Michael Prescott's Blog

If I wrote sitcoms

I write suspense novels but watch a lot of sitcoms. What would it be like if I combined my interests?

Hmm ... what would it be like? I wonder ...

Home Improvement. Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor is exposed as notorious serial killer Jigsaw, whose homemade torture machines have subjected dozens of people to agonizing deaths. In a related story, oddball next-door neighbor Wilson lands in hot water when the bodies of 37 schoolchildren are found in his crawlspace.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Affable newsman Murray Slaughter lives up to his name when he's unveiled as Minneapolis's dreaded Icepick Gouger.

I Love Lucy. When Lucy's "visit to her mother" lasts a little too long, the Mertzes investigate and find the zany redhead stored in two dozen mason jars under Ricky's bed.

Cheers. Carla's dislike for coworker Diane turns deadly when the overeducated barmaid's headless torso is found floating in Boston Harbor. Comedy ensues when her head ends up in Sam's bowling-ball bag. In a related story, Cliff goes postal and takes out everyone in the bar with an AK-47. He begins a new life in the  cartoon voiceover business, where he meets up with Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor, a.k.a. Jigsaw.

Just Shoot Me. Finch picks up a prostitute with a prominent Adam's apple and becomes the latest victim of Manhattan's Crossdressing Killer. Elliott's successful investigation of the crime leads to a new career in law enforcement.

The Andy Griffith Show. When Aunt Bee's "visit to her sister" lasts a little too long, Barney investigates and discovers the lovable matron stored in two dozen mason jars under Andy's bed. 

Seinfeld. The Soup Nazi returns from Argentina, ladling out death for Jerry and Elaine. Jerry's last words: "Didja ever notice how soup tastes like strychnine?" In a related development, oddball next-door neighbor Kramer lands in hot water when the bodies of 37 schoolchildren are found in his armoire.

Becker. Instead of flu shots, ditzy assistant Linda administers lethal injections to Becker's patients. She begins a new life as a street junkie, only to fall into the clutches of Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor, a.k.a. Jigsaw.

Everybody Loves Raymond. When Marie's "visit to her cousin" lasts a little too long, Ray investigates and finds the bossy matriarch stored in two dozen mason jars under Frank's bed. Robert moves to the suburbs to start a new life that isn't as funny.

The King of Queens. Father McAndrew is shocked when selfish, manipulative, child-hating Carrie Heffernan is revealed to be, in actuality, the Anti-Christ. In a related story, affable IPS driver Doug Heffernan lands in hot water when the bodies of 37 schoolchildren are found in his stomach.

Irreducible Mind and the NDE

I've been skipping around in the impressive (and impressively hefty) new volume Irreducible Mind, by Edward F. Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, et al. The 800-page book, extensively researched and exhaustively referenced, is a major assault on reductionist or physicalist theories of neurology. The authors cite a vast array of borderline phenomena, including psychic phenomena, in order to build their case that the relationship between brain and mind cannot be reduced to simple terms of cause and effect.

One of the most interesting chapters is Chapter 6, "Unusual Experiences Near Death and Related Phenomena," which was contributed by Emily Williams Kelly, Bruce Greyson, and Edward F. Kelly. I'd like to offer a few excerpts from this chapter, partly to give you the flavor of the book, and partly to address some common criticisms of NDEs. In all these quotes, material in bold font has been emphasized by me, while material in italics has been emphasized by the authors. Also, please note that I have omitted nearly all citations.

Anyone who has studied the subject knows that reductionists like to explain near-death experiences in terms of purely physical causes. The authors show the inadequacy of all such explanations. For instance, there is the claim that oxygen deprivation can bring about an NDE.

One of the earliest and most persistent of the physiological theories proposed for NDEs is that lowered levels of oxygen (hypoxia or anoxia), perhaps accompanied by increased levels of carbon dioxide (hypercarbia), have produced hallucinations.... One study frequently cited is that of Whinnery (1997), who compared NDEs to what he called the "dreamlets" occurring in brief periods of unconsciousness induced in fighter pilots by rapid acceleration in a centrifuge... He claimed that some features common to NDEs are also found in these hypoxic episodes, including tunnel vision, bright lights, brief fragmented visual images, a sense of floating, pleasurable sensations, and, rarely, a sense of leaving the body. The primary features of acceleration-induced hypoxia, however, are myoclonic convulsions (rhythmic jerking of the limbs), impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, tingling in the extremities and around the mouth, confusion and disorientation upon awakening, and paralysis, symptoms that do not occur in association with NDEs. Moreover, contrary to NDEs, the visual images Whinnery reported frequently included living people, but never deceased people; and no life review or accurate out-of-body perceptions have been reported in acceleration-induced loss of consciousness. [Page 379]

Then there is the ketamine model:

... the suggestion that a ketamine-like endogenous neuroprotective agent may be released in conditions of stress... Ketamine, an anesthetic agent that selectively occupies NMDA receptors, can at subanesthetic doses produce feelings of being out of the body. Moreover, ketamine sometimes produces other features common to NDEs, such as travel through a dark tunnel into light, believing that one has died, or communion with God.

