Ghosts And Paranormal Entities

[Antlerman]

We got an email yesterday telling us that they had consulted a local historian and asked if she knew anything of a local named Jed. She said yes, he was a guy who died roughly 80 years ago she thought, sold his hogs, went to town, got drunk, and was followed out of the bar and mugged and his money stolen -- precisely the story my fiancee got via the rods.

Got a last name? Email her back and ask her, since she says she identified someone.

[DesertBob]

I just did an experiment using coat hangers.

As I said, I'd discount that entirely, as I did with the woman that had her own set of "coat hangers" so to speak. I'm talking here about straight rods with one L-bend fitted so they are free-moving within wooden handles. In that configuration, there is so little fine control that the transmission of physical movements is obvious, and obviously different.

Much more stringent testing needs to be done before you alter your life views don't you think?

I agree that our assessment doesn't meet the standards of a scientific experiment. I don't see that as practical for my purposes, but most of my life and yours is conducted based on experiences that are far from scientifically controlled and purged of any subjective / intuitive elements. Science shines where it can hone in on aspects of the rough approximations we actually live by and discover underlying equations and rules. But it can't always do so. We know from quantum physics experiments that some classes of phenomena are altered simply by observing them, thus providing a limit to the scientific method's powers in any case. The other limitation is I don't have the time and money to turn this into a scientific inquiry.

 

For my purposes , I'm willing to say that this experience has significantly and unexpectedly changed in my mind the odds of consciousness existing outside the strict bounds of physicality. What if anything I will do with that other than be annoyed at yet more muddying of the waters of my understanding, I'm not prepared to say. I think it likely we'll explore this further to see if we can have better-formed opinions about it. If I had to hazard a guess I would say, likely we'll quickly bump up against the limits of what can be deduced from this and it will end up falling into the realm of interesting unexplained phenomena that is of no practical everyday utility.

[DesertBob]

We got an email yesterday telling us that they had consulted a local historian and asked if she knew anything of a local named Jed. She said yes, he was a guy who died roughly 80 years ago she thought, sold his hogs, went to town, got drunk, and was followed out of the bar and mugged and his money stolen -- precisely the story my fiancee got via the rods.

Got a last name? Email her back and ask her, since she says she identified someone.

I have, but the person she is referring to is not a "historian" in the formal sense but one of those locals who manages the local museum and is the informal repository of local lore. I don't know that she has newspaper clippings and details. I do know that "Jed" was arrived at by bracketing (does your name start with A,B,C, or D? No? How about E, F, G or H ... etc) and was not suggested to us by anyone. Some annoying person in the room who claimed to be an "intuitive" did introduce the idea of hogs as being somehow connected with this person -- they may have known of the story, consciously or not -- but that is the only point at which the direction of this was potentially directed by suggestion. The other stuff was strictly questions my fiancee came up with and bracketed down to some level of detail.

 

The other thing that would be interesting is if a search of county records and old news archives would bring forth other verifying details such as number of children and wives. He claimed to have 10 children by four wives, not that uncommon for people coming of age in a 19th century farm setting where you were cranking children out as farm hands by wives who would tend to die in childbirth, etc.

[Antlerman]

The other thing that would be interesting is if a search of county records and old news archives would bring forth other verifying details such as number of children and wives. He claimed to have 10 children by four wives, not that uncommon for people coming of age in a 19th century farm setting where you were cranking children out as farm hands by wives who would tend to die in childbirth, etc.

Which specifically is why I'm asking for his last name if you have it. I do this sort of research on nearly a daily basis. All I need is a first and last name, and I'll let you know what I find.

[DesertBob]

The other thing that would be interesting is if a search of county records and old news archives would bring forth other verifying details such as number of children and wives. He claimed to have 10 children by four wives, not that uncommon for people coming of age in a 19th century farm setting where you were cranking children out as farm hands by wives who would tend to die in childbirth, etc.

Which specifically is why I'm asking for his last name if you have it. I do this sort of research on nearly a daily basis. All I need is a first and last name, and I'll let you know what I find.

Thanks, I will let you know what I find.

