Michael Prescott's Blog

Essay: Talking to the Dead — Live & Uncut

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004. It has been slightly abridged and reworded.

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Talking to the Dead - Live & Uncut

 

I have to admit I'd never paid much attention to psychic medium James Van Praagh. His syndicated TV show, now canceled, never did anything for me -- the format was too similar to John Edward's series Crossing Over, and I didn't care for the touchy-feely attitude Van Praagh projects. But the other night (Friday, January 30, 2004), I happened to catch his appearance on Larry King Live.

What intrigued me about Larry King Live was that the show was, well, live. No pretaping, no editing. Van Praagh had to take calls at random from all over the world, in real time. He had no chance to prepare and, with only a minute or two for each caller, little opportunity to ask questions. Since he couldn't see the caller, he certainly couldn't be accused of reading the person's body language or facial expression. It seemed like a good test of mediumship on live TV -- working without a net. Did Van Praagh pass the test?

He did. With flying colors.

There are times when I wonder how people can be so skeptical about psychic phenomena. Watching this edition of Larry King Live was one of those times. I would hate to be a skeptic trying to explain the remarkable series of hits Van Praagh produced in the course of this hour of television. If you didn't see the show, I urge you to read the transcript of the episode.

The transcript will give you all the details, but what it won't tell you is how thoroughly convincing Van Praagh's manner of presentation was. Skeptics say that mediums ask leading questions in order to elicit information, but Van Praagh asked almost no questions and frequently interrupted callers who were trying to tell him more than he wanted to know. More than once he said, "Don't tell me. Let me tell you." He looked genuinely irritated at callers who blurted out information he'd wanted to reveal. Skeptics also say that mediums issue vague generalities that could apply to anyone. But a lot of what Van Praagh said was specific -- in many instances uncannily so. Once or twice I felt a chill as a caller verified a piece of information that could not possibly be explained away as a lucky guess.

Finally, skeptics say that any trained mentalist -- i.e. a fake psychic -- can duplicate what Van Praagh, John Edward, George Anderson, and other mediums do. Well, I'd like to see them duplicate what Van Praagh did on Larry King Live. I'd like to see a mentalist come up with specific, detailed information pertinent to a caller who has phoned in at random, in circumstances that preclude cold reading or advance research. If mentalists can reproduce this feat, let them prove it. Until then, I'll be skeptical of their claims.

As I said, the complete transcript is the only way to get the full sense of this program. What follows are a few highlights based on my scribbled notes.

Van Praagh is told by a caller that both her parents have died. He interrupts, saying that the father had a problem with one leg and couldn't walk. The leg was going to be operated on and preliminary tests were carried out, but the operation never took place. Also, the father's sister is deceased. This is all correct.

A caller says her twin sister died three years go. Van Praagh says the sister was not expected to die and had a sudden passing. She was religious and was buried underneath a religious symbol. All correct.

A caller says her mother passed away. Van Praagh focuses on a respiratory problem involving the sinuses and lungs and an inability to breathe. He is told that the mother died of emphysema.

A caller says her grandfather died nine years ago. Van Praagh says he's getting somebody with the last name of Cook or Cooke. The caller does know people by this name. Van Praagh says there's a deceased man named Cook(e) whose death was covered in the newspapers. The caller doesn't verify this, but seems to understand the reference. Van Praagh switches to the caller's grandfather, saying he had an eye condition that affected only one eye, and was unable to speak before he died. This is correct.

A caller asks about his deceased brother. Van Praagh says the brother is "around your father" (who is living) and that the father has health concerns - specifically blood sugar problems. This is correct. The brother suffered an unexpected death. Correct -- he died in a car accident.

A caller asks about her deceased grandfather, Adam. Van Praagh identifies a farm and is told by the caller that the grandfather was raised on a farm. Van Praagh says the grandfather's brother is also dead and the two men were not close while alive. This is true. Van Praagh says somebody just went to the eye doctor. The caller says, "I just went and got my eyes checked."

A caller wants to know about her Aunt Barb. Van Praagh says Barb wants to send a message to the caller's mother, who, he says correctly, is still alive. He says the mother deserves a lot of credit because, when her husband was not working, the mother worked extra hard to pick up the slack. This is true.

During a commercial break, Van Praagh apparently tells Larry King he is getting somebody's son and expects the next call to relate to this person. The next caller inquires about a father or husband, but Van Praagh says a son must have died before the husband -- which is correct. The son, he says, died by someone else's hand -- correct. The son had a friend named Mike -- correct. The son died at night -- correct. There's a reference to a fishing boat -- correct; the husband had a boat.

A caller wants to know if there is a message from ... But Van Praagh interrupts to say that her father has passed over - correct. There was friction between the father and his sister. True. There is a girl, deceased, whom Van Praagh identifies as the caller's daughter - correct. The caller says she has a gold necklace belonging to her daughter. Van Praagh says the caller thought of holding the necklace in her hand before making the call. True. He says a tree was planted in memory of the daughter. True. Asked by the caller about a friend named Lou, Van Praagh says the daughter knew him, and he liked race cars. True.

A caller wants to know about her father. Van Praagh says someone in the family just got married or is planning a marriage -- correct. He says someone in the family had a heart condition and is told that it was the father. Van Praagh says the father tried a variety of different medicines that didn't work -- correct. The father was put on a liquid diet and hated it -- correct. There are three kids in the family ("Exactly," says the caller), and they are fighting over the terms of the father's will. Correct.

A caller wants to know about a friend named Michael who committed suicide. Van Praagh says Michael was creative, he was thinking of moving before he died, he had his heart broken by someone else, there were two memorial services for him, and there is an important memory involving Florida. All of this is correct.

A skeptic would say I've listed only the hits and ignored the misses. Absolutely. That is precisely what I've done, and deliberately so - I want to stress the most impressive parts of Van Praagh's performance. There were misses, although often they involved callers who seemed so nervous and flustered that they might have failed to take in what Van Praagh was saying. By my count, the hits outnumbered the misses, although a skeptic would count some of my hits as misses and others as lucky guesses.

Is that what we're dealing with - lucky guesses? If so, Van Praagh is the luckiest guesser in the world. Anybody who can make this many lucky guesses in an hour has a skill indistinguishable from psychic power. Or is it a hoax, a massive conspiracy involving Van Praagh, Larry King, and CNN? Count on the skeptics to fall back on this desperate argument when all else fails.

I suppose that by a massive effort at rationalization, a person could pick apart Van Praagh's comments one by one, in much the same way that the O.J. Simpson defense team picked apart the mountain of evidence against their client and succeeded in befuddling the jury. Someone could claim that a particular statement was a lucky guess, while another was a generalization, and another was derived from an unusual insight into human nature, and so on. This is the kind of argument that skeptics make - when they bother to address the specifics of psychic readings at all.

To me, it sounds a lot like Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran arguing that one blood sample was planted by police, another blood sample was incorrectly collected, another blood sample was contaminated in the lab, etc. This strategy aims at getting us to focus on scattered bits of evidence, any one of which can be disputed, rather than stepping back to take in a broader view -- namely, that a trail of blood led from the the murder scene to Simpson's car, and from his car into his house. It can be an effective way to score debating points, but the only people who think it's a good approach for finding the truth are those who believe that O.J. is still searching for "the real killer."

What I think is that Van Praagh is for real. Call me naive, but for me, it's the simplest explanation, and the only one that fits the facts. And if he is for real, then there's no reason to doubt that some other mediums are for real also. Which means the world has suddenly become a much bigger, more interesting, and, I would say, better place.

Essay: Unreality TV

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2003.

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Unreality TV: "Psychic Secrets Revealed"

 

Recently, NBC aired an hour-long prime-time special called "Psychic Secrets Revealed," produced by reality TV pioneer Bruce Nash. In the style of earlier programs that demonstrated how professional magicians pull off their tricks, including Nash’s own "Breaking the Magician’s Code," the show ran through a variety of mentalist acts and revealed the ruses behind the illusions.

Actually, one of the secrets not revealed by the program was its exact title. In TV Guide, NBC press releases, and assorted other places it was known variously as "Psychic Secrets Revealed," "Secrets of the Psychics Revealed," "Secrets of Psychics Revealed" (sans "the"), and most dramatically, "Secrets of Psychics – Revealed!"

Whatever you call it, the show consisted of a wide range of mentalist tricks, most of which were nightclub-style acts that would probably never be taken as serious evidence of psychic ability. Some of the tricks were not so secret; the slate-writing gimmick, in which words magically appear on a chalkboard, has been known and written about for a century. Other tricks were barely tricks at all. We see a fake psychic reciting vague generalities to her clients, who claim to be amazed at her "accuracy." I can’t imagine that too many responsible adults would be taken in by that one.

The gullibility of the audience was pretty surprising at times. I almost wondered if their oohs and aahs weren’t a little bit rehearsed. In this respect it may or may not be relevant that the March 12, 2003, jobs bulletin at Tinseletown.com includes an audition notice for actors needed for "the NBC special ‘Secrets of Psychics – Revealed!’" No details are given, except that the job opportunity was first posted on October 8, 2002. It’s not clear if one or more actors are required. There may be a perfectly innocuous explanation, but I do wonder why the show, advertised as reality TV, would need any actors at all. What roles did they play? Gullible man #1? Credulous woman #2? Maybe "Psychic Secrets" is keeping a few secrets of its own.

Be that as it may, if "Secrets" was meant to warn us not to take every street-corner psychic seriously, it served its purpose well. If it was meant to convince us that psychic phenomena are never genuine – that all such occurrences are magic tricks – then I’d say it overreached. Let’s look at the some facts the show didn't choose to reveal.

Early in the program, one of the fake psychics demonstrates spoon bending, which is then revealed to be a trick made possible by a precut spoon that could be snapped with minimal pressure. The stage illusion has been explained. But how about spoon bending that isn't done by magicians? How about a party where regular folks – and their kids – start bending silverware with their minds? If you think it can’t happen, you haven’t heard of "spoon bending parties," a remarkable social phenomenon that’s been going on since the 1980s.

The best report I’ve read on the subject is found in Michael Crichton’s highly entertaining book Travels. "In the spring of 1985," Crichton writes,

I was invited to attend a spoon bending party. An aerospace engineer named Jack Houck had become interested in the phenomenon, and from time to time had parties in which people bent spoons. I ... was told to bring a half-dozen forks and spoons I didn’t care about, since they would be bent during the evening ...

About a hundred people were there, mostly families with young kids. The atmosphere was festive .... We were instructed to hold the spoon vertically and shout, "Bend! Bend!" Once intimidated by being shouted at, the spoon was to be rubbed gently between our fingers ... A lot of people were laughing. It was hard not to feel self-conscious, holding up a spoon and shouting at it ...

I was sitting on the floor next to Judith and Anne-Marie ... Rubbing her spoon, Anne-Marie said, "I don’t think this is going to work ..." I looked down at her hands. Her spoon was bending.

"Look, Anne-Marie."

Anne-Marie laughed. Her spoon was like rubber. She easily twisted the spoon into knots.

Suddenly Judith’s spoon began to bend, too. She was able to bend the bowl in half. All around me, spoons were bending....

My own spoon had begun to bend. I hadn't even realized. The metal was completely pliable, like soft plastic. It wasn’t particularly hot, either, just slightly warm. I easily bent the bowl of the spoken in half, using only my fingertips. This didn’t require any pressure at all, just guiding with my fingertips.

I put the spoon back and tried a fork. After a few moments of rubbing, the fork twisted like a pretzel. It was easy. I bent several more spoons and forks....

A year later, I mentioned to an M.I.T. professor that I had bent spoons. He frowned in silence for a while. "There’s a way to bend spoons," he said, "by a trick."

"I think so," I said. "But I don’t know the trick."

As of August 2002, Houck had reportedly hosted 354 such events. At 100 people per event, that’s 35,400 people "fooled."

In the course of "Psychic Secrets Revealed," other examples of fake psychokinesis (or PK) are shown, in which hidden mechanisms enable the mentalist to manipulate small items like matchsticks or dollar bills; another mechanism creates the illusion that the audience, using its collective psychic power, can shatter glass. These techniques work fine in a theatrical performance, but could they be employed in the controlled conditions of a laboratory, where the psychic is carefully searched and there is no opportunity to set up any hidden equipment? It is precisely in such conditions that countless small-scale PK phenomena been observed – and large-scale phenomena, as well.

Some of the most dramatic effects were observed in the presence of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. Sir William Barrett, a parapsychologist active in the early part of the 20^th Century, summarizes an investigation of Palladino undertaken by neurology professor Enrico Morselli. "The control of the medium was very strict," Barrett writes.

Her hands and feet were held by Dr. Morselli and Sig. Barzini, editor of the "Corriere della Sera," who states that he was present "with the object of unmasking fraud and trickery," but was in the end convinced of the reality of some of the phenomena. The person of the medium was thoroughly searched before the seance, and the room was also searched; the light was never entirely extinguished.

Under these conditions Dr. Morselli testifies to the occurrence of the following phenomena: movements of the table; raps on the table and sounds on musical instruments without contact; complete levitations of the table; movements of objects at a distance from the medium seen in the light, and, also, the operation of self-registering instruments by the unseen agency; "apports," i.e., objects brought into the room from outside; the sound of human voices not proceeding from any visible person; impressions on plastic substances of hands, feet and faces; the appearance of dark prolongations of the medium's body; of well delineated forms of faces, heads and busts. Although entirely sceptical at the outset of his experiments he declares himself convinced that most of the phenomena alleged to occur with Eusapia are "real, authentic, and genuine" ....

