Ghost Story Fallacies: German Church Road, Burr ridge IL - Jared Guy

 

Fallacy	Definition	Example
To quoque	Inconsistent with the arguments conclusion	In the haunting section it states that when experiencing the paranormal effect, you can hear the car peeling off, in another haunting experience they claim that a ghost car drove past them with no sound. It claims the ghost car makes noise in one claim then none in the other.
Appeal to ignorance	Something is true because there is no evidence for it	In one of the testimonies in the haunting experience a couple claims to have seen a “phantom” car pass by them. When they asked a policeman if they had seen a car drive by, he claimed he didn’t see anything. They then concluded it was a ghost car.
To quoque	Inconsistent with the arguments conclusion	The haunting experiences have seemed to have stopped since the structuring of the new subdivision, “paranormal activity usually picks up when areas are changed structurally.”
Tu quoque	Inconsistent with the arguments conclusion	In a haunting experience, a group of teenagers claimed they would visit “spooky places” and one of these spooky places was a house that supposedly two girls were murdered in, but in the case report it mentions nothing about the girls being murdered in a house.
Hasty Generalization	A conclusion is drawn from too small of a sample of evidence.	In the haunting experience in the row above, the person whose testimony this is says he found out a year later, that the girls of the murder case were dumped on the same road as the house they went into. He presumed that this had to be the house they were murdered in due to association.
Hasty generalization	A conclusion is drawn from too small of a sample of evidence.	In the same haunting experience of the two previous rows, the teenagers claimed to have gone into this house, where “the lights still worked,” and then they saw two figures chasing them to their car. How do they know this wasn’t someone’s property, somebody had to be paying the light bill, those two figures could have been owners of the property and not ghost.
Tu quoque	Inconsistent with the arguments conclusion	The teenagers that went into the “spooky place” claimed “the lights still worked,” if they had the lights on, how could they not make out the dark figures.
Bandwagon	A popular idea is correct	Such a big case, and the blog claims that “for people living nearby it was a common occurrence.” Common occurrence plus the two haunting experiences in the post. This is a well-known ghost tale of the town
Wishful thinking	Something is true because I want it to be.	These reports and hauntings were very high before a new subdivision was built in the area, could these stories have been driven by boredom and wanted some action in their boring little neighborhood