supernatural: real life and in movies

[Johnny Z]

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted and I was thinking of this recently. Are you a believer in the supernatural? If so, do you think it is an independent decision or is it based on seeing enough horror films that you started to believe? I have had 3 instances in my life of dealing with the supernatural. I believe it drew me into horror movies, so it is the opposite affect. If anyone is interested, my 3 occurances:

1. 13 years old, woke up in a cold sweat, hearing demonic voices and laughter, very loud and in my room. I stayed in my room alone. I asked my mom the next morning if she heard anything and she said no.

2. A couple of years ago I was staying at my mom's house and I look up to a computer in the room and there was a little girl sitting at the computer. This would be impossible because no children have lived in the house for years. She was also wearing older style of clothes.

3. Last September my wife and I were visiting a home and gardens in Moscow, Russia that had been occupied by tsars and other rich people centuries ago. When we were walking along the garden path, I clearly heard horse hooves coming down the path. I almost pulled my wife to the side to avoid being hit, but there was nothing else there except for the visitors and I later found out they do not have horses there anymore.

Anyone else have experiences? Did it affect your movie watching and choices?

[peter johnson]

I had 2 no-holds-barred encounters with the unexplained about 25 years ago in India.  I do think that the act of travel itself does leave one more open to that sort of thing, as lesser bits of strangeness have happened to me in Scotland as well.
Really, waaayyy to long to go into here in any case.
Did these encounters have any effect on how I view movies or what movies I watch?  No.  Not in any way that I can decipher, though of course there are those who claim that nothing in our lives is unconnected with anything else/that everything we do/say/experience resonates with everything else in some fashion, so maybe so . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[Jack Corbett]

There is a poltergeist in my house and the house down the street.

Well, two actually. One is an Aboriginal warrior, and the other is a little girl in a dress from the 1800's.

Look, I'll write on this later. Battlestar Galactica is about to come on.

[Writer]

I always have believed in the supernatural. It's a small but entirely important part of my beliefs as a Christian: God is real, and Satan and the demons are, too. I haven't had anything nearly so spooky as what you've described happen to me (though I also heard some evil voices when I was very young), but some associates of my brother's did once get to messing around with a ouija board. When they asked it whether someone they knew was going to die that year, it gave them my brother's name.

The board lied. My brother is alive and well and happily married now. As Mom told him at the time and as I believe myself, the ouija board is one of Satan's tools, and Satan's the father of lies. I hear occasionally of other incidents like that, but nothing that can be scientifically proved or traced, of course. Movies on the subject are always speculating on whether so-called "psychic" powers are real, not on where they come from and whether people should be messing with them at all. To all the speculators, I say: leave them alone. There's a reason why magic is associated so closely with horror.

As for ghosts and poltergeists, they're more of the same, I presume. The ancients lived in fear of spirits and the dead, so of course demons preyed upon their fears to get a kind of control over them; these old methods still work in some places. These days, many people find space aliens fascinating, so now demons sometimes disguise themselves as space aliens to take advantage of believers in extraterrestrials. It's not an accident, I think, that beliefs in extraterrestrials take on such religious overtones, and that the quasi-religion arising from these beliefs is always hostile to Christianity. (One believer I've read about went so far as to indicate a hostility to "Western religion" in general, for that matter.)

Since the supernatural by very definition is beyond the natural, it's futile to try to make any sense out of it scientifically. Believers in these things are wasting their time even trying to prove the reality to others, since it's just as useful to demons to keep some people utterly skeptical of the supernatural as it is for them to make others staunch believers. Again, none of the movies I've seen on the subject ever stop to ask whether we should be messing with the supernatural at all. My admonition is: leave it alone. God has not granted special powers to anyone, no matter what people may think. If any spirits are bothering you, get an exorcist.

