I remember back in my days of being a credulous youngster reading the “true ghost” books. They would include a section on poltergeist phenomena and invariably mention that such occurences often seem to focus around a child or teen living in the house. The books would state that the poltergeists must be somehow attached or attracted to the kids or that the kids somehow exuded the poltergeist energy.

In retrospect, it makes WAY more sense that events of flying plates and broken windows will naturally center on kids because the kids are throwing the plates and breaking the windows. There are all sorts of reasons why a child would be destructive. I’ll leave that discussion to child psychologists. For the purposes of this post, let’s just talk about the Czech poltergeist.

When I first read this article, I thought it was talking about a community college. I was going to go off on a rant about how this stupidity was bringing down my respect for local colleges. But, after reading it over, I realized it’s a “Community Learning Center”. This is more of just a loose conglomeration of any “class” that people from the community want to offer. If enough people sign up for it, then the class is held.

The Wem Town Hall “ghost” photo has been famous for years. I remember seeing it in “true ghost” books that I had as a kid.

This Forgetomori post contains some video and fascinating discussion about research into the negatives of the photo that indicate it might be a hoax.

I honestly don’t know if the Girl in the Fire photo is a hoax or not. The program raised some good questions, but it didn’t seem to me (for the information given) to really be an overwhelmingly clear case of fraud.

But, this is what makes sense to me:

This news story isn’t my usual thing to post, but I thought it was so odd that I wanted to pass it along. Here is the link to the story that I’m pasting below:

Woman sexually assaulted by ‘ghost’

Fri, Dec 25, 2009
The China Post/Asia News Network

TAIPEI, Taiwan – A man was charged for sexually assaulting his neighbor by taking advantage of her being scared by his bizarre and ghostly appearance.

I just came across the very neat blog Bad Ghosts. The blog has a very good post carefully investigating a ghost photo sent in by a civil engineer who is highly impressed by it. The ghost photo in question is over here on the left.

It still blows my mind that anyone would think the photo shows a ghost. It takes about 10 seconds of looking at it closely to figure out what is going on.  The guy who submitted the photo refers to himself constantly as a civil engineer, which apparently is supposed to show that he’s smarter than your average cameraphone user.

I came across this interesting article called, “Creating a Monster” on the randi.org page.  It briefly discusses the fact that different cultures view common supernatural beings or myths in different ways. The example given is that the traditional Japanese style of ghost has no legs. In the Western world, we have traditionally depicted ghosts with legs. These cultural norms then shape our perceptions. So if someone has an event occur in which they assume they have seen a ghost, they are most likely to report the look of the ghost to match their cultural expectations.

This is another excellent podcast from Brian Dunning on Skeptoid.com on the tools used and misused by ghost hunters. I recommend you go listen to it! Here is my favorite paragraph from the transcription of the podcast:

“If ghosts did exist and were detectable, you can bet that there would be huge industries behind it. I can’t think of anything that would attract more venture capital dollars from Silicon Valley. However, no rigorous research has ever shown that ghosts can be reliably detected with hardware. It’s easy to disbelieve me, but it’s much harder to disbelieve the lack of interest from greedy corporate America.”

Here is an excellent article by Dr. Steven Novella on the Skepticblog about the effects of fear on the brain.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

Have you ever had the chills? You know, the frights, spooks, willies, nerves, jitters, heebie-jeebies? Do you get these feelings when you have to enter a dark room alone, or if you find yourself on a lonely street at night?

The interesting natural phenomenon of sleep paralysis has, in contemporary times, been the cause of many stories of alien visitation. Back before we concocted the modern myth of aliens, people thought the sleep paralysis was caused by demons or ghosts.

It is notable that when the New England Skeptical Society visited the famous anomaly hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren, the Warrens indicated they had never heard of sleep paralysis. The fact that they had no knowledge of this incredibly common condition indicates their utter lack of interest in educating themselves on any explanation for supernatural phenomena beyond what they have already decided is real.

The Daily News Online ( a local newspaper in NY state) published this story today:

Seen a ghost? I think so! by Virginia Kropf

The story is fairly long so I’m going to cut and past sections of it here. I encourage you to read the whole thing to make sure I’m not cherry-picking.

The photo on the left is from her article. Click on it to see a larger version.

The text below in italics are by the newspaper wrtier Virginia Kropf. The regular text in between are my comments.