<|:D\-<
The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
(British Steel was participating in awesomeness on, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 6:06, Reply)

Is it just me

Almost everyone has a mobile phone with a camera, I have one myself

In fact was one of the first people in the UK to send in photos used worldwide during a major event (London bombings)

You have had a camera with you at all times for at the very least the past 3 years.
There are many spooky stories of ghosts and strange objects in the sky here and not one credible photo.

Someone care to explain? Or are they all camera shy?
( Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 3:41, 2 replies)

in my old house
just after my little brother had been born, we found out that there was a ghost in his bedroom.

although we never actually saw it, we heard it. we had a baby monitor by his bedside and the reciever was wherever my mum was. one night after putting baby_arsewipe to bed, me and my mum were sat downstairs watching tv, when a strange noise came from the monitor. it sounded a little bit like a screaming cat, but we didn't have a cat...

that one freaked me and mum out.

another incident was when i was asleep in my bed, when i was awoken by a girls voice calling my name (i don't have a little sister) i couldn't move but i felt a prickly heat down my back, i knew there was something/one there.
(LiL_Arsewipe licked your face on, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 2:16, 1 reply)

Again, I am not a crackpot.
I swear I'm not.

When I was a teensy nipper of around 10, me and a couple of mates were playing at a nearby coal bing, scooting around a little track on my mate's mountain bike and timing each other on my cousin's snazzy digital watch.

As my mate hurtled over the grass, a large..... thing sprang out and made a grab at the rear tyre, then disappeared into the grass again. I shat myself. I turned to ask my cousin if he had saw it but he was already saying "Did you see that thing take a bite at the bike?" When my friend got back to us, he didn't know what the hell we were talking about, he hadn't noticed a thing.

It looked like a big dog with reddish brown hair. It might very well have BEEN a big dog with reddish brown hair, but to 3 young kids a mile from the nearest civilization, that's almost as bad as a bloody werewolf..... the thing took a snap at the bike and we had to walk through that grass to get home. Or at least two of us did.....

Well, we made it of course and never saw it again. Looking back, it may have been anything, maybe an old plastic bag or a big splash of muddy water thrown up by the bike, you know what kids imaginations are like, but it was frightening at the time, especially as both me and my cousin independently thought we'd just saw a wolf take a snap at our friend.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 2:12, Reply)

Another one.
I saw a UFO.

Ah yes. Another crackpot, I hear you say. Well, I bloody did. I saw it with my own eyes, I was sober, I was sane and I was fascinated.

It was around 14 years ago now. I was standing in my local park with two of my mates, hanging around like kids of around 16 do. It was early winter, a freezing cold clear night, and behind us in the sports field a floodlit game of football was going on. For some reason, I looked up.

And there it was.

It was boomerang shaped, for want of a better description. It was around 150 feet off the ground, moving silently and had no lights...... it was very dimly lit by the lights of the playing field behind us.... had it been stationary, we might not have seen it at all. But it was moving..... and there was no way this was any kind of jet fighter I've ever heard of. It was travelling at, I would say, around 10 miles an hour at most. It also made slight direction changes here and there, sort of zig-zagging across the sky. It passed silently and slowly over our heads, all 3 of us stood there open mouthed and silent watching it. It faded from view as it passed over the playing field as the glare of the lights obscured it.

I don't know what it was. The nearest thing I can think of would be a hang-glider...... but in pitch dark with the nearest high hill around 10 miles in the direction the thing was travelling in? I've never heard of any plane that can fly so slowly and in dead silence..... well, it was quiet enough that we never heard a sound from it, even stealth fighters make noise, though we don't have many of them in rural scotland.

