Ectoplasm, spirits, and ghosts

Strange. I was just pondering this exact same question.

I have never experienced anything that seemed 'off', but again, my dad(and his brothers, sisters, mom,etc.) has stories from when he was growing up. I'm thinking of one instance in particular:

One of the kids was taking a piano lesson at home when, in the view of the instructor, said kid, and my grandmother, a candlestick rose into the air, did a circuit through the room and resumed its position atop the piano.

Then there were the pool balls clacking together(vigorously, mind you, in the middle of the night), or the time my uncle's bed began shaking violently while he was asleep. This was in California but that would have been a very localized earthquake, I'd say.

I follow what everyone is saying about nerve malfunctions, brain troubles, etc, but I honestly don't know what to make of that one about the candle. If three trustworthy people witnessed it(which they are), I'd say it's reasonable that it happened. I have absolutely no explanation for it.

What do you guys think?

Skribb, there are two processes involved in "seeing" or "hearing" something. One is the external stimulus that we percieve, the other is the subjective object we conceive. We all perceive the same external object and interpret what is there by our internal circuitry. That internal circuitry is influenced by our world view, our health, and our mental state as well as certain chemical balances in our bodies. As you have seen by the other posts, some people were brought up in a culture that accepts ghosts and "wee people." Our brains automatically try to fill in the missing pieces of a pattern and when we see or hear something only partially, that object's "reality" will be based on what our culture and experience has taught us is the most likely object. In the U.S. when we hear hoofbeats we think of horses, in Africa when you hear hoofbeats you think of Zebras. In the bar at 2AM when we hear hoofbeats we think of unicorns. If your Dad taught you that ghosts are real, when you see something only dimmly you may think of ghosts.

haushibo wrote

Strange. I was just pondering this exact same question.

I have never experienced anything that seemed 'off', but again, my dad(and his brothers, sisters, mom,etc.) has stories from when he was growing up. I'm thinking of one instance in particular:

One of the kids was taking a piano lesson at home when, in the view of the instructor, said kid, and my grandmother, a candlestick rose into the air, did a circuit through the room and resumed its position atop the piano.

Then there were the pool balls clacking together(vigorously, mind you, in the middle of the night), or the time my uncle's bed began shaking violently while he was asleep. This was in California but that would have been a very localized earthquake, I'd say.

I follow what everyone is saying about nerve malfunctions, brain troubles, etc, but I honestly don't know what to make of that one about the candle. If three trustworthy people witnessed it(which they are), I'd say it's reasonable that it happened. I have absolutely no explanation for it.

What do you guys think?

People convince themselves that things occur. My money is on your grandmother making shit up and the others going along with it. I'm sorry, but that's the best bet.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If three people witness it, then it can be photographed or otherwise documented. I'm sorry, but those witnesses are not trustworthy.

Proof talks, bullshit walks. It's like in the movie... (No, sorry, I don't recall WHICH movie... but the quote is from one)

"Do you know what it means when you swear to tell the truth on the witness stand?"
"Yeah, it means you have to tell the truth."
"No, it means they have to believe you."

[Sternwallow]

There are several ways to make a lighted candle, in its holder, sashay around a room, do pirouettes and sing a little song and none of them are supernatural. I submit that a natural method was much more probable than a supernatural one. By the evidence to date, supernatural causes are about as likely as "the building across the road leaning over and spitting lemonaid in your ear".

Sternwallow wrote

There are several ways to make a lighted candle, in its holder, sashay around a room, do pirouettes and sing a little song and none of them are supernatural. I submit that a natural method was much more probable than a supernatural one. By the evidence to date, supernatural causes are about as likely as "the building across the road leaning over and spitting lemonaid in your ear".

Don't ignore the simple solution, Stern. That it's all bullshit. The Candleholder never moved, and the grandmother manipulated the others into thinking it did.

[Sternwallow]

RenaissanceMan wrote

Don't ignore the simple solution, Stern. That it's all bullshit. The Candleholder never moved, and the grandmother manipulated the others into thinking it did.

Not ignoring, just saying there a gawd-awful lot of ways other than supernatural.

I definitely wasn't there, nor was I alive, so my testimony is pretty much shot here. Obviously I'm just inferring as to the veracity of what I've been told, but I do know the people involved, and I have to respectfully disagree with the idea that my grandmother purposely misled the others about this. If it were an isolated incident, then sure, I'd give that one to you, but there were many other times where similar stuff happened in her absence.
I should have mentioned this, but they were no longer young kids at this point. By kids I merely meant her children.

With that said, let me just say that I'm not proposing any specific explanation about what happened. Nobody involved knows what to think, which is why they all remember it. Some sort of prankster activity is definitely a possibility, though, and I'm sure you all have heard the other theories: demons, lost souls, spirits with unfinshed business, peanut-butter gnomes, etc.

