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Post by antmania on Feb 19, 2010 10:10:34 GMT
It's an interesting story Pillsbury and fits in with other similar accounts of History repeating itself. Coming from a more belief orientated side as others here, it looks like you and your sister experienced a residual memory, not a ghost as we could define it but an event replayed perhaps over and over. You both were/are adamant in what you witnessed and I am sure if there were some doubts in your mind as to what you both witnessed, you would at least acknowledge this. The thing is though. This is the Bad Psychics forum and you are not going to convince anyone of your experience because they are automatically looking for anything alternative to paranormal reasons for what you saw such is the role of the sceptic. Its worth taking on board all alternative explanations given by others here and asking yourself if any of them could be relavent to your experience. If not and you stand by 100% as to what you saw then you are asking the wrong people.
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Post by PILLSBURY on Feb 19, 2010 10:28:33 GMT
Good point Antmania, I come from the skeptical but believing point of view on there being more than just this mortal coil albeit that I havent defined what that could be after physical death, however that is exactly why I come on here, because I know that the only way we are going to come to the truth apart from going through physical death ourselves is with the use of open honest discussion and debate. I first joined after being kicked off the most haunted forum several years ago as I dared to suggest there was fakery going on and whilst I knew mh was faked, I didnt know half of what I know now,thanks to this site. Many of my own paranormal experiences have been explained by discussions on here and I have learnt from it. Many believers have left here in a huff rather than stay and debate which has been to the detriment of this site,as the balance used to be much better although some of the rows on here back then were legendary. My opinion is as valid as the most skeptical or cynical person on the paranormal and the great thing is that although science does explain most so called paranormal events, my interest lies in those few events that science cannot fully explain or when the skeptics and cynics reach for an excuse that is as unlikely as a total believers view that every bump in the night is a ghost. I accept that my eye witness testimony is not proof of anything but what my brain has tried to analyse and its answer is a woman jumped from a wall. Is this residual,stone tape or an optical illusion or me creating a false memory or is it a bona fide ghost? we will never know but unless I debate this with people we will never be able to come to a decision based on logic.
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Post by antmania on Feb 19, 2010 10:49:09 GMT
Indeed and you put your case over very well and clear although the fact you are asking questions about it suggests you still want some answers. If you definately saw a woman jumping to her apparent death then the answer can only be one of two things. A woman did jump to her death or you witnessed something that can only be paranormal in nature. I am in the same boat as you as reagrds to views on these things and I also enjoy the arguements on here. The people who take the huff though only have themselves to blame unless they have been recieving undeserved abuse. They come on trying to convince hardened sceptics about things paranormal in nature and somehow expect to convince them it is real and as is often the case, refuse completely to look at the alternative more rational explanations and take offence when members offer something different resulting in fueds and slanging matches. Personally I enjoy them but thats me ;D
I hope you find the answers you are looking for and I think the best way is to delve deeper and find other people who experienced the very same thing you did whether 24 years ago or more recently This would help perhaps to validate your story.
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Post by bobdezon on Feb 19, 2010 10:59:14 GMT
I understand the logic of what you are saying but no it wasnt a bag and we were all very clear that a woman had jumped off the edge *.* It may not have been a bag, perhaps it was a coat that someone dropped, and retrieved before you got there? I am unclear on the timescale involved here. Maybe it has been non of these things, but something we have not previously considered? Ok. While I agree that it is an excellent idea to continue asking questions, you have to be careful to weigh each answer. Sometimes we are not really interested in truth, but rather the exciting alternative. We are all prone to self delusions. Do you mistrust the concept of false memory? It is an important psychological concept that exists for a reason. Non of us are immune to it's influence, and it is extremely prevelant in almost everyone's every day life. Your memory of this event may be highly accurate, but I can guarantee you that there will be other aspects of your memory completely constructed around a false memory basis. Elizabeth Loftus conducted an amazing experiment in this area. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_in_the_mall_techniqueCorner of the eye is merely a euphemism I used for "very quickly" or "fleeting". I agree. I agree, but my point was actually we are monkeys in shoes that like shiney things. We are so badly evolved that bacteria has got its s*it together more than we do (it's behaviour is so adaptable and single minded). We are literally like a dodgy operating system riddled with virii, and sometimes the brain just loses files in defrag. Do not be alarmed, this is perfectly normal for the human species. Are you suggesting we discount her testimony then?
