Vietnam Psychic Find War Dead

[westphalia]

I can't imagine how a Vietnamese native might be able to psychically "discover" bodies of war dead.

Come on, jungle predators and vermin - bite! Attack!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/this_world/4989480.stm

[westphalia]

That should be "finds" in the thread title. D'oh!

[Carnivore]

I saw some of this show. The psychics were directing people to where the war dead were buried within living memory. The very first example was a guy telling a woman her loved one was buried in a particular cemetary, one of a plot of 5 graves of unidentified war dead. I soon changed the channel so I dont know if anyone was asking awkward questions about dental records or DNA analysis. I did see a professor hyping up 2 young girls who had directed searchers to a grave of 13 soldiers outside their village. "There was no way they could have known they were there!" (Who buried the soldiers, and did no one from the village know about it?)

This is a government backed program.

[Zep]

Not being sarcastic here, but wouldn't it be likely that MANY Vietnamese villages will have a burial site due to the Vietnam War?

[rjh01]

Quote from the BBC news


Formed in 1987, the centre's psychics claimed to have located thousands of those missing in action, but concrete confirmation is hard to come by.

It would not be hard to find human remains in Vietnam. Plus a bit of BS by the psychics for this story.

[Carnivore]

Especially if they are already buried in cemetaries and officialy listed as unidentified remains.

[Polaris]

Since there were B-52 campaigns like Rolling Thunder, which dropped more destructive explosive power than all the bombs and shells of all the nations in WW2 (that's a lot of kablooey!) minus the atomic bombs, I think a psychic would technically be correct if she felt the presence of the dead in many different places. 500 lb bombs tend to spread things around.

"I sense him here, and over by the well, and up there in the trees, and there by the garden - I sense him all around."

[westphalia]

Not being sarcastic here, but wouldn't it be likely that MANY Vietnamese villages will have a burial site due to the Vietnam War?

That's my take on it, too. In a country where DNA testing is out of the reach of most citizens, and probably little understood, what are the odds that a random village won't know where a VC or NVA grave might be located?

It's just nice to know that psychics don't only prey on obtuse, gullible or desperate Westerners.