DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - A judge ruled that a former security guard who was fired for seeing ghosts cannot be denied unemployment benefits. According to a court ruling released this week, the former guard's allegation of apparitions does not constitute misconduct. The issue started on Sept. 11, when Wade Gallegos alerted his supervisor at Neighborhood Patrol of Urbandale that ghosts were haunting a neighborhood he was guarding. The supervisor arrived at the scene, where Gallegos showed him where the ghosts were still apparently standing. The supervisor claimed he saw nothing and fired Gallegos five hours later. The company found no signs of drug use or alcohol. I personaly think the security guard should have sued for wrongful dissmissal. But hey, thats common sense... More spooky things this way --->
Firing his gun at hostile ghosts could be a bit of a problem, assuming he was an armed rent-a-cop. Good job, supervisor....but why did it take 5 hours to fire him?
I agree with .308AR here (scary, I know... ). It is obvious that the security guard was probably having a psychotic episode (believing in ghosts is one thing, but clearly seeing them is a whole different ballgame). You do not really want such a person carrying a weapon, or be in a position of responsibility. Firing might have been a bit harsh, but enforced sick leave pending psychiatric examination would definitely be the least that should have been done.
It's the real world, folks...not school. Why should the company waste money and time keeping him employed with his potentially unsafe dillusions?
Because it's been proven many times that the "ghost" effect is caused by more then just psychological issues. Many factors come into play, and many of which can give a very realistic "false-positive". OK, so say you've got a job at a game testing facility, and you're playing through a level and see a tree, but on closer inspection you realize there is no tree, so you write this up as a fault in the game. Unfortunately for you it cannot be proven that this "tree" ever existed, so it's believed you've suffered extreme mental trauma and are mentally unfit to work. To be short: you're fired. But that’s beside the point; I know I would rather have somebody in security that is over-vigilant then somebody who doesn't notice anything. And by the way, security guards do not commonly carry guns, nor would any rational person (including the one mentioned in the above article) ever shoot at a ghost, that’s just silly Everybody knows you need to use Holy-Bolt on ghosts!
Do rational people call their supervisor to report ghosts in the area? PS. I'd use a shot gun loaded with birdshot for killing ghosts. Zombies require slugs or buckshot at the least. EDIT Check out a few gun forums for more info on zombie killing.
I know all about the mechanisms of hallucinations (it's how I make a living, remember? ) and I can categorically tell you that if a person quite clearly sees a ghost standing there, while another person is quite clearly telling him he does not (i.e. serving as a cognitive reality-testing device), that something is likely to be quite wrong in his brain. This may be temporal lobe epilepsy, or a brain tumour, or some sort of psychotic breakdown, but it needs further examination if only for the man's own health and wellbeing. And BTW there is a BIG difference between thinking you saw a tree (a normal everyday object), realising you did not, and making a quite plausible attribution around this illusion on the one hand, and thinking you are persistently seeing a ghost, even when someone standing next to you is saying there is no ghost. I'm sure you do. But I bet you wouldn't trust him to drive your car, or look after your kids. And how rational is the frame of mind of someone who is seeing ghosts?
I dunno there is a thin line between madness and magic after all! sorry, I just had to shove that in somewhere in a thread about a mad guy with nexxo in it
This is true, but how do you discount all the people around the world who see ghosts, clear as day, and end up with a perfectly clean bill of mental health? Surely if there was automatically something wrong with somebody because they've just seen a ghost, then every single person who sees a ghost (not just a brief apparition) has something mentally wrong with them and is unfit, right? And about the tree, I don’t see how it is all that different. The game tester seriously defends that he saw the tree, is exceptionally sure of it, and there is a very real possibility that the same mental defect that cause the security guard to see “ghosts” could have caused the tester in my scenario to have saw this mythical “tree”. Yes I would, as I've known quite a few people over the years that have seen ghosts, and they're quite normal people. But I think we're all missing the main point here, we are working off of very little information, and we are all automatically assuming so much of the story that I'm sure a lot of it is getting distorted. The article makes no mention of any mental issues, or if he was even tested. Who knows, maybe the guard just had bad eye-sight but hasn't gotten it checked in a while, so he saw something in the distance that looked kind of "ghost-like". Or maybe the supervisor did see something, but just refused to admit it, as he didn't want to be fired as well. No no no! How do you kill something without mass with birdshot?! You're using a physical attack on something that doesn't have any physical form beyond the light it is projecting. Holy-Bolt is the only answer, as it's an attack on the actual spirit that is projecting the ghost-image, thus defeating the ghost at it's source. As for zombies, .12 shotgun to the head. Period.
Depends. If they say: "I saw a ghost in a haunted house once" I'll write it off as a superstitious explanation for an optical illusion. If they say: "I saw the ghost of my dead husband/wife once" it concerns a fairly normal grief reaction. But if a person says: "I'm seeing a ghost over there right now" (pointing to a clearly empty corner of the room) and they are not just misattributing something that both of us can see (like some reflection of the light or something), then it's safe to say that they are hallucinating. Now plenty of people hallucinate while they are clearly coherent (in fact, you'd be surprised), but usually they know that they are. But of course there are cases where people misattribute their experience within their superstitious framework. There are many conditions that involve hallucinations, but psychosis is a pretty common one, as are drug or illness induced hallucinations. So I first might want to check that they are cognitively coherent to rule those out. if they are, I would want to rule out temporal lobe epilepsy, dream-state narcolepsy (a rarer variant than the common one), brain tumours/lesions and the like. Then there are psychological issues in which people believe that they are seeing ghosts. But these knock on the door of delusions and hence, psychosis. You are comparing two different things. The programmer thought he saw a tree in a passing flash, but the guy who saw ghosts thought he was still looking at one. If the programmer was pointing at an empty spot and clearly stating that he was seeing a tree, I'd treat him the same as a guy stating he was seeing a ghost. OK, to recap. Guy points at an obviously empty spot and says: "I see a ghost there...". Would you let him drive your car now? All possible, but we are discussing the scenario as it was described to us.
Rob I think your field has already too many people needing help... do you have to diagnose another one to see you? I mean you must get what $250 an hr? heh...
*Obviously* it was *probably* a pyschotic episode? How did you work that one out, Einstein? And how is seeing ghosts any worse than believing in them??? It's OK to believe in ghosts, but not if you subsequently see them? What's to say that they don't exist, and that he didn't see them? Do you have a crystal ball in Birmingham that provides some insight that I missed?
Nexxos is just pointing out his personal stance on whether he believes ghosts exist or not. Obviously he believes ghosts do not exist and there isn't even a slight chance that there could be ghosts in the world. It's a bit like believing in god really, you either do or you don't. The point I am making is, although I haven't personally seen any ghosts I have many friends (like Malfoleo) who have and do believe in them... i'm not going to call them crazy or say they had have any traumatic pyschotic episodes because they haven't. There are too many people who have seen ghosts for me to say they don't exist, but I have never seen one to confirm that they do... so I stand on the fence, maybe they do, maybe they don't... meaning you can't judge everyone has been looney for having seen a ghost.
