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Well, it all depends on when the legend of Centaurs first began. For a primitive society to suddenly see foes on Horseback, you've got the culture shock. And given how effective even rudimentary cavalry is, the origin could well be a shellshocked group of survivors, and stuff getting lost in translation.

Point I'm trying to make is that the rational, historical and scientific disproving of a given reported phenomenon is often just as interesting as the slim chance it might be for real.


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It's also very interesting to see how legends and that develop overtime, and how widespread certain things can become.

Take Vampires, and Dragons. Both very common tropes across the world. None quite identical.

Now, within Europe that's likely down to known history and how the peoples moved around. Starts in one place, and as those peoples spread out, the legend travelled with them, and slowly changed (or even quickly changed. Look at how Christianity subsumed parts of other religions to better sell itself). Then there's European Dragons being very different to Oriental Dragons.

Take Cyclops. It's now thought to have originated from people seeing Mammoth skulls.



Bit wot the trunk plugged into being misconstrued as a single eye socket. Becomes a monstrous, one eyed creature.

Chimera? Well, and this is me speculating, could be the result of a cave filled with skeletal remains. All jumbled up, looking like a single beasty, rather than separate ones.

Something I'd be very interested in reading is a history of Vampire mythology. Not just tracing it back to it's origins, but tracing a sort of 'family tree' of local adaptations back to the source. Not because I think for one second Vampires are or ever were real, but because it fascinates me in terms of a history of human culture.

Yeah, this really is very out of date thinking. There's a lot of work on origins of myth and mythological creatures, and virtually no modern scholarship entertains much in the way of 'people saw this thing that looks a bit like X'. It's not unlike kling-klang etymology - it just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

Ancient people didn't have the same access to shared information as we do, but they weren't bumbling idiots that constantly jumped to look-a-like conclusions.

I entirely agree that the origins of ideas that don't bear scientific study are fascinating, though. I work on archaeological approaches to ancient perceptions of the divine!

Did this really need to not only take over a thread, but create a second?

I used to believe in ghosts, although I did not see them. Today, I probably will not believe my eyes if I see it.

nfe wrote:
Yeah, this really is very out of date thinking. There's a lot of work on origins of myth and mythological creatures, and virtually no modern scholarship entertains much in the way of 'people saw this thing that looks a bit like X'. It's not unlike kling-klang etymology - it just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

Ancient people didn't have the same access to shared information as we do, but they weren't bumbling idiots that constantly jumped to look-a-like conclusions.

I entirely agree that the origins of ideas that don't bear scientific study are fascinating, though. I work on archaeological approaches to ancient perceptions of the divine!

Perhaps not from first hand sightings. But scattered survivors struggling to communicate? It's possible! And I'd still love to read any dissertation or paper supporting or scotching that theory It's all food for my brain-bin of useless information!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

nfe wrote:
Yeah, this really is very out of date thinking. There's a lot of work on origins of myth and mythological creatures, and virtually no modern scholarship entertains much in the way of 'people saw this thing that looks a bit like X'. It's not unlike kling-klang etymology - it just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

Ancient people didn't have the same access to shared information as we do, but they weren't bumbling idiots that constantly jumped to look-a-like conclusions.

I entirely agree that the origins of ideas that don't bear scientific study are fascinating, though. I work on archaeological approaches to ancient perceptions of the divine!

Perhaps not from first hand sightings. But scattered survivors struggling to communicate? It's possible! And I'd still love to read any dissertation or paper supporting or scotching that theory It's all food for my brain-bin of useless information!

Read any paper involving modern studies of mythologies then.

I certainly do believe in the existence of spirits of various types, and have had experiences of the supernatural via the charismatic church.

Do ghosts exist? Jesus mentions them, which is enough for me. Not met any though or know of anyone with credible sightings.

As for angels and demons, not met the former consciously, though I know more than one person who has, for the latter have had two experiences of the demonic. The first doesn't count as it was in a dream, but second certainly does. I saw the demon in church on the shoulder of someone in the congregation who had terminal leukemia. When it realised I could see it, it left the building extremely quickly.

Yes I do believe in spirits and have encountered them myself and know others who have. Its very common in ministry circles.

