 Let's jump into the the two ghost articles. I'm gonna I'm just gonna throw this out both of the articles had something to say about sensing supernatural presences and They're being or not being an electro magnetic cause or electromagnetic explanation So I kind of like to to know what you thought about each article because in my reading of them I don't want to say they were oppositional in that respect, but they weren't on the same page Let's put it that way. So again for our listeners with these two articles tried to do and again They were typical academic journal articles We went to these haunted places. We interviewed people, you know, who said they saw this that of the other thing We took lots of notes, you know, what happened and you know, what did what people experienced either inside or outside? Which room and what kind of experiences they had and then they set up an experiment where they would have people You know who thought that they were somehow gifted in sensing ghosts and then they had a control group of skeptics and They had them go through the houses or go to certain locations, you know with the ones in in the UK and just Record take notes of Did you feel anything? Did you experience anything? Did you sense this that of the other thing? And then they just sort of you know compiled the data and then some of the the groups were pretty large You had several hundred people in one of them and then the other study, you know, they had again more You know people who volunteered to come forth and said yeah, I'm good at this, you know, that sort of thing so what did we think about The method and the results of can people are there people? Can they sense supernatural presences is one question and Is there a viable alternative explanation To the results or not. Those are the two questions we put on the table So what did we what did you think about the experiments here? Jerry still out Telling one way or the other I did think it was interesting in the maher article that the controls the three men who were skeptically disposed towards sensing ghosts two of them were What does it say they were members of an international magical society? devoted to the pursuit of arcane truths through magical rituals and then one guy was just like a Computer guy who was skeptical of everything, but it seems like could you not find like three atheists or like three? Not at all predisposed to the supernatural you had to have two guys whose whole goal is to Like do magical rituals and they're the skeptics. I thought that was really Bizarre I did you yeah, yeah the term there that throws you is is the whole Well, not the term but the whole idea of ritual Because if they're just stage magicians well, then I could see them picking those guys because They would know how to fake something. Yeah, you know, but yeah, they that that did throw me a little bit too Because it says they were interested in the pursuit of arcane truths through magical rituals That seems really occultic to me doesn't sound like it's stage Magician, it's very it was very weird choice in my opinion for for the control group Yeah, something that was weird about the the investigation of the general Wayne in General Wayne in the Mahler article is that the study happened in 1988, but the article didn't come out till 2000 Yeah, I found that buzzer. I actually went on I looked up some pictures I was kind of curious what this place looked like and in Uncovered that there was I guess it was a subsequent owner the owner to this subsequent to this investigation is There were two owners and one of them ended up murdering the other in the rest in the in the end and It actually went out of business. He's in jail now and and now now it's actually a Jew I think it's like a Jewish cultural center or something, but I Don't know. I just felt it was weird that article took It was released after this murder trial Yeah, because I don't think that this was from the Journal of Parapsychology and While it's common to take a year or two To get something, you know published, you know through through the whole peer review process I have to think there's not a truckload of articles that are waiting For publication in this particular journal, you know, I mean there's enough material enough work being done to have the journal But the eight-year thing that that is kind of strange. I just I don't see a good reason, you know for that You know who knows, you know what what they were thinking The let me read from that article the part of the conclusion The sensitives believe themselves capable of sensing ghosts and that is what they attempted to do again this this one group of individuals Tests of magnetic field magnitudes at target and control locations Provided no evidence to suggest that strong magnetic fields or sudden changes in field magnitudes Had caused witnesses or sensitives To mistakenly interpret certain locations as sites of ghostly activity Yet other physical tests such as those using infrared photography Polaroid photography video recording audio taping Were unsuccessful and produced no conspicuous anomalies that might support the premise of a ghost and here's here's this last sentence and The possibility that the sensitives positive scores reflect only PSI test ability Rather than sensitivity to ghosts cannot be experimentally addressed and therefore cannot be discounted now What what