What is the strangest thing you've ever experienced?

reply to post by Vanitas


What a great story. I wonder if anyone else has experienced something like this or even remembers seeing this picture? It reminded me of the multiple witnesses who apparently claim to have seen a picture of a thunderbird shot and being held by cowboys in the mid to late 1800's. The picture has never been proven to exist.

For this one, I see the point about writing a story beforehand. But why predict damage? Not unless someone caught wind of the trouble and wrote, hoping, before all the news was in. I don't know much of anything about the Titanic events.

reply to post by TravelerintheDark


They just keep coming in. I love it! I have no idea how many hours I've spent reading through these posts time and time again. Awesome stuff on here! Thanks again, everyone. For the posts, the flags, the time. You guys rock!

And thanks for taking an interested in this thread, TravelerintheDark. It seems you may be hooked. It happens to the best of us.

Peace, and thanks again.

Originally posted by TravelerintheDark
[
For this one, I see the point about writing a story beforehand. But why predict damage? Not unless someone caught wind of the trouble and wrote, hoping, before all the news was in. I don't know much of anything about the Titanic events.

Actually, the ship was plagued by "misfortune" since day one. It was involved in an incident or two before it even sailed from Southampton. (Although the caption - t was only an extended caption, not really an article - didn't mention Southampton.)

The odd thing, of course, is that I have been unable to find that photo and caption again. OR a retraction, for that matter (which would have been more than necessary in view of the embarrassment.)

Who knows... maybe that moment of concentrated distraction (gotta love them oxymorons ) opened a fleeting window into what could have been: a world where Titanic was only the grandest ship of all times and a mighty one-day attraction for the New Yorkers of 1912 - but hardly headline news... :-)

It wouldn't have been the first time an apparent temporal displacement occurred in my life.
But I am just speculating - of course.

Anyway, I am glad you're romantic enough to appreciate the subtle sweetness of this... non-event, I suppose. ;-)



[edit on 17-10-2008 by Vanitas]

reply to post by psychedeliack


"Sapo" is the Spanish word for toad - and the venom scraped off the skin of a particular type of toad.

Again: great story!

reply to post by Vanitas


Yes, that's what I was thinking, was that you might have gotten a glimpse into another timeline where the Titanic didn't sink. I was about to post that when I saw that you'd already suggested it.

And how weird is this .. last night for the first time ever I watched an episode of a show called "Eleventh Hour" - and it was partly about kids licking Colorado River Toads for Bufo to get high, which I'd never heard of before seeing the show!

Originally posted by Vanitas
Anyway, I am glad you're romantic enough to appreciate the subtle sweetness of this... non-event, I suppose. ;-)

I've always been most fascinated by events that are extremely rare, and often bizarre. Some can truly challenge concepts of our world thanks to their validity and oddness. And often these are stories that don't see much airing either. This story is such a great example. Thank you for sharing


Static Sky, yes, this thread is quite up my alley. I've been fascinated by more esoteric subjects since I was a child, but the chance to hear of events from first-hand experience is quite a treat.

reply to post by Heike


yikes, licking toads? wtf? lol, thats akin to the urban legend about smoking banana peels, as far as I know, you cant do that without getting adversely sick. I do know people like bufotenin, in which licking the toad probably works, but you would not get the '___' from licking the toad, an mao inhibitor must be ingested prior to '___' ingestion, 5-meo-'___' has been purported to work orally on its own, but I dont think its something that can be attained by licking the toad. Bufotenin is nothing like '___', and can hardly be considered a sacrament. The point is to commune with god in gods "space", not to dabble with altered states of this dimensional perspective. Sorry again for this off topic post.
edit to add: youre exactly right, kids just trying to get high. maybe if they did it the right way either for the right reasons or on accident, they would realize how silly they were being before, dabbling with sacred medicines for the sake of entertainment and recreation.

[edit on 10/17/2008 by psychedeliack]

reply to post by TravelerintheDark


www.cyberspaceorbit.com...

Do you mean these photos?

Sorry to be somewhat off-topic, but it's been a few hours now since I've first noticed there was an anonymous reply in this thread, and it still can't be seen.

