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[blubird]

Hello my name is blubird and im a sceptic.

Yep thats how it makes me feel sometimes, like i should be in a room with a group of people and standing up with slight embarrassment and stating this fact.

Why do I feel like that???

Because even when you mention the word sceptic it brings on cold sweats and shivers to the most ardent of believers!
They do not want their thinking rationalised and certainly dont want any ordinary Joe telling them that ghosts MAY just be a figment of there over indulgent imaginations.
No they prefer to go along with believing in a person who claims to speak to the dead and wanders around in dark buildings getting the shit scared out of them!
What makes their views any more important than us lowly sceptics?? TV thats what.

Even when you tell people the true meaning of the word, they roll their eyes as if you jest! The true meaning of the word is to seek the truth, and as both sceptics and belivers isnt that exactly what were after?

Yet we as sceptics are forced into the dark corners when attending a ghost hunt for fear of actually pointing out that the bang which was just heard wasnt actually a ghost but mearly the hot water pipes expanding, or that the glass movement on a table is just the ideomotor effect coming into play and or someone doing it on purpose. God forbid if we really let rip with the orb theory LOL

[Neal]

Hey Blubird and thanks very much for your posts.

About 10 years ago I started out pretty much as a believer. In my time I think I have seen
pretty much everything there is to see out there in the wonderful world of ghost hunting,
give or take a few experiences. In that time I have grown more and more sceptical of the
claims i read and hear about.

For the benefit of the hardened believers out there, I am not a debunker. I am merely
someone who has an active interest in ideas and theories of life after death who has
formed a team of like minded people ranging from professional electronics engineer, a
qualified (to degree level) historian to our latest member who is a qualified and practicing
Midwife.

We all have pretty much the same outlook on ghosts, being that we all want to conduct
proper scientific experiments that have no bias towards paranormal theories or non-paranormal
ones.

You are totally right, far many people and groups out there that investigate claims of ghosts
fear sceptics and believe that they are only out to cause trouble for their group and debunk
their so-called evidence that mainly consists of burred pictures of the most mysterious Orbs.

As I have said a thousand time before, ghost hunting groups should embrace the sceptical
community, not reject it out of hand. Like you say, we are all after the truth so what's the
problem? I suspect it's because they don't want to appear clueless about the world around
them, but that's just my opinion. Put simply, everyone could learn a lot only if they would
work together.

Having said that, some in the sceptical community need to learn to not be so closed minded.
In the past I have met some people claiming to be true sceptics but are nothing more than
debunkers, which never help anyone and are simply the polar opposite of the believers.

In my opinion, we need to be open to the possibility that there may just be an afterlife
but at the same time to not jump up and down and make claims that everything is a ghost.
It's something I like to call common sense lol... and it's sadly lacking in some people.

Personally, I would never turn someone who is a potential member of our humble group
away simply because of their personal beliefs. If they are a believer, great, but they need
to make sure that they are taking everything into consideration, such as environmental
conditions ect.

I can't think of one TV medium that I could say that I have a small amount of belief in.
However bad the normal TV mediums are, at least they have to be fairly convincing
liars. On the other hand we have the TV mediums that are also 'Psychic Artists'......
These really get me going. They can just draw anything they want and don't have
to backup their claims at all because it's just taken as fact. Most Haunted Live do this
a lot. There is no control there whatsoever and that pisses me off lol.

I think the only way that there will be any forward momentum in regards to ghost research
is for shows such as most haunted to die off (excuse the pun!) along with the many so-called
'professional' and 'scientific' groups out there that dog the true research & sceptical communities.
Then the field will be slightly more open to proper research, plus it will get a load of crap off the telly!

Before i go, Allan, our electronics engineer, has a very interesting theory on Orbs that has infinitely
more thought put into it than all the other orb theories put together and is based on fact rather
than some mystical energy field that cannot be detected. Saying that though, it's going to take
me a little time to accept it as for many years I have been totally against Orbs, but before I get
flamed by the hardened believers, I'm not closed to the idea lol.

Take care,
Neal

[Seth]

Completely agree with neals comment. From my POV, I cannot class myself as anything, I have never seen or had a paranormal experience. I've had the occasional 'that was weird' event but nothing certain. My intrest in the paranormal is purely scientific relating to the factor of media hype and the number of 'events' witnessed over the last hundred decades. My conclusion on the matter was that, 'enough events and situations have been claimed and not explained, I think this is something I should look into'. Finding the right approach to research however is proving difficult, so I alterate between 'claimed evidence thoery' & 'Real world thoery' for each. The easy way of saying this is 'I use theory as fact and then challenge it against real world therom' before i render the mechanics to see if it feasible and then even try to reproduce the effects or even the entire enitity. I find this is the best method to approach these situations without bias. I suppose it is like being told there is a tree behind you and with out really truely knowing its there try to figure a method of proving the statement true or false using only proven scientific thoery, for instance 'a solid object will cast a shadow in the light', the tree is solid is there a shadow? 'Yes, there is a shadow cast at the oppropiate angle based on the sun-time calculation to suggest so.'

My brain hurts.

[Seth]

To update***
Two things have changed since this post;

1/ My spelling has improved
2/ My personal experiences have changed, and previous ones made more relative

[Polgara]

as my teams sensative, i love sceptics, they can identify logical things when on investies, and if they feel something strange, well, thats a plus,

as you have said, debukers are something more irritating, it gets very tiresome to hear them winge on and eventually you wish they would go away, i think they are jelous (sorry spelling) because they can't see or feel anything themselves,

i had a brilliant conversation with a sceptic the other night, his face was a picture when i showed him the photo of a ghost i took on a recent investi, bless him,

people will remain sceptical untill they have an experience all their own, if they ever do, i always say that "seeing is believing, but sometimes you have to believe to see" 

[daniel_barham]

Well I think I'd say I'm a skeptic....

I'm open to the suggestion of paranormal activity / ghosts / spirits etc., and I have a few experiences to date, but I want to see things happening, and this is why I'm here to get advice and investigate for myself.  I'm not gonna moan on like a spoilt child if I don't actually see anything, but I'm getting more and more interested in the whole subject, something I've thought about for a few years but never got round to.