disguising nonsense
It’s nearly Halloween and my inner child has already demanded sweets in the shapes of eye balls and ghost shaped cakes. I love this time of year, not because I’m a paranormal researcher and think it’s significant (because it’s not, outside of folklore and religious beliefs) but because I am a very big horror fan. True horror, mind – I’m talking Edward Hyde and Frankenstein rather than the latest ‘Saw’ movie or ‘Hostel’ gore fest (there is a fine line between gore and proper horror.)
Anyway, once again I’m rambling.
The reason I wanted to write this blog post was because Halloween normally
means a few things are certain over the next few weeks.
1) There is going to be a lot of “paranormal television” on, some of which will claim that ghosts are more active over halloween.
2) Lots of people will be heading to their local haunted hot spots, or even “the most haunted graveyard/village/town/field/tree” they can find to either look for ghosts and get scared or to get drunk. Or both.
3) Paranormal investigation teams across the country will be conducting “paranormal investigations” on the night of October 31st for no other reason that “it’s Halloween”.
4) Charity investigations will be held by numerous groups and investigators. I’ve already seen at least four people I know advertising such events.
There’s no harm with that is there? I mean, Halloween is just about having fun, right? Besides, if you can raise some cash for a chairty then it’s even better I guess.
Supporting a charity (or numerous charities as I do) is great. Holding events to raise funds to your chosen charity is a really noble thing to do. I don’t want anybody to think that I am saying that charities are evil because I’m not.
However, I have spotted a trend over the last couple of years or so where a rising number of paranormal groups and teams are hosting charity ghost investigation events at Halloween (as well as throughout the rest of the year too).
Members of the public pay a ticket fee or donation to attend a paranormal investigation alongside the group of investigators and then all money raised goes to the chosen charity. Getting money to a worthy cause is always a good thing. However, these events can often lack common sense and common decency in the way that pseudo-scientific theories and methods are promoted by the investigators and because the event is for charity the promotion of nonsense is often overlooked.
There is never an excuse for the promotion of nonsense.
Quite often these events consist of the group of attendees paying their fee and being allowed to handle pieces of equipment that are supposed to detect ghosts – EMF meters, dictaphones for recording EVP. They might also conduct things like ouija board sessions, dowsing rods, glass “divination”, seances and similar. These are bad techniques for a paranormal researcher to use, the ideas that surround these methods and theories are unscientific, biased, and in the worst case scenario, rooted in superstition.
What needs to be considered is that the people attending these events are members of the public and may not know any better. If the paranormal team hosting the event use incorrect methods of investigation and promote incorrect theories as factual then they are spreading pseudoscience and this is fundamentally wrong no matter the circumstances.
When members of the public attend paranormal events alongside members of a paranormal team then the investigator is often seen as an expert, or at least as somebody who knows what they are talking about. With that comes great responsibility and it is so bad that these researchers are abusing that authority and shirking that responsibility.
Shame on them.
Paranormal Investigation: Live
I’m feeling rather frustrated and annoyed and it’s all because of an advert I just saw on LivingTV.
It was for a program called ‘Paranormal Investigation: Live’ in which, the trailer says, two paranormal research teams – “one using spiritual methods & one science” will investigate one of England’s most haunted locations to see “what proof they can uncover” on “the most haunted night of the year”.
The above is what I could decipher from a commercial that contained many dramatic shots of the teams in question, scary looking horror story figures and lighting effects.
By the way, paranormal investigation and research has nothing to do with dramatic lighting, dark clothing and spooky looking figures. That’s just bullshit television production (but sadly you would get that impression looking at a cross sample of British paranormal research teams, their websites and investigation photos…) anyway, I digress.
There are several points I want to make about this upcoming show. Lets call them part psychic prediction, part me moaning and pointing out the obvious that many have probably missed.
1) Flawed methods
One of the teams will be using “spiritual methods” and the other “science”. I would imagine the spiritual methods will include séances, automatic writing, table tipping, dowsing, Ouija board, glass divination and the like.
The “science” may actually be them basing their time at the location around a scientific model of investigation. This is television though, so I doubt it. They’ll probably have some gadgets that they will claim show certain things that can be linked to ghosts being present. They’ll debunk a few things, “that was probably the wind”, “that was an illusion”, but they’ll still present it as using science, and by doing so will paint themselves as being experts and authoritative and knowledgeable. This means that when something happens that they cannot explain it’s more likely that viewers will more readily accept that the occurrence is paranormal “because they’re scientific and they’ve tried everything to explain it.”
