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?

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.

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?