Skeptics, from the mouth of a skeptic researcher regarding the SCOLE experiment.

I'm not trying to force my opinion on anyone. So with that out of the way, I would like to talk about the SCOLE experiment. There are already a few threads on this subject but this afternoon, this is my little personal project.

The Scole Experiment chronicles the extraordinary results of a five-year investigation into life after death. At the beginning of 1993 four psychic researchers embarked on a series of experiments in the Norfolk village of Scole. The subsequent events were so astounding that senior members of the prestigious Society for Psychical Research asked to observe, test and record what took place.

Source

I had just finished watching an hour and a half of the documentary and I am just blown away. We're talking about images appearing on film that is impossible to fake. Levitation, direct verbal communication, physical objects maintaining their physical appearance yet losing all physical characteristics. Messages from the dead in multiple languages including ancient sans script. Hmm...an alien grey appearing on developed film while nothing was in the room. Oh yes, and the "spirit team" which were a group of scientific minded spirits from the past assisting the research team with conducting the experiment more efficiently. Thomas Edison himself with a diagram on undeveloped film to help improve the EVP recording capabilities.
Documentary

All of these events took place with scientific minds and skeptics present during the experiments. All of them there to make sure no Tom foolery was involved. All of them convinced. It is of my opinion that there should remain no doubt any longer. I also believe in a few more years we may actually have the technology to communicate with the after life visually and audibly. Anyway, here's what one of the skeptics had to say.



I urge those who are interested and skeptical regarding what happens once we die to watch the documentary. It hasn't changed my world for I am already aware, but it might change yours.

Cheers!

Really? No comments? bumpidy bump bump

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, she of the five stages of grief (WTF? down to apathy, ah, I mean acceptance) pretty much ended her medical career when she became a spokesperson for the afterlife. She had a ghostly visit, became conviinced that we live on, and actually talked about it to doctors and at hospitals.

reply to post by Aleister


It's a shame the scientific community will still ostracize those who stray from the collective. Not very scientific at all..

reply to post by FlySolo


Took a while to see he documentary but I'm not convinced that it was a properly done scientific study.

The documentary mixes and matches many stuff and fails to provide a clear presentation of what really is significant (that is a problem of the documentary not the experiences)

Then there is the problem with the logic and reason shown on the SCOLE experience there are many pertinent questions that one would ask. In any case I do believe that some mediums do believe what they say or experience and to a degree some of the things that they claim would have a very non-paranormal nature (just not obvious or easily replicated by everyone). I find it hard to conceive an afterlife were individuality is kept in an active state (persistent active and relevant).

reply to post by Panic2k11

The documentary mixes and matches many stuff and fails to provide a clear presentation of what really is significant (that is a problem of the documentary not the experiences)

Can you elaborate? I think just the exposed film in itself is fairly significant. Not just portions of the film, but the entire roll while still in the container.

Then there is the problem with the logic and reason

Again, could you elaborate? What logic and reason exactly? For example, the "apports" Yes, none of this is logical. In fact, all of it is illogical. Things just don't appear out of thin air and drop on a table. And Crystals don't de-materialize. But hey, if paranormal activity was logical, none of us would be surprised.

I find it hard to conceive an afterlife were individuality is kept in an active state (persistent active and relevant).

Naturally. However, how much time on a lazy Sunday afternoon have you spent combing through hours of EVPs?
Have you gone out on your own and even tried to find your own evidence? Seeing you are a skeptic, I doubt you have. Surely, not every single class A EVP can be a hoax. There are many people who do EVP sessions as a hobby yet they all come back with recordings of the deceased speaking with remarkable clarity. For me and others, this is evidence of a persistent and active state.

I will admit, watching it a second time I wasn't as spell bound as the first and possibly less credulous, especially when the "spirit team" began speaking. It does seem "too much" for the average person and could be the reason why this thread is taking off rather slowly.

I am fascinated by the Scole experiment, and I love hearing discussion about it.

I come with my own biases - I believe consciousness survives bodily death... but I am also a skeptic and think the vast majority of "evidence" is obtained in error, or via misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and sometimes outright hoaxes. I think there is MUCH more to our world than the strict materialistic view, but I personally don't know what... but seeking answers are an obsessive fascination. So, the Scole experiment is of course really interesting to me.

OK, that disclaimer out of the way - I do have some concerns with the Scole experiment. Of course, I cannot know what - if any - of the Scole experiment was hoaxed... but there are many red flags to me. The "box" issue always nags at me. Frankly, it seems like a magicians trick. Why in the world would the film need to be held in a box for these experiments? It seems like a classic distraction measure. Everyone is so busy worrying about the box and the integrity of the film inside, that they don't pay enough attention to the actual film processing - a point at which the film (which was so carefully guarded throughout the seances) could easily be switched or tampered with. I'm not saying that is what happened - but I am saying this is a pretty standard magician's trick to get an audience to pay attention one thing so they don't pay attention to where the actual slight-of-hand occurs.

