I'm curious about something and have some questions.

[Trailblazer]

I'm sure it is nice to see and feed such a variety, and of mostly friendly creatures.

Yes, I enjoy watching all the friendly creatures outside and it is a lot easier to manage now that I only have a few raccoons. I had about 15-20 a few months ago, and I got attacked by them every time I went outside to feed them, if I did not put the food down right away. I have no idea where all of them went, but one day I looked out there and there was only one raccoon. After that a few more showed up, but never like before. Maybe God took care of the problem.

Since my garden has become a wilderness,

My entire property has become a wilderness, and I finally gave up trying to do anything about it. It is a wildlife refuge for the birds and animals.
I had a view of the lake when I first moved here but now I can only see a little of the lake through the trees for the part of the year when the leaves have fallen. The rest of the year all I can see is trees, trees, trees everywhere!

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Of course, I can't be certain, but I believe I'll have another spirit of a deceased four-legged family member in my home tomorrow.

A sad day is coming for my family.

My family and I have made the difficult decision to put our oldest dog down. Her name is Sasha, and she is 16 and a half years old. She has seizures despite being given seizure medication every eight hours as our veterinarian has prescribed. We're taking her to the vet clinic tomorrow morning...

www.religiousforums.com

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

It has to come down to a personal judgment. My judgment is that the evidence that anomalous events do occur is overwhelming.

Yes, it is a personal choice. I've persuaded skeptics to believe in the possibility of an afterlife or to become believers by allowing them to investigate a haunted location with my ghost-hunting equipment. While my ghost-hunting equipment has been useful in persuading skeptics, I've discovered that the most effective way to persuade a skeptic that there are earthbound spirits and an afterlife is to give them a reading if the opportunity arises and a spirit asks me to deliver a message to them. But I don't approach random people and tell them I have a message from their deceased loved one because it would be awkward for both of us, second, they'd probably think I'm crazy, and third, I never force my mediumship abilities on others. I will occasionally give someone a reading if I believe they will be open to it, but I won't press the issue if the person isn't willing to listen. I will respect their decision.

Being an empath is especially helpful for me because it lets me judge how emotionally open someone is to getting a message from a loved one who has died. If I get the impression that the person is open to receiving a message from a deceased loved one, I will ask them to speak with me privately and request that they not tell anyone who I am because I value my privacy. Naturally, the person is skeptical at first and doesn't believe me until I tell them something that only they and their deceased loved one(s) knew, such as a specific date and specific details about a significant event in their lives, the first and last name of their deceased and living relatives, and specific information about their deceased or living relatives. At that point, they were convinced that my mediumship is genuine, as I couldn't have known the specific personal details that I shared with them. In other words, I don't give cold readings.

 

[InChrist]

In the past I’ve experienced paranormal activity. At the time I didn’t fully know what was happening, but I knew it was not normal and sensed an incredible awareness of evil. A few of these encounters gave me the realization that I needed a Savior. Later, after being saved by Jesus Christ, born again to new life in Him, and reading the scriptures I understood these experiences and/or the behaviors of demonic supernatural entities and encounters with beings tremendously more powerful than any human, with the ability to deceive and manipulate.

 

[George-ananda]

At that point, they were convinced that my mediumship is genuine, as I couldn't have known the specific personal details that I shared with them. In other words, I don't give cold readings.

Well, a determined skeptic will say you are always doing hot or cold readings because there is no such thing as a psychic reading. They will insist that even if you are being honest you are doing cold/hot readings and psychologically have convinced yourself that you are doing psychic readings. No matter how much obscure personal details you provide they can still hold to their claim. And since you cannot produce your source for them the disagreement can go on endlessly as it has throughout my decades of interest in the subject.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Well, a determined skeptic will say you are always doing hot or cold readings because there is no such thing as a psychic reading. They will insist that even if you are being honest you are doing cold/hot readings and psychologically have convinced yourself that you are doing psychic readings. No matter how much obscure personal details you provide they can still hold to their claim. And since you cannot produce your source for them the disagreement can go on endlessly as it has throughout my decades of interest in the subject.

The truth is that I have no interest whatsoever in persuading a hardened skeptic that my mediumship or the paranormal are real. It makes no difference to me whether they believe me or not. A skeptic's denial or disapproval doesn't change my reality. Besides, they have never walked a mile in my shoes and experienced what I've experienced for the past forty-three years. In fact, some Christians have told me that the accuracy of my reading has caused them to reconsider their belief in the Bible and the afterlife. Some non-Christians have also told me that the accuracy of my reading has caused them to reconsider their skepticism about the supernatural and the afterlife. My abilities as a medium have enabled me to help and comfort both the living and the dead.

