Non-Ordinary Experiences?

My sister Karen and her family live in a house my family built in the 1860's. It's a large, substantial house made to accommodate an extended family - but with such conveniences as 5 stone fireplaces on the bottom floor, and only 1 "wash room" in the entire house, along with antiquated electrical wiring probably added in the 1930's - some renovation had to be done.
All along, as the renovation was being undertaken, there were reports of an aroma of "pipe tobacco" and an "old fashioned perfume or sachet". There were also reports of being touched or caressed on the back of the neck - Karen, my niece Samantha, and I all experienced these "touches". In addition, Karen and Samantha were adamant about seeing balls of light floating in the attic. There were also faint strains of piano music to be heard at times, I am also able to personally attest to this fact - although I could never verify whether anyone there had ever owned a piano.
My sister instigated the event that led us to seriously appraise the possibility that one or more of the previous occupants of the house were still in residence. As a purely humanitarian gesture aimed at helping our partially departed relatives to move on ... Karen and Sam decided to do a Sylvia Browne style "house blessing" with the appropriate tools - salt, white candles, and Holy water. When the blessing ritual was almost complete a small antique wooden foot stool was "kicked" violently into the air. Sam and Karen ran outside and would not go back in until her husband came home that evening.
Later when Karen was telling grandma what happened, grandma said, "well you know it has to be a relative, just leave them be." That advice has seemed to serve everyone well.
The possibility that my sister and niece would collude to fabricate a falsehood is out of the question.

Has anyone had what I'm going to call a non-ordinary experience? If so - would you mind recounting it, and what did you make of it? It's not my intention to make anyone angry as I'm well aware that some folks prefer to summarily relegate all such things as this to the realm of fantasy ... but it does interest me.

 

Never have experienced anything. Very cool story, though.

 

Th

Thanks.
Some of my friends have had strange experiences, two friends were able to describe their N.D.E. experience to me. I prefer the type of experience that I can walk away from.

 

Ditto, davynn.

Heck, it even sounds better than some of the stuff out of Hollywood.

 

Thanks!

 

My ex-husband (when he wasn't my ex-husband) and I moved into a not so nice apartment complex not long after we were first married. It was an older complex built in the 40's, I think. Anyway, after work and picking up my daughter at daycare one day I had a very bizarre experience. It was hot, I remember. We had no air conditioning in the apartment and walking in was like walking into a furnace. As I was passing by the bottom of the stairs going up to the 2nd floor of the apartment I felt a chill. Frigid in comparison to the heat in the rest of the place. I heard water running upstairs and when I reached the upstairs bathroom I saw that the tub faucet had been turned on full blast and the tub stopper engaged. The tub was about 1/2 full already. My husband wasn't there (he'd left for work the same time as I had and wasn't home yet)

What to make of it? I have no clue. Neither the incident or anything like it repeated itself throughout our stay there (which wasn't long). Do I ascribe to ghosts and spirits interfering on the planes of the living? I sort of do and did before this experience, based on the many claims of others.

Do we simply enter another dimension when we die, with the ability to enter the dimension of the living given certain circumstances? Maybe. Who knows?

As far as non-ordinary experiences within the very real realm of the living, I have had the misfortune or fortune to have experienced a few of those as well. Too many instances to name where I wonder at the fact that I am still here to type out this nonsense. Call it blessed or consider the notion that I've been graced by decisions that I should carry on despite my follies.

I consider anything to be possible - our scope of knowledge being as limited as it is.

 

Joniemack, that's an impressive experience. I commend your open minded assessment. "I consider anything to be possible - our scope of knowledge being as limited as it is."

 

I am in a weird place where i have had many experiences with things that i cannot explain, yet, really, do not believe in ideas such as paranormal or supernatural.
I just tend to think that everything is normal and natural.
I have only had one experience that was not either mundane or vaguely pleasant.
This was in Louisiana just before a heavy revelation in my personal life.
Basically, a figure came rushing at me out of the darkness as I was standing outside smoking a cigarette. I saw the figure standing off in the distance, and then I stood there and watched as it came barreling toward me. I wasn't afraid. It was just...interesting. It dissipated around me like smoke. Yet, I just stood there and I distinctly remember having a very nonchalant attitude about it. It was strange.
I have only told my daughters about this. It's weird...I don't talk about it. Not because I'm afraid someone will think I am crazy, but because I never think about it unless someone brings up the subject of 'ghosts.'
I don't believe in ghosts...or spirits or demons. I tend to think it is the mind.

