Month: August 2015

Definitions

dictionaryEvery now and then I come across something in the paranormal field that takes me beyond the typical “I disagree” or “That’s just silly” to a rousing “Who do they think they are?”

Let me preface the following by explaining that I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to words. Words have meaning. Someone unilaterally deciding that a word should be redefined tends to bug the piss out of me.

Also, at the risk of sounding hypocritical, I get very tired of persons or groups implying that they are authorities in this field without producing the evidence to support such a claim.

I would like to make it VERY clear that I do not claim to be an expert nor an authority in the field of the paranormal. The goal of my writing and speaking engagements is to encourage people in the field to think for their selves, question what they have heard, and to learn as much as they can from as many sources as they can.

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The Party

This must be my week for strange and vivid dreams.

This one is particularly hard to piece together so please bear with me. When I do these journals I write down the broad themes and then try to fill in the details as they pop into my head. I know it makes my writing style a little “jerky”. This dream had a lot of seemingly unrelated elements.

Last night I went to a party. It felt like a reunion, but I only recognized a few people.

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Autumn On The Farm

I probably won’t be much good to anyone today as I FARMED ALL DAMNED NIGHT.

I had a very vivid (if factually muddled) dream last night. I suspect it reflects some things that have been in the back of my mind more than any message that might be buried in it, but here goes.

The location was “the farm” in late autumn. This farm pops up from time to time in my dreams. It is based on the farm where I grew up. Most of the geographical features are there, but it always has these glaring anomalies that separate it from the real place.

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Fact Checkers Wanted

factchecker

A while back I sort of got sucked into a conversation on Twitter about a piece of evidence in particular, but about skepticism in a broader context.

Let me see if I can set this up without boring you. My friend, Jim Malliard of the Malliard Report was working on a project where he would post “paranormal standards”. Of course the format of Twitter doesn’t leave a lot of room to elaborate on what is the idea and reasoning behind the standard.

One particular post said something to the effect that one still picture isn’t evidence. I took it to mean that because a single picture is a moment in time with no supporting data to reflect the conditions and environment present that it will always going to be an unreliable and easily dismissed data point.

Someone decided to argue the point by posting a picture that they had taken (presumably on a cell phone) that in his or her opinion obviously contained a shadowy demon-looking pig-man thing of some sort.

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