There is an oft-repeated claim among believers that in a
collision with a paranormal event, skepticism cannot survive.
The wake of a brush with the unknown is an epiphanic
transformation. If a skeptic were to have such an encounter,
their closed-mindedness would wilt away, allowing them to join
the community of believers.
However, experience is not the defining characteristic
separating the skeptics from believers. There are many skeptics
who have survived an encounter with the anomalous with their
skepticism otherwise intact. Many skeptics, myself included,
became so long after anomalous experiences, the journey for
answers leading to skepticism.
The weird and unusual have been frequent in my life. I
will not discuss them all here; some are too personal, some
involve other people and have not been given permission to give
the details. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of
something that could be paranormal. And these events did not
cease when I became a skeptic. The events have seemed to
parallel my interest in esoteric subject matters. I've often
wondered which bore which, a sort of paranormal Euthyphro
dilemma.
Home from college one summer, I saw someone in my parents'
home, someone that should not have been there. The last one to
bed, I was heading to my bedroom, shutting off lights behind me.
As I passed my sister's bedroom, I witnessed a little girl
standing at the foot of her bed, hair in curls, wearing a green
dress that would have not looked out of place in the nineteenth-
century or early twentieth. It was only a glimpse, seen in the
brief second I glanced in the door. But it was vivid enough to
give me pause. And it was not the last time I'd see this young
lady, though she only seemed to exist in my peripheral vision.
The girl in the green dress hasn't paid a visit since that
summer.
That is just one of the many strange experiences I've had.
So how do I reconcile being a skeptic seeing what seems to
be a ghost? Because I can never be sure what I saw.
Human perception and memory are wondrously and
fascinatingly flawed. So flawed, neither can be considered
trustworthy. A study released last year (1), suggests that our
perceptions are wrong even when paying close attention to
detail. According to the Innocence Project, eyewitness
testimony is "the single greatest cause of wrongful
convictions." Multiple witnesses are just as likely to make the
same mistakes of perception as a single witness; an arbitrary
amount of witnesses does not suddenly create a phenomenon wherein the witnesses' perceptions become less flawed. In a
study of 250 false convictions, Brandon Garrett found that a
third involved multiple eye-witnesses fingering the wrong person
for a crime. (2)
I cannot be sure I even saw a girl sporting curls and a
green-dress. While I'm positive I am remembering events as they
happened, it is probable this is not the case. Memory is not a
tape-recorder, transcribing events objectively and accurate into
our brains. It is subjective, based on our perceptions and
emotions at moment of the event. Nor does it become more
accurate or objective with time. It is perhaps less so.
Studies suggest that it is very easy to create false memories.
(3)
As flawed as our perception and memory is, the bulk of
paranormal research still relies on eyewitness testimony as
opposed to empirical evidence. This is not to say we should
dismiss eyewitnesses or treat them as anything less than sincere
(unless they prove to be otherwise). Eyewitness testimony
should be regarded as a starting point but never should any
case, paranormal or criminal, hinge on it.
1) Seeing Isn't Believing
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
2) Getting It Wrong: Convicting the Innocent
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurispruden
ce/features/2011/getting_it_wrong_convicting_the_innocent/h
ow_eyewitnesses_can_send_innocents_to_jail.html
3) Creating False Memories
http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm
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