The root of my skepticism.



In the second grade I read a book about ghosts, ghostly happenings and paranormal events.
It scared the ever loving shit out of me.

It was one of those books with stories like, "A woman sees her father's face outside her window, she goes outside but there is no one there. She later learns that her father died in a car crash 500 miles away at precisely that instant." I was terrified. At the time I very, very much believed in the paranormal. I was Ghostbusters crazy, and had just seen Beetlejuice, and I think reading that book just sent me over the edge.

I became gripped with a pathological fear of spirits, spooks and specters. When I got up at night to pee, I wouldn't pee directly in the water because I didn't want the ghosts to hear me. It got so bad that my dad gave me an old ring and told me it would protect me from all ghosts... or maybe he said it would make me invisible to ghosts. I can't remember, but either way it worked. I stopped being scared and my life went back to normal.

Soon after that I realized that it wasn't possible for the ring to be magical, and that ghosts probably weren't real. That also made me question other things like souls, heaven, hell, what happens to you after you die and the like. I went on believing in god for a while (or at least believeing enough to pray that if he would get me out of a situation that I would never do anything bad again and that I would give all my toys to poor kids and that we'd go to church every Sunday), and even went to church voluntarily in the fourth grade when I was a Webelos scout.

You didn't know I was a cub scout? Oh, mai oui!

Once I hit the sixth grade all bets were off and I knew that I didn't believe in anything. Add heavy metal into the mix [courtesy of Guns and Roses via Terminator 2 and AC/DC via Last Action Hero] and there was no turning back, eventually leading to the passionate non-theist you know and love today.
- posted by Mason @ 11:59 PM