Specifics

[Robbrent]

I am rereading Michael Bentines excellent book "The Door Marked Summer" he really put some footwork into paranormal research

His interest was sparked by his father who attended a seance, anyway to cut a long story short

The medium said she had a lady coming through saying "remember Bolton" (or something similar) which brought to the fore a long forgotten incident in the aforementioned town to do with the lady coming through

My immediate thought was why did she not say remember me (her name) why all the cryptic clues I have seen and read about this for years, things like "he's showing me a ring" how about he just says what his name was?

It could be the way the messages come through, I don't know but it would help if the communicating entities were a bit more specific

I got in row with some of Michel Newtons (Journey of the Soul and other claptrap) followers about this claiming that there were souls waiting to be reborn etc, etc, and what caused the arguments was I just wanted to know who these souls had been especially people who said they had lived in fairly recent times, I thought it was quite a reasonable request and would have been a game changer as would an entity giving their name straight away rather than a cryptic clue.

Or could it be the rules of the paranormal game are, never give 100% proof, confuse them, lay false trails etc, because that's the way it seems to me, those that search for the answers are sometimes driven to insanity, they get tantalisingly close and then the rug is pulled from under them, like some past life regression memories that on the face of are so close but one minor detail just doesn't fit (like there are no records of the person) but the minor detail seems to undermine the whole case (The Bridey Murphy case comes to mind)

The late Joe Fisher had experience of this in The Siren Call of the Hungry Ghost, (another great read by the way)

Anyway it intrigues me no end, because it seems to be the whole gamut of Forteana from Ghosts and the afterlife, UFO's, Fairies and even many cryptoids (alien Big Cats seem to play by the same rue(

 

[EnolaGaia]

... The medium said she had a lady coming through saying "remember Bolton" (or something similar) which brought to the fore a long forgotten incident in the aforementioned town to do with the lady coming through
My immediate thought was why did she not say remember me (her name) why all the cryptic clues I have seen and read about this for years, things like "he's showing me a ring" how about he just says what his name was? ...

The cynical interpretation, of course, is that the "medium" is fishing for clues or establishing "hooks" to reel the client into a state of belief using the bait of details the client might associate with a personally known entity on the other side. Places and events are usually good for this purpose because they set a broad context within which the client may project some association relevant to the contact attempt. These items are so general that it's easy to withdraw from them or shift the referential focus elsewhere if they don't get a "hit" on the first try.

In your example, the "remember" bit is as significant as the "Bolton" bit. It's a directive to the client to delve into his / her memory - in effect an oblique command to go looking for a memory that has something to do with Bolton. It's explicitly nudging the client to find a connection.

The more benign interpretation might be that entities on the other side don't recall their previous identities but can somehow recognize and / or be drawn toward allusions to elements from prior life experiences. I suppose another interpretation would be that spirits somehow remain in close proximity around living people with whom they had a prior life connection, even if they (the spirits) can't specify who they were or what the connection may have been. I don't recall reading or hearing any explanation for how spirits who can't identify themselves are supposed to be readily contact-able whenever a prior life acquaintance just happens to be (e.g.) consulting a medium.

 

[Robbrent]

The cynical interpretation, of course, is that the "medium" is fishing for clues or establishing "hooks" to reel the client into a state of belief using the bait of details the client might associate with a personally known entity on the other side. Places and events are usually good for this purpose because they set a broad context within which the client may project some association relevant to the contact attempt. These items are so general that it's easy to withdraw from them or shift the referential focus elsewhere if they don't get a "hit" on the first try.

In your example, the "remember" bit is as significant as the "Bolton" bit. It's a directive to the client to delve into his / her memory - in effect an oblique command to go looking for a memory that has something to do with Bolton. It's explicitly nudging the client to find a connection.

The more benign interpretation might be that entities on the other side don't recall their previous identities but can somehow recognize and / or be drawn toward allusions to elements from prior life experiences. I suppose another interpretation would be that spirits somehow remain in close proximity around living people with whom they had a prior life connection, even if they (the spirits) can't specify who they were or what the connection may have been. I don't recall reading or hearing any explanation for how spirits who can't identify themselves are supposed to be readily contact-able whenever a prior life acquaintance just happens to be (e.g.) consulting a medium.

A bit of context to the Bolton bit, the seance took place on the South coast of England, Bolton is a Northern Town close to Manchester, I thought about the fishing for clues and so did Bentine but it was such a random place to mention

 

[EnolaGaia]

A bit of context to the Bolton bit, the seance took place on the South coast of England, Bolton is a Northern Town close to Manchester, I thought about the fishing for clues and so did Bentine but it was such a random place to mention

The apparent randomness doesn't affect anything. The informant is being prompted to provide clues about who-knows-what from across a range of who-knows-how-much. It's like a constrained version of free association, so any prompt is fair game.

