Halloween: the paranormal stories people share on a forum

Paranormal stories people share on a forum

Sleep paralysis with a presence touching your stomach at age 15. A house one user describes as possessed, where, according to him, demons speak through the dog. A watch lost in Cancún that, according to another account, reappears years later in his mother's wardrobe. The premise is simple: share a real paranormal experience, no made-up stuff, and see what comes out. What comes out is a catalogue of phenomena the participants claim to have experienced and which, when given the chance, they tell in detail.

The thread opens with a clear warning: no made-up stories. From there, the material splits into three currents that coexist without stepping on each other. Those who say they have experienced something and tell it in detail. Those who believe everything has a neurological or chemical explanation. And those who argue that the truly paranormal thing is existence itself, the fact that there is something rather than nothing.

Sleep paralysis and the presence that won't leave

One of the most repeated stories is that of sleep paralysis. One participant describes an experience at age 15: a figure in a white nightgown approaching to touch her stomach, while she lay motionless, unable to react. "'Horrible' would be saying too little," she sums up. The description matches the classic pattern: immobility, a presence, the inability to scream.

The neurological explanation doesn't convince everyone. Some argue it is not an "illusion" manufactured by the mind, but something more. And others, from the opposite side, point out that hypnopompic hallucinations — the ones that occur between sleep and wakefulness — produce experiences of this kind with a vividness the person cannot distinguish from reality. The suffering of those who have hallucinations due to illnesses such as schizophrenia, they add, is another dimension of the problem.

The possessed house and the demons that speak through the dog

The most extreme story is that of a user who describes his home as possessed, where the paranormal is part of his daily life. He claims a demon speaks through his dog saying it is the Holy Spirit, and that the cars are also affected because they sleep on the property. The worst part, he says, is the breakdowns: "On the day one thing doesn't break, four things break."

The response from the rest ranges from disbelief to practical advice. There is mention of having approached a TV show specializing in paranormal phenomena, which referred them to a priest. The priests consulted, according to this account, washed their hands of it with "a thousand excuses" while trying to get money. The conclusion of the person affected is resigned: he has gotten used to it and even misses the demons when he doesn't hear them.

The Cancún watch and Mandela effects

Among the stories of impossible objects, one stands out with the structure of a novel: a watch lost in Cancún that, according to the account, turns up some time later in his mother's wardrobe, inside the box of family keepsakes. The story gets more complicated with two identical Omega watches bought in Switzerland in the seventies, an armed robbery involving biker gear, and the reappearance of the stolen watch at his cousin's house. The author classifies it as a "double ooparts phenomenon" and adds several personal Mandela effects and a déjà vu involving a coworker.

The material doesn't allow any of this to be verified. But the pattern repeats itself: objects that disappear and reappear in places that had already been checked, memories that don't add up, the feeling of having lived through an identical scene before. Human memory fails with a creativity that sometimes seems like malice.

The paranormal as a scientific experience

One of the most quoted comments flips the frame: experiencing paranormal events is "the most scientific thing there is" because it is based on personal experience in the face of evidence in the material world. Politicized science, he argues, ridicules everything it cannot explain. Along the same lines, another participant suggests that the truly inexplicable thing is existence itself: "Why does something exist rather than nothing?" Next to that, any ghost story is trivial.

Skepticism also has its place. One participant confesses to having seen "plenty of paranormal phenomena" in his youth and now finding a more logical explanation: the weed, trips, vodka, estimulante ilegal and benzos he was taking. Maturity, in his case, worked as a ghost-buster.

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With all this, the question is not whether ghosts exist. It is why we keep needing to tell stories about them. The answer probably has less to do with the supernatural and more with the human: the need for there to be something behind the noise in the wardrobe, the creaking house, the watch that shouldn't be there. If science ever explains everything, we'll have to invent something else to explain.