Miracle Doggie Door?

Here’s the video :

We have had trees, grilled cheese sandwiches, fences, regular doors, and now we have a doggie door proposed to have the face of  Jesus on it. I don’t quite understand why Jesus doesn’t just get on with and come back already, instead of playing hide and seek on random silly objects? Oh, that’s probably because neither of those are happening.

Roger Bowman and his family claim that in January of 2007 they first discovered the face of Jesus on their doggie door and interpreted it as divine intervention, telling them to keep the out-of-control dogs. Interestingly enough, that “divine intervention” came in the form of taking the dogs to a dog trainer. DUH! They never thought of that before? And interestingly enough, the divine intervention wasn’t enough, as one of the dogs was put to sleep due to being mentally unstable. Thanks for the false hope, Jesus!

Lately though, the Bowmans have fallen on hard times after his wife lost her job and now he, too is out of work, though his wife is working now working. Of course, the next logical step is to call all the TV stations and newspapers to let them know he’s placing the doggie door on eBay.

Right now the bid is up to $1,185! Bowman claims in the Q&A part of his listing that he didn’t intend to make a profit on the door when he first saw it, though earlier in the listing where he posted an instant message conversation with his wife after he discovered the door. He says:

“You know how some people saw the image of Jesus on their toast and put it on eBay?”

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume he was trying to make a comparison.

Mr.Bowman actually does a pretty good job of debunking his own item in his FAQ section, making such statements as:

I am told humans are genetically predisposed to identify faces, as it is an important survival skill. It is therefore reasonable to presume that different people possess differing levels of that trait. Hence it is likewise reasonable to expect some people would readily see the image while others struggle.

So is this door divine? It is to someone who believes it is.

Of course, these tidbits are drowning in a sea of nonsense that surrounds it, and I find it too ironic that he thinks it’s “far fetched” for people not to see the face. Oh, silly us, it’s much more reasonable that Jesus Christ pressed his face against your mud flap. I really should take a logic course.

Anyway, I think it looks more like John Rambo.

Ghost Hunters Halloween Hoax

I know I’m a little late on this, but it’s just so, so amazing!

I was watching the evidence episode of Ghost Hunters, from their live Halloween investigation of Fort Delaware, on Hulu last night. While watching it, there was a few out-of-place evidences that just seemed too good to be true and too fake looking to be taken seriously. To my amusement I did a little search for the events and found an overwhelming backlash to them all over paranormal websites and on YouTube, from people who actually believed in the integrity of TAPS. I even found an online petition started by a Ghost Hunters fan which calls for the show to be canceled.

The first piece of “evidence” is a very loud, supposedly ghostly voice, saying, “You’re not supposed to be here” twice, which sounds like someone playing a recording. Here’s the video of that:

The other piece of “evidence” consists of 3 blatantly rigged ghostly pulls on Grant Wilson’s jacket. Grant just kind of awkwardly wanders around for a few minutes with his right arm by his side, and then right next to the camera, someone obviously pulls a line causing a point on the back of his jacket to dip a little. The pull happens in the same place each time, while creating a single point where is obvious that 1 line is attached to it. Grant’s over-exaggeration of the force of the “pull” is hilarious. This clip is a little long, but it’s important to view all the odd behavior, as well as him pre-raising the collar of his jacket so it can be pulled down better:

Grant Wilson wrote a childish blog post about how unfair the criticism was, saying stuff like:

I just wish that people would give us constructive criticism and help us figure out what happened rather than just take the easy way out by saying we fake stuff.

As if when fraud is suspected the best people to “figure out what happened” are the people being accused of committing it. There is a bunch of people in jail right now that probably wish the cops and the courts had left them alone to “figure out what happened” in the crimes they were convicted of.

Of course, he finished off the blog with the typical statement of hoaxers and frauds, blaming it all on people hating them and not being true to them. It reminded me of the statement Sylvia Browne made after Shawn Hornbeck was found alive, even though she said he was dead, proclaiming that the people that don’t believe her were never genuine believers of her and her philosophies anyways.

I’ve tried to point out to people for a while now that the the very least Grant commits hoaxes, but this just proves that the whole group lacks any kind of integrity and the fans are finally seeing the light and they are pissed!

My Night With MUFON

Last friday, I attended my local paranormal Meetup group, where the New York state director of MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), James Bouck, was to give a talk.

MUFON was officially founded in May of 1969, by Walt Andrus, and MUFON’s official mission statement simply states:

“The scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity”.

And their goals are:

I. Investigate UFO sightings and collect the data in the MUFON Database for use by researchers worldwide.

II.Promote research on UFOs to discover the true nature of the phenomenon,with an eye towards scientific breakthroughs,and improving life on our planet.

III.Educate the public on the UFO phenomenon and its potential impact on society.

When I arrived at the meetup location there was a few men dressed in suits who looked very UFO investigator-ish, who I assumed to be from MUFON since they had not been to the meetup before. I found I was wrong when about 10 minutes later an old, shaky, casually dressed man walked in and identified himself to the meetup organizers as Mr. Bouck. He walked up to the front of the room and perched on a chair a tattered, crudely slapped together looking display board which a preschooler could have better constructed in arts and crafts (Fig. 1). Its hard to see in my camera phone picture, but the edges were full of dents, the papers were aged, damaged and the scotch tape holding them to the board was brown and coming off, and the photo of the Albany Airport UFO (top right) had badly handwritten scribble on it to describe the photo. Not exactly what I expecting from an international UFO organization, which is consulted for just about every TV show on UFO’s you’ve ever seen.

Fig.1

To no surprise, my expectations were lowered considerably and the ensuing “talk” was even more sad and disappointing.

The first part of Mr.Bouck’s “talk” simply consisted of him standing in front of the room and reading local UFO reports, with the papers literally held up directly in front of his face about 3 inches from making contact with it. He did lower them from his face a few times to tell some personal anecdotes, like how he and a group got all excited about a bright UFO on the horizon for more than an hour, only to finally figure out it was Venus rising in the morning sky. I’ve found it to be a trend when attending paranormal talks or classes, that even though the people giving them claim to be doing scientific research, all they ever do is just tell anecdotes. I want to hear the scientific breakthroughs, but all I ever get is stories.

As disapponting and lame the first half was, at least he came off as being somewhat reasonable. Well, that didn’t last long as he dove off the deep end in the second half.

The second half consisted of talking about nonsense such as extra-dimensional vortexes in caves, repressed memory therapy, and a quite impassioned rant about the government covering everything up and lying to us. He even ranted about how it took over a decade for the government to “fess up” about the Stealth Bomber.  The stupidity of that was overwhelming, as if the government should tell us everything they do, especially when it comes to the military.

All in all the night was a let down, as I was expecting much much more from the largest and oldest UFO “investigation” group in the world. It was still very informative in that it was further proof that this stuff is much worse when you go see it for yourself, rather than just what you see on TV.