[Kris]

I have been reading this thread and found it interesting, because I am also such a skeptic about these types of things. One of the things that sticks out for me is how "Jed"'s name was arrived at. The first thing that struck me is that it was a process of elimination-- why is it that ghosts have to be so damn vague? If Jed was speaking through the divining rods, why couldn't he clearly provide his one-syllable name? This alone makes me a little skeptical of the whole thing-- here is why.

 

Isn't it possible that whoever was asking Becky what the first letter of the ghosts name was subliminaly directing her to the letter "J"? Perhaps because they were aware of the colorful story of Jed the hog farmer? Perhaps that is why someone else in the room picked up on the hog aspect--at some point they had also heard of this story? If I was someone who was trying to convince others of my accuracy in ghost hunting, I probably would do some preliminary background research on deaths in the area, so that I could "direct" the outcome. Kind of like how a pychic gets little bits of information about a person in order to "read" them. Notice how they also use the elimination approach to ferret out answers. Again, if the vision, or divination is so clear, why can't the ghost or spirit just say who they are? By using the "elimiation" or "bracketing" approach-- they lead your fiance to the conclusion that they needed her to get to.

 

I honestly think that there may be more to this story than meets the eye. I think that you went in skeptical, but were working with some fairly "professional" ghost hunters-- who knew how to work the system. When you are in a spooky setting that lends some atmosphere to the event, your imagination can go out of control-- I honestly think that Becky was being directed to her answers even though it did not seem like it. Manipulation can be extremely subtle.

[Vigile]

I agree that our assessment doesn't meet the standards of a scientific experiment. I don't see that as practical for my purposes,

 

Well, between this and your views on drug studies, I'm thinking we have very different standards of evidence, so probably are going to have a tough time agreeing on these subjects. It's my opinion that you are unwilling to let your ideas be fully subjected to a degree of scrutiny that can potentially prove them wrong if you don't feel it serves your personal purposes. I won't hold that against you though.

[DesertBob]

I agree that our assessment doesn't meet the standards of a scientific experiment. I don't see that as practical for my purposes,

 

Well, between this and your views on drug studies, I'm thinking we have very different standards of evidence, so probably are going to have a tough time agreeing on these subjects. It's my opinion that you are unwilling to let your ideas be fully subjected to a degree of scrutiny that can potentially prove them wrong if you don't feel it serves your personal purposes. I won't hold that against you though.

I'm simply saying I can't set up and fund a double blind study just for this, so I have to do what other ordinary mortals do for purposes of ongoing daily life, and make the best assessment I can with what's available to me.

 

I really don't think you are actually hearing me on either this or the drug study issue. In the case of "Jed", I'm not unwilling in principle to subject any of my ideas to scientific study. Never suggested that I wasn't. But remember, I'm not selling you a book or asking for your endorsement, I'm simply sharing a personal experience and what I'm able to provisionally conclude from it. By your lights, I would never be able to process my experience and make any decisions about it unless and until someone somewhere funded and conducted a double-blind controlled study, which means I might as well not even have bothered to have the experience in the first place. I've encountered something and I have to decide what if anything to do with it.

 

As for the drug studies, I never said controlled tests were inherently a bad thing, either. I was speaking to a special case, a lack of nuance, a slavish adherence to protocol for the sake of protocol -- science that forgets human beings and their suffering are involved. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[DesertBob]

I have been reading this thread and found it interesting, because I am also such a skeptic about these types of things. One of the things that sticks out for me is how "Jed"'s name was arrived at. The first thing that struck me is that it was a process of elimination-- why is it that ghosts have to be so damn vague? If Jed was speaking through the divining rods, why couldn't he clearly provide his one-syllable name?

I agree that the vagueness of anything connected with the "spirit realm" is damn annoying. That said, the inherent nature of the rods is binary, that is, all questions are yes/no questions or a request to point the rods and someone or something if that's appropriate to the required answer. So to arrive at a name you ask bracketing questions. How would one communicate via a yes/no device with a syllable or a word? Can't do it.

Isn't it possible that whoever was asking Becky what the first letter of the ghosts name was subliminally directing her to the letter "J"?

No, my fiancee just worked her way through the alphabet by groups of four letters and arrived in due course at I thru L, got a yes, then I - no, J - yes. Then you would work first through the vowels, so it as A-no, E-yes. At that point, someone asked James (no) and it was actually me that suggested Jed (yes).

