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A Fortean Conspiracy Of Silence?

gattino said:
Just an observation really, masquerading as a "what do you think?" question. As I now earn my pennies being a host to paying houseguests, I encounter far more people and from so many diverse backgrounds than I previously had with just my own social circle.

And though I can't pretend to put any kind of percentage figure on it I can say with some confidence that I've never once started a conversation with anyone anywhere in which I told them about one or more of my brushes with the paranormal/psychic/whatever you want to call it, without them responding with stories of their own..stories that would never have been volunteered without me starting the conversation. At least some examples of psychic dreams, deathbed phenomena and after death communication seem to be in the unpublished back story of almost everybody you care to ask. Yet collectively we seem unaware of the fact.

It struck me that the whole world..or at least the english speaking western world..is in some kind of unspoken, unwritten collective agreement not to mention these things to each other in daily life. The dominance of the "disbelief = clever/educated discerning; Belief = gullible/uneducated/sad" equation in the mainstream media and the culture of comedy has left people too fearful of ridicule to realise their own experiences aren't remotely unusual after all.

Is it possible that we're as a species going around not acknowledging collectively what almost everyone is experiencing individually?
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I think Charles Dickens made a similar observation about this “conspiracy” in an introduction to one of his ghost stories gattino.
“I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture,as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a listener’s internal life and might be suspected or laughed at”...continuing on the same subject he adds “To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation”
Some of this reluctance may well be informed by culture/upbringing and personality type and of course not eveyone will have experienced something anomalous, or what they would consider to be anomalous but I completely agree that there exists a culture in the mainstream of dismissing marginalising and ridiculing the paranormal or anomalous and, by extension, those who believe in it (or even those who are prepared to consider such things with an open mind, rather than dismissing it out of hand). It would appear gattino, that your willingness to broach these subjects, even if in a lighthearted way at times, presents an opportunity to others to share their experiences without fear of judgement. The internet ought to provide a useful forum for the sharing of these “anomalous” experiences but as Schrodinger’s Zebra mentions there are many factors which render this platform somewhat unreliable although the discerning seeker can, I believe usually spot the fraudulent and may well find something of interest in the postings of even those who may be genuinely mistaken.The skeptical, it seems, will eagerly seize onto the obviously fraudulent or easily disprovable accounts and often dismiss the whole spectrum of anomalous experiences on the basis of these.
What has always intrigued me is the vehemence with which many skeptics dismiss the paranormal, or enjoy ridiculing those who may be prepared to contemplate possibilities beyond the boudaries of scientific materialism. From personal experience of attempting to discuss such things with one particular skeptical friend I was surprised to find that I was confronted not by reasoned argument but rather by defensiveness and hostility, and what is behind this need to laugh at what you may not understand?
I'll attempt to post a youtube clip which some of you may find interesting


Plenty of comments an youtube.....I'm just grateful I'm not her "best friend" claire
 
Fairlight said:
I think Charles Dickens made a similar observation about this “conspiracy” in an introduction to one of his ghost stories gattino.
“I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture,as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a listener’s internal life and might be suspected or laughed at”...continuing on the same subject he adds “To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation”
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What an extremely apt quote.

The vehemence of some debunkers is a frequent source of commentary among their opposite numbers, including on these boards. Broad categories of reasons for it may include pure tribalism -they're signed up to a community of popular science fandom or anti religious campaigning; personal fear, perhaps caused by an unspoken chain of association (a mind not confined to the brain = survival = an afterlife = heaven = god = religion = the church = control/condemnation), but the simplest explanation is one that affects even "believers" on boards as open to the possibilities as this one. That is we all fear looking foolish/being gullible..and relish being in on the magician's secret. If we know what "really" happened we're clever and among the select. If we merely gasp in wonder at what happened, we're part of the common gullible crowd.


In terms of the truly militant, dedicated, seek it out to dismantle it "sceptic", very interestingly i once read an article online by someone who infiltrated his local sceptical society and - the takeaway that i recall (I'll try and track it down) - was that the people who were drawn to the group had in large number or typically an unhappy religious past or upbringing. That really resonated with me as at the time i had noticed the two (unrelated) people on my facebook over the years who were endlessly, day in day out, posting anti-religious propaganda cartoons and quotes, and were vehemently dismissive of "psychics" and their gullible believers, were both as i understood it people who had been heading towards the priesthood in their youth.
 
