Paranormal Shows

I used to be a believer in the paranormal. I thought that ghosts probably existed, and that they could be potentially caught on video or other electronic devices. I thought maybe an OBE was possible, or a NDE, or telepathy, spoon benders, and all that jazz. Well I've grown a lot in the last few years. I don't buy into anything without scientific proof. I used to say I'd have to "see it to believe it," but even that's not the truth. I have seen weird things, but although strange, I  firmly believe that there has to be a scientific explanation, and that it's not suitable enough to just dismiss everything as being supernatural. That's the problem with so many people today, that they're not willing to reconsider what they've seen or felt. They just say "it's paranormal" and that's that. This is a problem.

In the past if you mentioned to someone that you had seen a ghost you no doubt would have faced ridicule; it wasn't as acceptable as it is today. Today you might end up on television or a popular radio talk show.  So why is this an issue? Well, the first real problem is that none of it really has anything to do with science. It's always about entertainment.

A good example would be shows about Bigfoot; it's always a team of middle aged enthusiasts who have no professional training. They just interview a few "witnesses" then go out into the woods, use infrared cameras and sound recorders, and jump at anything that they believe resembles a Bigfoot creature. It's something that ANY of us could do, and it never has results. Eye-witness testimonials on the paranormal are practically worthless, and for a number of reasons. We live in the age of the attention-whore, where people want a million Youtube hits on their personal channel. This means that people will say just about anything to achieve personal stardom, even if it makes them look like idiots. The internet is flooded with faked ghosts videos and bull shit experiences. I myself went onto a chat room when I was a teenager and made up a ghost story that me "and a group of friends" had, the so-called investigators took it as entirely truthful. So ask yourself, why should we believe everything that people say? You could counter it by saying "well, let's just put them on a lie-detector," as cute an idea as that is, it's a proven fact that even a lie-detector tests can have inconclusive results. So in reality, there is no way to tell for sure if someone is lying. What's more, some people can convince themselves that what they've seen, or even lied about, is true.

Memory is a weird thing, and over time changes. Studies have shown that people who witness notable events can alter facts about the event over time because their memory fails them. I have a friend who says they remember being in the 10th grade during the 9/11 attacks, which I said couldn't be possible because of our age difference; we proved by tracking the dates that they were not in that grade during the attack. Another example of this is a girl from my elementary school, who said she explicitly remembers owning a pink pencil case a young child, although her mother swears she never did. Between the two, who do we believe? The little girl who owned the pencil case, or the mother who bought it? Children are known for imagining things, and how likely is it that you remember buying something as trivial as a pencil case. Now think of an individual who sees something in the pitch black dark of night, they're already vulnerable because they can't see very well, and their lack of visibility makes things harder to discern. They claim they saw an eight foot monster with red eyes, are we supposed to believe them? I'm sure they saw something, but I'm not so sure they saw a monster. This just another reason eye-witness testimony of the paranormal is just about worthless.

The other problem is that these shows are using a kind of pseudo-science. They carry hoards of equipment, but really, what does any of it actually do? In order to prove something scientifically you need to be able to measure the thing, or at the very least reproduce it through testing. Nobody is actually doing this. You might step up and say, well what about Fact or Faked? They try to disprove things on their show through testing! Well, that's not scientific. All they do on that show is attempt to recreate the ghostly encounter through filming tricks. I could do that too, with Adobe After Effects. There's nothing scientific about that show, although I appreciate their attempts to de-bunk things. The Bigfoot researchers carry infra-red cameras to detect heat signatures of animals. What the hell does that even do? So you see a heat signature, then what? That doesn't prove you've seen a Bigfoot, heat signatures don't show you exactly what you're looking at, it could be anything. What about sound recordings? Well, although you can have the sound analyzed, and see what range the sound exists in, that doesn't give you a whole lot either, especially when you're just a nobody who knows nothing about animals or sounds. What about EMF detectors? Can they help during a paranormal investigation? I don't see why they could. Someone theorized that ghosts consisted/absorbed electric energy from around them, and that it could be measured on an EMF detector within a specific range. Honestly though, that's JUST a theory, and what the hell do they really know about electro-magnetic fields? Electro-magnetic fields are everywhere and produced by thousands of different objects. Even if you cut all the power off in a house.




So really, there isn't anything anybody is doing right now that actually proves anything. It's just pseudo-science and a whole lot of bullshit. I think the worst offender I have ever seen is this ghost-hunting show on the Travel Channel, Ghost Adventures. It's so pathetically bad. The guys are douchebags, but furthermore, they don't even pretend to try to analyze their materials. I saw one of them record an EVP and play it back in the same room immediately afterward, shit his pants and shouted that he heard the ghost, crystal clear. He doesn't even approach it with a skeptical eye, he doesn't analyze it, he takes it as proof with no testing or anything. If that idiot were a scientist, he'd certainly be a piss-poor scientist. Real scientists set out to achieve results, are unbiased, and keep an open mind (meaning they are skeptical, because "skeptical" does not mean you are 100% a non believer, it means you need more information before you know where you stand on the subject).

So in this world, where apparently we are all too ready to accept things for fact, I implore you to do research and ask questions! Don't always believe what you see or hear, always look for realistic explanations, because nine times out of ten, it can be explained with real science.