Both of these methods of investigation will be wrong.
2) The cost of “balance”
If the “science” team do use a proper methodology then that will be great, but by introducing the “spiritualist methods team” into the equation the television show is presenting them as having equal footing and relevance.
They don’t.
I am very much against television shows that use woo ideas to balance out a situation or story to please the audience. Putting a scientist up against a homeopath for the case of balance is ridiculous, putting a dangerous anti-vaccination proponent against a doctor is awful, and so is putting (widely debunked and nonsensical) spiritualist methods on an equal footing with scientific methods of research as though both deserve the same respect and consideration.
They don’t.
3) Most haunted night. Give me a break.
Seriously, there is nothing spiritually significant about Halloween. Ghosts don’t get stronger on Halloween night, there is nothing to suggest this apart from folklore, superstition and religious mutterings. Nothing. So shut up about it already!
3) Most haunted location, my arse!
There are probably some strange and spooky stories attached to the location in question, but that doesn’t automatically mean it is haunted.
Too many people make the assumption that because something unexplained has happened it means that it is paranormal and thus they are haunted. There are so many leaps of logic in these assumptions that it hurts my head.
I hate to come across as being cynical, but these sorts of paranormal television shows always claim that the location they are visiting is one of the most haunted in the country, and there is no way that many locations can be classed as one of the most haunted in the country.
It would mean a phenomenal amount of locations have a hell of a lot of anomalous phenomena taking place. If they do, they’re certainly not reporting them all for proper examination, so their claims to be “the most haunted” is based purely on anecdotes and hearsay.
There is hardly ever any consideration into rational explanations that may have caused the odd occurrences at the locations in question.
No, instead, a handful of odd occurrences that haven’t been properly explored and have been labeled as ghosts (which isn’t really an explanation, if you think about it…) have captured the imagination of many.
The stories will have spread, people will have had their own similar experiences because they were influenced by what they have heard.
If you go looking for a ghost, it’s very likely you are going to encounter one, but it’s more likely it’s simply a product of your own mind and your expectations.
This is how a ghost story grows, this is how a building becomes “one of the country’s most haunted”, this is folklore in action.
4) Searching for proof and introducing biases.
The thing that bothers me the most about the trailer I saw was the claim that the two teams will be aiming to see “what proof they can uncover”.
This is the worst thing a paranormal researcher can do. Entering a location with the aim of proving there is a ghost or something as equally paranormal is a bad research method no matter if you use “spiritualist methods” or “science”.
Everything one does when searching for proof of the ghost/s will be biased because you’ve already reached a conclusion and will (often unknowingly) squish your findings so that they fit with that conclusion.
I predict that the two teams will both experience things that they cannot explain, they will try to rationalise them, but because they’ve already reached the conclusion that the place has ghosts there, they will come to the conclusion that the occurrences were paranormal in nature.
This in itself is a leap of logic because the idea that just because you cannot explain something makes it paranormal assumes that you know everything there is to know everything.
All in all, I very much doubt I will be watching this show because if I develop the need to watch a program with people pretending to investigate a supposed paranormally active location while getting scared I will pop on ‘Ghostwatch’ by Steven Volk. It’s more entertaining, there are bits that still scare me and it has the balls to admit that it’s not real.
It’s a shame the producers who keep churning out pathetic paranormal “reality” shows that are like a cheap re-enactment of ‘Ghostwatch’ wont do the same.
Before I close this blog post, I should point out that it is worth reading more about ‘Paranormal Investigation: Live’ over at badghosts.co.uk in this great article.
Bloody paranormal reality television shows…
Putting the ghostbox to the test
Earlier this week the ghostbox that I bought online arrived in the post. Many of my friends and fellow researchers thought I had gone mad by buying this thing but the fact of the matter is that these things have always interested me.
A ghost box is basically a pocket radio (or at least, that’s what it says on the back of mine) and it scans radio signals and feeds back a mix up of different radio programmes and broadcasts.
According to the leaflet that came with my ghostbox, spirits/ghosts use this noise and manipulate it to answer the questions they get asked.
It’s classed as a more direct method of spirit communication compared to something like Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) for which you use a recording device that you listen back to after the time of recording before picking out any answers or phrases from the spirits present at the time. The ghostbox, as you will hear, allows you to hear the supposed answers directly.
