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A 'Fortean' Subject Of Which You're 100% Convinced

Well, I know that ghosts exists...I have seen them. (as well as felt them, heard them, smelled them and have seen the things they do, although that is no proof of existence.)

I, also, am convinced of extra terrestrial visits to Earth. Haven't actually witnessed such things with my own 2 eyes but have done enough research to know it's all really happening.

Actually, of all the strange and bizarre things that do happen, I pretty much believe in most of them. You would have to prove to me they do not exist, rather than I prove that they do.
 
i beileve in the existence of all things paranormal, there has been too many rticles and reports for their not to be anything, the house i live in has some shall we say some presences, of the unexplained i have heard and seen things myself that feeling you get when you know someone is there but at the same time know there cant be.

as for ufo's well there has to be something look at all the unexplained events that happen all the sights and its too much of a coincidence to say its all a great big hoax
 
What a brilliant thread! 8) This is what keeps me coming back to the MB. Bravo everyone.
:)
 
Well, given that I have lots of Scottish ancestry (including my very Scottish surname), of course I must believe in Nessie!

Otherwise I would be kicked out of the clan(s)!!! ;)
 
I have seen a ghost, a UFO and a USO, but I can't say 100% what they WERE, just what they are LABELLED AS.
 
i think its the fact that we dont clearly understand what we are seeing that makes it moe intriging and exciting.

its the element of surprise the "wow" effect, because it makes you stop and look
 
goth13girl666 said:
i beileve in the existence of all things paranormal
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Everyone has to draw the line somewhere (or do they?)...even if you buy into Yetis, Nessie and Uri Geller, there must be a lot of things even you find hard to swallow. Inhabitants of the hollow earth, Atlantis, werewolves...?
 
you have to think there must be even if the most tiniest bit of truth some sort of exsistence in ghosts, ufos, werewolfs, vampires etc etc.

although yes i agree not everything is justifiable to the point of belief there is no limit to what percieve to believe in and see
 
Not original for this thread, but it has to be UFO's. What really hacks me off are the 'experts' who are wheeled out and who belittle peoples observations by suggesting they saw Venus, or marsh gas or whatever. Similarly the scientists who churn out the old speed of light limit and say the stars are too far apart for even light speed travel to be viable or achievable due to energy requirements etc. These are the sort of people who said we would suffocate when travelling on a train when they first appeared or who would have laughed at the Wright Brother's ideas or who would have made a fool of scientists such as Tesla, or Newton. Just because we can't currently comprehend how to exceed the speed of light, or bypass it by warping space doesn't mean it can't be done and hasn't been done by someone on another system.
The other thing I believe is that the major governments of the world know the truth and are simply protecting us from a perceived panic that might arise if we learned that we are not alone. That said, I also wonder if they are also preparing us for the truth by the little snippets of information such as the 'Martian meteorite' bacteria, the regular discovery of planets around other stars, the ice on mars. All small stuff, but getting more significant and maybe just getting us used to the idea of someone or something else being out there.
 
Not original for this thread, but it has to be UFO's.
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I assume by 'UFO' you mean 'alien craft'. Can't deny that unidentified objects are seen, but you need to make the distinction if you're talking about extraterrestrial visitors.

What really hacks me off are the 'experts' who are wheeled out and who belittle peoples observations by suggesting they saw Venus, or marsh gas or whatever. Similarly the scientists who churn out the old speed of light limit and say the stars are too far apart for even light speed travel to be viable or achievable due to energy requirements etc. These are the sort of people who said we would suffocate when travelling on a train when they first appeared
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The difference being that we have a far better grasp of science. We know that the huge distance between stars makes interstellar travel very, very difficult indeed. It's not going to be something humanity is capable of without some big leaps in technology. And while the ability to warp space has been talked about, it's still only rough theory with absolutely no proof that it's possible. It's not unreasonable, then, to say that alien visitors are unlikely.