This hypothesis, however, also has problems. First, it is not of all clear that ketamine experiences do in fact resemble NDEs. Unlike the vast majority of NDEs, ketamine experiences are often frightening and involve bizarre imagery, and patients usually express the wish not to repeat the experience. Most ketamine users also recognize the illusory character of their experience, in contrast to the many NDE experiencers who are firmly convinced of the reality of what they experienced and its lack of resemblance to illusions or dreams. Even if ketamine experiences do resemble NDEs in some respects, many important features of NDEs, such as seeing deceased people or a revival of memories, have not been reported with ketamine. Furthermore, ketamine typically exerts its effects in an otherwise more or less normal brain, while many NDEs occur under conditions in which brain function is severely compromised. [Pages 380-381]

The authors further note that a "naturally occurring ketamine-like substance ... has not been identified in humans." (Page 384)

And there is the view, propounded most notably by M.A. Persinger, that electrical stimulation of the brain can reproduce NDEs on demand:

Persinger has also claimed that "a vast clinical and surgical literature ... indicates that floating and rising sensations, OBEs, personally profound mystical and religious encounters, visual and auditory experiences, and dream-like sequences are evoked, usually as single events, by electrical stimulation of deep, mesiobasal temporal lobe structures". His sole reference for this strong claim is a paper by Stevens (1982). That paper, however, is confined entirely to descriptions of certain physiological observations made in studies of epileptic patients, and it contains no mention whatever of any subjective experiences or of electrical stimulation studies, much less of "a vast clinical and surgical literature" supporting Persinger's claim. Persinger goes on to claim that, using weak transcranial magnetic stimulation, he and his colleagues have produced "all of the major components of the NDE, including out-of-body experiences, floating, being pulled towards a light, hearing strange music, and profound meaningful experiences." However, we have been unable to find phenomenological descriptions of the experiences of his subjects adequate to support this claim, and the brief descriptions that he does provide in fact again bear little resemblance to NDEs (e.g., Persinger, 1994, pages 284-285)....

Neurologist Ernst Rodin stated bluntly: "In spite of having seen hundreds of patients with temporal lobe seizures during three decades of professional life, I have never come across that symptomatology [of NDEs] as part of the seizure." [Pages 382-383]

As the authors explain, the similarities between hallucinations produced by electrical stimulation of the brain and NDEs have been greatly exaggerated:

As we mentioned earlier, research frequently cited in support of a model in which abnormal temporal lobe electrical activity produces an OBE is that of neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Penfield is widely reported as having produced OBEs and other NDE-like phenomena in the course of stimulating various points in the exposed brains of awake epileptic patients being prepared for surgery. Only two out of his 1132 patients, however, reported anything that might be said to resemble an OBE: One patient said: "Oh God! I am leaving my body". Another patient said only: "I have a queer sensation as if I am not here... As though I were half here and half there". In later studies at the Montréal Neurological Institute (where Penfield had conducted the study's), only one of 29 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy reported "a 'floating sensation' which the patient likened at one time to the excitement felt when watching a football game and at another time to a startle" (Gloor et al., 1982, pages 131-132). Such experiences hardly qualify as phenomenologically equivalent to OBEs. [Page 396]

Having disposed of the various physicalistic theories for NDEs, the authors go on to say:

NDEs seem instead to provide direct evidence for a type of mental functioning that varies "inversely, rather than directly, with the observable activity of the nervous system" (Myers, 1891d., p. 638). Such evidence, we believe, fundamentally conflicts with the conventional doctrine that brain processes produce consciousness, and supports the alternative view that brain activity normally serves as a kind of filter, which somehow constrains the material that emerges into waking consciousness. On this latter view, the "relaxation" of the filter under certain still poorly understood circumstances may lead to drastic alterations of the normal mind-brain relation and to an associated enhancement or enlargement of consciousness. [Page 385]

In their discussion of anesthesia, they consider the claim that some aspects of NDEs can be explained by the anesthetized patient being partially awake and hearing or feeling what is being done to him. They point out that such awakenings are exceedingly rare and different in kind from reported NDEs.

The expression "adequately anesthetized" is intended here to exclude cases of literal awakening, or partial awakening, during surgical procedures. Such awakening is known to occur, even using present-day techniques, in something on the order of 0.1-0.3% of all general-surgery procedures. Higher rates occur, as might be expected, when muscle relaxants are used in combination with low levels of anesthetic agents.... The phenomenology of such awakenings, however, is altogether different from that of NDEs, and often extremely unpleasant, frightening, and even painful. The experiences are typically brief and fragmentary, and primarily auditory or tactile, and not visual. [Footnote, page 387]

In their discussion of the celebrated and controversial Pam Reynolds case, they address the objection that the heavily anesthetized patient might still have been able to hear what was going on around her:

The experience also included some verifiable features: First, despite having speakers in her ears that blocked all external sounds with 95 dB clicks, the experience began when she heard the sound of the special saw used to cut into her skull... She also noted the unexpected (to her) way in which her head had been shaved, and she heard a female voice commenting that her veins and arteries were small....

Her description of the unusual saw was verified by the neurosurgeon and by photographs of it obtained by Sabom. Also, as the patient had heard, at the time the cardiopulmonary bypass procedure was being started, the cardiac surgeon (a female) had commented that the right femoral vessels were too small to support the bypass, so that she had to prepare the left leg. Although at the time this comment was made the patient's brainstem auditory evoked potentials had not yet disappeared, the molded speakers in her ears themselves, let alone the 95 dB clicks, would have made it impossible for her to hear the comment in the ordinary way, even had she been fully conscious at the moment....

The case is not perfect. The details were not published for several years after the experience occurred. More importantly, the verifiable events that she reported observing in the operating room occurred when she was anesthetized and sensorially isolated but before and after the period of time in which she was clinically "dead."... Even so, the extremity of her condition and her heavily anesthetized state throughout the entire procedure casts serious doubt on any view of mind or consciousness as unilaterally and totally dependent on intact physiological functioning. [Pages 392-394]

There is also a brief but fascinating discussion of an "even rarer kind of deathbed experience, but one that like NDEs calls into question the absolute dependence of mental functioning on the state of the brain":

There are scattered reports of people apparently recovering from dementia shortly before death. The eminent physician Benjamin Rush, author of the first American treatise on mental illness, observed that "most of mad people discover a greater or less degree of reason in the last days or hours of their lives". Similarly, in his classic study of hallucinations, Brierre de Boismont noted that "at the approach of death we observe that ... the intellect, which may have been obscured or extinguished during many years, is again restored in all its integrity". Flournoy mentioned that French psychiatrists had recently published cases of mentally ill persons who showed sudden improvement in their condition shortly before death....

