Jump to content

The Fortean/paranormal/conspiracy thread


Astro Hollywood

Recommended Posts

Aw that shark looks like an old person without their false teeth.If this is fake then we're going to have to pin all our hopes on the Abominable Snowman.

Leave Moj out of this.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Paid Members

Put "globsters" into Google Image Search and you'll see some of the weird unidentified stuff that washes up from the ocean.

And search a little more and you will find that these are decomposed whale carcasses.Anybody watch that show The Monster Hunter? That guy is hilarious. I hope he finds something.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

Put "globsters" into Google Image Search and you'll see some of the weird unidentified stuff that washes up from the ocean.

And search a little more and you will find that these are decomposed whale carcasses.Anybody watch that show The Monster Hunter? That guy is hilarious.
Some of them are, ie, the ones that were idenfitied as whales, many are not.Monster Hunter is great, the best Fortean show there's ever been, at least since Fortean TV. Certainly the best Most Haunted style stakeout show. It suffers a bit from the typical creepy music and title sequence edited to look like they've found something every week, but it's amazing, frankly, to see a host that's an open minded sceptic and not just screaming into the darkness every week. He is hilarious too. You can find streaming episodes online if you search for it under the original American title, Destination Truth.

I hope he finds something.

Spoiler tags and images don't seem to work, so here's a little spoiler space.071130_yeti_vmed_10a.widec-796841.jpgYeti footprint~
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Guys.:)Did anyone watch land of the jaguar on bbc1 last night where they climbed a very dangerous tabletop mountain that had a huge forest on top of it that no one had ever explored?. It was great watching but it was a shame they didnt find the mystery mammal that made the footprints they believe it was some type of unknown member of the weasel family and it would be awesome if they dedicated a series of shows to just exploring that mountain top.:)David

No but wish I'd caught it. did you see the programme when they were in Burma and found a forest in a mountain (there was a vertical expanse whcih could not be seen by helicopters.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Guys.:)Did anyone watch land of the jaguar on bbc1 last night where they climbed a very dangerous tabletop mountain that had a huge forest on top of it that no one had ever explored?. It was great watching but it was a shame they didnt find the mystery mammal that made the footprints they believe it was some type of unknown member of the weasel family and it would be awesome if they dedicated a series of shows to just exploring that mountain top.:)David

No but wish I'd caught it. did you see the programme when they were in Burma and found a forest in a mountain (there was a vertical expanse whcih could not be seen by helicopters.
If you can get it to work, you can catch it on bbc's iPlayer service
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Guys.:)Did anyone watch land of the jaguar on bbc1 last night where they climbed a very dangerous tabletop mountain that had a huge forest on top of it that no one had ever explored?. It was great watching but it was a shame they didnt find the mystery mammal that made the footprints they believe it was some type of unknown member of the weasel family and it would be awesome if they dedicated a series of shows to just exploring that mountain top.:)David

No but wish I'd caught it. did you see the programme when they were in Burma and found a forest in a mountain (there was a vertical expanse whcih could not be seen by helicopters.
Sadly i didnt catch that programme Tequila_Boy but i remember a programme called deep jungle where they absailed into a massive crater that had not been explored either and found new unidentified bugs and they found tracks from unknown animals there aswell.:)David Edited by Lucha fan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Monster Hunter is great, the best Fortean show there's ever been, at least since Fortean TV.

It'd struggle to be worse than Fortean TV. My absolute favourite example of the way that show worked was then they showed a picture of a dog, which looked like a dachsund / rottweiler cross. So basically, a rottweiler with short legs. They showed a picture of this animal as if it was something outside the realm of normal science, rather than just an unusually proportioned dog. It's doing stuff like that which detracts from any sensible stuff they may do. I once read the Fortean Times issue on the moon landings and it trotted out every single lame pro-conspiracy factoid, no matter how comprehensively they'd been debunked by the mainstream scientific press. It's this sort of thing that annoys me about people like the Forteans - Fort himself may have been a forward thinking man, but the people who operate under his name today cling to stuff like moon landing hoaxes and yetis and don't move forward as knowledge and understanding moves forward but are one and the same with the worst and weirdest conspiracy theorists. It's having to have the same argument, about the same thing, over and over again. Whatever you think of mainstream science, it moves when new theories are put forward and new understanding comes to light. Re: Randi, I saw him when he came to the UK, and he's never struck me as that dogmatic. He's done a lot to get people to further investigate things like homeopathy which are actually getting public funding now, and have not the tiniest shred of evidence to back them up. I mean, I don't know what your average issue of the Fortean Times is like, but I'd be interested to know what they've discovered or researched since the time of Fort which has been found to be true or right by mainstream science. Genuinely, I'm not having a pop or anything. If they're just a research group for weirder science topics, then good on them, but that moon landing issue was a million times more dogmatic than even Randi's harshest critic could accuse him of being. Edited by Famous Mortimer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

I once read the Fortean Times issue on the moon landings and it trotted out every single lame pro-conspiracy factoid, no matter how comprehensively they'd been debunked by the mainstream scientific press.

