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Believe It Or Not. What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

I always accept IHTM. Mostly because I think people really believe what they say and how they describe it. Also because it's no harm to me if they are idiots.

The strength of the FT was (is) that contributors were encouraged to cite original sources so that you could investigate the background to a story for yourself. But I love IHTM stories because they seem genuine and uncontrived even without supporting evidence and I can look for similarities with my own IHTM. For this reason I do feel that the 'It Happened to Someone Else' should be separated from the IHTM thread. I have grown the confidence not to mind if I'm thought of as an idiot and in turn I have some sympathy for people who clearly post after skipping their medication.
 
The strength of the FT was (is) that contributors were encouraged to cite original sources so that you could investigate the background to a story for yourself. But I love IHTM stories because they seem genuine and uncontrived even without supporting evidence and I can look for similarities with my own IHTM. For this reason I do feel that the 'It Happened to Someone Else' should be separated from the IHTM thread. I have grown the confidence not to mind if I'm thought of as an idiot and in turn I have some sympathy for people who clearly post after skipping their medication.

Nicely put BB :)
 
I've mentioned before that my mother who didn't believe in and hated the idea of ghosts, saw the image of a very young girl when she was looking after her neighbours empty house. Others had seen the girl as well, unknown to my mother. As a result of her experience, I did change my view of the existence of "ghosts". I also changed my view of psychics as a result of my last experience 20 years ago.
 
How long has it been now? Can distinctly remember the horror of eating a crisp from that first mis-chosen green bag; I hate salt and vinegar. The trauma.

Australia. The crisps are in random coloured bags. I think it's pink for cheese and onion from one manufacturer; I really suffer from crisp-misidentification syndrome when I'm over there.
 
my mother who didn't believe in and hated the idea of ghosts, saw the image of a very young girl when she was looking after her neighbours empty house.

I can't remember @PeteS did it change /her/ views?
 
This thread has been so interesting seeing how peoples opinions have changed . A few points I will make about my personal opinion and I'll try and not make it 3 pages long Haha.
1. Epilepsy was mentioned by scargy. I have epilepsy myself and the deja vu/jamais vu or hallucinations both visual and auditory usually come before a seizure, either a few days or a few hours or right before. Sometimes I have an aura where I can't see half of someone's face or something like that. They are always a warning to me that something is coming. It started in my early teens and I always called the 'episodes' my 'funny turns' so I would say "I'm having a funny turn" and wait for it to pass. My parents initially thought it was migraines until I started actually fitting but I remember it being very scary at the time and if someone didn't know what it was you could definitely attribute it to a sense of evil or foreboding paranormal.
2. I love the idea that age changes how you view things like others have said. When I was about 14/15 people were always doing ouija boards and telling ghost stories and it was really exciting wanting things to happen but then the older I got, the more cynical I became despite having lots of experiences. Or the more cynical I became about it being ghosts as opposed to something else ? I definitely believe in something because of the things that have happened to me and people I know, but I don't think 'ghost' as quickly as I did when was younger. I actually don't think I even believe in ghosts at all anymore.
3. I can definitely relate to the more things happen the more you look for an explanation (think it was catseye that said this). Myself and a friend have been desperate for proper 'proof' for a few months and kept going on these ghost hunts with companies that run them. Nothing usually happens or things happen and people are so quick to believe it was paranormal when there are obviously rational explanations and it makes the sceptic grow in me. When something happened with a medium a few weeks ago that should have been definite 'proof' we still drove home saying but it could have been this, I could have given her clues etc (I might explain it in another post so as not to make this one massive) .
Anyway I have honestly found this thread so interesting and think it was a really good idea asking for people who have been swayed either way.
 
I can't remember @PeteS did it change /her/ views?

I honestly don't know F. It was not something my mother spoke about after the incident, possibly because it was not something she wanted to experience. What was a bit strange was her telling the "ghost" , "we don't want you here"(emphasis on the YOU) whereupon the girl disappeared. I think I would have been tempted to watch the image for as long as I could. I would have been sceptical except for the fact that my father told me sometime later that others had seen the same little girl in the house. It changed my view though.
 
