Divine intervention?

wasapi

Penultimate Amazing
wasapi
Joined
May 27, 2008
Messages
17,287
No. But interesting.

I was 18, and was staying overnight at a friends. She was due back from work around 2am, so about midnight, I went upstairs to take a shower. A minute later, I heard a scraping noise. It was the sound of a ladder next to the house. A man with a stocking for a mask was climbing through the window. He was carrying a large butcher knife.

My scream was one that I know I had never emitted, never experienced before. Nor have I since.

Then, I heard running up the stairs. For the first time, feeling restless, my friends boyfriend had decided to go to her house and wait for her to get off of work.

Those who heard the story always had the same responses. They went from "guardian angels", "spirit guides", "divine intervention", even to astrology for showing it wasn't my time.


There was a time that I would have bought into divine intervention. This forum has helped my progress. It has answered questions, and I appreciate it.
 
I'm told we have no idea how many times angels have intervened to prevent our death or great injury. It's just that one time when the angel on duty slacked off.
 
Stocking-faced knife man climbs in the window of a teenage girl taking a shower at midnight, as recalled forty-odd years later?

No.

I call shenanigans.

I call all of the shenanigans.
 
theprestige said:
Stocking-faced knife man climbs in the window of a teenage girl taking a shower at midnight, as recalled forty-odd years later?

No.

I call shenanigans.

I call all of the shenanigans.
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Ah. You call it shenanigans, and I call it the most frightening experience of my life. 40 years later, you question my recall? Well, it is unlikely that I will ever forget the incident, and all that followed.

What I was attempting to do, was to take a random moment of luck, and use it to illustrate how much this forum has helped me learn. (Which I thought was the idea.) Because earlier on, I would have more easily bought into the 'guardian-angel', or the 'divine intervention'.

Perhaps you could explain your position. Anything to support your accusation of my experience being "shenanigans"? Please, enlighten me, for I am still learning. However, it may be as simple as you enjoy insulting others, or me. I don't know because I usually skip your posts.
 
Apathia said:
I'm told we have no idea how many times angels have intervened to prevent our death or great injury. It's just that one time when the angel on duty slacked off.
Click to expand...

Any rational person knows that the number of times angels have intervened is exactly zero.
 
wasapi said:
No. But interesting.

I was 18, and was staying overnight at a friends. She was due back from work around 2am, so about midnight, I went upstairs to take a shower. A minute later, I heard a scraping noise. It was the sound of a ladder next to the house. A man with a stocking for a mask was climbing through the window. He was carrying a large butcher knife.

My scream was one that I know I had never emitted, never experienced before. Nor have I since.

Then, I heard running up the stairs. For the first time, feeling restless, my friends boyfriend had decided to go to her house and wait for her to get off of work.

Those who heard the story always had the same responses. They went from "guardian angels", "spirit guides", "divine intervention", even to astrology for showing it wasn't my time.


There was a time that I would have bought into divine intervention. This forum has helped my progress. It has answered questions, and I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the script of a second rate horror movie. Questions abound.

What happened after the boyfriend ran up the stairs? When did you call 911? What did the police say and do when they arrived? Was there a manhunt? Was this serious event publicized locally as a precaution? Was the bad guy caught?Did your scream scare away the murderous intruder or did he wait until the boyfriend appeared? Did your 18 year old friend have her own house, or was it her parents house? Where were her parents? Where did the ladder come from? How did the bad guy decide to target that house?
 
wasapi said:
Ah. You call it shenanigans, and I call it the most frightening experience of my life. 40 years later, you question my recall?
Click to expand...
Well, yeah. 40 years later I question my recall. I can recall events that I was convinced 40 years ago that turned out to have never happened. Human memory is a mess and is useless as evidence of anything.

At one point in the past, I was a witness to a hit and run. I got every detail right bar one fundamental. I remembered the offending car as red. In fact it was green. And that was after a couple of weeks.

Human memory is fragile. Prestige is absolutely right to point out the fallibility of human memory, it's simply a matter of reality.

Yet here you are claiming that you have perfect recall of an event 40+ years ago. Hell, I can't recall what I had for breakfast yesterday, but somehow YOU have an infallible memory. That is an extraordinary claim and you had best be ponying up some evidence pronto.
 
abaddon said:
Well, yeah. 40 years later I question my recall. I can recall events that I was convinced 40 years ago that turned out to have never happened. Human memory is a mess and is useless as evidence of anything.

