The Ghost Of Nescience
 

I observed something recently that made me evaluate the line that divides ignorance and superstition, and tried to visualize the distance between those shores without being blinded by the invariably murky waters between them.
I didn't get far.

The scenario:
I was lying in bed and I heard the door knob to my room rattle as though someone were trying to open it. I wasn't asleep, and no one else was in the house.
The process:
My first thought was "someone's trying to open my door".
The following thought was "no one is here but me".
The third thought that followed became:
The superstition:
Is there a supernatural force causing my door to rattle?

Now, I'm a huge skeptic of all things paranormal. But due to not having an explanation at the time, my instinct was to challenge my own belief system to provide an answer.
Are my beliefs set in such a shakeable foundation? Are everyone's?

I was able to recover my questionably infallible sense of logic when, upon inspection, I remembered that my printer makes a rattling noise when it auto-aligns itself after a period of inactivity. It sounds like a door knob.
And it's sitting on a shelf, right next to my door.

I'm using that experience as a way to ask these questions:
Is superstition merely a comfort, or just a stand-in solution to a riddle until it's finally solved?
How do believers in the paranormal justify their stance? Have they had experiences they can't explain, or never had an experience and just believe because it fits their way of thinking?

I know what youre saying, I feel the same. I think its because it is always in the back of my mind. If there was no initial idea what so ever of paranormal events or activity in our minds, I think these thoughts wouldnt even canoe down our stream of conciousness. I had a semi-similar experience last night. I had a crazy ass dream about gremlins. Then when I was awake I was terrified that they might be in my house. I logically ismissed the entire thought knowing 100% it was a dream, yet I was still pretty scared. The best part is they were only like a foot tall, so in real life I would have just kicked the shit out of them. This also pertains in the slightest degree of how I feel about people that 'hallucinate' on MJ. I have had a few strange experiences on it where I thought I might have seen something out of the corner of my eye, but I didnt believe it. I think thats the difference between real hallucinations. While tripping, I definently believe whole heartedly the event that didnt eally occur, or even the object that I didnt really see. Something that sort of ties in, but is an opposite of the original discussion, is an experience I had not too long ago while experimenting with research chems. I was outside walking through the woods/graveyard at about 3am and saw a man standing there smoking a cig. I tried talking to him but he didnt talk back at all. As I approached him, I realized maybe I was just hallucinating, but had a very difficult time dismissing it from my mind. In this instance I knew I was more positive it was real then false, and this event confuses me about reality. Maybe it was a ghost! Kidding, sorry for gettin so off track. Twas a long Natty Light night.

Interesting thread Veridical :)

I think what you want to know, really, when the door knob starts shaking is if there's any kind of danger to yourself. There's a fear or worry that something dangerous is happening and that needs to represent itself somehow in the mind - is it a break-in? Is it a ghost?

From the way you write, it seems these thoughts were pretty instinctive but then you overcame them with rationality. I also force myself to think rationally when stuff like that happens. :p

This is slightly off topic (a good one by the way!), but can anyone explain this being anything other than a supernatural presence:

When I was boarding in a hall of residance (or dorm as you call it in America) which used to be an old maternity hospital, a girl on the 2nd floor woke up one night with a blue girl beside her. She thought at first it was her friend so said hello, and the figure didn't respond, but just glowed and she realised it was not normal so freaked out and ran out of her room screaming. Can you imagine that kind of thing or is it possible it was real? There had been other sightings in past years, repeatedly of a woman ghost who wandered around the stairs from ground to first floor crying out for her baby.

Could be a fever fantasy if the girl was sick.

I was once in bed with a heavy fever, yet I couldn't sleep or I was in that half-sleep stage. I "saw" one of my friends sit on the floor with his back to me, then he turned his head round slowly to face me and he had red glowing eyes. Weird, huh?

Of course I know my friend is not a ghost and I had a fever which sorta makes it easy to explain and cope with. :p

I have also had one of these 'fever fantasies' I was sick and saw small twisters all over the house. I ran out onto the farm and saw them there as well. I was a youngin', I remember running around in my PJ's. Sorry Verid for destroyin the thread so far with stories.

we call 'em both. res hall is more formal of the two. the Brits are all about that 'dormitory' business though.

This is a bit of a stretch but when someone dreams its caused from the brain naturally releasing dimethyltriptomine. It might be possible that she was in the middle of a dream and thus woke up with enough DMT in her system to still be hallucinating.

Back on topic, I've always viewed superstition as a manifestation of fear. People expect the worst to be true so they counteract it with paranormal comfort thoughts.

Interesting replies. :)

To add to the pot a little:
I always hear people's personal supernatural experience stories start with "when I was a child".
To me, that automatically lowers the credibility level somewhat considering how powerful a child's imagination is. When I was a kid, I remember laying down to sleep and seeing a zombie head float up from the bottom bunk. Scared the shit out of me.
I mean, everyone knows zombie heads can't float. ;)

Some believers in the paranormal might say that children are more sensitive to spiritual manifestations because they haven't been dulled and desensitized by logic over time.
I don't believe that.
I say that logic merely counters the tendency to freely imagine things into perceptual existence.
You grow up and learn how things work. Suddenly magic turns out to be only an illusion. It's not that we're killing off all the faeries, it's just that we're learning they never existed in the first place.

