https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2 Paranormal & Pseudoscience en-us 2018-03-06 01:46:18 UTC 2023-02-16 01:49:37 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Bigthunderstorm.png sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238423111 By Samantha Dean, working individually.

Background image from this site.]]> 2018-03-06 01:50:21 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238423111 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424291 2018-03-06 01:55:47 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424291 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424323 2018-03-06 01:55:56 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424323 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424347 2018-03-06 01:56:07 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424347 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424385 2018-03-06 01:56:17 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424385 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424414 2018-03-06 01:56:24 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424414 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424451 2018-03-06 01:56:34 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424451 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424508 2018-03-06 01:56:50 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424508 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424539 2018-03-06 01:56:59 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424539 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424588 2018-03-06 01:57:12 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424588 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424665 Answers to the reflective discussion questions.]]> 2018-03-06 01:57:32 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/238424665 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564024 Taken from this site.
This is a photograph that was taken the night of the paranormal investigation that was set up by a television station who invited many different mediums and psychics in hopes of catching something supernatural on camera. On the left, just above the bannister in the doorway, there is a boy's head who is speculated to be the spirit of the murdered John DeFeo. A red flag for this image is Confirmation Bias as this was taken in the home where the boy was murdered, the young girl who lived there said she had an invisible friend who played with her, and upon seeing this image later said that the boy looked like her playmate - with all of this information it is easy to play into what could already be believed about this home. A reason for belief for this photograph is Unexplained because there were apparently no children present at all during the investigation when the picture was taken and there is no logical explanation why there should be a child in the picture, leaving the mind open to draw its own conclusions. Though there are photographs available from the same roll of the images taken before and after this one, I do believe that this may have been altered in some way. It would have been hard to do since applications such as Photoshop did not exist back then but they did have other ways of tricking cameras.]]> 2018-03-31 01:08:24 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564024 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564100 Taken from this site.
This is an image of the Amityville house taken the night when the DeFeo bodies were found after Ronald DeFeo Jr had run into a bar claiming that he had come home to find his family shot. A red flag associated with this event is Red Herring as Ronald DeFeo Jr used the claims of his family having mafia connections to attempt to distract the police from pointing the finger to him as a suspect. A reason for belief associated with this event would be Simplicity and/or Agenticity as it would be much simpler to believe that some supernatural being made Ronald DeFeo Jr kill his family rather than try to make sense of someone just murdering their entire family while they slept. There are many theories out there about what happened that night, the most recent being that the daughter Dawn DeFeo had murdered the family and Ronald Jr had murdered her when he saw what she had done, another being that Dawn and Ronald Jr had conspired to kill their family together with people assuming that she was the dark demon who handed him the gun; however, the evidence is still incomplete as there is no explanation as to how or why the family was able to sleep through several gun shots.]]> 2018-03-31 01:10:34 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564100 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564172 Taken from this site.
This is an image of the famous facade of the Amityville house which has since been altered. A red flag associated with this house is Confusion of Correlation with Causation - due to the events that have unfolded in it, people have now come to assume that the house is haunted and is the reason why horrific things have happened rather than just having unfortunate events occur within it. It just so happened that Ronald DeFeo Jr snapped and murdered his family in the home, and even if playing devil's advocate and saying that there really was a haunting there, it could have been due to the theory of George Lutz taking part in the occult. A reason for belief associated with the home would be Agenticity because it is a common belief that some invisible entity cause terrible things to happen in the home. The DeFeo murders are, in my opinion, rather straightforward; however, the haunting of the Lutz family has plenty of missing/incomplete information (such as why they did not call a plumber to discover why their toilets were turning black), the motivation is seemingly to make money off exploiting the rumours of the paranormal experiences that Ronald DeFeo Jr was claiming, and many people are biased in favour of believing the Lutz family because of how they play on the emotions of others, claiming that they had to leave their home with only the things on their back and never return.]]> 2018-03-31 01:11:45 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564172 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564201 This website is dedicated to the house, that is now famously known as the Amityville Horror house, and to the events that transpired there. The red flag Appeal to Authority is absolutely apparent on the site as there are multiple interviews with several different people and copies of case files on the events of the home, and the red flag Confirmation Bias is relevant as when reading the page for the hauntings there are no links or information about how or why the Amityville Haunting could be false, making it a site for people to find information that they already believe. Ideology, a reason for belief, is clear on the site as there are multiple mentions of religion, exorcising and cleansing of the home, and the idea that there was a demon in the home (demons are a religious belief). This website is missing information (how the Lutz family met with DeFeo's attorney who confirmed facts that only the police would know) and is missing any sort of credentials to show that it is an authoritative source on the subject.]]