Bettyjoe, a distinguished Times Writer, reported a bizarre occurrence in the Thursday, March 21, 2002 issue. Not in offence to the writer (I have read many of her articles and respect her style of writing), yet I cannot help but feel scepticism.
"I swear I saw a ghost," as quoted from her article. Before you read on, your view of this editorial depends on: do you believe in contact with the restless departed? Or do you find all this paranormal, deja vu type incidences to be the result of a jaded and ephemeral need for a false sense of security; that our deceased love ones are not that far beyond us? That they are trying to communicate to us, even in death?
A summarized definition of paranoia would be fear and terror, wary mistrust, suspicion, tendency to obsession and terror. So I ask you, is Bettyjoe's claim a figment of an overactive and obviously creative imagination, or is it possible that Whyville has experienced contact with the beyond?
"I was picking my nose (changing it, duh!) and when I was done I went to the Spin Speak. Then I decided it didn't look as good as I thought it would, so I went back to change it again. But half my face parts wouldn't load and they were invisible, I kept losing my cursor and then the destination slot on the bus changed baby blue and big. My own face and body kept popping in and out of the bus."(another quote from Bettyjoe???s article)
If you will permit me, I will tell you what I think. Bettyjoe experienced her computer overloading. This could be due to the fact that Whyville is too much for her computer, or that she did not allow the appropriate time for her computer to load, in her haste to fix her face. What she would have seen was that her face would consist of grey blocks, and given a few minutes, it would slowly evolve into her actual face parts. On the right side of her screen, the face parts could have been, as she said, "invisible", or also thick grey blocks with no apparent shape but a rectangle or square.
At times, when I had too many things going on (ex. msn, icq, morpheus, Whyville) at the same time, my face parts did not show up at all. The blocks were pure white. At other times, the number 6 would appear on the tab of my internet page (where you can click back/ forward). Some of you may be thinking, "SIX IS THE DEVIL'S NUMBER!!!" As you can see, such things excite people, and that's why there are articles, movies and TV shows all about it.
People like to learn about what scares them, what they can't understand. Perhaps they would like to be the select few to have exclusive contact with "them" (the dead or devil and what not), much like Madam Cleo, the TV physic, who feels vibes and tells us our future or can read into our lives. This could be referred to as a having a "third eye".
"When I tried to go to City Hall, none of the faces would load and if and when they did a black or sometimes baby blue squares surrounded them."
I don't know about the rest of you Whyvillians, but I have also experienced having this. As I said, it's because the computer can't handle all of the details that it has to load in order for the Whyville page to come up. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying this because I actually think that I experienced some kind of ghostly thing. That's not logical, seeing that shortly after these boxes showed up around the people and I continued to go to and from rooms, a box popped up saying that there was an error and I have to close my internet or restart my computer.
"First I saw some of the buildings from Sector Y floating in the air near the airplane. Then I saw buildings popping up all over the place. Finally I saw the old stand where the Times building used to be (or at least where I heard it used to be, as I was not on at the time when it was in Whyville Square, but I have read archives about it). It was literally a newspaper stand!"
Okay, come on. Is it not true that some of this is pure fabrication, or even is it possible that all the images on her screen blurred together and Bettyjoe's sub-conscious mind convinced her to see what was not actually there? Or did it just sound good, more persuasive, realistic and probable to add in that she actually saw something that once existed "back in the day"?
From the moment I read Bettyjoe's article and began writing my own, I did not harbor the slightest doubt that what she experienced was not paranormal. Perhaps it is because I have experienced what she took as a frightening situation, when I see it as: my computer went screwy, I had too much on the go, and needed to give it a break.
In all fairness, we have seen two viewpoints of a certain situation; Bettyjoe's and my own, both from completely different perspectives and beliefs. It is up to you to draw your own conclusions.
GoT Ta JeT
- Liss22-
