# Haunted Collectible?



## Anthonicia (Mar 14, 2013)

Recently acquired some fired gardner mini-bullets from the Southern retreat from the Battle of Gettysburg.  They gave me a weird feeling, and still do when I hold them.  I have no idea if this bullet killed someone or whatever, but they give off a real heaviness that's hard to describe.

 I've never really believed that an object holds spirits or whatnot.  Do believe in ghosts, or I have seen something of the sort before.  I just don't go looking for them really.  

 But, anyway, I had a very lucid dream about a Civil War soldier or someone of that time and his name was Steven.  Whether it was maybe Stevens as in a last name it is possible.  I only heard it spoken once.  Well, this Steven man had a son, no wife or mother was present.  There was a horrible wave of melancholy that came over me and I believe this is what Steven was feeling.  Maybe he was upset about the war or maybe his wife had died, both?  I'm not sure.  But he kills his son and then walks outside to a tree and kills himself.  

 Upon waking up I was screaming "How long!" over and over.  Even a few times after I gained full consciousness I was still screaming.  I've had dreams about the man since then as well.  They've not been quite as intense as the first time, but I get that horrible wave of depression as he goes about ordinary 19th century life.

 One time I woke up speaking in a language I don't know.  Have it written down somewhere what I said but I can't find it.  

 Does anyone else have similar experiences?  Something strange or "paranormal"?

 I can't be the only "crazy" bottle collector here who is interested in ghosts right?


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## AlexD (Mar 14, 2013)

I'd like to say that's cool, but I better not. I'd be terrified if that happened to me[8D]


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## epackage (Mar 14, 2013)

My dreams are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy different from yours[], and I think people who believe in ghosts, bigfoot and 800 year old people, like those found in the bible, are on a 'personal search' for something  they feel they need that life itself isn't providing them. I'm positive we have many people who believe like you do here...


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## RICKJJ59W (Mar 14, 2013)

> ORIGINAL:  epackage
> 
> My dreams are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy different from yours[], and I think people who believe in ghosts, bigfoot and 800 year old people, like those found in the bible, are on a 'personal search' for something  they feel they need that life itself isn't providing them. I'm positive we have many people who believe like you do here...


 
 Do you have any proof that "certain" people didn't live 800 years? [] I'm lucky if I top out at 450. 

 Big Foot----- Not

 Ghost yes--Ive seen the other side


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## Anthonicia (Mar 14, 2013)

Not a spiritual quest or anything for me.  I like to keep an open mind.  It's only crazy until it happens to you.  Doesn't hurt to have someone with you to experience the same thing too.  The only time I've seen something was with an old friend.  A black mass like cloud formed to the left of us on a railroad track, then went under the track beneath us and started to form a figure on the right side, 8-10ft tall.  The way it moved was unlike anything I'd seen or seen since.  

 We were only 16 or so at the time and didn't have the nerve to stick around long.  Don't think I could stay around in that situation now being 30 though.  If I hadn't seen it and was listening to someone else telling the story I wouldn't believe it either.  You can easily be dismissive and say, "oh, that was just fog moving in."  

 I've never seen black fog before and I have been out in middle of oceans as I have land on the other side of earth.  Fog doesn't move with consciousness and never black.


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## Plumbata (Mar 15, 2013)

I've had some pretty wild inexplicable experiences, and like your experience with the black fog, one was experienced by myself and a friend in an abandoned house in the woods. We were in different parts of the house, and I heard a voice coming seemingly from inside the wall, saying something like "... who's there?..." (there was more but my hearing is very weird; not bad in the usual sense but my processing of auditory information has a lag time between initially hearing sounds and mental assemblage into intelligible words).

 Anyway, It sure didn't sound like my friend's voice but I went out of the room into the hall to holler and ask what my friend just said. He, at the same time, left the room at the other end of the hall to ask me the same thing. We both asked "what did you say?" at the same time. Our eyes locked, got wide, and we flew out of that house like terrified pigeons, haha. When we talk about it now, years later, it still gives us the chills.