I'm not a crackpot, but I can't for the life of me explain it. Though they did return later that night and probe my bottom. Alright, I made that bit up, but the rest is all true.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 1:59, Reply)

Damn you, brain..
Let me first say, like quite a few people who have posted already, that i am rather a terrible cynic. I don't believe in the paranormal (although it is extremely interesting in a cultural/psychological kind of way). I don't believe in Beardy McSkyface, fate, luck, homeopathy, acupuncture, chi, ectoplasm (even though I find THAT on a regular basis... Call it plausible deniability), the bermuda triangle, crop circles, UFOs (I'll get to that later), ouija boards, any kind of religion. You can tell I am a blast at parties...

Alot of the stories this week have been about unexplained sightings / experiences (funny that). I used to think (back when I was seventeen, knew everything and didn't use quite so many parentheses) that anyone who believed in things of this nature were mistaken, deluded or just plain idiots. Then I had an experience that made me realise something. It was a weekend trip to Amsterdam. 'What? This is a drug story! Nothing to do with the paranormal!', you shout, but hear me out.

Thing is, during the course of a long weekend in Amsterdam, I accidentally (okay, not entirely) ate a huge bunch of mushrooms. I'm talking, a little bit more than you're meant to take in one go, at least your first time. A few of my friends had rather adverse reactions to the stuff, but I escaped relatively unscathed. I did spend an entire night in the dark in our motel room (everyone else had to leave to chase one of our friends who wet himself and ran away to jump in a canal, they had to fish him out), but the experience was like nothing else I had ever had before.

It was that night I realised just how powerful the human brain is, what incredible ability it has to decieve. To put it in a really nerdy context, it's like a GeForce 99millionXT in terms of graphics processing power. People who haven't been on drugs can't really describe it - I saw things that night, not like some drunk guy who can't see properly - I actually saw the carpet turning into water, swallowing the furniture. I saw the walls bend into spirals, the door turn circular like Frodo's house in LOTR. The funny thing was that through all of this all I could think about was how amazing my brain was to be able to create these things for me - what kind of a computer would it take to be able to render the kinds of things I was seeing? And not some fuzzy, half remembered drunken antics, this was vivid. And I still remember it. I have since had similar experiences (on drugs) and these have confirmed what i thought - I'm not saying drugs are great or anything like that, they just give you a striking glimpse of what the human brain is capable of visualising. You can say that the drugs create these things, but they don't. All the drugs are doing is releasing chemicals in the brain which trigger certain parts of it to become active (or over-active).

Which brings me to my point (eventually). It's not surprising at all that so many people have paranormal, religious and spiritual experiences. In all of this, no-one really gives the brain its due credit - it is an insanely powerful machine, capable of visulising things that no-one could ever dream of - and we don't know the half of what it can do. The brain remains one of the biggest mysteries to science (one of the few things I have total faith in, if you can call it that). Be it sleep deprivation, stress, drugs, whatever trigger, the brain can, and will, do amazing things whether you ask for them or not, and often without warning.

I don't want to sound preachy or weird, but I have seen what my brain can do, and how utterly convincing it was, and it has made me a lot more understanding towards people who have had weird things happen to them, be it on drugs or not. The brain really just is the greatest liar of them all.

People who attribute their extraordinary experiences to ghosts, the almighty, or UFOs should stop and think about the most amazing thing of all... that squashy pink thing sitting between their ears. It holds all the answers. And someday, hopefully, we will learn them.

But then, do we really want to?

ooooOOOOOoooooOOOOOOOO

Its about six inches long and sits in your head, at the controls!
(fox_handybread, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 0:22, 6 replies)

When I was younger I used to have a recurring dream
where I would wake up in my bed in my room, and there would be strange shifting patterns on the ceiling, and when I tried to move, everything would be in slow motion. All I knew was something in the room was going to kill me, so I would drag myself out of bed and (slow motion) make a run for the door, realising on the way that I couldn't scream, speak or do anything other than whisper.

