Collective apparitions: evidence life after death?

[cj.23]

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).

Fair comment! Have a look at Ersby's analysis though.

1979 Blackmoor Suzanne visit of a lab:

I thought it was later (1987) but yes I knew Sue Blackmore, and spoke to Tony Cornell about his recollections of Carl's side of things. Carl left parapsychology and like me became an rpg author going to the USA, and i have no idea what became of him, but his side of things are described in the JSPR paper "Sceptical Fairy Tales from Bristol" where Blacmore was based then. Have you read it?

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

Given the facts are extremely contentious, and that this happened before the 1981 Honorton-Hyman concordat, I'm not worried by it at all. I don't think the studies involved are included in Ersby's dataset anyway?

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) ?

The ganzfeld protocol has been consistent a very long time? Again i refer you to Ersby's study. C'mon, this is Ersby. He si not going to make crap up...

I don't believe in psi as I keep saying, but we need to actually address the issues as thoroughly as the esteemed Ersby has. It only took him a few years, and he found that the ganzfeld database does produce results above significance?

cj x

 

[Aepervius]

Fair comment! Have a look at Ersby's analysis though.

I did. But in the very end nobody can go around the fact that without other evidence, it is just a nice statistical anomaly.

I thought it was later (1987) but yes I knew Sue Blackmore, and spoke to Tony Cornell about his recollections of Carl's side of things. Carl left parapsychology and like me became an rpg author going to the USA, and i have no idea what became of him, but his side of things are described in the JSPR paper "Sceptical Fairy Tales from Bristol" where Blacmore was based then. Have you read it?

Nope, but it does not matter. You asked for at least case where specific example of manipulation is given, it has been fulfilled.

Given the facts are extremely contentious, and that this happened before the 1981 Honorton-Hyman concordat, I'm not worried by it at all. I don't think the studies involved are included in Ersby's dataset anyway?

I don't care about a dataset. PEAR also had a dataset. So what ? It provide evidence of a nice mathematical statistical anomaly. But without corroborative evdience with a proper watched over protocol, it just stay that. My point is that TODAY in 2012 all we have .... is a dataset. No recent experiment on more people with a proper protocol watched over.

Have we advanaced in knowledge ? Have we advanced in identifying the phenomenon 8aka pure math or biological) ? have we have made ONE step forward ? Have ESP researcher taken that up since it looks promising ? No, no, no and no.

The ganzfeld protocol has been consistent a very long time? Again i refer you to Ersby's study. C'mon, this is Ersby. He si not going to make crap up...

I don't believe in psi as I keep saying, but we need to actually address the issues as thoroughly as the esteemed Ersby has. It only took him a few years, and he found that the ganzfeld database does produce results above significance?

cj x

No, the ganzfield database, when looked at meta analysis tools provide that there are some number above pure chance, with a certain certainty. it does not show the origin of that above chance, it does not show it was file drawer or other cosncious or not cheating it does not show it is biological origin.

AGAIN all it shows is that there is a statistical anomaly. That's it.

And that is the whole point. You can harp on that anomaly all the day, but that's it.

 

[Andyman409]

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

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...

thanks for the analysis

 

[cj.23]

I did. But in the very end nobody can go around the fact that without other evidence, it is just a nice statistical anomaly.

I don't actually think we need more evidence. I think we need explanatory hypotheses for the evidence we have that can be tested. Other than that we are on exactly the same page I think

cj x

 

[Aepervius]

I don't actually think we need more evidence. I think we need explanatory hypotheses for the evidence we have that can be tested. Other than that we are on exactly the same page I think

cj x

You put it in a much better way I could ever try to explain.

 

[cj.23]

thanks for the analysis

I'm reading the paper (which is good) now. Seems Persinger drew his survey data from issues of FATE magazine. Again, their is nothing wrong with this as an exercise in Cultural Studies, and it may well have value for understanding something about apparitional experiences too, but the books are not the same as actual rich interview or survey data. To cite this without mentioning the SPR Survey tradition seems... wrong. Still I think I can resolve another aspect of the mystery now... You asked me about why Wiseman says

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.

