Eenie, meenie, jellybeanie, the spirits are about to speak
24 April 2006 by Stardust
I would try to find a way to profit from the gullibility of superstitious people if I didn’t have any of my “atheistic” MORALS about taking advantage of stupid people.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A controversial television seance airing on Monday will claim it has reached the spirit of John Lennon, but viewers will have to pay $9.95 to find out what the peace-loving Beatle has to say.
The special, being carried on pay-TV service In Demand, was organized by the producers of a 2003 attempt to channel the late Princess Diana. That show failed to find Diana and received reviews that could have sunk the Titanic but it is estimated to have grossed close to $8 million. (ching ching!)
Sight unseen, the Lennon effort has been attacked by the late Beatle’s friends and fans as a tasteless effort to profit from his assassination 25 years ago. But producers say they are hoping to lure an audience that now loves such prime-time network TV shows as “Ghost Whisperer” and “Medium.”
The program features what is described as an Electronic Voice Phenomenon, or EVP, that a psychic on the show claims is the disembodied voice of Lennon speaking at a seance in one of his favorite New York restaurants, La Fortuna.
EVP is based on a belief that spirit voices communicate through radio and TV broadcast signals.
On the television show, filming at La Fortuna suddenly stops and a narrator says something odd has happened. They then claim that a mysterious voice can be heard on the voice feed of one of the psychics.
The producers then call in “EVP specialist” Sandra Belanger to examine the voice and she proclaims it the real deal.
“That’s very consistent with a Class A EVP,” she said, regarding the level and clarity of the voice. She also says the voice sounds like how Lennon would have talked.
Reuters was given a preview of the program, “The Spirit of John Lennon,” on condition that it not reveal what the “voice” said during the taped seance.
Producer Paul Sharratt, who heads Starcast Productions and who calls himself a skeptic, said hearing the voice has made him a believer.
“The Spirit of John Lennon” is being done without the knowledge or consent of Lennon’s estate or his widow Yoko Ono, who declined comment. Her longtime friend and spokesman Elliot Mintz has called the entire exercise “tacky, exploitative and far removed” from the icon’s way of life.
“A pay-per-view seance was never his style,” said Mintz.
24 April 2006, on 1:56 pm
*lol* This is too rich! I bet I know what Lennon’s “spirit” says – something along the lines of “give peace a chance” and “love is all there is” – and I’m not charging a dime to spread that knowledge (yes, star, a pox on these accursed in-my-case-agnostic morals)!
Now, doesn’t calling a particular segment of white noise a “Class A EVP” sound exactly like something out of “Ghostbusters?”
24 April 2006, on 2:07 pm
Eve – These people’s lives must be really dull and in need of some excitement or something. They want this eeebie jeebie stuff to be true so badly that they actually convince themselves to believe it.
As for this guy: Producer Paul Sharratt, who heads Starcast Productions and who calls himself a skeptic, said hearing the voice has made him a believer.
He is full of bullcrap! “Skeptic” my ass. Money-grubbing exploiter is more like it!
24 April 2006, on 2:08 pm
How can people fall for this shit?
24 April 2006, on 2:17 pm
I spit on these people for defiling Lennon’s memory like this.
Lennon the freethinker:
http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/1009a-almanac.htm
On 4 March 1966 The Evening Standard published an interview in which Lennon said,
“Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first-rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
The US press took the quote and ran with it. Radio stations, especially in the South and in the Midwest, gave Beatles music the Dixie Chicks treatment — they stopped the music; there were death threats; albums were burned en masse. A Cleveland clergyman (Thurman H. Babbs) threatened his congregation with excommunication should they listen to the Beatles. The Ku Klux Klan burned the Beatles in effigy. Pressed to make amends for offending an all-powerful deity, Lennon told reporters in Chicago,
“I’m not saying that we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. … I wasn’t saying whatever they’re saying I was saying. I’m sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don’t know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I’m sorry.”
International reaction was just as intemperate: Beatles were banned from the airwaves in Spain and Holland. The Vatican, never missing an opportunity to display its lack of a sense of humor and its grasp of passé jargon, commented, “[T]he protest the remark raised showed that some subjects must not be dealt with lightly and in a profane way, not even in the world of beatniks.” But Lennon survived the outrage.
