Paranormal TV Update

In the Paranormal-O-Sphere of reality TV, new episodes of My Ghost Story are being aired on the Bio Channel these days on Saturday nights at 10 p.m. with re-runs of the past weeks' show at 9 p.m. These are usually pretty freaky stories, although my feeling is that some of them are exaggerated or fabricated. Last week featured a couple that bought a big old house that they wanted to turn into a haunted attraction. In spite of the fact that they had some really vicious experiences, they said they still wanted to open it to the public as an attraction. Are they not concerned about exposing the public to activity that seemed almost demonic? Or are they just trying to drum up business?

This week, two stories were related to St. Augustine, Florida, where the lighthouse is supposed to be the most haunted lighthouse in the country, there was also a woman featured who takes video of water that she lightly disturbs. On the video there are frames that show pictures of people and animals. While I have never seen that exact technique, I have heard of using water or a mirror as an oracle for connecting to the other side or the use of videotape and static images on a screen.

While watching My Ghost Story I noticed that they are encouraging viewers to tweet their own ghost story to the Twitter address. Viewers of paranormal reality shows seem really interested in telling their own stories -- often anonymously, but more and more they are willing to be public about it even to the point of getting their 15 minutes of fame in doing so.

Ghost Hunters is airing its last episode of this recent season. The new format includes more interesting graphic frames and the addition of Jason's dog, Mandy, being used on investigations -- I suggested that TAPS use animals on investigations in a prior post here, based on the popularity of Animal Planet's The Haunted and the apparently obvious sensitivity of animals to paranormal activity evident in those stories. I made the suggestion on a Facebook thread for Jason Hawes about a year ago. I think they actually do listen to viewer comments in the web discussions and social media chats and threads. In some of the web discussions I had seen the complaint that the background music was distracting when investigators claimed to have heard something, and it didn't allow viewers to hear the sounds, as well. Now the production people are shutting off all music just prior to any allegedly inexplicable sounds that the investigators are hearing. The background silence signals something is about to occur, and viewers can focus their ears accordingly. I also noticed that Jason is much more animated in these recent episodes, and whether it is because of his increased fitness level due to his stringent workouts or because people posting online about the show complained that J&G were no longer "in it to win it," he apparently is more hyped up when he is pursuing a possible entity.

Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files follows the Ghost Hunters slot, and it was announced last week that they had record-breaking audience levels for four weeks consecutively. Not sure exactly what the "record breaking" means, but they had 1.4 million viewers for this past week's show, which was 6% higher than the previous week's show. Fact or Faked features a team made up of a photographer, tech expert, journalist, scientist among others who review web video claiming to depict paranormal and inexplicable phenomena and they determine which cases might be possible to investigate as hoaxes or truth. There are a lot of UFO and alien videos examined as well as those with ghosts and other odd occurrences.

Syfy has a new show starting Wednesday, June 1 at 9 p.m. -- Haunted Collector, which depicts the investigation of haunted objects causing problems for owners. The show features John Zaffis, who has been a paranormal researcher and demonologist for the past 30 years. Haunted Collector will precede the Hollywood Treasures show, which airs at 10 p.m. on Wednesdays. This is normally the Ghost Hunters slot--and I believe GHI or Ghost Hunters Academy usually follows right on the heels of the last Ghost Hunters episode of the season. However, it looks like GHI will be back around July, but I don't know if GHA will be.

Animal Planet's The Haunted is airing new shows now on Friday nights at 10 p.m. Last night's show featured a house that was built over a graveyard. A young child and her mother were experiencing activity and, of course, family members thought she was crazy, especially her husband. When the woman's sister experienced things, herself, she wouldn't go back into the house. In spite of other people having personal experiences and being visibly shaken by what they experienced, the husband didn't believe any of it. It always amazes me when they say, "This was different. Now it wasn't just my wife telling me she saw something. I actually saw it MYSELF." What does that say about his opinion of his wife or their relationship? Even the woman's mother was laughing at her until she felt a burning sensation and found teeth marks on her body. Not laughing now. In my research I looked at what makes people believe something is true or realistic, and it often has a lot to do with the trustworthiness people feel is exhibited by the source providing the information. Testimony + trustworthiness + evidence affect belief. Obviously, for him, the evidence was missing, but there was testimony from someone one would assume is trustworthy to him.