[Other examples of more recent vintage follow. Then:]

Such cases are few in number and not adequately documented, but the persistence of such reports suggest that they may represent a real phenomenon that could potentially be substantiated by further in traditions. If so, they would seriously undermine the assumption that in such diseases as Alzheimer's the mind itself is destroyed in lockstep with the brain. Like many of the experiences discussed in this chapter, such cases would suggest that in some conditions, consciousness may be enhanced, not destroyed, when constraints normally supplied by the brain are sufficiently loosened. [Pages 410-411]

I might note that Nancy Reagan reported seeing a sudden return of awareness and recognition in her husband's eyes in the last moments before his passing. At the time of President Reagan's death, some commentators observed that this phenomenon was not unusual.

And the authors observe that while awakening during anesthesia is rare and usually traumatic, there are cases in which people remember what transpired while they were anesthetized. These cases involve hypnosis:

The most impressive reports of explicit (or conscious) awareness of events during anesthesia have been elicited by hypnosis. The historically important Levinson study, for example, involved 10 highly hypnotizable subjects undergoing very similar surgical procedures carry out under a deliberately deep and uniform anesthesia regime monitored with EEG. A month later -- but only under hypnosis -- four of these patients recalled nearly verbatim, and four others recalled partially, standardized remarks made by the anesthetist in conjunction with a staged "crisis" in the procedure. These studies have never, to our knowledge, been adequately followed up, but they should be, because such results, if applicable, suggest, like NDEs, that mind is still somehow able to operate when the brain is disabled by anesthesia. Moreover, they suggest, as Myers argued, that hypnosis is a method particularly conducive to loosening the "barrier" [between ordinary consciousness and subliminal consciousness] and thus accessing subliminal levels of consciousness. [Pages 414-415]

The authors are at pains to point out that these phenomena are not merely fringe issues that can be safely ignored. Instead NDEs, OBEs, and similar events pose a paradigm-shattering challenge to reductionist orthodoxy:

How might scientists intent upon defending the conventional view respond to the challenge presented by cases occurring under conditions like [the Pam Reynolds case]? First, it will undoubtedly be objected that even in the presence of a flat-lined EEG there still could be undetected brain activity going on....

[The authors concede as much, but go on to say:]

This first objection, however, completely misses the mark. The issue is not whether there is brain activity of any kind whatsoever, but whether there is brain activity of the specific form a regarded by contemporary neuroscience as the necessary condition of conscious experience. Activity of this form is eminently detectable by current EEG technology, and as we have already shown, it is abolished both by adequate general anesthesia and by cardiac arrest. [Pages 418-419]

In a footnote, the authors add: "Representative of people who have completely missed the mark here is Woerlee (2004)." An interesting debate between Dr. Gerald Woerlee and Kevin Williams is found here.

After considering a few other objections, the authors conclude as follows:

In sum, the central challenge of NDEs lies in asking how these complex states of consciousness, including vivid mentation, sensory perception, and memory, can occur under conditions in which current neurophysiological models of the production of mind by brain deem such states impossible. This conflict between current neuroscientific orthodoxy and the occurrence of NDEs under conditions of general anesthesia and/or cardiac arrest is head-on, profound, and inescapable. [Page 421]

Heaven and hell

Is it just me, or does this whole discussion of heaven and hell seem almost totally bankrupt of meaning?

HELL is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope Benedict XVI has said....

In 1999, Pope John Paul II said heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God, which is the goal of human life".

Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy".

In October, the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a "halfway house" between heaven and hell, was "only a theological hypothesis" and not a "definitive truth of the faith".

People make fun of spiritualism as shallow and weird, but it seems to me that spiritualistic interpretations of heaven and hell are more concrete, more understandable, and more plausible than the incoherent gobbledygook fed to us by more established religions. Maybe it's the difference between abstract theological speculation and practical empirical investigation.

Indictment

I'd never heard of the 1995 HBO movie Indictment until recently, and wasn't sure if it would be any good. On a whim I added it to my Netflix queue. The film deals with the McMartin Preschool case that consumed the media in Southern California, and eventually nationwide, in the early 1980s.

As you probably recall, the owner and several employees of the Manhattan Beach preschool were indicted on charges of sexually molesting the children. Hysteria ensued; similar allegations struck other preschools across the country; some far-out religious organizations began to claim that there was a vast conspiracy of child-abusing Satanists running daycare centers across the country. Naturally the McMartin defendants were presumed guilty; children, we were repeatedly told, "just don't lie" about sexual abuse.

Except it turns out that they do. Or more precisely, young children are still at the stage of "magical thinking," when the line between fact and fantasy is blurry, if not nonexistent. Pressured to say they were touched in inappropriate places, they will eventually say whatever the adult authority figures around them want to hear.

The case was a gross miscarriage of justice. After an unconscionable delay, charges were dismissed against most of the defendants, but two of them still had to stand trial. One was acquitted on all charges; the other was acquitted on most counts, with a hung jury on the others. In an outrageously unnecessary second trial, this remaining defendant still was not convicted (the jury acquitted him on some counts and was deadlocked on others), and the D.A.'s office finally threw in the towel - more than five years after the start of the whole sorry affair.