they did it there were again these these sensitives and one in particular had a pretty good score of saying that he or she I think they were I don't know if they were all women or not but Felt something or sensed something Very close to you know the either either pretty much precise hits or close by In certain rooms and at certain locations in certain rooms where You know the stories about the place often put some sort of ghostly activity, so This one person had a particular particularly high kind of hit rate in that and then you know This they they tried these other means and they basically said well, there's no evidence to suggest that She wasn't like in there sensing some sort of physical, you know material, you know magnetic Kind of thing and so they leave the door open to well Maybe she really did send something but then they qualify it by saying oh well Maybe she just has PSI ability and it's not ghosts. What does that mean? Well, it I to me it just It felt like butt covering In the article because It's like it's not high enough to say that she can really do this But since we can't say oh, it's just geomagnetic Whatever, you know kind of like the the the episode we did with you know the the psychic animals thing where they're looking for a physical Reason why the dog, you know behaved a certain way well since we can't really establish there's a physical Reason that this person would have given us the response as she gave You know, we can't say it's B. We don't really it's not high enough to say it's a But maybe you know, she just has some other psychic ability And it's like well really, you know, you it almost felt like they were trying to salvage an inconsistent or Kind of a non conclusive outcome They were they were trying to save it, you know a little bit by oh, maybe it's something else that that we have it We can't rule out here. So it felt like a little bit of butt covering to me But again, that that was just me it reminded me of the one of the opening scenes and ghostbusters were Dr. Venkman is conducting his Rainer card test with some some some rather I Brother half thought methodology I think I Think in some cases that can that could be said of this article Yeah, I thought that it actually just showed this a huge Flaw in how this entire thing was conducted because ultimately No matter what the outcome was It was set up so that if these Sensitive or psychic mediums were gonna come into the place and make a claim about perceiving something Then we were not going to confirm or deny it. So almost it was like well, what was the point? Even bringing them in because the physical Quote evidence all kind of turned out to be in question like for example There was one where there was interesting streaks of light in the camera But then upon further analysis it looked like someone had probably opened up and exposed the film and sure enough You know if you paragraphs previous to that you hear about somebody who was taking pictures And then they came running out of the area where they were supposed to be to go get some more Film so obviously that is probably what happened, you know, so the physical parts Attempts at gathering evidence all seem to be pretty debunkable But then it's like well, what was even the point of the sensitives in the first place? Because they were pretty accurate with where there were have been Alleged sightings or feelings from people over the centuries. I think weren't they I mean so it's like yeah They're accurate, but you know, maybe they're just psychic Right. Well, you brought them in at the same time, you know if So somebody who took business in college had to take some statistics courses and You know, there's this idea of a sample size that you need a minimum sample size in order for it to have any kind of Meaning at all and when I read this I kind of felt the same way even when we did the crop circles thing And and that came out a little bit more I think in our discussion, but when you have like three people and this is supposed to be your sample size I mean it might work in a journal of parapsychology, but it would be laughed out of the room if it was a statistics journal, right? Yeah, yeah, it would be different if you had like a hundred people and Ninety exactly how to it has to be meaningful and just to have three random people walking in and even the numbers were all over the place You know two percent for one person and sixty percent for another. I mean, that's just not really telling you much of anything The other thing is go ahead. No, it was fun to read. I mean The author did a great job setting it up and sort of trying to prime us That seems to come up a lot Yeah Because there was also this interesting like sort of I guess I found this one to be a little bit confusing honestly because I Hope I'm not getting the two articles mixed up But I think it was the same one where it sort of seems like it started out that there was this attempt to differentiate between Regular ghost activity and poltergeist Activity but it seems like that didn't really carry through but then they kind of tried to bring it up again in the summation But it was lost on me. No, I'm with I'm with you. I don't I to me. That's like a distinction without a difference, you know, I Don't know what the point was and even with the back to the Yeah, the the term remember the Wayne the Wayne in what was the name of