Paranormal Apathy

Have you ever experienced paranormal apathy?

Why is it that when we experience something truly strange we are so quick to dismiss it? People who experience paranormal phenomena are often overcome with a strange sense of apathy during the encounter and only later acknowledge the weirdness.

What is Paranormal Apathy?

I was first introduced to the concept of what I’m dubbing “paranormal apathy” by the podcast Astonishing Legends. Forrest Burgess, one of the hosts, is often commenting on how strange it is that during some paranormal encounters people can experience the weirdest things and then just keep going about their business. People will see a ghost or an alien in the middle of the night and then just go back to sleep like nothing happened.

I have noticed this behavior myself when I have experienced high strangeness types of events.

A few years ago I was hanging out with my friend whose girlfriend had recently passed away in a tragic car accident. We were sitting in the car next to the accident site looking at a little plastic pinwheel that someone had placed there as a tribute. There was no wind and it was motionless.

We were talking about the spirit world and what we thought happens when you die. One of us said “if you are still out there and you can hear us, spin the pinwheel”. Almost immediately the pinwheel began spinning.

We were a bit skeptical and said again “ok, if it’s really you spin the wheel the other way”.

Almost immediately the pinwheel began to spin in the opposite direction. Weirdly, though this should have been a groundbreaking event for us we were both kind’ve apathetic about it. We shrugged our shoulders and moved on.

Even talking about it now, I know what happened and I remember it clearly, but it’s like my brain is unable to accept what it saw.

More stories of Paranormal Apathy

If you saw the boo hag would you feel apathetic? It’s hard to know!

Another such story that sticks out to me is a ghost sighting at the General Wayne Inn. A staff member was walking through the kitchen when he saw a decapitated head sitting on top of one of the counters. He didn’t think anything of it and continued about his business for a minute or two before what he had seen dawned on him.

This phenomenon also seems to be more common in children. I have heard many anecdotal accounts of kids seeing ghosts in the house and just chatting and playing with them as if they were a normal person. A user’s account on People.com follows this narrative:

"When my boyfriend was about 4 years old, he would talk to a man he saw in the mirror. Naturally, his parents were curious about his behavior and asked him questions about the man. He told his parents details about the man, including his appearance, hobbies and how he died. It turns out that one of the former owners of the house was a man who had committed suicide in the house, and he matched the descriptions of the man my boyfriend saw in the mirror. When his parents found out, they moved out of the house a month later."

The parents were immediately freaked out and moved out of the hosue but the child experiencing the paranormal phenomena thought it was normal.

What Could Cause Paranormal Apathy?

I think every case of paranormal apathy probably has different contributing factors. For many people, myself included, we have a natural tendency to dismiss anything we don’t immediately understand and just ignore it. We think it’s probably just some mundane thing causing the paranormal activity and don’t bother to investigate further.

For a lot of us, having to deal with the fact that reality could far more complicated than we thought is a bit too much to deal with at 2am on a Tuesday, while seeing strange shadows on the way to the bathroom.

What we sometimes find if we dig a little deeper into these situations is that the paranormal activity really is unexplainable. In order to even begin to entertain this idea we need to have an open mind and enough mental energy to grapple with it. So many of us are just so tired from existing that we just can’t bare to think about it.

Aside from this we all have inherent biases in the way we see the world. For a lot of skeptical minded people, there’s no such thing as ghosts, everything paranormal can be explained and anything that contradicts these ideas is ignored to prevent cognitive dissonance.

A more exciting explanation for paranormal apathy is that whatever it is we’re seeing doesn’t want to be seen. Maybe we see aliens that are able to wipe themselves from our memories. Perhaps spirits are able to exert influence on us that puts us into a bit of a trance -like state, and send us back to sleep without questioning what we have seen.

I think this is one concept where we just have to live with the question.

Have you ever experienced paranormal apathy? Let us know in the comments. If you enjoyed this article you might also be interested in unexplained panic in the woods or can rest home cats predict death?