Dormitory seems so...old. Hall of residence seems far more formal and appropriate to me.

True, but it doesn't explain the fact that she felt a cold wave beside her, and the people who spotted that woman it can't have just been made up when more than one person saw her. Just saying.

You have to be critical to what you hear as well. It's an annoying thing to be told, I'm sure, because in the end - the argument implies you basically can't trust anyone. But the truth is in some cases, "thought I saw" quickly becomes "saw" somewhere down the line of storytellers.

I've told this before, but it seems appropriate to the thread, between the ages of 16 and 18 i experienced 5 events that are utterly unexplainable. Believe me, ive sifted through my rational reference points, my past experience and flirted with every logical possibility, but i always come to the same conclusion.

If you're ever up to it, I'm interested in hearing about those events.
Even though I'm a skeptic, I'm constantly trying to challenge my beliefs as a way to test how strong they really are. So rest assured, I listen with an open mind. I just always end up internally debating with ideas until they eventually break down into something that fits my ideology.
Being able to debate them with others is a welcome change.

I guess it makes most logical sense to believe that superstition is just a comfort, since most things that we just can't explain we tend to try to provide paranormal explanations for. In my opinion, this is evidenced by religion, when they conjured god, and such.
As science slowly progresses we are slowly discovering more and more explanations for things that were previously believed to be that of God's doings. Now some of these appear rather ridiculous when we look back in retrospect.
Now sometimes people may seem to attribute superstition to strange events that cannot be explained. Most of these are easily disproved with a little knowledge of abnormal psychology and such. And others that right now may appear to unexplainable may be better explained as more neuroscience research comes up. Currently, the question "How does the brain work?" is one of the hottest topics in research right now. But because the brain works in such an intricate manner it is nearly impossible to answer that question, but enough is known that nearly all abnormal phenomena a can be explained in conclusive scientific way. So, it would be interesting to hear your stories Stu, and see if they can be explained by recent advances. Because I honestly can't possibly believe in all this superstitious crap.

Well it all centred in my old house, specifically my room (always good...), i'd been living there since i was 4 months old and experienced nothing to my knowledge until i was around 17.

My cat had been acting strangely a couple of days before it started happening, one night we heard it screetching and hissing, went upstairs to see what wa wrong and we found her hiding behind my mums bed trembling hardcore.

Then a couple of days later it was just me and my sister, we were both downstairs watching TV when suddenly i heard an almighty crash from my bedroom. I ran upstairs not knowing what to expect and found my tv pretty much in bits on my bedroom floor. What was inexplicable about this was that my TV was on a shelving unit secured to the wall by 7 inch nails - the shelf was completely intact so the only way it could of fallen was by being pushed off. Yet my sister was the only other person in and she was in the same room as me.

The very next day i came home to an empty house and found my wardrobe had been pushed over onto my bed, now my wardrobe is pretty big, nobody in my house (i lived with 3 women, me dad was hardly there) would of been able to move it plus why the hell would they?!

Later on that night i AGAIN heard a crash, this time my mum ran up with a golf club bless her and found my bottom rung on the bookshelf had been smashed - like somebody had dropped a heavy object on it. There was hardly any books on it so it couldnt of been the weight.

Nothing else happened for a few days and then i went on holiday to Ibiza with my mates for my 18th. While i was gone my mum had a huge argument with my dad and consequently slept in my room for the night. She was awoken in the early hours by what she thought was somebody whispering to her, she focused her eyes and saw a silhouette standing by my wardrobe looking at her in bed. She thought it was my dad and told him where to go but it just stood there silent before just seemingly disappearing. She was ****ting it and never went back in my room.

I came home after a week and all was ok for a few days after. Then one night i was trying to get to sleep when i suddenly felt my mattress sloop down as if somebody was sitting on it, i shot up and turned my light on but there was nobody there - yet there was a clear indent on my mattress where somebody had just been sitting, and it was slightly warm to touch.

After that nothing happened for months. Then one eve in january i think a couple of mates were over before we went to a gig, it was a free house so we went over the road to get alcohol. NOTE no alcohol had been consumed at this point. Upon returning, me and one of the guys were ahead of the others and i took out my keys to unlock the door. As i went to put my hand on the door handle it suddenly shook violently like somebody was trying to open it from the otherside. We recoiled away in horror thinking there was a burgler, then, armed with bottles of beer (seriously), we stormed in and searched the place. Absolutely nothing. The dogs were in their basket happy as larry (and no, they were far too small to reach the handle, even by jumping up) and the place was spotlessly tidy and kept. No sign of anything.

Two nights before we moved out, my big sister ws down for a visit and we were all in the kitchen eating dinner when suddenly she shrieked and dropped her fork in her food... it turns out as she was eating she had seen a dark haired boy peering around the bannister watching her as she ate. She said his eyes were undescribably hollow and dark and that he ran back up stairs when she saw him. My sister is a complete sceptic, she has no belief in the paranormal and thinks people that do are irrational. So for her of all people to experience this after what happened previously really made me think.

I have not fabricated or exagerrated any of this, i have no reason to. The fact 5 separate people (me, my mum, 2 of my sisters and my freind), 2 of which had no idea of previous events, experienced phenomena is startling to me. The majority of them were also sceptics.