Sincerely self-deluded does not equal fraud. The man could well have been totally mistaken in his interpretations of his experiences, or the level of credence he gives other people’s stories, but if he was not trying to mislead anyone then he is not a fraud.
- Just because they “seem” to be honest doesn’t necessarily mean they are.
- No one disputes that plenty of people actually believe they’ve seen ghosts. Sincerity is not meaningful evidence.
There’s no evidence of any kind, not just “no inconrovertable proof.” There’s nothing at all.
Like what?
What events?
What would they be measuring?
Was he willing to subject himself to scientific testing? Was he ever able to prove a single thing he claimed? Who do you think has the burden of proof here?
Individul pieces of his act can be definitively shown to be fraudulent, though. For instance, he was a big proponent of the Amityville hoax, and in fact, is the one who came up with the complete fiction about the house being built on an Indian buril ground. The guy was a full metal con artist. I don’t know what you would accept as evidence proving him a fraud, or why you think there would be particularly any more noteriety in specifically targeting him for “exposure” than any other fake psychic, and I think you’re confused about who ahs the burden of proof anyway.
It’s too bad you think that way. Us true believers in the nonexistence of ghosts have tried our best to convert you, but ultimately the decision is up to you. The Cult of Nonbelievers in Ghosts will be waiting for you once you’re ready to join us. Other cults you’re welcome to join:
The Cult of Nonbelievers in the Tooth Fairy
The Cult of Nonbelievers in UFOs
The Cult of Nonbelievers in the Flying Spaghetti Monster
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Bigfoot
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Queen Elizabeth Being Reptilian
The Cult of Nonbelievers in the Earth being Flat
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Elves
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Unicorns
The Cult of Nonbelievers in the Greek Gods
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Gremlins
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Psychic Powers
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Geo-centrism
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Wizards and Witches
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Trees That Talk Only When Humans Aren’t Around
The Cult of Nonbelievers in Vampires
…man, I could go on all day. There’re a lot of 'em! And the fun we have, sitting around discussing things we don’t believe in. You’re missing out!
This would be more impressive if you weren’t the poster child of Got Nothin’.
And the fact that you have to pretend that I just said “Once upon a time, somebody, somewhere did something or other???” proves that you yourself know that the stuff I did mention blows your position into nothingness, not the way that the hidden bombs in the holographic planes did to the twin towers on 9/11, but instead the way that a slight breeze dismisses a small substanceless whiff of smoke.
If Hans Holzer is so good at finding ghosts, why doesn’t he bring along measuring devices, cameras, and recorders?
They did this in Poltergeist, and you could see ghosts and spirits and stuff, and the needles really deflected and everything. That’s science!
You can’t do that most of the time though, it scares off the spooks. And everyone knows that your science can’t measure our woo. Except if something resembling science seems to prove what we want, then science is OK. And there really are ghosts, except They don’t want us to know.
Hans Holzer’s accounts are too detailed to be based on fraud. In his books he will claim that people had experiences with ghosts and asked him to investigate He will show up with a medium, who will talk to the ghost.
Near where I live there used to be a bar and restaurant that was at least as old as the Civil War. One day when I was there alone with the owner, he claimed that several times when he was alone after closing hours, and working in the basement office he would hear the door open, and a woman and two men would walk in. They would be laughing and talking, and they would play jazz music on the jukebox.
The problem, of course, is that the bar and restaurant was closed. The jukebox did not have jazz selections. Several days later, I was back, and I was along with an employee. He told me that he had had similar experiences, but he thought there were three men and a woman. He also said that he used to live in an apartment directly above from the bar and restaurant, and that sometimes when he was there after closing hours he would hear jazz from below.
They may have been making that up, but my sense of things is that they were telling me what they believed. A week later, I tried to get the owner to tell me more, but he seem embarrassed to, as though I would think he was delusional.