My contribution to this thread is unavoidably religious, but then so was the OP frankly. No disrepect to Peregrine here, he opened the discussion politely and from his paradigm. Scepticism is a fair contribution. However any discussion of the supernatural which only allows atheistic commentary is pointlessly one sided. Most supernatural encounters are religious in nature and one can use 'critical thinking' from either perspective. This thread is seven pages in and the mods have done nothing; so fair enough, if one religious perspective - the atheistic - is permitted, the non-atheist perspectives should be aired also at least to some extent.

If needs be we can leave it as a +1 vote for belief in the existence of the supernatural, specifically to answer the question: Do spirits wander the earth?, with the stated justification for the being "past religious experiences".

 Orlanth wrote:


As for angels and demons, not met the former consciously, though I know more than one person who has, for the latter have had two experiences of the demonic. The first doesn't count as it was in a dream, but second certainly does. I saw the demon in church on the shoulder of someone in the congregation who had terminal leukemia. When it realised I could see it, it left the building extremely quickly.

Did anyone else see this "demon" sitting on the shoulder of somebody? Could you describe the demon to us or possibly provide a sketch? If the demon exists and so does the sky fairy, why does the sky fairy allow the demon to live despite his absolute power? Moreover, why does the sky fairy do nothing to help the poor woman with leukemia?

This thread is not going to become a discussion of religion. It is no more inescapably religious than a thread about the Loch Ness Monster. Anyone who cannot control themselves and avoid posting about religion here should be advised to voluntarily cease posting ITT else it will be become an involuntary matter.

Is Religion a banned topic? I honestly don't remember.

Yes it is.

 Orlanth wrote:
Yes I do believe in spirits and have encountered them myself and know others who have. Its very common in ministry circles.

I wouldn't have thought so. For the longest time, and it's still the case officially, the largest christian denominations (catholics, anglicans and orthodox) rejected the existence of ghosts. It also used to be heresy to believe in such spirits and try to communicate with them.

The problem with personnal witnessing of demons, angels and ghosts is that the sightings are pretty much always consistent with the cultural image of such creatures. Christians see typical representation of angels and demons and typical depiction of ghosts too. Hindu see hindu ghosts (which are more akin to our zombies for example) and hindu demons which are easy to recognise from christian ones. If the appearence of those creatures were consistent around the world from their earliest writtings and representations to today's ones, then maybe we could start to wonder if there is indeed such a creature, but it's not the case. It's also surprising that considering there is about twice more dead people than living ones that there is so little ghost sightings.

Remember mythology was spread by word of mouth (Joesph Campbell makes this point quite often in his books). Speakers would generally misconstrue things over time. Like the Nuckelavee skinless centaur creatures that chased down people and raided villages... Sort of like the I don't know the people who brought down the Roman Empire?

Creatures from our own world inspire myths about them and natural event that a human could not understand would be rationalized as something else entirely, someone tells someone about that event and then it changes over time degrading its meaning and what actually happened. A star in the sky birghtly glowing the sky maybe a comet or possibly a star exploding in space. We don't know.

Word of mouth and most myths are essentially a giant game of telephone.

As is any case 'of possessions' or daemonic events. Miscontruded events that could be easily explained as: A psychotic episode, someone breaking because of extraneous circumstances etc.

Trauma and PTSD also cause people to misremember things and create events for themselves which never really happened.

The Idea of 'ghosts' is one i've always found interesting because it would mean that humans would have some sort of leaving behind 'effect' in most these cases I think it is mostly projection. People project their emotions onto things, their expectations and their own mind creating those circumstances. (Which your brain does to adjust)

I've always quite liked the "geological tape recorder" theory. I.E the idea that a specific arrangement of rocks (or something else) creates a magnetic (or some other) field that can be imprinted in a similar way to ferrous tape.

It answers the questions of how apparitions disappear, the recording simply reaches the edge of the area that meets the specific requirements needed, and why they're apparently so rare - it may take a specific set of conditions to make an imprint and an equally specific, and perhaps different, set of conditions to prompt "playback."

There's a lot of slack in the concept, but it does neatly address the idea of apparitions in a scientifically plausible way, even if it's based in as yet little understood or unknown science.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I've always quite liked the "geological tape recorder" theory. I.E the idea that a specific arrangement of rocks (or something else) creates a magnetic (or some other) field that can be imprinted in a similar way to ferrous tape.

It answers the questions of how apparitions disappear, the recording simply reaches the edge of the area that meets the specific requirements needed, and why they're apparently so rare - it may take a specific set of conditions to make an imprint and an equally specific, and perhaps different, set of conditions to prompt "playback."