What makes the case so infuriating is that the D.A.'s office knew or should have known almost from the outset that the charges were phony. The initial claim of molestation was made by an emotionally unstable woman later diagnosed to be suffering from acute paranoid schizophrenia, a woman who accused a variety of relatives, neighbors, and strangers of abusing her young son. Her rambling, obviously delusional complaint was never forwarded to the defense team by the prosecution, and her later accusations of child abuse against other parties were deliberately covered up so that the defense wouldn't hear of them.

As the case dragged on, the children's claims began wilder and wilder. Not only had they been made to strip naked and engage in sex play with the preschool workers (in a building with large uncurtained windows situated on a busy street), but they had been taken to a cemetery and made to dig up corpses ... they had been led through a maze of underground tunnels beneath the school to a secret hideaway ... they had been escorted to a church where animals were ritually sacrificed on the altar ... they had been flown in a hot air balloon to a distant location ... they had been forced to watch as one of the staffers killed a horse with a baseball bat ...

Fantasy after fantasy after fantasy. Yet the D.A.'s office insisted that all of the defendants were guilty, holding many of them in jail for months or years. (Ray Buckey, the last defendant to be acquitted, spent more than five years in prison without bail.) In all this time, no physical evidence ever emerged to back up the children's increasing outlandish stories. Medical exams showed no signs of abuse. No pornographic pictures or videos of the children were found, despite a worldwide search. There were no tunnels under the school; the desperate investigators actually excavated the area, with no results. (Later, a crackpot archaeologist spent a brief time at the site and claimed he had found tunnels, but what he had really uncovered were some 1940s-era garbage dumps. Even the prosecution didn't take his "evidence" seriously.)

You would think that a case this badly botched, rife with prosecutorial misconduct, would have resulted in severe career penalties for the city attorneys involved. Apparently not. The woman in charge of the case, Lael Rubin, remained on the staff  of the Los Angeles County D.A.'s office long after the McMartin case finally collapsed. To my knowledge, she has never admitted fault for any of her actions. Indeed, she seems to be continuing such tactics. In 2003, the D.A.'s office was rebuked for failing to share crucial evidence with the defense in order to obtain a conviction. Who was in charge of the policy that was supposed to prevent such abuses? Lael Rubin.

The McMartin debacle highlights several important points that our society seems unwilling to learn. First, prosecutors enjoy extraordinary discretion in pursuing defendants who may well be innocent; even when clearly innocent people are subjected to extreme harassment over a pri0d of years, there is rarely any price paid by the offending prosecutor. The Duke lacrosse "rape" case is a more recent example. My guess is that prosecutors abuse their authority on a daily basis, and only the most notorious cases become public knowledge.

Second, as a society we have a tendency to lapse into hysteria the moment that "the children" are invoked. Almost any danger to children, whether real or imagined, significant or trivial, can generate a mob mentality. The Salem witchhunts are not as far behind us as we like to think.

Third, conspiratorial thinking comes naturally to a significant part of the American public, who had no problem believing that hundreds of daycare centers around the nation were engaging in systematic ritualistic abuse. This suggests that "magical thinking" is a stage of development not limited to the very young.

Fourth, the ego is a dangerous master. Lael Rubin and the other prosecutors were driven by the need to win a much-publicized case at any cost, regardless of facts, logic, or justice. They simply did not care that the accused staffers were innocent. All that mattered was to salvage their reputations and their prestige.

Fifth, some minds cannot be changed. To this day, there are people who continue to insist that the molestations did occur and that Satanism is running amok on the playgrounds of America.

And finally, we are far too quick to assume that children "must be" telling the truth when they make such accusations - and far too ready to grant expertise to the psychological manipulators who have evoked these "hidden" memories through a variety of dubious techniques. Our worship of "experts" is woefully misguided, whether the experts are reclaiming lost memories, orating about global warming, or debunking the paranormal. Experts have egos, too - and often are more interested in their agenda than in the facts. Just like the prosecutors in the McMartin fiasco.

All of which brings us back to that HBO movie, Indictment. It is one of the most powerful films I've seen on any legal or political issue. Shot in a documentary style, the film traces the progress of the case from the early hysteria to later doubts, relying mainly on the vantage point of cynical defense counsel Danny Davis, played by James Woods. Woods' bravura performance receives strong support from Mercedes Ruehl as Lael Rubin, Lola Davidovich as the social worker who elicited the children's phony memories, and Henry Thomas (Eliot from E.T., now all grown up) as Ray Buckey. Actually, there's not a weak performance in the film; you know a movie is well cast when an actor of the caliber of James Cromwell  has a relatively minor role as a judge.

If you have any illusions about the justice system in this country, Indictment will wipe them away. This film is not an indictment of Ray Buckey and the other McMartin defendants, but of the system that did its best to destroy them for no good reason at all.

A mighty wind

Certain Bible passages fascinate me, because I can almost, but not quite, grasp their meaning. For a long time, John 3:5-8 was one of them:

"... No one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born anew.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of spirit." [New International Version, slightly adapted]

Now, however, I believe I understand this particular passage. The key to my little epiphany came when I was thinking about creativity. I found myself thinking that creativity is not something you generate, but something that operates through you.

With that in mind, I thought of John 3:5-8 in a new light. I now believe it means something like this:

"No one can achieve a spiritual life unless he or she is born of higher consciousness. Ordinary birth gives rise to ego, but spiritual rebirth gives rise to higher consciousness. Therefore you shouldn't be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born anew.' Higher consciousness is like the wind; it does what it pleases, not what you wish it to do. You see its results in action, but you cannot tell where it comes from or how it may manifest itself next time it appears. That's just how it is with spiritual people: higher consciousness operates through them, using them as a vessel, an instrument; they cannot control it or predict it, any more than they can control or predict the blowing of the wind."

