Your ol' pal Skippy is on a bit of a forced vacation - Kentucky and Southern Indiana got dealt with a couple of days ago by a huge ice storm and my place of employment is currently closed due to a combination of bad roads and widespread power outtages. My electricity was off for the better part of yesterday, but it's back on now and there's not a lot to do around here but read and watch daytime TV, which brings me to my point: There's a woman wrestling a ghost on the freakin' Discovery Channel.
Maybe that's normal for the Discovery Channel these days, but I remember when, you know, it was possible to actually learn things from watching the "educational" cable channels. I'll admit that the Discovery Channel did start going south earlier than say the Learning Channel and the History Channel, but I'm nonetheless aghast that at 2 in the freakin' afternoon the Discovery Channel is running an "investigative" show about ghosts which culminates in a literal wrestling match between some "psychic" lady and a big zombified fat guy. The show's called A Haunting and it's big draw is the relatively sophisticated "re-enactments" of supposedly supernatural events. It provides essentially no verifiable information about the cases it claims to discuss. Seriously, it's beneath even Unsolved Mysteries when it comes to actually trying to show any kind of "evidence". Instead it's kind of like watching an episode of Tales From the Crypt, but with no Crypt Keeper and no possibility of nudity. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that it's is pretty goofy - the show is affiliated with Ed and Lorraine Warren, the "demonologists" that helped to fabricate the Amityville hoax.
The best/silliest bit about the whole thing is watching the psychics and exorcists they trot out to fight the various monsters talk with a straight face about all their battle tactics against these supernatural beasts. The episode with the aforementioned wrestling patch was accompanied by commentary in which our psychic friend explained that even though the ghost was "trying to rip [her] neck off" she was able to "release its negative energy" and destroyed it. Lucky thing, that - Astute readers will recall that monsters imbued with negative energy drain an entire experience level every time they touch someone, so the psychic lady was in real danger here. If I recall correctly, being drained to zero levels by a ghost causes the victim to rise as a ghost themselves, but with only half the hit points of the original monster.
...Or maybe there aren't actually ghosts and the people on these kinds of shows are either deluded or opportunistic charlatans. I'm honestly not sure whether the veiled use of Dungeons and Dragons nonsense on the part of these "ghost fighters" points to the former or the latter.
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paranormal. Show all posts
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, October 29, 2007
Oooooo...spooky.
Here in Louisville the "haunted" place of note is the Waverly Hills Sanatorium. (That's San-a-TOR-ium, not San-i-TAR-ium. It was a TB hospital, not a madhouse. Even the place's own fliers get that wrong sometimes.) It was a local legend long before being featured on Sci Fi's "Ghost Hunters" program a couple of years ago, and has been operating as a haunted house during the Halloween season for years now.
The place is actually more properly called the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, given that it existed in that capacity for around 28 years after the Sanatorium shut down, but the Waverly Hills bit sounds scarier. I recently attended the haunted house attraction there, and I have to say that it's a legitimately creepy place. The architecture is cool and its indisputable that a ton of people died there, so it's obvious why urban legends about ghosts and whatnot abound regarding the place.
Sadly the only thing that was actually scary about the haunted house itself was the line - My party foolishly purchased our tickets in advance and waited in line from 10:30 at night until around 2 in the morning to actually go through the place. By that point, no amount of guys dressed up as Michael Myers could make the place worth the wait. (To be fair, the werewolf at the very beginning was quite cool, and one of the performers got a legitimate jump out of me towards the end.) Much was made in the lead up about the "haunting" at the building itself, but precious little of the attraction centered around it. I'd have been more interested just to take the tour...
That being said, I'm considering signing up for one of the overnight stays that the Mattingly family (the people that own Waverly these days) organize. Sadly they're a $100 a person and there aren't any openings until next year. I think it would be an interesting place to do a Skippy video, but that's one heck of a location fee. Plus I've heard rumblings about cameras not being permitted and actors being strewn hither and yon throughout the building to turn it into "an experience", but I suppose we'll see. The official Waverly website is rather obfuscatory, while the superior Memorial and Resource Center site has nothing to do with the touring aspect of the operation.
Time will tell, I suppose.
The place is actually more properly called the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, given that it existed in that capacity for around 28 years after the Sanatorium shut down, but the Waverly Hills bit sounds scarier. I recently attended the haunted house attraction there, and I have to say that it's a legitimately creepy place. The architecture is cool and its indisputable that a ton of people died there, so it's obvious why urban legends about ghosts and whatnot abound regarding the place.
