The first thing someone told me about ghosts was that they are fake. That person was probably a schoolteacher. Before that, I hadn’t heard of spooks. Ghosts are fairy tales, the teacher said at primary school. Several years later, I went on a school trip and visited the Singraven Estate near Denekamp. The custodian told us that a spook dwelt inside the manor, upsetting things, but he added that we shouldn’t fear it. We could safely enter. It is better not to put faith in spooky stories about venues that depend on tourist income. The facts that are beyond doubt aren’t spectacular. They are lame indeed.
As a teenager, I also visited Twickel Castle in Delden, located near Denekamp, but it did not have such a spooky reputation. I recently learned that this castle also has ghostly phenomena. The castle doesn’t advertise itself as a ghostly venue, which makes the claim more believable. Only one source on the Internet mentions it. If it is true, the laws of physics went out the window, at least temporarily. The author preferred that I quote her work. She wrote,
Recently I heard a strange tale from the phlegmatic steward of Twickel Castle in Delden. An English restorer who had come to restore some antique cupboards was given permission by her to stay overnight in an attic room of the castle. After he had been there for a few days, she saw that he had put his mattress on the floor.
She asked him why he slept on the floor and not on the bedstead? He answered her unmoved that he had been pushed out of bed for three consecutive nights. To prevent it from happening again, he had decided to sleep on the floor from then on. He had not been bothered since then. The steward asked him if he didn’t find that creepy? His answer was calm and clear: ‘No, I’m from England.’1
That is what the stiff upper lip is about. You might not believe it if you haven’t witnessed similar things occurring in your own house. So that is why I am inclined to believe it. There are plenty of ghost tales that go around. Most are hearsay. On the Internet, you can find lists of ghost tales like 10 Eerie Real-Life Paranormal Encounters to Creep You Out on Listverse.com.2 The list is fact-checked, which means the stories happened unless witnesses lied and got away with it. You are about to read one story from that list. It was also on CNN. The CNN article allows paranormal investigators to share their unscientific claims about crisis apparitions. An explanation that doesn’t conflict with science is that we live inside a virtual reality. So, here is the story,
Nina De Santo was closing her New Jersey hair salon when she saw Michael, one of her customers, standing outside the shop’s window. He had become a good friend. He had been going through a tough time after his wife left him. Nina had tried to cheer him up. When she opened the door, Michael seemed happy and transformed. He smiled at her and said he wanted to thank Nina for everything she had done for him. They chatted, and each went their way. The following day, Nina received a call from one of her employees. Michael’s body had been found the previous morning, nine hours before Nina had spoken to him at the salon. He had committed suicide.2
In 2014, a couple named the Simpsons asked the regional news channel Fox43 in the United States to visit their haunted house in Hanover, York County. DeAnna Simpson, the wife, mentioned that entities were haunting the home. She and her husband had lived there for seven years. She caught ‘ghosts’ on film. They had scratched or even attacked the guests. DeAnna had invited priests, paranormal researchers, and the crew of the TV show The Dead Files into her home, who then uncovered ‘evidence’ of ‘grisly deaths’ that had occurred there.3 When the Fox43 staff came in, something invisible scratched their photographer.
In March 2018, my wife woke me up in the middle of the night. She said, ‘The bathroom door is locked, and our son is sleeping in his bed.’ You can only lock the door from the inside. The lock needs force, so this can’t happen by accident. My wife feared a burglar was hiding inside. I took a knife from the kitchen to unlock the door while she was standing behind me, holding a heavy object to smash into the head of the burglar. Only, I never believed there was a burglar. So many unusual things had happened already. And I was right. There was no burglar.
So, what to make of this? The goings-on at Twickel Castle and the Hanover house are undoubtedly peculiar. Nina De Santo’s story is mind-boggling. In my home, the laws of physics didn’t always fully apply either. It made me wonder. I have seen it happen, and so has my wife. And if there is no naturalistic explanation, is this evidence of ghosts? Not necessarily. If you believe ghosts are real, you think science is crap. And I don’t. The simulation can play into our imaginations and fears. And ghosts are as unreal as we are. There may not be more to it than that. That at least makes sense.
Latest revision: 18 July 2025
Featured image: Halloween cat from Poland. User Silar (2012). Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
1. Betoverd door: haunted houses. Theracoppens.nl. 2. 10 Eerie Real-Life Paranormal Encounters to Creep You Out. Listverse.com (2022). 3. A haunted Hannover home. Civilwarghosts.com. [link] 4. Why those TV ghost-hunting shows are transparently fake. Scott Craven (2019). The Republic. [link]
Whether or not we have free will is an ancient philosophical question. Ancient Greek philosophers already reasoned, ‘This happens because of that. Everything that happens could be an endless sequence of causes and effects.’ We feel we make our own choices. If I went out to buy a garden gnome yesterday, I am inclined to think I could have decided not to go out shopping or to buy something more useful instead, like an inflatable Santa Claus that says ‘Ho ho ho’ when you pinch his nose. If I could go back in time, I might have done something different, or so I believe. But had I felt an uncontrollable urge to buy that gnome, I would have considered myself subjected to forces beyond my control.