Otherwise, I feel touches and brushes and see things all the time. I try to smile.

 

mixedmedia, Thanks very much for sharing. Interesting ... for several reasons. Does our attitude toward such phenomena exert an influence? either overtly or perceptually? Something to think about for sure.

 

I tend to think that any explanation we can use to rationalize these sorts of experiences is probably off the mark in terms of explaining it within the confines of what we "know".

But I also believe that, to consider them supernatural or paranormal is wrong. I believe they are entirely within the realm of the normal and natural. The normal and natural of course, is generally considered only that which we can analyse and explain. My guess is, we just haven't cracked the code on this aspect of physical nature yet.

 

Makes no difference if you can explain it, if you experience it, it is real to you.

 

Your point goes to - does personal experience count as evidence? I believe it does, for very practical reasons.

 

Evidence of what?

I think people tend to take these things very personally, which is not practical at all. And I tend to think that is a mistake.

 

Evidence of what? ... is the question ... and a clinical attitude is a reasonable approach. I would say that practically speaking, accepting the evidence of your senses contributes to keeping you alive every day.

 

My childhood home was built in what was at the time rural Virginia, not far from NAS Oceana and the beach. Outside the house there were patches where nothing grew, and I mean nothing. You didn't even get anthills or bugs in these little patches. My mother tried grass seed. Then she tried more with fertilizer. She tried with some rich planting soil. She even ice-cream-scooped the entire patch and replaced it all with fresh soil, seed, and fertilizer in case it was something in the ground. It grew back in the same pattern. After that she gave up.

In the house itself things would sometimes go missing, clothes, glasses, other items you might want to grab at some point. Not an extraordinary occurence except that you would almost always find the stuff in one of the bedrooms upstairs, usually sitting right out in the open somewhere you had just verified was empty a moment ago. I don't mean "Oh I missed it in that drawer" type stuff, it was more "How did I not step on that shirt that's laying flat and neat right in the middle of the doorway when I first walked in the room?".

 

Shadowex3, Awesome experiences, thanks for sharing. I don't know what to make of the soil where nothing would grow - even after the soil was removed and replaced. Intriguing ... and of course the question occurs - is the soil incident related to what was going on in the house?

 

Nah, those were around virginia in various places and were referred to as spots where the Witch walked. Iirc they were referring to Grace Sherwood with that. In the house you always had the feeling of a child just out of sight playing games with you.

 

Two days before my father died, I was talking to him in the hospital. He was awake and lucid (I thought). We were talking about all sorts of things. Then he started talking about having been out to dinner at a restaurant with my mother the week before. He was talking about the things they talked about and how nice it had been; all of which would have been understandable if she hadn't died 24 years 363 days prior to this conversation. Two days later he died, 25 years to the day after she died.

While rationally it was probably just the confusion caused by his medical condition (he was often not lucid), it's really nice to think that my mother (or at least her memory) was there to help ease my father's last moments.

 

No experiences I would say are supernatural. My mom has tales of ghosts and such, but I'm ever the doubter.

 

Yeah, a couple of times I've had "weird" experiences. When I was a teenager, I had a friend who moved into a house that "had something wrong with it." It was centered around the attic and one bedroom, both of which were always cold, and in both of which, objects had a tendency to suddenly be in different places from where they had been placed. There were odd drafts that came from nowhere, and clocks in both places either stopped in short order (like, within minutes) or began moving too quickly (this was before most folks could afford digital clocks-- they were all the old-fashioned kind). And one just felt...uncomfortable...being in those rooms.

The other time was right after college, some friends of mine were living in a house that was almost entirely consistently cold, and in which there were constantly floorboards creaking while no one was walking on them, the sound of doors closing when no one had closed a door, etc. But the most disturbing thing was that all three of my friends had regular nightmares that took place in the house, wherein they were being attacked and murdered, and woke up either sweating or screaming. By the time they were able to move out, they had done some research down at the offices of the local paper, and found that the house had actually been the site of a gruesome double murder and suicide some seventy years before.

These things happen, I think....