Just in time for Halloween and from the “you just can’t make this stuff up” department we have this tale of hilarity. Rob Gutro is a Deputy News Chief in the office of Public Affairs at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. He writes a number of science stories, like this one on hurricanes or this one on the Gulf Oil spill. But, he also talks to ghosts. I’d like to ask him to ask the dead these questions: “Is climate change dead too? Is heaven green? Does hell use a coal powered furnace or is it nuclear or solar driven?” Inquiring minds want to know.
NASA worker brings a scientific eye to his hobby: Talking to the dead
Medium and NASA Meteorologist Rob Gutro tries to communicate with a possible ghost beneath a bookstore in Baltimore.» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER
By J. Freedom duLac Washington Post Staff Writer
Rob Gutro was driving to the wake of a co-worker’s stepfather when a ghost began to speak.
“I kept hearing the name Cindy Lou,” Gutro recalled. “I had no idea what that meant.” But he knew this: Once again, somebody who’d died had something to say.
By day, Gutro is a meteorologist who works as deputy news chief at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, communicating the nation’s scientific work to the public.
By night (and whenever else the entities get in touch), he talks to the dead.
“I have an ability to communicate with and understand ghosts and spirits,” Gutro said.
During his off-hours, away from NASA’s advanced technology, Gutro actively seeks encounters of another kind by traveling to haunted houses and other historic sites where spirits might be found.
Sometimes, he said, entities seek him out. So it was, on the way to the wake this summer, that the disembodied voice in the car asked Gutro to deliver messages to his grieving friend and NASA colleague, Cynthia O’Carroll.
Gutro obliged, pulling her aside at the ceremony and saying he’d been hearing the name Cindy Lou. “I believe your dad has come to me,” he told O’Carroll.
She cried.
“My dad used to call me Cindy Lou,” O’Carroll said later. “But the thing that really touched me and made me cry was when Rob said, ‘Your dad said thank you for taking care of your mom.’ Just the way he said it sounded like the way Dad would have said it.”
Gutro is quick to acknowledge that some NASA scientists – and plenty of non-scientists too – approach his work with considerable skepticism. “Some people do think that mediums are crazy,” Gutro said. He shrugged.
There’s no scientific consensus on ghosts and spirits; the word paranormal, after all, means something beyond scientific explanation. But Gutro, who used to work as a forecaster for the Weather Channel’s radio division, insisted that the science behind his experiences with entities is sound.
Read the entire story here
h/t to WUWT reader “Bob”
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Please remember Anthony that more Americans believe in ghosts than man-made global warming.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1386/cap-and-trade-global-warming-opinion
http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/onethird-americans-believe-dearly-may-departed.aspx
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/26/not-scary-enough-more-americans-believe-in-haunted-houses-than-human-caused-global-warming/
Next they’ll all be speaking in tongues.
Ghost shows are very trendy now, just like AGW. How sciency both topics are.
I’m with M.A.DeLuca II (October 28, 2010 at 2:09 pm) on this one.
Yes, I’m (highly!) skeptical of this–but I can’t say that it is 100% a fraud. To do so would be to display the kind of hubris the AGW crowd does today. Why is that?
Imagine it’s 1650 (only a short time ago–especially in geological terms). You tell someone that it will be possible, from the location where the two of you are situated, to speak with someone on the other side of the world. Better still, you tell them that it is possible to see what is inside one’s body without sharp cutting tools and a big mess. And that one day people will fly seven miles in the air across oceans while sipping champagne and eating food heated without a flame (never mind landing on the moon).
Such concepts would be utterly alien, and immediately dismissed as complete rubbish.
What if some of these n-dimensional theories (such as http://www.tenthdimension.com) turn out to be correct? And that lives lived do not disappear (only to us restricted to this plane of existence) but persist in the greater family of universes–and that through some quirk of quantum physics a person’s brain in our plane of existence can somehow interact–or at least receive input–from one of those lives/beings?
No, no pot smoking or acid dropping here. More of a belief that anything is possible (progress is rooted in that, after all–and the profit motive 😉 ).
Was it Einstein who said “As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it”? Mock this person if you want, but doesn’t that make you sound like Mann/Romm/Gore/etc.?
On the other hand, if this guy starts charging for ‘readings’ or asking for tax breaks/subsidies, put him in jail.
At least he’s not running around breaking the law like that other chap that truly reflects poorly on their employers.
If one stops to think for a moment, this is an organization populated by scientists who for the most part believe in global warming despite any science to show it, launch telescopes into space after carefully ensuring that each part meets specification, but without testing the assembly itself, resulting in a myopic telescope, and when told by the design engineers of Challenger’s O rings that they’ll likely fail in a cold weather launch, decide that since the engineers couldn’t PROVE that they would fail, that it would be OK to launch anyway.
