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34 Comments to "Ghostly Voices Tell Woman of Brain Cancer: Miracle or Madness?"
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Ali S.
April 7th, 2008 at
9:44 pm
Now that IS freaky! I always knew the government were out to spy on my thoughts…but now doctors?! Get out of my mind! Unless, I have a horrible debilitating disease that you guys find.
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caitlin13
April 7th, 2008 at
9:57 pm
Why can’t I get helpful voices in my head?
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bean
April 7th, 2008 at
10:27 pm
“Now, normally, hearing voices is a sure symptom of mental illness (like schizophrenia) … but is it always a bad thing? ”
The answer is YES. You wouldn’t ask that if you had ever actually dealt with a paranoid schizophrenic.
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sikantis
April 7th, 2008 at
10:49 pm
I’m writing blogs about positive news worldwide and I try always to confirm myself that the story is true. But you never can be sure of it.
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Barbwire
April 7th, 2008 at
10:50 pm
I’ve had dreams that alerted me to real dangers, both for me and for loved ones. There really is more to the mind than we’ve been able to discover as yet.
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andrew
April 7th, 2008 at
10:51 pm
meh. not really surprising, just another Petwhac.
Petwhac (Population of Events That Would Have Appeared Coincidental). This is defined as all those events that may be considered to be a ‘coincidence’ if studied casually, but are both possible and statistically probable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_rainbow#Petwhac -
Dave
April 7th, 2008 at
11:11 pm
Miracle.
Miracles are far more real and commonplace than skeptics like andrew could comprehend (or would want to, since it proves them wrong.) Petwhac? I think not. How statistically probable was it for this woman to be able to correctly diagnose a condition a doctor would likely have missed?
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jodie
April 7th, 2008 at
11:15 pm
well, if the brain was sick - it would be the first to know, right? maybe it was telling her but, for some freaky reason, the message came through in that odd way as if coming from a third party - who knows? these stories are so hard to prove or disprove. but i think that the brain is a great and mysterious wonder. then again, my brain just told me to write that….
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fz
April 8th, 2008 at
12:29 am
For the amount of people who’s brains are telling them they have a tumor, and DON’T have one, this was bound to happen. Mix it in with some bullshit and you have yourself a miracle.
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Athon
April 8th, 2008 at
12:45 am
In a population of millions, where millions of things happen every day, it’s to be expected that one-in-a-million events occur at least every now and then. However, I feel that this story has more to do with post-hoc reasoning and explanations than a straight-forward ‘miracle’.
The very fact a person has voices in their head is a symptom enough of a neurological anomaly that needs to be investigated. Do we have figures on how many people seek medical attention on the advice of phantom voices, dreams or mysterious experiences every year, without the advice bearing fruit? I’d venture to say it’s a significant number. When one happens to coincide with an actual medical case, people are quick to point it out as a miracle without considering the multiple ‘non-events’ which led nowhere.
Athon
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Stolia
April 8th, 2008 at
12:46 am
Either a miracle or a hoax. If was not a hoax, there is always the question of whether it was hyperscientific (beyond the realm of known science but not mystical) or mystical in nature.
The only thing it was definitely not is mental illness. Schizophrenia doesn’t go away, and it’s certainly not comparable to angels.
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su.wei
April 8th, 2008 at
2:16 am
oh neatorama, you never fail to entertain me…
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Terry
April 8th, 2008 at
2:36 am
Have people heard of the Hearing Voices Network? HVN’s are starting up all over the world. People hear voices for all sorts of reasons, plenty of people that hear voices have no psychiatric diagnosis. Moreover Loren Mosher, M.D., former Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia, National Institutes of Mental Health setup the Soteria project and was curing so-called schizophrenia without drugs. The American Psychiatric Assocition cut his funding. Just like the HVN, Mosher focused on getting people who’d recovered from SZ to help guide other people through the experience. It worked, 85% success rate.
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Johnald_Chaffinch
April 8th, 2008 at
2:41 am
that 1/3 or 1/4 people get cancer this is just very liekly to happen.
anyway, if someone’s got cancer of the brain it’s not that strange that they’re having mental problems is it! -
hedwig
April 8th, 2008 at
2:46 am
Well if I ever hear a voice like that in my head, I’ll definitely listen. Usually it’s just my little inner self saying ‘did you really mean to do that?’; ‘did you know that those 2 shades of red don’t match?’ and such like… maybe I’ll start paying more attention! giggle
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Frank
April 8th, 2008 at
3:07 am
I totally agree with Andrew. Either that, or she just made it up…
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avraamov
April 8th, 2008 at
5:09 am
aaaah. the daily mail. “miracle or madness?”. attention seeking more like.
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ted
April 8th, 2008 at
6:22 am
Man has sudden urge not to get on plane, stays on the ground, plane crashes = man tells everybody.
Man has sudden urge not to get on plane, stays on the ground, plane lands safely = man doesn’t tell anybody.
Same thing, unless the story is entirely made up. Sometimes, people convince themselves that things happen. It’s kinda creepy to think there are intelligent beings floating around, peering into our brains. Why don’t they speak to the millions of other people who get sick, like children, before it’s too late to save them?
