Freak Paranormal

Portrait of "The Brown Lady" ghost

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:46:00 +0000

They say seeing is believing. And while in this day of digital image manipulation that might not be as true as it once was, these photographs are considered by many to be the real deal - photographic evidence of ghosts. Faking ghost photos through double exposure and in-the-lab trickery has been around as long as photography itself; and today, computer graphics programs can easily and convincingly create ghost images. But these photos are generally thought to be untouched, genuine portraits of the unexplained.

This portrait of "The Brown Lady" ghost is arguably the most famous and well-regarded ghost photograph ever taken. The ghost is thought to be that of Lady Dorothy Townshend, wife of Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount of Raynham, residents of Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England in the early 1700s. It was rumored that Dorothy, before her marriage to Charles, had been the mistress of Lord Wharton. Charles suspected Dorothy of infidelity. Although according to legal records she died and was buried in 1726, it was suspected that the funeral was a sham and that Charles had locked his wife away in a remote corner of the house until her death many years later.

Dorothy's ghost is said to haunt the oak staircase and other areas of Raynham Hall. In the early 1800s, King George IV, while staying at Raynham, saw the figure of a woman in a brown dress standing beside his bed. She was seen again standing in the hall in 1835 by Colonel Loftus, who was visiting for the Christmas holidays. He saw her again a week later and described her as wearing a brown satin dress, her skin glowing with a pale luminescence. It also seemed to him that her eyes had been gouged out. A few years later, Captain Frederick Marryat and two friends saw "the Brown Lady" gliding along an upstairs hallway, carrying a lantern. As she passed, Marryat said, she grinned at the men in a "diabolical manner." Marryat fired a pistol at the apparition, but the bullet simply passed through.

Camping Encounters with Monsters and Ghosts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:59:00 +0000

WHITE MOUNTAINS CREATURE

In late October, 1995, Tango and his family, including the dog, were searching for a suitable camping spot in the White Mountains of Arizona. The sun was already beginning to disappear behind the mountains and they hadn’t found a spot yet. They were all as growing tired, and the dirt road they were traveling was becoming narrower and darker. As the trees closed in around their car, Tango’s dad, who was at the wheel, realized they weren’t going to find a good spot on this road and decided to turn around.

His dad stopped the car and began to make a three-point turn to go back in the other direction. It was then they saw something quite unexpected. “As we turned our car halfway around, we saw a little girl,” Tango says. “She was in tattered clothes, and she looked up at us. Her eyes grew wide in fear, like she had seen a ghost. My dad rolled down the window and asked, ‘Are you alright?’ The little girl trembled and said, ‘You shouldn't be here. Please go back!’”

Tango’s dad was confused. Did this girl need help? What was she trying to tell them? The little girl just repeated that same phrase. Tango’s was mom was scared and finally said, “Let's go back.” Tango’s day finished turning the car around and headed off in another direction. About 30 minutes later, they finally found a camping spot. Oddly, no one seemed to feel tired anymore. They unloaded the car, set up the tents and built a warm campfire.

As they sat around the fire, they couldn’t help trying to sort out their experience with the strange girl. Suddenly, Tango’s dad said, "Shhhhh!" His mom chuckled because he was always making jokes. But he was serious. His face went white, and it was clear that they were all struck with the feeling that they were being watched. “I looked around the forest, my heart pumping fast,” Tango vividly recalls. “I didn't hear anything, but I was scared.”

A spine-chilling roar came from the woods. What was it? Tango was on the verge of screaming in terror. The bushes rustled and something bolted out of the forest and into the light of the fire. “It had sharp teeth and no fur,” Tango says. “It was the size of a bear, but its eyes were yellow. I was frozen in fear. It stood for ten seconds in the light, then galloped off into the forest. I was horrified. My dog was whimpering and it curled its tail between its legs. This was the most horrifying experience in my life. This creature was extremely skinny, it looked like flesh and bones. This disturbing image of this... ‘thing’ is implanted in my head forever.”

Parapsychology

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 May 2009 02:10:00 +0000

Participant of a Ganzfeld experiment which proponents say may show evidence of telepathy.

Main article: Parapsychology

Experimental investigation of the paranormal has been conducted by parapsychologists. Although parapsychology has its roots in earlier research, it began using the experimental approach in the 1930s under the direction of J. B. Rhine (1895 – 1980). Rhine popularized the now famous methodology of using card-guessing and dice-rolling experiments in a laboratory in the hopes of finding a statistical validation of extra-sensory perception.

