zengizmo's Psi Hi Thread

The marriage has been dead for years. It cannot and will not be revived, and there are several very good reasons for that. I'm grateful for the lessons I've learned from it, for four great kids, and for some happy memories.

And that is that.

Since our resident skeptic Meliai seems to be shirking her job, maybe you'd like to fill in? Do you have any more specific observations than "may be nothing more than coincidence and illusion?" Something we can sink our teeth into?

 

Uhm, so you think you writing these "experiences" in this thread constitutes "actual evidence"?
I'm going to call James Randi, have him read this thread, then collect $1 million. Because of course this thread provides solid "actual evidence" of psychic phenomena.

:smilielol5: :rofl:

 

All of our experiences are psychically generated.

 

In a court of law, eyewitness accounts constitute "actual evidence." Are you suggesting that eyewitness accounts are inadequate for use in determining the verdict in a court case?

The two eyewitness accounts I've included so far even include a corroborating witness - my wife. However I will grant you that she's not actually contributing to this discussion, so all you have is my word that she can corroborate my accounts. Of course you could accuse me of lying about that.

 

I agree, however I think that level of abstraction is too big a stretch for this discussion.

 

BTW, just one blurb to address The Amazing Randi's prize offering:

What Randi has done is to come up with a definition of what "psychic" means, and what properties it should have if it exists. Then he has said, "If you can't show me something with these properties, then 'psychic' doesn't exist."

This is called the "Straw Man Fallacy" in logic.

 

i'm still here! i haven't had a chance to formulate thoughts and write a reply yet..i will be back later tonight to offer some skepticism!

 

Sounds cool! I would buy it!

 

Well Meliai, I can't wait around for you all day, so I'm going ahead and adding another story.

 

My wife had taken all the kids with her on a trip to Wisconsin, and she was on her way back to our house in Illinois. It was getting late, and she still wasn't back, and I finally decided to go to bed.

I managed to fall asleep, but about an hour or so later I awoke abruptly with a slightly panicky feeling that my family was in danger. The impression I had was that my wife was falling asleep at the wheel.

I was very concerned, and spoke telepathically to my spirit guide. "Will you help keep her safe?" I requested.

"We will," she replied.

I tried to fall asleep again, but I was too worried to relax. About half an hour later my wife arrived home. I got up to talk to her.

She told me that at a particular point on the road she had briefly fallen asleep at the wheel. She woke up in time to find herself drifting off the highway, caught the steering wheel, and got back in the lane. She rolled down the window after that, for some cold air to help her stay awake.

She told me the place on the road that she had fallen asleep. It was slightly south of the town of Lincoln, about half an hour's drive from our house.
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Copyright (c) 2010 by Richard Bryant Reinertson - all rights reserved

 

1. When parted from family, it is natural to worry about their wellbeing and even become paranoid about them being in danger, especially late at night when tiredness has kicked in and it's obviously dark out there and a loved one is driving, increasing risk.

2. Without knowing exactly how your conversation with your wife went and what both your characters are and your relationship was, it is impossible to say what happened here. For example, if you had said to your wife "I was so worried. Did you fall asleep at all whilst driving?" that very suggestion, to a tired out mother who was also worried, may have made her believe she had. She could also have wanted to please you by telling you you were right, especially if she was a believer in that kind of thing or at least wanted to be. If you didn't tell her and she told you first, it could just purely be coincidence. Afterall, it's not unheard of to fall alseep when tired at the wheel, and it's very common for relatives to worry about family they're parted from and dream up dangerous scenarios they may find themselves in. I get it all the time.

3. It is a lot less rare for somebody to STAY asleep at the wheel, so the chances were very high that she would wake herself and keep herself awake until she got home, thankfully.

 

Filling in on the skepticism front :2thumbsup:

 

Excellent, Fingermouse. This is good critical thinking, and I especially like your point #2, because it made me aware of some details I need to add to the story.

1. I certainly WAS worried about my family even before I fell asleep. I had been a bit worried about them all day, in fact. And I can certainly see how this could make me sleep restlessly and to wake up now and then, wondering if they were okay.

However I only woke up this one time. And the one time I woke up, it wasn't with a vague worry - it was with a definite impression that there was something wrong, and that it specifically involved my wife falling asleep at the wheel. I know the difference between a general, nonspecific feeling of worry versus a definite, acute perception of danger. And finally, my one waking-up time corresponded apparently quite closely to the time my wife reported actually falling asleep.

Obviously there's nothing here that can "prove" my conclusion about this being a psychic event - however it seems to me that the overall weight of the evidence is compellingly in favor of an explanation that is beyond mere coincidence.