Unless you know they cannot always be relied on.

That is hard for people to accept. Expressions such as 'I saw with my own eyes!' 'I heard EXACTLY what he said!' tell us this.
If everyone believed their senses were untrustworthy there'd be no Fortean experiences.

It'd go like this -
'Hey, last night I saw a ghost!'
'No you didn't. It was undoubtedly a trick of the light. Or you'd been drinking.'
'Oh yeah right, that'll be it.'
 
Yes, but, my senses tell me that the sun goes around the earth. I see it move through the sky. People much cleverer than me tell me this is not so but that's not what I see.

To paraphrase Wittgenstein (mentioned already in another thread) - 'so what would you see if the earth moved around the sun ?'
 
While it may be true that our eyes, brains and memories can deceive us in many different ways its an observation that's often used as a cop out in order to dismiss something a non-witness considers at odds with THEIR beliefs about the world. But in day to day life would be an extraordinary suggestion to reach for and quite nuts to accept.

In any other matter, how accepting would/should a witness to something be of the claims made by a non witness or non participant?

If you have cornflakes for breakfast and a stranger in a different city confidently tells you that, no, you must have had sausages, you only think you had cornflakes...you'd hardly think them reasonable or give their assertions any credence at all just because it's known to be *possible* some mental, visual or perceptual error has caused you to be mistaken about your own experience
If they were sitting at the breakfast table with you, then there's clearly something to discuss. But the person least qualified to tell you what you didn't witness is anyone who wasn't there.

Alternative "rational" explanations for extraordinary events should always be explored...but its far more common that people confidently assume what "must have" really happened, regardless of whether their hypothesis is in line with the facts and details described. At the very least you would hope the doubting non-witness would ask questions to see if their own explanation makes sense, and would listen to the replies before deciding it does. But it seems to me that rarely ever happens.
 
Having cornflakes for breakfast is not an extraordinary event. You're basing your theory on a false equivalency.
 
Having cornflakes for breakfast is not an extraordinary event. You're basing your theory on a false equivalency.
Nope. I was very specific..i said "But in day to day life " and "in any other matter"

I was precisely drawing attention to the difference between the way the "paranormal" and everything else is treated..not in terms of what other people may think of it, but in terms of the expectation that we ourselves should accept as reasonable someone else telling us we didn't do what we just did or see what we just saw. They may be right..but accepting the proposition is asking a hell of a lot.

The example of breakfast was simply to take the idea of listening to a confident nay-sayer's claims about something they were no part of - but which we were - out of the realms of the "extraordinary" to show how peculiar it is.
 
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That is hard for people to accept. Expressions such as 'I saw with my own eyes!' 'I heard EXACTLY what he said!' tell us this.
If everyone believed their senses were untrustworthy there'd be no Fortean experiences.

It'd go like this -
'Hey, last night I saw a ghost!'
'No you didn't. It was undoubtedly a trick of the light. Or you'd been drinking.'
'Oh yeah right, that'll be it.'
^^^^^
Yep, because folk think their senses and memory are infallible and often this is also part of their self-identity.

Once you realise either or both can be completely wrong, there's no necessity for the cognitive dissonance.
 
^^^^^
Yep, because folk think their senses and memory are infallible and often this is also part of their self-identity.

Once you realise either or both can be completely wrong, there's no necessity for the cognitive dissonance.

That's a big step for most and anyway nobody's going to cease trusting their own senses and memory. They'll end up just haggling over the really outrageous stuff which is exactly where we all are today.
 
While it may be true that our eyes, brains and memories can deceive us in many different ways its an observation that's often used as a cop out in order to dismiss something a non-witness considers at odds with THEIR beliefs about the world. But in day to day life would be an extraordinary suggestion to reach for and quite nuts to accept.

In any other matter, how accepting would/should a witness to something be of the claims made by a non witness or non participant?

