Just what is it that we're discovering here?

I grew up watching pretty much only PBS and the NBC nightly news, and as such I have a fondness for educational/factual television. Yes, I love to watch plenty of mindless entertainment, but I’m also perfectly willing to kick back and watch something informative. Before moving to Korea last August, I’d never had the opportunity to watch the Discovery Channel. I was excited, thinking I’d be watching it more than anything else. (Little did I know OCN would distract me by showing CSI nearly all the time… And yes, I can sense Caitlin’s disapproval from across the Pacific.) CSI notwithstanding, I do actually watch the Discovery Channel Asia a good bit, although over the past ten months I’ve begun to wonder just how accurate it all is.

My distrust of the Discovery Channel stems from several things. Two of those “things” are actually two episodes that I really enjoy watching: A Haunting and Psychic Detectives. They’re really entertaining, although I don’t take any of it seriously. The thing is, these shows present everything as fact without present any alternate explanations for what’s happened.

For example, in one episode I saw of A Haunting, a woman starts to have incredibly strong, irrational, unexplainable feelings of sadness and despair shortly after moving into a newly purchased old house with her boyfriend. The show explains her feelings by bringing in psychics who sense the negative energy of a malevolent spirit, blah, blah, blah. To me it seemed obvious that the woman was suffering from the classic symptoms of clinical depression; she needed Lexapro and not an exorcism. Additionally, it seems that almost all of the A Haunting episodes involve some sort of Catholic exorcism/cleansing. Do only Catholics see ghosts? The show also presents as fact that if you use a ouija board or dabble in the occult, you will soon be possessed and/or tormented by Demons from Hell. As someone who has done both of those things, I would just like to point out that I haven’t summoned any demons.

I took a class in college called Pseudopsychology. We looked at all sorts of paranormal phenomena, but we looked at them from the point of view of the believer as well as the scientist. Everything we discussed in class was debunked via scientific experimentation. As an educational television station, shouldn’t they add some education of this sort to their shows about ghosts and psychics? Or do they skip over that simply because it’s not as entertaining?

One weekend I stumbled upon a documentary on the Discovery Channel about a British scientist who had discovered the fossilized remains of dragons in Eastern Europe – irrefutable proof that dragons were not mythical beasts after all. It was an incredibly well done documentary, with interviews and footage from the excavations and extensive delving into historical records… except that as I was pretty damn sure none of it was real, I checked online. According to the Discovery Channel’s website, it was a mockumentary showing what would happen *if* someone discovered proof that dragons had existed. Um, ok. Someone please tell me what’s the point here? Confusing small children who might watch and then believe in dragons? Yes, it was entertaining, and yes, I watched the whole thing… but that was hardly educational!

Obviously, not all shows on the Discovery Channel are of that nature. I watched an excellent documentary of the terrorist siege at the school in Beslan, Russia quite recently. I felt that the documentary was quite well done (especially considering that they were able to get Russians willing to go on television and criticize the way the government handled the situation; that kind of open criticism is hard to find over there), and I felt that I learned a lot. Except that afterwards, I found myself wondering if everything I had just watched was presented as accurate. I mean, this was the channel that told me ghosts and dragons were factual!

So what are your feelings on educational television? (And not just the Discovery Channel – you can take on PBS or the History Channel or any other educational station.) How factual should educational television be? Is it acceptable to include shows about dragons and psychics and ghosts without any sort of scientific counter argument? Or should educational TV be like the channels here in Korea: a teacher lecturing at a blackboard, guaranteed to send your children to sleep immediately?

I see you rolled your way into the semis. Dios mio, man.

I have a lot of catching up to do.

First, my excuse: As everyone sort-of knows, I had a bit of a health "issue" a little while back, and it got better, then it sort of got worse again- lots of really crappy and scary tests, and a really bad, misinformed and terrifying wrong diagnosis later, and I've finally got back on my game- in fact, right now I feel better than I did when this whole thing started.