[Ellie]

I have had a few wierd things happen to me and my husband and I did live in a apartment that had a "ghost" living there also..so to speak.
I was homeless for a few years and once I decided to do something about it I went to stay at a Christian shelter only this place turned out to be anything but. It was "Set Free". During a prayer group a man fell on the floor screaming that something was trying to strangle him..I actually saw finger marks on his neck as they occurred . I could not believe my eyes.  It also didnt help things as this woman kept screaming "I see it ,its coming out of your mouth!"  
One night  in  a converted walkin freezer  I  was the only person inside asleep..I was pinched HARD on my leg. I stayed awake the rest of the night, determined to leave the following morning. I did.
The apartment was just a one bedroom that me and my husband moved into right after we got married. Right away we noticed wierd stuff. our cat Kearah would hiss at  nothing. I would be in the bedroom watching TV and I could have sworn my husband had walked in and I would turn to speak with him and he was still in the living room. I actually heard foot falls on the carpet. Made the hairs on the back of my neck stand right up. At night on the way to the bathroom we both saw something/someone out of the corner of our eyes in the darkened dining room. Being a Christian we finally just prayed it away.  I don't miss it one bit.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I am somewhat a believer in the occult and believe quite strongly in the paranormal.  I have had some strange encounters over the years, but many of them are too "normal" to really worry posting about.

I did grow up in a house that had been around since the late 20s.  It had seen hurricanes, tornados, floods, etc and yet it still stood.  There had been numerous inhabitants before my family, two of which I happen to know died in the house.  As a child and growing up, I would occasionally hear a voice, but nothing very extrodinary.  My mother always hated the house though, and I didn't find out why until I got married.

My parents let myself and my wife have the house after we got married.  Soon after my wife became pregnant, strange things began to occur.  She would wake up screaming that someone had their face on the bed looking at her.  She would swear that she woke up with someone on their knees with their head flush with the bed looking directly at her.  I thought that it was just a case of night terrors caused by the pregnancy.

I was proven wrong one night when the bedroom door was slowly opened.  I was awakend by the sound of the knob, and I watched as it turned, opening up the door.  Our room was basically connected to the living room in the house.  As soon as the door opened, the TV came on.  Naturally I was scared to death, but got up and turned off the TV anyway.  At this point, I slowly went back to sleep.  I then awakened a few hours later to the room being quite hot.  It seems that after I went back to sleep, the heater in the living room was turned on full blast.

After taking care of this, I went back to sleep once again (my wife had been asleep the entire time).  About 2 hrs later, she once again saw the "person" beside the bed.  We soon moved out into our own place.  The house was eventually "destroyed" during a flood from a hurricane in 2003.  My parents are currently putting a new home in it's place.

After we moved out, my mother asked if we ever had any strange experiences.  She's quite superstitious (probably where I get my beliefs in the uncanny).  We asked her what she meant, and she mentioned the person beside the bed and electronics acting strange (alarm clocks, lights, etc) at night in their bedroom.  They never mentioned this to me as a child for fear that I'd be scared of the house.

As I said, there have been a few other strange things to happen over the years but not as strange as that.

[Mr. Hockstatter]

When I was a little kid, they were having a raffle for some silly little prize.  There were about 8 kids eligible to win, and just before they drew the name, I was sort of overcome by this thought that I would win.  I knew it, absolutely, positively.  And I did.  That's my grand encounter with the supernatural, LOL.  

I've always been fascinated by that sort of stuff, though over the years I've become a complete skeptic.  When I was younger I believed it all, and that's where my interest in sci-fi and horror movies got started.  I believe there are aliens in space, it's almost a statistical certainty, I just don't believe they're abducting bored housewives in Ohio.  I kind of, sort of believe there may be some sort of...something...that might be responsible for flashes of insight and foreknowledge.  

It's all very fascinating, too bad Hollywood manages to suck every last ounce of fascination out of it whenever they attempt to portray it.

[Wence]

I must admit that I am an absolute opponent of all metaphysical appearances, as well as religion.

Supernatural appearances can maybe explained with the "Freudian" unconscious part of the ego, or with modern psychology, or with the simple fact,  that SciFi/horror/mystery movies have a great effect on the fantasy of their audience.

Just remember the early 50ies/60ies in the USA - how many alien-encounters/kidnappings after "War of the Worlds"...

(I should make a new topic of that point)