> 2018-03-31 01:12:50 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564201 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564217 This website was created and is maintained by Ric Osuna and is dedicated to disproving the paranormal events that are said to have taken place at the Amityville house with pages for the DeFeo murders, the Lutz haunting and other theories. Confirmation Bias is a red flag on this website, only giving one side of the story and not reporting the facts in an unbiased way, allowing for the readers to read only what they want to. Another red flag is Red Herring, with many of the "disproving" claims to be about an apparent Indian burial ground being the reason for any haunting rather than focusing on whether the hauntings actually occurred. A reason for belief on this website is Patternicity  from the writer of the website attempting to find meaning in seemingly innocent things to support conspiracy theories. Another reason for belief is Emotional Connection since the writer uses Ronald DeFeo Jr's account of what had happened as facts, appealing to the sense of frustration and loss rather than logic, rather than police records. Though I appreciate the skepticism apparent on the site, the motivation for all of the website is to promote the writer's book, The Night the DeFeos Died, which is mostly based on the word of Ronald DeFeo Jr. The writer is clearly biased in favour of the person whose story he used for his book. As much as I would like to take this source as credible, it is flawed with conspiracy theories and emotion coming through the writing.]]> 2018-03-31 01:13:19 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564217 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564237 This is an archived version of George Lutz's Amityville Truth website, since the "official Amityville Horror website" is now taken down, which has articles, interviews, images, and more to support evidence that the Amityville Haunting did occur. A red flag on this website is clearly a type of Proof by Verbosity - though the information is not being spoken out loud the amount of information being given on the website is overwhelming, though not necessarily credible. Again, Confirmation Bias appears on this website as there is only one side to the story given - that the hauntings did occur and anyone who says otherwise should be dismissed. A reason for belief on this website is Agenticity, believing that something invisible and supernatural was able to cause all of the terrors that are being claimed to have happened. This website is obviously biased in favour of George Lutz's story and the motivation of the website was to try to validate his tales.]]> 2018-03-31 01:13:56 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564237 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564254 This is a video documentary about the events that took place in the Amityville house, the DeFeo murders and Lutz family, and the media frenzy that followed it including interviews with Ronald DeFeo Jr, George Lutz, Lorraine Warren and more. An example of the red flag Confusion of Correlation with Causation would be when the Lutz family claims that one of their windows opens on its own due to a haunting, but a journalist proves that the window opens seemingly on its own when stepping on a loose floorboard that causes the improperly set counterweights for the window to open it; whereas another red flag, Confirmation Bias, is shown when the Lutz family takes advantage of the mystery surrounding the DeFeo murders and Ronald Jr claiming a black demon handed him the gun, so the family claims several paranormal events occur knowing that there is already a predisposition to the paranormal for the house. A reason for belief in the haunting of the Amityville house would be Agenticity due to many people assuming some invisible demonic or ghostly entities caused the events to unfold, along with the reason for belief Perception and Observation because when the book "The Amityville Horror: A True Story" is published with a picture the daughter drew of the demonic pig that looked into her window at night the neighbours of the Amityville house see the picture and say that it's clearly their cat which Ronald Jr would always call, "the pig," because it was fat. I feel this documentary actually does a decent job exploring both sides of the stories, though I do believe the motivation of the documentary is to exploit the very same media frenzy that it criticizes. ]]> 2018-03-31 01:14:39 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564254 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564268 This is another documentary about the Amityville haunting, describing the events of the DeFeo murders, the Lutz events, and the events afterwards. A few red flags becoming glaringly obvious from this video: Red Herring, when the narrator begins discussing how little the Lutz family had to gain from "ruining their reputation" for telling their story and how they could not have made the story up to get out of their mortgage that they could not afford because they had not even made a mortgage payment yet, another Red Herring when discussing Daniel Lutz's recent revelations saying that he must not be lying because George Lutz had abused him so he would not corroborate the story unless it was true; Appeal to Authority when discussing the court transcript from Ronald DeFeo Jr's case and saying that a doctor saying they were mystified that the family was able to be murdered and not be woken by the gun shots; Mystical Energy when talking about George Lutz and his potential dabbling in the occult, letting some bad energy into the home to begin the events. Reasons for belief apparent in this video are Emotional Connection when talking about how little the Lutz family had, how it had affected them, and generally appealing to the viewer's sympathetic side to try to blur a feeling of sadness with logic; Unexplained when discussing how George and Kathy Lutz are now dead and therefore we will never know the real answers to what happened in the home, making the viewer believe that what happened has no real explanation and they are to come up with their own conclusion. This video is limited in that it is giving false information (the video states that the Lutz family put up the "High Hopes" sign in front of the house because they were hopeful about them home when it was really the DeFeos' sign), the video is biased in that the narrator continuously presents their opinions as facts (the Lutz family would never make up this type of story since it ruined their reputations), it is missing information (George and Kathy Lutz had met with Ronald DeFeo's attorney, Weber, and learned facts that they later used in their story), and the motivation of the video is to promote the new Amityville movie, Amityville: The Awakening.]]> 2018-03-31 01:15:12 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564268 sdeanlit https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564288 This is an interview with George and Kathy Lutz, and actor James Brolin, on the Amityville haunting. Red flags are very apparent in this video, such as Red Herring when asked about why they did not call a plumber to investigate the problem with their toilets (the china of the bowl turning black) and they turn the subject to the colour of the water in the bowl, the changing colour of the china, and a slime-like substance on it to distract from the fact that they did not ask a plumber to come and figure it out; Appeal to Authority is relevant because they had the actor James Brolin, who played George Lutz in the Amityville Horror movie, saying that he believed the Lutz family's story and that he was scared of it. Reasons for belief in this video were Emotional Connection when George and Kathy were attempting to make viewers feel bad for them and believe them when talking about how much they loved that home and did not want to leave it; Simplicity is apparent when discussing the validity of their claims and they offer up very quickly that they had taken a polygraph test and passed, giving the audience an easy answer to believe (that they were correct and being truthful because they had passed a polygraph test); Agenticity is a very obvious reason for belief as the whole story of what happened is based on the belief that something supernatural, an invisible being was terrorizing the family. The motivation of this video is clearly to promote the Amityville Horror movie that was being released - a movie of which the Lutz family would get a percentage of the profit.]]> 2018-03-31 01:15:41 UTC https://padlet.com/sdeanlit/Assignment_2/wish/247564288