I'll reply to this more comprehensively later, because I am sick as a fucking dog right now, but fuck me, what an issue for you to have sampled. That one is notorious, the most controversial one they've ever had, and had such a huge reaction that a few issues later, they published a massive response to the article, tearing it to pieces. It's always going to depend on its feature writer, and that issue they happened to give space to a wacko. They haven't done the same thing before or since, certainly not on that level.I'd hate to think anyone confuses FT for something like Uri Geller's old magazine, as it really does take a pretty sceptical view on paranormal stuff, and has a much broader spectrum than most people realise. That issue was back in about '96 I think.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

Monster Hunter is great, the best Fortean show there's ever been, at least since Fortean TV.

It'd struggle to be worse than Fortean TV. My absolute favourite example of the way that show worked was then they showed a picture of a dog, which looked like a dachsund / rottweiler cross. So basically, a rottweiler with short legs. They showed a picture of this animal as if it was something outside the realm of normal science, rather than just an unusually proportioned dog.
Fortean TV was a fun show, that's all, a sort of entry level program crammed with the kind of thing you might see on the And Finally bit at the end of the news. It usually ended with Father Lionel Fanthorpe singing a song he'd written while a man dressed like a mermaid danced about in a bad wig. People confuse Fortean stuff as ghosts/ufos/nessie and nothing else. It's just a cataloguing of anything remotely outside the ordinary. The current issue has the typical strange deaths column, a bit about Ceaser's bust found in a river, dolphin beachings, idiot criminals, ant infestations, the freemasons, visions of the Virgin Mary, olive heists, a man who lives on Wotsits, the history behind Illuminati theories and tons more. You should flick through a copy next time you're in the newsagents, you'd probably be surprised, or go to the website. Something doesn't even have to be outside of the realm of normal science to feature, as long as it's interesting.

It's this sort of thing that annoys me about people like the Forteans - Fort himself may have been a forward thinking man, but the people who operate under his name today cling to stuff like moon landing hoaxes and yetis and don't move forward as knowledge and understanding moves forward but are one and the same with the worst and weirdest conspiracy theorists. It's having to have the same argument, about the same thing, over and over again. Whatever you think of mainstream science, it moves when new theories are put forward and new understanding comes to light.

Well, by definition, those people aren't Forteans. They're believers or sceptics who shape their vision of the facts around what they already believe. I have no problem with mainstream science as long as it's open to looking at every piece of evidence, and I expect the same of anyone investigating from the other side. Science_vs_Creationism.gifYou're falling into that trap everyone does of assuming that anyone who has an interest in this stuff without automatically wanting to roll their eyes and cut it down is just a rube who blindly believes. Anyone who does behave like what you describe above is a cunt, and falls into the unfortunately large percentage of idiots and kooks who get associated with Forteana. Fat chicks don't only ove Jeff Hardy, they love Most Haunted too.

Re: Randi, I saw him when he came to the UK, and he's never struck me as that dogmatic. He's done a lot to get people to further investigate things like homeopathy which are actually getting public funding now, and have not the tiniest shred of evidence to back them up.

I do have a great deal of admiration in Randi, especially in his rallying against quackery, mediums/liars and the likes of Uri Geller, and his awesome JREF Challenge, but in the past when reading his commentaries, I've found him far too dismissive of literally everything, including things areas he's not overly knowledgable in, like cryptozoology. I'll make a shit case right now because I can't remember any specifics, and obviously he has no reason to believe in anything, and at his age he's not about to change his opinions, but I feel like he'd dismissively wave his hand if Bigfoot climbed through his window and shat in his mouth. "This plop tastes like flim-flam!" The likes of Randi, Dawkins, Hitchens and Penn and Teller's Bullshit (mostly great, often wide of the mark), regardless of any truth to what they're saying, have inspired a lot of irritating cynicism where people are forgoing examining things in any depth, and swatting it away because it must be a load of laughable old rubbish, and it's fun to be a sneering cynic who's smarter than everyone else.

