Collective apparitions: evidence life after death?

[23_Tauri]

I knew you were going to say that.

Oh I just kneeeeeeeeeeeew you were going to say that!

 

[Andyman409]

Has he? Maybe. I have no idea what Andy believes on anything: my knowledge of the chap is limited to what I have seen here. he seems to want me to shut up ad stop getting involved, so perhaps I should. Given I regard the term "paranormal" as essentially meaningless, I can't really infer much from what that anyway. There are clearly causes for the poltergeist phenomenon - what they are is mysterious, but clearly naturalistic. Does it require a revision of some of our scientific understandings? Maybe! I can't tell. Have to go answer the door now unfortunately. I'll return to this in a moment.

Gosh, I hope I haven't given this impression! I enjoyed your treatment on the subject and linked to it sure to its rigor and lack of gullibility. If I sounded crabby, it was probably since I had to read 20+ posts at the time while organizing which I should respond too. No, stick around if you wish.

BTW, for the millionth time everyone, I don't think apparitions are poltergeists are "paranormal". I am tempted to dismiss them a priori- but I feel inclined to at least understand them and the best evidence in their support before I do so.

 

[Andyman409]

http://www.amazon.com/Apparitions-C...UTF8&qid=1350315593&sr=1-40&keywords=mccreery should do it for you.

Amazon about 2 minutes.................

If you've been following my comments, you'll notice that they got more and more sophisticated the more time passed, since I have been able to read more and more. And no, I'm not going to buy the book, I'm gonna see if I can find a library that holds it.

 

[Andyman409]

I think some of the underlying assumptions of apparitional research may not be obvious. I'm talking about academic research here, so I'll quickly try to outline some of them...

1. People see "apparitions" - they have an experience they interpret in a culturally mediated framework (ie. "of ghosts") of seeing things or people not there.

2. The vast majority of such cases since 1894 have been agreed to be uninteresting except as in terms of hallucinations - everyone agrees they are mental constructs. Hallucinations in the sane are far more common than previously thought (outside of parapsychology where this has been the consensus for over a century).

3. Certain cases challenge the Hallucination model. We can split them in to two groups - the so called A) Veridical Cases, where information that could not have been acquired by normal channels was provided by seeing the apparition - sometimes includes "coincidence cases" where the apparition coincides with the sudden unexpected dearth of the subject of the apparition and B) Collective Cases, where the apparition was witnessed by multiple witnesses. You can add C) Haunts, where the same apparition is seen in a certain geographical location over a period of years or generations by witnesses who seem to have no prior knowledge of earlier sightings.

4. The SPR group in 1894 developed a theory that as almost all ghosts were hallucinations, the Veridical Cases were perhaps caused by telepathic information transfer from living agent to living agent, the resulting hallucination of the apparition being a way of the brain tricking the percipient in to receiving the information. Variants of this theory have dominated the parapsychological discourse since 1894, with notable papers written on the subject including those of GW Tyrell and Hornell Hart. I believe it is not supported well by the dataset.

Hope this clarifies a bit. http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/...think-we-know-about-ghosts-is-probably-wrong/ is my ASSAP talk on the subject (in written form) - I have not yet written up my Skeptics In the Pub presentation that follows on and looks at my conclusions and the supporting evidence in more detail, but I'll link it when I do.

cj x

I asked a question to the effect of since +99% of ghosts stories are weeded out by the survey (due to being at a bedside or not of a full figure) how can we have much confidence in the -1% of cases that appear to be extraordinary? Surely at that point, "veridical cases", like collective apparitions would be almost expected by chance.

Of course, I suppose this would involve defining what you'd think chance expectation would be. If you think that, by chance, there should be no collective apparitions at all, than you will take these surveys as evidence for the paranormal.

(Sorry for my use of the word paranormal, as I agree it is not very helpful. I think you get the general idea of what I mean when I say it tho)

 

[Stray Cat]

Of course, I suppose this would involve defining what you'd think chance expectation would be.

When using nothing but stories, chance can be anything as varied as the stories are. It speaks of nothing that validates the stories.

If you think that, by chance, there should be no collective apparitions at all, than you will take these surveys as evidence for the paranormal.