The wonder is not that one of them believes in ghosts. The wonder is that there is only one of them.
Stephen Schneider says it’s a lot hotter here.
So maybe he could follow his boss’ latest book and author a tandem publication:
“Disembodied Voices of My Great-Grandparents”
Same audience.
Actually, I might read that one because I am interested in the supernatural.
However, the science is not solid, LOL
Anyone notice how in the Washington Post video the reporter used the word “skeptics” (read: those who do not believe in ghosts) in the interview??
Strange. The word “skeptic” being used in a negative light.
Where have we seen that before?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Can he come out here and talk to the California economy?
Well — either the mind is an emergent phenomena that arises when the brain has established sufficient complexity, and the mind dies with the body and that’s the end. Or. The brain just holds part of the total mind, rather like a robot probe sent to Mars receives program downloads, while the bulk of the data and data analysis programs are back here on Earth. Analogous to this, when the brain dies the mind continues — because most of it is not “in” the brain.
So which is true? Neither can be proved — or disproved. So really neither one is truly scientific — they are both just beliefs.
This isn’t at all unusual for scientists. The great majority of them believe in- aside from the scientific hypothesis of CAGW- a scheme of absurd unreality utterly laking in any supporting evidence. Religion is everywhere.
Religious folks don’t realize the way they ridicule Spiritualism, Scientology, Mormonism, and most other designated loony-ness is precisely the way many atheists see religion of whatever stripe- from Methodists to Buddhists.
Only it’s not so funny knowing that the irrational believers dominate all the world, and shed blood everyday for their pet schemata.
And Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot show that atheism results in a far superior view of things, right? Is it rational to believe in morality while at the same time believing that humans are the result of random, meaningless chemical processes? The rational conclusion of a completely naturalistic view is that everything is meaningless. But to avoid utter despair, the atheist irrationally lives as if there is a meaning to life anyway. The person who believes in God has a very rational basis for morality, not to mention order, beauty, art, music and love.
Given that Cynthia O’Carroll was a “friend and NASA colleague”, it’s hardly inconceivable that Gutro had consciously or otherwise, overheard a reference to her father calling her Cindy Lou.
“Unconsciously” is the charitable explanation – “consciously” makes my blood boil at the thought of the *******s who exploit the grief of others.
Well it was only a matter of time before this thread turned to an atheism vs religion debate so before the mods shut it down:
1. There’s no such thing as an atheist in a fox hole.
2. Other than not attributing the rationale to a superbeing of some sort, there is no difference between Communism and any other religion. They are belief systems that rely on faith rather than evidence, and justify their actions on that belief system.
3. I sincerely hope that there is an afterlife and that “ghost” is one of the options. (There has to be choices, it can’t be homogenous. Or linear. Or logarithmic. I’m thinking chaotic, consider the variety of the inputs. Also, I recall a rather amusing proof that it is exothermic). In any event, I want to choose “ghost” because there are some people that I really, Really, REALLY would like to come back and haunt.
davidmhoffer says on October 28, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I understand what “reds under their beds” is, I think, but what are “atheists in foxholes?”
SunSword says
” Analogous to this, when the brain dies the mind continues — because most of it is not “in” the brain.”
—————-
Of course it’s not. It’s in the gut! There are thousands of times more afferent nerves from the gut than there are efferent ones. They keep busy telling the brain what to think. Maybe that’s why ghosts smell so bad.
Auditory hallucinations are a common symptom of schizophrenia. He should definitely consult a physician. While his symptoms may currently be harmless, there is a good chance they will not remain so.
davidmhoffer says:
October 28, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I also have an open mind on metaphysics and the paranormal. Dabbled a bit with groups who tried to construct axiomatics of consciousness.
Anybody who knows a bit of history of science would know that the world we live in now, with radio, television, mobiles, computers, instant world communication would be considered a fantasy at best, the devil’s illusions for witches at worst from the 18th century “physicists” and educated public.
It is true that there are more unknowns than knows, and the more we push the radius of our knowledge outwards, the circle enlarges and our periphery touches more unknowns.
More so as current theoretical physics calls down 11 dimensions and an infinity of probable worlds. One does not have to believe the stuff, but one can keep an open mind and live and let live, as one does with religious beliefs, which are also metaphysics if anything.
Let me get this straight.
There is scientific consensus at NASA about global warming but no scientific consensus there about communication with the dead.
Alrighty then. That explains a lot, actually.
anna v says:
October 28, 2010 at 9:50 pm
No it was the electric light that slew the ghost.