Professor Philippe Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological Institute at the University of Naples, having read the report of Dr. Morselli's experiments at Genoa, made an attempt to verify the phenomena by means of an elaborate and carefully arranged set of self-registering instruments, in the hope of obtaining an automatic graphic record of the psychic force exercised by the medium. Such a record would negative [i.e., nullify] the hypotheses of hallucination or mis-description on the part of the observer. These important experiments, carried on with the collaboration of several able professors of the same University, were remarkably successful, and Professor Bottazzi's article concludes by stating these experiments have "eliminated the slightest trace of suspicion or uncertainty relative to the genuineness of the phenomena. We obtained the same kind of assurance as that which we have concerning physical, chemical or physiological phenomena. From henceforth sceptics can only deny the facts by accusing us of fraud and charlatanism."

Investigations of Palladino continued, with varying results. At times she very obviously attempted to cheat. At other times no known trickery could account for the phenomena she produced.

"In 1909," Barrett continues,

three members of the S.P.R. [the Society for Psychical Research], the Hon Everard Feilding, Mr. W.W. Baggally and Mr. Hereward Carrington, were commissioned by the Society to carry out another serious investigation with this medium. The selection was specially made with a view to the qualifications of the investigators. Mr. Carrington was a clever amateur conjuror, and for ten years had carried on investigations on these physical phenomena in the United States. His book on this subject shows his familiarity with the methods adopted by fraudulent mediums and his cautious attitude towards all such experiences. Mr. Baggally was also an amateur conjuror with much experience, and had come to a negative conclusion as to the possibility of any genuine physical phenomena. Mr. Feilding's attitude was the same, and, moreover, he had had extensive experience in investigating physical phenomena.

The result of this investigation was that all three of these well-qualified men were convinced of the absolute genuineness of the remarkable supernormal phenomena they witnessed at their hotel in Naples.

Transcripts of the Naples sessions fill the greater part of a lengthy book, Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding. More recently, Stephen Braude has ably summarized these sessions in his important book The Limits of Influence. A reader willing to wade through the exhaustive, literally minute-by-minute transcripts of the Naples sittings cannot help but be impressed by the variety, complexity, and sheer scale of the effects witnessed by these competent and skeptical observers.

Less dramatic examples of PK have been documented extensively. Dozens of experiments conducted by parapsychologist J.B. Rhine, in which test subjects tried to influence the fall of dice, have been subjected to a statistical "meta-analysis" by Dean Radin. In The Conscious Universe, Radin writes that even after eliminating some possibly defective tests, "there was still highly significant evidence for mind-matter interaction, with odds against chance of greater than a trillion to one." His analysis of random number generator (RNG) tests yielded similar results. After looking at 597 RNG studies conducted between 1959 and 1987, Radin found that "the overall experimental results produced odds against chance beyond a trillion to one. Control results [from 235 control studies] were well within chance with odds of two to one."

The hundreds of participants in these studies were not skilled conjurers engaged in a massive, decades-long conspiracy. They were ordinary people demonstrating a little-known, barely understood, but perfectly genuine ability.

The last major "psychic secret" to be revealed was communication with the dead. "Is it for the real?" narrator Stacy Keach asks ominously. "You be the judge."

Two readings with audience members are shown; both sessions seem highly convincing. Then we learn that these audience members had earlier been approached by the mentalist’s accomplices, who engaged them in seemingly casual conversation. Personal details were elicited, which were given to the mentalist. Color-coded stickers discretely placed on these audience members’ seats ensured that the mentalist would know whom to select for the readings.

Afterward, a man who thought he’d been in touch with his dead grandfather was told the truth. He appeared crestfallen. "A big part of me genuinely wanted to believe. Ultimately I was really let down."

Assuming that this gentleman had really been duped and was not someone who’d responded to the show’s casting call, I find this part of the demonstration somewhat unethical. The mentalist and the TV crew are toying with the raw emotions of real people. It’s a cruel thing to do just to prove a point.

But the question remains: Does this ruse explain all mediumship?

It certainly does explain some of it. In his book The After Death Experience, Ian Wilson recounts the exposure of prominent British medium Doris Stokes, whose public performances were rigged to feature clients she already knew. "Not only had the key individuals been known to Doris beforehand," Wilson writes; "each had been specifically invited to the show by none other than Doris herself." Wilson gives the example of a certain Mrs. Stenning, who received an impressive reading in front of the audience. "A friend had written to Doris Stokes on her behalf, telling her about Mrs Stenning’s loss of her daughter Kerry. As a result, Doris Stokes had personally telephoned her at her home just the week before, offering her two complimentary tickets ... At the very least the fact that Doris undeniably knew beforehand Mrs Stenning’s surname, Christian name, and deceased daughter’s name makes a charade of her professed hearing of these names as ‘other side’ voices. And with Doris’s similarly undeniable prior knowledge of Mrs Stenning’s telephone number, there is scarcely anything other-worldly about how she could have known Mrs Stenning’s 239 Kingston Road address. She had only to look in the London telephone directory."

But Doris Stokes had never been subjected to close scrutiny. Are there any mediums who have been tested – and who’ve passed the test?

One of the most famous mediums in history was Leonore Piper of Boston, who was active in the late 1800s. Her abilities came to the attention of many prominent Bostonians, including William James. An investigation was undertaken by the American Society for Psychical Research, whose chief investigator, Richard Hodgson, was notoriously skeptical and had debunked countless mediums. His colleague F.W.H. Myers explains Hodgson's methods: "Mr. Hodgson has been in the habit of bringing acquaintances of his own to Mrs. Piper, without giving their names ... Mr. Hodgson also had Mr. and Mrs. Piper watched or ‘shadowed’ by private detectives for some weeks ..." All such efforts were fruitless. "It was thus shown that Mrs. Piper had made no discoverable attempt to acquire knowledge" used in her sittings.

It’s worth noting that even in the 19th Century, investigators knew that fake mediums would attempt to gather information about their clients in advance – hence Hodgson’s policy of bringing anonymous, unannounced visitors to see Mrs. Piper, while setting private detectives on her trail to ensure that she was not conferring with an accomplice.

In 1889, British parapsychologists arranged for Mrs. Piper to come to England. Myers writes,

Professor Lodge met her on the Liverpool landing-stage, November 19th, and conducted her to a hotel, where I joined her on November 20th, and escorted her and her children to Cambridge....

Mrs. Piper while in England was twice in Cambridge, twice in London, and twice in Liverpool, at dates arranged by ourselves; her sitters (almost always introduced under false names) belonged to quite different social groups, and were frequently unacquainted with each other. Her correspondence was addressed to my care, and I believe that almost every letter which she received was shown to one or the other of us. When in London she stayed at lodgings we selected; when in Liverpool, in Professor Lodge’s house; and when at Cambridge, in Professor Sidgwick’s or my own...

We took great pains to avoid giving information in talk; and a more complete security is to be found in the fact that we were ourselves ignorant of many of the facts given as to friends’ relations, etc. ...

Myers sums up, "Few persons have been so long and so carefully observed; and she has left on all observers the impression of thorough uprightness, candor, and honesty."

Other mediums whose reputation for honesty was never tainted, despite years of close observation by trained experts, include Gladys Osborne Leonard and Eileen Garrett. Garrett, in particular, went out of her way to be tested, even helping to set up an institute for research into psychic phenomena. More on Garrett can be found in my essay "R-101." 

There are, in short, two points for viewers of NBC’s "Psychic Secrets Revealed" to keep in mind. First, it’s a mistake to assume that professional parapsychologists would be taken in by any of the magicians’ tricks showcased on the program. These tricks, and many others like them, have been known for more than a hundred years. Members of the (British) Society for Psychical Research and its American sister society have exposed hundreds of fake psychics and mediums. In most cases the exposure isn’t especially difficult. Although my knowledge of magic tricks is very limited, even I could guess how some of the effects on the NBC show were done. A professional investigator would make short work of any of the mentalists who appeared on that stage. That’s what psychical investigators do – they identify the frauds and unmask them.

But not all the people they investigate are frauds. And that’s the second point. Just because some money is counterfeit, we can’t assume that all of it is. Likewise, the fact that some people can fake some psychic phenomena does not entitle us to assume that all such phenomena are – or can be – faked.

In his book The Afterlife Experiments, Gary Schwartz tells a revealing story. With his associate Linda Russek, he had designed a laboratory test for several mediums – John Edward, Suzane Northrup, Laurie Campbell, and Anne Gehman – and he wanted to know if a professional mentalist could duplicate the mediums’ impressive results. For this purpose, he found a local magician, Ross Horowitz, who was knowledgeable about mentalist techniques. But when Schwartz explained the protocols used in his experiments, the magician balked.

He quickly explained that his techniques were useless unless he had the opportunity of obtaining secret information beforehand, or of holding a dialogue with the sitter, or preferably both. I pushed him to try, and he reluctantly agreed. Giving it his best shot, his +3 accuracy [meaning his score for the most solid "hits"] was well under 20 percent.

When Linda and I told him that the mediums we had tested produced specific and accurate information during a silent period, when the medium did not even know who the sitter was, we had his full attention. He wanted to see the videotapes ...

The look on Ross’s face as he watched [the first tape] was actually funny to see. After only a few minutes, he told me he could not find any indications that Suzane [Northrup] was using psychic cold-reading techniques....

He told us that none of the tricks or tools he knew would allow him – or any psychic magicians he knew of – to score as high as Suzane did.

The mentalist’s only suggestion was that all four of the tested mediums, as a group, had cheated by tapping the laboratory’s phones and Professor Schwartz’s personal phones. Even this unlikely conspiracy would not explain all the data that the mediums provided. In subsequent experiments, the protocols were tightened still further, but the mediums continued to supply accurate, verifiable information at rates well above chance.

Schwartz’s experiments are only among the latest in more than a century of investigations into psychic phenomena. If hidden mechanisms and planted accomplices could explain all paranormal occurrences, interest in the field would have died out long ago.

Viewers who choose to be wary of palm readers and carnival fortune-tellers have learned a good lesson from "Psychic Secrets Revealed." I just hope they don’t draw the wider, mistaken conclusion that the entire realm of the paranormal consists of fraud.

After all, there’s one thing worse than being taken in by a fake psychic. It’s being in the presence of a genuine paranormal phenomenon – and thinking it’s a trick.

 

Essay: Some Thoughts on John Edward

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2002. I believe it was the first item on the paranormal I ever posted. 

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Some Thoughts on John Edward,
Crossing Over, and Talking to the Dead

 

I have become intrigued with John Edward. This is a strange thing for me to be saying. To see how strange it is, you should know that from about the age of twelve until I was in my late thirties, I was a confirmed atheist. Some might have called me a militant atheist. When I had to fill out a form that inquired about my religion (back in the days when they still included that question), I always wrote down ATHEIST in uncompromising, carefully printed letters. I remember reading an essay in a political magazine in which the writer started talking about heaven and hell, and I was floored. Did this guy really believe this stuff? How could an educated person writing for a national magazine entertain such a superstitious view?

In my late thirties, my outlook began to change, and I went from feeling scorn for religion to having a rather intellectualized respect for it. Some of the arguments that moved me are put forward in Patrick Glynn’s excellent book, God: The Evidence. But I was still pretty skeptical. I used to describe myself as being “just barely more than an agnostic” when it came to having any religious beliefs.

And now I am writing about John Edward, a “psychic medium” who claims to communicate with the dead. How in the world did this happen?

Well, for one thing, I spend part of each year in Arizona, and it was at the University of Arizona that Edward and some other mediums were tested by psychology professor Gary Schwartz. I read about these tests in Schwartz’s book The Afterlife Experiments and I found them intriguing. So one night I tuned in to Crossing Over on the Sci-Fi Channel – which, skeptics say, is exactly where it belongs.

Before we continue, let’s acknowledge a few caveats. Crossing Over is pretaped and heavily edited. Obviously the best readings are included, while the bad ones end up on the cutting room floor. Even the good readings are shortened, with at least some dead-end avenues of inquiry omitted. And in even the best readings, a great deal of what Edward says is sufficiently general or ambiguous to apply to many people. As skeptics point out, many audience members want desperately to believe that they are in communication with their loved ones, so they will accept any statement that even remotely fits their family circumstances. They will ignore or forget the "misses" and remember only the "hits." They will unconsciously supply details that the medium himself has not divulged.

New York Times writer Chris Ballard captured both the objections to Crossing Over and the reasons for its appeal in a piece that appeared in the Times’ July 29, 2001, edition. Here’s an excerpt.

Much of the information is fuzzy -- Edward may get only ''a J or a G'' sound for a name or see ''blackness in the chest,'' which may be lung cancer. But occasionally he says something startlingly specific, mentioning a peculiar family nickname like ''Miss Piggy'' or a long-forgotten keepsake. On this afternoon, such a moment occurs when Edward is relaying information to a young woman who has recently lost her father.

''Is there a joke between them with the celery or something?'' Edward asks her, looking puzzled.

She gasps, then laughs and corrects him. ''It's onions.''

''The chopping of it?''

''No, they have a nickname in Italy,'' she explains, smiling. ''It means like a running onion.''

''So if they show me the vegetable joke, you know what it means?''

She nods, grinning. Edward moves on. ''He's telling me to acknowledge the wedding, do you understand this?'' At this, the woman crumbles, breaking into tears and nodding in jerky time to the sobs.

It is an impressive display, like watching a gambler who keeps doubling down and keeps hitting, but it is also the best reading of the afternoon. Twice during the tapings, Edward spends upward of 20 minutes stuck on one person, shooting blanks but not accepting the negative responses -- "Do not not honor him!'' he says at one point, staring down a bewildered man. On other readings, his statements have a throw-it-all-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks flavor, and he clearly struggles to get a rhythm going, hitting well below 50 percent for the day. Later, when the edited version of the taping is produced (all episodes are edited for entertainment purposes), it includes only the onion woman and the second-best reading of the show.