The images created on the film also "felt" very problematic to me. Anyone familiar with Victorian photography hoaxes will recognize the sharp delineations around the images of the faces - like a crude cut and paste job. It just "looks" faked -- but, of course, who am I to say what spirit photography should look like? Just because it looks like old-timey hoaxes doesn't make it so. This isn't proof of a hoax, but just something that added to my general feeling of unease about the evidence.

Other things that raised red flags for me was that they didn't want night vision cameras in the seances. They also, at one point, wore glowing bracelets (a technique popular with - once again - Victorian hoaxers). So much of this seemed to be staging. So many rules to follow. So many distractions and set-ups. True spirit interaction, surely, wouldn't require such elaborate measures and strict rules - all of which have the end result of "hiding" for plain view what was going one. Couldn't a ghost etch pictures in film right before our eyes just as well as they could (or better!) through a locked box in the dark without any cameras present? Am I right, or crazy for thinking along these lines?

I hate to sound too critical because the paranormal is something that I believe is difficult to measure and study by... well "normal" scientific means. One of my greatest frustrations is that we are so engrained in the scientific method that if we find a strange phenomena that just happens to not be very repeatable or allow us to build a neat and tidy predictive model around it, we dismiss it. Someday, perhaps humanity will look back and laugh at these "dark ages" of science... but that is the context and the lens through which most of the modern world views such "experiments" and so they are often too quickly dismissed. I don't want to be one of "those people", but I just can't shake my skepticism over this particular set of experiments.

In the end, I feel there may indeed have been something paranormal going on (what, exactly, I don't know) - but perhaps it was elaborated and exploited by overly eager "researchers." Those are just my personal thoughts and by no means necessarily the truth! Just my thoughts and a gut feeling.

Sorry for the over-use of quotation marks in the post. Looking forward to hearing more discussion on this subject! Thanks for posting the topic.

Parlor tricks and sleight of hand do not prove the afterlife. Next!

reply to post by Foundryman


Really? Must be great to be so sure of everything- especially when the scientific dogma you are clinging to is in its infancy, and is at best a collection of generalizations to allow us to roughly describe our enviroment, and is constantly being proved incorrect or invalid.

Still, people were absolutely convinced 200 years ago that man would never fly, speeds above 30mph would stop the human body breathing, leaches were a cure all etc etc- or try explaining mobile phones/the internet/TV to your great grandfather- he probably would have assumed 'sleight of hand' or some such get out clause because he couldnt comprehend it......

However this experience may measure up against scientific standards, I found the amount of time and effort put into it and the willingness of the professionals involved to put their reputations on the line admirable. It is very difficult to find this kind of adventurous attitude and dedication in studies of the paranormal these days. I remember someone in the documentary commenting that they found the likelihood of any one of these events occurring as within the bounds of chance - but could not say the same for the combination of all the phenomena that occurred to this one group. Again - no hard numbers to back that up, but this kind of attitude made the documentary enjoyable and thought-provoking.

Isn't Scole some kind of chewing tobacco? Guess I have to research this after supper.

Originally posted by Foundryman
Parlor tricks and sleight of hand do not prove the afterlife. Next!

You wear a mustache, don't you. A big one, and not ironically either.



You remind me of someone's dad with that stuff.

I watched that documentary several times, bought the DVD, and took some serious time to investigate the backgrounds of everyone involved in it. It's as authentic as the liner notes suggest, and a flat dismissal of the entire study as "parlor tricks and sleight of hand" is indicative of someone who hasn't got the time to bother with watching the video, let alone challenging SCOLE as a serious study.

I would've preferred that they didn't involve traditional physical mediums, and I would've preferred that the lights not be darkened completely without night-vision cameras, but I do understand why these two irritations (for me anyway) were central to the study.

The physical mediumship did provide results that could be easily recorded and inspected - even if they did remind me of the stupid crap that ruled the spiritualism movement of 100 years ago, and the presence of massive swarms of protons would be a bit much to manage if what you're trying to do is isolate and manipulate very specific event trajectories in a precise manner. Later in the documentary, the "spirits" did suggest that they might be able to work out a way to do what they do with the proton waves present, but to be honest, I can't really imagine how that would be workable.

All in all, and even with the issues I noted, this is a breakthrough documentary of a study that should've had a lot more impact than it had. The problem is that there is so much horsesh*t that sits on the Youtube servers right now, just about anything that's authentic can hide in plain sight - like a needle in a pile of needles.

It's very difficult to 'know' something as existing yet having to scientifically prove it.

It's like having the answer in hand yet working backwards to show your work. I had this same problem in physics classes.

I would derive at the answer to a question using my own methods and showing very little work often missing steps taught by the professors entirely. I would then have to go back and try showing 'how' this answer was derived with methods (steps) that were not essential for me.

