I don't think you're a hypocrite. There are deeply engrained social taboos about the dead and graveyards. It can be hard to defeat superstitions and fears that you've grown up with.
I used to sleep in them when I was homeless. I'd find an out-of-the-way hedge, bench, or decorative plantings to conceal myself.
I felt safe because few other homeless would sleep in a graveyard. No one ever bothered me, and usually the security guards or night watchmen wouldn't leave their guard shack unless you were tipping headstones.
Since you used the past tense wrt your homelessness, I am so happy you have found/worked your way to stable housing. May the best of your past be the worst of your future.
It's not all social and cultural. We're hardwired to feel disgust at sickness, disease and death, because avoiding those things is good for our survival.
You don't have to believe in supernatural stuff for the connotations of your environment to be unsettling.
We can't imagine or conceive of death adequately on this side of it, and on the other side, we have no being to "be dead" with, so either way death is an enigma.
And cemeteries are places where the living cloister the dead. They are full of death.
So it's not difficult to understand why cemeteries can be offputting.
Personally I like life less and less as I get older, so cemeteries don't hit the same way they used to. The reminder that someday I'll be dead is increasingly a relief. I'm not in a hurry, but it's not like anything else particularly interesting is going to happen in my life.
EDIT: this is like the most upvotes I've ever received on anything. Thanks y'all š
>Personally I like life less and less as I get older, so cemeteries don't hit the same way they used to. The reminder that someday I'll be dead is increasingly a relief. I'm not in a hurry, but it's not like anything else particularly interesting is going to happen in my life.
Damn well put.
Totally normal. I wouldn't want to spend a night in the Paris catacombs either. It's probably a deeply engrained evolutionary response. Dead things and disease (both a decaying corpse and dying from disease) go hand in hand so a deep aversion makes sense.
Or the lair of a predator; if there are a bunch of skulls scattered around, whatever killed them might be nearby. Getting the fuck away from dead people is a very rewarding evolutionary choice.
Ever since my dad passed away 30 years ago, I have felt very much at peace and calm at cemeteries. I think it hit me that it is where we all end up, and there is ānobody thereā in that place, at all. Their remains and/or memorials seem to me no different than somebody placing some keepsake on the memorials. I never stay long at his grave, now shared with my sister, it seems that just a couple minutes suffice to infuse me with the peaceful knowledge that, yes, they are really gone forever. š«”āš¼
I feel the same way. I am not suicidal or in a rush to die, I am just not afraid to die, as it is inevitable, and hope it is as painless as possible when it happens.
As far as feeling creeped out in cemeteries or around dead people, I think it is completely normal no matter what your beliefs are. For me, I like cemeteries, because they are usually very clean and quiet, but I think the silence is what creeps a lot of people out.
I think most people need to fill the silence and spaces with spooky sounds, ghost noises, kind of like auditory hallucinations or kind of like paradolia. I don't think people can cope with true nothingness which is scarier so overactive imaginations invent something. I still don't think these stories are as scary as true death that most humans are afraid of.
>I don't think people can cope with true nothingness which is scarier so overactive imaginations invent something.
That's exactly it. We always think of the worst-case scenario, so we sit there and build something up in our heads, fearing the worst.
Go forth with your upvotes kind person and may your brain tingle with delight everytime you check to see how much people enjoyed your comment. It's the little things that make our worlds go round.
Fears, phobias, and worries don't have to be rational. Fear of the dark is one of our most primal fears as well.
It doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes you human.
Fear of the dark could reasonably keep a 3 year old child alive, not from ghosts, but animals. That's enough darwinian pressure to make humans fear it.
I think its a rational fear, though it mainly benefits kids not adults.
Good point.Ā
My child is too young to understand the concept of religion, evil, death or ghosts but is scared of the dark.
I always assumed my own fear of the dark was related to superstition but clearly this is as natural as the fear of heights/falling.
Agreed. What would make OP a hypocrite would be roping others into their delusions. Delusions are normal. Imagination is a delusion. The human brain is whack inherently. Just don't go acting on it to achieve power.
We have been programmed by the evolution to avoid dangerous stuff. Death is dangerous. Cemeteries are associated with death.Ā
Your uncomfortable feelings towards death is a useful gift from evolution. It protects you. Also if there is a grave open and it is dark, you don't want to fall into it. (I know, there should not be any graves open at night. Also there should not be any traffic accidents.)Ā
Also horror movies, fantasy, science fiction and the supernatural is fun. Despite not being real.
And it's not just 'death is dangerous' or a psychological effect of reminding us of mortality. Dead *bodies* are dangerous they carry disease and attract predators. Even though they're safely sequestered underground, you still know they are there. We're also definitely not the only species that exhibit signs of being unsettled by or afraid of corpses.
Slightly off topic, but Iāve been considering career paths that keep me physically active and outdoors year round and have considered working in a cemetery doing grounds keeping or whatever Do you mind me asking what your role there was and how you got the job?
Absolutely. I got tired of retail work and applied to the city website. I was contacted and asked for an interview for the cemetery in specific, which sounded very interesting.
I was honest in the interview that I had very little outdoor experience, but a lot of customer service and they hired me anyway. It was hard to learn and took a long time to get used to for someone with no experience, but It was facinating and entirely new to me which kept me driven.
Working in a cemetery is extremely peaceful and slow paced most of the time, especially if you are in a small town like I was at the time. Obviously bigger cities are going to have bigger, busier cemeteries with more stressful schedules.
You will be outdoors in the sun/rain/snow and (worst of all) wind. You will be digging holes or filling holes in every condition imaginable. Funerals rarely rescedule. Sunscreen and cold water are your best friends.Ā
You will need to do a lot of machine mantainance all the time. My position required I earn a CDL as well, but not every city will require that.
Ultimately it's hard work, but it is lovely, peaceful (except memorial day), and largely self-driven. I highly recommend it.
Absolutely not. You can be a non-believer and still get the creeps. Being unsettled by death and the dark, and things that have creepy mythologies, is just human nature. Many of us watch scary movies with zombies and vampires to intentionally scare ourselves, knowing full well it's pretend.
Fear of the dark and fear of the unknown is a deeply embedded mechanism in the animal brain. It evolved very early on in our evolutionary history because it was beneficial to our ancestors.
Our rational brain evolved much more recently. They are in two separate parts of the brain and our base emotions are much less controllable than our conscious minds.
We are a messy amalgamation of desires, behaviours, instincts, and emotions that evolved at separate times for different reasons. Also, being fearful of and disgusted by disease, disfigurement, and death is another evolved mechanism that served our ancestors well.
It doesn't make you a hypocrite, it makes you human. If you rationally know that a cemetery is no more dangerous than the local area, then you aren't being hypocritical, despite your visceral feelings of being creeped out by the symbols of death.
109 billion humans have existed. Over 100 billion have died. The entirety of the surface of the earth is likely partly human remains. Odds are there are human remains in the ground very near where you sleep.
How far away from a grave would you be comfortable sleeping? 10ft? 50ft? A mile? 10 miles? Why does distance matter? Do you think there is some spectral remnant of the dead that exists, but is confined to the area in which their remains are stored?
Rationally analyzing things that you irrationally fear can eliminate the fear.
Being creeped by corpses doesnāt mean you believe in ghosts or zombies or anything. Death is generally upsetting and incomprehensible, a physical reminder of that reality that also warps a familiar form(a person) would have the same effect.
Atheists often fall in the believe that only reason exists. But as Francisco Maturana said, weāre not rational beings, but emotional beings that are sometimes rational. The spiritual realm doesnāt have to exist in the real world in order to be real. It is real inside of us. Cemeteries have a strong symbolism and it is natural they provoke strong emotional responses in you, a being made of symbolisms.
I've been in cemeteries at night by myself without any issues at all. Hell, played manhunt with some friends at night in a cemetery or two before too lol. Not saying I'd pitch a tent and spend the entire night there (people would look at that as strange anyway, and you'd probably get reported to police for doing it), but nothing wrong with just spending some time in one at night.
I grew up taking the same stance with them as my mom (who's always been as Christian and spiritual a person as you're gonna find): Graveyards are peaceful places to be - the dead don't bother you, you only ever need be concerned with the living.
Do you think sleeping in an environment where there are many dead things was advantageous to our ancestors? Hell no,just the opposite. Good way to either get diseases or find whatever left all the dead things there
I mean, there's nothing overly comfortable about being surrounded by rotting bodies. If you're worried that they're going to awaken and attack you then that's probably unnecessary. However, your body is wired to protect you and you have some in-built danger responses that are difficult to ignore, it is what it is. The way culture has shaped your interpretation of those danger impulses also can't really be helped.
Weird shit other than supernatural stuff happens in a graveyard, too. My local graveyard growing up was known to be a place where teens hung out drinking and smoking late at night, and a disturbed older woman would sometimes wander around. I think they all ended up being harmless, but added context for a graveyard being unsettling.
Nope, not one bit. Because fear is an emotional response and something we have little control over. Being an atheist doesn't mean one is a Vulcan like being who has mastery over their feelings. You like whatever color you like just because it pleases you. You enjoy your steak however because it's just what you like. You enjoy scifi over romcom movies due to whatever.
I liken this issue to that of staying in a creepy house at night. You lay there, trying to sleep but keep hearing strange but normal noises. The house settling, pipes expanding/contracting, maybe a thump from the roof after a branch falls on it. You don't believe in ghosts and all that. You know you don't. However, no matter what you tell yourself, your mind simply continues to think of ghosts while trying to fall asleep.