So there is no way of evaluating Edward’s taped and edited performances by tallying hits and misses, because most of the misses have been cut out. This makes for better TV, of course, and it is doubtful if anyone would watch a show that included a high number of unsatisfying exchanges. Still, it makes things difficult for those of us who want to assess Edward’s ability objectively.

And yet, as the Times writer points out, there are those moments when “he says something startlingly specific, mentioning a peculiar family nickname like ‘Miss Piggy’ or a long-forgotten keepsake.” And to the extent that I can judge from the show, such moments are not quite as “occasional” as the Times would have us think. In the short time that I’ve watched Crossing Over, I’ve seen a large number of these impressive hits. What explains them?

The most common explanation offered by skeptics is that Edward is engaged in “cold reading” – a ruse in which a fake psychic plays off the reactions of his subject. A standard cold reading would go something like this:

Fake Psychic: Has your father passed?

Subject: Yes.

Fake Psychic: I see your father. Did he pass suddenly?

Subject: Not really.

Fake Psychic: Right, I’m seeing that it was drawn-out. Painful?

Subject: Yes.

Fake Psychic: He’s saying there was pain. But not at the end?

Subject: At the end, no.

Fake Psychic: He says it was peaceful at the end.

Here the fake psychic elicits responses from the subject and merely repeats what the subject has just said. Critical to this approach is the fake’s ability to quickly follow wherever the subject leads. Often the fake must rely on subtle cues unconsciously supplied by his subject – a nod, a shake of the head, a tightening of the shoulders – and instantly adjust course.

Now, one thing I’m sure of is that John Edward is not engaged in cold reading. To indicate why I say this, I’ll present some examples of Edward’s interactions with audience members.

Please be aware that while I’ve taken notes on the show, I have not made a transcript. Therefore all the exchanges that follow are paraphrases, not direct quotations, and are intended only to capture the flavor of the exchanges. And, as mentioned above, not every reading by Edward yields results that are this dramatic. I have selected some of the more noteworthy moments – the “startlingly specific” hits – from the shows I’ve watched.

With that in mind, see if the following exchanges can be explained by cold reading.

* * *

Edward: Did someone  here study with Bob Ross, the TV artist? ... I’m getting Bob Ross. I’m also seeing a picture of a tree, shrunken down. It was big, now it’s small.

Man: My mom took lessons from Bob Ross. One of her paintings was of a tree. It was too big for the album, so I had it reduced.

* * *

Edward: Someone in your family went to a farm and drank milk straight from the cow?

Man: That was me. When I was a kid.

* * *

Edward: When they marked her skin for the IV, she said it was the closest she’d ever get to having a tattoo?

Man: That’s what she said, exactly.

Edward: And you had to be sort of the “air traffic control” for her passing?

Man: The doc told us that I would be her air traffic controller. That’s the phrase he used.

* * *

Edward: Somebody dressed up as a tree?

Man: My dad dressed up as a Christmas tree.

* * *

Edward: They’re laughing, sort of teasing you about your leg, your knee.

Woman: I took a hayride, and I fell and twisted my knee a couple of months ago.

* * *

Edward: Was there a baby’s toy buried with him [an elderly man]?

Woman: A stuffed bunny. My daughter’s.

* * *

Edward: I’m getting the name Maynard.

Man: That’s my girlfriend’s last name. I don’t know how you got that. It’s an unusual name.

* * *

Edward isn’t eliciting information from the audience members in these instances. He’s presenting specific information that is verified only after he says it.

Sometimes the verification takes place much later.

* * *

Edward: Someone had a glass eye? Lost his sight when he was young?

Woman: I don’t know about that.

Edward: I’m seeing a glass eye. And maybe an eye patch.

Woman: I don’t know.

(Two weeks later, the woman reports having learned that her sister-in-law’s grandfather lost an eye when he was young and a wore a patch, then a glass eye.)

* * *

Edward: Something about buying sheets for the bed – not a bedspread, definitely sheets – but they didn’t fit.

Woman: I don’t know what that’s about.

Edward: It’s for your mom, I think. You should ask your mom about it.

(After the show, the woman calls her mother, who says that she bought a set of bed sheets for the deceased – one of her last gifts – but the sheets didn’t fit.)

* * *

In neither of these cases could Edward have used the subject’s reactions as cues, since the subjects didn’t know what he was talking about.

So maybe Edward is just a very good guesser? Take a look at a few more exchanges.

* * *

Edward: Was someone in your family a shepherd?

Woman: My dad used to joke about being a shepherd. He’d say that when he retired, he wanted to be a shepherd so he could say, “Get the flock outta here!”

* * *

Edward: I’m seeing a clam, a big clamshell, opening up.

Man: I work underwater. My friend [the deceased] used to say I went clamming. It’s not really clamming, but that’s what he called it.

* * *

Edward: Someone in the family would read coffee grinds – like, for predictions? Like reading tea leaves?

Woman: My grandmother did that.

Edward: With coffee grinds?

Woman: Yes.

* * *

Edward: Did someone bail someone else out of jail?

Man: My sister’s boyfriend. My dad had to bail him out. Oh, my God.

* * *

This goes beyond good guesswork. If you had been the subject, would references to a shepherd, a clamshell, reading coffee grounds, or bailing someone out of jail mean anything to you?

Skeptics say Edward knows that certain facts apply to many people and so can be safely assumed. This is called “warm reading.” For instance, most people who’ve lost a loved one have had a dream about that person, or wear or carry something belonging to or connected with the deceased, so guesses along these lines are likely to be scored as hits. But consider these exchanges.

* * *

Edward: He bought you jewelry – an anklet or something like that – on an island?

Woman: A bracelet. I’m wearing it now.

Edward: He bought it on an island?

Woman: Yes. The last trip we took together.

* * *

Edward: I see a tattoo of a cross, bleeding.

Woman: I have a tattoo like that [under her clothes; not visible].

Edward: Bleeding? Blood on it?

Woman: No.

Edward: I’m seeing blood.

Woman: I got it in memory of him.

Edward: There are three things around the cross?

Woman: Three angels, yes.

Edward: The tattoo – it matches? Like there are two, and they match?

Woman; My daughter and I got matching tattoos.

* * *

These are very specific facts – an item of jewelry purchased not just anywhere, but on an island; a pair of matching tattoos in memory of the departed.

Skeptics also say that there are only a half dozen ways that most people die – heart failure, cancer, auto accident, etc. – so Edward can quickly guess the cause of death.

As in these instances?

* * *

Edward: Someone was thrown off a horse? Thrown off a pony or a horse?

Man: My nephew died being thrown from a horse.

* * *

Edward: Two people passed with a sudden impact. Might have been shot ...

Woman: I had two friends in high school who were shot.

Edward: And you moved, around then?

Woman: No.

Edward: You didn’t? Because I’m seeing a Mayflower moving van.

Woman: They were shot on Mayflower Avenue.

* * *

How many people do you know who died from being thrown off a horse? Or who were shot to death, as a couple, on Mayflower Avenue?

To explain hits like these, skeptics say that Edward relies on a technique of yet another temperature – “hot reading.” This means using investigators to dig up info on audience members in advance, or eavesdropping on them while they stand in line or while they wait between breaks in the taping. Presumably hot reading explains the following exchanges:

* * *

Edward: There was a bird outside, and someone thought it would be a good idea to bring it inside and give it a bath? But it turned out not to be a good idea?

Woman: We had some baby ducks in the yard. We brought them in and put them in the bathtub. But they got too big. They bit my husband [the deceased].

* * *

Edward: You were playing around a hutch, there were German collectibles in it, and you knocked over a statue or a dish … It broke, but you glued it back together. Your mom found out, but you didn’t admit you’d done it.

Woman: It was a cup – we tried gluing it, but she saw it was broken. We never said a word, but she knew we’d done it.

* * *

Edward: Someone in the family worked with ice – like, packing up ice?

Woman: Our grandfather worked in an icehouse.

Edward: There was an attack on a woman – a violent attack.

Woman: He was accused of that.

Edward: A body on ice … Like, a murder, and the body was left on ice …

Woman (uneasy): There may have been.

* * *

Edward: There’s a connection with a dolphin. Swimming with dolphins?

Woman: We took a trip last year where we went swimming with dolphins.

Edward: There’s a bug. A bug in the bathroom.

Woman: There was a big bee in our house once –

Edward: That’s not it. This is a bug, a big bug in a bathtub, and someone pulls back the shower curtain and – eek!

Woman: I don’t know …

Edward: On your trip?

Woman and Daughter: Oh, the bug!

* * *

In the last example, notice that the two audience members did not even recall the bug episode until Edward linked it to the trip he’d already brought up. Notice also that Edward rejected the plausible suggestion of the “big bee in the house” and insisted on the bug in the bathroom. A cold reader wouldn’t do this. He follows his subject’s lead.

As for hot reading, what private investigator could dig up the bug story? And if the two women had been chatting about the bug incident while waiting on line or in the studio, how did they manage to forget it completely until they were reminded of it in detail?

Maybe, just maybe, a topnotch investigator could have learned about the mysterious icehouse incident. But no investigator could know about the baby ducks from years earlier, or the broken cup from fifty or sixty years ago. And it seems unlikely in the extreme that audience members would be talking about these obscure details before the show.

Sometimes issues are raised that the subjects clearly did not discuss among themselves.

* * *

Edward: I don’t know how to say this, but did you and your husband do something involving … handcuffs?

Woman (very embarrassed): Yes.

* * *

Edward: There was a neighbor’s dog … I don’t want to use the word torture, but you … abused this dog.

Man (shamefaced): Yes.

* * *

These people weren’t gabbing about handcuff games and animal abuse in a roomful of strangers.

Skeptics, perhaps in some desperation, suggest that all kinds of information are available on the Internet these days. Maybe that’s where Edward gets his inside knowledge.

But where on the Internet would Edward find the story of a boy drinking milk straight from the cow? The “air traffic control” comment? The stuffed bunny? The family joke, “Get the flock outta here”?

Yes, some people have “blog” sites where they record every detail of their lives. Most people don’t. The grandmothers who are frequent studio guests on Crossing Over don’t look like bloggers to me.

Having done some research on Internet snooping for my books The Shadow Hunter and Last Breath, I know that addresses, phone numbers, real estate holdings, and records of legal disputes and tax liens are readily available on the Web. Unscrupulous searchers can track down social security numbers and probably some (not all) medical records.

But a sister-in-law’s grandfather’s glass eye? A nephew thrown from a horse? A father who dressed up as a Christmas tree? A woman who took painting lessons from TV artist Bob Ross?

With all respect to the debunkers, I am too much of a skeptic myself to believe in the omniscience of private investigators or Web surfers who can unearth information of that kind.

The last line of defense for the skeptics is that the entire show is a fraud. The audience members – at least those who participate in readings – are shills, ringers. They are actors following a script. This would be believable if Edward were traveling from one small town to another, using the same shills over and over. On TV, he could not risk using the same actors more than once, so he would have to hire at least five or six actors per show. How many shows has he done? Fifty? One hundred? How many actors is that? Two-hundred-fifty? Five hundred? Can even one hundred people keep a secret this big?

Not likely. Nor is it likely that Edward’s various radio and TV appearances over the years, in which he’s done readings for callers on studio phone lines, were all faked. This would require a massive conspiracy involving hundreds, if not thousands, of actors, technicians, and radio and TV hosts. It would make the game show scandals of the 1950s look like child’s play.

But why won’t these mediums submit to scientific testing? ask some skeptics. Edward has. Remember those tests at the University of Arizona, with results detailed in Gary Schwartz’s book The Afterlife Experiments? Oh, but Schwartz is flaky, say the skeptics. Well, flaky or not, he appears to have run some well-designed experiments on Edward and other mediums, with persuasive results.

Now, it’s always possible that tomorrow an exposé will reveal Edward as a fraud who uses some brand of brilliant legerdemain to fool millions of viewers. In the absence of said exposé, however, the burden of proof is on the skeptics to explain the exchanges listed above – and many others you can observe for yourself on Crossing Over.

Though it astonishes me to say it, I have come to think this guy is for real. I think something genuinely spooky is happening. I cannot see any plausible prosaic explanation for the apparent faculty that John Edward possesses.

If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to be shown where I’ve gone astray. In the meantime, I have to side with Hamlet against the debunkers – and against my former, skeptical self:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

Essay: R-101

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2002 and updated in 2003. 

---

R-101

On October 5, 1930, at 2:05 in the morning, the 777-foot British dirigible R-101 crashed in flames in the woods near the French town of Beauvais, en route to India. All of the passengers and most of the crew perished, and British airship production suffered a setback from which it never recovered.

Two days later, the London medium Eileen Garrett, while in a trance, began to convey messages purporting to come from Lt. H.C. Irwin, who had died aboard the R-101. In jerky, staccato utterances typical of his speech pattern in life, "Irwin" said, "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity. Engines too heavy. It was this that on five occasions made me scuttle back to safety ... Useful lift too small. Gross lift computed badly – inform control panel ... Explosion caused by friction in electric storm. Flying too low altitude and could never rise. Disposable lift could not be utilized ..."

So began one of the most fascinating and convincing episodes in the history of psychic research, an episode ably chronicled by John G. Fuller in his 1979 book, The Airmen Who Would Not Die. Fuller’s book, extensively documented and written in a crisp, novelistic style, is now out of print but is well worth tracking down.

The voice of "Irwin" continued, speaking almost faster than the stenographer present at the session could take it down:

Load too great for a long flight ... Cruising speed bad, and ship badly swinging. Severe tension on fabric, which is chafing. Starboard strakes started. Engines wrong – too heavy – cannot rise ... Never reached cruising altitude. Same in trials. Too short trials. No one knew the ship properly.

