Bella-Angelique
Feb 27 2006, 06:17 PM
QUOTE(Desk Light @ Feb 27 2006, 01:06 PM) [snapback]1082055[/snapback]
i have heard countless stories of peoplel claiming such radical things as clear as day, teh instant a little bit of investigation is done teh truth is soon revealed.
Desk this attitude is just so outdated.
There are plenty of investigations going on using machines and the machines are clearly showing that something is there exactly as the people are stating.
Multiple video cameras of different types are not lying and are not having hallucinations and are not being deceived by magicians.
SCIENCE through tech has proven these manifestaions of some form of energy do in fact exist. The energy shows up on the films in exactly the same spots that people state that they are seeing things.
Video cameras have caught inanimate objects moving on their own.
Some can keep on denying this, but the body of good, quality expert evidence just keeps growing year by year.
Until you get your own euqipment and go out and find out for yourself though, I doubt you will ever believe it though. You just do not want to believe it it seems.
Maybe it is just to scary for some reason for your mind to handle.
capeo
Feb 27 2006, 06:35 PM
QUOTE(ZeroShadow @ Feb 27 2006, 01:00 PM) [snapback]1082048[/snapback]
"Flaws in human perception" is the most overused, overrated excuse. We all know that david blane can use trickery. But they still know they've seen something. Now, if I saw something, that was transparent, shaped like a dead person who I once knew, what do you want me to say?
"Oh wait, it's my friends playing a trick on me! It's like David Blane's magic!".
The 2 are not the same.
It doens't matter what Victor Himself is. What matters is what's in the book. You are so biased I bet you didn't even read it. He makes references to many scientists, and includes things they have said themselves in his book.
Here's how evidence was collected for the Scole Experiments which Zammit flaunts as one the most complete studies ever done:
"November this year sees the fourth anniversary of the end of the Scole Experiment. Although the group started off originally with seven participants, five of whom witnessed some amazing phenomena (the two mediums, unfortunately, were almost always in an altered or trance state and so did not have the opportunity themselves except on rare occasions to witness the proceedings), three of the group left because of personal circumstances. This meant - for the bulk of the five year period - apart from the sessions when the group were joined by visitors, that there were only four of us present including the mediums, who were not conscious."
Source:
http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/foy/scole.htmNot scientific in any way shape or form. Other referenced studies are by the Discovery Insitute a creationist group trying to prove there's an afterlife to fit their religion. The CSL, which is part of the Noetic Society (or whatever they're called) use the following criteria:
http://www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/practical/analysis.htmlwhich has both parts of the experiment making inferences about how close a match is. Not scientific at all. The best they've arrived at is .007 percent above pure chance. Not very paranormal. You can't take these studies seriously. Some of these scientists were listed in peer review journals, but not for their current work, only work in their original field before they quacked out, so listing such things, I find, are rather intentionally misleading.
Bella-Angelique
Feb 27 2006, 06:52 PM
Ok, this C&P comes from the Skeptical Inquior group.
I think everyone can agree that they are the very last people on earth to support the theory that spirits are real.
C/P -
ghost
A ghost is an alleged disembodied spirit of a dead persons. Ghosts are often depicted as inhabiting haunted houses, especially houses where murders have occurred. Why some murder victims would stick around for eternity to haunt a place while others seem to evaporate is one of the great mysteries of existence.
Many people report physical changes in haunted places, especially a feeling of a presence accompanied by temperature drop and hearing unaccountable sounds. They are not imagining things. Most hauntings occur in old buildings, which tend to be drafty. Scientists who have investigated haunted places account for both the temperature changes and the sounds by finding sources of the drafts, such as empty spaces behind walls or currents set in motion by low frequency sound waves produced by such mundane objects as extraction fans.
(end)
Now, the amount of times that scientists have been able to prove a constant to account for the changes in temperature is rare. It is obvious as in one, stretching for the last straw possible example, that it is not at all difficult to turn electrical power off to a site or to register and locate all sources of energy within a site. More often than not the scientists simply cannot account for the readings the machines are giving them as to the activity that is taking place. Their usual answer is actually that they have no idea what is going on or what the readings or films review, but they (psychically somehow?) are sure it cannot be a spirit.
