Paranormal Events
First let me say I don’t like the idea there are ghost hunters popping up everywhere. It just leads to more hoaxes. Many believe it is fine to deceive the public when it comes to the paranormal. They also believe the public is far more gullible than many of them are. Many of them are just poor people in the sense they have lost a loved one and are just looking for some sort of proof there is a life beyond this. The equivalent of selling snake oil to a desperate sick person. Another problem as some see it is if any real evidence is found, it will be considered just another hoax. Houdini spent a good part of his life looking for proof of the after life and had no success, and yet if we look at some of the experiences some ordinary people have had, it seems they may have found it.
There are a few ghost hunters who were set onto this path because they originally had an unexplainable paranormal experience. The problem is none of the experiences meet the scientific criteria for being a true paranormal experience. First of all, the words scientific and paranormal just do not go together in a scientists mind. I believe no scientist worth his or her salt, would want to be connected to any paranormal event no matter how many witnesses saw it. It has been estimated about 10,000 people saw the miracle at Fatima in Portugal on 13 October, 1917. The sun seemed to come down to earth and they all saw that but three children also said they saw the Virgin Mary standing on a cloud.
First of all, this was outside in the sky at a time where there was no chance of earthly technology being used to fool everyone, because we just didn’t have any that could. In this case the word paranormal is just a substitute for a religious event to most people.
There has been an inordinate number of people who have had experiences which they consider paranormal after a relative has died. Most of them do not have any mental diseases of any kind, but rarely have there been any witnesses. One would be surprised at how many times it has been claimed a dead relative has contacted the living. One person was sitting up in bed and wide awake when he heard his wife’s voice loudly ask him if he was awake. It startled him and without thinking he jumped out of bed and said he was. He had forgotten for a moment she had died about eight days before. That same person had his daughter die and about eight after, he work up from what he thought was a dream where his daughter was calling him. It turned out when he was awake, he could still hear her calling him. These were the only times he ever heard them contact him after death.
Are some people just more sensitive to being contacted than others? This is a hard question to answer. It seems being a nurse in a ward at night in a hospital which contains dying people might sensitize people. I say this because it looks to me from reports they seem to see more paranormal events than others. Some of them report seeing patients walking down the halls only to find they had died in their beds. How does a person explain such things?
Could it be people who have had a very close relationship with someone who died are more apt to be contacted by them? While I think this seems to be true, we have no way of knowing. Some believe people who hated each other might also be contacted as a form of torture. Most people will never admit to being contacted so that is another problem. They do not want to be the butt of ridicule and one can understand this. Sometimes they keep it to themselves only to find out years later their brothers or sisters also had been contacted and also kept it secret.
I also want to talk about night versus day in contacts. It really doesn’t matter. The person who I mentioned who was contacted by his wife and then daughter was contacted in the daytime not at night in the dark like most of these ghost hunting programs talk about. Some people also think electricity has something to do with being contacted and if you look at any of these ghost hunting programs the hunters have all sorts of tools to see if there is electrical current, heat, or moving being detected. It has been said the energy in our bodies never dies but goes on forever and this was said by science. In our different religions most of them say we have a spirit that goes on forever after we died. Is there a connection?
We have had some thing banged into our minds about the paranormal such as cemeteries are haunted. All I have to say about that is could you imagine dying and being relegated to have to stay in a cemetery forever. That would have to mean the cemeteries would become that spirits personal hell. I find myself thinking this is just too hard to believe. It would also mean a spirit doesn’t have free will anymore. In this case free will would mean the ability to move anywhere.
In another case a man was having things happen in his house for years like loud banging noises, footsteps, doors slamming and things disappearing. The noises and footsteps happened upstairs which was empty. He resolved himself to not let this bother him and after a couple of years the crashes moved down to the first floor and would happen in the room next door which was the kitchen. He would be sitting in the living room, hear a loud crash, jump up and checkout the kitchen, but there would be no sign of anything falling. One day he was laying in bed and a voice was heard saying goodbye and that was the end of all the problems. This event just couldn’t be explained. He had been determined not to move out of the house.
It is a shame people exploit the paranormal mainly for reasons of money. They make believe they see things on some of the television shows and some events are even scheduled to make them look like a paranormal event. One of the favorites is a door which seemingly is closing on its own. Another is a chair moving and strange sounds in the distance. It would be refreshing to have a show where real people talk about the experiences they had.