by Karen Frazier, Managing Editor
Paranormal Underground Magazine

I’ve always had a super analytical mind. Never one to trust experience, I’ve always questioned everything and applied what I know of our physical universe to determine whether my experience in a given situation was true or not.

Take, for example, my early experiences with whatever shared my WWII-era apartment with me when I was in my early 20s. While I was there and in that experience, I felt the bed depress every night. I felt the caress of breath across my cheek. I felt my hair flutter. I heard the words, “I love you” whispered in my ear. I saw the doors opening and closing, latching and unlatching. I experienced the water faucet turning itself on and off. I saw my six foot tall inflatable Godzilla move from one place to another. Dubious decorating choices aside, in my experiences in that apartment I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was not alone.

And then my rational thought process kicked in, as did 20+ years of hindsight and justification. The further that apartment got in my rearview mirror, the less certainty I had about my experiences there. Because what happened in that apartment didn’t fit in with my view of what was rational and what was scientifically known and possible.

The same thing happened with God. When I was a child, I knew that God was there. It was simple, really. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t need to know the stories about God – because God didn’t need stories. (S)He was merely there. God was a constant presence, and often a source of calm comfort. As I got older and started to analyze what I had been taught of God, my experience of God started to be overshadowed by what I knew to be scientific and logical. A virgin birth? Puhleez! Burning bushes? No way. My brain had overshadowed my experience and what I felt to be true in my core.

In both examples, my experiences told me one thing, while my brain told me something else.

So it is in the paranormal. I often think that we get so caught up in the rational, the scientific and the logical that we completely forget that experience can be just as valuable of a teacher. Sometimes, you just can’t prove it. Or recreate it. But it doesn’t make the experience any less valid. I can no more prove to you (or to myself) that I experienced what I described about my WWII-era apartment than I can fly. And yet, being unable to prove or recreate it makes that experience no less powerful, life altering or profound to me.

In my life, I have experienced ghosts. I have experienced Grace. I have experienced God. I have received guidance. I can’t prove a single one of them. I know they serve to prove nothing to anyone else. But they have been my experiences – and to look back at them in my rearview mirror and let how powerful they were to me trickle away to nothing because I can’t prove them robs me of the life-altering understandings that have come from such experiences.

We are rational creatures, it’s true. And yet I sometimes wonder – do our brains get in the way and block us from truly connecting with who we are, where we come from, and where we are going when we leave here? I don’t know the answer. I can’t tell you rationally whether that is true or not. All I can do is allow myself to go to that place where I know the truth in my very core and trust that it won’t lead me astray.