Classic FM) or sitting next to me in a concert. Music for us was the connection.

Suggest that folks using the word atheist check the dictionary

What is it about the word "atheist" that you think people are misunderstanding, Standrews ?

As is telling someone they have no right to an opinion on something if they haven't a degree in it!

I've done postdoctoral research on some of the men of science who founded the Society for Psychical Research. I think I'll award myself at least one for that.

I've done postdoctoral research on some of the men of science who founded the Society for Psychical Research

Ah, Cali that's fantastic!
Do you agree with a PP who said that the establishment of such a society was because they wanted to prove that such experiences were real, as most people believed in ghosts, psychics etc. then? It is not my impression (through my rather less scholarly reading on Victorian woo) that that would be the case. More likely the opposite. I know the society itself never had a corporate position on this.

I'd be interested to hear what you think about this.

Lowbrow it's not straightforward, as you would imagine. Plus, I'm remembering things I studied several years ago. They were genuinely interested in psychic phenomena. There was an interplay between the development of magic tricks and the work of mediums. There's a lot of quite literal smoke and mirror stuff going on.

John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, devised machines for weighing ghosts. He and his family invited mediums to perform for them to investigate their possible powers. They did make sure they tied and locked the mediums to chairs to prevent sleight of hand. The idea was then to tempt the ghosts onto the weighing machines. Members of the SPR could be quite guarded in their attitudes. There's still a sense, even that far into the 19th century, of proving science as useful and a reluctance for it perhaps to be tainted by links to spiritualism. But members of that elite Cambridge circle did hold seances. I don't think it's a case that they wanted to prove it was real. They wanted to investigate it to see if it was real but that's slightly different. This is on the back of Victorian interest in table turning and mesmerism.

You see an upsurge in belief in mediums and spiritualism during World War I, which is not surprising. So many people were desperate to communicate with people who had died young, in horrific circumstances, that they were just reaching out for anything. This is partly why, although I don't have spiritual beliefs, I do think that many humans feel a need to have them.

@Extrastout
I've heard the doorbell as well. It's very convincing and, like you, I have checked whether anyone was at the front door. Years ago, I read an explanation of the phenomenon somewhere online but have no idea what it's called now.

In a very strange coincidence I ended up reminiscing with someone about the psychic/physics based experiments going on in Cambridge 15-20 years ago.

Apparently there was someone claiming to have psychic visions of the contents of protons. Unsurprisingly the visions matched the prevalent pop-science level understanding of protons of the time, and completely failed to match the emerging evidence of their contents coming from up to date experiments.

I've heard the doorbell as well. It's very convincing and, like you, I have checked whether anyone was at the front door. Years ago, I read an explanation of the phenomenon somewhere online but have no idea what it's called now.

If its a radio or wireless doorbell its quite likely that either someone else somewhere within range has rhe same codes or possibly a Taxi radio may have set it off. These items win't be engineered to a very high standard to not respond to interfering unwanted signals.

m3lon I was thinking about this thread, and I am fairly sure I read about government led experiments to do with ESP going on during the cold war, and it being used! I might be wrong...

Anyway, going back to your proposed experiment, rather than looking at chance or probability the starting point is likely to be brain scans messages via their mind, parts of the brain are going to be more active.

In relation to neuro science, psychiatry and psychology, afaik there are definitely wide open areas which are not fully understood yet. eg I was watching a Harvard lecture by a leading psychiatrist a while ago and he was talking "neural feedback therapy" about which there had been no or very little research and his comment was "we are not sure why this works, but it does seem to". It is a therapy for trauma and ADHD I think. I have heard a similar thing said by leading psychologists in relation to EFT.

The world of woo is merging with the world of science!!

I have a suspicion that a great deal of what people call "paranormal" or "supernatural" is in fact going to be one day widely accepted as "normal".

that would be "brain scans of people who send and receive messages via their mind, as parts of the brain are going to be more active when it happens"

I'm sure loads of cases of "woo" can be connected to science. I'm also sure loads can't.

EHS

The world of woo is merging with the world of science!

big, if you read the updates, with links to recent triple-blind trials from the last few years, at the bottom of this article in Psychology Today, you'll see that while earlier neurofeedback results, based on trials that were poorly conducted in the 1990s, were often deemed 'promising but inconclusive', especially for ADHD and related conditions, the conclusion from recent widespread properly blinded studies is that it performs no better than other therapies. And this 2017 study goes even further:

Update Nov 2017: A new paper in American Psychologist, by Robert Thibault and Amir Raz at McGill University, states that "placebo factors permeate EEG-nf [EEG-based neurofeedback] and likely account for the majority of relevant experimental findings and clinical outcomes". In other words, most of the benefits seem to be a placebo effect based around the experience of attending a clinic and receiving attention from a caring practitioner, rather than having anything to do with learning to control your own brain waves. [...] They also draw attention to the massive conflict of interest in the research field: in a literature review, they found that "the first author on 37 of the 39 publications included (i.e., 95%) either runs a private EEG-nf practice or sells neurofeedback equipment."

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/brain-myths/201302/read-paying-100s-neurofeedback-therapy

The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson is a very funny but well researched and fascinating account of the US Army’s attempts to harness psychic forces during the Cold War. The film is good too, but obviously with far less information and evidence.

procne your post doesn't conflict with what I said. The leading psychiatrist said "we are not sure how it works, but it does seem to". You have come up with research that says it works because of the placebo affect. I understand that point of view. So do the leading psychiatrists, no doubt. Because of the impact on lives, however, I doubt they would see that analysis as the end point. The thinking is that for some disorders such as BPD, for which the therapy is drugs for life, the thinking from the 70s may have been wrong, that the root problem may have been trauma and that trauma can be recovered from, and one therapy is your "placebo".

Radical changes to real lives, so not to be mocked or written off.

If you look more deeply into it, you will also find there are policy issues to do with funding in the US - some research is funded and some is not.

Neuro not neural, doh.

procne ps the same thing applies to EFT. Can't see hard evidence about that emerging in the next few years either, other than stating it is all conclusive and probably placebo. Yet it is recommended by people who know their onions.

bertrand in relation to your question, you are saying that you know "a lot" about the paranormal, enough to give definitive statements about what is possible and what is not, but your views can't come from peer reviewed evidence based research (and I am not talking about wiki here...) on the "paranormal" because there isn't very much of it, and nothing conclusive about the "rational" explanations you refer to, so far as I can work out. But if I am wrong please tell me and link the peer reviewed evidence based research you are relying on.

inconclusive not conclusive.

You had a visit from a loved one. How lovely.

The thing is Bertrand you don't seem to allow for actual open-mindedness or the possibility that you (and anyone who says this isn't possible) could be wrong. Even if it's only a small chance you could be wrong, it's more scientific to accept that and respect the feelings of those who may believe that.

As I understand it, Bertrand is perfectly prepared to allow for the possibility that she could be wrong, as she's said she's happy to accept anything that is supported by convincing evidence.

However, it's obviously completely unscientific to say that you will accept something wholly unevidenced just because some people believe in it and there's a vague chance that at some point someone might produce evidence notwithstanding that no evidence has ever emerged despite decades and even centuries of trying to find it.

your views can't come from peer reviewed evidence based research

As pointed out upthread, by definition there cannot be any evidence-based research to prove a negative.