Car crash leaves Australian woman with French accent http://

Or it isn't what it isn't. (^__^)

I don't think you're nuts. I do think you are mistaken.

What I do think is nuts is your long standing absolute refusal to consider the possibility of error.

Aside from your personal anecdotes, you never seem to have any evidence to support your beliefs. So, while "it is what it is," how do you know what it is?

People do make mistakes, so how can you be certain that you are correct?

Dear Raybar:

I might be the only person you've ever met who has had their hearing tested at a level beyond what is considered "normal" for a human being. Since I have audiologist's records proving my hearing is actually more acute -- is it any surprise when I say I can hear spirits? I don't know that there's much use to being able to -- given that they say little of pragmatic value to the living. But still, would that constitute "proof" enough? Being measurably "different"?

Sorry it took so long to answer -- I tried posting three times yesterday and couldn't get the system to work.

--Debutante

Deb - for spirits to make a noise, they would have to physically vibrate air. This requires lungs, vocal cords, hands and/or other such physical things. 8->

People give spirits too much credit - they can walk though walls, yet are not pulled by gravity through the floor to the center of the earth. They can speak, but have no lungs or vocal cords. They can hear, but have no eardrums. And so on. (Some believers get around this sort of thing by claiming that spirits use telepathy to talk, not vocal cords.) But so long as there are other, reasonable explanations of phenomena that people attribute to spirits, there's no need to seek beings that can violate pretty much all the known laws of the universe. Like someone wrote, before you spend time investigating a phenomena, we must be sure that there's actually something unusual to investigate. First-person spirit stories always seem to be best answered by the phrase, "There are no haunted houses, only haunted people." We see and hear things that aren't there virtually every day. It's just that the rest of us don't think it's anything weird. LOL.

No, Molly does not hear anything she thinks might be spirits. And she does not hear any voices. She hears high pitched sounds that I can't hear and low volume sounds that I can't hear. And the dogs and cat react to sounds neither of us can hear -- we don't really need a doorbell because the dogs are always (almost) at the door before it rings.

Do you hear in your dreams, Fred?

Lily – My dreams are like movies. I know what’s going on, even if there is no sound. 8->

Deb wrote:
> I don't think anyone's imagination can predict broken bones.
True. But our brains can “post-dict” such. We seek patterns and narrative, even where there is none.

Example: years ago I read about a man who was traveling in Japan or somewhere when his mother died back in the states. For about 30 years he told the story of how she appeared to him at the moment of her death, then he called home and found out that she had died. He defied skeptics to explain how he could have known the exact moment that she died.

Then he ran across an old diary. Turns out that family had told him about his mother’s death, then, that night, he had a dream about her. For some reason his memory warped and by the time he got back to the states he remembered the events wrong. And if he had not found his old diary, he would have spend his life totally believing that he had had a true “paranormal” experience.

Skeptics are familiar with hundreds of stories like this. Normal brains make all sorts of mistakes, and memories are not like video tapes. We all have false memories, we all confuse events in various ways. Which is why skeptics place no value on personal memories or experiences. Just because I remember something doesn’t mean that it happened the way I remember it. In fact, my memories are ALL at least partly false because each time I call up the memory, my brain alters it to match new information or new memories that I have acquired. If you don’t call up a memory often, it fades. If you call up a memory often, it changes every time you review it. That’s just the way our brains work.

So, yeah, you are absolutely certain about your experiences. (And you may be correct.) But everyone is certain about their experiences, even when the memories are false. Currently, there is no way to filter true memories from false memories. Until that happens, skeptics will continue to require other evidence besides memories before accepting any supernatural claims.

Dear Fred:

No...my memory is 100% on target in this case. The break happened about five minutes after the warning. Trust me, I was in such pain that I kept thinking, "Why didn't I listen?". You'd think that after I'd been hearing spirits all my life -- I'd have known better than to just ignore the remark. I was literally, kicking myself for my own foolishness in not taking it seriously. There's no chance of it being an inaccurate memory.

--Debutante

Joan, I appreciate your research, and I will definitely take the time to read what you've found. But I don't think you really understand what I'm trying to say to Fred and I don't think he understands what I'm trying to say either (actually he does understand but is being contrary.  )

Here is what Fred said:


People give spirits too much credit - they can walk though walls, yet are not pulled by gravity through the floor to the center of the earth. They can speak, but have no lungs or vocal cords. They can hear, but have no eardrums. And so on. (Some believers get around this sort of thing by claiming that spirits use telepathy to talk, not vocal cords.) But so long as there are other, reasonable explanations of phenomena that people attribute to spirits, there's no need to seek beings that can violate pretty much all the known laws of the universe

Fred said that the only way that that speech can be produced is physically through lungs and vocal cords. That's why I asked him about his dreams which he answered they have no sound. The thing about "sound" is that it is processed in our cochleas and brains. Folks in a coma don't hear sound even if spoken to. If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there, does it make a sound? I never said I hear "voices". But I in a dream do hear "talking". To me that's sound. If it is not, I'd like to hear an explanation why not. I had an irritating dream this morning before waking up. Part of my last job was property management. For instance, getting the carpet cleaned and buying and having light bulbs changed, but the other employees took it too far. So in dream this one co-worker asked me to get her a plant for her desk. I woke up before I "said" anything. But I heard her loud and clear and was damn irritated.

There is no sound without a hearing ear. Only vibrations. Does hearing only involve sound waves? What goes on in the brain of a deaf and blind person?

Helen Keller had an amazing life. Did you know she helped found the ACLU?

Her biography:

www.biography.com/people/helen-keller-9361967?page=1

Also view this.

Don't know. Like I said, those who lose their sight or hearing later in life have memories to call up. Those who are born with problems don't. Both deaf and blind could try to describe their inner world. I just don't remember ever reading such.

I once worked at a state hospital for mentally ill, on the deaf ward. One man was blind and deaf and mentally ill. To communicate with him we would make letters from American sign language in his hand. He "heard voices" in the sense that like many schizophrenics he "hallucinated". He would stand in a corner and argue with the "voices" in his head. We never knew what he "heard" or what he replied.

Twas a strange place to spend my days. 8->