I wouldn't be complaining about it if it weren't for the fact that it has now happened countless times. In fact, I hardly remember when was the last time I did get to read an AP (in the threads that I find interesting).

Am I to believe all these AP are "trolls" with nothing to contribute?

What is the point of allowing anonymous posting, if they are not going to be displayed?






[edit on 18-10-2008 by Vanitas]

reply to post by Vanitas


Anonymous replies are visible only to the mods until they are read and approved by a Mod. I've read a thread about this somewhere, on BB&Q I believe, and I think I remember a mod stating that many of the anonymous replies are SPAM, off-topic junk, insults, etc., and such are not approved and so are never visible.

However, I have seen quite a few anonymous replies in various threads, and I'm pretty sure that if it is a relevant and on-topic reply and makes a contribution to the thread, it will become visible to us once a mod has a chance to review it.

reply to post by Heike


Yes, I now - about the moderating bit, I mean.

I's just that there have been SO MANY lately!
(I am still scratching my head over the one that I never got to see in my thread "Fire in the Skies"... And the funny thing is: it was probably nothing much. )









[edit on 18-10-2008 by Vanitas]

Originally posted by TravelerintheDark
reply to post by Vanitas

 

I wonder if anyone else has experienced something like this or even remembers seeing this picture?

Well, I have experienced something that could be qualified - no less speculatively - as "similar".

I don't especially like plugging my (by now very neglected) bloggy, but anyone can see it's not even remotely commercial, so I don't think there's any harm in posting a link from time to time.

If these walls could sing

(It's about hearing music when there was none. I am noting this to spare you a visit in case you're not interested in this particular type of story. ;-)
Although I suspect you might like Jung's account, which can also be found there.)


EDIT: I have decided to repost my story (most of it) from the blog here. I don't see a problem with that, but if there is one, please accept my apologies.


(Start of reposted text)

It was September 18th or 19th, 1998.
I was visiting a delightful small town by the sea; a town I had visited many times before.

Around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I climbed a hill to visit an ancient church that stands there, commanding a view over two gulfs.

I was happy to be there, and relaxed, as I usually am after the sea air, with all that iodine, gets me.
But, climbing that hill, I was also saddened on seeing the obvious neglect of the town by its present population.
And so, when I arrived at the top of the hill and leaned on the parapet in front of the church, observing the skyline merging with the sea, a sense of melancholy took over me as I thought about the town's glorious past.

I like history; I even know a thing or two about it.
I also happen to have a vivid visual imagination.
Which is why it would have been practically impossible for me to resist the temptation of trying to imagine the town as it once was. In my mind, I tried to remove all the baggage of the centuries, all the architectural additions (AKA houses ), and see the hills around me as they once were, overlooking the very same sea that I was now hearing, pounding against the rocks far below me.

I turned to look at the church. It was too far "gone" to be envisaged as it once was, what with the additions and remodeling through the centuries (and besides, nobody really knew how it looked when it was first erected, back in the 7th or 8th century). But at least its location hadn't changed in more than a thousand years. Regardless of its looks, people had been climbing that same hill for more than a thousand summers, more than a thousand autumns, more than a thousand Septembers; and, without a doubt, they, too, stopped to catch their breath at the very spot where I was standing at that moment. The sea was the same as then; so were the mountain crests and the hills in the distance; and the sun, all those centuries ago, shone on their hair and cheeks as it shone on mine in September 1998.

My spirits were suddenly lifted; I started to feel cheerful as I hadn't felt in a long time. I realised that nothing could really defeat and destroy the ancient spirit of the city; that the neglect, as destructive as it was, could not reach backwards into time and corrupt what once was. For once something exists, it never ceases to exist: it CANNOT cease to exist.

I decided to go to the other side of the church, to take in the view of the "other" gulf.