Airscrews too small. Fuel injection bad and air pump failed. Cooling system bad. Bore capacity bad. Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 cc’s, but that bore is not enough to raise too heavy load and support weight. It had been known to me on many occasions that the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure. This I had placed again and again before engineer, without being able to enlarge capacity of Diesel twin-valve ...

But the structure no good. That actually is the case, not gas did not allow mixture to get to engine – backfired. Fuel injection bad ... There was not sufficient feed. Leakage. Pressure and heat produced explosion ...

Weather bad for long flight. Fabric all water-logged and ship’s nose down. Impossible to rise. Cannot trim ... At inquiry to be held later, it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience, and had far too much weight in envelope ... The added middle section was entirely wrong. It made strong but took resilience away and entirely impossible. Too heavy and too much overweighted for the capacity of the engines ...

Over the next few months, Eileen Garrett continued to receive alleged communications from Irwin and other R-101 crewmembers. While the first séance took place in the presence of psychic researcher Harry Price, the remaining ones involved a different sitter, Maj. Oliver Villiers, himself a friend of Irwin and an export in aviation (though not in the field of dirigible design).

Collectively the transcripts of these seances contain some of the most compelling evidence ever assembled for communication with the dead. Included in the messages received by Eileen Garrett are technical details about the R-101’s design and construction, recollections of test flights, discussions of political pressures and unrealistic deadlines that plagued the project, and a description of the crash itself and its causes. The personalities of the dead airmen also came through in recognizable detail. In one instance Villiers asked the communicating entity to identify itself, at which point the voice replied, "Use your damned intelligence!" – a catch phrase used by Sefton Brancker, who had died in the crash.

Indeed, the personalities of the men emerged so clearly that Villiers, who had several sessions with Garrett, eventually fell into conversing with his old friends as if they were in the room with him.

Garrett’s seances, held in broad daylight in a room designed by Harry Price to be a sealed, deceit-proof environment, yielded so much detailed, factual information that Villiers was moved to present the transcripts to Sir John Simon, in charge of the government’s investigation into the crash. This was a bold decision on Villiers’ part, one that could have jeopardized his career if Simon had looked unkindly on the idea of combing through the transcripts of seances for clues. Yet Simon handled the material respectfully and followed up on leads suggested by the communications.

Working independently of Villiers, Harry Price had the transcript of his single session with Garrett analyzed by Will Charlton, supply officer at Cardington, where the R-101 was built and tested. Charlton’s meticulous analysis revealed that the majority of the information was accurate.

"Irwin" said: "The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity ... Engines too heavy ... Useful lift too small ... Gross lift computed badly." All of these comments were correct.

"Flying too low altitude and could never rise ... Disposable lift could not be utilized ... Load too great for long flight." Many witnesses observed that the R-101 was flying low. The ship dumped half its ballast just to escape from the mooring tower, and heavy rain that night would have added more weight to the vessel.

"Weather bad for long flight ... Fabric all waterlogged and ship’s nose is down ... Impossible to rise ... Cannot trim ... Almost scraped the roofs at Achy." The trip took place in a driving rainstorm with high winds. The R-101 was seen flying with its nose angled downward. Charlton noted, "Achy is a small village, 12 ½ miles north of Beauvais, and would be on the R-101’s route."

Much of the information was outside the province of any layman.

"Irwin" said: "Starboard strakes started." The word "strakes" was a technical term known only to experts.

"Airscrews too small." Charlton felt that this was likely to be correct, and noted that the airscrews used on the R-101 were smaller than those originally planned.

"Next time with cylinders but bore of engine 1,100 cc’s ..." Charlton noted that this would be correct if the term "cubic inches" was substituted for "cubic centimeters" ("cc’s").

"... the bore capacity was entirely inadequate to the volume of structure." Charlton noted: "This language is technically correct and might have been Irwin’s opinion [emphasis in original]. It is an opinion that could only be expressed by an expert in the subject ..."

"... it will be found that the superstructure of the envelope contained no resilience and had far too much weight." Charlton found this accurate, saying, "It was the most rigid airship that had ever been constructed."

"The added middle section was entirely wrong. It made strong, but took resilience away and entirely impossible. Too heavy and too much overweighted for the capacity of the engines." The R-101 had been expanded to 777 feet by the additional of a new "middle section" only a few months before the flight. This addition greatly complicated the craft’s handling and may well have contributed to the crash.

In some instances, the information was unknown to anyone who had not been part of the Cardington team.

The "Irwin" voice: "This exorbitant scheme of carbon and hydrogen is entirely and absolutely wrong." This appears to be a reference to upcoming experiments involving a mixture of oil fuel ("carbon") and hydrogen. These experiments, in the planning stage at Cardington shortly before the R-101’s crash, were not reported in the press; only project team members, like Irwin, knew about them.

"Too short trials ... No one knew the ship properly." The abbreviated test period was a concern of those working at Cardington, but was unknown to the public at the time of the séance.

"It was this that made me on five occasions have to scuttle back to safety." True – Irwin had cut short several test flights because the ship was too heavy. The press had not been told of these failures.

The Villiers transcripts, which were not seen by Charlton, offered an equal wealth of technical detail, as well as personal observations. Among these was the claim by a voice representing itself as another crewmember, Lt. Cdr. Atherstone, that he had kept a secret diary recording his worries about the R-101 program. When official inquiries were made of his widow regarding this diary, she insisted she had never heard of it. But years later, in 1967, Mrs. Atherstone produced the newly recovered diary, which was found to contain exactly the kinds of private worries mentioned by the "Atherstone" voice nearly four decades earlier.

In the face of this considerable accumulation of evidence for the genuineness of the Price and Villiers communications, it would seem that a powerful case for the continuation of life after death had been made. Indeed, many of those who participated (sometimes reluctantly) in the seances or in subsequent analysis of the transcripts came to this conclusion – among them, William Wood, a pilot and outspoken atheist who wrote for the magazine The Freethinker, and who startled his readership by declaring his belief in an afterlife after studying the messages.

And yet, in the field of psychic phenomena, nothing is ever cut and dried. There are always objections to be lodged, skeptical arguments to be advanced. The R-101 case is no different. A good summary of these objections is found in the book Psychic Detectives, by Jenny Randles and Peter Hough.

Critics [say the authors] claimed that the matter was not so clear cut. It emerged that Will Charlton was not an ‘expert’, but someone in charge of stores and supplies at Cardington. He was also a spiritualist. One of those challenging Charlton’s views was Archie Jarman, whom Fuller credited as knowing more about the subject than any other living person ...

While Jarman was compiling a report on the R101 affair in the early 1960s, he consulted his own experts: Wing Commander Cave-Brown-Cave, who had been closely involved in the airship’s construction, and Wing Commander Booth, who had captained the R100 [a different airship] on its Montreal flight. Booth said, ‘I have read the description of the Price-Irwin sequence with great care and am of the opinion that the messages received do not assist in any way in determining why the airship R101 crashed.’

As for the Villiers sequence, Booth commented: ‘I am in complete disagreement with almost every paragraph ... the conversations are completely out of character, the atmosphere at Cardington is completely wrong, and the technical and handling explanation could not possibly have been messages from anyone with airship experience.’ ... From what was supposedly said during the seances, the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission before the airship had left England. Writer Edward Horton argues that if this was really the case – and there was no indication of this before the seances – all Irwin had to do was turn the airship around and, with the wind behind them, limp back to Cardington.

Superficially this seems like a convincing rebuttal of the R-101 case. But in fact many of the arguments summarized by Randles and Hough are spurious. Let’s look at them one by one.

"Will Charlton was not an ‘expert.’"

While Charlton was not an engineer himself, he did know all the engineers who had built and tested the airship. He shared the transcripts with them, obtaining their input in addition to his own.

Charlton "was also a spiritualist."

He was not a spiritualist at the time he reviewed the transcripts. Later on, after becoming convinced that the dead airmen had made contact through Garrett, he became a spiritualist.

"One of those challenging Charlton’s views was Archie Jarman."

This does not seem to be accurate. It is true that Jarman did not find the Villiers transcripts useful, because Villiers had jotted down incomplete notes and later supplemented them by memory. Jarman felt that this method opened up too many possibilities for unconscious distortion or embellishment of the material. (He may have been too hard on Villiers, who was known for his prodigious and retentive memory, a faculty still intact when John Fuller interviewed him at the age of 91.) In any case, Jarman assessed the Price transcript (the one reviewed by Charlton) quite differently. Because these notes had been taken down verbatim by a trained stenographer, he judged them to be a reliable record of the séances – and he felt they did provide important evidence about the fate of the R-101b that could not be obtained through normal means.

"Booth said: ‘... I am of the opinion that the messages received do not assist in any way in determining why the airship R101 crashed.’"

Booth’s statement, as reported, is puzzling, because whatever anyone thinks of the messages’ provenance, they surely do provide a viable theory (at least) of the R-101’s crash. The scenario is as follows:

1) The airship was overloaded and underpowered, hence unable to achieve sufficient altitude ("The whole bulk of the dirigible was absolutely and entirely too much for her engine capacity ... Useful lift too small ... Flying too low altitude and could never rise ... Never reached cruising altitude," said the "Irwin" voice).

2) High winds caused the chafing of the gas-bag compartments, one of which eventually ruptured ("Severe tension on the fabric which is chafing," said "Irwin.").

3) The rupture of this bag allowed the wind to penetrate the vessel, subjecting it to further strain as it twisted against itself.

4) This twisting caused structural damage.

5) The airship, having lost structural integrity, lost altitude. Because it was flying low to begin with, it didn’t have far to fall, and there was no time to execute emergency maneuvers like dropping the ballast.

6) At this point, one or more explosions occurred. They were set off by

1. a) the release of static electricity from the hull when the ship hit the ground ("explosion caused by friction in electric storm");
2. b) the backfiring of an overtaxed motor ("... backfired. Fuel injection bad."); or
3. c) electrical shorts produced by structural damage ("Pressure and heat produced explosion.").

Quite possibly two or even all three of these causes were responsible.

7) The explosions set fire to the huge amount of the volatile hydrogen gas inside the craft, quickly reducing the R-101 to cinders.

This scenario not only is plausible, but closely matches the official results obtained by a government inquiry into the crash. How Booth could say that the transcripts were of no value in explaining the disaster is therefore something of a mystery.

"Booth commented: ‘...the conversations are completely out of character, the atmosphere at Cardington is completely wrong ...’"

Yet Charlton and Villiers, who worked at Cardington and knew the crewmembers, assessed the conversations quite differently. And there does not seem to be any doubt that "the atmosphere at Cardington" was one of political infighting, impossible deadlines, and desperate shortcuts, just as the messages suggest.

"Booth commented: ‘... and the technical and handling explanation could not possibly have come from anyone with airship experience.’"

But equally knowledgeable aviation experts like Lord Dowding, Commander-in-Chief of the (British) Fighter Command in World War II, and Sir Victor Goddard, former commander of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, were favorably impressed with the technical accuracy and evidential value of the transcripts.

"From what was supposedly said during the seances, the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission before the airship had left England. Writer Edward Horton argues that if this was really the case – and there was no indication of this before the seances ..."

Actually, more than one crewmember expressed reservations about the flight. On the day of the flight, Brancker told Villiers, "I have had several talks with Scott and Colmore [other crewmen]. They’ve become more and more uneasy at the prospect of this journey to India. In their opinion, the ship is not really airworthy." Another witness also reported that Brancker was unusually nervous that day. The Atherstone diary, mentioned above, confirms that the R-101 crew were well aware of the risks of the flight.

If "the officers knew they were setting off on a suicidal mission ... all Irwin had to do was turn the airship around and, with the wind behind them, limp back to Cardington."

This objection was answered in the seances themselves, when it was explained that, for political purposes, it was thought necessary to start the much-ballyhooed trip to India by crossing the English Channel. The airship could then be docked in France, and the cancellation of the rest of the trip could be blamed on bad weather. This compromise was a way of saving face, both for the British government, which had invested two million pounds sterling in the project, and for the R-101 program itself, which was dependent on political goodwill for continued funding.

The scheme, while desperate, was not necessarily "suicidal." In fact, the airship did make its way across the Channel before suffering irreparable damage. Had the forecast of twenty- to thirty-knot winds proved accurate, the R-101 probably would have docked safely in France. Unfortunately, the winds blew at forty to fifty knots, conditions the crew could not have anticipated when starting out.

If the bulk of these objections are spurious, do we then have an incontrovertible case of after-death communication? Regretfully, I have to say no. While I find the R-101 case extremely powerful, I would not classify it as airtight. There are still legitimate areas of doubt. Here are a few things to consider.

First, although John Fuller did an excellent job in researching and writing The Airmen Who Would Not Die, his credibility is not unimpeachable. He had earlier written The Interrupted Journey, a bestseller about the alleged UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. The Hill case has been well addressed by skeptics and, in my opinion, offers little if any evidence of an extraterrestrial encounter.* If Fuller could be favorably impressed by the Hills’ dubious claims, perhaps his journalistic hardheadedness is open to question in the R-101 case, as well.

(* Among other objections, skeptics point out that the bulk of the Hills' testimony was recovered under hypnosis, an unreliable method that often produces false memories. Other alleged memories of the abduction surfaced in Betty Hill's dreams, which she related to her husband, perhaps influencing his recollection. The story changed over time; in Mrs. Hill's dreams, the aliens appeared human, but years later, under hypnosis, she remembered them as having bulbous heads, wraparound eyes, and lipless mouths. In her early hypnosis sessions, Mrs. Hill said that one alien spoke English with an accent; later she said that he communicated without speaking, via telepathy. Many details of the encounter are reminiscent of 1950s and '60s science-fiction dramas, and Barney Hill's description of the aliens closely matches an extraterrestrial depicted in an episode of The Outer Limits that aired a couple of weeks before the hypnosis sessions began.)