Some things are beyond our control. Our biology and culture limit our options. You can’t simply stop breathing or run faster than the speed of sound. Those who have tried, failed, or died. And it is hard to do things that go against the prevailing will of society or your family and friends unless you don’t care about other people’s opinions, which might be something you have no control over. But it seems you have options. Choices like buying a garden gnome don’t raise controversy, and you appear free to make them.
Recent advances in neuroscience have enabled scientists to observe brain activity associated with decision-making. And that was quite revealing. Our choices originate in our brains several milliseconds or even longer before we become aware of them.1 The evidence suggests that there is no free will in the sense we traditionally believe it to exist.
The traditional idea of the will is that it is a force in its own right. Nothing else causes it. It is rooted in the belief that we have a mind, a spirit or a soul that is separable from our bodies. This idea is at odds with scientific findings that the mind results from chemical processes in the brain. Not having a will is not the same as predestination. It doesn’t rule out the possibility that we could make different choices if we went back in time. Our choices could still be random, like the throw of a dice. A dice doesn’t have free will, either.
Religious people face questions like, ‘If we have free will, how can God know what we will choose?’ Or conversely, ‘If God knows what we will choose, how can we have free will?’ The most straightforward answer is that there are two levels: the level of us mere mortals, who make our plans, and the level above, that of the Supreme Puppet Master, who pulls the strings and determines what we will choose. That is not free will at a higher level, but at a lower level, it is. Somehow, some people remain fascinated by this question.
At least we experience making choices. These choices might be illusions, but the feelings that accompany them aren’t. It is the experience of choice that we understand as free will. When you go through an emotional struggle before buying a garden gnome, the emotions are real to you, even when they are chemical processes in the body. Free will, as an experience, exists as we understand it. And it is pointless to argue that even if you could go back in time, you couldn’t have done otherwise, because you can’t go back in time.
Predetermination raises several questions. One is about punishing criminals as retribution rather than to protect the public. A desire for reprisal is a human emotion. But it seems unjust to hold people responsible for actions they can’t control. Often, criminals lack a proper upbringing, or they have psychological issues. And punishing offenders rather than addressing the underlying causes increases the likelihood of recidivism. Worse yet, small changes in body chemistry can profoundly change our character. That may all be true, but it is our nature to have moral systems with accountability and punishments. We can’t help ourselves in that sense as well. And so, the alternative of having no accountability and punishments is having no society.
In our experience, moral rules and punishment matter, just as free will does, and we experience having a choice. That is the point of punishing criminals. And it can deter calculating individuals. From a pragmatic perspective, you can prevent a lot of trouble by rehabilitating criminals when possible. Still, humans are rule-following creatures, and transgressions come with feelings of moral indignation. Failing to cater to feelings of justice and the desire for reprisal undermines the moral fabric of society.
Compatibilism holds that we have free will even when our choices are predetermined. It is similar to the Christian concept of making a moral choice, even though God knows what you will do. It becomes logically consistent if you introduce two levels: one of daily experience and another of the underlying reality. It is a practical approach which allows us to make moral choices. Morality is more than just following rules. It is about doing the right thing. However, the entire concept of morality hinges on the assumption of freedom of choice.
The second question deals with fate. If you are going to die on a preset day, then what is the point of seeing a doctor? Alternatively, you could opt for a dangerous hobby like mountaineering, for you will live until a specific date. But you don’t know that date. So, if you go to a doctor who cures you of an illness that would otherwise have been fatal, that would be predetermined. If you choose not to go to the doctor and you die, that would also be predestination. The same applies to abandoning a hobby such as mountaineering rather than perishing on the slopes of Mount Everest.
The third deals with premonitions and accurate predictions insofar as they are not attributable to fraud or chance. Why can fortune-tellers sometimes make accurate predictions? And why are their predictions unreliable at the same time? The answer is that it is impossible to know the future. If I knew I would have a car accident tomorrow, I would remain home, and the accident wouldn’t happen. Predictions can influence the future, unless they are vague or hidden. In 1914, no one could have guessed that the licence plate number on Franz Ferdinand’s car referred to the end date of the upcoming world war.