About those incidents with just one person, though, did anyone else catch the National Geographic channel show a month or so back where they went through debunking 'spirit orbs' ands the like? Two guys with a dusty carpet made a whole mess of those little buggers.

Interesting suggestion regarding Auschwitz...

[psyadam]

haushibo wrote

I definitely wasn't there, nor was I alive, so my testimony is pretty much shot here. Obviously I'm just inferring as to the veracity of what I've been told, but I do know the people involved, and I have to respectfully disagree with the idea that my grandmother purposely misled the others about this. If it were an isolated incident, then sure, I'd give that one to you, but there were many other times where similar stuff happened in her absence.
I should have mentioned this, but they were no longer young kids at this point. By kids I merely meant her children.

With that said, let me just say that I'm not proposing any specific explanation about what happened. Nobody involved knows what to think, which is why they all remember it. Some sort of prankster activity is definitely a possibility, though, and I'm sure you all have heard the other theories: demons, lost souls, spirits with unfinshed business, peanut-butter gnomes, etc.

About those incidents with just one person, though, did anyone else catch the National Geographic channel show a month or so back where they went through debunking 'spirit orbs' ands the like? Two guys with a dusty carpet made a whole mess of those little buggers.

Interesting suggestion regarding Auschwitz...

I would be very interested to know how they debunked the spirit orbs. I was browsing a website recently that said that the orbs could appear on any camera of someone who was doing ghost hunting.

As far as stories about supernatural events, I know that my mom told me my grandfather claimed to have had one event where he saw some sort of an evil being on a horse close to a path that he needed to cross when he was young and he rode his bicycle past it really quickly. He also claimed to have seen the number "666" on the popes miter when he was really young (I think my mom said he was 6-- my mom was born in Germany and my grandfather somehow got my mother to America during the holocaust). Needless to say, that those are rather unbelievable claims (esp the one about the popes miter). They are interesting to think about and you would wonder why someone would claim something like that happened if it really didn't, but having not experienced anything close to something supernatural myself, I don't think you should throw away the possibility that even though we may have respect for somebody, they could have been lying.

[Sternwallow]

Researchers recently showed (in a Discovery Channel show) that some 20% of test subjects could be easily convinced that they had a memorable experience when young that they never had. They were asked in their first session to describe how they would have felt if they had been lost in a department store at a very young age. It had been learned beforehand from their family that they never had been lost. A week later these people recalled the incident vividly, could give fine details about it and would not accept that the whole memory had been fabricated.

Maybe Grandpa wasn't lying at all. Maybe he acquired the strong and very specific memory of a non-event through psychological means other than witnessing it.

haushibo wrote

I definitely wasn't there, nor was I alive, so my testimony is pretty much shot here. Obviously I'm just inferring as to the veracity of what I've been told, but I do know the people involved, and I have to respectfully disagree with the idea that my grandmother purposely misled the others about this. If it were an isolated incident, then sure, I'd give that one to you, but there were many other times where similar stuff happened in her absence.
I should have mentioned this, but they were no longer young kids at this point. By kids I merely meant her children.

With that said, let me just say that I'm not proposing any specific explanation about what happened. Nobody involved knows what to think, which is why they all remember it. Some sort of prankster activity is definitely a possibility, though, and I'm sure you all have heard the other theories: demons, lost souls, spirits with unfinshed business, peanut-butter gnomes, etc.

About those incidents with just one person, though, did anyone else catch the National Geographic channel show a month or so back where they went through debunking 'spirit orbs' ands the like? Two guys with a dusty carpet made a whole mess of those little buggers.

Interesting suggestion regarding Auschwitz...

I should rephrase that... I'm not trying to imply that your grandmother was INTENTIONALLY lying, just that she is not a reliable witness. Note the common denominator here, your grandmother.

Also notice that you weren't even there. So.. YOU can't possibly be lying or mistaken about these incidents. But, given the unverifiable nature of supernatural observations, your grandmother is almost certainly mistaken (or lying) about what she thinks she saw. Most likely... she wants to believe it so bad she has convinced herself of it over the years.

Right there is how belief in the supernatural (and by inferrence, belief in religious 'miracles' and such) propagates. It takes GREAT intellectual integrity to stick to your guns and insist on evidence whan a family member tells some bullshit story.

Notice how Jeebus was basically unknown during his 'lifetime'? How 'new material' surfaced 40 to 100 years after his 'death'? You can't verify facts from a dead man.

RenaissanceMan wrote

I should rephrase that... I'm not trying to imply that your grandmother was INTENTIONALLY lying, just that she is not a reliable witness. Note the common denominator here, your grandmother.

Also notice that you weren't even there. So.. YOU can't possibly be lying or mistaken about these incidents. But, given the unverifiable nature of supernatural observations, your grandmother is almost certainly mistaken (or lying) about what she thinks she saw. Most likely... she wants to believe it so bad she has convinced herself of it over the years.

