Things that go bump in the night
Things that go bump in the night
This entry is about the paranormal. I believe in science, logic and reason, but I am appalled at the hypocrisy of intellectuals who ridicule people who embrace religion, superstition or the paranormal but who themselves accept their beliefs by blind faith and unquestioning dogma when some of the things that they believe in cannot be proven by empirical evidence, such as the belief that life originated from a primordial soup by chance three billion years ago. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, or as Jesus Christ said, “ Don’t mock the speck of dust in your brother’s eye when you have a beam in your own eye.”(The Gospel according to Matthew Levi chapter seven, verses three through five) I don’t claim to have all of the answers, think for yourselves and believe what you will. Although I believe in the paranormal realm I don’t believe in ghosts per se, but that is due to my theological worldview: I believe that when human beings die, we go to either Heaven or Hell, depending on the life that we lived and whether we accept or reject redemption. (As it is written “ It is appointed unto men (humans) once to die and then the judgment”, The Epistle to the Hebrews chapter nine, verse twenty-seven). Thus I don’t believe that human spirits remain on Earth to haunt buildings or places. And yet there are numerous reports of haunted locales in various places in the world. I do believe in angels and demons and reports of ghosts inhabiting these locations may be demonic phenomenon impersonating human spirits. I don’t believe that angels would pretend to be disembodied human spirits. It is natural for humans to be fascinated and intrigued by mystery, esoterica and arcana but the paranormal realm can be dangerous so it is best to be careful when investigating it. I personally would not be involved in ouija boards, tarot cards, séances or astrology as these things can make people vulnerable to the dark forces. What you get involved in is your choice.
In the library in our basement we have the book “Strange Stories, Amazing Facts” published by the Reader’s Digest, many of the things contained in that book are interesting reading but some things in there creep the hell out of me to this day.
One phenomenon that I am intrigued by is the topic of ghost ships, such as the Flying Dutchman, the Mary Celeste and the schooner Jenny. How much of the Flying Dutchman is fact and how much is legend I do not know, most of what I have read about the Mary Celeste and the Jenny seems to be realistic. I have done research on this subject, some on the web and some in books, the first two ships mentioned were covered in the RD book that I spoke of earlier, I first read of the Jenny in the January 1977 issue of Cricket magazine. According to the legend: The Flying Dutchman phenomenon started when Captain Hendrik Vanderdecken ran into bad weather and cursed God and was thus doomed to sail until judgment day. This took place in the 1600’s and sightings of the ship have occurred from then until the most recent sighting, which was in September 1942. There is a scientific explanation that the Earth’s atmosphere can refract light causing a ship that is hundreds of miles away to appear like a mirage but that does not explain how a sailing ship from an earlier era could be sighted during the modern era. The Mary Celeste set sail with a crew of ten on November 5, 1872 but was later found adrift and abandoned. Most of the ship and it’s cargo was undisturbed but the crew was never found. Various explanations have been suggested including mutiny, waterspout (a kind of tornado at sea), alien abduction and giant squid. As the cargo was unmolested piracy is not likely. The accepted explanation is that a temporary deck constructed on the bow broke off with the crew standing on it dumping them into the ocean and the ship sailed away without them, but this theory is also disputed. The schooner Jenny set sail from Lima, Peru sometime in 1823 and never reached it’s destination. Thirty-seven years later on September 22,1860* the whaling ship Hope was sailing between Australia and Antarctica and encountered icebergs. One of the huge chunks of ice broke apart and inside was the Jenny, her crew frozen and perfectly preserved. The crew of the Hope thought that they were encountering the Flying Dutchman but the skipper, Captain Brighton, bravely boarded the ghostship and investigated. He found that the final log entry was on May 4, 1823. There was no explanation of how the ship and her crew ended up trapped in the iceberg, only that they had been without food for 71 days. The bodies were buried at sea and the captain’s log was later delivered to the British navy.
*This date is disputed.