So, if I pass a sign saying, ‘You will have a car accident tomorrow,’ it can only be a sign if I laugh about it and discover it was a sign the next day. Premonitions and accurate predictions require more than predestination. If you have a suspicion that proves correct, it is not you knowing the future but the one giving you the premonition. Predetermination suggests that we are like characters in a story, much like the comic book character Spiderman. Spiderman may realise he is a comic character in a story, but only if that is the script. Spiderman can’t change the script, but the script’s author can make him believe he can. That would be a delusion on the part of Spiderman, for you can’t escape destiny.
That is also how voodoo works. The practitioner of voodoo puts needles in a doll, and the targeted subject may suffer intense pain simultaneously, yet there is no causal relationship, nor is there any magic involved. It is a scripted coincidence, and the author of the script wants you to believe that voodoo works.
Predetermination allows for accurate predictions that defy chance. Actions taken to prevent these predictions from being fulfilled must fail, which requires a lack of information on the actors involved. Oedipus fulfilled the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother. He didn’t know that the couple he believed to be his parents were not his true parents. Fearing the prediction, he fled, setting off a chain of events that made the prediction come true. The prophecies of ancient Greek oracles only made sense in hindsight. And so, for guidance on people’s actions, they could be pretty worthless.
Latest revision: 16 June 2026
Featured image: Aruba sunset. English Wikipedia.
1. The clockwork universe: Is free will an illusion? Oliver Burkeman. The Guardian (2021).
Humans are animals. Other animals experience joy and suffering as we do. So, if we are considerate of our fellow humans, we might also consider being less cruel to other animals. Of course, humans are cruel to each other as well, but that may change. So, let us imagine that it will happen someday, perhaps not that far in the future. We can place ourselves in someone else’s position and feel compassion. Other social animals can also do that, as it promotes cooperation. Nature doesn’t have ethics, but ethics are part of our nature. In nature, plants and animals cooperate for mutual benefit or compete for resources, and compassion is closely tied to cooperation. Yet, humans can invent rules and believe they have rights. Animals can’t. Animal rights, like human rights, exist only in our imagination, not in objective reality.
A conscious mind experiences suffering, but consciousness comes in different levels. You can beat a stone, but it doesn’t feel anything. A plant is less aware than an insect. An insect has less awareness than a fish. Fish might be less conscious than mammals. And we relate more to animals like us, so mammals elicit the most sympathy, most notably the cute ones, and being furry may enhance their cuteness. Killing a dog or a cow feels different from squashing an ant or a mosquito, at least for most people. We can relate better to a dog because they are more like us.
And we care more about the people we know than about strangers, which makes us care more about our pets than about other humans in faraway countries. The suffering that goes unnoticed doesn’t affect us as much as the misery we see. That is why the meat industry hides the unpleasant reality from us: animals crammed in confined spaces or mistreated in slaughterhouses. There is an animal holocaust going on that dwarfs Hitler’s extermination campaign during World War II by a wide margin, except that it concerns animals, not humans. It is millions of times the size of the Holocaust because it affects billions of animals each year. When we become aware of it, we react in different ways:
Not caring. You may have more urgent problems than animal welfare.
Accepting. You could argue that meat is a natural part of our diet.
Doing something. You might become a vegan.
Humans have slaughtered animals since time immemorial. Our distant forebears have already driven animal species to extinction. Why stop now? Humans now dominate the planet entirely, and much of the remaining wildlife may soon go extinct. Hence, it may be time to ask ourselves questions, such as, should there be animal rights? And if so, what rights should animals have? Respecting nature and concern for animal suffering are reasons to consider animal rights. Those considerations can conflict with each other. You may protect the wolf out of respect for nature or shoot it to protect the sheep.
Even when we think animals have rights, the animals themselves transgress our moral rules. Predators hunt prey. We can’t order an eagle to eat grass. Some species go extinct because of our actions, while others profit. Rats, cockroaches, and seagulls thrive where humans have disrupted the balance of nature. Should we restore that balance? For instance, humans introduced diseases that eliminated the rabbit population, which had been on the foxes’ menu. The foxes survived by preying on other animals that don’t reproduce as quickly as rabbits, causing their populations to decline. Hunting foxes could prevent that. And if you let your cat go outside, you contribute to a bird genocide. In the Netherlands alone, house cats kill 20 million birds per year. Cat owners seem not to care. Why can’t they keep their murderous beasts inside?
Industrial farms are inconsiderate of farm animals and do not respect nature. If you believe Creation is sacred, factory farms are an abomination. Animals are crammed into small spaces and processed in slaughterhouses. It’s efficient. Producing meat in an animal-friendly manner is costly and can be less environmentally friendly. Excrement produces greenhouse gases, and you may get more excrement per unit of meat. The European Union has regulations concerning the welfare of farm animals, so European industrial farm animals are slightly better off. The measure for animal well-being is that farm animals can behave naturally. If they can’t, they may experience stress and suffering. The question remains whether an animal would prefer to live in the wild if it had a choice. Being hunted by predators also causes anxiety and pain.
