Looking for Skeptics

[Pixel42]

There isn't a budgie present, its probably/possibly/likely noise from the spirit world, or not. The sentence I hear, I have never said before in my entire life. If you listen @ 0.5 seconds, there is a more quiet high-pitch voice saying "She wasn't speaking"

I asked jsfisher to block the image off the recording. I'm in a quiet room, I have head phones on, and my lips are closed at all times.

If you had headphones on then how do you know whether or not the room was completely silent whilst you made your recording?

My best guess for this particular recording is that a couple (the woman of whom had a voice similar to yours) loitered outside the window of your library having a quiet conversation whilst you were making it, and you only noticed them when you played the recording back some time later. A car radio playing outside the window is another possibility.

The bottom line is that there are perfectly adequate non-supernatural explanations for everything you've so far presented here, whether it's pareidolia, interference or living people's voices recorded inadvertently. Unless you can produce evidence for which the supernatural is the only possible explanation (like a checksum for a file on someone else's computer changing spontaneously), we must by default assume a non-supernatural one. Do you understand why?

 

[Biscuit]

Again, why do you think the church would have any interest, motivation, or ability to "investigate" your spirits? What could they possibly have to do with any of it? You might as well keep insisting that the post office should do something about it.

The church has nothing whatsoever to do with this. It doesn't speak well for the wisdom of your spirits that they keep misleading you.

In fact I think the bible is quite specific that those who claim to speak to the dead should put to death or something. Where did I read that? Oh it was on page 7 of this thread,

Leviticus 19:31
'Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God.'

Leviticus 20:27
"Men and women among you who act as mediums or psychics must be put to death by stoning. They are guilty of a capital offense."

Deuteronomy 18:10-13
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you.

 

[SezMe]

There isn't a budgie present, its probably/possibly/likely noise from the spirit world, or not.

This is what endears you to us, flaccon. Your clear, precise statements would make an English major blush with jealousy.

More seriously, I must confess a great deal of frustration at this point. We go on for page after page of "I hear <>". "No, it's noise." "Well, I hear <>." Was the file name <> or []? "Did you hash it?" "No, it was over the phone." "Was that before or after you sent it to box?" And on and on and on .......

I wanna scream, STOP! This is just nonsense. All this file manipulation, hearing "stuff" or not, etc. is just enabling flaccon to continue her delusions.

There is not ever going to be a clear claim. There is never going to be a protocol. There is never going to be any kind of viable test. There will never be an admittance by flaccon that she has deluded herself.

I wish people would not continue to engage with flaccon. All of this is just a diversion from flaccon getting the help she needs. We can't make that happen over the internet but we can stop giving her avenues to pursue instead of getting real help.

Yeah, yeah, I'll still follow the thread - it's a slow motion train wreck and I can't stop looking. But I sincerely believe we're doing more harm than good.

/rant

 

[Pixel42]

The fact that they constantly request Church intervention, and the fact that the Catholic Church gave me this "protective" spirit in the first place (13 years ago) I do believe that I'm entitled to an explanation from the Church, but sadly not.

You've not said much about this previous encounter with the church but it sounds to me like you encountered the sort of compassionate priest your doctor was hoping you'd find again when he wrote that letter for you - someone who would ignore the church's official position on such things in order to help out a fellow human being in distress.

Can you bring yourself to consider the possibility that this priest, recognising that he would not be able to persuade you of the non-existence of the malevolent supernatural forces you believed to be plaguing you and your family, invented a benevolent one for you to believe in? Doctors do something similar when they send someone with psychosomatic symptoms to a homeopath or similar - they know homeopathy doesn't really work, but when an illness is all in the mind then a cure which is also all in the mind may be what's required. Likewise an imaginary benevolent spirit may be what's needed to help someone who is imagining malevolent ones.

 

[Orphia Nay]

Your laziness is rather selective I see. I may be wrong at times, but I am certainly not a fibber.

You don't intentionally lie.

But you do ignore or confuse the issues at times, to protect your thrilling addiction to the paranormal.

A recent example:

I think people think that you, flaccon, tell scrappy (and others) what you think you've heard, and this prompts him to think he hears the same thing.

Yes, there are far too many assumptions, mistakes and theories going on, and no matter how I try to correct them, it's pointless.

