This thread is inspired by this
one on vampires. I want to hear from the folks who have/think they have had a brush with the super-natural, paranormal, ghosts, phantoms whatever. Keep in mind that this is the Locker room and not the Study. Please just interact and enjoy without attempting to debunk anyones story.
“Whatever?”
Some would say my family is steeped in “whatever.”Some would call my entire life a brush with the “whatever..” :lol: I don’t like those words (supernatural, paranormal) very much.
What the heck is "normal?" :lol:
I’m someone who walks with a foot in each world. In fact, that’s one of my Native names: walks in both worlds. It’s not easy being a scientist who has experience with such things, and it isn’t made any easier by people who insist that everything must have a scientific explanation, or those who also believe or have experience with the “otherworldly” and try to explain it scientifically, when they lack the scientific background to do so in any way, shape, form or fashion.
Some of my experience is, of course, spiritual, and personal in nature. Some of it can come across as pretty mundane. Some is interesting.
For starters, I’m not even supposed to be alive anymore. I was born 2 months premature-in 1960. Spent the better part of my childhood being told how long I had to live.If a pulmonologist unfamiliar with my case looks at my lungs, he’ll usually assume that I’m a 65 year old smoker, with limited capacity, and probably on oxygen. They’re generally (I’ve had to change doctors a few times) really surprised to see the fit person in front of them-especially since my spirometry (lung function) is relatively off the chart for a supremely healthy man of my age-I have a VO2 max around 85 ml/kg/min, last time it was checked…..additionally, early in childhood I developed aplastic anemia, which is usually fatal. I did get a bone marrow transplant from my younger brother when he was old enough, but they said it didn’t “take.” Maybe it took, ‘cause I’m no longer anemic. Maybe it was a miracle…….(Medical definition of “miracle”: misdiagnosis :lol: )
My grandfather, also “Aaron J. Cuffee,” passed away in 1965. A year later, when I was 6, I had febrile seizures, with temperatures in excess of 106 degrees Fahrenheit, and you might not be surprised to learn that I also had been resuscitated twice during that experience, and was “technically dead” (dead in 1966, anyway) for a total of something like 4 minutes. You might be surprised, though, if I were to tell you that during one of those cardiac excursions I visited a very bright place, and felt much, much better (that was a one hell of a night, and I felt like crap-especially after waking up in a tub of ice water!) . I was picked up by my grandfather, who’d been dead nearly a year-and he rubbed his whiskers across my cheek and made me laugh and giggle the way I always had. He smelled of pipe tobacco-just as he always had-and told me that I couldn’t stay-I had to go back because I had things to do. Then he put me down, and sent me on my way-straight back to the emergency room at Bellevue, where I scared the crap out of a doctor by talking to her-saying something smartass, actually. I was supposed to have brain damage from having such high temperatures, and having been “dead,” you see.
What else my grandfather said, and what it all means-if anything-is mostly spiritual in nature, and personal, so I won’t be sharing…..
My sister died last year She had surgery the day before Thanksgiving,2007, and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Being a nurse, and a somewhat anxious person, Karyl proclaimed that she had “less than six weeks to live,” despite her doctor’s assurances otherwise. She came home the Monday after Thanksgiving, and was going to rest up and start chemo. While disregarding her “six weeks” comments, the doctors also disregarded her saying that “ I can feel something growing in there…” right up to the point when her kidneys stopped working, and she went back into the hospital, because something was, indeed, “growing in there.” Anxiety or no, my sister conducted herself with a grace and humor I did not know she had, and was visited by a constant stream of genuinely saddened people who treated her as a sister. I did not know she was a person of that sort of quality, and I lack the words to express how deeply shamed I am that it took her being on her deathbed for me to find it out. At one point I told her she was going to “beat this thing,” or some rah-rah words of support, and she said “I know you’ll take care of my babies if I don’t.” Karyl was a single mom to three teenage boys, divorced from a husband no one has seen in years and who is just no damned good anyway….Karyl, the poor kid, couldn’t catch a break. Systems in her body kept failing, and she was in a coma by Dec. 30. My mom’s parish priest, Father Brian (who is a bit younger than I, and something of a tool, in my opinion) came to the hospital to perform last rites. There comes a point in the ceremony (with my mother, my other sister, some friends and me all around her bed) where the patient gets anointed with oil. Father Brian put some oil on his thumb, placed it on her forehead and said, “Karyl, I anoint you…” at which point her eyes snapped wide open. She looked right into Brian’ eyes, then around the room at each of us, then she just died-completely shut off, five weeks and four days after her diagnosis.40 years old.
