To think children may see things we can’t?

[Opal93]

My son is autistic and his language is disordered so it’s very hard to ask him what he actually means when he tells us something, but lately there have been a few instances where he has said things that have spooked us out a bit! Tonight he was at my mums, and he said “goodnight nana Marlene” (my mums mum who died when he was one) and started singing her favourite Doris Day song, word for word which he has never heard before and I didn’t know of the song until my mum told me today he started singing it and she has no idea how he knew it. My dad died when I was 16 and my son knows his photo. We were in a park the other week and my son pointed behind me and said “it’s grandad Stephen!” And I looked behind me thinking he probably saw a man that looked like the photo but there was nobody there. Another time, he started talking to my husbands dad about “nanny Margaret.” I didn’t realise he even had a nanny Margaret but apparently it was my husbands dads mums name. Then he said nanny Margaret has a big belly, and my FIL looked freaked out then and said she had a massive hernia that ruptured and killed her. I wouldn’t say I’m a believer in ghosts or life after death but it does make me wonder. Any other experiences of kids sensing things?

I am actually embarrassed for grown adults who think they know for sure there are no such thing as ghosts/spirits. Such know it alls.

If they exist, why has nobody claimed any of the numerous cash prizes that exist for those who can prove it?

I don’t believe in supernatural but apparently I used to say I had someone who visited me at night!

@FlyingFancy

Worth noting that no medium has ever been able to prove the existence of their skills under laboratory conditions.

Oh, it’ll be the power of sceptics disrupting the Vibrations.

Clearly we should have been entering toddlers for the Randi Prize.

I am religious so do believe in an afterlife. However, the mind does play tricks on you. Sometimes I am sure that I remember something a particular way and then have to acknowledge to myself that my memory was completely at fault.

So I agree with theories above re confirmation bias etc

@lynsey91

I wonder if anyone would call us “know it alls” for proclaiming that unicorns don’t exist!

In fact, the list of things we don’t know FOR SURE don’t exist but we’d all agree don’t is infinitely long - so your logic is rather faulty @lynsey91.

@Clocktopus

Could a child's rapidly growing brain see through time unconsciously?No because that's not a thing.

How do you know for sure?

How do you know for sure?

Total lack of supporting evidence and the fact that time doesn't work like that are good pre-indicators...

I am actually embarrassed for grown adults who think they know for sure there are no such thing as ghosts/spirits. Such know it alls.

You may believe they do not exist you DO NOT know for sure

We also DO NOT know for sure u i pens don't exist, or Big Foot, or the Loch Ness Monster. But humans tend to use logic, evidence and science to get by and until someone produces definite proof ghosts or spirits exist, I'll assume they don't. Of all the 7 billion people on Earth, isn't it funny how not one can come up with the goods to show that spirits exist?

*unicorns

I don't really believe it just because I haven't experienced it. Kids have wild imaginations. I know they say children with autism do not but my son is autistic and he can make up some stories. My son also absorbs a lot of information. He will talk about things in great detail from years ago from before he could talk (he didn't talk until 4.5). I never thought he took in much but he obviously did.

Your son could be just remembering you have talked about whilst he's listening in.

My beloved grandad died last year. I would be weirdly comforted (but probably shit scared too) if my kids claimed they could see him!

How do you know for sure?

Because to “see” anything you need light and an eyeball to absorb it. The patterns the eye collects are then interpreted by the brain to form an image. You can’t do this “unconsciously”.

Every time you look around you, you are “looking back in time” by a sliver of a second. If you look into a telescope you can look back millions of years to see what stars used to look like - but you need an instrument that uses lenses and mirrors perfectly calibrated in order to do it.

A brain is a material organ that requires eyeballs to do it’s seeing - it’s impossible to beam an image (which is light) directly into it.

That’s why.

There are actually researchers trying to study that.
As far as I know they haven't been able to understand the why or how.
But they now have a long list of 'incidents' when children ahve been decsribing vefy specific things that the couldn't possibly have known about. Especially when it comes to things that their parents for example didn't know anything about etc...

dc2 used to say he could see ghosts. I have no idea of he could and what he saw but he was adamant.

Of all the 7 billion people on Earth, isn't it funny how not one can come up with the goods to show that spirits exist?

personally I find it fascinating that more or less all cultures talk about ghosts, even tough their beliefs are different, they have no relation with each other etc....
It's such a shared experience that it makes me think there must be something behind it all.

