5/9/2011 - PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL HEAVEN or my thoughts on the abilities of individuals to communicate with entities from the other side of the light and the ability of television producers to exploit that

I went back home tonight, had dinner with my family. Then we watched a bit of TV together and we ended up watching a show about parapsychology.

Parapsychology is the science of communication between humans and entities and presences from the other side of the light i.e. spirits and ghosts. It is also something that my parents are really into.

The TV programme showed a crew going to places, like scenes of brutal murders, abandoned prisons, decaying insane asylums etc., along with a few mediums and equipment that was able to record ultrasounds and hence the voices of the dead. There was a bunch of other equipment to measure the thermal values of the different rooms. Yes, I did think it was entertaining, although undeniably cheesy. But while my parents deeply believed in everything that was shown and never doubted most of the evidence that was given that ghosts were indeed in those settings, I was very doubtful.

One of the things the show made use of was EVP, which stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon. These are electronically generated noises that are recorded but unplanned and unintended. The show made use of it as if it was the spirits saying words, and the way they shot the whole sequence, you would have believed it, because it did give you the creeps.

One of bits was set in a castle inhibited by spirits of all sorts. They recorded for ages, and in the end came back with a feminine voice that seemed to have been saying 'help, I am trapped in time'. I wonder, would someone who was really trapped in time really ever know of being trapped in time? No matter, the average viewer would believe it, without knowing that those mics are so sensitive and catch signals the human ear cannot because it is picking up things from other wavelengths - but it's not the voices of ghosts it's getting. It's static and stray radio transmissions of all sorts.

I think that if a plane flew over the plane and the captain spoke on the intercom, saying 'we'll be landing shortly', the average human television viewer would be so scared that he or she would probably start riots of panic thinking that an alien invasion would be imminent.