2. Yes, this is a good observation, for having insufficient information about what happened. The fact is, I didn't say anything at all to her about waking up worried until after she told me about falling asleep at the wheel. This wasn't some vague drowsiness that she magnified for my benefit - she had actually caught herself asleep, drifting off the road. It had panicked her, and she had been very worried about it all the rest of the way home. It loomed so large in her mind that she made a point of telling me about it without my asking. Knowing the way my wife obsesses about things, I can easily see an event like this looming in her mind afterward.

3. I absolutely agree with this. I have no way of saying that my prayer to my spirit guide, or any spiritual intervention, helped keep my wife awake, and I therefore make no such claim. The main point of relating the part about my request to my spirit guide was to emphasize that my concern was so acute that I made a point of seeking some kind of help, whether such help could or would make any real difference or not.

 

I've had terrible mini "visions" when I've been worried about family I'm parted from. It really has felt like a very urgent warning of some kind, especially when I've been dozy. To be honest, I've "seen" things so disturbing I've questioned my thought processes after, but after talking it through with others, it seems this is a common phenomenon and nothing to raise concern over.

 

I can understand this. At the same time - again - I think the compelling difference is that my experience specifically coincided with both the type and time of the actual event - otherwise it wouldn't even be worth mentioning.

Any further rebuttals? Shall we move on to the next story?

 

Oh btw, actually one skeptic's angle that you haven't mentioned is the whole idea of sampling bias. Maybe, you could say, I've experienced this same sort of feeling lots of other times when it didn't turn out to correspond to actual real-life events. However I would have to say no, I never experience anything that feels that acute and specific and find out later that nothing like that actually happened.

 

you lost me at "spirit guide," quite honestly.

Perhaps hindsight is the only thing that makes you believe it was an acute, specific worry rather than a generalized feeling of anxiety. I worry about my loved ones anytime I am seperated from them, and I especially begin to worry anytime they are on the way to see me. A thousand thoughts cross through my head, "what if...?" If anything actually happened while worrying about somebody, I could relate it to psychic phenomenon. I could conclude that my worry in that case was very specific to the events that followed. But all I would have to do to disprove this is examine the countless times I've worried and nothing has happened.

 

Some guy in a pickup truck once cut me off in traffic and I was so upset I used my psychic ability to induce pain which to the uninitiated would feel as if he was experiencing a heart-attack

It offered little comfort and I felt guilty afterwards


Hotwater

 

Yeah, I figured the "spirit guide" part would lose you...however it's not important for the story. I hope to come back later and deal with the spirit guide thing in little baby steps.

Anyway Meliai, thanks for getting back to me with your thoughts...now I'm the one holding things up - I had a few other things to take care of...

I think you've brought up two distinct issues. (1) Maybe I re-engineered my memory of my anxiety to make it seem more acute and specific AFTER I heard my wife's story, and (2) Maybe I've worried lots of other times when nothing happened, and therefore I don't remember those times.

Number 2 is the issue I addressed in my post just before yours - this is called "sampling bias" - remembering only cases in which the results matched my hopes or expectations, and not the cases in which the results were unremarkable.

Certainly I've been worried LOTS of times in my life. Sometimes my worries were well-founded, and sometimes nothing happened at all. For example, recently I was worried that my end-of-the-year bonus would be less than last year, which would create a financial hardship. As it turns out, my worries were unfounded - in fact, my bonus this year was substantially larger than I had hoped.

However my worries about my bonus were qualitatively different from my worries about my wife driving. My feelings about the bonus were just vague uneasiness, and I even knew I might be worrying needlessly. When I awoke with the worry about my wife, it was not just general worry, it was a feeling of danger and alarm, as if something had happened.

And this is also part of my answer to point 1. I remember the incident well, because it made a big emotional impression on me. And as you probably know, memories that have a big emotional component to them stick in our minds better than memories with no emotional component. My memory of my feelings on waking was very much in the forefront of my mind when my wife was telling me her story - I didn't need to go back and re-examine them at all. Considering the way I had felt, I think I would have been more surprised if my wife hadn't been in some danger - again there was a qualitative difference between these feelings versus feelings of general anxiety.

Also keep in mind: I woke up at apparently right about the time my wife caught herself falling asleep at the wheel and woke in a panic - not before, not after.

Thanks again, Meliai. If you have no further thoughts on this story, I'll move on to another one...

 

Is this your confession then?

I think I've done worse than that...and had things done to me, so I know exactly what you're talking about...however I think for the purposes of this thread, any stories of that sort would be stretching our readers' credulity beyond what it will bear at this point...