The Podge Cast

4 responses so far ↓

• 1 Asylos // Feb 10, 2009 at 6:16 am

  I’m going to have to check out that Weird Chicago book as a gift for a couple friends. The history stories are very interesting.

  Hey, next time you have a ghost hunter or such on, ask if they’ve ever come across the ghost of an animal?

• 2 Ken Melvoin-Berg // Feb 10, 2009 at 8:48 am

  There are several times we have come across the presence of animal ghosts, mostly pets. One story relates how a liquor store owner in Chicago was getting robbed in October, 1968. The man pulling the gun took a shot at the man behind the counter and the dog jumped in the path of the bullet accidently trying to defend his master. The dog died from the wound but frightened the man so much he ran out on to the street and was hit by a police car. Every time after that (up until the time the man died in 1978 of lung cancer) the ghost of the dog would reappear to defend his master against attackers.

  There are also lots of reports of owners of pets sensing, hearing or seeing their pets after they had passed on to the other side.

  Also the ghosts of some circus animals that died in Chicago are said to appear near the the place at the rail line where they died. The ghosts are of the big cats and the elephants.

  Hope this helps!

  Ken

• 3 Donald // Feb 10, 2009 at 11:15 am

  The Weird Chicago stuff was neat, but he didn’t give any trackable details on these murders, and nothing that couldn’t be easily explained easily enough.

  It would have been easy enough to palm a coin for his trip into the pond as well, or if he had to reach into the murk the coin could have been in his shoe.

• 4 Snap_Dragon // Feb 13, 2009 at 11:40 am

  As a skeptic what Ken says raises a lot of red flags for me.

  First off working as a psychic detective: The whole three suspects with one of them having DNA evidence that points to your killer smacks of the kind of stuff Silvia Brown does. Secondly probable cause is needed to obtain a warrant, no sane judge would issue a warrant on a psychics say so. No psychic detective has ever been praised or given official recognition by the F.B.I. or US national news for solving a crime, preventing a crime, or finding a kidnap victim or corpse [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_detective#Critical_commentary].

  The coin was another interesting part as if you are already up to your waist in muck in a swamp it would be difficult to bend down and touch the bottom without damn near submerging your entire body. And given the ‘I just reached in’ not ‘I dove in the filthy water nearly engulfing my head’ the story is likely exaggerated, fabricated, or faked (Donald’s suggestion).

  Secondly project stargate has been thoroughly debunked(http://skepdic.com/remotevw.html) and was closed down after exhibiting no useful or often contradictory results.

  Also his characterisation of James Randi was incorrect the testing methodology used by organisations like JREF is not to ‘stick somebody in a compound for 72 hours and wake them up at four in the morning.’ The testing procedures for JREF are mutually agreed upon, the claimant must put forward a specific claim for testing (provided that claim is testable and not non-falsifiable) and they mutually agree on a test which will examine this claim under scientific control.

  And lastly psychometry the practice of touching an object and reading things about it or its owner is testable and debunkable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQHYkyq7Hs.

  Ken’s extraordinary claims raise a lot of red flags. The most likely explaination is that he’s a BSer, but a good enough one to get paid for it.

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