The Lindbergh case

One of the most sensational criminal cases in American history was the fatal kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby boy in 1932. The case remains controversial to this day, and I had always assumed there was some real doubt about what had happened. Recently, however, I did a little reading on the subject and was surprised to discover that for the most part the resolution of the case was pretty straightforward. There really shouldn't be much controversy at all.

The major bone of contention involves Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a young German who was illegally in the United States. Hauptmann's English was poor, making it difficult for him to defend himself, and his nationality made him the target of widespread prejudice. For this and other reasons, some people have always insisted that Hauptmann did not receive a fair trial.

And this may well be true. The jury was quite likely predisposed to find Hauptmann guilty and took only a few hours to do so. Nevertheless, it is a big leap to go from saying that the trial had some irregularities to saying that Hauptmann was actually innocent.

Let's look at the evidence against him.

A large portion of the ransom money was found hidden in Hauptmann's garage. Hauptmann was known to have been spending the money; in fact, it was traced back to him through one of the purchases he had made. (The serial numbers on the bills had been recorded.)

Hauptmann's handwriting matched the handwriting on the ransom notes. His characteristic misspellings, some of which were quite eccentric, also matched the misspellings in the notes.

A homemade ladder with a hinge mechanism was used in the commission of the crime. Hauptmann was a carpenter. A diagram of a ladder of exactly this type was found in one of his notebooks. Some of the wood used in the ladder was purchased at the lumberyard that Hauptmann frequented. Another piece of wood came from Hauptmann's attic; one of the attic's horizontal crossbeams had been cannibalized to complete the ladder.

Hauptmann had a criminal record in Germany and had escaped from prison before coming to the United States. One of his crimes was burglary. He committed the burglary by propping a ladder against the side of the building and climbing in through the second story window -- exactly the modus operandi used in the Lindbergh case.

A man named John Condon was used as the go-between in the ransom negotiations. Condon's address and phone number were found a written on the wall of Hauptmann's closet. Hauptmann admitted that the writing was his and had no coherent explanation of why he had written down the information.

John Condon identified Hauptmann as the man with whom he had negotiated.

Hauptmann had been absent from his job on the day when the ransom payment was made and quit his job the next day, claiming he had come into a large amount of money by playing the stock market.

There was more evidence, but you get the idea. People who insist that Hauptmann was innocent have to claim that all of the evidence against him was manufactured or manipulated in some sinister way. It's essentially the argument used by the O.J. Simpson "dream team" of defense lawyers. Maybe if Hauptmann had been able to retain a dream team of his own, he would have been acquitted, but it's hard to say that justice would have been done.

If there is so much evidence against Hauptmann, why does anyone continue to defend him? I think there are four reasons.

First, Hauptmann went to his death refusing to confess, even when the governor offered to commute his sentence to life in prison if he would take responsibility for the crime. Hauptmann's defenders say that only an innocent man would take such a stand. But there are other possible reasons for his intransigence. He might have genuinely preferred a quick death to the prospect of spending the next fifty years in a prison cell. Or he might have feared that his wife, who was never arrested, would become the target of retribution by accomplices in the crime if he began to sing.

This leads us to the second point of controversy: Did Hauptmann act alone? Here his defenders have a legitimate point. There is a considerable amount of evidence suggesting that more than one person was involved in the kidnapping. Hauptmann may have taken the fall for his associates. But of course, this doesn't make him innocent; it only means that one or more other guilty parties escaped justice.

Third, some of Hauptmann's defenders are politically motivated. Charles Lindbergh became famous -- or infamous -- as an isolationist on the eve of World War II, insisting that the United States stay out of a European war. For taking this stand, he was denounced in some quarters as a fascist or a Nazi sympathizer, though he does not appear to have been particularly enamored of Hitler. He simply felt that Russia and Germany should be left to fight it out between themselves, while the US stayed on the sidelines. This was a fairly popular position at the time; the nation committed itself to war only after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, people who regard Lindbergh as a proto-Nazi are inclined to see the worst of him in all respects; they go so far as to suggest that he killed his own baby and then conspired with the authorities to frame Hauptmann. Needless to say, there is not a scintilla of evidence to back up this claim.

Finally, we cannot discount the natural human tendency to want the "crime of the century," as the Lindbergh kidnapping case was dubbed, to be as dramatic as possible. Bruno Hauptmann was an insignificant figure, and some people simply find it hard to believe that a nobody like him could be responsible for the crime that captured the attention of the world. It just had to be more complicated than that, they think.

But it probably wasn't. Even if Hauptmann had one or two people helping him, an objective look at the evidence shows that he was deeply involved in the crime. It was no grand scheme concocted by a criminal mastermind. It was a poorly conceived and ineptly executed plot that ultimately failed, resulting in the demise of little Charles Lindbergh Jr. and sending Bruno Richard Hauptmann to his death in the electric chair.

For more info:

Lindbergh, A. Scott Berg

The Lindberg Case, Jim Fisher

The Cases that Haunt Us, John Douglas and Mark Olshaker

A literary feast

Today we learned of the latest triumph in the world of letters.

 

LOS ANGELES - Anna Nicole Smith's private thoughts written in two diaries have been sold for more than $500,000 to a German businessman ...

The late Playboy model's handwritten 1992 diary was sold for $282,500 and her 1994 diary went for $230,000 in an eBay auction Thursday, plus a 20 percent buyer's premium.

Her 1992 diary consists of 26 entries from January to August while the 1994 one contains about 30 pages from January to July, Riccio said. The entries show a moody and complicated woman ...

Among the entries was Smith discussing her husband, elderly Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married in 1994 and who died the next year.

"It was a okay day," she wrote of June 11, 1992. "I had lunch with Howard. Someone ran over my cat yesterday. I was real sad."

