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@mcjulie Wow, that's odd. See, stories like these are hard for me, because I end up being stuck thinking, "Maybe the broken watch strap was there and you were looking from a weird angle?" Or, you know, "Maybe he was messing with you?" Even though I know you'd both insist otherwise.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie It's a consequence of being committed to a naturalistic view. Which I am: Fortean events are interesting to me as fictions, but I think things are always ultimately explicable in naturallistic terms. Confronted with a story like that, few (acceptable) explanations are available.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Here's an analogue for me: in my high school English class, our teacher had a deck of cards he used to pair us up with partners for spelling/vocabulary tests.* (Yes, that part of the class was taught to the bottom 30%. Nice teacher but that was ridiculous...)Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Usually he'd shuffle the cards, and then he'd pair us up: one off the top, one off the bottom. He'd read the name off the first card, and then pause suspensefully. Messing with us, killing time. But this one day, he paused a little too long, and I blurted out the second name.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Not sure why I did, even, except the name popped into my head. Just like psychics always claim it works, right? The teacher draws the next card, makes a shocked face, looks at me in amazement, and says, "That's right," and repeats the name.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Repeat that scene a bunch of times—like seven in a row, I think? After seven, I said, "I don't know..." and someone else blurted out a name. Same reaction from the teacher as that person gets two in a row. Then someone else blurts one out. She's right too. I was like, "How?!?!?"Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie The obvious answer I arrived at shortly thereafter was, "He was just humoring us, messing with us by pretending all the answers matched up. Which... he didn't actually show us any cards. He didn't read any names, either: he let us track who'd been "taken" & who needed a partner.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie That's always stood out in my mind as the go-to example of something *some* people would obviously insist was a supernatural or psychic experience, but which obviously was just one having a bit of innocent fun by pretending such a thing was happening.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie And while I don't remember the first person who jumped in, I am sure the second one wouldn't remember, but would not be mad if I told her that story. She'd laugh, and say, "Sure, that makes sense." Somehow people are less likely to laugh about ghost stories that way.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Some even get upset when you suggest maybe other explanations are possible for the "supernatural phenomena" they describe, as if you've insulted their taste in music or clothing.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Or, rather, they feel their intelligence is insulted when you offer other explanations. Even when their dismissal of the alternate explanation is poorly grounded or illogical, because of course anyone who offers a terrible dismissal of an alternate explanation won't realize it.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie It's hard to say, "I'm not insulting your intelligence, I just think you're overestimating it... or how thorough you've been assessing the alternative explanations..." But see, that falls apart with your story. I know you guys. You're not dummies.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie So I have to default to, "I wonder if there's some feature of the house that could have caused this to happen..." Like, say, a carpet pattern that made the watch strap hard to see from a certain angle, say. I mean: it *couldn't* have moved on its own.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie I end up fumbling a little, into the territory of, "Well, there's been plenty of times when I didn't see something that was exactly where I left it. Somehow I just didn't see it. It seems likely that would occasionally happen to two people at once, especially w/ suggestion."Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Which... I mean, suggestion alone can make a second person not see something that's there. Maybe you were both tired and suggestible. Maybe, I dunno? People hate that, when one brings up suggestibility, even there's piles of evidence for it. Third person effect.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Which I get: it's one thing to recognize other person are subject to suggestion and can be made to see things other than how they really are. It's another thing to recognize it in oneself. (Which I supposes loops us back to your, "Not seeing listening as self-debasement" point.)Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie I do have one from my dad: he used to tell about how my mom fell down some stairs, and he wasn't home, but he "felt" it and knew something was wrong. The details are fuzzy—Mum might remember, I'll ask next time we talk—but that's the outline of it. It became family legend.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Which is the rub: family legends are always embellished. What could easily have been coincidence can turn into, "I knew... I just *knew* something was wrong." Lucky timing can become fate or psychic intuition, and if the teller tells it enough, they ultimately believe it.On twitter.com
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@mcjulie And some people always think something is wrong, so... even a broken clock is right a couple of times a day. Meanwhile, my dad had no idea any of the times my nose broke, or when my sister injured a tendon, or... well, you get the picture. That suggests coincidence embellished.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie The trick, though, is recognizing when someone's story is important enough to them to be important beyond its factuality: like, when it's part of their identity. Dad's story had a context in which it had special, metaphorical meaning. A lot of "ghost stories" do, I think.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Which just leads me back to, "So why do I not find a need for that sort of thing?" The closest I actually come to it was when, shortly after we were married, my wife looked at my passport and looked up at me in shock. "What?" I said. She read the passport number.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Then I saw it: it was her initials, followed by her birth date. Literally: the initials of her given name, and then the six digits of her birthdate. I'd gotten the passport a few years before we even met (it was near expiring). We both found that very odd.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie But ultimately we just had a laugh and decided it was a funny coincidence. I don't imagine that makes me "smarter" or "less prone to nonsense" but I do think a *lot* of people would make more of it, and wonder how we both ended up lacking the instinct to do so.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Probably the fact we both are solidly atheist after being raised in a religious manner has something to do with it. Probably also both that we embrace an explicitly (and vehemently) naturalistic worldview, and prefer to sequester the supernatural to fiction and entertainment.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Maybe also we've developed a very... powerful allergy to supernaturalistic explanations of things, the way some people develop a penicillin allergy due to overexposure? Like, I love it in stories: once someone tries to use it in real life, I get the emotional equivalent of hives.Permalink On twitter.com
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@mcjulie Not everyone who's overexposed develops an allergy, of course. But why or why not? I think maybe it's an instinct for stories to function in those metaphorical ways. Then again, I dunno: maybe there's other stories I use for those purposes that just rely on some other element?Permalink On twitter.com