The Spielberg Institute?

Steven Spielberg is said to be planning a social network for fans of the paranormal. TechCrunch, a site which reviews new Internet companies, has been told this by 'multiple sources'. The network will be for users who've had, or who are interested in sharing, paranormal and extraterrestrial experiences. It may carry video clips of ghost and UFO investigations.

I don't know how reliable the report is, but it makes sense. As has been widely noted, a sci-fi-cum-paranormal element runs strongly through Spielberg's work: Close Encounters (1977), ET (1982) Poltergeist (1982), The Haunting (1999), the TV series Taken (2002), and The War of the Worlds (2005). Spielberg is also said to have had paranormal experiences himself.

But a film director wouldn't have to have a particular interest recognize that the paranormal is a smart subject to tackle, and easy to turn into big bucks. It taps into people's interest in the exotic and sensational, also the fascination with the occult, of which the conspiracy theory is a modern, secular manifestation - UFO cover-ups, Biblical codes, things that are not what they seem, etc, etc. 

Yet in real life the paranormal is not really as Spielberg depicts it. It just isn't as scary as people think. Poltergeist is effective entertainment, but that very extreme sort of entity-attack isn't typical of what witnesses report.

Nor are encounters with ghosts particularly scary. I'm thinking of the late nineteenth century case reported by the Society for Psychical Research, of a house in Cheltenham where a ghost appeared so often that she was treated as a sort of unofficial guest, seen by (I think) as many as eighteen different people (Proceedings 8, 1892, pp. 311-32). She didn't hurt anybody and people didn't run screaming in hysterics when they saw her. In fact they got used to her hanging around and then disappearing into thin air. As for all the stories described in the SPR's Phantasms of the Living, once you've read one you've pretty much read them all - person appears unexpectedly, person vanishes mysteriously, person turns out to have been dying in some distant location at the time.

What worries me about this project, if the reports are true, is that it will be a sort of oo-er fest, with people out-doing each other with bizarro stories. It's unlikely that the anecdotes will be corroborated in any meaningful way. The network will just end up creating a target for sceptics, who can quote from it to back up their argument about human credulity. It will be a centre for the sort of low-level babble which the Internet already seethes with, and just further entrench the paranormal as an artefact of the human imagination.

Perhaps I'm doing him an injustice and Spielberg plans to do this in an orderly and serious way. To judge by his work in recording reminiscences of Holocaust survivors, a project which came out of his work on Schindler's List, he might want to do something serious. In that case, I hope he's getting good advice from leading parapsychologists about how to make a social network effective, for instance by establishing rules about the minimum criteria for an anecdote to be accepted. 

Even so, aren't there better ways to make a contribution?  Parapsychology is a pitifully underfunded discipline, with a very tenuous presence in academia. A Hollywood mogul could use some of his wealth to create a new university institute, as the writer Arthur Koestler did at Edinburgh, enabling new research and graduate study. The Spielberg Institute has a good ring to it, and would be a fitting epitaph to a career largely built on the public appetite for all things paranormal.

That would be the obvious route, but for a film-maker of his genius there is another application: to make films that explore the paranormal not as scriptwriters imagine it but as it is experienced in real life. Just to take one example - and not necessarily the best -  I've often thought that the nineteenth century investigations of mediums by scientists offer fantastic opportunities in this regard. The combination of special effects and human sensitivity that Spielberg can uniquely create could really bring them to life: the extraordinary story of William Crookes and Florence Cook, for instance, or the equally astonishing events at the Villa Carmen in Algiers, where Charles Richet first encountered Marthe Beraud (later known as Eva C.) An entity like Florence Cook's 'Katie King', as she is described by Crookes, is already a sort of ET figure, a visitor from another world, exciting a gamut of emotions from wonder and friendship, to fear, ridicule and consternation.

To be sure, these subjects are hugely controversial and in lesser hands the result would probably be risible. But I can just about see Spielberg pulling them off. 

Comments

[Mark]

Well, if it helps, then I guess every little bit counts. What we really need, though, is a way to not just create groups that advocate the paranormal, but to force those who don't believe to at least give these ideas the time of day. Science is going to keep being plagued by people not looking at evidence that is there because of their prejudices until some (probably outside) group says to them, "Start being more open-minded, or you're all going to get your balls cut off." Okay, maybe not so extreme, but there needs to be some sort of real punishment for them (up to and including getting banned from the scientific community) if they refuse to be open-minded.

[Mickey D]

"I've often thought that the nineteenth century investigations of mediums by scientists offer fantastic opportunities in this regard. The combination of special effects and human sensitivity that Spielberg can uniquely create could really bring them to life"

The Scole Experiments would probably be the best subject for a Spielberg movie as it's a contemporary story with reliable living witnesses. I would imagine he would feel especially at home with the end of the Scole saga when the experiments were apparently stopped due to malicious extra terrrestrials making their presence felt.

[Veronica Keen]

Montague Keen died 4 years ago. I have tapes of him speaking clearly since he died, he has materialised, shook the hands and chatted to several people, it is all on tape, he gives scientific information etc. He intends to be filmed speaking in a univercity lab. with only scientists present, the web. www.montaguekeen.com

[Peter W.]

'The Scole Experiments would probably be the best subject for a Spielberg movie as it's a contemporary story with reliable living witnesses. I would imagine he would feel especially at home with the end of the Scole saga when the experiments were apparently stopped due to malicious extra terrrestrials making their presence felt'.

I strongly support the above quote, from "MICKEY".

Hence ~ there is an outline synopsis now winging its way directly to Steven Spielberg covering this very subject, as of 3.59 p.m., this afternoon.