I mean, I don't know what your average issue of the Fortean Times is like, but I'd be interested to know what they've discovered or researched since the time of Fort which has been found to be true or right by mainstream science. Genuinely, I'm not having a pop or anything. If they're just a research group for weirder science topics, then good on them, but that moon landing issue was a million times more dogmatic than even Randi's harshest critic could accuse him of being.

They're not a research group, they just report on stuff or give a platform for people who feel as though they have something to say, be they someone who's reporting on the Elf School in Norway, the creation of the myth of the Jewish Golem, or Richard Dawkins. They never, ever take on an editorial stance one way or the other, (other than that of a Fortean) and being that the Fortean viewpoint is all about the facts, if anything the tone tends to lean more towards the sceptical, which of course, many of the articles are anyway, probably the majority in fact. A lot of the big cases or incidents that get wheeled out on TV or in the press from time to time, like Rendlesham Forest, have been soundly debunked inside the FT.The book reviews section is a good indicator of tone, with the many, many poorly researched and poorly written books about conspiracies or Holy Grails or what have you uniformly torn to pieces over more well written, well informed pieces. FT is a really intelligent, informative, entertaining read, it's just a shame you have such a wonky view of it thanks to one questionable article over a decade ago. Not that it was wrong of them to print it, as that was a big story at the time, which a lot of (stupid) people believed, so it was important to allow readers to hear that viewpoint. There's actually a fair amount of science in there most months. Science, archeology, history, zoology.Generally, it's so incredibly frustrating that you can't even show an interest in this stuff without being sneered at. My whole life, I've come to realise that blacks and gays don't know anything about real intolerence :(edit - Jag, not yet. It should be happening at 8pm our time. Edited by Woyzeck
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Generally, it's so incredibly frustrating that you can't even show an interest in this stuff without being sneered at. My whole life, I've come to realise that blacks and gays don't know anything about real intolerence :(

I'll answer this bit first. You're tops, and I'm not sneering. I'm merely disagreeing with some stuff you've written, while appreciating what you write is a reasonably held belief on your part.

Well, by definition, those people aren't Forteans. They're believers or sceptics who shape their vision of the facts around what they already believe. I have no problem with mainstream science as long as it's open to looking at every piece of evidence, and I expect the same of anyone investigating from the other side.

Sadly, when the pages of Fortean Times are given over to closed-minded propaganda like the moon landing hoax stuff (which I'm sorry to harp on about), and nonsense like some of the more serious articles on Fortean TV then the only conclusion I can draw is that they are Forteans.

You're falling into that trap everyone does of assuming that anyone who has an interest in this stuff without automatically wanting to roll their eyes and cut it down is just a rube who blindly believes. Anyone who does behave like what you describe above is a cunt, and falls into the unfortunately large percentage of idiots and kooks who get associated with Forteana. Fat chicks don't only ove Jeff Hardy, they love Most Haunted too.

I'm really, honestly not. I just think there are a lot of people who don't have that critical faculty when it comes to this sort of thing. The "Most Haunted" crowd are another breed entirely, I wouldn't dream of tarring you with their brush. Nutty fucking "John from Bedford just saw a ghostly presence on webcam 4" types.

but in the past when reading his commentaries, I've found him far too dismissive of literally everything, including things areas he's not overly knowledgable in, like cryptozoology. I'll make a shit case right now because I can't remember any specifics, and obviously he has no reason to believe in anything, and at his age he's not about to change his opinions, but I feel like he'd dismissively wave his hand if Bigfoot climbed through his window and shat in his mouth. "This plop tastes like flim-flam!"

I'll defend Randi, a little. His adult life has been taken up with debunking people, and showing these crazy beliefs up, in the face of public indifference or straight-up hosility. He presumably sees a show like "Medium", based on the life story of a fraud without the tiniest hint of any supernatural abilities, getting big ratings and gets justifiably pissed off that although she's backed down from taking the million dollar challenge, over and over she still is allowed to claim these powers. So maybe he's overly dismissive of things that he shouldn't be dismissing. If I'd been exposed to the decades of bullshit that he has, maybe I'd react the same way.

They're not a research group, they just report on stuff or give a platform for people who feel as though they have something to say, be they someone who's reporting on the Elf School in Norway, the creation of the myth of the Jewish Golem, or Richard Dawkins. They never, ever take on an editorial stance one way or the other, (other than that of a Fortean) and being that the Fortean viewpoint is all about the facts, if anything the tone tends to lean more towards the sceptical, which of course, many of the articles are anyway, probably the majority in fact. A lot of the big cases or incidents that get wheeled out on TV or in the press from time to time, like Rendlesham Forest, have been soundly debunked inside the FT.

