reply to post by Gemwolf
S & F
Confabulation and False Memories
Seems plausible.
Although I have to admit. I think I saw the Lost Thunderbird one online a LOOOONG time ago back in the NETs early days.
These aint it.
Dark forces at work in the Crypto world: The "Lost Evidence"., page 1
privacy
Topic started on 5-8-2009 @ 03:35 AM by Gemwolf
A recent question about a mokele-mbembe video brought forth a lot of digging and even
more questions - including a supposed lost "Thunder Bird" picture.
The more you dig into mysteries like these the more it would appear that there are a lot of "lost evidence" in the Cryptozoology world. Animal Planet even took the idea and made a TV series about it: Lost Tapes.
1. The Mokele-Mbembe video which supposedly shows the cryptid in the water. The video was debunked at some point when "experts" said that it's clear that it's two local fishermen on a boat. (Others say it's clearly an elephant swimming.) The video is unavailable for review. Yet many claim to have seen it.
2. The Thunderbird Photograph:
The photograph is unavailable for review. Yet many claim to have seen it.
3. Steve Irwin's Tasmanian Tiger footage.
While critics say Steve Irwin never looked for the Thylacine, many say they have seen an episode of Crocodile hunter (or at least a trailer) showing the a hunt for the Tasmanian Tiger. The footage is unavailable.
There are many more examples (and I welcome members to post rumours of "lost evidence").
An interesting (yet far-out) theory of a Cryptomundo reader calling herself (himself?) Kim reads like this:
Naturally when we approach the time travel theory we hit a barrage of paradoxes.
If a person stopped footage from becoming public by time travelling, then people simply won't remember the footage existing. You cannot remove something from a time-line and not remove the memory of it, right?
We can bend the time travelling theory a bit and take the Matrix approach where we all live in a Cyberworld. In the movie The Matrix "unexplained phenomena" such as UFOs are described as viruses or "rogue AI". It would be easy for the programmer of the Matrix to remove said "cryptozoological evidence" from the Matrix.
But such a theory is naturally a bit farfetched and just about impossible to prove.
So basically the theory suggests that these rumours of evidence are fictional memories?
According to the egg-heads confabulation or false memories can be organic or psychological of origin.
1. Organic Causes
2. Psychological causes
In other words psychology suggests that many of the "cryptozoologists" (or at least people interested in Cryptozoology) remember the said photographs or videos because they want it to be real?
So according to this theory a person vaguely remembers a video clip about a werewolf he saw as a child (keep in mind that theoretically speaking this is a false memory and the footage doesn't exist). He wants to "confirm" the memory by reviewing the video clip and posts on an Internet forum asking about the footage. A person comes along and recall something similar, and confirms that he has also seen the footage. A third person comes along and recalls the footage to be from an Episode of a 1986 TV series "How Strange is that!". (Let's say there was an episode about werewolves but it never showed the "imagined" footage.) And every time a person comes along and adds more detail to the memory of the footage that doesn't exist...? And so "lost evidence" is created by a string of false memories. The hunt for the footage continues but is never found because the evidence simply doesn't exist.
Is that really possible? Can we really have such little faith in our memories?
I have a similar situation. In the late 80’s there was a supposed UFO crash in the Kalahari, South Africa. A local magazine did a story on the crash and included a photograph of the alien. I clearly recall the article and have spoken of it here on ATS. Yet, after much digging I have been unable to produce the article from the magazine... Did I create a memory because I want to believe the article/aliens & UFOs are real? There is no doubt in my mind that the article is real - but can I really trust my memory if I am unable to confirm it?
How do you confirm a memory? By providing proof, right? And we're back at square one.
Then there is the much-hated, but very obvious answer. Claims of "lost evidence" are lies. People simply claim to have seen a photograph or a video because they want the attention, they want to be part of a discussion or they are spiteful. Can it be that all these people claiming to have seen the "lost evidence" are lying?
It surely would be simplest answer. But for most cryptozoologists this would be a sad blow, as we would hate this to be the case.
Let's say someone is wilfully trying to hide evidence of crypto beasts. The big question would be "why?!".
When we look the UFO field for instance where there is arguably proof of Government cover-ups we can understand why. If life outside our world were a reality it would have an undeniable impact on our lives. But if say Bigfoot existed - so what? It's just another animal. New animal species are discovered on a weekly basis and announced to the world with great excitement. Why would a giant animal in Loch Ness or an existing pack (streak?) of Tasmanian Tigers be any different than the re-discovery of the Borneo Rhino?
Unless there are more to Crypto’s than we think? Or we are making more of them than is necessary? Or they simply don't exist?
As is typical with subjects such as these there are now more questions than answers. Perhaps this would encourage people to do more investigation. Produce the evidence to prove that their memories CAN be trusted. Prove that they are NOT liars.