it again? General Wayne in general in and yeah losing the word general there, you know It would be also significant if the place had like a hundred rooms And and you all exactly, you know, and the and the reported activity of centuries gone by or whatever Only like happened in three of them. And so if you had like a huge number of rooms and Sort of a really narrow Opportunity for hits and then you had a lot of people You know come come up with the same thing to me that would be really significant So the numbers are a little bit odd I mean it and again for the sake of our listeners I'm not one and I don't think any of us would would be in the boat where we just don't believe that Ghost stories can ever be real. I mean, I'm not in that boat. I actually know people in a town Where I first I had my first teaching job where This was a guy in church. He was a realtor Bought this, you know old house in town. It was a really nice house But there was one particular room that they just learned you don't go in there And it and it wasn't a violent thing. It wasn't a threatening thing but there was one particular room in the house that They couldn't do anything with it was always colder than every other room. You couldn't Put furniture in it. The furniture would get moved around or overturned. You couldn't put wallpaper on the thing It would get shredded and it's like, okay. It's just not our room. We're done with that and As long as we don't have any other trouble. We're fine So again, these are just people that I knew I mean, you know people insurers had no they didn't go around Advertising and selling tickets to this room, you know, it it's just it's just something that was part of their house like a Leaky faucet or something. It's like we don't use that room because Somebody else lives there, you know, that that sort of thing. So it just kind of was what it was To them. So I I'm not closing the door on them, but I agree. I wasn't real satisfied with this article and the other article Actually had, you know, in the abstract, let me just read the the conclusion to the second one This is the one in the UK Results revealed significantly more reports of unusual experiences in areas that had a reputation for being haunted. So again, lots of hits This effect was not related to participants prior knowledge about the reputation of these areas You know, they tried to find people who didn't know anything about the place however the location of participants experiences correlated significantly With various environmental factors including for example the variance of local magnetic fields and lighting levels You know, you you do something like that and and you get that result You know It didn't it couldn't really prove anything So to me these this was in the I remember the source here Let's see go back to my my initial notes here that one was from The British Journal of Psychology Okay, so that wasn't you know up a parapsychology journal. This was sort of a more mainstream Academic journal and again, they they got a lot of hits, but they in this case They thought well there really are there could be at least they don't know they wouldn't say that there are but there could be at least Environmental factors, so it just sort of canceled out for other reasons The apparently interesting results that they got Yeah, in a way that was kind of like the in the crop circle The idea that well, there must be microwave radiation. I mean in this case. They actually found The magnetic fields were had variances, which I thought was really interesting Yeah, in and of itself it is yeah, but I wanted I wanted more I mean, so let's go someplace. Let's make Let's it's very you know, let's create microwave variances and let's send people through that place And see if they think it's haunted that would to me would would be really compelling Anybody else find have something interesting in this one or a point of dissatisfaction or satisfaction I think one of and I don't be cliche about it but I think one of the One of the underlying things that these kinds of studies prove is is You know, methodological considerations aside, you know The question that recurs to me when I read this kind of literature is how do we go about quantifying? These sorts of phenomena But what would you suggest let's say that you could You could alter either of these we've already talked about the one Hey, it'd be nice to have more rooms. It'd be nice to have more people I mean any other suggestions that you'd like to see because one of the goals that we have, you know for this podcast is eventually When we go through kind of a first pass on a number of topics we want to go back and contact some of the the authors of these studies and revisit, you know the topic and You know, it'd be nice again for me taking notes here that To ask them, well, why didn't why did you do this and not that you know that kind of thing? So anybody have other suggestions? What would you like would have liked to have seen them done, you know to kind of make it more satisfying for you one thing about this are this Wiseman article that it mentions is that during if I'm reading it correctly during the actual experiments the place was lit up and full of tourists So I don't know, you know, I guess it kind of tries to say that Whether people actually saw things or whatever or they felt dizziness headache sickness short