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Odd Experiences: As A Child Versus As An Adult

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Anhedonian

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Feb 17, 2013
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Odd things do happen to us all, if only we'd realise and take the chance to look. Here's some weird things that have happened to me over the 30 years of my life;

I can remember when I was a kid and I was falling asleep in bed, I can sort of subconsciously remember something stroking my hair. And I used to have a re-occuring dream of being in a dark room whilst sat on a bench, being told something by a huge light before me. Very strange looking back. I can also remember being on my street and feeling something run past me, only turning around to find nothing there.. I also saw the spirit of my first pet dog enter my parent's bedroom one night. It looked completely real to me. I've had many precognitive things too - thinking of something (usually really trivial, like a certain film) and then finding myself seeing it later.

I believe in Spirit, and it's a nice affirmation when I look at these "oddities" that have happened over the years. :D
 
I do believe that as we grow up we develop filters that make us tend not to notice oddities around us that are irrelevant to getting our daily necessities done. In me these filters are not particularly strong, but then I had a fairly unusual upbringing.

I believe this is why extreme skeptics are so vehement - they are trying to conceal a subconscious or semi-conscious doubt that possibly all is not 100% a matter of scientifically explained fact. Rather like some people proclaim their extreme heterosexuality. After all, even a scientist ought to be open to the idea that as yet we have not explained _everything_.
 
Cochise said:
I do believe that as we grow up we develop filters that make us tend not to notice oddities around us that are irrelevant to getting our daily necessities done. In me these filters are not particularly strong, but then I had a fairly unusual upbringing.
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Over the years I've actually come to believe in something which is in some ways the opposite of what you suggest - but the results of which are almost the same.

That is, rather than blocking out anomalies, many people assimilate them so readily that it it almost seems that they have been wiped.

For many years I used to tell people that I liked weird stories but that nothing particularly strange had ever happened to me - then I realised that, actually, yes it had. It's not that I'd blocked the memories in any way - just that they had become part of the library of my accumulated experience as comfortably as having mumps or canoeing in Knoydart.

And I think this is really common. In my experience some of the best (and most convincing) stories that I've ever heard have been from people who've started the conversation claiming that nothing much has ever happened to them - and with most of those people there's no sense of repression, just that the experience has been filed away along with all the others that make up our lives.
 
That's interesting, spookdaddy. As you say, the results are almost the same as if they were being blanked.

If the 'alert - this isn't right' response does not kick in with most adults, does that tie in to the 'panic' (another thread) that hits when the oddness becomes too great to ignore? Although I still get that too, and yet I'm quite good at passively accepting things on a - 'hmm this is odd, wonder what happens next' basis.
 
An example:

When I was at university the room I occupied in a shared house was intermittently plagued by a knocking sound, just as if someone were gently tapping picture hooks into the other side of the party wall – which, at first, is what I thought it was, until it started moving around the room.

This went on the whole time I was there – not constantly, but regularly - and I never came up with a satisfactory explanation despite trying many for size: some kind of insect infestation; mice in the rubble fill; nutty neighbours who hung a lot of pictures, or just liked making tapping sounds at odd hours of the day and night; bored parrots (honestly, a mate of my dad inherited an insane parrot that used to hang upside down off the light fittings squawking abuse, tap his beak violently on the furniture to get attention, and occasionally hide behind things in order to ambush whoever came into the room next).

Anyway, none of the explanations I played with fitted the bill, and very soon I just stopped worrying about it. My housemates, after I'd introduced them excitedly to my tapper, were initially spooked but, like me, eventually just got used to it. (It didn't affect the rest of the house, but at least one of the girls I shared with told me that she used to hate walking past my room when she was alone in the place because she was convinced that on a couple of occasions the tapping started up in response to her presence.)

Once or twice I tried rapping back, following the sound as it appeared to move along the walls. I even had the odd drunken conversation with it - one-sided thankfully, I'm not sure I'd have been as sanguine about the affair if I'd actually got a response.

In fact when I think about it now I can’t help feeling I got rather attached to the oddness of it all. We had a party one night, during which about twenty people crammed into my bedroom in complete silence waiting for the tapping to start up - it actually did, and the resulting cheer appeared to instantly silence the noise, which left me considering the intriguing and oddly satisfying possibility that we may actually have managed to scare the shit out of a poltergeist.

My point is (sorry, got carried away a bit there) that this was an odd experience, witnessed by others and taking place over an extended period of time - but once I'd left the house I completely forgot about it for several years; it didn't enter my thoughts again until a night of drunken reminiscence not far off a decade after the fact. For a long time, if you'd asked me to relate any strange experiences that I'd had, I suspect that this one wouldn't have crossed my mind - because, in a way, it had become part of the furniture (I’ve been visiting this board for years and I think this is the first time I’ve thought of mentioning it); it was strange on a technicality (because I didn't know what was causing it) but in an everyday, pragmatic sense it was no longer strange, because it had become a familiar part of my accumulated experience.