If you have cornflakes for breakfast and a stranger in a different city confidently tells you that, no, you must have had sausages, you only think you had cornflakes...you'd hardly think them reasonable or give their assertions any credence at all just because it's known to be *possible* some mental, visual or perceptual error has caused you to be mistaken about your own experience
If they were sitting at the breakfast table with you, then there's clearly something to discuss. But the person least qualified to tell you what you didn't witness is anyone who wasn't there.

Alternative "rational" explanations for extraordinary events should always be explored...but its far more common that people confidently assume what "must have" really happened, regardless of whether their hypothesis is in line with the facts and details described. At the very least you would hope the doubting non-witness would ask questions to see if their own explanation makes sense, and would listen to the replies before deciding it does. But it seems to me that rarely ever happens.

My view exactly. I liken these events to a similar experience of having a dream. Recently I had a long and detailed dream about buying a Ferrari (not a car I have ever wanted). It was extraordinarily detailed to the point in my dream that I remember saying "this can't be a dream its so real".
I definitely had the dream there is no doubt of that. But if someone didn't believe me and challenged me to provide evidence, I obviously couldn't. Doesn't make the experience of having the dream untrue.
Fortunately I could produce all the evidence required in respect of the most Fortean experience of my life, discussed before in other posts. Certainly evidence which would satisfy a court, but nonetheless I'm sure there would be people calling "rubbish" . Had I not had this evidence I would have been none the wiser and would not have come to this forum...
 
While it may be true that our eyes, brains and memories can deceive us in many different ways its an observation that's often used as a cop out in order to dismiss something a non-witness considers at odds with THEIR beliefs about the world. But in day to day life would be an extraordinary suggestion to reach for and quite nuts to accept.

In any other matter, how accepting would/should a witness to something be of the claims made by a non witness or non participant? ...

This - and some subsequent responses - afford me an appropriate juncture at which to mention the single most general and significant change in my own orientation toward Forteana.

First - a cursory sketch in very broad strokes to set the context ...

Over the more than half-century since I first became interested in Forteana (broadly construed ... ):

- I've had multiple personal experiences of high strangeness supporting the notion there's more to reality than the mundane, and ...

- I've had multiple such experiences along with one or more fellow witnesses who've validated the basic experiential / perceptual event(s), such that ...

- I'm confident that 'the extraordinary' is an actual aspect of my existence and environs.

By the same token, and on the other hand, during this same half-century I've personally and professionally:

- learned and experienced how easily perceptions can be misleading, misinterpreted, and even willfully manipulated;

- learned, observed, and wrestled with the fact that humans are not always - in some cases not even often - accurate or credible witnesses;

- learned, observed, studied, and even demonstrated how readily testimony (as contrasted with 'evidence') can be manipulated;

- learned, or at least concluded after intensive research, that all too many famous Fortean items that wowed me as a kid were outright hoaxes or at least hyper-inflated mythos derived from anomalous reports;

- observed and become increasingly appalled by the frequency with which people adopt or mimic the memetic garbage of the surrounding masses rather than making the effort to generate their own explanations or conclusions; and

- learned that some folks will say or do anything to make waves, get attention, or make money.

Now, having said that ... Let me describe the resultant shift in my thinking that allows me to deal with this dilemma and which relates to the framing of gattino's (and others') remarks ...

The most universal (and pesky) aspect of Fortean accounts is that they commonly consist of nothing beyond a witness's personal description of an incident / event - i.e., testimony that a second party can only take or leave. In some instances there are secondary elements which a second party may reasonably observe / assess on their own (i.e., physical or documented evidence).

It is a serious mistake to blur the distinction(s) between testimony and evidence, and it's potentially idiotic to assume testimony carries the same expository / explanatory weight as evidence.

I've come to realize it's just as serious a mistake to treat testimony (as is) as a true and complete record of whatever it was the witness perceived. The progression from perception to testimony isn't a single-step affair. Instead, it's a two-step process, which I'll sketch as:

- Perception - The raw experience or apprehension of a possibly anomalous state of affairs, event, etc., and ...
- Conception - The witness's translation of the raw experience into memorizable / expressible form.

The map is not the territory, and a witness's report is not the perception. The report can only be taken to represent the perception as filtered through, and hence biased by, the witness's descriptive / interpretive predilections and constraints.