 And Jim is naturally cynical seeing how he has stated he is an agnostic/atheist. Well, I was an atheist at the time too, and never believed in spirits, the afterlife, or any of that stuff anytime prior. Sure as heck wasn't into believing in ghosts, spirits, etc. so that event rocked me pretty hard.


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## epackage (Mar 15, 2013)

Cynical yes, but in this case it's more a matter of being a person who has grown up in a time of science. I find myself believing that there is a reasonable answer as to why everything happens, not always easy to prove answers but reasonable explanations none the less...[] Many times the situations people find themselves in seem to dictate or allow the imagination to run wild just a little bit, creating great stories to regale one another with for years to come.


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## Anthonicia (Mar 15, 2013)

I don't know what I really consider myself to be.  I grew up Catholic, but my friends would say I'm agnostic.  The main resistance to saying I'm actually an agnostic is guilt.  

 Those strange things we see/hear could be scientifically explained as being from another dimension.  If you're scientifically minded, then that has to be a possibility.  Unless you are from that school of science who thinks Einstein's theories are just of the theoretical and not proven?


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## rockbot (Mar 15, 2013)

How about other life in the universe?




> ORIGINAL:  epackage
> 
> Cynical yes, but in this case it's more a matter of being a person who has grown up in a time of science. I find myself believing that there is a reasonable answer as to why everything happens, not always easy to prove answers but reasonable explanations none the less...[] Many times the situations people find themselves in seem to dictate or allow the imagination to run wild just a little bit, creating great stories to regale one another with for years to come.


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## andy volkerts (Mar 15, 2013)

[8|]As to other life in the universe, I feel that it would be really dumb to think that intelligent life(if ya can call it that[]) only exists here on earth......


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## Plumbata (Mar 15, 2013)

So what "time" was I born into, 25 or so years more recently than you, Jim? Was it not the age of science and technology as well? I am not trying to argue or anything, but despite what I wanted to believe back when I was 19 (essentially identical to your stated position here), there really aren't reasonable scientifically substantiated answers for absolutely everything that one can experience. Not yet, anyway.

 We both know that you are highly intelligent and aware, but conscious, fallible, subjective, and malleable human awareness of the universe does not constitute or comprise the entirety of objective reality. I've written well-rounded (and sober, heh) manifestos about this general subject but won't share them here, not yet anyway. Believers don't like having their foundations shaken, and just the same nonbelievers don't like their "logical" foundations shaken either. At the core it is all the same thing; a matter of belief and faith. It is almost funny that despite being at the opposite ends of the spiritual spectrum, both diametrically opposed sides are guilty of the same "logical" fallacy. Both sides "believe" in something, or some idea, that can't be definitively proven. This is why I abandoned Atheism. It made me just as ignorant and closed-off to incongruous information as my religiously or spiritually faithful Judeo-Christian compatriots are to unfamiliar ways of spiritual thinking (or a lack thereof).

 I didn't relate other past experiences that in retrospect may have been subconsciously triggered/cultured by prior knowledge or understanding; even subconscious. A bullet, by nature, carries unique subjective psychological and emotional implications for everyone who knows what a bullet is. The imagination can make manifest many potent "experiences"; I've been there and metacognitively debunked most of my "supernatural" experiences, but a few are beyond explanation given what we (or I) know presently. I still don't believe in spirits, ghosts, heaven/hell/afterlife or any of that crap. I do know that my friend and I experienced something so obnoxiously unusual that there is no reasonable explanation for it; save there being some troglodytic misshapen "Igor" of a freak being kept chained secretly in a hidden space somewhere under the roof of the house which hasn't been occupied (by non-freaks) since the 1970s. Deep in the woods at 3 AM with the closest property being that of my friend, I sincerely doubt someone was playing an elaborate prank on us.

 Stuff like this makes me firmly Agnostic. I really don't know, and anyone who presumes to know the true reality of the universe in it's entirety is full of BS. When I have people way less intelligent try to preach to me I laugh silently but am respectful. Usually they are great people who I like a lot, but... Sometimes; or even most of the time, I wish that I was as dumb as them and believed that the world was just as black/white and cut/dry as they think it is. Doesn't matter if they are born-again or militant atheists. They "have it figured out" and can move on without worrying about the uncertainties. Life would be a helluvalot easier if I could do that.


