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There has always been talk of shadow people, demons, negative energy and anything that could be 'evil' that haunts someone.

I was told a 'tale' about how when walking out in a graveyard at night, a person witnessed a 'being' that was demon like with huge wings and red-ish eyes.

I then later found out that the person who had told me this story, later went to jail for a heinous crime.

Could it be that some of these stories that we hear aren't really anything more than the mind manifesting guilt into some kind of 'negative being' in order to deal with the guilt and perhaps purge the feelings the person has accumulated?

I have heard the term "Shadow People". From what I remember they are brought on from the build up of negative/malicious energy, and are most commonly seen in graveyards at night. I was also told they could 'attach' themselves to the living. So that is a very intriguing notion. It's completely possible. The human mind can manifest extraordinary things when it wants to. Even more so in disturbed minds.

Yes, I definitely think it could be and in most cases is the disturbed persons mind. But not always. I believe in spirits and beings from another dimension in our world do exist.

I am in agreeance with it not being always the case. I do believe that there are some of the 'real deals' out there, and not just parts of the mind.

It has also made me wonder if, at some point the mind can dwell so much in the guilt that it builds up energy, or vibrations, and can also cause items to move, like a poltergeist. And that would connect with certain objects moving when the 'being' tried to interact with them.

Moonie regarding "poltergeist" you may be interested in The Tina Resch case. You can wiki it. Dr. Nandor Fodor a parapsychologist had some insight into the case.

I believe demons exist and fuck with people for many reasons

also the human brain is very powerful so that's possible in some cases too

Guilt is a very vague and expansive term to be interpreted. There are even Biblical connotations of guilt. I am not sure if you meant in a religious context.

Point is, this could be a long shot if viewed as guilt causing these manifestations. It could be ONE of the reasons, resulting in a loss of normal functioning ability of the brain. Emotions are a tricky thing. People who suffer from "voices" usually tell the authorities that the "voices" told them to commit those crimes. Is that a manifestation of the mind? Definitely. But is there a religious explanation? Perhaps. Is there a scientific explanation? Definitely. I know it because I have gone through this. Minus the committing a crime part of course.

Catholic Enclyclopedia's explanation of Sin:
"The understanding of sin, as far as it can be understood by our finite intelligence, serves to unite man more closely to God. It impresses him with a salutary fear, a fear of his own powers, a fear, if left to himself, of falling from grace; with the necessity he lies under of seeking God's help and grace to stand firm in the fear and love of God, and make progress in the spiritual life. Without the acknowledgment that the present moral state of man is not that in which God created him, that his powers are weakened; that he has a supernatural end to attain, which is impossible of attainment by his own unaided efforts, without grace there being no proportion between the end and the means; that the world, the flesh, and the devil are in reality active agents fighting against him and leading him to serve them instead of God, sin cannot be understood..."

Guilt as explained by Wiki:
"Guilt (emotion) is an emotion that occurs when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard that they themselves believe in."

Guilt (law) as explained by Wiki:
"Philosophically, guilt in criminal law is a reflection of a functioning society and its ability to condemn individuals’ actions. It rests fundamentally on a presumption of free will, in which individuals choose actions and are, therefore, subjected to external judgement of the rightness or wrongness of those actions..."

I don't mean guilt in any religious sense. I, personally, don't think what a person feels guilty about has anything to do with religion, but their own person reasons as to why they feel that way.

Guilt is just a tool used by religion to instill shame in the masses.

i think guilt can also just be your minds way of saying you have done something massively wrong.

our minds can certainly make us see and experience some strange things under stress...but i dont think it accounts for every strange and unexplainable thing that people encounter.
~W~

guilt is the horrible underneath a bright light in an interrogation room feeling that makes you feel horrible and want to confess what you did that you feel was wrong

not all of it can be a figment of the mind though

Guilt is just prettier way of saying regret.

But we're getting a little off the main topic here. I believe any strong emotion be it fear, anger, sorrow, guilt, or even happiness can be imprinted in places by the energy we give off.

Ahhh...that pesky mind, sometimes, act alone and make you the toy of her games.

Another angle is that psychopaths are manipulative, and making such claims serves a purpose To either Intimidate, Impress, or generally disarm their audience, so they concoct deceptive testimonies about sightings, and visions.

I left out another motive for those with psychosis, or psychopathic who fabricate extraordinary claims; Grandiose self promotion.

I am not talking about grandiose self promotion or psychopathic manipulations. They wouldn't be good 'subjects' for the question I have posed, due to the fact that studies have shown that they do not experience remorse or a sense of guilt. And that is a large part of what creates the manifestations that I am referring to.

in a way the act of creating such extraordinary claims is 'guilt by proxy' or the closes thing to removing themselves from the equation ) misdirection.

Well, being that Sociopaths (psychopaths) do not have the capacity to feel guilt or remorse I don't believe they would be able to create the manifestations.

dabbler, I get that you are a skeptic. You've made that clear many times. There are a lot of times I don't know what you are getting at because of the way you either word things, or you take the long way around getting to the point.

This is one of those cases where I am not grasping what you are getting at.

I thin he's saying that people that are psychotic want attention so they claim they saw these things to get it

but where his point fails is not everyone who experiences the things described in the original posts are psychotic, some are just regular people

in that sense I think it's emotions that eat away at regular people and their mind makes them see these things

I do think those shadow beings or whatever they see actually exist too, here's my experience where I rationalized what I saw and then it failed:

I kept seeing things popping out of all sorts of places, but only when I was home alone or it was dark and I was in an isolated part of the house.

Since I started staying home alone at age 7 and it was one of the points where I felt pretty well invincible, as many children do, I thought it was my inner fears of the dark and being home alone acting out and my mind was making me see those things to make me realize that fear.

But then as I made it into my teen years and had friends over without an adult home and it was dark or cloudy. Once even one of them said they saw it, exactly what I saw and where, then I knew it wasn't just my mind, it had to be real.

I found out it was a fear demon, found it's name, used an elemental banishing spell, sent it back to hell, and that was the end of him

Not every experience is like mine, sometimes it is just hallucinations of the mind but others it's not.

I am following the topic, but I wanted to interject another element briefly to the matter at hand. I personal agree with the threads general point. delusions, and psychosis go hand in hand, and a chemically compromised mind, or a mind clustered with unresolved conflict, or contradictions of behavior norms is apt to exercise itself through graphic hallucinations (audio , and visually). There is a disability already well known Schizophrenia, and schizo effective.

Well, now that I can understand.

If a person has a psychosis, like schizophrenia, and they also suffer from extreme levels of guilt, either rational or irrational, I do think that their manifestations would be more severe. They might be more violent as well. I think it would depend on the hallucinations that they were already having.

David Berkowitz swore that a dog nagged him into killing his victims.

are you saying that everyone who sees these things is schitzophrenic and just crazy?

It would be naive, and gullible to dismiss such factors, to do so would be a the very definition of closed minded.

but conversely if you dismiss every such claim as delusion, then would it not be just as naive, and gullible and closed minded?
~W~

Extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence.

There are far more cases debunked, then there are cases that remain undetermined.

In the matter of a personal anecdote, it comes down to how sincere, and credible the individual is.

To many people get away with half ass story telling (unchallenged, and without scrutiny ), then the more cynical skeptics become. If not for skeptics, even believers would eventually become secretly jaded by such claims.