Second, some technical details conveyed in the seances were wrong. These errors perhaps can be accounted for by miscommunication or mistakes in transcription, but they should not be glossed over. Villiers distinctly heard mention of "altimeter springs" on two occasions, but the R-101’s altimeters had no springs. "Irwin" mentioned a gas indicator rising and falling throughout the flight, but Booth says that there was no such gauge onboard.

Third, we have to remember that both the Price session and the Villiers sessions involved the same medium, Eileen Garrett. This is not too surprising, since Garrett was the most famous medium in England, and considered the most powerful by those who believed in her abilities. Still, while no taint of fraud was ever attached to Garrett in her long career, it is fair to say that the communications would have been more impressive if two, three, or even more mediums had been involved. Cross-correspondences among various mediums provide the strongest evidence of genuine paranormal phenomena but, except for some marginal communications reported by other mediums, are lacking in this case.

Finally, there is the fact that the R-101 program had been heavily covered in the press. It is conceivable that some of the technical details and other information conveyed by Garrett were known to her, if only subconsciously. Militating against this idea is the fact that Garrett was hardly a technical whiz. She never owned a car or even learned to drive, and, according to Jarman, who knew her well, she was entirely uninformed about mechanical principles. Even so, is it possible that Garrett pulled the necessary facts out of her own subconscious or, via telepathy, out of the minds of the sitters participating in the sessions? This hypothesis would not explain all the data that came through, but might cover some of it.

The bottom line is that no single case can establish the validity of a phenomenon like mediumship. What is impressive, as John Fuller and many others have pointed out, is the cumulative weight of hundreds, even thousands, of well-documented communications that have been received over more than a century of research. Even acquiring an overview of this mass of material is a large job, but a rewarding one. Those who would like to begin can find no better place to start than in the rainswept woods outside Beauvais, early in the morning of October 5, 1930, when the R-101 met its fiery end.

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October 15, 2003: Recently, while searching the Web, I noticed a few references to a 1984 book called Psychic Paradoxes by John Booth. It was said to provide "fresh, penetrating insights" into paranormal phenomena. But what really caught my eye was this promotional claim: "Booth's eye-opening, first-time explanations for the baffling R101 tragedy seance [and other mysteries] are revealed."

An explanation for R-101? This I had to read. On the Web, I tracked down a secondhand copy of the out-of-print book, supposedly in "fine" condition, and ordered it. I admit I had some trepidations about spending $15 on this item. Psychic Paradoxes was published by Prometheus Books, a small publishing house founded by rationalist philosopher Paul Kurtz, who also was instrumental in founding CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, a zealously skeptical organization. Prometheus Books is known for putting out a large number of anti-paranormal and anti-religious tracts, many of which seem to be hastily written and indifferently edited. Nevertheless, Psychic Paradoxes might be different. I owed it to myself, and to my millions -- okay, dozens -- of fans, to find out.

The book arrived about ten days later. It was not in "fine" condition. It looked as if someone had left it out in the rain and then peed on it. But it was readable. I turned to the index, and found that the R-101 tragedy was economically covered in just four pages. Booth spends the first couple of pages recounting the events in minimal detail. He then presents the groundbreaking theory which will explain it all.

Eileen Garrett, he tells us, was

a woman of abiding curiosity. Copies of the aircraft blueprints could have been slipped to the psychic long before the tragedy. Her friendships in high places were numerous. Security was not tight in that period of euphoric peace. The entire nation was fascinated by the construction of this new marvel of the airways.

We are aware that she had followed its building. In his book Eileen Garrett and the World Beyond the Senses, Allan Angoff ... reveals that 'she had predicted (the R101 tragedy) long before the dirigible crashed in France.' Others who had studied its construction carefully, perceived dangerous potential flaws.

The medium was a brilliant woman. Her subsequent career as a psychic researcher, publisher and administrator, both in Britain and the United States prove this. She could deduce accurately the probable sequence of fatal events by piecing together newspaper reports, checking back over her earlier investigations and perhaps even discussing the matter in seeming innocence with a valued technician friend from the airdrome.

Preliminary trial flights of an airship, short ones, reveal defects that assist postmortem verdicts. Garrett's confidante [sic], perhaps noting later how she had picked his brain, would hardly dare to reveal the true source of some seance information. His own employment and standing would be jeopardized and a friend's reputation disintegrate.

The rest of Booth's treatment of the R-101 mystery consists of a brief discussion of a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes written by Clifford Irving, and the well-known Piltdown Man hoax. These cases prove that people can be fooled.

Now, when I read this, I have to confess that I became very excited. I felt I had just received a revelation of startling import and potentially life-changing implications -- namely, that I should never, ever again buy anything published by Prometheus Books.

I also realized that Booth had proved his case conclusively in at least one respect. It is possible for people to be fooled. Case in point: I had been fooled into purchasing Psychic Paradoxes.

It's probably a waste of precious computer pixels to spend much time rebutting this remarkably dumb argument. A few points might be noted.

1. Eileen Garrett had indeed heard of the R-101 program before the crash. Everyone in Britain had heard of it. It attracted as much public interest as America's Apollo program of the 1960s. But the technical details of the airship's construction were never published, and the average person knew no more about the fine points of dirigibles than the average American in the 1960s knew about rocketships.
2. Garrett did indeed claim to have foreseen the crash. She made no secret of this, and it was mentioned in John Fuller's book and many other places. No one has ever made much of it. Psychics are always getting (or claiming to get) premonitions.
3. Garrett did have "friendships in high places." She was a member of London's literary arts community. Numbered among her friends were such luminaries as James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw. There is no reason to think that she ever hung out with aeronautical engineers, or that there was any overlap between the literary and theatrical circle in which she moved and the tightknit fraternity of engineering experts working on a secret government project.
4. Garrett was undeniably "a brilliant woman." And she was certainly successful as a psychic researcher, publisher, and administrator. None of these talents would qualify her for the job of "piecing together newspaper reports [and] checking back over her earlier investigations" (what investigations?) to deduce anything about the mechanical failure of an airship. Garrett's brilliance did not lie in the area of mechanics or engineering. She never even learned how to drive a car, and her ignorance of all things mechanical was well-known.
5. Could Garrett have had "a valued technician friend from the airdrome" who served as a secret confidant? Well, this claim is certainly impossible to disprove -- since if the relationship was secret, then by definition it was never found out. Is there any evidence that she had such a relationship? No. Was the possibility ever raised at the time? Yes. Her statements about the crash were sufficiently specific to arouse the suspicion of the government, which send agents to investigate Garrett. No link between her and the R-101 project or any of its participants was uncovered.

But maybe the investigators just weren't good enough, or Garrett was too clever for them. She would have to have been very clever indeed. Presumably, according to Booth's "theory," she was smart enough to anticipate that the dirigible would crash in the near future. She decided she could use this event to enhance her reputation as a psychic. To pull off her scheme, she had to befriend a technician working on the top-secret project and obtain classified information from him, even including blueprints! She then had to use her formidable intelligence to anticipate how the crash would occur - employing a chain of deductive reasoning that was apparently beyond the capabilities of the engineers themselves. She also had to learn all the relevant technical jargon so that she could recite it in her seances. Moreover, she had to be so fluent in her use of this jargon and so knowledgeable about the underlying concepts that she could engage in extended, highly technical dialogues with an aeronautics expert. She accomplished this feat despite the fact that at no time in her life, before or since, did she show any interest in or knowledge of mechanics. She also had to learn so much about the deceased crew members' mannerisms, vocal inflections, and turns of phrase that she could impersonate them well enough to fool someone who had known them in life.

All this is plausible, Booth suggests, because, after all, people were fooled by Clifford Irving and by the Piltdown Man.

If anyone from Prometheus Books is reading this, could I please get my $15 back?

 

Sources

John G. Fuller, The Airmen Who Would Not Die, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979

Jenny Randles & Peter Hough, Psychic Detectives: The Mysterious Use of Paranormal Phenomena in Solving True Crimes, Reader’s Digest Association, 2001

John Booth, Psychic Paradoxes, Prometheus Books, 1984

Essay: Why I'm Not a Skeptic

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004. 

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Why I'm Not a Skeptic

For the past couple of years, as a sideline to my usual work as a fiction writer, I've posted a series of online essays on paranormal phenomena. The topic is always controversial. Despite massive evidence to the contrary, some people continue to maintain that no such phenomena exist. Those who hold most tenaciously to this opinion characterize themselves as "skeptics."

Now, as has been frequently pointed out, this use of the term "skeptic" is more than a little misleading. In common usage, a skeptic is someone who maintains an open mind, insisting on evidence for any claim. The more unusual the claim, the more stringent the evidential demands. According to this view, the skeptic has no private agenda, no personal bias, but serves only as a guardian of the truth, who weeds out unsupported allegations and superstitious imaginings. The skeptic is the proverbial Missourian; though willing to be convinced, he says, "Show me."

That's the theory. In practice, things are different. Far from being a state of habitual open-mindedness, today's skepticism is characterized by resistance to any new ideas or new evidence, and unwillingness to critically examine its own biases. These tendencies, in turn, rest on a very definite agenda, promoted by a clear and comprehensive worldview, a philosophy of life. This philosophy is rationalism.

In a 1995 essay, Gene E. Veith ably summarizes rationalism's basic tenets. Coming of age in the eighteenth century, rationalism "excluded on principle everything that could not be seen, measured, and empirically analyzed. Revelation was ruled out as a means of knowledge, and belief in a supernatural realm that transcended the visible universe was dismissed as primitive superstition. Not only did modernists [i.e., rationalists] believe in the inerrancy of science, they also had a devout faith in progress. The 'modern,' almost by definition, was superior to the past. The future would be even better. Modernists genuinely believed that science would answer all questions and that the application of scientific principles would solve all social problems. Through rational planning, applied technology, and social manipulation, experts could engineer the perfect society (Veith, 1995)."

Here we have not innocent open-mindedness, but a narrow and intolerant creed, which is today often recognized as such. The word "skeptic" is, in fact, increasingly conjoined with "dogmatic," "zealous," and "militant." Some people accuse skeptics of being nothing but cynics in disguise. A few wags have dubbed them "septics." Admittedly, that's not very nice – but, truth be told, skeptics have brought such attacks on themselves by repeatedly characterizing their opponents as credulous, gullible, simpleminded, ignorant, irrational, and foolish.

Want proof? Look at skeptic Andrew Stuttaford, a frequent contributor to National Review Online. "A séance," he writes glibly, "is, by definition, a gathering of the credulous (Stuttaford, 2003b)." Apparently, then, all the researchers who have ever studied mediumship – the noted psychological theorists William James and F.W.H. Meyers among them – were either dupes or dopes. Stuttaford on Crossing Over star John Edward: "He's a fast-talking psychic with slow-witted fans." Although he admits, "I have no idea ... how Mr. Edward does it," Stuttaford opines that "it ... takes, how can this be put politely, a certain special something in the minds of his subjects. It cannot be put politely. Those special somethings are naivety, superstition, and a problem with rational thought (Stuttaford, 2001)."

Crossing Over fans shouldn't take undue umbrage. Stuttaford has many other dislikes. Even Walt Disney movies earn his opprobrium. "It's not easy to decide which Disney character is the most repellent," he muses. "That simpering Bambi would be better roasted, carved and surrounded by potatoes, gravy and parsnips (Stuttaford, 2003a)."

Stuttaford approaches the world from a rightist political perspective, but happily there is political balance among skeptics. Left-leaning gadfly Christopher Hitchens denounces all spiritual interests and phenomena as a "tsunami of piffle" embraced by the "feebleminded." He has high praise for Houdini, who "toured far and wide, exposing and announcing the callous hoaxes of the ectoplasm-artists." Hitchens doesn't mention the fact that Houdini himself is credibly accused of a hoax; the master magician's assistant confessed to having planted a suspicious article among medium Mina Crandon's effects so that Houdini could conveniently discover it later. If Hitchens is aware of this detail, he doesn't allow it to dim his enthusiasm for the famed "fairy-flattener" (quoted in Shermer, undated).

Perhaps paralleling Stuttaford's animus toward Walt Disney, Hitchens has his own bete noir in the person of Mother Teresa, the target of his scathing polemical pamphlet The Missionary Position. Reviewing this 98-page "book," one critic takes note of "Hitchens' genuine hatred of Mother Teresa. He uses anything and everything to paint her as a phony ... This isn't a reporter examining both sides of an issue; this is a guy with a vendetta (Milner, 1995)."

People who dislike Walt Disney and Mother Teresa must have some heroes of their own. And they do. Well-known skeptic Michael Shermer reports that, although he regards Ayn Rand's philosophy as a cult, nevertheless "I actually have a photograph of Rand on my wall, next to other photographs including Martin Gardner, Penn & Teller, [James] Randi, [Stephen Jay] Gould, Richard Dawkins, Isaac Asimov, Frank Sulloway, G. Gordon Liddy, Houdini, [and] my wife (Shermer, op. cit.)."

What can we learn from Michael Shermer's wall? His heroes can be divided mainly into professional skeptics (Martin Gardner, Penn & Teller, James Randi, and Houdini) and scientists or science writers of a sharply rationalistic bent (Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Isaac Asimov, Frank Sulloway). What connects the people on Shermer's wall is not politics. Asimov, a committed liberal, wouldn't have found much ideological common ground with Watergate felon Liddy. Nor is it a shared view of human nature. Sulloway, who applies Darwinian methods to the study of siblings' birth order for the purpose of explaining human behavior, would scoff at Rand's romantic view of man as "a being of self-made soul." Nor is it any particular point of agreement on scientific issues. Gould, an innovator in the field of evolution, vigorously disputed Dawkins's old-fashioned, unreconstructed Darwinism.

