Captain Bob Thread

C

chuck.drake

This thread is for sharing thoughts on what in fact Captain Bob may have experienced on that fateful day.

I will start.

In this case I may need to go with the simplest explanation which is that an apparition appeared to Captain Bob in the airport.
 
I agree. The only reasonable explanations are that he witnessed an apparition, is lying, or was hallucinating. I see no motive for lying other than to give people cause to believe that he's crazy (I give him credit for talking about the incident). A hallucination does not sound plausible to me based on the description, and even if it was, the fact that it occurred shortly after the death of his friend and during the time of transport of the coffin (if I read the investigation description correctly), that alone is interesting.

Cheers,
Bill
 
I agree. The only reasonable explanations are that he witnessed an apparition, is lying, or was hallucinating. I see no motive for lying other than to give people cause to believe that he's crazy (I give him credit for talking about the incident). A hallucination does not sound plausible to me based on the description, and even if it was, the fact that it occurred shortly after the death of his friend and during the time of transport of the coffin (if I read the investigation description correctly), that alone is interesting.

Not saying it's the case, but there is a fourth option. He could have thought it was the wrong person.
 
Not saying it's the case, but there is a fourth option. He could have thought it was the wrong person.
The investigator thought it might have needed to be a twin for that to be the case, I assume based on his testimony. He knew the guy for 9 years.

One possible answer to this mystery would have been if Jack had a twin brother or a brother who looked exactly like him, and who also knew Bob, but he did not. No other person with even the same surname was on board that 3 o’clock flight

Cheers,
Bill
 
The phenomenon of recently deceased or contemporaneously dying individuals appearing to friends and relatives, without their knowledge of that person's demise, has many precedents. Captain Bob's testimony fits the type.
What does that mean? What can we conclude from that?
It means some dead people appear to have a brief opportunity to make a connection with those they knew when they were alive. What a crisis apparition consists of, and the mechanisms behind it, nobody knows. It still provides the most complete explanation for such testimonies. Do these meetings take place outside time and space, are they recordable by conventional means, why are the meetings short, we can only conjecture.
 
Not saying it's the case, but there is a fourth option. He could have thought it was the wrong person.
Hmm... I can recall a couple of times when I have caught myself talking to acquaintances and realized it is not who I initially thought it was. Possibly I've been thrown by a similarity in complexion, hair or speech. I had a particularly striking episode of this a couple of months ago: I'd mixed up two guys (who had similarities) who I knew pretty well, and was chatting for a couple of minutes before I realized. I suspect that these mix-ups are more likely to happen if you see someone at an unexpected venue, away from the place that you associate with a person.

It is entirely possible that I have had short conversations with people, and these conversations have finished with me none the wiser that I've committed an identity error.
 
The investigator thought it might have needed to be a twin for that to be the case, I assume based on his testimony. He knew the guy for 9 years.

It's unnecessary that it was a twin. There are no details about how well he knew the guy, and we should try not to speculate about how deep their acquaintanceship was. For example, I'm in a very clicky industry where we all know each other and all attend the same conferences, and there are plenty of people I could say I've "known really well" for 10+ years. But I could absolutely mistake any number of people for the wrong person. I'm only suggesting that it is a possibility we could add to your list.

Also, according to Bob's description, the guy approached him from across the airport and then took off. He instigated the whole situation and ended it, not the other way around.
 
Hmm... I can recall a couple of times when I have caught myself talking to acquaintances and realized it is not who I initially thought it was. Possibly I've been thrown by a similarity in complexion, hair or speech. I had a particularly striking episode of this a couple of months ago: I'd mixed up two guys (who had similarities) who I knew pretty well, and was chatting for a couple of minutes before I realized. I suspect that these mix-ups are more likely to happen if you see someone at an unexpected venue, away from the place that you associate with a person.

It is entirely possible that I have had short conversations with people, and these conversations have finished with me none the wiser that I've committed an identity error.

Yes exactly. It's a realistic possibility.
 
Hmm... I can recall a couple of times when I have caught myself talking to acquaintances and realized it is not who I initially thought it was. Possibly I've been thrown by a similarity in complexion, hair or speech. I had a particularly striking episode of I'this a couple of months ago: I'd mixed up two guys (who had similarities) who I knew pretty well, and was chatting for a couple of minutes before I realized. I suspect that these mix-ups are more likely to happen if you see someone at an unexpected venue, away from the place that you associate with a person.

It is entirely possible that I have had short conversations with people, and these conversations have finished with me none the wiser that I've committed an identity error.
I've run into many acquaintances who's names I could not recall, and where I could not remember where I knew them from. I've never run into anyone I've known for 9 years, knew their exact name, and knew I worked with them and the completely mistook them for someone else. Have you?

Cheers,
Bill
 
Yes exactly. It's a realistic possibility.
No it isn't, it's debunking. Stick to what we can reasonably assume about the case. Why didn't Captain Bob land at airports that seemed to look like other ones? How come he didn't confuse the friend who passed him The Scotsman newspaper containing the obituary with someone else? Why was it someone who he knew very well and whose body was believed to be in transit through Glasgow airport at the time of their meeting?
 