The number of sites with fairly continous, constant reaccurring spirit activity are enough to fill up a New York phone book. There is a really big reason that they are labled as UNSOLVED MYSTERIES. It is because for all of the scientist that have been there, especailly to some of the most famous sites, absolutley no explanation could be found unless someone is open minded enough to admit that the readings and films are saying the same thing as the people who reported the occurrences. Something involving some type of energy IS THERE.
Name it what you will. It does not change the fact it exists, and that scientists so far cannot account for it. Real scientists admit that they do no know what it is, but they do not deny that something unknown ot them is indeed taking place.
Bella-Angelique
Feb 27 2006, 07:39 PM
On The Shoulders of Giants ---
A CHAPTER OF HISTORY
It was not until 1916 that stories about sharks were to leave the realm of myth and legend to which they had hitherto been confined. For in that year the sensationalists were to have a ball and the morbid to take delight, the stubborn disbelievers were forced to keep silent, the skeptics to become observers, the scientists to ask themselves questions, and the political authorities to wake up. Fanciful speculations would henceforth give way to attempts at objective analysis, even though it would need another sixty years to arrive at the scientific certitudes chronicled in this book.
Saturday lst July 1916, Beach Haven, New Jersey
Charles Van Sant runs towards the beach, eager to plunge into the cool water he has been dreaming of since the beginning of the week. He has only just got off the train from Philadelphia, accompanied by his father and his two sisters whom he was too impatient to wait for. Within minutes of arriving at the hotel, he was in his swimming costume and running out of the foyer. At twenty-three, he will soon no doubt be dragged into the war like so many others but, for the time being, the endless horizon offers itself to him and he plunges with delight into this sea that he loves so much. The sea is calm that day at Beach Haven.
Charles is a strong swimmer and very soon is far out from the beach, going a hundred meters or so beyond the distant barrier. After a few minutes, he decides to return towards the shore, and turns his back on the open sea, as if with regret, now swimming lazily, unhurried as he is to interrupt this first serene and solitary bathe. But he is no longer alone.
Just behind him, tracing a beeline wake beneath a black fin, a gray shadow is catching up with him. It has been seen from the beach, and bathers shout at the swimmer but he doesn't hear. They suddenly stop, speechless and immobile, paralyzed at the sight of the shorter and shorter distance now separating the two silhouettes. Van Sant is still swimming slowly, unable to imagine for a single moment that he might be the target of some deadly pursuit.
It is when he is very close to the shore that the water seethes around him and red foam encircles his body. Immediately, Alexander Ott, a former member of the American Olympic swimming team, dives in and swims faster than he has ever done before. Just as he arrives level with the red stain, the grey shadow turns around menacingly, slowly approaches, then rapidly disappears into the blue waters, leaving Van Sant to the man who has come to rescue him.
Ott manages to bring Charles back to the beach, surrounded by a crowd horrified by the sight of his legs which are cut to shreds. Van Sant dies that evening of haemorrhagic shock.
The grey shadow departed as it had arrived, invisible and mysterious. Nobody could remember a shark ever having killed a swimmer in the past. Perhaps it had happened in the waters of the open south or in Australia, but never in New Jersey. And what about the experts who declared that there had never been any absolutely authenticated case of a shark attacking a swimmer anywhere in the world? Twenty-five years beforehand, a rich New York banker had offered a prize of five hundred dollars to anyone who could prove to him that a swimmer had been attacked by a shark anywhere north of Cape Hatteras. The prize had never been claimed.
Three years earlier, on 26th August 1913, a fisherman had caught a shark off Springlake, in New Jersey. Although a woman's foot with a leather shoe and a stocking had indeed been found in the stomach, this simply appeared to prove that sharks devoured dead bodies, not live swimmers.
6th July 1916, Springlake.
