Anyone on MAP who's lived in very rural areas have any stories to tell? I'd be interested in hearing bujingodai's take on this since he's looked into this stuff as an investigator.
I work in a psychiatric hospital, and a few years back a few people on the night shift were making a fuss about going into the day hospital at night, all sorts of creepy feelings and so on. One of the explanations they put about was that when the day hospital was built, they'd cut down a tree on the site that somebody hanged themselves on. I was quite taken by the older nurse who pointed out that in the grounds of that hospital, the difficulty is finding a tree that HADN'T been used as a gallows.
Almost everybody in my work has reported seeing a dark figure standing in the scanning room out of the corner of their eye or feeling as though they're being watched. I've experienced it myself. But I don't think it's haunted.
Most of the time it happens when the room is nearly empty with only one or two people in it or when people are being unusually quiet and actually doing some work. Experiments have shown people readily hallucinate when the brain is lacking any meaningful input. Our minds just aren't capable of shutting down. People don't really have an off switch.
So I reckon if you take a bunch of people who are reasonably intelligent, most of whom have college or university educations and put them in the most boring and monotonous job imaginable. They're likely to lose a few marbles.
The only problem with my theory is the dark figure always appears in the same spot no matter who sees it or feels it's presence. We're all drawn to look at the same part of the room.
Something really interesting about your cactus situation is that in Hindu mythology, there's mention of the gods raining down flowers to Earth to show their satisfaction/pleasure over something. When it comes to this type of stuff (ghosts, evil things out in the middle of nowhere, etc.), I'm happy to accept it's perfectly natural, unexplainable and then go about my life. There are too many people with stories they'd rather not share for me to classify it as unnatural.
My mother's younger sister passed away in her twenties from Asthma and a variety of overmedication prescribed by the doctors causing more problems with her lungs.
My grandmother loves plants.
And in our family we had a thing about magic (not the way you're all thinking).
On the night my mother's sister passed away, my grandmother took a cutting of a plant in her hospital room.
So my grandmother grew this plant in reminder of her.
Last year, 21 years after my mum's sister passed away, my grandmother was sitting in the living room and looked at that plant. She thought that the plant was getting too big (5 foot) and didn't even have flowers and decided to throw it away in the morning.
She came down stairs the next morning and looked at the plant.
At first she thought my cousins had been messing about and put some toy flowers on the tree.
But they were real flowers.
Lots of little star shaped flowers had grown and bloomed over night.
Make of it what you will.
Call it fake, but its not.
21 years later when my grandmother decided to throw it away, the plant bloomed as if to say "Don't throw me away".
It's a reminder of my mother's sister.
That's just it, it really is nonsense and blatantly doesn't make one iota of sense, being a scientist I need evidence, data, numbers, tables, binomial charts and awesome PowerPoint presentations, but I saw what I saw stood by the window, and I know I saw that kid looking at me. I can't explain it...
The incident in HK, I tried to rationalise it as me bring tired, drunk, probably still jet lagged, but for the fact we all saw the damn thing. In the hospital, I made excuses that my mind was playing tricks on me, as the room with my specimens used to be used for autopsies, yet I know I saw that kid looking at me...
When i was a teenager a friend and I were trying to lose the hangers-on that plagued us most nights (they were younger and annoying). We headed down to the woods where we regularly had fires and beers but the buggers followed. We decided we would freak them out in the hope that they would be too frightened to stay so we started with "What was that? I swear i just saw someone overthere" (throws a stone in to the bushes) "Woah, i definately saw a figure then"
A little frightened voice pipes up "what was it?"
"It looked like (insert generic ghostly description)" (throws a few more stones)
By this point my friend and I no longer had to participate as the crowd had developed mass hysteria and were feeding their own delusions. Very shortly after this had started one of the girls screamed bloody murder and everyone legged it leaving me and my mate in peace. Except, even though we knew there was nothing sinister or supernatural, and that we had instigated the whole scenario, we both were on edge for the rest of the night.
Funny how even rational and sensible people can be duped or convinced given the right circumstances.
Add the fact that the hotel front desk saw it as perfectly normal, and that makes me wonder:
a) Do they put groups of drunk, jet lagged men at the end of the hall so they don't disturb guests, with the expectation that they'll hallucinate, flip out, and demand another room in the middle of the night? This seems irregular for hotel staff since they usually like to check you in and be done with you.
or
b) Do they actually believe they're trapping spirits at the ends of halls with mirrors, reserve booking those rooms until they're at capacity, but also keep a spare room available for when the inevitable happens? This would certainly be the more entertaining option when it comes to drunk, jet lagged foreigners, but it'd still be extra work that the night shift may, or may not, be interested in doing.
At the time only one of us flipped out. Alex, he left the room to sit in reception. My other mate and I stayed, not knowing what the other had seen until morning. Apart from me having a conversation with Alex, who wasn't in the room, nothing else "unexplained" happened.
Reception, like I said, told us that they "understood", there was no talk of ghosts from them, just that they knew why we wanted to switch rooms. They didn't even ask us if there was anything wrong with the room, just accepted that we wanted out.
Now, China is spectacularly superstitious, and despite being Chinese I'm not hugely so, but that man/thing/ghost that was by the window, was something I can't explain.
Another unexplained incident I witnessed was on a night out after a grading with my old Aikido club. We were in a bar playing pool when an empty pint glass on a shelf just collapsed in on it's self into little shards of glass. The glass was already there when we arrived. So who knows what had happened to it earlier. Was pretty cool at the time though.