The Afterlife Investigations - The Scole Experiments.

[trainedobserver]

 

[trainedobserver]

Skeptoid on the Scole Experiments.

 

[Muadib]

Skeptoid on the Scole Experiments.

I remember watching "The Afterlife Investigations" when I was younger and being very impressed with their findings. As I got a bit older and thought about it a bit more, I began to see some glaring problems with the way their investigations were conducted. Most of my concerns were addressed in the Skeptoid article, mainly the fact that none of the investigators had any real control over the experiments, and the fact that they always had to be conducted in total darkness, which to me seemed like nothing more than a condition they imposed to make it easier to hide whatever tricks they were doing.

One thing I didn't know that's in the Skeptoid article was that they used different locked containers, other than the one provided by the mediums themselves. I think it's very telling that no images ever showed up on film that was placed in a box that was properly locked. What more evidence of fraud does one need?

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Comes down to this for me: either you accept that things like having the lights off are a must when contacting spirits, or, it's a perfect cover for tricks. One magician can blow your mind with his sleight-of-hand. Imagine what several in conjunction could achieve?

I all I was thinking was that these people (the bereaved) were probably known in the 'i believe in the afterlife' circuit (there are psychic fairs in ever town) so people could easily have been picked out in advance and someone finds out a personal fact so they can be prepared when these people visit the medium.

I actually am undecided on this stuff but I cringe every time shit goes down in a dark room. I know enough dead people for at least a few to get in touch cos we spoke about such stuff. Never had a peep from any of them. Now, does that just make me a non candidate for being a medium? Or does it mean that it never happens. Usually the only people convinced of this stuff really, really want it to be true. It never happens to average joe's with no interest in mediumship. Everything I see is explainable by the will to exploit.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

Why don't they go and hit James Randi for a million?

 

[Polterwurst]

Well obviously, Randi wouldn't have accepted the condition of "everything has to take place in darkness".

I wonder, if it was all hoaxed, where did they get the 40s newspaper and the other old objects? Can't be too easy to find what seems to be a newspaper dated in the 1940s that was printed on an old-fashioned printing press. And how did they manage to convince even the magician who should know about fooling people into believing things? Also, on the Scole Experiments website I read an article which stated that the boxes containing the film on which the pictures "appeared" had to be in the possession of the scientists at all times.

I admit that I want to believe that these scientists would have noticed a hoax eventually. At the same time, some of the results - the grey alien foto and the eye-rolling film for example, just seem too ridiculous for the whole affair to be genuine paranormal phenomena.

I mean, if I was hoaxing this, I'd use less dubious material. Surely I wouldn't come up with the image of a "grey" in a ghost-related hoax. Somehow, I do smell a trickster there. It's as if someone doesn't want this stuff to be taken seriously. Maybe that entity, mechanism or whatever is even responsible for the "darkness" condition (?)

Is it only me or does anyone else find the sitting with Allison DuBois at the end of the film (1:21) pretty remarkable? I mean, they only gave her the first name of the widow, for crying out loud. I was really shaken after those last few minutes of the film.

Not having experienced the Scole group sittings myself, it's relatively easy for me to say that the scientists must have been fooled. But that part right there, that to me is undeniable proof that something very much out of the ordinary is going on.

Btw., the guys behind Mrs. DuBois are Dr Gary Schwartz and (I think) Julie Beischel. Who I think would make delightful guests for the paracast (not to mention Mrs DuBois herself). Speaking of which, I'll head over to the guest suggestions...

 

[Polterwurst]

For a deeper look into why the SPR researchers seem to be more or less convinced they witnessed genuine "paranormal" phenomena instead of a very elaborate hoax, here are the vids of the full-length interviews of the three researchers featured in the "Afterlife Investigations" film posted above, of which only excerpts made it into the final version.

I found them quite interesting. For example, the questions I kept asking myself about the observed "small light orbs" (were they moving around the whole room or just inside that glass dome, and didn't anyone of the scientists try to capture one to see if it was attached to some string or wire ?) are answered in the second interview.