When I would get to the top of the stairs, I would find myself physically incapable of walking down them, and no matter how hard I knocked on my parents' bedroom door, no sound would come out - so I would throw myself (still in slow motion) down the stairs as the only way to escape the imminent doom-terror now looming invisibly behind me in the strange-patterned room... And then I'd wake up. No strange patterns. Back to sleep then. And it would start all over again. I must have had that dream more nights than I didn't for years and years, and I still have no idea what it means.

Not particularly spooky, I know, but I'd like an explanation. I'll also type up all the slightly odd things that have happened to me since if I decide they're worth it.
( Shegetz Chris Kamara's comedy moustache, Tue 8 Jul 2008, 0:12, 8 replies)

The Disappearing Monkey.
In my occupation as a rozzer I come across various strange things, all of which are explainable and down to the oddness of the general population however the only one that comes anywhere near this qotw.. Theres no witty or spooky punchline either unfortunately.

A couple of years ago I was driving along on duty (I work in a city area - a detail which wil become apparent shortly) at probably around 7 to 8 pm when I was flagged down by a motorist.

An bloke in 50's or 60's who said something like:

'I know this sounds odd but I've just gone out to get my chips and as I've come down that road (pointing to a junction he'd just pulled out of) I've seen a monkey sat on a car bonnet'

The chap seemed quite genuine and after years of dealing with people in my job you tend to get a feel for nutters and people taking the Michael, so I called it in (to some derision) and shot off to have a look.

Unfortunately I never found it, and we didn't have any reports of any lost monkeys either.

Totally random - I've heard of 'Big Cats' but Monkeys on the loose in a city?
(Titanix, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 23:34, 3 replies)

So im all alone in my apartment..
Its just gone midnight.. The only light in my room is from the screen of my laptop. And Im reading Tales of the Unexplained b3ta QOTW.

Now my mind is in overdrive. Im sure im going to see an old lady stood at my bed now. See flashing lights outside, hear strange noises, bangs, whistles etc.

Oh gawd its going to be a bad one!

Im such an idiot!
(Miggyman, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 23:08, 2 replies)

I was not going to tell this tale
for a variety of reasons, but maybe I should. It's not a funny story by any means, but it may be worth reading.

I was in a relationship with a woman years ago, a very intense relationship that I thought was going to result in marriage but was ultimately ended by circumstances- we lived five hours apart and there was no way for either of us to move. It tore me apart in ways I can't describe- or rather, I could but would rather not.

Anyway, this woman has a very strange and strong connection with me. She sees me in her dreams, in very specific ways that are impossibly accurate. Examples:

-she sketched a building in my home town in great detail, one I had never described to her and that she could not have known about. It's the local library. She even sketched the boulder in the front yard with the bronze plaque on it.

-she sketched my current house in great detail. I have never shown her a picture of it, and I bought it years after we last saw each other.

-she described the Lunatic Artist and her dog to me in great detail, without knowing that I knew such a person.

-she described to me a lighthouse I saw in California the day after I saw it, without knowing where I was at the time. The lighthouse is unusual, and she described it perfectly.

And today I got an email from her because last night she saw me lifting something in great effort, getting the impression that what I was doing was of crucial importance. Yesterday afternoon I was helping to move furniture, and we moved a large oak armoire that just about killed me- the two boys were at one end and I was at the other, and I would guess it weighs about 350 lbs.

I'm an engineer, and not given to flights of fancy or beliefs in the supernatural as a rule- I'm far too logical. Most of it I can explain in terms of commonplace things that only seem spooky. But this?

Say what you want, she sees me from many miles away. I don't know how, but she does. She has done this dozens of times.

Explain that, if you can.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Mon 7 Jul 2008, 22:57, 7 replies)

Natuaral holograms
Now this was weird. Very cool, but very weird.

Next to my bed, on the bedside cabinet, was a sort of vortex of light. Not doing anything, just sitting. Wow. Cool.

Turn on the light, it vanishes. WTF? Turn off the light, it comes back. Draw back the curtains, gone, put them back - there it is again. I can walk around it, it's all 3D.