There was a stone bench attached to the church wall. I sat there, leaning on the church wall with abandon, with the back of my head against it. I felt so good... With my sadness and resentment gone, there was nothing to occupy my thoughts - nothing whatsoever. I just wanted to breathe and relax, not thinking, unthinking, almost animal-like. My eyes wandered lazily across the sea and up into the sky and back again.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard music. It seemed to be coming from behind the wall on which my head was resting. I was startled. (The church seemed empty when I had arrived, and I would have heard people arriving to the top of the hill and entering the church.)
I listened intently. Definitely, it sounded as if it were coming from inside the church: a small male choir singing a Gregorian chant - muffled but unmistakable.

For some reason I still find slightly odd, I immediately grabbed my handbag and literally ran to the other side, where the entrance to the church was.

It was just as I thought: there was nobody there.

Nor was the music, for that matter.

I stood still, holding my breath, so I could catch the slightest sound of any movement, anywhere in the church.

Nothing.

And yet, I still stood there for a minute longer, waiting... something.
Then I returned outside and looked all around me: there were no people, either arriving or descending from the hill.

It's been almost ten years, and I still haven't figured out what exactly was that happened on that warm September day.

There is no question of my having "imagined" it. (My mind was almost totally blank at the moment, remember? And even if I had been thinking about the church's history - which I wasn't, certainly not at the time - I would not have thought about music.)

There was no visible or audible tape recorder or any other sound device - or anyone to operate them, for that matter - not in the church not anywhere around it. (The church doesn't have a monastery or any type of dwelling attached; and I didn't have any type of radio or player with me.)

I wasn't under "influence" (alcohol, prescription or OTC drugs of any type) nor was I suffering from any physical or mental condition worth mentioning.


So... what was it?
No, really - I am asking you: what do you think it was?


(End of reposted text.)


P.S. In case anyone is wondering what is the point of dwelling on personal thoughts and feelings before the "event" - it's because I strive to include as many details as possible to make a "snapshot" of the moment in all its dimensions (within possibilities, of course), and also because I suspect the quality and intensity of one's state of mind prior to the "event" are actually conducive to the experience, or at least make a person more susceptible to such events.

















[edit on 18-10-2008 by Vanitas]

These were in earlier posts of mine in different topics, but this one seems to be ideal for this one.

When I was about 6 years old, we lived in Utica Mississippi. This was about 1972. I had gone to spend the night at a friend's house. His mother was a neat woman. She had a reputation around those who knew her of being a witch, (in the mystical sense of the word. ) Being 5, I didn't know anyone thought that, and probably wouldn't have cared. My mom told me this years later. This lady was nothing but good to us, and you don't forget friends like that too easily.

Anyway, her son was my age, and I was going to spend the night over at their house. We played, watched tv, and went to bed.

I don't know if this was a dream, or not, so it gets a bit strange here..

Some time in the middle of the night, I found myself sitting in a big steel chair, surrounded by the lady, and about 6 or 8 other (I assumed adults). They were all wearing, what at the time I thought were black police uniforms, no hats, but I didn't see any unusual features to make me think that they were anything but normal people. The room we were in was curvy from ceiling to floor, and it was huge, and there were a bunch of brightly colored lights, and screens all around it, and a few more of the big chairs, similar to the one I was sitting in. All that they did was ask me questions, some male voices, some female voices, and I remember one of them saying something that sounded like "We will monitor this one.". That's all that I remember.

The next morning at breakfast, I asked Ruth about it, because it seemed very clear at the time, and she smiled and told me that I was dreaming and to forget it, because all kids dream weird things. I took her at her word at the time, because it seemed like the right thing to do.

A couple of days later, my mom was making sure that I had scrubbed myself well in the tub, and she asked me what I had been into. I told her that I didn't know, and wanted to know why. She had found a red circle, right between my shoulder blades. It was shaped like an "O". she was afraid that it was some kind of big ringworm, and took me to the doctor. He told her that it looked to him like something was on the inside working it's way out, but he couldn't find anything during the exam to suggest that there was anything that would physically cause this weird mark. He told her to let it go, and if it hadn't gone away in a week to come back. She checked it every morning, and at night for 4 days. On the fourth day, it was there in the morning, and it was gone that evening before I went to bed. That was pretty much the end of the strangeness for me.