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Post by asdfg on Feb 19, 2010 11:16:02 GMT
I just believe that in opening up about this event as well as being challenged myself over it, it is fair for me to challenge people's responses. Well, for one thing, I wasn't responding to *your* event - I was speaking generically about about how a false perception can end up becoming a 'true story' via the shared memory phenomenon. Your experience cannot be investigated meaningfully because we have nothing to go on other than your eye-witness account; and as we know, eye-witness accounts are notoriously unreliable - because people are prone to false perceptions and false memories!!! Our senses are not infallible.
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Post by bobdezon on Feb 19, 2010 11:28:34 GMT
The thing is though. This is the Bad Psychics forum and you are not going to convince anyone of your experience I believe his experience, as I am sure many others here do also. There is no alternative to reality. The paranormal has not been evidenced to exist in any form. Why would we include the possibility of this being paranormal? That just muddies the real reasons something like this might occur. We are polluting our options by pandering to fantasy, and all that will do is prolong the search for the real answer by producing more dead ends (no pun intended). For that alternative to be adopted, we would need to base it on a preexisting event (IE: evidence of the paranormal). Why is it not Angels? Pixies? Munchkins? Aliens? Why must it be a Ghost? Do you see what I mean? If Pills was a fan of ghosts, he may say it was a ghost. However, if he was a UFO enthusiast, he may claim an Alien influence was the cause. The role of a sceptic is to provide balance to a discussion by forcing all parties to focus on what is relevant. Sceptics are generally more experienced at thinking clearly. That is not to say that sceptics cannot be wrong, Infact we LOVE being shown we are wrong because then we have learned more. Too many cooks spoil the broth, ant. I disagree, there is a third alternative. Simply put, he constructed a working theory based upon incomplete information. How right you are. The problem is people take our response to be an insult, when infact we really want to help them discover what has been bothering them. We find that a nicer alternative than to lie to them and pander to delusions which may be dangerous. It may just help add to confirmation bias though. A lot of people can be wrong about one subject. The amount of people who believe it to be true does not make it so.
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Post by antmania on Feb 19, 2010 11:42:56 GMT
That is probably true Bob about too many cooks but Pills seems to be someone who is well balanced and also sceptical by nature. All I am saying is that he won't find the answers he is looking for here unless he has some doubts as to what he saw and then can find the more rational explanation for two people apparently seeing a woman falling to her death. From what I can gather, already the usual rational or phsychological explanations have been trotted out yet Pillsbury still is not swayed one iota hence my suggestion to look elsewhere and perhaps similar experinces at the same location.
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Post by lovelyyoungman on Feb 19, 2010 12:39:26 GMT
Here's a quick aside on the false memory aspect. If you'd seen it 10 minutes ago I would say its potentially a false memory.
Here's a demonstration of it in action-This weekend I had 3 mates staying at my flat, one was supposed to go home early and two were staying on till the afternoon. When I got up (late) I looked in the spare bedroom and "saw" my two mates who were staying late still asleep. When they got up I realised that the one who was supposed to go early was still here and another had left instead. I would have sworn in court that the friend who had gone was still there (he is the only one of my friends with a beard) as I had seen him lying there only 20 minutes previously.
Things like this probably happen more often than we think, its just that we never re-examine them as they're not usually significant.
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Post by bobdezon on Feb 19, 2010 13:02:30 GMT
Classic example of your mind filling in the blanks to construct your final memory.
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Post by PILLSBURY on Feb 19, 2010 13:03:25 GMT
this is the whole eye witnesses are unreliable and it can only be reliable if two or more people saw it at the same time,which in this case three people saw it simultaneously, then it becomes a mass hallucination. Its catch 22 in that regard. You have to remember that all three of us agree as we saw it,what we saw and that story hasnt changed. So unless we immediately within a microsecond all created the same false memory I dont think its a valid arguement,so then we are into a mass hallucination or we saw what we said we saw or we saw a light anomaly. I do find it of interest that people only report seeing this "suicide" on a summer evening in similar weather" that suggests that weather conditions may well be a factor in what we saw and that is why I put it out there openly for discussion. At the end of the day I do want to know what we saw that day.
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Post by asdfg on Feb 19, 2010 14:23:06 GMT
So unless we immediately within a microsecond all created the same false memory I dont think its a valid arguement You missed, or dismissed, the explanation of 'shared memory'. No one's actually saying that you all simultaneously created exactly the same false perception and memory. At the end of the day I do want to know what we saw that day. You don't seem to want to accept alternative explanations that are known to be real. It seems as if you trust your perception that day and your memory of it as being 100% accurate, therefore this sighting must have been a ghost! It is very common with paranormal beliefs for people to use arguments like: "science can't explain it, therefore it must have been paranormal" (i.e. the Argument to Ignorance fallacy); but whenever scientific or real-world explanations are provided, they won't accept them - then they just continue with the "This can't be explained" line of argumentation. It seems implicit, to me at least, that your preferred explanation for what you saw is a paranormal one rather than a normal one such as misperception. Who knows, it might have been a ghost; but don't dismiss normal explanations out of hand as no matter how unlikely you think they may be, they are more likely to be right than paranormal alternatives.
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Post by PILLSBURY on Feb 19, 2010 15:07:19 GMT
No Jigsaw, I want to know what I saw but nothing I have seen or heard has adequately explained what I saw, I will go back and read what has been said about shared memory,maybe Ive misinterpreted it but none of the potential alternatives raised here match what I saw that day, is that because of a false memory, I dont know. As for the arguement to ignorance fallacy, no I dont accept that, what I do accept is that science is always learning new things and our scientific knowledge now compared to 100 years is ago has massively increased. Any person who wants science to explain such events also accepts that science may not be able to explain it now but will be able to in the future, that is not ignorance it is common sense. The problem we have here is that out of all of us on here,Im the only one who saw what ever I saw and none of you can corroborate my sighting, neither can you confirm my honesty or integrity or whether it is a false memory or not and that is the problem with this discussion.I have spent 24 years asking if it was a ghost or not, I certainly wouldnt have done that if I was sure that it was a ghost.
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Post by asdfg on Feb 19, 2010 17:34:20 GMT
The Argument to Ignorance fallacy is where ignorance (lack of knowledge) is used as justification for a belief or conclusion. e.g. "I saw a craft in the sky and there were no records of any aircraft in the area that night - therefore it was an alien UFO". It's using a lack of knowledge (ignorance) to assert a conclusion. In other words, it's saying: I know what this was because I don't know what it was! That's why it's a fallacy: it's logically absurd. See: Argument to IgnoranceOf course, real skeptics know the fallacy by its Latin name: Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. none of you can corroborate my sighting The main problem here is that you can't corroborate your sighting either! Your position relies on the assumption that what you perceived was actually what you saw - it ain't necessarily so! Again, you have to delve into the world of psychology and how our brains process information, but when sensory input is scant or ambiguous, our brain fills in what it thinks is the 'best fit' to the data. It may simply have been someone throwing down an overcoat to someone on the ground (because she'd left it behind) and the shape of the coat, from a distance, resembled a human form; and if seeing a human-like figure falling down from a wall is normally due to someone jumping, then that's the most likely scenario that your brain puts on this information from a distance (a jumper rather than a coat ). Now I'm not saying that is the explanation; I'm just echoing what Bob has already said - our senses are easily fooled.