No, the overarching theme of Shermer's portrait gallery is something deeper. It is the same basic worldview summarized in the quotation from Gene Veith above. For the most part, the thinkers on Shermer's wall are rationalists – arch-rationalists, one might say - who do indeed "exclude ... everything that [cannot] be seen, measured, and empirically analyzed." Certainly most of them rule out mystical insight "as a means of knowledge" and "dismiss ... as primitive superstition ... [any] belief in a supernatural realm." (Martin Gardner, a philosophical theist, is an exception to the latter point.) They "believe in the inerrancy of science" and have "a devout faith in progress." They "genuinely believe ... that science [will] answer all questions and that the application of scientific principles [will] solve all social problems," allowing "experts" to "engineer the perfect society."

It is this shared commitment to Reason with a capital R that unites these otherwise disparate opinion-shapers. One may even call it a shared faith, though the appellation will not be met with approval by those on whom it is bestowed.

Of course, there's more to this rationalist faith than the positions already laid out. Rationalism takes its most clear-cut, dramatic, and bracingly simple form in its view of history.

For thousands of years, the story goes, the forces of reason have been doing battle with the forces of unreason, and the rise and fall of civilization follows the victories and defeats in this ongoing war. The ancient Athenians first enshrined reason as the basis of culture and politics, and in so doing, they created the first democracy and the first great literature and art. But Athens fell to the uncultured, unphilosophical Spartans and later to the boorish Macedonians, and the light of reason was nearly extinguished - until the Roman Empire, scavenger of subjugated cultures, adapted Greek philosophy to its own ends. Rome built a complex technological society that endured for centuries. But the Romans made the fatal mistake of adopting Christianity, a move that catapulted them directly into the Dark Ages.

The poverty, superstitious ignorance, and utter stagnation of medieval times persisted until the rebirth of reason known as the Renaissance. This opened up a new era of optimism, prosperity, and scientific progress, all made possible by the burgeoning philosophy of secular humanism, which reached its zenith in the Enlightenment.

Since that time, the forces of unreason have staged an increasingly successful counteroffensive. America is now under assault by a variety of pseudoscientific or openly irrational movements that fall under the rubric of the New Age. If these pernicious ideas consume our culture, then our society will go the way of the Roman Empire, and our future will be a new Dark Age. In this apocalyptic battle of ideas, nothing less than the survival of civilization is at stake.

As you can see, the rationalist version of history is an exciting story, full of high drama, complete with a cliffhanger ending. Will civilization commit suicide? Will all be lost? Tune in next week ...

Great stuff. The only problem is, it's not quite the whole story. In fact, a lot of it isn't even true.

For instance, the view that ancient Athens was a stolidly rationalistic society is a nineteenth century myth that has long since been exploded. We now know that, as early as the seventh century BC, Black Sea commerce had opened Greek society to Eastern mystical ideas. Asiatic teachings of soul-body dualism, reincarnation, and metempsychosis were picked up by leading Greek thinkers, most notably Pythagoras.

Although the intellectuals of Periclean Athens – the Athens of the fifth century BC - were undoubtedly more committed to the primacy of reason than earlier generations had been, Athens remained a hotbed of competing intellectual currents. The same leaders who praised reason also relied on oracles for guidance. The same tragic playwrights who brought powerful psychological insights to their studies of human nature also infused their tragedies with gods and monsters, while stressing the inexorable workings of fate. Euripides' last and arguably greatest play, The Maenads, is a celebration of the wildly irrational religion of the god Dionysus, whose intoxicated followers frolicked naked in the woods in orgiastic abandon.

The admixture of rationalist and irrationalist ideas in Athens helps explain the Hellenistic period which followed, when occultism again gained the upper hand. Had Athens been as uniformly rationalistic as its admirers suggest, the Hellenistic practitioners of alchemy and astrology would never have had a chance. (For a full discussion, see Dodds, 1951.)

What about the decline of the Roman Empire? True, the eighteenth century historian Edward Gibbon argued at very, very great length that Christianity was responsible for sapping the Romans' manly pagan virtues and leaving them open to attack by more vigorous barbarian hordes. Like other rationalists of an aristocratic bent, Gibbon waxed euphoric about the heyday of the Empire: "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he could, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus (quoted in Pagels, 1988)."

Undoubtedly these years, from A.D. 96 to A.D. 180, were a time when at least one portion of the human race was "happy and prosperous" - namely, adult males who enjoyed the benefits of Roman citizenship. They were, however, a minority of the population, the majority being made up of women, children, resident aliens, and slaves. For them, Gibbon's golden age was decidedly less lustrous. Elaine Pagels writes, "Within the capital city of Rome, three quarters of the population either were slaves - persons legally classified as property - or were descended from slaves. Besides being subjected to their owners' abuses, fits of violence, and sexual desires, slaves were denied such elementary rights as legitimate marriage, let alone legal recourse for their grievances (Pagels, 1988)."

Did anyone stand up for these marginalized people? One group did - the Christians. Pagels observes that Clement of Alexandria, an influential second century Christian, "attacked the widespread Roman custom of exposing abandoned infants on garbage dumps, or raising them for sale: 'I pity the children owned by slave dealers, who are dressed for shame,' says Clement, and trained in sexual specialties, who were sold to gratify their owners' sexual tastes. Justin, in his Defense of the Christians, complained that 'not only the females, but also the males' were commonly raised 'like herds of oxen, goats, or sheep,' as a profitable crop of child prostitutes ... Many Christians were themselves slave owners and took slavery for granted as unthinkingly as their pagan neighbors. But others went among the hovels of the poor and into slave quarters, offering help and money and preaching to the poor, the illiterate, slaves, women, foreigners - the good news that class, education, sex, and status made no difference, that every human being is essentially equal to any other 'before God' ... (Pagels, 1988)."

When Gibbon declaims on the glory that was Rome, it is best to keep in mind the "profitable crop of child prostitutes" and the abandoned infants languishing in garbage dumps. And when he insists that Judeo-Christian religious values "weakened" Rome or made it "effeminate" and "soft," it is worth remembering what casual, everyday atrocities the pagan world was capable of.

But did Christianity weaken Rome in a military sense? Did it cause the Empire's downfall and bring about the Dark Ages? Although Gibbon thought so, more recent research has widely discredited this idea. In a recent book, Greg S. Nyquist observes, "Those who ... regard Christianity as responsible for the collapse of Roman Civilization fail to realize that only the Western half of the empire fell. The Eastern half, which was every bit, if not more, Christian than the West, remained a viable political force during the entire period of the Middle Ages. While Western Europe suffered through centuries of abject poverty and feudal anarchy, Byzantium persevered amid a veritable sea of enemies (Nyquist, 2001)."

As with any large-scale historical event, the actual reasons for Rome's fall are complex and numerous. The Empire was overextended and difficult to defend, and the Romans were eventually obliged to employ Germanic tribesmen as mercenary soldiers to patrol the borders. Unfortunately, the emperors and the senate were notoriously stingy in paying the mercenaries' wages. As a result, the mercenaries periodically rose up against the authorities. One of these rebellions ended in the overthrow of the emperor in AD 476.

That date is often cited as the official fall of Rome, although the Empire, in a somewhat altered form, actually persisted for another two centuries. It collapsed only after the advancing Islamic armies took control of the Mediterranean Sea and made it, in the words of historian Henri Pirenne, "a Moslem lake." The end of Mediterranean commerce sent shockwaves through eighth century Europe, from which the continent's economy could not recover. (This theory is elaborated in Pirenne, 1974.)

Perhaps the most cherished chapter in the rationalists' historical overview is that the long, dreary interlude of the medieval period was brought to an end by a glorious rebirth of reason.

Again, the truth is more complicated. In fact, the medieval period blends rather seamlessly into the Renaissance. There were small businessmen, merchants, engineers, artists, philosophers, even nascent scientists in the late Middle Ages, just as there were astrologers, witches, spirit mediums, and religious fanatics in the Renaissance.

Jean Gimpel, in The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages, explores the often neglected technological and commercial innovations of the medieval period. "The Middle Ages," he writes in his preface, "was one of the great inventive eras of mankind. It should be known as the first industrial revolution in Europe ... Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries, western Europe experienced a technological boom ... Capitalist companies were formed and their shares were bought and sold ... Many of the tasks formerly done by hand were now carried out by machines ... There was a marked increase in the general standard of living."

Later he writes, "It is an astonishing concept to the modern mind that medieval man was surrounded by machines ... The most common was the mill, converting the power of water or wind into work: grinding corn, crushing olives, fulling cloth, tanning leather, making paper ..." A survey of England undertaken in 1086 by William the Conqueror reported 5,624 water mills. "On rivers like the Wylye in [the county of] Wiltshire the concentration of mills is remarkable: thirty mills along some 10 miles of water; three mills every mile."

Readers who prefer to get their history through historical novels might want to look at Michael Crichton's Timeline, which incorporates a great deal of recent research into its picture of the medieval world (Crichton, 1999).

If the Middle Ages was less mystical than rationalists suppose, the Renaissance was less rationalistic than they would like to believe. Rationalists sometimes credit the rediscovery of the works of Aristotle with laying the foundation for the new progressive spirit of the Renaissance. A case can be made that at least equal credit belongs to Aristotle's polar opposite, the semi-mythical ancient Egyptian known as Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes Thrice-Great. The corpus of occult writings attributed to this figure, known as the Hermetica, first returned to Western European hands in 1460, when Cosimo de Medici acquired some Hermetic texts from Byzantium. More texts turned up, and by 1593 a complete volume was published in Italy.

The Hermetica is crowded with occult lore of all kinds – astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, magical rituals, invocations of pagan deities. Interlaced with this rather banal material is a more uplifting mystical vision of a hierarchical, purposeful cosmos in which the human spirit is continually evolving toward reunion with the godhead.

Renaissance intellectuals were fascinated by the Hermetica. Such leading figures as Giordano Bruno and Pico della Mirandola became deeply committed to this occult philosophy, which has many similarities to the mystical traditions of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism - and nothing at all in common with classical rationalism. If we want to find the inspiration behind the works of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and perhaps even Shakespeare, we would be better advised to look at the Hermetica than at, say, Aristotle's Metaphysics.

It is true, of course, that rationalism eventually became the dominant mode of thought among intellectuals in the West, a trend that culminated in the Enlightenment in the middle to late 1700s. Even this development was less triumphal than contemporary rationalists make it out to be. The climax and apotheosis of the Enlightenment was not the American Revolution, which blended rationalist and religious sentiments in a common-sense mixture, but rather the French Revolution, which began as a revolt against the privileged but evolved swiftly into a radical onslaught on all religious beliefs, customs, traditions, and values. If you want to see the spirit of the Enlightenment, and therefore of scientific rationalism, in its pure, unadulterated form, look at Paris in 1793.

In that year the Jacobin party, in control of the Revolution, outlawed the Bible, closed all churches, and decreed the death penalty for anyone found guilty of practicing Christianity. The cathedral of Notre Dame was stripped of Christian symbols and transformed into a Temple of Reason, in which an actress made up as the Goddess of Reason received obeisance from the assembled mob. The local bishop was forced to declare that he worshipped no God, but only Liberty and Equality. An ass dressed in priestly garments, with the Hebrew Bible and New Testament tied to its tail, was paraded through the streets to its destination - a huge pile of religious books, which were ceremonially burned.

The new "Revolutionary Calendar" removed all references to Christianity, renaming Christmas as "Dog Day," and All-Saints Day as "Goat's-beard Herb Day." Other holidays included Virtue Day, Genius Day, and, of course, Reason Day. The months of the year were renamed for the seasons and harvests – the month of Mist, the month of Frost, the month of Heat; the months of Seed, of Blossom, of Fruit. Even clocks were remanufactured to count out ten hours to each day, with one hundred minutes to each hour – apparently a more logical approach.

Finally a truly rational society was at hand, or so the reformers thought. But at the very time when the Jacobins were outlawing religion, and perhaps not by coincidence, they were also instituting the Terror – the indiscriminate murder of thousands by means of that shiny, new, technologically efficient killing machine, the guillotine. The dream-turned-nightmare came to an end in 1799 with a coup d'etat that established the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Still, this was hardly the last effort to wipe out all vestiges of tradition and build a new, utopian society on a purely "scientific" basis. The Nazi ambition to establish a master race was founded on the new science of eugenics, while the Marxist attempt to mold the New Soviet Man relied on behavior modification through incessant propaganda and reeducation camps, policies justified by the "rational, scientific" theory of Marxism itself. It has been aptly said, by theologian Thomas Oden, that "modernity" lasted exactly two hundred years – beginning with the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

In making these points, I don't mean to suggest that the pursuit of reason has had no beneficial social consequences. This is obviously untrue and would be just as much of an unwarranted oversimplification as the rationalists' contrary position. What I am saying is that the pursuit of reason as an absolute, an end in itself, can lead to outcomes quite different from those that rationalists expect.

History is complicated. It is not a simple matter of good and evil, with the forces of good exemplified by reason, and the forces of evil exemplified by mysticism. It is more like a balancing act, in which both the rational and the nonrational aspects of human nature must find some degree of fulfillment in a stable social order. When the balance tilts too far to one side or the other, instability results. An excess of nonrational impulses can engender stagnant tribalism or despotic theocracy. An excessive commitment to reason as the be-all and end-all of life can usher in the chaos and madness of 1793.

Rationalists will have none of this. For them, all the ills of the world are the product of irrationalism and can be defeated by the systematic application of science, logic, and technology. This, they feel, is self-evident, and anyone who doesn't see it is either dishonest or stupid. Since a great many people don't see it, rationalists feel a certain contempt for the masses - contempt mixed with fear, since in a democracy the masses have considerable power.