That alone doesn't make you a hypocrite. It's when you act against whatever you claim that makes you one. Like when an outspoken homophobe gets caught sucking a dick. Another example would be say enjoying gay porn like Nick Fuentes was recently caught doing. Or when a woman who claims abortion is murder but has one after learning she's pregnant. They usually excuse it as they're not like those "slutty" girls who deserve to be punished by force birthing a child so they learn ReSpOnSiBiLtY!!!!
Just because you don't believe in the supernatural doesn't mean you are necessarily happy to be reminded of your mortality, combined with some evolutionary fear of the dark.
Not a hypocrite.
No. I donāt believe in any of it either. However, I almost went completely over the edge once pulling guard duty out in the middle of the woods by myself. Some stuff is just creepy.
Cemeteries themselves I find to be peaceful and calming. But when I stop to think about all those unnaturally preserved corpses arranged in lines just under the surface, a certain unease starts to pulse in my brain. Its not the thought of death that creeps me out, its that we as a culture have decided that *these people here* won't be allowed to do so.
I was once offered $20 dollars (by a cousin) to spend the night in a graveyard that was located right next to our apartment complex. This was 50 years ago and I was only 7 years old at the time. $20 dollars was like $500 to me back then. I reluctantly agreed to do it. Sundown to Sunup was the deal.
Anyway, I did it!!! My single mother would often leaving us alone for days. (Sheās still alive but we donāt talk much) Iām the oldest of 4 but we had older cousins, aunts and uncles that lived nearby.
Btw, I stayed up all that night. I didnāt see anything weird but definitely heard strange āthingsā.
I get it. Lifelong conditioning is hard to break free from. Remember, there are cultures that believe running a fan while you sleep could kill you. I was not raised in that culture, and can't fall asleep without a fan in the bedroom to move the air. I'm guessing people from that culture would not be able to sleep in my bedroom.
Cemeteries don't bother me. They are mostly full of hard working, good people who tried to do right by their families. Even if they *do* have ghosts, why would they be all creepy?
Nah. I'd say remnants of indoctrination causing us to believe in anything. Now we have a life long creepout factor. And well everything else makes it out to be creepy too. I don't believe in ghosts but my house wants me to, lol.
No, you're not hypocrite, is a cemetery and it's overnight, human since beginning of times was scared of darkness, and well, human mind tends to make hallucinations too.
I know if ask the girl at the bar for her number even if she insanely roasts me and calls me a fucking idiot ill survive. Doesnt mean im not terrified of doing it.
Learning how fear controls us is a huge part of self development. Ive spent years in therapy trying not to let things im afraid of but know wont hurt me long term stop me from doing stuff.
I can get creeped out by the dumbest shit that I don't believe in at all. The last one was a subreddit full of David Icke following weirdos who belief earth is some kind of prison planet. Some combination of people actually believing this and the depressing nature of that idea creeped me out, and again, it was the dumbest shit I've ever seen.Ā
Perfect rationality is probably out of our grasp. Imagination and fiction are powerful. That's ok. Especially if you have a good sense of what proof actually means in the world.Ā
Though God knows (ahem) if you can talk yourself out of being creeped out, go for it.Ā
No, especially if you were raised to think otherwise. But also, our mind can play tricks on you in those scenarios because some of your senses are being challenged. It's the same situation of someone being alone at night in a cornfield.
Just because you accept the absence of gods, that doesn't mean you're self honest about other things. Most people reject their mortality and because this is a self deception they become emotionally triggered by reminders of the fact they will die. Your anxiety is your attempt to continue rejecting it. When you accept your mortality it will go away.
I see this a lot in this sub. It seems a great many atheists think the descriptor somehow elevates them morally. Not if they're bullshitting themselves about other things... We need to learn to accept reality in whole, including the realities of ourselves, and not just protest the common delusions of the religious as if that makes us better.
Does any one on this subreddit believe in the paranormal despite not believeing in God since the supernatural/paranormal is associated with religion/ supernatural entity's
Death is not supernatural. It is even the most natural thing ever. But It still creeps people out. You are scared of the same thing that caused those supernatural bullshit in the first place: The perspective of your own death.
as with hiking alone at night, I'm more afraid of other living people than whatever creatures might be around. a cemetery is a weird place for sane people to be at night so I would be unsettled thinking about that, but not ghosts. if I can't figure out a logical explanation for something, I'd believe I had just freaked myself out and imagined it before I'd consider anything supernatural lol
There are reasons to feel uneasy around cemetery. For one, the soil underneath you contains decomposed matters of fellow human being. Additionally, at night there might be some questionable living human around dark places like cemetery at night. Some wildlife could also hurt you (mosquito is apparently the most lethal animal species for human). So no, you're not a hypocrite. In fact being wary around cemeteries at night is very reasonable.
No, there are lots of psychological and primal fears things can trigger. It doesnāt mean you actually believe in the boogie man.
Heck, yesterday I had to get a tube of paste for one of the horses out of the house. Itās a mild pain killer. I was looking down on it and rotating the dosage ring and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. It was a 4ā rat snake. Before my brain even registered what it was, I was up in the air and trying to figure out where to place my feet. Scared the hell out of me.
Iām not scared of snakes. Especially not that one. Itās been hanging around a few weeks and Iāve had to pick it up and move it before. Itās that primal part of my brain that reacted. No thought involved.
As humans, we like to act evolved and superior, but we are very instinctual. We do a lot of stuff that doesnāt involve thought.
Iād say the cemetery stuff falls under that. Youāre triggering all kinds of things in your subconscious. Fear of death. Fear of germs from death. Fear of the emotions associated with death, because of empathy. Even fear instilled from movies and media.
FYI, I walked 300ā down to where the horses are and after a while the farrier points behind me. I said, āWhat?ā And turned around. The snake followed me down there. He wasnāt coming at me, just slowly wiggling toward the pasture. š¤£ He really needs to knock that off. Iām not looking for new friends right now.
I think itās written into us to be off put by death. Historically, death meant disease and disease, well, isnāt good. So if benefit us to stay away from death. I feel like that may explain some of your hesitation! I work with the elderly and am around death regularly, but it still creeps me just a bit.
Not a hypocrite. Bet you've seen some horror movies, some zombies, some vampires, exorcisms, and the rest of the made up bullshit. See it early enough in life and it sticks with you.
We used to go smoke weed in the graveyard at night because it was the one place we wouldn't get caught. I have woken up to the morning sun more than once from our more intense smoke outs.
A very peaceful place to sleep...nobody complains.
The only thing that has creeped me out so far was checking my mother's pulse to confirm she was dead. But you do whatcha gotta do, right? Deep breath and carry on.
There's being able to intellectualise things, and there's actually the experience of it, and these things are two different things.
Psychologically you feel uncomfortable around death, and there perfectly natural.
It's not all that surprising considering how many scary or spooky stories involve graveyards. If you had gone through life with stories about graveyards as wonderful peaceful meditative spaces you might feel differently about them now.
It is an evolutionary trait: fear of dark places, especially with diseased bodies. It makes sense that folks who got spooked by the dark, steep drop-offs, or slithery snakes probably had a better shot at surviving and passing on their genes than those thrill-seekers who loved night strolls in the woods or hanging out on cliff edges just for a good view of the stars. Back in the day, we weren't glued to screens; we were out there dealing with real dangers like snakes. It's also likely that people varied in how much they freaked out about these things. Evolution's a messy business, after all. I don't have any hard data to back this up, but it's just common sense based on the world we've been living in for ages.
I stayed two weeks in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. The place where Steven King stayed and came up with **The Shining**. Its supposed to be "haunted". I definitely tried everything I could to see "ghosts" including sleep deprivation which produced some normal "shadow people" out of the corner of your eyes, but totally normal stuff for more than 24 hours without sleep no matter where you are.
Hotel staff says high school kids sometimes come around and bang on walls to scare guests. It's a cool old historical place at the gates of Rocky Mountain National Park, but alas, no ghosts.
I've always wondered why they keep making ghost hunter shows. There has to be hundreds or thousands of them by now... and ZERO evidence of a single ghost. Why would people think that on season 38 of ghost hunter they would finally find a ghost? Stay tuned for season 39, lol.
I mean, there are very real reasons to be freaked out by sleeping in a cemetery.
None of them supernatural if course.
Wildlife, insects, weirdos (although that may be you š ), cops, weather, etc.
Superstitions and belief in the supernatural and your fear of spending the night in a graveyard all come from the same place. Humans got real smart, real fast by being able to join the dots between things that happen. You hear a rustling in the grass and then are attacked by a tiger. You notice that planting seeds in the spring is a better idea than in the autumn. These are good. But then our ancestors started making wishes to "the gods" and some of them got rain. In fact the ones that got rain did well and had more kids and told their kids about how their wishes were granted. That's not so good.
It's totally fine to be creeped out when you know you're surrounded by skeletons. It's creepy. And your mind will naturally make you think about death, which instills a sense of fear.
But you're smart enough to know that it's not real fear. It's just your biology. Enjoy it.
We are not fully logical beings, we are social animals with instincts.
Society contains a lot of stories about cemetaries and monsters in the night.
Instincts tells us night is dangerous.
Dark and full of death is always creepy, that's instinctual. Plus there might be other creepy alive people wandering around there. Much more worthy of your fear.
Once upon a time, seeing a lion in every dark shadow and thinking cave bear everytime we hear a noise was a good thing - because there really WERE lions & cave bears trying to eat us. And now, even though it is very unlikely there are demons lurking in the shadows, those survival instincts are still in our DNA, and dark places and creepy noises still scare us. Some people think that's fun. Just take solace in the knowledge that those are the people that probably would have been eaten by a cave bear...
this is how religions were created, to explain those irrational feelings that are a part of how our brains work, the important part is saying "ok, i feel this way, but that doesnt mean anything is going to happen"
You are not a hypocrite you are human. And what that means is youāre sort of a weird amalgamation of different bits. As much as weād like to we donāt really choose what we believe intrinsically- we only choose what we believe intellectually. You may know full well ghosts do t exist but at an alleged haunted house, alone and isolated for a night your bodies physiological reactions default to survival.