I've run into many acquaintances who's names I could not recall, and where I could not remember where I knew them from. I've never run into anyone I've known for 9 years, knew their exact name, and knew I worked with them and the completely mistook them for someone else. Have you?

Cheers,
Bill
How would you know? That's like saying "I've never seen a good wig" ;)

This is exactly what happened to me a couple of months back. I caught myself after a couple of minutes and it completely threw me. If the conversation had finished earlier I might not have twigged.

Have you?
I have also never knowingly met a ghost, so appealing to my personal experiences won't get us very far.
 
No it isn't, it's debunking.
To say it's not a realistic possibility is unreasonable.

Stick to what we can reasonably assume about the case. Why didn't Captain Bob land at airports that seemed to look like other ones? How come he didn't confuse the friend who passed him The Scotsman newspaper containing the obituary with someone else? Why was it someone who he knew very well and whose body was believed to be in transit through Glasgow airport at the time of their meeting?

Well, here's the problem. We don't know hardly anything about the case, and the reports we have are all slightly different. Between Tricia Robertson, the Herald, and Bob himself we have slightly deviated stories, so right off the bat we know there is room for some kind of error. There has to be, because they can't all be right. For example, Robertson says a friend was there to pick him up, and Bob says he was going to catch a bus. Bob says his friend said goodbye and walked away after refusing to shake his hand, and the Herald says Bob claims his friend vanished into thin air. Robertson does not confirm that the coffin was for Jack or Robert Macleod.

And the sum total of what we know about their conversation with each other: "How's it going you old bastard?".

I want to be extremely clear that I'm not trying to debunk this story. In fact, if anyone is willing I would recommend as an exercise that we jointly pursue more information about it. Unless of course we're happy to unconditionally accept it on one side, and unconditionally dismiss it on the other. Then we can just argue until we're blue in the faces.
 
What's interesting about this topic is that in some sense, it reflects the prior beliefs of the observer.

If someone thinks "I doubt this sort of thing is possible", then very improbable explanations begin to sound reasonable, even probable. If the explanation given is assumed to be impossible, then any other explanation will be given more credit, no matter how far-fetched.

On the other hand, take someone who has had their own crisis apparition experience (you probably know someone like this, I've found it is actually fairly common). They already accept that this phenomena is possible. To them, the other explanations (it was a different person, he misrembered, etc) seem unlikely. An experiencer may say 'Why bother proposing these low-probability explanations when his explanation seems to make the most sense?'

My attitude is more like - "I haven't experienced it, but I don't see why this phenomena shouldn't exist, and I'd like to learn more". So I lean toward the experiencer's story being correct unless someone provides a true high-probability reason to doubt it.

At some level, it really is a subjective matter of what each individual considers to be an "extraordinary claim". You can almost judge each poster's general reaction without even waiting for them to post it. That is one reason I am learning to just stay out of skeptic vs. proponent debates, and why people spend so much time arguing past each other.
 
(Incomplete) list of possible explanations to keep everyone happy (in no particular order).

1. Ghost
2. Mistaken identity
3. Alien
4. Hallucination
5. Bob falls asleep meets friend on astral plane
6. Bob falls asleep and has a lucid dream
7. Alien ghost
8. Bob is drunk
9. Confabulation
10. Bob mad/delusional
11. Bob lying
 
(Incomplete) list of possible explanations to keep everyone happy (in no particular order).

1. Ghost
2. Mistaken identity
3. Alien
4. Hallucination
5. Bob falls asleep meets friend on astral plane
6. Bob falls asleep and has a lucid dream
7. Alien ghost
8. Bob is drunk
9. Confabulation
10. Bob mad/delusional
11. Bob lying
12. Bob is actually a ghost himself (what a twist!)
 
What's interesting about this topic is that in some sense, it reflects the prior beliefs of the observer.

If someone thinks "I doubt this sort of thing is possible", then very improbable explanations begin to sound reasonable, even probable. If the explanation given is assumed to be impossible, then any other explanation will be given more credit, no matter how far-fetched.

On the other hand, take someone who has had their own crisis apparition experience (you probably know someone like this, I've found it is actually fairly common). They already accept that this phenomena is possible. To them, the other explanations (it was a different person, he misrembered, etc) seem unlikely. An experiencer may say 'Why bother proposing these low-probability explanations when his explanation seems to make the most sense?'

My attitude is more like - "I haven't experienced it, but I don't see why this phenomena shouldn't exist, and I'd like to learn more". So I lean toward the experiencer's story being correct unless someone provides a true high-probability reason to doubt it.

At some level, it really is a subjective matter of what each individual considers to be an "extraordinary claim". You can almost judge each poster's general reaction without even waiting for them to post it. That is one reason I am learning to just stay out of skeptic vs. proponent debates, and why people spend so much time arguing past each other.

I appreciate this post. It really gets to the heart of the whole chasm between perspectives.
 
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