This is so cool. So I took a photo of it.

Not spooky at all, but very strange, sort of like a natural hologram. My only guess it was some combination of the light through the window, the street lights, and maybe the moon.

Any ideas?

This was in a hotel, and it was gone the next night. Very strange.
(inflateable, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 22:53, 6 replies)

haunted my arse
A few years ago, me and my girlfriend were asked to spend the night in a haunted house, Chambercombe Manor

It's actually a really cool old cottage, and if you stay there you have the run of the place. Quite a interesting house. But then the guided tour...bloody hell.

On being shown a chest of drawers, the lady showing us round lifts all the drawer handles upright, balanced against the drawers. 'the ghosts like to knock these down' she says. I jump on the floor. The all fall down.
She glares at me. The rest of people staying there glare at me.

'This old rocking crib likes to rock on it's own. A baby once died in it.'

Again, I bounce on my toes. The thing moves. I'm giggling but suspect I may be about to be asked to leave.

One old lady whips out a pendulum and starts spinning it about. Ghosts, apparently. Another starts writing gibberish in a notepad and says spirits are guiding her hand. Oh do fuck off.

An evening unfolds of the most gullible people in the world slowly convincing themselves that there is a presence/ghost/spirit whatever. I gradually get more and more irritated.

Now, I grew up in an old house. It was noisy. It moved, creaked, groaned and banged. There were cold spots in the house for no particular reason. The cat would occasionally freak out for no particular reason. There were odd noises, and eerie groans when the wind blew from a particular direction. It wasn't haunted (though a few of my mates were convinced it was).

This place we stayed in was nearly 1000 years old, and made no noises, creepy or otherwise. It was the least creepiest or hauntiest place I've ever known. It was actually more eerie because of it's total lack of eerieness.

We went home at 2am, bored. The lady showing everyone the haunted stuff made out we were freaked out and couldn't handle it. We rolled our eyes and left them to their ouija board.

Idiots.
(inflateable, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 22:47, 2 replies)

i believe I was six at the time
I remember laying on my bed, under the covers. I had a nightlight on the one side of the room. Anyway, I remember laying on my side, back to the nightlight, trying to fall asleep...

I remember seeing a shadow pop up.. vaguely circular shaped -- can't really describe it. But there was definitely something there. It was just there for a split second and disappeared.

I was terrified, but didn't yell or do anything... I may have but the covers over my head. I don't really recall. Anyway, I calmed down, and it happened again. I want to say it was there for a little longer, maybe half a second or so, and disappeared.

I was paralyzed with fright.

I calmed myself down, but still looked for shadows. Now, one could chalk all that up to my mind playing tricks or whatnot.

Then my bed shook. Not just a little, not like a passing truck might shake your bed. I was off that bed and running to momma like a bolt of lightning. That was almost 30 years ago and it still creeps me out.
( Foxglove -- it all ends in tears anyway..., Mon 7 Jul 2008, 22:27, Reply)

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 21:56, 7 replies)

My identity revealed?
Many of my friends know me, as you fellow b3tans do, as "Crow." They, of course, know my real name, but the (partly self-inflicted) nickname of "Crow" has stuck.

This is not information I have shared with the people in my department. They think I'm weird enough without discovering my crow fixation. At most, I think 3 of them know, which includes my housemate and her boyfriend anyway.

So, during a certain football tournament involving numerous European nations, the department had a small sweepstake going on the winner. We put in a quid and drew our team out of a hat.

Yep, you guessed it. Completely unwittingly, I pulled out Croatia. Crow-atia. Oh, yeah.

That's not the spooky bit. The guy organising wrote up everyone's name on the notice board alongside the recongnised abbreviation of the country they'd drawn, thus:
Archibald FRA
Euripides ITA
Mr S Crow CRO
and so forth.