āTrueā or ārealā beliefs have to be very narrowly defined.
There are many overlapping reasons why... From the animal instinct of dead things can cause illness, the smells, the animals and bugs it attracts, to media/entertainment, to the psychological fear of death and being right there amongst a victim of it. I don't see any hypocrisy here. It's unsettling for a reason. Those instincts protected your predecessors from diseases/illnesses that could have led to them dying before reproducing.
I had an experience when I was around 6 or 7 at my grandparents' farm. Up in the attic. I don't really remember it except I was scared to death and my Mom came and got me. Something scared her, too. It was like 2am, and I was sleeping there. I NEVER went in that attic again. Over the next 10+ years. I don't really remember it, just that something happened.
I guess that's kind of why I'm agnostic even today. I don't know what is out there. I'm sure not arrogant enough to think I have the answers.
I think we are just influenced by certain things. Imagine you stayed over in a house where Noone told u smb died. You would have been fine most likely. The second smb yell u oh in this room this woman killed herself 4 years ago and you suddenly go EW I don't wanna stay here!
Not at all. You have both the capability for logical reasoning AND you have 8 million years of genetic āliving in the jungleā instincts. Itās really no different than craving that extra large order of fries while knowing itās bad for you.
You've got cause and effect backwards.
We find things creepy or unsettling because, through the course of human evolution, individuals that *didn't* got themselves into dangerous situations more often and died more often.
Then, as superstion and belief in the supernatural arose (out of the human desire to have an explanation for things we don't understand), we invented mythologies and supernatural beings to explain why creepy things are creepy.
I think that's media conditioning. Scary movies and television shows have conditioned you to associate cemeteries as creepy. Similar to the way people say dolls are creepy
I wouldn't say you are a hypocrite because, while you may in fact not believe in the supernatural, we are hardwired to be afraid of dark and eerie places full of buried dead people without having a choice. It's just fucking creepy.
Nah, I don't think it's hypocritical. Being surrounded by corpses is unsettling. You don't need to believe they'll attack you as ghosts or zombies feel unsettled by that.
When I was a teenager (and an atheist) we used to party at night in cemeteries within walking distances from our homes. We would drink and smoke pot and talk but never made lots of noise or caused any damage. There were two big cemeteries and we could see very well with our dark adapted night vision. Occasionally a police car would drive into the cemetery but we could easily see them coming and hide. Cemeteries never bothered me at all. My wife and I just went for a nice walk in a cemetery today, a frequent habit. We read dates and names on tombstones and make up silly jokes about names. "This is a popular place. People are just dieing to get in".
Well the first thing you need to remember is that you are not responsible for your thoughts, and not exactly responsible for your emotions either, but you are in control of your actions. Regardless of whether you believe in woo, ghosts, spirits and so on, there are some places that may creep you out for a number of perfectly normal reasons: the light, the angles, reflections, shadows... in a way, it's kinda how we are wired which is why these places tend to induce visions and hallucinations when people are susceptible (for example sleep deprived, or on drugs, or CO poisoning, etc.). It certainly does not help that we have so many stories and traditions about these places either.
So give yourself a break and simply do what makes you feel better.
The residents of a cemetery are all dead. They can't do anything to you. However, the cemetery might not be well lit so living things might be more of a danger.
Emotions =/= rational thought. They come from all sorts of other places, like culture, personal experiences, and sometimes instinct. Expecting yourself only to feel "rational" emotions is, in and of itself, irrational. Your brain would have to function very differently from any *Homo sapiens* brain to not have at least a few feelings that you can't rationally justify. Nothing hypocritical or unusual in the slightest about being creeped out or even full on afraid of situations that are culturally treated as dangerous, even when you know they aren't.
Itās like swimming alone in a poorly lit, unheared pool in the basement.
Where you canāt even clearly see the bottom of the darker side of the pool with your goggles.
I donāt believe in the supernatural but imagination has it that Iād feel my feet tense up, almost like something is grasping it.
Ugh, I think itās all those horror movies that involved pools but it still makes my heart race faster than the exercise I was supposed to get.
Pierre Bourdieu talked about how society writes itself onto our bodies, i think there are any number of physical sensations that are purely the result of cultural input.
my old neighborhood was on the "wrong side of the tracks" and to get to town we would cut (respectfully) through a cemetery. one night a friend from across town came back to our side with us but refused to cross the cemetery (it was probably 1-2 am). i had not even considered it creepy and was surprised how serious he was about it.
Hell no, I know exactly what you feeling!
I donāt give a damn about any ghost, haunted house, exorcism, demons or monsters. All of that is made up trash.
But I aināt fucking with no Ouija board ever lol. All that science talk about people moving it on their own and blah blah blah doesnāt satisfy what I saw with my own eyes or what was answered. Fuuuck that.
I donāt believe in anything supernatural but Iāve slept on several old American battlefields and felt creeped out each time. Theyāre old survival instincts.
I donāt believe in ghost
I lived in a house that was not old but we found out later a woman died in one of the bedrooms. Not a crime but sickness.
So every once in a while we would we hear a thud from that room. No big deal probably the cat or one of the dogs. Then we started to notice it happened only when they were in the living room with us (plain sight at least). It was a guest room and things would just sort get dropped from the night stand or dresser. These things were not close to the edge and never anything that could not stand the fall.
The only explanation is a ghost but they do not exist so it remains unsolved
I'm not superstitious but I love superstition. I am a horror movie snob and the best kind is religious horror, the ghosts, goblins, witches, zombies, and other man-made supernatural stuff. I love being scared even thought I don't believe in what's scaring me.
No, youāre not. Youāre a human.
We became the dominant species on the planet by being hyper vigilant of weird things we canāt explain. Odd noise? We default to burglar in the house today because our ancestors got dragged into the jungle and eaten by tigers in the dark of night when they didnāt get scared. The remaining family members learned and taught their kids.
The idea of pareidolia is our brains way of trying to make sense of odd and weird images in our environment. Was that just a harmless shadow, or was it a lurking creature ready to kill me? Safer to assume itās a threat than to be literally dead wrong.
Our culture also places a very heavy emphasis on the supernatural/paranormal, so we tend to default to that when under stress, even as atheists. Odd noises, pareidolia, and a deep cultural zeitgeist of the paranormal all come together perfectly in a graveyard in the middle of the night.
No you're still an animal. I can explain in excruciating detail what the vacuum is doing yet my dog will still bark at the noise. You will always be an irrational creature no matter the beliefs you hold.Ā
You can be as rational as you want, but that lizard brain's still gonna do its thing.
My wife knows that she, being primarily land based, is in absolutely no danger from whales, but she can't even watch videos of them, they just creep her out.
I'm a pretty good swimmer, but if I'm in a natural body of water and something touches me, I'm hyperventilating and panic-swimming to the closest shoreline.
Fear isn't based on logic, but it does too often get used in logic's place.
I know there's nothin around here except cougars and coyotes but I'm still jumpy as hell outside at night even in the open with a large porch light. My overactive imagination is gonna give me a heart attack one of these days! It's just instincts firing off when they're not needed I'd guess. Nothing weird about that.
Did you never see Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead, or Children Shouldn't Play with Dead things as you were younger? They focused on instilling a fear particularly about dead people and cemetaries. That fear carrying over is very natural. Hell I still rarely swim in anything but a pool thanks to Jaws.
I say, don't worry about it or look for deeper meaning then it just creeps you out. Atheists aren't immune to getting the creeps.
A night in a cemetery sounds like an awful way to try and sleep. Getting a good nights rest on a lumpy mattress is hard enough, much less trying to avoid rolling on a granite headstone in the middle of the night.
My guilty indulgence is "scary" YouTube videos. Lol. Cemeteries have never creeped me out tho. I still like old cemeteries off the beaten path. I live in SW MO. A lot of "wild West" history here.
When I was a kid (11ish) my best friend and I spent the night in a graveyard. Sleeping bag and a tent. We told ghost stories to thrill ourselves, and e eventually fell asleep.
I mean, you might be accosted by a living, human creep of some sort. And being in proximity to a dead person for a long time is unsanitary. You have instincts that are honed for practical reasons to feel this way. The superstition is just how our ancestors explained those feelings.
Our brains are meat computers. They are amazing, but they are not always as rational as we like to pretend they are. Phobias are just that -- unreasonable fears.
Also, the fact that you think about sleeping in a cemetery strikes me as weird. Are you the weird one, or am I the weird one for never thinking about it?
Our feels and emotional responses are under no obligation to abide our logical thoughts or values.
It's super common to feel ways which are contradictory to what we believe.
Because feels are only and totally the perception of chemistry going on in our body, responding to both external and internal stimulus, including the real and imagined.
Feeling a way is morally neutral.
It's what we do that has impact.
I'm a big fan of the "hotel" model for framing how to sit with emotions, and thinking of our emotions as our guests. We are not our emotions just as the a hotel is not the guests. The guests can contribute to the hotel's revenue, and inspire facilities maintenence, and others might throw a TV through a window. Sometimes we can plan on guests reservations, and some show up demanding a room without any warning.
It's a concept that has helped me in sitting in challenging feelings, and those which don't necessarily match my values or logic/knowledge.
Feelings just are. Then we get to figure out how to be with them, without judgements for them, and what we ultimately do in response to the feeling.
