Paranormal feelings

wegs

wegs

Matter and Pixie Dust
Valued Senior Member
From article:

"Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths University, Alice Gregory, believes there are several ways in which sleep disruption can be confused with ghouls.

One of the ways is through sleep paralysis – when you reach the deep sleep state, or REM state, where you become paralysed as to not act out your dreams.

However, around eight percent of people retain some form of consciousness when they are in an REM state so it seems as if their dreams are transferred into real life and it could be misinterpreted as seeing people and things which are not actually there."

I had a paralysis dream once where in a half asleep state I sensed a demonic presence in the corner of my bedroom. I then shouted out the name of Jesus to make it go away (an old jedi mind trick) and as I woke myself up I heard the bushes outside my window thrashing around. I feel like whatever was there had skedaddled out the window!
 
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Could it be the reality of the Tonal's occasional glimpse of the reality of the Nagual?
or
The Nagual's occasional meddling in the reality of the Tonal?
 
wegs said:
In reading through one of MR's threads, most everyone here is a skeptic when it comes to paranormal/ghostly activity. What would it take for you to ''believe''? When do you consider accounts of ghost activity to be mere folklore or legend, as opposed to factual?
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Repeatable results from a controlled test.
 
wegs said:
What might a controlled test look like when it comes to determining if ghosts actually exist?
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Example - let's say that house X was haunted, and paranormal investigator Y said that the ghosts always drain their batteries (a common claim.) The next step would be to run an experiment with a charged capacitor (the simplest battery) and document the results over a number of experiments - say, 20. Document the charge lost and the conditions, and do an analysis of the results. Explain the loss of energy in terms of thermodynamics.

Then publish. Then open the house to other scientists who can come in and run the same experiments, whether they believe in ghosts or not. If they get similar results, then you have moved from paranormal to science.
 
billvon said:
Example - let's say that house X was haunted, and paranormal investigator Y said that the ghosts always drain their batteries (a common claim.) The next step would be to run an experiment with a charged capacitor (the simplest battery) and document the results over a number of experiments - say, 20. Document the charge lost and the conditions, and do an analysis of the results. Explain the loss of energy in terms of thermodynamics.

Then publish. Then open the house to other scientists who can come in and run the same experiments, whether they believe in ghosts or not. If they get similar results, then you have moved from paranormal to science.
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Okay, fair enough. That makes sense. But, where to find all of these unbiased scientists who wouldn't allow their skepticism to influence the outcomes? :wink:

A general question, but how likely is a group of scientists to believe that an outcome/result/set of circumstances could border on the extraordinary, uncanny, or mysterious? Of course, many claims of paranormal activity could be readily explained (as being anything other than ghost activity), but I wonder how fair skeptics would be in such experiments.
 
wegs said:
Okay, fair enough. That makes sense. But, where to find all of these unbiased scientists who wouldn't allow their skepticism to influence the outcomes? :wink:

A general question, but how likely is a group of scientists to believe that an outcome/result/set of circumstances could border on the extraordinary, uncanny, or mysterious? Of course, many claims of paranormal activity could be readily explained, but I wonder how fair skeptics would be in such experiments.
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It doesn't matter what they believe. That's the point of the controlled test.
 
Magical Realist said:
From article:

"Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths University, Alice Gregory, believes there are several ways in which sleep disruption can be confused with ghouls.

One of the ways is through sleep paralysis – when you reach the deep sleep state, or REM state, where you become paralysed as to not act out your dreams.

However, around eight percent of people retain some form of consciousness when they are in an REM state so it seems as if their dreams are transferred into real life and it could be misinterpreted as seeing people and things which are not actually there."

I had a paralysis dream once where in a half asleep state I sensed a demonic presence in the corner of my bedroom. I then shouted out the name of Jesus to make it go away (an old jedi mind trick) and as I woke myself up I heard the bushes outside my window thrashing around. I feel like whatever was there had skedaddled out the window!
Click to expand...

Interesting! I can totally understand how being ''half asleep'' could contribute to delusions or hallucinations, or our minds playing tricks on us. But, how about ghost tours? Like legit ghost tours? A friend of mine went on a tour of a local haunted restaurant/hotel, and she felt terrified. Now, one could say...she set herself up to be terrified, therefore she was afraid throughout the tour. Okay, I get that. Nonetheless, she wasn't half asleep, and many claimants of the paranormal are wide awake when they experience their ghostly encounters.

I'll say that I definitely don't believe most paranormal claims, but there are some that seem valid. If I'm honest though, I'm not really sure why I believe them, except that maybe I just feel not everyone is lying when they say they've seen a ghost.

Question for you, MR - did you ever experience that situation after that one time?
 
wegs said:
Okay, fair enough. That makes sense. But, where to find all of these unbiased scientists who wouldn't allow their skepticism to influence the outcomes?
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That's where design of experiment comes in!

The first group is the control group. They are in a house that isn't haunted. There are special effects to make it seem haunted.
The second group is in another control group. They are in a house that isn't haunted and has special effects - but the capacitor has a lossy dielectric that causes charge to leak away during _any_ experiment.
The third group is the study group. They are in the haunted house.

You don't tell any of the researchers which group they are in. If #1 sees no loss, and #2 and #3 DOES see loss - then it's a valid experiment. If all three see losses, then the researchers are "true believers" who want ghosts to be real. If none of the three see losses, then they are "deniers" who want ghosts to be false.

