Paranormal Investigations

[MN Dave]

I can't believe this is a thing that people claim to do.

What are your thoughts? I can only imagine.

[Todd]

I should figure out a way to make money from it.  While in consultation with clients, I could suddenly blurt out "Did you hear that?"

[MN Dave]

I should figure out a way to make money from it.  While in consultation with clients, I could suddenly blurt out "Did you hear that?"

I laughed out loud.

[Todd]

[Mandryka]

I was once recruited into a company which turned out to be owned and run by a cult which claimed to have powers of mind control. Needless to say, the job didn't last long but I was there for long enough to help win some substantial business for them, mostly setting up call centres for financial services companies in the UK and in France. This was in the 1990s.


Anyway in the time I was there I got to know some of the cult people, including one very bright lady who said she could use powers of hypnosis to make prospects sign orders. She was a very successful salesperson.

They would use powers of suggestion to control the thoughts and actions of others. I remember this started with some sort of mirroring of the prospect's minute body language - when he crossed his legs, she would cross her legs; when he blinked she blinked. And then slowly she would take the upper hand in this game, and the victim would be mirroring her body movements rather than the other way round. At that point she had him: he would sign the contract.

I have a strong memory or standing on the platform of a London railway station - Paddington maybe - where there's an enormous clock. The clock was right in front of me and I was looking at it, I was convinced we had missed our train. And the suddenly I looked again and saw we had plenty of time to spare. Jan, the cult sales person, laughed and said she had hypnotised me to misperceive the time on the clock.

Anyway the company eventually disbanded and somehow, maybe by hypnosis, Jan convinced Deloitte to take her on in quite a senior position. She was there a few years I heard, but never felt comfortable.

By the way, the « leader » of the cult had managed to inveigle his way into the upper echelons of the Tory party in the 1980s, Thatcher's Tory party, and was tabling all sorts of proposals to « transform Britain » by using mind control techniques in schools to produce a workforce which was biddable, target driven, not at all militant. He also managed to get a group of Chinese gentlemen to let him have a huge amount of money for a venture capital operation - I don't know what came of it.

But all of this experience made me think that there are indeed ways of making money out of the paranormal — as Todd says.

[Karl Henning]

I can't believe this is a thing that people claim to do.

What are your thoughts? I can only imagine.

May the Force be with you.

[Jo498]

There are or used to be people in serious psychology departments who did "psi research". But I think it was overall fairly boring. Look if some people can guess cards (or symbols on a screen) with better than random outcomes, if they can influence a cursor on a screen or whatnot. Basically the same boring statistics as lots of other psychology (and probably doing as poorly at being reproduced by another study as less edgy stuff). If psi phenomena exists they must be very rare and mostly useless. Otherwise they would have been exploited by the military, secret services etc.

[Scion7]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOR5l1NH8J0

[MN Dave]

There are or used to be people in serious psychology departments who did "psi research". But I think it was overall fairly boring. Look if some people can guess cards (or symbols on a screen) with better than random outcomes, if they can influence a cursor on a screen or whatnot. Basically the same boring statistics as lots of other psychology (and probably doing as poorly at being reproduced by another study as less edgy stuff). If psi phenomena exists they must be very rare and mostly useless. Otherwise they would have been exploited by the military, secret services etc.

. The plot of much fantasy!

[Todd]

. The plot of much fantasy!

And some comedy.

https://www.youtube.com/v/5ohlA__xABw

[Jo498]

There is a rather good story by Roald Dahl (I think) about a guy who discovers (or learns from a Guru) that he can look through cards. He goes on to wreak havoc in all the gambling place but there is another twist later on.

[MN Dave]

There is a rather good story by Roald Dahl (I think) about a guy who discovers (or learns from a Guru) that he can look through cards. He goes on to wreak havoc in all the gambling place but there is another twist later on.

This sounds like it might have been done for television.

[steve ridgway]

Good story Mandryka. I think you can only really believe in this stuff is by seeing it in your own life. For me it's been meaningful coincidences, synchronicity. They eventually became so many and so outrageous I couldn't ignore them any longer. I don't claim any magic powers though, things just happen and by paying attention I notice the meaning in them. You might start by looking for repeating numbers, symbols, words. Correspondences with randomly playing tunes can be interesting.

[Holden]

Back in the day when I was working with primary school classes I devised a unit of work for my Year 5 students which I titled "Hoax" The aim of this was to get my students to question what they saw. Take nothing for granted - yes it might be true but you owe it to yourself to check it out. There is nothing wrong with asking questions.

The introductory lesson was me telling the students that I could transfer my thoughts into another persons mind. I asked "who believes I can do it" - No Way! Thirty minutes later I had nearly 90% of the class convinced. Whatever they threw at me I countered it. At this point I had asked the question again and there were only one or two skeptics left.

I then told them that I had fooled them (but didn't say how). We watched videos about how advertising companies fooled their audience and other examples of what we would call fake media today. The assignment I set the kids was to create their own hoax. "My dog is psychic" was the best I ever saw.

We need to train our young people to question everything they see, read or experience and be prepared to ask questions. Statements like "You are a climate change denier" are an example of people who don't want you to think but agree that they are right, no questions asked. Righteousness is the major ideology today. Simply translated - I am right and you are wrong.