At one point in the past, I was a witness to a hit and run. I got every detail right bar one fundamental. I remembered the offending car as red. In fact it was green. And that was after a couple of weeks.

Human memory is fragile. Prestige is absolutely right to point out the fallibility of human memory, it's simply a matter of reality.

Yet here you are claiming that you have perfect recall of an event 40+ years ago. Hell, I can't recall what I had for breakfast yesterday, but somehow YOU have an infallible memory. That is an extraordinary claim and you had best be ponying up some evidence pronto.
Click to expand...

You equate not being able to recall what you had for breakfast to a life altering trauma? Alrighty then.
 
Apathia said:
I'm told we have no idea how many times angels have intervened to prevent our death or great injury. It's just that one time when the angel on duty slacked off.
Click to expand...


There was a Punisher storyline that Marvel subsequently abandoned and now pretends never happened, that introduced a supernatural element to the character and revealed that Frank Castle's guardian angel was in a bar getting drunk the day his family was murdered.
 
Apathia said:
I'm told we have no idea how many times angels have intervened to prevent our death or great injury. It's just that one time when the angel on duty slacked off.
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure mine's a drinker, I'm just lucky I haven't needed him much.

wasapi said:
Ah. You call it shenanigans, and I call it the most frightening experience of my life. 40 years later, you question my recall? Well, it is unlikely that I will ever forget the incident, and all that followed.

What I was attempting to do, was to take a random moment of luck, and use it to illustrate how much this forum has helped me learn. (Which I thought was the idea.) Because earlier on, I would have more easily bought into the 'guardian-angel', or the 'divine intervention'.

Perhaps you could explain your position. Anything to support your accusation of my experience being "shenanigans"? Please, enlighten me, for I am still learning. However, it may be as simple as you enjoy insulting others, or me. I don't know because I usually skip your posts.
Click to expand...
I like to think I'm a skeptic, so I question everyone's memories all of the time including my own.

Steve said:
Sounds like the script of a second rate horror movie. Questions abound.

What happened after the boyfriend ran up the stairs? When did you call 911? What did the police say and do when they arrived? Was there a manhunt? Was this serious event publicized locally as a precaution? Was the bad guy caught?Did your scream scare away the murderous intruder or did he wait until the boyfriend appeared? Did your 18 year old friend have her own house, or was it her parents house? Where were her parents? Where did the ladder come from? How did the bad guy decide to target that house?
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So there are some things I learned recently.
A. Trauma will typically result in some memories of particular details being remarkably accurate. Some that often seem too accurate are often correct. But like all memories, there are bits that just aren't remembered well.
B. Memories of Trauma have a way of being exaggerated over time.
C. What I already knew and all skeptics should know, we often conflate memories. It is totally possible that someone remembers something they heard or were told or saw in a movie as something that actually happened to them.

I have no reason to think this particular memory of Wasapi's is incorrect or correct. I will assume it happened as Wasapi remembers for now and say, it was just random chance that the dude was there and heard the scream.
 
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wasapi said:
You equate not being able to recall what you had for breakfast to a life altering trauma? Alrighty then.
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From reading various articles in The Skeptical Inquirer over the years, memories of life altering traumas are actually more likely to be flawed than memories of breakfast. It's quite likely you won't remember breakfast at all, but if you remember it. you will probably remember it correctly.

Memory is a funny thing. There was some interesting research published a few years back (or at least, that's when I read about it) that included an analogy of how memory works. Most people think of memory like a file cabinet full of photos. When you remember something, you pull out the photo and take a look at it, and then stick it back into the file cabinet for next time. In reality, according to the research, it is more like you take the photo out of the cabinet, but you can't replace the original. Instead, you have to make a new painting of the photo, and put the painting back in its place. Over time, the details get mixed up and the memory takes on a lot more "artistic impression". Those life altering traumas are more likely to be dredged up and "remembered" more frequently, resulting in greater alteration.



The way you described the incident seems incredibly unlikely. It would be a bizarre event. While it is how things would be depicted in fiction, there are several elements that would be extremely unlikely in reality.

