(Part 2) Top products from r/Thetruthishere

it's always interesting to me that quite consistently people see female beings/spirits/whatever wearing white. you didn't say whether your father felt this being to be male or female, but i am assuming there was a long gown, to make him think it was a nun.

from 'the field guide to little people':
>"the White Women of Northern Europe fulfill many of the same functions as the local fertility elves of southern Europe ...
like the korrigans and the fees, they have been associated with the old pagan priestesses ...
>"the white women are helpful and generous towards humans ...help travelers find the right road, change flowers and stones into precious amulets, aid women in childbirth, make cows produce more milk, foretell the future, lessen the fury of storms ...
>"despite their generous natures, they can be easily angered by cruel, or ungrateful men ...
>"often seen near sacred groves ..."

• the boldface is my own emphasis, also i'm using an older edition than the one cited here on amazon.
  
  
• nuns and convents are the remnants of an older priestess order. this would be particularly true in ireland.
  
  
• an orchard is a kind of a sacred grove, though like a roman catholic convent, much diluted. apples in particular are sacred in celtic belief.
  
  
• my guess is that your father and his chums, through no fault of their own, acted in a way that overrode the sacredness of the space, and did not exhibit the kind of gratefulness for the gift of the apples that the white lady would have liked to have seen.
  
  
• when you (or anyone) are not appreciated or acknowledged, it is like you don't exist and you fade a little. perhaps what seems like an over reaction on the part of the white lady is in fact because she is in a fight for her continued existence in these modern times.
  
  if you haven't already, you might very much enjoy 'The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries: The Classic Study of Leprechauns, Pixies, and Other Fairy Spirits' by wy evans-wentz the version i just highlighted has it for free on kindle. it is well well well worth the effort of reading. very long. can't remember if it specifically discusses white ladies. i doubt it. but it will discuss the tuatha de danaan, the great race of original irish beings from whom all true fairies are descended. the tuatha are shining white beings of great size, great age, and great power and are felt by many in celtic countries to be angels trapped for a variety of reasons on earth.
  
  edited to add: just noticed you said your town was noted for stories of bean sidhes. 'bean sidhe' just means 'woman fairy' and have the three aspects of 'maiden mother crone'. again, they all wear white. and they are believed to be the closest to the original tuatha de danaan
  
  
  
  
  

Pick up mathematics. Now if you have never done math past the high school and are an "average person" you probably cringed.

Math (an "actual kind") is nothing like the kind of shit you've seen back in grade school. To break into this incredible world all you need is to know math at the level of, say, 6th grade.

Intro to Math:

1. Book of Proof by Richard Hammack. This free book will show/teach you how mathematicians think. There are other such books out there. For example,
   
   

• How to Prove It: A Structured Approach by Daniel Velleman
  
  
• Mathematical Proofs: A Transition to Advanced Mathematics by Gary Chartrand et al
  
  
• Discrete Mathematics with Applications by Susanna Epp
  
  These books only serve as samplers because they don't even begin to scratch the surface of math. After you familiarized yourself with the basics of writing proofs you can get started with intro to the largest subsets of math like:
  
  Intro to Abstract Algebra:
  
  
• Linear Algebra: Step by Step by Singh
  
  
• Abstract Algebra: A Student-Friendly Approach by the Dos Reis
  
  
• Numbers and Symmetry: An Introduction to Algebra by Johnston/Richman
  
  
• Discovering Group Theory: A Transition to Advanced Mathematics by Barnard/Neil
  
  
• A Friendly Introduction to Group Theory by Nash
  
  
• Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler
  
  There are tons more books on abstract/modern algebra. Just search them on Amazon. Some of the famous, but less accessible ones are
  
  
• Algebra: Chapter 0 by Aluffi
  
  
• Algebra by Maclane/Birkhoff
  
  
• Algebra by Lang
  
  
• Advanced Linear Algebra by Steven Roman
  
  Intro to Real Analysis:
  
  
• The Real Analysis Lifesaver: All the Tools You Need to Understand Proofs by Grinberg
  
  
• Understanding Analysis by Abbot
  
  
• Writing Proofs in Analysis by Kane
  
  
• The Lebesgue Integral for Undergraduates by Johnston
  
  Again, there are tons of more famous and less accessible books on this subject. There are books by Rudin, Royden, Kolmogorov etc.
  
