# I'm a Sceptic



## ChrisChandler00 (May 14, 2015)

I've been writing the first book in what I hope to be a series called The Sceptic Truth. In preparing to write the series, I first had to understand my own stance on the supernatural, and even read a couple of books in the name of research to help build -hopefully- a somewhat believable universe. A universe that, regardless of personal opinion or fact, is home to spirits, demons, and anything else that goes bump in the night.

Firstly, I am a sceptic. I will always consider any evidence to be incorrectly identified or fake. To me, it's just more likely to be misconstrued than paranormal. But I am open to the idea that ghosts and everything else may actually exist. To a degree.

I only actually read one book in the name of research, and I didn't make it past the half-way mark. I found it difficult because I expected the book to be serious. To focus on the factual side of the paranormal. When the author had finished describing the theory and moved on to his own experiences, I couldn't help but feel that it was all purely in the name of entertainment. My sceptical side kicked in. I think if I were a believer, I would have taken the second half of the book to be the author putting the theory into practice. But to me, it was nothing more than storytelling.

People have described their experiences to me, and all I can think is 'your imagination is running away with you'. I'm in no position to tell anyone that what they believe happened is wrong. How could I possibly know? I wasn't there. But to me, it is much more likely that at that moment you struggled to explain what happened and so the only possible solution was ghost!

And I've been there myself. Even scrolling through pages like this, watching the videos and analysing the photographs, I get a shiver down my spine. A creak in the hallway or the rustling of leaves outside becomes louder and grabs my attention. I'm suddenly aware that the door behind me is wide open, that someone or something could be standing behind me. Watching.

But I know there isn't. Emotion heightens our senses. I went on a 'ghost walk' in nearby Edinburgh for Halloween last year. We were all standing in a pitch-black room within a bridge where literally hundreds of people at a time were forced to live in horrible conditions. As the guide was telling us about a young boy who haunts the room and takes things from visitors pockets, the shadows began to take shape, to move. It felt as though someone was prowling the darkness.

Later in the walk we were escorted into a crypt in a graveyard that was used to imprison heretics until their deaths. We were told about a vicious poltergeist that would descend from the ceiling. As soon as I entered I became overwhelmingly hot and began to sweat. I had a splitting headache. I felt like I was going to pass out. But upon leaving the crypt ... I was fine.

Were these feelings and experiences real? Yes. I felt them. But they were developed by the power of suggestion. There was no ghost of a pickpocket lurking in the shadows. There was no poltergeist waiting in hiding. As a sceptic, I believe that my eyes brought the shadows to life rather than a spirit. I think it may have been Derren Brown (an English illusionist) who said that people who are being hypnotised will play along without realising it so as not to disappoint the hypnotist or the audience. Perhaps I didn't want to disappoint the guide when he was building the atmosphere in the crypt?

But in developing my book series, I have thought a lot about it. Opinion. I have chosen to interpret those experiences as suggestive, as imagination carrying me away. But could someone else just as easily interpret them as genuine paranormal experiences? Whether what I experienced was one or the other can never be determined beyond my own interpretation. And in saying that, could it mean that the paranormal is only as real as we want it to be?


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## dither (May 14, 2015)

I like where you're coming from 00 and i do believe that your very last sentence really IS the bottom line.

Good luck with that.


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## John Oberon (May 14, 2015)

If you want to learn of the supernatural world, read the Bible. That's about as real as it gets. You can learn a lot about the hierarchy of authority and good and evil. Nothing better for research in this area.


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## Jenwales (May 14, 2015)

I used to be a firm believer but I am like you sceptical. Paranormal things can be explained by science if not now then in the future. Apparently our brain will automatically blame ghosts etc if something we can't explain happens because it has to have an explanation. And the way you think can also affect the way you feel, people with anxiety may have a irrational thought and that will trigger their heart to race and them to shake etc this is caused by what they think. So if someone says you should be scared, your mind may when make you feel scared.
It's the psychology of the situation that interests, I always find the truth or logical explanation is always more interesting than the paranormal explanation. I'm no expert (I'm an anxiety expert as I have it).
Saying all that maybe there is a phenomena we can't explain yet, that science can't explain yet. Us not having the answer and rational explanations make writers lives easier as we can make all the answers up and find a good story. I love ghost stories and horror.


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## Phil Istine (May 14, 2015)

In general, I lean toward seeing the supernatural as the personification of hitherto unexplained (or misunderstood) laws of physics.  The power of suggestion can be phenomenal.  It sounds like you are onto a cracking idea for a decent book - one that can be written from different points of view.


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## John Oberon (May 14, 2015)

Jenwales said:


> I used to be a firm believer but I am like you sceptical. Paranormal things can be explained by science if not now then in the future. Apparently our brain will automatically blame ghosts etc if something we can't explain happens because it has to have an explanation. And the way you think can also affect the way you feel, people with anxiety may have a irrational thought and that will trigger their heart to race and them to shake etc this is caused by what they think. So if someone says you should be scared, your mind may when make you feel scared.
> It's the psychology of the situation that interests, I always find the truth or logical explanation is always more interesting than the paranormal explanation. I'm no expert (I'm an anxiety expert as I have it).
> Saying all that maybe there is a phenomena we can't explain yet, that science can't explain yet. Us not having the answer and rational explanations make writers lives easier as we can make all the answers up and find a good story. I love ghost stories and horror.



Supernatural phenomena can and will be explained by science ONLY if the supernatural does not exist. If the supernatural DOES exist, then science will never explain it because it lacks the scope. By definition, science seeks to examine and define things of this world.


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## Bevo (May 25, 2015)

I was a sceptic but a few things happened that changed that, now I fully believe in ghosts and spirits.

