WEBVTT - Ghost in the Machine, Part 1: Spooky Week #2 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:08.600 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:16.640 Welcome to it could Happen. Here's Spooky Week special presentation. 0:00:17.800 --> 0:00:21.600 I'm Garrison Davis and earlier this year, I, along with 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:25.840 my friend Elane, attended the twenty twenty three organ Ghost 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:29.880 Conference in Seaside, organ the past few years, I've had 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.760 a growing interest in the occult, both for testing the 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.879 limits of manufacturing my own weird experiences as well as 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:42.600 looking at it as a vector of political extremism. Sometimes 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.120 it's useful to not just to look on from the outside, 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.800 but actually hop into other people's reality tunnels to gain 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.479 a more intimate understanding of how they interact with our world. 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.240 This was my primary motivation in attending the Ghost Conference, 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:02.040 to learn what metaphysical beliefs drive the attendees and how 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:06.800 said beliefs intersect with politics and our broader culture. My 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:11.360 experiences at the conference ranged from ghost hunting to being hypnotized, 0:01:11.680 --> 0:01:15.360 to learning of the galactic Federation of Angels and abortion 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:19.040 hungry demons. So with that in mind, I hope you 0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.640 enjoy my report back on the twenty twenty three Oregon 0:01:22.720 --> 0:01:28.119 Ghost Conference. The first challenge we faced was simply getting 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:32.360 to the town of Seaside. The first day of the conference, Friday, 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.640 March twenty fourth, coincided with a massive snowstorm along Highway 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.360 twenty six from a Portland to Seaside. As we were 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:44.360 driving on the treacherous mountain roads, a white out completely 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.560 engulfed our view. When we emerged from the snowstorm, it 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.760 was as if we'd gone through a portal, transporting us 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:56.600 from the mountainous forest to the small coastal town of Seaside, Oregon, 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:03.480 into a world of ghosts, spirits, specters, and overpriced convention food. Seaside, 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:07.160 as the name suggests, is a beachfront town situated in 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.560 northern Oregon. It was founded in the late eighteen hundredths 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:14.800 after railroad baron Ben Holliday built his summer vacation quote 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.920 unquote Seaside house on the plot of land which is 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:22.040 now Seaside's golf course. It's always been a sort of 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.800 tourist resort town that people from Portland travel to for 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:30.639 beachfront entertainment. The conference is put on by a friendly 0:02:30.760 --> 0:02:34.760 high school art teacher and Oregon City commissioner, Rocky Smith. 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:38.440 Smith has been doing ghost tours in Oregon since the 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:41.120 mid nineties and has been putting on the Oregon Ghost 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:45.560 Conference since twenty twelve. Originally, it was held in Smith's 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:50.000 hometown of Oregon City, an extremely haunted town often cited 0:02:50.040 --> 0:02:53.960 as the end of the Oregon Trail. In twenty sixteen, 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:58.800 the conference outgrew its Oregon City venue and relocated to Seaside. 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.239 It's now the largest paranormal convention in the Pacific Northwest. 0:03:03.760 --> 0:03:10.519 The conference features ghost tours, classes, guest speakers, vendors, tarra readings, seances, 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:15.800 ghost hunting, and paranormal investigations. The first big event I 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:18.600 marked on my schedule was a ghost tour to get 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:23.720 acquainted with Seaside's most haunted places. The tour began right 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:28.160 outside the convention center. Conference director Rocky Smith led this 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:32.400 one himself. He filled us in on some old ghost 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:36.960 conference lore. The Seaside Convention Center went through some extensive 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.320 renovations right before the pandemic, but the first year the 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.000 conference took place in the convention center, they had a 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.080 class for kids where a group of children explored around 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:48.720 the old building to find what they thought were the 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.920 most haunted places. There was one hallway on the west 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:57.600 side of the building where people routinely reported strange experiences 