Of course, any intelligent person looking at that would spot that much of the fault lies with the organization itself. You do yourself no favours by constantly citing them.
And you still haven’t answered my question. Where did your quotes come from. Either cite the people who said them, or admit that you made them up.
Motion activated cameras are a bad idea. Stream it and record all data coming in. If not, I guarantee that there will be something that supposedly happened, but the camera will not have recorded it.
I like this suggestion. Added.
Peter this bit of nastiness is uncalled for. If you have a problem with Czarcasm, you know the location of the Pit.
No warning, but stop this now, please.
Ellen Cherry
IMHO Moderator
That is actually why I suggested it. If it doesn’t trigger a motion eye, then it is something that is completely violating every law of physics as we understand them. A solid object moving is hard evidence that can actually be investigated. Though perhaps in hindsight it wouldn’t be a bad idea to simply double up each cam. One streaming, one motion activated. Then compare the time stamp to the supposed “event”.
Theoretically this should confirm or deny the existence of an event, as the woo believers should be out of the home, and the investigators cannot report something that is not documented somehow.
For example: Claim: at 12:30 we all heard what sounded like something walking down the stairs.
Check streaming video: Nothing
Check motion cam: Nothing
Check digital recorder: Noises, that do have a pattern similar to something moving on the stairs.
Start debunking the claim.
If the pattern went:
Check streaming video: Nothing
Check motion cam: Nothing
Check digital recorder: Nothing
Dismiss claim as fluke, move on but note the event to look into possible explanations for such an odd noise pattern that was not recorded, but agreed to be experienced, at a later date.
I apologise. I was mistaken.
I was under the impression that this is the Straight Dope, where we fight ignorance and cite our claims. It seems I’m on some different message board, where people are allowed to make stuff up, and pass unchallenged.
I will follow your instructions, and not ask Czarcasm to cite his sources for those quotes again.
He did not present them as sourced quotes, but as facetious predictions of what people might say. You are not unintelligent. You know this.
Speaking of the paranormal, have there been any updates from that experimental trial where they were going to stick objects high up on shelves in the operating room, so that patients whose extra-corporeal selves floated upwards during near-death experiences could take note of them, and once revived, describe them and thus prove that they really did go out of body? (I enjoy the thought of what informed consent for this study must be like. “In case the surgery doesn’t go so well and you have a near-death experience, would you mind telling us what you saw in the OR, assuming we’re able to revive you?”
Violating the laws of physics is not a problem likely to give pause to most spook/spirit world believers. It doesn’t bother supporters of homeopathy, where the laws of physics are constantly violated by the assumption that extreme dilutions of “medicine” (to the point where probably no molecules at all of the substance remain in the homeopathic drug) are more physiologically active than a big dose.
It had occurred to me that we should consider the possibility that Peter is on some other message board (in a parallel universe), where posters are telling him entirely different things than have been stated here.
That would explain Peter’s exasperation with what we haven’t said and non-responsiveness to what we have said.
Probably not sufficient as proof of the paranormal, but worth further study. 
Exactly. He made them up. I did indeed know this.
You are not unintelligent either. You should understand what’s wrong with presenting strawmen as an argument, and why I object to it.
Nothing has come of it at all(yet), but it is still sited as one of many studies used to bolster woo beliefs. “if there was nothing to it, why are there so many studies?” This is where you have to pin down the claimant and ask if any completed studies have shown evidence of the paranormal. Let’s say 100,000 people over a period of 2000 years have attempted to levitate-does either figure actually matter if no one to date has actually levitated? When do you get to say that it just isn’t worth the time and effort to debunk each and every claim?
If your test of this particular building goes off as planned, and nothing paranormal is found, what would be your conclusion?
Frankly I’m baffled by your stance on this. We’ve all heard those excuses a hundred times regarding paranormal experiences, are you saying that you haven’t? Here’s just two examples that took me about 20 seconds to find:
That the documented “activity” is the result of coincidence and natural phenomena. Further, if the usual suspects, (high EMF’s, infrasound, pressure variations between rooms, etc) were eliminated, I would have no option but to conclude that either there is a poorly understood natural phenomena occurring or we have somehow been hoaxed/ fooled/ lied to about one or more of the alleged incidents. If the evidence was strong, and really weird then it would be high on the list to investigate further. If it was weak, then we could recommend some tradesmen consultants be utilized to figure out where the issue is coming from.
Calling something “paranormal” would require an extremely high level of repeated interaction, and would only be made after a thorough consult and investigation into probable hoaxing. Even then, I would be extremely hesitant to apply that label.
missed the edit:
If you mean that we got nothing at all? Then the alleged “activity” is coincidence, and was not documented at all by the team. There is nothing strange or unusual about the property, and we cannot lend any credence to the claims of the owner. I would recommend that the owner document all further problems with date, time, general weather conditions, and what and to whom it happened. If there is a pattern they can call us back later to investigate something more specific. Such a place would be very low on the list to return to, if ever.
I’m aware that the true believers will simply hand wave it away, but the point is to eliminate common causes while documenting anything truly unusual for further research. My thoughts are that after a great many of these places are proven to be coincidence, that the claims will start dying off, slowly but surely. It also would be a great help to maintain a catalogue of these types of phenomena to help out people debunk their own “mysterious” phenomena.
Actually, all you’ll have discovered is that the ghost wasn’t active at the time that you recorded it.
So far, 100% of case studies of supposed hauntings have failed to find a ghost. How many total should be investigated until the 100% failure rate is taken to be valid enough to discontinue testing and draw a conclusion?
This is it. Woo of the gaps. You can’t disprove ghosts any more than you can disprove God. There is no way to fasilfy either of these things absolutely. We can only show that a particular attempt to prove the positive has failed.
It reminds me of the various attempts to test the efficacy of prayer. When the studies show no difference in effect between sick people who are prayed for and those who are not in double-blind tests (actually one study showed a statistically insignificant advantage for those who were NOT prayed for), then the prayer believers just come up with a million different excuses for why the tests weren’t ideally controlled, and that God himself knew what was going on, or that maybe people really were secretly praying for those in the non-prayer group, etc. No amount of failure to prove the positive can ever be enough. There are always gaps for woo to retreat to.
:rolleyes:
Stop being a jerk. It’s not winning you any friends and it’s making me grouchy.
You know. I’m starting to get annoyed. My default position is that ghosts do not exist. I believe I’ve said so this entire thread, and that I’m not attempting to validate their existence. However, if someone is scared and having a problem that they do not understand, then scoffing at them is counterproductive. If they want to retreat to the gaps, bully for them. If a thorough investigation turns up even one hitherto unknown natural phenomena that causes these types of “events” then it’s worth it completely. If you turn up even one unknown type of vibration that messes with the human brain, then it’s worth it. Every little nibble at the edges of the gap shrinks it.
It is not possible to investigate all of them, and it isn’t worth the time, cost or effort to try. I I don’t know what you mean by a “having a problem.” but I don’t care if they’re scared. They can call us when they actually have proof of something.