What about eating meat? Meat has been on our menu since immemorial, providing us with the necessary nutrients. There may soon be artificial meat and replacements that contain the same nutrients. And so, we might end animal farming and stop making animals suffer unnecessarily. That could be our goal, not ending meat consumption. If there is not enough food for the deer in a forest, shooting the weak and eating them could be better for their well-being than letting them starve. Introducing wolves might achieve the same, but it also increases deer suffering, and wolves may prefer sheep because they are easier prey. In any case, a deer might prefer a clean shot to a lengthy chase by a pack of wolves before being devoured alive.
If you choose the wolves chasing deer, you aren’t a deer and believe the value of nature takes precedence over the rights of deer. Nature itself does not suffer, nor does it care. Humans have profoundly disturbed the ecological balance, so unspoiled nature, as it once was, is gone in most places. And so, we may be left managing wildlife as if the world were a park. Other events disrupt the balance in nature as well. The dinosaurs went extinct after a meteor struck Earth, causing a sudden change in the climate. Letting wildlife coexist with humans can also cause problems. You can’t let pests destroy our crops or spread diseases. The Sacredness of Creation is a religious dogma, and even if you adhere to it, you don’t always get clear-cut answers.
A broken clock is right twice a day. At least that was so before clocks came with digital displays. Even that truth no longer holds. And so, nothing is certain, not even that. In the same fashion, end-time prophets may be correct, at least once, because there can be only one end, even though that is not certain either. As for the end-time predictions of varying religions, if your religion is full of errors, expect no less from its prophecies. There can be an end time, while the prophecies aren’t much help in picking a date or detailing the scenario. The Bible doesn’t mention historical events like the discovery of America or the Industrial Revolution, which seem significant to historians but apparently not to the prophets of that time. Or the ancient prophets had no clue, which seems more likely.
Now, if these prophets didn’t know the future, and God likes to joke around, and of both we have evidence, their prophecies may still come true in ways they didn’t anticipate because we live in a world that runs the script of a story. So if the name Bathsheba hints that She was an avatar of God and would return as the Queen of Sheba, then the presidency of Donald Trump may precede the end times, because the noise of trumpets heralds the end times, and the name Trump refers to a trumpeter.
Logic is a strange thing, and humans are emotional creatures that occasionally think. If the end time ever comes, it is closer than ever, but the longer we have waited, the less likely it seems. In any case, the odds for an apocalypse are higher than ever, and the main reason is the development of artificial intelligence. It is about to vastly exceed human intelligence to the point that human intelligence becomes irrelevant. If that is about to happen, it most likely has already happened. We live in an AI-generated world, and are about to find out. In other words, we may soon discover that we live inside a virtual reality created by an advanced post-human civilisation to entertain someone we call God.
If the end is now, it is time to apply some after-the-fact reasoning about how we arrived here. One ingredient in the mix is an obscure Canaanite deity whom the Jews came to revere as their preferred object of adoration and, later, as the Creator of the entire universe. And by a rather noteworthy course of events, which we can now explain in hindsight, billions of people came to believe the same. Meanwhile, the Greeks had kicked off a tradition of rational enquiry into reality and moral life, which Europeans later took up. They developed science, Enlightenment ideas, capitalism, and social progress. They learned that the facts contradicted the Bible and that it was not the absolute truth, not even in moral matters. In hindsight, we can add Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel to the list of greatest prophets of all time, as he envisioned that social progress through revolutions would bring us closer to Paradise. That guy really nailed it.
Pop music, the unexpected medium
If the end is near, there may have been signs, and probably not in places people were looking, and not the type of signs they expected. A few Christians found Satanic messages hidden in pop music by playing tracks in reverse. Some of them even believe Satan is in charge of pop music entirely and that this horned fellow has been busy composing the lyrics in his state-of-the-art studio in that hot place called Hell. Few would have guessed that God was the composer and hid secret messages in pop music. That, however, might be the case. Even more surprisingly, you don’t have to play the songs in reverse to hear them. Only that was not for the faithful to guess.
God is a DJ This is my church
Faithless, God is a DJ
Clearly, God likes to joke around. The song ‘Strange Phenomena’ by Kate Bush suggests that a coincidence with the radio could be a sign of God’s arrival,
A day of coincidence with the radio … G arrives, funny, had a feeling he was on his way. … We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us Sure ’nuff, he has the answer
Kate Bush, Strange Phenomena
G might be God, as the song alludes to the hand that moulds us and someone who has all the answers. Does a day of coincidence on the radio herald the arrival of God? For me, it did. Coincidences on the radio prompted me to search for these messages. Like literary criticism, this is not science but speculation. So, can I guess God’s intentions? The following incident suggests so. At secondary school, I did particularly poorly at explaining literature. It is about guessing the motives of book authors. My scores were consistently poor, the poorest in the class. I considered guessing other people’s motives and decoding hidden messages in texts a waste of time. There are so many ways in which you can interpret words. The authors themselves often marvelled at what the literary experts deduced about their intentions from their books.