 

[EnolaGaia]

... Anyway it intrigues me no end, because it seems to be the whole gamut of Forteana from Ghosts and the afterlife, UFO's, Fairies and even many cryptoids ...

You're not alone.

I agree that this issue of specificity is a problem for all types of Fortean / paranormal studies.

Fort's own modus operandi was to focus on reports of extraordinary experiences and observations (e.g., all those newspaper clippings). These are the evidence for strangeness. All these decades later it is still the case that the evidentiary base for Fortean phenomena (broadly defined) primarily consists of observer reports.

If the report itself is all you have to go on, it provides the only clues you might have for evaluating whether the report represents a truly extraordinary observation / experience, reliable retelling of a third party incident, questionable hearsay, a deliberate lie, or sheer bullshit.

One of the few ways anyone can assess a report is to check its details. It is only with specifics that one can "scrub" a story (check its coherence / veracity) or have any hope of finding additional information about the incident being reported.

If someone provides a report so vague that I can't tell who did or saw what, when or where it happened, etc., I've learned to not pay much attention to it.

 

[Robbrent]

It does appear to be a paranormal tactic, march the researcher up the hill but not allow them to the summit

There is sometimes deliberate ambiguity (buckwheat pancakes anyone?) deception, half truths, and great games of chase the monster or cat, another way of looking at it is, whatever is the root phenomena is having great fun at our expense, perhaps the ancients with their Trickster god knew all about this, and perhaps that's why they went to great lengths to protect themselves before getting involved

I guess the question should be "why"? Why does it want to hide behind the curtain?

 

[AlchoPwn]

In terms of cold reading, it is genuinely possible that some people who think they have psychic powers and are not trying to defraud anybody may be a bit like Clever Hans and are cueing into unconscious signals with a precision that is unusual. This is the same as cold reading, but done unconsciously.

 

[PeteS]

I guess the question should be "why"? Why does it want to hide behind the curtain?

Precisely the question I have asked myself over the past 20 years about the very specific reading I got. I have come to the conclusion that the psychic/ medium "sees" or "hears" messages but cannot necessarily interpret them in a meaningful way. Ringo on here very kindly shed some light on this for me, and it made sense.
EG mentioned above that observer reports are usually the only evidence available and are of course subject to the possibility of all sorts of accusations. Fortunately in my case I have the written evidence of the psychic's reading, which is enough evidence for me, although obviously still capable of being rubbished as "made up" et al by others.
Personally I can't really see this aspect ever really being resolved, which in my view makes the subject much more interesting.

 

[Robbrent]

Like I said, they could say they were Joe Smith died aged 67 lived 22 Acacia Drive, give load of good facts, but upon checking you realise that there was no Joe Smith ever living at that address, the regression thing is also very similar, or the famous "he's showing me a ring"

Maybe we are just given enough to keep us on our collective toes, perhaps if it was 100% certain that we never actually die and there are countless other dimensions, we would just give up on this lump of rock?

I do wonder who is the gatekeeper hiding behind the curtains is?

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I do wonder who is the gatekeeper hiding behind the curtains is?

This question skips to a different context for specificity / ambiguity. It shifts focus from:

(a) ambiguity in the evidence you receive for the existence or action of some or any extraordinary presence / agency / phenomenon / event / etc.

... to ...

(b) ambiguity in the motives, mechanics and / or actions of a force / agent / entity / etc. that you already presume to be operating.

Version (b) incorporates some measure of presumptive explanation or belief that necessarily contextualizes and thereby unavoidably biases one's orientation to the subject at hand. It pre-loads or seeds (poisons?) a discussion by trying to force all answers to conform to the choice of context thus imposed. It tacitly bypasses the question of "did it really happen?" (point (a) above) in favor of "what or who caused the thing now assumed to have really happened."

 

[SkepticalX]

For years, this has been a pain point for me with alleged alien encounters. The preachy stuff these Zeta Reticulans come up with tell us nothing we couldn't have gotten from a brief, tedious conversation with Al Gore. They never tell us anything we don't already know, which (to me) indicates these incidents are somehow generated within the experiencer and have little or no connection with objective reality.

If there are aliens and they are trying to tell us something, they're doing a piss-poor job of it. Advanced civilization... humbug.

 

[Robbrent]

For years, this has been a pain point for me with alleged alien encounters. The preachy stuff these Zeta Reticulans come up with tell us nothing we couldn't have gotten from a brief, tedious conversation with Al Gore. They never tell us anything we don't already know, which (to me) indicates these incidents are somehow generated within the experiencer and have little or no connection with objective reality.

