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Just to be clear this thread isn't referring to religion, it is about the typical supernatural (ghosts et al).
So what do IJBMers think of the supernatural?
Myself I'm a sceptic as a lot of the stuff looks explainable by science rather than spirits from beyond the grave.
Comments
I don't necessarily believe in the paranormal as such, but I've encountered enough unexplainable occurences that I've sometimes wondered, or at least given some of my reading material a little extra charge. And I'll mourn the day when the supernatural isn't interesting enough to carry a work of fiction...
-shakes head-
Okay then. Aside from that...
Which is why I can say succubi are real but most likely not in it's fantastical LaVeyan or Semitic descriptions where they fly around, have awning horns and cause the birth of hellbound sinners and monsters.
I have seen strange lights, strange figures, heard disembodied voices and seen things that I probably should not see at all, but I don't have the attention span to record all of it and show it to people. I take it as a nice personal belief and be done with it.
Most of the problems of some believers of things is they don't understand the fact that most of said things are personal experiences, and very hard to try to explain to people without being crazy.
Like bigfoot, he's a Skin-walker like shapeshifter being here in Montana which takes the forms of animals and trees to hide from those seeking it, but the majority of people are convinced that it's a real ape-like creature wandering around in the wilderness and being able to avoid cameras at will and build tools.
And the Force.
He's similar to Akintsikitso-koo ( I have no idea how to spell it) who is a shapeshifting spirit or animal who used to be in very high numbers, and dwelled in the forests in the general direction of Canada. The legend of the Akintsikitso-koo was based around them being hairy giants that dwelled in forests and ate animal and human flesh alike, and spoke in a "smoky tongue" (which probably meant their voices were very raspy like a smokers). The tribe's food and materials were located in the forests, but they refused to go there because the Akintsikitso-koo were as feral as the animals they ate and cared not for the general sense of respect that most tribes shared, and during the night they would wander around the camp, stealing children, women, dogs and food and dragging them into the forest never to be seen. Eventually as the winters got harsher and the Akintsikitso-koo began to get more hungry the tribes moved away from the north and began to look for shelter along riverbanks and the plains where they were easier to see due to their large hairy body being visible amongst the short grass. Some of the Akintsikitso-koo followed them, but due to the lack of areas to hide and others to protect them they scattered about the world, and began to get cowardly and hide in smaller forests or bushels. They began to get less powerful and numerous as the "north winter" got so extreme that it killed off a lot of different animals, including the Akintsikitso-koo.
As a preventive measure from dying out and being found by the tribes who wanted to drive them out of the forests and slay them, they began to learn how to shapeshift and hide in holes in the ground.
There are a lot more stories concerning the "hairy giants" but I only know a few because most of the stories are oral tradition and are not written down, and since there is very few people writing down the history and oral stories from elders in my tribe before they pass away there is a lot of things that have been lost.
This is generally my stance on bigfoot and one I don't mind keeping if they do find evidence of a bigfoot. It explains to me why they are never seen and why they are monkey like and very large.
On the other side, I believe dragons went extinct, vampires exist as an extreme form of diabetes, and ghost are real in some kind of form.
They change their forms when nobody is looking, from trees, to different animals and the like.
I'd make a great vampire. I'd be the right combination of hamminess and self-loathing.