The Ghost in the Computer
Discussion
here's an intresting story - any opinions from pc techies?
The Ghost in the Computer
We are all familiar with the accounts of spirits communicating through knocks and mediums at seances, through divination tools such as Ouija boards... even through electronic voice phenomena (EVP) captured on audiotape. Quite rare, however, are the accounts of spirits communicating with the living through computers.
One possible case took place in the autumn of 1984. At this time, home computers were fairly new; the Internet and e-mail were non-existent. Yet Ken Webster of Dodleston, England received messages on his personal computer screen from a being who seems to have lived in the 1500s.
Previous to the messages, Webster had been experiencing strange poltergeist activity in his small terraced house called Meadow Cottage, which was in the process of being renovated. Most of the activity focused in the kitchen where Webster would experience stacked objects, unexplained marks on the walls, noises and an occasional thrown object.
Webster was a teacher who had access to one of these primitive computers - by today's standards, a laughably "weak" machine with 32K of memory, a simple word processor and an external 5.25" floppy disk drive. It certainly had no network connection of any kind. One day, Webster left, forgetfully leaving the computer on. When he returned, there was a message on the screen in the form of a poem, written in what seemed to be Elizabethan English. Webster dismissed it as a prank, but saved it on disk. Two weeks later, a second messages appeared, which said, in part:
"Wot strange wordes thou speke, although I muste confess that I hath also bene ill-schooled... thou art a goodly man who hath fanciful women who dwel in myne home... 'twas a greate cryme to hath bribed myne house."
Webster began to write responses to the messages, which began a dialog with a personage who identified himself as Tomas Harden who claimed to have lived in the very same cottage during the mid-sixteenth century. Besides using the computer, Harden also left messages on blank pieces of paper and in chalk on the home's walls and floor.
An investigation could not uncover any hoax or offer any explanation, although linguistic experts concluded that the style of the writing was not genuine to the time period claimed - it was a phony Tudor style. And while the "dialogue" was taking place between Webster and Hardin, the poltergeist activity subsided. Yet later, other psychic phenomena took place, and messages in other voices appeared. Ken Webster later wrote a book about these experiences.
The Ghost in the Computer
We are all familiar with the accounts of spirits communicating through knocks and mediums at seances, through divination tools such as Ouija boards... even through electronic voice phenomena (EVP) captured on audiotape. Quite rare, however, are the accounts of spirits communicating with the living through computers.
One possible case took place in the autumn of 1984. At this time, home computers were fairly new; the Internet and e-mail were non-existent. Yet Ken Webster of Dodleston, England received messages on his personal computer screen from a being who seems to have lived in the 1500s.
Previous to the messages, Webster had been experiencing strange poltergeist activity in his small terraced house called Meadow Cottage, which was in the process of being renovated. Most of the activity focused in the kitchen where Webster would experience stacked objects, unexplained marks on the walls, noises and an occasional thrown object.
Webster was a teacher who had access to one of these primitive computers - by today's standards, a laughably "weak" machine with 32K of memory, a simple word processor and an external 5.25" floppy disk drive. It certainly had no network connection of any kind. One day, Webster left, forgetfully leaving the computer on. When he returned, there was a message on the screen in the form of a poem, written in what seemed to be Elizabethan English. Webster dismissed it as a prank, but saved it on disk. Two weeks later, a second messages appeared, which said, in part:
"Wot strange wordes thou speke, although I muste confess that I hath also bene ill-schooled... thou art a goodly man who hath fanciful women who dwel in myne home... 'twas a greate cryme to hath bribed myne house."
Webster began to write responses to the messages, which began a dialog with a personage who identified himself as Tomas Harden who claimed to have lived in the very same cottage during the mid-sixteenth century. Besides using the computer, Harden also left messages on blank pieces of paper and in chalk on the home's walls and floor.
An investigation could not uncover any hoax or offer any explanation, although linguistic experts concluded that the style of the writing was not genuine to the time period claimed - it was a phony Tudor style. And while the "dialogue" was taking place between Webster and Hardin, the poltergeist activity subsided. Yet later, other psychic phenomena took place, and messages in other voices appeared. Ken Webster later wrote a book about these experiences.
tali1 said:
Ken Webster later wrote a book about these experiences.
Interesting. That is the most useful part though!Possibility of this being paranormal activity tiny. Possibility of this crank doing it for publicity or money very large.
I watched a Time Team a few years ago from a guy who wrote in with some of the items from his small estate.
The guy showed them where to dig and the team were genuinely astonished to find Victorian artifacts and when they dug deeper in the same spot found medieval artifact and lower than that found Roman artifacts and beyond.
They literally had trays and trays of stuff and were very excited until they made a discovery at the edge of the site of 1920's barbed wire through all of these 'layers'. It was later found out that the owner *may* have put the items in the ground a decade ago and allowed the ground to settle and become overgrown before the great discovery was found.
Indeed the great silver haired scouse actor Derek Acorah who gets possessed with ghosts on that haunting programme - for money of course and his sideline with his premium rate telephone line was found out.
It was reported that he never did research about the site before he got there and was possessed so that when the researchers checked the names of his 'ghosts' they tallied up. One week he was possessed by two ghosts with very strange names. One of the producers by chance planted some 'history' with the researchers with the name of two inhabitants of the house which were anagrams of 'Derek Lies' and 'Derek is a Fake'...
Its funny what people will do for a bit of fame and money!
qube_TA said:
That's the dumbest story I've ever read, of course email existed in 1984!
Hmmmm,here we have an early home micro computer collecting email in 1982 and I think Prestel was also around about that time....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VCDeHuEiiQ
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