"I don't believe in ghosts, but have a ghost story."

I was on the island of Tinian, in the CNMI, training with my light infantry unit. This island saw a pretty fair size battle when liberated in 1944. The two atomic bombs dropped on Japan were loaded on the bombers there.

Over the course of a couple nights on the island we continued to hear bolts sliding forward on rifles, safety's being switched off, whispers, snickers, things you may or may not hear around soldiers. Someone would always blame someone else about noise discipline and everyone accused would deny it was them.

One night I was scouting some lines when I came back to the main area where people were sleeping. The whole place was in total chaos. People I trusted swore they woke up to find themselves being carried off by three or four people. One man was crying, happy to be alive, believing that he had been bayoneted. Almost everyone frantic that they had been under attack by people in the area, pulled from their place of rest. None of the sentrys spotted anyone coming or going from our area. A call in to Command Center confirmed we were alone and off harassment status.

The next morning at the Command Center, the news got back to the hire ups. I was there. The XO (executive officer) mentioned he got up to take a leak and didn't hear anything around that time of night. One of the OPFOR (Opposing Force) guys who was out all night came in to report and get a cup of coffee. He over heard the XO mention the potty break and remarked, "Yessir, good thing you had your security team with you. You were almost pissing on my gilly suit. If you'd have been alone, I'd have taken you out."

The XO said, "I was alone. I don't have a security team." After a few moments of silence, everyone sort of went their own way and there was no more 'odd' doings the rest of the time there.

I don't believe in ghost, but I got a ghost story all right.

How about you guys? Every witness something unexplainable in the back country?

out in the back country, old lighthouses, ships, everywhere

While out on a trail testing nightvision equipment a friend and I had a weird experience. With a thermographic camera I caught a massive mountain lion looking thing walking along with us on a ledge above. I asked my friend "What the ** is that?" and directed him to look at the cat (the size of a brown bear). He looked with a light amplification scope and saw nothing.

I didn't believe him so we swapped and sure enough there was nothing in the visible spectrum (we were only testing one thermographic camera). The ?lion? kept walking along and we both clearly saw it. I had the presence of mind to record and we played it back again and again and sure enough it was there (or its heat was)

Let's forget about it being invisible (there was nothing visible even in clearings)...that aside... the region I was in has nothing like that. I grew up in the area and I've never even heard of anything like that. I just can't explain it and to this day it sits there just kind of tickling my version of reality. If there wasn't a witness I think I would have totally dismissed it -even with the recording.

The ?lion? type thing eventually walked away and we weren't the least bit alarmed (just VERY confused) as there wasn't a hope in hell of seeing any sort of lion in this area as it is the wrong ecosystem and surrounded by city....that and again, the invisible thing really let us feel calm

I later saw some "ghost hunters" who used a thermographic camera and did catch ghosts on it. I wonder if what we saw was a ghost of a cat. No offense to cats, but that's pretty lame. That's like the greatest ghost you see in your life being a bug or something. At least it wasn't terrifying!

That's all! Put another log on the fire and tell your own experience.

-NIM

Hi Comms,

Thats why my ETS name is Am Fear Liath Mor....

Several friends of mine have seen and fired upon big cats in the Arkansas state area. Many people have seen big cats (mostly black panther types) in the woods.

No one knows how many "idiots" throughout the world have gotten imported animals when they were young and then released them when they got bigger than the apt that they were living in.

That's how come there are "crocogators" in Florida now.

I've seen enough to know that with my science and engineering background that what we know is the iceberg of existence. Anyone who says we can explain it all isn't paying attention, even if we can explain the majority.

Sleeping (or trying to) in a tent one night, high in the Sierra Nevada Mtns, we (there were two of us) heard something large and fast run by, right next to the tent. Next morning, look as we might, no tracks of any kind in the soft dirt...

Nope. There is no credible evidence of ghosts, spirits, angels, deities.

Humans are used to sound and light acting in a predictable linear fashion. Mostly it does. At least it does under normal conditions and within our expected range.

Other times both sound and light have surprising quirks.

One of the local 'lover's lanes' where I used to live was on the side of a slight hill near a swamp where the wind came in off the water. At that location the sound of a concert in a stadium over a half mile away could be heard quite clearly. So loud and clear that sitting in car with the windows down you, if you didn't know better, swear that you were parked in the stadium. The kids who couldn't afford the cost of a concert ticket would go park. In some ways it was better than actually going to the concert. You could bring your favorite intoxicants, there wasn't any crowd, security or parking hassles, you could get a little squeeze and the night sky over the water was as good as any light show.

People during the civil war noted similar situations where sound would carry and concentrate at certain locations. Battles miles away would sound like they were right there. It was sometimes called acoustic lensing and it believed to be caused by differences of air density, moisture content, wind and the landscape causing the sounds to bend and concentrate.

Light is also subject to being bent, combined, recombined and distorted. Mirages are the result. Lights can appear to be much closer than they really are. They can also be made to seem to 'wander'.

Of course, there are many details of light, sound and the rest of the EM spectrum that are pretty much impossible to nail down in anything but a tightly controlled environment. And many things we have incomplete knowledge of. That isn't to say not knowing implies the existence of spirits or supernatural forces or entities.

So far the evidence for anything resembling the supernatural is completely unconvincing.

This is only made more unconvincing because humans are remarkably poor observers and are both highly suggestible and subject to memory drift. Numerous studies have demonstrated just how poor recorders we really are.

I have always believed in life in other worlds (UFO's) probably because my father claims to have seen one as a young man and because the universe is so vast. But it was not until fairly recently that I started to believe in this parallel dimension / time-shift sort of stuff. I had an occurence with "something" that I cannot explain, but like NIM mentioned, I was not afraid of it at all. I was alone at the time except for the family cat, and the cat also reacted to it; I have no answers.

Mike

Art in Fl wrote
'Nope. There is no credible evidence of ghosts, spirits, angels, deities'

Of course you are right. But what good does that do me when the nephews want terrifying with stories around the camp fire?
Keep em coming folks!
The Sock