As I said before, it was assimilation rather than repression – but the result was kind of the same.
 
Spookdaddy said:
...and the resulting cheer appeared to instantly silence the noise, which left me considering the intriguing and oddly satisfying possibility that we may actually have managed to scare the shit out of a poltergeist.
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Haha! Now, that's funny. :lol:
 
Great story, Spookdaddy. :D And I understand what you mean, although I tend to see it in a slightly different way. I've noticed that people can be placed roughly (very roughly...I'm not too keen on generalizations) in two categories - those who value the strangeness that shows up in the course of ordinary life, and those who don't (because they don't care, don't notice or want nothing to do with it).

When I'm getting to know someone, one of the things I'll ask is "what's the strangest thing that ever happened to you?" The person will either come out with a fascinating story or wonder why on earth I'd ask such a thing. It seems rather like the results of that well known study on luck. http://www.richardwiseman.com/research/ ... yluck.html
The more a person is open to it, the more it happens.

I understand the willingness to discuss it, or even how someone feels about it may be culturally influenced, though. Ask a Texan about these things and they'll either exuberantly spill their stories or shut you down because they think you're foolish. I've rarely known anyone from the latter group to change their viewpoint on anomalous experience, so in my own culture, the acceptability of such experience may be more cut-and-dried.
 
I think one reason these experiences get pushed to the back of the mental closet is that you usually can’t draw any useful information or lesson from them. They happen, they’re bizarre, and that’s all you can say about them. You can’t understand how or why or what they mean. You can’t recreate them or cause them to happen – well, I can’t anyway.

Also, it’s not generally socially acceptable to talk about them, it marks you as weird. It’s only occasionally that circumstances are right and people feel safe sharing their strange experiences. And you tend not to think too much about things that you never have cause to talk about.

But you have to wonder how many millions of strange stories remain untold. A few months ago I was having a drink with two of my best friends for the past 15 years – two guys I’ve hung with and talked with a lot. Somehow the conversation drifted to strange experiences. I told my ghost story and mild UFO sightings. One friend volunteered that his father’s ghost had visited him a few weeks after death. The other friend (1) had a UFO hover over his car shining a light down and had missing time, and (2) saw a pterodactyl in flight. All these years I had no idea. And this guy is a cancer surgeon – you know, a ‘’credible, rational” person.
 
IamSundog said:
All these years I had no idea. And this guy is a cancer surgeon – you know, a ‘’credible, rational” person.
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All the more reason not to talk about it except to someone he can trust! I would assume.

And I think you're right, that the way our brains work is by sorting our experiences according to what's useful. I wonder if any of the untold, even forgotten stories are winding up re-told in strange or mundane ways in dreams? Especially as the brain is throwing stuff around trying to sort it during sleep.

This is a complete tangent, but part of me can't help noting it somewhere. On another forum I'm on, we have a games board, and one of the games is finding humorous consecutive thread titles. Today, here, I came upon:
I have been sexually abused by a entity
It happens to us all
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...which, thankfully, isn't true.
 
Spookdaddy's 'tapper' story just made me realise that we too have a tapper!
I never even thought about it before and always just assumed it was the neighbours (on both sides) tapping in nails... After three years surely both sides must have covered their walls in frames by now?!
 
birdy said:
...we too have a tapper!
I never even thought about it before and always just assumed it was the neighbours (on both sides) tapping in nails... After three years surely both sides must have covered their walls in frames by now?!
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I'm bumping this thread because

a) The assimilation over suppression thing really fascinates me, and I think it merits an airing out.

b) I'd just like to say that having, in the past, been completely unable to find the story I posted re my bedroom knocker, I'm impressed by how much improved the site search function is from the one I totally gave up on several years ago.

c) Looks like birdy hasn't been around for months, but I'd love to know if they ever got to the bottom of their own tapper.
 
Great thread.

i took in a rather eccentric old stray cat who was great company and loved to sleep on my bed. We had several years together before she passed away.

within a couple of days, I very clearly felt my deceased cat jump up onto the bed by my feet whilst I was reading a book before bedtime. I felt the ‘landing’ and the weight on my bed, even the movement of feet. With regret I closed my eyes and said to myself it simply wasn’t possible and then the weight was gone.

This has since reoccurEd several times but with less ‘weight’ each time, and now I simply class it as ‘one of those things’.
 
I resurrected this thread after thinking about my dad yesterday. If asked he would always state that he'd never seen a ghost - then there'd be a bit of a pause, and then an, Oh, hold on - well, there was this one time.