As far as the topics go:

Rejection: Not much I can go into on this one- I've never been rejected in dating, as far as asking someone out. No one has ever said "no." However, I have been cheated on, which is a bit of a rejection. But that was a high-school relationship, so there's not much that I remember about it and I'm not sure how much I cared at the time. But I will say this about things like rejection: Everything happens for a reason. I can even say that about this health crisis I just went through: March and April of this year have probably been the worst of my entire life. Yet I came through this better, stronger and clearer than I was when I was "normal" and "happy" before it happened- and it's been reflected in other areas of my life: I was just promoted at work, for the 2nd time in a matter of months. So I look back at the rejection in my past as being necessary and that outlook seems to help. The worst rejection was probably a major breakup in my life: I dated this girl, the relationship got real serious, talk of marriage, I was in love, all the right things were happening, and then it turned the corner. She was the first girl to break up with me, and she was, at that point, the most serious relationship I'd even been in. It hurt worse than just about anything I'd been through up to that point. But, it was necessary: Before I met her, I was very unhappy in my hometown and was making plans to move out. Obviously, when I was with her, I then wanted to stay. Had that relationship gone how I had wanted it to at that time (I'm thankful now that it didn't!), who knows what would have happened. Very shortly after she broke up with me, I got a great opportunity to move to southwest Florida, and the rest is, well, history.

I have some professional rejections as well: I worked at the library in Lake City for close to five years. I worked my fucking ass off at that place. I made sure I knew everything. I read the stacks of books so I could answer any question I got. I asked my superiors to give me things to do, to teach me things that were well beyond my job position and job description. I took my job more seriously than almost everyone else I worked with- I approached it as more than just something I had to do to get a paycheck, and do just enough to stay employed and get paid (a work ethic I inherited from my father, which has since paid off for me). I worked the absolute crappiest schedule that was available there (every night until 9pm, every single fucking Saturday and almost every Sunday, split shifts, etc.), and every time a position came up that was one above where I was, the work of which I had been doing, I always applied and I always got turned down. This happened about three times I think. I deserved those promotions, and the superiors who turned me down knew it damn well- their excuses were EXTREMELY lame-- I mean, literally one time the excuse was that the person who got the job had better handwriting on their applications (my handwriting is not bad, apparently theirs was just fucking better- they must have used fucking calligraphy or something). The next time, I friggin typed the application. I never understood it. But looking back, I'd be miserable working at the library. Now, having got any of those promotions would not have kept me in Lake City when an opportunity arose. But it taught me something, and it did help the decision to move- and now, I took a job which made me realize what I wanted to do with my life and with my career, it's helped me work through school, the work ethic I cultivated there has paid off, and I've been promoted three times in the less than two years since I've started working there, with no real qualifications besides the fact that I do a good job, I've received and award from my employer, etc. Rejection is something that one can't always control, but how you approach it you CAN control, and that determines the outcome. At least that's what I believe and that's how I approach life.

Ghosts: I have to say something about beliefs here: many scientists and so-called "strong atheists" are JUST as dogmatic and closed off as fundamentalists of any religious stripe, whether it be Christian, Islamic, etc. Many scientists and atheists, in the face of anything that might conflict with their beliefs, are just as closed off as fundie Christians etc. There's a dogmatism present in scientific circles and with atheists etc. just as there is with the frequently reviled religious people. Me, I approach everything OPENLY. If there is something that I feel I know, that's fine. Otherwise, I am totally open to anything. Some things I have personally discounted: a personal God, for example- one that meddles in our lives, a la who wins football games and Grammy awards, etc. I don't believe in hell: it makes no rational sense to me- why would a God create something imperfect and then damn it for being imperfect? Wouldn't it be just as good for God to just do away with that individual? Why would He have to put him in a lake of fire for eternity, which in and of itself FAR outweighs any wrongdoing that could possibly be done in the physical realm. I don't believe in religious fairy tales- I feel that those can be reasonably and comfortably debunked and proven false. However, as far as ghosts, I am open: I've never seen a ghost, and I find things like haunted houses, exorcisms, etc. to be somewhat ridiculous and I personally lean towards disbelief, but I remain open and interested in EVERYTHING.