It is five days since Van Sant was killed. over five hundred people are out for a stroll on the beach. It is low tide, and very few swimmers are in the water. Springlake is an elegant and peaceful resort, frequented by all the upper middle class of New York. Senators and governors live close to the shore there in their luxury houses which they like to call "cottages", or in the big hotels, notably the Essex and the Sussex. The talk is neither of the war nor of that lowly young man who died a few days earlier at a rather antiquated resort 80 kilometres away, but about the epidemic of infant paralysis that has been decimating New York for weeks, with twenty-four deaths on 5th July alone.
In the sea of democracy, a bellboy or page is just as good as a billionaire, and that is perhaps why Charles Bruder loves the ocean. When he is not working at the Essex or the Sussex, he often goes for a bathe in the course of the day, and everyone knows him as one of the faces of the town. He is only twenty-eight, but his open nature and his kindness have made him popular with everyone. With his tips, he maintains his only family: his mother who lives in Switzerland.
Bruder is not working on the afternoon of 6th July and, low tide or not, he is determined to go for a bathe. He walks out almost as far as the barrier, talking to and smiling at the clients who recognize him. When the water is up to his waist, he decides to dive and start swimming; he very soon goes beyond the "security lines" which enclose the bathing zone, but White and Anderson, the lifeguards on duty, do not intervene as they would with the majority of bathers, for everyone here knows that Bruder is an excellent swimmer.
A woman's scream echoes on the beach at Springlake and, instinctively, White and Anderson scrutinise the sea. Bruder has disappeared. "He's turned over!" the woman cries out. "The man in the red canoe has turned over!"
She has scarcely started to scream again before White and Anderson have rushed into their dinghy, heading for what is not a red canoe as the panic-stricken woman thinks, but the cloud of blood in the middle of which emerges the dying face of Bruder and, for a brief instant, one of his arms dripping with blood. The boat reaches him and White offers an oar to Bruder who still has the strength to grasp it. They pull him towards them. His face is terribly pale and his eyes are closed. "A shark, a shark's had me, taken both my legs", he still has the strength to moan before losing consciousness. White hoists him over the freeboard, his body does not weigh much. When White and Anderson arrive at the beach, they hesitate to set Bruder down in the midst of the crowd, where several woman have already fainted. There is in any case nothing more that can be done for him.
The switchboards at the Essex and the Sussex telephone all areas and, in a quarter of an hour, all the swimmers have left the water along the thirty-five kilometres of the New Jersey coast.
But was it a shark? Is it true that man-eaters will now plague the region's coasts? The hoteliers, resort officials and gossip columnists all wish to make it known that it cannot have happened, and people start to talk of a turtle or an enormous mackerel to account for Bruder's wounds. All wait anxiously for the verdict of the doctor, Colonel Schauffler. The latter's decision is final: 'There is not the slightest doubt that it is indeed a man-eating shark that has inflicted these injuries on Bruder. The right leg has been torn off, and the bones cut halfway between the knee and the ankle. The left foot has been torn off as well as the lower part of the tibia and of the fibula. The bones are stripped of flesh below the knee, and a deep gash stops in the femur above the knee. On the right side of the abdomen, a piece of flesh the size of a fist is missing."
That night, while a collection is being made for Bruder's mother, motorboats equipped with searchlights are launched for a futile pursuit. The crew members ara armed with guns for patrolling, and fishermen set tens of lines with mutton which is reputed to be the best bait. 'I am certain that two or three days from now the beaches will be safe", Senator Hill declares. Not one shark is captured, shot or even seen.
The day Bruder is killed, twenty-four people die in New York from poliomyelitis, known at that time as 'infantile paralysis", but the newspapers talk only of Bruder. Such are the demands of man's terror and his fascination at the hands of the shark.
