Among my guilty pleasures is my addiction to the SyFy shows Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International. I really don't want to get in to a discussion over how fake or not-fake the show is or may be. I certainly watch each episode with a grain of salt, and make my own conclusions based upon what I see and hear. I have my doubts about the whole phenomenon of EVPs, which most of the time can be chalked up to matrixing. All the same, I really like Grant and Jason, and ever since they got rid of the losers from the first couple seasons, at the very least they have a professional group, not to mention better looking.
I have a general interest in what could be termed the "paranormal", although I find the term misleading, because it implies that certain events are only partly normal. In any event, I have had some interesting stuff happen to me (and others around me) on a few occasions, both at the house in which I grew up and at my oldest sister's house - the latter being far more interesting than scary - and I am far more intrigued by such things than I am scared. Which doesn't mean I go looking for them, or invite the possibility of such things in to my own house. Far from it.
Yesterday, Lisa and the girls spent Mother's Day at her mother's house, and I was left to my own devices, by and large. I spent some time on YouTube and discovered a channel by someone named Sunshine Girl, which purports to be a video chronicle of the hauntings at the house in which she and her mother live in Oregon. I found some of the stuff interesting, right up until the "creepy lady" from down the street popped up, and the obviously very badly faked ghost images showed up. Then I realized this was a first-attempt by an aspiring young film-maker. I am a little disconcerted by the fact that so many of her viewers continue to believe her insistence that the events she chronicles are "real". Even more am I surprised - although by now I really shouldn't be - at all the chatter about "demons".
It seems to me that demons, whatever else they may be, have far more important things to do than bother pubescent young women. Furthermore, while certainly startling - all that banging on doors and opening and closing doors and such - I have always maintained that should demons exist and spend their time and energy bothering human beings, they could be far more creative. I am quite sure there are earnest and honest believers in such things, and such matters as demonic possession and demonic hauntings and such, but I just can't get behind such nonsense.
How, one can ask, is it possible that I can hold out the possibility of human hauntings but not demonic, each being equally implausible. For me, I guess, the answer is simple enough. Human hauntings make a certain amount of sense. Demonic, not so much. Since I'm not really sold on the existence of such creatures anyway - and please don't even get me started on angels - the whole thing begs all sorts of questions, the answers to which usually make me figure that demons really are quite stupid. Or perhaps bored. Or even both.
In any event, while certainly entertaining on a level with The Blair Witch Project (and slightly better done), the whole Sunshine Girl phenomenon is no more real than A Haunting in Connecticut or Casper. There may well be interesting hauntings going on out there, documented by folks on YouTube, but this just isn't one of them. The number of folks who buy in to her insistence that the events in question are real only proves that there are really dumb, gullible folks out there in the world who are willing to discount all sorts of evidence that is quite plain.
So, I continue to enjoy my guilty pleasures, salt-shaker always close by for those grains. Encountering Sunshine Girl, at least, has convinced me my powers of discernment are not completely shriveled.