A general question, but how likely is a group of scientists to believe that an outcome/result/set of circumstances could border on the extraordinary, uncanny, or mysterious?
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This is, again, design of experiment. This has been a problem for the past 250 years or so. A new drug comes out for a deadly disease and researchers desperately want it to work. So for a good trial, there are two groups - placebo and real treatment. If both groups see the same improvement - or see no improvement - then the treatment doesn't work.
 
billvon said:
That's where design of experiment comes in!

The first group is the control group. They are in a house that isn't haunted. There are special effects to make it seem haunted.
The second group is in another control group. They are in a house that isn't haunted and has special effects - but the capacitor has a lossy dielectric that causes charge to leak away during _any_ experiment.
The third group is the study group. They are in the haunted house.

You don't tell any of the researchers which group they are in. If #1 sees no loss, and #2 and #3 DOES see loss - then it's a valid experiment. If all three see losses, then the researchers are "true believers" who want ghosts to be real. If none of the three see losses, then they are "deniers" who want ghosts to be false.


This is, again, design of experiment. This has been a problem for the past 250 years or so. A new drug comes out for a deadly disease and researchers desperately want it to work. So for a good trial, there are two groups - placebo and real treatment. If both groups see the same improvement - or see no improvement - then the treatment doesn't work.
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Ah, that makes sense.

There's no mention of ghosts to the researchers though, correct? So, the experiment would be to strictly find out why the batteries are draining? (potential causes?)
 
wegs said:
There's no mention of ghosts to the researchers though, correct? So, the experiment would be to strictly find out why the batteries are draining? (potential causes?)
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That would be a good way to do it if you could manage it. (i.e. there's no creepy bloodstains on the walls or howling winds or anything.) But from a pure design-of-experiment viewpoint all that matters is that everyone has the SAME expectations about the test.
 
billvon said:
That would be a good way to do it if you could manage it. (i.e. there's no creepy bloodstains on the walls or howling winds or anything.) But from a pure design-of-experiment viewpoint all that matters is that everyone has the SAME expectations about the test.
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Okay.

I guess my point is that if the researchers all come out of the experiment stumped by what is causing the drainage of the batteries, would they simply say ''I don't know,'' or would they then um...think that maybe something 'out of the ordinary' could be the reason? Do scientists ever leave room for such ideas?

Once the experiments were finished, I suppose it could be revealed then, that there have been claims made suggesting that the problem with the batteries is due to paranormal activity.
 
wegs said:
Okay.

I guess my point is that if the researchers all come out of the experiment stumped by what is causing the drainage of the batteries, would they simply say ''I don't know,'' or would they then um...think that maybe something 'out of the ordinary' could be the reason? Do scientists ever leave room for such ideas?

Once the experiments were finished, I suppose it could be revealed then, that there have been claims made suggesting that the problem with the batteries is due to paranormal activity.
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A double blind experiment is one where neither the participants nor the one's running the experiment know what is going on. It's been used to test prayer before where people were terminally ill. Neither the test givers or the test takers knew which group was being prayer for and which wasn't.

That's why I said it doesn't matter what the scientists think.
 
wegs said:
I guess my point is that if the researchers all come out of the experiment stumped by what is causing the drainage of the batteries, would they simply say ''I don't know,'' or would they then um...think that maybe something 'out of the ordinary' could be the reason? Do scientists ever leave room for such ideas?
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Well, the result of that study would be that "Place X known for ghosts causes a reduction of charge in capacitors." That's an important bit of science. Once that's established, then the next step is to figure out how it's happening. Is it ionization between the plates? Does that mean that ghosts cause reduced ionization potentials? Because if that was true, you'd suddenly have a very accurate way of measuring ghosts. And once you could do _that_ you could start understanding them.
Once the experiments were finished, I suppose it could be revealed then, that there have been claims made suggesting that the problem with the batteries is due to paranormal activity.
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Sort of, yes. But there's a big caveat there. Once it is understood, it's not paranormal any more. If ghosts exist because of X, then once you understand X they are part of science, not the supernatural.
 
wegs said:
Interesting! I can totally understand how being ''half asleep'' could contribute to delusions or hallucinations, or our minds playing tricks on us. But, how about ghost tours? Like legit ghost tours? A friend of mine went on a tour of a local haunted restaurant/hotel, and she felt terrified. Now, one could say...she set herself up to be terrified, therefore she was afraid throughout the tour. Okay, I get that. Nonetheless, she wasn't half asleep, and many claimants of the paranormal are wide awake when they experience their ghostly encounters.

I'll say that I definitely don't believe most paranormal claims, but there are some that seem valid. If I'm honest though, I'm not really sure why I believe them, except that maybe I just feel not everyone is lying when they say they've seen a ghost.

Question for you, MR - did you ever experience that situation after that one time?
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I fully believe in paranormal activity, but it happens only rarely imo. Many times people are freaking themselves out about something mundane happening at night. I never had any other experience besides that one. I tend to stay out of situations where I would encounter paranormal activity like deserted houses or graveyards etc. I don't need any sort of firsthand confirmation since I have seen so many investigations on TV where paranormal activity occurred. Also all the anecdotal evidence is hard to dismiss, particularly when all the stories are about the same haunted location over the years.

IMO it would be impossible to subject paranormal activity to scientific experimentation as you can never guarantee an occurrence will repeat. One time it may be a loud bang in the attic. Next time a child's giggle down the hallway. Next time nothing at all. We don't have enough knowledge of the paranormal to be able to predict when and how it will occur and what conditions are necessary for it to occur, if even then.
 
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