of breath or some sort of a Presence and intense emotional feelings and then they were they had to score it as to whether it was a ghost Definitely. Yes, probably. Yes, maybe maybe not whatever the categories were I don't know How you heard if the place is full of people, you know, you saw something well the place is full of people You know, I don't know. It was difficult for me to Understand how a proper investigation or or experiment could have taken place with that kind of mean it specifically says it was loud There was noise. It was completely lit up and there was people everywhere that one that part really confused me Yeah, the general Wayne in they did it after hours in the middle of the night, which by the way that would creep me out I get a hit in every room House on haunted Hill that movie, you know, you're gonna spend the night in a haunted house. It's like, oh So I think it'd be cool if they could isolate it is to in the one in the UK one of them was I can I think a big palace or something and It'd be cool. They could isolate it after hours a little bit and then send the people through Yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be intentionally made to be spooky like, you know These ghost hunting shows where it's like we have to turn all the lights off and have it completely black And you can only see things through infrared cameras, you know But but at least maybe not during a time where there's just a ton of people around making noise with You know, everything illuminated and it just seems like that would always Interfere with trying to perceive something unusual Yeah, I'd like to see these them try something where they're not focused on The paranormal where they tell the subjects. They're studying something else So they don't go in there already biased or have a preconceived notion or looking for this stuff Mm-hmm. Well, that would even happen if you were a sensitive like let's imagine if we were all quote-unquote Sensitives and we all get invited to go, you know through this house we're not told anything about the house or its history or whatever but You know, we all know we've been asked. Hey, do you think you have a special skill in Detecting ghosts, you know, like you can just sense them and so we all kind of know why we're there Well, if it's me, I mean, I would be I'd feel kind of I'd feel a little bit like an idiot if we come back out The place and I'm the only one that says nope didn't feel anything because then it's like well, you're just no good I mean, there's there's got to be some I think there's a bit of a you know, maybe a peer pressure element here that How many people would really do that and just honestly say I didn't feel a thing Yeah, all of you others are reporting this and I guess I just stink at this or I lost the gift or how to bet You know, yeah, you'd kind of feel At least a little bit Nudged Towards saying something Somebody wants to be the only non, you know Experiencing psychic in the room. It's the only incompetent psychic in the room So I think there's some of that too going back to that EVP article when they were trying to pick up voices of ghosts in the university room Here they're going to a haunted house, but what if I mean, what's to say that these intelligent ghosts, right? The theory is that the entities are intelligent. What's to say that they're gonna be in the room at the same time as the sensitive? I mean, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Don't go smooth around. Yeah, I mean, it's yeah These alleged sightings take have taken place over decades or centuries in some cases are there like specific times when they show up According to the you know the past records and is that relevant to the to how you do it an experiment? Yeah Yeah, you I know what you're getting at, you know that boy wouldn't it be nice to have a have more data and have that data be At least ostensibly on the surface a little more relevant, you know, because you you know, you bring these other factors and that might make your Experiment a little more intelligent, you know a little more focused or something. I'm trying not to be pejorative here But yeah, that might matter. You would think it would it would matter if it has a long history That might be something you'd want to incorporate into doing whatever it is. You're trying to do here I'm sorry, Mike. Go ahead. No, I was gonna say I just have general questions about ghosts and again I'm not one of these that would say there's no such thing as ghosts, you know again because I know people You know who have no reason to lie to me Including relatives and whatnot that I take their experience at face value and so You know, even aside from the the scriptural warrant to believe that there are such things as ghosts I do have questions about Studies like these and sort of the modern way ghosts are hunted if you want to put it that way Why would why should we expect the activity the spectral activity? To not only show up in the same room, but the same part of a room I mean like can't are they just chained there like there's some kind of ghost glue that whenever they show up It has to be here, you know, I it doesn't make any sense to me If you're a disembodied spirit and you're real and you're not apparently subject to the normal laws of You know physics or whatever. Why can't you just go where you want? See people have these