In a 1994 entry, she wrote about his illness. "My husbands very weak. Theres nothing I can do," she wrote. "I want each hour to comfort him with medicines and prayers."

Even on the basis of these brief excerpts, the two slim volumes do indeed promise a stimulating reading experience about "a moody and complicated woman."

Take June 11. One minute it's "a okay day," and the next minute Smith is mourning her cherished cat. ("I was real sad.") Rarely in modern literature do we confront such stark mood swings and such a richly textured inner life.

Consider also the author's Hemingwayesque simplicity of language: "Someone ran over my cat yesterday." Have six words ever said so much?

Yet Smith also reveals her Joycian side, as she plays with words, grammar, and punctuation, creating a new syntax rife with double meanings: "My husbands very weak." The artfully omitted apostrophe raises the question: one husband, or two? Does the implied duality suggest a dichotomy of loyalties? A divided heart?

Or contemplate the words "It was a okay day." By merely substituting "a" for the more conventional "an," the author recreates the guileless naivete of childhood, while subtly punning on the slang expression "A-okay," with its subliminal militaristic associations." The innocence of childhood is thus juxtaposed with the horrors of warfare. Masterful!

And the buyer paid a mere $600,000 (including the 20% premium) for fifty pages of these stylistic coups and Proustian insights? Clearly it would be a bargain at ten times the price. These diaries are fated to take their place beside the First Folio of Shakespeare, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, and the collected poems of Emily Dickinson.

Some, no doubt, will be cynical about the purchase of these diaries, but I say, fie on the naysayers! This inspiring story - and the still more inspiring woman behind it - proves that even in an age saturated with mindless diversions and tabloid sensationalism, the written word in all its power and beauty continues to command center stage.

Project Alpha

Update, January 31, 2008: Banacek, one of the magicians mentioned below, has his own recollection of events, which is somewhat different from Thalbourne's. For his side of the story, please see this post.

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Today a reader, Travis, asked me about Project Alpha, the famous episode from the early 1980s in which superskeptic James Randi arranged for two young magicians to infiltrate a parapsychology lab in order to confound the researchers. Over the years, this strange incident has assumed almost legendary proportions in the minds of some skeptics and reporters, who claim that the researchers were totally fooled. Here, for instance, is the way the story is told in Las Vegas Style magazine, with my comments and corrections in brackets and in bold font:

By 1979 BANACHEK [one of the magicians in question, whose real name is Steve Shaw] was starting to draw national attention as a gifted performer in extra sensory perception crafts. That was also the year that McDonnell-Douglas Aircraft awarded a $500,000 grant to Washington University in St. Louis for the establishment of the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. [Incorrect - the grant was not bestowed by the corporation, but by James S. McDonnell as a private gift.] The lab was supposed to come up with evidence that things like bending a fork with your thoughts was a real thing. If the idea of spending half a million clams on fork bending seems just a little soft in the head, you're not alone. James Randi was an internationally known magician and an active investigator of paranormal claims when McDonnell-Douglas [sic] made the grant. He decided to send two young illusionists into the MacLab to debunk it. BANACHEK was one of the illusionists.

For three years [he] was subjected to every test the pros could come up with to prove he had authentic psychic powers. He bent things, burned things, moved things and knew things. He passed every test with flying colors [false - see Thalbourne's article, linked below] and at the end of the three year period the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research proudly announced to the scientific community that they had the real thing in the form of BANACHEK [false - no such announcement was made]. OMNI Magazine did a spread on BANACHEK. Discover Magazine said "...his demonstrations were just phenomenal." Even the National Enquirer called him a "Prodigy. Nobody like him in his field."

Mid bow for the McDonnell folks James Randi drops his bomb that BANACHEK had been working for him for the past three years and what's more everything he did was an illusion. Remember? Illusions are ideas creating misleading appearances. And mislead BANACHEK did. You know you have a major coup in your pocket when you sting the National Enquirer. [Really?] The guys at the Laboratory for Psychical [Research] were crushed. [False - they had already suspected Shaw and his partner of fraud, and had dismissed them both more than a year earlier.]

I guess Las Vegas Style subscribes to the motto "print the legend." The actual facts behind this case are thoroughly presented in a paper I found online in PDF (Adobe) form: "Science Versus Showmanship: A History of the Randi Hoax," by Michael A. Thalbourne.

Originally I had thought of summarizing this article, but there's no need to do so because it speaks for itself. Thalbourne, who was a participant in some of the events, writes in a straightforward, engaging style and lays out the key facts and timeline in the clearest possible way.

The case is also covered, in less detail, by John Beloff in Parapsychology: A Concise History.

As both Beloff's and Thalbourne's accounts make clear, there is much less to Project Alpha than its cheerleaders would have us believe. Regardless of what the National Enquirer may have said, the researchers never publicly committed themselves to the view that the phenomena they observed were genuine. They remained properly cautious in their published remarks. Indeed, they privately came to the conclusion that the two test subjects were not worth studying any further, and politely terminated the experiments. Even so, Randi had the chutzpah to hold a press conference claiming that the lab had been successfully duped - a story that is repeated to this day.

To nail down this point, I direct your attention to the appendix that follows the bibliography in Thalbourne's paper, where the published conclusions of the researchers are reproduced. This document is dated September 1, 1981, more than one year before Randi's January, 1983, press conference exposing the hoax. Regarding the test subject Mike Edwards (Shaw's partner in trickery), the researchers write:

The outcome of this research is suggestive of psychokinesis but inconclusive, due to its exploratory nature ... ordinary explanations exist for these effects, given the conditions under which they have been observed. Thus, although several events of interest have transpired, we do not claim that evidence conclusive of "psychic ability" has yet been demonstrated in our research. [Emphasis added]

Jack: back on track

I'm really tired of the expression "jump the shark." Every time a TV show has a lapse in quality, an assortment of critics and Internet know-it-alls start insisting that the show has jumped the proverbial shark, i.e., crossed the line from solid entertainment to unwatchable trash. (The term comes from an infamous episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie waterskiied over a shark tank, or something. It was said to mark the show's transition from good to bad ... or more accurately, from mediocre to even more mediocre.)