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:01.720 back in twenty sixteen, a child at the conference claimed 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.960 they saw a ghost down this hallway when exiting the bathroom. First, 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:09.000 they just saw something out of the corner of their eye, 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:11.960 and then when they turned to the left, they saw 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.960 a woman in an old dress staring at them. At first, 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.479 they weren't sure if the dress was long or short 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.800 because they were too scared to look down, but then 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:24.719 they noticed that the woman didn't have any legs and 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:29.320 was just floating in the air. Because of the new renovations, 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:33.400 that hallway is no longer accessible. Rocky Smith remarked that 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:35.839 he didn't know if that was intentional or not, but 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.080 said that a lot of times when they redo buildings, 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:41.400 they'll change the part of a building that used to 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:44.839 be kind of scary and uncomfortable, so that hallway is 0:04:44.920 --> 0:04:48.480 now used for storage, although one of the convention staff 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:51.279 members claimed that a vacuum cleaner now held in the 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.960 hallway is possessed. So there's that. The convention Center was 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:58.839 originally built in the seventies and doesn't really have a 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:03.280 lot of notable hit history, but when looking into hauntings 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:06.960 or reports of ghosts, typically people try to learn the 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.760 history of the building or plot of land in question. 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.720 For Seaside. That's kind of hard because in nineteen twelve, 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:19.000 four blocks of downtown Seaside burned to the ground, destroying 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:23.440 most of the town's early history. The first stop on 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.320 the ghost tour after we left the Convention Center was 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.200 one of the reportedly most active sites of ghostly activity 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:34.159 in Seaside, the Bridge Tender Tavern. It was built in 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:36.760 nineteen fourteen, so just a couple of years after the 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.000 Big Fire. I used to be called the Pastime Bar 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.600 and then suffered its own fire and was later renamed 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.440 the Bridge Tender. The previous owners of the bar claimed 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:49.920 that in the early twentieth century it was a brothel. 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.719 This is unconfirmed, but it relates to the tavern's most 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:58.040 frequent ghost, the Madam. Staff and patrons of the Bridge 0:05:58.040 --> 0:06:01.600 Tender regularly addressed the Madam. If customers are being rude, 0:06:01.640 --> 0:06:04.200 It's said that the Madam will spill drinks on them, 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:07.080 you know, stuff like that. The story I like the 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:09.719 most about the Madam has to do with the taverns 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.760 old CD jute box. If a specific song played on 0:06:13.800 --> 0:06:17.040 the jukebox, something would go haywire, CDs would shoot out 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.719 of it or other weird things would reportedly happen in 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.960 the bar. Patrons would put the song on repeat just 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:26.440 to see what would happen. Eventually, the owners took the 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.440 CD with the song in question out of the jukebox 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.159 so that people would just stop playing the song. But 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.680 people are persistent bastards, so now people just play the 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.320 song on their phones or the new digital jukebox in 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:42.000 the Bridge Tender. Now the theory is is that the 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:46.400 Madam just really hates this song, so she gets mad 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:50.159 when it plays and then causes some commotion. The song 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:54.000 is Dancing Queen by Abba, So if you want to 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.120 go test this yourself, you can travel to the Bridge 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:01.880 Tender and play Dancing Queen and see what happens. Another 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.960 highlight from the ghost tour was learning about the old 0:07:05.080 --> 0:07:08.839 Seasider Hotel at the end of the promenade. It was 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:12.840 purportedly haunted by multiple spirits, and it was believed that 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.120 when the hotel was torn down in the eighties, the 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.000 ghosts followed the hotel staff who got new jobs at 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:25.000 a restaurant in downtown