Quite honestly, I find that the Catholic church is most responsible when it comes to these sorts of things. Priests are trained to be skeptical about demonic activities until all other explanations no longer fit. Often, they will involve a psychologist that will evaluate the person that is supposedly possessed, and will then take action based upon what that feedback.  They have similar policies about miracles as well that I greatly admire--and consequently there are very very few cases where the Catholic church will acknowledge a miraculous healing. Basically, when it is to the point where all medical opinions from those involved with the case to those that review it independently will come out and say that they are totally baffled and that there is no medical possibility that it could have happened, that is the point at which they will acknowledge a miracle has taken place. Of course, that doesn't stop people from believing what they want--I remember seeing a documentary about a particular shrine in South America (you know the type, one person claims miraculous healing at a location, and suddenly millions show up that are desperate for their own). They said that out of the millions of people that had visited the site over 100 or so years looking for a miracle, the church has only acknowledged four miracles taking place.

Needless to say, I am highly skeptical of miracles, and demonic activities in general. I know, I know--I'm a Christian, I'm not supposed to think that way, but there it is. Personally, I think it is highly irresponsible to claim something is a miraculous healing when it can be more easily explained by saying that the disease ran it's course, and you got better once the body's natural defenses did their work. Mind you, I don't think there's anything wrong with thanking God that you finally go over that pesky cough, but saying it was miraculous when it wasn't just makes all Christians look like uneducated backwoods bumpkins. Even more so to claim that a house is haunted by an evil spirit or a long deceased farmhand. Most of these cases are easily explained by science. So called "ghost hunters" that go into a house with an EKG and claim that some garbled noise on an audio tape is a voice from beyond are the most reprehensible. You say "heightened electromagnetic fields are a sign of a haunting" and I say "strong electromagnetic fields have been clinically shown to cause visual and auditory hallucinations--and the fields are more likely a cause of a geological anomaly like a large mineral deposit." Likewise, the brain is hardwired to recognize both faces and words--that is, any patten that exhibits similar markings to a facial pattern, the brain will recognize as a face; and anything that sounds vaguely like a word will be interpreted as such. We see this all the time when some person that is inclined to the vulgar will interpret the crappy voicebox recording in a child's toy as saying something vulgar or malicious was really meant to be saying something else entirely.

Being irresponsible about things that can have weighty consequences and are out of the scope of "normal" every day experience is dangerous. Take for example this case here: http://www.rickross.com/reference/exorcism/exorcism6.html. When things like this happen, it has the potential of creating a public outcry against the church--and thanks to our incompetent president, there is a growing hostility towards Christianity to begin with--and may lead to legislation barring the church from the practice. Once that happens, it will open the door to more laws being passed to bar religious practices that are deemed "unsafe" or "offensive". Constitution? Yeah... that hasn't meant much to the government lately, now has it?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Maybe that's because when the door gets opened it lets in fresh air.  I had a similar experience in a warehouse full of Plasma TVs, but never thought to attribute it to spirits.

Michelle; I don't feel that Anxiety was making light of your experience.

While he also says that he felt a similar discomfort when walking through a warehouse of plasma tv's, he made what to him explained a scientific reason for his feelings.    He is correct that the air outside of and near to a door is cleaner and fresher the closer you are to it, while the further one goes back into a large room the air becomes stuffier.

You had your experience and it happened as you have described. No one else who has posted was there to experience what you went through. We all can appreciate that you feel comfortable enough to post this on the blog for everyone else to read.

He is admitting that he would not look at the experience from a supernatural viewpoint, but would try to find a scientific explanation.  Anxiety is not known for looking for any supernatural explanations.  Which lends itself to showing that there are different interpretations to everyone that we all experience.

I am sure that he did not mean for his words to cause you consternation. 

Apologies.  I'm not a a doctor, so I'm not an authority on the "scientific" explanation.  You, however, seem to be in support of the witch doctor theory.  Would you care to enlighten us with a better explanation from this viewpoint?

I'm telling you I'm not an authority.  I made the statement.  This is not putting words into your mouth.


http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/metaphor

Sarcasm intends to say the opposite of a what a person means for ironic emphasis.  I did none of that here.  Sorry to get so off-topic, but if your working definition of rude includes someone asking a hard question aimed at receiving a substantive answer then there's not much progress to be made.

Thanks Amanda 

For what it's worth, I don't subscribe to the "witch doctor" thing you guys were talking about either. 

I really can't explain it anymore than I did.  The whole thing happened in less than 10 minutes. 

I know it was real. 
I know it wasn't air from the door. 
I know it was spiritual. 
And I know some people will be skeptical because it isn't necessarily back by scientific findings. 

From Amanda:

I am in agreement with this and would like a description of the spiritual side.  You say one shouldn't discount the belief in the spiritual, but you cannot defend this assertion, let alone begin to define it.