Actually, it was more than one time - he had three cracking stories, but would kind of forget they'd ever happened, until prompted. He wasn't being coy, or theatrical - and wasn't in any sense reluctant to revisit the experiences - he'd simply filed them along with everything else that had ever happened to him.

(It was reading the Rob Gandy article in the lates FT that got me thinking about it. When he was a youngster my dad had an experience very similar to one of those mentioned in the piece.)
 
Spookdaddy said:
I resurrected this thread after thinking about my dad yesterday. If asked he would always state that he'd never seen a ghost - then there'd be a bit of a pause, and then an, Oh, hold on - well, there was this one time.

Actually, it was more than one time - he had three cracking stories, but would kind of forget they'd ever happened, until prompted. He wasn't being coy, or theatrical - and wasn't in any sense reluctant to revisit the experiences - he'd simply filed them along with everything else that had ever happened to him.

(It was reading the Rob Gandy article in the lates FT that got me thinking about it. When he was a youngster my dad had an experience very similar to one of those mentioned in the piece.)
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Do you feel like telling your dad’s stories?
 
IamSundog said:
I think one reason these experiences get pushed to the back of the mental closet is that you usually can’t draw any useful information or lesson from them. They happen, they’re bizarre, and that’s all you can say about them. You can’t understand how or why or what they mean. You can’t recreate them or cause them to happen – well, I can’t anyway.

Also, it’s not generally socially acceptable to talk about them, it marks you as weird. It’s only occasionally that circumstances are right and people feel safe sharing their strange experiences. And you tend not to think too much about things that you never have cause to talk about.

But you have to wonder how many millions of strange stories remain untold. A few months ago I was having a drink with two of my best friends for the past 15 years – two guys I’ve hung with and talked with a lot. Somehow the conversation drifted to strange experiences. I told my ghost story and mild UFO sightings. One friend volunteered that his father’s ghost had visited him a few weeks after death. The other friend (1) had a UFO hover over his car shining a light down and had missing time, and (2) saw a pterodactyl in flight. All these years I had no idea. And this guy is a cancer surgeon – you know, a ‘’credible, rational” person.
Click to expand...

Can you tell us more about the pterodactyl sighting?
 
Ogdred Weary said:
Can you tell us more about the pterodactyl sighting?
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Not much - he didn’t go into much detail and I don’t live in the same state anymore and have largely lost touch. I believe the sighting happened in South Carolina in the 70’s, he was a teenager, outside fooling around with several friends, and they all saw it. He swore it was a clear sighting and was anxious to convince me that it really happened, despite how absurd it sounds, and he referred me to a website that collects pterodactyl sightings.
 
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IamSundog said:
Not much - he didn’t go into much detail and I don’t live in the same state anymore and have largely lost touch. I believe the sighting happened in South Carolina in the 70’s, he was a teenager, outside fooling around with several friends, and they all saw it. He swore it was a clear sighting and was anxious to convince me that it really happened, despite how absurd it sounds, and he referred me to a website that collects pterodactyl sightings.
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Thanks for your reply, I take it he didn't mention time of day, distance etc?
 
IamSundog said:
No I don’t recall that he did.
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I'm just curious as to how that conversation played out, it sounds like you didn't get the chance to get the info out of him you might have liked, did you get the chance to ask him any further questions? Being people into weird shit we probably all like to think we'd pump anyone who told us something like for info but I'm also aware that things don't always work out like that.

I hope you don't mind me quizzing you, I'm just curious and don't intend to imply criticism. If you don't recall, then fair enough, thank you for sharing your friend's experience.
 
Hmmm. It just didn’t occur to me to press for more detail. As I recall it was a far-ranging wandering conversation over a bottle of wine late at night with no particular agenda. It would probably have been a little socially awkward to switch over into Fortean Investigator Mode and start pumping him for specifics. Also I have a tendency, everywhere but in this forum, to downplay the amount of interest I have in such topics in order not to be perceived as any weirder than I already am.

I suppose it would be possible to find an email address for him and ask him if he’d be willing to provide a detailed account. I have no idea how he’d react.
 
WierdExeter said:
Great thread.

i took in a rather eccentric old stray cat who was great company and loved to sleep on my bed. We had several years together before she passed away.

within a couple of days, I very clearly felt my deceased cat jump up onto the bed by my feet whilst I was reading a book before bedtime. I felt the ‘landing’ and the weight on my bed, even the movement of feet. With regret I closed my eyes and said to myself it simply wasn’t possible and then the weight was gone.

This has since reoccurEd several times but with less ‘weight’ each time, and now I simply class it as ‘one of those things’.
Click to expand...

