My wife…someone not taken to flights of fancy…saw a friend’s father coming out of a lift in The Princess Anne several years ago. We had just been to visit a good friend who had just given birth to her first child…a daughter.
We were just leaving when her mother and brother arrived with a smartly dressed elderly man with a pencil black mustache…we said hello, said a few things and got into the lift they had just vacated. However I hadn’t seen the elderly gent…just my wife had seen him and nothing was said at the time.
A couple of weeks later we went to visit them and during the conversation our friend said she only wished her father had lived to see her newborn. My wife a little puzzled said…I though the man who accompanied your mother and brother the day we saw you in hospital was your father.
No she said there was no man accompanying her mother and brother…her father had died 10 years before. My wife went on to describe the man…our friend and her husband looked shocked. She went to a photo album and my wife promptly picked out a picture of her father.
Our friend found it a great comfort…in fact she burst into tears and laughter…ran over and gave my wife a great big hug.
My wife didn’t think it was a ghost and nor do I…but I’m also convinced my wife didn’t make it up. We left it as unexplained.
Once again you mention money - $bn industry - as long as you continue to focus on con merchants and people just in it for cash, I dont think you are going to be able to keep an open mind. There is a lot more to all of this than Derek Acorah and magicians.
Interestingly, there are some theories about genetic memory-which could offer an explation as to why some folks ofetn think they have had aprevious incarnation - eg fractions of your DNA from 1000 years ago or 15/20 generations may retain some ‘memory’ - its only a hypthesis, but its a good example of apsosble scientific type of explanation to something that is currently ‘unexplanable’
So the proof that spirits and ghosts exist is that I cant prove they are wrong? Seriously? See above post re science and open minds versus woo peddlers and closed ones…
TV cash, ‘donations’ to ‘churches’, ‘publicity’, entrance fees to medium sessions or 'show’s … with respect to teenagers and ‘poltergeist’… there will be a more rational explanation. I could ‘invent one’ as the woo believers have done. Or I could be scientific and understand that the woo version is teh LEAST probable and a rational explanation is much more probable…
I didnt say that. I said that people have obviosuly had experiences that they cant explain. Can you say that they are all wrong and it can all be explained away by a magician? Now if Paul Daniels did it that might open a few eyes!
There are plenty of people who work as healers or psychics who do no charge. If they do charge it doesnt mean that they are conning people. Even if it is an “industry” does that negate the whole paranormal concept?
As for what happened in my house. The glass could have been on the edge of the table and a breeze might have knocked it off. The wire the picture was hanging on may have been balancing on the top of the fixing and it might have chosen this time to fall off the wall. But how do you explain bayonet fixing bulbs finding their own way out of their fixings? An electrician couldnt expain it to me but perhaps I should have asked a magician?
And there you go…the classic paradox. I will repeat, just because something can not be explained, wy shoudl someone believ in an invented explanation that has not been proven by any scientific test or means and that in 99% of all cases could be repeated by a magician in 5 minutes? That is what the woo peddlers ask you to do and increduouslymany buy into it.
Science does not INVENT explanations
The classic Geller used to peddle was that just because other magicians could perorm his tricks with magic, did not mean he was using teh smae tricks… you could not make it up… Geller the multi millionnaire psychic spoonbender who could only bend spoons when he had tinkered with the props in advance…
… I cant explain the bulbs, but the picture is obvious- I could repeat it anytime provided I had access to the room next door… or even just access to your thermostat at teh right time of year…
…actualy I have done teh buld thing myself when I jumped down form a step ladder in the room above… the large vibration on the ceiling causing it to jump out - muight suggets that stropping teenager banging tehir feet, might have done that…? who knows, but would you not agree that this is more likely than woo?
… but ‘healers… please dont go there’ they are the biggest con artists - they dont charge individuals because they dont need to… the publicity gets them a bigger gig for their nonsense. And yes it is a con, because they are selling something that is simply a lie. Sorry SOG, it is always about the money - you will always find someone is earning a wedge from every woo event
I bet 19th Century scientists thought they were hot shit, GA.
We think a lot of their practices and ideas backward and barbaric. I’m sure we’ll be equally poorly thought of by the people that come after us.
I guess my point is that there are many, huge questions that science simply hasn’t resolved. Our limited understanding therefore cannot be used as a smackdown against things like the paranormal.
Ghosts have been reported in almost every culture in the world, if not all. I have personally never had a prob, but my auntie and uncle were pestered by _something _when they moved to one of those weird three story things in the shadow of the Itchen Bridge.
These are people I trust with no reason to bullshit, and some rather unexplainable accounts. The inability of science to measure it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
… but ‘healers… please dont go there’ they are the biggets con artists - they odnt charge individuals because they dont need to… the publicity gets them a bigger gig for their nonsense. And yes it is a con, because they are selling something that is simply a lie. Sorry SOG, it is always about the money - you will always find someone is earning a wedge from every woo event
I have met two healers. On charges, one doesnt. The one who charges was recommended to me as “The Witch” and if she had been around in the 16thC she probably would have been burned as one. I used to go to spiritual classes with her (for a charge) as did a large group of others. This woman in amazing. She works mainly with women who cant conceive and her success rate is excellent. Yes she charges, Do you know how much IVF costs (and that is proper science)? I have had a few readings with her and she is very good. I have also been to a couple of healing sessions with her. It is a very interesting experience. You can feel the heat coming off of her hands as she passes them over you. I took my daughters to see her and one of them said she turned her into a chip! I mentioned this on another thread but I sent a friend to see her who had an inoperable brain tumour. It was too far gone for this lady to help her but she described the tumour in perfect detail just by passing her hands over my friends head. It was a small mass joined to a larger mass by a stalk. My friend said the picture she drew was the same as the CAT scan. She only knew my friends first name and had no way of finding out any more information before they met. The local police have used her services as have the national police and she has been involved in some missing persons investigations and the like. She charges because she needs to make a living and spends all of her time doing this. I never had a problem with that. Carpenters and plumbers charge for their skills, why shouldnt healers and mediums? If you are no good you will soon be out of work. It is easy to dismiss them as charlatans and say it is all bollocks and I am clearly not going to change your mind, but I think there is a lot more to this than we understand and it cant all be dismissed as a magic trick.
Jeez pap - you and Soggy and the rest of the woo apologists are missing the crux. ‘God’ or some different version has been seen in every culture… all cultures used to run away from volcanoes and thunderstorms (probably a good thing) - This is a classic indoctronated woo response - they bring up the ‘why would they lie’ -the answer is so obvious it is staring you in the face - THEY are not. They are simply telling you the truth as they saw it - they experienced something they could not explain.
The difference between me and the woo peddlers is VERY simple. I as a scientist Ilook at that situation and say that there will be a rational explanation once its worked out. Woo peddlers invert the ONLY explanation in order to perpetuate their nonsense and be able to claim their money grabbing shit is real… jeez I cant believe there remain folks who buy this shit… but then again there are folks who vote Tory and for Brexit, so it sort of explains a lot really…
