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

gattino

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
2,515
If anything.

I'm talking the broadly Fortean stuff, none of your politics here.

Is there anything you were previously convinced of the reality of , but that reading or experience - or lack of it - has pulled you away from?

Or is there anything you previously - and genuinely, not just saying it for a better story - scoffed at and dismissed as disproved and/or impossible until it happened to you or the weight of written material wore you down?

On TV believers always insert "I'm a very sceptical person, but..." and scoffers are always sure to claim "I would love to believe, but..". Each, it seems to me, merely insert these unconvincing descriptions of themselves to ward off claims of gullibility or closed mindedness before they can be made. Everyone wants to paint themselves as the rational one swayed only by evidence, and swayable still. I suspect few are.

So, are there any genuine converts through experience here - in one direction or another?
 
Alien visitations.

I now think the credible UFO sightings can be explained as secret military aircraft. As for the incredible sightings/encounters, they're either hoaxes or mystical experiences (whatever those actually are.)

Also there seems to be some scattered evidence that various intelligence agencies have attempted to manipulate UFO belief systems over the years. That in itself would prove an interesting field of study.

Maybe at some time in our history an alien probe or vessel did execute a quick survey of our planet. If so, I suspect we never even noticed it. Or if we did, it's impossible to pick it out from all the other reports.

Aliens may still land tomorrow though. I live in hope!

On the flip side, I'm starting to think it credible we may be living in a simulation. (If so, anything from frogs falling from the sky to Marian apparitions are simply lines of code being executed, whether by design or error.)
 
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I've gradually and sadly concluded, over two decades, that almost no Fortean phenomena are actually real, no ghosts (as independent non-corporeal entities), no lake monsters (for the most part, possible a big eel or two), no aliens, no yowies or bigfoot no 'ESP'. Most of this stuff rumbles on without ever producing any tangible evidence and has done for decades.

The big mystery is why so many folk need to believe in this stuff and how/why their senses are so completely taken in once they have a belief system based on the reality of 'insert Fortean thing here'.
 
I have gradually shifted my position on the idea that there are multiple realities, I now think that this is a reasonable explanation of many fortean phenomena*.
Previously I thought it was a trick used in sci-fi movies to cover plot holes.

* also neatly explains why I get greeted by people I don't know and loose my phone a lot.
 
The Brown Lady Of Raynham Hall (Norfolk), more specifically, the world famous photo of the ghost woman on the stairs ... someone posted a video on youtube recently which has since been removed (because you're told you're not allowed to take videos or photos for the £38 they charge you to wander around a bit unsupervised these days) that re creates the effect almost exactly and is shown to just be a trick of the light reflecting off the polished wooden stairs all along.
 
Spontaneous human combustion (as a supernatural event). I'm quite convinced by the slow burn theory as expressed in a couple of documentaries maybe 10 years or so ago.
 
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I've gradually and sadly concluded, over two decades, that almost no Fortean phenomena are actually real, no ghosts (as independent non-corporeal entities), no lake monsters (for the most part, possible a big eel or two), no aliens, no yowies or bigfoot no 'ESP'. Most of this stuff rumbles on without ever producing any tangible evidence and has done for decades.

The big mystery is why so many folk need to believe in this stuff and how/why their senses are so completely taken in once they have a belief system based on the reality of 'insert Fortean thing here'.

That's pretty well my view too.
Would love for there to be extant dinosaurs, Bigfoots, aliens visiting us, timeslips, Cumberland spacemen and such like but, as each case gets systematically debunked, I feel myself becoming more of a hard-nosed, pragmatic skeptic.
 
Turning the question on myself, im not sure there's a specific subject i once said was or wasn't so and now say the opposite. But my general attitude to most of this stuff has definitely shifted and changed in the course of life.

As a child and early teen, like most children, I would be drawn to any tv show, film or story about esp, ghosts and ufos in the same way as we were - are! - to superheros, scifi and magic. They are collectively the stuff of imagination and fantasy. And those are good things. ESP, ghosts and aliens though have the added pull of being, purportedly, witnessed in the real world. Magic made real. What's not to love about that.

By late teens/early 20s though the smug feeling of being the one who knows the magician's secret, one of the elect and intelligent who aren't fooled like the common folk, had me firmly in the sceptical camp. I lapped up James Randi et al, explaining how X and Y were fake or foolish. At the very least i was, and remain, a contrarian...snarking or wincing at whichever side is trying to recruit me over the TV screen. Over time the professional sceptic annoyed me more than the sincere seeming experiencer. I would get annoyed when the former would make a confident claim that was either itself outlandish or simply did not match the details of the incident as reported.