Look, I think it is obvious that there is more to life than what we see: science basically proves this. Whether or not it proves that souls exist, the afterlife exists, which in turn would mean ghosts could possibly exist (if they do, I would posit that they are spirits who have had some trouble making the transition into the spirit realm for whatever reason, or who can't accept they are dead, etc.), and maybe some sort of "God" exists- who knows. Some of it might be unprovable. Some things seem like we could actually prove them- could quantum physics seems to possibly prove weird things like parallel universes and time travel. I have about a dozen books by very well credentialed physicists who claim that some science seems to point to the existence of a "soul" and possibly an "afterlife" (as in a realm that exists in a different level of reality of our own). Certainly there have been enough people in the world over time who have had experiences (NDEs, OBEs, etc.) which suggest certain things, and there's been lots of scientific experiments that seem to suggest, if not prove, that consciousness is not completely confined to the brain and mind. Things like that force one who is open minded to think that there is more to life than just what we see, feel and hear- that we're not just meat machines, animals, accidents, etc. So I suppose I'm an open-minded agnostic. I usually prefer to not use the label "agnostic," for what it suggests, but that might be closest. I don't believe in a personal Islamic-Christian-Jewish God. I do believe there is a LOT more to life than we know. I believe that a soul exists, and I believe something similar to a "spirit world" exists (though my belief in that is NOWHERE NEAR what many would think when thinking of the phrase "spirit world"). Beyond that, I believe nothing, but am open minded and I *consider everything.* As one of my favorite physicists says, "be in the mystery."

I'm not sure that addresses the ghost question. I don't particularly find haunted houses, exorcisms, seyances, ouiji, etc. to be convincing or believable. But, I do believe that ghosts *could* exist.

One word on skeptics: I am a big fan of skeptics, from Penn & Teller to Michael Shermer to Richard Dawkins to The Amazing Randi, etc. But they have to be taken with as much of a grain of salt as anyone else. As I said in the beginning about scientists and religious nuts. I'll use Penn & Teller as an example. I am a HUGE fan of their show "Bullshit." Their Bible episode is absolutely brilliant and hilarious ("Elvis didn't do no drugs!"). They are regarded as expert debunkers. But they did an episode on cigarette smoking, and the episode strongly asserted that second hand smoke posed no harm whatsoever (or that it was hardly harmful, etc.). Obviously that's wrong- there was an agenda there, being that these guys are hugely libertarian, against smoking bans, etc. I believe they subsequently had to come out and say that they were wrong about that. Also one starts to notice when watching their show, as well as reading some of the other very prominent skeptics, that they will usually pick the biggest fringe wackos to represent the other side of the argument, as opposed to someone as thoughtful as the one representing their side of the argument, which hardly seems "balanced."

I usually fall on the side of the skeptic- but I always remain open minded, I NEVER knee-jerk, and I always consider everything.

As far as aliens, it seems reasonable that aliens might exist somewhere. But what if we are the only sentient life in the universe? Is that a bad thing? I was reading something recently that was mathematically trying to prove (pretty convincingly, actually) that the universe seems to be "tweaked" for consciousness to exist- that, as quantum physics seems to point to the fact that all possibilities exist simultaneously until observed, and the universe needed consciousness so that it could be observed. Does this point to a self-aware universe? (NOT a "God") What about those parts of the universe and reality that we don't observe- does that suggest that there is an "ultimate observer" or some sort? That's interesting stuff to think about, right? What about aliens- would they be "conscious"? How would they define consciousness? What role would they play in a quantum universe? Interesting thoughts, none of which I have any clue about. So the short of it is, I'm not sure how I feel about aliens. Until they land in South Florida, they don't impact my life.

Here's a theory about ghosts, before I stop writing (sorry this is so interminable): The new physics posits that all possibilities exist until observed, and that possibly all possibilities exists until a choice is made. These possibilities might exist as "parallel universes" that exist simultaneously, maybe "side-by-side" for lack of better understanding, that don't "collapse" until an observation/measurement is made or a choice is made. What if some ghosts of ghostly experiences are pieces or reflections of these parallel realities? Food for thought.