Any more theories? Any more examples of "lost evidence"?
Edit: Formatting.
[edit on 5-8-2009 by Gemwolf]
The more you dig into mysteries like these the more it would appear that there are a lot of "lost evidence" in the Cryptozoology world. Animal Planet even took the idea and made a TV series about it: Lost Tapes.
Examples of "Lost Evidence"
1. The Mokele-Mbembe video which supposedly shows the cryptid in the water. The video was debunked at some point when "experts" said that it's clear that it's two local fishermen on a boat. (Others say it's clearly an elephant swimming.) The video is unavailable for review. Yet many claim to have seen it.
2. The Thunderbird Photograph:
There are scores of people who say they saw a photograph of a thunderbird nailed up to a barn door with a line of men standing in front of it to give it scale. That picture has never been found although all describe the same picture.
The photograph is unavailable for review. Yet many claim to have seen it.
3. Steve Irwin's Tasmanian Tiger footage.
After Steve Irwin was killed by a stringray, a strange rumor circulated that he might have captured an elusive, supposedly extinct Thylacine on videotape during the making of the mentioned episode. But, for whatever reason, the blurry footage was never broadcast. Or was it?
Source
While critics say Steve Irwin never looked for the Thylacine, many say they have seen an episode of Crocodile hunter (or at least a trailer) showing the a hunt for the Tasmanian Tiger. The footage is unavailable.
There are many more examples (and I welcome members to post rumours of "lost evidence").
Time Travel
An interesting (yet far-out) theory of a Cryptomundo reader calling herself (himself?) Kim reads like this:
I suspect that someone with the ability to go back in time stopped the photo from being taken. After that occurred the photo disapeared from all the books and magazines it was ever in.
I think this happened in the early 1990’s. Sounds crazy I know, but I also know I had the photo in a book prior to 1996.
Cryptomundo
Naturally when we approach the time travel theory we hit a barrage of paradoxes.
If a person stopped footage from becoming public by time travelling, then people simply won't remember the footage existing. You cannot remove something from a time-line and not remove the memory of it, right?
The Matrix
We can bend the time travelling theory a bit and take the Matrix approach where we all live in a Cyberworld. In the movie The Matrix "unexplained phenomena" such as UFOs are described as viruses or "rogue AI". It would be easy for the programmer of the Matrix to remove said "cryptozoological evidence" from the Matrix.
But such a theory is naturally a bit farfetched and just about impossible to prove.
Confabulation and False Memories
Confabulation is the formation of false memories, perceptions, or beliefs about the self or the environment as a result of neurological or psychological dysfunction. When it is a matter of memory, confabulation is the confusion of imagination with memory, or the confused application of true memories. Confabulations are difficult to differentiate from delusions and from lying.
Wiki
So basically the theory suggests that these rumours of evidence are fictional memories?
According to the egg-heads confabulation or false memories can be organic or psychological of origin.
1. Organic Causes
Berlyne (1972) defined confabulation as "...a falsification of memory occurring in clear consciousness in association with an organically derived amnesia." He distinguished between:
- "momentary" (or "provoked") confabulations – fleeting, and invariably provoked by questions probing the subject's memory, sometimes consisting of "real" memories displaced in their temporal context.
- "fantastic" (or "spontaneous") confabulations – characterised by the spontaneous outpouring of irrelevant associations, sometimes bizarre ideas, which may be held with firm conviction.
Patients who have suffered brain damage or lesions, especially to the prefrontal cortical regions, may have confabulation of memories as a symptom.
Wiki
2. Psychological causes
Bartlett's studies of remembering are arguably the first concerted attempt to look at the memory-illusion phenomena. In one experiment, he asked a group of students to read an Indian folktale and then recall its details at various time intervals. As well as errors of omission, interestingly he found numerous errors of commission whereby participants had adapted or added to the story to make it more rational or consistent.
...
Theorists such as Bransford and Franks noted the significance of personal beliefs and desires, or more technically scripts and schemas, in memory retrieval.
...
False memory effects are usually (but not always) explained as a reliance on gist traces in a situation when verbatim traces are needed. Because of this people may mistakenly recall a memory that only goes along with a vague gist of what happened, rather than the exact course of events. Three reasons are proposed: First, there is thought to be a general bias towards the use of gist traces in cognition due to their resource efficiency, and people will tend to use gist traces when they seem sufficient. Second, verbatim traces are said to be inherently less stable than gist traces, and decay faster. Third, in the process of forgetting, memories fragment and gist and verbatim traces can become independent.
Wiki
In other words psychology suggests that many of the "cryptozoologists" (or at least people interested in Cryptozoology) remember the said photographs or videos because they want it to be real?
