(Goals for P 5 speech were to make appropriate and sufficient gestures to convey the right meaning and emotions - I included a bit of drama)
Did you just see that? There was a lady that came straight out of that wall and went straight through the window. She was dressed in a white bridal dress. She was very beautiful but looked very sad. You did not see her? You are not telling me that I was just hallucinating, are you? Was that a ghost or a spirit or a full bodied apparition? Did someone die here who was beautiful and lonely? Did I just have a paranormal experience? Questions and more troubling questions. Brain refuses to accept what senses have grasped. But I stand by what I believe I saw.
Toastmaster of the day, fellow toastmasters and guests – welcome to the world of paranormal. What is paranormal? The word paranormal is derived from 2 root words – para – meaning above or against and normal. Hence paranormal – that which is above or against normal. Paranormal, the term, is used to describe experiences that lie outside the range of normal experience or scientific explanation. For example, you are haggling with your boss to get a 5% raise in salary and the boss insists that you must get a 7% raise. That is paranormal – beyond scientific explanation. Now true paranormal believers definitely would raise some interesting questions – was your boss possessed? Did his eyes turn red or black or purple when he agreed? Did you smell any sulphur? My grandmother would have asked you to check his feet – were they pointing straight?
Paranormal world has a variety of characters, activities, events – a wide gamut of human behavior and experiences. To the uninitiated, paranormal world starts with ghosts. You all know what are ghosts? Have you seen one? You have heard of ghost stories right from your childhood, haven’t you? Any given bunch of kids definitely has that one single person who is the know-all of this amazing world. “There is a ghost on the top floor of our building.” He would say so and swear by its truth. “Have you seen it?” you ask him. 9 out of 10 times the answer is no. The actual seeing part is done by the elders. The most plausible reason behind this rumor is that the elders did not want him to go to the top floor for some other reason. But what are these ghosts? In traditional belief ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person. It is also called as phantom or apparition. In most ghost stories a person dies, most often unhappily, and comes back to haunt the people who wronged him during his life. This is revenge in after-life. And then not all ghosts are bad – there are some like in Bollywood movie Bhootnath or Hollywood movie Ghost who help the protagonists. Most of these movies also tell you that once you become a ghost you still have to learn things, for example, its not as easy to just start throwing things, there is a technique. (Gesture with arms to lift something from a distance and throw it). Sometimes these ghosts might just show up and scare you. However, there are advanced levels here. There are also other special entities (higher qualified designations) of demons, vampires, were-wolves and what not. There is poltergeist – where a ghost doesn’t show up at all, however, it manifests itself through violent actions. Imagine you are sitting in your kitchen and suddenly all your cabinets just spring wide open.
Paranormal world’s next favorite phenomenon is the Extra-terrestrial life and UFOs. “It’s a bird, It’s a plane….Its Superman”… Or is it? Could that be an intelligent form of life from outer space doing a reconnaissance of our amazing planet? Unlike ghosts UFO’s and ET’s are a newer phenomenon from the 1950’s when, around the world people started seeing things flying through the sky and did not know what they were. Interestingly this was also the time of the advent of airplanes and spaceships. There were sightings of objects flying so fast and which were so technologically superior that people said that they could just not be human made. Then there were incidents where such UFOs crashed and witnesses saw alien bodies which within hours vanished – hidden away by the governments, they said. Aliens are believed to make elaborate plans to come to earth to take away our natural resources, while at other times they are just interested in drawing crop circles. Not to be taken lightly though. Paranormal enthusiasts believe that many an enigmatic structures like Stonehenge, ancient cave paintings, Egyptian carvings, the pyramids and much more are alien creations.
Paranormal believers would think that I was possessed by a highly devious demon, if I were to not mention the cryptids. A cryptid is an animal whose existence is not confirmed by science. There are so many of them and each has its own glorious story and has enthralled many a believer. There is big-foot – a giant ape like creature which inhibits some forests here in North America. There is yeti – which is similar to big foot and is found in the Himalayan regions. There is Loch-ness monster – which is so cryptic – that no one knows yet what it is – a giant snake, a fish, an anaconda or something else.
India is no stranger to paranormal phenomenon. One excellent morning, people went running to temples because idols started drinking milk. We had a three-headed villain terrifying the sleep out of our young ones. And then there are paranormal beliefs of our politicians that they will convert Mumbai into Shanghai – no scientific explanation. But all said and done the world stands divided into two factions of believers and non-believers. And again the question arises– to believe or not to believe?
Scientifically ghosts are optical illusions. Some theories also point towards heavy magnetic fields stimulating a person’s brain to make him see things. There can be other environmental factors – which may be as trivial as a mirror far away casting crazy reflections elsewhere. Extra terrestrial life has scientifically not beenproved to exist – but scientists have enough proof to believe that life in some form may exist outside of our planet. The first aliens to contact us may turn out to be smarter than us but it may also be true that we might have just forgotten how we erected the Stonehenge. Bigfoot, Yeti and Loch-ness monster may exist – but how can we discredit the notion that it was just a tall man wearing a weird suite scaring kids away from his farm. UFOs are unidentified flying objects because we have not understood them yet. May be they are just advanced devices created by our own scientists.
Technology and knowledge seem to be the main pranksters dividing the world here. In a remote village in India, using my phone to unlock my car will be considered perfectly super-natural. However, I still think there is someone standing in that corner. He is looking straight into my eyes. His finger nails are growing bigger as I speak, so I would request the TMOD to come and take over the podium.
