Can All Weird Experiences Be Explained?

[nailit]

I'm generally sceptical of the paranormal and view with suspicion the claims of psychics, spiritualists and the like. However I personally know many people who have had some very strange and inexplicable occurences.
Can ALL strange experiences really be explained by science, psychology etc?

[Duncer]

Perhaps not yet, but most can.

[Mosaic]

Personally I believe they can, but I love hearing about them all the same.
Do tell.
I'll just get comfy...

[Old_Geezer]

It may depend on what your etc includes ;-)

[Noth43]

There is still that contest where $1M is up for grabs if any one can show psychic or paranormal activity under laboratory conditions. It's been running for years and no ones ever got near the money.
So it would seem that yes, all weird things can be explained.

[Mick-Talbot]

Anything can be explained, whether you choose to believe that explanation is another matter.

[atalanta]

I believe the mind can play tricks on people, especially at times of great stress or great emotion.

[nailit]

my sister seems to be always having some very strange experiences, most of which I scoff at. However a few weeks ago she attended a ouija board session for the first time and my dad 'apparently' came through. She asked the board, if it was our dad to give some indication that it was him by revealing something that no one else present could possibly know. She then took her hand off the glass. The glass then proceeded to give her my dads army number (even I dont know it). The number was correct.

[grasscarp]

It is definitely not all in the mind. I was not emotional or involved in the situation, or tired, or wanting to see anything but I did, 40 years ago, see a ghost. I have put details on here before. There are things that are inexplicable as well as things like objects turning up moved in a house without a person moving them.

[cazzz1975]

sane and very sensible people have witnessed inexplicable things, I get annoyed that everyone who experiences something is instantly dismissed as seeing things or "emotional"

[MrsLulu]

how about the magician 'Dynamo'? I cant understand how he does what he does.

[mibn2cweus]

Although I have not personally experienced anything that I cannot explain satisfactorily without resorting to the 'supernatural', I can not explain everything that others claim to have experienced which by virtue of not having experienced it myself, I can not relate to. I certainly do not have an irrefutable explanation for many things but I strongly object to so called, 'explanations' that are not explanations at all, that invoke the 'certain' existence of phenomena that contradict our current understanding of reality and for which certainty has not an in many cases can not possibly be established.

Neither hearing nor seeing alone nor in combination constitute proof of the existence of what one believes is an explanation for what one has seen or heard. I find those unwilling to question their conclusions about what they believe they have experienced, no less suspect in light of their refusal to question those conclusions. Having failed to arrive at an explanation within the confines of ones current understanding is in no way justification for believing one has an explanation for something that lies outside of that understanding. Believing in itself, no matter how strongly, does not make anything necessarily a reality. Until you understand how it is, you cannot justifiably claim certain knowledge of what it is.

[grasscarp]

In other words if it didn't happen to me it didn't happen.

[nailit]

Noth //There is still that contest where $1M is up for grabs if any one can show psychic or paranormal activity under laboratory conditions //
It seems that James Randie's offer is conditional on REPEATABLE paranormal activity whereas these things seem to be random phenomona. I could be wrong and stand to be corrected.
The example I gave above regarding the ouija board and my dads army number seems inexplicable and I would love to know how that could possibly have happened. As I have said, Im a sceptic but these things make me a tadge uncomfortable.

[naomi24]

//Can All Weird Experiences Be Explained?//

Currently, no.

[nailit]

BTW, Ive done ouija boards in the past and never had anything happen that cant be explained by the ideomotor effect or wishful thinking.

[seadogg]

How can a phenomenon which is the result of someone's perception be explained?

[jim360]

The problem is that many of these accounts rely on eyewitness evidence which is notoriously unreliable. And even if the witness is trustworthy, he usually can't reproduce what happened -- not his fault, of course, as this is the nature of these sorts of things. I think I get Deja vu quite a lot of the time, but it might just be two things that are similar matching up for whatever reason.

Not everything can be explained, not yet at least, but the general trend is that the weird paranormal stuff turns out to have perfectly rational explanations. I see no reason why this won't continue, and that yet more apparent paranormal events will turn out to have been random effects, or people seeing things that weren't there, and so on.

As to the case of your sister seeing her Dad's army number on the glass, without being there I can't possibly comment. How did the glass get there, whose was it, who put the number on the glass and so on? I can't blame you for feeling uncomfortable about it as these incidents do tend to defy explanations at least initially.

[grasscarp]

Jim, exactly so. I did see someone that wasn't there. However the outline of that person was there. How do I know? I saw it. How can I explain it. I can't. Maybe I didn't believe in ghosts before? I don't think I even thought about the question. All I know is my experience was interesting and I am glad it happened as I would never disbelieve anyone else if they said they saw something "weird".

[naomi24]

Jim, messages don't appear on glasses used with Ouija boards. Those present each place a finger on an upturned glass which then moves to letters and numbers placed around the edge of the board to spell out messages - allegedly.

I think the biggest mistake people make when attempting to explain 'weird experiences' that defy explanation is to assume they're 'paranormal' or 'supernatural', or somehow connected to religion. I think these things have entirely natural explanations - we just don't know what they are yet. Nothing is 'supernatural' or 'paranormal' - in my opinion. Quite simply, we don't understand what is happening, but I've no doubt something is!

[jim360]

Oh gosh how embarrassing that I should have forgotten that! And I saw it being done once (albeit in a Monty Python sketch when I had no idea what they were really up to).