All this is very much in line with the black-and-white mindset that typifies rationalists. There is reason, and there is its opposite, and never shall they meet. The ambiguities and complexities of the real world, the multiple causes underlying massive historical events, the nuances and subtleties of human nature are all quite alien to their streamlined and simplified vision.

For that matter, even some of modern science is alien to rationalists. This may seem odd, since rationalists are, if anything, champions of science. But if you examine them closely, you'll find that they are often more committed to the scientific outlook of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth - or the twenty-first.

The nineteenth century was the heyday of rationalism in science. It was the age when Newtonian physics seemed on the verge of explaining the universe. It was also the age when Darwinian evolutionary theory seemed to have solved the mysteries of life itself. Not surprisingly, rationalists still feel at home in that era.

But science has undergone momentous changes in the past century. The Theory of Relativity and, even more so, the advent of quantum physics have undermined the old Newtonian world picture. Where Newton saw the universe as a great machine humming along in a neat and orderly fashion, following laws that could be mathematically calculated, producing results that could be predicted with pinpoint accuracy, the new physics sees the universe as a place of paradox and ambiguity. In the quantum world, a subatomic particle can be both a particle and a wave at the same time. The distinction between the observer and the observed, so crucial to the classical outlook, has dissolved, and it now appears that the observer can directly affect or even bring about the events under observation. Entities are able to influence each other over vast distances instantaneously - a multiply verified observation that has given rise to the idea that this is a "nonlocal universe," a universe in which, at a fundamental level, space and time do not exist. Physicist David Bohm has compared the universe to a giant hologram, a multidimensional image projected out of a two-dimensional wave-interference pattern at the quantum level. Superstring theory argues that the essence of things is not any material object, but cosmic vibrational frequencies.

Meanwhile, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection is increasingly seen as incomplete. Some biologists postulate a new view of evolution, "punctuated equilibrium," in which new species emerge suddenly in response to environmental pressures. Other theorists apply chaos theory or quantum physics to the problem, while still others suggest, ever so carefully, that there may be something to the old Lamarckian notion that animals pass along acquired characteristics and thereby accelerate the evolutionary process. The origin of life remains a complete mystery, in which every proposed theory has been discredited and no new theories are thought to be in the offing. Molecular biologist Michael Behe, in Darwin's Black Box, argues that cellular organization represents an "irreducible complexity" that cannot be explained, even in principle, by evolutionary theory. Behe points out that even the simplest cell carries out millions of chemical reactions every second, in a meticulously choreographed array of sequences, and that all this activity is necessary if the cell is to metabolize nutrients, eliminate waste, and (most daunting of all) successfully reproduce. How the first cell ever developed out of nonliving antecedents is unknown, especially since examination of some of the oldest rocks on Earth has shown that microbes came into existence much earlier than previously believed.

In many respects, science is evolving into a more open-ended discipline, one that allows for and even celebrates the enigmas, paradoxes, and ambiguities of the universe. Rationalists are unhappy with this development. They resist it. They gripe about it. They make fun of it. They cannot come to terms with it.

Nor is this surprising. For the most part, the rationalist mindset is simply not flexible enough to adapt to new information or changing circumstances. Although rationalists themselves would vigorously deny it, their worldview is essentially religious in nature - not because they believe in God or the supernatural, but because they believe that they have identified absolute truths and that virtue consists in defending those truths at any cost. Their contempt for religion as a mere "belief system" blinds them to the fact that their philosophy is itself a belief system, subject to the same bias and incompleteness as any other set of beliefs. Philosophically, they have committed themselves to a simple, straightforward theory of everything, and are unable or unwilling to see that this theory, like any theory, can never be more than a rough approximation of the truth.

The quest for truth is an ongoing process, a journey, not a destination. Indeed, science - and reason itself - can be best understood not as a final answer but as a method, a tool. If science is seen as a set of answers with which one must agree in order for one to be deemed "rational" - a viewpoint for which the term "scientism" has been coined - then any new information that challenges the existing scientific worldview is a threat to science and to rationality itself. In that case, one must be perpetually on guard against such threats, by assiduously debunking any new ideas or new observations that fall outside the established paradigm.

On the other hand, if science is seen simply as a method leading to provisional answers that are always subject to revision, then new ideas and new observations are no threat at all.

So now we can see, I think, why the more militant rationalists become militant skeptics - i.e., militant debunkers. Their penchant for denigrating and discrediting the paranormal is not simply a tic of the personality, but the ineluctable consequence of a certain fundamental view of life, mind, and the cosmos.

Unfortunately, people with a powerful personal agenda do not make the best skeptics - at least not if skepticism is understood as the exercise of unbiased objectivity.

A small example will illustrate this point. It involves Dr. William A. Nolen, who went to the Philippines to study so-called "psychic surgeons." Let me be clear that I have no particular interest in psychic surgery and no confidence in its genuineness. My point in choosing this topic is to show that even regarding one of the most dubious paranormal claims, skeptics still indulge in hasty generalizations while ignoring possible nuances and subtleties of the issue. If they play fast and loose even when occupying comparatively solid ground, how reliable are they in better substantiated areas of paranormal research, such as telepathy and psychokinesis, where volumes of evidence and mountains of data weigh against them? (The most up-to-date summary of the evidence for psi-related phenomena is Radin, 1997.)

Dr. Nolen tells us that that his attitude was admirably unbiased. "I was making a very sincere effort," he says, "not to prejudge the merits of the psychic surgeons whom I was about to investigate. If I had already been persuaded they were charlatans, I would never have undertaken the assignment."

But "unbiased" means one thing to people in general, and quite another to a committed rationalist-cum-skeptic. To the skeptic, it means that he is willing to waste a little of his time examining obvious nonsense for the socially beneficial purpose of debunking it. Don't take my word for this. Here is Nolen again, this time being a little more forthcoming.

"I have to confess that I undertook the assignment with fear and trepidation. I knew that by looking into and writing about psychic surgery I ran a serious risk of being labeled a 'kook', a label that might destroy my reputation as a legitimate medical writer. I didn't want that to happen.

"On the other hand, I didn't agree with the AMA's policy. It seemed to me that ignoring the lunatic fringe, hoping they would just go away, was unrealistic. Remaining silent while quacks went out and sold their ideas, unopposed, just wouldn't work ... (Nolen, 1974)."

So Nolen's "very sincere effort not to prejudge the merits of the psychic surgeons" took the form of assuming in advance that they were "quacks" who were part of "the lunatic fringe." Remember this the next time a skeptic boasts about his impartial, objective stance.

Nolen spent a total of two weeks in the Philippines, a rather short time in which to investigate a phenomenon that, by some estimates, involves more than four hundred Filipino healers. Nevertheless, he was able to confidently conclude that the whole business of psychic surgery is a fraud.

George Nava True II, in a sympathetic online essay, summarizes the doctor's findings. "An ‘appendix' which Sison removed from a patient turned out to be a wad of cotton; a 'hysterectomy' made by Mercado consisted of chicken intestines which were passed off as the uterus; a 'tumor' Mercado removed from Nolen was clumps of fat soaked in a reddish liquid that was said to be blood. In one instance where Flores supposedly removed the eye of Joaquin Cunanan, a retired businessman who promoted psychic surgery, Nolen said this was accomplished by means of a dog's eye which the healer produced at the right moment (True, undated)."

So, then – cased closed. Or is it? Before we grant the final word on the subject to Nolen's two weeks of study, we might consider some contrary points of view.

In a recent book on the subject, Sandy Johnson acknowledges, "Sleight-of-hand surgery is common in the Philippines and elsewhere. Here, the healer creates the illusion of removing a tumor. To do this he uses cleverly concealed animal blood and tissue, usually small pieces of chicken liver or gizzard purchased at the corner stall, and proceeds to imitate a real surgery."

She interviews Henry Belk, who founded the Belk Foundation for Psychical Research, and asks why the healers would resort to trickery if they have actual healing powers. "Actually," Belk explains, "among the early Filipinos, sleight of hand existed for centuries. The belief was that if you extract a symbolic object from a sick patient, the disease would disappear. The shaman never considered what he did to be deceitful. His only interest was that the patient be healed. Any and all means of healing came from Spirit, and therefore was miraculous."

Is it, then, just a placebo affect? And what, really, is the placebo effect, anyway, if not a fancy name for a healing that occurs by no known mechanism?

After pondering these issues, Johnson came to believe "that all healing, including modern medicine, contained an element of the placebo effect. If belief and expectation is the spark that activates the immune system - whether delivered by a man in a white coat or a shaman in feathers - won't healing occur?"

Later she visits psychologist Stanley Krippner of the Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, who is described as "an outspoken advocate of the work of Rubens Faria," a Brazilian healer. "I think," Krippner says, "that he's putting on a show that brings out the best in people. Technically, he could do all this without cutting into the skin, without taking on the identity of Dr. Fritz [the doctor whose spirit Faria is allegedly channeling]. But that's not the way people's belief systems operate. People like theater, they like spectacle, they like drama, especially people who go to folk healers. Many folk healers around the country tell me, 'I would not have to call on the spirits. I would not have to cut into the body. I would not have to do the rituals, but people expect it, and I must give them what they expect if they are going to be healed.' (Johnson, 2003)."

And here is Jane Katra, writing in a book coauthored with pioneering physicist and ESP researcher Russell Targ: "After a week, I'd seen many so-called psychic surgeries, most of which my rational mind told me were sleight of hand, and yet which my observations told me were efficacious to varying degrees. I saw things that looked like animal entrails appearing as if they were being pulled out of people, and things that looked like real incisions cut into people, through which globs of who-knows-what appeared. I mostly saw sick people feeling better, speaking a common language of hope and fellowship to each other, in a community of affirmative expectation.

I was looking forward to seeing the renowned healer, Alex Orbito, do his famous eye-check procedure. I decided to team up with an American woman who was writing for a Yakima, Washington, newspaper ... The reporter stood on one side of the patient's head and watched Orbito's hands, while I stood on the other side with my face down, eye-to-eye with the patient. It looked as if Alex had his finger behind the man's eyeball, and that the eyeball was popped forward in its socket and pushed off to one side. I thought to myself, it might be easy to palm a fake eyeball, but why can't I see the man's real eye in there? And how does he get a glass eye to just hang there? ... When I compared notes with the other reporter after Orbito's eye show, we were each disappointed that the other didn't have an intelligent explanation for what we saw ...

I didn't know what to believe, and I didn't trust what I thought I saw. Some of the operations I observed had been quite bloody, and others not at all. When I asked [a psychic healer] why that was, she told me that 'Some people do better with lots of blood.' I assumed she had meant that they more strongly believed in the power of God to heal them, or that they heal themselves better.

Why did the healers palm chicken guts if they could rearrange eyeballs painlessly, and remove hemorrhoids with their bare fingers? I thought I had seen a tiny razor blade under one healer's fingernail, so, aha! He wasn't cutting people open with his finger! He was simply using a razor blade! (And then reaching inside people's bodies with his bare hands and pulling out tumors, while the people felt no pain?) Or did he cut people and use chicken guts, so they would believe they were being operated on - and actually heal themselves? [Targ and Katra, 1999]

Another viewpoint, from an online essay by Juliette Hauser: "Philippine psychic surgeons believe that disease is lodged in the rigid belief systems of the mind. When a patient watches someone's hands pass through the flesh, their belief systems are cracked wide open. The disease loses power as it is severed from its matrix. So although healing can be accomplished without physical penetration, Alex Orbito will continue to use the dramatic demonstration of psychic surgery as long as it is necessary for the patient's mind (Hauser, undated)."

Reading Michael Harner's book The Way of the Shaman [HarperSanFrancisco, 1990], I came across a description of traditional healing techniques used by the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador. Jivaro shamans believe they can rid the patient of bad influences, thought of as "magical darts" implanted in the patient's body. These "darts" are called tsentsak and may correspond to various mundane items - "insects, plants, and other objects." In the healing ceremony, the shaman first conceals two tsentsak in his mouth; "they are there to catch the nonordinary aspect of the magical dart when the shaman sucks it out of the patient's body." At the end of the ceremony, the shaman spits out one of the tsentsak "and displays it to the patient and his family saying, "Now I have sucked it out. Here it is." Harner notes, "The nonshamans may think that the material object itself is what has been sucked out, and the shaman does not disillusion them. At the same time he is not lying, because he knows that the only important aspect of the tsentsak is its nonmaterial or nonordinary aspect, or essence, which he sincerely believes he has removed from the patient's body. To explain to the layman that he already had these objects in his mouth would serve no fruitful purpose and would prevent him from displaying such an object as proof that he had effected the cure (pp. 17-18)."

It appears, then, that the situation may be more complicated than Nolen's hasty judgment - one could say prejudgment - would suggest. There may be a mixture of sleight of hand and legitimate psychic power at work in some of these cases. Certainly, skeptics can point to patients who showed no improvement after a trip to the Philippines. Just as certainly, believers in psychic surgery can find cases in which remarkable healings did occur. Skeptics dismiss the success stories as "anecdotal," even if they are well-documented (although they never dismiss their own examples of failed healings as mere anecdotes). If pressed, a skeptic may admit that some healings have occurred, but will fall back on the "placebo effect" as an explanation - without considering the large questions about the relationship between mind and body that the very existence of the placebo effect opens up.

There is no time for large questions or for deep thought. The committed skeptic, sure of his conclusions in advance, carries out the intellectual equivalent of a hit and run - a few days of hasty "research," then the announcement of his preconceived opinions as verified fact.

Skeptics like to point to the harm that can be done by fake psychics, fake healers, and so on. Rarely do they acknowledge the harm done by their own over-hasty dismissals of legitimate phenomena. A case in point is described in Lynne McTaggart's book The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe.

McTaggart tells the story of French scientist Jacques Benveniste, "a specialist in the mechanisms of allergy and inflammation [who was] appointed research director at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM)." Benveniste became interested studying the characteristics of highly diluted solutions. To his surprise, he discovered that "the weaker the solution, a more powerful its effect."