  Ideally, after this you would follow it up with a nice course on rigorous multivariable calculus. Easiest and most approachable and totally doable one at this point is
  
  
• Vector Calculus, Linear Algebra and Differential Forms: A Unified Approach by the Hubbards
  
  At this point it's clear there are tons of more famous and less accessible books on this subject :) I won't list them because if you are at this point of math development you can definitely find them yourself :)
  
  From here you can graduate to studying category theory, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, more advanced texts on combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, complex analysis, probability, topology, algorithms, functional analysis etc
  
  Most listed books and more can be found on libgen if you can't afford to buy them. If you are stuck on homework, you'll find help on [MathStackexchange] (https://math.stackexchange.com/questions).
  
  Good luck.

Sure. :) I was trying not to hijack the thread, but I'll just put the list here and that way anyone can have it. Keep in mind, these aren't all collections of stories, some of them are research topics, but none of them that I've browsed through look like bad reads. The ones I have read I've tried to note.

Iroquois Supernatural: Talking Animals and Medicine People - Michael Bastine, Mason Winfield - most closely related to thread topic

Life After Life - Raymond Moody - Very good intro to Near Death Experience research

Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones - Raymond Moody

Journey of Souls - Michael Newton - Read this one, it was great, changed my views on reincarnation

The Day Satan Called - Bill Scott

Hunt for the Skinwalker - Colm Kelleher, George Knapp - read parts of, need to finish

The Vengeful Djinn - Rosemary Ellen Guiley - I've read this one, it's really good too, has a large "slow" section in the middle that quotes the Q'uran a lot, but some good creepy Djinn stories.

The Djinn Connection - Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Ghost Culture: Theories, Context, and Scientific Practice - John Sabol

Zones of Strangeness - Peter A. McCue

Lost Secrets of Maya Technology - James O'Kon

The Mythology of Supernatural - Nathan Robert Brown - this one might sound cheesy, but I've read a book on world mythology by the same author, and apparently the writers of the show did their research

Holy Ghosts: Or How a (Not-So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night - Gary Jansen

Thanks kind stranger! Sure thing. It's called : The Strange Paths We All Follow. Here is a link (FYI - available in 3 formats, all different prices :)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692051376/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_C3PyAbVNGF7AP

Anything written by R.J. Stewart is solid.

'The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries' by W.Y. Evans - Wentz is the classic in the field. It's currently free on Kindle

The Field Guide to the Little People is both informative and whimsical.

While his newer stuff no longer meets my and many other's desired degree of scientific scrutiny, Philip Imbrogno's Files from the Edge of High Strangeness explains tales similar to yours. Really the only connecting factor is that they are all very strange. try to pick ip a cheap used copy or get the kindle.

The simple fact is that strange things like this happens and they are both unexplained and become even more mysterious as they are ignored by people because they hover near the edges of accepted reality for even pseudoscience. I studied Psychology at university and went on to work in Parapsychology for a while and I found these cases very interesting. In fact, this isnt in and of itself an unusual story out of those Ive heard, but is more in line with UFO's than ghosts, which is what your other story was about.

My dad was a MP for a while and ranked pretty highly in the USAF and this doesn't seem to far off from some of the things I would hear him doing.

However, the dream component and the stereotypical-moustached-male archetype is what sets this story apart from normal, everyday government weirdness, but not too far apart from UFO and even some ghost/paranormal stories.

Anything else similar ever happen?

Well I'm not quite sure what you mean by the 'negative' kind, but a new book did just come out called Witches of America that I've been hearing interesting things about.

Growing up, not having my reading material screened by parental units, I found this book to be a fairly decent "go to" for concise descriptions of a wide variety of topics on this subject: http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Fairies-Hobgoblins-Supernatural-Creatures/dp/039473467X

Absurd to state there is no single documented case, there is plenty of documentation which describe this phenomenon.

Supernatural entities? Psychosis?

As an atheist, supernatural doesn't fit my world view, however, make of this what you will, it shows there is plenty of similar documented "cases"

• Spirit Possession and Exorcism: History, Psychology, and Neurobiology, Volume 1 - Mental States and the Phenomenon of Possession Patrick McNamara, PhD, Associate Professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA. 2011.
  
  
• Glimpses of the Devil: A Psychiatrist's Personal Accounts of Possession
  
  
• The Growing Evidence for ‘‘Demonic Possession’’: What Should Psychiatry’s Response be? Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 44, No. 1, Spring 2005, Stafford Betty.
  
  
• The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession
  
  
• Possession Demoniacal & Other; T. K. Oesterreich, Professor, University of Tubingen, 1930
  
  
• Dissociative Symptoms and Reported Trauma Among Patients with Spirit Possession and Matched Healthy Controls in Uganda