Right there is how belief in the supernatural (and by inferrence, belief in religious 'miracles' and such) propagates. It takes GREAT intellectual integrity to stick to your guns and insist on evidence whan a family member tells some bullshit story.

Notice how Jeebus was basically unknown during his 'lifetime'? How 'new material' surfaced 40 to 100 years after his 'death'? You can't verify facts from a dead man.

This is one of the great problems in trials and recollection of 'UFO' visitations. Simply there are to many external influences that can be used, consciously or unconsciously, to produce a desired memory in a person. The majority of trial witnesses are given prompting from the persecution or the defense in the pretrial to almost craft their memories to produce a desired testimony. Also this event is evident in the use of 'hypnosis' in which a person's mind will convince them that they have preformed an event, when in actuality the hypnosis doesn’t work and they only want to believe as such. As a young child i can remember walking into a supposedly 'haunted' house, and i was sure i encountered numerous 'spirits'. I returned last year at 17 years of age to face my fear form my child hood. Every spooky thing that i can remember from my childhood i was able to explain in rationality as an adult. The brain is a very complex orgin, constantly rearranging itself in order to improve effect, maximize redundancy, and navigate around dead cells. In this process of brain reconfiguration it is quite possible that numerous memories can, with time, become blended into one memory in which the supernatural occurred.

psyadam wrote

I would be very interested to know how they debunked the spirit orbs. I was browsing a website recently that said that the orbs could appear on any camera of someone who was doing ghost hunting.

Let's see if I can pull this all up. It's been awhile.

The gist of it was that they thought it was airborne dust particles. So, the two skeptics who were on this show took a camera, light source, and themselves into a dark, dusty old room and proceeded to shake up the dust by beating the carpet, etc. As the individual motes were swirling around in the air they reflected the light to various degrees and showed up on film as shining specks(aka spirit orbs). Ghost hunters traditionally work -on the basis of what I've seen- without all the lights on, or they do on these shows to up the creep factor. So, if they are operating camera equipment with a single, bright light source that will of course make anything swirling about in the air show up and stand out more than it normally would. For an example, take a picture of a cat's eyes in the dark with flash and see what you get. Do the same thing outside in the sun. Some stuff shows up very well under bright, direct lighting.

Another supposed proof of their supernatural nature was that they displayed seemingly impossible patterns of movement, ie zagging when they should have zigged, thereby proving they moved of their own volition. If you keep in mind that they're dust, though, that's very easy to explain. Your average piece of dust weighs, what? 1/100000000000th of an ounce/gram? In any case, not much. Let's say there's a small(110 pound) person walking through a room. Since they are made of matter, they will have an effect on the air around them, and will create turbulence, thus buffeting about whatever's around them. Picture a fast-moving car acting on dead leaves piled at the side of a road in the fall.

People moving + light source = moving dust = spirit orbs if you're looking for them

I'm sure these orbs are in family photographs and the like all the time, but people don't notice because 1) Usually the lights are up so little stuff like that will be washed out, and 2) they aren't looking for them.

Hope that helps

[PanAtheist]

Around when I was twelve, or in my early teens, I delivered free local newspapers, once a week, in the area where I lived.
And I was asked to cover a neighbouring round for three weeks, in unfamiliar roads.

I suddenly came to this house (in a very ordinary row of small terraced house) that I was totally, out-of-the-blue, absolutely TERRIFIED of. It was as if HELL was right there, a step away, and if I stepped up to that door then A DEVIL would reach out and grab me. That sounds corny, but you have to understand that I was consumed, totally out-of-the-blue with UTTER TERROR! And what's more I DIDN'T BELIEVE IN THAT STUFF! I REALLY DIDN'T! And I had been delivering papers for a long time. The house was unkempt. But so fucking what? I had delivered to many an unkempt house! But something about that house screamed of HELL behind the curtain. My whole self screamed with unbelievable fear. Absolutely out of the blue!

Now listen well and understand this:
This wasn't a house with a long spooky path!
It was right there on the sidewalk, along with all the neighbouring houses, which did nestle closely to its side.
At that exact moment there was no one else in the road.

It, like all the others, had a metal railing, about a metre from the front of the house, seperating it from the sidewalk. And it had a metal gate.
A meter behind that, was the front door.
(NB. In Britain, post and papers go through the front door itself.
Each front door has a flapped slit in it, which we call "letterboxes")
I had to approach that door, and put the paper through it.
Every other house on that side of the road was arranged like that - and I had already (without incident) done most of them.

I was TERRIFIED of opening THAT gate.
I "felt", I somehow "knew", that there was an EVIL PRESENCE in that house!
And it threatened to pull me in.

As I said, I really didn't believe in that stuff, and yet there I was and this was happening to me. And as I was certain that my fear was stupid, I was determined that I *had* to deliver that paper, else I was MAD!