With the final exams approaching, I began to fret and asked my teacher for additional practice exams. It didn’t help. The grades remained as poor as before. Before the final exam, I prayed to God that my grade wouldn’t be too bad. My result was the best of everyone’s, but it was also matched only by a girl with a striking, slightly alternative hairdo who dressed in an outspoken way and flaunted her interest in art and literature. That was not only a surprise to me. A classmate wondered how I had managed to pull this one off. I was too ashamed to tell. I didn’t need a higher grade while children were starving. It was a peculiar incident. At the time, there was no reason to think God was behind this, nor did it seem a harbinger of things to come.
Hotel California
Now, let’s do a text analysis of the world-famous song ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles. What is its meaning? On the Internet, you can find some answers. It could be about the lost Paradise caused by American decadence and burnout, too much money, corruption, drugs and arrogance, and too little humility. Her mind being Tiffany-twisted and owning the expensive car reflects that. The wine being unavailable since 1969 refers to the fact that in 1969, it was no longer legal to drink alcohol while you were in a drug rehab programme. Before that, you couldn’t do drugs, but you were allowed to drink alcohol. Thus, the hotel was a rehab. What you read into a text can be personal, so there are countless interpretations that the songwriters didn’t intend. And when you give it a personal twist, some lines don’t fit. If you think there is a message, you can see them as noise.
When She stood in the doorway, the mission bell sounded. He might be meeting God because of the mission bell. And then, he enters Paradise, thinking this might be heaven or hell. God is a spoiled woman who owns the place and is used to getting Her way. Her mind is thus Tiffany-twisted. She owns an expensive car. Most people think Paradise is perfect, but it doesn’t agree with human nature. There is a darkness to it. They can’t kill the beast. And you can’t escape. You can check out when you like, but you can’t leave. You can argue against this by pointing to the master’s chambers. If there is a master, she isn’t God. Indeed, seeing meaning is not science, and interpretations are dubious. I knew that already as a teenager. And so, I won’t argue. With that in mind, we may proceed.
From Almelo via Enschede to Eurovision
Ilse DeLange’s fourth studio album, The Great Escape, contains the most messages. If there had been a meter for hidden messages, it would show an elevated reading when you play this album. If you read between the lines, this album comes with a message from God, Eve reincarnated, to Her husband, Adam reincarnated, to prepare himself. The album contains lyrics with parts that convey such a message. Noteworthy coincidences surround DeLange. DeLange was born on 13 May 1977 in Almelo, a town in the Dutch region of Twente. Almelo was also the hometown of Herman Finkers, a comedian who wrote ‘Kroamschudd’n in Mariaparochie’, a short animated picture about the possibility of Christ coming from Twente.
On 13 May 2000, the 23rd birthday of Ilse Delange, a fireworks plant in Enschede in Twente blew up, killing 23 people. That was exactly 11 years after I moved to Enschede to live on the University of Twente campus. I lived in dormitory 401 for five months, until 13 October 1989, a time lapse that precisely matches the events surrounding the Fatima Miracle of the Sun, which occurred 72 years later. This is the most spectacular religious miracle ever confirmed to have actually happened. And in that dormitory, lived that most peculiar Lady. The recurrence of 23 is also odd. The accident was on the day of the Eurovision Song Contest. Once the seriousness of the situation became manifest, the Dutch broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest ended.
My wife had dreamt about a large fire the night before the fireworks accident. On the day itself, she visited a friend who had just given birth. Some of her other friends were also present. One of them came from Enschede. Just after my wife told this friend from Enschede about her dream, this friend received a text message asking whether she was all right. It was only then that they learned about the fireworks accident. Fourteen years later, Ilse DeLange sang in the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest herself with Waylon as The Common Linnets. They came in second place after Conchita Wurst, a transgender Jesus look-alike. That is noteworthy, not only because it links DeLange to Jesus but also because early Christians performed a sex change on God in their scriptures.
Jesus and Conchita Wurst at a Meet & Greet during the Eurovision Song Contest 2014. Albin Olsson (2014). CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons.
