the great divide

As luck would have it, today has an example from both sides of the believers/skeptics camps. First, a researcher in England thinks he's pinned down the source of ghosts in English castles: Infrasound created by sea waves.

“The ‘dead people’ in this country have more reasons to walk round the corridors and towers of the old castles and mansions because of the strong sea winds blowing swiftly across the British Isles,” says [British specialist in information technology, Vic] Tandy. “The winds produce the sound waves of a particular range, which until recently researchers have failed to take note of. The people traditionally see the phenomena created by those sound waves as specters.” ... So far Tandy has failed to explain why the “resonant sounds” took shape in such a form.

As the article from Pravda says, Tandy apparently did not elaborate how an infrasound wave produces a human form, and if true, I would say this is more a case of one researcher seeing a ghost but not being able to believe his eyes, thus producing a thin excuse of some external source that "tricked" his eyes. However, infrasound is definitely something we need to be cognizant of in our Sealed House, since Bose labs has done similar research and has created for subjects the alien abduction experience, using sound.

On the other hand, we have believers like Cindy Starr-Witman of the Chester County Paranormal Research Society who says an "orb" captured on film at the Phoenixville Library "is definitely something." Well, yes, it is. It's what I would call a "photographic anomaly created by a digital camera." I'll have to dig up the photos, but I was once involved in a group picture taken by many different cameras, and the digital pictures unfailingly came back with "orbs," while the emulsion film cameras captured nothing. My feeling is that, if a ghost is truly an electro-magnetic phenomenon of some kind, then it would create distortions on emulsion, but there's no reason the same would be true for digital, which can only capture what the naked eye could see (orbs, most likely, are dust or pollen close to the lens, in my opinion).

And for something completely different, but sort of on topic, wildlife officials and animal control officers in Androscoggin County, Maine have declined to go to Turner to examine the remains of what could be the Maine Mystery Beast, which has been local legend for going on 15 years. Now why would they decline to go and put to rest what the thing killed by a car is? Are they afraid they'll actually find something unexplained?

After reviewing photos of the carcass, [Loren Coleman, a Portland author and cryptozoologist,] said he was bothered by the animal's ears and snout. It reminded him of a case years ago in northern Maine in which an animal shot by a hunter could not be identified. In the end, wildlife officials got a DNA analysis that showed the animal was a rare wolf-dog hybrid, he said.

And now we'll never know what this thing is, simply because the "experts" once again refused to even examine -- and possibly debunk -- physical evidence of something "unexplained."

stories referenced:

• "British researcher says infrasonic wave sounds create ghosts" (Komsomolskaya Pravda), August 16, 2006 (english.pravda.ru)
  
• "You Decide: Ghosts Caught On Tape?" (NBC10.com), August 16, 2006 (nbc10.com)
  
• "Maine Mystery Beast Possibly Killed by Car" (AP), Wednesday, August 16, 2006 (foxnews.com)