In the days following, there is a frenzy of action and unhelpful commentary. At Atlantic City, swimming costumes that do not cover the hands and feet are banned, while at Asbury, with the help of publicity, the installation of a shark-proof metal net around the beach is set in motion. According to a captain of an ocean-going vessel interviewed as an authority in the field, the net is not necessary since it is easy to frighten any shark "by shouting as loud as possible, and by striking the water with one's feet and hands". Everything moving in the water is aimed at, with guns, pistols, spears and oars. Finally, in the midst of this hysterical war, the voice of academic reason makes itself heard when Dr Frederick Lucas, director of the Natural History Museum, declares: 'No shark could skin a human leg like a carrot, for the jaws are not powerful enough to induce injuries like those described by Colonel Schauffler."
The experts having spoken and equivocation having cost 250,000 dollars in loss of revenue for the seaside resorts, there was still hope that this could be made up over the six remaining weeks of the summer, with the final blessing of the fisheries department in Washington. In fact the person in charge there declared that the two attacks were without any doubt attributable to the same shark, which would have been driven to attack Van Sant as it had lost its way far from any zone with plenty of fish; having tasted human flesh, it would have continued swimming near the coasts until satisfying its appetite with Bruder. Doubtless the situation would not recur.
Matawan, again in New Jersey, is a small inland port 16 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, to which it is connected by a narrow creek just a few metres wide at low tide. Its wharves, long since disused, serve as diving-boards every summer for the children of Matawan.
In early July 1916, Rennie Cartan, aged fourteen, dives into the muddy water of Wyckoff Dock. He is scarcely in the water before he feels a whiplash at stomach level, as if he were being violently rubbed with coarse sandpaper. Hastily climbing back on to the quay, he discovers a superficial bleeding wound and warns his companions: "Don't go in! There's a shark or something!". Nobody takes any notice of the warning and the incident is forgotten.
On II th July, a few kilometres away, a fisherman catches a 3 metre shark, something that has never been seen in the region, but no more is spoken of it.
On the morning of 12th July, Captain Cottrell, retired seaman and casual fisherman, is walking along the new bridge which crosses Matawan Creek 1.6 kilometres downstream of Wyckoff Dock. Eleven days have passed since Charles Van Sant died 120 kilometres away, and six days since Charles Bruder was killed 40 kilometres from Matawan. Cottrell suddenly catches sight of a grey shadow gliding sl owly upriver beneath the bridge, carried by the rising tide. He shouts in the direction of two workmen a little farther on, who also see the shadow passing. He then runs to telephone the barber at Matawan, who is also the chief of police, and hurries into the main street warning everybody to stop their children going to the creek where they swim every day. Everyone bursts out laughing at the idea that a shark'could come prowling inland in a creek no more than 12 metres across at its widest point, and Chief Mulsonn does not even leave his barber's shop. Captain Cottrell therefore returns to the creek.
One of the stores that he has forewarned is that belonging to Stanley Fisher, a giant of twenty-four years who has just set up as a dry-cleaner at Matawan, even though he could have followed in his father's footsteps and joined the navy. Many regard it as lamentable that a man so big and strong should content himself with such an occupation, but hasn't he got the future ahead of him to change direction?
That 12th July is decidedly hot, and young Lester Stilwell is impatiently waiting to leave his father's mill where the heat is almost unbearable. His father releases him from work for the afternoon and he immediately goes and joins all his friends on the edges of the creek.
Later that afternoon his friend, eleven years old Albert O'Hara, is about to leave the water when Lester calls to him: "Look at me floating!". Albert turns to him in surprise. Lester is so thin that he usually has difficulty floating without splashing about. At that moment, something hard and rasping barges into Albert's right leg. He looks beneath the water and catches a glimpse of the sinuous tail of an enormous fish. His friend Van Burnt also sees it, the biggest, the blackest he has ever seen. They call Lester, who answers them with a yell. Van Burnt catches sight of the body of the enormous fish turning around as it seizes Lester; it is indeed black above, but it has a white belly and enormous pearly teeth. He is sure now that it is a shark that has just shut its jaws on Lester's frail body and dragged it beneath the reddening waters of Matawan Creek. Lester will never shout again. All, the children dash out of the water, and some run to the village to give the alarm while the others despairingly call Lester.