Sadly the only thing that was actually scary about the haunted house itself was the line - My party foolishly purchased our tickets in advance and waited in line from 10:30 at night until around 2 in the morning to actually go through the place. By that point, no amount of guys dressed up as Michael Myers could make the place worth the wait. (To be fair, the werewolf at the very beginning was quite cool, and one of the performers got a legitimate jump out of me towards the end.) Much was made in the lead up about the "haunting" at the building itself, but precious little of the attraction centered around it. I'd have been more interested just to take the tour...
That being said, I'm considering signing up for one of the overnight stays that the Mattingly family (the people that own Waverly these days) organize. Sadly they're a $100 a person and there aren't any openings until next year. I think it would be an interesting place to do a Skippy video, but that's one heck of a location fee. Plus I've heard rumblings about cameras not being permitted and actors being strewn hither and yon throughout the building to turn it into "an experience", but I suppose we'll see. The official Waverly website is rather obfuscatory, while the superior Memorial and Resource Center site has nothing to do with the touring aspect of the operation.
Time will tell, I suppose.
Monday, February 05, 2007
It's about more than ghosts...
A brief quotation from Dan Agin's "Junk Science" serves here as some chewy food for thought:
"As a rule, the more polarized the political stance, the more likely realities are twisted to suit the arguments, and at the extremes of polarization it's no surprise to find that those on the extreme left and extreme right essentially practice the same methods..."
These are words worthy of being taken to heart. Though I devote a lot of my attention to the questionable actions of the political (and especially the religious) right, the left is far from sinless. From the irrational fear of nuclear energy to the spread of rampant and choking "political correctness", the left has woven its share of threads into the tapestry of the ridiculous that now hangs over the United States and the world.
The defense against this is a skeptical and critical worldview, a demand that claims be backed with verifiable evidence and that policies be dictated by reason rather than impassioned wishful thinking. Skepticism isn't just for dealing with psychics and ghosts and Mothman. The value of skepticism would be sorely limited if its application was constrained merely to the paranormal. After all, Sasquatch isn't in charge of allocating federal money for medical research and the Loch Ness Monster doesn't keep a blog about the alleged evils of transgenic foods. While paranormal charlatans can fool us, steal our money, and use our emotions against us, political and corporate entities can do all these things and more on a scale that is almost unimaginable- but only if we let them.
I've come to see the examination of these more fantastic claims as a sort of practice, a skepticism 101 that lays the foundations for one's ability to deal with the more insidious flummery that surrounds us. The mechanisms for examining the claims of a psychic are not much different than the mechanisms for examining the rationale behind political or corporate policy. Though the subjects for consideration may be very different, we must still strive to reach conclusions based on the evidence and solid, neutral reason.
Because we live in a representative democracy, the public must learn to protect itself from specious reasoning. On its face the equation is simple: The better the powers of reasoning that the voting public can bring to bear, the more rational public policy and governance will become. The real application is unlikely to be quite so perfect, but it's a mark to strive for nonetheless.
"As a rule, the more polarized the political stance, the more likely realities are twisted to suit the arguments, and at the extremes of polarization it's no surprise to find that those on the extreme left and extreme right essentially practice the same methods..."
These are words worthy of being taken to heart. Though I devote a lot of my attention to the questionable actions of the political (and especially the religious) right, the left is far from sinless. From the irrational fear of nuclear energy to the spread of rampant and choking "political correctness", the left has woven its share of threads into the tapestry of the ridiculous that now hangs over the United States and the world.
The defense against this is a skeptical and critical worldview, a demand that claims be backed with verifiable evidence and that policies be dictated by reason rather than impassioned wishful thinking. Skepticism isn't just for dealing with psychics and ghosts and Mothman. The value of skepticism would be sorely limited if its application was constrained merely to the paranormal. After all, Sasquatch isn't in charge of allocating federal money for medical research and the Loch Ness Monster doesn't keep a blog about the alleged evils of transgenic foods. While paranormal charlatans can fool us, steal our money, and use our emotions against us, political and corporate entities can do all these things and more on a scale that is almost unimaginable- but only if we let them.
I've come to see the examination of these more fantastic claims as a sort of practice, a skepticism 101 that lays the foundations for one's ability to deal with the more insidious flummery that surrounds us. The mechanisms for examining the claims of a psychic are not much different than the mechanisms for examining the rationale behind political or corporate policy. Though the subjects for consideration may be very different, we must still strive to reach conclusions based on the evidence and solid, neutral reason.
Because we live in a representative democracy, the public must learn to protect itself from specious reasoning. On its face the equation is simple: The better the powers of reasoning that the voting public can bring to bear, the more rational public policy and governance will become. The real application is unlikely to be quite so perfect, but it's a mark to strive for nonetheless.
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