When a few friends get together sometimes the subject of the paranormal crops up and it always seems to bend the same way. Instead of a discussion about the very nature of the supernatural, ghosts, spirits and other paranormal phenomenon, what tends to happen is a collection of spooky ghost stories and nothing more. Most of the stories are second hand or old urban legends and some experiences have apparently happened to the speaker themselves, often the experiences will only be limited to hearing doors shut; lights turning on or other strange things, however some will tell yarns to make your hair stand on end. When will the bigger picture get a look in? Never will a true honest debate take place because to do so might invite the truth to the party.
2. Duplicate Duke
Something spooky happened to me once as a child, we used to have a beautiful dog (German shepherd) but he was tragically killed by a car one night. One day I came downstairs and headed into the kitchen and as I turned to walk through the door I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the dog in the back garden. At this point you will assume that what I suggest I saw in the garden was a ghost spirit of my deceased dog right? No this particular day was a day when he was actually still alive. What was spooky about this incident is that as I walked into the kitchen the dog was in there instead and not in the garden at all. How could I have seen two versions of my dog, it was clearly impossible because he was in the kitchen eating out of his bowl the whole time. My point to telling you this story is simply that had this experience happened AFTER my dog was killed how easy would it have been for me to state that I had in fact seen a ghostly apparition of my dog? So what did I actually see that day? The brain and the eye really do have an interesting relationship with the mind forever attempting to make connections and that's all I believe it was.
3. I saw something...out of the corner of my eye!
People think their eyesight is better than it is but when you look around, your eyeballs pan around inside your head incredibly fast so you get the impression that your field of vision is larger than it actually is when in fact you can only see whatever is directly at the center of your gaze. Try this experiment and you will understand my point. First you need to have an object to look at on the other side of the room, a living room is ideal. Concentrate your gaze on an object on the other side of your room and remain focused on that object; it could be a pattern on the wall or an ornament or anything else. While you are looking at this object you will still be able to see other things around it, try and see something else in the room that's in your field of vision but REMAIN FOCUSED on that first object at all times. You will be amazed that you can't actually 'see' any of these things at all. You may have a TV on that you can see but its just shapes, you know that's a photo of grandpa but can you see his face clearly? Try this and you will be surprised how limited your field of vision really is, let alone 'the corner of your eye' which is a thousand times worse. The other eye test is also rather fun and involves watching a finger moving left to right using just your eyeballs to track it. Try it and you will notice a smooth gliding motion as your eyeballs effortlessly track the finger, now take the finger away and pan the room from left to right, you will notice your eyeballs no longer have the deluxe gliding system but will freeze at points along the way. This second eye experiment has nothing to do with this work except to highlight our biology but this third test goes even further. We all have a blind spot in our sight and it has something to do with the way our eyes function. This blind spot is literally void, blank it does not exist and we cannot see in this area, why then do we not notice it? The reason we cannot 'see' this blind area is because our brains fill in the gap for us, but it is possible to overcome this rather pleasant service that our brains perform by doing an experiment. Here we go, first look straight ahead closing your LEFT eye and extend your RIGHT arm straight ahead with a thumb up in your field of vision. Now move your right arm still extended in front of you with thumb up about 2-3 inches to the right (60 degrees or 1 o'clock) BUT keep looking straight ahead don't follow your thumb but you will still see it. Keep moving your extended arm slowly up, down, around in that area and you will find the blind spot. Your left eye must be closed and you must remain looking ahead, eventually you will find your blind spot and when you do your thumb will vanish, it will literally disappear. I hope you find it and then marvel at our wonderful biology, not paranormal, the aliens didn't build the pyramids humans did we are amazing.
4. Anyhoo....on to the moggy
I must move on to the cat in my title. This is a true story about a guy who, as a master skeptic, debunked all paranormal activity and up to this moment in his life could explain every paranormal occurrence with a more scientifific explanation, but one night he himself went through an out of body experience. He rose from his bed and looked down from the bedroom ceiling and he could see himself lying fast asleep on the bed below him. He explains that the detail was so clear that from the ceiling he could even see the patterns on his duvet and that his cat had sat right in the middle of the bed so he was all scrunched to one side. In the morning he awoke and immediately remembered his experience...but it wasn't the amazing phenomenon it appeared to be. First the duvet during the out of body experience was actually in the wash and had not been on the bed, second the cat had been locked outside the entire night, it was impossible for him to have seen the cat on his bed that night. Suppose this had been a man who never washed his duvet, and imagine if his cat had been inside that night; then this experience surely would have been an undeniable supernatural experience. The point here is that what sometimes may appear to be unexplained or supernatural has a more down to earth boring explanation.
5. The warning
Most folks limit their experiences to creaking floors and second hand telling of stories but I offer a serious warning to you; beware anyone who will tell you with a straight face that they regularly see ghosts; talk to them or hear voices in their heads; these people are ill and share a common experience with many serial killers!! Beware so called fairground psychics and church faith healers for these people are con artists who feed off the vulnerable and soil beloved treasured memories of the bereaved. Anyone with a gateway of communication with the afterlife will also have a gateway to stardom and riches and we've seen them all including the church preacher who wore an earpiece to communicate with his wife fooling his flock into believing it was God and breaking their necessary walking sticks. Let’s face it if Jonathon Edwards, Doris Stokes and Uri Geller had to rely on standard 'cold reading' techniques to hoodwink the masses, the old hag in the tower block that's charging five pounds for a reading is not worth the bother. Just save your money whoever they are; the only difference between the gypsy in the fairground and Sylvia Brown is that Brown is a better charlatan. Please have a look at a real transcription of a psychic reading never before published arranged and analyzed by me http://theharlowsceptic.weebly.com/the-harlow-sceptic/transcript-of-psychic-reading-tricks-of-the-trade
6. Supernatural clothing manufacture
Among the most ridiculous of ghost sightings in my opinion are that of spirits when they are in full dress, you know with nuns, old ladies, soldiers and other ghosts dressed in clothing from days gone by......that's right....DRESSED!! Consider...if we do have an eternal soul or spirit surely it would be naked? Can the spirit world manufacture spirit clothing...really? Does it make any sense that if a human being dies the spirit world would manufacture an exact copy of the clothes that they were wearing? Maybe they go to Marks and Specter or psyKE? Another theory is that perhaps what people see as ghost's are actually real pieces of past time frozen...like a re-run of past events? This would sit more comfortable with me and explain our clothed ghouls but even that explanation is absolutely riddled with major flaws and not dissimilar to my socks...full of holes.