There is nothing but panic and screaming on the banks where Captain Cottrell took his walk the day before.
Among the adults who are running towards the creek without knowing exactly what has happened is Stanley Fisher, who has taken the time to slip on his swimming costume.
The schoolmistress Anderson warns him: "Remember what Captain Cottrell said, it could be a shark!". Fisher stops for a moment. "A shark? Here?" He seems huge as he stands in front of the schoolmistress, thinking out aloud as if to convince himself. "Too bad, I'm going anyway." He immediately heads for the little creek, where two hundred people are now gathered, including Lester Stilwell's parents. He tells two men to get a boat and tow a stuffed chicken towards the other end of the creek, hoping in this way to lure the monster from the area he himself must search. Fisher knows that there is an underwater cavity in the creek, and he is sure that the shark is hiding there with Lester's body. Once his archaic plan of action is put in place, Fisher plunges towards that hole. When directly above it, he takes two big breaths and then disappears underwater.
The detective Van Buskirk arrives just in time to see Fisher dive. The surface remains calm for about twenty seconds before a big swirl seems to announce Fisher's return to the open air. But instead, the surface becomes calm again and clouds over with a rapidly expanding red stain. Van Buskirk hurries by boat towards the sinister stain, from which Fisher's head, then his chest, slowly emerge. Seen from a distance, Fisher seems to be standing beside the hole, with water reaching to his waist. He turns his back to the crowd, who therefore do not see the spectacle that greets Van Buskirk when he reaches Stanley Fisher. The latter is staggering, holding in both hands the bleeding remnants of one of his legs. Van Buskirk barely has time to grab him by the shoulders before he slumps face downwards. He can only hoist him up by the waist while the helmsman makes a half-turn towards the dock. The crowd then get a view of Fisher as a macabre ship's figurehead. His body is out of the water sufficiently for the hideous wound to be visible. From the hip to the knee, all the flesh has gone from his right leg, which is now only joined to the trunk by the femur, itself deeply gashed along its whole length. Reaching land, Van Buskirk manages with difficulty to stop the flow of blood escaping from the torn femoral artery using a piece of rope. Fisher makes desperate efforts not to sink into unconsciousness, as if he definitely wants to say something. He is taken on a makeshift stretcher to the station, where there is a three-hour wait for the next train. There a doctor manages to ensure that the bleeding from the wounds has been arrested, but a further three hours' traveling is necessary before finally reaching the hospital. Despite his pain Fisher remains conscious until reaching the operating table, where he succeeds in delivering his message. He did find young Lester's body at the spot he had envisaged, and he did manage to snatch it from the jaws of the shark before being attacked himself. Fisher succumbs even before being given the anesthetic.
While Fisher was waiting on the station platform, several boys continued to bathe a kilometer downriver from Matawan Creek, unaware of the drama that had just taken place. When they were at last informed, they all rushed out of the water. Joseph E)unn, the youngest of them, was the last to use the dock ladder at Key Port. As he was starting to climb up, he felt something like a huge pair of scissors lacerate his right leg: "I felt my leg inside the shark's mouth, I thought it was going to swallow me whole." His brother Michael and two other older boys clung on to him in a deadly tug-of-war against the shark, which refused to release its hold. They tore open Joseph Dunn's flesh but saved his life. The shark finally released its victim, the third in less than an hour, and the only one to escape with his. life even though he had to have his leg amputated at the thigh.
The tragedy was followed by one of the most intensive shark hunts ever seen. Hundreds of volunteers flocked in. After the creek had been shut off with metal nets, hundreds of kilos of dynamite were set off everywhere where the shark could have hidden itself, but nothing significant was caught. Even small craft fitted with cannons for harpooning whales were brought in. Several sharks were caught here and there, immediately stuffed and put on show for the public, in return for their participation. Meanwhile, Lester's body was recovered a hundred metres from the spot where he had disappeared, bearing seven wounds including two to the abdomen.