I'm not saying it didn't happen I just think that a few of the details have probably been altered from the original reality of the situation. After reading lots and lots of articles about similar situations, in which "memories" are altered or indeed implanted, we know that it would be extremely odd for a situation like you describe to be remembered completely accurately. The fact that it contains elements that sound like stereotypical fiction make us think it even less likely.



However, back to your main point. Regardless of details, it seems that you describe an event where a dangerous experience happened, and there was some unusual circumstance that allowed you to safely escape the situation. It's true that an awful lot of people would decide that the unusual circumstance must have been divine intervention. i.e. your roommate's boyfriend wasn't usually there, but that night he was. That's common, and so wrong.


IN many cases, people take an "I could have been killed" situation, and really totally get the analysis wrong. In many cases, in order for the bad thing to occur, many different circumstances would have to go just exactly right. In the case of the intruder scenario you described, any number of things could have intervened. A passing car, a barking dog, a phone call that doesn't usually happen. All sorts of thing can happen to foil a burglary, and if any one of them actually happens, people imagine what are the odds against that one thing. It's the wrong question. Rather, one should ask what are the odds that out of any number of things that could intervene, what are the odds that at least one of them will actually occur? And even if those are still pretty long odds, out of any number of times where similar scenarios are occurring, what are the odds that something will intervene in at least one of them.


For example, I have read stories of people who were supposed to be in the World Trade Center on September 11. They might say that God was looking out for them by cancelling their meeting. And yet, there were thousands of meetings. At least one of them was going to be cancelled. It's not divine intervention that it happened to be the one specific cancellation that saved that person.
 
wasapi said:
Ah. You call it shenanigans, and I call it the most frightening experience of my life. 40 years later, you question my recall? Well, it is unlikely that I will ever forget the incident, and all that followed.

What I was attempting to do, was to take a random moment of luck, and use it to illustrate how much this forum has helped me learn. (Which I thought was the idea.) Because earlier on, I would have more easily bought into the 'guardian-angel', or the 'divine intervention'.

Perhaps you could explain your position. Anything to support your accusation of my experience being "shenanigans"? Please, enlighten me, for I am still learning. However, it may be as simple as you enjoy insulting others, or me. I don't know because I usually skip your posts.
Click to expand...

Did you call the police?
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Did you call the police?
Click to expand...

Of course. The intruder, they suspected, was a known serial rapist that LE had been seeking in Redondo Beach. I had to stay in the area for another several days for the initial investigation, though my plan had been to see my friend, Carol, and take off the next day to move to San Francisco.

After my move, LE stayed in contact, and I was aware that if he was arrested I would need to return to testify. Eventually, LE informed me that while they still were still looking, they believe he had fled the area.


People can question, ridicule, criticize, mock, discount. I don't care. I know what happened. A 12 year old child experiences his parents having a violent argument where the child observes his father beating his mother, then leaving forever. So, the child may, when grown, not recall the day or time of the event, or everything they said, but they WILL remember the event.
 
I think the point is that it's actually an open question whether one remembers the actual event, or one remembers an event much like it, that may or may not have occurred as remembered.
 
wasapi said:
Of course. The intruder, they suspected, was a known serial rapist that LE had been seeking in Redondo Beach. I had to stay in the area for another several days for the initial investigation, though my plan had been to see my friend, Carol, and take off the next day to move to San Francisco.

After my move, LE stayed in contact, and I was aware that if he was arrested I would need to return to testify. Eventually, LE informed me that while they still were still looking, they believe he had fled the area.


People can question, ridicule, criticize, mock, discount. I don't care. I know what happened. A 12 year old child experiences his parents having a violent argument where the child observes his father beating his mother, then leaving forever. So, the child may, when grown, not recall the day or time of the event, or everything they said, but they WILL remember the event.
Click to expand...

To me, the part that seems most unlikely is the butcher knife. It's not a great choice of weapon for the scenario, and if he was indeed a serial rapist, I would think he would use something more appropriate to the task. On the other hand, the intended victim would not likely be paying close attention to the details to figure out exactly what sort of big, scary, knife the guy was using. So, it seems likely to me that the butcher knife probably wasn't actually a butcher knife.

And....by chance was this a house that had been subdivided into apartments on the upper and lower floor? A whole lot of story elements would make a whole lot more sense if that were the case, as opposed to this being a single family, two story, home.
 
