Moved Into Our First Apartment Together

Hi...I would assume a long time ago something else stood where those cars were parked. Maybe it was a cellar there at one point in her life?

Greetings, Marilyn, and Welcome to YGS.

Your experience is not a cause for fear; it was an old lady who was minding her own business in much the same way you encouraged your boyfriend not to stare at the car (and possibly frighten the old lady). You don't describe any sort of hostility or anger, nor any feeling of fear, while you thought the old lady was a living person, merely fear-based reactions to your logical analysis failing to meet up with your previous observations.

It is perfectly reasonable for agnostic people --including me-- to have supernatural/paranormal experiences. We're people, too! People have experiences. Most are perfectly normal experiences (waiting for the traffic lights to change, drinking cold beverages on a hot day, etc.), some are coincidences (a friend calls while you were thinking about calling her), others are paranormal (precognitive dreaming; an unexpected sense of dread about a specific future event). These are all within the scope of the human experience. Just because you are not convinced by any one religion's scripture, dogma, or traditions, you do not need to rule out the possibility of the paranormal.

One fantastic example of this is the Vikings. Thanks to their religious beliefs, they used to beat the handles of their axes or the pommels of their swords against their shields to scare away a gigantic wolf who appeared to be eating the moon; today, we call this event "a lunar eclipse." Yes, some of the most terrifying warriors of European History were trying to scare away the Earth's shadow by making loud noises at night. The shadow always gave up and left, so the Vikings would congratulate themselves on having kept the moon safe. Who in his/her right mind would try to explain an eclipse to an angry Viking warrior in the middle of this ritual and that his attempts to scare away the wolf were not necessary because it was just a shadow?

I have had several conversations with religious friends and acquaintances (including my wife) who want to know how I can believe in ghosts and the human soul, but do not profess a belief in God. They are lovely people, but many of them are making a connection between their worship of God/Gods and supernatural events on Earth. This is an example of the "false cause fallacy" (post hoc, ergo propter hoc), such that THEY believe in God, therefore anything supernatural MUST BE related directly to the will of God or to the forces of evil. [My wife is not that dogmatic; she recognizes that we are different and she asks me IF I've got any "feelings" about a course of action or a location!] Religions offer their adherents a framework of moral teachings, comfort, and respectful worship of the divine, but all of the supernatural events that occur must then be explained within that religion's teachings & traditions.

Bertrand Russell once stated, "It doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you don't believe it completely." He was a socialist who spoke out against Hitler's fascism, but after the war he visited Russia only to discover that HATED Stalin's "communist" dictatorship in Russia (it, too, had become fascist). In the same way he encouraged religious people to ask fundamental questions about the teachings they heard in their temples/ synagogues/ churches/ mosques. He --to the best of my recollection-- simply wanted others to question what they had believed. If they were happy with it, that was FINE by him; if they were unhappy with what they found, then they needed to consider how they would change their own lives (within, or apart from, that religion).

Many members of YGS are happy being religious people, but most do not limit themselves to teachings that contradict their personal experiences. Agnostics are the skeptics of religious teachings; we don't completely rule out the idea that the Divine exists, but we doubt anyone who claims his or her understanding of the Divine is "right." Sadly, when anyone has a paranormal experience, there are many religious adherents who want to jump on the events as an excuse for promoting their belief system as a way to 'fix' the problem, instead of providing comfort to the friend who is surprised/ shocked/ scared by what happened. [I have seen this first hand on a couple of occasions on two different continents.] The majority of YGS members will not do that. We've had odd events in our lives, too; this is a great forum for expressing and exploring what has happened, even proposing potential explanations for the event.

As with the Vikings' defense against lunar eclipses, eventually we may discover a purely scientific basis for the interaction of disembodied spirits with the "real" world. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that spirits/ ghosts/ apparitions interact with temperature changes, electronic fields, sound waves, etc.; the paranormal, then, is merely an extension of the normal world into the unknown events we occasionally glimpse and do not fully understand.

I realize that this response rambled a bit, but I hope it gives you a sense that the paranormal is a rare or unusual part of normal human existence.

Best,
Biblio.

Marilyn - I hope you don't mind me shortening your name.

Yes I understand your surprise. Sometimes people have to experience that sort of event to appreciate the "what the hell just happened" moment.

I had a rather weird experience in a supermarket. I tend to go shopping early in the mornings as grocery shopping is not my favourite pastime and I like to get it over and done with as quickly as possible while the shops are still virtually empty.

Anyway I was towards the end of this specific aisle and I had just passed a woman sifting through some of the canned goods, a few feet away from me. There were no other shoppers in that aisle. She didn't have a basket or a trolley. It took me about two seconds to grab my jar of Bovril, which is all I wanted in that section of the supermarket. This particular woman had simply disappeared! She couldn't have walked past me as I would have seen her. There is no way she could have turned around and gone in the opposite direction, there quite simply was no time for her to have walked the length of that aisle in a second or two - unless she was an Olympic sprinter and at her age I doubt that, because I most certainly wouldn't have missed a spectacle like that either!

I know I used up a lot of comment space on my own experience but I simply wanted to let you know that experiences such as yours are not that unusual 😊

I do look for logical explanations for my own and other people's experiences and I won't put my head on a block that your experience and mine can't be explained logically.

By the way, how do we know that every person we see on the street is a living human being 😕

Regards, Melda

[at] nalchen there was no possible way the lady could've been where I saw her. It was around 1 in the morning and The car was parked too close behind another car. I never saw her again. I do recall she was an older black woman with short hair & was wearing a white blouse.

In your last line you have wrote that you will soon share your next experience, but I pray that you don't experience such things again because this experiences are not good experiences.

Hi Marilynanguiano,

Welcome to YGS. Am sure you have found the right place to post your queries.

Regarding the incident, It might not necessarily be a ghost. Maybe the lady bent down, picked up whatever it was and left while you looked at the name of the car and went to the side the lady was initially present. Maybe you just missed her and whatever she was looking for was under the car parked next to it so she went next to the other car to pick it up.

Not ruling out a possible ghost sighting though. There are high chances for that as well.
But would be able to judge based on your other experiences as well. Did you see the same lady in your other experiences? Please submit you other experiences as well.

Cheers,
Nal