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## tftfan (Mar 15, 2013)

[8|] Had a few GOOD ones myself, some alone, some not alone. Sure makes ya wundur.


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## tftfan (Mar 15, 2013)

On the lighter side....  this is my best SQUATCH pic.   []  she is gonna hurt me[]


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## Anthonicia (Mar 15, 2013)

Could definitely see that dream being manifested from subconscious thought.  Civil War was on my mind, well had to be since I got the bullets that day.  A little bit weird, but explainable.  Other things are not so.


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## cowseatmaize (Mar 15, 2013)

Well, have you been in touch with THEM yet?


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## frozenmonkeyface (Mar 15, 2013)

I am a Christian and I believe in it 100% even though I am majoring in a scientific field.  I do not think that makes me ignorant. I think that means I have experienced God in a way that sadly some.of you have not. I wish everyone could and I hope in due time your able. I am not trying to get into a debate. Just felt like I needed to say that much. 

 I had something odd happen to me after my grandfather passed away and I use to think.it was his ghost, but now I think it may have been my emotional state.
 Anyway, right after I found out he passed away I was in bed upset, my husband (ex now) had left for work about 30 minutes earlier. I was on the edge of the bed facing away from the wall. The bed was in the middle of the room. All of a sudden something slammed on the side of the bed, just like someone was hitting it with the palm of their hand. I jumped and turned over.....nothing there. It hit the side of the bed three times.

 I was my grandfather's favorite and my dad thinks he wanted to play a trick on me one last time. Haha


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## cowseatmaize (Mar 15, 2013)

Religion shouldn't be involved here because every religion, even the some odd hundreds of denominations of Christianity are different in belief.
 You can believe what you want to believe, ghosts, heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation etc.,  or choose your own path. 
 I'd just prefer religion be kept out of the equation.
 Eric


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## epackage (Mar 15, 2013)

Yes Plumb you too were born into the scientific age...[]  My need for 'proof' has nothing to do with religion, my original response wasn't based in any religious or non-religious beliefs(except for 800 year old people) because I don't equate seeing or believing in ghosts with religion anymore than I equate seeing Bigfoot as being relgious. I think most times the subconscious plays a major roll in what people see, hear and are otherwise affected by including myself, if they are considered religious by those experiencing them I have no issue with that.

 I was born and raised as a Catholic, went thru it all including CCD classes until I was 12. Then a switch was flipped in my head that made me question the things I was being taught regarding God and faith, it had a profound effect on me and the way I viewed everything because accepting things based on 'faith' no longer made sense to me. Suddenly religion itself wasn't much different than the magicians that I grew up watching on tv, with just a little bit of faith I could believe the womanWAS being sawn in half and that the elephant HAD disappeared when the sheet was pulled down from its rigging.

 Having said that I would never try to discourage someone from having faith because I don't see anything wrong with, it just doesn't work for me because I have the need to question all things. How, what, where, when and why became my new religion at a young age. The one thing I do find kind of odd is the people who do believe in a specific religion but feel the need to cast aspersions on other peoples religious beliefs, and the lengths many have gone to to do harm to those who have a different faith from them. I know of no religion that teaches the kind of violence we have seen for thousands of years, yet it continues today on this big blue marble.[]

 Looking back, I can honestly say as a kid I had similar experiences to some of the stories told here, as an adult I can now say that those 'happenings' were easily embellished and skewed by my own mind and those of my childhood cohorts who may have been with me when the supernatural happened...[]


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## Plumbata (Mar 15, 2013)

Well-put everybody, glad my drunken statement didn't make the thread devolve into a nasty brawl. []