Anyone using correct critical thinking skillz will realise that stories are not evidence of anything other than that sometimes people tell stories, and sometimes those stories are about ghosts and weird stuff, sometimes about a young boy at a school for wizards and sometimes about a group of hobbits that have to drop a ring into a volcano.

 

[Andyman409]

When using nothing but stories, chance can be anything as varied as the stories are. It speaks of nothing that validates the stories.

Anyone using correct critical thinking skillz will realise that stories are not evidence of anything other than that sometimes people tell stories, and sometimes those stories are about ghosts and weird stuff, sometimes about a young boy at a school for wizards and sometimes about a group of hobbits that have to drop a ring into a volcano.

LOTR is a poor analogy to ghost stories. A better one would be those annoying face-book stories about how Jesus saved someone's life, which end with "like this and repost if Jesus is lord!" I hate those things.

Seriously, a large measure of this is just figuring out what the argument is. I cant accept or debunk a position if I dont understand it.

If my analysis is correct, and these apparition cases do compose less than 1% of all "paranormal experiences", than I'd agree with you. There is no need for strict consistency, since the phenomena in question is so staggeringly small. At that point, explanations like schizophrenia, dementia or lying all of a sudden become more palatable, since there would be so few cases demanding an explanation.

 

[Stray Cat]

since the phenomena in question is so staggeringly small.

This is not really relevant.
All it would take for ghosts to be real is one single ghost to be real.

What is relevant is that they are nothing more than unverified and unverifiable stories... there has not been a "phenomenon" that requires an explanation.

 

[Andyman409]

This is not really relevant.
All it would take for ghosts to be real is one single ghost to be real.

What is relevant is that they are nothing more than unverified and unverifiable stories... there has not been a "phenomenon" that requires an explanation.

I guess we just disagree here. If, say, 1 in 10 people claimed to have collectively perceived a full figure in broad daylight, I'd want to look into that. If, say, 1 in every 10,000 people did, it would be much less interesting. And if even less people do (which is what the survey appears to be telling us) than, well, you get the picture...

 

[Stray Cat]

I guess we just disagree here. If, say, 1 in 10 people claimed to have collectively perceived a full figure in broad daylight, I'd want to look into that. If, say, 1 in every 10,000 people did, it would be much less interesting. And if even less people do (which is what the survey appears to be telling us) than, well, you get the picture...

Yes, I get the picture, I guess there was a time when only one person in the whole world claimed that the Earth revolved around the sun. Luckily that didn't make the case for the Earth revolving around the Sun any the less compelling.

 

[cj.23]

I guess we just disagree here. If, say, 1 in 10 people claimed to have collectively perceived a full figure in broad daylight, I'd want to look into that. If, say, 1 in every 10,000 people did, it would be much less interesting. And if even less people do (which is what the survey appears to be telling us) than, well, you get the picture...

Hi Andy. Do you have Houran and Lange 1996? If you have the paper a) I'd love to see it (fair use copy under the Berne Convention - review purposes, as I intend to review it) and b) did you see my comment on why the cited figures are an irrelevance? They are based as far as I can make out on a Paranormal Belief Survey performed at Chester College USA. Hardly representative of any larger population, especially given the primary aim of the survey was NOT t record apparitional experiences. Hence the fact Houran & Langes data differs so widely from everybody elses. Their survey (or rather Pekkala's) was not intended to collect apparition experiences - the experiences they record are part of a broader study of paranormal belief in a college population at one institution. Or so it seems -- I am inferring this from their 2000 paper. I could be wrong. I need to see the 1996 paper to be sure.

The figure for persons experiencing the apparitions that do not get removed by the SPR exclusion criteria hover around 10-12% - so do the number of collective cases. The maths is therefore simple. Assuming (as was the case with Harraldsson and Sidgwick et al) that the collective cases are only counted once regardless of number of percipients, then 1 in 10 times 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 persons will witness a collective apparition?

cj x

 

[Stray Cat]

The figure for persons experiencing the apparitions that do not get removed by the SPR exclusion criteria hover around 10-12% - so do the number of collective cases. The maths is therefore simple. Assuming (as was the case with Harraldsson and Sidgwick et al) that the collective cases are only counted once regardless of number of percipients, then 1 in 10 times 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 persons will witness a collective apparition?

cj x

Massaging figures aside... 1 in 100 people (who have claimed to see stuff they can't explain) will claim to witness a collective apparition.