called Girdles. New employees are said 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:29.800 to have recognized apparitions from the hotel and the restaurant 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.640 gained a haunted coffee pot that would either move on 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:36.800 its own or even fly across the room, depending on 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.280 who you would ask. I think it's nice that the 0:07:39.280 --> 0:07:42.520 ghosts seem to have a pretty good job relocation program, 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.040 something that most of us do not so good for them. 0:07:46.920 --> 0:07:51.160 As the ghost tour approached the beachfront promenade, that snowstorm 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:54.960 from the nearby mountains seemed to have caught up with us, 0:07:55.600 --> 0:07:59.120 and a dreary mix of rain and snow began to descend. 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:04.000 Upon ceased, as if some otherworldly force was trying to 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:07.559 keep us from further exploring the hauntings of the town. 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:12.800 So as even my trench coat began soaking through, we 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:18.160 took refuge back indoors. The very first class my friend 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:23.240 Elaine and I took at the conference was titled Ghost Detectives. Now, 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:26.760 despite the silly, stounding name, it was probably the most 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:30.920 grounded class throughout the entire weekend, certainly the one with 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:35.400 the least amount of spiritual dogma. The class was focused 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:40.640 on best practices for conducting paranormal investigations, specifically to ensure 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:45.200 that the process and finding's mirror the evidentiary standards. Set 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:50.239 by the justice system for law enforcement investigations. The instructor, 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.560 doctor Nelson, is a supervisor for a crisis hotline with 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:57.520 degrees in mental health, metaphysics, and fine arts. He described 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:02.160 his methodology for investigating paranormal activity as quote unquote applied science. 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:06.920 He was definitely the most meticulous investigator of the whole 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:11.160 weekend and the least ghost hunter esque in terms of 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:16.360 advocating for strict investigative procedures and not just assuming that 0:09:16.520 --> 0:09:20.520 every spooky noise was evidence of a ghost. Most of 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:25.040 his class was spent explaining very basic police investigative procedure, 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:28.520 proper ways to collect evidence, having a chain of evidence, 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:33.160 and not simply jumping to conclusions. It's a little foolhardy 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.640 to assume every single spike on an electromagnetic field or 0:09:36.800 --> 0:09:42.040 EMF meter is actually a ghost trying to communicate. The 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.600 other unique thing about his class was the emphasis on 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:50.199 before pulling out your special ghost detecting tools, perhaps one 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.719 should conduct thorough interviews and collect witness statements. If the 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:58.040 people reporting the phenomenon, try to figure out what's going 0:09:58.040 --> 0:09:59.920 on in their life, maybe even look into their own 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.320 mental health background. As much as you're able to if 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:06.240 they've had any sudden losses, past trauma, or history of 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:10.640 paranormal experiences. Asking thorough questions can give a much fuller 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:13.760 look at what someone might be going through. Some examples 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.560 of things to ask or look into were if the 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.439 phenomenon is related to a house, who owns the house, 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.960 who lives there, who has experienced the event? What led 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:28.640 to a paranormal investigator being called? What precipitated the phenomenon? 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.800 When it occurred? How often has it occurred? When was 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:35.280 it first noticed? Was there just one random strange experience? 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:37.840 Or is someone going through an event in their life 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:41.120 that has made an experience suddenly stick out as strange? 0:10:41.640 --> 0:10:44.839 Has the person sought help, and has the phenomenon been 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:49.280 verified by more than one person. In terms of haunted houses, 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.520 figuring out if there's any issues in the house is 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:56.240 a great first step, because if there's a carbon monoxide leak, 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.640 that could explain a great many things, or if someone 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.480 claims ghost ectoplasm is leaking through the ceiling and walls, 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:08.040 perhaps the roof and water pipes should be inspected. Elene 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.800 and I did a little debrief after the conference, and 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:14.200 they reminded me of another good tip gleaned from the 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:15.600 ghost detective class. 