Apr 21 2009
Poltergeists and Psychokinesis: Can You Bend a Spoon With Your Mind?
On a recent episode of Paranormal State (The Raven) a couple had called out to the Paranormal Research Society for help with what they thought was demonic activity in their home. Turns out, as diagnosed by Ryan Buell, founder of the PRS, what they were dealing with was not an external entity, but a poltergeist, created subconsciously (?) within the mind of Debra, the homeowner and primary target of said activity. What I’m left wondering is, how much of this phenomena is real and verifiable? What percentage of these cases are actually hoaxes perpetrated by attention-seeking individuals? Let’s Explore…
Poltergeist activity is said to occur around an agent or focus (usually a teen in the high-tides of puberty and angst). It can be anything from hearing loud noises, moving objects (telekinesis), shaking beds, phones ringing, etc… It is also said to be occurring subconsciously, so naturally you can’t have a skeptic come out and say it isn’t so without catching the person red-handed. It’s interesting how so much paranormal phenomena is set up that way. You can’t disprove what you can’t see. On the same token, how can you prove it? If it happens in the subconscious, then asking someone to move an object will say they cannot will it. Too bad, that would be a skill to talk about. Believers will keep on believing and skeptics will keep on questioning. And the green grass grows all around, all around…..
One thing that can be positively identified, when possible, is the agent being caught red-handed in their hoaxing. One such case, made famous by the media was that of Tina Resch, a 14 year-old girl in Columbus, OH. Her case was drawing attention of both the local media and the notable parapsychologist William Roll. At one point, a camera left behind in the home was inadvertently still recording and the teen was caught pulling a lamp down from a table and moving objects around when she thought no one was looking. Of course Roll defended her and continued to work the case. Call me a cynic if you like, but as far as I’m concerned, if a fake can be proven, then I must assume that a good majority of these cases may be fakes as well, until some other verifiable evidence is presented. As it is right now, this case is a verifiable hoax. Authenticity has yet to be proven. May you draw your conclusions where you will.
Hey there skeptic. Cautious believer checking in…
I’m going out on a limb here, but I think that woman may have been able to manifest her own poltergeist. I’ve been researching (obviously, right?) some things lately and I’ve run across the believe that energy cannot be destroyed once created, just transmuted or channeled. In fact, negative behaviors or emotions - fear, anger, rage, hatred, sorrow - seem to manifest the most energy. Unfortunately, that energy is usually trapped in the person’s house.
I’m not going to get into all the ways you get that negativity out of your house, but come on…Have you ever walked into a house or a building and gotten the sense - with no prior knowledge - that something just wasn’t right? An uniformed person might immediately decide there’s a ghost, but a lot of times it’s just the leftover emotional junk being felt.
And of course, I can’t offer up any scientific proof. All I have to go off of is my own experience with walking into the home of a friend or family member, being overwhelmed by whatever feeling and asking them “what happened”…only to then have them tell me about the fight or the bad phone call or whatever they recently had.
I wish science would hurry up and catch up. I mean, the paranormal is only the paranormal until our science evolves to the point where it understands it. I think there’s a lot of fakes and a lot of bad information out there, but there’s also a lot of reality…in my opinion.
I’m willing to give benefit of the doubt regarding her subconscious psychokinesis, as she would fit the mold, so to speak, being both emotionally turbulent and hormonal. The part I think may have been fabricated involves the whole demon thing - you’d have to read the full episode review @ Cult of the Skeptic for details.
That being said….I have felt a sense of things being “off” before. Sometimes there was something to it, sometimes there wasn’t.
On the Law of Conservation of Energy…where energy cannot be created nor destroyed but transformed (unless you can channel and ask Einstein) I know that this actually can be measured in a unit called a joule. Energy can change from, say potential to kinetic, from kinetic to thermal etc. How do we measure anger or fear energy? Is it thermal in nature? Does it have a wavelength frequency? Science can get there I think, but we need to be speaking the same language first.
I’ll have to go read about that then so I can be on the same page.
Very true. I don’t have a clue what anger or fear would equate to in joules. I know from a vibrational standpoint, most of what we associate as being dark, negative or evil is at a very low vibration while more positive emotions are deemed as higher vibration.
*snaps fingers* Damn! I wish I’d gotten out my handy dandy joule counter before I banished the malevolent energy (being, spirit, whatever) from my house. Then we’d know what joule level a low vibration equates to…