99% of all children under the age of 7 in the western world claim that a fat man dressed in a red suit enters their houses down a chimney once a year and gives them free stuff. A certain percentage of those children also claim to have seen him doing it.

 

[Andyman409]

Hi Andy. Do you have Houran and Lange 1996? If you have the paper a) I'd love to see it (fair use copy under the Berne Convention - review purposes, as I intend to review it) and b) did you see my comment on why the cited figures are an irrelevance? They are based as far as I can make out on a Paranormal Belief Survey performed at Chester College USA. Hardly representative of any larger population, especially given the primary aim of the survey was NOT t record apparitional experiences. Hence the fact Houran & Langes data differs so widely from everybody elses. Their survey (or rather Pekkala's) was not intended to collect apparition experiences - the experiences they record are part of a broader study of paranormal belief in a college population at one institution. Or so it seems -- I am inferring this from their 2000 paper. I could be wrong. I need to see the 1996 paper to be sure.

The figure for persons experiencing the apparitions that do not get removed by the SPR exclusion criteria hover around 10-12% - so do the number of collective cases. The maths is therefore simple. Assuming (as was the case with Harraldsson and Sidgwick et al) that the collective cases are only counted once regardless of number of percipients, then 1 in 10 times 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 persons will witness a collective apparition?

cj x

I dont have the specific numbers to the Houran and Lange survey on me- just Wiseman's short blurb on them. As I said, according to him, 1% of reported ghost experiences involve full figures. If memory serves, you agreed with me on that. You also concurred that the survey by sidgwick, etc only focused on the 1% of reported ghost experiences involving full figures. These are what you call apparitions, correct?

If my suspicions are correct the datasets are completely disparate - even if they are not, the survbey tradition I am dealing with -- Sidgwick et el, 1984, the three West Studies, Becky's and now Haraldsson and the work of Tyrell Hart Green & McCreey & Evans are all total different, concentrating on the 1% of "cases" Lange mentions, as their exclusion criteria rule out as hypnagogic/hypnopompic or trivial to explain the majority of the material he refers to here.

Surely you aren't saying that 1 in every 100 people in the general populace experience a collective apparition, are you?

 

[cj.23]

I dont have the specific numbers to the Houran and Lange survey on me- just Wiseman's short blurb on them. As I said, according to him, 1% of reported ghost experiences involve full figures. If memory serves, you agreed with me on that. You also concurred that the survey by sidgwick, etc only focused on the 1% of reported ghost experiences involving full figures. These are what you call apparitions, correct?

Nope I'm saying Wiseman's figure is utterly meaningless, because of the way Houran and Lange's data was collected. All it tells us is that 1% of the college students at Chester's reported experiences in a Paranormal *Belief* Survey by Pekkala were full apparitions. The exclusion criteria and method of collection were totally different to any other study: hence the differences. I could be wrong: i'd need to see the original paper to know,a and we don't carry it at my local uni. The cite by Wiseman is however highly misleading I'm afraid.

Surely you aren't saying that 1 in every 100 people in the general populace experience a collective apparition, are you?

Yep: based upon all the survey tradition, 1 in 100 will claim to experience a collective apparition. I in 10 claim tye experience an apparition and around 12% in Smith, Haraldsson and Sherwood as I recall citing last night are collective - Sidgwick et al was 8%. So the figure for claimed collective cases in the general population is around 1 in 120 to 1 in 80?

cj x

 

[Andyman409]

Massaging figures aside... 1 in 100 people (who have claimed to see stuff they can't explain) will claim to witness a collective apparition.

99% of all children under the age of 7 in the western world claim that a fat man dressed in a red suit enters their houses down a chimney once a year and gives them free stuff. A certain percentage of those children also claim to have seen him doing it.

No, If I'm reading him right, he's saying that 1 in every 100 people claim to have seen a collective apparition, after controlling for hypnagigic hallucinations and experiences that dont involve full figures. Thats a very, very large number of people. You and I probably know people who have seen a collective apparition if that is the case.