Oh, one thing I've noticed in my studies: The East is WAY more advanced than we are when it comes to spirituality and in many cases social values. I've read some Hindu, Buddhist and Zen stuff lately that is so, so far beyond the shit that we get for spirituality in America. In fact, I was reading a book that showed that some Hindu philosophies about the nature of reality and the universe that goes back literally thousands of years are just now being proven by science, namely physics and quantum physics. That's amazing to me. Am I the only one that seems to think that America, as wonderful as it is and as much as I love my country, is way behind, especially when it comes to spirituality and social mores? And I mean WAY behind.

I'd say this makes up for my lack of presence here for the past few weeks.

Belief in the Unbelievable

During this week's discussion of ghosts and hauntings, we've talked a little about the willingness of people to believe in the unprovable... and I did mention aliens in passing. In many ways the willingness to believe in extraterrestrial visitors is similar to the willingness to believe in ghosts. And I do love me some Carl Sagan.

I Ain't Afraid of No Ghost!

Well I hate to admit it, but I do believe in ghosts. However rather than giving you some bizarre story about how I was in a cemetery, or an abandoned mental hospital or the like, mine all take place within my home(s).

My only encounters with ghosts have been with relatives that have died. I don't remember this first one, but I've heard about it numerous times from my mother. I was really young, and my great-grandmother had just died the night before. The following morning I came out and told my mom that a woman had come and sat at the end of my bed last night. She asked what she did and I told her that she just smiled at me. So my mom got out the family album and told me to point to who it was, and I pointed to the same great-grandmother who had died. Now, there are several things wrong with this. First of all, I have no idea whether they had already told me that Grandma Gigi died. Second, she took out a family album - there are only so many people in those pics, so odds are I'd pick the right one, however, its not the only story.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, my great-great-grandmother died. (On my father's side - the other one was my great-grandmother on my mother's). The night she died my parents were out and we had a babysitter. My sister and I shared the whole upstairs of the house - it was all one room (about 35 ft long), and she had a bed on one end, and I had a bed on the other by the stairs. That night, or maybe the next (its been 15 yrs+ now) I heard footsteps headed toward the stairs in the middle of the night. I figured they were Kellie, and told her to get back into bed. They kept going, and when I sat up to tell her again, I didn't see anyone, but the footsteps continued and went down the stairs. I told my dad about it the next morning and he said he had heard them too, and had stopped outside their bedroom.

The final one was when my grandfather (dad's side) died. (This one didn't happen to me, but to my mom - kinda). Anyways, again, about a day or so after his death, my mother awoke to find the candle moved from her bedside table (her room was right next to the kitchen), and all the cabinets and the refrigerator were left open. She then told me about how he would always check the fridge and the pantry when he came over, and if he wasn't satisfied with what he saw, would take them to the store and buy them more groceries.

All of these can be explained away - however they do all take place in the same time period - about a day or two after a death. My mother used to hold the belief that your soul was on earth for a few days before you went on. With her newly found zealousness, I don't know if she still believes it. Whether they were ghosts, or just our overactive imaginations, I suppose they brought us comfort after the loss. To think that you are so dear to someone that they visit you after death is - OK probably heart-warming and sappy, but pretty cool too.

I want to believe.

I want to believe in ghosts. Really and truly I do. I also really want to believe that aliens are out there monitoring us. The problem is that there isn’t any proof. I’m a big fan of proof when if comes to believing in things – this is one of the biggest reasons why I am not a believer of any religion. As Rachel Weisz’s character in The Mummy says, I believe if I can see it, and I can touch it, then it's real. That's what I believe. That being said, I am very open to the idea of ghosts and if I ever see one, then I’ll be a complete convert. Of course, just because I’m a skeptic doesn’t mean I haven’t had a couple of Really Creepy Experiences myself. I had two in particular when I was younger.

Jane’s Ghost Story #1

This story occurred when I was in fifth grade. My parents and I were taking a springtime vacation with our camper. We had originally planned to camp in Torreya State Park, located in the Florida panhandle (south of I-10, about halfway between Tallahassee and Marianna). My father happened to mention our vacation plans to his coworkers. It turned out that one of them owned property only a few miles from Torreya State Park. This property was a large, wooded tract of land containing an old, empty farmhouse. (The owner of this property would apparently go there periodically to go hunting in the woods.) This coworker said that since there was electricity and running water available on the property, we should simply park the camper there – that way we could camp for free and still be close enough to the park to spend our days there.

