seemingly unexplainable cases of the paranormal

[GeeMack]

Share ghost stories? One of my biggest, if not the biggest, reason I came here was to understand why some people like this guy consider ghosts/poltergeists to be such strong evidence for the afterlife.

Those questions have been answered for you several times, yet for some reason you choose ignorance over a reasoned consideration of the answers. But once more, here's why...

[...] he's wrong. Either intentionally or unintentionally, honestly or dishonestly, for noble or not noble reasons I neither know nor care not [...]

Giving the believers the biggest possible benefit of the doubt, they simply don't understand the concept of objective evidence and they don't apply the tools of critical thinking.

Sure, one can mock them for being deluded fools. I just prefer to understand their position before ridiculing it. Sorry for finding them interesting.

We understand their position and we have tried to explain it to you. Swapping more ghost stories isn't going to get you any closer to understanding the flaws in the believers' thinking. They misunderstand the null hypothesis, what constitutes objective evidence, and where the burden of proof rests. Now if you're willing to pay a little attention to what people are telling you here, you might just understand it, too.

 

[Resume]

Andyman 409:

A number of skeptics have taken time to explain what skepticism is, what critical thinking entails.

Are you going to acknowledge this information or are you just going to continue unpacking credulous anecdotes?

 

[Andyman409]

What do you need to understand about his position?

Additionally, could you detail what you find about these anecdotes interesting?

Thanks.

That's a hard question to answer. I guess I find poltergeists interesting since they'd provide undoubtable evidence for an afterlife if they could be substantiated. I was also surprised at how few skeptics spoke about the phenomena. That could only mean one of two things: Either they are a huge joke everyone knows is false, or the skeptical community is conspiratorially ignoring proof. Considering how paranormalists hold frauds like enfield, Resch and Rosenheim in such high esteem, I'd side with the former. These poltergeist thingies look like a joke. Of all the supposedly verified SPR cases, a quarter are admittedly frauds, only a handful are contemporary, and the rest are suspiciously under verified (why no magicians?). The South Shields case looks interesting- but I doubt its going to change my mind.

I am still researching apparitions, however. Its not so much that i find them interesting, but that skeptics dont say much on them. I can only assume its because there isn't much to say. Believers, on the other hand, have a huge amount to say- most of it theoretical. Its rather odd, considering how mundane a phenoena is. It looks like pathological science to me.

Maybe my good nature just makes it harder for me to to write them off as crazy. I dunno.

 

[Resume]

Maybe my good nature just makes it harder for me to to write them off as crazy. I dunno.

Crazy is just one explanation and not encompassing. Add mecurial, biased, mercenary and just plain contrary for its own sake.

Paranormal enthusiasts lack credible objective evidence for their enthusiasms; skeptics aren't ignoring proof, they're requesting it and it is those requests that are being ignored.

They're being ignored because the evidence is nonexistent.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Maybe my good nature....

Being gullible is not "good nature."

Again you're not the first person to start a bunch of threads trying to paints skeptics as closed minded meanies.

We don't dismiss unsubstantiated claims because we dislike the people making them, we do it because they are unsubstantiated.

 

[amensae]

Interesting story, though I found a few problems with it... I hate to come off as overly skeptical, but thought I'd give my 2 cents

Sorry it’s taken me a while to reply.
One weird part of the story is that my mother claimed she saw my grandfather in his street clothes, whereas my brother saw an “angel.”
She has no idea if she was awake or asleep at the time she saw my grandfather, only that she was awake when she heard my brother (obviously).
My mother knew the approximate time when she awoke. She has never said why but I assume she must have looked at a clock. I always do this when I wake up – maybe it’s inherited trait.
The nurse registered the time of death.
No worries. I am also extremely skeptical. I don’t believe anything supernatural happened.

 

[amensae]

In my experience, believers like to pretend to be skeptics, then post made-up stories on skeptic boards to get them to debunk the experience, which is obviously impossible because the story is complete fiction.

And sometimes people who label themselves skeptics really are skeptics.
A true skeptic does not dismiss claims dogmatically, but finds rational, logical (and non-supernatural) explanations for unexplained phenomena.

 

[SusanB-M1]

Exactly what I came here to post.

Me too! Also, when I saw the title, to read the rational responses.

The Shadow: I enjoyed reading your story. There are two events - unimportant ones - in my life which do not have a complete answer; I revisit them every now and again but always from a properly sceptical viewpoint!

Andyman409: You would find an audience more sympathetic to your topics on the GH (Graham Hancock message boards), but you'll find me there too!!

 

[Pixel42]

Maybe my good nature just makes it harder for me to to write them off as crazy. I dunno.

For goodness' sake!

"Honestly mistaken" is not the same as "crazy". Never was and never will be.

On numerous occasions people have come here to describe an anecdotal experience, been offered possible rational explanations, and have immediately accused those who offered them of calling them "deluded", "crazy" etc. This OTT defensive reaction is entirely misplaced. We are all subject to the same cognitive biases and fallible perceptions. Suggesting that someone might have been inadvertantly fooled by theirs is not calling them crazy, it's calling them human.

 

[pakeha]

That's a hard question to answer. I guess I find poltergeists interesting since they'd provide undoubtable evidence for an afterlife if they could be substantiated.

How so?
Why do you think the existence of apparitions and/or ghosts is evidence of an afterlife?

 

[zooterkin]

I am still researching apparitions, however. Its not so much that i find them interesting, but that skeptics dont say much on them. I can only assume its because there isn't much to say.

I can only assume it's because you're not looking very hard. I've been to a number of talks about sleep paralysis, wakeful dreams, and all the tricks the brain can play on us because of the way it constructs reality from a fraction of the information available to it. There are many books on the subject of how the brain works, and the illusions that can arise because of that in the right circumstances. Maybe your problem is that they're in the science section, not the paranormal section.

 

[PixyMisa]

How so?
Why do you think the existence of apparitions and/or ghosts is evidence of an afterlife?

And doubly so for poltergeists. How do self-opening cupboards establish the persistence of personal identity after death?

 

[PixyMisa]

That's a hard question to answer. I guess I find poltergeists interesting since they'd provide undoubtable evidence for an afterlife if they could be substantiated. I was also surprised at how few skeptics spoke about the phenomena.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

That could only mean one of two things: Either they are a huge joke everyone knows is false, or the skeptical community is conspiratorially ignoring proof.

They are a huge joke everyone knows is false, but that's still a false dichotomy predicated on an unstated premise.

I am still researching apparitions, however. Its not so much that i find them interesting, but that skeptics dont say much on them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

I can only assume its because there isn't much to say. Believers, on the other hand, have a huge amount to say- most of it theoretical. Its rather odd, considering how mundane a phenoena is. It looks like pathological science to me.

It's not science at all.

Maybe my good nature just makes it harder for me to to write them off as crazy. I dunno.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

 

[Stray Cat]

That's a hard question to answer. I guess I find poltergeists interesting since they'd provide undoubtable evidence for an afterlife if they could be substantiated.

Interesting that you would think this.

Firstly you would have to substantiate the actual anecdotes and come up with a reliable method of recording them to rule out trickery.
Secondly having established there was a phenomenon, you would have to look for the cause of it.
Thirdly, you would have to show that the cause somehow related to someone who had died and now was continuing some sort of existence and being able to affect this existence on a physical level.

I've no idea how anyone would/could do any of this when at the moment, no one has been able to satisfy the needs of the first step, but if just for one minute, we suppose the first step had been done, that still leaves, hobgoblins, malevolent demons, interdimensional aliens, rogue leprechauns, witch's spells, voodoo hex's and a host of other possibilities that would need to be tested for and ruled out... Unless of course you could find an example of a poltergeist who communicated unambiguously (using language instead of knocking plates over for instance) who could tell you they were enjoying an existence after they had died and provide you with some information that could allow you to check their story...

It's not going to happen is it?

 

[Garrette]

That's a hard question to answer. I guess I find poltergeists interesting.

In all seriousness, no you don't. This statement is the crux of the issue and demonstrates why you are nit as skeptical as you believe you are.

In reality, you find claims of poltergeists interesting.

 

[dlorde]

One of my biggest, if not the biggest, reason I came here was to understand why some people like this guy consider ghosts/poltergeists to be such strong evidence for the afterlife.

Why come here to find out why he considers something to be the case? shouldn't you be asking him?

If you read the article you linked to, you should get a far better idea than we can give you - he actually explains in some detail why he thinks what he does. His reasoning may be badly flawed, but it's his explanation.

We can only give you the generic reasons why people have false beliefs (see Pixy's lists of biases & fallacies).

 

[GrandMasterFox]

That's true, to a point, but quite a few people do not consider themselves "skeptics" but "believers". "Believers" are those who are already decided on the issue of the paranormal and are already believers in ghosts.

Some may start the story with something silly like "As someone very sensitive to the ghost world...".

And they'll usually say, I'm a believer today, but I *used* to be a skeptic.
Not only does it help people identify with you (I used to be one of you guys) but it does basically say "I don't just randomly run after every tom, dick and casper out there"

The thread linked to, containing the story was from back in 2006.

I stand corrected then on the paranormal activity thing then.
My appologies

 

[cj.23]

Share ghost stories? One of my biggest, if not the biggest, reason I came here was to understand why some people like this guy consider ghosts/poltergeists to be such strong evidence for the afterlife. Sure, one can mock them for being deluded fools. I just prefer to understand their position before ridiculing it. Sorry for finding them interesting.

Hi Andy. That would be, er, me. I'm planning to write an article on The Cheltenham Ghost on my blog at some point: it fascinates me because I think it influenced Henry James "The Turn of the Screw" (though I could well be wrong there: not checked dates etc) and because, well I live ten minutes from the house. Once many many years ago ago I carried out an experiment in the vicinity in to witness perception (having primed a group of student nurses with accounts of the haunting, extracts from PSPR 8 etc, I then got a friend (a forty year old male maths teacher) to thrown an orange bed blanket over his head and walk past the group at about twenty yards. They all saw the apparition, (apart from me and Hugh who were the instigators), and when they wrote up their experiences afterwards they reported seeing the woman in black and emotional aspects to the experience which were rather interesting. Ethically dodgy, and admittedly the streetlights on Pitville Circus Roundabout make everything look orange, but yep, they saw "Imogen" as primed to.

Despite all that, yes I stand by what I wrote in my little article on ghosts. I do think they are absolutely fascinating, and in fact my girlfriends PhD on apparitional experience is drawing to a conclusion (her viva is at the end of this month aptly enough - she will know how she fared on Halloween!) -- but from what I have seen of her content analysis section and the themes that emerged the experiences look exactly like those of 1894: which is in itself puzzling.

If apparitions are cultural constructs, mediated by folklore, film, fiction and societal issues, then we would expect the "ghosts" of 2010-2012 to look completely different to those recorded by the 1894 Census of Hallucinations. After all, every bloody experience we have is mediated by prior expectation, social positioning and a huge dollop of cultural baggage. From falling in love to hailing a cab, what we experience and how we report it is shaped by our social exposure. Yet somehow, the experiences reported, proportions and type of thing people say happen are a) much as 1894 - statistically significantly so and b) nothing like what we might expect from "Poltergeist", "Paranormal Activity" or even older ghost fiction. One very obvious example she cited - the sensation of a room growing cold, or sudden feeling of cold, is reported in hardly any cases (less than 1% I think). And so it was in 1894. Apparitions are experienced in day as much as night -- as in 1894.

The findings are interesting, and once i can analyse them I will know more what to think. The cause may well be prosaic - but there appears to be a cause for the experiences, however mundane, beyond mere imagination. This is quite interesting given the study she did in 2008 in a "haunted hotel" that had featured on Most Haunted. The difference was the phenomena recorded there, in 175 reports by different "ghosthunting" groups, were a beautiful reflection of exactly the kinds of phenomena one sees on "paranormal TV" ghosthunting shows. (Her PhD study only deals with "spontaneous cases", and all narratives from ghosthunters were excluded from the dataset). I don't think any thing beyond expectation was needed to account for the hotel cases -- we had worked together for a couple of years in a well known "ghost tourism" site watching the groups and learning about how they work, so we were not particularly surprised to be honest.

Anyway sorry to jump in on the thread late -- I saw someone visited my blog from the JREF, and it gave me an excuse to pop back in and say hi! I'm actually planning to work through Guy Lyon Playfair's "This House is Haunted" chapter by chapter on my other blog Polterwotsit, so I had best go and make a start.


all the best
cj x

 

[cj.23]

Why come here to find out why he considers something to be the case? shouldn't you be asking him?

It wasn't such a bad choice, given how often I post here

cj x

 

[cj.23]

That's a hard question to answer. I guess I find poltergeists interesting since they'd provide undoubtable evidence for an afterlife if they could be substantiated.

I would not say so. Well actually I think the case for a link is stronger than many people in the parapsychological community do, but Stephen E Braude, D Scott Rogo, Andrew Green and the vast majority of academic parapsychologists who favour a "paranormal" explanation for poltergeists invoke "psi", and RSPK (Recurrent Spontaneous PsychoKinesis). The "dead guys" hypothesis has been deeply unfashionable since 1894 at least -- the reasons for it being primarily historical (and the subject of the book I should be writing right now, as I'm the recipient of a grant award to do so.) In short however in the period 1882-1894 the SPR became known as a super-sceptical "debunking" organisation, the Spiritualists leaving en masse in 1888 (some remained, but few) and the core SPR had no faith in "physical phenomena" at all - too many fake mediums had been busted by them. That changed a little after the Fielding Report in 1904 (which incidentally featured two magicians among the SPR investigating team; one of the convinced witnesses at Enfiield was also a Magic Circle member, and stage magicians have been involved with SPR investigations throughout its history - Carrington for example?) The classic article on the issue of poltergeists and the living versus discarnate agent debate is entitled "Poltergeists: Are they Living or are they Dead?" and waspublished in the JASPR in I think 1987 - it's by Prof. Ian Stephenson. I notice some issues of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research are available online as epub files for Kindle and KObo, soworth having a look, as the JASPR is not on Lexscien

I was also surprised at how few skeptics spoke about the phenomena. That could only mean one of two things: Either they are a huge joke everyone knows is false, or the skeptical community is conspiratorially ignoring proof. Considering how paranormalists hold frauds like enfield, Resch and Rosenheim in such high esteem, I'd side with the former. These poltergeist thingies look like a joke. Of all the supposedly verified SPR cases, a quarter are admittedly frauds, only a handful are contemporary, and the rest are suspiciously under verified (why no magicians?). The South Shields case looks interesting- but I doubt its going to change my mind.

I have far more faith in Enfield than South Shileds, but that is based upon a very limited discussion with two people, one pro, one opposed, on South Shields. I have not yet read Hallowell's book. Alan Murdie was very positive about the case; the skeptic (who I won't name till I have his permission) utterly unconvinced. Likewise at Enfiled there is a huge discrepancy between the two SPR groups who emerge with differing viewpoints. Now Maurice is no longer alive I think we might hear more critiques, I expected to, but so far none have emerged. I keep meaning to read what Tony Cornell has to say on the case. I know (from personal conversation) he was unconvinced by some aspects, but I don't think anyone from the SPR who visited the house more than once thought the whole case was bogus (I may be wrong). When I attended SPR Study Day 50 on poltergeists no one objected to GLP's description of events or raised serious critiques, but there appears to have been an SPR Report on the case (referenced in This House Is Haunted) that I have never seen and can not find.

On Rosenheim, I'm surprised you think it was faked. I have never seen anything to suggest that. I am afraid I don't know enough of the tragic Resch case to make a comment, but William Roll is still very much around and I expect has written on it somewhere.

Anyhow hope my vague musings not too far off topic!

cj x