Aside from her saying that she had “less than six weeks to live," and that proving to be true, and her saying that “there’s something growing in there,” and that also proving to be true, there’s the matter of her opening her eyes and looking at us from what was called a “deep coma.” The first two could be attributed by some to “Self fulfilling prophecy,” or “body awareness,” or any number of other “scientific explanations.”, and they might even be “true,” but what about those eyes opening? Father Brian, aside from having the crap scared out of him (I saw it, the ninny!) says that he saw “acceptance” in my sister’s eyes, while my mom is certain that it was the “moment the soul left her body.” Someone else will attribute it to that last synaptic activity, an electrical surge before dying, a response to simply being touched, or just nerves. I can tell you what I saw, what I experienced, and I might even tell you what I feel and believe about it, but I can’t tell you for certain what it was, and neither can anyone else. This happened, that happened, and this is how I feel about it, but as for data? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
I can also make mention of living in the House at Otowi Bridge, and tell you that during the time that I lived there, the house displayed all sorts of phenomena that would qualify it for some as quite haunted.: poltergeist activity, shadowy forms, odd noises and feelings, and a room that “grabbed” women-all witnessed by me and others, but it doesn’t really matter, as I have no videotape, no photographs, no audio tape, no measurements were taken, no data was compiled. We experienced what we experienced, and it all could be due to, in no particular order, underground springs, magnetism, river flow, highway traffic, practical jokers, telekinesis brought on by the onset of puberty, hallucinations, mass hysteria, indigestion or…ghosts…..or, I could have made it all up. I can tell you what I saw, and experienced, but I can’t tell you what it meant, or what really caused it-though I might have an idea, or some beliefs, or an opinion in that regard. In the end, this happened, that happened, and this is how I feel about it, but as for data? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know..
My favorite story from there, though: I dated a woman who wore an eye-patch. We were in the living room, and one of those shadowy forms passed by. I didn’t say anything, but she (being familiar with stories about the house) playfully told me, I saw that. Which was funny, ‘cause it was towards the side of her eyepatch, and she shouldn’t have “seen” a thing…..
I’ve mentioned before that I follow some American Indian spiritual practices. I was on what some call a “vision quest,” though the proper Lakota term is hanblecha, or “ crying or lamenting for a vision”-literally begging “God” to “show you something.” Sometimes, one receives a blessing from an animal spirit, or is offered other information. Basically, you purify yourself, stand in a lonely place that’s been purified and protected, and stare at the sun for four days without eating or drinking, praying the whole time. (Plains Indians are fairly big on suffering-this is actually a cakewalk, though a really serious one, compared to Sundance).
We just call it “going up on the hill.”
So, I had been up on the hill for three days, and early in the evening of that day, I saw a bear. Came and sat down right outside the tobacco ties (protection). I’d been around bears before-this one didn’t smell, like bears did, and wasn’t surrounded by a cloud of bugs, and we proceeded to have…….a conversation. After a while, the bear got up, huffed once, and wandered off. Next day, Danny, the man who was watching over me for the ceremony, came to take me down, looking at me pretty funny. He asked me if I’d seen the bear, and I asked him, kind of wondering
, Did you?
That’s when he pointed at the bear tracks. Said he’d come up to check on me, seen the bear, and had been tempted to go get a rifle, but then watched me talking to her for about a half-hour. Never seen anything like it-though it was likely that I smelled pretty delicious to a bear after three days
……:lol:
Now, hardly paranormal, except for the conversation part, anyway. But not what most would call “normal,” either. As for what the bear and I talked about, well, that’s personal, and spiritual-or, if you feel better, an
hallucination- so I won’t be sharing….:lol:
