Describe something that's happened to you for which you have no explanation.

[NJmaverick]

??????

[Courtesy Flush]

1. I didn't turn out like the rest of my family.

I had the typical dysfunctional family (nothing as crazy as some of you guys may have had), and didn't think my adult life would be any different. But as soon as I moved away, the drama ended, and I've been living a peaceful life with a great marriage for decades.

I've been happy for 30 years

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

2. The Bush Administration

How in the HELL did that happen?!

[NJmaverick]

5. Stolen election in florida

you put crooks in office and the rest was pretty much what would be expected.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

6. Hey! I live in Milwaukee!

What's this "you" put the crooks in office crapola!!!

[CBHagman]

3. If I described it, there'd been a massive DU pile-up.

Suffice it to say it was an experience while praying with others.

[NJmaverick]

4. I woudl certainly be interested in hearing the details.

[CBHagman]

16. It's an experience I've only heard one other person describe.

It was the physical sensation of power flowing through me as several people prayed over me. I can only describe it as being as though a painless electric current were passing through me. The people around me felt it and remarked on it. I was maybe 15 or 16 at the time, in good health, and since then I've experienced nothing like it.

In recent years a friend of mine described something similar happening to her, only in that case the prayers were for another person, a person with severe health problems.

[HERVEPA]

7. I'm 60 years old. How did that happen?

[RebelOne]

13. Hey, I'm 70 now and I have no idea where all the years went. n/t

[Javaman]

14. I'm 80 years old and I have no idea who any of you are! nt

[SteppingRazor]

8. I once read Bill O'Reilly's Culture Warrior. n/t

[NJmaverick]

9. How did it affect you?

[SteppingRazor]

10. It didn't. It's funny, there's this one part about halfway through...

where Bill imagines a presidential speech circa 2050 if the "secular progressives" have their way. The president (a Latina, of course, because having the president be both a woman and a minority is EXTRA scary), goes on and on about all the things they've accomplished. O'Reilly writes it as some sort of cautionary tale, but for the most part, I read through the whole speech thinking to myself, "Sounds great!"

But for the most part, it's standard rightwing blowhard stuff. O'Reilly makes a bunch of wholly unsupported claims and the reader is supposed to just lap it up without thinking too hard. (I recall in the beginning of the book, there's a line where O'Reilly says how his show has kept secular organizations on the defensive and, in some cases "has put them out of business." My first thought was, "Really, Bill, could you tell me what organizations are no longer operating thanks to the Factor?" But of course, no examples were offered, and a fan of O'Reilly's wouldn't even stop to answer the question.)


On edit: And, jokes aside, I did have a reason for reading it. This couple who are some of my wife and I's best friends are also conservatives for the most part. As a joke, they gave me the book for a birthday gift. Still, I promised them that I would read every page, and I'm a man of my word.

[NJmaverick]

11. The not thinking part is a key component of right wing ideology

It's shallow depth of thinking was also the key reason those ideas and concepts nearly destroyed our nation.

[SteppingRazor]

12. Agreed.

Black-and-white thinking and hard, line-in-the-sand morality are part and parcel to modern conservative ideology. Muslims are always evil, the free market is always good, etc. I suppose it makes for a much simpler world, but it's also, you know, wrong.

[DevonRex]

15. How about a spooky one?

I was in a motel room in upstate NY, sound asleep. All the sudden the door crashes open, waking us. I looked outside. Nobody was there. No wind, no nothing. I closed the door and locked it again.

A few minutes later the door crashed open again. Same thing. Nobody there. No wind, no nothing. This time I locked the door and wedged a chair under the door knob.

I have a few of those types of incidents to tell but that will do for now.

[NJmaverick]

19. That is certainly strange

do you think someone was messing with you?

[DevonRex]

20. I didn't know a soul in that little town.

So. Maybe it depends on the definition of "someone."

[DFW]

17. After 27 years, I STILL can't figure this one out:

An exquisitely beautiful, well-adjusted, tall blond woman, who is a genius cook and easy-going travel companion,
agreed to be my wife. We had 8 years together before getting married, when she could have broken it off at any
time, and walked away free and clear, and she STILL chose to stay with me.

I haven't figure it out to this day.

Nor am I complaining!

[NJmaverick]

18. Good for you guys

[abq e streeter]

21. several...ouija board incident, encounter with a "ghost"(?), shared audio hallucination

and encounter with a strange woman...I've mentioned the ouija one recently; briefly, my friend and I ( we were about 11) were playing with one in '62 or '63, and it "told us", several times in a row, that President Kennedy would not be re-elected but that it would be a Democrat, in '64. Made no sense and we forgot about it until Nov 22nd, '63......had an experience in the early 90's that I can't explain any other way besides a ghost, mainly because an hour after I'd felt or "sensed" some "entity' in my home, a friend came over, and with me having not said anything or even hinted that something weird had happened, he told me that he didn't want to scare me , but that he had just seen "a person" in another room, that couldn't have possibly been there. In about 1974, I had some street woman come up to me asking for a place to stay; had never seen her before nor since, and she started telling me all sorts of things about me, including what I'd been thinking, that it's impossible for her to have known...
But maybe the weirdest, was a friend and I , while in college in 1970, had been listening to a Rolling Stones album and heard a "horn flourish" of some sort that was not on the record, and it was so striking, that both of us simultaneously looked at each other and excitedly asked "did you hear that?" We'd heard the same thing, and we replayed the song, and it wasn't ( and isn't ) there. Kind of freaked us out , but hey , strange things happened in those years during experiences on ,um... a different plane of reality. It was so striking though ( in that we both heard the same auditory hallucination) that I'd never forgotten about it, and when we reconnected decades later ( about 2 years ago) , one of the first memories he brought up, with "you probably don't remember this, but..." was this incident. I confirmed to him the "enhanced state" we'd been in, and 37 years later, as middle aged (at least) men, we still can't explain what happened.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

22. In December 1991 I was staying in the bedroom that my grandparents used

in their house. I was playing with my one of my toys and suddenly I heard my grandfather talking to me

My grandfather had passed away in August of that year. I was totally freaked out and ran from the room.

Actually there were a few events preceding my grandfather's death that I can't explain. I only have vague memories of my grandfather because we lived in two different countries on two different continents and I only saw him a few times in his life before his passing. I think he may have felt quite close to me, though, because I shared the same name as his favorite brother who had died in World War I. We hadn't seen each other for about three or four years when he died and, shortly before he passed away, he expressed a wish to see my sister and I as soon as possible. Tragically, he passed away just days before we were scheduled to move permanently to the country in which he lived in.

A few months before his death, I started to have this distinct feeling that time was running out for him. I remember talking about it to my teacher at the time and also having this dream where I visited my grandparents in their home, after which I woke up with an even greater longing to see them. I'm not sure whether this was coincidence -after all, his health had been in decline for some time (although there was no outward indication that he was near death) -or whether it was something deeper. On the night that he passed away, I remember thinking about him and how nice it would be to see him again. Again, I'm not sure if it was coincidence or not

And then I had the experience in his bedroom a few months later. I hesitated for quite a while before telling my grandmother. To my surprise, she didn't dismiss what I had to say as I thought she would. She later confided to my Dad something to the effect that she had felt his presence around the house for a while after his passing and she'd known when he had finally "moved on", so to speak.

Apart from that, I can think one other incidence which I can't explain and which is sending shivers down my spine just writing about it

It happened when I was could have been no older than about six or seven. I woke up early one morning (say about 3AM or 4AM) and spent some time with my father, who was also up. We then decided to go to sleep in my sister's room (my sister was sleeping with the rest of my family that night so her room was empty) so as not to disturb the rest of the family. I was lying in bed and in the process of going to sleep when one of the toys on my sister's shelf started to move freely of its own accord. It started to change its position on the shelf with the same sort of movements and mannerisms that you'd expect from a human and in a way that could not have been compatible with the type of toy that it was. It was very coordinated and focused in the way that it was moving, not like it was being blown around by the wind or any other external factor like that.

I don't know what the heck that was but it scared the heck out of me then and it still does now.