95% of my 4000 cases are not ghosts

By on September 13, 2012 in News 6

Television overflows with heady haunts and fumbling ghost hunters frantic with green light night vision hallucinations and errant cold spots. The reality of the phenomena is a much more sober affair.

Parapsychologist Dr. Barry Taff has been investigating anomalous phenomenon for 43 years, and has investigated over 4,500 cases of ghosts, hauntings and poltergeists. His book,  Aliens Above, Ghosts Below: Explorations of the Unknown provides an extensive overview of some of his most notable cases.  Having consulted on films such as Poltergeist, Altered States, Demon Seed and The Entity, he is no stranger to the media, however his serious approach to the study of the outer extremes of human experience puts him at odds with today’s ‘circus sideshow‘ approach.

In the following clip Dr. Taff discusses the real life investigation that provides the basis for the film The Entity.

“95% of my 4000 cases are not ghosts, or hauntings per se…”

 

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  • Nirvanasteve

    Interesting! Good post.

  • http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

    Horatio:
    O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
    Hamlet:
    And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

    Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167

    • Nirvanasteve

      Amen, Shakespeare.

  • Alex

    So is he claiming to have investigated 200 real ghosts or is he pulling a random number out of his astral projection?
     

    • David Metcalfe

      He’s saying that he encountered at least 200 cases of anomalous phenomena, where the evidence does not provide a clear causal solution through something that can be linked to a human agent. In poltergeist phenomena, even extreme cases, it seems that the events are linked to some kind of human agency (not necessarily fraud, but something linked to a specific person such as psycho-kinesis, or anomalous perturbation as it’s called today)

  • http://www.facebook.com/michelle.c.staley Michelle Cooper Staley

    I would love to hear his explanation of the activity and events in my former antique shop. Activity reports came from customers and my employees. It was daily activity. Finally we had a paranormal group come in to check things out and the evidence captured was pretty interesting. Word soon got out, about the level of activity captured, to area paranormal groups and in all I think 5 different groups came in and all captured something and had some type of not normal experience. It certainly changed my views on the paranormal and I don’t doubt for one minute that what was going on was not real.