Dear Stevenyc:
Thanks for your help.
Respectfully,
Richard
(The Wanderer)
Poltergeists on video?
by ButtLight 38 Replies latest jw friends
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The wanderer
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Terry
poltergeist
One of the more famous cases in poltergeist history is the case of the Seaford Poltergeist, investigated by J. B. Rhine's associate J. G. Pratt. One of the stranger events attributed to this poltergeist was the spontaneous popping of bottles and the subsequent spilling of their contents in different rooms of a house at 1648 Redwood Path in Seaford, Long Island, New York. The paranormal investigators and the press who covered the story were baffled. Milbourne Christopher notes that "as a study of human response to the unexplained," the Seaford case is "without parallel. What does an average family do when strange events, apparently of supernormal origin, upset their normal pattern of living? What solutions are offered? How does the public at large react?" (Christopher 1970: 150). J. G. Pratt put it this way:
[T]he Seaford case may in the long run be remembered as an episode that contributed to the advance of the psi revolution by serving as a gauge of public interest in such matters. We reached - I repeat - no conclusion regarding the case itself, but one conclusion was brought home to us with the force of a new volcano erupting in one's own back yard: people everywhere are intensely interested in such unexplained human experiences as the Herrmanns had to endure! And they are interested in the scientific approach to these things - to the whole problem of psi phenomena - as shown by the fact that it was not until the two halves of the "atomic charge," the case itself on the one hand and the investigator from the Parapsychology Laboratory on the other hand, came together that the potential energy exceeded the critical level and there resulted the explosion of publicity heard around the world.*
Christopher notes that the only ones in the house when the first bottle-popping and liquid-spilling events occurred were Mrs. Lucille Herrmann and her two children, aged twelve and thirteen. When they investigated the popping sounds they found in one room an open bottle of holy water on its side with liquid spilling out. The cap was "some distance away." In another room two more open and pouring bottles were found. In the kitchen, they found a spilled bottle of liquid starch and in the basement there was a spilled container of liquid bleach.
A few days after the initial incident, Mr. Herrmann was chatting with his son, 12-year-old Jimmy, who was brushing his teeth. Mr. Herrmann saw two bottles move off a shelf and onto the floor. A few weeks later a visitor was watching TV with the children when a porcelain figurine took off from an end table and flew about two feet before falling to the ground. The visitor swore the children weren't near enough to the item to have moved it. The same thing happened a few days later while Mr. Herrmann was in New York to appear on the Jack Paar show. Somebody suggested that the cause might be high-frequency radio signals. Robert Zider, "a technician associated with the builders of a 35-billion [electron?]-volt synchrotron at the Brookhaven Laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission" came to do a scientific investigation. But he showed up with a dowsing rod and speculated that jet airplanes might be having supersonic impacts on a local reservoir which might be sending out energy waves that traversed underground streams that flowed beneath the Herrmann's house (Christopher 1970: 153).
Milbourne Christopher, then president of the Society of American Magicians, heard Mr. Herrmann's plea on a television show for someone to solve the problem. So, he called the detective on the case and told him who he was and that he could duplicate all the events the Herrmann's were experiencing "by perfectly natural means." But, according to the detective, Mr. Herrmann didn't want a magician in the house. He said he wanted the government or scientists to help him, not "charlatans, mystics, mediums, or magicians." To which Christopher said: " I could understand his objection to the first three categories, but not the fourth" (Christopher 1970: 156). When Mrs. Connolly phoned to advise the Herrmanns to cover up their chimney, however, Mr. Herrmann had a chimney cap installed to no avail.
Even though Mr. Herrmann was not interested in Christopher's offer to duplicate the phenomena, the media were and the magician did six demonstrations for them. When Pratt visited Christopher "a china figurine leapt from a bookcase shelf and landed some eight feet away." Pratt knew it was magic but he couldn't figure out the trick. For those interested in more details, I suggest you read Christopher's delightful and enlightening book ESP, Seers & Psychics: what the occult really is. I will mention just one thing: some items that people think move on their own are actually thrown. People often think they see what they did not actually see. And we are ill-equipped to locate the precise direction of a sound because of the design of our outer ear (New Scientist, "Animal superpowers," 24/31 December 2005).
Other examples of poltergeists that turned out to be hoaxes or pranks are the Amityville hoax and the case of Tina Resch.
William Roll investigated the Resch case and declared it authentic. In 1984, Tina was 14 years old and living in Columbus, Ohio. Newspaper reports testified to her chaotic household where telephones would fly, lamps would swing and fall, all accompanied by loud noises. James Randi also investigated the case and found that Tina was hoaxing her adoptive parents and using the media attention to assist her quest to find her biological parents.
A video camera from a visiting TV crew that was inadvertently left running, recorded Tina cheating by surreptitiously pulling over a lamp while unobserved. The other occurrences were shown to be inventions of the press or highly exaggerated descriptions of quite explainable events. (Randi 1995).
Randi also notes that ten years later "Tina Resch was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her three-year-old daughter."
See alsoastral projection, infrasound, mind, near-death experience, and séance.
further reading
- Carroll, Robert (2004). "Pranks, Frauds, and Hoaxes from Around the World." Skeptical Inquirer. volume 28, No. 4. July/August, pp. 41-46.
- Middle Tennessee Skeptic's poltergeist page
Christopher, Milbourne. ESP, Seers & Psychics (Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1970).
Randi, James. 1985. "Columbus poltergeist." Skeptical Inquirer. vol. 9, no. 3. reprinted in Science Confronts the Paranormal, edited by Kendrick Frazier. Prometheus Books, 1986.
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Terry
You Tube has many videos of James Randi exposing fakers such as Uri Geller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo
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funkyderek
Warlock:
Is there any way to arrange funky derek or someone like him to observe that happening, or maybe spending a few nights there?
No need for that. My eyes have been opened and I am now fully convinced that these furniture movements are the work of powerful ethereal beings. I mean, the alternative is just too ridiculous to consider, isn't it? How could they possibly be fake, unless all these people somehow managed to procure - and use - a thin piece of cotton thread? Ludicrous!
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ex-nj-jw
scary!!
nj
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ButtLight
Here is one you will ALL believe is real!!!
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Warlock
Did you happen to see the second poltergeist in that video, butt? Or maybe I was just seeing things.
Warlock
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The wanderer
Dear Terry:
I think you make a good case about fraud in the paranormal field
because there are large measures of hoaxes that can be debunked
or other explanations provided about such strange events.However, consider the fact there are creditable institutions world-
wide that have dedicated their time and research into such
matters.Respectfully,
The Wanderer
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funkyderek
If anyone's thinking of taking The Wanderer's bait, please read this thread first: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/132351/3.ashx