But most of all life and the personal experience of odd things made disbelief in the extended mind at the very least hard to maintain. I try and swerve adopting an explanation for most of the oddness but that much of this stuff objectively happens is something i now take as a matter of everyday fact.

Reading, more than experience, has led me in the last few years to more than entertain the idea of survival of bodily death. Previously i treated it as simply unknowable and not worth speculating on. Now i'm more convinced than not that we do survive...but not with any great certainty. Aliens and UFOs on the other hand i take little if any interest in, where once i might have entertained it seriously. Being detached from interest in a subject, its much easier to fall into the camp of assuming its all nonsense.
 
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Spontaneous human consumption (as a supernatural event). I'm quite convinced by the slow burn theory as expressed in a couple of documentaries maybe 10 years or so ago.

The one by the Codpiece King?
 
Please tell me that Cochice meant combustion? as consumption sounds quite bad

I do not know what to believe in, I am willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, as I have had a few things happen in my life, the voice and the evil were real. So, i am one that floats, between believing sometimes and then not. Oh, sorry, I was an avid believer in aliens and ghosts.
 
I was never a 'true believer' in most forteana, but there was always the 'what if?'
These days I'm just an old sceptic, but still find it all interesting.

What I do like is how some fringe stuff has become more mainstream. For good and bad. I think the x files had a massive influence there.

I'm now wondering how much my scepticism blocks my wonder of things? It's so easy to just be stuck in yer ways.
 
One i fluctuate a lot on is mediumship.

My original default position is that the people who stand on stage claiming to be mediums are charlatans or deluded. Then I read a book by - and later corresponded with - someone whose words convinced me he himself was sincere...mainly because he was so analytical and questioning of his own extraordinary experiences of seemingly delivering messages. I thought if he's real he can't be the only one. So "it", whatever it is, must be a genuine thing that some people experience. Books and accounts of the SPR studies in to victorian and edwardian mediums seemed to confirm that...and of course other people's anecdotes on these boards and elsewhere. And yet, and yet, and yet...ive still not found or witnessed one who stood out from the crowd , all using the same dull shtick. Any time someone sings the praises of one I'll look them up online, there's inevitably a video somewhere, and they're just the same as all the others. Like Fox Mulder I want to believe...but there's no point being a damn fool about it.
 
I used to envy people who had paranormal experiences and believed it'd never happen to me. Then it did, over and over, and I realised that it always had done; it just felt normal because it is.
 
I've gradually and sadly concluded, over two decades, that almost no Fortean phenomena are actually real, no ghosts (as independent non-corporeal entities), no lake monsters (for the most part, possible a big eel or two), no aliens, no yowies or bigfoot no 'ESP'. Most of this stuff rumbles on without ever producing any tangible evidence and has done for decades.

The big mystery is why so many folk need to believe in this stuff and how/why their senses are so completely taken in once they have a belief system based on the reality of 'insert Fortean thing here'.

I'm more or less in this camp. I don't think all Fortean phenomena are "equal" though. So, for example I no longer think that most cryptids are flesh and blood, though maybe there's one or two big(ish) undiscovered things in the sea, I've not believed in aliens for a long time and have had corresponding little interest.

On the other hand, "Ghosts" and "poltergeists" are a different kettle of (falling from the sky) fish. There's little to no physical reality to "them", I apologise for the irritating use of quotes, it's just all terms are loaded. I don't feel that ghosts are spirits of the dead, some appear to be something akin to recordings and some may be hallucinations- as may some cryptids, other entities and UAPs. There's enough correlation in polt cases that I think there may be something to it and that something can and does move objects, strike people, cause fires, talk and appear to either have an intelligence (of sorts) or mimics intelligence, which is scarier. There's little in the way of physical evidence to study, I think all or almost all "ghost" photos are faked and one can only study the sounds recorded by polts, they appear camera shy, I don't know that any definitive proof will be obtained. I can see why some don't believe on that basis but I, very tentatively - and with caveats, do.

I believe many conspiracies happen all the time but do not believe in the meta-narrative, NWO, Elders of Zion, cabal of men pulling all the string type "meta-conspriacies". Of course the rich and powerful have influence but they aren't "steering the ship" as it were.

