Belitionlee: Spiritual / Paranormal Activity News: Mirror-Touch Synesthesia, Demi Lovato's Ghost and the Extinction of Religion

Experience: I feel other people's pain

guardian - When I watch a film, I feel as if I'm in starring in it. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was horrific. My friend invited me to see it, and I had no idea what it was about – I normally try to avoid dramas and thrillers. When the character Salander was tortured, I felt as if my body was being beaten; I could physically feel the sensation of being attacked. It's the same with emotions. If someone is happy, it's like hearing an orchestra and I feel extreme excitement and joy. This is the reality of living with "mirror-touch" synesthesia, a rare neurological condition that causes sufferers to hyper-empathise.

My earliest memory of mirror-touch is standing in my parents' garden in South Africa, aged six, watching butcher birds hang mice on the wire fence. I felt the tug on my neck and spine; it was as if I was being hanged. I remember crying to my mum, trying to explain what had happened. I wanted her to understand that I could see emotions as colours, and feel sounds; that someone else's anger felt like heat running between my chest and stomach. "You're just oversensitive, Fiona," she said.

Eventually, she took me to the doctors, but they didn't have any answers. My GP told my mum I had a lot of nervous energy. After that, she turned to the church. She'd take me in and have people place their hands on my body and pray for me.

As the years went on, I struggled to cope with normal life. I was constantly crying – not because something had happened to me, but because I had seen someone else crying or felt someone else's pain. Watching someone eating, I would taste and feel their food in my mouth, and I struggled with weight loss because I always felt full. I could walk into a room and tell you who has depression, who is angry and who has just had good news. My reactions vary: sometimes I see colours and feel vibrations, other times I sense a change in temperature or hear a particular sound. The feelings that I draw from other people stay with me for days and invade my dreams, making it difficult to sleep.

I went from being a solitary and withdrawn child to a teenager who was too scared to date. I ended up marrying the first man I went out with at 20, and moving to the UK. Sex was very difficult. I would experience the physical sensation of intercourse at random intervals for days after. I never tried to explain it to my first husband. He said the same as everybody else: I was "nervous", "anxious", "oversensitive". We broke up after two years.

It wasn't until I moved to LA to study in 2005 that I finally found the courage to seek help. One day, on a shopping trip with my then-boyfriend Gary, I stayed in the car and saw someone get punched. Gary returned to find me unconscious. He told me I had to talk to a doctor about it, and I went to hospital for tests. Although they didn't diagnose me with mirror-touch, for the first time in my life people were taking my problems seriously.

Back in the UK, I began researching my symptoms. I found that feeling sounds and colours was known as synesthesia, and wondered whether my condition was connected. I tracked down a UK team of doctors specialising in the study of synesthetes, and in 2008 I was finally diagnosed with mirror-touch.

Neuroscientists think mirror-touch synesthesia is caused by over-activity in our mirror-touch system – a network of regions in the brain that become active when we see another person being touched. A normal person flinching when they see an accident is thought to be the normal work of this system. When I physically experience other people's pain, my system is in overdrive.

Getting a diagnosis was a huge relief. I have spent a lot of my life feeling like a freak, and now I know that it's not my fault. I have been given medication to decrease my sensitivity, and I'm sleeping better. I now live alone, but have lots of understanding friends and I'm ready to meet a new partner.

As a child, I didn't have the self-acceptance I do now. I'm learning to have fun with my mirror-touch. When I watch a bird in the sky, I feel like I'm flying. That's a joy. And my friends love how sensitive I am. I'm hugely considerate of other people – after all, I know exactly what it feels like to be them.

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Demi Lovato "scared to death" by ghost

digitalspy - Demi Lovato has revealed that she was "scared to death" after seeing a "ghost" in her closet.

Speaking to TMZ, the 18-year-old singer said that she believes in paranormal activity because of the childhood encounter.

"I've seen a ghost before, it was creepy. It was in my closet when I was about 8 and it scared me to death. It just popped out and it was horrible!"

Lovato, who recently returned to work after escaping the limelight to deal with "emotional and physical issues", is not the only celebrity to have reported supernatural experiences.

Lady GaGa was apparently followed around on tour by an angry spirit called Ryan, and organized a séance to rid herself of the "bad omen".

Meanwhile British TV presenter Holly Willoughby was cured of a ghost phobia by This Morning life coaches earlier this week.

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Religion to Die Out in 9 Nations

newser - Religion is bound for extinction in nine nations where it's already in decline, according to researchers using mathematical models. The researchers applied the principle of "nonlinear dynamics" to census data from the countries—Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland—and predicted that religion will die out completely in those countries as religious groups shrink and as becoming a member of a religion offers fewer and fewer social benefits.

"The idea is pretty simple," one of the researchers tells the BBC. "It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility," he explained. "It's interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going." One member of the research team used a similar mathematical model in earlier research to explain the decline of some languages.

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Medium: Coming Out

paranormalia - I've often wondered what it's like to be a medium, to sense the presence of discarnate beings and interact telepathically with them. But it's not something they talk about much. I suppose they're so used to it they take it for granted.

So I was interested to hear from someone recently who is in the process of finding his feet as a medium and who talks about all this in quite a bit of detail. He doesn't like the term "medium", and isn't even completely sure yet what to make of his experiences. The point is, they are experiences , and having avoided the issue for years he's finally having to deal with it.

He's a former journalist and long time corporate affairs executive, says he's used to being sceptical and asking tough questions.

"The toughest question I've had to ask is one for myself - why do I see and experience the things I can't explain? As you can imagine, when you are a 'normal' businessperson dealing daily with the standard principles and practices of corporate and family life, trying to then rationalise the other side of your life which doesn't appear rational at all ... is not an easy ride. The thought has crossed my mind on many occasions that perhaps I'm mentally ill despite being able to successfully forge a career and raise a family. I'm so mainstream but the other 'side' of me isn't - if that makes sense.

He says that all his life he has had the sense of "energies" - spirits, ghosts, souls, auras, whatever - around him and communicating with him mentally. He always found it a burden, and tried to avoid it. He also got headaches frequently, and although he could make them go away by meditating, this increased the sense of the "energies", which was worse. Now he's coming to terms with it all.

The best part of all this is when I feel the presence of an energy or spirit that I somehow 'know' to be that of my Grandma. She often 'speaks' to me through my dreams or at times when I've been willing to accept this 'gift' via intense meditation, it can feel as though she is sitting in the chair next to me and we are having a conversation even though we aren't in the true meaning of conversation. Please understand, I can't physically see her but I see an energy. It isn't on a level we understand as part of what we experience with others on earth. The best way to describe it is I see what some people might consider an aura - which then begins to form an outline of a presence of energy or light that I feel is my Grandma."

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THIS WEEK'S SPIRITUAL / PARANORMAL ACTIVITY NEWS

Train Wreck at Oakland Cemetery

The metaphysical limitations of neuroscience

Voices heard at Hill House

The Ghost of Janet Dalrymple

Look Who’s Meditating Now

Witches have right to live

Affirmations 101, What Do You Need To Know About Using Them For Inner Growth

The Limits of Paranormal Belief

Haunted Places: The Puget Sound Mental Hospital

Ghostly goings on at Mossley Mill?

A ghost of a chance

Grieving Mom Hosts Psychic Mediums to Connect With the Dead

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