My feelings on Halloween: While the only religions that I accept are Judaism and Christianity, I believe in tolerance for people’s right to follow and practice whatever religion that they choose without interference from the government or other people. As such I would not infringe on the rights of wiccans, pagans or druids to exercise their beliefs, including their celebration of Halloween. But since I am a Christian I no longer celebrate Halloween as I did when I was a child. There are elements of that holiday that I don’t have a problem with, I just reject from my own life the factors involving the occult or death. I will not infringe on wiccan’s right to celebrate their holiday as they please but I don’t embrace those factors myself, therein lies the difference between tolerance and acceptance.
Elements of Halloween that I reject: The Occult, death; wizards, warlocks and witches; haunted houses, ghosts, demons, animated skeletons, vampires, werewolves, animated corpses (such as zombies, mummies and Frankenstein’s monster), and the ritual of trick or treat that some say is a form of extortion.
Elements of Halloween that I accept: Autumn harvest, Victorian houses and mansions, critters (cats, bats, owls, ravens, spiders, etc.), costume parties, mad scientists, the full moon, the crescent moon, dark and stormy nights, pipe organ and harpsichord music, flying saucers with comical or exotic humanoid aliens, generic monsters, cobwebs and wolfhowls.
I don’t mind the proverbial mad scientist doing eccentric experiments or creating robots, androids or cyborgs, I’m just not into the whole “monster formed from dismembered corpses” thing. I don’t mind spooky or mysterious houses as long as they are not actually inhabited or haunted by evil entities.
There is also a difference between Satanism and witchcraft: witchcraft is a pantheistic religion that practices nature worship whereas Satanism is a theistic religion that believes in but rejects and is hostile to the JudeoChristian God. Halloween is a Wiccan event but Satanists have embraced it too.
There have been superheroes and other crimefighters who have had a dark, mysterious and ominous appearance, either through their costumes or the image that they project, starting with Johnston McCully’s El Zorro (Don Diego De La Vega), The Shadow (Lamont Cranston), Bob Caine’s Batman, Batgirl and Nightwing (Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson), property of D.C.comics, Stan Lee’s Spiderman, Spiderwoman and the Black Cat(Peter Parker, Jessica Drew and Felicia Hardy), property of Marvel comics, Disney’s Darkwing Duck (Drake Mallard), and Filmation’s Rex Ruthless and Dirty Trixie (secret identities unknown) from the cartoon “Hero High” and Web Woman (Kelly Webster) from the cartoon “The Super Seven”. These characters don’t bother me but I am uncomfortable with supposedly heroic characters who are rooted in the occult such as the Marvel characters Dr. Strange, Dr. Druid and possibly Scarlet Witch (I am not really familiar with the nature of that character so I am not sure whether she is actually a witch or not).
Some religious and/or superstitious types have assumed that bats and ravens are evil or satanic but this is based on misunderstanding and foolish assumptions. When the bible says that they are unclean and are to be considered an abomination to the Hebrews it means that they are unsafe to eat, and science has documented that many of the animals ruled unclean by the dietary standards of the Torah often have parasites or infectious microbes in their meat. God used ravens to bring food to the prophet Elijah so ravens must only be unclean to eat, not to touch.
There are two kinds of lycanthropy: the mythological kind where people transform into werewolves (and zoanthropy where they transmogrify into swan maidens or things like that) and the psychological kind where people have a delusion of being an animal, like Nebuchadnezzar in the book of the Prophet Daniel. I don’t believe that it is possible to actually change into a beast, as the kind of transmutation involved, whether on the genetic or molecular level, would be too traumatizing to the organism involved. (One reason why I doubt macroevolution) It doesn’t really matter whether the transmutation is sudden (man to wolf) or gradual (ape to man) such changes are unlikely in the real world. In my struggle with schizophrenia I have at times had symptoms of psycho-lycanthropy, whether I need an exorcism or whether it is due to some trauma in my past I do not know. It may be rooted in the weakness that has corrupted me throughout my life.