marduk
quelling chaos since 2352BC
Hey, I didn't think the show was that bad. She seemed a little messianic in her quest to "help" them, whoever they were -- a question I'd rather she explored more. There's absolutely no evidence I'm aware of that the apparitions or whatever are actually the leftover joie de vivre of our dearly departed. None.
I'm a skeptic who has actually seen what I would consider to be a ghost. I won't go into it here but nothing in the event led me to believe it was somebody that had died and not crossed over.
And no comprehensive theory of haunting can be complete without at least a discussion of the Philip experiment:
What I find particularly intriguing about this experiment is it's relationship to the UFO phenomenon: UFOs in the 1800s appeared as airships manned by foreigners, not metallic spacecraft from zeta reticuli. ETs were elves in the middle ages. You don't hear much about MIB's anymore, they seem to have been an artifact of cold war thinking.
On another thread I also mentioned CARET and the drones as hoaxes. People point out that others, including reputable people, have come forward and reported experiences going back years. What I find fascinating is that none of these people came forward until after all the (what I consider to be obviously hoaxed) photos were posted to the ATS forums. Perhaps our memory of these high strangeness events is itself somehow malleable as well?
Something about this phenomena - both UFO and ghostly - adapts itself to our expectations of it, which makes it very difficult to study. And very intriguing. But because of it's apparent malleability it is very easy to be lead astray -- this is why any theory (rather than belief system) put forward must be verifiable and testable in some way. Otherwise there is no way to be sure of any understanding that you have.
As they say, "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" -- the Buddha you meet won't be the real Buddha, just your symbolic idea of what Buddha is. If this stuff is important enough to matter, then it's important enough to test, verify, and "kill" our ideas of what we want it to be and replace them with what is.
I'm a skeptic who has actually seen what I would consider to be a ghost. I won't go into it here but nothing in the event led me to believe it was somebody that had died and not crossed over.
And no comprehensive theory of haunting can be complete without at least a discussion of the Philip experiment:
The Philip experiment - creating a ghostIn the 1970's, a group of Canadian parapsychologists wanted to attempt an experiment to create a ghost, proving their theory that the human mind can produce spirits through expectation, imagination and visualization.
The actual experiment took place in Toronto, Canada, in 1972, under the direction of the world-renown expert on poltergeists, Dr A. R. G. Owen.
The members of the experiment proposed an idea... by using extreme and prolonged concentration, they could create their ghost through a collective thought form: Non-physical entities which exist in either the mental or astral plane. In order to create this ghost and make it as 'real' as possible, it needed a life story; a background in which the ghost could 'relate' to.
They named the ghost they were attempting to bring into focus "Philip Aylesford" and created a tragic story, explaining to the fullest and in great detail, his life, and the few actions that lead to his tragic death.
Step two was contacting Philip. In September 1972, the group began their "sittings" and after some initial problems the group attempted to duplicate the atmosphere of a classic spiritualist séance. They dimmed the room's lights, sat around a table and surrounded themselves with pictures of the type of castle they imagined Philip would have lived in, as well as objects from that time period.
Within a few weeks, Philip made contact. Although he did not manifest in spiritual form, appearing as an apparition or ghost, he did make contact through a brief rap on the group's table. "Philip" answered questions that were consistent with his fictitious history, but was unable to provide any information beyond that which the group had conceived. However, "Philip" did give other historically accurate information about real events and people. The Owen group theorized that this latter information came from their own collective unconsciousness.
The sessions took off from there, producing a range of phenomena that could not be explained scientifically. His "spirit" was able to move the table, sliding it from side to side. On more than one occasion, the table chased someone across the room. All hands were clear of the table when this occurred.
In conclusion the experimenters were never able to prove the 'how' and the 'why' behind Philip's manifestation. Was Philip a direct result of the group's collective subconscious or perhaps did they conjure an actual entity that simply latched onto the story?
While some would conclude that they prove that ghosts don't exist, that such things are in our minds only, others say that our unconscious could be responsible for this kind of the phenomena some of the time.
Another point of view is that even though Philip was completely fictional, the Owen group really did contact the spirit world. A playful (or perhaps demonic, some would argue) spirit took the opportunity of these séances to 'act' as Philip and produce the extraordinary psychokinetic phenomena recorded.
Whatever caused the manifestation it seems that it adapted itself to the expectation of the audience, playing the role of the spirit they intended to contact. Since all was based on fiction it could not be the spirit of Philip so what else could it be?
What I find particularly intriguing about this experiment is it's relationship to the UFO phenomenon: UFOs in the 1800s appeared as airships manned by foreigners, not metallic spacecraft from zeta reticuli. ETs were elves in the middle ages. You don't hear much about MIB's anymore, they seem to have been an artifact of cold war thinking.
On another thread I also mentioned CARET and the drones as hoaxes. People point out that others, including reputable people, have come forward and reported experiences going back years. What I find fascinating is that none of these people came forward until after all the (what I consider to be obviously hoaxed) photos were posted to the ATS forums. Perhaps our memory of these high strangeness events is itself somehow malleable as well?
Something about this phenomena - both UFO and ghostly - adapts itself to our expectations of it, which makes it very difficult to study. And very intriguing. But because of it's apparent malleability it is very easy to be lead astray -- this is why any theory (rather than belief system) put forward must be verifiable and testable in some way. Otherwise there is no way to be sure of any understanding that you have.
As they say, "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" -- the Buddha you meet won't be the real Buddha, just your symbolic idea of what Buddha is. If this stuff is important enough to matter, then it's important enough to test, verify, and "kill" our ideas of what we want it to be and replace them with what is.