In 1957, the Parapsychological Association was formed as the preeminent society for parapsychologists. In 1969, they became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That affiliation, along with a general openness to psychic and occult phenomena in the 1970s, led to a decade of increased parapsychological research. During this time, other notable organizations were also formed, including the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine (1970), the Institute of Parascience (1971), the Academy of Religion and Psychical Research, the Institute for Noetic Sciences (1973), and the International Kirlian Research Association (1975). Each of these groups performed experiments on paranormal subjects to varying degrees. Parapsychological work was also conducted at the Stanford Research Institute during this time.

With the increase in parapsychological investigation, there came an increase in opposition to both the findings of parapsychologists and the granting of any formal recognition of the field. Criticisms of the field were focused in the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (1976), now called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and its periodical, Skeptical Inquirer.Eventually, more mainstream scientists became critical of parapsychology as an endeavor, and statements by the National Academies of Science and the National Science Foundation cast a pall on the claims of evidence for parapsychology. Today, many cite parapsychology as an example of a pseudoscience.

Though there are still some parapsychologists active today, interest and activity has waned considerably since the 1970s. To date there have been no experimental results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific community as valid evidence of the paranormal.

Anecdotal approach

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:28:00 +0000

An anecdotal approach to the paranormal involves the collection of stories told about the paranormal. Such collections, lacking the rigour of empirical evidence, are not amenable to be subjected to scientific investigation. The anecdotal approach is not a scientific approach to the paranormal because it leaves verification dependent on the credibility of the party presenting the evidence. It is also subject to such logical fallacies as cognitive bias, inductive reasoning, lack of falsifiability, and other fallacies that may prevent the anecdote from having meaningful information to impart. Nevertheless, it is a common approach to paranormal phenomena.

Charles Fort (1874-1932) is perhaps the best known collector of paranormal anecdotes. Fort is said to have compiled as many as 40,000 notes on unexplained paranormal experiences, though there were no doubt many more than these. These notes came from what he called "the orthodox conventionality of Science", which were odd events originally reported in magazines and newspapers such as The Times and scientific journals such as Scientific American, Nature and Science. From this research Fort wrote seven books, though only four survive. These are: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931) and Wild Talents (1932); one book was written between New Lands and Lo! but it was abandoned and absorbed into Lo!.

Reported events that he collected include teleportation (a term Fort is generally credited with coining); poltergeist events, falls of frogs, fishes, inorganic materials of an amazing range; crop circles; unaccountable noises and explosions; spontaneous fires; levitation; ball lightning (a term explicitly used by Fort); unidentified flying objects; mysterious appearances and disappearances; giant wheels of light in the oceans; and animals found outside their normal ranges (see phantom cat). He offered many reports of OOPArts, abbreviation for "out of place" artifacts: strange items found in unlikely locations. He also is perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction, and was an early proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Fort is considered by many as the father of modern paranormalism, which is the study of the paranormal.

The magazine Fortean Times continues Charles Fort's approach, regularly reporting anecdotal accounts of the paranormal.

Paranormal research

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:21:00 +0000

Approaching the paranormal from a research perspective is often difficult because of the lack of acceptance of the physical reality of most of the purported phenonema. By definition, the paranormal does not conform to conventional expectations of the natural. Despite this challenge, studies on the paranormal are periodically conducted by researchers all from various disciplines. Some researchers study just the beliefs in the paranormal regardless of whether the phenomena are considered to objectively exist.

This section deals with various approaches to the paranormal: anecdotal, experimental, and participant-observer approaches, the skeptical investigation approach and the survey approach.

introducing of paranormal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:03:00 +0000

Paranormal is a general term that describes unusual experiences that lack a scientific explanation, or phenomena alleged to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure. In parapsychology, it is used to describe the potentially psychic phenomena of telepathy, extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis, ghosts, and hauntings. The term is also applied to UFOs, some creatures that fall under the scope of cryptozoology, purported phenomena surrounding the Bermuda Triangle, and other non-psychic subjects. Stories relating to paranormal phenomena are found in popular culture and folklore, but the scientific community, as referenced in statements made by organization such as the United States National Science Foundation, contends that scientific evidence does not support paranormal beliefs.