Brian Sharpless is an associate professor of Clinical Psychology at Argosy University in Washington, DC. He gave a presentation with the National Capital Skeptics Association on how sleep paralysis has formed our view of the paranormal. In his talk, he went over the history of sleep paralysis and compared it to our view of nightmares. He went over several quotes from different stages of history that depict people who experienced sleep paralysis and their descriptions of this scary experience. For most of his talk, he discusses specific paranormal entities and how sleep paralysis contributes to their creation. He describes how people who have gone through these seemingly traumatic dreams can make up things in their minds, the paranormal, in order to justify their dreams and what happened to them. Although he did go through a lot of examples of different paranormal entities and how sleep paralysis may cause someone to create such a creature in their mind, I am not fully convinced that sleep paralysis is the main contributor to the paranormal that we all know and love. A lot of the connections he made relating to sleep paralysis and the paranormal felt like a stretch in reasoning. One quote from his slides that exemplifies this is "Often occur at night while the 'victim' is in bed" when describing similarities between sleep paralysis and vampirism. While yes, he does mention other similarities, they are all stretches that you can't really deduce anything definite. I do believe that yes, humans will make up supernatural creatures or events in order to explain situations that they simply can't explain. However, I think Brian wasn't able to give enough concrete supporting evidence to explain how sleep paralysis created the paranormal. Just because certain situations seem as if they could be explained very easily by ghosts or demons, does not convince me that the whole world of paranormal was created because of the hallucinations people experience during sleep paralysis. Something he didn't touch on that I have more belief in is looking more into the origin of paranormal creatures such as ghosts and vampires. Many other articles that talk about the origin of the vampire, often talk about diseases that may be the origin which in my mind makes more sense than sleep paralysis, especially considering our previous lack of knowledge when it came to viruses and bacteria. I think that people like to call people terms that relate to the paranormal when it comes to things they don't understand and can't explain, which was the case with the Salem witch trials. In situations like these, stories travel fast and far, which can lead to widespread belief in various paranormal phenomena.
Dr. Sharpless could've convinced me more if he had gone more into depth about the science behind sleep paralysis. He mentioned at one point that certain neurotransmitters had to do with why some people experienced it, but he didn't go any further than that. If he had spoken more on the level of deep-rooted fear that sleep paralysis can cause and why people have a trauma-like response that causes them to make up entities to explain what happened to them, I think it could've been more convincing. In that sense, I would see that humans needed to make things up like ghouls and demons in order to somewhat process what they just experienced. Overall, I think it is a cool idea how something like sleep paralysis can create a world of paranormal, I just think there are more feasible ways to explain the explainable.
The Chesapeake Bay Program made various videos about environmental factors affecting the Chesapeake called Bay 101. I watched multiple short videos about different subjects such as oysters, the watershed, and fish food. In these videos, they spoke about the Chesapeake itself, the animals that live in it, how human and environmental factors are affecting it, and the work the foundation is doing in order to help restore it to its full health. One specific topic they spoke about was how oysters benefit the health of the bay and the massive effort they're making along with NOAA to restore the oyster population back to what it was before they were overfished. Another topic was the emerald ash borer which is an invasive species that eats the part of ash trees that allows them to absorb nutrients and has caused the death of thousands of ash trees in Maryland and along the east coast.
I think all of the videos I watched covered extremely important information and that the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is doing vital research and work when it comes to restoring the bay back to what it once was. In almost every video, they talk about how all the work they are doing is to restore the bay, as in doing what they can to bring it back to its original health. I cannot think of a more important cause since it is obvious that all of the human-caused changes are not helping the massive ecosystem that is supported by the bay. In the video about the entire watershed, they spoke about how the activities of people all the way up in New York and Pennsylvania have an impact on the health of the bay's ecosystem. This showcases how ever since the age of new technology starting in the industrial age, there are millions of people whose activity has had a negative impact on the bay's health. From this, it is very easy to deduce that over time, a large impact has been made and that in order to reverse even a small portion of the damage, it's going to take years of research and action. Something that was also shown a lot in these videos is research being done in the field. They showcase scientists imaging the bottom of parts of the bay to check sediment levels or oyster population levels. They also show scientists in the lab performing dissections and measuring fish in order to do data analysis on what the fish are consuming. This showcase of research is telling that the work that they're doing is backed by actual numbers and data. The foundation is doing work that has some kind of quantifiable result. When doing those three and six-year check-ins, they are able to see whether or not their efforts have been successful or not. From this, they can reevaluate and decide whether they should continue their previous work or change it so that the results will be more favorable in the future.
Another aspect of these videos that makes the need for this foundation convincing is that they show the dire effects caused to the bay and the ecosystem surrounding it. They show how because of chemical runoff from urban areas, some fish have been found to be intersex, which is not something that happens normally. They also showcase what exactly an emerald ash borer does to the tree, by showing how the tree because brittle and that the bark clearly indicates something was in it chomping away. Another case is with the fish kills, they actually go to a shore where a fish kill is evident and show the amount of dead fish that are washed up on shore from the lethal nutrient increase in the water.