I'm a big fan of I Survived...Beyond and Back, which airs on Sunday nights. It is in re-runs now but it has the least production effects (background music is minimal and there is no re-enactment, just graphic images to enhance the story). The story is told solely by the person who had the NDE and a person who was involved in the accident or death event or who was involved in the resuscitation. I think the minimal treatment these stories get (based on the same production techniques used in the I Survived program) are very effective to keeping the focus on the story and the person telling the story rather than being an enhanced interpretation of the story that is dotted with comments by the actual people involved.

Report and Video on Paranormal Research Presentation

Here is a small piece of a talk I gave during Halloween week on Research and Musings behind Paranormal Television. (click on link to read article and watch video). I was hoping to show how traditionally schooled scholars have explored things like telepathy, communication with the dead, crisis apparitions, near death experiences, and more. My next talk at Teachers College looks at Death in Popular Culture on or around February 3rd in the Gottesman Libraries.

Mortality Salience = Love 'em or Hate 'em

I was walking down the street recently and realized that everyone around me was just aggravating me. I felt as if I didn't like anybody. People were annoying. Especially people who were different from me or who have different priorities, backgrounds, hobbies, and ways of doing things. Too many dogs on leashes, too much dog waste on the sidewalk, too many strollers blocking my path, too many slow-moving people in front of me. I didn't feel as if I liked ANYONE.



As I was experiencing this dislike for most of the people around me, I recalled reading a story about a man (Howard Storm) who had a near death experience (NDE), before which he was similarly cranky and unhappy, but additionally treated people in a nasty, condescending, rude and abrupt way. He expressed no belief in afterlife or a deity or any reglious doctrine. During his NDE he initially experienced negative entities who seemed to take pleasure in hurting and lashing out at him as well as pleasure in his anger at them. Ultimately he came to the conclusion for various reasons that he should pray to Jesus, something he was not accustomed to doing. After he did that, his experience changed to a light-filled positive experience that changed his beliefs and outlook on life from that time on. After returning to his body he said that he felt love for everyone he saw because he was shown during the experience that we are all connected and that love was a key element to growth and life enhancement.



So as I walked down the street, I thought of this cranky man waking up from this "scrooge" experience and loving everyone around him (to their discomfort). And I wondered if I could feel love for the people around me and, if not, why not? Why was it that I was so turned off by everyone's differences from me?



And I realized on the other hand that there is a theory called Terror Management Theory (TMT) that says that the more mortality salience we have, the more judgmental and territorial oriented we are -- with an "us/them" sense of the world. For some reason, this theory says, that a stronger sense of self-esteem (i.e. feeling like "I'm better than you" and "My way is better than your way") helps fend off a fear of death. I don't really understand why that would be the conclusion, and I don't necessarily agree with it, but those who have put forth TMT have done research on these responses by people who are reminded about the reality of death.

It seems to me that this difference in response to mortality salience -- being aware of one's ultimate demise--comes from the way one is reminded of one's mortality. From a real near-death experience in which one narrowly escapes death versus talk about or reference to death's reality. I personally have not had an NDE but my awareness of death's reality is fairly substantial -- so perhaps that is why I exhibited the negative response to people???? Who knows. I think it has nothing to do with my mortality salience and more to do with my salience that life is hard and sometimes other people make life harder for me. And sometimes they make it easier. That day, I didn't find anyone helping to make it easier.

Then you get the Christmas Spirit and holiday generosity -- the "feel good" season -- giving food to the needy (this one time a year?) and coats and blankets to the homeless (as if this is the only time to give something and as if that is what and how to give).

But that is another subject altogether...

Born to Die?

More riffs on this whole preoccupation with life after life and philosophies surrounding death.