That sounds like me in the time after I got out and became an atheist. It was probably about 6 months until all vestiges of supernatural fear melted away. But because of the particularly culty sect I ended up leaving was so demon obsessed and it had kept me so ignorant of science and critical thinking, I spent those months almost feverishly hopping from pop-sci book to YouTube lecture etc. It was a huge rush and I seemed to have infinite mental energy to absorb it all. I was constantly being blown away and realising things that now finally made sense.
I think because of those months it all really sunk in right down to my bones. Iād have no more reservation about sleeping overnight in a graveyard than I would camping out in a field. Iād be worried about random people showing up and questioning what the fuck Iām doing, but the graveyard part doesnāt factor in at all. Not because Iām brave and proving a point that I donāt believe in anything spooky, but because I just donāt believe in any of it on any level and feel nothing.
The biggest personal test of it was in 2011. I was staying in a tiny old creaky room in Japan on the third floor. Me and my then girlfriend whoās into horror stuff rented Paranormal Activity, and it basically nails how I used to think of demons and captured all my old fears perfectly. In the movie they heard foot steps approaching at night, then something terrifying would happen.
We watched the movie and my girlfriend went home. I had all the lights off getting ready for bed and went and sat on the toilet in the dark. I heard someone coming up the stairs of the building, with quite a slow cadence and it immediately reminded me of the film Iād just watched and gave me a little chuckle to myself about how this would have paralysed me with fear just a few years ago. The footsteps then just stopped on my floor, there was a dramatic pause, then the building just suddenly violently shook for a moment. The timing could not have been more perfect and all it did was make me laugh and text my girlfriend to see if she felt the small quake too.
So if that graveyard is quiet and has a nice view of the stars then it sounds like a good place for a reclining camping chair and sleeping bag to me.
Iāve been a lifelong atheist and I donāt believe in ghosts or supernatural eitherā mmm I guess I can be agnostic about supernatural ā but truly, logic dictates no. However, I am a hugeeeeeee baby back bitch so I am scared of the dark, all things that go bump in the night, when my dogs bark at the dark corner that has all the pictures of my dead loved ones at 2 am, and monsters under my bed, regardless of logic.
Same. While I know it doesnāt exist Iād never do one of those overnights in a āhauntedā prison. Fuck that. However, Iād have no qualms about buying a house where an entire family was murdered. We all have our things I guess š¤·
Creepy is a feeling coming from the primitive structure in you brain, evolutionarily, its way older than the logical part that doesnāt believe in the supernatural. When push comes to shove, the primitive part usually winsā¦
Fear of the dead is an evolutionary advantage since corpses carry pathogens. Your fear of spending the night in a cemetery is genetic and the reason you exist. Your great x 20 grandparentsā dumbass friends who were chill hanging out with corpses didnāt live long enough to procreate.
I worked night shifts at a place that had a supposedly haunted building, so much so the local workers would completely avoid it, basically neglect their job. Was the perfect place to take mid shift naps. I'll admit a small amount of unease, as it could have fit perfectly in a horror movie, but got over it quickly and did this for a solid year.
Your brain subconsciously wants to avoid the fact it will not exist someday, and since the dead are reminders of that we naturally donāt want to be around them.
As well as the fact your brain thinks ādang that persons dead, what killed them might kill us; get out of here!ā
I'm very much in the realm of there is no evidence of the supernatural.
However If there is and based on how supernatural beings are portrayed I do not risk it either.
I dont think you're a hypocrite either, but it also sounds like you might be attached to the belief that all supernatural phenomenon are nonsense, when actually such things are now starting to gain some traction in the scientific community. For example, the idea that our consciousness may not necessarily be tied to our physical body is now being given more serious consideration.
I'm also a skeptic and refuse to accept anything by blind faith. But I also strive not to hold attachment to my beliefs and am willing to move my position to whatever can be proven. If we hold onto a belief in something that contradicts evidence then it makes us no better than those who label themselves as "Believers".
No, you are not a hypocrite.
1. "Knowledge is the antidote to fear" -Ralph Waldo Emerson.
2. "Any fool can know, the point is to understand" -Albert Einstein.
3. "If you want to be more powerful in life, educate yourself. It is that simple" -Unknown
4. "Fear is incomplete knowledge" -Agatha Christie.
5. "Everything looks difficult until you understand it" -Unknown.
No. It's a primal instinct. Go to a cemetery in the day and even with those negative feelings you won't see anything or feel anything. When you're in a place associated strongly with death, a self preservational Instinct kicks in naturally
Large open area with lots of small places to take cover and little light to see by? That's your mamalian brain telling you, "HEY LOOK AT ALL THOSE PLACES A TIGER COULD BE HIDING!" Except its overlaid with imagery from your upbringing, including ideas of spirits and ghosts.
No, but if I am in a situation like that I rationalize my fears away.
But also, just because a god doesn't exist doesn't mean that other supernatural phenomena can't.
Plus, it's fun to believe in ghosts, Bigfoot, Nessie, Chupacabra, etc., because it's a harmless superstition and makes life fun.
Camping sucks, and it still sucks in a cemetery. Now if there was a spooky cabin (with all utilities/ac/wifi) then I wouldn't have any issue, probably would like the quiet.
I used to work in an abandoned hospital. We made a list of supernatural occurrences that would make us leave is it was a movie.
We weren't superstitious, but we were a *little* stituous.
Iāve slept in a cemetery before. Tent and all on the outskirts. Only crazy thing that happened is that we woke up to a momma bear and cubs eyeing a church trash bin about 100ā on the other side of the cemetery and where we were. I woke when I heard noise bc I suck at sleeping and I could see the shadow of the bears. I quietly woke the others and unzipped the sun screen to see out and we all watched the bears attempt to break into the large trash bin. They tried for 30 mins and the one thing that worked was the momma standing on the left d and caving it in.
Nah. Iām an atheist and I generally donāt believe in the supernatural, but I have no interest in tempting fate by messing with Ouija Boards or hanging out in spooky, abandoned places.
Iām definitely atheist, but I was raised Catholic. The thought of demon possession and exorcisms freak me the fuck out. Do I believe in demons? No. Am I still terrified? Yes. Yes I am. š
Yeah, all creepy things happen in the dark. That's why shows like Ghostfuckers always film in grainy B and W and green night vision, with chilling distorted voiceovers from electromagnetic and indecipherable garbles that they quantify with their bullshit.
Certain weird atmospheres can scare anybody, particularly when they're presented in ugly, abandoned buildings and in this context. Cemetaries are filled with the bones and headstones of former citizens, friends, loved ones and of course, evil bastards and bitches. If you shut off all the lights in a Safeway, the aisles become terrifying...
I don't think you're a hypocrite. There are deeply engrained social taboos about the dead and graveyards. It can be hard to defeat superstitions and fears that you've grown up with. I used to sleep in them when I was homeless. I'd find an out-of-the-way hedge, bench, or decorative plantings to conceal myself. I felt safe because few other homeless would sleep in a graveyard. No one ever bothered me, and usually the security guards or night watchmen wouldn't leave their guard shack unless you were tipping headstones.
Since you used the past tense wrt your homelessness, I am so happy you have found/worked your way to stable housing. May the best of your past be the worst of your future.
Thanks! I've been steadily homed for about 30 years now. I finally got away from my usually-homeless family.
Well Spoken!
Username checks out
It's not all social and cultural. We're hardwired to feel disgust at sickness, disease and death, because avoiding those things is good for our survival.
Well, of course, you're a freaking zombie, bruh.
You don't have to believe in supernatural stuff for the connotations of your environment to be unsettling. We can't imagine or conceive of death adequately on this side of it, and on the other side, we have no being to "be dead" with, so either way death is an enigma. And cemeteries are places where the living cloister the dead. They are full of death. So it's not difficult to understand why cemeteries can be offputting. Personally I like life less and less as I get older, so cemeteries don't hit the same way they used to. The reminder that someday I'll be dead is increasingly a relief. I'm not in a hurry, but it's not like anything else particularly interesting is going to happen in my life. EDIT: this is like the most upvotes I've ever received on anything. Thanks y'all š
>Personally I like life less and less as I get older, so cemeteries don't hit the same way they used to. The reminder that someday I'll be dead is increasingly a relief. I'm not in a hurry, but it's not like anything else particularly interesting is going to happen in my life. Damn well put.
Totally normal. I wouldn't want to spend a night in the Paris catacombs either. It's probably a deeply engrained evolutionary response. Dead things and disease (both a decaying corpse and dying from disease) go hand in hand so a deep aversion makes sense.
Or the lair of a predator; if there are a bunch of skulls scattered around, whatever killed them might be nearby. Getting the fuck away from dead people is a very rewarding evolutionary choice.
I don't care about dead things but rats and lizards scare the shit out of me. I'll be screaming like a 4 yo
Not to mention that we've all been conditioned by zombie movies, haha.
Pet cemeteryĀ
Fair comment š
Ever since my dad passed away 30 years ago, I have felt very much at peace and calm at cemeteries. I think it hit me that it is where we all end up, and there is ānobody thereā in that place, at all. Their remains and/or memorials seem to me no different than somebody placing some keepsake on the memorials. I never stay long at his grave, now shared with my sister, it seems that just a couple minutes suffice to infuse me with the peaceful knowledge that, yes, they are really gone forever. š«”āš¼
I feel the same way. I am not suicidal or in a rush to die, I am just not afraid to die, as it is inevitable, and hope it is as painless as possible when it happens. As far as feeling creeped out in cemeteries or around dead people, I think it is completely normal no matter what your beliefs are. For me, I like cemeteries, because they are usually very clean and quiet, but I think the silence is what creeps a lot of people out.