 

[George-ananda]

The truth is that I have no interest whatsoever in persuading a hardened skeptic that my mediumship or the paranormal are real. It makes no difference to me whether they believe me or not. A skeptic's denial or disapproval doesn't change my reality. Besides, they have never walked a mile in my shoes and experienced what I've experienced for the past forty-three years. In fact, some Christians have told me that the accuracy of my reading has caused them to reconsider their belief in the Bible and the afterlife. Some non-Christians have also told me that the accuracy of my reading has caused them to reconsider their skepticism about the supernatural and the afterlife. My abilities as a medium have enabled me to help and comfort both the living and the dead.

That's the right attitude. Nothing can make a hardened skeptic concede but they don't affect reality anyway. The rest of us move onwards with our beliefs.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

That's the right attitude. Nothing can make a hardened skeptic concede but they don't affect reality anyway. The rest of us move onwards with our beliefs.

I've had to learn to move on with my life despite the skepticism and criticism because being a psychic medium is who I am, and I can't simply turn off my mediumship like a light switch when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable for me or others and then turn it back on when I need to communicate with spirits.

 

[Trailblazer]

I've had to learn to move on with my life despite the skepticism and criticism because being a psychic medium is who I am, and I can't simply turn off my mediumship like a light switch when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable for me or others and then turn it back on when I need to communicate with spirits.

I've had to learn to move on with my life despite the skepticism and criticism because being a Baha'i is who I am, and I can't simply turn off my beliefs like a light switch when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable for me or others.

 

[Frank Goad]

I’m curious to know if I’m the only paranormal investigator (“ghost hunter”) on this forum.

I've spent over a year on this forum sharing stories about my years of experiences as a psychic medium and paranormal investigator (with 43 years of experience as a medium and 15 1/2 years as a practicing medium and paranormal investigator). I've started several threads about my recent paranormal investigations, and I've shared many stories about my experiences as a medium in both my own and other people's threads. I haven't simply stated in my threads or other threads that I'm a medium and a paranormal investigator or that I believe in the paranormal. I've backed up my claims many times with detailed personal accounts of my experiences as a medium, as well as with visual SLS images, EMF readings, and specific details about my investigations.

Having said all of that, I'd like to ask the following questions: (1) How many people on this forum who doubt the existence of earthbound human spirits, nonhuman entities, or anything else that could possibly be paranormal have personally investigated a haunting or anything else paranormal? (2) How many skeptics on this forum have taken the time to research and purchase the proper ghost-hunting gear, look for and research places they think might be haunted, go to a place they think might be haunted and do a thorough investigation there, and then spend hours and hours going over their collected data, such as digital photos, recorded videos, and EVP recordings on digital recorders or EVP recorders? (3) How many skeptics of the paranormal on this forum have spent their time and energy honestly seeking answers at a suspected haunted location, whether the haunting is residual, intelligent, poltergeist, or potentially sinister, rather than posting on this forum that they don't believe in human spirits or nonhuman entities because those who claim to believe in them haven't given enough evidence to satisfy the skeptics? I wouldn't necessarily say, "Put your money where your mouth is," but the idea is the same.

Based on my fifteen and a half years of personal experience as a practicing medium and paranormal investigator, I am more than convinced that "seeing is believing," even for the most adamant skeptic of the paranormal. I've been posting about my experiences as a medium and paranormal investigator in my own threads and in many others for over a year, and yet there are skeptics who still don't believe in the paranormal. Personally, I don't believe that any amount of my personal stories, visual images from my investigation, or even random articles about a haunting will ever persuade even the most ardent skeptic that the paranormal is real or that my mediumship is real. I do, however, believe that seeing is believing, and if one of these skeptics thoroughly investigated a suspected haunting for themselves, they may change their minds and begin to believe. Of course, I can't say that for certain because spirits are often unpredictable, and they rarely perform on command, especially when the paranormal investigators are very rude and disrespectful to them.

Spirits don't always respond to a polite request to make their presence known to the living, and they certainly don't like provocation, as seen on some paranormal shows. It usually does not end well for the untrained or arrogant paranormal investigators who provoke the spirits in order to elicit a response. I don't feel sorry for the rude investigators who get the desired response and then flee the building screaming like little girls, terrified of the spirits they have just provoked. As a paranormal investigator who has traveled across the country to various haunted locations, I've been to well-known haunted locations where the spirits refused to communicate with or interact with me or with the other paranormal investigators present. On the other hand, I've visited places that weren't previously known to be haunted, and I've been bombarded with poltergeist activity. To thoroughly investigate a haunted location, it takes a lot of patience and many hours of dedicated investigation. Most paranormal investigators will leave a location empty-handed, but other times they're able to collect a lot of evidence of a haunting. Finally, if you're one of the people on this forum who believes in the paranormal (i.e., earthbound human spirits, nonhuman entities, and anything else paranormal), but you haven’t investigated the paranormal, then why do you believe?