What did he really think of religion? When Lennon made the Jesus remark he was 25 years old. He never really bought into Christian dogma, but he was not an Atheist. With his sentimental respect for “the basic things [Jesus] laid down about love and goodness,” he embraced a vague spirituality, instead. His mature lyrics demonstrate this clearly. In a 1970 song called “God,” Lennon wrote,
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
I don’t believe in magic…
I don’t believe in Bible…
I don’t believe in Jesus…
I don’t believe in Buddha…
I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that’s reality
And, in the song, “I Found Out” (1970)
…There ain’t no Jesus gonna come from the sky
Now that I found out I know I can cry
Old Hare Krishna got nothing on you
Just keep you crazy with nothing to do
Keep you occupied with pie in the sky
There ain’t no guru who can see through your eyes
And, finally, in the title song for his 1971 album, Imagine,
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
24 April 2006, on 2:18 pm
My youngest brother and his wife went to San Diego a few years ago and what did they do? They spent their WHOLE ENTIRE TIME going to “haunted” houses! That was the sightseeing they wanted to do. I asked what else they did and that was it. Then he tried to convince me that there was a spook that chased them out of one of the houses they were in. The xians in my family ALL believe in ghosts, haunted houses and stuff. I guess that makes sense since xianity is all about zombies and demons and supernatural entities, etc.
24 April 2006, on 2:35 pm
I meant “love is all you need.”
Ramen, Sean!
star, I personally love “haunted” houses, but mostly for the tales behind the “spookings” – and that’s not all I’d do on a tour somewhere I’d never been before. If someone were to offer me a million dollars to spend the night in one, it would be the easiest million I’d ever make in my life (naturally, I’d take the dare).
I happen to work in a building with a reputation of being haunted (it used to be a funeral home) – several of my current co-workers claim to have had “experiences” – but despite working all by myself often late into the night, nothing even remotely inexplicable has ever happened to me. When I tell this to my “believer” co-workers, they claim that I need to be “open,” “aware,” and “sensitive” to such things to experience them – at which point I laugh derisively, of course. I guess this means I’m immune to demons as well.
24 April 2006, on 2:47 pm
When I tell this to my “believer” co-workers, they claim that I need to be “open,” “aware,” and “sensitive” to such things to experience them
They are just proving that they choose to believe in this crap to add excitement to their dreary lives or whatever… and want you to be as gullible as they are!
My husband worked in his uncle’s funeral home when he was a teenager. He would be there late into the evening all by himself in the basement with “the bodies”…ooooooooo. He said sometimes his mind would play tricks on him, but he was smart enough to know even at that young age that to believe in spooks was not rational.
24 April 2006, on 3:26 pm
Ramen, star, and good for your husband! So much of what everyone calls “inexplicable” has perfectly logical, rational explanations if only people greeted their “experiences” with more curiosity and skepticism. My more superstitious colleagues have wondered aloud how I can stand being here alone with all the sounds, possible spooks, etc. I tell them the vast majority of the sounds are caused by things like temperature changes causing contractions in wood, foundations settling, drafts, and so on, to the point where any supernatural force would have to *really* put on a show to catch *my* attention – and besides, there’s more to fear from the living, anyway.
24 April 2006, on 4:02 pm
This doesn’t surprise me one iota. I found myself thoroughly depressed the other day after CNN did an 8 minute report on exorcism. One third of what used to be a decent middle of the road news program (now with regular religious advertising) is spewing nonsense. “The Marching Morons” has come true; if you have not read this classic short story it is by CM Kornbluth and really applies to the current situation.
24 April 2006, on 6:06 pm
[...] Following in the footsteps of stardust1954’s “ghostly” lead, I looked up something I remembered seeing a preview for on TV just recently. [...]
24 April 2006, on 7:00 pm
As long as there are idiots who claim something is real, there will be even bigger idiots who believe them…
25 April 2006, on 3:42 am
As a huge fan of Lennon (the best Beatle and one of the most profound musicians ever) I am most upset by this travesty – and yes this is a travesty. John Lennon wrote and sang “Imagine” and now they are trying to degrade his personhood and his public belief – or rather disbelief – with such perverse and arcane nonsense. If ever there were such a thing as blasphemy surely this is it.