Through the years, I've had reoccouring dreams of that room, thoes people, and that chair. The screens in later years were color computer screens of some type. The lights were on banks of control panels. Everything looked a lot clearer as I have gone through life.

I have no idea what the 6 year old version of myself dreamed, why I dreamed it, and why I can still remember bits and pieces of it. Up to that point in my life, I hadn't been introduced to anything considered to be high technology, science fiction, or anything of that nature.

I still don't know what that was all about.

another from a different thread.

When I was 17, a group of us had gone camping down in Harmon's Den, Tn, We'd done this on a pretty regular basis. It was October. We'd fished at the stream, had a nice campfire, ate, and had climbed in our sleeping bags to go to sleep. It was cold, so falling into a peaceful sleep was no problem, after the sleeping bags had warmed up.

We all woke up at the same time, (2:15 am. I remember this, because I looked at my watch.), because there was a humming sound that just didn't belong in Harmon's Den. There is no high tech anything that used to go on there.

We decided to see if we could follow the sound, and were able to go about 1000 feet down the stream to where it was the loudest. It never was truly loud, but you could feel that humming right into your bones. My buddy Tom and I were at the front of this group, so we topped a hill around the curve in the stream, and saw something that looked like a big V with yellow and orange lights, hovering about (based on the trees), 30 feet above the stream. The "nose" of it was over the stream, and looking up, we were under the right side, almost under one of the yellow lights, possibly under one of the "wings".

The other guys had lined up on either side of us by then. We kept looking at that thing, and looking at each other. I guess we were too shocked to say anything. The V started shooting white and blue beams of light into the stream. The humming was doing a variable thing now, It almost sounded like it was warbling. You could see the beams, because they looked solid. something in my head, that wasn't my voice, said "Go back from here, or you'll come to harm.". It was like we'd all heard this at the same time, because we all hit the trees behind us at the same time. We sort of trotted back to the camp site, and nobody had said anything.

The campfire was a lot less red than when we'd left, and I just happened to look at my watch again. It was 5:47 am.

It didn't take us that long to walk down to that curve. It didn't feel like we'd been watching the whatever it was, and it didn't take us that long to get back. We'd all heard the same thing, and seen the same thing.

anybody who has gone camping down in Harmon's den, has probably seen something strange at least once or twice.

reply to post by metallion


Those are 2 terrific contributions metallion! The witch story is the scarier of the 2, for me. That ones very creepy. The other sounds like several similar stories I've heard over the years from various different people. Not to diminish it, of course. It's just that I've never heard an account quite like the witch one. Great stuff! Thank you very much for taking the time to post those. Cheers.

playing cards with my brother when i was younger we noticed the queen of hearts was missing. as the box the cards came in had the same pattern we decided to cut the side of and make it the queen of hearts.. while i was about to cut the box i noticed that the back of the box was only stuck on and i peeled it back to reveal the queen of hearts stuck to a plain blank back.... maybe they stuck a card onto all there box's to show you the pattern on the back of cards but it was strange it was the one that was missing....

reply to post by Vanitas


Thank you for sharing that.

I'd like to offer a broad explanation using your experience as an example. I hope you won't mind, and understand that what I'm saying is in no way arguing against your experience. I totally support your explanation. Perhaps it can go some way in explaining things we have all experienced. I hope I can communicate it so that it all makes sense.

Reason would seem to say that your mind recreated a memory for you to experience, one it could link to that place and time, and that all you experienced was that recreation.

But I believe there is another explanation.

Every moment we live, every action we take exhausts energy. Like smoke from a fire that can be captured in the structures we surround ourselves with, stone and wood. Repetition creates a harmonic, strengthening with every repetition.

When the mind moves to an emotional state it shifts focus from the gross energies that form our physical world to subtler movements. In your reverie you opened to those subtler energies, trapped through years of repetition.

Now I'd like to reconcile the two explanations, if you'll bear with me.

Perhaps there never were any Gregorian chants repeated at this church. Some would insist that this must be known to validate the experience. How can what you heard be explained as something other than a hallucination without such supporting evidence? My answer is, very simply.

