i am very leery of sharing experiences i've had concerning caitie. people here don't know me enough to know if i am delusional, a broken-hearted mom grasping at straws, a mom who has had experiences and gone thru all other explanations and 'debunked' as much as possible or just a crazy lady.

in the end, i know what i've experienced and i know myself. i am not trying to prove anything to anyone. i can only tell what i've experienced. i will take a baby step here.

the first time i 'saw' cait was after we had moved 2 times after we lost her. mick, danny and i were getting ready to leave the house, it was very hectic. it was winter, danny was 3 and we were getting his snow suit, boots etc on him, getting ourselves ready…most of you know how it gets crazy doing all that.

i stood there waiting as mick was zipping danny up when this 'shadow' (not the right word, really) just walked past me. it wasn't really a shadow, more like sepia colored shape of a person. it seemed comprised of tiny dots of colors mixing to make the color. it was the exact outline of cait: my height, her curly short hair…her walk, everything. it seemed to last forever but was over in the blink of an eye. i know that makes no sense, but it's how it felt. there was no cold spot or anything like that. it anything i felt suddenly flushed, but that could have been due to my reaction to seeing what i saw.

i felt my eyes get big and i had a quick intake of breath. it was loud enough so that mick asked if i was alright. i just nodded as i couldn't speak. i was digesting what had happened.

so that's it. it happened when i was totally distracted, was not expecting anything, not looking for anything. but that would be just like caitie to just casually stroll by in the midst of bedlam…

(if admin feels this belongs in personal experiences rather than here, feel free to move it.)

karen,

a psychic once called me and spoke with me for probably an hour and a half because cait had come thru to him so strongly when my best friend had been to one of his readings. he told me that cait stayed near us because she loved us and wanted to be there.

yes, i think the connection is vitally important for some sightings. as has been said elsewhere here, investigators look for famous ghosts a lot of the time, which is understandable. but i think the vast majority of sightings may happen like your and my experiences.

bill has seen cait more often than i have. at first she was a shadow but then he saw her in color, at first part of her then full-body. like she had to learn how to do it or gain strength or something.

i asked the psychic why bill could see/feel her more than i could, why when the grief was the worst i felt her the least. he told me that the strength of the emotion, the strength of the grief was blocking her getting thru to me. (i am not saying bill doesn't grieve for her or doesn't have deep pain at her loss; he does. it's just that i was the one on the front lines for 5 years. and i fell in love with her from the moment the test read 'positive'.)

am no fool. i am wise to how some so-called psychics dig out info without one being aware, but this guy knew stuff he had no way of knowing, things even my best friend, my husband, my son didn't know. but because cait and i had become so close over weeks at a time in hospital together, she knew. nothing bad, just the intimate stuff that gets shared between people who are in a terrible situation.

You know, I don't really know where I stand on this. I've seen plenty of pictures over the years from the past since the camera has been invented to believe that a ghost could be captured on film. To me it really comes down to being prepared. It surprises me (and I'm guilty as well) how so many people go ghost hunting with cameras and the sort and then can't manage to get it on film. It's either they freak out too bad or the camera is pointing the wrong way. I hate to say that the shows on TV are the best example of this. I've seen a brown mass move in front of me at a cemetery that I've caught EVPs at but didn't think to get my cellphone out to take a picture. It seems the paranormal reveals itself to us when it knows we are unprepared.

That kind of goes hand in hand with the other post talking about why paranormal shows haven't captured any compelling evidence. It could be that there is intelligence behind such avoidance – OR it could be that the factors of probability don't favor the chance of capturing a significant anomoly on camera. If paranormal events are rare – let's say that a paranormal event happens .001 % (and I think that's being extremely generous) of the time and let's say that you actually carry a camera around .01 % of the time it is highly improbable that a paranormal event will occur at the same time you are carrying around a camera….[is there a mathmetician in the house that can figure out what that probability is?]….and then you have to throw in the preparation factor that you just mentioned.

but Bryan, if it does exist solely in ones brain then there may not be a way to prove it.

that wouldnt make it any less true (just saying if that's what it really was), maybe some

things just cant be proved at least not with current scientific knowledge and equipment.

