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<\/a>\u201cDown where we lived there was no light,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cIt was always so dark. We were walking and we had to walk a long ways to get home. As we were walking I looked across the field, and my grandmother – she was dead – when I looked across the field I saw my grandmother standing out in the field, dressed in a long white dress. When she was buried, she was buried in a long white dress. She looked like an angel to me. She was just standing there looking at me. It scared me. I grabbed my boyfriend by the arm, he knew something was wrong, but he didn\u2019t ask me. He walked me home and I didn\u2019t tell him because I didn\u2019t want him to be scared walking home by himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDown South is very spooky,\u201d Wilson said. She recalls feeling hot breaths on her back when walking in the dark.<\/p>\n
Wilson talked about her encounters with spirits while living in Wisconsin as an adult. In one instance a spirit appeared that resembled one of her daughters who currently lives in suburban Des Plaines. The figure started calling her \u201cMama,\u201d which alarmed Wilson. She is adamant that she can see spirits.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpirits are very real,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t believe it. They look at you like you\u2019re crazy, but I know for myself that I\u2019ve seen a lot of spirits.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tend to see faces occasionally where they\u2019re not there,\u201d Hancock said. \u201cThat particular phenomena is called pareidolia. You can see it for example when you look on Google and someone sold I believe a grilled cheese sandwich with the face of Jesus Christ on it for several thousand dollars. If you grill enough cheese sandwiches they\u2019ll be a pattern in there that\u2019s sufficiently like the face of a famous person like Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n A grilled cheese sandwich with what many viewed to be the face of the Virgin Mary sold for $28,000 on eBay in 2004, according to reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Science often explains such phenomena as the brain compensating for incomplete information. The underdeveloped brains of children are offered by some scientist as an explanation for why children may experience illusions. But the people who claim to experience the paranormal consider their perceptions very real.<\/p>\n The brain of the child is developing and expanding at a rapid pace. \u201cBut also the brain of the child is also tuned to the fact that it needs to generate approval from the adults around it. It tends to be very receptive to its environment. The child is a more complicated issue because social environment has such a larger affect,\u201d Hancock said.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren have [an] underdeveloped frontal cortex, which is part of the brain that is important for an accurate memory and understanding of reality. This can leave children more prone to cognitive illusions, such as false memories,\u201d he said. \u201cChildren also are more suggestible, which means that they might be more likely to accept a supernatural explanation for an unexplained event, especially if that explanation is provided by an authority figure [like] a parent.\u201d<\/p>\n Jenny Miller, a Roscoe Village bakery manager and specialty cake consultant, said she believes she has had supernatural experiences. But she is uncomfortable letting people know that and asked that her name be changed for this story.<\/p>\n At age nine, Miller flat-lined in an emergency room. She had acute appendicitis.<\/p>\n She recalled her out-of-body experience, hovering over herself in the hospital: \u201cI almost died. I remember the next day, saying to them, \u2018I saw you there trying to help me.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018what?\u2019 I told them, \u2018I could see you, because I was near the ceiling, and I could see myself and I could see the nurses and I could see all the doctors.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n At the time she had never heard of anyone having a similar experience. But as an adult she became aware of people having similar near-death encounters.<\/p>\n As a child growing up in Massachusetts, Miller said she had the ability to know when death was arriving. At age 10 or 11 she knew that the infant her mother babysat would not live to be a week old. At age 14, while in geometry class, a feeling overwhelmed her that her mother had passed. Miller was right. Her mother died from a blood clot at 39 years old before the teenager could get home.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how I know,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a notion that was there and was so complete. That\u2019s it. This person is going to die.\u201d Miller said she has not anticipated anyone\u2019s death since her youth.<\/p>\n She has, however, confronted what she believes to be a spirit in her 150-year-old home ever since moving in in 1992. She and her husband purchased the house from a widow of a postal worker. According to Miller, the postal worker had a heart attack on the block and died. Miller believes the spirit to be the Englishman who built the house, she said, or someone who lived there previously. Her husband believes the spirit belongs to the postal worker. He doesn\u2019t see it but feels its presence, he said.