(November 2, 2016 at 4:13 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 3:24 pm)pocaracas Wrote: It wouldn't take much to make those kids believe in what they were being told... Rural Portugal was pretty much pastoral - no sophistication of any kind... Very religious to begin with, so, by default, gullible.
Curiously, on the day the sun was seen to wobble, there was no apparition... no lady, no angel... just the sun. It's as if it would be impossible to pull such a trick in front of all those people.

Eh, the Virgin Mary could have appeared herself instead of the sun thing, but I honestly think that would have been easier to pull off if it was some sort of magic trick and much more easily able to be explained away. I think the sun literally starting to move around in the sky and change colors and drying up puddles is a lot more shocking and convincing and difficult to pull off than if a lady or winged person were to show up claiming to be divine.

We have natural explanations for a wobbling sun and clothes drying up, but not floating ladies or winged persons.

(November 2, 2016 at 8:06 pm)abaris Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 8:03 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Bahahahaha! Abaris, you're always making fart jokes lol. Do you fart a lot in real life?

One thing I love is people misbehaving in a not hurtful way. I love to encourage them to do that, but don't do it a lot myself. Watching is much more fun.

Anything bathroom humor to me is hilarious, though I don't fart.

(November 2, 2016 at 4:47 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Never underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion, or the orchestration and manipulation thereof. Take a group of people who may already be eager to be part of something other (and in this kind of case, the more really is the merrier, since the group is self-reinforcing), prime them that they're actually going to experience something, and I'd be most surprised if at least a majority percentage don't see anything. What would the odds rise to if you direct them to some action geared to distort their perception; say, staring at the Sun for several minutes?

Bravo!  But, also, remember it was not sunny that morning.  It was only after the Sun began emerging from the clouds that Lucia started screaming, and at that time, the atmosphere was in a complete state of atmospheric flux:



http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160302.html

(November 2, 2016 at 5:05 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 5:00 pm)Doubting Thomas Wrote: It happened at the same time because didn't one of the children yell out to look at the sun?  They likely all stood there staring at the sun wondering what they were supposed to see when it started affecting their eyes.  And as soon as a few people started saying that the sun was dancing in the sky, other people hoping for a miracle likely would have convinced themselves that they were seeing the same thing.  Because that's how mass hysteria works.

The reason nobody who saw it questioned it as merely a hallucination or optical effect is likely due to the fact that most people there were very religious and superstitious.  If you're very religious and superstitious and in a crowd where thousands of people start claiming they are witnessing a miracle, you're likely not going to pipe up and tell them they're just hallucinating.  It's hard enough to convince gullible Christians that Jesus really didn't appear on a slice of toast and what they're seeing is pareidolia.

I dunno... there were 100,000 people there. I doubt they all heard a little girl say "look at the sun". Also, what about the dry clothes and dried puddles?

When she started screaming, others started screaming.

(November 2, 2016 at 5:54 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: The part that I find interesting is when the little boy starts walking backwards and up a wall and ceiling in front of objective witnesses. One being a social worker, another being a nurse.

It's in official reports: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/...eport.html

I don't think those 2 women would have lied about that to the police and to the doctors.

You have equivalent accounts from Salem.

(November 2, 2016 at 7:22 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 7:20 pm)abaris Wrote: Since the film is from the early 70ies and based on a book that - naturally - was written even earlier, not really. The real breakthrough in psychology or psychiatry happened at a later point in time. Much later, actually. There are mental conditions the people in the 60ies and 70ies didn't know the first thing about.

Yeah it happened in the 1940's.

What's your favorite scary movie or book?

I know you're not asking me but I'll butt in a recommendation anyway H.P. Lovecraft. If you look it up on amazon you can get the complete collection of 62 stories in one, cheap volume (on kindle). They're all short stories, so they make for good toilet reading , and some of them are very creepy. One of those stories is The Call of Cthulhu... so by reading that you get to learn the back story of our resident Mafia overlord but there are also plenty of other stories on a wide range of themes, but all of the horror genre.

(November 2, 2016 at 7:41 pm)Stimbo Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 7:31 pm)abaris Wrote: Or the Haunting, also the original one. Because it didn't actually show the scare, only hinted on it.

Yes! Absolutely! An all-time classic!

Then there's the 1976 BBC adaptation of Dickens' "The Signalman". Check it out on Dailymotion - I'm getting chills just thinking about it.

If that's the one with Jack Nicholson (the haunting I mean) I loved that film.

(November 2, 2016 at 8:32 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 8:06 pm)abaris Wrote: One thing I love is people misbehaving in a not hurtful way. I love to encourage them to do that, but don't do it a lot myself. Watching is much more fun.

Anything bathroom humor to me is hilarious, though I don't fart.

Quote:An old lady visited her doctor for help with a problem.
"Doctor, I don't know what's wrong, but I fart all the time. It's weird because they are silent and odorless, but they keep coming out. In fact, I've farted about 6 times just sitting here. What can I do?"

The doctor replied, "Here, take one of these pills every morning and then come see me in a week."

A week later, the old lady came back to the doctor and she was upset. "Doctor, those pills didn't help - they made it worse! I'm still farting, but now they stink something fierce!"

The doctor replied, "Calm down, ma'am. Now that we've cleared your sinuses, we can work on your hearing."

(November 2, 2016 at 8:32 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(November 2, 2016 at 8:06 pm)abaris Wrote: One thing I love is people misbehaving in a not hurtful way. I love to encourage them to do that, but don't do it a lot myself. Watching is much more fun.

Anything bathroom humor to me is hilarious, though I don't fart.

To me too... that's why I love Bottom (Rik Mayall et al) cos that's the ultimate in toilet humour "you're not supposed to be in there, it's out of order" "not as out of order as me mate" [long fart sound followed by a closing phut] And I can hardly get through the scene in Austin powers where he's in the toilet cubicle... "come on, we're gonna get through this"... for the tears of laughter

But seriously, never? I find it hard to believe it when anyone says that because it's just a natural bodily function, along with burping, which sometimes just has to happen. Sure you can be polite about it... let it out gently and silently, but it still has to come out

Thanks for that Min, I needed that