The Finnish rock band Turisas dedicated a song titled ‘The Great Escape’ to the Norwegian king Harald Sigurdsson, who played a role in a deception scheme related to D-Day. His daughter died in Norway on the same day he perished on the battlefield in England, a noteworthy coincidence. The Great Escape was also the title of the fourth album by the English rock band Blur, released on 11 September 1994, a remarkable date given the coincidences surrounding the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. The total length of Blur’s album is 56 minutes and 56 seconds. Compressing these numbers yields 11:11 since 5 + 6 = 11. And 56 + 56 = 112, which is also the European emergency telephone number. The lead song of DeLange’s album, The Great Escape, lasts 4:01 minutes. I moved to Enschede to live in room 112 of dormitory 401.
The Great Escape
Ilse DeLange’s album ‘The Great Escape’ contains a message from God, the eternal Eve, asking Her prospective husband, the temporary Adam, to prepare for his task as saviour. That was not DeLange’s intention. Unwittingly, she became the channel for this particular communication. As Finkers already noted, a lot was going on in Almelo, such as traffic lights switching colours. Mediums make misses alongside accurate guesses. The messages blend into the lyrics like the accurate guesses of mediums mixed up with misses. The book ‘The Virtual Universe’ explains how mediums can be precise at times while making many misses. It is not a gift but scripted. It works the same way as meaningful coincidences. So, how can we interpret those songs?
In the first song, ‘Reach For the Light,’ God says She remembers and that everything he knew is lost. That makes sense if he is supposed to be Adam and doesn’t remember,
I know my name, but who’s the same when everything you knew is lost I’m filled with hope that echoes loud inside a forgotten mind
Ilse DeLange, Reach for the Light
In the second song, ‘The Lonely One’, God claims She used Her powers to make his life disagreeable. Only God can order the sun not to shine and the sky to fall on him. What She says about Herself would even make Louis XIV, the Sun King, blush,
I told the sun not to shine and stay away … I am the only princess, I am indestructible … Asked the sky to fall down on you
Ilse DeLange, The Lonely One
He probably thought his life was not great. The song ‘The Great Escape’ gives the album its name and is the centrepiece. The song says it’s autumn, and some force pulls him into the shadow world. For him, it was scary to be taken in this fashion. But it is a holy land in disguise. She says she comes from heaven,
In this holy land A desert made of quicksand … Some force pulls you in The shadow world … I was falling, falling, falling from heaven
Ilse DeLange, The Great Escape
In the next song, Carry Hope, She instructs him to prepare himself. She says the power is in his hands, and he has to make this land his own. She adds that faith calls out his name. In all his vanity, even Louis XIV, the Sun King, would not have said that when he lets go of hope, there is no one left you can follow. There is nothing but the power to believe in Her,
The power is in your hands, the dust will fall to sand Gotta make this land your own … Faith calls out your name When I let go of hope, there’s no one left to follow There’s nothing but the power to believe in me
Ilse DeLange, Carry Hope
It can hardly be more clear than that. The song Was It Love suggests She doesn’t care for religious people. They are locked inside their belief,
And they’re locked inside belief But they’re not inside of me
Ilse DeLange, Was It Love
You have to cherry-pick lyrics and lines to get the message, so critics might point that out. They are critics after all. The coincidences relating to DeLange suggest that there is more to these messages than just an accidental slip of the songwriter’s mind. And DeLange comes from the Dutch region of Twente. I lived in Twente, met the Lady there, and She was born there as well. That makes it more remarkable. And then you have Finkers’ animation picture ‘Kroamschudd’n in Mariaparochie’ about the possibility of Christ coming from Twente. Unless you are a critic, that might be a bit too much to ignore.
Slippery slope
Lyrics by other performing artists contain messages from God. The song ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles did get its fair share of literary criticism, as did ‘Gimme the Prize’ by Queen, and ‘God Is a DJ’ by Faithless. To access these messages, you must filter out the noise, thus selectively choosing the parts that fit, which is a very unscientific approach. Literary criticism is about seeing meaning. You can’t prove meaning as it is subjective, making seeing it an art. And not seeing meaning is the art of being a moron, and there are some true artists in that field as well. The song ‘Joga’ by Björk mentions accidents, coincidences and connecting the dots. The coincidences make sense only with one person. So God made these things happen to show him Her love,
All these accidents that happen Follow the dot, coincidence Makes sense only with you … This state of emergency How beautiful to be … All that no one sees, you see What’s inside of me
Björk, Joga
She adds, ‘How beautiful it is to be in an emergency.’ The emergency services telephone numbers are 112 and 911. When God demonstrates Her love for you by murdering people in accidents and terrorist attacks, that might count as intimidating. And you might get the impression that you, like Jesus, have no choice but to go along with God’s plans.