This is case of monkeys and typewriters. If she’s relly hearing voices, then her delusion simply matched up with her disease.
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andrewdoane
April 8th, 2008 at
7:20 am
Oh course it’s madness. Lucky for her she’s crazy, though.
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julie
April 8th, 2008 at
7:45 am
it’s neither…. all lies.
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Ursula
April 8th, 2008 at
7:47 am
I think the likeliest explanation is that she was aware on a subliminal level that something was wrong, and her brain, probably because of some weird misfire due to the tumor, was able to send her a very literal warning message. There’s nothing supernatural about that.
I’m reminded of Grant Morrison, the comics writer. He wrote a story about a man who was tortured, and his torturers convinced him face was being eaten away by some weird virus. Not long after, Morrison really got some weird virus that was eating his face away. I think that it’s the same thing - on some subliminal message, he knew something was wrong, there was a virus attacking his face. So, that idea bubbled up in his fiction, the same way you can have a nightmare about getting sick a few days before you get the flu. It’s not actually a prophetic dream. Your body is letting you know, “Hey, you’re coming down with the flu,” but you haven’t figured it out yet, on the waking level.
The body and mind are fascinating and mysterious enough, without needing to look for supernatural stuff.
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Nastia
April 8th, 2008 at
7:52 am
yea I wouldn’t really be surprised if The Daily Mall just made this up or stretched the story.
If only the voices told her their names…
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Dave
April 8th, 2008 at
8:11 am
I guess all the skepticism about miracles is to be expected in a world that believes we all evolved from pond slime with no intelligent intervention. With that sort of beginning, heck, anything is possible.
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DCGaymer
April 8th, 2008 at
9:56 am
Oh crap….voices and sounds = brain anomoly?
When I’m sleep…I sometimes hear someone knocking at the door or I hear the doorbell (which I don’t have) or someone using a door knocker. I usually get up to go answer the door, peer through the peep hole, only to see no one is there…and no one else in the house has heard anyone knock. It happens when people are here or not. Great….now I need a brain scan.
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fsmarch
April 8th, 2008 at
10:55 am
When I hear voices, I put aluminium foil inside my hat. This blocks the gamma rays…
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stellamerteuil
April 8th, 2008 at
11:01 am
Wow. That sounds like the plot to a novel or a movie. Very cool, but very creepy.
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L
April 8th, 2008 at
1:59 pm
I wish I could talk to those “voices”; I’d have all kinds of questions for them. If they were deceased doctors, could I have their names (so I could verify their existence)? And why did they choose this particular woman to help? Was she destined to do something special with her life? Had they known her when they were alive? Why don’t other dead doctors go around helping people with mysterious illnesses that might kill them if they’re not treated?
And if the voices were just a product of her condition, so what? She got the help she needed. Even if that’s not “supernatural”, it’s still kind of miraculous. Wouldn’t you rather know something’s wrong in your head — no matter how the information came to you– and live, than not find out about it and die?
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CheeseDuck
April 8th, 2008 at
2:43 pm
Maybe it was a time traveler from the FUTURE!
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jessleigh
April 8th, 2008 at
3:33 pm
Stories like this always make me scared, for some reason. I know a girl who claims to hear voices that tell her all kinds of things, and I keep my distance from her, even though I really do like her, but she says that sometimes the voices say really evil and sick things and she has to ignore them, but it scares her. She is on medicine and under the care of a doctor. This really happens.
My first instinct is to doubt this story. If you read the article, you will read about a woman who was healed at a Penecostal rally in the 80s. She was paralized for many years, then was able to walk instantly. I have seen her on television, but I wonder if it is documented and proven? Does anyone know anything about this? -
Thomas
April 8th, 2008 at
4:23 pm
I see no reason to disbelieve the story. I know a girl whose mother is psychic. Say what you want, but this woman knows things that she couldn’t know otherwise. The day her daughter lost her virginity, she called the boyfriend only moments later, demanding to know what he did to her little girl.
There are phenomenon that can’t be explained, only rationalized under the “had to happen to someone” theory. If someone can believe in a magic man in the sky that controls our fate, I can believe in the power of the human mind.
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empty-minded
April 8th, 2008 at
7:12 pm
What the article didn’t say was that the woman subsequently received a bill from The Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children for 20,000 Euros for the consulting fee for the two voices. Upon receipt of the bill she had a massive coronary.
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Rob
April 9th, 2008 at
9:21 pm
People will jump through almost any hoop to deny a phenomenon that doesn’t fit their materialist world view. It’s such a sad way to go through life. What makes it worse, to me, is how angry and nasty people get about it. Of all the available religions, materialism and scientism have got to be the most reactionary.
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Athon
April 9th, 2008 at
9:56 pm
Well Rob, it would be nice if we could all invent our own realities to suit our desires. If only the universe didn’t have these pesky, objective laws which kept getting in the way.
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Alannah
April 11th, 2008 at
1:57 am
I so badly want to it to be true, but I simply have no faith.
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