Armitage72 said:
There was a Punisher storyline that Marvel subsequently abandoned and now pretends never happened, that introduced a supernatural element to the character and revealed that Frank Castle's guardian angel was in a bar getting drunk the day his family was murdered.
Click to expand...

It's hard to get good help.
 
Ok. Never mind the never mind.

May I ask why the full arsenal of skepticism is being hauled out to dismiss a person's account of an event that traumatized hir?

From the get go ze tells us ze isn't claiming bigfoot or actually arguing for "Divine Intervention." Yet everyone is eager to show their skeptic-fu and dismiss hir trauma as if it were a recovered memory or an alien abduction.

By this method we can tell anyone who has been frightened or even assaulted, "There, there, it didn't happen the way you think it did. So suck it up, unless you can produce some hard evidence. Give us a CSI on it, but otherwise, just shut up."

Women, children, and the elderly are so easy to dismiss.

Wasapi, I'm not a very good skeptic. Unless someone else who was there then can tell me you are misremembering, I take your account that you were traumatized at face value. Of course, the details may not all gell, but I'm happy to hear circumstances saved you from much worse.
 
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wasapi said:
No. But interesting.

I was 18, and was staying overnight at a friends. She was due back from work around 2am, so about midnight, I went upstairs to take a shower. A minute later, I heard a scraping noise. It was the sound of a ladder next to the house. A man with a stocking for a mask was climbing through the window. He was carrying a large butcher knife.

My scream was one that I know I had never emitted, never experienced before. Nor have I since.

Then, I heard running up the stairs. For the first time, feeling restless, my friends boyfriend had decided to go to her house and wait for her to get off of work.

Those who heard the story always had the same responses. They went from "guardian angels", "spirit guides", "divine intervention", even to astrology for showing it wasn't my time.


There was a time that I would have bought into divine intervention. This forum has helped my progress. It has answered questions, and I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Sure it wasn't just the boyfriend pulling a prank on the wrong person?
 
The Man said:
Sure it wasn't just the boyfriend pulling a prank on the wrong person?
Click to expand...

ETA: In a row house alley in Philadelphia a guy jumped out from a garage with his face covered and wielding a meat cleaver. He wasn't trying to hurt me just scare the crap out of me. While I didn't crap I was scared. I basically froze and he stopped short. After some time I went beck and met the man pretending not to be the same guy. He claimed the guy shrinks down and hides under his car. Even being quite young I didn't buy it nor did I report the incident to anyone.
 
Apathia said:
Ok. Never mind the never mind.

May I ask why the full arsenal of skepticism is being hauled out to dismiss a person's account of an event that traumatized hir?

From the get go ze tells us ze isn't claiming bigfoot or actually arguing for "Divine Intervention." Yet everyone is eager to show their skeptic-fu and dismiss hir trauma as if it were a recovered memory or an alien abduction.

By this method we can tell anyone who has been frightened or even assaulted, "There, there, it didn't happen the way you think it did. So suck it up, unless you can produce some hard evidence. Give us a CSI on it, but otherwise, just shut up."

Women, children, and the elderly are so easy to dismiss.

Wasapi, I'm not a very good skeptic. Unless someone else who was there then can tell me you are misremembering, I take your account that you were traumatized at face value. Of course, the details may not all gell, but I'm happy to hear circumstances saved you from much worse.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much.
 
This is a skeptics' forum. The purpose of this place is to apply skepticism to claims.

That doesn't create a slippery slope that all victims of crimes will be dismissed and mocked because most victims of crimes don't start threads about it on a skeptics forum.

What response exactly could Wasapi have been expecting?
 
Apathia said:
Ok. Never mind the never mind.

May I ask why the full arsenal of skepticism is being hauled out to dismiss a person's account of an event that traumatized hir?

From the get go ze tells us ze isn't claiming bigfoot or actually arguing for "Divine Intervention." Yet everyone is eager to show their skeptic-fu and dismiss hir trauma as if it were a recovered memory or an alien abduction.

By this method we can tell anyone who has been frightened or even assaulted, "There, there, it didn't happen the way you think it did. So suck it up, unless you can produce some hard evidence. Give us a CSI on it, but otherwise, just shut up."

Women, children, and the elderly are so easy to dismiss.