Except for those it allowed illusionists to create for the delight and bemusement of their audiences.
It was the charlatans and mountebanks, never far behind, who took the technology and turned these harmless illusions into quasi mystical happenings to prey on and profit from the credulous.
But it has always been so.
Kindest Regards
SunSword says:
October 28, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Well — either the mind is an emergent phenomena that arises when the brain has established sufficient complexity, and the mind dies with the body and that’s the end. Or. The brain just holds part of the total mind, rather like a robot probe sent to Mars receives program downloads, while the bulk of the data and data analysis programs are back here on Earth. Analogous to this, when the brain dies the mind continues — because most of it is not “in” the brain.
So which is true? Neither can be proved — or disproved. So really neither one is truly scientific — they are both just beliefs.
Yes.
There are people doing experiments with the paranormal, not successfully at present. There are gripping stories of near death experiences, out of body travels, reincarnational memories etc. I find it better to be agnostic tending to “prove to me” then agnostic “nothing to prove”.
The difference lies between the words “experience” and “experiment” .
My only experience with the paranormal is with telepathy, which I find very strong with my daughter and sister. If telepathy exists, then there are other ways/dimensions of communicating physically than the ones we have discovered up to now.
I have stopped delving into this as I near the doorway to the next experiment. Death is the experiment we will all undergo, and there will either be data to study, or not. If we disappear at death that is fine, no problem with zero; but if I find myself aware in other dimensions I think I have studied enough maps to be able to navigate.
Richard Sharpe :
October 28, 2010 at 9:04 pm and the rest of the too young to remember:
The saying “there are no atheists in foxholes” comes from the first world war, where soldiers dug “foxholes” to shelter from fire and shrapnel.
Richard Wright:
“And Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot show that atheism results in a far superior view of things, right?”
Stalin’s atheism had nothing to do with his wrongs. Not anymore than plain, unafraid apprehension of the natural world in acknowledgement of gravity is at back of one’s political opinions or ambitions. If two women disagree on whether Mark Twain or Jane Austen is the better author, which believes in evolution and which doesn’t has nothing to do with the mater. Their religious beliefs or lack thereof do not inform the matter.
Correct beliefs may be held independently of other bad opinions and not inform them at all. Atheism does not any more justify State Communism than Christianity.
Richard Wright:
You assert that life is bereft of meaning or the ethical imperative without either of these is supported by faith, the purposeful blindness to reason.
I do not find them un-justified, and so needing to be supported by locking out the fully free reign of rationality. I assert, as instinctualist Humanists are wont to do, that he who is blind to the ethical imperative is as blind as as any men bereft of one of his senses, like sight as in the metaphor. That we “ought” do good is a basic instinct and sensory truth, and so rationality serves it, not serves it up.
Faith, however much emotional comfort it provides, shows by its diversity and my personal experience as a human, to be other than sensory and is avowedly a logical construct. Problem is, to remain valid, it requires its adherents to shut down their rational consideration at some point. Ethics is thus defeated, and served at the expense of religious faith, served with the approval of religion by coincidence, or ignored; this last is the great problem.
Best,
Mark
I read a few comments, and I am with the NASA guy. I understand the purposes of character assassination and all, but belief in ghosts isn’t a good reason to take this guy and turn him into a pariah. Just because he is a meteorologist, he can’t have post-death beliefs not stamped ‘approved’ by the skeptic (and, for that matter likely the AGW) crowd? Nonsense and balderdash. Quit piling on the guy just because of this and find a real reason to.
Or leave him alone. Anything else is just juvenile. Sorry, watts and blog, but this is out of line. I am sure someone will try to engage me in discussion on this topic, but it really isn’t open for discussion because of the subject matter. It is only open for introspection, and if you are not willing to perform that introspection, then you don’t have the proper basis to move forward. If only scientists were allowed to have open minds, perhaps one of them could explain Charlie Chaplin’s cell phone user.
I’ll say this much, I am beginning to wonder if there are any scientific points to be made here on this blog? I have commented here for quite a while, but recently the posts tend to be more against a certain individual than promoting openness to a certain scientific view. This post forces me to ask, with all sincerity and no malicious intent, are they all disproved?
Being considered a troll myself just don’t feed me, but…
Enneagram, repeating it at nauseam doesn’t work here. If you want to know something new about Pythagoras see
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd09xx/EWD975.PDF
What you propagate isn’t even pseudoscience.
[rant] If they continue on this road making wonderful and nice ’round’ numbers for natural constants from those ugly long and random looking ones then next pi will be exactly 22/7 with help of an electromagnetic force acting inversely with the distance and not inversely with the square of the distance like that silly gravitation. [/rant]