I honestly think that there may be more to this story than meets the eye. I think that you went in skeptical, but were working with some fairly "professional" ghost hunters-- who knew how to work the system. When you are in a spooky setting that lends some atmosphere to the event, your imagination can go out of control ... manipulation can be extremely subtle.

We found the event quite non-spooky and it was very casual and matter of fact, actually. Indeed, in introducing the evening, one of the regulars was starting to tell stories of some of their past experiences in the building and the leader stopped her and said not to share that story as he did not want to "pollute the well" -- he wanted any newcomers to have their experience without being directed unwittingly to anything in particular. That said, yes, inherently there's a certain amount of atmosphere and there was the incident I mentioned of the "intuitive" who professed to have an "impression" about hogs being part of this guy's story which was the singular thing that I am still suspicious about, and rightly so. However, my fiancee is quite an assertive natural leader and she had command of the rest of the situation and asked her own questions and the group mostly acquiesced to her. I have to say that if the "hog" part of the story was a plant, and "Jed" was just a fortuitous guess on my part that happened to harmonize with some preselected set up story, then other details will eventually prove incorrect (number of children, number of wives, etc).

 

Also, the more distance we have from the experience the more I'm realizing that what I'm actually willing to conclude from it has little practical impact. Unlike a lot of people we don't have a belief system to superimpose on the experience. Neither I nor my fiancee are a theist, a Christian, a New Ager, a believer in reincarnation or a spiritist. I have zero ego invested in paranormal things being true, I was simply humoring my unofficial stepson and helping him have an interesting (to him) birthday / going away to college gift. If I have a bias, it's actually against the legitimacy of this as an actual interaction with a non-corporeal being or even, as AM suggests, a "consciousness residue". We have no fucking clue what this was, but neither can we debunk it, and the least complex explanation seems to be to take it at face value. I respect the fact that others here feel comfortable with dismissing it, but they don't know my fiancee and they weren't there to experience it in person. It's fair to say that if I had gone alone and someone else had used the rods, it would have both played out very differently and would have been much more dismissable by me.

 

Lastly I generally follow the money when considering these kinds of situations. They made exactly $200 in exchange for setting up access to two buildings, setting up and knocking down massive amounts of expensive equipment, providing snacks and accepting liability for four people (the three of us plus one other paying visitor) for an entire night, and committing to process and summarize roughy 20 hours of captured video and audio from multiple sources and send us copies. I suppose these guys could be in it strictly for the ego or to build reputation, but in all honesty they are already pretty established and have had TV exposure and the like and don't seem to care very much about it one way or the other -- if anything they feel that too much publicity brings out the crazies and provides materials for rival groups to crib and claim as their own accomplishments. The principals are all fire fighters and paramedics and finance this hobby with their day jobs. The general vibe was very credible. Again, they could all be in cahoots to deceive us but that just seems paranoid. I don't necessarily believe everything they do, but I believe they believe, if you know what I mean. So putting that all together you have sincere people (maybe sincerely wrong, of course) putting on a demonstration for some intelligent skeptics and it's pretty impressive the amount of pause they've given us.

 

Well enough of this for now. It's the kind of thing I am not going to share in mixed company because it's the sort of thing that makes people think you're a little nuts. I made an exception here due to the quasi-anonymity of the forum plus the fact that I promised I would let you all know what happened.

[florduh]

I've had similar experience with the Ouija board, though I never got any verifiable "Jed" information. I filled notebooks with dictation from the board.

 

Spiritual type information was received (reincarnation, etc.) that echoed popular New Age thought. Did that confirm that New Agers are correct in their views, or did our familiarity with the beliefs come out because we expected it to?

 

Of course I was told by Christianity that we were conversing with demons intent on misleading us. Science told me we projected our own thoughts subconsciously through our hand movements. All I know is, it's weird.

[Kris]

I guess that I still come back to the fact that even though the name of "Jed" came through random circumstances-- it is possible, that it was coincidence. Jed is likely to be a common name of those living around a 100 years or so ago. So, as the letters began coming together-- J, and then E, it would not be unreasonable to come up with Jed or Jedadiah-- not a whole lot of other common choices, other than Jesse or maybe Jeb. That being said, once you arrive at that name, perhaps a subliminal story popped up about a Jed that lived in this area long ago. and voila, you have your ghost.

