Have any atheists ever had a 'weird' experience?

[Feck]

All the time,but then ...that's just me

[mistermack]

At almost the age of 60 I have never had an experience of any sort which could vaguely be called 'supernatural' or have a supernatural explanation, except existence of course. Every report I have read has been second hand - even the ones here.

I have however experienced extreme states of consciousness, which were very strange indeed and might in previous times have been considered 'magical' in some way. LSD was the cause of those, and occasionally weed and speed mixed..deadly and to be avoided!

Of course, people in the stone age were eating all sorts of plants that we don't use now, and could have had lots of weird experiences from mild poisons.
Magic mushrooms are pretty common even now, and must have been well known in the past. But when you're hungry or starving, you're going to resort to eating stuff you would normally give a wide berth.
There must have been a lot of that in the distant past, with very few ways of effectively storing food.
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[Gawdzilla Sama]

I went to a voodoo ceremony on Hispaniola once. The guy I went with worked at the base where I was stationed in Puerto Rico. The "services" were not for tourists, I was the only non-local there. I was wrecked when they started and it only got worse. The next day he asked me if I'd had an "religious" experiences the night before. I had to tell him that I hadn't.

[Elessarina]

1. an experience of something that could be considered a "telepathy" one.. nothing major but it was surprisingly odd random and very very accurate

2. An "out of body" experience that was very very vivid and surreal

3. I have had lots of weird sleep paralysis experiences and dreams where I *think* i am awake but am not and then realise and am aware that i am trying to pull myself out of sleep.

4. I once swore I saw a rabbit or something run across the road in front of me but I knew at the time it was an hallucination (i wasn't on drugs or anything it was just .. *odd*)

[Svartalf]

I once had a very weird experience, but if it was religious, I'm going to start pouring libations to Thor, Odin, Freyr, Freyja, Teutates, Belenus, Esus, Lugh Long Arms, and last but not least, Arawn, Lord of the Other World.

Long ago, in my wasted youth, I was curious about that 'reincarnation' stuff and people going off about who they were in their previous lives. I, and some of my friends, were also regular customers of the local esoteric bookstore.

So, one day, they let it be known that a hypnotist will come to town and conduct a 'relive your past lives' workshop. So Of course I was there. The hypnotist does his thing, and before I know what's happening, I'm finding myself sharing the body, senses and consciousness of somebody who wasn't me.

Well, something not quite regular must have happened, because the person I was was nobody who ever lived on earth. Actually, as I quickly noticed as my brains tried to process his sensory input, he wasn't even really human... it was funny to notice that I was seeing quite clearly in an environment that any human would at best have qualified as 'dark', and seeing colors (hues and intensities of color actually) that my own eyes would not allow me to perceive.

What was really interesting is when I got enough of the guy's mind and memories to know in whose I was getting hypnotically stuck. He was nobody else than one of my Dungeons and Dragons characters.

What one might conclude from this about the working of the human mind and accessing the subconscious is interesting, but I wouldn't say it has anything to do with religion.

[The Dawktor]

At almost the age of 60 I have never had an experience of any sort which could vaguely be called 'supernatural' or have a supernatural explanation, except existence of course.

Me neither and I am MUCH younger than Rum!

[Thinking Aloud]

I also know someone who had a very strange godly experience. They were trying to unlock a door - with the right key, but it wouldn't turn. They were alone, and then a clear voice told them, "Jesus is the key," and lo, the key turneth in the lock and the door openeth. They're atheist now...

[mistermack]

I also know someone who had a very strange godly experience. They were trying to unlock a door - with the right key, but it wouldn't turn. They were alone, and then a clear voice told them, "Jesus is the key," and lo, the key turneth in the lock and the door openeth. They're atheist now...

Are you sure it wasn't their own voice saying, "jesus christ, what's wrong with this fuckin key?"
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[Thinking Aloud]

I also know someone who had a very strange godly experience. They were trying to unlock a door - with the right key, but it wouldn't turn. They were alone, and then a clear voice told them, "Jesus is the key," and lo, the key turneth in the lock and the door openeth. They're atheist now...

Are you sure it wasn't their own voice saying, "jesus christ, what's wrong with this fuckin key?"
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Yes.

[A Monkey Shaved]

I am getting more hypnagogic hallucinations lately which seem to be getting more detailed and intense with age. I first started getting them in my mid 30's I am currenty 56 years of age. They are kind of like flashes of a dream as I am usually relaxing in a darkened room and last for a few seconds.

[tattuchu]

I once had an experience of time not flowing correctly. I'd gotten off the school bus with my friend Michael, and we stopped at his house because he wanted to change his clothes. I waited outside and sat on my bike. I watched him walk in the front door, and then walk back out seconds later in a change of clothes. It was physically impossible. His bedroom was on the second floor up a long flight of stairs, and down the hall. There was no way he could've gotten up there that fast, found clothes, changed, and been back out the door. Not in the span of several seconds

p.s. There was only one logical conclusion to draw from this: I was abducted by aliens. You can read more about the experience in my autobiography, Percy Gets Probed

[Geoff]

At almost the age of 60 I have never had an experience of any sort which could vaguely be called 'supernatural' or have a supernatural explanation, except existence of course.

Me neither and I am MUCH younger than Rum!

Me neither, and so am I!

[mistermack]

This is the only other odd thing I've ever experienced. Odd it certainly was. But it didn't strictly happen to me. I'm including it here because I was sitting right next to the guy it happened to.

