Given all the attempts made through history, to contact the dead, has anyone tried the email route? Rather than EVP, it seems that emails would take very little energy to deliver.
So, have any planet wide attempts (like SETI) been made? It would seem that such an experiment could be done very quickly.
Huh? Emailing the dead? I have a hard enough time getting email responses from the living. How exactly are the dead supposed to respond to an email? I thought this thread was about emails that somehow got misrouted and don’t show up until after someone has died… which is eerie enough for me.
I’m going to try to produce a serious response here.
I disagree with the premise that producing an email is somehow easier for a person to produce than other forms of communication like speech or writing or interpretive dance. Even if you’re still among the living, communicating by email requires a computer, an internet connection, and electricity.
The spirits of dead people would presumably have a hard time getting access to these material things. So I would think it would be much more difficult for them to communicate by email then it would be for them to communicate by speech.
As for the idea that a spirit could somehow just produce email without computers, I don’t see it. Can you produce an email without a computer using just the power of your mind? I can’t and I don’t know anyone else who can. I don’t see any reason why a dead person would somehow acquire knowledge and abilities they didn’t have when they were alive.
I believe the Romans did. It was called the AppEan Way but it proved to be a rather rocky, bumbling approach which ended in the gutter.
The dead are constantly emailing us, but it just goes to spam.
How do they get access to a larynx?
You mean, find some dead guy’s address, and mass email him all at once?
Worth a shot. I volunteer. Get everyone on this board together. After I kick the bucket, you all shoot me an email. See if gets my attention.
I’m not dead yet, but I’ll let you know when I am.
There’s no TCP/IP in heaven, let alone POP or IMAP. It’s just too insecure.
Thankfully, not only does Jesus save, he backs up.
Wait. No internet in heaven? Then how am I supposed to spend eternity, exactly?
I’m telling you, I’m getting more and more relieved that I checked “reincarnation” on that form they gave me.
Would it matter, even if you could?
Ghosts never just get to the point. They’re always leaving cryptic messages or doing weird, meaningless shit, like writing “IN THE RIVER” in blood on the bathroom mirror or stacking all your books in a Jenga-like tower in the middle of your dining room.
They’re never direct or explicit about anything.
That is just lovely!
Echoing off **Little Nemo **…
Since the advent of telegraphs then later telephones there have been ongoing ghost stories told of phantom messages or calls from the dead. And of calls from facilities long since dismantled.
IMO to credulous people the telephone, et al, are mysterious devices that run on something unsubstantial. Ghosts are mysterious beings that are made of insubstantial. Since it’s all magic, it must all be the same kind of magic. Therefore the dead can make phone calls.
It’s but a tiny leap from that to email. Which also seems pretty insubstantial once you get beyond the physical keyboard. Email entered by voice response feels especially insubstantial.
If we had a test for membership in the 21st Century human race, a lot of people would flunk out. Shame we can’t banish them all to the 12th century where they belong; we’d have a lot more room on the freeways and in the grocery stores. The nightly news would be a lot more calm as well.
I think in Mary Roach’s book “Spook”, she addresses various attempts to detect spirits via the electromagnetic spectrum, although I don’t recall that email was a modality that was tried. Certainly, there would be little ambiguity about the actual contents of the message, but tremendous skepticism about the source. It would be too easy to spoof such a message, and there is a question about the choice of a return email address.
It is the case, though, that zombies are frequent contributors on the SDMB.
I have a larynx. And I imagine I’ll take it with me when I die. So if I somehow exist as a ghost, I see no reason why I wouldn’t have a ghost larynx.
But a computer is not an integral part of me. There’s no reason why my computer should “pass over” with me.
On a related note, I don’t know why people expect ghosts to be dressed. Shouldn’t ghosts be naked?
What do you mean “we”? You might have a lot more room here in the 21st century but I’m pretty sure I’ll be back in the 12th.
It’s the hidden one percent - the people that actually understand how our modern technology works. The other ninety-nine percent of us are just using the stuff they build with no real idea how it works.
Well, if “can we contact ghosts via email” is the test, then I get to stay here. Because there’s no email in the 12th century. Duh!
I guess, in theory, that an email might be a probably form of communication if we assume that spirits are some form of electromagnetic disturbance. So, maybe they’d be able to interact with computers in a complex way by interacting with the way files are written or with the telecommunications. But the issue with that is that in order for that to be anything other than gibberish, they’d need to have a thorough understanding of how to manipulate those things in a way that can be understood. So, maybe if you happen to know an electrical engineer who was fascinated with the supernatural, maybe he’d try to communicate with email.
Other than that, they’d pretty much have to interact with a computer in the same way we would and, frankly, finding a computer that’s connected to the internet, logging in, drafting and sending an email just seems like way more work than doing any other thing they might be able to do to communicate if they can physically interact with the world. Except, if we take claimed past examples at face value, their ability to interact with the world is probably just too unreliable to do such a specific task as type.
So, all in all, I think if we’re going to try to contact the dead, emails just seem like a very unlikely avenue.
I just got ten emails from a dead colleague. Happens from time to time (when a bottish creature hacks a forgotten email account somewhere).
We should start by building a computer printer that is able to print directly onto walls.
(ETA: Preferably with a script font.)
That part’s trivial. It’s filling the inkjet cartridges with human or goat blood that’s tricky.