 

[Andyman409]

Nope I'm saying Wiseman's figure is utterly meaningless, because of the way Houran and Lange's data was collected. All it tells us is that 1% of the college students at Chester's reported experiences in a Paranormal *Belief* Survey by Pekkala were full apparitions. The exclusion criteria and method of collection were totally different to any other study: hence the differences. I could be wrong: i'd need to see the original paper to know,a and we don't carry it at my local uni. The cite by Wiseman is however highly misleading I'm afraid.

Yep: based upon all the survey tradition, 1 in 100 will claim to experience a collective apparition. I in 10 claim tye experience an apparition and around 12% in Smith, Haraldsson and Sherwood as I recall citing last night are collective - Sidgwick et al was 8%. So the figure for claimed collective cases in the general population is around 1 in 120 to 1 in 80?

cj x

After they control against hypnagogic hallucinations and experiences that aren't of full figures? Sorry, this just seems to contradict the previous comment you made, where you referred to the SPR cases as being within the "1%". Do the SPR consider only experiences of full bodied figures to be apparitions, or do they also allow other phenomena to count, like disembodied voices? One rather professional looking article I read referred to a case where many people shared the same olfactory experience as a collective apparition.

I'll have to email Houran to find out more.

 

[Pixel42]

At that point, explanations like schizophrenia, dementia or lying all of a sudden become more palatable, since there would be so few cases demanding an explanation.

You forgot "honestly mistaken" again. Human cognitive biases and fallible perceptions make that by far the most likely explanation of such experiences.

 

[Stray Cat]

No, If I'm reading him right, he's saying that 1 in every 100 people claim to have seen a collective apparition, after controlling for hypnagigic hallucinations and experiences that dont involve full figures. Thats a very, very large number of people. You and I probably know people who have seen a collective apparition if that is the case.

Yes, the figures are being massaged, but I wasn't even going to get into that.
It's a nonsense to claim that 1 in 100 within the general population will see collective apparitions, especially after all mundane and known causes have been eliminated.

I can just about believe that 1% will claim to have had experiences. I'm fairly sure that only 1% of that 1% are not ruled out due to the mundane causes already addressed.
I'm also quite sure that a greater percentage of people will have had similar experiences but not claimed them as such because they already realised there was a mundane explanation.

Again I liken it to my study of UFOs.
Only a percentage are ever reported
Only a percentage of that percentage are considered to remain unidentified.
There is a dispute about what those percentages are.

It matters not one jot what the percentages are, no one has ever shown there to be anything other than a mundane cause. Every thing that has been reported as a UFO which has subsequently been shown to be something in particular has been discovered to be something mundane.

Every claim of an apparition that has been shown to be something in particular has been shown to have a mundane cause. Arguing over percentages is nothing more than a distraction from this fact.

Instead of discussing possible percentages of people's unverified and unverifiable claims, why not just find one person who's claim can actually be objectively examined and verified as accurate.

 

[cj.23]

I'm trying to find an article... It was about the statistical basis of "shared experiences" and how they randomly "walk" toward a corroberative base that shares "popular cultural characteristics", i.e. in the 19th century certain commonly misidentified phenomena were called "angels". In the 17th century that identical phenomena may have been called "witches on broomsticks." Today it might be a UFO. And "believers" tout similarities as strength supporting the group claims, while in fact it is because all of the individuals live in a culture that has experienced "Close Encounters", "X-Files", etc...

I'd love to see this too! If you can find it please do post it!

cj x

 

[Aepervius]

Why do you assume ESP (which I don't believe in) would be consistent?

Because it is a cop out. In a random serie you can always find small sub serie which obey some law. And if you cut out the crap you find "oh miracle" there is a phenomenon. Remember PEAR in the cloud ? The problem is on basic biological and physical phenomenon there is not many which are so inconsistent that they work only 1% of the time, and not on the same persons. As of now ganzfield is an interesting statistic anomaly found up by maths, but nothing which was evidenced to be a phenomenon of biological origins. (haha firefox keep wanting to correct ganzfield into garfield).

Come on, just give me three examples of the flaws you claim permeate the dataset, from specific experiments. Why is everyone so unwilling to back up their assertions with actual evidence?

cj x

1979 Blackmoor Suzanne visit of a lab:

It now appeared that on one session — number 9 — the following events had taken place.