There's a lot of slack in the concept, but it does neatly address the idea of apparitions in a scientifically plausible way, even if it's based in as yet little understood or unknown science.

If there can be natural nuclear reactors, why not?

 Azreal13 wrote:
I've always quite liked the "geological tape recorder" theory. I.E the idea that a specific arrangement of rocks (or something else) creates a magnetic (or some other) field that can be imprinted in a similar way to ferrous tape.

It answers the questions of how apparitions disappear, the recording simply reaches the edge of the area that meets the specific requirements needed, and why they're apparently so rare - it may take a specific set of conditions to make an imprint and an equally specific, and perhaps different, set of conditions to prompt "playback."

There's a lot of slack in the concept, but it does neatly address the idea of apparitions in a scientifically plausible way, even if it's based in as yet little understood or unknown science.

If such was the case, apparitions would be stable, predictable and recordable in ''haunted place''. It seldom seem to be the case. Plus, in all the most famous ''haunted places'' that have been investigated, all were either found to be hoaxes or have failed to produce any sort of evidence that matches the description of its most famous apparitions (think of how many time people simply finds a weird shadow that promptly disapeer if it even was there and not a trick of the eye, or have the ''sensation of being observed'', all fairly mundane phenomenon easily explained by fatigue and low consciousness, vs the story of fully formed ghosts with visible features doing impressive things like flinging objects and screaming loudly). That explanation appears to me extremely weak.

Im sure if the specific conditions needed were understood then, were the theory correct, those conditions could be recreated and the apparitions would be predictable.

But to continue the analogy further, if I handed you a cassette tape, which was pre recorded so had stable and predictable music that could be played back at any time, but you had no concept of what a cassette tape was or how it worked, how would you listen to it?

Or would you simply declare that there wasn't music because you couldn't hear it?

 Azreal13 wrote:
But to continue the analogy further, if I handed you a cassette tape, which was pre recorded so had stable and predictable music that could be played back at any time, but you had no concept of what a cassette tape was or how it worked, how would you listen to it?

Is the cassette playing? If it's playing, I can say there is music. I could record it using another method (should there be one) and I could invite people to listen to the music all of them would hear the same thing in a consistent and predictable fashion. Ghost stories are varied, inconsistent and people have various visions and interpretation. They are also impossible to record

Or would you simply declare that there wasn't music because you couldn't hear it?

There is functionnaly no difference between music you can't hear and detect and silence. You have designed what Carl Sagan would have called a ''Garage Dragon'', a thing whose description makes it basically unexistent.

epronovost wrote:
There is functionnaly no difference between music you can't hear and detect and silence.

That’s not true at all. There are plenty of phenomenon that at some point could not be detected because of the insufficient capacity of then-available instruments.

As for the tape casette metaphor, it seems to me that the real question is what gets recognized as music. What is getting identified by some as “ghosts” may literally be invisible to others, just as someone might hear “music” in white noise.

Re: silent music: remember that we're talking about things that can be observed. Many, if not most, of the claims of ghosts involve a person directly observing the supposed ghost. They see a human-like figure where there shouldn't be one, hear a voice, etc. We've even had plenty of claims to have photographed a ghost. The lack of evidence isn't because the experience is some kind of difficult concept that the skeptics are unable to grasp and don't have appropriate instruments to capture, it's because when people do set up the appropriate instruments based on the claims that are made nothing shows up.


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 Manchu wrote:
What is getting identified by some as “ghosts” may literally be invisible to others, just as someone might hear “music” in white noise.

This is not a theory that matches the claimed experiences. People aren't claiming to have seen an abstract pattern of light and shadows that they interpret as a ghost, they're claiming to have seen an obvious human figure. And, in some cases, to have photographed it! We can look at those photographs and see that there is something in it that we can all agree is the supposed ghost. When people express skepticism they aren't failing to agree on which pixels of the image are being discussed, they're seeing the object and doubting that it is a ghost (whether because they think it's photoshopped, it doesn't really look like a person, etc).

I see people everywhere.

