I <3 Week in Weird

I’ll come right out and say it – I’m a big fan of the team over at WhoForted? Blog and have been for a while now. Mainly because of the fart-based pun in the name, partly because Dana does an awesome BigFoot call, but also because of the constant stream of quality content produced and uploaded to the site – genuinely interesting stories from the weird world we live in that you probably wont see talked about in many other places. In 2011 WhoForted? Blog premiered the documentary ‘The Bigfoot Hunter: Still Searching‘ which you can watch here for free. It’s really interesting, insightful and fun.

Not too long after that they launched a new venture called ‘Planet Weird’ which promises to engage the strange, and investigate questions such as ‘How does Bigfoot get it on? Why do space aliens want to stick things up our butts so badly? If you cast a curse on your ex-girlfriend and she bites it, can you go to jail?’. I’m very excited. They released a sneak peak of the project being released this Summer that really whets the appetite. It reminded me hugely of the many hours I spent out in the field getting no results only for something completely unexpected to happen that makes your heart pound and the adrenaline rush through your system. You can watch it below. It makes me want to go out monster or ghost hunting, like the old days. Maybe I should…

Anyway, I’m not here to reminisce. I wanted to let my readers know about the newest project from those Mystery Gang rejects over at WhoForted? Blog. Greg and Dana have started working on weekly video round-ups of the strange news breaking across the globe. Called ‘Week in Weird’ you can catch the videos on their website or by subscribing to them on Youtube.

I’m not just kissing ass here, but I think you should check it out. I know I’m a skeptic and I’m supposed to not like weird shit like this, but I do and I’m unapologetic. The WhoForted? Blog tea probably wouldn’t describe themselves as skeptics in the way I do, but I think we take the same approach to ghosts, monsters, aliens etc.

Weird stuff happens to people all around the world every single day and it deserves out attention. Right now somewhere someone is freaking about because something just went down. I love keeping up to date with weird news and WhoForted? Blog is right up there in the top websites I check out on a regular basis, along with The Anomalist, The Gralien Report, The Spooky Isles, Cryptomundo and Daily Grail to name a few. Do I always agree with them? No, but we’re not here to always agree. Weird stuff happens, and unless we pay attention to it, it remains a mystery.

Below is the latest Week in Weird, and the first can be found here. Enjoy.

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Posted in: Musings, Paranormal

On Psychics, Failures, and ‘Gloating’

Psychics mess up.

That’s what American Psychic Sylvia Browne did in 2004 when she told the mother of missing teenager Amanda Berry that her daughter was dead. She wasn’t dead, and was in fact rescued yesterday after a decade with her captors. Lots of media outlets have run stories about Browne’s incorrect prediction and how it echoes her previous failed prediction that Sean Hornbeck was dead prior to him being found very much alive.

Today I have seen it said that speaking out about Browne’s mistakes is gloating on the part of skeptics, and this makes me angry.

The media coverage about psychic failures is an asset to skeptical commentary about Psychics and Psychic trickery, and if you are opposed to commentary about Psychic Trickery then you are as bad as the Psychic Tricksters that you want to go unchallenged in public.

People fall victim to so-called psychics every day. If it isn’t as a result of a dodgy psychic reading it’s a psychic mail scam sucking Senior Citizens of their life savings. If it isn’t Syliva Browne saying missing kids are dead, it’s Joe Power failing to predict that Karen Matthews had played a role in her daughters disappearance while posing for a photo with her during the search for the missing schoolgirl.

...awkward.

…awkward.

If it isn’t people committing suicide because their local psychic will no longer allow them to talk to their dead son because they’ve run out of money (that they spent on psychics) it’s extremely ill people stopping their medication because the psychic says their dead father says they don’t need it. If it’s not a psychic channeling a fictional character it could be a whole load of psychics over a number of decades telling the family of murdered child that they know where his missing remains are when they don’t.

All of these examples are true stories that I have been told since I launched Project Barnum, the website that helps people learn how to spot psychic trickery. I can recall a conversation with Alan Bennett, whose brother Keith was murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, in which he told me he has had to deal with many psychics over the years who have never proven remotely useful or accurate.

“I have never accepted the views of those people but had dealings with them in the past purely for the sake of my mother, who was desperate and prepared to try anything and listen to anybody. As far as I and my family are concerned all they ever did was add to her distress and our own.”

So when high profile psychics make mistakes lets talk about them and promote the mistakes as examples of a bigger problem, but let’s not assume that cases like the Sylvia Browne failures are unique. They’re not. Tackling this problem isn’t easy and there’s no quick solution to it. People will continue to be harmed by people claiming to be psychic, and most of this harm will happen away from the newspapers where people will never learn about it. Pensioners will continue to be robbed of every penny they have for the hope of hearing from their deceased spouse, psychics will continue to harass the Bennett family, and high profile “psychics” like Browne and like Power will offer their opinions when they should just keep their mouths shut.

If speaking out about high profile examples of this is gloating, then you just watch me gloat.

p.s. if you have a moment you might sign this petition asking the Government to help the Bennett family find Keith and give him a proper burial? Please?

