• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Jan W. Vandersande Ph.D. Guest on 7.13.08

Free episodes:

Forums New posts
valiens

valiens

Skilled Investigator
Dave nailed something for me here when he challenged the doctor on what is impossible for a magician to do in the dark. It's this:

Too many people believe that because they can't figure something out it's not possible. They don't respect the limits of their expertise or the expertise of others. And sometimes, they mistakenly think it does fall within their expertise. This is why psychologists, psychiatrists, magicians, astronomers, and physicists have limited usefulness where alien abductions are concerned, as well as spiritual and paranormal experiences. But try telling them that.

A psychologist, for example, is useful to the point that s/he can tell us Person X is deranged and therefore projecting a false experience. But when they conclude that a person who is otherwise not deranged must be so because what they're saying sounds like what a deranged person would say...that's not useful.

A physicist can tell us what we currently know the limits and the laws of the universe to be, but they are useless where UFO reports are concerned because they can't apply our current vision to that of an advanced race.

And in this interview we see the reverse working: The good doctor is fine in describing what he experienced, but in saying that a magician could not possibly reproduce some (or all) of it in the dark is meaningless. He's not a magician. That takes years of training just like being a doctor.
 
Of course, nowadays it would be extremely easy to touch someone in the dark like that. If it's dark, the people in the room cannot see you putting on night vision goggles. Do any of y'all know when that technology was invented? What year did the events in the dark allegedly take place? And, for that matter, why in the dark? Why cannot a spirit do it in the light? Doesn't make sense, using darkness to conceal sight is obviously a magician's trick.
 
I wrote a response a few hours ago but I guess I wasn't logged in, son of bitch!

Allow me to paraphrase................ myself.

I agree with Jeremy. Why is faking trumpets in the dark impossible? Based on his really impressive academic background you'd think he would require a higher standard of evidence, but since he experienced this first hand perhaps that changes things for him. The whole ectoplasm thing is really strange, and the fact he is scared it might harm the medium to take it to a lab, shows he really buys into this paradigm.

Interesting the spirits knowledge was far from omnipotent. I have a feeling that in the afterlife our quest for the one truth will continue.

Cool to get a guy with such an impressive academic background instead of the pseudo scientist type.

Interesting that even with his background, his ability to explain or prove anything is actually not much stronger than a lot of the pseudo scientists, which to me might be a reflection of how hard it is to pin any of this down, yet how real it is to the experiences regardless of the ability to control/measure it in any predictable way (Except for Arigo!!!)
 
An interesting show and an interseting guest. He does seem a little too biased by his own experiences but then who around here cannot say the same (David, Jeremy, I'm looking at you guys)?

That said, at least he's realistic and honest about it and enthusiastic about the idea of using things like night-vision cameras, mass spectrometers and other current technical tools to do some real analysis on this stuff and that should not be glazed over.

Also, while I agree in principle with what has been said by all about magicians and fakery it's worth remembering that simply because something can be faked it doesn't automatically follow that it has been. That's debunker thinking. Fake UFO photos don't discount the reality of genuine photos, it just makes them harder to trust and the same thing might apply here. Ultimately we won't know anything however until after the hard science is done.

One comment regarding David's mention of nihilism. Now, I'm a deist, so I view the universe as a great machine in which we are all cogs. That means that while I believe I exist for a purpose, I see no reason to believe that that purpose will be either obvious or beneficial to myself. The entire purpose for my existence could be something obscure like say giving a friend a ride to the airport. That's it. For some reason the universe as a whole needs me to do that favour in order to progress. It's not spiritual and it has no bearing on me or the existence/non-existence of my soul or the afterlife, it's simply a consequence of causality in the turning wheels of the great machine that is the universe.

So what I'm saying is, I think it's entirely possible for us to exist for a reason without it having some sort of metaphysical pedigree. I don't think believing we exist for a purpose but not for a "reason" would qualify as nihilism.
 
