Among the one third of Americans who believe in ghosts are high-ranking officials in the intelligence agencies and military.
In the 1970s and 80s, the CIA funded research into "remote viewing", so that they could train clairvoyants to locate, among other things, Colonel Gaddafi and the U.S. marines kidnapped by Hizbollah.
More recently, it was reported that the military employed remote viewers to find Saddam Hussein, and that the Department of Homeland Security is hoping to adopt Russian "mind-reading" technology to identify terrorists.
So when personnel at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio began reporting things that go bump in the night, the Pentagon naturally gave commander Colleen Ryan the green light to call the ghostbusters.
Comments
The Ghost Hunters are a bunch of pseudoscientific wankers...
Posted by: Louis B. | January 22, 2008 4:04 PM
cool! thanks for the heads up. you might want to check this out too.
Dean Radin's lecture at Google:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew
~C
Posted by: ~C4Chaos | January 22, 2008 4:10 PM
I wrote this with tongue firmly in cheek. I'm with Louis on this one.
Posted by: Mo | January 22, 2008 4:41 PM
Ok, you gotta take a look at the disclosure project:
http://www.disclosureproject.org/
Expertise in "military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific" matters does not suddenly make one immune to the well-researched flaws in our sensory, perceptual, cognitive and memory systems. It will, however, make one more likely to dismiss those flaws as not applying in one's own case.
Posted by: Anon | January 22, 2008 5:22 PM
This is just sad. How does one rise to the rank of Colonel in the US Air Force without an ounce of critical thinking skills? The base commander says the viewers of Ghosthunters are "tech savvy", but this is utter BS. The viewers are just paranoid and conspiracy obsessed.
Posted by: Jim RL | January 23, 2008 12:07 AM
Among the believers are also some of the mensa members, if we refer to one talk of their meeting program for this year:
www.ag2008.us.mensa.org
"Ghosts: What They Is and What They Haint"
I thought high IQ were quite immune to this kind of fantasy..
Posted by: torea | January 23, 2008 5:32 AM
This "ghost-buster" spending by the Pentagon only confirms one thing: it has a limitless amount of money to spend on anything it wants to.
Can you imagine any other entity in business or government that would allocate funds away from some other need to explore ghost-busting?
I rest my case.
Posted by: CynicalObserver | January 23, 2008 11:03 AM
You don't know that they are paying for it. But, yeah, big waste of time.
HJ
Posted by: Bing McGhandi | January 23, 2008 3:47 PM
Your tax dollars at work
Posted by: Shank | January 23, 2008 4:09 PM
If you think that's bad, you've obviously never heard of Major General Albert Stubblebine III (commanding general of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, 1981 to 1984) - the chap who became convinced that it should be perfectly possible to walk through walls if you just believe it hard enough. After all, atoms are mostly empty space... He was also closely involved in all the "remote viewing" nonsense, and the program which attempted to train soldiers to kill goats just by staring at them.
General Jack D. Ripper was perfectly sane by comparison.
Posted by: Dunc | January 24, 2008 7:35 AM
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Posted by: tony | January 24, 2008 8:00 AM