El Chupacabra, The Goatsucker

Does Halloween scare you? Are you superstitious? Did you ever watch a show like "In Search Of" and think the "arguments" were convincing? Do you think there are ghosts out there, angry and unresolved spirits seeking revenge on the living? You're not alone if you do, I just read that a good percentage of Americans believe in ghosts, in one form or another. And then there are the even more ridiculous stories of The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and of course, my personal favorite, El Chupacabra, The Goatsucker. You'd have to be pretty drunk to accept these stories based on the "evidence" provided.

And that's the thing: there is no compelling evidence, and compelling evidence is what gets my attention, not folk tales and hyperactive imaginations. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Aside from a few naive grade-school creepy stories, thoughts of the living dead never scared me. The reason is that I truly do not believe them and cannot, even during a movie, make myself do so. The whole idea is so preposterous, so completely impractical to me that I'd be more inclined to accept a claim that my dog Jake is spying on me for a foreign government.

I hear this quite often: "Many things happen that cannot be explained". My standard reply is: "Yes, lots of things happen that have not been explained, but that doesn't mean you just get to make up any story you like to explain it". There are all kinds of reasons we think we see strange things and hear strange noises and suddenly feel cold. And it is highly unlikely that any of those reasons has to do with deceased humans or tortured souls.

We interpret this world through our senses and our senses lie to us on a regular basis. Reality comes to us filtered through very imperfect instruments. So wired are we for pattern recognition, especially facial patterns, that we construct faces from the most poorly aligned blobs of contrast. And don't forget that when we are excited or scared, our brains are flooded with dopamines that increase the brain power allotted to these imperfect senses, so inputs become amplified. We must admit to ourselves that we are not very good scientific recording instruments.

Incidentally, take a look at this "ghost" picture I took. See that green light near the center left of the picture? Is that a ghost? Could be, right? It did not appear to any of us "witnesses" in person, it only showed up when I looked at the picture on the camera. Hmm. Could it be lens flare from the fire? No, that explanation is too simple and...well...too boring. It must be a ghost, Yes, a ghost...a lost soul, long dead, is roaming the halls of the monastery, searching for a resolution to his ancient torment. And he chose to show up only on camera, and in the form of lens flare, because...well, we don't know why, but I'm sure that's what it is. Right?

Riiiiight.

So I don't worry about all that stuff. Besides, there are so many real things going on in the world that scare me, I don't have the time...