Fair enough, I just thought if they're publishing all this stuff, then some of it must have been proved right somewhere down the line. Having a zero per cent hit rate on stuff outside the scientific mainstream must get a bit depressing after a while. But if that's not what they're about, I retract that bit. I am fascinated by conspiracies and alternate views of the world, partly because it's interesting how peoples' thought processes work when evaluating certain evidence, but partly because there is stuff out there we don't know all about yet. And I wish I'd read that debunking of the moon landing issue, seems I picked the wrong week to crash at my mate's house and read the copy he'd left in his spare room. I may pop to the library one evening after work next week and see if they've got a copy knocking about. Edited by Famous Mortimer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderators

I'll answer this bit first. You're tops, and I'm not sneering. I'm merely disagreeing with some stuff you've written, while appreciating what you write is a reasonably held belief on your part.

Morty <3I was mostly referring to people in general, and it's refreshing to have a back and forth with someone that can fully back up their opinions and arguments, rather then the way these sorts of threads or threads about religion usually consist of someone typing something they've heard coming out of Richard Dawkins or Bill Hicks's mouth.

Sadly, when the pages of Fortean Times are given over to closed-minded propaganda like the moon landing hoax stuff (which I'm sorry to harp on about), and nonsense like some of the more serious articles on Fortean TV then the only conclusion I can draw is that they are Forteans.

I guess it's hard to refute that carrying such an article would obviously tar the whole magazine with the mad brush, but on the other hand, those views were out there in a huge way at the time. There was that frightening statistic that 20% of Americans believing that the moon landings were hoaxed. I could dig it out later, but I'm sure there was a caveat in that month's editorial about how controversial Percy's views were, as they usually address the content of the main featured article. I don't doubt it had a lot to do with sales either, as that was big news then and the MOON LANDING HOAX cover probably shifted a few thousand extra copies. But still, it's one issue (and what timing to make that the only one you've read) over a decade ago. I've not missed an issue since 1991, including stacks of back issues, and that's the one thing that really stands out. Biggest postbag of responses ever too, with angry readers pretty much saying what you are. To their credit, FT openly took it on the chin.I don't know how anyone can hate Fortean TV. I wish Father Lionel was my dad.

I'm really, honestly not. I just think there are a lot of people who don't have that critical faculty when it comes to this sort of thing. The "Most Haunted" crowd are another breed entirely, I wouldn't dream of tarring you with their brush. Nutty fucking "John from Bedford just saw a ghostly presence on webcam 4" types.

Well, I'm glad. I am admittedly ultra defensive about this, and probably even more critical of the absolute fucknuts out there, making everyone else look bad. I once texted and emailed a bunch of times over one of the Most Haunted Live weekends saying that I'd seen the ghost of an old man's face in my toilet, but they didn't read any of them out :(I hope this doesn't make me look a flake, but over the course of all those hundreds of hours of TV, there have been a handful of genuinely unexplained and very strange incidents that really should have been investigated further. I don't believe in ghosts, but that doesn't discount anything that happened. Even though Ouija boards and table tipping are complete bollocks that was exposed by Houdini over a century ago, and if you blindfolded everyone, it would just come out with gibberish, I'm still fascinated with the unthinking subconscious physiology behind it, as evidenced in Derren Brown's Seance. Sometimes it's interesting just from a psychological standpoint, like the mass hysteria at Pendle Hill where the entire crew fainted and had panic attacks, one by one.Of course, Living just wants fake psychics pretending to be possessed while Stuart the rigger hurls himself down some stairs so that he can parade around the next night like he's a returning war hero that survived a massive trauma. It's so frustrating to see the way people are willing to believe to the point of blocking absolutely everything else out. If I put 'orbs' into google, I'd probably explode. Most Haunted is to blame for a whole cottage industry of this shit.

I'll defend Randi, a little. His adult life has been taken up with debunking people, and showing these crazy beliefs up, in the face of public indifference or straight-up hosility. He presumably sees a show like "Medium", based on the life story of a fraud without the tiniest hint of any supernatural abilities, getting big ratings and gets justifiably pissed off that although she's backed down from taking the million dollar challenge, over and over she still is allowed to claim these powers. So maybe he's overly dismissive of things that he shouldn't be dismissing. If I'd been exposed to the decades of bullshit that he has, maybe I'd react the same way.