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.280 I mean, my favorite was when he was talking about, like, 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.880 if you're using an EMF detector and one wall just 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.800 keeps setting the EMF detector off, you might actually just 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:27.200 need to call an electriciity. 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.880 Yes, yeah, No, he definitely was one of the more 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:34.200 reasonable people we spoke with in terms of Yeat knows. 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.680 He seems he seems pretty close to like consensus reality. 0:11:36.720 --> 0:11:38.760 Like he also he also is like a part of 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:43.320 like the Portland Ghostbusters cosplay group, Like like he's he's 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:46.000 someone who like makes stuff with his hands. He's very 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.360 like he feels very grounded and like and like consent 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:51.679 this reality a lot in a lot of aspects, and 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:53.880 this is like a very fun hobby that combines his 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:56.520 two favorite things, well two of his favorite things, just 0:11:56.520 --> 0:12:00.000 like Ghostbusters cosplays and also like parnimal investigation stuff. 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:03.880 I'm not actually sure if the instructor for the paranormal 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:08.200 investigation class really believed in ghosts or if you've just 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:13.200 had an interest in researching paranormal experiences. I don't think 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:17.600 I believe in ghosts the same way literally everyone else 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.240 at the conference did, but almost half of Americans do 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:25.360 believe in ghosts, and around one fifth are unsure if 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.040 their believers or not. The rate of belief in ghosts 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:32.480 is about the same as belief in demons. But the 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.360 interesting thing about that is although Americans belief in organized 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:41.199 religion has been decreasing, especially Christianity, belief in ghosts has 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.480 been and still is on the rise. In fact, it's 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:48.240 gone up by nearly four hundred percent since the nineteen seventies. 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.880 These last three years, for really the first time ever, 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.560 Gallup polls show that less than fifty percent of Americans 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:59.480 say they belong to a religious congregation. Alan Downe is 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.560 a computer scientist and professor at the Olin College of 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.719 Engineering in Massachusetts. His research suggests that the Internet is 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:10.760 a major cause, not just a correlating factor, in the 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:14.720 decrease of religious affiliation, and with the rise of the 0:13:14.760 --> 0:13:19.160 Internet and reality TV, ghost hunting has become a relatively 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:24.360 popular niche hobby. But as religious belief has declined, belief 0:13:24.400 --> 0:13:27.760 in the afterlife has remained the same about seventy percent 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:31.679 according to the General Social Survey. Gallup's polling suggests that 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:35.440 currently about three and four Americans have some sort of 0:13:35.600 --> 0:13:39.880 paranormal belief Thomas Moen, a sociologist who's been conducting a 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.840 study on religion and paranormal belief at Bowling Green State University, 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:48.040 said that he's finding that quote atheists tend to report 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:52.440 higher belief in the paranormal than religious folk unquote. As 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:56.200 to why so many Americans believe in ghosts, Mohen says, quote, 0:13:56.360 --> 0:13:59.319 people are looking to other things or non traditional things 0:13:59.360 --> 0:14:15.360 to answer life big questions that don't necessarily include religion unquote. 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:21.800 Throughout the conference, the word ghost, spirit, and entity were 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:26.000 often used interchangeably. Each of those words kind of act 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:30.280 as an umbrella term for a broad swath of ontological concepts. 