 

The only reason why I say that is that I saw this exact thing happen at a bar near where I live. Personally, I think that the bar owner wanted to get a bigger crowd to come in to her establishment, so when some "ghost hunters" stopped in to say that they had a funny vibe about her bar, all of a sudden, interesting things started to happen-- then comes the name and story of a gentleman who supposedly died in the bar a number of years ago, and you have your ghost. The funny thing is, I don't remember anybody talking about this "ghost" prior to the ghost hunters showing up, the ghost never made an appearance when I or my husband was around. We just got to hear the stories and once there was a name to attach everything to-- the story expanded. (Kind of reminds one of certain biblical stories, huh!!) A&E even came out and did a story on the bar. I honestly think that the whole thing is a load of crap. I think that everyone was influence by subliminal thought, and the fact that someone died in the bar long ago. Perhaps that is what happened with Jed. Once you hit on that name, because there was someone who lived in the town a long time ago with that particular name, he became the ghost. It sounds like he had a colorful story that my have been stuck in some subliminal memory, and it come out during this encounter. I have to go with logic and science in these situations--and that would explain the experience. Otherwise, we can all take away from this that there not everyone goes directly to heaven or hell, because poor Jed is lurking around!!

[Kris]

I dont want to take away from your experience, though-- I just have a hard time believing any of this stuff. I think it is truly all in the mind.

[Antlerman]

I have to go with logic and science in these situations--and that would explain the experience.

No offense, but I think what Bob was saying and how he reasoned and explained it was very solid and careful logic processes. Quite respectably I'll add. He makes an open-ended assessment of it, without saying, "If only we had science to look at it, then we'd be able explain the experience." I heard cautious and guarded skepticism, a desire to understand, a logical progression of examining evidence, and so on - all of which qualifies as a scientific process. I make a distinction between skepticism and cynicism, which has to find some other explanation since this one won't do. "This just can't be," is neither using logic nor science.

[Kris]

I agree with you that Bob was very good with explaining his reasoning, etc, and his feelings regarding the outcome. I guess what I was trying to convey was that it was still possible to have a completely logical explanation for the events without even entertaining the idea of something supernatural. The power of suggestion is extremely strong-- and even if in all innocence, everyone did not intend to be influenced by certain suggestions, it is possible that they were-- i.e., in coming up with the name Jed, and then attaching the story of Jed to the entity in the room. Bob comes up with the name Jed, then the other person in the room subliminaly remembers a story about Jed the hog farmer, and then you end up with your ghost. Perhaps if the name would have ended up James-- someone would come up with a person named James who died many years ago in this same town and had some backstory, and that would have been your ghost instead.

[Antlerman]

Bob comes up with the name Jed, then the other person in the room subliminaly remembers a story about Jed the hog farmer, and then you end up with your ghost.

That's actually not how he said it happened. 1. He came up with the name. 2. Some "intuit" in the room injected something about hogs. 3. After the fact, outside the group, some local history when queried about some man named Jed who might have died in 1931 came up with a recollection of a local man by that name who did.

 

I'm hoping to get a last name from Bob for the Jed from that historian's recollection. I do genealogical research quite a lot and have the ability to dig up information from then. What would you say if I was able to actually produce his name, occupation, wife, children, death, address, etc? Scientific enough? Add to the above list, 4. Independent verification of the details.

 

Science is often times a matter of probabilities and converging lines of evidence to lend credibility and probability. Doing history for instance is never a perfect science, and I seriously doubt "ghost hunting" would be either. I personally am open to it, even though it doesn't fit into how I see things.

 

I will say if I had enough to go on and actually did find something there, that would be quite interesting indeed.

[Kris]

I guess what I was attempting to say was that perhaps the "intuit" had heard a story about Jed and this memory rose to the surface when he heard the name, then the independent confirmation by the town historian solidified the story. I am not saying that there was not a Jed, who was a hog farmer, who died in this town--

 

What I think is possible, however, is that the name Jed started the ball rolling--this story sounds like it may have been around in the community. Perhaps the intuit heard his parents talking when he was a little kid about some hog farmer named Jed-- he filed it away in his subconcious, and then years later when he hears the name Jed--he recollects this story, which is then confirmed by the town historian. Even if you found evidence to support that Jed the Hog Farmer existed, it still would not necessarily prove to me that there was a ghost named Jed.