Now the word goes around in certain circles that the song ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin contains hidden satanic messages that you can hear by playing the song in reverse, which is something normal people wouldn’t do. There was something there, and the artists said it was a coincidence.1 However, straightforwardly playing that same music, which normal people do, reveals something even more interesting. It mentions a lady we all know. That lady could be God. After all, the song is named ‘Stairway to Heaven’ rather than ‘Highway to Hell,’
With a word she can get what she came for Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to Heaven … There walks a lady we all know Who shines white light and wants to show How everything still turns to gold The tune will come to you at last When all are one, and one is all … And she’s buying a stairway to Heaven
Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven
It is not a coincidence that the same album, Led Zeppelin IV, which features ‘Stairway to Heaven’, also includes the song ‘Going to California.’ It mentions a queen who is a woman who was never born, thus Eve,
Seems that the wrath of the Gods Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow … To find a queen without a king; They say she plays guitar and cries and sings. La la la la Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn Trying to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born.
Led Zeppelin, Going to California
The song ‘The Infant King’ from the album Adieu Sweet Bahnhof by The Nits is about a boy king on his way to meet his Bride. The world is falling apart. The border is closed. People are packing. Gold can help you if you want to leave. That could be the End Times. But the infant king is on his way,
I tip-toe tip-toe through the sleeping train An infant king who meets his bride … Two eyes two ears nose uncertain smile A child reflected thousandfold Someone said the other day The border’s closed there’s no way in or out … My mood is changing every mile Someone said the other day The world is cracking up it’s plain to see … Two eyes two ears nose uncertain smile The infant king is on his way
The Nits, The Infant King
On that same album is the song ‘Woman Cactus’, describing a psychotic love affair of an indecent nature. His senses don’t make sense at all. She haunts him as the bar sign repeatedly prints Her name on the wall,
This is not comme il faut It’s no respectable affair … My heart, my head, my brain My senses don’t make sense at all The bar sign prints your name Over and over on the wall … I know it hurts to touch a woman With those needles and pins
The Nits, Woman Cactus
There is more, but it is a slippery slope. The farther you go, the more you slip slide away, which is also a song by Paul Simon, by the way. For the argument, the presented selection suffices.
Latest revision: 9 May 2026
Featured image: Watchmen cosplay at Comic-Con 2009. Taken on July 24, 2009. Ewen Roberts. CC BY 2.0. Wikimedia Commons.
1. The 10 Wildest Led Zeppelin Legends, Fact-Checked. Rolling Stone (2012). [link]
The biological purpose of our existence is to preserve our genes and allow them to replicate, so our brains are occupied with staying alive and mating, not with making us happy. Anxiety keeps us from doing stupid things. Happiness can make us complacent, which can be fatal. If we see happiness as a goal for our societies, it could be a sign that our civilisation is dying. In Paradise, we will be happy, or so we hope. Thus, what is the point of new ideas, technological development and social struggle? Why do we have agriculture, industry, cities, writing, money, empires, science, property, human rights and democracy? If these things don’t make us happier, what is their point? As human civilisation is in its final days, the historian Yuval Harari asks this question in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.1
Things often don’t happen to make us happier. Things often don’t happen to make us happier. Our forefathers switched from hunting and gathering to crop planting and animal herding because agriculture feeds more people. It was a success for human genes, as there could be more copies of them, and for the genes of domesticated animals and plants as well. It made the lives of humans and farm animals more miserable. By growing crops or herding animals, people had more food. More children survived, so there were more mouths to feed, and people remained as hungry as before. Compared to hunter-gatherers, farmers worked harder, had less varied diets, and experienced more violent conflicts.1 Paradise was lost. That is, in short, the story of Eve, Adam, Cain, and Abel.
Social reforms, such as equal rights for women, aim to promote fairness. But it doesn’t always make people happier. If there is a norm, for example, the man being the head of the family, many women might be content with the arrangement. Men might have accepted that women had been in charge if that was the norm. A norm gives clarity, and change brings discomfort. Feminism liberated women, and overall, it probably made women happier, but not always, and the process of changing norms raises tensions. So what makes us happy? That is not easy to answer. It depends on our characters and circumstances. Several issues influence our happiness:
fulfilment of our needs
chemical processes in the body
money
our expectations
our desires
having a sense of purpose
social trust
Maslov’s hierarchy of human needs
Hierarchy of human needs
Abraham Maslow thought of a hierarchy of human needs. He claimed that basic needs such as food and shelter are paramount. Once you have them, you desire security. Maslow believed that if you have food and security, you crave love and attention. And if you have all that, you want to be respected and have a sense of purpose in your life. These needs exist but not in such a neat hierarchical order.
Chemical processes in the body
Some people are always cheerful despite adversity and misery. Others are always bitter and fret, even when they prosper and have nothing to worry about. That has to do with body chemistry. If cheerfulness is chemistry, we can take pills to be happy. Pharmaceutics can end a depression. Is this a false sense of happiness? And what is the difference with the bliss you get from a drug like cocaine? More and more people use pills to feel better. It is often an easy way out.