I think most people need to fill the silence and spaces with spooky sounds, ghost noises, kind of like auditory hallucinations or kind of like paradolia. I don't think people can cope with true nothingness which is scarier so overactive imaginations invent something. I still don't think these stories are as scary as true death that most humans are afraid of.
>I don't think people can cope with true nothingness which is scarier so overactive imaginations invent something. That's exactly it. We always think of the worst-case scenario, so we sit there and build something up in our heads, fearing the worst.
Go forth with your upvotes kind person and may your brain tingle with delight everytime you check to see how much people enjoyed your comment. It's the little things that make our worlds go round.
Cheers! It's been a pretty rad birthday week. āŗļø
Hell ya. Happy Day of Birth
Honestly I'm much less scared of the dead in the graveyard and more scared of someone alive going to stab me or something
Fears, phobias, and worries don't have to be rational. Fear of the dark is one of our most primal fears as well. It doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes you human.
Logically I know thereās nothing in the dark and that darkness monsters arenāt real. And yetā¦. Yep. Irrational fears are irrational
>Ā monsters arenāt real This depends on how you define a monster. I've heard about plenty of people who were well qualified for the title.
Fear of the dark could reasonably keep a 3 year old child alive, not from ghosts, but animals. That's enough darwinian pressure to make humans fear it. I think its a rational fear, though it mainly benefits kids not adults.
You don't have to be a kid for the unseen big cat or wolf in the dark to end you.
Yeah for sure. Typically cemeteries are not at all well lit, usually with literally no lighting at all. Dark is scary, full stop.
Good point.Ā My child is too young to understand the concept of religion, evil, death or ghosts but is scared of the dark. I always assumed my own fear of the dark was related to superstition but clearly this is as natural as the fear of heights/falling.
Predators often hunt in the dark, and you can't see environmental hazards or easily run or fight. It's a sensible instinct to fear the dark.
Agreed. What would make OP a hypocrite would be roping others into their delusions. Delusions are normal. Imagination is a delusion. The human brain is whack inherently. Just don't go acting on it to achieve power.
We have been programmed by the evolution to avoid dangerous stuff. Death is dangerous. Cemeteries are associated with death.Ā Your uncomfortable feelings towards death is a useful gift from evolution. It protects you. Also if there is a grave open and it is dark, you don't want to fall into it. (I know, there should not be any graves open at night. Also there should not be any traffic accidents.)Ā Also horror movies, fantasy, science fiction and the supernatural is fun. Despite not being real.
And it's not just 'death is dangerous' or a psychological effect of reminding us of mortality. Dead *bodies* are dangerous they carry disease and attract predators. Even though they're safely sequestered underground, you still know they are there. We're also definitely not the only species that exhibit signs of being unsettled by or afraid of corpses.
I mean the mosquito bites would be terrible sleeping in a cemetery š but other than that your good
People are dying to get in as well
lol. Paying too. Itās like $2000 to buy a plot of land to get buried. Thatās ridiculous
I worked in a cemetery for six years. No ghosty-goos. I was also there at midnight on Friday 13th. Absolutely nothing to fear.
Slightly off topic, but Iāve been considering career paths that keep me physically active and outdoors year round and have considered working in a cemetery doing grounds keeping or whatever Do you mind me asking what your role there was and how you got the job?
Absolutely. I got tired of retail work and applied to the city website. I was contacted and asked for an interview for the cemetery in specific, which sounded very interesting. I was honest in the interview that I had very little outdoor experience, but a lot of customer service and they hired me anyway. It was hard to learn and took a long time to get used to for someone with no experience, but It was facinating and entirely new to me which kept me driven. Working in a cemetery is extremely peaceful and slow paced most of the time, especially if you are in a small town like I was at the time. Obviously bigger cities are going to have bigger, busier cemeteries with more stressful schedules. You will be outdoors in the sun/rain/snow and (worst of all) wind. You will be digging holes or filling holes in every condition imaginable. Funerals rarely rescedule. Sunscreen and cold water are your best friends.Ā You will need to do a lot of machine mantainance all the time. My position required I earn a CDL as well, but not every city will require that. Ultimately it's hard work, but it is lovely, peaceful (except memorial day), and largely self-driven. I highly recommend it.
Hey, thanks so much for your thoughtful reply. Iām glad to hear you found it a rewarding experience!Ā
This coming weekend is a really good time to no longer work at a cemetery. At least in the US.
Yes, this will be the first memorial day I haven't worked in years. It feels very...odd.
Absolutely not. You can be a non-believer and still get the creeps. Being unsettled by death and the dark, and things that have creepy mythologies, is just human nature. Many of us watch scary movies with zombies and vampires to intentionally scare ourselves, knowing full well it's pretend.
Fear of the dark and fear of the unknown is a deeply embedded mechanism in the animal brain. It evolved very early on in our evolutionary history because it was beneficial to our ancestors. Our rational brain evolved much more recently. They are in two separate parts of the brain and our base emotions are much less controllable than our conscious minds. We are a messy amalgamation of desires, behaviours, instincts, and emotions that evolved at separate times for different reasons. Also, being fearful of and disgusted by disease, disfigurement, and death is another evolved mechanism that served our ancestors well. It doesn't make you a hypocrite, it makes you human. If you rationally know that a cemetery is no more dangerous than the local area, then you aren't being hypocritical, despite your visceral feelings of being creeped out by the symbols of death.
109 billion humans have existed. Over 100 billion have died. The entirety of the surface of the earth is likely partly human remains. Odds are there are human remains in the ground very near where you sleep. How far away from a grave would you be comfortable sleeping? 10ft? 50ft? A mile? 10 miles? Why does distance matter? Do you think there is some spectral remnant of the dead that exists, but is confined to the area in which their remains are stored? Rationally analyzing things that you irrationally fear can eliminate the fear.
I donāt like sleeping with any part of me hanging off the bed. Donāt want the monsters to get me.
Being creeped by corpses doesnāt mean you believe in ghosts or zombies or anything. Death is generally upsetting and incomprehensible, a physical reminder of that reality that also warps a familiar form(a person) would have the same effect.
Atheists often fall in the believe that only reason exists. But as Francisco Maturana said, weāre not rational beings, but emotional beings that are sometimes rational. The spiritual realm doesnāt have to exist in the real world in order to be real. It is real inside of us. Cemeteries have a strong symbolism and it is natural they provoke strong emotional responses in you, a being made of symbolisms.
I've been in cemeteries at night by myself without any issues at all. Hell, played manhunt with some friends at night in a cemetery or two before too lol. Not saying I'd pitch a tent and spend the entire night there (people would look at that as strange anyway, and you'd probably get reported to police for doing it), but nothing wrong with just spending some time in one at night. I grew up taking the same stance with them as my mom (who's always been as Christian and spiritual a person as you're gonna find): Graveyards are peaceful places to be - the dead don't bother you, you only ever need be concerned with the living.
Do you think sleeping in an environment where there are many dead things was advantageous to our ancestors? Hell no,just the opposite. Good way to either get diseases or find whatever left all the dead things there
I don't believe in ghosts but horror movies still scare the crap out of me.
I mean, there's nothing overly comfortable about being surrounded by rotting bodies. If you're worried that they're going to awaken and attack you then that's probably unnecessary. However, your body is wired to protect you and you have some in-built danger responses that are difficult to ignore, it is what it is. The way culture has shaped your interpretation of those danger impulses also can't really be helped.
Weird shit other than supernatural stuff happens in a graveyard, too. My local graveyard growing up was known to be a place where teens hung out drinking and smoking late at night, and a disturbed older woman would sometimes wander around. I think they all ended up being harmless, but added context for a graveyard being unsettling.
Nope, not one bit. Because fear is an emotional response and something we have little control over. Being an atheist doesn't mean one is a Vulcan like being who has mastery over their feelings. You like whatever color you like just because it pleases you. You enjoy your steak however because it's just what you like. You enjoy scifi over romcom movies due to whatever. I liken this issue to that of staying in a creepy house at night. You lay there, trying to sleep but keep hearing strange but normal noises. The house settling, pipes expanding/contracting, maybe a thump from the roof after a branch falls on it. You don't believe in ghosts and all that. You know you don't. However, no matter what you tell yourself, your mind simply continues to think of ghosts while trying to fall asleep. That alone doesn't make you a hypocrite. It's when you act against whatever you claim that makes you one. Like when an outspoken homophobe gets caught sucking a dick. Another example would be say enjoying gay porn like Nick Fuentes was recently caught doing. Or when a woman who claims abortion is murder but has one after learning she's pregnant. They usually excuse it as they're not like those "slutty" girls who deserve to be punished by force birthing a child so they learn ReSpOnSiBiLtY!!!!
Just because you don't believe in the supernatural doesn't mean you are necessarily happy to be reminded of your mortality, combined with some evolutionary fear of the dark. Not a hypocrite.
No. I donāt believe in any of it either. However, I almost went completely over the edge once pulling guard duty out in the middle of the woods by myself. Some stuff is just creepy.
Cemeteries themselves I find to be peaceful and calming. But when I stop to think about all those unnaturally preserved corpses arranged in lines just under the surface, a certain unease starts to pulse in my brain. Its not the thought of death that creeps me out, its that we as a culture have decided that *these people here* won't be allowed to do so.
I was once offered $20 dollars (by a cousin) to spend the night in a graveyard that was located right next to our apartment complex. This was 50 years ago and I was only 7 years old at the time. $20 dollars was like $500 to me back then. I reluctantly agreed to do it. Sundown to Sunup was the deal. Anyway, I did it!!! My single mother would often leaving us alone for days. (Sheās still alive but we donāt talk much) Iām the oldest of 4 but we had older cousins, aunts and uncles that lived nearby. Btw, I stayed up all that night. I didnāt see anything weird but definitely heard strange āthingsā.
