chris wrote:
Have you heard the wooden chopsticks version of this? Well, aparently if you use wooden chopsticks all the time…well, you know…
Happens to me all the time. Never seen a ghost though.
They’re talking about the disposable kind. Next time you use some, take a sniff when you remove them from the packaging. That’s an extremely powerful bleaching agent you’re smelling. The wood’s impregntated with it and then you ingest it. Don’t know about cancer, but I’ll bet my next lottery jackpot that it won’t do you a lot of good.
Someone once told me that a section of the Mucha MRT line had to be completely re-done because someone had designed it with a 90-degree turn along the route. The construction workers, the story goes, merely followed the blueprints they were given.
The 90 Degree turn can be seet at the Heping East Road / Fuxing South Road interchange.
Please not how slow the train goes when passing that sharp corner. If the speed was much higher it would fly off.
Given that the city is overbuilt, it’s hard to build an elevated metro here. Don’t think it’s a design fault, merely a compromiose.
What the Taiwanese call 鬼壓床 gui3ya1chuang2 (ghost pressing on the bed) is sleep paralysis, and is a real, terrifying, and apparently fairly common experience, though little understood. I think it is a truly fascinating phenomenon.
I have it fairly often, and used to have doubts about my sanity until I found out more about it. As a previous poster mentioned, it is believed to be caused by awakening to near-normal level of consciousness while your body is still ‘turned off’ (the mechanism that stops you physically acting out actions you are doing in normal dreams).
I expect everyone who has had this will agree that one of the most distinguishing features is feeling that the experience is definitely NOT a dream, but something entirely distinct. It is often accompanied by feelings of a malevolent presence suffocating/ pressing on you, and is thought to be the source of many so-called ‘paranormal’ phenomena throughout history, including the succubus, incubus, and alien abductions.
During my most extreme attacks I sometimes experience that I am being attacked by evil spirits that are strying to steal my soul and suffocate me, and I feel that it takes every drop strength in my being to resist them. I do not exaggerate by putting it in those terms. When it happens I am always aware that I am lying in my bed suffering a sleep paralysis attack and strain with all my might to wake myself up by rolling out of bed, hitting myself in the face, screaming - anything to get out of it - but my body is paralysed by the crushing force. Sometimes my eyes are half open and I can look around the room. Friends who have seen me in that state say that it looks like some seriously f***ed-up stuff. Bad attacks leave can me deeply, deeply shaken for hours after I wake up in a way that few things can. Not nice.
A fascinating aspect of sleep paralysis is the link to ‘out-of-body experiences’ i.e. extreme lucid dreaming. This has happened to me once or twice from a sleep paralysis state, where I have gone past the terror stage and become free to float around, look at my body on the bed, fly around the neighbourhood, all with the most incredible non-dreamlike rational vividness and perfect recall upon awakening. I would say it is as ‘far out’ an experience as that induced by any of the strong psychedelic drugs I have, ahem, ‘heard about’.
For anyone interested in finding out more about sleep paralysis and related non-standard ‘sleep’ experiences, I found this page useful and interesting:
http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html
I had it last night and I get it about twice a month. You are not alone, my friend.
I have had the same sleep paralysis for most of my life. It’s a little scary being helpless, but coming out of it has become quicker as I don’t panic and struggle as much these days.
Yes,it’s VERY real.
Possibly an involuntary form of astral projection?
Yes … hygiene … they never think about the fact that the people that were sitting there before could have not the proper hygiene and now all the bacteria are on their hands … yuk :s
Maybe he wanted to say ‘it’s rude not to eat when walking on the street’ 
Taiwanese eat anywhere, jeez 
In Sanxia we also have one … secret … ssshhhh 
I’ve heard one that’s more in the classic urban legend mold; a tale warning young girls against wantonness with foreigners.
A female Taiwanese college student goes to France on academic exchange for a semester. Once there, she meets a dashing French guy and they have a passionate affair. On their last day together, he accompanies her to the airport and gives her a rather odd parting gift: a charm bracelet with a tiny golden coffin dangling from it. He says he wants her to remember him by this strange gift. She doesn’t understand, until a few weeks after her return to Taiwan, when during the course of a routine medical exam, she learns that she has contracted AIDS 
I’ve heard at least two Taiwanese friends tell me this one.
Yes … because now they have so many fire arms just for the pickin’.
This is true and not a legend, the ghost is simply called ‘sleep paralysis’ and I’m a sufferer, it really feels as they discribe it … but no one is holding you down … it just happens and it’s a medical mystery.
Some western sufferers think they’ve been abducted by ALIENS … duh … 
I have it mostly when I’m stressed out, feels as you’re gonna choke and die.
Shame on me … didn’t read all the posts … 
Can’t they even invent their own myths? Variations of that one have been going around in America since, oh, at least the mid '80s.
Not with the anti-foreigner twist, I’ll wager.
Dude that is just when you wake up from being hammered with some girl passed out on top of you , not sleep paralysis.
No, that’s an experience of Coyote Ugly.
Apparently there’s a car driver in Hsinchu who does NOT stop in the scooter box, turn without indicating, make U-turns without thinking of those coming up beside him (or her, the legend doesn’t specify).
Don’t be so damn stupid, DSN. This is the Urban Legends thread, not the wishful thinking thread. Get a grip for God’s sake.