people read Charles Dickens, you know the ghosts they wander Well, and even even if you're talking about a mischievous one. Oh for the last 50 years I've been showing up in in the bedroom. Ah this time. I'm gonna show up in the bathroom You know just just to throw him a curveball, you know, they're just things that to me seem kind of transparent about kind of the the assumptions that are brought to the whole enterprise that that Make me look at it and think well, you know boy I This just doesn't seem like something that that's gonna really pan out well That's gonna really produce any any safe result And don't you think it would be interesting if some of these experiments were carried out not in like the creepy old Historical in or the creepy old UK Palace like wouldn't it be more interesting? I think this would be a really interesting experiment take a bunch of people who claim to be sensitive and Then just take two random residential houses that nobody's ever heard of it just so happens that one claims to have paranormal activity And one is just like Not it's just a house that's there and you send some of the sensitives into one and some Sensitives into the other and you don't tell them which is which and then just see what the results of that are I think it would be less like of a I mean if you're going into an ancient Palace or old historical in there's already this inherent creepiness about it. It mean it is Hard to imagine that people haven't heard some stories about these places that are notorious And I don't know that it seems like priming to you know Why not just put them into these places that nobody's ever heard of and not tell them if there's ghosts there or not And just see what they find. Yeah, we've done a number of these episodes now and the priming thing just again sort of bubbles to the surface where I Agree, I agree with with what Natalie just said it It just seems that there ought to be more focused attention to doing everything you can possibly do to avoid priming and that's that's difficult, but Some of the things we've read I I'm in agreement with with you know others You know here that have said, you know or just wondered about well Why why did you do this? Why didn't you do that? Because if we can sit here and after one reading and in a discussion You know an hour-long discussion here Think well that just predisposed somebody to this or that why couldn't they have thought of that? It just doesn't seem on one level Too hard to weed out the kinds of things that are occurring to us, but then on the other side, you know to be fair you know Can you really anticipate every way that someone might be primed? I don't know, but but somebody ought to be thinking about that again That's just that's just you know my take on it. I but the priming thing just seems really, you know really important a lot of this It's hard not to chalk it up to priming. Let me let let's I'll just be honest You know, I don't again. I'm not predisposed to saying that's all it ever is I don't believe that either some of these scenarios the small group of us can look at it and say Well, I would have thought that if this was the per you know, we can't be alone there I mean that other people were just we're just people were normal and so we're gonna be subject to priming and if we can Sort of be subject to it. Well, why didn't they think of that ahead of time? Yeah, I guess thinking about the the one in Scotland I think it was Scotland where they went to this giant arches It's some giant bridge with these giant arches that was supposed to be haunted And you have hundreds of people milling about and then and there's like certain spots that are supposed to be where the ghost live I guess and sure enough the test subjects picked those spots, but if you're in a like a tour And if you hear the person next to you, oh, do you feel that do you feel that? Oh, I feel creepy I mean, could if you just overhear that you're gonna say, oh, yeah, and now that you mentioned it I feel creepy too or yeah, well, of course you do I mean because everyone else in the area is talking about that too, you know I mean that's so I Talk it seems way obvious that no wonder they had so many hits everyone's gonna be It's a herd mentality kind of you're in a in a in a group Yeah, and anybody who's ever like it heard a ghost story, you know, you know that these Ancient structures ancient buildings historical, you know edifices this is where ghosts hang out and so you're gonna go into them and you're gonna feel creepy creepy when you When you go in there, right? I mean, that's just kind of like natural and then that's gonna make you have these these weird feelings that are sort of vaguely classified as like an uneasiness, you know That of course you're gonna feel that way because you've heard a ghost story before, you know And it took place in a place like this That's why I think it would be so much more interesting if it was just like these little residential Houses that don't have anything particularly overtly creepy about them. That would just be so interesting to me Well, maybe I mean we're gonna we're gonna at some point be coming back to the ghost topic because there's a lot of things like You know the the orb photographs and what now there's a lot to mine here Maybe we'll come across that something like that that would be real interesting for a future episode