Cyber Ghosts and E-Mail from the Dead
Anne Mcilroy
Globe and Mail, Canada
__________________
His wife had died, but he kept her e-mail account open and checked it regularly to see if she had any messages from far-flung friends or acquaintances who didn't know she had passed away.
On the anniversary of their first date, a strange e-mail arrived with an attachment that had nothing in it. He checked to see who it was from, but there were no names in the "from" header area. On their wedding anniversary, an identical message arrived.
He became convinced, he explained on a website devoted to the paranormal, that it was his dead wife trying to communicate with him. E-mail and cellphone calls from the dead. Ghostly orbs that appear in pictures taken by digital cameras.
Demons captured on cellphone cameras. New technology is having an impact on how people experience the paranormal. "Any technology throughout history has been adapted to two things -- first of all pornography and secondly, the paranormal," James Alcock, a professor at York University who specializes in the psychology of belief, said. He is a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a group that has investigated and exposed psychics, spoon benders, alien abductees and poltergeists since it was formed in the mid-1970s. But for some, cyberspace extends to the great beyond, and the Web is a worldwide Ouija board. There are thousands of websites devoted to the paranormal, where people report their supernatural experiences.
Many are encounters with old-fashioned-style ghosts and apparitions, the kind that inspired the most spectral Halloween costumes you'll see on the dark streets tonight. But a growing number involve modern technology, like cellphones.
A young man gets calls from a grandparent warning that he left the oven on. What's remarkable is that Grandma is dead, said Amy Allen, Ontario director for Paranormal Phenomena Research & Investigation, an organization that includes about 75 paranormal investigators in Canada, and another 60 or so in the United States and around the world. These calls, she said, have always proved impossible to trace.
There are also reports of mysterious e-mails, like the one posted on a paranormal website by the man, who identified himself as Tom, who believed his wife had attempted to contact him on two important anniversaries in their relationship.He's in good company. Even Thomas Edison saw new technology as a possible channel of communication with the spirit world, Dr. Alcock said.
The inventor tried to make contact through a phonograph-like device in the 1890s and then tried again in the 1920s with chemical equipment.The advent of photography was closely followed by mysterious pictures of ghosts, and today, digital cameras have sparked a similar boom in spooky pictures, including many containing strange, transparent orbs.
Darryll Walsh, executive director of the Halifax-based Centre for Parapsychological Studies in Canada, said they are caused by the flash being too close to the lens in the point-and-shoot cameras.
Once the telephone became popular, people reported calls from dead loved ones. The advent of television brought reports of people seeing faces of the dead on the screen. For several decades, people have reported hearing the voices of the dead on their tape recorders.
Nov 01, 2005
Anne Mcilroy
Globe and Mail, Canada
__________________
His wife had died, but he kept her e-mail account open and checked it regularly to see if she had any messages from far-flung friends or acquaintances who didn't know she had passed away.
On the anniversary of their first date, a strange e-mail arrived with an attachment that had nothing in it. He checked to see who it was from, but there were no names in the "from" header area. On their wedding anniversary, an identical message arrived.
He became convinced, he explained on a website devoted to the paranormal, that it was his dead wife trying to communicate with him. E-mail and cellphone calls from the dead. Ghostly orbs that appear in pictures taken by digital cameras.
Demons captured on cellphone cameras. New technology is having an impact on how people experience the paranormal. "Any technology throughout history has been adapted to two things -- first of all pornography and secondly, the paranormal," James Alcock, a professor at York University who specializes in the psychology of belief, said. He is a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a group that has investigated and exposed psychics, spoon benders, alien abductees and poltergeists since it was formed in the mid-1970s. But for some, cyberspace extends to the great beyond, and the Web is a worldwide Ouija board. There are thousands of websites devoted to the paranormal, where people report their supernatural experiences.
Many are encounters with old-fashioned-style ghosts and apparitions, the kind that inspired the most spectral Halloween costumes you'll see on the dark streets tonight. But a growing number involve modern technology, like cellphones.
A young man gets calls from a grandparent warning that he left the oven on. What's remarkable is that Grandma is dead, said Amy Allen, Ontario director for Paranormal Phenomena Research & Investigation, an organization that includes about 75 paranormal investigators in Canada, and another 60 or so in the United States and around the world. These calls, she said, have always proved impossible to trace.
There are also reports of mysterious e-mails, like the one posted on a paranormal website by the man, who identified himself as Tom, who believed his wife had attempted to contact him on two important anniversaries in their relationship.He's in good company. Even Thomas Edison saw new technology as a possible channel of communication with the spirit world, Dr. Alcock said.
The inventor tried to make contact through a phonograph-like device in the 1890s and then tried again in the 1920s with chemical equipment.The advent of photography was closely followed by mysterious pictures of ghosts, and today, digital cameras have sparked a similar boom in spooky pictures, including many containing strange, transparent orbs.
Darryll Walsh, executive director of the Halifax-based Centre for Parapsychological Studies in Canada, said they are caused by the flash being too close to the lens in the point-and-shoot cameras.
Once the telephone became popular, people reported calls from dead loved ones. The advent of television brought reports of people seeing faces of the dead on the screen. For several decades, people have reported hearing the voices of the dead on their tape recorders.
Nov 01, 2005