I liken it to this (without prejudice) If I enter into a room full of scots, or foreigners with broken English, and they all talking at the same time, at different volume. I will have no idea what they are saying. After a few days/weeks whatever, I will begin to get the hang of what they are saying.

Pardon me but that doesn't actually address Orphia Nay's point which you are replying to. The point was that lots of readers here assume that Scrappy only hears what you hear after you have prompted him with suggestions of what he might hear.
[...]

No reply to that.

Admit it. You do tell your friends what you've heard, in order to get them to listen to the recordings for themselves. You tell scrappy, you told your sisters and brother, you told Mrs S and Mr Bulger.

Please admit that you do this. You know you do it (that's why you're not answering). Otherwise the accusations will just get worse, I'm afraid.

 

[abaddon]

For what it is worth, flaccon, I'm completely with you on this. As far as I have observed, you have not lied about anything. While we may differ on the explanation of what's going on, you have been forthright and sincere in all your interactions with me.

I don't believe flaccon is lying either. misguided perhaps, but not lying.

 

[abaddon]

I Heard a constant drone in the recording played back through a land line. I was carefully listening for anything noticeable. There were no interferences at all on that recording, no crackle, no quietness, nothing, just a constant drone, until I retrieved it myself from email, and played it through this machine.

Perhaps I am not making myself clear. Whatever it was you heard over the land line simply was not what was in the file. End of story. This is not a case of interference, crackles, quietness or whatever and I never suggested same.

Land lines intentionally, purposefully alter audio. This is not optional.

If you gleaned anything from a file replayed over land line, then that is further evidence that all you have is pareidolia effects.

 

[pakeha]

OK. I have verified that Youcam is bundled on some laptops, so likely flaccon got it as part of the often useless freebies that come with new PCs or laptops. ...

Thanks for the run-down on Youcam, abaddon.
Are we at the point where flaccon understands the voices only appear when she uses this particular software?

Just for fun I have been looking for an online demonstration of audio pardolia and I found these two clips that might be of some use is demonstrating the powerful effect of your brains desire to interpret noise to scrappy and flaccon.

Listen to audio clip number 1 a few times and write down what you hear.

Then listen to audio clip number 2 just once should do. Now go back and listen to #1 again.

Be honest with your results and maybe you'll understand this a bit better.

Spooky!

Before I allow any stranger into my home, and before I video myself off looking like a bigger idiot, I will continue to press for the preliminary test of altering a silent file with either noise suggestive of words, or significant differences in some way.

Hi, flaccon. Have you understood the need for the precautions people have mentioned, among them checksum?

... The fact that they constantly request Church intervention, and the fact that the Catholic Church gave me this "protective" spirit in the first place (13 years ago) I do believe that I'm entitled to an explanation from the Church, but sadly not.

Hi, flaccon, when you say the Catholic Church, do you mean an individual priest?
What was the 'protective' spirit you were given?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I don't believe flaccon is lying either. misguided perhaps, but not lying.

Well, I'm having a very hard time believing she's not being disingenuous in affecting bewilderment over identifying where the voice recordings came from. When the file was posted some days ago I had an unpleasant suspicion it was only a matter of time before there would be a claim that their mundane chatter was spirit voices. And the budgie too. A spirit budgie, no less.

Say, Abbadon, I have an experiment for you to try with your remaining free trial period of Youcam: What happens if you make a new recording while playing a previous recording in windows media player? Can you select the computer's audio output as your audio source, so that your new video gets the sound from your old video?

Just a thought.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

There are a lot of things I wont say for fear of ridicule taking precedence.

You fear that explaining what a 'spirit' said using your voice would somehow appear more ridiculous than claiming that this mundane conversation which includes your own voice is a mystery to you and you have no idea how it got onto your video. Hmm. That is peculiar reasoning from my point of view.

By the way, do you keep a budgie?

 

[Daylightstar]

Your laziness is rather selective I see. I may be wrong at times, but I am certainly not a fibber.

No fibber eh? Here's this post again:

..., We don't belong in a circus. I listened in with her and said to her "I doubt you will hear that sentence its too long" She replied "Yes I got that sentence too" ...

... a spirit clearly but quietly says "It's evident we don't belong in a circus" ...

^{Hilites by Daylightstar}
flaccon, do you have in your possession a file in which such a sentence can clearly (and apparently repeatedly) be heard?

If so, I'd like to hear it. Could you email that file (email address via the icon below my post count) to me?
I'll extract the audio and post it here.