Wasapi, I'm not a very good skeptic. Unless someone else who was there then can tell me you are misremembering, I take your account that you were traumatized at face value. Of course, the details may not all gell, but I'm happy to hear circumstances saved you from much worse.
Click to expand...
Worthy sentiments.

Wasapi's trauma is not the topic of the thread, though.

Ostensibly, the topic is the value of skepticism, and wasapi's gratitude for what she's learned about skepticism here. As illustrated by an anecdote which there's a lot to be skeptical about.

It's a condemnation of this forum, that while wasapi has learned that coincidences aren't magic, she hasn't learned about the fallibility of human memory, the error of personalizing the debate, or the fallacy of the appeal to emotion.

---

Wasapi, you've got a few recent threads where you not only dive away from skeptical challenge, but even from analytical assistance. But as soon as someone deigns to validate your feelings (as Apathia does here), you're full of gratitude and light.

What exactly are you looking for, when you start these threads? Because even when you appear to be asking for help, it seems like help is not actually what you want.
 
Cavemonster said:
This is a skeptics' forum. The purpose of this place is to apply skepticism to claims.

That doesn't create a slippery slope that all victims of crimes will be dismissed and mocked because most victims of crimes don't start threads about it on a skeptics forum.

What response exactly could Wasapi have been expecting?
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wasapi said:
<snip>

Those who heard the story always had the same responses. They went from "guardian angels", "spirit guides", "divine intervention", even to astrology for showing it wasn't my time.


There was a time that I would have bought into divine intervention. This forum has helped my progress. It has answered questions, and I appreciate it.
Click to expand...

Um, dunno, but the one she got definitely wasn't called for. I don't know how anyone can read the highlighted and say that she was making a claim, let alone one that needed skeptical dissection.

We used to have more friendly threads around here. It's like people have forgotten how to recognize them.

Yeah, yeah, I know - her memories. Details about the intruder weren't even the point of the post, so if anyone wanted to quibble about those recollections just to flex the old skeptic muscles, they could have done so in a more pleasant and less accusatory fashion. (Not saying everyone who responded was accusatory, but overall, bad display.)
 
Cavemonster said:
This is a skeptics' forum. The purpose of this place is to apply skepticism to claims.

That doesn't create a slippery slope that all victims of crimes will be dismissed and mocked because most victims of crimes don't start threads about it on a skeptics forum.

What response exactly could Wasapi have been expecting?
Click to expand...

You're right. Pro tip: don't share personal experiences or whatever insight you might have gained from them here.
 
Cavemonster said:
This is a skeptics' forum. The purpose of this place is to apply skepticism to claims.

That doesn't create a slippery slope that all victims of crimes will be dismissed and mocked because most victims of crimes don't start threads about it on a skeptics forum.

What response exactly could Wasapi have been expecting?
Click to expand...

This section of the forum is General Skepticism and the Paranormal. If we are not supposed to be skeptical of anything in the OP then I suppose we are just all expected to agree that there was nothing paranormal occurring in the narrative.
 
Steve said:
This section of the forum is General Skepticism and the Paranormal. If we are not supposed to be skeptical of anything in the OP then I suppose we are just all expected to agree that there was nothing paranormal occurring in the narrative.
Click to expand...

I think that skepticism over details and memories and such could have been hashed out in a way that was much more respectful to the OP.
 
isissxn said:
Um, dunno, but the one she got definitely wasn't called for. I don't know how anyone can read the highlighted and say that she was making a claim, let alone one that needed skeptical dissection.

We used to have more friendly threads around here. It's like people have forgotten how to recognize them.

Yeah, yeah, I know - her memories. Details about the intruder weren't even the point of the post, so if anyone wanted to quibble about those recollections just to flex the old skeptic muscles, they could have done so in a more pleasant and less accusatory fashion. (Not saying everyone who responded was accusatory, but overall, bad display.)
Click to expand...

Body of work. After getting pushback over a medical question she raised, because I asked what her physician had to say, I figured it was this kind of party.

Now, I try (not always successfully) to keep in mind that threads in FC really are not about the nail, but this isn't FC.

Yes, the details of the anecdote aren't particularly germane to the conclusion, but then the anecdote itself isn't germane to the conclusion. She could have just posted "thanks for helping me understand that coincidence is not magic" in FC, and basked in the warm regard of her fellow members. No need for stocking faced butcher knife man from forty years ago to make that happen.
 
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