So I opened that gate. I started going in. I kind of leaned in. As I stepped forward, I think the gate did begin to swing shut behind me. And my fear ROCKETTED! It CRESENDOED! How weird that was! I was practically still on the road!

And then I put the paper up to the slot in the door and began to press it through.
And then the world FELL APART!

The paper was whisked out of my hand AS IF BY A WIND. I mean IT WAS SUCKED!
Now understand this well - I had been delivering papers for maybe two or three years, and I had had hundreds of papers yanked out of my hands by dogs (and people!). And this was utterly, utterly different. I aint kidding! This was SOMETHING ELSE!!!

I turned in blind panic and bolted.
And as I passed the closed window the most incredibly EXTREMELY EVIL and INHUMAN laughter UNEXPECTEDLY clattered out from that house. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO SHOCKED IN ALL MY LIFE. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO AFRAID IN ALL MY LIFE.

I RAN.

Conscientously I did the whole road - I delivered a paper to every house.
I had a crisis of conscience about doing the other side of the road, coz it meant I would have to pass that house again.
I DID go ahead and do the otherside.

I ran the whole road. I delivered to every house running.
I was absolutely terrified, and ran, ran, ran.

I have done my best to convey the real experience of this happening, and yet I believe I will have totally failed, because I know that everyone will read this and just laugh!

But I am writing this to convey this experience.
I did not tell this experience to anyone for almost ten years.
Not till my third? year at University did I mention it.
And I was changed my this experience.
It made me *believe* in the insanity of the universe!

Rationally, today, I have to say that I had to have been totally had.
There must have been someone inside, and they must have *seen* my fear, and they must have very quickly whisked that paper away, and then deliberately laughed as though they were evil incarnate.
As a teenager, I couldn't believe that anyone would ever do that to another person, a stranger, and then leave them to deal with it.

I was terrified when I looked at that house, before anything had happened.
I still have no idea why.

Now back to that event - imagine me in that state of fear.
I was in a state of constant fear for weeks afterwards.

In those days of fear, I was sitting in a cookery lesson at school near the door.
I was closest to the door. And I had my back to the door.
My mind was not on the lesson.
It was on this event.
It had "shown" me that evil was real and I was petrified.
I believed evil could come at me at anytime.
I fearfully glanced a few times, but I then became to terrified to look around.
I was terrified, of evil coming in to grab me there and then.

But again, what actually happened took me totally by surprise.
I was sitting looking forward into the class.
And then I heard the door swing open behind me and there was a rush of cold, and then a sharp "finger" jabbed me very hard in the back, propelling me forward . I was, again, utterly terrified, and petrified, unable to turn round.

I couldn't speak for a minute, and then I asked the person next to me, a girl who was my lesson buddy, whether anyone had entered the room while the teacher was talking. She, quite sincerely, and in a surprised way, said "no". Unsatisfied, later in the class I repeatedly quizzed her, but it was quite clear that she being honest, and when I finally said that someone had jabbed me in the back, she truly looked at me as if I was mad. She was a good and honest person, and I have no idea what happened that day.

I believed in insanity for many years, as a result of these incidents.

So, I should shamefully throw my "PanAtheist" hat away.
If the universe presents to a person as insane, it is totally possible for that person to believe it to be insane.
But that, really, is the truth of the matter.
Its never about "Gods" and "Demons" really, its about the "INSANITY" of the "REALITY" that we experience.
"Gods" and "Demons" can become AVATARS for that insanity.

The corollary of this, is that belief/insanity is propogated when people somehow "experience" reality as being, itself, fundamentally insane, with an evil (insane) potential in it. And that this can happen spontaneously, and can be propogated both deliberately and accidentally.

[psyadam]

I remember watching the movie "The Ring" on dvd back when I lived with my old roommates and we watched the ending part at the end where it shows the movie to you that is supposed to cause the phone to ring and a scary voice says something random. Anyway, after that thing finished the phone in my apartment rang (note that I am insanely gullible esp after watching a movie like that) so I answered it expecting it to actually to have just been a coincidence. Since my roommate who used his cell phone to call couldn't pull off the prank better (He couldn't pull it off without laughing), I think everyone in the room just started laughing at me at that point.

psyadam wrote

I remember watching the movie "The Ring" on dvd back when I lived with my old roommates and we watched the ending part at the end where it shows the movie to you that is supposed to cause the phone to ring and a scary voice says something random. Anyway, after that thing finished the phone in my apartment rang (note that I am insanely gullible esp after watching a movie like that) so I answered it expecting it to actually to have just been a coincidence. Since my roommate who used his cell phone to call couldn't pull off the prank better (He couldn't pull it off without laughing), I think everyone in the room just started laughing at me at that point.

Yeah, it takes nerves of iron to pull off a prank like that.