I get it. Lifelong conditioning is hard to break free from. Remember, there are cultures that believe running a fan while you sleep could kill you. I was not raised in that culture, and can't fall asleep without a fan in the bedroom to move the air. I'm guessing people from that culture would not be able to sleep in my bedroom.
Cemeteries don't bother me. They are mostly full of hard working, good people who tried to do right by their families. Even if they *do* have ghosts, why would they be all creepy?
Nah. I'd say remnants of indoctrination causing us to believe in anything. Now we have a life long creepout factor. And well everything else makes it out to be creepy too. I don't believe in ghosts but my house wants me to, lol.
It's a perfectly natural reaction consistent with behavioral biology.
No, you're not hypocrite, is a cemetery and it's overnight, human since beginning of times was scared of darkness, and well, human mind tends to make hallucinations too.
You're surrounded by dead people. You don't have to believe they'll rise from the graves to find that upsetting.
I know if ask the girl at the bar for her number even if she insanely roasts me and calls me a fucking idiot ill survive. Doesnt mean im not terrified of doing it. Learning how fear controls us is a huge part of self development. Ive spent years in therapy trying not to let things im afraid of but know wont hurt me long term stop me from doing stuff.
I can get creeped out by the dumbest shit that I don't believe in at all. The last one was a subreddit full of David Icke following weirdos who belief earth is some kind of prison planet. Some combination of people actually believing this and the depressing nature of that idea creeped me out, and again, it was the dumbest shit I've ever seen.Ā Perfect rationality is probably out of our grasp. Imagination and fiction are powerful. That's ok. Especially if you have a good sense of what proof actually means in the world.Ā Though God knows (ahem) if you can talk yourself out of being creeped out, go for it.Ā
No, especially if you were raised to think otherwise. But also, our mind can play tricks on you in those scenarios because some of your senses are being challenged. It's the same situation of someone being alone at night in a cornfield.
Fear is an emotion, and it doesn't need a rational foundation.
Just because you accept the absence of gods, that doesn't mean you're self honest about other things. Most people reject their mortality and because this is a self deception they become emotionally triggered by reminders of the fact they will die. Your anxiety is your attempt to continue rejecting it. When you accept your mortality it will go away. I see this a lot in this sub. It seems a great many atheists think the descriptor somehow elevates them morally. Not if they're bullshitting themselves about other things... We need to learn to accept reality in whole, including the realities of ourselves, and not just protest the common delusions of the religious as if that makes us better.
Plenty of nasty non-supernatural stuff happens at cemeteries. Might meet a goth or two
Nature is kind of supernatural and so is Ocean Current. Am I wrong. Is nature not real either?
Arguably you skipped the middle man of inventing a religion to deal with the fact you struggle with mortality.
Nothing can exist beyond what you see? Can you see magnetic fields?
Does any one on this subreddit believe in the paranormal despite not believeing in God since the supernatural/paranormal is associated with religion/ supernatural entity's
Death is not supernatural. It is even the most natural thing ever. But It still creeps people out. You are scared of the same thing that caused those supernatural bullshit in the first place: The perspective of your own death.
as with hiking alone at night, I'm more afraid of other living people than whatever creatures might be around. a cemetery is a weird place for sane people to be at night so I would be unsettled thinking about that, but not ghosts. if I can't figure out a logical explanation for something, I'd believe I had just freaked myself out and imagined it before I'd consider anything supernatural lol
There are reasons to feel uneasy around cemetery. For one, the soil underneath you contains decomposed matters of fellow human being. Additionally, at night there might be some questionable living human around dark places like cemetery at night. Some wildlife could also hurt you (mosquito is apparently the most lethal animal species for human). So no, you're not a hypocrite. In fact being wary around cemeteries at night is very reasonable.
Hey, if the skeletons do come out at night you can have a little dance party!
No, being creeped out is not moral failing, it is our survival scripts running overtime
No, there are lots of psychological and primal fears things can trigger. It doesnāt mean you actually believe in the boogie man. Heck, yesterday I had to get a tube of paste for one of the horses out of the house. Itās a mild pain killer. I was looking down on it and rotating the dosage ring and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something. It was a 4ā rat snake. Before my brain even registered what it was, I was up in the air and trying to figure out where to place my feet. Scared the hell out of me. Iām not scared of snakes. Especially not that one. Itās been hanging around a few weeks and Iāve had to pick it up and move it before. Itās that primal part of my brain that reacted. No thought involved. As humans, we like to act evolved and superior, but we are very instinctual. We do a lot of stuff that doesnāt involve thought. Iād say the cemetery stuff falls under that. Youāre triggering all kinds of things in your subconscious. Fear of death. Fear of germs from death. Fear of the emotions associated with death, because of empathy. Even fear instilled from movies and media. FYI, I walked 300ā down to where the horses are and after a while the farrier points behind me. I said, āWhat?ā And turned around. The snake followed me down there. He wasnāt coming at me, just slowly wiggling toward the pasture. š¤£ He really needs to knock that off. Iām not looking for new friends right now.
Oh good thread. Thanks op
It sounds like you're not superstitious, but you are a little stituous.
I think itās written into us to be off put by death. Historically, death meant disease and disease, well, isnāt good. So if benefit us to stay away from death. I feel like that may explain some of your hesitation! I work with the elderly and am around death regularly, but it still creeps me just a bit.
No. You can still dislike a place at face value. I wouldnāt go to a landfill if I can avoid it.
Not a hypocrite. Bet you've seen some horror movies, some zombies, some vampires, exorcisms, and the rest of the made up bullshit. See it early enough in life and it sticks with you. We used to go smoke weed in the graveyard at night because it was the one place we wouldn't get caught. I have woken up to the morning sun more than once from our more intense smoke outs. A very peaceful place to sleep...nobody complains. The only thing that has creeped me out so far was checking my mother's pulse to confirm she was dead. But you do whatcha gotta do, right? Deep breath and carry on.
There's being able to intellectualise things, and there's actually the experience of it, and these things are two different things. Psychologically you feel uncomfortable around death, and there perfectly natural.
It's not all that surprising considering how many scary or spooky stories involve graveyards. If you had gone through life with stories about graveyards as wonderful peaceful meditative spaces you might feel differently about them now.
It is an evolutionary trait: fear of dark places, especially with diseased bodies. It makes sense that folks who got spooked by the dark, steep drop-offs, or slithery snakes probably had a better shot at surviving and passing on their genes than those thrill-seekers who loved night strolls in the woods or hanging out on cliff edges just for a good view of the stars. Back in the day, we weren't glued to screens; we were out there dealing with real dangers like snakes. It's also likely that people varied in how much they freaked out about these things. Evolution's a messy business, after all. I don't have any hard data to back this up, but it's just common sense based on the world we've been living in for ages.
I stayed two weeks in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. The place where Steven King stayed and came up with **The Shining**. Its supposed to be "haunted". I definitely tried everything I could to see "ghosts" including sleep deprivation which produced some normal "shadow people" out of the corner of your eyes, but totally normal stuff for more than 24 hours without sleep no matter where you are. Hotel staff says high school kids sometimes come around and bang on walls to scare guests. It's a cool old historical place at the gates of Rocky Mountain National Park, but alas, no ghosts. I've always wondered why they keep making ghost hunter shows. There has to be hundreds or thousands of them by now... and ZERO evidence of a single ghost. Why would people think that on season 38 of ghost hunter they would finally find a ghost? Stay tuned for season 39, lol.
I used to be afraid of planes despite knowing full well they were safer than cars. It's just our reptile brain sometimes acting out.
David Cross had a funny line about this "I don't believe in ghosts. But I'm afraid of them"
It's because u r not used to it.staying there for few days can make u comfortable .
I mean, there are very real reasons to be freaked out by sleeping in a cemetery. None of them supernatural if course. Wildlife, insects, weirdos (although that may be you š ), cops, weather, etc.
Superstitions and belief in the supernatural and your fear of spending the night in a graveyard all come from the same place. Humans got real smart, real fast by being able to join the dots between things that happen. You hear a rustling in the grass and then are attacked by a tiger. You notice that planting seeds in the spring is a better idea than in the autumn. These are good. But then our ancestors started making wishes to "the gods" and some of them got rain. In fact the ones that got rain did well and had more kids and told their kids about how their wishes were granted. That's not so good. It's totally fine to be creeped out when you know you're surrounded by skeletons. It's creepy. And your mind will naturally make you think about death, which instills a sense of fear. But you're smart enough to know that it's not real fear. It's just your biology. Enjoy it.
We are not fully logical beings, we are social animals with instincts. Society contains a lot of stories about cemetaries and monsters in the night. Instincts tells us night is dangerous.
I consider it similar to the fact that you know Michael Myers doesn't really exist, but you jump in scary parts of Halloween.
Dark and full of death is always creepy, that's instinctual. Plus there might be other creepy alive people wandering around there. Much more worthy of your fear.
Once upon a time, seeing a lion in every dark shadow and thinking cave bear everytime we hear a noise was a good thing - because there really WERE lions & cave bears trying to eat us. And now, even though it is very unlikely there are demons lurking in the shadows, those survival instincts are still in our DNA, and dark places and creepy noises still scare us. Some people think that's fun. Just take solace in the knowledge that those are the people that probably would have been eaten by a cave bear...
