I'd like to preface this by saying I'm not ridiculing anyone or trying to deny or disprove anyone's own claims, only give my own personal opinion of this subject, which I do not believe most people do intentionally, but is more an unconscious tendency that manifests subtly, creating the environment for this to take place.


I think the idea that children are sensitive or can see ghosts and such is imagination or misidentification and confusion on the part of the child (or adult), as well as the adults wanting to ascribe specialness to their child, and to also use their child as a conduit, to allow them to also believe in "magic" again, the paranormal.


They project this perception onto their child, until the child hears this enough and believes it or even starts to behave appropriately in a manner to be rewarded by the parent, by positive reinforcement and nurturing these "abilities", possibly even developing in the child a lifelong "gift" or idea that they can see and feel things, but which are actually not there at all, but is instead the wind, a draft, etc.


At the same time, regardless of their previous beliefs (though most were already inclined toward the mystical), the parents suddenly "rediscover" and "remember" old abilities they themselves "had", and could see and hear and feel spirits, and now can still do it "sometimes". Since the parent's genetics or psychic aura or something is allegedly transferred to offspring, that means not only is the child obviously a very special being, but that means the parent must be too!


In one example, a mother was carrying her 22 month old, which pointed at empty air and said "ghost", which the mom asked for her to repeat what she said, and the 22 month old said there was a ghost (according to the mother - though I'm skeptical on the clear and accurate speech of 22 month olds). We are not born knowing what ghosts are, or what significance they have or that they're unusual or break natural laws and established theories, or are a philosophical and religious hot button, so it is rather unlikely a child (especially ones so young) would "recognize" or understand a ghost if they saw one.


They most definitely couldn't know or use the correct traditional word, unless they have been raised, surrounded and influenced in an environment in which such things are talked about as factual or at least regularly, much the same way more religious Christian children might report "seeing angels", or earlier rural Europeans reported seeing fairies - it is part of the inherent condition and legend of the ambient culture, so it is incorporated into their belief system, expectations and personal symbolism.

Hahhaa, that is facepalmworthy. Although I know they sell them in some places, when you type Ouija into the search at Walmart.Com, you only get a book "The Most Dangerous Game", which I own and is the worst kind of religiously-fueled fearmongering. Baffling.

Product Description
Ouija Board has always been mysterious. It has always been mystifying. And now the OUIJA Board is glow in the dark! With 72 fun questions included, you'll never run out of things to ask. Who will call/text me next? Gather your friends around, draw a card, place your fingers on the planchette and ask your question. Concentrate very hard and watch as the answer is revealed in the message window. Make up your own questions, and let the OUIJA Board satisfy your curiosity in virtually endless ways. OUIJA Board will answer. It's just a game - or is it? Includes OUIJA Board, message indicator (planchette), card deck with 72 questions, carrying case with storage pockets and instructions.

Although they do seem to tend to cause hysterical reactions in people, especially children and teens, who apparently don't have the intellectual critical thinking skills or intent needed to approach it as an experiment for the mind and reasoning, it is still just an entertainment novelty (to be fair I can't say it is a game, as it has no real features of what we consider games) and functions on the almost never understood or accepted ideomotor principle. Saying they need to be removed because they cause problems is like saying the same for Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly or Risk, because those can lead to real life fights and bad feelings that can also last a long time and cause grudges.


When people get negative stuff and cursing and verbal abuse, which they are wont to do because that's the types of things that a lot of younger people or the very anxious manifest due to their immaturity, they become near basketcases, swear the Devil is trying to eat their soul, burn the board and never, ever touch it again and make it their mission in life to warn others away from the most dangerous game, relating their own bad first-hand "experience" as proof. None of these things has anything to do with the board itself but people's own tendencies and inclinations, and sometimes desires - they want to be scared, they want to scare, they feel guilty, they want to be mean to someone else, they want something out of this world to believe in - they get all these. They could just as easily print one out and use a CD to make one (my main sig has a page to do that), or build a radionics device out of an old TV knob, cereal box and copper wire, or even use a Scientology truthometer or whatever those ridiculous things are called.


I think the girls' version is a hilariously shrewd concept because those are where 90% of the base stories of horror come from, which only drum up yet more interest (even if it is seen by most as 'negative') and fascination with the Ouija as a forbidden "tool", because that's what kids do - what you tell them NOT to - and we don't necessarily outgrow that as adults.





I don't know who these people demanding the removal of boards, but I'd recommend they spend about fifteen minutes actually looking at the thing with a critical (not prejudiced from ignorance) eye and realize there's nothing "threatening" to it and if you blindfolded users, you'd get words about as coherent as most Youtube comments.

I know this is old and brief but I found it interesting nonetheless.

Recently released documents by the National Archives show that UFO sightings in the United Kingdom spiked in 1996: 609 that year, up from 117 the year before.

Source: http://scifiwire.com/2009/08/peak-uk-uf ... gs-coi.php

There's a good example, namely toys, of what I feel is at work, at least partially, with coulrophobia (the fear of clowns), as well as other non-human figures; the lack of visible emotions, and emulation of but not apparent member of the human race. The little known fear, automatonophobia, is the fear of any lifelike figures, usually humanoid, which are not human (ie. artificial; dolls, puppets, CGI characters). This is also part of another less clinical term, the Uncanny Valley, which also refers to the disquieting feeling people get when viewing human-like figures which are artificial and not actually human.