The latest target of shark-jumping commentary is 24, which was under fire for two or three subpar episodes in a  row. And it's true that Jack's foray into a Russian consulate, complete with the obligatory torture, was not the series' finest moment. It was, in fact, pretty lame. But it was only a couple of eps. No sharks were jumped. At worst, maybe a few guppies were hopped.

What people don't seem to realize is that writing a TV show is hard work, and when you're cranking out 24 hours of drama per season, there are going to be dramatic lulls, problematic plot points, and other misfires. It's inevitable.

And it's not as if it hasn't happened before. 24 has had other bad patches. Remember the misadventures of Jack Bauer's hapless daughter Kim, who was caught in a hostage standoff at a convenience store, kidnapped by drug dealers, and pursued by a hungry cougar? Or Terri Bauer's temporary amnesia? Or the long stretch of time Jack spent cooling his jets at a desolate Mexican ranch until the writers could figure out how to get him back on US soil?

A show like 24, constricted by its more-or-less real-time format, is always going to have its ups and downs. Last season was probably the most consistent so far, and as such it's a tough act to follow. But the new season offers plenty of thrills and twists for Bauer junkies (and you know who you are).

Last week's episode was generally strong, with a shocker ending involving ex-President Logan. Tonight's episode was even better, a fully satisfying mix of ticking-clock suspense, political machinations, office intrigue, and neato plot twists.

In other words, Jack is back - not that he ever really went away. And there's not a shark in sight. 

War of the words

Well, here we go again!

On March 8, Marcel Cairo left this message on one of this blog's comment threads:

Unlike the majority of people who visit here, I have been a mental medium since my teen age years, as well as a member of the spiritualist church for the same amount of time. I have also attended dark circle seances where decepted tricks were used to convince people of a floating trumpet.

My point is, I am speaking from an insider's POV. That said, I want to point out that there is a reason why the National Spiritualist Association of Churches has rejected the practice of materialization mediumship. IT'S FRAUD!

There is no such thing as ectoplasm, and there is no logical reason within the laws of physics or nature why these acts of materialization should have to take place in the dark.

Another one of the ridiculous claims made over and over again by people defending these charlatans and frauds is that any interference with the Medium may bring harm to him/her. Well, I, being a medium of over 23 years, am in no danger from Spirit. Allow me to be bound to them during one of these sessions. Let me "risk" my life. I am not afraid... they are.

I am hereby officially throwing out a challenge to David Thompson, Warren Caylor or Colin Fry to openly pick up my challenge to let me sit bound to them during a materialization session. It's time to turn off the loud music and turn on the lights to this blatant deception.

Michael Prescott has been diplomatic, because that's the gentleman that he is. I am not. I am a hard-headed, American-Argentine medium, and proud of the honest work I do.

You no longer can claim that it's just skeptics that are trashing your claims. I am trashing your claims. Me, the medium. Why? Because frankly, I'm sick and tired frauds tainting my profession!

So come on Australia and England, the gauntlet has been thrown. Which one of you has the balls to take up my challenge?

On March 19, on the same thread, Leo MacDonald posted what is evidently a response from Victor Zammit. I have not been able to find this response on Mr. Zammit's Web site, so I'm not sure where it came from. If anyone knows the URL, please let me know so I can link to it.

Victor rebuts a self styled ‘medium’ who states that materialization séances are nothing but fraud.

For the record: credibility of the cynic is critical. So let’s examine who this critic is and why he tried to launch a dirty attack on materialization mediumship and the sitters of materialization mediums – ie on me too!!. Let’s start first, who is this Marcel Cairo (hereinafter Marcy)? He is not empiricist. He is not qualified to conduct experimentation at professional level. To my knowledge – after sixteen years of intense professional afterlife research, he has never written any acceptable article anywhere about the afterlife. Nor has he done any acceptable work which was confirmed by any empiricist or peer group at all. He appears to be some sort of a small-time, amateur once a week radio programmer/broadcaster. He claims to be a ‘mental medium.’ In terms of the paranormal, he’s a non-entity touting for support for his small time radio.

No one appears to know if he charges any money for his so called mediumship and no one really knows objectively, how accurate he is if he is a medium.

But we never heard of him before; we never ever obtained any independent evidence that he is a medium - let alone a genuine medium. He claims to have attended ‘dark circle’ séances but we do NOT know where, when and with whom he sat. He is too shy to tell us who the materialization mediums were. Cairo claims deception was used regarding floating trumpet, but no one ever reported that bit of interesting news anywhere at the time.

Not having available evidence to the contrary, this Marcy could be a real fraud himself. He could be charlatan, a cheat and a liar himself – trying to dupe innocent people. He could be doing some dirty work for somebody else. If that is the case we want to know WHO is making this Cairo dirty in the way he goes about his attacks. We want to debate the organ grinder not the monkey!

He showed anti-materialization bias when I was on his radio program from Hollywood some 12 months ago. Content analysis of what he stated shows clearly he is actively against materialization mediumship. He just cannot be a genuine medium. No medium behaves like this M.C.

Now, without ever having experienced proper materialization mediumship he makes a dogmatic statement that it is ‘fraud.’ In professional debate, that would be inadmissible because the submission has to have the details of the circumstances where and when fraud took place and who were the witnesses – and whether the witnesses are credible or not. Cairo carefully omits that. He makes an assumption consistent with his own negativism that it must be fraudulent conduct in the séances – the results are too sensational to be true.