Now back to what's changed in my thinking and interacting with regard to Forteana ...

I've become more of a critical / skeptical listener - not for the immediate purpose of convincing a witness there's a mundane or scientific explanation for his / her perception, but rather for the purpose of exploring how much of his / her report represents basic or raw experience versus biased or unjustified glossing added in the course of describing it to him- / herself or to others.

To be sure, there are often mundane / scientific explanations for anomalous experiences. Such outcomes are to be decided (or not) after determining what the most accurate or detailed account of the initial perception may be.

This is why I've repeatedly explained my apparent interrogations of witnesses in terms of 'scrubbing the story'. I'm not laying the groundwork for pouncing with an already-presumed explanation; I'm simply trying to figure out what it is that warrants explanation and / or to determine how extraordinary it may be. [1]

IMHO this sort of up-front critical inquiry has become essential because the Fortean / paranormal 'industry' and modern communications capabilities (e.g., social media) bombard witnesses with pre-digested pigeonholes into which they often feel they must insert their reports.

Haven't you noticed how many first-person reports are already framed with regard to one or another conventional category of Fortean / paranormal phenomena? If someone sees an odd glowing sphere aloft outdoors it's gotta be a 'UFO', whereas seeing it in their home's living room makes it a 'ghost', and so on ... [2]

Anyway ... I'll stop there. This is the biggest such change I've experienced in exploring Fortean / paranormal subjects. There have been other shifts, but I'll address them separately as I'm able.

[1] It's because of this different intention underlying my interrogations that I have to dispute gattino's characterization quoted above, which is reflected in some of the subsequent posts. Just because someone asks for details or clarifications it doesn't mean they're seeking to refute you out of hand, and it's a mind-fuck to claim they are.

[2] Not to inflame a delicate social situation, but simply to cite a timely example ... Consider the case of recently-arrived Georgek. His decades of experiences and work spanned a number of Fortean / paranormal categories (UFO's, of course, but also EVP, spirits, and ghosts). I couldn't help but wonder whether and / or how he attributed distinctions among aliens, spirits, and / or ghosts as the ascribed others with whom he'd experienced encounters and interactions.
 
This - and some subsequent responses - afford me an appropriate juncture at which to mention the single most general and significant change in my own orientation toward Forteana.

First - a cursory sketch in very broad strokes to set the context ...

Over the more than half-century since I first became interested in Forteana (broadly construed ... ):

- I've had multiple personal experiences of high strangeness supporting the notion there's more to reality than the mundane, and ...

- I've had multiple such experiences along with one or more fellow witnesses who've validated the basic experiential / perceptual event(s), such that ...

- I'm confident that 'the extraordinary' is an actual aspect of my existence and environs.

By the same token, and on the other hand, during this same half-century I've personally and professionally:

- learned and experienced how easily perceptions can be misleading, misinterpreted, and even willfully manipulated;

- learned, observed, and wrestled with the fact that humans are not always - in some cases not even often - accurate or credible witnesses;

- learned, observed, studied, and even demonstrated how readily testimony (as contrasted with 'evidence') can be manipulated;

- learned, or at least concluded after intensive research, that all too many famous Fortean items that wowed me as a kid were outright hoaxes or at least hyper-inflated mythos derived from anomalous reports;

- observed and become increasingly appalled by the frequency with which people adopt or mimic the memetic garbage of the surrounding masses rather than making the effort to generate their own explanations or conclusions; and

- learned that some folks will say or do anything to make waves, get attention, or make money.

Now, having said that ... Let me describe the resultant shift in my thinking that allows me to deal with this dilemma and which relates to the framing of gattino's (and others') remarks ...

The most universal (and pesky) aspect of Fortean accounts is that they commonly consist of nothing beyond a witness's personal description of an incident / event - i.e., testimony that a second party can only take or leave. In some instances there are secondary elements which a second party may reasonably observe / assess on their own (i.e., physical or documented evidence).

It is a serious mistake to blur the distinction(s) between testimony and evidence, and it's potentially idiotic to assume testimony carries the same expository / explanatory weight as evidence.