You will remember the passage as it is the one that started this aspect of our discussion, and you asked why it varied so much from the material I cited? Well I can explain all now.


L&H studied "nearly 1000 experiences" according to Wiseman. Yes, but he appears to misunderstand what this means. From the three books by Arthur Myers they took 127 cases. Myers includes 128 apparently - they don't state the reason for the other case being excluded in their paper, but I assume it was sensible sampling (assuming you think Myers is a useful source here, which I am not sure of for technical reasons rather than any snobbery about popular ghost books.) From these 128 cases they derive 924 (indeed, nearly one thousand) experiences.


Now if i had not done sampling of data from interviews myself i might not immediately recognise something here, so I'lll spell it out. I'll make up a brief ghost story


"I was sleeping in my room when suddenly I floated three feet above the bed. When I opened my refrigerator a voice said "Zuul". Oh and eggs and bacon fried themselves on my kitchen counter"


So this would be one case, with three experiences. However often the boundaries between what constitutes a separate experience are really blurred -- so try this one


"I was walking back from the sea front at Seaburgh when I became aware of a man following me. Whenever i looked back across the groynes he seemed to vanish. At dinner that night the hotel waiter tried to lay a setting for another gentleman, and when he counted could not work out where the pale man had gone. I entered my bedroom, polished the silver whistle and noted an eerie chill. Then suddenly the curtains blew in, from a sudden blast of wind, and moments later my rather uncommon prayer book rose in to the air, and a picture of my Uncle Canon Alberic flew off the bedside table. I went over to the Three Crowns for a pint of Count Magnus, but had the most unsettling feeling that I was being watched. As I passed back through the inn courtyard past the well among the four yews, and headed over to my room I felt distinctly an icy hand on my back. I fled upstairs to my hotel room, to be greeted by a lot of knocking sound. Just the ash tree outside blowing in the wind? Then the temperature dropped, and the sheets on the unoccupied bed rose up in a ghastly simulacra, and floated towards me, as all the doors opened and slammed and the lights went out"

How many experiences? How we break down a case is actually vital to the analysis, Different people would come up with different numbers (and maybe a few people will get my playful references ). Back in July 1996 I explored this problem and the implications in detail in my own JSPR paper "The Poverty of Theory: Some Notes on the Investigation of Spontaneous Cases". ( I recommend an atomistic, incident by incident analysis, looking for mundane causes, arguing ghosts stories can easily falsely derive from the stringing together of unassociated elements linked only by the being explanation offered being "ghost", just in case you are wondering)>


Now here actually it is not even that. Lange et al did an analysis of 16 factors - essentially a template analysis I think, but I can't be certain.

The methodology section includes their exclusion criteria

Most cases describe multiple and distinct experiences, sometimes involving groups of percipients. AU distinct experiences were scored on the first five factors listed in the next section. If at least three of these five factors could be scored, the sixth factor (congruency) was scored also and the experience was selected. Approximately one-third of the experiences
did not meet this criterion, leaving a total of 924 experiences for
analysis.

The first 5 factors were Visual, Auditory, Olfactory, Tactile & Sensed Presence. The 6th listed is Object Movement. So 5 sensory modalities and a type of phenomena. So it was not these that make up their Factors (these are called variables further in the paper, but I suspect what they henceforth refer to as categories. I'll list those I guess


A Context of Perception
B Type of Experience
C Percipients State of Arousal
D Contextual Variables
E Type of Percipient


These are split in to 16 variables, and each experience is scored of them, and each case (group of experiences - which may involve different percipients.)


They then analysed the data, and reported their findings. Now the importance and value of the paper is in the development of the contextual hypothesis - a sound idea, well thought through. Wiseman and i agree on that much: it is the data set I'm questioning.


