Paying Attention to "The Impossible"

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Courtesy: iStock The Smoke Ghost. October 2018

Ever since I was little, I have always enjoyed watching movies and TV shows and reading books about paranormal phenomena. For one of my birthdays as a kid, I got a book all about New England ghost stories, and was obsessed with looking at the creepiest, grittiest photos that it featured. Jeffrey Kripal’s chapter from Authors of the Impossible included just the sorts of stories, theories and concepts that I obsessed over as a child. I was really intrigued by the idea that there is more to our world than what we see every day, and especially intrigued by those who frequently experience the paranormal. 

Haunted New England by Charles G. Waugh. 
Published: Yankee Books, 1988




I’ll come out and say it: I was and still am a believer!! I have heard stories from loved ones (who I consider to be reliable narrators) that send shivers up my spine, and while I haven’t seen a ghost or alien right in front of me (as far as I know), I have felt something that I would describe as a sixth sense. In class, we discussed how the five senses are arbitrary and specific to our culture, which was very interesting to me, and I am excited to learn more about how our senses play into people's everyday lives or paranormal/ religious experiences.The fact that living beings appear to have sensory capabilities that are beyond taste, touch, smell, hearing, and sight is totally mind-boggling.





It would be extremely interesting to experience a different animal’s sense even though it would probably be very overwhelming. Pets frequently seem to see things that are not there, or bark/ whine at empty corners of rooms. Maybe if we had their fine-tuned sense of smell and acute hearing, we could be picking up on whatever they are focusing on. A few years ago, I met a friend of my dad’s who had been trained in remote viewing. We were out to dinner when he told me and my family that he had used this skill to locate the exact location of warehouses filled with weapons in countries he had never been to. I was pretty shocked to hear this, and couldn’t believe it at first. Maybe TMI, but my mom and I went to the bathroom together afterwards at the restaurants, and from her stall she whispered to me, ‘Do you think he’s remote viewing us right now??”. We had a laugh about that, but I’ll never forget what he told us.


Couresy: How Different Animals See the World by Be Amazed. Youtube Video. 2018.

Many times, people are quick to dismiss people’s experiences because they say they were “imagined”. But, as Hana wrote in her blog post, we all hear things differently. And we all see and feel things differently too! So why couldn’t it be true that some people are seeing things, REALLY seeing things differently than everyone else? I just think it’s not something that we should rule out or ignore, just because it can’t always be replicated in a lab. I feel for the alien abductees who lost their jobs, reputations, and friendships, and more because the public didn’t believe their story. I can understand why people would be skeptical and doubt these stories, but the exiling is too much! I think that people who have had these run-ins with the paranormal should be listened to, especially in circumstances where the person has nothing to gain, and everything to lose from sharing their experiences.


I’m unaware of any major advancements since his book was published, but Kripal describes how the paranormal has hardly been given the chance to be seriously acknowledged in academia. Of course, there are many scholars and researchers who have studied this topic, but I am certain that much more could be known today if it was not so heavily ridiculed. Our class discussion about UFOs being from other dimensions was a theory that I had never heard of, and it lead me to wonder about all the other theories that exist (but that I haven't learned about) that could be explanations for paranormal

So many people have had experiences that they simply cannot explain, and as E.R. Dodds explains, a paradox has existed since the ancient world, and probably before then as well: “it is difficult to either ignore the evidence, or believe it”. (Kripal, p.10). I resonate with this statement, but I believe that people should be more open to belief. Is it hurting anyone to think with an open mind and challenge what we think of as being in the realm of possibility? All in all, I really enjoyed this reading, and being able to hear about people’s paranormal experiences excited my inner child. I wish that I had the vocabulary to describe the sixth sense that I have felt before, but I can definitely say that it is an emotional thing to experience.


Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausFebruary 15, 2022 at 7:06 AM

    You should definitely read all of Kripal's Authors of the Impossible - you'd love it! The last author he discusses, Bertrand Meheust, who writes mostly in French, has a web page in English here :http://bertrand.meheust.free.fr/index_en.php. He's worth following to keep up to date on what's going on in the critical study of paranormal activity.

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