Two days after these events, Michael Schleisser, a taxidermist, captured a shark 2.6 meters long off South Amboy, six kilometres north of Raritan Bay. When he opened it up, he found seven kilos of flesh and bones, very quickly identified as of human origin, in its stomach. Among the remains was part of a bone apparently belonging to Charles Bruder attacked nine days earlier. Schleisser mounted the shark skin so as to exhibit it and it was definitively identified as a Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias. Following this capture, the attacks immediately ceased, confirming that this shark was a loner, the one and only perpetrator of the five attacks.
There was no lack of theories to explain this phenomenon. Some people claimed that it was the time of the year for sharks. Others suggested that the beast must have been suffering from a kind of mange in the way dogs do, when they can be driven mad by it. It was also thought that because of the war sharks were no longer finding the usual food that was thrown overboard from liners, and were falling back on other sources. Recent maritime disasters had also perhaps given these unscrupulous predators a taste for human flesh.
Whatever the real reason may have been, these events demonstrated for the first time the destructive power of a shark capable of attacking man.
ShaunZero
Feb 27 2006, 10:02 PM
QUOTE(capeo @ Feb 27 2006, 08:20 PM) [snapback]1082280[/snapback]
Hallucination, half-dream state, a shadow you applied what you wanted to see to. Take your pick. Perception is a tricky thing.
So you guys won't even accept that I saw something? Let's say I did. How would you explain it? If I tell you I just saw my dog walk out of my room, would you even question THAT? Man, I can't believe this is really all you've got. It wasn't a shadow at all, it wasn't even black. I wasn't half asleep, I was playing video games. I wasn't halucinating, because I had no reason to be.
This is like a blind man telling someone who's describing a sunset that he's halucinating!
That's the sad thing, when someone really sees something they're treated like kooks. You're being downright rude and I'll stop here before the mods get at me. [Not capeo, capeo is an ok guy, I'm talking about Desk Light].
Why do you think that it is halucinations? Why could I have not really seen anything? Is it because you're assuming spirits don't exist? So, let's say 2 people have never seen lightening before. Then one sees it and explains to the second guy. Would it be ok for the second guy to explain it away by calling the first guy delusional, and telling him he had to have been halucinating because there's no such thing as streaks of light in the sky?
This really is like explaining a sunset to a blind person.
Just a note: When it comes to seeing things and hearing things I'm extremley skeptical. That's why this is the only experience I don't right off.
Beckys_Mom
Feb 27 2006, 10:19 PM
QUOTE(ZeroShadow @ Feb 27 2006, 10:02 PM) [snapback]1082466[/snapback]
So you guys won't even accept that I saw something?
AHEM YO Zero over here....
guess what??? I BELIEVE YOU....cuz I too once saw something...a ghost and man it had me so scared (I was like 9 btw) I lay in my bed and I was too scared to yell for my dad to come up the stairs...and I AM SERIOUS
Guys this is true...it was NO dream...I know what I saw
EDIT I came back to tell y'all the story
When I was like 9 years old I was in the girl guides (yes BM was a lil goodie two shoes) My friend from next door Mary came up with me to the graveyard to visit her grandmothers grave.
I was wearing my girl guides uniform at the time and the rain mac with it...it had a huge pocket in front...Anyhooo.....We where fascinated by the nice shinny colored stone on the graves and thought they would look nice in our gardens lol...so we took some and filled our pockets.
That night without even thinking we did wrong I went to bed.....later I awoke and saw this old woman sitting at the bottom of my room, rocking back and forth on a chair (thing was I didnt have a racking chair in my room) ....I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming...and looked again and yup she was still there.
I was so scared I couldnt even call for my dad who I could hear down stairs in the living room, watching tv. I closed myseyes and waited...looked up again and there she was STILL THERE!!!!!....So I pulled up my quilt over my head and prayed that she would go away.....something told me it was her grave I took the stones from.....
Next day right before school...I called for my friend and told her about it...so we both went to the graveyard again and I put back the stones...........I never saw that lady again