After Croatia were knocked out (and did a lot better than I expected), I glanced at the notice board to see my name crossed off. But...somebody had added a 'W' to my 'CRO' suffix. The 3 people I mentioned earlier never got involved with the sweepstake...does this mean somebody else has found out?

HOW DO THEY KNOW????

That's not actually spooky at all. Nor is it particularly interesting to read. I'd still like an explanation, mind.

Apologies for length, you should see the size of its beak.
(LongJohnBaldry, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 21:47, 1 reply)

Fremantle Prison
I'm a skeptic. Always will be. Never seen a ghost and I've read some interesting things about electro-magnetic fields and sleep paralysis that would probably spring to mind if someone mentioned them to me. Nevertheless...

Whilst travelling in Australia a few years back, we found ourselves in the Perth/Fremantle area for a week or so and duly elected to visit the (now closed) prison. And of course being the uber-hard, scared-of-nothing 19 year olds we were, we went on the night tour.

I'll admit I jumped a bit when a 'prisoner' suddenly jumped out of one of the cells. Being in the solitary cell with all the lights off in pitch darkness was pretty spooky.

But nothing could compare with the atmosphere inside the old gallows room. I didn't see anything; didn't feel 'cold' etc. Just the sheer dread of *knowing* that people had been killed in that room. I've never experienced anything like it before or since and don't really wish to again to be honest.

No apologies for length; apparently if you get it wrong the head can just fly off...
(beanojam isn't really Ricardo Flange, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 21:18, Reply)

Sleep Deprivation
Like so many people, sleeping is one of my favourite things. I love sleeping, I've slept on trains, in fields and even twenty feet away from a Formula One car being driven with gusto by David Coulthard.

So imagine my consternation a few weeks back when the rather lovely _chickenlady sharing my bed elbowed me in the ribs to whisper "Turn on the light, there's something enormous and purple in here!".

Well, naturally given those exceptional circumstances what is a gentleman to do?

However, my immediate response of "Yes darling, the fires of passion rage out of control with you whenever I look into your eyes, let's abandon ourselves to an inferno each other's arms"
_{*not necessarily an accurate description of my response, which may/may not have been "wha...amisnorinagain?"}

"Not now you idiot, can you not see the large purple elephant with yellow spots in the room?"

That Dumbo is a total bastard.
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Mon 7 Jul 2008, 20:47, 7 replies)

Vipros reminded me
I was on my way home from a LAN party in Newbury about a year ago. My boyfriend was driving and it was fairly late at night so admittedly we were both pretty tired.

Wes saw a small orange globe in the sky, it was just ahead of us. It started moving in circles and then shot off to the left. To this day i have no idea what it was.
(panda_sam, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 20:31, 5 replies)

Ghosty on the A1M Southbound!
Happened about 10 years ago, I was driving back Londonbound from a friends house in Lincoln at about 1'ish in the morning.

Was doing about 80 or so, and as I come round a slight bend in the road see a figure in the middle of the road up ahead, approaching my car rapidly...at about 80mph as it happened. Thank f*ck the road was empty and there was no one behind me, as the whole Emergency stop procedure went right out of the window as I planted my foot on the brake. As I stopped the car, what turned out to have been a woman, disappeared in front of me, and on the hard shoulder to my left was a Police car.

I pulled over and the cop got me out of the car, explained that he saw it too, and refused to let me get back on the road until I had sat down for 10 minutes and had a cup of tea.

Apparently the woman was a mentalist who walked onto the motorway earlier in the evening and got hit by a car.

First and only ever ghostly experience that was. Still not sure if I believe in them though strangely enough!
( Pixieelf got his 1st front pg. when MJ died! Double Whammy!, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 20:15, 1 reply)

Worst dream I've ever had
This was a few years back.

I awoke in the night, nothing unusual. I was lying facing the wall, nothing unusual again. However on this particular occasion I just knew and felt that something was in the room with me. And although I didn't roll over to see what was there, I still had the feeling of terror surging through me. Now, I've been scared before in my life... But never as terrified as I was on this occasion. I was physically shaking.