It's such a shared experience that it makes me think there must be something behind it all.

Yes there are many things behind it all, none of which are actual ghosts/spirits.

@MyriadeOfThings

Of all the 7 billion people on Earth, isn't it funny how not one can come up with the goods to show that spirits exist?

personally I find it fascinating that more or less all cultures talk about ghosts, even tough their beliefs are different, they have no relation with each other etc....
It's such a shared experience that it makes me think there must be something behind it all.

Lots of cultures talk about lots of things.

That doesn't translate to ghosts being real.

Not the same thing really but my daughter (now nearly 4yo) seems able to detect early pregnancy (mine and other people’s) and has done since she was verbal. Obviously some of it I put down to overhearing/guessing things but she’s got a ridiculous track record that I can’t quite explain away.

It's well documented how easily our senses can be fooled in part because of how our brains are constantly look for patterns and associations and try to predict what is coming next based on our previous experiences & knowledge - and children have less of that.

I'm open to the possibility that there is part of who we are that we cannot yet perceive that may linger post-death to reintegrate with the energy in the universe that cannot yet be entirely measured (there are a few we can't explain) and that such an integration may take time and some energy may be able to do things/be perceived by some others during that process. It is possible that the pubescent processes that rewire how our brains use information may mean we filter out more of what we don't expect to be around us more than children who absorb everything and are more often to accept any explanation that comes to mind or are told that they see.

However, like others, I think that absorb everything capacity, especially with children with very strong memories, means it's more likely that they come out with interesting combinations of things that occasionally are really spot on and that their senses may actually be easier to fool by desperately trying to find explanations and patterns compared to adults without having as much to base it on.

I had a feeling when my grandmother passed as a kid - I can clearly remember looking at the clock at 2:30 in class and getting this strong feeling of loss and warmth before I was later told about her time of death. However, I had overheard adults talking about how the doctors would make a decisions as to whether there was 'significant progress' after lunch that day to continue with the machines, there is no way to know how many other times I had looked at the clock that day with the same feeling expecting the worst that I don't remember because those times weren't burnt into my memory from having an association tied to it later. I've had other loved ones die, before and since, that I've had nothing like that, even when like with my grandmother I was part of the death watch probably because no other death had that discussion where I was entirely a bystander - I was either not involved at all or was directly involved in knowing the details, rather than overhearing and trying to figure it out and make a connection from fragments. I have had other times where I had a feeling someone was dead, sometimes a very strong one, that turned out not to be true at all - I've had it repeatedly for my kids, for my spouse, that gut feeling and nothing was wrong. It's just that one where the feeling and reality aligned.

I believe in this OP. Too many things have happened in my family for me not to believe that 'things aren't always as they seem'. I'm from a very scientific, logical family as well.
We don't really understand anything about the world or where we came from or what else is out there. We could just be a game or an experiment for all we know. The older I get the more I realise how little we actually know.

It's such a shared experience that it makes me think there must be something behind it all

Death is a shared experience & so is the fear of it.

My nephew when he was around 4/5 explained to a pilot how to fly an old plane apparently, when asked if he had watched a programme or read books on it recently he piped up no I used to be one before I was a child again. The pilot confirmed what he had said was correct. Also a couple of miles before getting to their holiday destination described a local non famous landmark that was coming up. They’d never been to that location before and had no idea what he was talking about until they passed it further on. Sister is not at all woo but even she freaked out a bit.

@BiBabbles

Everything science knows about energy has shown that it’s impossible for ghosts and spirits to exist.

The idea that there could be some spooky undiscovered form of energy that exists in us & continues on after death retaining some of our individual characteristics is, literally, impossible.

When I was four, I was on the top deck of a bus with my Mum, in her home town, hundreds of miles away from where we lived. I very excitedly told her we were going to see my old school and I hoped we'd see Miss Williamson, my old teacher. A few minutes later I was very upset to see that a building was being demolished, and asked my Mum why they were knocking down my school. When we got to my Nana's house, Mum asked her what was the building that was being demolished, and was told it had been a school.

No.

We don't really understand anything about the world or where we came from or what else is out there

We do though.

I believe this. I think maybe because they are not conditioned like most adults to believe that ghosts don't exist and you'll be considered mad if you say you've seen something. I've seen things but as an adult.

My younger sibling had a phase of crying and saying "I want to go home" when we were at home together as a family.

I notice my young baby often seems to focus on something above or being me but I realise hoping this is likely just because he hasn't learned to focus properly yet