[sudosteph]

It's interesting because I've heard similar experiences described by my close friends who are avowed atheists and skeptics. It's hard to convince people to share these sorts of experiences, but I like to hear them. Personal experience is still a data point in my view, even if a very fallible one.

To my point, one friend described visiting a historical site that was an ancient tomb and feeling fine until a young couple started chanting some weird stuff. After that she said she experienced a feeling of total fear and dread and felt the need to run out of there. She says it's a feeling she never felt before or after, and she's not the superstitious sort overall.

Heck, even my husband and I once shared an experience that is impossible to explain outside of the ideas of ghosts or some other shared hallucination phenomena. Had it been just one of us witnessing it, it would be so easy to dismiss, but try as we might we still have no good explanation. I'm still a skeptic to my core, but the experience certainly made me more curious about hearing from others about their experiences and not dismissing them as pure fabrications or delusions outright

[fwip]

You think maybe the young couple visiting the historical site was just, y'know, talking in their native language? Maybe a prayer?

It's not that unusual for white people to feel terror and dread on hearing somebody talk in a different language. The "they must have been doing voodoo" is a cute rationalization, though.

[sudosteph]

Well, she described it as a chant, so a prayer does seem likely. But again, this is a person who mocks religious practices and has traveled extensively and isn't freaked out by languages.

The fact that it was a burial site or crypt makes me think the setting was key to that response. Maybe movies or something predisposed her to be freaked out in that setting. Her theory was that the burial site itself was chosen for geographic features that made it make people feel freaky. I'm not sure if that makes sense either, but it's interesting considering how people try to explain unusual things to themselves.

[stickfigure]

It's perfectly normal to be scared in a horror movie even though you know it is fiction. Even for atheists. Human beings have wonderful imaginations; getting spooked by a creepy underground crypt shouldn't send anyone looking for a supernatural cause (or capture an $N million dollar grant).