"I don't wanna die, I wish sometimes I'd never been born at all" --Queen


I think I was born for this work. It seems to be my life's purpose -- to explore death. From the time I was five I suffered from thantophobia -- a strong fear of death -- which I don't have now, but it's been a long journey to get from there to here. What could POSSIBLY trigger such a fear of death in a five year old?

My father's father was riding to work in Manhattan on a LIRR train one morning in 1962 when he realized he had lost his wallet. At the time, I was a five-year-old sitting in my den watching television. My mother, of course, was vacuuming -- her favorite pastime -- and could not hear the phone when it rang. So I hopped up off the couch and picked up the phone in the hallway. It was my father's sister, Bette, asking to speak to my mother. I could tell my mother was upset while talking on the phone and did not really understand that my aunt was telling her that my father's father had suffered a heart attack on the train when he realized he could not find his wallet, and that he was being taken to the hospital. I think my mother called my father at that point.

The next phone call came in, and I answered it again. This time it was my father's step-sister, Carol. When I handed the phone to my mother, I heard my mother start to cry and say, "He was such a nice man." My next memory is of sitting in the same place on the couch in front of the television, this time at night with a babysitter next to me as my parents, dressed in black, were going out the door. Sometime later, possibly the next day, I recall that I was kneeling on the living room sofa looking out the front picture window at a gray day with a heavy rain, while a Rachmaninoff symphony played on the stereo. Everything just felt sad -- the music, the weather, the atmosphere in the house.

I was always the curious child who asked all the difficult questions. What was going on, I wanted to know. Grandpa H. had died. What's that? What does "died" mean? It means he is gone and will not come back. What? Why did that happen? His heart stopped and he died. I hope that doesn't happen to me.... It will. It happens to everyone. What????????? Don't tell me ! THAT is going to happen to me? And not just to me but to my PARENTS? And my BROTHER? and my OTHER grandparents?

That’s where it began. The fears, the sleepless nights, the sense of dread…who says childhood is innocent and carefree?

My older brother was the scientific type who read all the books about the planets and bugs and rocks and chemistry. I must have been about seven when we had a discussion about the end of the world. I said, “I’m afraid that the world will end during my life, and I’m afraid of what that will be like” Well, I said it in my seven-year-old voice and thought process. He told me, “No, the way the world will end is that the sun will die out and the earth will freeze and that won’t happen for a long, long time.” (so much for Global warming). “You will already be dead,” he said. There was that word again. So what was worse? Being dead before the end of the world? Or living UNTIL the end of the world. Either way, there was no way out of it. It just boggled my mind, and affected my ability to live without worrying about everything. At church, when the priests would talk about judgment day – how we would all rise from our graves to be judged by God on how we lived our lives – my seven-year-old mind saw that as the ultimate horror show. I ran out the door of the church on several occasions and threw up in the parking lot.

As a teenager, my fears became more real. I had heard about more people, even my own age, who had died. Frequently, my perceptions about being dead and being buried and no longer existing would overwhelm me in the middle of the night and I would go to my mother’s room literally screaming in fear that I needed someone to help me. Get me out of this situation! But she couldn’t. How could she? She was in the same boat. She stayed awake with me as long as she could and tried to help distract my thoughts – normally through a creative outlet like drawing a picture or a distracting one, watching television or reading a book. What did NOT help was when she tried reading the Bible to me – something that allayed her own fears, but stirred mine.

For a time I became excessively religious – almost superstitiously religious – and read the Bible on my own from front to back, listened to Christian radio stations and read every popular fundamental Christian book I could find. I became fearful of not following the rules that were set forth in those texts lest I not make my way to an after life in paradise. When I decided that I had allowed myself to become a doormat to those less concerned with being good people, I had had enough. The fear of death gradually became repressed, surfacing only briefly in the middle of the night through my early marriage, but the curiosity about it became stronger. I had to figure this out my OWN way in order to be able to put the subject to rest and get on with my life.

