"Proof of Horror..."

i used to be a real estate agent.

in this day in age, of course those who really don't want to believe won't regardless of what evidence you provide. a lot of people want to believe in ghosts anyway, so *any* piffling amount of 'evidence' is good enough for them. it's really those 'agnostics' who are on the fence about it you can't predict. thing is, these aren't your zealous types, i don't think, so i think the reaction from their quarter would, while having a polarizing effect perhaps, be minimal.

it's those other two groups you've got to be careful because they'll contain the extremists. more than likely, you'll have a sh!tload of arsons of haunted houses. you'll also experience a tremendous amount of 'ghostbusting' services which are fake. a fox executive will try to make a sitcom starring the undead, then when their star fades, put them in an ice rink. 'dancing with the dead.' and should a person who died at twenty but who died a hundred years ago be allowed to sing in 'american idol'?

that's rather flippant, but that's the kind of inane stuff that would likely happen, imo.

would people be running through the streets? no.

would churches suddenly be over-crowded? you betcha.

i feel today's civilization would be rather underwhelmed with the discovery. that is, i don't see mass hysteria setting in. maybe paranoia to a certain degree, and a lot of silliness like advertising 'all our homes are ghost-free.' it would raise a lot of questions and curiosities, but hardly be the light that sparks the fuse of worldwide decline.

indeed, you'd have to pity most of the ghosts. the evil ghosts would be ousted even if you have to burn the damn house down, and the nice ones would forever be pestered by curiosity seekers and treat them like freaks. i depends on the type of ghosts you're referring to, too. you'd likely see a tremendous amount of legal actions being taken and defenses based on, 'i didn't stab my b!tch nag of a wife, the *ghost* did it!' while that may be good news for o.j., that would cost the taxpayer a lot of money, lol. it's just these kinds of ignorant things done by ignorant people that would make the actual exposing of ghosts a hassle.

approaching it from my standpoint, it wouldn't change the time i wake up in the morning, where i work, what i eat, or the normal machinations i go through to survive another day. you can investigate the affect such a momentous discovery it would have on the fringe of society for fun, but by-and-large what choice do people have other than to do what they normally do? i wonder what affect it would have on the mortuary industry? (damnit, i'm having an 'effect'/'affect' brain fizz today.)

i might open up a con-shop advertising, 'you're guaranteed to die and stay dead using my five easy and expensive tips.'

otherwise, life goes on... even in death.

I think there would be some kind of religious backlash. For one thing, it would be a heyday for priests conducting exorcisms. Other sects (some Christians?) would never buy into it, as it goes against their teachings. Other sects might develop who essentially worship the ghosts. I like the idea.

I think that so many people have been desensitized to the strange and unusual that the discovery would be swept under a rug. Not to mention any kooks that would go out of their way to disprove it.

Subsequentially, I recall a strange piece of ghostly stuff. In the movie, Three Men and a Baby, there's a scene with Ted Danson's character and his mother. They walk about their penthouse apartment where the movie is being filmed and as they pass a bedroom window you can see a little boy of about ten years of age standing behind the curtain. It made the news then quickly disappeared. I don't recall if it was debunked but every time I watch it I get the willies. Anybody recall this?

i remember that scene in the movie. it gave me the chills to watch it. i'd heard several different versions, the one i like is because the one character was supposed to have been an actor, the 'ghost' was a prop of a prop the character in the movie had. it was supposed to have been a cardboard standie he got from one of his movies, in other words, if even that makes sense.

i think aliens landing would send people into more of a frenzy. that, too, would have a profound effect on religion, moreso than ghosts which just 'proves' the supernatural world exists.

it would, however, send 'shockwaves throughout the xxx community,' which only guarantees i'd have to read about it to realize anything has changed today, lol. it would, more than anything, imo, be good water cooler fodder. naturally, oprah would book the first weepy ghost with a sob-story so the bobbleheads in the audience could get a good cry out... and a free car! vacuous drones aside (man, am i the only one who thinks oprah was better at doing the inappropriate slap and tickle shows of her early years?), look for 'memoirs of the dead' at your local bookstore.

yep, we'd exploit 'em for cash, you betcha, boy howdy.

It got debunked as a cardboard cut out? How many people stand behind a camera, watching the scene before, during, and after it's shot? I can't imagine that they all missed something like that, then the editors totally missed it as well. I don't buy that. Still, it's worth a good debate.

Pike

Jcomp said:

So, I'm really big on "what if" scenarios, and I'm writing a story (devolping into a novel?0 in which the public at large is made fully aware of the "fact" that there are places in the world that are indeed haunted. Some spirits are your friendly neighborhood Casper variety, and others would sooner throw you down a flight of steps than let you share "their" home.

