Not something in the back country........right in our kitchen.

Our youngest son's birthday....It is the day after the anniversary of my mother's death. Wife and her mom in the kitchen chatting (several other people present and witnessed the event). On the other side of the kitchen, sitting in the middle of the counter (no physical way it could 'fall') was our son's lunchbox.....all of a sudden it flew off the counter and landed on the middle of the kitchen floor.......not one word was said by anyone....

My wife and I later figured it was 'my' moms way of saying Happy Birthday....


Ah...boo.

I don't believe in the supernatural, because when something comes into existence, it becomes "natural" by default. Heard some second-hand experiences, never had one myself.

Wish I had, though.

'and I will not go back there again by myself I know.'.

A sentiment I have learn't the hard way. Oh and I will admit that I was absolutely terrified! BTW the term 'queer' had a different meaning back in the 1920s

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/opencountry_20070113.shtml

Then of course there are the strange rumours about the 2 unfortunate USAF F15s chasing UFOs over Ben Macdui a few years ago as well.

Something similar perhaps,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC0ZBAjREOM

Two incidents, one that made me wonder if I had gone to sleep, and one that was just funny:

I had moved to Las Vegas to fix up my Mom's house and yard so she could sell it more easily and get a decent price. I had been there a few months.

I went to bed and as I lay down, turned off the light, and noticed the clock said 11:00. I had left the bedroom door open, and there was light in the living room where my mother was still reading.

In a couple of minutes, my dog Dixie came into the bedroom just like she always did, tags jingling slightly, and she came to the bed for her goodnight head pat, I rubbed behind her ears and told her goodnight, and she circled a couple of times and lay down beside my bed, and sighed. I turned over and the clock said 11:02.

Then I remembered that I had had to have Dixie put to sleep the previous week due to liver cancer. I turned the light on and looked at the floor. Then I went into the living room, and asked Mom if she had noticed anything. She said no, then hesitated, and said it had almost sounded like Dixie's collar tags jingling a minute ago, but it must have been something else.

I still don't know if it was a dream.

An acquaintance had moved to a farm area of Oregon. Late one afternoon in winter, she walked down the road to visit someone. She didn't leave until well after dark, and the fog had moved in. She was about halfway home, on the edge of the road, and she suddenly realized that someone was walking behind her. She stopped, the footsteps stopped. She started and the footsteps started again. She stopped, and after a moment or two, the footsteps stopped, too. She looked around for a house, any house, but there were just fences and fields, no lights. She started running, then slipped on the gravel and fell. The footsteps didn't stop, they just kept coming.

Then......

"MOOOOOOOO!"

Sue

I guess that's one way of looking at it... Most people that write about such topics have an axe to grind, one way or another.

I'm a mathematician, and reading Newton et. al. (Gauss is my favorite), these people had some very serious intelligence. Gauss, in particular. He didn't cop out of *anything*, and could pretty much reduce his detractors to ashes without much trouble. He could probably do that in today's society, were he still alive.

But it's all theoretical, since they aren't around to defend themselves.

There is not sufficient space on this forum to relate all of my experiences. A quick rundown includes, but is not limited to:

7 of us being followed for 6 hrs by a UFO in 1965,

A most unusual UFO sighting in 1969,

Multiple sightings of UFO's during 1975 - 1976,

A demonic experience in 1976,

Many, many UFO sightings from 1990 - 1993,

Many UFO sightings between then and now,

Many, many other ethereal sightings between then and now.

I've actually started trying to sort them all out and getting the experiences down in writing.

I don't know if you read the article, but I thought this paragraph was especially notable:

"There may be a limit to what the human mind can figure out about our universe. But how presumptuous it would be for me to claim that if I can't solve a problem, neither can any other person who has ever lived or who will ever be born. Suppose Galileo and Laplace had felt that way? Better yet, what if Newton had not? He might then have solved Laplace's problem a century earlier, making it possible for Laplace to cross the next frontier of ignorance."

He is refering to the story earlier in the article about how Laplace solved the problem that Newton had answered with an unsatisfactory "god does it." So yes, Newton did cop out. There was more knowledge to be had, but he found it too difficult and quit.

I believe; and here's one of the reasons why:

I was once visited by two ghosts in my apartment. One was a little boy and the other a little girl. They appeared as very faint ethereal-like images. They were friendly and claimed to be brother and sister. In talking to them, they said they came to stay with me until such time as I met their father. They told me that the only way to connect with him was through someone who truly believes. They told me they wouldn't remain visible all the time, but they wanted me to know they were there, and would be with me until they made their connection with their father. As silly as it sounds, I told them they were welcome to stay with me as long as they needed. For the most part, I forgot about them and generally attributed the apparitions to my over-active imagination. They showed themselves very seldomly, and not for very long, only every now and then, but always in a friendly and excited manner, and while treating the whole experience as though it was happening, I kept telling myself to grow up and just stop believing in these "ghosts" that my mind might be just making up. But I'm a good guy, and I didn't want to intefere with the other side in its attempt to connect with their living family, so I continued to believe. Although to be more honest, I don't think I have ever had any real choice in the matter.
Well, after about a month or two I did meet a guy through a mutual friend. After becoming closer friends, we were both drinking alcohol one night with a few other friends, and he told us all some of his life story. His interest turned solely to me, as everybody else was enjoying the company of others in their drinking and socializing. As I was the only one who stayed interested in his life-story, he told me all kinds of details about crimes he had commited and girlfriends of his. Then he told me about a woman he had a couple of kids with years before and the car accident that killed her (if I recall correctly) and their two young children, a boy and a girl, who were all in the car. He wasn't with them. He was very solemn, and as he continued his story I could not help but feel overwhelmed by the desire to tell him about the ghosts. He told me about how many times he played Russian Roulette with his revolver, if I recall correctly, dozens of times, and other things. As much as I wanted to tell him, I thought he would think I was making fun of his misfortunate life, so I did not ever mention the ghosts of his children to him. Anyways, not many days after (I can't recall exactly as this happened about fifteen years ago) having that conversation with him (mostly just listening though), the two appeared to me again and thanked me for "having them", what I took to mean enduring their stay or something. I told them that I was glad to be of help, and that they were welcome to visit me anytime.

I have grappled with the possibility that my mind made up the ghosts, and that the guy I met, somehow overheard my conversations with those two ghosts via telepathy before I met him, and was relating his story of his children as deception, just to deceive me into believing in ghosts, as a sort of prank. If that were the case, then he could surely not have been the only one to have "overheard". I don't know, and it really doesn't matter anyways, because I have had many encounters with things unexplained, telepathic and otherwise, and I do honestly think, hope, and whatever, that I believe.

So one person recognized his limits in one particular instance. I would hardly call that a cop out. We can just agree to disagree.

"What does it take to change a man? Time."

In time, all things will be revealed. In time, our puny brains will evolve into something capable of realizing what we presently cannot. In time, we may yet learn how to define the indefinite.

Our real challenge is to find a way for civilzation to survive, so that we don't once again have to start over, as we have so many times before. Our knowledge is built and closely tied to our civilization. Neither can exist without the other. We cannot hope to preserve one if the other should perish.