Below are three recordings named A, B & C. Each was taken on the ghost box.
A = the first recording, in which I was not present during the recording, thus meaning no questions were asked. B & C are recordings in which I was present and asked a generic set of questions for any ghosts present.
Before you begin this quick experiment get a pen and paper or open up notepad or similar on your computer.
Listen to recording A (with no questions asked) and note down any phrases or words that stand out to you.
I warn you, these recordings have some white noise and static and can be very noisy in parts. Oh, and did I mention, my voice is awful this week?
Did you hear anything? Did you note it down? Now listen to recording B (with questions being asked) and write down any responses you hear to the five questions I ask (one question is repeated twice)
Did you hear any answers in that one? Please make sure you noted them down and then listen to recording C (with questions asked again)
Did you hear any answers in that recording at all? Note them down and continue the experiment by reading beneath the picture below.
If you have written down answers you heard in recording C then take this moment to compare them with any words or phrases that stood out to you in recording A where no questions were asked.
Do the phrases or words match?
If not then they should because recording C is a cut down section of Recording A with questions recorded over the top of it in an editing programme.
If you heard answers to the questions I asked in recording C then they are not answers at all as there were no questions. This shows how easy it is to hear what you expect to hear in a mashup of random noise. It is auditory pareidolia.
That is what the ghostbox produces, a mix up of random noises that people put meaning into. If you ask “is there anybody here?” you would expect to hear “Yes” or “No” or something similar.
This is all the ghostbox produces, rather much like Electronic Voice Phenomena but with added help towards creating auditory illusions with the help of the clicking noise and the clippings of the broadcasts and transmitions.
I honestly cannot see how anybody could count this as a method of spirit communication without being seriously ignorant of the facts.
I don’t know if this can class as a real experiment as I don’t think it had enough controls in place, however, I do hope it allows you to see how easy it is to create answers out of nothing and it also allows my skeptical friends to hear exactly what a ghostbox sounds like (it’s even better live :p)
Why aren't ghosts naked?
Due to the recent launch of the website for BARsoc I have been doing a lot of looking around on paranormal websites for recent paranormal news and claims that I could potentially write an article about for the new site.
Of course, as you do when visiting websites dedicated to the paranormal, I came across a lot of claims that made me shake my head with dizzy confusion as the leaps of logic and odd conclusions made by ghost hunters built up. Being the mischievous demonic entity that I am, I put a quick status update on my facebook page saying:
Why are ghosts not naked? How to their clothes become ghosts? Why are there never ghosts under water? Where are the dinosaur ghosts? Why do ghosts from hundreds of years ago know how to speak and spell in our modern language? What is a ghost?
See, one thing I have learnt from being a host for Righteous Indignation is that a lot of the time, people who made claims that consist of little evidence or leaps of logic don’t always see the flaws in their logic until you question them. Those questions I posted were such things that some people had probably never considered when coming to a conclusion about ghosts.
A lot of people jump to the conclusion that ghosts are the spirits of dead people, but are they? How do we know? We don’t. It’s just a hunch some people have. Why aren’t ghosts naked? How do clothes become ghosts?
I wasn’t actually after answers because as far as I am concerned it is impossible to try to answer such questions because to do so would also involve leaps of logic that have no evidence to support them.
I guess, all in all, I was trying to point out with my status update that we, as researchers, shouldn’t be making assumptions about the things that are reported as ghosts because we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do.
Sure, we know a lot about psychology of hauntings and eye-witnesses, we know about the logical causes behind certain phenomenon, but if I were to ask someone who believed ghosts were dead people why the ghosts clothes continue to be on their bodies when they clothes weren’t living things they probably wouldn’t know. Or, they would launch into a further explanation about another theory that has holes in it too.
You can read blog posts based on the same themes to my status update here and here. I don’t necessarily agree with the ideas in the second.
Why aren’t ghosts naked? Probably because we don’t expect them to be and a lot of sightings and experiences with ghosts are caused by our expectations.
Also, I am sure there are cases where ghosts have been seen naked, or under water or do speak in old-fashioned language, but I have sat in numerous seances or ouija board sessions where ghosts that were hundreds of years old knew words that didn’t exist when they were alive, like O.K.
As for Loch Ness and the lake Champlain monster being dinosaur ghosts, that’s a theory I’ve never heard before…
I support…
