There is
always a more rational, alternate explanation.
I suffer occasionally (rarely) from something called sleep paralysis. During these episodes, I have felt and experienced things that I could have very easily interpreted as terrifying and unexplainable realities. The first time it happened, I absolutely
was not right for the rest of the day. I was literally experiencing symptoms that people often describe in relation to alien abduction, or a visitation from some sort of demonic entities. I'll go into detail if anyone is interested.....
Anyway, I was kept sane by the fact that I am not the sort of person who
wants to believe in such things, and thus I came to understand what sleep paralysis was and how very well equipped the human mind is at playing tricks on us. Dirty, dirty tricks.
Anybody I've ever talked to about their own perceived paranormal experiences has always made it clear that they're perfectly willing to accept a paranormal explanation - they don't want to closely examine the possibility that they were tricked, or that they fell victim to some sort of fraudulent display or a hoax. That sort of credulity is somewhat laughable to me. Take my wife for an example. She is downright convinced that ghosts exist and that she witnessed one before. "Her great grandmother visited her one night"
Well, one morning she asked me why I had gone in to the living room a bit earlier. I explained to her that I had been lying there beside her, wide awake, for over an hour, and that I had
not been in the living room. She wasn't too hard to convince, and she easily accepted that she must have been dreaming but simply could not clearly differentiate the two states which must have
overlapped a bit just as she awoke.
If she had been dreaming of a
dead person in the living room, she would have believed that she had seen a ghost, and as she told the story to people over and over throughout the years - the allowance for an alternate explanation would become lesser and lesser until the story became absolutely solid and devoid of any sort of loopholes. To be fair, I believe that people do this unconsciously most of the time.
I've discussed this with her in relation to her ghost story, and I've found that some of the elements that she described to me earlier are already missing. Like that part about her having been asleep and in bed prior to seeing the ghost....
. When I point this stuff out to her she almost seems offended. Oh well...
When I was younger, it seemed like my friends were always talking about haunted houses and stuff like that. There were deserted houses that we would go to. Every little creak, noise, or "creepy" vibe that they felt while there was considered evidence for the haunting. I think that some people never totally grow out of such behavior.
By the way, if anybody can actually provide evidence for any sort of paranormal phenomenon - they should go immediately and collect on the James Randi Million Dollar Challenge!