However, category B is important. It breaks experiences down by type - the types listed are the sensory modalities listed above, sense of presence, objects moving, erratic functioning of apparatus. So I guess Table 2 where they give a gross breakdown is useful - but unfortunately I am completely unable to locate the source for Wiseman's claim that 1% of the experiences were of full figures. Perhaps it was personal conversation. It is not as far as I can see in the paper, but given the mode of analysis, by experience, yes it could well be -- I'm sure you can see why? It could be that Visual apparitions as a variable represented 1% of the total derived experiences. That really tells us nothing, we would need to look at the data as case level.



Almost nothing in Wiseman's quote appears in this paper. However Houran & Lange published another paper on apparitions in 1996, so I guess I'd best check this next. This is proving hard work... not that I mind hard work. It goes with scepticism generally doesn't it?



cj x

 

[SusanB-M1]

I won't second guess you, but surely you accept people have experiences of apparitions? I suspect, but do not know, that it is the underlying causes of such experiences where your scepticism cuts in? ie. you are sceptical they are "dead guys" or similar?

cj x

Please remember to check out the Charles Bonnet Syndrome.

 

[Resume]

I'm reading the paper (which is good) now. Seems Persinger drew his survey data from issues of FATE magazine. Again, their is nothing wrong with this as an exercise in Cultural Studies, and it may well have value for understanding something about apparitional experiences too, but the books are not the same as actual rich interview or survey data. To cite this without mentioning the SPR Survey tradition seems... wrong. Still I think I can resolve another aspect of the mystery now... You asked me about why Wiseman says




You will remember the passage as it is the one that started this aspect of our discussion, and you asked why it varied so much from the material I cited? Well I can explain all now.


L&H studied "nearly 1000 experiences" according to Wiseman. Yes, but he appears to misunderstand what this means. From the three books by Arthur Myers they took 127 cases. Myers includes 128 apparently - they don't state the reason for the other case being excluded in their paper, but I assume it was sensible sampling (assuming you think Myers is a useful source here, which I am not sure of for technical reasons rather than any snobbery about popular ghost books.) From these 128 cases they derive 924 (indeed, nearly one thousand) experiences.


Now if i had not done sampling of data from interviews myself i might not immediately recognise something here, so I'lll spell it out. I'll make up a brief ghost story


"I was sleeping in my room when suddenly I floated three feet above the bed. When I opened my refrigerator a voice said "Zuul". Oh and eggs and bacon fried themselves on my kitchen counter"


So this would be one case, with three experiences. However often the boundaries between what constitutes a separate experience are really blurred -- so try this one


"I was walking back from the sea front at Seaburgh when I became aware of a man following me. Whenever i looked back across the groynes he seemed to vanish. At dinner that night the hotel waiter tried to lay a setting for another gentleman, and when he counted could not work out where the pale man had gone. I entered my bedroom, polished the silver whistle and noted an eerie chill. Then suddenly the curtains blew in, from a sudden blast of wind, and moments later my rather uncommon prayer book rose in to the air, and a picture of my Uncle Canon Alberic flew off the bedside table. I went over to the Three Crowns for a pint of Count Magnus, but had the most unsettling feeling that I was being watched. As I passed back through the inn courtyard past the well among the four yews, and headed over to my room I felt distinctly an icy hand on my back. I fled upstairs to my hotel room, to be greeted by a lot of knocking sound. Just the ash tree outside blowing in the wind? Then the temperature dropped, and the sheets on the unoccupied bed rose up in a ghastly simulacra, and floated towards me, as all the doors opened and slammed and the lighst went out"


How many experiences? How we break down a case is actually vital to the analysis, Different people would come up with different numbers (and maybe a few people will get my playful references ). Back in July 1996 I explored this problem and the implications in detail in my own JSPR paper "The Poverty of Theory: Some Notes on the Investigation of Spontaneous Cases". ( I recommend an atomistic, incident by incident analysis, looking for mundane causes, arguing ghosts stories can easily falsely derive from the stringing together of unassociated elements linked only by the being explanation offered being "ghost", just in case you are wondering)>



Now here actually it is not even that. Lange et al did an analysis of 16 factors - essentially a template analysis I think, but I can't be certain.