Jan certainly was an agreeable and forthright individual who understands the more challenging aspects of this, but I'm just left with a feeling that this method is, well, 'so 19th century' in its approach (Probably early 20th is more accurate.) But c'mon. Darkened rooms? Trumpets? Ectoplasm? I keep thinking Sir Arthur Conan Doyle should be in the room, too. Thanks for the show, though--a little different than most.
 
I was trouble by this guest. For someone with such scientific credentials, many of his answers seemed to suggest that he turned off the scientific method when it came to spiritism.

I'd never heard of Super ESP, so I'll have to check that out.

Maybe it's on me. I've heard of spiritists who who manifest ectoplasm from their body, but when you get to describing it as sheets or what-have-you, that just struck me as weird. I guess I had sort of figured all that stuff to be discredited 19th century stuff, and I didn't know it was still practiced. That black beard stuff also seemed really odd to me, too.

I don't know why I can accept the possibility of all sorts of paranormal things, but this whole blowing-ectoplasm-out-the-oriface thing just strikes me as plain weird.
 
Wooahh horsee.

Well i must admit the good doctor was a nice bloke all in all ... but isn't this all a bit silly really? Lengths of cloth like material pouring out of peoples noses, trumpets flying around the room in the dark (did the trumpets have night vision goggles perhaps??), silly beards ... it goes on and on.

Nope ... never been convinced by mediums producing ectoplasm, and I'm afraid I remain unconvinced.

And doesn't anyone ever take an infra-red camera into these events??

Flamin 'eck ... the whole thing smacks of hoaxing on a grand scale to me, and it'll stay that way for me until something truly astonishing happens to change my mind. What that would be I have no idea ... but its going to have to be pretty damn amazing for me to be convinced by this rather silly silly string stuff.
 
Personal experience is everything. Especialy when it comes to ufo sightings. I think that people with the experience are almost harder to convince sometimes than people with out. People with out usually just kind of nod their heads smile and roll their eyes and dissmiss it.
People with an experience I feel sometimes really make you qualify every last detail before they will open the door and say "ok", you really did have an experience. you're in the club now, come in". But I think that is because they are looking for that similar story to make their own make sense to them. Same applys to flying trumpets and color absorbing black spots. :)..................how come there isn't a cross eyed smiley?
 
Hi,
Yay - first post.
Listening to the show I was dumb-founded that the kind doctor was not aware that Harry Houdini had debunked pretty much exactly the type of "Spiritualist" parlor trick that Dr. Vanersande was describing in his books in the early 1900's, most notably "Miracle Mongers and Their Methods" and more recently a gentleman by the name of Jim Steinmeyer describes the work and methods of some of the most notable spiritualists from the turn of the 19-20th century in his book "Hiding the Elephant". The whole show of the ectoplasm and trumpet dancing in the dark is a standard Spiritualist sham and essentially a magicians parlor trick. I didn't think people fell for this type of thing after the release of Houdini's book laid bare the hoax.
 
I dont believe in Mediumship myself, I think it's Mickey Mouse IMHO.

Spiritualism was big in Victorian times because the Victorians were obsessed with Death and didnt have Television.

At these Seances when they are comunicating with spirits they are never told anything tanigible like the exact process that happens to you after Death.

I believe in Ghosts though.

Which is the Paracast Episode where David Biedny recounts his experience ? I found this intersting and would like to listen to it.
 
Anyone who has been around paranormal/new age media in the past 10-15 years knows that a PhD (even in physics) doesn't do as much for credibility that it used to. Math smarts, unfortunately, don't equate to common sense.

Vandersande sounds like a wide-eyed recent convert to some evangelical religion. And when he can't use any sort of science to explain this phenomenon he falls back to explanations from the other side or from the mediums themselves.
It was a chore to get through this show, the commercials were a nice break from that voice!
The cover of the book pretty much sums up Vandersande. You can see the picture on Amazon.
 
I seem to have a problem finding World of the Dead by James Wolcott????on google.This is the book David references on this show and also on a previous episode (can't remember which one)! Do I have the author and title correct? Also David mentioned it was an audio book. The events happened in the late 19th century centering around two brothers.Any info would be appreciated:shy:
 
Back
Top