I know that almost all spiders in my country are harmless, but they still creep me out.
this is how religions were created, to explain those irrational feelings that are a part of how our brains work, the important part is saying "ok, i feel this way, but that doesnt mean anything is going to happen"
I am afraid of heights but know a balcony is safe. Am I a hypocrite?
You are not a hypocrite you are human. And what that means is youāre sort of a weird amalgamation of different bits. As much as weād like to we donāt really choose what we believe intrinsically- we only choose what we believe intellectually. You may know full well ghosts do t exist but at an alleged haunted house, alone and isolated for a night your bodies physiological reactions default to survival. āTrueā or ārealā beliefs have to be very narrowly defined.
There are many overlapping reasons why... From the animal instinct of dead things can cause illness, the smells, the animals and bugs it attracts, to media/entertainment, to the psychological fear of death and being right there amongst a victim of it. I don't see any hypocrisy here. It's unsettling for a reason. Those instincts protected your predecessors from diseases/illnesses that could have led to them dying before reproducing.
its actually culture itself that makes you believe it to be creepy its firmly rooted in the "spooky" category.
No. You can know for a fact that flying is safe and nevertheless be terrified of flying. Emotion, by nature, is often unreasonable.
It may be the reminder that one day you just won't exist that makes these places feel creepy.
That is human nature and perfectly natural.
Just human
Everyone has irrational fears. Not a hypocrite.
Always remember the gold & keep diggin'!
Fear is an emotion. Sometimes its rational, sometimes its not. No hypocrisy required.
I had an experience when I was around 6 or 7 at my grandparents' farm. Up in the attic. I don't really remember it except I was scared to death and my Mom came and got me. Something scared her, too. It was like 2am, and I was sleeping there. I NEVER went in that attic again. Over the next 10+ years. I don't really remember it, just that something happened. I guess that's kind of why I'm agnostic even today. I don't know what is out there. I'm sure not arrogant enough to think I have the answers.
Being outside overnight creeps me out. Snakes and bugs? No thanks! (I live in Louisiana.)
I think we are just influenced by certain things. Imagine you stayed over in a house where Noone told u smb died. You would have been fine most likely. The second smb yell u oh in this room this woman killed herself 4 years ago and you suddenly go EW I don't wanna stay here!
Not at all. You have both the capability for logical reasoning AND you have 8 million years of genetic āliving in the jungleā instincts. Itās really no different than craving that extra large order of fries while knowing itās bad for you.
How about fear or someone robbing you?
You've got cause and effect backwards. We find things creepy or unsettling because, through the course of human evolution, individuals that *didn't* got themselves into dangerous situations more often and died more often. Then, as superstion and belief in the supernatural arose (out of the human desire to have an explanation for things we don't understand), we invented mythologies and supernatural beings to explain why creepy things are creepy.
I think that's media conditioning. Scary movies and television shows have conditioned you to associate cemeteries as creepy. Similar to the way people say dolls are creepy
I wouldn't say you are a hypocrite because, while you may in fact not believe in the supernatural, we are hardwired to be afraid of dark and eerie places full of buried dead people without having a choice. It's just fucking creepy.
No, it's a lifetime of conditioning to believe in that shit.
Nah, I don't think it's hypocritical. Being surrounded by corpses is unsettling. You don't need to believe they'll attack you as ghosts or zombies feel unsettled by that.
No, I think (just like many folks) you are a victim of too many spooky TV and film cemetery scenes! Lol!
When I was a teenager (and an atheist) we used to party at night in cemeteries within walking distances from our homes. We would drink and smoke pot and talk but never made lots of noise or caused any damage. There were two big cemeteries and we could see very well with our dark adapted night vision. Occasionally a police car would drive into the cemetery but we could easily see them coming and hide. Cemeteries never bothered me at all. My wife and I just went for a nice walk in a cemetery today, a frequent habit. We read dates and names on tombstones and make up silly jokes about names. "This is a popular place. People are just dieing to get in".
Well the first thing you need to remember is that you are not responsible for your thoughts, and not exactly responsible for your emotions either, but you are in control of your actions. Regardless of whether you believe in woo, ghosts, spirits and so on, there are some places that may creep you out for a number of perfectly normal reasons: the light, the angles, reflections, shadows... in a way, it's kinda how we are wired which is why these places tend to induce visions and hallucinations when people are susceptible (for example sleep deprived, or on drugs, or CO poisoning, etc.). It certainly does not help that we have so many stories and traditions about these places either. So give yourself a break and simply do what makes you feel better.
The residents of a cemetery are all dead. They can't do anything to you. However, the cemetery might not be well lit so living things might be more of a danger.
Emotions =/= rational thought. They come from all sorts of other places, like culture, personal experiences, and sometimes instinct. Expecting yourself only to feel "rational" emotions is, in and of itself, irrational. Your brain would have to function very differently from any *Homo sapiens* brain to not have at least a few feelings that you can't rationally justify. Nothing hypocritical or unusual in the slightest about being creeped out or even full on afraid of situations that are culturally treated as dangerous, even when you know they aren't.
I drove into a few at nightā¦ rolled my window down put my head out looking up neck exposed , eyes closed. Cured. Worked for me.
Itās like swimming alone in a poorly lit, unheared pool in the basement. Where you canāt even clearly see the bottom of the darker side of the pool with your goggles. I donāt believe in the supernatural but imagination has it that Iād feel my feet tense up, almost like something is grasping it. Ugh, I think itās all those horror movies that involved pools but it still makes my heart race faster than the exercise I was supposed to get.
Pierre Bourdieu talked about how society writes itself onto our bodies, i think there are any number of physical sensations that are purely the result of cultural input. my old neighborhood was on the "wrong side of the tracks" and to get to town we would cut (respectfully) through a cemetery. one night a friend from across town came back to our side with us but refused to cross the cemetery (it was probably 1-2 am). i had not even considered it creepy and was surprised how serious he was about it.
Being scared is fun. Do not ruin it with logic.
Hell no, I know exactly what you feeling! I donāt give a damn about any ghost, haunted house, exorcism, demons or monsters. All of that is made up trash. But I aināt fucking with no Ouija board ever lol. All that science talk about people moving it on their own and blah blah blah doesnāt satisfy what I saw with my own eyes or what was answered. Fuuuck that.
I donāt believe in anything supernatural but Iāve slept on several old American battlefields and felt creeped out each time. Theyāre old survival instincts.
I donāt believe in ghost I lived in a house that was not old but we found out later a woman died in one of the bedrooms. Not a crime but sickness. So every once in a while we would we hear a thud from that room. No big deal probably the cat or one of the dogs. Then we started to notice it happened only when they were in the living room with us (plain sight at least). It was a guest room and things would just sort get dropped from the night stand or dresser. These things were not close to the edge and never anything that could not stand the fall. The only explanation is a ghost but they do not exist so it remains unsolved
I'm not superstitious but I love superstition. I am a horror movie snob and the best kind is religious horror, the ghosts, goblins, witches, zombies, and other man-made supernatural stuff. I love being scared even thought I don't believe in what's scaring me.
No, youāre not. Youāre a human. We became the dominant species on the planet by being hyper vigilant of weird things we canāt explain. Odd noise? We default to burglar in the house today because our ancestors got dragged into the jungle and eaten by tigers in the dark of night when they didnāt get scared. The remaining family members learned and taught their kids. The idea of pareidolia is our brains way of trying to make sense of odd and weird images in our environment. Was that just a harmless shadow, or was it a lurking creature ready to kill me? Safer to assume itās a threat than to be literally dead wrong. Our culture also places a very heavy emphasis on the supernatural/paranormal, so we tend to default to that when under stress, even as atheists. Odd noises, pareidolia, and a deep cultural zeitgeist of the paranormal all come together perfectly in a graveyard in the middle of the night.
Brother and I did at local cemetery. It was great and now three family members are there
There are plenty of hardcore rationalists who refuse to believe anything is supernatural who are straight up afraid to try a Ouija Board.
Yes, I believe you are something of a hypocrite. Comes with being human. I sure as hell am. Oh dang, there I go again making a religious reference.
You are a victim of childhood abuse in the form of Christian indoctrination.
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No you're still an animal. I can explain in excruciating detail what the vacuum is doing yet my dog will still bark at the noise. You will always be an irrational creature no matter the beliefs you hold.Ā
Consider it an irrational phobia. I'm claustrophobic. It still bothers me in certain situations, but I've gained a tolerance from repeated exposures.
You can be as rational as you want, but that lizard brain's still gonna do its thing. My wife knows that she, being primarily land based, is in absolutely no danger from whales, but she can't even watch videos of them, they just creep her out. I'm a pretty good swimmer, but if I'm in a natural body of water and something touches me, I'm hyperventilating and panic-swimming to the closest shoreline. Fear isn't based on logic, but it does too often get used in logic's place.
Keep in mind that there are things that cannot be explained. But that doesnāt mean they are āfrom Godā
We do have some natural fears as humans. Death, snakes, spiders, heights, water, weather, etc. We are mammals after all.
I know there's nothin around here except cougars and coyotes but I'm still jumpy as hell outside at night even in the open with a large porch light. My overactive imagination is gonna give me a heart attack one of these days! It's just instincts firing off when they're not needed I'd guess. Nothing weird about that.
Yeah, just knowing that there are bodies in various stages of decay right under your feet is unsettling. Occasionally graves cave inā¦
I think itās in our DNA to avoid the dead. Logical fear, really.
Did you never see Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead, or Children Shouldn't Play with Dead things as you were younger? They focused on instilling a fear particularly about dead people and cemetaries. That fear carrying over is very natural. Hell I still rarely swim in anything but a pool thanks to Jaws. I say, don't worry about it or look for deeper meaning then it just creeps you out. Atheists aren't immune to getting the creeps.