I'm not sure how long this went on, but it felt like ages. All the time, my mind was getting closer and closer to the conclusion that I was going to die. This thing was going to kill me.

However, a particularly brave (and until then unsurfaced) part of my psyche kicked in. I made the decision that I was not going to go down without a fight!! I decided that I would simply throw the covers back, and swing for whatever was there!!

I threw the covers off me, and swung as hard as I could manage. I got half turned around. Then. Nothing! I was lying on my back, in the bed. Completely calm. And it was light outside.

Thinking to myself what a crazy dream I had just had, I got up and went into the bathroom. Where I found out that I had bruised knuckles and a popped lip.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep very well the next few nights!!
(NoStrings Tastes like zombies!!, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 19:21, 2 replies)

Her net worth
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Goody

I mean, fucking explain that!
( Muns, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 19:20, 3 replies)

'twas a dark but actually quite pleasant night...
Last summer I was camping in a field somewhere vaguely near stonehengeish area, for I am an archaeology student and was working on the excavations.
There were 4 of us sitting in a tent having a couple of spliffs about to head off to the mess tent to join the mass drinking.
The door of the tent was open and I spotted it first - a big brown furry creature. It was not a dog or a horse or anything like that because it had no head...or legs. It sat still a couple of metres from the tent and after about 30 seconds started moving slowly towards the tent. We sat there a bit freaked out shouting "what the fuck it that?" quite a lot.
The creature stops, my friend asks who it is and why they are playing a practical joke on us. A growly voice says "I am the Shaman" to which we replied with a scream, not sure why.
The creature reached out its previously concealed arm and drops a few small objects of the floor and looks at them "The bones do not read well for you" to which we replied with another scream and promptly zipped up the tent and peered underneath the door at the creature that was still sitting close to the tent.
We sent out Mark, for he was the only man so it was his duty to protect the women. We unzipped the tent and pushed him out. Mark screams and runs back in the tent. We can still see the creature when our tent starts violently shaking yet more (slightly hoarse) screaming. The creature vanished into the darkness towards the portaloos
"He’s going to the toilets - it’s a real person"
"Even shamans need to pee" he replied
After a few minutes of hiding trying to work out if it was a group hallucination the shaman returned holding his cloak, or rather as you will have already guessed one of the other archaeology students returned holding his camping blanket, the ‘bones’ were in fact pieces of a tiny plastic Stonehenge. His friend was shaking the tent, not evil shaman magic.
Wankers, we could have died (sort of)
It was all rather dramatic.
(ecilA Alice...has nothing to do, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 19:01, 2 replies)

The third tower to fall on September 11 2001
Watching a documentary on BBC2 last night, I was reminded about this little mystery. There's also a very good website about it:

wtc7.net

For the uninitiated, I'll try to summarise it as succinctly as I can:

-Three skyscrapers came down in New York on September 11 2001, WTC1 & 2 we all remember, but WTC7 was the third one.

-The cause of the collapse was attributed to fire weakening the steel-framed structure to the point of total, simultaneous catastrophic failure of more than 80 enormous steel columns.

-It was (and remains to this day) the only skyscraper in the world to suffer total collapse as a result of fire damage.

Those points on their own merit further investigation, but then there is all the gumph added by our conspiracy theory friends...

-The building's fire alarm system was put into 'test' mode on the morning of September 11, which meant that the fires which broke out later that day could not be located and isolated.

-It housed several government agencies, including FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) whose role was to manage a response to precisely this kind of disaster

-The collapse resembles a controlled demolition in every way. It collapsed at approximately the same speed as freefall under gravity. It appeared to show no resistance to lower floors on the way down, and the destruction of the building was absolute - nothing recognisable was left at the end.