Today I will say that I have no fear of death itself, but perhaps the process of dying is scary – or the unknown hour of the event itself in my life. While I am more comfortable with my own demise, I have had only limited experience with other loved ones dying – and when my grandmother, to whom I was very close, died at 92, six years ago, it still felt wrong that she was no longer physically here. I dread to think how I will feel when my own mother dies or if I were to lose someone else I am close to. My eldest son is a fireman, and people ask me if that scares me. It does not. But I cry when I see mothers of firemen who have died holding their sons’ photos or helmets and mourning their loss. I can imagine their pain of loss, but think that what I have come to believe about death will make future loss of that kind in my life easier.

So how do we learn to come to terms with death? I can’t possibly have been the only child to experience that dread. My younger son said to me one day as a child that he did not want to get old and die. I knew what he was feeling. But he has had close friends die at young ages – 14, 19. He’s seen classmates die in car accidents. It scares him, and he does not want to talk about it openly to me. But he knows that I have strong beliefs about life after life and if he needs to he can come to me.

Americans tend to ignore death’s reality. Doctors don’t like to tell their patients they are likely to die. At funerals, the dead are positioned to look as if they are asleep, and there are even drive-in wakes – where you drive up to a window to pay your last respects. Death is not treated realistically in movies or television shows. More than sex, it is the great taboo that people don’t want to hear about or witness or think about in any realistic way.

Religion is supposed to provide the answers, but as a society we look more and more to science to give us the REAL story. And in religious circles, what is written about in a book for one group can differ from what is written about in another – and on top of that interpretations by religious leaders and scholars bring more variation to the answers.

Science looks at death from THIS side of the coin. What can they find out up until the point of death, and what do they observe happening to the body. They might look at what people say before death, or how they act. (Do they talk about knowing they will die? Do they see or hear things that are related to their possible imminent death?) Even Near Death Experiences (NDEs) have been investigated, but are controversial. If it can’t be proven, documented or replicated, can it be scientifically sound evidence? (a TIME magazine article in September 2008 notes that Dr. Sam Parnia of NY's Weill Cornell Medical Center will be doing a study to investigate claims of outer-body experiences during operations, taking the lead from numerous patients over the years who claim to have knowledge of what was going on in the room while they were being operated on, from a point of view near the ceiling of the room).

In the early 19th Century, scholars and psychologists, and physicists (see Ghost Hunters by Deborah Blum)were looking into claims of psychic experiences, ghostly apparitions, communication with the dead, and with powers that defied the normal realm of experience for most human beings. These visionaries saw a need to investigate claims by the masses to assuage fears and defy exaggerated claims while determining the legitimate experiences from the fraudulent.

What is interesting about the death phenomena is that people tend to choose a belief and stick with it no matter what may be presented as evidence. Their belief may be what you see is what you get – you die and it’s over—or the faith-based religious claims to what they can expect. No matter that the ideas presented by religions are not evidence based or proven scientifically, people are willing to buy into that. When television or the internet provide experiences surrounding death or life after life as an alternative way of documenting the idea of death, people often weigh that against their scientific or religious dogma, without seeing it as a source of information about what other people are finding out or experiencing in their lives about these issues. OR, they watch the shows or go to the sites and find it hard to believe that the things claimed to have happened, really did happen. And then there are those who take those personal experiences of real people and make their own judgments about what is really happening.

These are the issues I want to explore. Because, as the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying says, we are here to prepare for the afterlife. And to prepare for the afterlife, we need to know what to expect or it will overwhelm us. I liken it to preparing for childbirth – when I was pregnant with my first child, I read a book about childbirth in which one woman described it as “feeling like being run over by a train.” Ugh! Again. No way out of this—that baby was coming out of me one way or another, just like I was going to leave this earth someday, one way or another. But a nurse told me that not knowing what to expect in childbirth made the process so much more scary than it had to be. And I believe that not knowing what to expect in death – or not knowing what one believes about the afterlife – makes the reality of it that much more difficult. And the way we as individuals deal with that knowing is what I am exploring, especially in its iterations through popular culture.