This isn't anything obscure.In fact, this is one of the more popular urban legends around about paranormal occurences being caught on film. This particular legend has been debunked numerous times in the past by fans, photography experts, and even the actors and the director himself. However, people will believe what they want to believe regardless of what you tell them but a little background on this case...
The lurker in the window
Direct your attention to the photo above. As you can see in the screencap, there's Ted Danson and his onscreen mom holding an adorable little critter. Also clearly visible is the other little critter lurking amongst the drapes. Judging from the height of the figure, it's rather short and seem to resemble a young boy, possibly around 13-14 years of age. There are several variants to the legend but the most common one (search online and you'll see) is of a 9-year old boy commiting suicide ala shotgun. The variants go on to detail how the parents of the boy moved out of the apartment where the movie was eventually shot and the footage captured. It goes on to detail how the mother sued the studio for refusing to remove the image from the film. There's even a version where the mother goes insane upon seeing the image of her son in his burial clothes and had to be confined to a mental institution, where she remains to this day....OOooOoO...
The Cardboard truth
The truth however, is a lot less exciting. The figure was actually a cardboard cut-out that Ted Danson's character kept in his apartment (apparently, he was a narcissist). The cut-out is even seen again later in the movie as shown above. In addition, the interior shots were taken in a soundstage in Toronto so there was no 'apartment' for a ghost to haunt. You would think that this would be the end of this particular legend but some people just won't let a good story lie.
Now almost 20 years on, we have paranormal 'experts' stepping forward to resurrect this ghost of movie's past. A short bio of these experts :
"Dr. Dave Oester co-founded the International Ghost Hunters Society in 1996, which is widely accepted as the largest organization of the genre on the Internet. Along with his companion Sharon Gill, he travels across US in his RV to visit and investigate sites of alleged haunting. Author of around 20 books and lecturing all over the country, they even put together self-taught Ghost Hunting programs"
Considered an authority on these matters, he revealed in an interview that he felt that the boy in the movie was genuine. He mentioned that Hollywood producers in those days didn't know how ghosts appear and what forms they manifest in. Lacking this knowledge, the producers would, quite naturally, write the whole thing off as a case of mistaken identity. Talk about being lost in your own world! It saddens me that this so-called authority would weaken the stance of paranormality in the eyes of the world like this. By being so firm and resolute about something that was proven to be wrong, he has given skeptics greater ammunition to shoot paranormality down. It's similar to crapckpot preachers and televangelists zealously defending 'miracles' that were staged to defame them except in this case, it's self-inflicted. Sigh...yes, my face is in my hands now.
"In 1994, Christopher Wilson confessed on his deathbed that the fabled picture taken by his grandfather Robert Wilson, in 1934, of a creature sticking its head out of Loch Ness was a hoax. The confession was subsequently itself called a hoax, and the story calling the confession a hoax was hinted to be one itself. Which means the Loch Ness monster legend is needed alive and well, and remains just as fascinating. The question towards the "Three Men and a Baby" ghost boy isn't whether it is true, nor if you believe in it. The question is what do you WANT to believe in, and WHY"
This excerpt illustrates my point quite clearly. People will believe whatever they want to believe, regardless of whatever evidence you present to them. You may shake them for a while but eventually, they will pump themselves up internally to either develop a spanking new, equally absurd belief or rationalise things such that they were never wrong in the first place. As for me,i'm just here for a meaty story. While this has been debunked, there are others out there that might defy all explanations. I'm still here and i'm still looking...
Aaron blogged at 8:35 PM
Thursday, March 16, 2006
ONCE UPON A TIME oh gawd! It's been almost 6 months since i last posted anything. If anyone is still reading this, bless your little hearts for even bothering to check on me. Unfortunately for you, this is a pretty much a no-substance post but i just couldn't hold it in.I gotta let it out!
At the moment, there's this Mandarin show featuring in the local cineplexes called "The Heirloom". It's a creepy flick about a house with a haunted 4th floor where an entire family committed suicide. I think you can see the creepy potential in that theme...but anyway, so my bro goes to watch this show and later that night, he comes into my room at about 2am and casually mentions to me that he went to watch the movie with a bunch of friends. Naturally, i asked him how was it. He ranted a little about how crap the show was and that it was a big letdown but then, he told me what proved to be the biggest hair-raiser i've heard in quite a while...
While watching the show, certain events on the screen triggered a memory in him of a time when we were still staying in our house in Taman Megah. Now this house was really haunted (i'll tell you the tale at a later date if you haven't heard it) and both my bro and i were staying in the same room. We were about 7-10 yrs old at the time so memories tend to be a little fuzzy. However, he began to recount this time where we were both sleeping late one night and for one reason or another, he woke up and sat up in bed. He then looked over to where i was sleeping and for some strange reason, he couldn't recognise me. At this point of the story, i asked him "you mean you couldn't recognise me?" and he replied "It was not that i couldn't recognise you...it didn't look like you". I looked at him for a few moments and he looked both puzzled and perturbed. You can imagine the mental discord when you recall something and it's both eerie and disturbing. We talked a little more about it before he went off to bed and left me alone with my thoughts. What exactly happened there? It could be any one of these possibilities:
1) He was groggy and with his brain so sleepy, he could have seen a pink hippo for all we know 2) His new 'memory' is actually a mental construct prompted by a hyperactive imagination inspired by on-screen images 3) It wasn't me that he saw but the 'little kid' that lurked in that house and was snuggling up to me (brrr)
Now, i know my brother and he's not prone to making stuff up. He's a practical guy and not one to sensationalise anything nor quickly believe in the paranormal without sufficient evidence. For him to voice this out didn't mean that he believed it was a ghost or a demonic manifestation.It just meant that he saw something he couldn't explain. I can't explain it but i have my suspicions...let's just say that somethings are better left unexplored and this avenue is another one i would like to relegate to "campfire stories".
