Ghosts of Louisiana

Ghost Website Fallacies-http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/

Emotional Appeal: On the home page of the website, it states “Alas, the cast photo for the television show that almost was…” This is an attempt to appeal to the audience through making them feel bad because the group didn’t get a television show, but it also shows the fact that the group is good enough to almost get a show. http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/index.html

Appeal to Force/Fear: When looking at the Types of Hauntings page, the opening paragraph states: “They can run the gamut from the benign, which can still be frightening, to the more extreme examples of elemental and demonic hauntings.” This appeals to people’s fear of being “haunted by a demon,” thus ushering in the need for someone to call a ghost-hunting crew. http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/page5.html

Post Hoc: When looking at the Types of Hauntings page, the entire page uses the Post Hoc Fallacy by stating that since once thing or set of things happen, then there must be a haunting occurring. After this, the site then continues to narrow down the type of haunting that must be occurring. http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/page5.html

Poisoning the Well: When looking at the EVP’s page (and barely being able to understand what most of them were trying to say) I came to the last EVP from an insane asylum. This is supposedly says “I need to sell another cat.” The commentary of the audio piece states, “It's a strange phrase and we puzzled over what it might mean for some time before realizing that this was an insane asylum! Not everything heard in this place is going to make sense!” In a sense, this “poisons the well,” especially for skeptics visiting the site that thinks that none of this makes sense anyways. http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/page2.html

Anecdotal Fallacy/Misleading Vividness: When looking at both the Ghost Photography and Ghost Video pages, the photos and videos “highlight” ghosts and paranormal activity in both. These images, however, look like total bullcrap and could totally have been photo-shopped. Even better, when the group was picking out the “ghosts” in the photos and videos, they drew on the images to make them more clear, they are the biggest stretches I have ever seen when it comes to using images as evidence. http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/page3.html http://www.ghostsoflouisiana.com/page6.html