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.720 Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that relates to the 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.680 nature of being. Depending who you ask, a ghost or 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:40.720 a spirit can be anything from a wayward soul of 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:45.280 a deceased human, some otherworldly energy, an evil presence, or 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.960 even some sort of temporal loop. Historically, these terms have 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.720 never been very clear either, they've evolved with the times, 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:57.240 so Elene and I prepared a brief history of ghosts 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.200 to help give context for the rest of this episode 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:06.360 and the next. The idea of contacting spirits or interacting 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:11.480 with some sort of spirit world obviously isn't new. Worldwide, 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:15.280 people have traditions of interacting with ancestors that deceased and 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:19.800 a variety of non material beings. Ancestor veneration in China 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.960 goes back at least six thousand years, while the word shaman, 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:25.320 relating to someone who works with spirits and in the 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.040 spirit realm for healing and divination, comes from the Tungusic 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:32.120 language of Siberia and has practices that are at least 0:15:32.240 --> 0:15:36.520 too millennia old. The term necromancy stems from a Greek 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.720 word meaning divination of the dead. In the Odyssey, Homer 0:15:40.800 --> 0:15:45.640 writes of Odysseus learning necromantic rituals to summon the shade 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:51.920 or underworld ghost of Tyresius. While clerical necromantic traditions through 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.120 the medieval period made a clear distinction between the souls 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:59.160 of dead humans from other random spirits, that separation was 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:02.440 not as ubiqui among folk beliefs of people who claimed 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:06.280 to interact with the spirit world. Emma Wilby describes in 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:10.160 her book Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits. How into the 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:14.120 early modern period, many cunning folk basically low level magicians 0:16:14.120 --> 0:16:18.640 and conjurors had ghosts, fairies, and animal spirit companions, all 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:23.320 of which seemed to interact very similarly. The European concept 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.720 of ghosts being linked to evil or demonic forces is 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.800 a relatively new idea. It came to be as a 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:34.280 byproduct of the Reformation and rejection of the Catholic Church. 0:16:35.280 --> 0:16:39.280 The Catholic doctrine of purgatory and limbo was rejected by 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:44.360 the new Protestants, which caused some cosmological problems when it 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:49.240 came to people's own experiences with ghosts and spirits. Catholics 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:53.240 held that ghosts were basically spirits of dead humans on 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:58.600 vacation from purgatory, But with Protestants rejecting purgatory for its 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:02.440 lack of biblical basis, they defined some other way to 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:08.040 explain the apparently fairly common phenomenon of ghostly encounters. A 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:13.520 Swiss theologian named Ludwig Lavater attempted to solve this cosmological 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:19.480 problem in his fifteen sixty nine book Despectus. I just 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:21.800 picked up my copy a few weeks ago and had 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.119 been going through it, and it's a lot of fun. 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:28.720 The full English title was quote of ghosts and spirits 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.680 walking by night and of strange noises, cracks, and sundry 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:36.120 fore warnings which commonly happened before the death of men, 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:42.000 great slaughters, and the alteration of kingdoms. Pretty cool stuff. 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:46.719 Two of my favorite consecutive chapter titles are quote what 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:50.880 hath followed this doctrine of the Papists concerning the appearing 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.760 of men's souls, followed by testimonies out of the Word 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:57.200 of God, that neither the souls of the faithful nor 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.960 infidels do walketh upon the earth after they are once 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.520 parted from their bodies. So that kind of gives you 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.160 a look at the writing style of this entire book. 