 

It is just a thought.

[mwc]

So ghosts now? Is that where we're at? <sigh>

 

The brain is a magic transceiver? Really? <another sigh>

 

Whatever...

 

mwc

[Kris]

Well MWC,

 

I think no, and was trying to explain this curious set of events--I am 44 years old and have never seen anything remotely supernatural. EVERYTHING had and has an explanation. I hear ghost stories all the time however, and found that a lot of them were occurances that people had either as a small child, or when waking up from a dream. In these situations, children have great imaginations, and over the years, something that could have been "percieved" has now become real. In the dream situation, everyone who has this type of occurance says "I know that I was awake!" when they describe seeing or hearing a ghost, but then who really knows-- I believe that there are many levels between being asleep and awake. Other times people say that they "saw something", but cannot fully explain what they saw-- and cannot replicate the event. I think that people tell a story of odd events and the story becomes more real as time goes on-- i.e., I saw a little boy at the foot of the stairs that I think was a ghost-- now everyone else that hears my story decides that they see the ghost too and on and on and the story gets more and more dramatic. However, I made the whole thing up!

 

If this type of stuff was really going on, don't you think that someone somehow could conclusively prove that spirits exist? Why are their methods of communication so lame? Why can't a ghost just say "Hey, I am Jed the Hog Farmer and I am seriously pissed off because I have some unfinished business?" Why are they obsessed with slamming doors, or making moaning noises? (perhaps because it is the wind instead of a spiritual presence?)

 

I just think that the power of suggestion, no matter how innocent, is what truly creates ghosts. But then again maybe I am just not an "empath" and can't see the spirit world! (Another ridiculous explanation why some people cant see ghosts that I have heard!)

[mwc]

You and I appear to be on the same page with this nonsense Kris so I would say my post wasn't directed towards you (it just happened to come after your post).

 

mwc

[OpheliaGinger]

I guess what I was attempting to say was that perhaps the "intuit" had heard a story about Jed and this memory rose to the surface when he heard the name, then the independent confirmation by the town historian solidified the story. I am not saying that there was not a Jed, who was a hog farmer, who died in this town--

 

What I think is possible, however, is that the name Jed started the ball rolling--this story sounds like it may have been around in the community. Perhaps the intuit heard his parents talking when he was a little kid about some hog farmer named Jed-- he filed it away in his subconcious, and then years later when he hears the name Jed--he recollects this story, which is then confirmed by the town historian. Even if you found evidence to support that Jed the Hog Farmer existed, it still would not necessarily prove to me that there was a ghost named Jed.

 

It is just a thought.

 

You can pretty much come up with an accurate ghost just by knowing the historical demographics of an area.

[Kris]

Exactly!!

[Noumena]

Good luck with your adventure. If you come back with white streaks in your hair we'll have to do a study on you. "Carol Ann.... Carol Ann....."

Well, alright ... following up on our "ghost hunt", this is not what I expected.

 

Drawing the bare minimum conclusions -- that is, inferring nothing more than I know for sure -- we had an experience for which by far the simplest explanation is that at least some people's consciousness continues after death and can have some rather limited but significant contact with the living. In all honesty we are so stunned that I am still processing this. I've grown to draw some comfort from the idea that it's unlikely there's an afterlife -- not the least of which is that I'm a rather tired soul for whom oblivion is quite attractive. So I resist the above conclusion but find it inescapable based on our experience.

 

I am kind of swamped with work and other stuff right now but I will give you the short version. Our host offered my fiancee -- who, like me, is an unbeliever and skeptic -- a set of divining rods. These are copper wires with an L-shaped bend inserted into wooden handles such that if you hold them by the handles in a way that they swing freely within the handles and hold them out perpendicular to your body -- well, they were used in the old days to find well water but in this case she was instructed to just ask any spirit present in the building to respond to yes / no questions. She's a skeptic but a great sport and this was an experience she wanted her son to enjoy and find pleasant and memorable. So she asked a series of such questions in which a "yes" answer was to be indicated by the rods moving to cross each other, and a "no" answer is indicated by the rods not moving. To her amazement the rods moved quite reliably and the responses were logical and consistent. Using bracketing questions she obtained the name of the entity (it answers to Jed) and its year of death (1921), manner of death, number of wives and children, and a host of other very specific questions and tests. This continued all night in a variety of settings in two different buildings about a block apart. There was no coaching, no plausible opportunity for external / rigged manipulation.