-The media reported that it had collapsed a full 20 minutes before it actually happened, then they blamed it on 'confusion, and simple human error'... As one commentator has put it: "To report that a building had collapsed before it had done so would be an odd sort of error, wouldn't it? A bit like reporting that the Lord Mayor's trousers had fallen down before they did so."

-As with the twin towers themselves, the debris from the collapse was recycled within 6 months, leaving very little evidence to examine.

And many, many other interesting snippets.

I have no particular judgement to make on this and I won't add my own opinion, as it is irrelevant. However, I would ask if anyone can offer explanations about why WTC7 came down in the way it did. I'm sure most of the other points raised can be answered one way or another, but it seems to be an inconvenient problem that the entire building suffered total collapse, without any surviving structure whatsoever. I would have expected a building that suffers major fire damage to have some parts totally destroyed, other parts totally surving and everything in between, just like every other similar event in the past.

The NIST report is due for publication later this year, but I suspect it will gloss over many of the more unusual aspects of the collapse in favour of detailed models of fires, much like the report on the twin towers themselves. There are so many valid, unanswered questions which could presumably be tackled by any willing scientific organisation given the time, it makes me rather uneasy to find that so many people are willing to accept the official explanation, which makes no sense when examined.

So, fellow QOTWats, can anyone shed any light on this intriguing matter?
( chart cat has an itch, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 18:02, 24 replies)

Past life regression
.
or "what a load of old cobblers" as it is also known.

One of my workmates went to a "regression session" recently with some friends. For 25 quid each (IIRC) they were all taken back to their past lives. They were all either famous or rich the last time out, oddly enough. What a weird coincidence!

Surely, if this was real, at least one past life experience would have followed the scenario of:

Born into extreme, grinding poverty in 16-oatcake, eked out a miserable, sickly existence for however many years, then succumbed to plague / died in childbirth / got killed in battle?

But no, they were all duchesses, princesses, actresses (having been female in their past life as well) and lived the high life til a ripe old age. The worst bit? They all believed every word .. these are all educated young women, holding down responsible jobs, and yet they're happy to blow spare cash on this tosh?

My own opinion is that the "regressor" (if that's a word) is a hypnotist, who's discovered a great way to make easy money. Still, slightly better than mugging old ladies in the street I suppose.

*stands by for flaming from Cleopatra's current incarnation*
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Mon 7 Jul 2008, 17:50, 8 replies)

I see dead people.
It all began when I was eighteen. On a nightly basis I would wake up and see shadowy figures standing at the bottom of my bed.

On one occasion I leapt out of bed, ran past this figure, out the door and was down the stairs before I properly woke up. Regularly I would wake myself with my screams from seeing these things. Often it would get so bad that I would refuse to return to my room.

I saw doctor after doctor, I saw psychiatrists too yet none of them could come up with a reasonable explanation as to why this was happening to me.

Once in the Lake District I was staying in a b&b and I awoke to see a little old lady standing at the end of the bed.

More recently I awoke to see my (then) baby son crawling up the wall above my head. I can't even begin to describe the terror and fear I felt. I jumped out of bed, turned the light on and searched under the bed then ran into his bedroom to make sure that both he and his brother were still where I'd left them…and they were.

Shortly after that I woke again to a figure standing over me and this time the figure wanted to take me with him. I fought and screamed and only after properly waking up did I realise that the (then) Mr Chickenlady was holding me back, not dragging me off to god knows where.

One GP I had some years back asked me if I believed they were ghosts….

That would be nice, wouldn't it?

Really nice to know that somehow we go on after death…even if it is to scare the bejeezus out of (relatively) innocent women in the countryside.

When the film the Sixth Sense came out, or at least the trailers for it, you know the ones, where the boy whispers that he sees dead people….I saw that at a cinema and went cold….the way it was depicted in the trailer was *exactly* what I'd been experiencing all those years.

I saw dead people.


But….