I personally believe these terms potentially extend to any moving or still lifelike figures, not just humanoid, such as large realistic toy dogs, rubber snakes and even figures that are vaguely human-like but which are obviously not human-like, such as animatronic bears or rats (like some restaurants have) or other animal or creature with exaggerated and obviously non realistic features. I also believe there is at least a correlation between these and fear of mascots (like the San Diego Chicken) and mostly concealing costumes which are out of the ordinary and non-human looking, and whose intentions, emotions and body language are unreadable, even though there is a human in them, such as Darth Vader, etc., which I believe then also includes and leads back to clowns and mimes, which again, are unpredictable because we can't "read" them. It is also hypothesized to be related to maskophobia,

Furthermore, I just did some more searching on the internet and found three MORE terms that I think relate to all this. Maskophobia is the fear of masks, specifically, usually horror masks but sometimes any, and can involve seeing them on others or wearing one. A caveat here is that Google only came back with about 70 matches in total, and not one of them from a site with any sort of obvious credentials or particular reliability, so I feel if this is a real fear, it is called something else more commonly. Well, speaking of that, I see now that maskaphobia gets about 500 results, and is listed as the fear of masks also. Again, I think this relates to obscuring human features and intent, making us instinctively wary of possible danger - coulrophobia sounds very close to this, as the paint also obscures, and I came across some writing that indicates fear of clowns is indeed a sub-category of these. Masklophobia is specifically the fear of mascots and most likely animatronic figures, basically any costumed character, usually large, as I mentioned above. To complicate matters, prosopeiophobia seems to be an overlap between the previous two phobias, as it is variably described as a fear of masks or mascots, but yields only 8 Google results, and absolutely no credible site with any significant information on the disorder.

Lastly, a new study has concluded that humans are not alone in this fear of lifelike figures, as they have discovered that monkeys also exhibit this same aversive behavior when confronted with obviously artificial monkey figures and faces, though they are okay with real or photo-realistic faces. This is curious to me, as I recall an experiment where scientists placed an obviously non-living object, which bore only a vague resemblance to a monkey, with hair or carpet placed over a heavy monkey-sized object and only a rudimentary angular face and features and eyes, into a cage with the real monkey's babies. Eventually the babies became accustomed to the fake monkey mother and clung to it and slept near it, apparently accepting it as a mothering figure, even though it looked or really even felt nothing like one, and obviously wasn't alive. These two experiments seem to be at odds with each other, which I think is quite interesting.

From Science Daily:

In the experiments, the monkeys, which normally coo and smack their lips to engage each other, quickly avert their glances and are frightened when confronted by the close-to-real images. When asked to peer at the less close-to-real faces and real faces, however, they viewed them more often and for longer periods.

Link: Science Daily

Obviously, with about five or six different terms for the fear of not-quite-human or normal creatures, this is, overall, a fairly widespread and encountered fear, though for the most part, finding these as true and severe phobias is not frequent, except for the fear of clowns, which is the most common specific phobia. No doubt about it, there are plenty of fears to choose from.

On masklophobia:

Mascots can inadvertently traumatize some children, and adults, too. Masklophobia, the fear of mascots, can result from children having a bad experience early on with a large, furry creature. Although it's not a text-book defined phobia, there are masklophobia discussion groups all over the Internet about the fear and loathing of these larger-than-life masked entertainers.

Link: Canada.com

On maskaphobia/maskophobia:

Maskaphobia, or fear of masks, is surprisingly common, especially among children. However, it is important to note that this fear is often a part of normal childhood development. Therefore, like most phobias, it is not diagnosed in children unless it persists for six months or longer.

Link: About: Phobias

On automatonophobia:

This fear can manifest in many ways. Some people are afraid only of wax figures, others of dolls. Some are unable to visit theme parks or local attractions, which frequently use moving humanoid figures called "audio animatronics" in their displays.

Link: About: Phobias

On the Uncanny Valley:

The uncanny valley hypothesis was introduced by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970. The "valley" refers to a dip in a graph that charts a human's positive reaction in response to an image on one axis and a robot's human-likeness on another. People like to study other human faces, and they also can enjoy scrutinizing countenances that clearly are not human, such as a doll's or a cartoon figure's. But when an image falls in between -- close to human but clearly not -- it causes a feeling of revulsion.

Link: Science Daily

Oh noes, I am going to poop on more parties!

Also, I facepalm in the general direction of these people who are pretty obviously attempting to proliferate this meme as real and established, but know full well it is neither. And as I've already plainly provided treatment of, there are no correlating "old" stories or myths, pre-2006, about Slender Man, anywhere in the world, under any name, unless you want to just start making mindlessly wide comparisons like "the ghost of Michael Jackson has been around for centuries, as evidenced by ghost sightings throughout history", because obviously, all ghost reports are about the ghost of Michael Jackson, even though he only recently died. Of course, it makes perfect sense...

While it really is a neat monster, and I can see why the guy won the contest, it is most definitely made up.


An explanation about this creation on Know Your Meme:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man

Read More...