So according to this theory a person vaguely remembers a video clip about a werewolf he saw as a child (keep in mind that theoretically speaking this is a false memory and the footage doesn't exist). He wants to "confirm" the memory by reviewing the video clip and posts on an Internet forum asking about the footage. A person comes along and recall something similar, and confirms that he has also seen the footage. A third person comes along and recalls the footage to be from an Episode of a 1986 TV series "How Strange is that!". (Let's say there was an episode about werewolves but it never showed the "imagined" footage.) And every time a person comes along and adds more detail to the memory of the footage that doesn't exist...? And so "lost evidence" is created by a string of false memories. The hunt for the footage continues but is never found because the evidence simply doesn't exist.
Is that really possible? Can we really have such little faith in our memories?
I have a similar situation. In the late 80’s there was a supposed UFO crash in the Kalahari, South Africa. A local magazine did a story on the crash and included a photograph of the alien. I clearly recall the article and have spoken of it here on ATS. Yet, after much digging I have been unable to produce the article from the magazine... Did I create a memory because I want to believe the article/aliens & UFOs are real? There is no doubt in my mind that the article is real - but can I really trust my memory if I am unable to confirm it?
How do you confirm a memory? By providing proof, right? And we're back at square one.
Hoaxes
Then there is the much-hated, but very obvious answer. Claims of "lost evidence" are lies. People simply claim to have seen a photograph or a video because they want the attention, they want to be part of a discussion or they are spiteful. Can it be that all these people claiming to have seen the "lost evidence" are lying?
It surely would be simplest answer. But for most cryptozoologists this would be a sad blow, as we would hate this to be the case.
Reasons
Let's say someone is wilfully trying to hide evidence of crypto beasts. The big question would be "why?!".
When we look the UFO field for instance where there is arguably proof of Government cover-ups we can understand why. If life outside our world were a reality it would have an undeniable impact on our lives. But if say Bigfoot existed - so what? It's just another animal. New animal species are discovered on a weekly basis and announced to the world with great excitement. Why would a giant animal in Loch Ness or an existing pack (streak?) of Tasmanian Tigers be any different than the re-discovery of the Borneo Rhino?
Unless there are more to Crypto’s than we think? Or we are making more of them than is necessary? Or they simply don't exist?
Conclusion
As is typical with subjects such as these there are now more questions than answers. Perhaps this would encourage people to do more investigation. Produce the evidence to prove that their memories CAN be trusted. Prove that they are NOT liars.
Any more theories? Any more examples of "lost evidence"?
Edit: Formatting.
[edit on 5-8-2009 by Gemwolf]
reply posted on 5-8-2009 @ 04:15 AM by SLAYER69
reply to post by muzzleflash
The civil war ones have to be hoaxes IMO.
Not too many older and fat soldiers during the civil war.
Looks more like reenactment actors.
The one on the left with the smaller bird looks possibly real.
[edit on 5-8-2009 by SLAYER69]
The civil war ones have to be hoaxes IMO.
Not too many older and fat soldiers during the civil war.
Looks more like reenactment actors.
The one on the left with the smaller bird looks possibly real.
[edit on 5-8-2009 by SLAYER69]
reply posted on 5-8-2009 @ 04:22 AM by muzzleflash
reply to post by SLAYER69
The Pterodactyl photo at the top, is just simply amazing.
I do not have access to the original, so I have to purely go from my gut instinct here.
It does look authentic for 1860-65 era. The quality matches the apparent age very nicely.
The military garb of the soldiers is exactly what the Union soldiers wore, as far as I can tell.
The corpse of the Pterodactyl matches skeletons I have seen perfectly, however this appears to be a freshly dead specimen.
Did they leave it there? Eat it? Take it to a local city? Does anyone know what happened to it?
Dinosaur bones had been discovered prior to this event, but it could be possible that the soldiers in the photo had never heard of such a thing, and so they may have had no clue as to what they discovered. (Killed?)
The way the one guy has his foot on it's beak, and the condition of the corpse leads me to think they actually killed it.
I really do not think it was a wood carving, although it is not impossible, just unlikely because of the uncanny resemblance to skeletons that we are all accustomed to in our modern society. Back then I doubt they could have created one so anatomically correct.
The Pterodactyl photo at the top, is just simply amazing.
I do not have access to the original, so I have to purely go from my gut instinct here.
It does look authentic for 1860-65 era. The quality matches the apparent age very nicely.
The military garb of the soldiers is exactly what the Union soldiers wore, as far as I can tell.
The corpse of the Pterodactyl matches skeletons I have seen perfectly, however this appears to be a freshly dead specimen.
Did they leave it there? Eat it? Take it to a local city? Does anyone know what happened to it?
Dinosaur bones had been discovered prior to this event, but it could be possible that the soldiers in the photo had never heard of such a thing, and so they may have had no clue as to what they discovered. (Killed?)
