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Misperceptions

Just the other day I was sitting at the computer listening to a band by the name of Sabbat when all of a sudden I hear a voice whispering directly into my right ear. This scared the absolute shite out of me, and caused me to spin around, expecting to see someone behind me. But of course there was nothing there, which creeped me out just a little.

I gave that song I was listening to another listen, and surely enough it was just a part of the song, but it scared the crap out of me that second time too. For some reason the whispered vocal section sounds as if someone's whispering directly into your ear.
 
And there's also the whole thing about them attacking people seemingly for no reason. (There is a reason, but the first you find out about it is when they attack.)

Are you sure it was pecking at seeds? My parents are convinced it's the cockroaches they go after on their roof.
 
I think most folks get spasms from time to time. I usually get them in my leg. The muscle twitches and if you were in a certain frame of mind, you could almost think an invisible finger had just prodded you. Happens more when I'm tired.... :cry:
 
This is a story my dad sometimes tells.

For a short time during the early years of WW2 he was billeted in London. One night when he thought things would be relatively quiet because it was fairly windy he was crossing Hyde Park when he got caught in an air-raid and decided to make a run for a shelter near Marble Arch. While running for his life in the pitch dark he became aware of an amorphous white shape keeping pace with him, fluttering just behind his left shoulder and right on the edge of his field of vision. When he turned his head to see what it was there was nothing there and when he faced straight ahead again the fluttering shape would reappear in his peripheral vision. Caught between the bombs and the thought that he was being tailed by a ghost he decided the bombs were probably more dangerous and legged it across Hyde Park for all he was worth.

When he reached the entrance to the shelter the thing was still there - he turned full circle but whatever it was stayed just out of his direct sight - until he realised it was the enormous army issue handkerchief he‘d had clamped to his face for most of the day, due to what he describes as the worst cold he’s ever had in his life, fluttering in the night breeze. He’d let go of it and it had caught somehow in his webbing and was trailing in the wind behind him as he ran.

Funny how panic can turn the bloody obvious into something very mysterious. It may be the tunnel vision thing that some people report happening when they've got caught up in a disaster - all normal services, mental and physical, being suspended apart from the ones which are essential to carry out that one task upon which your survival depends.

My dad’s apparent wussiness can be forgiven though - he’d contracted his cold the night before when, not two hours after he’d arrived in London, another air-raid had more or less completely obliterated the shower block he’d been using - everything apart from the stall he was stood up in.
 
I wrote on the 'misperceptions' thread how I once got an involuntary muscle spasm in the region of my lower back/waist that felt perfectly like somebody cheekily prodding me.

I do seem to be prone to this sort of thing. Also once while shopping in Asda I developed cramp in my lower buttock area that felt like I had been violently kicked up the arse!!!! :laughing: You never know, perhaps that one was a ghost.
 
anome said:
And there's also the whole thing about them attacking people seemingly for no reason. (There is a reason, but the first you find out about it is when they attack.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, did you hear about that guy who was pecked in the eye and DIED from brain injuries? I think it was a year or so ago.

My brother had one at his house that he was convinced had a personal vendetta against him. He tried to trick it, wearing a hat and sunglasses (?!) and leaving the house by the back door, but it still went for him every day. He also watched to see if it went for any one else, but apparently it only had eyes for him!

anome said:
Are you sure it was pecking at seeds? My parents are convinced it's the cockroaches they go after on their roof.
Click to expand...

Could be... If it is pecking cockroaches then it must be doing a superb job, because I never see any in the house.
 
These are exactly the type of experiences that I'm talking about (including the ghostly kick in the arse! haha!). Thanks for sharing.

I'm sure that most poltergeist "attacks" are nothing more than misperceived muscle spasms, etc. What I think is really interesting about is how easily own bodies become "other" when such misperception occurs.
 
Gnomey g said:
Just the other day I was sitting at the computer listening to a band by the name of Sabbat when all of a sudden I hear a voice whispering directly into my right ear. This scared the absolute shite out of me, and caused me to spin around, expecting to see someone behind me. But of course there was nothing there, which creeped me out just a little.

I gave that song I was listening to another listen, and surely enough it was just a part of the song, but it scared the crap out of me that second time too. For some reason the whispered vocal section sounds as if someone's whispering directly into your ear.
Click to expand...

They probably recorded that bit with holophonic recording techniques, to give the impression that someone was whispering into your ear. It's amazing what can be done with sound these days.
 
haha! same thing happened to me one day while listening to the Queens of the Stone Age "No One Knows" on the radio. There is a whispering voice under the main vocal line during the chorus. I was working in the garage at the time, and due to the acoustics in the place it sounded like someone whispering in my ear. I had a good start! :D
 
Two or three years ago, I was on vacation with my family and I had dragged my girlfriend along. We were all staying in an apartment, and the two of us had a tiny bedroom with two twin beds, each with the head of the bed against the wall opposite the door.