While I do think the main issue is that what people mean by “ghost” is inherently not suited to a materialist account of reality, what I mean regarding the musical metaphor is that whatever Witness X has experienced and interpreted as a “ghost” might simultaneously be experienced by Witness Y, as in the latter was standing right next to the former at the moment in question, and yet Witness Y neither saw nor heard nor smelled nor felt anything at all. There is an indispensible subjectivity through which each of us experiences the world. Beyond that, there is also the noospheric nature of our experience of the world. No one in the course of daily life “experiences” an atom other than as a matter of abstract understanding, yet no one doubts their existence. The world of words (which is to say, the world as processed through language) is the one we actually live in, as opposed to the world itself. We have to consider whether we arr disagreeing about a natural phenomenon or about the way in which we might understand a natural phenomenon (sound versus music).

 Manchu wrote:
There are plenty of phenomenon that at some point could not be detected because of the insufficient capacity of then-available instruments.

Those phenomenon that couldn't be detected couldn't be said to exist. They could be theorised or hypothetised, but they didn't ''exist'' until they were detected. Saying anything else then that would have been ridiculous.

Ghost aren't even in this category. Hauntings are people ''detecting'' something. The only question is detecting what? Is it an overactive imagination making them see something where there is nothing? Is it sleep paralysis? Is it the affect of lower brain activity due to fatigue or people about to fall asleep? Is it an optic illusion? Is it a false memory caused by bad schematic memory? Is it a rarely experienced natural phenomenon like will-o-wisps or St-Elmo fire? Is it people playing a prank on you? Were you drugged, drunk or feverish? Are you simply insane? Is it a combination of the above? etc. Nobody is saying ''You haven't experienced anything''. Some people say ''what you experienced is the spectral presence of the mind of a dead person'' and other would say that this explanation is nonesense.

“I saw a ghost” is a conclusion rather than an observation. I think Azrael13 is talking about observations rather than conclusions.

epronovost wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
But to continue the analogy further, if I handed you a cassette tape, which was pre recorded so had stable and predictable music that could be played back at any time, but you had no concept of what a cassette tape was or how it worked, how would you listen to it?

Is the cassette playing? If it's playing, I can say there is music.

No, it's not playing. My analogy was perhaps imperfect, but my point was that the presence of a recording is irrelevant if you don't understand how to access it. Once you understand how to access it, then you can play it whenever and wherever you like. What the analogy doesn't really address is the apparent ability for the cassette to play under certain circumstances, irrespective of any understanding how.

I could record it using another method (should there be one) and I could invite people to listen to the music all of them would hear the same thing in a consistent and predictable fashion.

There isn't another method that you can utilize. Your option is to try and understand how cassette recordings work. Once you've cracked it though, everyone can hear it whenever you play it.

Ghost stories are varied, inconsistent and people have various visions and interpretation. They are also impossible to record

Disagree on both points. Ghosts broadly drop into three categories, apparition, manipulation (objects moving) and noises. None of those things are impossible to record, and in fact many claim to have done so, simply not to the standard sufficient for people who don't already believe to change their minds, even when they've apparently defied explanation by conventional means. I'm not suggesting that geological impressions are a catch all, but they're a possibility for apparitions.

 Manchu wrote:
(sound versus music)

Except, again, that's not what is happening here. The skeptics aren't just saying "we agree that there is sound, but I disagree that it's music", they're setting up the sound recording instruments and getting nothing at all. Or, in the case of the supposed photo of a ghost that was posted recently, everyone who looks at that picture agrees on which pixels are the "ghost". The disagreement is that the "ghosts" only show up in pictures provided by people with no formal system of accountability or data preservation to keep them from photoshopping in a ghost, when you take away the opportunity to falsify data the "ghost" images also disappear.

Or they're setting up sound recording instruments when the music's being broadcast on the radio. Or transmitted using light.

I take your point, Peregrine. Certainly what you’re describing is one part of the debate. But it’s not the only part nor the more significant part. The vast majority of alleged ghost encounters do not entail photographic records much less all the crank tech we talked about on page one ITT. I daresay most people who think they have encountered a ghost don’t care whether there are any instruments capable of registering the material reality of their experience. So really the main issue is going to be perception rather than proof. But then again, as I have explained, I don’t see any basis for the notion of asking for proof of the existence of ghosts, a demand which assumes that ghosts (a concept inadmissable to materialism) are really the “thing in question” to begin with.

.

 Peregrine wrote:
...when you take away the opportunity to falsify data the "ghost" images also disappear.

Yep, I'm of the "James Randi" school of thought when it comes to paranormal phenomena. If your results conveniently dry up whenever you're restricted to a scientific methodology which you can't stack in your favor, then you never had any results in the first place.