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Fairlight said:
I think Charles Dickens made a similar observation about this “conspiracy” in an introduction to one of his ghost stories gattino.
“I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture,as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a listener’s internal life and might be suspected or laughed at”...continuing on the same subject he adds “To this reticence I attribute much of the obscurity in which such subjects are involved. We do not habitually communicate our experiences of these subjective things, as we do our experiences of objective creation”
Some of this reluctance may well be informed by culture/upbringing and personality type and of course not eveyone will have experienced something anomalous, or what they would consider to be anomalous but I completely agree that there exists a culture in the mainstream of dismissing marginalising and ridiculing the paranormal or anomalous and, by extension, those who believe in it (or even those who are prepared to consider such things with an open mind, rather than dismissing it out of hand). It would appear gattino, that your willingness to broach these subjects, even if in a lighthearted way at times, presents an opportunity to others to share their experiences without fear of judgement. The internet ought to provide a useful forum for the sharing of these “anomalous” experiences but as Schrodinger’s Zebra mentions there are many factors which render this platform somewhat unreliable although the discerning seeker can, I believe usually spot the fraudulent and may well find something of interest in the postings of even those who may be genuinely mistaken.The skeptical, it seems, will eagerly seize onto the obviously fraudulent or easily disprovable accounts and often dismiss the whole spectrum of anomalous experiences on the basis of these.
What has always intrigued me is the vehemence with which many skeptics dismiss the paranormal, or enjoy ridiculing those who may be prepared to contemplate possibilities beyond the boudaries of scientific materialism. From personal experience of attempting to discuss such things with one particular skeptical friend I was surprised to find that I was confronted not by reasoned argument but rather by defensiveness and hostility, and what is behind this need to laugh at what you may not understand?
I'll attempt to post a youtube clip which some of you may find interesting


Plenty of comments an youtube.....I'm just grateful I'm not her "best friend" claire
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Terrific video, thanks for posting it. :hoff:
 
Vardoger,

..I would be ridiculed by other atheists for being interested in fortean and paranormal phenomena if I just mentioned it...

Only if the other people automatically associate the paranormal with a Biblical type God.

One does not need a god to be able to formulate a possibility that there are other dimensions etc.

INT21
 
gattino said:
What an extremely apt quote.

The vehemence of some debunkers is a frequent source of commentary among their opposite numbers, including on these boards. Broad categories of reasons for it may include pure tribalism -they're signed up to a community of popular science fandom or anti religious campaigning; personal fear, perhaps caused by an unspoken chain of association (a mind not confined to the brain = survival = an afterlife = heaven = god = religion = the church = control/condemnation), but the simplest explanation is one that affects even "believers" on boards as open to the possibilities as this one. That is we all fear looking foolish/being gullible..and relish being in on the magician's secret. If we know what "really" happened we're clever and among the select. If we merely gasp in wonder at what happened, we're part of the common gullible crowd.


In terms of the truly militant, dedicated, seek it out to dismantle it "sceptic", very interestingly i once read an article online by someone who infiltrated his local sceptical society and - the takeaway that i recall (I'll try and track it down) - was that the people who were drawn to the group had in large number or typically an unhappy religious past or upbringing. That really resonated with me as at the time i had noticed the two (unrelated) people on my facebook over the years who were endlessly, day in day out, posting anti-religious propaganda cartoons and quotes, and were vehemently dismissive of "psychics" and their gullible believers, were both as i understood it people who had been heading towards the priesthood in their youth.
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Yes Gattino, I can recognise many of these categories of belief/prejudice amongst some of the skeptics I've encountered and the mention of those skeptics who have encountered or been involved with religion/religious indoctrination in their earlier life certainly rings a few bells. The link to the article by the late Guy Lyon Playfair is very interesting thanks! although I'm not surprised at some of the claims made.
Perhaps I should also qualify my remark relating to the youtube post to ensure there is no misunderstanding and also to make a semi-serious point. If we are to accept the veracity of the speaker's account of her "ghost encounter" it would appear that she was fortunate enough to have a friend who was both non-judgemental and open minded and in whom she could confide her concerns without fear of ridicule. Her friend Claire's suggestions were presumably made in good faith as an attempt to banish the "presence" yet the reward for her good intentions was to have these suggestions very publicly ridiculed in a lecture that would then be posted on youtube for the world to see! With friends like that etc....
Does this not reveal a disturbing lack of empathy/awareness/respect/imagination in the speaker (if indeed it is an accurate account) and I can't help but feel that I would have felt just a tad uncomfortable sitting in the audience sniggering at this particular part of the account.
Those with purported mediumistic abilities are often called "sensitives", and perhaps in general they are more sensitive, aware, empathetic etc than the average person and this may be a component of their "gift" if such it is.
Might there be amongst hard line skeptics a certain "blind spot"? The speaker in this particular TED talk and at least some members of the audience might with some justification be described as "insensitives"
 
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escargot said:
And now we'll have to beat it out of YOU. ;)
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ion
aaaaaaaaand finally I get around to replying.

I will try and make this as simple as possible. I have forgotten many details but the essence of the story and the manner of the original teller in telling the tale is what is under consideration.