I've come to realize it's just as serious a mistake to treat testimony (as is) as a true and complete record of whatever it was the witness perceived. The progression from perception to testimony isn't a single-step affair. Instead, it's a two-step process, which I'll sketch as:

- Perception - The raw experience or apprehension of a possibly anomalous state of affairs, event, etc., and ...
- Conception - The witness's translation of the raw experience into memorizable / expressible form.

The map is not the territory, and a witness's report is not the perception. The report can only be taken to represent the perception as filtered through, and hence biased by, the witness's descriptive / interpretive predilections and constraints.

Now back to what's changed in my thinking and interacting with regard to Forteana ...

I've become more of a critical / skeptical listener - not for the immediate purpose of convincing a witness there's a mundane or scientific explanation for his / her perception, but rather for the purpose of exploring how much of his / her report represents basic or raw experience versus biased or unjustified glossing added in the course of describing it to him- / herself or to others.

To be sure, there are often mundane / scientific explanations for anomalous experiences. Such outcomes are to be decided (or not) after determining what the most accurate or detailed account of the initial perception may be.

This is why I've repeatedly explained my apparent interrogations of witnesses in terms of 'scrubbing the story'. I'm not laying the groundwork for pouncing with an already-presumed explanation; I'm simply trying to figure out what it is that warrants explanation and / or to determine how extraordinary it may be. [1]

IMHO this sort of up-front critical inquiry has become essential because the Fortean / paranormal 'industry' and modern communications capabilities (e.g., social media) bombard witnesses with pre-digested pigeonholes into which they often feel they must insert their reports.

Haven't you noticed how many first-person reports are already framed with regard to one or another conventional category of Fortean / paranormal phenomena? If someone sees an odd glowing sphere aloft outdoors it's gotta be a 'UFO', whereas seeing it in their home's living room makes it a 'ghost', and so on ... [2]

Anyway ... I'll stop there. This is the biggest such change I've experienced in exploring Fortean / paranormal subjects. There have been other shifts, but I'll address them separately as I'm able.

[1] It's because of this different intention underlying my interrogations that I have to dispute gattino's characterization quoted above, which is reflected in some of the subsequent posts. Just because someone asks for details or clarifications it doesn't mean they're seeking to refute you out of hand, and it's a mind-fuck to claim they are.

[2] Not to inflame a delicate social situation, but simply to cite a timely example ... Consider the case of recently-arrived Georgek. His decades of experiences and work spanned a number of Fortean / paranormal categories (UFO's, of course, but also EVP, spirits, and ghosts). I couldn't help but wonder whether and / or how he attributed distinctions among aliens, spirits, and / or ghosts as the ascribed others with whom he'd experienced encounters and interactions.
An excellent post!:)
 
I have to dispute gattino's characterization quoted above, which is reflected in some of the subsequent posts. Just because someone asks for details or clarifications it doesn't mean they're seeking to refute you out of hand,
No one suggested it does mean that. All that was said is that THAT does often appear to be the case.

It's the distinction between
1) Asking for details, clarification, and shaping a plausible alternative explanation for the event around the answers
and
2) Presuming and declaring the event couldn't have happened/probably didn't happen as attested because its out of the ordinary and peoples perceptions are unreliable.

The second, the presumptive one, is the one I was describing.

The basest example would be to suggest the UFO witness was drunk, tired, confused by the lights, instead of asking whether they were drunk , tired etc and forming a conclusion based on their actual replies.

More subtly its appealing to the knowledge/assertion that the human brain and eye can be easily tricked to satisfactorily put aside an extraordinary experience...without establishing some way to determine whether it actually did apply in the particular case in question.
 
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... The second, the presumptive one, is the one I was describing.

Understood ...

I assumed you weren't intending to seem so one-dimensional, but I needed to address the passage at face value (which explicitly focused on the latter version alone).
 
That's a big step for most and anyway nobody's going to cease trusting their own senses and memory. They'll end up just haggling over the really outrageous stuff which is exactly where we all are today.
Speak for yourself :)
 
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