I wanted to take a sleeping bag to that place, and spend the night there, but it soon closed. Months later, I mentioned all that to a bar tender at another bar. She said, “Oh yes, that place is haunted,” as though there was nothing unusual about that. She told me about an experience of her own there, and said that someone had been murdered there.
That is the kind of phenomenon Hans Holzer investigated, or at least claimed to.
I lave lived in old houses. I never had occult experiences in them. When I was younger I liked to visit cemeteries after dark. The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I nearly got arrested. :eek:
Wait, what? I can come up with as complicated a lie as you please, given time.
How do you figure that? Why do you think people can’t invent details? Have you ever seen a movie? Lots of detail in those.
Yes he claims these things. This is evidence of what?
They were most likely shining you on.
There exists an entire class of people, called “writers” or “novelists” who actually make a living by creating stories that are extremely detailed, even moreso than factual accounts can be.
Be that as it may, I have a couple of Holzer’s older books as reading material in the downstairs lavatory. A typical story seems to be that someone tells Hans about a ghost, he brings in a medium, and the medium tells a story completely different than what the homeowners were saying. Hans then ties himself into knots trying to reconcile the two “accounts,” with a lot of vague references and general statements about the time when the house was built.
Entertaining as bathroom reads,but I have read many better ghost stories. (My own experiences are boring, but everyone on the ovenight shift at one of my jobs had seen the Man in the Brown Suit at some point or another. I could extrapolate a lot, but we all agree that we seemed to see a man wearing brown pass by the end of an aisle in the warehouse. No closer encounters, sorry.)
Ghosts are not real.
Unfortunately, because they would be kind of cool. Assuming they weren’t horrible demonspawn hellbent on stealing souls and dragging them through the nine circles of Hell.
It doesn’t matter to the woos. If the story is elaborate, with no holes, they will say that must be true because of the many details. If the story is spotty and full of holes, they will say that it must be true because a fake story would be too elaborate to be real.
I consider myself a sane, happy go lucky person with no history of mental health issues. After a six month long experience in the house I used to live in last year. I absolutely know that there is paranormal phenomena that can not be explained. Yes, I absolutely believe in ghosts. I have EVPs taken by myself and also with teams of paranormal investigators who investigated my house that are unexplainable and mindblowing.
Before the investigation, there were numerous things that happened to me from being pushed, touched, hair pulled, hearing growling (by far the scariest thing to happen to me at 4 am in bed) seeing solid black shadows float across the room at incredible speeds and many other unusual events. The EVPs captured were also incredible. I’m in the process of getting them on the internet. I’m talking about EVPs that are full sentences and are clear as a bell and I was there when they were captured. They could not have been altered in any way.
So it’s easy to say, “no they don’t exist, show me the evidence” when you’ve never experienced something like this, but once it happens to you…pfff…you’ll be singing a different tune. Trust me.
Trust me, I won’t. I hope you haven’t given those ghostbuster scammers too much of your money.
My personal favorite jazz tune from the Civil War is the “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-To-Die-In-Pickett’s-Charge” Rag.
I too have encountered the supernatural. Perhaps the voice of God, or a ghost. It was over thirty years ago at a Waldbaum’s grocery store in New York. It was late, and the store was nearly deserted. As I pushed a cart down the aisle, from nowhere I heard a voice distinctly say ‘Buy 1 pound of roast beef or smoked ham at the deli counter, and you will get a pound of potato salad or macaroni salad for free’. Startled, I looked up and down the aisles for someone who could have spoken those words, but no one was there. I assumed it was some sort of hallucination. But moments later, I heard the voice again, repeating the same message, and this time adding, ‘Hurry, the store will close in 15 minutes’. I don’t know why, but as I passed the deli counter I thought it couldn’t hurt to buy some roast beef. So I ordered a pound of the roast beef. After wrapping it up and handing it to me, to my enduring surpise, the deli worker said to me, ‘You can have a pound of potato salad or macaroni salad for free’.
If that is not proof of the supernatural, I don’t know what is.
Did the voice also thank you for shopping at Waldbaum’s?