Brother-in-Law (now ex) This happened to him at a time before he met my sister, was travelling in a car with his then girlfriend, north of England (moorland between towns at night, I think)

Something large flew directly over them. He said he could see panels and rivets like when you board a plane, don't remember if there were lights but he said the thing that freaked him was it was absolutely silent.

I got the sense that part of the reason he didn't want to talk about it was because talking about it brought those odd feelings back, it fucked with his head (he had a look on his face, a far away and deep look as he spoke). In some ways me being receptive to his story made it worse!
 
Pandacracker,

So, something flies over them, at night, and he can see the rivets ......

Damn good eyesight, that's all I can say.

INT21.

(just eating a meal from...The Happy Panda)
 
Just an observation here - I've noticed that people from the American South tend to be more open about such strange happenings than people from other parts of the country. You are on safer ground mentioning such a thing to someone from Louisiana, for instance, than you would be with a person from New York, until you knew them very well.

I've never been to Britain, but I've certainly noticed online at least that people from the more Northern parts are more open and willing to chat in general than people from more Southern regions. Could the same go for paranormal subjects? This is a theory I've invented in the last three minutes or so, but it may be a regional thing?

Note: of course this is a generalization and naturally won't be 100% for everyone.*
**that said, I've never met a Scottish person who didn't have a harrowing ghost story or two in their repertoire. :)
 
Ulalume said:
Just an observation here - I've noticed that people from the American South tend to be more open about such strange happenings than people from other parts of the country. You are on safer ground mentioning such a thing to someone from Louisiana, for instance, than you would be with a person from New York, until you knew them very well.

I've never been to Britain, but I've certainly noticed online at least that people from the more Northern parts are more open and willing to chat in general than people from more Southern regions. Could the same go for paranormal subjects? This is a theory I've invented in the last three minutes or so, but it may be a regional thing?

Note: of course this is a generalization and naturally won't be 100% for everyone.*
**that said, I've never met a Scottish person who didn't have a harrowing ghost story or two in their repertoire. :)
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Ulalume, you made me think about your instant theory about the Southernmost and Northmost countries. My first reflex concerning the Southern States was “African heritage”, but the Northern States have them as much as the Southern ones. Nevertheless, it’s true that the African heritage on the USA is richer in what concerns Fortean phenomena (even the Salem poor “witches” had to have a Tituba to give substance to this hypothesis…). It’s true also that more fundamentalists protestants, like first pilgrims and colonizers, showed this tendency to send to the gallows everything that sounded fringe, transgressive or unexplained, so it’s possible to understand that people went shy about this oventones.

But, then again, French have a strong catholic tradition and, yet, dismiss Fortean phenomena. True that French, for a long time, obeyed the rule of the Reason, that could easily wipe anything that sounded close to the “superstition” and the “un-scientific” as “un-republican”. In other hand, fervent catholic latitudes, like the ones of South America, are fond of Forteana, in many different aspects (again, the African heritage and the Native traditions were incorporated on more “porous” cultural environment).

I always find amusing to see how much British (considering all countries on both main islands) are much more receptive to ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, magick and everything that is out of the norm, than French. I confess that I still haven’t found a definitive explanation, but an array of historic, religious and political reasons for this. Well, at least both countries succeeded in beheading their kings, what is a start…

So, I think that we should look for the explanation further, with a different, more open scope. Maybe it is more in the private sphere than on a wider, “cultural” one. I can attest that this sense of… magic in the world around me came from my family background and is being passed to our children. Maybe this private scope is what the original post refer as being silenced, quietely smothered. I tend to believe that, in our troubled times, this would be a starting point to try to answer the question.
 
I cannot help but notice how, as I grow past middle age, more and more people appear to live in a bubble, unaffected by, and unconcerned with world and local events, politics and the like. Whether this is , perhaps even subconsciously, a form of self preservation, I don't know. Such people, together with the self absorbed egotists (who seem to becoming more and more numerous), I have found , are unwilling to discuss anything other than their own small world let alone Fortean subjects. Fortunately my friends and the good people on this forum take the opposite view and long may it continue.:)
 
Ulalume said:
Just an observation here - I've noticed that people from the American South tend to be more open about such strange happenings than people from other parts of the country. You are on safer ground mentioning such a thing to someone from Louisiana, for instance, than you would be with a person from New York, until you knew them very well.

I've never been to Britain, but I've certainly noticed online at least that people from the more Northern parts are more open and willing to chat in general than people from more Southern regions. Could the same go for paranormal subjects? This is a theory I've invented in the last three minutes or so, but it may be a regional thing?

Note: of course this is a generalization and naturally won't be 100% for everyone.*
**that said, I've never met a Scottish person who didn't have a harrowing ghost story or two in their repertoire. :)
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No Dad's Army episode would be complete without the dour Scotsmen Fraser rolling his eyes and telling a ghost story. Wouldn't have worked as well with the cockney geezer / spiv Walker telling spooky tales.
 