Why don't you provide that recording?!

 

[Cassidy]

Again, why do you think the church would have any interest, motivation, or ability to "investigate" your spirits? What could they possibly have to do with any of it? You might as well keep insisting that the post office should do something about it.

The church has nothing whatsoever to do with this. It doesn't speak well for the wisdom of your spirits that they keep misleading you.

Correction, the Church as everything to do with this. It's more their business than it is mine. Despite RIP being a big fib that cost me £8.000, it was actually the Church that gave me this protection in the first place.

 

[Daylightstar]

flaccon, those words were spoken by you. ...

How do yo know ........... ?

 

[abaddon]

Thanks for the run-down on Youcam, abaddon.
Are we at the point where flaccon understands the voices only appear when she uses this particular software?

No. We are not. I consider the Youcam crapola to simply be a target of opportunity. By happenstance it could have been any other bundled software which drew the short straw. flaccon glomed on this particular one. I am done wasting time with this particular piece of crapware, but it could just as easily have been any other piece of crapware. Basically whatever she got on her lappie for free. There is buckets of free SW that you get when you buy a lappie in, say curries. YouCam simply happens to be the one she got with her lappie. Had she chosen a different brand of lappie, we would now be discussing whatever type of crapware came with that.

Whatever you might say YouCam is entirely innocent in this matter, it could have been anyone who foisted their crapware on the unwary. Although there is a certain irony in that. They foist their crapware upon you and attempt to jack your browser, flaccon in return has jacked their, umm, product as a source of spirit voices. There is a certain symmetry.

Spooky!

Just a little. Although I knew what was likely coming, I wanted to follow the instructions as posted. At my first hearing of #1, nothing, nada, rien du tout and all subsequent hearings. Listen to 2 and suddenly there's epic paredolia all over. I cannot NOT hear even though I am fully aware that my brain is playing tricks.

Hi, flaccon. Have you understood the need for the precautions people have mentioned, among them checksum?

The answer to this so far appears to be "No", and I don't say that in a bad way. If I were to say "pins in lock cylinders are intentionally misshapen to defeat lock pickers", I would be correct. I would be incorrect to assume that there is any reason whatsoever that you would have any reason whatsoever to know this. flaccon is in this position.

Hi, flaccon, when you say the Catholic Church, do you mean an individual priest?
What was the 'protective' spirit you were given?

And that is problematic right away. Not only are you introducing Catholic angst, but the nub gets ignored. What nub, you may ask? Well that is likely personal to me, but, I suspect, common to others.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Correction, the Church as everything to do with this. It's more their business than it is mine. Despite RIP being a big fib that cost me £8.000, it was actually the Church that gave me this protection in the first place.

I wonder if you can take a step back and appreciate that to everyone else here that post makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Daylightstar]

flaccon, I would still like to know what you believe your voice says in that recording.

Why are you avoiding telling us?

She appears to also avoid posting the file with the purported clear circus reference.

 

[Daylightstar]

Correction, the Church as everything to do with this. It's more their business than it is mine. Despite RIP being a big fib that cost me £8.000, it was actually the Church that gave me this protection in the first place.

What did you buy for £8.000?

 

[Cassidy]

No fibber eh? Here's this post again:


Why don't you provide that recording?!

I was informed that recordings become distorted/lose quality after uploading, you have no chance of hearing it, but I have a recording with a rather sarcastic spirit speaking about JREF. Somewhere in a post, Alderbank had mentioned reporting me to the police. One of the spirits say "Oh my god, that JREF can have us arrested, have us arrested Trace" You would stand a better chance with that one if its any use to you.

Deciding not to waste your time trying to hear something I know you will not hear after transfer, is not fibbing is it. Would you mind if I asked you to stop accusing me of lying?

 

[Orphia Nay]

Perhaps flaccon means she paid £8,000 for a funeral so her father could rest in peace.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I was informed that recordings become distorted/lose quality after uploading, you have no chance of hearing it, but I have a recording with a rather sarcastic spirit speaking about JREF. Somewhere in a post, Alderbank had mentioned reporting me to the police. One of the spirits say "Oh my god, that JREF can have us arrested, have us arrested Trace" You would stand a better chance with that one if its any use to you.

Who informed you that "recordings become distorted/lose quality after uploading"?

In any event, why don't you at least try to let everyone hear your most impressive spirit recordings?