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Weird Or What Television Program Is Ridiculing The Paranormal Community -- This Is A Public Blog

Posted by Tom Butler, 19 October 2011 · 155 views

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What the public thinks ofthe paranormal phenomena and how it thinks of those of us who study them has agreat deal to do with the future of our work. As long as mainstream thought isthat these phenomena are impossible, and therefore cannot be, we will beconsidered fraudulent, ignorant, or at best, delusional. For the mainstream,there are no other possible conclusions about people who believe in somethingthat cannot be.

Of course, it does nottake very much time working with such “impossible phenomena” as EVP and visualITC to convince open minded explorers that they are very real. The scientificcommunity is unlikely to do their societal duty to explore these phenomena so wedepend on the media to help mainstream society understand. The most influentialwas Universal Studios with the movie, White Noise. With that movie, EVP became a household word and it was notlong after the release that just about every community in the country had ahauntings investigation group with at least one EVP practitioner.

Television has also beenimportant, but not in a good way. All of the ghost hunting programs have onlyserved to bring more ridicule to our frontier community. The need to entertainrather than inform has resulted in sensational programming that amounts todebunking, rather than informing. If the viewer sees how something could befaked, whether or not the fake would actually pass scrutiny, it is too easy forthe viewer to conclude that all of the examples are probably faked.

Case in point is the newtelevision program “Weird or what” featuring William Shatner. One of the articleresearchers contacted us some time ago with:

Hello, I’m a researcher with the popular television series WilliamShatner’s Weird or What. Please do not let the title of the show sway you – weare not out to call something weird. Quite simply put we present mysteriousstories and give three possible explanations without giving a solution ordebunking. Right now I am looking to speak with someone about the study ofElectronic Voice Phenomenon.

We exchanged emails andthen spoke on the telephone. The researcher seemed sincere and I have alwaysbeen a Shatner fan, so always hopeful for an honest treatment of our phenomena,we were considering how we could help.

Then we read this comment onVictor Zammit’s blog:

SCOLEEXPERIMENT CONTROVERSY: The producers of the show "Weird or What"took part of Tim Coleman'sdocumentary on the Scole Experimentand then FRAUDULENTLY claimed that thewhole thing had been set up using magician's tricks. Never watch this fraudulentWeird or What show again. DO NOT BELIEVE SUCH SKEPTICAL RUBBISH!

We asked the researcher to explain and received:

I just watched the segmentagain. At no point do we conclude that the Scole Experiment was faked. Like allof the amazing stories we tell in the show, we suggest theories as to possibleexplanations, but always leave it for the viewer to make up their own minds. Weask, "Was the Scole Experiment faked?" and then show how séances couldbe manipulated if one so chooses. Then we ask if the photographscould be real and ask an expert to suggest how these images might have been made. We end the piece by asking one final question - whatif the people involved in the Scole Experiment were telling the truth?

Producer/director of thedocumentary on the Scole Experiment, Tim Coleman, did not respond to our query,but Robin Foy did. Robin and Sandra Foy were two of the sitters in the ScoleGroup and are highly respected in the paranormal community. He responded with:

Hi Tom and Lisa,

It was actually ME who was thevictim in the Weird or What Saga. Their 'total hatchet job' was based on aninterview I gave them in Spain. This past spring, their team flew out to Spainto interview me about the Scole Experiment. The interview I gave took about 4hours to film in two different places (with 4 hours positive dialogue regardingScole), but in actual fact there was only about 2 or 3 minutes of my dialogueshown, whilst the rest of the show was carefully put together to totally rubbishour work, with a so-called professional debunking effort by a 'photographicexpert' and a farcical 'comedy sketch' style attempt by a 'spook' covered with asheet during a fake séance to illustrate how the program editor alleged it wasdone.

William Shatner was never shownon camera. It was only his commentary that was used. I had been given to believethat he would be the host for the program on camera.

In order to get me to agree tothe interview, I was promised that their program would be a 'serious andbalanced presentation' of what happened at Scole. I was 100% totally lied to bythem - or I would never have agreed to be interviewed in the first place. Mypersonal advice to you is 'Don't touch it with a bargepole'!!!! These people areNOT honest!!!

Robin

There are several researcher associated with the program, we are sure, scouring the frontiercommunities, looking for anything not mainstream they can make a good joke outof. Please spread the word that the program and others like it—there are manywould be producers looking for a new angle—are proposing the free use of ourknowledge, talent and examples so that they can make money entertaining thepublic. Most of what we do is complex and not easily explained in a shortprogram, so the obvious choice for them is to make it fun by ridiculing us.Spread the work. Don’t feed the monster.





Alison Kirkbride
Oct 25 2011 02:10 PM
Hi Tom,

This is a concern. I agree with you, ever since ridiculous programmes like the U.K.'s Most Haunted hit our screens we have received loads of ridicule, so much so that I do not tell anyone about my evp research unless I know they are actively involved in the field. I am seriously considering copyrighting my work so that examples cannot be used without my permission.


Alison

Tom Butler
Nov 08 2011 05:34 PM
It is funny how often we are met with silence when we respond to "What kind of nonprofit is it?" with either "The study of survival" or "The study of after death communication." I do not know if they are afraid of the subject or afraid of us for studying it.

If people are able to cloister themselves amongst like-minded people, they tend to forget that the vast majority of people in the English-speaking world are insulted by our study, or afraid of the people who study these things. I spent much of my life in the cooperate world and was surrounded by the same kind of people I encounter as an editor in Wikipedia. However, my personality is such that, face-to-face, I was able to keep things professional even when others knew I studied metaphysics ... and actually believed in the stuff. I know that most people like me maintain a very low profile. The trick is to maintain a discerning "naturalist" persona.