The way the one guy has his foot on it's beak, and the condition of the corpse leads me to think they actually killed it.
I really do not think it was a wood carving, although it is not impossible, just unlikely because of the uncanny resemblance to skeletons that we are all accustomed to in our modern society. Back then I doubt they could have created one so anatomically correct.
reply posted on 5-8-2009 @ 04:28 AM by xoxo stacie
reply to post by Gemwolf
I actually have a serious problem with "lost memories" every time I have a seizure that is pretty bad. There are times I even go comatose for days on end! BUT a neurologist taught me something that I have been using for a few years now that helps keep you from forgetting anything you want to remember. It goes like this...
If it is something you are reading or learning etc. read it once then put it down think and say a word you use in everyday speech. Then read it again occasionally saying the word again while reading/learning/looking here and there. Now when you say or hear that word you commonly use it will reinforce the memory. It also works with scents very well also. Just find one that is common to where you live etc and instead of saying the word smell the scent!
Trust me it works great! I have even been able to recover some of my memory from when I got severely ill last summer. This because I was using one of my catch words a lot at the time. So I naturally brought the " lost memories" back to the forefront of my thought. It wasn't something made up either my mom had pictures as proof.....
I actually have a serious problem with "lost memories" every time I have a seizure that is pretty bad. There are times I even go comatose for days on end! BUT a neurologist taught me something that I have been using for a few years now that helps keep you from forgetting anything you want to remember. It goes like this...
If it is something you are reading or learning etc. read it once then put it down think and say a word you use in everyday speech. Then read it again occasionally saying the word again while reading/learning/looking here and there. Now when you say or hear that word you commonly use it will reinforce the memory. It also works with scents very well also. Just find one that is common to where you live etc and instead of saying the word smell the scent!
Trust me it works great! I have even been able to recover some of my memory from when I got severely ill last summer. This because I was using one of my catch words a lot at the time. So I naturally brought the " lost memories" back to the forefront of my thought. It wasn't something made up either my mom had pictures as proof.....
reply posted on 5-8-2009 @ 05:03 AM by muzzleflash
reply to post by Gemwolf
The Triceratops photo looks totally fake. (Spliced straight out of that scene in Jurassic Park?? lol)
The middle Pterodactyl photo looks totally real, I just cannot see any fakery in it. The explanation that it is " Verdict: photoshopping" just sounds like blowing it off without even analyzing it.
The third photo (2nd bird), looks legitimate but the coloring seems off for a the civil war era, and seems quite modern but just edited to look more authentic. I find a lot of things wrong with that one too.
So really that 2nd photo listed the link you gave, or the top photo on slayers post, still seems totally genuine to me. I just cannot find anything wrong with it.
There is one odd thing about it though. That is the outer wings, they seem to be reflective or of a odd coloration. I say this because I cannot see the soldiers feet behind them.
Also note that the shadowing is totally perfect. That is why I think if it is a fake, it is not photoshopped at all. It would have to be a wood carving I think, because that fits the size/coloration very well. That carving would take a lot of skill and time though.
[edit on 5-8-2009 by muzzleflash]
[edit on 5-8-2009 by muzzleflash]
The Triceratops photo looks totally fake. (Spliced straight out of that scene in Jurassic Park?? lol)
The middle Pterodactyl photo looks totally real, I just cannot see any fakery in it. The explanation that it is " Verdict: photoshopping" just sounds like blowing it off without even analyzing it.
The third photo (2nd bird), looks legitimate but the coloring seems off for a the civil war era, and seems quite modern but just edited to look more authentic. I find a lot of things wrong with that one too.
So really that 2nd photo listed the link you gave, or the top photo on slayers post, still seems totally genuine to me. I just cannot find anything wrong with it.
There is one odd thing about it though. That is the outer wings, they seem to be reflective or of a odd coloration. I say this because I cannot see the soldiers feet behind them.
Also note that the shadowing is totally perfect. That is why I think if it is a fake, it is not photoshopped at all. It would have to be a wood carving I think, because that fits the size/coloration very well. That carving would take a lot of skill and time though.
[edit on 5-8-2009 by muzzleflash]
[edit on 5-8-2009 by muzzleflash]
reply posted on 5-8-2009 @ 05:17 AM by Gemwolf
Originally posted by muzzleflash
...
So really that 2nd photo listed the link you gave, or the top photo on slayers post, still seems totally genuine to me. I just cannot find anything wrong with it.
...
I agree that a website claiming it's fake without much explanation isn't very satisfying.
This is the supposed back-story of the photograph and also the real story. (And also links to the "missing pterodactyl barn photograph".)
Here is an ATS discussion about that image.
Here is an alternative debunking.
Hope that's more satisfying.
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