<\/p>\n Miller is open to its presence. From seeing a \u201ccharcoal-like\u201d image walk through her home to witnessing pennies or quarters whizzing past her while watching television, she said she has\u00a0never felt disturbed by their otherworldly guest.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing nowadays is [scientists] are trying to – they\u2019ve actually been doing it since the 1800s – trying to find the science behind it,\u201d she said. \u201cMy background is in science, I\u2019ve studied biology, I\u2019ve studied chemistry, so I\u2019m kind of used to things that are real that aren\u2019t seen. And so, that\u2019s how I look at it.\u201d Miller understands that her experiences may not make sense to some or be proven by science, but she said she personally knows her experiences were and are real.<\/p>\n \u201cThe human brain was designed by evolution to recognize familiar patterns,\u201d Gallo said. \u201cWhen the brain processes incomplete or distorted information, it often fills in the blanks based on what it assumes to be true about the world.\u00a0 If these assumptions are false, this can lead to cognitive errors such as optical illusions or false memories.\u00a0 From a scientific standpoint, seeing ghosts could sometimes result from this kind of cognitive error.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1996, Logan Square chiropractor Raymond Manasia, 50, said he experienced what some may call a supernatural event.<\/p>\n Manasia still finds himself thinking about the event ever so often: \u201cAs I was getting into my car, I noticed an elderly woman struggling to get into the building adjacent to where I was parked. I got out of the car and asked her if everything was all right. She said that she lived there and couldn’t get into the building. She was wearing a blue coat and a black pillbox hat and cat eyeglasses, and I thought it was odd that she looked like one of my great aunts.<\/p>\n \u201cI told her there was no key hole in the door, that it was probably for exit only, and was sure she had the right building. She was a little irritated when she replied that she knew where she lived. Since it was now getting dark, I went back to my car and got the flashlight from my glove box and showed her that there were no keyholes. She insisted that there had to be. I told her I was sorry I couldn’t help her, but\u00a0that\u00a0I had to leave. I got in my car and she continued to look for the keyhole.\u201d<\/p>\n The next day Manasia said he checked the door and noticed that two keyholes were present, one on the door frame and the other just above the doorknob. He said he never saw the woman again.<\/p>\n Manasia said he also experienced premonitions as a child. Dreaming about relatives being pregnant before others knew, hearing footsteps when no one was around, and seeing a man who \u201clooked like Burl Ives dressed like a genie, with a turban and curly-toed shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n Business attorney and author, Roberta Grimes is interested in life after death. Grimes said that she also has spent decades studying some 200 years of paranormal experiences. She believes that time and reality are consciousness-based.<\/p>\n \u201dBy their own measurement,\u201d she said, \u201cphysicists tell us that all of matter and energy makes up less than five percent of what they know exists. They just don’t know what the other 95 percent might be. People believe wholeheartedly [in what they see] because what they see hear, feel, smell is in fact real. And they know that.\u201d<\/p>\n So could spirits reside in the other 95 percent of matter and energy? Grimes said no one knows, but said 27 percent of the universe is dark matter, while dark energy accounts for 68 percent. Dark energy and dark matter are called dark, according to Grimes, because \u201cneither give off nor reflect photons of light.\u201d<\/p>\n Grimes considers dying to be a continuation of life, the subject of her book \u201cThe Fun of Dying: Find Out What Really Happens Next!\u201d In the book, she writes, \u201cThere are about seven inhabited levels of after-death reality that are separated from us and from each other only by their differing energy levels. How is this possible? It turns out that dying is a lot like changing channels.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Scientists are trying to understand paranormal activities. In the United States, the University of Virginia established the Division of Perceptual Studies in 1967. The division is considered to be part of the university\u2019s Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences. It focuses on studying \u201capparent paranormal phenomena\u201d such as near-death experiences, children believing they lived in a previous life, and out-of-body experiences, according to the website<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the United Kingdom, the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena, which defines itself as a \u201cscientifically-orientated educational and research charity,\u201d carries out investigations and research centered on making sense of four distinct areas: earth mysteries, psychic phenomena, UFOs, and Fortean phenomena<\/a>. The association, registered in London, formed in 1981 and allows anyone the opportunity to become a paranormal investigator. The website also offers a telephone number and email address for anyone seeking assistance.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a>