The two of us had been to a nightclub disco in Nailsworth in the Cotteswold hills. We were travelling home at about two am, the road was completely empty. We'd had a few drinks, nothing excessive, and I was driving, he was in the front passenger seat.
I have to mention now that my friend was 0% superstitious, a totally non religious, non-anything individual, and I'd known him years. He was a down-to-earth son of a farmer.

As we drove along, along the tops of the local hills, I was looking ahead and noticed how much like an arch the trees were, above the road, in my headlights. I was looking up, noticing that. Suddenly my friend sat bolt upright, and shouted "what the fuck was that?" at the top of his voice. Then he shouted "stop the car, stop the car!!"

I stopped and asked him what the hell he was on about.
He was saying "didn't you see it? You must have seen it" and stuff like that. I said "see what? I didn't see anything".
He said that a weird little creature crossed the road, right in front of the car. He kept saying I must have seen it, but I saw nothing. I was looking up at the arch above the road made by the trees, right at that instant.

He sounded so genuinely shocked, I asked what it was like, and he said that it was 'horrible', less than a meter in height, black, shiny, and smooth, with a body rising to a peak, and then gradually flowing towards the rear end. And he said it didn't run, like an animal, it "flowed" across the road, and "glided" up, and over the stone wall.

I was laughing at him, and taking the mick, but he was really shaken. I said, OK, lets back up and have a look. So I reversed up about 100 meters, to where he swore it happened, and he pointed to a wall and said that it went over that wall.

With me still taking the mick, we got out of the car, and walked up to the wall. It was very very dark, no moon or street light, just my headlights pointing down the road, so I couldn't see much to start with, but when my eyes got used to the dark, we could see that there were gravestones, and then I made out the shape of a church.

I have to admit, my confidence was a bit rocked then, but I still took the mick, and told him it must have been the devil, and we both ended up standing on top of the wall, shouting "come on out, you bastard". Pure bravado, fueled by a few pints of beer.

Anyway, nothing 'came out', and we got back in the car and went on home.
Nothing more happened, except that when I called at his house the next day, his girlfriend asked what the hell we had been up to, because he woke her up in the middle of the night, babbling about seeing weird creatures, and wouldn't shut up about it till it was getting light, and she got no sleep.

I know this guy so well, I know for a fact that he saw something that really shook him. I told him it must have been a fox, but he was adamant that he saw it really clearly in the headlights, and he was a farmer's son, and knew a fox or deer if he saw one.

Anyway, that is odd, especially if you knew how cynical this guy is, but not that weird I guess. But the story has a postscript.

About two or three years later, I was housesharing a flat, and a new girl moved in. A few of us were chatting one evening, about Stroud, the town she came from. ( not too far from Nailsworth ). She was talking about superstitious stuff that happened in the area, witchraft and such. I could tell that she was a bit superstitious herself.

Then she said, "and of course, there are sfarts on Haresfield Beacon!".
We all laughed at the name, and said "what the hell are sfarts?"
And she said "they are little creatures that people say they have glimpsed at twilight on Haresfield Beacon. ( A local beauty spot ).
I said what are they like and she said " they are about two and a half feet tall, black and shiny, with a point at the top, and flowing down gradually to a tail. And they don't run, they 'glide' across the fields.

We were still laughing at the name, and the description, but something was nagging at me, like I'd heard something similar before.
This was a good two or three years later, so it didn't immediatly dawn on me, till the next morning, that it was practically word for word what my friend had seen.
And this girl had definitely never met my friend, I hadn't seen him for ages, and she had only just moved in, and she came from a town ten miles away.

The end of the story is that I've asked other people since from that area if they have ever heard of sfarts, or of weird creatures on Haresfield Beacon, and the answer has always been "no".
And one more detail, I didn't connect the two initially because I thought you would need to drive about seven or eight miles to get from where it happened to Haresfield Beacon, but I looked at a map once, years later, and if you travelled overland, along the ridge of the hills, it was actually less than a mile!

Anyway, make of that story what you will. I can assure you every word of mine is true. (although I can't guarantee other people didn't invent). It was frustrating that I wasn't looking, at the instant it happened, maybe that would have been the end of it, if I didn't see it, or maybe I would have seen that it was a fox, or bin liner in the wind. But anyway, I didn't, so that's all there is.
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[Tero]

One hallucination. I was not taking anything, but graduate school was causing anxiety. This devilish woman appeared on waking up. She sat in a chair in my room, then evaporated in seconds. I was awake, sitting up.

[HomerJay]

I had a similar experience once, tried to wake myself up because I felt I was being watched, woke myself up to see a little old lady sat on the end of the bed talking animatedly, although I could tell she wasn't talking to me.

I knew it must be a dream and I hadn't woken up at all, so I tried harder to wake up.The harder I tried the more animated she became, rocking backwards and forwards, clutching a handbag, hat and coat on like she wasn't relaxed but she wasn't panicking.

As I struggled to force myself awake she finished her conversation, got up and flew out of the window.

I sat bolt upright in bed staring at the curtains, there was very little light but my eyes became accustomed and I consoled myself it was just a dream.

Then I looked to the end of the bed where she had been sitting and the bloody handbag was still there!

Just as I realised I couldn't have woken up properly she came flying back in the window and picked up the handbag and flew out again.

I woke up for what was now the third time, still thinking it must have been a dream, but now not sure if I was awake or not.