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Post by PILLSBURY on Feb 19, 2010 17:37:46 GMT
I can corroborate my sighting though, my sisters saw it at the same time. However we are now in the he said,she said stage of this and I dont think its getting us anywhere.
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Post by asdfg on Feb 19, 2010 17:49:42 GMT
I can corroborate my sighting though, my sisters saw it at the same time. Shared memory phenomenon? However we are now in the he said,she said stage of this and I dont think its getting us anywhere. I think we're in the you've got your belief and nothing's going to change it stage. There's some good information in this thread (although the psychological explanations certainly require a lot more detail) and people have taken time to offer you some explanations that you claim to seek - yet you dismiss any other possibility out of hand. OK mate - it could only have been a ghost. All other possibilities have been ruled out. Science can't explain it - and there's no way that your senses can be fooled. You saw a ghost, therefore it was a ghost! End of.
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Post by PILLSBURY on Feb 19, 2010 18:58:38 GMT
I really think you need to take a chill pill Jigsaw,this sort of attitude does not help and just because I do not agree with you doesnt mean you have to be this way. My belief is that I dont know what it is I saw and asked for possible explanations,those possible explanations have been forthcoming and do not match what I saw with sufficient clarity to explain the phenomona. shared memory and false memory are not applicable as previously stated, could it have been someone throwing a coat over the wall? maybe but that doesnt explain why we all saw a woman with a dress on and longish brown hair and her legs were visible too,but as you think my memory is false that doesnt matter does it? So in short your assumption of my belief system is wrong and your assumption that I believe it to be a ghost is equally wrong as at no point have I said it was a ghost.
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Post by antmania on Feb 19, 2010 19:49:56 GMT
It was one of those coats with sewn in long brown hair, skirt and stockings Pillsbury. Surely that must be obvious to you by now!
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Post by asdfg on Feb 19, 2010 20:08:50 GMT
It was one of those coats with sewn in long brown hair, skirt and stockings Pillsbury. Surely that must be obvious to you by now! You noticed the embellishment of the story too then!
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Post by morganp on Feb 19, 2010 22:01:58 GMT
Hi Pillsbury,
If you are adamant that what you saw 24 years ago and how you recall it now are one and the same events then all credit to you for sticking to your guns despite the very valid and logical replies from myself and other members of the forum particularly from Jigsaw and Bob. Having had a similar experience and having read much on the way the human senses and memory are constructive I do seriously doubt my own ability to remember what I saw with any degree of accuracy. As Antmania has pointed out quite rightly this (as you well know) is not a forum for any sympathy or easy capitulation to anyone who claims to have paranormal encounters. It is an open minded forum where I think all posters get a fair hearing based on the facts provided.
My own experience (posted earlier) ended on a bad note with a suicide shortly afterwards (next day to be exact) - needless to say we all blamed 'the forces' on this unfortunate death.
I very much agree with Jigsaw and Bob and my own research and reading on the subject. Based on my experience I can only agree that our memories are highly fallible and we can only offer our opinions Pills - you saw what you saw but the reality of that has been lost for 24 years now.
morganp
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Post by lovelyyoungman on Feb 19, 2010 23:46:51 GMT
I think one of the problems is that when there is a possibility that a false/shared memory is occurring, it is very difficult to counter that argument without external corroboration. Person A-"But I remember it clearly" Person B- "But you have a false memory" A- "But we all remember it" B- "But you have a shared false memory" A- "No we don't" B- "Yes you do" Ad infinitum. Although I don't think anyone here is saying that you definitely have a shared false memory, I really think it is worth considering as a possibility. When you say you all spoke at the same time and therefore it cannot be a false memory- have you considered the possibility that that is part of the shared false memory? Not deliberately of course but we all subconsciously make links and assumptions. I should say again to be clear, I'm not saying that you definitely had a false memory but it is the explanation that most comfortably fits as an explanation for your story. Edited so it actually makes sense this time (drink and posting don't mix
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