I have now found out all about these Night Terrors and just how common they are amongst children and some 'lucky' adults too. Unfortunately when I was doing the rounds of the doctors most of them seemed unaware of these and blamed sleep paralysis - but I'm not paralysed, I wake up, see the 'thing' and switch the light on.

I know now that these are entirely concocted by my overactive imagination and once the light is switched on they flee back to the darker reaches of my subconscious.

And as I'm far less scared of them now they are tending towards the ridiculous…

The other weekend we were visiting PJM's parents in Norfolk….we had a very pleasant day and after a few glasses of wine, retired for the night.

I fell fast asleep rather quickly until approximately 45 minutes later (it's always the same pattern of sleep). I opened my eyes to see….and this is no word of a lie…


A giant purple elephant sporting rather fetching large yellow spots. The elephant was attempting to walk from the bedroom wardrobe through the wall and then, obviously, down the road to rejoin the circus from whence it had come.

I quickly elbowed PJM and insisted he switch the light on to see the size of this bloody elephant….the light went on and the bugger had scarpered.

That Dumbo is a total bastard.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 17:48, 9 replies)

In 1899 John Hewey,
founder of the Rationalist Society of Melbourne (now the Rationalist Society of Australia) hung himself. His ghost is said to still haunt the Society's headquarters. Many people have reported seeing his spectral form, looking embarrassed and trying to hide.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 17:48, 3 replies)

When I was very little
I went to play at a friend's house after school one evening. She had a little home-made Wendy house thing in the back garden, with red gingham curtains and a little table and chair and all the usual stuff little girls play house with. All very sweet and cutesy-looking.

However, for some weird reason, the minute I went in there I felt scared, like I was in absolutely mortal danger and couldn't get out of there fast enough. I have no idea what it was, or why I needed to get out, I just know that something wasn't right. I've never worked out why it was, but I still remember how badly it freaked me out.
( Maladicta, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 17:39, 4 replies)

I spoke to a ghost once
When I was about fourteen, my grandmother took me on a week's holiday visiting relatives in Inverness, during which we seemed to spend every day driving to visit various touristy attractions around Loch Ness. The last day before going home, we went to visit a smallish castle (I have no idea which one), and being a sprightly young teen who by now was fed up of being dragged around by an OAP, I scooted off to visit the dungeons. Having discovered that these consisted of nothing more than a big empty stone room with a few metal railings bolted around the place for Health and Safety, I turned around to go back upstairs, but my blood turned cold when I realised I was standing face to face with the vision of a young lady in shabby heavy-looking clothes.

I can't remember details, but I instantly knew what she was, and at the same time had the intense assuredness that she was "friendly", even though my heart was racing faster than I thought possible. I managed to engage her in conversation, even though we had real trouble understanding each other's strange dialect, and then it struck me that I was holding my gran's instant camera in my clammy left hand. She didn't really know what I was asking, but seemed perfectly happy to pose and smile, so I manically finished off the roll of film before she turned and walked up the stone staircase.

My feet seemed pinned to the floor for an eternity, but I finally managed to leave and rushed back to the car park where my grandmother was waiting for me. I don't know whether she believed my story or was just humouring me, but was happy to listen to it, and I couldn't think of anything else for the next few days, especially as I had to wait until we returned home before I could take the film to the chemist for processing. Two days later I went back to pick up the prints, and practically ripped the packet open trying to get to the photographic evidence of my supernatural encounter. I couldnt believe my luck when I couldn't see anything - it wasn't so much that my ghostly friend was invisible to photography, but the prints themselves were woefully underexposed. Sadly for me, the spirit was willing but the flash was weak.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 17:17, 10 replies)

Why is it now...
everyone uses the term "UFO" meaning "flying saucer of an alien nature"?

Unidentified flying objects are just that, it does not mean they are from another planet. It just means they're flying about and you have no clue what they are.
( vix0r was not Matthew on, Mon 7 Jul 2008, 17:00, 3 replies)