It's even harder to believe in alien visitors when you consider the total lack of evidence. Doesn't help that all too often UFOlogists seem incapable of carrying out any kind of proper investigation and are all too keen to jump on the alien explanation.
 
goth13girl666 said:
you have to think there must be even if the most tiniest bit of truth some sort of exsistence in ghosts, ufos, werewolfs, vampires etc etc.
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You may be right. But two things bother me -

- that the tiniest grain of truth may be something quite mundane. Stories of giants were of men who were simply big but have gradually been magnified down the ages. Vampires may originally have been people suffering from porphyria, with all the supernatural stuff added on later - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyria# ... werewolves - etc

- does this mean that storytellers have no imagination whatsoever, and that they never invented anything? That whatever tall tall you care to spin will always be linkable to some truth, even rockinghorse people eating marshmallow pies?
 
hokum6 said:
Not original for this thread, but it has to be UFO's.
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I assume by 'UFO' you mean 'alien craft'. Can't deny that unidentified objects are seen, but you need to make the distinction if you're talking about extraterrestrial visitors.

What really hacks me off are the 'experts' who are wheeled out and who belittle peoples observations by suggesting they saw Venus, or marsh gas or whatever. Similarly the scientists who churn out the old speed of light limit and say the stars are too far apart for even light speed travel to be viable or achievable due to energy requirements etc. These are the sort of people who said we would suffocate when travelling on a train when they first appeared
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The difference being that we have a far better grasp of science. We know that the huge distance between stars makes interstellar travel very, very difficult indeed. It's not going to be something humanity is capable of without some big leaps in technology. And while the ability to warp space has been talked about, it's still only rough theory with absolutely no proof that it's possible. It's not unreasonable, then, to say that alien visitors are unlikely.

It's even harder to believe in alien visitors when you consider the total lack of evidence. Doesn't help that all too often UFOlogists seem incapable of carrying out any kind of proper investigation and are all too keen to jump on the alien explanation.
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You've reiterated just what I complained about. You are restricting your thinking to what our current level of technology already permits, or what may be reasonably possible. Consider the following, "The solar system must be younger than a million years because even if the sun were made of solid coal and oxygen it would have burned up within that time at the rate it generates heat." (An argument from ignorance, from 19th Century encyclopedias based on the assumption that because there was no means known at that time of producing heat more efficient than coal, this logically put a limit on the Sun's possible age. In fact in the 20th Century with the discovery of radioactivity and nuclear fusion, the sun's age was more correctly dated at many billions of years old instead. The 'ignorance' in this case was assuming that no fuel source could be more efficient than coal and oxygen.)

http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ignorance.html

My point is that we could be dealing with societies who are millenia ahead of us in terms of technology and operating on a level which to us, as the late great Arthur C Clarke said 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'. When you say there is a total lack of evidence, it should also be considered that absence of evidence does not infer evidence of absence.
 
to wembly8 yes i think story tellers have imagination how else would we get to know about all these stories about things we see and cant explain.

fter all are we not all story tellers?
 
One Fortean phenomenon with which I am 100% convinced is the occurence of anomalous blue flashes in a clear nightly sky.

I've seen it myself, while out watching a meteor shower. I am 88.3% certain that this was no coincidence.
 
see we all see something weather we openly admit ir or not, some of us tend to lean more to the science approach to explain things than look from another angle as to what we have witnessed.

yes while i agree some things are coincidence but not everything is right?

there is just too much space explored and unexplored for there just to be us humans, and yes i believe in mythical beings aswell, too much happens for it to be our minds playing tricks,
 
Giant Squid. Once regarded as the stuff of Jules Verne and gnarly old salts who spent too much time out at sea, there is very good evidence not only of Giant Squid but Colossal Squid.
 
One great (once considered) Fortean phenomenon, I'm 99.9999% (always leave some room for healthy doubt in everything) convinced of and really love is the moving rocks of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley.

I've actually seen similar rocks with tracks on another lakebed called Bonnie Claire Playa near Death Valley. They looked supebly strange, the feeling of wierdness enhanced by the solitude of the setting.

Here are some piccies I took whilst there:
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/104371 ... 7999cMShRp
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/104371 ... 7999eVImXM

If anyone's ever in that area, these ones are much easier to get to (although less impressive) than the ones on the Racetrack Playa.
 