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:13.960 Despecters became massively influential. It was widely translated. Shakespeare was 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.679 reading this as he was writing Hamlet. More importantly, the 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:21.120 text took off across many Protestant circles and became the 0:18:21.160 --> 0:18:24.359 backbone of the cultural conception of ghosts in the soon 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.959 to be United States through such Protestant sects. Instead of 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:33.000 ghosts being wayward specters of dead humans who escaped from purgatory, 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:39.040 Lavater proposed a great many explanations for spectral experiences, including 0:18:39.040 --> 0:18:44.960 many non mystical causes. He lists illness, insomnia, psychoactive substances, 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:49.960 sleep paralysis, and grief as being common causes of ghostly hallucinations, 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:54.960 an opinion now shared by many psychologists and doctors. Definitely, 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:57.119 the closest thing I've ever seen to a ghost was 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:02.200 during a sleep paralysis episode. Lavator writes, quote, Melancholic persons 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.280 and mad men imagine things which in very deed are 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:10.040 not fearful. Men imagine that they see and hear strange things. 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:13.280 Men which are dull of seeing and hearing imagine many 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.560 things which in very deed are not so. Unquote. He 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:21.920 also cites pranksters as another common cause of perceived spectral activity, 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.840 but most interestingly, in an attempt to bash the Catholics, 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:30.560 the Protestant Lavater also lists low level clergy trained in 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:34.600 exorcistic magic to summon demonic spirits in an achromatic fashion 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:42.000 as possibly producing some supernatural phenomenon interpreted as ghosts. Now, 0:19:42.160 --> 0:19:45.560 Lavater does believe in spirits, but his thesis is that 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:50.080 genuine ghosts spirits bumps in the night, those strange cracks 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:52.840 and noises which we now might refer to as politgeists 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:58.800 are almost always demons that are torturing people. He wrote 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.240 that devils can quote appear in different shapes, not only 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:04.960 of those which are alive, but also of dead men 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:07.399 as well as a peer in the likeness of a 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:11.320 black dog, a horse, an owl, and also are able 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:16.119 to bring incredible things to pass unquote. Levater did admit 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:19.520 that in the rarest of cases, God may send angels 0:20:19.600 --> 0:20:21.720 or the spirit of a dead person to Earth for 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:26.320 a very specific task, but due to demons a nature trickery, 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:29.360 there's really no way to trust that a ghostly presence 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:32.600 may be from God. So he recommends that one should 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:37.080 always assume that a specter is demonic. God may even 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:40.320 allow demonic spirits to appear as a form of punishment 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:45.200 and a sign that one should repent for wrongdoing. Lavater's 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:48.600 theologic work on ghosts were part of a larger Protestant 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:53.880 Christian campaign to literally demonize all spirits. Right, the only 0:20:53.920 --> 0:20:56.399 thing you can really talk to is Jesus or God. 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:00.320 Anything else is probably just a demon. This is the 0:21:00.400 --> 0:21:03.000 version of ghosts that I grew up with as a kid, 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:06.720 the idea that basically, if a ghost appears, it's probably 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:10.520 a demon trying to scare or trick you. This concept 0:21:10.560 --> 0:21:15.000 that spirits and spirit contact were predominantly demonic, changed the 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:18.920 nature of many witch trials, since when cunning folk listed 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:23.359 their familiar ghosts or fairies, they were basically admitting to 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:28.040 trafficking with demons. The next evolution in ghost lore came 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:32.879 in the form of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish theologian and scientist. 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:35.520 In fact, he was one of the first to postulate 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:39.760 the existence of the neuron. As Christians in Europe were 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:42.880 dealing with this messy assortment of spirits that you really 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:45.159 shouldn't try and interact with, but if you do, you 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:48.640 better make sure they're angels, Swedenborg was about to shake 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:53.119 up this whole entire cosmology. In the seventeen forties, he 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:58.680 started having quote intense mystical experiences, dreams, and visions unquote, 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.600 which led him to believe he was in contact with 0:22:01.680 --> 0:22:06.400 a spirit world and entities that he described as angels, demons, 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:12.000 as well as other spirits, including ones from extraterrestrial planets. 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.000 This is like one of the first guys to do 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:17.920 the spirits I'm talking to are actually aliens, which is 0:22:17.960 --> 0:22:21.440 pretty cool. In seventeen eighty five, he published a book 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:26.880 titled Heaven and Hell, based on his experiences of the afterlife. 