Money
If you are poor, some extra money makes you happier. Poor people often feel miserable because they worry about making ends meet. It becomes less clear once you can buy the things you need and have no financial worries. More money can make you happier if you spend it on the right things. What is right is a personal matter. So if you can afford it, you should buy that garden gnome you always craved.
The more you have, the less more makes you happier. Your first automobile can make you happy. You can go where you want when you want. A second vehicle makes less of a difference. You and your husband can go to different places on the same evening. A third and a fourth car probably have no use unless you are a car collector and have a garage where you can spend your days gazing at your automobiles.
Expectations
Suppose your daddy promised you ice cream. If you expected a small cone and received a medium-sized one, the outcome exceeded your expectations, which can make you happy. But if you anticipated a large cone and received a medium-sized one, the result didn’t meet your expectations, which could have made you unhappy.
If you anticipated less than what you got, that could make you happy, but if you expected more, it could make you unhappy. We adapt to new situations. After a while, our happiness or sadness is gone. Having low expectations can be a path to happiness. If you expect the day to be miserable, and that does not materialise, it can make you happy.
Expectations management can make a great difference in happiness. Promising nothing or setting the bar low is the way to success. It is also the reason why politicians nearly always disappoint, as they usually are like Santa Clauses promising presents to their followers, whether it is more spending or lower taxes, more regulations or fewer.
Social identification and ranking
What you desire depends on the groups you identify with. If you are a fan of a famous pop artist, you crave her merchandise. Our genes make us desire items that make us more attractive to potential mates, such as clothing. We rank one another socially and compare ourselves to others. If you are better off than the people you compare yourself with, that can give you satisfaction. Being worse off, such as receiving less pay for the same job than your colleagues, has the opposite effect.
Your happiness depends on the people you compare yourself to. The attention given to celebrities, their riches, and their beautiful husbands and wives can give you the unpleasant feeling that your life is subpar. That can make you go to the gym or the plastic surgeon, buy things you can’t afford and turn down potential spouses who are not rich or do not look so great. These problems didn’t exist a century ago, and we might be happier without the Internet and television.
Rock cut seated Buddha statue, Andhra Pradesh, India
Craving
Gautama Buddha also weighed in on the issue. He was a happiness expert who lived 2,500 years ago but is still famous for founding Buddhism. Mr Buddha taught us that we crave temporary feelings and things which cause permanent dissatisfaction. As soon as you have achieved a desired goal, such as love, or acquired a desired object, such as a garden gnome with a straight hat, you will crave something else, like a garden gnome with a crooked hat. That is why there is a large selection of garden gnomes on the market.
Our desires tie us up in this world, so our souls will reincarnate and keep suffering from craving, or so Mr Buddha said. Yet, it keeps the economy going. When we stop doing that and disengage ourselves from this world, we disappear into nothingness, a state of eternal peace, and the economy collapses because investors can’t make profits. If you take away the Buddhist fluff about souls being tied to this world, happiness comes from accepting life as it is and not desiring more. And that is a valuable lesson that is still valid today.
Having a sense of purpose
Believing your life has a purpose can make you feel better. That human feature contributes to the success of religions. If you believe in God, you may think you play a role in God’s wonderful cosmic scheme, while atheists may believe their lives are purposeless, which is not inspiring. But at least they can poke fun at theists who delude themselves in this fashion, so it can still be a good life. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman arrived at a similar conclusion.
Kahneman interviewed women and asked which daily activities gave them pleasure and what made them happy. Caring for their children was among the activities that gave them the least pleasure. But when he asked these women what made them the happiest, they answered that their children gave them the most joy. Their children gave meaning to their lives. Similarly, if you think your job makes other people happy, that can bring a smile on your face.1
Good societies, bad societies
Finally, there is something humans have some agency in, which is the quality of their societies, and working on that issue is the principal goal of this entire project. Yet, as you can see, it is a single ingredient the happiness mix, and you can be happy without it, so you shouldn’t expect too much on the happiness scale. Maybe, people in Denmark are happier than in Venezuela, but because the situation you live in is the normal, the difference may be smaller than we might think. There are plenty of people who act like Santa Clauses promising you this or that if vote for them you buy their products, and they didn’t make you happier either. In the post-apocalyptic world, there is little left to dole out, but we can have enough, and build a good society.
Latest update 14 October 2026
Featured image: Smiley. Public Domain.
Other images: Maslov’s pyramid chart of the hierarchy of needs. Androidmarsexpress (2020). CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikimedia Commons. Rock-cut seated Buddha statue, Andhra Pradesh, India. CC BY-SA 3.0. Adityamadhav83. Wikimedia Commons.
1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvill Secker.
