Paranormal: From Barcelona UFOs to Out-of-Body Experiences

Paranormal Experiences: From Barcelona UFOs to Out-of-Body Experiences with Headphones

A two-year-old child plays under the dining room table while the family eats and talks. His grandmother asks him who he is playing with, and he replies: "With Aunt Begoña. Here with me, next to your leg." Aunt Begoña had been dead for over a year. The account, from a father who claims not to have mentioned that name in front of the child, adds to the collection of anecdotes that fuel the oldest question in the world: has anyone ever experienced something paranormal?

The Catalog Ranges from UFOs to Driverless Trains

The responses describe all sorts of things. An emerald green light suspended in the Barcelona sky in late August, which looked like a satellite but was too close and shot south, leaving a trail (it would have passed Valencia in less than a second). A completely empty commuter train that skipped stations and had no driver. And domestic presences, people who feel accompanied in their car. The cast is completed by déjà vu, two balls of light running together across the floor, and a pencil appearing a meter away from where it was.

Out-of-Body Experiences Can Be Learned (and Done with Headphones)

Here things get technical. One testimony details the Raduga indirect method: sleep for 3.5 to 5 hours, wake up for five minutes, and go back to sleep with the intention of having an out-of-body experience. The result, it says, is strong vibrations, creaks "as if stretching leather or skin," and electrical crackles in the head during separation. To prepare, Hemi-Sync tapes are used, which the audio itself requires listening to with headphones. The conversation ends by discussing which exact model is suitable, open or closed.

Hypnagogic Hallucination

There is a school of thought that reduces the mystery. In this view, sleep paralysis, or hypnagogic hallucination, explains that feeling of a presence overhead without actually seeing it—hence the name nightmare—and, as one user recalled, it even appeared in Don Quixote. It also applies to the teenager who was waiting for a friend at 9:30 and still doubts if what he remembers was real, because he retains the episode with a clarity he never applies to his dreams. Other voices point to a vision problem or simply a dream.

Coincidences That Border on the Impossible

Things get interesting with coincidences. Someone thinks of a childhood friend they lost touch with on the Madrid Metro and runs into them as they step onto the platform. The star anecdote is that of actor Anthony Hopkins: hired for The Girl from Petrovka, he couldn't find the novel in any bookstore and ended up finding it abandoned on a metro seat, underlined, by the author himself, George Feifer, who had lost it. Another version of the story involves a dream about a first cousin and a bald man who the next day materializes in the living room.

When the Body Decides for You

Some accounts are less supernatural and more about instinct. A person with drug allergies claims they knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if they went down to the operating room they wouldn't come out: they got dressed, left the hospital, and the emptiness disappeared. Another detects the chapel of a Templar castle by a jolt that runs down their back before any sign indicates it. And a motorcyclist still doesn't understand why, after crashing into a car that ran a stop sign, he was thrown backward with two broken ribs instead of flying over the handlebars.

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The original question allowed for "paranormal" to be replaced by "impossible coincidences." This was done. The result is an inventory where the measurable and the inexplicable coexist. "I was much happier before. In a way, ignorance is bliss," summarizes one of those who claim to have experienced something paranormal. There is no way to verify how much of it is memory and how much is desire.