 

We got an email yesterday telling us that they had consulted a local historian and asked if she knew anything of a local named Jed. She said yes, he was a guy who died roughly 80 years ago she thought, sold his hogs, went to town, got drunk, and was followed out of the bar and mugged and his money stolen -- precisely the story my fiancee got via the rods. They're attempting to verify other details. Of course that could all be made up and they're all in cahoots but that is starting to seem a little paranoid position to take. Regardless, I don't have to believe that evidence to be suitably impressed with what I witnessed.

 

I examined the rods and I couldn't figure out a reliable way to deliberately manipulate them without them swinging wildly and unpredictably. With these particular types of rods, if you could do it with practice, even subtle hand movements would be obvious, rather like a bad ventriloquist or something. And it would take considerable practice, which my fiancee clearly had neither the time nor motivation to pursue. So at least in the case of my fiancee, she had to just hold them perfectly still and in balance and allow them to be moved by the apparent external force. They were very simple devices with no hidden components or parts. An electromagnet powerful enough to move them with any precision would have to be very close and in a controlled environment, and operated by very elaborate contrivance, plus the characteristics of how the rods would move are inconsistent with such gross manipulation -- each rod could and did move independently rather than in lockstep, and in enough variety of ways that it suggested direct fine controlled action on them individually. We all had free run of the buildings and the experience was very self-directed and loosely structured and happened in about a half dozen random locations. Given all that, I rule out any kind of rigging or other deception.

 

During the night, not only did we get yes/no responses but they would move to point to people in the room when asked, etc. It was all very precise. No credit was given for anything but exactly the response requested, in other words, the rods had to clearly cross to signify yes and they had to point exactly at someone when the "spirit" was requested to do so.

 

My fiancee's son tried them out and got similar results. Predictably I tried them and nothing happened, but in all honesty I was very resistant and conflicted. One did get the impression that the person holding the rods acted as some sort of channel or in some kind of symbiosis with the "spirit". We were told that the rods don't work for everyone but when they work they are very effective. I dont know about that, but I know my fiancee well enough to accept her experience just as well as I would accept my own. If anything she is more credible than me because she never was a religious believer.

 

Now none of this compels me to draw any conclusions about deities, nor does it at all require any. None of this confirms or denies a particular cosmology or worldview. The binary nature of the communication is necessarily slow and cumbersome and we did not get very far in discussing the nature of the reality that "Jed" claims to inhabit or what he's supposed to have done with himself for the better part of a century. The most we got out of Jed was that people's consciousness continues on and some are happy and others not happy about being non-corporeal -- some are productively engaged and some are not -- pretty much like the land of the living. Jed's purpose appeared to be connected in some way with mentoring and caring for people who died as children. We got a sense that time is a very fluid concept to these beings, that they don't necessarily perceive the passage of a lot of time in their realm and aren't even necessarily anchored to a particular time.

 

It is possible that Jed is misrepresenting itself or just making stuff up, or that he's a manifestation of the collective unconscious of the dozen or so people who were present. Anything is possible, but the simplest explanation is that Jed either actually is, or sincerely believes himself to be, someone who was mugged to death for his money in 1920s rural Indiana, and he has the ability to manipulate a couple of metal rods -- with some effort apparently -- and was motivated enough to do so for about eight hours.

 

I don't know much about this stuff, such as for example why it seems to work much better at night, or why "spirits" cannot communicate in more straightforward and verifiable ways, and a bunch of other things, but we are determined to return soon and explore this some more. I think we are probably fairly unique in that we are not desperate for any kind of reassurance or validation for any belief system or ideology and aren't afraid of our own mortality or have any great desire for an afterlife. We're not even sure what we'll do with what we learn beyond saying, "huh, that's sure interesting", but it's certainly fascinating at this point. We just want to study it and see what we can figure out from it.