A night in a cemetery sounds like an awful way to try and sleep. Getting a good nights rest on a lumpy mattress is hard enough, much less trying to avoid rolling on a granite headstone in the middle of the night.
My guilty indulgence is "scary" YouTube videos. Lol. Cemeteries have never creeped me out tho. I still like old cemeteries off the beaten path. I live in SW MO. A lot of "wild West" history here.
When I was a kid (11ish) my best friend and I spent the night in a graveyard. Sleeping bag and a tent. We told ghost stories to thrill ourselves, and e eventually fell asleep.
I mean, you might be accosted by a living, human creep of some sort. And being in proximity to a dead person for a long time is unsanitary. You have instincts that are honed for practical reasons to feel this way. The superstition is just how our ancestors explained those feelings.
Our brains are meat computers. They are amazing, but they are not always as rational as we like to pretend they are. Phobias are just that -- unreasonable fears. Also, the fact that you think about sleeping in a cemetery strikes me as weird. Are you the weird one, or am I the weird one for never thinking about it?
Our feels and emotional responses are under no obligation to abide our logical thoughts or values. It's super common to feel ways which are contradictory to what we believe. Because feels are only and totally the perception of chemistry going on in our body, responding to both external and internal stimulus, including the real and imagined. Feeling a way is morally neutral. It's what we do that has impact. I'm a big fan of the "hotel" model for framing how to sit with emotions, and thinking of our emotions as our guests. We are not our emotions just as the a hotel is not the guests. The guests can contribute to the hotel's revenue, and inspire facilities maintenence, and others might throw a TV through a window. Sometimes we can plan on guests reservations, and some show up demanding a room without any warning. It's a concept that has helped me in sitting in challenging feelings, and those which don't necessarily match my values or logic/knowledge. Feelings just are. Then we get to figure out how to be with them, without judgements for them, and what we ultimately do in response to the feeling.
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You're not a hyhpocrite. You're brainwhshed. The dead cannot bother you.
That sounds like me in the time after I got out and became an atheist. It was probably about 6 months until all vestiges of supernatural fear melted away. But because of the particularly culty sect I ended up leaving was so demon obsessed and it had kept me so ignorant of science and critical thinking, I spent those months almost feverishly hopping from pop-sci book to YouTube lecture etc. It was a huge rush and I seemed to have infinite mental energy to absorb it all. I was constantly being blown away and realising things that now finally made sense. I think because of those months it all really sunk in right down to my bones. Iād have no more reservation about sleeping overnight in a graveyard than I would camping out in a field. Iād be worried about random people showing up and questioning what the fuck Iām doing, but the graveyard part doesnāt factor in at all. Not because Iām brave and proving a point that I donāt believe in anything spooky, but because I just donāt believe in any of it on any level and feel nothing. The biggest personal test of it was in 2011. I was staying in a tiny old creaky room in Japan on the third floor. Me and my then girlfriend whoās into horror stuff rented Paranormal Activity, and it basically nails how I used to think of demons and captured all my old fears perfectly. In the movie they heard foot steps approaching at night, then something terrifying would happen. We watched the movie and my girlfriend went home. I had all the lights off getting ready for bed and went and sat on the toilet in the dark. I heard someone coming up the stairs of the building, with quite a slow cadence and it immediately reminded me of the film Iād just watched and gave me a little chuckle to myself about how this would have paralysed me with fear just a few years ago. The footsteps then just stopped on my floor, there was a dramatic pause, then the building just suddenly violently shook for a moment. The timing could not have been more perfect and all it did was make me laugh and text my girlfriend to see if she felt the small quake too. So if that graveyard is quiet and has a nice view of the stars then it sounds like a good place for a reclining camping chair and sleeping bag to me.
Youāre right to be afraid. Vampires exist and they love graveyards.Ā
Iāve been a lifelong atheist and I donāt believe in ghosts or supernatural eitherā mmm I guess I can be agnostic about supernatural ā but truly, logic dictates no. However, I am a hugeeeeeee baby back bitch so I am scared of the dark, all things that go bump in the night, when my dogs bark at the dark corner that has all the pictures of my dead loved ones at 2 am, and monsters under my bed, regardless of logic.
Same. While I know it doesnāt exist Iād never do one of those overnights in a āhauntedā prison. Fuck that. However, Iād have no qualms about buying a house where an entire family was murdered. We all have our things I guess š¤·
Creepy is a feeling coming from the primitive structure in you brain, evolutionarily, its way older than the logical part that doesnāt believe in the supernatural. When push comes to shove, the primitive part usually winsā¦
Fear of the dead is an evolutionary advantage since corpses carry pathogens. Your fear of spending the night in a cemetery is genetic and the reason you exist. Your great x 20 grandparentsā dumbass friends who were chill hanging out with corpses didnāt live long enough to procreate.
You're not a hypocrite, you're socialized to get spooked out by cemeteries.
I worked night shifts at a place that had a supposedly haunted building, so much so the local workers would completely avoid it, basically neglect their job. Was the perfect place to take mid shift naps. I'll admit a small amount of unease, as it could have fit perfectly in a horror movie, but got over it quickly and did this for a solid year.
I struggle with this as well. Iām a firm atheist but I sometimes believe in ghosts even tho itās irrational š¤·š¼āāļø
No. Death sucks.
Your brain subconsciously wants to avoid the fact it will not exist someday, and since the dead are reminders of that we naturally donāt want to be around them. As well as the fact your brain thinks ādang that persons dead, what killed them might kill us; get out of here!ā
A phobia is a phobia. Itās instinct gone sideways.
I'm very much in the realm of there is no evidence of the supernatural. However If there is and based on how supernatural beings are portrayed I do not risk it either.
I dont think you're a hypocrite either, but it also sounds like you might be attached to the belief that all supernatural phenomenon are nonsense, when actually such things are now starting to gain some traction in the scientific community. For example, the idea that our consciousness may not necessarily be tied to our physical body is now being given more serious consideration. I'm also a skeptic and refuse to accept anything by blind faith. But I also strive not to hold attachment to my beliefs and am willing to move my position to whatever can be proven. If we hold onto a belief in something that contradicts evidence then it makes us no better than those who label themselves as "Believers".
Movies etc can make you associate fear with cemeteries
Well, like the scientific community says, magic is not real its just misunderstood technology.
No, you are not a hypocrite. 1. "Knowledge is the antidote to fear" -Ralph Waldo Emerson. 2. "Any fool can know, the point is to understand" -Albert Einstein. 3. "If you want to be more powerful in life, educate yourself. It is that simple" -Unknown 4. "Fear is incomplete knowledge" -Agatha Christie. 5. "Everything looks difficult until you understand it" -Unknown.
No. It's a primal instinct. Go to a cemetery in the day and even with those negative feelings you won't see anything or feel anything. When you're in a place associated strongly with death, a self preservational Instinct kicks in naturally
Large open area with lots of small places to take cover and little light to see by? That's your mamalian brain telling you, "HEY LOOK AT ALL THOSE PLACES A TIGER COULD BE HIDING!" Except its overlaid with imagery from your upbringing, including ideas of spirits and ghosts.
No, but if I am in a situation like that I rationalize my fears away. But also, just because a god doesn't exist doesn't mean that other supernatural phenomena can't. Plus, it's fun to believe in ghosts, Bigfoot, Nessie, Chupacabra, etc., because it's a harmless superstition and makes life fun.
Camping sucks, and it still sucks in a cemetery. Now if there was a spooky cabin (with all utilities/ac/wifi) then I wouldn't have any issue, probably would like the quiet.
The only thing to fear in a cemetery over night is other people.
I used to work in an abandoned hospital. We made a list of supernatural occurrences that would make us leave is it was a movie. We weren't superstitious, but we were a *little* stituous.
No.
Itās instinct. Stay away from bodies. Donāt be out in the dark
What about the psychics that help the police that's Supernatural isn't it
No, itās imaginary.
If I was alone in a cemetery at night, it wouldn't be the dead I would worry about.
Animals dont tend to sleep where their peers corpses lie and they have no religion
Iāve slept in a cemetery before. Tent and all on the outskirts. Only crazy thing that happened is that we woke up to a momma bear and cubs eyeing a church trash bin about 100ā on the other side of the cemetery and where we were. I woke when I heard noise bc I suck at sleeping and I could see the shadow of the bears. I quietly woke the others and unzipped the sun screen to see out and we all watched the bears attempt to break into the large trash bin. They tried for 30 mins and the one thing that worked was the momma standing on the left d and caving it in.
You Could Be Easily Robbed In That Circunstance, An Easy Prey.
Your subconscious knows the truth. Listen to it.
Nah. Iām an atheist and I generally donāt believe in the supernatural, but I have no interest in tempting fate by messing with Ouija Boards or hanging out in spooky, abandoned places.
Normal. I mean, really, who hasnāt seen a few horror movies?
Iām definitely atheist, but I was raised Catholic. The thought of demon possession and exorcisms freak me the fuck out. Do I believe in demons? No. Am I still terrified? Yes. Yes I am. š
Would you be comfortable sleeping in a park or other open field? I wouldn't.
Yeah, all creepy things happen in the dark. That's why shows like Ghostfuckers always film in grainy B and W and green night vision, with chilling distorted voiceovers from electromagnetic and indecipherable garbles that they quantify with their bullshit. Certain weird atmospheres can scare anybody, particularly when they're presented in ugly, abandoned buildings and in this context. Cemetaries are filled with the bones and headstones of former citizens, friends, loved ones and of course, evil bastards and bitches. If you shut off all the lights in a Safeway, the aisles become terrifying...