I am one of the people who do believe in this kind of stuff.With out ever doing any paranormal investigations.Or being a full blown psychic.Because I think I have seen angels before.And have had my prayers answered to things that would literally be a miracle.

 

[Ella S.]

I spent a few years researching and conducting a variety of seances, as well as practicing various forms of necromancy from around the world. I wrote two books on the subject of varying quality. I've practiced alongside Paleros, Quimbaneros, Vodousaints, Demonolators, Hermetic Neoshamans, as well as both San la Muerte and Santa Muerte cults. I was actually given insight into the "inner cult" of San la Meurte, although there are a number of groups claiming that title so I don't feel like I'm breaching my oath of secrecy by saying that.

I have also engaged in paranormal investigation, although not as much. I'm familiar with EVP, EMF, spectral imaging, and so on.

I have quite a few dramatic stories around that time. I experienced objects teleporting, I blacked out during trance possession a number of times, I even witnessed apparitions in groups with other occultists. I had spirits tell me information that I swore I could never have known. I even had a prophetic dream about COVID. I had spirits accept my offerings and grant my petitions through coincidences that were so unlikely that it left no doubt in my mind that the spirits were real. Crazy stuff.

I offered my services as a medium in 2018 and 2019, and I spooked a number of my clients with my "supernatural insight." I was also a member of a private group of Western occultists mostly composed of higher-ranking members of the O.T.O. and the A.'.A.'. dedicated to studying alchemy through a spirit-focused lens.

However, I no longer believe in spirits. All of the experiences I've had, and the experiences that I've heard from people I know and through the grapevine, have more plausible natural explanations except one.

The current naturalistic explanations for shared dreams and shared entheogenic "trips" do not fully account for some of the experiences that I've had. I am fairly sure that there is a naturalistic explanation to be found, but I don't know what it could be; every proposed explanation I've seen falls short. Everything else is explainable though, despite how dramatic much of the experiences were, and I rarely hear anyone who has experiences that even come close to the wild ones that I've had.

And... well, that's actually not interesting at all, because scientists have been studying alleged occult phenomena for over a hundred years. A lot of the research just isn't super well-known, especially in occult circles, or when it is there's a lot of conspiratorial and unfalsifiable accusations and shifting of the goalposts that you get in most religions when they come in conflict with science. That made me realize that all of these occult beliefs followed many of the exact same mechanisms other religions do, down to the supposed miracles, answered prayers, apparations, and visions.

So I feel like I wasted my time. Any other skeptic can debunk most of these same supposedly supernatural experiences, too, probably, without needing to have them.

 

[Ella S.]

Having recorded evidence is always better than not, though it's important to remember that visual and auditory pareidolia is a thing. Our brains will try to make patterns out of vague or confusing stimuli to make us see and hear things that aren't actually there.

And it seems to me that the ghost-hunting community never seems to tackle the question of "are the anomalies we're seeing here more or different than what we would expect to see in a place that isn't haunted?" Without that, it's hard to have a real basis to conclude a paranormal explanation for anything.


From my perspective, the best evidence from paranormal investigations - or at least the best that I've ever seen - falls well short of that point.


That was the thing that really convinced me that the ghost-hunting community just isn't approaching their investigations in good faith... especially the way that Microsoft Kinetic cameras are often used as "SLS" detection devices.

I mean, why would someone insist on using a 10-ish-year-old camera from a video game to investigate... well... anything? It's low res compared to even a modern phone camera and it's going to have noisier low-light performance than a modern DSLR. There's nothing about it that an intellectually honest researcher would see appealing enough to seek it out as a real research tool.

What it does have going for it are things that would lend itself to getting as many false hits as possible: the low res and noisy-by-modern-standards chip would help to generate false anomalies and artifacts, and the camera's "try to map a human form onto absolutely anything that looks kinda close to human proportions" algorithm designed for video games is especially attuned to "find" human-like shapes when they aren't there.

IOW, the only reason to have something like that on an investigation is to generate false positives to try to pass off as real, IMO.

EMF, EVP, spectral imaging, spirit radio, aura cameras, etc. all follow the same general lines. The paranormal investigators who use this equipment don't understand it on a technical level. Often, they interpret a few false positives in a row as evidence of the supernatural, because to them they're consistently "picking up spirits" when really they've only found a way to consistently distort the input.

I am technically minded, and I've looked into pretty much every popular and obscure piece of "ghost hunting" equipment. I've also looked into how this equipment is used in paranormal investigations, not only looking into videos of it being used by finding various guides written by other paranormal investigators. Pretty much without fail, they're misunderstanding the output of the equipment (or technical processes) and their mind is filling spirits into what they see as ambiguous data.

