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Wärndorfer and the Poltergeist


rashore

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Aren’t you pleased science solved that pesky Yeti problem?  That one’s been bugging me abominably for years.  Sure they only genetically tested eight purported samples of Yeti detritus, and they turned out to be seven shiftless, poser bears and one dog with an identity crisis, but for god’s sakes have some faith in statistical power when it comes to small sample sizes.  After all, the fact that a large portion of academic psychological literature out there is based on a sample of college students forced to participate for Psych 101 credit, doesn’t discredit the results in other populations.  It doesn’t, does it?  Pack your bags, Bigfoot and Sasquatch.  They’re coming for you next, baby.

Anomalistics and the struggle to comprehend strange phenomena have always suffered from a kind of skeptical terrorism – the skeptics only have to get it right once, and things are deemed to have fallen apart in the face of overwhelming reality, whereas the anomalist must always be right in order to support their view of the phenomenal or noumenal.  An excellent example of this is the 1906 case of suburban Vienna’s Poltergeist of Lerchenfelderstrasse 158, an occurrence superficially investigated by the local police who concluded it was a pointless hoax, but rigorously examined by Society for Psychical Research member Mr. August Wärndorfer (1865-1940) who begged to differ.

https://esoterx.com/2017/12/07/warndorfer-and-the-poltergeist-of-lerchenfelderstrasse-158/

 

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I like the Mark Twain quote when geologists still thought the Mississippi was a million years old. Not around 12,000 years old.

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14 minutes ago, Piney said:

I like the Mark Twain quote when geologists still thought the Mississippi was a million years old. Not around 12,000 years old.

Which Twain quote.. and what does this have to do with the topic?

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1 hour ago, rashore said:

Which Twain quote.. and what does this have to do with the topic?

The one in the article you posted. 

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Extrapolation from thin facts, a crime of which anomalists are often accused by skeptics, is actually a hallmark of skepticism and scientism.  Mark Twain probably said it best, remarking, “In the space of one hundred and seventy six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over a mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-pole. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo, Illinois and New Orleans will have joined their streets together and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact” (Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1884).

 

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