A similar experience occurred to the comedy actor and host of Pointless, Alexander Armstrong with his deceased dog:

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20170916/282110636777459
 
Great thread. I agree that we all assimilate our experiences until we stop and think ‘ hang on, I know that this is all part of my history/our family history, but that’s odd!’ an example for me was when I lived in a basement flat ( my first flat) and purchased a big old wooden second hand bed, complete with carved headboard. This bed was my pride and joy, as was the flat and despite it being run down and damp when I moved in, as well as being prone to being s little dark, I absolutely lived this flat and decorated it beautifully. After a few weeks of sleeping in this bed I would feel the end depressing at night and a weight near my feet that would remain until I dozed off. At first I thought it was the old bed springs doing something odd but upon inspection they were intact and unmoved. This happened every night and I would wait for it and imagined (?knew) that it was an older lady sitting on the bed. If it didn’t happen I would be a bit sad. Well that was 25 years ago and the bed and the flat are history but at night when I settle down I often wonder if I will feel the bed depress at the end. There was no fear, in some ways there was comfort .
 
Seasidepagan said:
Great thread. I agree that we all assimilate our experiences until we stop and think ‘ hang on, I know that this is all part of my history/our family history, but that’s odd!’ an example for me was when I lived in a basement flat ( my first flat) and purchased a big old wooden second hand bed, complete with carved headboard. This bed was my pride and joy, as was the flat and despite it being run down and damp when I moved in, as well as being prone to being s little dark, I absolutely lived this flat and decorated it beautifully. After a few weeks of sleeping in this bed I would feel the end depressing at night and a weight near my feet that would remain until I dozed off. At first I thought it was the old bed springs doing something odd but upon inspection they were intact and unmoved. This happened every night and I would wait for it and imagined (?knew) that it was an older lady sitting on the bed. If it didn’t happen I would be a bit sad. Well that was 25 years ago and the bed and the flat are history but at night when I settle down I often wonder if I will feel the bed depress at the end. There was no fear, in some ways there was comfort .
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Reminds me of my mother's story about a mattress. She was given it when she and my father were newly married and very broke. Mother reckoned she kept waking up in the early hours feeling freezing cold and in a panic. She was sure someone had died on it and was haunting it!
After that she swore she'd never have a used mattress again.
 
I can remember being laughed at (well not that specific, but the feeling of derision) as a child, when I told my parents about stuff like going to my great aunt's house and being convinced til I was about 5 or something, that there was this bald man with glasses there, very quiet, but who liked me and I thought was kind and nice. Great Aunt, it turned out, was a widow and had been since long before I was born. I thought this man I only ever saw in her living room was real and there and it turned out... he wasn't. I was told by someone that her husband had indeed looked like the man I described and there wasn't a single photo of him - or even my great aunt herself - on display in her house. And she only showed me her photo albums once - when I was about 12 or 13, years later. I loved it as pictures of my mum were in it that I'd never seen before. And I longed to see it again but never did, which is how I'm so certain. But I remember thinking I probably shouldn't talk about things like that. I don't even recall who reacted with derision or something like it that I thought was unpleasant. But I think children are schooled at an early age that some stuff is 'batshit'.

Another one I have recounted here, my imaginary friend in the hen house. Also very much present til I was about 5. I had lengthy conversations with him. I was always in there on my own (I liked helping my dad close up the hens at night but before he came down I'd often sit in there as I loved watching for glow worms!) But when I told my parents my 'real to me' friend was very quickly dismissed as imaginary and I got the distinct impression if my parents said he wasn't real.... he couldn't be real. And not long after I didn;t see him ever again. And don;t get me wrong, my parents weren't at all the sort to deride children or be harsh with them - the opposite. But you definitely picked up the feeling there were things you shouldn't say you'd experienced. So you stopped talking about them.

I think part of it comes from that christian culture of "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." which is very negative and dismissive. But also a deep part of culture.

Wordsworth had it right: "The child is father of the man". Not to sound trite but there is something magical about being a child - especially an imaginative, numinous child who is open to all kinds of experiences and phenomena - that is totally erased before we are even adults.
 
I've been wondering if children see and experience things that they don't as adults because of limits on brain development. From the first our brain development commences with the creation of trillions of neural connections, until we end up with more connections than we need. We start losing neural connections as very young children, through a kind of editing process called pruning. My understanding is that "use it or lose it" applies; if you're taught that you shouldn't use it, there's a reason to lose it. Our brains remain somewhat elastic as adults after 20 or so, but we never have the adaptability of very young children. Perhaps all those extra connections enable children to perceive things that, as adults, we can't.
https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/inbrief-science-of-ecd/"The basic architecture of the brain is constructed through an ongoing process that begins before birth and continues into adulthood. . . . In the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second. After this period of rapid proliferation, connections are reduced through a process called pruning, so that brain circuits become more efficient. Sensory pathways like those for basic vision and hearing are the first to develop, followed by early language skills and higher cognitive functions. Connections proliferate and prune in a prescribed order, with later, more complex brain circuits built upon earlier, simpler circuits."
 
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