I think fairies and other miscellaneous entities are possibly hallucinations. Not sure what I make of SHC, it may be the slow-burn "wick effect" or something else.

I don't think it's a mystery why people believe in weird/outlandish/supernatural stuff, we are clearly programmed to do so and are a rationalising rather than a rational species, even tedious hardcore, Dawkins-esque atheists have an emotional attachment to their much vaunted "rationalism" and many will hold political views that other people find irrational. The views of your opponent are usually irrational.

I do not applaud Fortean stuff going "mainstream" in any way: look at the Flat Earth bollocks gaining traction, or all manner of conspiracies or people deciding that the UK has a population of flesh and blood bigfoots hiding (with govt collusion of course) in tunnels or whatnot. This is entirely the fault of the web, God help us all.
 
I don't feel that ghosts are spirits of the dead, some appear to be something akin to recordings and some may be hallucinations

I believe epilepsy has a lot to answer for here. Not everyone with epilepsy has full-blown seizures so someone might have the condition without knowing.

They can have range of symptoms such as fear, anxiety, deja vu, a feeling of being watched, a conviction of being in the presence of others whether human or spiritual, and so on. They can have 'absences' which might give an impression of time slips.

All these experiences are very real to a sufferer and they might become quite indignant at the suggestion that it's literally 'all on their head'. I've been personally attacked on'ere for discussing that very possibility! It made me sure that the other poster was worried about it.

Here in the UK anyone who tells their doctor they might have had a seizure, or who comes to medical notice after a sudden health issue like fainting that suggests epilepsy, will lose their driving licence on the spot. So who's going to let a doctor know? I wouldn't.
 
I think the question "why" people believe stuff is incredibly loaded. It pretends - in the case of psi, apparitions and the like at least (conspiracy theories are clearly a different matter) - that the answer isn't known and obvious.

People believe in X because people experience X...or at least others who they know or trust experience it.

I've never - as far as I know - seen a ghost. But im pretty damn sure if I ever did do (and other people clearly do, whatever the nature of a ghost may be, so its an experience that can be had) that someone who wasn't there telling me it just wasn't so would have very little traction with me.

To me, committed disbelief is the more intriguing mystery.
 
I believe epilepsy has a lot to answer for here. Not everyone with epilepsy has full-blown seizures so someone might have the condition without knowing.

They can have range of symptoms such as fear, anxiety, deja vu, a feeling of being watched, a conviction of being in the presence of others whether human or spiritual, and so on. They can have 'absences' which might give an impression of time slips.

All these experiences are very real to a sufferer and they might become quite indignant at the suggestion that it's literally 'all on their head'. I've been personally attacked on'ere for discussing that very possibility! It made me sure that the other poster was worried about it.

Here in the UK anyone who tells their doctor they might have had a seizure, or who comes to medical notice after a sudden health issue like fainting that suggests epilepsy, will lose their driving licence on the spot. So who's going to let a doctor know? I wouldn't.

Very possibly, someone may have epilepsy for years without knowing - a friend was only diagnosed after he had a seizure in front of I and another person, he may have had it since childhood but had never had a seizure with a witness before then.

I think some "weird shit" - cryptids/other creatures, spirits, UFOs may be hallucinations (for lack of a better term) that might be partially externally generated - i.e. something(s) in the enviroment interacting with a person's brain and body to produce something that might seem very real to them. The brain/mind may make sense of these stimuli by causing someone to see or hear a bigfoot type creature in the countryside for example. It seems "real" but there's nothing physically there. It may be some people are more prone to this than others and there may be all sorts of factors that influence this. Just a theory and one that possibly isn't falsifiable but I ain't a scientist. So nerr.
 
I think the question "why" people believe stuff is incredibly loaded. It pretends - in the case of psi, apparitions and the like at least (conspiracy theories are clearly a different matter) - that the answer isn't known and obvious.

People believe in X because people experience X...or at least others who they know or trust experience it.

I've never - as far as I know - seen a ghost. But im pretty damn sure if I ever did do (and other people clearly do, whatever the nature of a ghost may be, so its an experience that can be had) that someone who wasn't there telling me it just wasn't so would have very little traction with me.

To me, committed disbelief is the more intriguing mystery.

But some people believe "X" without having experienced "X"?