Sargent did the randomization when he should not have.
A 'B' went missing from the drawer during the session, instead of afterwards.
Sargent came into the judging and 'pushed' the subject towards 'B'.
An error of addition was made in favour of 'B' and 'B' was chosen.
'B' was the target and the session a direct hit.[3

Enough ? That is *one* example somebody uncovered. Now imagine what happened *all across*.

And also ask yourself why ESP researcher seem to go from ESP experiment to experiment, none related, using the experiment-du-jour ? Why isn't ganzfield studied in depth with solid protocol ? Why not solid protocol made up to find out the origin of the anomaly ? Why haven't we advanced since 1930 (ETA 1930 when the first chamber to cut off perception) (or 1970 when the first ganzfeld experiment started) ?

That is 40 years of nothing more but a statistical anomaly.

 

[cj.23]

Let's recap. Andy very sensibly challenged me on why the Survey Tradition based upon interviewing claimants to apparitional experience from 1894 to the present day produced results very different to those cited by Richard Wiseman in this CSICOP article -

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_haunted_brain/

Have a look. The relevant section is

James Houran has carried out a great deal of research into the nature of these ghostly experiences. Houran is an interesting fellow. During the day this mild-mannered statistician works for a well-known Internet dating site creating mathematical models that help promote compatibility. By night Houran transforms into a real-life ghost buster, conducting surveys and studies that aim to solve the mystery of hauntings. Fifteen years ago, he analyzed almost a thousand ghostly experiences to discover what people report when they believe that they have encountered a spirit (Lange et al. 1996).

Houran’s work revealed that reports of full-fledged apparitions are very rare. In fact, they account for only 1 percent or so of sightings; when such figures do turn up, they usually appear at the foot of a bed as people are either waking up or drifting off to sleep. Around a third of Houran’s reports involve rather fleeting visual phenomena, such as quick flashes of light, odd wisps of smoke, or dark shadows that move furtively around the room. Another third involve strange sounds, such as footsteps from an empty room or ghostly whispering. The remaining third are a mixture of miscellaneous sensations, including odd odors of flowers or cigar smoke, sensing a ghostly presence, or feeling a cold shiver down one’s spine.

OK, interesting. That is totally different to what the Census tradition exemplified by Eleanor Sidgwick, D J West, Erlendur Haraldsson, Rebecca Smith , Simon Sherwood and other have found. I finally found a site that provides access to the Journal cited, and got the paper (incidentally $32.00 for 24 hours access seems unreasonable to me). I was completely wrong on how Lange and Houran acquired their dataset - it was not from Pekkala and the Paranormal Belief Survey as I earlier postulated based on trying to work it out from one of their 2000 papers, but from Myers three books. I though ah Phantasms of the Living? Nah!

Different Myers!

MYERS A,. (1986) The ghostly register. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books.
MYERS A, . (1990) The ghostly gazetteer. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books.
MYERS A, . (1993) A ghosthunters' guide. Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books.

They state they use 924 experiences culled from 127 cases. So this is how they collected their dataset. I am not familiar with Arthur Myers books, but you can see one here -- http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Ghostly_Register.html?id=ZNUMAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Now I have not read said books, but I think we can assume that the dataset acquisition from a book described in the blurb as "A traveler's guide to America's strangest landmarks, including haunted dwellings and active spirits." and two more by the same author might well explain the discrepancy. I am surprised to find in a Skeptical Inquirer article the source ultimately resolves to this, honestly I am.

Now Wiseman makes no claim that this data is more reliable than the SPR tradition academic studies as he is really just telling an interesting story about an interesting bloke, and it the study itself may well be fascinating. I certainly think there is a great deal to be said for the study of Contextual Mediation of apparitional experience, which Lange and Houran pioneered, and I have previously used popular ghost narratives to study how folkloric elements and cultural factors inform our understanding of ghosts. Still, while I have so far only read how they collected their dataset, I don't think we need worry too much about the differences, as however honest and good Arthur Myers is as an interviewer, the narratives in his book have been subject to editorial control and the writers desire to present the narratives in a consistent and spooky manner.

Ha! This has rather amused me to be honest. Last time i take a Skeptical Inquirer article at face value. Bloody skeptics...