Psychologists call that ‘projection’ – attributing to others his own proclivity for fraud, ie, he would be attributing his own fraudulent conduct on to others. This is a primary conclusion when Cairo does not substantiate his claims about fraud.

“There is no such thing as ectoplasm” he states. This dogmatic erroneous statement is also inadmissible because he has not rebutted the empirical evidence submitted by a number of highly qualified experts, including a Nobel Prize winner Professor Richet from France, Prof Crawford, a physicist from Scotland and what we witnessed ourselves during our own materialization experiments. Our sitters, all open minded empiricists- not spiritualists, nothing to do with religion, have witnessed ectoplasm being emitted out from brilliant materialization medium David Thompson.

“ … there is no logical reason within the laws of physics or nature why these acts of materialization should have to take place in the dark …”

Cairo here exhibits colossal paranormal ignorance: he shows he knows absolutely nothing about non-physical energy and how it works. He mentions the ‘law of physics’ when we are dealing with non-physical energy.

A little illustrative digression: this guy reminds when Professor Donald West in England made a fool of himself in public when he stated that ‘there is no ectoplasm’ and boasted that materialization Helen Duncan hid over two yards of white cheesecloth in her anus. Then during the séance she pulled it out to make it look like it was ectoplasm. I challenged this good Professor if he himself (or if he could bring somebody else) to demonstrate that to us, I will give him twenty thousand dollars. This professor went into silence for many years after that. Or will Marcel himself would like to demonstrate that to us? I challenge you to do that Marcy!

“ … the ridiculous claims made over and over again by people defending these charlatans and frauds is that any interference with the Medium may bring harm to him/her.”

Again, Cairo failed miserably to do proper research and makes ridiculous claims himself. Materialization medium Helen Duncan was killed when during one of her séances in the dark, the arrogant Nottingham police raided the séance room and put the lights on. The ectoplasm bounced back into the medium and as a result of this she died a few days later with the injury caused by the light being put on. Incidentally, during her trial in 1944 over 43 witnesses with the highest credibility testified about how genuine Helen Duncan was and NOT ONE WITNESS was discredited. She is known as the first of the contemporary Spiritualist martyrs.

“I am hereby(sic) officially throwing out a challenge to David Thompson, Warren Caylor or Colin Fry to openly pick up my challenge to let me sit bound to them during a materialization session. It's time to turn off the loud music and turn on the lights to this blatant deception.”

Here we have a non-entity totally uninformed about materialization mediumship. He does NOT come across as a serious truth finding researcher who exhibits competence that he can perceive the paranormal with empirical equanimity. Marcy has made up his mind BEFORE the experiment! How amateur can you get?? His conclusion is final – ‘don’t bother me with empirical facts – it’s all fraud’ he says and imputes. His definitive ‘can’t be true’ has blinded equity, fairness, empirical balance. His wild and outrageous statements show how ignorant, silly and negatively prejudicial he is. His personal beliefs in closed minded skepticism have blinded him of what is empirically tested truth.

No legitimate medium will allow such outrageous suggestions for Marcy to be tied to the medium especially, when he has aggressively stated that he has the potential to sabotage the legitimate procedure of the materialization experiment with the potential of harming the medium.

Being tied to a medium will inevitably mitigate against the materialization procedure. That is not fair to suggest something which is diametrically opposite to materialization protocol.

What is fair, reasonable and professional is for Marcy to try to duplicate the results the Circle of the Silver Cord gets – and if he can he gets a cool guaranteed $500,000 as one flamboyant skeptic national debunker stated a number of times. When I challenged him to put up or shut up - to duplicate our results, he kept as quiet as a mouse.

M Prescot website is not supported by professionals. Prescot himself is not a professional empiricist. He has no credibility at all as a legitimate critic. He raises issues that are silly and his logic is not up to standard at all. He tends to repeat other people’s errors, as does Cairo – both of these gentlemen show, by their conduct that they are closed minded skeptics with an apriori negative bias against materialization mediumship. This is something which is not accepted at professional level debate.

Now, if Marcy has to direct professionals to take us on at professional level – I guarantee that David Thompson and other respected materialization mediums will be more than happy to oblige. My challenge of $500,000 for anyone who can duplicate what we do every Sunday night is current.

Got the fortitude, the courage, the balls, the brains and the cash for it Marcy.?

Marcy, put your money where your mouth is. Again, for the record Cairo, put up or shut up!

My advice: Let's not get all hot and bothered about this little dust-up. In an area so fraught with controversy, some disagreements are inevitable. But I do want to say that I participated in a group reading, via an Internet-based teleconferencing service, with Marcel Cairo, and all of the participants were extremely impressed with his accuracy, professionalism, insight, and modesty. I think that he is a genuine medium, and I believe the other participants came to the same conclusion as well.

That said, I'm not so sure "there is no such thing as ectoplasm," as Marcel says. While a lot of allegedly ectoplasmic phenomena have been faked, some of it seems (in my opinion) to have been genuine. Also, while a mental medium may not be in any danger from bright light or physical contact, I think it is possible that a physical medium may face such risks. The two phenomena are different.

My opinion is that some physical mediums have been legitimate - D.D. Home and Eusapia Palladino are the outstanding examples - while others have been fraudulent. I would not dismiss all materialization phenomena by any means. The modern spiritualist movement began with the Fox sisters in Hydesville, and I think they were legitimate, at least in their early years.

Some good books on this subject include The Limits of Influence, by Stephen E. Braude; Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding; Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spirituaism, by Barbara Weisberg; and Ghost Hunters, by Deborah Blum (which covers a variety of mediums, mental and physical).