Haunting Memories

I've been watching those paranormal shows on Netflix.  Right now, I'm watching one that was on Animal Planet.  All three seasons are on Netflix.  I won't name the show.  In spite of the fact in some cases, I just feel that people are scaring themselves into believing a building is haunted, there are a few where I believe they were haunted.  But a few I wonder about.  So far, two shows have taken place in the area where I grew up.  The one house, as soon as I heard the name of the original family that lived there, I knew exactly where it was.  My old neighbor's ex-wife grew up there.  It was never haunted when she was growing up.  But, it was also a kind of lame story to begin with.  But all of this is beside the point.  I've been learning a few things I never knew watching this show!  Such as...

• Poltergeists prefer young girls to young boys.

I don't know what it is about activity they deem to be poltergeist, but in these shows, it tends to affect houses with daughters more than with sons.  It seems like the ghosts that haunt where boys live tend to be more normal ghosts.  Unless of course, they insist it sounds like a demon before even investigating.  I don't know if the network told them that they needed so many types of hauntings per season, or they had to use certain consultants so many times per season.  But most of the shows had to do with them determining what guest expert needed to come in before they even got there.

• Some adults have never gotten over their childhood fears of dark basements.
• Speaking of basements, hairy spiders in your basement are a sign of ghosts.  (If the cameraman is to be believed.)

Basements.  Most in these shows are unfinished.  Unfinished basements tend to be plot points in a lot of horror movies.  And let's face it.  In certain areas, you are going to find various creepy crawlies in dark, damp basements.  If you've ever lived with a basement, you know what I mean.  Every basement in this show is unfinished.  You never see a finished basement being haunted.  Just the unfinished, which might not even have adequate lighting.  I understand the fear of the basement.  Big spiders are down there, waiting to jump from behind the washer or dryer and run across your feet.  If you live in a flood plain, it's going to flood.  You might need sump pumps running down there.

But as you grow up, you get over the fear.  Well, if you don't grow up with a bunch of unaddressed neuroses about it.  Generally, your parents help you get over the fear.  Unless they're scared of it too.  

• A vixen in heat shrieking in the woods is a sign of an evil spirit, not mating season.

This show is on Animal Planet.  So you would think that somewhere along the line, someone in the chain of command would know we were listening to a vixen.  Was the idea to scare people who have never been out of their cities?  Something like this makes everything else less credible.  It gives the impression of, "well, nothing to see here, wait, let's record wild animals looking for sex, pretend to be freaked and call it a day."

• Nocturnal emissions are a myth made up by big, bad scientists and doctors.  You are really under attack from a succubus.  
• Sleep paralysis and night terrors are really demonic attacks.

Science and medicine be damned!  We are headed right back to the 15th century.  Did these experts all drop out of high school before they got to basic biology?  Were they all sent to Fundamentalist Christian schools or home schooled by someone who considered science to be of the devil?  Or are they all just batshit crazy, seeing demons in every shadow?  It makes me wonder how they would score if given the MMPI-2.  I doubt they would come up as sane.

According to Alfred Kinsey, 83% of men will have wet dreams in their lifetime.  While this is most common in teenage boys, it can happen anytime after the onset of puberty and about 60% of married men will have them.  But no.  This married, middle aged man was under sexual attack from a succubus.  Do they even know their mythology about succubi?  I think not.  The mythology came about because no one understood the science of puberty or wet dreams.  We understand why they happen now.  Unless of course, we're a whacked out expert on one of these shows.

As far as sleep paralysis goes, I know it's hard for people who suffer from it to accept that what is happening isn't real.  What they need is a sleep clinic, not some crackpot who is going to tell them that they're under demonic attack.  That does nothing to help the person and is not going to stop the problem.  To announce someone is under demonic attack so flippantly, without looking for a medical reason first is just irresponsible.

The entire anti-science movement bothers me.  Shows such as this one drive home the point how much we need to push science in school.  Granted, there are always going to be those who want to believe that every shadow is a demon, just as there are always going to be guys who think they're a knight of old.  Fantasy invades reality.  But we're not giving random guys with swords reality shows and setting them up as experts in medieval weaponry.  This show takes utter crackpots and insists they're experts.  

• You are the wrong religion.  If you're Catholic, you should be Baptist.  If you're Baptist, you should be Catholic.  If you're mainline Protestant, you should be SSPX.  
• Any religion or spiritual practice you don't understand or falls outside of Christianity is evil.
• If you're an atheist or agnostic, demons are going to possess you.  

That's right.  If you aren't on your knees, praying to the Abrahamic god, you are going to get possessed.  Which is why science has medical explanations for what is obviously bad juju.  (Atheists!  If they believed in the right god, they wouldn't be possessed and they wouldn't push science on you!)  We all have superstitions, whether we're willing to admit it or not.  However, to be so superstitious that you are suspicious of anyone who doesn't share your faith, that is on the edge of paranoia and once again, I want to see how you score on the MMPI-2.

• Priests can just do exorcisms for the camera without getting permission from the Bishop.

Or not, after I actually looked up the priests on this show.  There are two priests I have seen on this show.  One is Roman Catholic and he uses prayers of deliverance, which can be said by anyone, including the laity.  The priest doing the exorcisms calls himself an Independent Catholic and appears to have a wife.  So he is definitely in schism in more ways than one.  (As a matter of fact, unless his ordination was done by a Bishop in good standing with the Vatican, it is invalid.)  He seems to be under the impression that all ghosts are demons and need to be exorcised, which tends to be a very fundamentalist point of view.  I have to say, if I was a ghost and he showed up and was telling me I was a dark force and I needed to be banished, I would offer resistance.  Which of course, would make everyone think my ghost was a demon.  Which might explain why once these camera crews are gone, months later some families have claimed things got worse, instead of better.  