My jobs have generally been the sort where I'm around strangers in one kind of stress or another which makes people more inclined to share. I've heard some wild ghost stories and shared them on'ere for you lot to enjoy.

(You do get chatting with people about odd stuff. Yesterday a colleague whom I don't know well did a little reading thing on me, like a reiki type of thing, and told me I was carrying a trinket of some sort, like a stone. Not being a trinket sort of person I was taken aback.

However, when I put my coat on I found a seashell in a pocket. Hadn't realised until that moment that I always pick up a shell when I walk on a beach. There's something he taught me about myself!

That's why so many of my coats and bags have a shell in them somewhere. It's my talisman. Dunno why, they're just beautiful. It's never a stone or a piece of driftwood.)
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
No Dad's Army episode would be complete without the dour Scotsmen Fraser rolling his eyes and telling a ghost story. Wouldn't have worked as well with the cockney geezer / spiv Walker telling spooky tales.
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Private Fraser was a great character. He often stole the show.

Though of course it was Arnold Ridley, whom we meet as character of Private Pike, who wrote the play The Ghost Train.
 
INT21 said:
Pandacracker,

So, something flies over them, at night, and he can see the rivets ......

Damn good eyesight, that's all I can say.

INT21.

(just eating a meal from...The Happy Panda)
Click to expand...

I would have to contact my B.L. to get the exact details of the story but the low altitude of the craft and lack of sound was exactly what made it so weird. I lived in Hong Kong for a couple of years and a friend I'd visit regularly lived under the flight path for the old airport.
As the planes came in to land you could definitely make out the panels that made up the fuselage and wings and the lines of rivets.

(I hope the Happy Panda provided a tasty and nutritious meal)
 
chicorea said:
Ulalume, you made me think about your instant theory about the Southernmost and Northmost countries. My first reflex concerning the Southern States was “African heritage”, but the Northern States have them as much as the Southern ones. Nevertheless, it’s true that the African heritage on the USA is richer in what concerns Fortean phenomena (even the Salem poor “witches” had to have a Tituba to give substance to this hypothesis…). It’s true also that more fundamentalists protestants, like first pilgrims and colonizers, showed this tendency to send to the gallows everything that sounded fringe, transgressive or unexplained, so it’s possible to understand that people went shy about this oventones.

But, then again, French have a strong catholic tradition and, yet, dismiss Fortean phenomena. True that French, for a long time, obeyed the rule of the Reason, that could easily wipe anything that sounded close to the “superstition” and the “un-scientific” as “un-republican”. In other hand, fervent catholic latitudes, like the ones of South America, are fond of Forteana, in many different aspects (again, the African heritage and the Native traditions were incorporated on more “porous” cultural environment).

I always find amusing to see how much British (considering all countries on both main islands) are much more receptive to ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, magick and everything that is out of the norm, than French. I confess that I still haven’t found a definitive explanation, but an array of historic, religious and political reasons for this. Well, at least both countries succeeded in beheading their kings, what is a start…

So, I think that we should look for the explanation further, with a different, more open scope. Maybe it is more in the private sphere than on a wider, “cultural” one. I can attest that this sense of… magic in the world around me came from my family background and is being passed to our children. Maybe this private scope is what the original post refer as being silenced, quietely smothered. I tend to believe that, in our troubled times, this would be a starting point to try to answer the question.
Click to expand...

There was an article mentioned on FTMB once, about the French disbelief in ghosts. Unfortunately, I can't find it now, but it was very interesting. An English teacher in France was teaching Wuthering Heights in a literature class. The French students believed the narrator must be insane or very ill to think he'd seen a ghost, and the teacher couldn't convince them otherwise. :) The teacher (if I recall correctly) believed this stemmed from the scientific and rational values of the Enlightenment.
 
Ulalume said:
There was an article mentioned on FTMB once, about the French disbelief in ghosts. Unfortunately, I can't find it now, but it was very interesting. An English teacher in France was teaching Wuthering Heights in a literature class. The French students believed the narrator must be insane or very ill to think he'd seen a ghost, and the teacher couldn't convince them otherwise. :) The teacher (if I recall correctly) believed this stemmed from the scientific and rational values of the Enlightenment.
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In general, I would agree with that. My wife though believes she saw a ghost (see other thread about haunted hotel room) and, given the strong Catholic tradition, there's quite a deep French belief in the supernatural with a religious flavour, including apparitions of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and miraculous cures at holy sites.
 
escargot said:
Yup, I'm on my phone jumping from one site to another. Pike must've crept in there.



Stupid boy.
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<Takes out sinister little black book and puts on a faux-German accent>
"For making such a silly mistake, you too shall go on ze list. Vat is your name?"

- Don't tell him, Escargot....!
 
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