The methodology section includes their exclusion criteria






The first 5 factors were Visual, Auditory, Olfactory, Tactile & Sensed Presence. The 6th listed is Object Movement. So 5 sensory modalities and a type of phenomena. So it was not these that make up their Factors (these are called variables further in the paper, but I suspect what they henceforth refer to as categories. I'll list those I guess


A Context of Perception
B Type of Experience
C Percipients State of Arousal
D Contextual Variables
E Type of Percipient


These are split in to 16 variables, and each experience is scored o them, and each case (group of experiences - which may involve different percipients.)



They then analysed the data, and reported their findings. Now the importance and value of the paper is in the development of the contextual hypothesis - a sound idea, well through through. Wiseman and i agree on that much: it is the data set I'm questioning.



However, category B is important. It breaks experiences down by type - the types listed are the sensory modalities listed above, sense of presence, objects moving, erratic functioning of apparatus. So I guess Table 2 where they give a gross breakdown is useful - but unfortunately I am completely unable to locate the source for Wiseman's claim that 1% of the experiences were of full figures. Perhhapsit was personal conversation. It is not as far as I can see in the paper, but given the mode of analysis, by experience, yes it could well be -- I'm sure you can see why? It could be that Visual apparitions as a variable represented 1% of the total derived experiences. That really tells us nothing, we would need to look at the data as case level.



Almost nothing in Wiseman's quote appears in this paper. However Houran & Lange published another paper on apparitions in 1996, so I guess I'd best check this next. This is proving hard work... not that I mind hard work. It goes with scepticism generally doesn't it?



cj x

How does one control for out and out fabrications?

 

[cj.23]

How does one control for out and out fabrications?

In interview and survey research there are safeguards; but no system is perfect. If you take your data set from three books on haunted America, like the article cited I have no idea. It's actually a complicated methodological issue in all survey research so I will ask my partner to comment and write a proper description if you like, though obviously certain aspects can not be popularised because that would defeat the point of using them. I'll try and answer properly later.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

Please remember to check out the Charles Bonnet Syndrome.

Absolutely. And a number of other syndromes and illnesses. Somewhere I have a wonderful list from SPR member Dr James McHarg, who was an expert on these matters. I'm familiar with the medical literature on hallucinations (as hallucinations have been something I have researched since my undergrad dissertation) but it is vast: however recent research has shown that normal healthy sane adults have a surprisingly high level of hallucinatory episodes as well. I can cite papers if anyone interested...

cj x

 

[Resume]

I'm familiar with the medical literature on hallucinations (as hallucinations have been something I have researched since my undergrad dissertation) but it is vast: however recent research has shown that normal healthy sane adults have a surprisingly high level of hallucinatory episodes as well. I can cite papers if anyone interested...

cj x

I think many here are familiar with hallucinations and other cognitive errors/biases; in fact, I think quite a few began their path towards skepticism when realizing their absolute certain ghost/alien/bigfoot experience was in all probability a result of a hypnagogic episode as just one example.

 

[cj.23]

OK, I have read the other 1996 paper - it is definitely not in there either. Nor the 1997 paper. I can only assume Wiseman's comments derive from personal correspondence or a conference presentation he witnessed, because none of it is in the papers he references. I will present what IS in the papers if anyone interested.

cj x

 

[Stray Cat]

In interview and survey research there are safeguards;

I'd be very interested to know what they are. Because to my mind any unverifiable story can only ever be subjectively decided upon in terms of validity.

but no system is perfect.

What error margins are ever expressed within these study papers to take account of this imperfection?

If you take your data set from three books on haunted America, like the article cited I have no idea.

An unverifiable story is an unverifiable story. "His eyes were too close together" isn't really a valid reason for discounting a story as a total fabrication when someone is telling you they have an invisible dragon in their garage.

It's actually a complicated methodological issue in all survey research

And an impossible task with unverifiable stories with zero objective evidence with which to validate their veracity.

so I will ask my partner to comment and write a proper description if you like,

Yes, please, I'd like. I would appreciate that very much.

though obviously certain aspects can not be popularised because that would defeat the point of using them. I'll try and answer properly later.

