11 February 2007

Sunday Brunch

Can you sense when someone unseen is staring at you?

11 comments:

Unknown said...

No, but I am able to do this.

erp said...

What a neat trick. Mind over matter: my husband can cause a car in a coveted parking spot to pull out just as we approach. This has been documented many times and our youngest son claims to have inherited this invaluable ability.

To answer the question posed, yes I can sense when somebody is looking at me. It feels like a pressure on my shoulders.

joe shropshire said...

Yes, and stop it right now, David.

Oroborous said...

I believe that it's a human ability, but not one that I have.

Hey Skipper said...

No.

Mike Beversluis said...

On Reading My Stasi Files

Susan's Husband said...

Heck, I can't tell when someone seen is staring at me.

My paintball experience indicates that no one I ever played with had that ability.

Brit said...

I can wake up if somebody looks at me while I'm asleep. I inherited this superpower from my father. Another one we both share is a strong sense of time while asleep.

I play a game sometimes: if I wake in the dark, I try to guess the time to the nearest minute, eg. 5.22am. I'm usually right to within 5 or 6 minutes and am often spot on. If I'm way out, like over an hour, as sometimes happens if I've been on the booze, it discombobulates me no end.

David said...

For those who think they can sense people staring at them, what's the mechanism?

For those who don't think such things are possible, what are we to make of all the literature the casually asserts, "She felt his eyes upon her and turned?" If the purpose of literature is to illuminate the human condition, how can it be wrong about something so basic?

erp: I have the same skill. We call it the favor of the parking gods.

Brit: Email me.

Unknown said...

Wow, we're the X-men! It does seem a challenge, though, to figure out a way to use these powers to fight crime.

Brit said...

I would hazard that the mechanism is a mixture of hearing, guesswork based on intuition, and imagination.

Being woken by someone looking at you is presumably hearing. If a woman feels a man's eyes on her, perhaps she expects him to be looking at her, and it's a mix then of peripheral vision plus hearing his breathing, footsteps etc change as he does the looking.

David: I seem to have misplaced your address. You can email me though(see close to bottom of page).