What is the best evidence for Poltergeists?

[SusanB-M1]

Indeed yes. I was involved in a "ghost story" that ended up in "Surrey Ghosts: Old and New" by Frances D. Stewart. It had become so exaggerated in the book that I am described as "a gentleman"! Several years later I was on a ghost tour of Croydon and we stopped outside my old flat while an even more exaggerated version than the one in the book was told. I said that I had invented that story in the first place and our tour guide tried to argue that my story was further proof of a ghost in the building, because I had also had an experience there, besides the history that was entirely invented. He probably told later tours that he had met someone who had seen the ghost. It is certainly impossible to "prove" no ghost. Believers won't even believe that the "facts" are really fiction. There's lots of "evidence" by Andyman's loose use of the word.

Love the story!! There's a scene in the terry Pratchett book, 'Nation', where the girl is saying exactly what happened, and the tribe's story-teller is interpreting it for the others. It is immediately elaborated to make it memorable. And the underlying lesson for the younger reader is clear.

 

[Andyman409]

But why not give the credit for these things to where it belongs? That is to say, to your brain.

ETA Welcome to the forum.

thanks for the warm welcome

and BTW I use the word evidence the way the dictionary does. It's just a loose term by definition. Thats why I try making a distinction between scientific evidence, which is good, with testimony, which is aweful. But if it will make communicating easier, I will stop calling testimony evidence, and refer to scientific evidence herin as just evidence. There, now we have defined our terms.

 

[GeeMack]

and BTW I use the word evidence the way the dictionary does. It's just a loose term by definition. Thats why I try making a distinction between scientific evidence, which is good, with testimony, which is aweful. But if it will make communicating easier, I will stop calling testimony evidence, and refer to scientific evidence herin as just evidence. There, now we have defined our terms.

Good. Then we can dispense with all this nonsense about there being any evidence for poltergeists.

 

[GrandMasterFox]

Poltergeists definatly make the most extraordinary claims of all paranoral phenomenon.

No that would be religion. Burnning bushes, global floods, curing cancer, creating huricanes etc
Seems far more extrodinary than moving a plate.

and that skeptics have done enough homework after all?

What homework is there? Again, the problem with your threads is that you're missing how the woo actually works. If we have a discussion about vampires, do I read Ann Rice? World of Darkness? Dracula? True Blood? The vampire Diaries? Buffy? Twilight?
Do real vampires get burnt in the sun or just sparkle?

How can you possibly be an expert on something that's not real?
Poltergeists are the same.

thanks for the warm welcome

and BTW I use the word evidence the way the dictionary does. It's just a loose term by definition. Thats why I try making a distinction between scientific evidence, which is good, with testimony, which is aweful. But if it will make communicating easier, I will stop calling testimony evidence, and refer to scientific evidence herin as just evidence. There, now we have defined our terms.

Suggestion: Stop posting here for a couple of hours. Switch to lurker mode.
Go read any thread that was formed by the idiot known as DOC (in particular, evidence why the NT is true thread)

If you did not recieve any brain damage from the insane amounts of face palms you gave yourself, you'll understand why the term "evidence" should not be used to cover "bad evidence" ever again.

 

[Foolmewunz]

thanks for the warm welcome

and BTW I use the word evidence the way the dictionary does. It's just a loose term by definition. Thats why I try making a distinction between scientific evidence, which is good, with testimony, which is aweful. But if it will make communicating easier, I will stop calling testimony evidence, and refer to scientific evidence herin as just evidence. There, now we have defined our terms.

Uh,.... Susan was welcoming Windshadow. I know because I'm sensitive to things like that and got vibes from her post. Well, that and the fact that she's quoted him/her in her post.

 

[I Ratant]

.
You, you... monster in human form!
"Read a DOC thread!"
How could you sentence anyone to that?????

 

[Akhenaten]

I only read them for the pictures.

 

[I Ratant]

Here we go. Eastern Airlines Flight 401.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_401#The_Ghosts_of_Flight_401

The site doesn't have nearly as much detail as the book, so I'm going to quote a somewhat lengthy passage and wait for the mods to hand slap.

...

.
At the time of that crash, just after the L-1011 entered service, we in Flight Test were quite interested in it...
We determined the best fix for the problem was an aural as well as visual indication that the autopilot had changed to control-wheel steering mode.
The beep alerted the flight crew.
As for parts of that airplane being reused... from the photos we had of the crash, there was little of anything major not destroyed. The galley would be scrap metal.
The story of ghosts on planes with recycled parts was probably just an urban myth begun by someone at Eastern.

 

[Dcdrac]

That old chestnut about the plane parts beig haunted what a hoot.

There is no evidence for poltergeists because like Santa Claus they do not exist.

 

[RemieV]

.
At the time of that crash, just after the L-1011 entered service, we in Flight Test were quite interested in it...
We determined the best fix for the problem was an aural as well as visual indication that the autopilot had changed to control-wheel steering mode.
The beep alerted the flight crew.
As for parts of that airplane being reused... from the photos we had of the crash, there was little of anything major not destroyed. The galley would be scrap metal.
The story of ghosts on planes with recycled parts was probably just an urban myth begun by someone at Eastern.

Interesting, IR.

What I'd like to know is if there was actually a flight attendant named Faye Merryweather working on the flight where she saw the ghost. And then I'd figure out if she's still alive, call her up, and be like "So tell me about this ghost..."

Hell, I'd like to know if the flight was real; and if it really had engine trouble and didn't complete the last leg of its journey.

My feeling is probably not.

 

[I Ratant]

Interesting, IR.

What I'd like to know is if there was actually a flight attendant named Faye Merryweather working on the flight where she saw the ghost. And then I'd figure out if she's still alive, call her up, and be like "So tell me about this ghost..."

Hell, I'd like to know if the flight was real; and if it really had engine trouble and didn't complete the last leg of its journey.

My feeling is probably not.

.
Any three-motored airplane has to be able to takeoff with a failed motor.
We'd practice them all the time.
Unless memory fails, the flight after the 401 crash with the motor problem was one out of Mexico City, which has a high and hot airfield. A wing motor failed on the Tristar, which made the takeoff somewhat dicey at the altitude.
I could probably annoy my buddies from Flight Test, but they're even older, and their minds can't be much better...

 

[Lusikka]

Does anybody here know something about the South Shields poltergeist? There are claims of very strong phenomena. Impossible to take seriously without background information.

http://www.amazon.com/The-South-Shields-Poltergeist-Invisible/dp/0750948744

 

[pakeha]

...Go read any thread that was formed by the idiot known as DOC (in particular, evidence why the NT is true thread)...

.
You, you... monster in human form!
"Read a DOC thread!"
How could you sentence anyone to that?????

I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so
To punish me with this, and this with me,
That I must be their scourge and minister.
I will bestow him, and will answer well
The death I gave him. So again good night.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.
Hamlet Act 3, scene 4, 173–179

 

[John Albert]

 

[Andyman409]

Does anybody here know something about the South Shields poltergeist? There are claims of very strong phenomena. Impossible to take seriously without background information.

http://www.amazon.com/The-South-Shields-Poltergeist-Invisible/dp/0750948744

Yeah, I came across it on McLuhen's blog, Here. Let me be upfront for a moment and say that this is probably a fraud. Enfield and Rosenheim were, and yet they are still hailed as the best cases by many parapsychologists. But, you know, theres nothing wrong with looking into one more volcano, just for ◊◊◊◊'s and giggles

 

[Resume]

Yeah, I came across it on McLuhen's blog, Here. Let me be upfront for a moment and say that this is probably a fraud. Enfield and Rosenheim were, and yet they are still hailed as the best cases by many parapsychologists. But, you know, theres nothing wrong with looking into one more volcano, just for ◊◊◊◊'s and giggles

Probably?

Surely you understand who bears the burden of proof and why?

 

[Andyman409]

Probably?

Surely you understand who bears the burden of proof and why?

???

I noticed that most of these poltergeist cases were frauds, so I assume this one is too.

 

[Akhenaten]

???

I noticed that most of these poltergeist cases were frauds, so I assume this one is too.

You did it again.

 

[Resume]

???

I noticed that most of these poltergeist cases were frauds, so I assume this one is too.

Can you indicate a case that isn't fraudulent?

 

[Foolmewunz]

???

I noticed that most of these poltergeist cases were frauds, so I assume this one is too.

You did it again.

Can you indicate a case that isn't fraudulent?

Andyman409,
You seem to be bending over backwards to keep an open mind, but please remember something James Randi is rather known for saying (and I'm sure he borrowed it - he's never claimed it was original).... "Keep an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out."

It sounds perfectly scientific to keep leaving the possibility open that you haven't seen all cases and couldn't possibly be familiar with every single one of them so cannot say, with certainty, that they're all frauds. But you look at the statistics you have available and you can come to a conclusion.

Take whatever your total of "known/familiar" cases is.... let's say twenty cases. Of those, if you're batting the same average as the rest of us, then you probably have 12 anecdotes and 8 frauds. The anecdotes (and I believe you cited some) represent your problem area. If they can't be proven, you seem to be willing to judge some of the content of the story (containing more anecdotal evidence and hearsay) and say that some of them "seem possible". So you wind up with 8 frauds, 9 most likely made up, and three "possibly true".

What you need to do is dismiss any such stories. They are not testable or provable and they are not documented. They should not be a valid part of your sampling and if you discard the invalid data as part of your study, you wind up with a statistical sampling of 8.

If you extrapolate that to my own experience/studies (I've checked out about fifteen such cases over the years), and Remie's (probably hundreds) and various others and we all have the same results, you wind up with maybe 175 stories which are campfire ghost stories and can't be proved one way or the other -AND ARE THUS DISMISSED and about forty known cases that have been investigated and that had sufficient actual evidence, and ALL of those are proven frauds. If you take the original number 215 cases - it sounds like a whole lot of possible-to-be-proven incidents of ghosts or poltergeists. But if you take the valid sampling of 40, you have a 100% fail rate.

By all means continue in your "research", but this is not a philosophical question where you accept all parts of the hypothetical as given. If you're trying to come up with a valid result and study this stuff for real, then you don't show invalid/incomplete data as "possible"; you throw it out.