To us, this seemed like an excellent arrangement. We arrived at the property, and it seemed perfect. There was a nice shady spot under a tree, with both a grounded electrical outlet and a water-spigot: the perfect place to set up the camper. Except that it wasn’t. From the start we had trouble getting things to work. The electricity was turned on, and the camper was plugged in, but nothing was getting through. Then, despite the fact that the camper’s battery was fully charged, nothing would run off it either. I also seem to remember that we had trouble getting the gas to work, too. (My memory is vague on specifically all that went wrong – it’s been roughly 17 years, after all!) What I do remember clearly is that my parents and I got really freaked out. At first it was just stress – along the lines of: why won’t this thing work properly? But the longer we were there, the weirder things got.

We decided to give the camper a break and go for a walk to explore the property. It was at least ten acres, although it might have been considerably bigger. Most of it was wooded, and the woods were crisscrossed with a few sandy-dirt tracks (made, one assumed, by the hunters). We walked for a good distance down one of these tracks before heading back to camp. As we approached camp, we found something really strange: someone had written the word Phillips in the sand, twice. This writing was over top of our footprints, and there were no footprints in the sand other than ours.

At this point, the three of us started feeling really creeped out, as if something were watching us… and as if that something were malevolent. This feeling continued for the rest of the day – as did the problems we were having with the camper. We all felt so uncomfortable on that property that first thing the next morning we packed up and moved to the State Park campground. As soon as we left, we all felt a great feeling of relief. Everything in the camper worked perfectly once in the State Park campground.

Jane’s Ghost Story #2

This story took place when I was in either sixth or seventh grade. My friend Melissa G (not the Melissa who frequently comments here) was visiting me. I lived in the boonies, at the end of a dirt road in a very rural area, ten miles south of Lake City, FL (which is like saying ten miles south of nowhere). As a child I was constantly exploring the various woodlands near my house, and whenever friends came over to visit, I dragged them along on these explorations. Melissa and I had found a patch of swampy woodland near Rose Creek which had obviously once been a favorite play-spot of the then-grownup child of that property’s owner (I hope that makes sense). There were still a few toys strewn here and there, and best of all… we found the remains of a small wooden footbridge. It had been dislodged, and nestled in some brush near the bank of Rose Creek. We carried it downstream to a place with an island and placed it across. We busied ourselves clearing our island and nearby bank of brush and debris, with plans to turn it into our own private park.

Then I felt the incredibly strong sensation of someone watching me. I was about twenty feet away from Melissa. She wasn’t looking at me. I looked around and saw no one, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling. The Melissa turned to me and said, “Jane, I feel like someone’s watching us.” I said, “Me too!” and we immediately dropped what we were doing and RAN. We ran all the way to the bridge. (For those of you who never went to my old Lake City abode, the road to my house crossed a bridge over Rose Creek about a mile from my house. The place where we were creating “our park” was about half a mile from the bridge on the opposite side from my house.) We had reached the bridge, panting and out of breath, and were sitting down, laughing nervously and wondering if we had simply imagined things, when suddenly I felt IT again. Melissa and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, “I feel it again!” and we flat out ran the mile to my house. We locked ourselves in my bedroom, where we remained pretty freaked out until it was time for her to go home.

I never had any other spooky experiences in my neighborhood, and I certainly continued to traipse through the woods near my home for years afterwards. I never went back to that one spot though.

I'm a believer

I get made fun of for this often enough, but I DO believe in ghosts. I'm sayin' it loud and proud: I do believe, I do! (I can't remember what I just quoted... Peter Pan maybe? or Wizard of Oz?)

I watch every ghost show I find on TV, and they're always scary. Well, almost every show. I don't like the ones where the 'psychics' go into a house with the lights off and close their eyes and fall over and say, 'oh my! there is a disturbed spirit here!' C'mon, I could do that. (Psychic Detectives, however, is pretty awesome).