Which is frustrating for me because, personally, I think the idea of scientifically studying spirits is freaking cool as hell, but we've more or less debunked the existence of ghosts several times over by now.

But I did look. I was open to the idea that they may have found reliable methods of detecting and documenting ghosts. I was just disappointed, because they definitely have not. There's not even really room for the possibility that they have. If you understand the equipment they use, then you know with pretty high certainty what the actual source of their data is, and it's never spirits.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

I spent a few years researching and conducting a variety of seances, as well as practicing various forms of necromancy from around the world. I wrote two books on the subject of varying quality. I've practiced alongside Paleros, Quimbaneros, Vodousaints, Demonolators, Hermetic Neoshamans, as well as both San la Muerte and Santa Muerte cults. I was actually given insight into the "inner cult" of San la Meurte, although there are a number of groups claiming that title so I don't feel like I'm breaching my oath of secrecy by saying that.

I have also engaged in paranormal investigation, although not as much. I'm familiar with EVP, EMF, spectral imaging, and so on.

I have quite a few dramatic stories around that time. I experienced objects teleporting, I blacked out during trance possession a number of times, I even witnessed apparitions in groups with other occultists. I had spirits tell me information that I swore I could never have known. I even had a prophetic dream about COVID. I had spirits accept my offerings and grant my petitions through coincidences that were so unlikely that it left no doubt in my mind that the spirits were real. Crazy stuff.

I offered my services as a medium in 2018 and 2019, and I spooked a number of my clients with my "supernatural insight." I was also a member of a private group of Western occultists mostly composed of higher-ranking members of the O.T.O. and the A.'.A.'. dedicated to studying alchemy through a spirit-focused lens.

However, I no longer believe in spirits. All of the experiences I've had, and the experiences that I've heard from people I know and through the grapevine, have more plausible natural explanations except one.

The current naturalistic explanations for shared dreams and shared entheogenic "trips" do not fully account for some of the experiences that I've had. I am fairly sure that there is a naturalistic explanation to be found, but I don't know what it could be; every proposed explanation I've seen falls short. Everything else is explainable though, despite how dramatic much of the experiences were, and I rarely hear anyone who has experiences that even come close to the wild ones that I've had.

And... well, that's actually not interesting at all, because scientists have been studying alleged occult phenomena for over a hundred years. A lot of the research just isn't super well-known, especially in occult circles, or when it is there's a lot of conspiratorial and unfalsifiable accusations and shifting of the goalposts that you get in most religions when they come in conflict with science. That made me realize that all of these occult beliefs followed many of the exact same mechanisms other religions do, down to the supposed miracles, answered prayers, apparations, and visions.

So I feel like I wasted my time. Any other skeptic can debunk most of these same supposedly supernatural experiences, too, probably, without needing to have them.

Thank you for sharing your experiences, Ella. It's interesting to learn about other people's experiences. I've met other people who thought that they'd had paranormal experiences but hadn't, and I've met other people who had genuine paranormal experiences that couldn't be debunked, like my husband, for instance. Besides, the fact that some people believe they've had a paranormal experience but have not does not negate everything I've experienced over the past 43 years. I've already shared some of my experiences, such as in my OP and other posts such as this one, in which I responded to your post and you responded back here. As I've said before, I don't post about my experiences to convince skeptics that my mediumship and the paranormal are real.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

I am one of the people who do believe in this kind of stuff.With out ever doing any paranormal investigations.Or being a full blown psychic.Because I think I have seen angels before.And have had my prayers answered to things that would literally be a miracle.

Thank you for your response, Frank. I appreciate it.

 

[Trailblazer]

Besides, the fact that some people believe they've had a paranormal experience but have not does not negate everything I've experienced over the past 43 years.

It is a logical fallacy to say that just because some people believe they've had paranormal experiences but have not, that means that other people who say they have had paranormal experiences have not had paranormal experiences.

Hasty generalization is an informal fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence—essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables.
Hasty generalization - Wikipedia

Hasty generalization usually shows this pattern:

1. Person w believes they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences
2. Person x believes they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences
3. Person y believes they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences

Therefore, Person z believe they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences

It is possible that person z has really had paranormal experiences, and whether they have or have not had them has nothing to do with whether persons w, x, and y have had them.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

It is a logical fallacy to say that just because some people believe they've had paranormal experiences but have not, that means that other people who say they have had paranormal experiences have not had paranormal experiences.

Hasty generalization is an informal fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence—essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables.
Hasty generalization - Wikipedia

Hasty generalization usually shows this pattern:

1. Person w believes they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences
2. Person x believes they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences
3. Person y believes they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences

Therefore, Person z believe they've had but did not really have any paranormal experiences

It is possible that person z has really had paranormal experiences, and whether they have or have not had them has nothing to do with whether persons w, x, and y have had them.

Informative frubal.