Deja vu and precognitive dreams - no idea what they are but they certainly exist. About seven months ago I had a dream that a friend of mine and his family who live overseas came on their annual visit. We were in a car and discussing whether plantains were a separate but similar fruit to banana or exactly the same thing!
After the discussion we had an accident and I was quite distressed when I awoke and told my wife of the dream. I had never eaten plantain, have no interest in the subject and the whole thing seemed the kind of totally surreal rubbish dreams throw up.

Last week my wife bought some plantain crisps home (potato chips for the US readers). I was driving my friend and his family back to his mother's house when we got talking about food and I remarked that I'd had some plantain and lime flavoured crisps. At that moment the whole deja vu thing kicked in and I began to become aware that the scenario ended really badly.
I looked around for some clue as to the impending disaster but said nothing to my friend - he's a rationalist scientist who would have thought I was being absurd - and the conditions were perfect, afternoon sun, dry roads and very little traffic which had been thinned out by roadworks a few miles previously. Just then the car in front decided to brake sharply from about 65mph to a standstill on the motorway (absolutely no stopping) because he'd overshot his exit slip road!
I slammed the brakes on and began to manoeuvre into the next lane when he realised there was no way of pulling over and moved into the next lane, causing me to swerve round him. It was a close call but he drove off leaving us cursing the damned fool.

I asked my wife if she could remember me telling her about the dream when I got back without saying why and she told me all the main details. I then relayed the incident back. Absolutely bizarre.
 
I'm not convinced at all by almost all Fortean phenomena.

I think that UFOs are probably not extraterrestrial in origin, neither are they hyperdimensional or anything of that ilk.
Telepathy and parapsychology in general just don't seem to be real effects- they are probably the result of some sort of confirmation bias mechanism in our own minds.
Alien Big Cats have been found in reality, but only on one or two rare occasions. There is almost certainly no breeding population out there, and quite likely none in the British countryside at this very moment. All reports of big black cats are misidentifications - there honestly aren't any big black cats in the UK, except in zoos.

Ghosts are interesting as folklore, but I am sure that they don't really exist.

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But does that mean I dismiss all Fortean possibilities? No.

One scenario seems quite plausible to me, and it is possible that this scenario might explain some, or many of the other phenomena.
That is to say, I am fairly convinced by the Simulation Argument. I am almost certain that an advanced civilisation would create simulations of various kinds, perhaps a vast number of them; and if advanced civilisations do exist anywhere or anywhen, (not proven) then they could easily create a simulation including everything we recognise as our own reality.

If the creators of our particular simulation are a little mischeivous, or if they have other motives we can't fathom, it is possible that some little 'glitches in the Matrix' might be thrown in, creating all sorts of Fortean phenomena we can't explain.

I'm not 100% convinced by the Simulation Argument, but then neither is Bostrom- but it does have a high probability of being correct, in my opinion.
 
eburacum said:
Alien Big Cats have been found in reality, but only on one or two rare occasions. There is almost certainly no breeding population out there, and quite likely none in the British countryside at this very moment. All reports of big black cats are misidentifications - there honestly aren't any big black cats in the UK, except in zoos.

Ghosts are interesting as folklore, but I am sure that they don't really exist.
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I would have agreed with you on the big cat thing until I spoke to the head of a big cat research group who pointed out 11 had been hit by cars and killed (I think he said in the south west but I may be wrong on that) and began to list the locations. They've even been seen by zoo keepers who know exactly what a large melanistic leopard looks like.
I used to subscribe to the zooform theory - large scale misidentifications seems to set the recognition bar unnecessarily low - but I'm coming round to the idea of big cats being out there. I recently spoke to a club cyclist in Cornwall who said ABC sighting weren't even particularly uncommon among high mileage riders who stayed out late or got up early.

