When I turned off my shower water this morning I heard water running in the bathroom sink. I didn’t remember turning the water on, but it was on. There are only two possible explanations. The spirit of a dead human turned the water on, or the plumbing has come to life and has a will of its own. Right?
I heard someone use a similar either/or line of reasoning on a TV news program once. A reporter was interviewing a man who ran a small religious group and claimed that he was the reincarnation of Jesus and several other spiritual teachers from history. He told the reporter, “Either I’m crazy, or what I’m telling you is true.” The reporter was skeptical but didn’t bother to mention the obvious third option –he might be a con man. That one was skipped right over.
It’s the dang false dilemma fallacy, so often used by promoters of crazy. The options are rarely restrained to just two. For example, look at all the other possibilities for my running water mystery:
(1) One of the cats could have opened the bathroom door without me noticing, crept in, managed to muscle the faucet on, and crept back out again, closing the door behind her.
(2) A person or raccoon could have climbed to the roof outside the second floor bathroom, slid open the window, eased themselves through the opening, turned on the water, and exited the same way.
(3) Maybe in my hazy, just-woke-up state, I turned on the water and forgot to turn it off before getting in the shower.
I think we can agree that most likely explanation is sentient plumbing.
dangblog 
You forgot the obvious possibility of transient extra-terrestrials in search of a shower and possibly a place to sleep. Have you checked your implant status?
Yeah. And I feel you just pooh-poohed the ghost research… slacker!
Thinking like this will never get you your own Ghosthunter show. But it might land you a spot on Animal Planet. Dang funny!
That gives me an idea. Ghost-Animal Planet could be my ticket to fortune. “What was that? I thought I heard a dead parrot!”