If there are aliens and they are trying to tell us something, they're doing a piss-poor job of it. Advanced civilization... humbug.

I attended a few spiritualist churches in my youth, but walked away very disappointed

Here we were trying to explore one of the biggest mysteries of life, and spirits were handing over imaginary bunches of flowers or giving such puerile messages

My favourite was the old cold reading trick "Does the name Dave mean anything to anyone" everyone knows a Dave, do spirits forget they had Surnames, now if they said does anyone know a Dave Shufflebottom I might have been a bit more impressed

Like I said from the start, researchers that I respect such as the late Mr Bentine never really got down to specifics when it comes to the afterlife I want to know,

What your full name was when you walked the Earth

Your address (or even just the road or avenue you lived on)

Details of family members

Your Occupation

Something that only your family would know about you

Just general biographical details, it can't be that hard especially as I am told that many souls are trying to get a message through to their loved ones left behind, if they can remember them they can remember their earthly details

 

[SkepticalX]

It kind of makes sense that specific memories of a given life may be tied purely to the physical body. When you die, your soul (or whatever survives death) might retain only incomplete snippets of memory. Perhaps it's like early childhood. Most of us have no specific memories - only vague impressions and vague remembrances of a few incidents.

 

[PeteS]

It kind of makes sense that specific memories of a given life may be tied purely to the physical body. When you die, your soul (or whatever survives death) might retain only incomplete snippets of memory. Perhaps it's like early childhood. Most of us have no specific memories - only vague impressions and vague remembrances of a few incidents.

Particularly if you've been dead for thousands of years! I mean I can't sometimes remember what I did yesterday, so I'd probably be not all that good in passing on useful messages in the afterlife. (it would be more like "where am I again?" )

 

[Recycled1]

We all remember different things.

|I had a much loved aunt, and some years ago when my mother was still alive , I had a message purportedly from the aunt, at Wolverhampton Spiritualist church, mentiononing the zoo.
It meant nothing to me at the time.

Later when my mother died and I was going through her photos, I found one of myself and this same aunt at London zoo on my 7th birthday.

Don't dismiss everything!

Communication is not an exact science!

 

[IbisNibs]

I don't know but it would help if the communicating entities were a bit more specific.

I often feel this way about the living.
Maybe it doesn't get any better when we're "over there".

 

[Robbrent]

We all remember different things.

|I had a much loved aunt, and some years ago when my mother was still alive , I had a message purportedly from the aunt, at Wolverhampton Spiritualist church, mentiononing the zoo.
It meant nothing to me at the time.

Later when my mother died and I was going through her photos, I found one of myself and this same aunt at London zoo on my 7th birthday.

Don't dismiss everything!

Communication is not an exact science!

Would not be better if she just said its your Aunt Jane (whatever her name was) ?

Why be all cryptic?

 

[Robbrent]

It kind of makes sense that specific memories of a given life may be tied purely to the physical body. When you die, your soul (or whatever survives death) might retain only incomplete snippets of memory. Perhaps it's like early childhood. Most of us have no specific memories - only vague impressions and vague remembrances of a few incidents.

How come they remember who to communicate with? And why such cryptic clues (see the Zoo in previous post)

 

[Recycled1]

In the case of my aunt, her actual first name was Hannah, but when she met my uncle in the 1940's , she called herself Alice, and that's how I grew up knowing her -"Auntie Alice",
Later, she prefered her contemporaries to call her Anne.

Once in Spirit, she may not even have remembered exactly what I called her (Slartibartfast -"Names are not important" )

I suspect that the link is the bond of loving someone -that's who you choose to communicate with!
The petty little earthly details don't matter, or are all abit hazy.

 

[Robbrent]

In the case of my aunt, her actual first name was Hannah, but when she met my uncle in the 1940's , she called herself Alice, and that's how I grew up knowing her -"Auntie Alice",
Later, she prefered her contemporaries to call her Anne.

Once in Spirit, she may not even have remembered exactly what I called her (Slartibartfast -"Names are not important" )

I suspect that the link is the bond of loving someone -that's who you choose to communicate with!
The petty little earthly details don't matter, or are all abit hazy.

I get your point, and you could be right but it's a major road block in ascertaining if what is coming through is genuine of not

 

[SkepticalX]

How come they remember who to communicate with? And why such cryptic clues (see the Zoo in previous post)

Good point, but maybe it's these strong, interpersonal connections that transcend death better than the petty details. Also, there's no guarantee that the snippet of memory that sticks with the shade of dear old Uncle Ned means anything to us. It appears cryptic but, perhaps, only from our perspective.