• There is no such thing as a Jewish ghost, Muslim ghost, etc.

I say this because with the exception of one haunting, where they brought in a shaman to deal with a Native American ghost, all these ghosts are susceptible to Christian prayer.  So before you say, "that is because Jesus is the one true god," then why did they need a medicine man to deal with a Native American ghost?  One of the first things settlers did was work on converting the Native Americans.  So surely the Christian prayers would have worked.  No?  Going by this logic, if a ghost in life is outside of the Christian belief system, then Christian prayer isn't going to do a thing.

• Flickering lights don't mean a bad bulb or wiring if they continue to flicker.  Flickering more than once means evil forces.
• Never get the wiring checked if there's a high EMF reading.  It is always a ghost.  That fire that started in the wiring?  Ghosts.

If anyone on this show was responsible, the first thing they would do for flickering lights or high EMF readings is tell the family to call an electrician to check things out, before claiming a place is haunted.  While telling them they're haunted might be the gist of the show, it's also leaving these people to risk dying in their sleep as the place burns to the ground from faulty wiring.  

• Beetlejuice was 2/3 documentary.

Honestly, it was.  Watch that movie and then watch these shows and tell me I'm wrong.

• Tiny volunteer paranormal groups manage to be able to film themselves in a room from every angle and manage to zoom in at just the right time.

"We got this video from thus and so paranormal society..."  Yeah, I believe every little group can afford $100K worth of camera equipment and has a professional camera crew working with them, who can zoom in on the right person in an instant.  If that is the case, the cameramen should be working as psychics.  Not everyone in your viewing audience is stupid or irrational.  We notice bullshit when we see it and when something like that is claimed to be amateur video, we call bullshit.   Also, if the show isn't being faked, how do the cameramen know to zoom in at the exact right moment, every single time?

• Satellite mothers are really annoying and think everything is out to kill their children.

This is just a personal observation.  No matter what you want to call them, be it satellite or helicopter mothers, they are annoying, narcissistic imbeciles that we all want to see shut the hell up and let their children have their own damned personalities and interests.

• "We use scientific methods" means having the latest gadgets, not anything else related to science.

If they were using scientific methods, they wouldn't decide it was a haunting before they even got there.  They would want the wiring checked if something was reading too high on the EMF meter.  They would use some form of rationality, before deciding animals acting like animals are proving a paranormal entity is afoot.  They would have at least a modicum of common sense.  Nope.  Their scientific methods are to use gadgets and that is it.

• Confirmation bias runs rampant.

 Depending on your belief system, all ghosts are demons, or there are friendly ghosts and bad ghosts, etc.  So the show is a bit of a hodge-podge of how to handle things.  One week, you need a priest.  The next week, you need a shaman.  The week after that, you need a new age channeler.  However, whatever happens to be the belief system of the week, that is what will get rid of all ghosts.   We see methods ranging from exorcism to, oh, let's just burn a little sage to get rid of what our dime store demonologist claims is a demon.

Oh yes, the dime store demonologist.  He is introduced as being world famous in every episode where they bring him in for the cameras.  I had never heard of him before watching this show and it is nigh impossible to find his credentials through a Google search.  All I get are links to his fame and a few interviews that tell me nothing.  I want to know where he studied.  What makes him an expert.  From what I've seen, he's read a bit of Montague Summers, which is dogmatic, dated tripe.  (In my opinion, of course.)  He also comes off as a bit sleazy and definitely creepy.  Oh, he studied with the Warrens, who spent their time running around with that SSPX priest, who had been excommunicated by the Vatican?  That would explain a few of his odd ideas.  I have never been a fan of the Warrens.  They were fakes in the 70s when they insisted that house on Long Island was haunted and they tried to ruin the careers of anyone who told them sure, they would help investigate, but at the slightest sign of trickery, they were going to expose them as fakes.  If they were ever genuine, they wouldn't have had to worry about being exposed, as there would have been nothing to expose.  So, in my opinion, anything or anyone having to do with them needs to be treated with skepticism.

Getting back to confirmation bias, we use it from time to time.  It validates our beliefs, as we look for evidence that backs up our beliefs and we ignore anything to the contrary.  This show is nothing but confirmation bias.  As I mentioned earlier, they decided houses were haunted and what kind of entity it was before they even got there.  When they did get there, it wasn't let's see if we're right, but it was, let's prove we're right.  That is far removed from scientific method.  It is looking for what confirms what you want to believe and ignoring anything to the contrary.

Finally, I think my favorite line from the entire series was, "we went outside and the dogs started barking."

Really?  Dogs who live in a pen outside started barking at a bunch of strangers on the property they feel they need to protect?  Do these supposed experts have any experience around dogs at all?  If they knew anything about dogs, they would know that outside dogs especially will bark at the wind blowing the wrong way.  But, they wanted to believe it was a sign of a haunting, so noisy dogs became the sign of a haunting.

It is that sort of thing that really annoys me, because, Animal Planet.  A channel that is supposed to be educational.  Once again, somewhere up the chain of command, you would think someone who works there would have a dog and be able to correct this.  All in all, this was just a way to hop on the paranormal bandwagon.  It was not a good idea at all.