Has anyone seen TAPS? Actually, it's called Ghost Hunters, but that name is unoriginal. These two real-life Roto Rooter guys in (I think) Rhode Island get calls to come investigate hauntings, and they run around at night with all sorts of crazy video and sound equipment trying to capture proof of the ghosts. Now that I put that into words, I just realized that it's my dream job.

I was big into ghosts and ghost hunting as a kid and was always convinced that I was surrounded by ghosts, although most of them were benevolent. But I've only had one ghost experience that really shook me up. I'm really into cemeteries, which I know is a little weird. It's not a morbid thing, really, I just love the quiet calmness, the interesting stones, the idea of connecting with a very personal history of the area. Most of the people in cemeteries you'll never find in history books, so you're free to imagine who they were, what they were like, and how they ended up with a tiny memorial right there in the midst of a bunch of other memorials for people they may or may not have ever met. There are plenty more reasons I like visiting cemeteries, but, as this is just background info, I'll skip ahead.

A friend and I are driving around southern Georgia one day in college looking for little, forgotten cemeteries to wander through. Around dusk we decide to head back to Tallahassee, but then decide to make just one more stop (isn't this the way horror movies start?). We find a cemetery that's a ways back off the main road and surrounded by woods. It's small and unlit and we're the only people there. The stones are mostly new, which usually means there's not as much 'atmosphere' (for lack of a better word) or that the 'vibe' is fainter. But as I'm walking around, the vibe is quite strong, and it's not happy. As I approach one corner, the air feels more and more dangerous. I look up, and my friend, who was in another section, was looking at me at the same time, and we both knew it was time to leave.

As I turned back to the car, though, there was a small rustling in the woods behind me. I glanced back and a beautiful white horse was leaning its head over the fence and into the cemetery. I have never been more drawn to a creature than I was to that horse who apparently came out of no where because dead leaves covered the ground in the woods and it didn't make a sound until I turned my back. As I started to walk back towards it with my hand outstretched, my friend literally had to PULL me back to the car. As we drove away, though, we both felt something with us, something in the car. I even put the window down a little as if I could chase it out like a fly or bee. Finally, we drove within the warm light of the Waffle House and gas station signs and it seemed to disperse.

In retrospect, I wonder what the intent of that encounter was. I wonder if it was a ghost or maybe some other type of spirit. I wonder if that negative feeling was coming from the burial ground or if it wasn't from that friend who, it turned out, was an absolutely repulsive human being who put me in a lot of bad situtaions. I'm surprised I got out of that alive, sometimes, and I wonder how or if anything would have changed if I had pet that horse like I so wanted to.

G-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-ghost!

Well, I'm still busy, but I feel like I need to post something. So this week's topic is ghostly encounters, or spooky experiences anybody might have had. I think everybody, even people who don't believe in ghosts, have probably had one or two unexplained experiences. For instance, my friend Dimitri, who repeatedly swore he didn't believe in ghosts at all, still told me about a time when he went to get a drink in the night (he was 18 or 19) and there was an old lady knitting in his living room rocking chair. The lady looked like the woman who died in the house before his family moved in. Anyway, whenever he told this story, he would say that he knew it was a ghost, but whenever I asked him if he believed in ghosts, he would say no. I'm not telling this story well. Maybe I'll give him the heads up that he made a cameo in this blog and he can retell it in the comments.

My ghost story isn't as weird. When I was a kid, I thought I saw car lights through my bedroom window. When I looked outside, there was just this orange ball of light moving down the street. It turned into our driveway, and then it vanished.

That story sucks.

When we were kids, my friends and I used to have an elaborate, imaginary group of ghosts we said lived in the woods behind my house. (The head ghost was named Evil Ghost [clever], then there was the Red Lady, the Dead Lady, and some others I forget). Although I think we all knew it was just make believe, there were still places in that forest that freaked me out. For instance, there was this place in the woods that always just felt kind of weird, and one day all of the trees had their bark ripped off. Which I guess could have been done by an animal. But you know.

Anyway, my post sucks. Maybe others will have better ghost stories to tell?