Short true story, I will try to write more about the others as most would find it interesting.
This will be more summary than story but stay tuned.

2001 my wife and I were sleeping as normal, she woke up to a strange feeling of being watched, I must of felt her sadness and looked at her. She was sitting up in bed looking at the foot of the bed, as I looked a man faded away to nothing, I was not scared but also felt a great sadness.
Holding her as she cried I asked who that was, it was her father who was fighting cancer in Toronto, we were in Vancouver.

I got up to get her the phone and it rang in my hand, it was her stepmother calling to say her father just died.

If this didn't happen to both of us I would not believe it but it did, we both saw him and both felt him.
This really changed the way I thought but also opened me up to new experiences, I saw much more after.

One thing I do agree about is as said suggestion, the brain is powerful and can really affect the body.


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## ChrisChandler00 (May 29, 2015)

Thanks for the replies and comments! 

Bevo, I find stories such as yours interesting. I have shared this on a Facebook page also, and someone posted a very similar account there too.

I don't doubt your story, this is purely speculation:-

There are a lot of stories of animals being aware of their owner becoming ill. The development of cancer, things like that. I think it has been put down to their sense of smell. They can smell the cancer as it develops and become more loving towards their owner.

In much the same way that our brains fill in the gaps to explain events, are we much more intuitive than we realise and our brains find a way of transferring that knowledge from our subconsciousness to our consciousness? The feeling of sadness, the imagery. Are we connected to our loved ones more than we think, but are not emotionally/consciously advanced enough to understand it?


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## Phil Istine (May 29, 2015)

I am open to some people being more intuitively and psychically aware than others and that current science is unable to explain some of this.
However, I do sense that this is probably different to what I (perhaps wrongly) understand as the "supernatural."
I'm not looking for debate (this is not allowed on the forum anyway), but I will hypothesize for a moment so please indulge me:
During the Far East tsunami a few years ago, very few non-human animals lost their lives.  They mostly fled to higher ground some time before humans became aware of what was happening.  Many animals have much sharper senses than ours which can detect changes that we can't.  Possibly this may extend beyond just seeing, hearing and feeling vibration to something that some may refer to as a "sixth sense."
If we accept (and I realise that many don't) that all life on Earth evolved from a common ancestor species, I feel that it is quite conceivable that humans have something like this extra ability to sense too.  For most humans this is heavily suppressed as it's no longer needed due to our brains, but maybe some people have retained this sense a bit more than others - possibly surfacing at times of extreme emotion.
I suppose that this hypothesis differs from "supernatural" in that there is no spirit being as a conduit for this extra awareness.
All hypothesis of course and not trying to rattle anyone's cages.
It is known these days that some creatures see a wider range of colours than us.  To assume that our eyes see all colours would be as self-centred as believing that the Earth is the centre of all things.  Many colours can only be detected by electrical instruments that we have developed.  Even then there are probably colours that we cannot yet detect (dark matter?).
That is just about the sense of sight.  Undoubtedly this principle applies to our other senses - but why stop with the senses about which we know (rhetorical   ).
Sorry, I wasn't trying to engage in a physics vs. supernatural post - just trying to make some more sense out of this beautiful life.
I'm possibly nuts so don't read too much into it  .


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## Devium (Jul 3, 2015)

I myself am planning to educate myself about what makes people believe weird stuff, and I think reading up on some cognitive science would do us both good. There are various ways our brain takes shortcuts in perceiving and thinking about the world, most of them not based on logic. Knowing about how we come to believe what we believe would add depth and credibility to a book about skepticism.


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## JustRob (Jul 3, 2015)

If there is anything that induces fear and despair in me it is any statement that begins "There is no evidence that ..." often uttered by someone who would not benefit by seeking out such evidence. It is quite possible that in the last days of humanity these could be the final words ever heard.

In my meagre collection of books I have _The End Of Science _by John Horgan. It was published some twenty years ago but the question that it poses is still as relevant today. Do we really understand almost everything this time around or are we still deceiving ourselves as humanity has so many times in the past? Perhaps there is a more recent review of scientific opinion around now, but I probably wouldn't understand it anyway. Most of it is still magic and mystery to me, so where should I personally draw the line? What robes do today's sages wear to set them aside from those of us who still have to live by personal experience and faith alone? The point is that we cannot exclude the paranormal, the improbable, even the singular from our acceptance without establishing confidence that the spectrum of understanding is filled completely from the other end, the beginning of science, if science is our sole faith.

My own experiences led me to make the proposition that the story in my novels was based on my own future memories at the time of writing. It has met with scepticism from men of science, psychology and religion, unsurprisingly. There is no evidence that it is a valid proposition; it only remains an unlikely possibility until we have a better understanding of quantum events and states within the human brain, but I may well be dead before anyone gets that far. It doesn't matter though how we discuss such subjects as precognition, ghosts, sixth sense and miracles. For example I am happy to discuss God's activities without admitting to belief in such an entity; it is a convenient way of encapsulating the information that we seek to communicate. I don't have to understand the origin or workings of my sixth sense to trust it. My past experience suggests that it exists and is as reliable as any of the others in guiding me through life. Perhaps it works just because I trust it and use it and, just like the other senses, practice enhances it. Maybe it is simply an amalgam of my other senses and deep-seated subconscious processes. I also greatly respect the power of the subconscious mind, again because I have past experience of that. These things are all personal experience though. There is no evidence, or at least not enough that I could ever convey to any other person, to prove any of my claims. Indeed I would not want it so because widespread belief in such matters would radically change human society, possibly cause it to crumble faster than ever, so I'd rather be regarded as a crumbling fruit-cake myself.

Discuss what you will, believe what you will and write what you will. It has very little to do with the price of fish.


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