 

[Ian]

I wonder, if it was all hoaxed, where did they get the 40s newspaper and the other old objects? Can't be too easy to find what seems to be a newspaper dated in the 1940s that was printed on an old-fashioned printing press.

Unfortunately getting old newspapers is quite easy. There are a number of companies in the UK (and probably most countries) who specialise in obtaining almost any paper from the last 100 years or so, from dispersed archives, house clearances, etc.

Ian

 

[Polterwurst]

Unfortunately getting old newspapers is quite easy. There are a number of companies in the UK (and probably most countries) who specialise in obtaining almost any paper from the last 100 years or so, from dispersed archives, house clearances, etc.

Ian

OK, I didn't know that, thanks. I looked up a couple of sites of these companies. Obviously it would be not more than a question of money to get a real copy of an old newspaper like that. The same applies to the other objects, I guess.

So, all the physical 'proof' in the case can be explained away quite easily, but of course it would mean that the hypothetical hoaxers would have had to go to great lengths and efforts and spend lots of money. I wonder if the outcome would justify that.

The sceptical researcher the SPR guys had brought along for one sitting, who closed his hand around one of the "orbs" might not have closed his hand tight enough to notice the string that it hung from. The other researchers and "civilian" witnesses allowed themselves to be deceived again and again by "angelic forms" made of gauze, hanging from wires, and by hidden mechanisms that would make tables seem to levitate and move and let light orbs and ghostly forms fly around.

Somehow, even in the instances where the box with the photographic film never left the hands of the researchers, the hoaxers managed to get some pictures on it. Somehow, the hoaxers knew that Montague Keen had a special relationship to a particular Rachmaninov piece.Somehow, a guy dressed in black, with only one hand visible in the dark (or maybe a lifelike reproduction of a hand haniging from wires again), managed to move around in the room unnoticed and touched the witnesses.

I guess you can take any one piece of evidence in this case and explain it away as a hoax or a misinterpretation and call the researchers gullible. Not having witnessed anything like that myself, I'm leaning towards these explanations, too, because flying body parts, cobweb angels and eye-rolling ghosts on film seem just too silly. But if you get told by credible witnesses over and over again, that there was no way it could all have been hoaxed, I wonder if that perpetual explain-it-away business is really as rational as it seems.

What really astonishes me, though, is the experiment with Mrs Dubois at the end of the film and why not one of the thread posts before mine even mention it. I've read both Dr Schwartz's and Mrs DuBois take on the experiment and they both sound quite like honest people and good reseaerchers to me. The only way I see that this can be explained away, is by another hoax,..

 

[nameless]

The human brain is an amazing thing. I wouldnt rule out the imagination, the mirror of the Id, collective un/conciousness and tulpic thought forms before I start believing in dead communication.

 

[Goggs Mackay]

The thought of an afterlife scares the shit out of me, and so do concepts such as 'heaven' or immortality.

Reason being is how long is forever? I mean a trillion billion years squared to power of 100 is not even a dent in the surface of infinity - so what the fuck is anyone supposed to do for all that time? I want death to be like before I was born, nothing. I don't see that as in any way negative, I think all this afterlife stuff is a projection of peoples natural fear of death. Hey everyone in history has died and so will everyone you ever know - it's gonna happen so if there is anything after, we'll find out soon enough!

 

[nameless]

The thought of an afterlife scares the shit out of me, and so do concepts such as 'heaven' or immortality.

Reason being is how long is forever? I mean a trillion billion years squared to power of 100 is not even a dent in the surface of infinity - so what the fuck is anyone supposed to do for all that time? I want death to be like before I was born, nothing. I don't see that as in any way negative, I think all this afterlife stuff is a projection of peoples natural fear of death. Hey everyone in history has died and so will everyone you ever know - it's gonna happen so if there is anything after, we'll find out soon enough!

exactly.
its a can of worms.
the idea of my dead gran watching me jack off is very frightening not to mention off putting.