Committed disbelief is ultimately belief - "I believe UFOs aren't real." This is more philosophical territory I suppose.
 
something(s) in the enviroment interacting with a person's brain and body to produce something that might seem very real to them.

Like the low-frequency vibrations that make people's eyeballs wobble and convince them they've seen a ghost?
 
I think I just like a good story, and if there's proof something weird genuinely has happened, so much the better. But it's all about perception, and that's down to people, who can believe the most incredible garbage despite all evidence to the contrary, yet on the other hand can use their imaginations to think up amazing concepts that can even turn out to be true. So up with people! Well, some people.
 
But some people believe "X" without having experienced "X"
Well yes...but that's covered in the category of accepting the bona fides of others whom we trust and who have experienced X.

Besides, there's no mystery in believing things without direct experience......we do so with most of the world around us. We accept everything from the chemical composition of the air, the existence of Chad and the earth's place in the cosmos without doing anything much to personally test that these things are really so. We take the word of others who we trust to have tested or experienced these things. We don't say until I've been to Chad i refuse to accept there is such a place. That's not the same as saying we do or should believe everything other people tell us. It's just pointing out that lack of direct experience is no impediment to acceptance if enough of the right people attest to a thing convincingly.

It is true though that lack of personal experience seems to be the common element in disbelief. "I'll believe in ghosts when I see one" is a common refrain...and an interesting one. It's honest at least. But it neglects its own implications. That direct eye witness testimony is of real value...a notion that is rejected when the witness is someone else!
 
Well yes...but that's covered in the category of accepting the bona fides of others whom we trust and who have experienced X.

Besides, there's no mystery in believing things without direct experience......we do so with most of the world around us. We accept everything from the chemical composition of the air, the existence of Chad and the earth's place in the cosmos without doing anything much to personally test that these things are really so. We take the word of others who we trust to have tested or experienced these things. We don't say until I've been to Chad i refuse to accept there is such a place. That's not the same as saying we do or should believe everything other people tell us. It's just pointing out that lack of direct experience is no impediment to acceptance if enough of the right people attest to a thing convincingly.

It is true though that lack of personal experience seems to be the common element in disbelief. "I'll believe in ghosts when I see one" is a common refrain...and an interesting one. It's honest at least. But it neglects its own implications. That direct eye witness testimony is of real value...a notion that is rejected when the witness is someone else!

Chad Kroeger? I wish he wasn't real.

I see what you're saying but is the evidence for the existence of Chad the same as that for weird phenomena? Again not all weird phenomena is equal or Chads (see above). I mean Chad appears on maps, there are photos of it, it has embassies, one can meet people who have been there and been from there. I suppose there are photos of weird shit, and people can see they've seen it, though it doesn't tend to have embassies...

Isn't someone saying they've seen weird shit more akin to gossip and hear say? Folklore if you will. Also people can be honestly mistaken - eyewitness testimony is often proven to be unreliable and easily influenced after the fact.

Someone more versed in philosophy and/or science thresh this out, I'm more of a knob gag man myself.
 
I mean Chad appears on maps, there are photos of it, it has embassies, one can meet people who have been there and been from there.
Ghosts appear in books, one can meet people who have encountered ghosts and interacted with them

Of course they're not the same thing. I'm not arguing for the non existence of Chad, nor for the blind acceptance of ghosts.

Merely saying that in and of itself lack of personal direct knowledge/experience is no impediment to accepting that other people have had direct knowledge/experience. It doesn't mean they HAVE, just that you need better reasons for assuming they haven't.
 
Ghosts appear in books, one can meet people who have encountered ghosts and interacted with them

Of course they're not the same thing. I'm not arguing for the non existence of Chad, nor for the blind acceptance of ghosts.

Merely saying that in and of itself lack of personal direct knowledge/experience is no impediment to accepting that other people have had direct knowledge/experience. It doesn't mean they HAVE, just that you need better reasons for assuming they haven't.

"Better reasons" may include: insanity, stupidity and the tendency of our species to lie or at least fantasise, I am not convinced that you need them. I am also not saying that all those who claim to have experienced weird shit are accounted for within those groupings.
 
But the existence and potential for insanity, stupidity etc apply to any knowledge we've gleaned from others. We're back to the existence of countries we've never visited.
 
The amount of "genuine" Fortean reports that were classed as 100% true in my youth that have now been completely debunked.

Really good thread Gattino!

There's still enough weird shit out there though to keep us going :)
 
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