When we sense things, do we always know what they are? Your mind searches what it knows, makes a comparison and draws a conclusion. It is the same with every experience. The mind must interpret the energy it receives from sight, from sound, from touch, from taste, from smell and from sources we don't yet fully understand, translating it into what we perceive.

Even if our interpretations are wrong does that mean we didn't feel anything, or just that we interpret it through limited experience? Does limited experience invalidate new experiences?

I don't believe so at all. We interpret to express commonality and understanding both to ourselves and others. Which is to say, I know you felt something and I accept how you interpret it because it creates understanding. That is how we share.

I hope this has all made sense.

Thank you again for sharing such a wonderful experience.

reply to post by TravelerintheDark


I am not sure that I have an explanation (I rather relish NOT having it, unless I could be 100% sure, of course ;-)).

Anyway, not only I do not mind (how could I?), but I already know I'll be keeping your line of explanation present at all times. (I just KNOW when something goes directly into the filing/processing "cabinet" of my mind. )


P.S.
I would just like to post some additional information pertaining to my experience.
I am intentionally divorcing it from the main point of your posting precisely because I believe in the overall usefulness of your interpretation.

I "recognised" it as Gregorian chant simply because I know a little about music.
I didn't know, however, whether there had ever been chanting in the church (not all churches have chapters, as you probably know).

Some four or five years after the experience, I had the opportunity to ask an expert on the history of the place about chanting in the church. (I didn't go into details. ;-))
It turned out there was a chant chapter in the church, until the 17th century, if I remember correctly.







[edit on 19-10-2008 by Vanitas]

Well my experience are pretty tame compared to most on here and I don't really have that many of them but here goes.


The first ever bizarre experience I remember, I must have been about five or six. We were on a nature reserve beach in Menorca where my dad owns our summer home. I don't like the beach and I think I was sulking, just sat there not doing anything. Both my mum and dad were fast asleep enjoying the sun and my twin brother was building a sandcastle next to me. I was facing the sea and to the left of me was a huge cliff face, at least the height of two double-decker buses stacked. What appeared was only there for a moment. In the time it took me to blink it had appeared and vanished but it was so real. It was a huge moth type creature. The size of (if not larger) than the cliff face, it perched onto it and then flew off. For years I thought I was imagining it but I asked my brother and he said he saw the same thing only he remembers it being further out to sea where as I remember it being further inland. He thinks we both perhaps had a shared hallucination with being twins but it's bizarre none the less.


A lot of my childhood experiences involve remembering beign taken to places where I'm told I haven't been. For example, I remember being taken to a bar. A huge, high ceilinged, goergian room with dusty pink walls. There were posters of old fashioned cigarette packets on the walls and silver round tables and chairs. The whole place just had this uneasy feeling.There were all these men and women smoking cigarettes and wearing odd clothes. I asked my auntie (whp I was convinced had taken me) and she said she's never heard of such a place. But I have so many vivid memories of places and people that suposedly don't exist.


More recently, one of the weirdest things that has happened to me was maybe a year ago. I had fallen asleep on the sofa and everyone else was in bed when I came upstairs. I had left the tv on but it was off when I woke up. We have a living room doors that swings outwards so you can't see who's opening it until they step out from behind it. When I looked over to this door, it was moving towards me slowly. I called my brothers name and it stopped. I shouted agai but there was no answer. I didn't hear anyone go upstairs. I didn't register what had happened because I was half asleep but my dad had been snoring and my brothers ladders to his bedroom are made of chrome and make a lot of noise so I'd have heard him.

Before now I have dreamt somebody had died a few days before they did and I suffer terrible nightmares and sleep paralysis. I often think about a person just before they ring or come over and if I think I'd like to watch a film or hear a song I havn't heard in a while, 80% of the time it will be on not long after. Nothing exciting really. It's all a bit boring compared to some of the stuff here. But there you are, hope you enjoy

I'll spare you the graphic details, but let you know it involved duct tape and a gerbil. Second line.

[edit on 10/19/2008 by TheRooster]