The first night we were there, we closed the door and turned out the lights to go to sleep. The room, which was perfectly fine and rather cute with the lights on, immeadiately became incredibly disturbing in the dark.

For one thing, the doorless closet had kind of an ethereal glow coming from the inside of it. The closet seemed normal enough earlier in the day, but now it had decided to glow in the dark. Was this a portal to another dimension? Is this where closet monsters came from? Maybe this was how that blob got into the room...?

Ah, the blob.

The wall opposite our beds was completely blank all day, but as soon as the lights went out, a large shapeless black blob appeared right in the middle of it. With her vivid imagination, my memories of stories on this board about shadow people and stickmen, and the fact that we both have bad eyesight... the blob was obviously of supernatural origins!

We stared at it for maybe an hour, confused and scared and not wanting to move for fear it would attack us. It took a long while, but I finally got up the courage to walk across the room and figure out what this shadow mass was that manifested in our room.

Ends up, there was a mirror on the back of our door. Moonlight through our window cast a shadow under a shelf with some object on it that was on one of our walls, and this whole thing was reflecting in the mirror. This was the strange blob on our previously "blank" wall.

We checked the closet the next day and found a vent in it (near the bottom) that led to the kitchen. Our closet was glowing because we left the kitchen light on.

Both of us were about 16, and still scared of monsters in the dark! How sad. :roll: [/i]
 
I just had a little misp. sitting right here at the computer. I have a pewter mug of water nearby, and it seemed to have a bright blue fleck of something floating on it.

Now sometimes at work I've got flecks of blue paint in my hair (from the cage where we keep bottled gas), so my first thought was that one of these had fallen into the mug. But closer inspection revealed that the blue fleck was a reflection of the ON light on my computer!

I'd not seen this before, because the mug has to be nearly full of water, and in a particular position.


Web Site Issues: either my perceptions are getting really screwed up, or the board is! I just replied to a post on another thread, and was surprised to see that the reply format had changed to a new style.

I then came to this thread and found the thread itself in the new style - but the reply format is still old style! :?

EDIT: Now the thread is back 'old style'!
 
Many years ago I was a member of fandom and had gone to a convention (Eastercon???) Well at that time I also used to smoke roll-ups. At one room party one of the participants threw a couple of tins in my direction and asked me to "skin up"

I opened one tin and saw some dark strange smelling tobacco and rolled a cigarette passing it back to the donor.

The reefer was set afire with great ceremony and various people took long drags carburetting furiously and commenting on how good this sh*t was

Before it got to me however I opened the other tin and saw a lump of dark brown resinous substance that should have been crumbled into the cigarette. :oops:

I said nothing but watched several people getting high as kites on a strong, but plain, rolling tobacco. Seems like a cheep way to get high to me except I cannot any more as I have given up. I'll have to stick to retsina
 
The Invasion from Outer Space

Great thread. Thanks, rynner!

Several years ago, I lived with my then boyfriend in San Francisco. One night, just before falling asleep, we both caught a glimpse of movement out the room's only window, a tiny window that gave only a view of the sky.

A fleet of dark-colored UFOs was flying over our city under the bright night sky (a sky lit from city lights, of course)! There were a great many of the UFOs, and they just kept coming!

After a few terrifying moments, we realized that the "UFOs" were the background, that is, the sky as seen through holes in the foreground, which was a fast-moving, and dense fog.

:roll:

The misperception was probably the result of watching too many SF movies and far too much SF television.

(Which probably also accounts for dreaming about cannibal nuns two nights ago -- but that's a different thread altogether.)
 
I said nothing but watched several people getting high as kites on a strong, but plain, rolling tobacco. Seems like a cheep way to get high to me except I cannot any more as I have given up. I'll have to stick to retsina
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Ah, the power of suggestion...when I was in high school a friend of mine rolled up some catnip and sold it to someone, who came back later asking for more as it was such good weed. :roll:
 
When I was little, and still living with my parents, the garden path ran right next to my (ground floor) bedroom window. An old oak tree stood three feet from my window, and every autumn, the path would be covered in very crispy leaves.