I write a lot about the community of people who study things paranormal and allow myself to be more aggressive in my personal pages at ethericstudies.org. It is important that we, as a community, question ourselves and insist on objectivity. The problem is that, again as a community, we have not developed a culture of positive vetting as opposed to attacking that which we do not understand.

A member recently sent me a critique of a séance she attended. all of her comments were about how the phenomena could have been faked rather than discussing how they could be possible. The average person will assume that, if a paranormal event could be faked, then it must have been faked. Approaching these subjects from the assumption of fakery, even in a honest attempt to be a positive critical thinker, gives the Skeptics all the more ammunition to attack us with; if even an "insider" doubts, then there must be fraud.

There was recently something of a public lynching in the Spirit of PN blog that has cast a dark shadow over the "phenomena of Spiritualism." There will be little progress for us when we are seen to "eat our own."

Probably the best attitude for experiencing and learning about these phenomena is suspended judgement. As more is learned about a subject, it becomes more likely that the how and why of the experience will become known. The problem is that the how and why is often rather complex while imagining ways to fake is easy and need not be tested.

All of this to say that I think serious researchers do tend to work in private. This, much to the determent of our work to understand these phenomena, but nevertheless understandable .

As for copyright, it is a good practice to decide which of your material you are willing to have others use as examples without asking you and which you want to be used only with permission, if at all. I put a "©butler2011-name" for the files I want to control and "(cc)butler2011-name" for the Creative Commons permission (http://creativecommo...s/by-nc-sa/3.0/). Almost everything we do is (cc).

Alison Kirkbride
Nov 10 2011 12:32 PM
Tom,

One of the main problems I have is with my mother. she is a Jehovah's witness (No one else in the family is, thankfully). My youngest sister let it slip - and I think it was to cause mischief - that I recorded everyday to catch evp's, my mother was furious and accused me of contacting demons! Unfortunately, she is so indoctrinated into the faith that she cannot be reasoned with and now barely speaks to me, which I find very hurtful, but that is her choice. I have also been called a crackpot by other people who are skeptical. They have no wish to listen to my results and say that I am deluded because the "voices" are nothing more than radio signals. I do not bother to argue anymore. These are some of the reasons that I keep my work quiet even though some of my captures make me want to run into the street and tell everyone. I used to be skeptical but I always kept an open mind, I wanted proof but needed to find it for myself, which I now believe I have managed to do. I feel sorry for people who are so closed minded. I am trying to advance my results so that I can one day, show all the skeptics that our consciousness does survive physical death and it is then that our proper journey finally starts.

Edward Ozosky
Feb 13 2012 07:33 PM
I initially began serious paranormal study back in the 1960s. During that age, it was exceedingly difficult to find any support,

let alone credibility, in paranormal research. While todays media distorts and misinforms much of what we currently do, that

same media also have inadvertently created a vast deal of attention to paranormal existence. This awareness, in turn, has

precipitated the development of a "paranormal age of enlightenment".

We now have moved the subject of post mortal existence into universities around the world. We conduct more serious,

scientifically based research today than at any time in the past. Still, We are confronted with media distortion. I believe we

should embrace the silver lining and continue to cultivate the positive while minimizing the ignorance.

Tom Butler
Feb 14 2012 10:59 AM
Fundamentally, I think we agree, but I have developed something of an attitude about the media. As an organization dedicated to objective study, we find the media can only survive on sensationalism and that means scary, which is diametrically opposed to our objectives.

We took a lot of static when we worked with Universal for White Noise because the movie cast a negative light on EVP. We persisted because, going into the movie EVP was known to hauntings investigators and a few paranormal researchers and that was about it. There were over 70 thousand unique website visitors the day the movie came out in the US, and we are told nearly that many on the mirror site Universal set up for us. Later, we watched surges of visitors come to our website as the DVD rolled out to the various zones of the world. I personally responded to thousands of emails from people around the world about EVP and contacting loved ones. Today, it is very difficult to find someone who does not at least know what EVP is.

So yes, I agree that the media helps. The problem we have is that the majority of people contacting us were afraid of EVP. The emails were mostly kids wanting to contact their recently transitioned mother or brother, but who were afraid they would be attacked by demons.

Since then, we have worked with several documentarians and many television programs. Most have not sold their pilots and only the sensationalist demon hunters seem to survive. I suppose that is good for the paranormal community but it has not helped research, it has not helped people's fear of death and it has not helped people grieving the loss of loved ones.

Meanwhile, the Skeptical community continues to become more organized and better funded. It was largely because of their propaganda about the dangers of pseudoscience that led to Wilhelm Reich death in prison. Reich's research is virtually the same as that being conducted by several modern researchers. The well-organized skeptical community is really just a group of overzealous apologists for what they see as the mainstream view of what is real. It is their objective to guide governments toward right thinking, which means eliminating pseudoscience whenever possible. If they prevail...and they are, those modern researchers are in danger of the same treatment as Reich received.

The world is only as enlightened as the media and religious leaders.

As an organization studying things paranormal, I think it is part of our duty to do what we can to balance that dynamic. Certainly, the media has the potential to be our friend--wants to, really--but as long as scary sells, we will be spending our time explaining to website visitors that there is little danger in contacting their loved ones--that we have not yet had a demon take anyone.
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