93 replies to this topic

[Colorado Dan]

I wasnt a believer or non believer (not even interested) untill an incident took place in 1969 on a mountain top in Viet Nam! After that it was like a DOOR opened, and Ive been in contact with the other side (both good and bad) ever since! later

[kithrox]

I read the book Ghosts! by Alvin Schwartz when i was in like first grade and ever since then I have been interested in ghosts and the paranormal, watching TV shows on the topics, reading tons and tons of books on local haunts, and trying to convince my friends to go ghost hunting with me.

[Hadriana]

None of these options really work for me.

I had an interest from the time that I was a small child. I had an imaginary playmate that was VERY real, I've seen a lot of things but I've never felt like I did not understand them...although I've been scared a few times - I understood.

I've read books but I don't really learn anything new? It isn't that I know it all - it is nothing like that...I just don't really feel 'in the dark' at all either.

[ghosthuntress16]

I think my first exposure to the idea of ghosts and the paranormal was the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz. Then I started watching The X-Files, and I begged my parents to let me rent scary movies. All of that, combined with some strange occurences in my house, has led me to believe that there is more to life than what we can see.

[burgyj]

After a (seemingly) lifetime of strange activity surrounding me in my various homes, I finally have accepted that it may be paranormal. I also have a close friend that has had crazy experiences in an old schoolhouse she lived in in rural Kansas as a child. She is also a very level-headed individual and I believe her experiences (way scarier than ours!)

[Moregan]

When I was little my father's aunt used to tell me ghost stories. Since then I was always interested in paranormal phenomena. I also had a few experiences as a kid, but can't tell whether they were real or just my vivid imagination. And I had precognitive dreams as a teenager...

[airhead]

It's fun for Halloween.

[GillGal]

My aunt lived in the house that my grandfather (dad's side) and all my uncles and father helped build. When she was a teenager she woke up and hovering above her was an "angel" and the angel said "Harry is next" in Pennsylvania Dutch (A dialect of the German language) and within a few weeks my grandfather Harry died in a freak tractor accident.

Then my mother died when I was 6.

[gaia227]

I have been interested in the paranormal since I was a little girl - I cannot remember a time when I wasn't interested in it. As a child of 6 or 7 I had tons of books about ghosts and hauntings, bigfoot, UFO's, Loch Ness, basically any kind of unexplained occurance I was all about it. I also cannot remember a time when I wasn't a little jumpy. I was always looking under the bed, down the staircase, out the window for unseen things. I had a wild imagination which resulted in my two best friends(imaginary), the two guys who lived under my bed, the bird monster that lived at the end of the street, I went so far as to believe my parents had been abducted by aliens, had their skin taken off and that was what the aliens were wearing so I would believe they were my parents. When my mom would come to tuck me in at night I would tug on the back of her head to see trying to "reveal" her true alien self........I know it is weird. I was not allowed to watch TV at all, my mom monitored my reading material and I could only see G rated movies until I was like 12 so these crazy notions did not come from the media.
I have always been scared of the dark and I still sleep with a night-light
I have never had any definite experiences that I would call paranormal but in many ways I have been surrounded by it my whole life.

[SeekX]

I have had a potpourri of experiences and it made me curious , though i voted " I saw something once that I didn't understand. " also true was I heard strange noises that had no explanation as voices of people not there have sung with me.

SeekX

[SeekX]

erato, on Mar 29 2007, 08:24 AM, said:

Wow, I have never thought of this one before.. when did it all start? I think it has alot to do with the fact that I have grown up with stories of the supernatural and speaking with the spirits, of dreams and their meanings and family spirit guides so it was never a question of disbelieving it was more of a searching for others who shared the belief in a world that demands scientific and rational proof of existence.

I have always loved a good horror film, book, ghost story, exorcisms, angels and demons and the rest.. its just so fascinating to me which is why GV is such a great place to be.

I sometimes wonder though about others who say they dont believe.. is it because they are closed to the signs or do some people just not sense the 'others' so to speak? strange how that is..

___________________________________________

Not Strange at all erato it has to do with Logic , some people never take truth on assumption , including sensing things or feeling or anything other than cold hard factual proof.

SeekX

[oldcloud]

Hau,
I also have to say not 1 thing influenced me.... but everything ,what I was taught by my native grand parents,, What I have seen,, What I experienced in my woods,,, What I dreamed,,,, And what I have felt.. Oldcloud

[BunsenBurner]

Many things. I've always gone to Catholic schools and Catholicism tends to encourage you to believe in the unbelievable. Just take Our Lady of Lourdes - she was an apparition yet at the age of five, my school was showing us the movie about it, 'Song of Bernadette'. And they encouraged us to believe it. It's a fascinating story but you've got to be careful with small children. I was lucky but I know some kids who had the daylights scared out of them by Catholicism.

The other reasons should go under 'personal experience', but briefly, when I was 9 years old I lived in a house in Sydney which I believe may have been haunted. I HATED it! I've never known fear like that before or since.

[aloha_spirit]

I had many experiences (both visual and audial) growing up. The most vivid in my mind were my encounters with an entity I believe to be Lucifer (long story, so save it for another time) who manifested himself as a shadow person (this was before I had even heard that term).

[Oniix]

Polls are always so difficult to use, I find none of the answers fit!

I've always included my own personal childhood experience in this, but I wanted to include something that honestly opened the door for checking out the Internet and doing searches on ghost hunting and investigations.

Someone I worked with had friends that owned a small cottage upnorth in WI. They would hear odd sounds, sounds of people walking around, things moved... basically you normal set of ghostly deeds.

The people that owned the cottage decided to try an experiment. they took a flat, smooth board and placed babhy powder on it. They then asked the ghost to leave signs in it that the ghost was there. They left it out over night and the next morning they found what looked like finger marks tracked through the baby powder. They could not however reproduce the odd looking marks with their own fingers, they looked very different.

The person I worked for had the photos of these marks and showed them to me, after some small talk about things that went bump in the night. That's when the Internet scrounging began and set my interest in full motion.