We humans can be a very gullible group when we choose to be. If more than two people believe that something is true, it becomes a movement or at the very least, it warrants producing a reality TV show.
The other night, when my daughter Rachel was home from college, she wrangled my wife Stacey and I into watching a reality show called "T.A.P.S. - Ghost Hunters". T.A.P.S. stands for The Atlantic Paranormal Society. Apparently it was a marathon, which initially I thought would be fun.
Having always been a sucker for anything dealing with the paranormal, I bought the ticket and was in for the ride. All I could do was hope for the best. Who knows, maybe there would be some startling revelation or a way to get a message to the other side. There are a few folks over there that I wouldn't mind having a chat with if the possibility arose.
The show follows the usual format of investigative shows. The investigation, the pursuit, the analysis, and the findings. The one thing I kept wondering about is all the very high tech equipment they were using. The biggest question being is where do they get all this stuff?
During the show they broke one of their E.M.F. gages. (F.Y.I. : E.M.F. stands for Electro Magnetic Field, but don't ask.) Well, when it broke their reaction was one of "Oh well, we will just run out get another one." Where? Target? Kmart? Best Buy? Ghosts 'R Us?
Now "T.A.P.S.-Ghost Hunters" is not the only game in town and should not be confused with the other spirits haunting the television airwaves. There are quite a few. You've got "Most Haunted", "Haunted America", "Haunted Travel", "Celebrity Ghost Story", "My Ghost Story", "Ghostly Graveyards" and my son Alex's favorite "Ghost Adventures". Trust me this is nowhere near a complete list.
As I discovered after a brief conversation with Alex, people have a tendency to become loyal to their paranormal shows. In his mind, Ghost Hunters couldn't rattle Ghost Adventures' chains. Having watched both shows I wasn't exactly sure why his loyalty was based there, but to each his own.
But back to the gullible part of this article. Granted, believing in ghosts, spirits, and the paranormal is a tough sell. It requires a giant leap of faith for most. According to the latest poll, 78% of us don't buy into it. But that also means that there are 22% that think that it is true. Despite the number of shows on cable the ghost movement needs to get some hardcore press in order to move it to the front of the world wide consciousness.
You know like the recent waste of everyone's time over the pending end of the world or "The Rapture" to those in the apocalyptic know. I was absolutely stunned and annoyed by the amount of coverage it was receiving the week before our impending demise.
It always mystifies me when the news media sets their sights on a given story regardless of its origins. In this case it was because an 89 year old ex-Sunday school teacher named Harold Egbert Camping, who happens to have a radio show, said it would happen. He came to his revelation by taking a few passages from the bible and applying some good old fashion numerology mumbo jumbo to it.
When it didn't happen on the date and time planned, which it obviously didn't, he did what every good con artist does, he changed the date. Until everyone loses interest and by everyone I mean the press, we will keep following his predictions blindly.
Why anybody would listen to this guy's babbling in the first place is amazing to me. Since when does teaching Sunday school qualify somebody to predict anything except maybe what time the class will end?
As much as I want to believe in ghosts, for me there needs to be more definitive proof. So far all we have witnessed from any of these shows are blurry shadows, garbled disembodied voices, and goofy hosts running around like a bunch of giddy kindergarteners. Trust me, when there is something that is even close to proof, the news media will be all over it.
Until then I will have to be stuck between two worlds. Somewhere between Ghost Hunters and Adventures.
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