One autumn, I was woken up in the middle of the night by a dragging "scrunnnnnnch! scrunnnnnnch!" noise, as if someone was walking slowly up and down past my bedroom window, dragging their feet. Our garden had a seven-foot wall, three locks on the gate, and was impossible to get in to without several keys (long story involving making it relative proof). No-one should have been there at that time of night. Being the brave little soldier that I was, I hid under the quilt until I passed out with incipient asphyxiation. :oops:

The next, night, I heard the same "scrunnnnnch! Scrunnnnnnch! Scrunnnnnnch!" noise, getting louder as it approached my window, and fading as the Walker went past. I lifted my head cautiously from the pillow, and twitched aside a fraction (not too much - I didn't want the Walker to know I was there) of the curtain. The noise was fading into the distance, and the garden was empty. :eek!!!!:

The third night (it's always the third night in stories, isn't it?), I heard the noise again. Scrunnnnch! Scrunnnnnch! Scrunnnnch! Checking that I had a clear run to my parents' bedroom in case of nasty-ghostly-walking-things-with-fangs-and-talons, I got out of bed, stood up, and opened the curtains. There, directly below my window, stood a large fat badger, gathering dried oak leaves for his winter bedding. :oops:
 
drbastard said:
I wrote on the 'misperceptions' thread how I once got an involuntary muscle spasm in the region of my lower back/waist that felt perfectly like somebody cheekily prodding me.

I do seem to be prone to this sort of thing. Also once while shopping in Asda I developed cramp in my lower buttock area that felt like I had been violently kicked up the arse!!!! :laughing: You never know, perhaps that one was a ghost.
Click to expand...

I get this too, although with me it feels like someone pinching my bum. So either it's muscle spasm, or a particularly randy ghost stalking me.
 
Leaferne said:
I said nothing but watched several people getting high as kites on a strong, but plain, rolling tobacco. Seems like a cheep way to get high to me except I cannot any more as I have given up. I'll have to stick to retsina
Click to expand...

Ah, the power of suggestion...when I was in high school a friend of mine rolled up some catnip and sold it to someone, who came back later asking for more as it was such good weed. :roll:
Click to expand...

When I was child, my friend and I stole her father's cigarette papers, and pulled up some grass and tried to smoke it...actual green grass. Needless to say it didn't work.

For a few days, I heard the most terrific, horrifying blood-curdling screams beneath my window. I was convinced that even if the noises were natural (which surely they were too bone-chilling to be) something was being horribly killed beneath my window every night.

Then it turned out it was foxes having sex.

Apparently it's quite painful? Hence the screaming.

And not that I'm against foxes having a sex life, but must it be below my window every frelling night!!!! :cry:
 
I've got a curved bay window in my front room, well, three ordinary windows, set in a curve. They reflect off each other, particularly when one or more of the individual windows is open. About once a week, I'll come out of the kitchen or something, and out of the corner of my eye, glimpse the ghostly reflection of a woman somewhere in the roo - oh no, hang on, it's me again. Every single time, I fall for it! Either the fact that it's a reflection of a reflection (of a reflection) confuses one's perception, or I'm gifted with an astonishing level of stupidity.

(I get the spasm thing as well, btw, sometimes it feels like a punch, sometimes like something is crawling on me, leading to a comedy morris-dance type thing as I leap up and flail around battering myself on the leg or wherever, till I realise there was nothing there.)
 
cherryhinton said:
(I get the spasm thing as well, btw, sometimes it feels like a punch, sometimes like something is crawling on me, leading to a comedy morris-dance type thing as I leap up and flail around battering myself on the leg or wherever, till I realise there was nothing there.)
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I get the crawly thing too! Even when I haven't just found a huge wolf spider in the laundry.
 
Last week I drove home on my bicycle and as I parked it in front of my house I looked up at the stars and thought:

1) There's quite a lot of stars visible although it's not quite dark yet.
2) There's a bright star.
3) It's getting brighter! No it's not a star, it must be a helicopter searchlight.
4) It's dimming again, there must be clouds passing by. No, the sky is clear, it can't be clouds.
5) What the heck was that?
6) It was a meteor! No, it stayed in the same place.

All in a matter of seconds. Later I checked it and of course it was an Iridium flare. I went to look the next day and (by coincidence) I saw it again, at almost the same time in almost the same spot.

Funny thing is that I had been looking for it a year ago and then I saw nothing. And now I caught it by coincidence ...

I can recommend it, it's an interesting phenomenon.
 
Tyger_Lily said:
This is more of an aural misperception but the first track on the Julian Cope album Saint Julian is Trampoline and there's a guitar effect which always sounded like my sister calling my brother's name!
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I thought I was the only one. Pink Floyd s' "The Wall" album which I have probably listened to five hundred times plays a background track that sounds like children playing on a playground. You can hear the playground equipment and the kids shouting and the whole bit. In it you can hear a child calling out loudly to another child. It sounds EXACTLY like me when I was a child calling out to my sister, Nicole. The child screams "NICOLE, COME HERE!!" at the top of its voice. . . at least I'd SWEAR that is what is being said. I've played it to my parents, my husband, friends and of course my sister. They can hear it too. It's kind of strange to listen to.
:shock:
~Kim~
 
Hi all. HI KIM. I'm sure there's a Bruce Dickinson song off one of his solo albums thats like that. I made some very pathetic noises when i heard that one.....with a sprinkling of choice words. :?
 