 As it stands now, I respect and value the faith others have in their beliefs, though with some reservations based upon basic constitutional rights of all people to pursue life, liberty, and happiness provided it doesn't infringe upon the same pursuits of others, and honestly wish I had some faith too (I'm presently interested in an amorphous sort of deism). The human perspective, even for Einstein, is as ignorant relative to the reality of the universe as an ant is ignorant relative to the awareness of the human organism. Science, as a product of humanity, is similarly constrained. I do not respect people when they claim that their unique, fallible, personal understanding of something as complex as the universe constitutes the entirety of immutable cosmic truth, to the exclusion of all other people who believe differently. Anyone who goes around treating people like idiots if they aren't a militant Atheist, or preaching that you will go to hell if you aren't a good Catholic (born and raised), or aren't born-again and don't accept Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior (and treat you like dirt because of it) are little different in my mental categorization than Jihadists who think every modern westerner is a morally corrupt tool of Satan. 

 Regarding inexplicable "supernatural" human experience, as a rule I believe that there is a logical explanation for it all (even if humanity hasn't discovered it yet), but it does not exclude the possibility of other dimensions or planes of existence. The vast majority of such incidents can be explained with elements of the science of psychology and sociology, but I've seen and read enough to believe (versus definitively know) that some things are beyond explanation given our present scientific understandings of things.

 Similar to the bullets (their subconscious potency, anyway), I have these 3 tri-lobate, wonderfully interesting little stones with similar polished angles/facets, which were found over a number of years in different locations. I had seen an article describing morphologically identical ones in a 1997 archaeology periodical suggesting they were Native American ritual/game stones, so over time the stones came to hold great ancient and spiritual potency. They seemed to emanate an energy so strong that holding them or looking at them for too long made me particularly uncomfortable. [] I spent many hours researching them and Native American symbolism, even had a professor assisting me in the quest. I determined that they symbolized a snake (based upon the verified symbolism of the trilobate motif), which to the native american represented a bridge between the earth and sky, or earthly and spiritual realms.

 Well, 2 years ago I discovered that they are worn-down ceramic (looked like a greenstone) "mill stars" used in a tumbler for de-burring metal castings, and weren't likely from before the 1900s. Found out by tracking down the author in the 1997 publication who learned the truth sometime after he submitted the article, and then I verified it through other sources. Pretty funny, albeit disappointing, but a superb example of the power of the subconscious and "suggestion". 

 So, although I take most similar situations, or tales of spirits and ghosts with a big 'ole rock of salt, especially after that episode, I still believe the mechanics of the universe hold some pretty damn extraordinary potential for the presently-inexplicable. It may seem presumptuous or arrogant, but I believe we are but ignorant little insects compared to the complexity of "The All".


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## myersdiggers1998 (Mar 15, 2013)

ancient aliens ,the series on history channel .com


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## rockbot (Mar 15, 2013)

Let us not forget....
*
 Science is a process of verification and disproof, not one of proof.

*


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## Plumbata (Mar 15, 2013)

Quite right, good of you to point that out. You're a physicist, aren't you Rocky? I take it you believe there is other life "out there", and I believe that there certainly must be as well, but don't know enough to back it up with numerical probabilities or whatnot. Do you think Carbon-based life is the only viable form out there, or could other elements which can form a great variety of bonds be the basis of vastly-different forms of life? Think I've heard that Silicon is a possibility. Any thoughts on this?


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## rockbot (Mar 17, 2013)

The universe is made up of only three building blocks, subatomic particles we call electrons, neutrons and protons and combine to form atoms. Combinations of subatomic particles form ninety two naturally occurring elements. Elements in turn combine to form compounds providing an infinite variety of substances.

 So to answer your question Plumb, with over fifteen hundred galaxies in the size of a grain of sand at arms length, Yes, IÊ»am sure the possibilities are endless![]





> ORIGINAL:  Plumbata
> 
> Quite right, good of you to point that out. You're a physicist, aren't you Rocky? I take it you believe there is other life "out there", and I believe that there certainly must be as well, but don't know enough to back it up with numerical probabilities or whatnot. Do you think Carbon-based life is the only viable form out there, or could other elements which can form a great variety of bonds be the basis of vastly-different forms of life? Think I've heard that Silicon is a possibility. Any thoughts on this?


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