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Posted in: Musings

The internet hasn’t killed the Loch Ness Monster.

nessie

I’ve just read a really interesting opinion piece on The Guardian website by Philip Hoare that questions if the internet has killed the Loch Ness Monster. I can somewhat identify with Hoare’s feelings that the mystery and wonder brought forth by monster stories gracing the headlines has disappeared. A memory that always stands out strongly for me was being a young child when a monster scare broke out in the village I lived in. I can remember being at Primary School but I forget my exact age, but I do know that it was before the internet was a thing in my house. The local paper was (and still is) The Wiltshire Times and they ran a story on a Big Cat that had been seen prowling the fields near my house and right next to the warehouse that my mother worked in. I will filled with pure fascination and terror that can never be replicated by a story breaking on the internet.

However I’m not so keen to consider this a terrible thing. I believe that any decent Paranormal researcher, Fortean, Cryptozoologist or whatever they identify as wants to know what is really causing what is or has been witnessed, whether it be a ghost, monster or UFO sighting they are dealing with. There are, of course, those who revel in the pseudo-scientific and the answers they fancy that aren’t necessarily logical, but don’t be mistaken in thinking that they represent every researcher out there. The majority of researchers I know are rational thinkers who aren’t led by their biases.

When a new monster sighting occurs we now have masses of information at our finger tips. More than that even… we have the experience of so many others at our finger tips too. I have witnessed the buzz of activity borne when it is reported somewhere in the world that a strange beast has been spotted, caught on film or captured. Communities of people who were never connected before the internet swap notes and speculations, the reporters and eye-witnesses are easy to track down, experts around the world – biologists, marine biologists, ecologists – are contactable immediately, and we can examine what happened and where it happened in great detail because all the details we need are often online. More often than not researchers can discover what it is that has really happened – whether it be hoax, misidentification or the next new discovery of a real monster that has never been seen before! If it’s going to happen, then I truly believe that now is the time.

Before the internet made it possible to connect to the bigger world I was a young girl who clung to mystery as though it were essential, not because I loved the mystery but because I loved the ‘what if?’. Today modern technology and social media make that ‘what if?’ easier to answer. Before, there were ‘what if?‘s that went unanswered and led me down the path to becoming a pseudo-scientific ghost hunter, and as a result I wasted so much money and time on the wrong questions. So yes, although it is a shame that a lot of the mystery in these stories is now lost by the instant media that our world has come to know, I feel it has been replaced with something much more valuable and important – the ability to answer the mystery once and for all. I know of nothing more wondrous that resolved curiosity.

On a parting note – I visited Drumnadrochit last year, and Nessie is looking as well as she ever did ;)

photo credit: Artist unknown (if you know, let me know)

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Posted in: Musings, Paranormal, Skepticism / Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How it is.

If you laugh at people because they believe in stupid things you’re laughing at me six years ago. I cannot help but take that personally.

Unless you went on ghost hunts with me you probably wont be able to grasp the complexity of the beliefs I held about ghosts, afterlife, psychics and more. I wouldn’t expect you to, but I would expect a decent person to withhold judgement before mocking me. Sure, I don’t get mocked for the things I believe in now, but I used to. I remember that and I still feel the anger and resentment.

When skeptics mock believers, they’re mocking my people - and because skeptics are often my people too, it makes things very weird and I often feel disconnected from what I am supposed to feel a part of. Of course, when people mock those who believe weird stuff they don’t necessarily intend to be nasty, it’s just a reaction to concepts outside our realm of what is considered normal, but I guess for me all that stuff is part of normal life. I don’t believe in it, but I get it. It’s part of my reality & my past.

When people leave feedback for the Be Reasonable podcast that says our guests are crazy, that we should have gone for the jugular, or that we’re doing skepticism a disservice by not pulling our guests to pieces (actual feedback…) it makes me feel disappointed. I’m not interested in going for the jugular or humiliating people, but that’s what some people want and believe skepticism stands for. I got involved with “organised skepticism” when I stopped believing in ghosts, psychics etc. because I wanted to rationally analyse information or claims and challenge misinformation when and if I could, but what I encountered instead people redefining the word ‘skepticism’ to meet their perception of what it is.

Recently, Rebecca Watson and Barry Karr attended a Big Foot convention and Rebecca made some funny tweets about a woman who was introduced as the First Lady of Bigfoot at the conference. It turned out that woman was a friend of mine and it really demonstrated to me the two almost incompatible worlds that I am trying to exist in. When my friend found out that the skeptics in attendance had tweeted about her she was horrified that they’d be horrible to her and that made me sad. I knew Rebecca and Barry wouldn’t be, but that automatic fright of skeptics was disappointing… and not totally surprising.

There are skeptics I identify with and lots who do great work, and this isn’t one of those blog posts where I claim I am no longer a skeptic because I will continue to be a skeptic by default through the use of… you know… skepticism. Yet, do I feel as though the modern skeptical movement represents me? No. I think it’s just best that people accept that my skepticism doesn’t define me and it doesn’t make me like them through some sort of automatic association.

That’s how it is.

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Posted in: Musings, Paranormal, Skepticism