The proof comes not in some goofy/funny Ghostbusters-esque fashion, nor in any pseudo-scientific method where muffled, indiscernible voice and video recordings, along with the intuitions of psychic investigators, make up the entire body of evidence. I'm talking news cameras catch someone being mauled and tossed around like a rag doll by some spectral, translucent entity and every expert in the field studies it until his/her eyes are ready to fall out without finding a trace of fakery. And this, in turn, for unknown reasons, causes observable supernatural activity worldwide to spike.

So, story's in development, I like where I'm taking it so far, but just curious how you guys think the world might respond in light of such a development. Sure you'd have your die-hard skeptics (more than could probably be reasonably expected actually), but despite that, society would have to adjust. Not just people's beliefs, but all sorts of little things you don't even think about. Real Estate Agents, for instance, would have to fully disclose that "hey, by the way, this house is CRAZY haunted. But when you check out that view from the master bedroom, it won't even matter."

What do you guys think? How does modern civilization respond?

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Read Immortality Inc by Robert Sheckley.

'It got debunked as a cardboard cut out? How many people stand behind a camera, watching the scene before, during, and after it's shot? I can't imagine that they all missed something like that, then the editors totally missed it as well. I don't buy that. Still, it's worth a good debate.' ~ i must not have worded it right: the cardboard cut out was supposed to be there, supposedly, it just got misinterpreted. the whole thing started because the apartment they shot the movie in supposedly had been inhabited by a kid who died somehow. only problem is that scene in question was shot on a soundstage, lol.

flap, i lieu of searching for, paying, and reading the book, can you give us some examples of sheckley's version of what he thinks would happen?

preyer said:

'It got debunked as a cardboard cut out? How many people stand behind a camera, watching the scene before, during, and after it's shot? I can't imagine that they all missed something like that, then the editors totally missed it as well. I don't buy that. Still, it's worth a good debate.' ~ i must not have worded it right: the cardboard cut out was supposed to be there, supposedly, it just got misinterpreted. the whole thing started because the apartment they shot the movie in supposedly had been inhabited by a kid who died somehow. only problem is that scene in question was shot on a soundstage, lol.

flap, i lieu of searching for, paying, and reading the book, can you give us some examples of sheckley's version of what he thinks would happen?

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I can't remember much about Immortality, Inc, but the story is about a future world where Ghosts are real. I read it years ago, perhaps 15 or so. It's nothing like the film "Freejack". The main character is someone who is brought back to life in a new body, but the world is full of supernatural happenings related to his resurrection. It may be nothing like what you're doing, it just struck me as being something worth reading!

I'm not sure what exactly you've got planned - it seems to be some sort of "world" where are ghosts are known to be real and exist in certain places - but ghost stories are, by their nature, set in places where "ghosts" and supernatural things ARE real, but their nature is mysterious and linked to history or events that somehow threaten. This is the core element of ghost stories. See MR James for example, whose ghost stories aren't bettered. By making them somehow "real", then will have to provide some sort of plausible reason for ghosts being real, try to explain them. This takes away the magic of just why we like ghost stories.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea - it just doesn't perhaps sound as groundbreaking as you may think. I suspect most people would think a TV show be faked, anyway, and most religions already believe in things like "spirits" and demons. It's just that there's never been any proof that they do exist, and virtually all the photographs can be shown to have been faked.

See Nigel Kneale's "The Stone Tape", which is excellent.

Ghosts and ghost stories are just, IMHO, urban myths. Ghost stories tend to hinge around places where something happened. Perhaps a means of remembering events...

we're reminded of ghosts on a daily basis, too. every christian church you pass has behind it the 'holy ghost.' okay, not a ghost, per se, not as we write them, but since it's really impossible for the average person not to be inundated with death and the supernatural, it's an image hard to shake. i'm sure there are many 'reasons' for seeing ghosts. for example, remembering events, like you said, through ghostly visitations or seeing images in the sworls of cheap wood laminate. a lot of it has to do with people seeing what they want to see.

Jcomp said:

Um, I don't think it's "groundbreaking," wouldn't be so pretentious. I just have a story I'd like to tell, so I'm trying to tell it, and I'm a sucker for hypotheticals (as I mention in the original post).

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Sorry, point taken, I was rambling a bit - I think the thing that gets me about the "hypothetical" is that by definition ghost/horror stories are doing the same thing, except they focus on a particular area and characters, and the assumption is the ghost/supernatural is real. That's the genre trap. In this sense, the writer doesn't have to explain WHY, just needs to justify why.

I think by stepping back and having a story in which ghosts are shown to exist, and that's part of your story, you run the risk of ending up having to explain the Why.

If you want to examine a world where ghosts exist, then you could just do it as an alternate world type of thing, where ghosts are known to be true because eveyone sees them and they invade all parts of life. From this you can build up your story in your world...

I think that's what I would do...

(If you get what I'm saying!)