Sorry had'nt had my shot of caffiene when i typed that.sorry blakta. :roll:
 
One night I was getting ready to put the kids to bed. We had turned off all the lights downstairs, except for the one at the foot of the stairs. As we were passing our front door, which has a 4 foot oval beveled glass window, I was startled to realize that I could see two ghostly figures out on our front porch. There faces were sort of fuzzy, with dark spaces where their eyes should be, but no other discernible features. I could make out that they were wearing long flowing gowns. They appeared to be floating, rather than standing on the porch, and the darkness beneath their gowns suggested that their feet didn't incorporate with them.

I looked once, twice, and still the ghostly figures stood there, sort of swaying back and forth in place. I literally couldn't believe my eyes. Why, after all my interest in everything fortean, were ghosts suddenly showing up on my front porch? My first thought was that I had to try to make sure that the kids didn't see them--I was sure they'd be given nightmares for life.

I must have stopped short and been standing for longer than I realized, because one of my daughters asked what I was waiting for, why I wasn't going on up the stairs. While she was talking, a dark space opened and closed on the face of one of the "ghosts", approximately where the mouth would be.

A little testing later, with moving the kids about, turning the porch light on and off, etc, and I had determined that the ghosts were the images of my daughters in their nightgowns being refracted through the beveled glass and reflected off the porch windows. I was fooled because their reflections were distorted by the front door window into appearing taller than my daughters (they were four years old at the time, but the reflections looked like small women), and because I wasn't in the reflection (I was wearing black clothes). The illlusion was completely realistic, as good as any movie FX. I wonder how many other "ghosts" are the product of light reflection and refraction.
 
Today I was told of someone who's convinced he has a ghost, because his TV keeps turning on in the night. Now he won't even sleep in that room.

Tonight I remembered I had a TV that did that...

..it turned out that the TV had an Alarm function, which had accidently been set for a certain time, and turned itself on then.


I'll pass this info on to my informant to tell his pal. If it turns out it is an alarm function doing this, then another misperception will have been explained

- if not, then I shall have a real spooky tale to investigate! :shock:
 
I was woken once, many years back, in the early hours by the most unnerving sound. As I came to my senses, I became aware that some huge creature, a dog or a pig from the sound of it, had got into my bedroom and was running around in frantic circles. Now the house was/is on the outskirts of the Birmingham conurbation, with fields behind, but there was no way, nonetheless, that any earthly creature could have got through a locked front door and upstairs to my room. I was absolutely frozen with fear. Was I dreaming? Well, this awful sound went on in the dark for half a minute and then faded slowly away as this creature presumably found its way back to wherever it had come from. All was eventually silent, and I managed a few more hours sleep, already convincing myself that I had had some kind of vivid dream.

The next day, watching the local news on TV, I had what you might call a Homer Simpson "D'oh!" moment, as the programme was all about... you guessed it: a small earthquake that had hit the Midlands in the early hours. Only then did I remember the previous small 'quake in the area, some years before, that had caused the old leaded lights (since replaced) in my bedroom windows to rattle! It's probably the first and last time that watching the news has helped me sleep easier in my bed!
 
Nice posts, those ghosts and the earthquake! I've just a small one to add:

Last Saturday I was cycling home, the sun was setting and I saw a bright light in the sky. This went on in my head:

1) What a bright light. This can't be a star, it certainly is the landing light of an airplane.
2) I hear the plane coming over. See, I was right!
3) Hey! The light is still in the same place! It must be Mars, I read that it's very close to the Earth. That's why it's so bright!

Then I saw the light on successive evenings. One evening I even saw it between the clouds. This looked almost as if it was under the clouds. This looked very UFO-like.

Finally I looked it up on the Internet. It was Venus after all :D
 
The earthquake story reminded me of the time I was upstairs in my house and very clearly heard the sound of someone/something crashing around in my kitchen, throwing pots and pans all over the place. Both my dogs were upstairs with me and there was nobody else in the house. I was petrified that some psychopath had broken in and was on a destructive rampage downstairs. I locked both the dogs in a bedroom and crept downstairs, almost fainting with fear, to see what was making this unearthly racket. I peered round the corner into my kitchen, to be confronted with the horrific sight of...my washing machine on a spin cycle. It must have gone off balance and crept a couple of inches to one side and was pushed against my dishwasher and was shaking it, along with all the pots and pans in there.
 
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