 

[Donnie Vienus]

The thought of an afterlife scares the shit out of me, and so do concepts such as 'heaven' or immortality.

Reason being is how long is forever? I mean a trillion billion years squared to power of 100 is not even a dent in the surface of infinity - so what the fuck is anyone supposed to do for all that time? I want death to be like before I was born, nothing. I don't see that as in any way negative, I think all this afterlife stuff is a projection of peoples natural fear of death. Hey everyone in history has died and so will everyone you ever know - it's gonna happen so if there is anything after, we'll find out soon enough!

I could live forever if it was as good as your best day on Earth to the power of 100.Otherwise it would probaly be a chore.

 

[Polterwurst]

The human brain is an amazing thing. I wouldnt rule out the imagination, the mirror of the Id, collective un/conciousness and tulpic thought forms before I start believing in dead communication.

Well, yeah, or maybe a trickster, which is admittedly not so far away from "earthbound spirits". It's just that I want to go with the old Sherlock Holmes motto "consider the improbable only after eliminating the impossible". Meaning that to me it seems impossible to just shrug it off as a hoax, hallucinations, imagining things, misinterpretation etc. IMO, there is something there which I would consider "paranormal", what it is, I don't know. Maybe "just" the collective unconscious or tulpas in the form of "gossamer angelic forms" and disembodied hands, somehow produced by living people's consciousness. But as far as improbable explanations go, some form of survival of consciousness seems the less complicated one.

One of the two cases I witnessed of what looked like a child having memories of a deceased person (and later either forgetting about them or intently suppressing them, btw.), strongly indicates that there is more behind it than just fragments of information floating somewhere in a hypothetical collective unconscious. Bluntly put (and I know how this sounds), it looks like the person in question intently chose to "come back" near me. Which of course would mean, that more than just a few fragments would have "survived".

Man, I don't know. Maybe goggs has a very valid point in (I guess) implying that one is better off leaving these things in the dark. Admittedly, it hasn't brought much good and many more questions than answers, looking into them.

 

[Polterwurst]

I've just posted in the questions forum about some Scole experiment witness testimonies (regarding orb-like phenomena) I'd found, so I though I'd share the vids here:

EDIT: very cool (at least for me) I found a witness interview with two german participants (didn't even know there were any). The guy seems very technically inclined and he's german, which means he's probably been brought up to suppress any form of fantasy or imagination and interest in the paranormal (trust me, I know).

 

[Charlie Prime]

the idea of my dead gran watching me jack off is very frightening not to mention off putting.

I bet your Gran doesn't consider it a moral failure, being that he had a meat body once.

 

[trainedobserver]

One has to wonder why these "proofs" of the supernatural/paranormal always resemble parlor tricks rather than scientific experiments.

 

[Polterwurst]

Yeah, well, that's obviously why this "experiment" will never be accepted as proof of anything. The requirement of darkness is highly suspicious, of course and the explanation that the phenomena just won't show up in full daylight is quite lame. Which is why I've always dismissed physical mediumship as pure bogus, too.

But one also has to wonder why so many intelligent, sceptical and perceptive people couldn't find any sign of fraud or parlor tricks. How did the pictures turn up on film when the witnesses were holding the box in their hands all of the time? And there are not individual frames but one long frame on the film. How do you do that? If it was done in a lab, the film would have to be swapped, which seems to have been impossible, if you believe that the witnesses are not all complete idiots.Why didn't the guy feel any strings or attachments when he closed his hand around the light which he could then feel moving around between his fingers?

 

[trainedobserver]

But one also has to wonder why so many intelligent, sceptical and perceptive people couldn't find any sign of fraud or parlor tricks. How did the pictures turn up on film while the witnesses were holding the box in their hands all of the time? Why didn't the guy feel any strings or attachments when he closed his hand around the light which he could then feel move around between his fingers?

All I have to come back with is, "It is a well thought out trick."

 

[trainedobserver]

Weird or What? The Scole Experiments, Monterey County Skeptics