Ghosts certainly do exist, though I can live with the doubt of those who haven't seen one. What they might be is another matter entirely.
 
colpepper1 said:
[I would have agreed with you on the big cat thing until I spoke to the head of a big cat research group who pointed out 11 had been hit by cars and killed (I think he said in the south west but I may be wrong on that) and began to list the locations.
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I would be interested to hear of one black leopard or jaguar which had been killed by a car.

Here is a list of confirmed alien big cat remains in our country-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_bi ... nd_remains
this more or less agrees with a similar list published in Fortean Times a few years ago. Even this list contains a few doubtful cases- such as the dead lion in a quarry.

Jungle cats seem to be able to cross-breed with domestic cats, and it is possible that some, or many hybrids are out there- that in itself would constitute a breeding population of exotic cats, but over time presumably the jungle cat strain would disappear. Apparently interbreeding between Scottish wildcats and domestic cats is diluting the wildcat strain in a similar fashion.
 
I enjoyed and fully believe Colpepper's account of a precognitive dream. The plantain memory seems to have heightened his awareness at a significant moment, when motorway driving would normally lull us into automatic mode.

The cosmic mechanisms required for this are beyond imagining. These moments seem to happen to spite the whole notion of mechanisms.

My own precognitive dream was vivid but without any real meaning. I could dig out the date from my papers but it isn't vitally important.

Some dreams seem to come from a different level than our ordinary ones. Usually I forget my dreams very quickly, unless I have kept a pad by the bed. This day I had no need to record the dream - it was a simple scene in which I was in a greenhouse, reading a letter from some friends, who were working in Africa. The odd thing was that I had not been in touch with them for about eighteen months and we had missed the usual rituals of Birthdays and Christmas. Coming downstairs, what was on the mat but a long letter from those same friends, explaining their long silence.

I don't know the significance of the greenhouse - the heat of Africa? Anyway, they had not been in my mind at the time of the dream for any reason. :shock:
 
eburacum said:
I would be interested to hear of one black leopard or jaguar which had been killed by a car.
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The images I recall were of jungle cat/lynx sized animals as roadkill. There may have been black leopard pictures I couldn't say, ABCs aren't a particular interest of mine.
I have a high regard for country people's perception of domestic fauna, their relative size and the way they move, what's normal and what is anomalous. On balance there are too many reports of outsized cats from a variety of sources for them all to be dismissed as misidentification, IMO.
Living in the Pennines I have never seen an animal that could remotely be misconstrued as a big cat but farmers in the region have and there is stock predation that matches big cat kills rather than stray dogs with whom upland farmers are familiar.

As I said, I'm open minded on the subject, the larger creatures could be zooform in nature but there's reasonable evidence for non-domestic cats roaming the countryside.
 
I have a high regard for country people's perception of domestic fauna, their relative size and the way they move, what's normal and what is anomalous.
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Let's just say that I think your high regard is not justified. People are very poor observers. The reason that black cats are seen so often is because they are just that- black domestic cats.
 
eburacum said:
People are very poor observers. The reason that black cats are seen so often is because they are just that- black domestic cats.
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You may be right. It's also true that some people are fantasy prone, others are attention seekers and yet more hoax. That still leaves a substantial body of people like policemen and train drivers who have little to gain and a good deal to lose by seeing 'big cats' in the British countryside. That's not accounting for a conceivably greater number who may see them and not report it for fear of ridicule from those who consider the idea preposterous.

A police officer or a zoologist who reports something like that puts their other judgements under scrutiny as well as their mental health. On balance I think there's something in the phenomenon.
 
Police officers seem to be remarkably poor observers of fortean phenomena; I suspect that they are prone to adrenalin-fueled exaggeration or something.

If a zoologist on the other hand were to see a black panther in the British countryside that might count for something (let me know if that has ever happened).
 
Have a look through your FTs from a few months back, mine are in the bog or the attic. I should say that a mere zoologist is unlikely to convince a sceptic on this matter so be prepared to not have your opinion amended.
 
I would love to be able to say I 100% Believe in ALL forteana

I can't say that of course, but I would say I 100% believe in Ghosts.

As for the rest I will remain a 99% believer untill I'm convinced otherwise.

:D
 
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