Talk:The Bélmez Faces

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article falls under the scope of WikiProject Paranormal, which aims to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to the paranormal on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the attached article, help with current tasks, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and discussions.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.

Contents 1 under the kitchen floor 2 Another Article Is Listed Here 3 Rewritten article 4 Citation needed?

[edit] under the kitchen floor

Not sure if this article would still be considered a stub, but it does need elaboration. There are several accounts of what was found under the kitchen floor, and most disagree. In contrast to the "Christians killed by Moors" version,

• a cemetery attached to a medieval monastery that once occupied the site
• heretics/witches interred in a mass grave by the Inquisition
• a forgotten ancient burial ground
• the victims of a murderer who once lived in the house

I think someone has got to have a definitive answer to what was down there; public records and local history would discount the more fanciful interpretations. Also, images of the faces have been widely cirulated. If PD, we should have at least one here. Canonblack 13:49, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another Article Is Listed Here

http://paranormal.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.leftfield%2Dpsi.net/ghosts/belmez.html

[edit] Rewritten article

I have rewritten a (previously) POV article. The previous incarnation of this article leaned toward the paranormal interpretation disregarding all data from the various skeptical investigations.

By the way, in my user page images of the cement blocks of the faces called "La Pava" and "El Pelao" can be seen at the background of a photo that a neighbor of María Gómez took me. "La Pava" is the one embedded in the wall. The small photo above it is how the same face looked originally in the early 1970s. —Cesar Tort 10:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citation needed?

Re Rockpocket’s request in edit summary for citation in this paragraph —:

an advantage of this and other cases of ostensible thoughtographic appearances is that, as the paranormal interpretation is falsifiable, it is not a pseudoscientific hypothesis. ^{[citation needed]}

—the article merely tries to convey the well-known fact that parapsychology is pseudoscientific because, as readers of Skeptical Inquirer know, “the most common characteristic of a pseudoscience is the unfalsifiable hypothesis”. Parapsychology is pseudo since the anecdotes of ghosts, etc, are not falsifiable. But fixed “phantom portraits” such as those at Bélmez are an exception to the rule! The paranormal claims are falsifiable, and have been already refuted. Therefore, though the paranormal hypothesis has been proven false, it’s not a pseudoscientific one (basic Karl Popper stuff about falsifiability). I don’t think we need all of this Popperian reasoning in the article. —Cesar Tort 15:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The standard answer to such a response to a citation request is: "if it is a 'well known fact', it should be simple to source per WP:V." It reads like reasoning to me (albeit perfectly logical reasoning) and our job is not to reason, but to report the reasoning of others. Rockpocket 03:24, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I see the WP policy. I’ve added citation. —Cesar Tort 06:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Its a nice article. Good work. Rockpocket 06:06, 17 October 2006 (UTC)