Laird Shaw

Laird Shaw (online pseudonym: Laird) is a schizophrenic nutcase, sex pest and ex-psychiatric patient from Tasmania who claims he is possessed by demons and paedophilia is caused by demonic possession (meaning he seems to confess to being a paedophile) and that he can communicate with ghosts. Being literally insane, Shaw spends most his life as a deranged troll on the internet, posting his delusions, warped perception of reality and psychosis; this led him to discover Rome Viharo on the pseudoscience Skeptiko forum and both of them engage in a pointless warfare against skeptics of the paranormal i.e. both intensely dislike RationalWiki.

Laird Shaw

	“	Here's my position for the record: based on the evidence I've read and seen, I've personally concluded that Uri Geller has psychic powers.	„
	—Laird Shaw

Shaw is a fan of Uri Geller and is so dumb mentally ill he thinks Geller is a real psychic, writing he's "convinced that Uri has psychic powers as I am that Spain exists".

Crazy beliefs

Demons and paedophilia

Shaw claims to be possessed and in communication with demons, and in the same bizarre post claims paedophilia is the result of evil spirits (demons); so he appears to admit to being a paedophile:

Demonic beings, and potentially a supreme evil being going by a name like Satan or Lucifer, exist and can communicate with and influence "ordinary" human beings. I have been communicated to verbally by such a being, and have been, at times, influenced by metaphysical evil to the point of paralysis. So, when various posters to this thread speculate that paedophiles - whom we know exist - are being driven by evil spirits (demons), my reaction is "That's entirely possible - plausible even. And when various folk talk about ritual initiations by the powerful into secret societies, or even into fame and fortune through "contracts with the Devil", I say: that's certainly possible, and fits with my own experiences.

Spirit mediumship

Shaw holds crackpot views about communicating with spirits:

Extremely likely to likely. Why? Because of veridical information which cannot be explained by trickery. e.g. the double(triple?)-blind studies conducted by Julie Beischel. I must say though that when it comes to the proposition that the communication comes from the actual supposedly deceased entity, I am agnostic. There are plenty of spirits out there who watch our every move and who could potentially impersonate any being whom they have observed. Not all of these spirits are benign. Thus, I would be unlikely to actually consult a medium, and would certainly be very wary of any advice they offered that was supposedly from a deceased friend/relative.

Schizophrenia

In his own words, Shaw claims to be an ex-psychiatric patient and suffering from schizophrenia:

As an ongoing survivor of some fifteen years, across three states, of the "mental health" system here in Australia, and having been diagnosed with "schizophrenia" at some point in those one and a half decades, I have always been vehemently opposed to the rights violations inherent and primary in being involuntarily sectioned and "treated" in psychiatric wards, as well as afterwards in the community on "treatment orders". I have always seen my "illness" in a combination of psychological/psychic and spiritual terms: as a psycho-spiritual condition. I have always seen medication as objectionable - perhaps even evil - even though, having been originally forced onto it, I then found (and now find) it difficult to avoid and withdraw from, not least of all because, if, in withdrawing, I re-enter a psycho-spiritually fraught state, I then come to the attention of concerned individuals, and inevitably find myself once again incarcerated in a psychiatric prison, and forced back onto medication, typically after having been subjected to electro-convulsive therapy (ECT).

Sex pest

Because of his bad mental health and having been confined to psychiatric wards for many years, Shaw claims he has hang-ups with women and getting sex because of his social isolation he still claims to be recovering from; for this reason he’s been described by one user on a forum as “sex-obsessed” for talking about sex in too many posts:

	“	It sounds as though you have been repressing your own desire for female company and sex for many years, due to your own emotional issues, and now the thought of accessing these things has become an obsession. To my ears, your thoughts on these matters are incredibly adolescent. You sound like an inexperienced, desperate, sex-obsessed teenager. In all honesty, you don’t really belong on this forum at all, and I’m not sure how long I can put up with your sexual obsessiveness intruding into things all the time.	„

Shaws' response:

	“	It's true that I have had a few personal problems in recent years that have made it impossible for me to even interact with women. In that time though, I was so messed up (and isolated - it's a lot easier to be without desire when you're not around the objects of your desire) that sex and the desire for female company was the furtherest thing from my mind anyway. It's only now, as I overcome those problems and start to again engage with society, that my desires and yearnings return in full force. And yes, it is a potent experience.	„

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Laird Shaw is part of a series on Psychology