Well, Heidi, it's an interesting thought – I'm not discounting that. I love engaging in philosophical conversations – they can be intriguing. All I am saying, for those of us who are actually seeking some answers – something we can measure, test, catalog, etc. – it's somewhat impractical to entertain these ethereal ideas that can't be tested or proven. If it can't be tested or proven, then how could it be true? How does one define true – other than something that can be tested and validated through laws and facts? Otherwise, any thought no matter how sound or how absurd, that I choose to dream up could be true? Again – this is one of the weaknesses in the paranormal community. Now I understand that you are just kind of brainstorming here, and I can appreciate your creativity…it's just not something that can ever be proven.

but really you cant say that, we dont know what the future will bring.

think about the things they thought we could never prove 100 years

ago, 1000 years ago. who knows what they will be able to tell in

100, 1000 years.

I agree… a friend of mine once said "if you don't think there are any answers, why are you doing this?" I'm not saying I have the asnwers Heidi – I don't…I'm just trying to find a logical way to address the questions that I have.

And I understand as someone hunting for answers the idea that maybe

the answer is something you wont be able to find with current knowledge

and technology would be discouraging. But again, this is my wild theory

based on nothing more then a thought that popped into my head at four

in the morning /biggrin.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':D' /> , so in other words, not very scientific.

I was thinking the same thing(on one of the other forums I frequent):

Assuming ghosts are real, I would expect…

"The reason no concrete physical evidence has presented itself is that ghosts don't manifest physically at all but interact with some part of the brain that allows us to 'see' them."

Great minds think alike!

I realize the frustration such a thought causes among those hoping to uncover physical evidence.

Like saying, "You can't get there from here".

I am a big believer that just because we can't prove something doesn't mean that it isn't true. We progress, we move forward.

For instance, in the past decade, there have been huge leaps forward in brain science; however, our brains remain mostly an enigma wrapped in a mystery to scientists. Still, I just read in either SciAm or Discover Magazine (I can't remember which) that brain mapping has come so far that there are machines that can almost read minds.

What we can't prove now, maybe we can in the future. And maybe, sometimes, logic fails us because we reason on a macro level when everything in our universe is first carried out on a quantum one. And that quantum world – at least as we currently understand it – is pretty darn chaotic and can appear to be quite illogical given our current models and constructs of the world. In the quantum world, everything can exist as two things at once (known as a state of quantum superposition) until it becomes one of the two things when it is observed (known as wave function collapse). There are folded dimensions in our physical universe about which we know little other than that they are there.

Our propensity is to have everything be one thing or another. It is how we are wired. Black and white is easy to understand. Shades of gray are not. Computers operate on logic that is binary – a series of yes or no questions, a series of ones and zeroes. And yet, here come quantum computers that work on shades of gray. Everything between one and zero.

This is all my long and windy way of saying that we fail to see and understand things in our universe because they are presented to us in packages that we don't yet have models for. If ghosts exist, I believe that we can't currently prove it because they present themselves to us in such a package. They are that gray area between one and zero – between black and white.

I agree with much of what you say here, Karen. You are right – this is a vast universe, and it would be arrogant indeed to think that we have a complete understanding of it. I wasn't trying to imply that just because we lack the ability to prove something with our current base of knowledge – that it can't necessarily be true. What I am trying to convey, is that, unless we can develop a device (and who knows – maybe this is forthcoming) that can scan one's brain and transfer that data into a medium that others can view and study – it's a fruitless endeavor to theorize that one's real environment consists of not only the external environment but that "perceived environment" that is encapsulated in our brain. Perhaps you and Heidi have a point…maybe someday medical science will further our understanding of the human brain and just how much of our reality consist of our own perception…but we certainly aren't there yet…

ok – my brain hurts now!