Sylvia Brown :angry: What a cunt. Yeah, it is really easy to see why he's the way he is. Ex-magician, exposing those who need to be exposed, but sadly, he's either preaching to the converted or to deaf ears. He's listened to nothing but 100% bullshit most of his life, exposing it as he goes, but watching as America falls over themselves to believe John Edward and James Van Der Pragh. It's hard to be even mildly angry at him really, but it is frustrating that his good work and good ideas often leads people into an us against them mentality for anything that's not exactly as it is in a textbook.

I am fascinated by conspiracies and alternate views of the world, partly because it's interesting how peoples' thought processes work when evaluating certain evidence, but partly because there is stuff out there we don't know all about yet. And I wish I'd read that debunking of the moon landing issue, seems I picked the wrong week to crash at my mate's house and read the copy he'd left in his spare room. I may pop to the library one evening after work next week and see if they've got a copy knocking about.

Conspiracy theories are such a huge industry right now, it's ridiculous. Nobody wants to believe the simple truth that the Western world is run by an idiot with a monkey face and a Scotsman who doesn't know how to smile properly, but that's all there is. Nobody's pulling the strings, not like that. No lizardmen, no secret Jewish cabals. Jon Ronson got into Bohemian Grove and it was just a bunch of boozed up middle-aged fratboys and future presidents pissing against trees and lighting fires. It's definitely fascinating to look at the mindset of someone who'll buy into that by shoving aside anything that doesn't fit in with the theory.It always broke my heart to find out that a celebrity I liked was a Scientologist, but now you sometimes get the same thing with 911 conspiracy believers. Loose Change has a lot to answer for. Shit, even Alex Shane is preaching about the lizardmen, and there are some believers on this forum.Title edited for catch-all discussion. Everyone feel free to join in with the fun, whatever your beliefs. Edited by Woyzeck
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Conspiracy theories are such a huge industry right now, it's ridiculous. Nobody wants to believe the simple truth that the Western world is run by an idiot with a monkey face and a Scotsman who doesn't know how to smile properly.

Who rely on a Frenchman to broker peace with an 'enemy' because they are too busy posturing to that enemy.More stuff on the bigfoot claim.

In August 2008, two US hunters, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton, claimed that they had discovered the deceased body of a Sasquatch in a forest in northern Georgia. The body is reportedly male, more than two metres tall, weighs more than 230 kilograms (500 pounds), has reddish hair, blackish-grey eyes and human-like teeth. Photographs released showed a large ape-like animal crammed into a freezer, where it was being preserved. Tom Biscardi, a Bigfoot hunter who has been searching for the creature since 1971, claimed he was shown the body after a trek of a day and a half in the forest. "It's a huge situation for me after 35 years, because I've wanted to bring one back," he said. Biscardi claimed a video shot by the two men the day they found the body showed at least "three others walking upright like a man". Reacting to hoax claims, he retorted: "We trekked in for a day a half … what kind of lunatic would be out here in a monkey suit? I saw the thing, I touched it." Biscardi referred to Dyer and Whitton as "fine guys" who are "pretty credible"—one working for the police department in Georgia and the other was a correctional officer.However, the men previously admitted filming a hoax video, supposedly interviewing a "scientist", which turned out to be fake. The video, uploaded onto YouTube by Dyer, shows a "Dr Paul Van Buren" after he had viewed the Bigfoot body, after flying from Texas to Georgia. "Van Buren" said, after viewing the corpse: "It's obviously a male, we looked at a very, very large primate male, it doesn't fit into any of the taxonomic groups I can think of. Unbelievable, I'm still shaking... I've never seen anything like this before." Van Buren was later identified as being Martin, Mr. Whitton's brother, and the two later admitted in a subsequent video that the interview was a hoax. However, they still insist they have a real Bigfoot corpse in a freezer. In a report for The Times, Ben Radford, the managing editor for Skeptical Inquirer said: "It's smelling to high heaven like a hoax. They can claim to have DNA, but its not going to be possible for them to prove through DNA analysis that they have Bigfoot because there's no specimen in a jar that says, This is Bigfoot, to match it to. And the video?... it'll be what's known in the Bigfoot research community as a Blobsquatch, an indeterminate, dark blob that may or may not be a man, a bear, a Bigfoot, an elf, a dragon...who knows?" Jeffrey Meldrum, a prominent Bigfoot researcher, reported to Scientific American that he was "extremely sceptical about this Bigfoot claim". He alleged that, from past interactions with Biscardi, "anything he is involved in is suspect". A press conference to release "DNA evidence" is scheduled for August 15, 2008 at 12 pm–1 pm PDT

PDT = Pacific Daylight Time.Can't check world clocks here thanks to our shitty bloxx software, but 1pm will probably mean quite late this evening. Edited by DJ Stevie C
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...