Wednesday, December 3, 2014

We've all of done Paranormal Activity... I Gurantee it!

If the word paranormal popped into your head, most likely scenes from horror movies come along with  it. And probably even haunted houses, ghosts, communicating with the dead and maybe even witches. In other words the list that Gallup surveyed. And your thought would be very much like most of our culture being that paranormal is defined as being demonic.

Anette Hill defines paranormal as “…a proposition that has not been empirically attested to the satisfaction of the scientific establishment but is generated within the non scientific community  and extensively endorsed by the people who might normally be excepted of their society to be capable of rationale thought and reality testing.”

Dictionary. com defines it similarly as well,“of or pertaining to the claimed occurrence of an event 
or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other 
purportedly supernatural phenomena.”

It is interesting to think that even though we relate paranormal as bad, evil and demonic, really it is anything that is falls under things that science cannot explain, so things like horoscopes, reincarnation, belief in aliens, folkloric creatures like big foot, and even religion

We can find paranormal scenes in the recognizable movie Matilda. (Sorry for the bad voice over work. It was either bad video or bad audio; take your pick.)  Don't have to watch the full scene you can just start at the time 2:50.
We can see the paranormal of "magic powers" in the film that Matilda possesses.
And one more clip for the holiday spirit where we find paranormal in the cultural famous story  A Christmas Carol.



Now I quickly want to look at the paranormal activity of superstitions. Do you believe or not believe? 
We have superstitions all over in culture. This is kind of a longer video, but worth watching. Shows the history to some popular superstitions, a few of them I didn't even know about. 






  I know I have had my superstitions as an athlete and I think that comes along with the athlete culture because we seem to think that every great athlete has one or two. We kind of assume you can't be a great athlete without one. But outside of sports I don't consider myself superstitious, like I am sure many of you don't think you are either. But do you still tend to avoid superstitions? For example, avoid crossing the path of a black cat anyways, even though you tell yourself you aren't superstitious. So does that mean you are subconsciously superstitious?

4 comments:

  1. I agree with the beginning statement about having first thought that pops into my head when I hear the word paranormal, be something from a scene in a horror movie. I rarely watch scary movies, and know very little about Paranormal Activity perceived in TV shows and movies. But I've never really paired superstitions to be associated with paranormal sources, so this really broadens my understanding on this topic. I'm sure we all catch ourselves avoiding a superstition at some point or another throughout different experiences we encounter.

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  2. Exactly! I always find it funny when people I know to be quite religious claim that they don't believe in the paranormal. I think we associate "paranormal" with dark, evil things because the entertainment business throws the word around a lot in the horror genre. Just another example of how the media influences our understanding of things.

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    Replies
    1. Interesting, because Annette Hill defines paranormal as including religious beliefs like the afterlife and messages from God.

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  3. Would all superstitions and ritual fall under this category of paranormal? I feel that the majority of the time superstitions are generally just coincidences, but I understand how that could be in the paranormal category. I agree, though, about what you said about most people believing in the paranormal. Whether we think so or not, I think a lot of people believe in something that cannot be explained.

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