Post-Halloween Special: Deconstructing the Human Belief in the Paranormal & Supernatural

Do you believe in the paranormal/supernatural? A good majority of humanity does. However, seemingly unexplainable phenomenon can actually be shed light on with a little science; those that cant be simply means that man has yet to discover the answer to. Man of the past believed that the world was flat, or that the heart was the source of intelligence. Science, even if it took that long, proved those beliefs erroneous.

Man’s very short history is a testament to mans will to survive in a world full of beasts much more superior to him. Man do not have fangs, claws, wings, tail, etc. but he has a superior brain. With his superior brain man learned from his environment, evolved, studied and started to explain various phenomenon, and from all these experiences developed technology which made him king of the planet.

In this developmental process, superstitions and religions took form. Man had to make sense of his environment. He needed an explanation why things are the way they are. Religion started to take root because of mans fear of the unknown and the need for a higher, divine being to look over his daily life. Thus, hand in hand, religion, civilization, and science developed. The priestly order that studied the skies in search of the abode of the gods gave rise to astrology, which gave birth to astronomy; Taoist sages/hermits seeking immortality started alchemy, which led to chemistry.

Without a doubt, the most celebrated facet of philosophies and religions is about life and death. There are various belief systems that have developed in different cultures, and they give us a good idea of why early man believed things the way they do.

Why do we cover our mouths when we sneeze and why do other people tell us God bless you? The modern answer would be to stop germs from spreading. But then the concept of germs is yet unknown in the past, a time when people believed that one should cover his mouth so his soul can not leave the body! And people who witnessed it says GBU since the person gets to keep his soul.

The original comment was, Jupiter bless you during the Roman times.

Why do people believe in ghouls and vampires? Why do we wear black when someone dies? Why do we put a tombstone on a grave? When modern man tries to answer these questions he tends, most of the time, to answer from his own perspective, not considering the context and eras from which these practices came from.

At a time when medicine was not yet as sophisticated as it is today, doctors of the day made countless erroneous clinical death diagnoses, declaring otherwise still-alive patients to be dead who end up being buried alive. Naturally, when the hapless patients come to, they would frantically claw their way out of the sealed wooden coffin and usually expired even before they can totally get out of the grave, many times leaving a hand sticking out of the freshly dug grave ala Return of the Living Dead, or at least disturbing the grave just enough to make observers fearful and in a state of panic. So how do you prevent the undead from coming back to the surface world? You put a heavy tombstone over its grave!

Other times, graves were disturbed because of natural forces, such as earthquakes, or of man-centered activities, such as exhuming remains. When people of the past saw well preserved bodies, they would postulate that these were the undead when in fact, these bodies would have been naturally mummified because of a lack of moisture or some other factors. In other cases, they found corpses with blood on their mouths and therefore concluded that they were vampires. But the truth of the matter is, the corpse was just in a state of decomposition, with various chemical processes happening within the body.

Archaeological finds have shown that corpses had been buried with their heads severed, a stake driven to the heart, and/or stones inserted into the mouths. These show the real fear of people of vampires and ghouls and various ways they have developed to prevent them from rising. There are even graves where the remains were buried face down, so that they could not dig themselves out of the grave.

In the Medieval times, the nobility would often marry within their family to retain the purity of the blood and to retain power and wealth within the clan. This practice has also been documented in other cultures, particularly in ancient Egypt. Such inbreeding produces offsprings with deformities, perhaps a pale skin which leads to aversion to sunlight and perhaps remedied by Medieval doctors by the drinking of blood. Any Medieval peasant who saw such a sight would have started the rumors of the existence of a vampire.

And finally, people of certain cultures in the past believed that upon death the soul left the body and looked for another body to inhabit. Thus, people color themselves black so the soul of the departed doesnt see them. Over time this act of painting the skin black has evolved into just wearing black when someone dies.* ( James U. Sy, Jr. with inputs from Gil Alfredo B. Severino, MAEd)