0:22:26.960 --> 0:22:30.760 According to Swedenburg, once humans on Earth pass on to 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:35.160 the spiritual world, they enter a intermediate realm in between 0:22:35.200 --> 0:22:40.600 heaven and hell and eventually either become beautified into angels 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:44.720 or twisted into demons, and then respectively pass on into 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:49.240 either heaven or Hell proper. While his depiction of spirits 0:22:49.240 --> 0:22:53.119 were obviously influenced by his Christian beliefs, the variety and 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:57.600 breadth of his spirit world was broader than just the undead. 0:22:58.440 --> 0:23:02.760 Swedenburg's writing was one of the early influences on spiritualism. 0:23:03.200 --> 0:23:05.879 Core tenants of which are there being multiple levels of 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:10.680 the afterlife and that an individual's awareness persists after death 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:16.320 and may be contacted by the living, which is pretty 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:20.200 similar to what most people now would probably describe as 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:22.960 ghosts if you were to ask them what a ghost is. 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:28.720 While Swedenborg actually recommended against attempting to contact spirits, he 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:32.360 had a lasting influence on American spiritualism for creating an 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:37.800 explicitly Christian based system where spiritual entities worked as mediators 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:42.040 between humans and God. Coming out of Upstate New York 0:23:42.080 --> 0:23:44.760 in the decade before the Civil War, spiritualism brought to 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:48.200 the other aspects of the Radical Quakers with Swedenberg's idea 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:51.720 of spirit intermediaries who could bring messages to the living. 0:23:52.640 --> 0:23:56.600 The spiritualist movement formally began on March thirty first, eighteen 0:23:56.680 --> 0:24:00.000 forty eight, when the Fox Sisters made their fraudulent clases 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:04.040 of contacting a spirit who could communicate through knocking noises. 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:09.800 Starting initially in Quaker communities, mediumship and seances immediately took 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:12.680 off across the United States, including the White House as 0:24:12.720 --> 0:24:15.919 the Lincolns were graving the loss of their son, showing 0:24:15.960 --> 0:24:19.199 that interest in ghosts and seances were not just a 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:22.600 parlor trick for commoners, they were also a parlor trick 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:26.760 for the president. The fact that the rise of spiritualism 0:24:26.840 --> 0:24:31.840 coincided with Civil War deaths and gruesome battlefield photography certainly 0:24:31.920 --> 0:24:35.040 helped fuel the drive to communicate and receive messages from 0:24:35.040 --> 0:24:39.920 the recently deceased. Due to its Quaker roots, the spiritualist 0:24:39.920 --> 0:24:44.159 movement was abolitionist, and its belief in an egalitarian afterlife 0:24:44.400 --> 0:24:47.800 prompted its members to advocate for social change here on earth. 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:51.760 Even the messages that mediums claimed to relay from the 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:56.840 dead were often progressive. In eighteen fifty two, the medium 0:24:56.960 --> 0:25:02.000 Isaac Post published a collection of messages supposedly channeled from 0:25:02.080 --> 0:25:06.600 such people as Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson, and other famous figures 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:11.359 who urged the living to push for radical social change. 0:25:11.480 --> 0:25:14.800 The book, entitled Voices from the Spirit World, included a 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:18.959 passage claiming that the ghost of George Washington became an 0:25:19.040 --> 0:25:22.840 abolitionist after death. And I don't know the idea that 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:28.320 the ghost of Jefferson and Washington suddenly became abolitionists after death. 0:25:29.119 --> 0:25:31.840 Although I understand its utility at the time for trying 0:25:31.840 --> 0:25:36.000 to push people towards becoming an abolitionist, it does kind 0:25:36.000 --> 0:25:38.919 of read as a little bit gross, considering how that 0:25:39.119 --> 0:25:42.720 was very much not their opinions when they were actually 0:25:42.760 --> 0:25:47.840 living humans. New to the spiritualist development of ghosts was 0:25:47.960 --> 0:25:52.480 not just the idea of regular spiritual contact, but evidence 0:25:52.600 --> 0:25:55.639 that the spirit world could be shown to the physical 0:25:55.840 --> 0:26:01.639 scientific world. Basically, the precursor to modern ghosts emerged between 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:05.520 the Civil War and World War One. In London. Multiple 0:26:05.560 --> 0:26:09.680 ghost clubs and psychic or paranormal research groups were founded 0:26:09.800 --> 0:26:13.120 in the mid to late eighteen hundreds aimed at scientifically 0:26:13.160 --> 0:26:19.600 investigating ghosts, hauntings, and the claims of spiritualists. Similar groups 0:26:19.600 --> 0:26:23.240 for investigation opened up in the United States, and around 0:26:23.240 --> 0:26:25.280 this time is also when we start to see the 0:26:25.400 --> 0:26:30.520 use of technology to assist in capturing alleged evidence of ghosts. 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:35.760 In eighteen sixty one, amateur photographer William Mumler was developing 0:26:35.840 --> 0:26:39.560 a self portrait when a shattery apparition of a young 0:26:39.640 --> 0:26:44.119 girl appeared on his developing plate. Mummler knew this to 0:26:44.160 --> 0:26:49.119