It seems for science the answers are inconsequential and the 'process' is of utmost importance. The need for clarification of all steps to derive at the conclusion is where we stand in trying to connect the dots to the astral!

Okay, I watched it. All those supposedly reputable people involved and my mind still screamed hoax.

Didn't anyone get P'd off when the flowers fell on the table while the night-vision camera JUST HAPPENED to be filming (of all places) the floor? Even more irksome is how Robin Foy clearly explained that when every apport fell onto the table, no matter how small the object was, it always gave off a loud bang - every time. Well, did somebody forget to the bang on the table when the flowers fell out of thin air? Here is Robin as he slammed a hand down hard on the table, and a pic of a flower petal falling.



Now, the camera film was carefully protected from when it was purchased to when it was placed in the camera. The room was totally black, so what was the point of the camera at all? I mean, why couldn't these supposed ghosts simply leave their messages on the film while the film was still in the sealed box it came in?



There was a ghost picture of a man that matched perfectly with a real picture. Both images had the man in the exact same position. That's because it was the same picture! Only, one was made out of focus by someone in THIS realm.



There was a round table that started spinning in mid air. Well, thank gawd the host just happened to put glow in the dark stickers on the table so we could see the table spinning in the dark. Like THAT wasn't planned, huh?



If you are over fifty then you were brought up at a time when TV stations went off the air, leaving nothing but static all night long. Cheap radios broadcast more static than music. And yet, only a handful of people around the world receive ghostly messages from this static, while billions of us listened to more static throughout our lives with not even a hint of a message? I don't think so.

My own problem with the idea of an afterlife as it is portrayed in the documentary is the fact that millions and millions of babies have died, either at birth or soon after. So, what? Is the afterlife one giant, baby-screaming nursery? I don't think so, and no thanks!

Interesting documentary, watched it all. I am an open skeptic to the paranormal. Which means I believe something is out there, but in the sense nothing has totally convinced me.

This documentary left me with nothing gained nothing lost. I don't think it was put together very well.
I would have loved to see the crystal that moved in the air and dematerialized then materialized.

The table lifting?
Flowers falling?
I agree with the poster above oh put the camera on top to catch the table lift and the flowers falling from a camera on the floor? Something cries BullSh@t!

What's with this scole group not wanting the use of infrared cameras?
I just think this was nonsense and that is too bad since I would like more.

reply to post by FlySolo


I was planning to reply here in length, hence the delay, but I have stated much of the clarification that you asked in my posts in the Near-Death Experiences: Evidence of Afterlife see my posts there.

Something always struck me as odd about the Scole experiment. Yet at the same time... things like this just confuse me. I don't even know what to think sometimes.

You might wish to review this thread.

The Scole Experiment Thread

Here is David Fontana et al the three on the scene investigators speak out...

Unfounded Allegations Of Fraud

MUness quoting MU!!

Be that as it may, Scole produced well tested phenomena, scientists were convinced, no one has poked any real holes in their evidences other than to fire BB gun shots at it. No one has proven any fraud which is Point One in any criticism of any supported case. It is up to the skeptic to show his proofs...Scole did not provide survival evidence...but may well have to those who attended. This is a moot point in that Scole as far as I could tell was never about survival evidence to begin.

WTS, Scole is what Scole is. Fontana and Keen were no fools...

I've watched the video twice now, and though initially impressive, there are certain points which give it the whiff of hoax.

Why the need for pitch darkness?

Some well-known mediums of the past didn't insist on this. Daniel Dunglas-Home in the 19th century often insisted on his séances being conducted in broad daylight, and Helen Duncan would typically conduct hers in subdued red light.

It certainly wasn't very wise of the 'spirit team' to do this and give unnecessary ammunition to skeptics.

To make matters worse, infra red cameras were forbidden also - thus rendering detection of any trickery impossible.

The documentary doesn't give any reasons for this save that the spirits insisted on these conditions.

I personally can't think of any logical reason why any of this would matter.

Then we have the 'team of internationally-recognised scientists' who all seem to have been convinced of the idea of an afterlife already.

Were there any truly skeptical people there?

I wasn't convinced by their insistence that no trickery was possible, and for us all to be reassured that they were all experienced scientists who couldn't be fooled.

Confirmation bias is bound to have played its part.

reply to post by Aleister


Yes, Dr. Ross maintained a deceased patient, a female, strolled in a short time after her death looking quite solid and even obliged her by touching her and signing a notebook, which purportedly matched her signature.

Obviously, the Dr. had become deranged... because the alternative is too bizarre.

Now I wasn't there, but watching and reading Dr. Ross's literature and interviews, she doesn't seem insane... like UFO's, once someone approaches the mass of credible literature on the subject, rejecting the reality of some manner of phenomena existing is simply ignorant... but it doesn't hurt to have personal experience to settle the matter in one's mind.

Now, if we could only avoid that pesky dying part of dying...