Posted: Apr 21, 2011 9:35 am
jerome wrote:trubble76 wrote:Here's my problem with this and similar stories; let's assume every word is completely true, we know where there is a place on Earth that is home to an active ghost. Anyone of us can go and examine the phenomenom of all the furniture pilling itself against doors, or messages from beyond the grave being written in flour. And yet, what would be undoubtably one of the greatest discoveries of humankind, more important even than the Irish peace process or the Moon landings, remains undocumented.
It's like someone telling me that they dug up a pre-Cambrian fossilised rabbit but haven't bothered to show it to a paleontologist. It makes no sense. Having said that, a cracking good campfire yarn is a good thing as long as people don't accept it as fact.
That's a pretty good point Trubble, indeed a vital one. Given such cases supposedly do exist, and given the tremendous importance they would have if proven legitimate, why do people not investigate them? Well I guess Sunchime I and HPrice (the poster or the original Harry Price) do, as do many others. However, there is a "common sense consensus" such cases are bollocks, and scientists in particular work in a hegemony that says these things don't happen, so why look? Of course there are exceptions -- including a few Nobel winners -- http://www.spr.ac.uk/main/page/past-pre ... psychology - gives the past Presidents of the SPR, a rather fun and surprising list -- but most people don't.
So maybe these cases just don't exist? Yet I can think of quite a few from the last two years that I dissected on my blog --
Coventry 2011
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2011/ ... ltergeist/
Pembrokeshire 2010
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... -haunting/
Doncaster 2010
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... yre-depot/
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... ot-part-2/
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... st-part-3/
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... 93-part-4/
Romiley 2010
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... ture-pose/
Cork 2010
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... -part-one/
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... -part-two/
http://polterwotsit.wordpress.com/2010/ ... st-part-3/
There were undoubtedly more but I have been so busy I don't always write them up...
j x
But Jerome, those are just commentaries on stories, not scientific investigations. Quantum Physics is a virtually unfathomable mystery to most humans, including (like me) those with above average physics educations, but the science is solid, the experiments clearly defined and documented and the results fairly unambiguous. Given the correct equipment and processes as described in their notes, anyone can recreate their experiments, despite how unlikely the results seem.
If there are houses where obvious and unavoidable physical processes are happening that would seem simple to document and test, and there are giants of academia throwing their weight behind investigation, then why do we have little more tha campfire tales.
If tables can be piled against doors by a force, then the past Presidents of the SPR could surely devise a method to absorb this new information into our Laws of Physics. Why do we not cover Furniture Rearrangement By Spirits in our schooling? Why is there no section in out insurance claim forms for damage done by demonic possession?
This house is still there, I assume. It seemingly offers easy access to evidence of previously unknown physical processess.
To refer to my early point, there is a house with a fossilised pre-Cambrian rabbit. There are thousands of people that would make fame and fortune from being the first to scientifically document this rabbit, and all they have to do is go and look. And yet, there is no fossilised pre-Cambrian rabbit in any text book, museum or university course.
The only answer that makes any sense at all is, every single word of it is rubbish, from start to end. And proving otherwise is very straightforward, get thee to that house and document the gun-bender in action, or do the left-over spirits of humans murdered decades/centuries before get camera shy?