I've heard this excuse before. Again going back my crop circle research.
It was often claimed that the crop circle researchers couldn't tell us exactly how they knew the difference between man made and unknown origin crop circles because the nasty hoaxers that made some of them would then simply start to incorporate the apparent differences into their own designs thereby defeating the point of using those differences as a litmus test for "genuine" crop circles.
It is of course nonsense to suggest that an anyway reliable (even if not perfect) system can be so easily circumvented.

But if one can tell if someone is simply lying with any high amount of accuracy, I wonder that the police and other law enforcement agencies haven't approached these people to see how they can employ the same methods which apparently allow such confidence in the results.

 

[cj.23]

I did not know you researched crop circles, or rather i did but never hit me before. Do you know the excellent Trystan S. ?

cj x

 

[Stray Cat]

I did not know you researched crop circles, or rather i did but never hit me before. Do you know the excellent Trystan S. ?

cj x

Yes, I know of him, but then again I think it was always his aim that people knew of him. My approach was always to remain anonymous. For that reason I cannot agree that he is excellent.

 

[ufology]

Why? should we also consider multiple people seeing UFOs very strong evidence of aliens or paranormal aerial phenomena?

The two issues are of an entirely different nature. Even if the phenomenon associated with a belief in life after death is real, it still doesn't mean that it represents a continuity of existence for the deceased person. There is simply no known way to measure that transition, and even if there were, there are no cases of poltergeists that demonstrate all the characteristics we associate with a living person and therefore logically they cannot be considered to be the same person. That person is usually buried or reduced to cinders and the poltergeist is at best some incomplete remnant or facsimile. In other words a dozen people could see the same thing at the same time, but it wouldn't constitute sufficient evidence for life after death, only that a dozen people saw something that resembled a deceased person.

In contrast UFOs ( alien craft ) are not something that was purportedly part of our material universe that then transformed into something else upon being destroyed. UFOs consist of physical material that has been observed and tracked on radar. They have been reported by military personnel and taken seriously enough for the armed forces of several developed nations to investigate them. Unlike poltergeists, there is no logical or scientific reason that UFOs ( alien craft ) cannot exist. Therefore if multiple people were to see one clearly enough for a follow up investigation to conclude that it is not reasonable to believe it was any natural or manmade object or phenomenon, then the only remaining alternative is something alien. It's that logical and that simple.

 

[PixyMisa]

Correct.

Poltergeists don't exist and are also impossible.

Alien spacecraft just don't exist (in the vicinity of the Earth, anyway).

 

[GeeMack]

[/SIZE][/FONT]
The two issues are of an entirely different nature.

No. There is no objective evidence to support the claim that poltergeists exist, and there is no objective evidence to support the claim that alien craft exist. In that regard, the only regard that makes your impolite attempt to interject your pet topic into this wholly unrelated thread, they are exactly the same.

 

[Sledge]

Also, please stop trying to conflate "UFO" with "alien spaceship," ufology. Moving on...

I would have thought it was obvious that you can't verify a person's account if that is all you have to go on. You can decide if you think what they're saying is what they believe to be true, but you can't comment on the objective truth of that statement. Even adding other people's statements can only be helpful in deciding what a group of people think happened.

 

[cj.23]

Also, please stop trying to conflate "UFO" with "alien spaceship," ufology. Moving on...

I would have thought it was obvious that you can't verify a person's account if that is all you have to go on. You can decide if you think what they're saying is what they believe to be true, but you can't comment on the objective truth of that statement. Even adding other people's statements can only be helpful in deciding what a group of people think happened.

Yep. Exactly. You can investigate the reports of the experience, and how the witness constructed the experience. You can never investigate the experience itself. What you can do is look for themes and commonalities, which may give rise to testable hypotheses as to what is happening. (This is what I'm currently doing btw - having developed a hypothesis, I'm testing it. Results will be in in 27 days )

cj x