 

Incidentally the fee structure for this was very nominal, clearly not enough to do more than defray expenses a bit. This is just a couple with an expensive hobby that they pursue with passion but not, thankfully, evangelistic fervor. They do paranormal investigations all the time, but for no charge, just to collect data. If they are trying to draw people into a scam I can't see where the payola is. They're not even charging us for sending us a DVD of their static night vision cameras and audio captures (which we'll discount as any real evidence of anything because they could be doctored six ways to Sunday). If they're scam artists, they're uncommonly patient and clever ones.

 

As I said, I'm not sure what this changes in practice for me. Whatever "spirit world" exists (or not) does so independently of any belief system so it's certainly not even remotely tempting me back into the arms of Christianity. I would suspect that people who dabble in this stuff tend to superimpose beliefs like Christianity, reincarnation, and/or spiritism upon it and see it as validation of said beliefs. I have no doubt that many such experiences are generated from people's over-fired imaginations, too. But none of that means there isn't some element of actual truth to it.

 

Looked at from an objective point of view, and refusing to jump to specific conclusions, all it really does is suggest that consciousness is a phenomenon that does not depend on specific physical bodies for it to be housed. I've always thought it possible in theory that sentience is a more general phenomenon that we know as individuals and that it simply finds expression in us for a time. My theory was that the brain could simply be a transceiver for consciousness. My fiancee's son is into physics and so sees the "spirit realm" as just another multiverse. Who the hell knows. At the end of the day it's just another bit of annoying ambiguity in an existence we struggle to make sense of without adequate data or sensory or intellectual equipment.

 

I have probably managed to disappoint, annoy, and upset some folks with this post but it is what it is. I would not call myself a True Believer because I just don't know enough about this to articulate a firm belief in anything -- but at a bare minimum I feel it necessary to revise my provisional interpretation of reality to include the possibility, nay, likelihood of some form of consciousness beyond death. What the hell one would do with it or why one would want it is still beyond me, but I cannot ignore what I personally experienced, either.

 

Oh, cool. Here's your experience. I didn't realize there was another thread about the paranormal. Interesting.

[Foxy Methoxy]

We have a lot of ghost hunters in this area, especially in St Augustine. One of my buddies often visits "haunted" lighthouses and gets readings. I borrowed his meter one time and found out my fish tank was haunted. Probably by the ghost of a clown fish that left me too soon.

 

Anyway, I don't believe in ghosts and also believe in the power of imagination, but our brains apparently have a part that manufactures these delusions. Perhaps these manifestations are evidence of our brain functioning normally? Perhaps these things are useful and we are inclined to pass them off as a hoax, a scam, a delusion, or a lie too readily when our mind is attempting to communicate on a deeper level?

 

It's just a thought

[DesertBob]

We have a lot of ghost hunters in this area, especially in St Augustine. One of my buddies often visits "haunted" lighthouses and gets readings. I borrowed his meter one time and found out my fish tank was haunted. Probably by the ghost of a clown fish that left me too soon.

 

Anyway, I don't believe in ghosts and also believe in the power of imagination, but our brains apparently have a part that manufactures these delusions. Perhaps these manifestations are evidence of our brain functioning normally? Perhaps these things are useful and we are inclined to pass them off as a hoax, a scam, a delusion, or a lie too readily when our mind is attempting to communicate on a deeper level?

 

It's just a thought

I think there's too much ambient electromagnetic noise in the modern environment to put any stock in the occasional anomalous reading. It's also well known that certain EMF fields can cause subjective feelings of paranoia, being watched, etc. So absent ghost hunting in a Faraday cage I don't find these meters to be useful tools.

 

With some emotional distance from this event and a lack of responsiveness from our hosts about details of the alleged historical "Jed" I am willing to just sit with the ambiguity of having no clue how to explain the phenomenon described and yet having insufficient data to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. I don't have to explain everything and I don't have to assign meaning just to relieve the tension of not knowing. I will certainly come back here if anything more comes to light for us but for now it has to be relegated to "interesting but fundamentally meaningless".

[Antlerman]

I will certainly come back here if anything more comes to light for us but for now it has to be relegated to "interesting but fundamentally meaningless".

Until you find out Jed followed you home.