Electronic Voice Phenomena: Terrifying.

[Umbran]

The brain is an electromagnetic pattern. If an electromagnetic pattern is in one place for long enough - say, where the person's head always rested in a favorite chair over many years - then, just as putting up a polluting factory can alter the weather patterns in the area, this person's brain pattern may begin to alter the local electromagnetic "weather" pattern of the room they are in in a specific way.

The brain isn't really an electromagnetic pattern. However, there are detectable electromagnetic phenomenon associated with it. What you are talking about, then, is effectively a very long-exposure photograph. WIthout any camera or focusing device.

The problem is that for long-exposure photographs to produce an image, the light source needs to be still. Very still. For a very long time. Even that person who always sits in the chair moves his head around quite a bit. And unless he's always thinking the exact same thing, he won't be putting out the same picture.

Plus, our world is loaded with EM radiation more powerful than that put out by the brain - sunlight, radio waves, and so on. Any "picture" should be thoroughly overexposed.

Ghosts are occasionally associated with locations where a single person persisted for a long period of time. More often, though, they are associated with traumatic events that take very little time, which doesn't seem to tie in well with your hypothesis.

Nor does your hypothesis explain photographs taken or sounds recorded at sightings. Tape machines and cameras aren't human brains. You think a tape recorder will take down these imprinted thoughts as audible words? And cameras will take them up as images of human faces?

Later, when someone else has moved into the house, at some point, they may have their head in just the right position in the house's pattern to "pick up" some of the patterns from the first person.

How does this explain phenomena that persist as the observer moves throughout the house? Typically, these things don't happen when the observer is standing stark still.

 

[Guilt Puppy]

BUT - they both describe the SAME universe. So if they disagree, one or both is not true religion or true science.

While I agree with your first assertion (that they are different modes of describing the universe -- art/culture is another), I don't think disagreeing necessarily means that one or the other is "wrong." For one thing, the whole notion of equivalence that allows them to "disagree" in the first place is a scientific one, so already you're jumping frames.

I'm going to avoid the "religion" issue (since it's actually pretty tangential to the debate) by substituting in art, and making it science versus art... It's a metadiscussion, so the same principle will apply. In science, truth is defined as "agreeing with observation;" in art, truth is defined (more loosely) as "agreeing with intuition." If you presume that they must agree to be correct, then quantum physics (which makes little intuitive sense) must be bunk, and Expressionism (which looks little like the reality we observe) must also be bunk.

In that sense, a "belief in the paranormal" can be perfectly right, so long as it exists within a framework that supports it. It definitely doesn't fit scientifically, so people who believe in it on a scientific basis could be called "wrong" (I wouldn't call anyone wrong for wishing to research it on a scientific basis, or being curious about it on a scientific basis... but any belief in it, given current observation, has to come from elsewhere.) But from other viewpoints (and yes, religion might be a good term to use, if used broadly), a "belief in the paranormal" may be perfectly right.

For more information, please read Kurt Vonnegut's explanation of chrono-synclastic infundibulum in The Sirens of Titan.

 

[Torm]

Very well, I will use Science and Art, since you are right, it amounts to the same thing for my purposes here, and provides a beautiful way to illustrate my point.

Science is frequently best described as math, and for a lot of people, that math is very boring. BUT, to someone who can understand the math, an equation that is both functional, eloquent, and minimalist to achieve the desired effect can be quite beautiful - a veritable work of Art. And frequently graphic illustrations of the math ARE Art.

On the flipside of that, we percieve people, sounds, and images - that is to say, Art - as beautiful or ugly, emotive or not, and when emotive, emotive of happiness or sadness or melancholy, etc. Our presence Science has some equations that, while budding, are beginning to be pretty effective at determining whether, on the whole, people will find a particular thing beautiful or what-have-you, through simple math. The Golden Mean is a good example. But just because we can do that, and probably will do it better and better, as time goes on, doesn't make it NOT Art anymore - science and art don't negate one another.

The notion that Art (or religion) are negated by being explainable by science is hogwash. I understand the biology of human reproduction extremely well, but that made my children's births no less a miracle. I understand the astronomy and atmospheric science behind a beautiful sunrise, but it is no less a work of Art for that. To use your terminolgy, your intuition was clearly wrong if it disagrees after the fact with what you then know could have been discovered by observation. And vice-versa. And if that is not true, either your means of observation or your means of intuition (or both) are broken. It is ALL one thing, and it makes sense that the varied ways of studying that one thing agree.

 

[Torm]

Nor does your hypothesis explain photographs taken or sounds recorded at sightings. Tape machines and cameras aren't human brains. You think a tape recorder will take down these imprinted thoughts as audible words? And cameras will take them up as images of human faces?

I really wouldn't dignify my little theory (note the lack of capitalization) with the term "hypothesis" , as I haven't really even gotten to something that could be tested empirically. But the one thing I feel that it has over the "paranormal" studies, even if it requires a LOT of refinement, is that it is an explanation that starts to build off of previous science, rather than trying to cram pseudo-science into a model to support something people WANT to believe based on religion or fear of death or whatever. THAT puts the cart before the horse, and is bad science.

 

[the GreyOrm]

...the theory that the dead can communicate with the living through the static on the radio, phone, or television...

Weird...I wrote a whole game supplement around that concept and I didn't even know it was a "real" phenomena! (For those interested, the supplement is for "Sorcerer" by Adept Press and is called "Electric Ghosts.")

So, here's my question: have any of you ever had any experiences with EVP? Anyone you know ever have an experience with EVP? What was it like? What'd they say? Tell me anything you know about the subject...

Nah, I just hear aliens and secret government communications.

 

[RobJN]

Not sure if the group's material is also linked up at the AAEVP site, but check the group "Ghost Invetigators Society" (G.I.S.); they... I don't know if "specialize" is the right word -- but they've been on Coast to Coast with Art Bell for many years, each visit creepier than the last, with the sound bites they sent in.

A quick Google or search of the Coast to Coast (Ghost to Ghost?) website should turn up more staticky, garbled spookiness. And if it doesn't give you more fodder for the game you have in mind, it may spark other ideas....

Good Gaming,

Rob

 

[s/LaSH]

In the interests of possible explanation, I've experienced strange interference with transmissions before. I've seen odd images superimposed over my TV programs, and heard voices on phone lines that had nothing to do with the people I was talking to.

Unfortunately, the images on the TV were easily distinguishable as the bold logos of appliance sales outlets (and changing the channel revealed, yes, that ad was playing on one channel or another), and the phone voices were just my neighbours when our cordless phones got confused.

A full explanation? Hardly. But certainly a possibility.

 

[Torm]

A full explanation? Hardly. But certainly a possibility.

And on an overcast night, I've talked to people on a CB from Alaska - when I was in Missouri. So there's no telling what sort of interference and from where you could get on all sorts of appliances, when the circumstances are just right (or wrong, depending on your point of view and how weirded out you get by it ).