McTaggart goes on, "Benveniste joined forces with five different laboratories in four countries, France, Israel, Italy and Canada, all of whom were able to replicate his results. The thirteen scientists then jointly published the results of their four-year collaboration in May 1988 edition of the highly prestigious Nature magazine, showing that if solutions of antibodies were diluted repeatedly until they no longer contained a single molecule of the antibody, they still produced a response from immune cells .... To the popular press, which pounced on the published paper, Benveniste had discovered 'the memory of water'."

The editor of Nature, John Maddox, attached a skeptical addendum to the paper, saying, "There is no physical basis for such an activity ... Nature has therefore arranged for independent investigators to observe repetitions of the experiments."

McTaggart continues,

Four days after publication, Maddox himself arrived [at Benveniste's lab] with what Benveniste himself described as a scientific 'fraud squad,' composed of Walter Stewart, a well-known quackbuster, and James Randi, a professional magician who tended to be called in to expose scientific work that had actually been arrived at by sleight of hand. Were a magician, a journalist and a quackbuster the best possible team to assess the subtle changes in biological experimentation, wondered Benveniste. Under their watchful eye, [Benveniste's assistant] performed four experiments, one blinded, all of which, Benveniste said, were successful. Nevertheless, Maddox and his team disputed the findings and decided to change the experimental protocol ... Under their new protocol, and amid a charged atmosphere implying that the INSERM team were hiding something, three more tests were done and shown not to work. At this point, Maddox and his team had their results and promptly left ... Soon after their five-day visit, Nature published a report entitled 'High dilution experiments a delusion'. It claimed that Benveniste's lab had not observed good scientific protocol. It discounted supporting data from other labs ... Nature's results had a devastating effect upon Benveniste's reputation and his position at INSERM.

Nevertheless, Benveniste continued to pursue his research, and in 2001 he was apparently vindicated when four outside labs, in a series of double-blind experiments overseen by highly skeptical chemist Madeleine Ennis, reproduced the same phenomenon he had reported in 1988 (Milgrom, 2001; Connor, 2004).

Benveniste himself, not content merely to replicate his earlier findings, has been trying to find a mechanism by which to explain them. He may have discovered it in the possibility of electromagnetic communication between chemicals. His laboratory work suggests that even after a chemical has been diluted out of a solution, the water itself retains the memory of the electromagnetic vibration specific to that chemical - and it is this vibration, or frequency, which brings about chemical reactions.

Every molecule, McTaggart explains, has a unique "signature frequency," analogous to the frequency of a particular radio station. Other molecules can "tune in" to this frequency, allowing molecules to communicate over large distances. She goes on:

As these two molecules resonate on the same wavelength, they ... begin to resonate with the next molecules in the biochemical reaction, thus creating, in Benveniste's words, a 'cascade' of electromagnetic impulses traveling at the speed of light. This, rather than accidental collision, would better explain how you initiate a virtually instantaneous chain reaction in biochemistry ...

Benveniste ... was able to record and replay these signals using a multimedia computer. Over thousands of experiments, Benveniste ... recorded the activity of [a] molecule on the computer and replayed it to a biological system ordinarily sensitive to that substance. In every instance, the biological system has been fooled into thinking it has been interacting with the substance itself and acted accordingly, initiating the biological chain reaction, just as it would if in the actual presence of the genuine molecule [McTaggart, 2002].

This new field of study, termed "digital biology," may represent a major breakthrough in our understanding of life. Yet the whole highly promising avenue of research, along with the career of the innovative scientist behind it, was nearly cut short by the presumptuous arrogance of three skeptics, none of whom was trained in chemistry.

If Benveniste's work yields life-saving medical breakthroughs, will the "fraud squad" apologize? Don't count on it. After the reproduction of Benveniste's results in 2001, James Randi quickly organized a counter-experiment, which yielded negative results. On his Web site, Randi reports only the negative findings, which he calls "definitive," and he makes no mention at all of the positive results from Europe (Randi, 2003). As noted in an online article by Rochus Boerner, a search of Randi's site turns up only one reference to Madeleine Ennis, and "it mentions Ennis' name in the context of discussing a disconfirming study, and calls her a 'pharmacist from Belfast.' Relying solely on Randi's site, a reader would never know that the women is a professor of Immunopharmacology at Queen's University, Belfast, and that she and others have produced a ground-breaking replication of Benveniste's work (Boerner, undated)."

Self-doubt - or at least the admission of same - is not characteristic of the skeptic, who prefers to radiate an aura of unshakable assurance. To admit any doubt is to cede territory to the forces of unreason - the primordial enemy, which, as we have seen, must be resisted by any means.

And here we come to what is, as I see it, the real problem with skeptics. They wish, above all, to be certain – and when reality doesn't oblige them by offering clear-cut answers, they turn away from reality and seek refuge in pre-existing theory.

They oversimplify history as a battle between good and evil, and miss its complexities and subtleties. They resist modern developments in science and cling to outdated, nineteenth century conceptions. They jump to prearranged conclusions and shut their eyes - and their minds - to anomalous data and alternative explanations.

In their quest to prove themselves right, they lose sight of the ambiguities and paradoxes of life. In their desire to be safe and sure, they turn away from anything interesting and new.

They are creatures of comfort and routine, not explorers. They cannot think outside the box. They will, in fact, deny that there is or ever could be anything outside the box - and they'll heap scorn on anyone who suggests otherwise. They'll call names, cry fraud, and holler that civilization is in danger and the barbarians are at the gates. They'll do anything, really - except examine their own assumptions with a remotely critical eye.

And that's why I'm not a skeptic.

 

Sources

Behe, M. Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution The Free Press, New York, 1996.

Boerner, R. "Some Notes on Skepticism," undated. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.suppressedscience.net/skepticism.html" (link expired)

Connor, S. "New Research Supports Basic Premise Behind Homoeopathy," The Independent August 19, 2004. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.rense.com/general56/behi.htm

Crichton, M. Timeline Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999.

Dodds, E.R. The Greeks and the Irrational, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1951.

Gimpel, J. The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages, Barnes & Noble Books, 2003, pp. viii - ix, 1, 12

Hauser, Juliette "Miracle Healers: When Psychic Surgeons Defy Reality," undated. Viewed on September 16, 2003, at http://www.berkeleypsychic.com/Reader/archive/December97/healer.html (link expired)

Johnson, S. The Brazilian Healer with the Kitchen Knife: And Other Stories of Mystics, Shamans, and Miracle-Makers, Rodale, 2003, pp. 136-137, 160.

McTaggart, L. The Field: the Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe, HarperCollins, New York, 2002, pp. 60 - 68.

Milgrom, L. "Thanks for the Memory," The Guardian March 15, 2001. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at the Internet site: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2001/mar/15/technology2 

Milner, M. "Lives of the Saints," Philadelphia City Paper December 14-21, 1995. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.citypaper.net/articles/121495/article003.shtml (link expired)

Nolen, W.A. Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle Random House, New York, 1974.

Nyquist, G.S. Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature, Writers Club Press, Lincoln, NE, 2001, p. 80.

Pagels, P. Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, Random House, New York, 1988, pp. 51-53.

Pirenne, H. Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1974, p. 25 and passim.

Radin, D. The Conscious Universe, HarperCollins, New York, 1997.

Randi, J. "Commentary" September 5, 2003. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.randi.org/jr/090503.html

Shermer, M. "Hitchens on Fairies, Banned by Rand," undated. Viewed on August 28, 2004 at http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/ftale.htm (link expired)

Stuttaford, A. "Dead Men Talking: The Crossing Over Success," National Review Online August 11-12, 2001. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/television/television-stuttaford081101.shtml (link expired)

Stuttaford, A. "Who Shot Bambi?" National Review Online June 21, 2003. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.asp?ref=/thecorner/03_06_15_corner-archive.asp (link expired)

Stuttaford, A. "False Memory Watch," National Review Online August 15, 2003. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/03_08_10_corner-archive.asp (link expired)

Targ, R. and Katra, J. Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing, New World Library, Novato, CA, 1999, pp. 153-154.

True, G.N. "The Facts About Faith Healing," undated. Viewed on August 28, 2004, at http://www.netasia.net/users/truehealth/Psychic%20Surgery.htm (link expired)

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Essay: Getting a Rise out of Ectoplasm

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay, originally posted in 2008, is an adaptation of three blog posts - "A Moldy Tale" and its sequel, and "Getting a Rise out of Ectoplasm." It also incorporates material that came up in the comments threads.

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Getting a rise out of ectoplasm

In his book After Death -- What? Researches in Hypnotic and Spiritualistic Phenomena (1909; Aquarian Press edition 1988), turn-of-the-century scientist Cesare Lombroso recounts the experiments that led him from a strictly materialist worldview to a belief in spirits and life after death. One of the most striking chapters is Lombroso's account of "seventeen séances held in Milan in 1892 ... séances in which the most marked precautions were taken, such as searching the medium, changing her garments, binding her and holding her hands and feet, and adjusting the electric light on the table so as to be able to turn it off and on at will." (pp. 40-41)

The subject of these experiments was the controversial Sicilian medium Eusapia Palladino, who was said to be able to levitate tables, make musical instruments play themselves, produce cold winds in a sealed room, and materialize hands and faces. Eusapia was an eccentric character known for her propensity to cheat when she thought she could get away with it, a tendency that discredited her in the eyes of many researchers. (The fact that she was a coarse, uneducated, and flirtatious peasant woman also factored into the disrepute in which she was held in genteel circles.) Nevertheless, when properly controlled and observed, she produced some remarkable phenomena, which are difficult if not impossible to explain by any normal means. Indeed, the premier magician of the day, Howard Thurston, witnessed one of Eusapia's séances and stated publicly that her phenomena could not be duplicated by any trickery known to him.

It's also worth noting that Lombroso was a serious and careful researcher, not in the least naive when it came to Eusapia. Here's what he said about her:

Many are the crafty tricks she plays, both in the state of trance (unconsciously) and out of it - for example, freeing one of her two hands, held by the controllers, for the sake of moving objects near her; making touches; slowly lifting the legs of the table by means of one of her knees and one of her feet, and feigning to adjust her hair and then slyly pulling out one hair and putting it over the little balance tray of a letter-weigher in order to lower it. She was seen by Faifofer, before her séances, furtively gathering flowers in a garden, that she might feign them to be 'apports' by availing herself of the shrouding dark of the room.

What follows are a few excerpts from Lombroso's treatment of the Eusapia sittings. It should be noted that the table used in the experiments was not Eusapia's; it was "made expressly for the purpose" by the researchers. (p. 41)

After recounting some partial levitations of the table Lombroso writes:

It was natural to conclude that if the table, in apparent contradiction with the law of gravitation, was able to rise on one side, it would be able to rise completely. In fact, that is what happened, and these levitations are among those of most frequent occurrence in experiments with Eusapia. They were usually produced under the following conditions: The persons seated around a table place their hands on it and form the chain there. Each hand of the medium is held by the adjacent hand of the neighbor on each side; each of her feet is under the foot of her neighbor; these furthermore press against her knees with theirs. As usual, she is seated at one of the short sides (end) of the table, -- the position least favorable for mechanical levitation. After a few minutes the table makes a lateral movement, rises now to the right and now to the left, and finally is lifted wholly off its four feet into the air, horizontally, as if afloat in a liquid, and ordinarily to a height of from 10 to 20 centimetres (sometimes, exceptionally, as high as 60 or 70), then falls back on all four feet at once. Sometimes it stays in the air for several seconds, and even makes fluctuating motions there, during which the position of the feet under it can be thoroughly inspected. During the levitation the right hand of the medium frequently leaves the table with that of her neighbor and remains suspended above it. Throughout the experiment the face of the medium is convulsed, her hands contract, she groans and seems to be suffering.

In order better to observe the matter in hand we gradually retired the experimenters from the table, having noticed that the chain of several persons was not at all necessary, either in this or in other phenomena. In the end we left only a single person besides the medium, and placed on her left. This person rested her feet on the two feet of Eusapia, and one of her hands on the latter's knees. With her other hand she held the left hand of the medium, whose right lay on the table in full view of all, or was even lifted into the air during the levitation.

Inasmuch as the table remained in the air for several seconds, it was possible to secure several photographs of performance. [Two of these are included in the book.]

A little before the levitation it was observed that the folds of the skirt of Eusapia were blown out on the left side so far as to touch the neighboring leg of the table. When one of us endeavored to hinder this contact, the table was unable to rise as before, and was only enabled so to do when the observer purposely allowed to contact to occur. It will be noticed that the hand of the medium was at the same time placed on the upper surface of the table on the same side, so that the leg of the table there was under her influence, as much in the lower portion by means of the skirt as in the superior portion through the avenue of the hand. No verification was made as to the degree of pressure exerted upon the table at that moment by the hand of the medium, nor were we able to find out, owing to the brevity of the levitation, what particular part was in contact with the garment, which seemed to move wholly in a lateral direction and to support the weight of the table.

In order to avoid this contact it was proposed to have the levitation take place while the medium and her coadjutors stood on their feet, but it did not succeed. It was also proposed to place the medium at one of the longer sides of the table. But she opposed this, saying that it was impossible. So we are obliged to declare that we did not succeed in obtaining a complete levitation of the table of all four of its legs absolutely free from any contact whatever, and there is reason to fear that a similar difficulty would have been met in the levitation of the two legs that stood on the side next the medium. [pp. 43-46]

While performing some experiments with a balance, the same "blowing out" of the medium's garment was observed.

In this experiment of the balance, also, it was noticed by some of us that success seemed to depend on contact of the garments of the medium with the floor upon which the balance was directly placed. The truth of this was established by a special experiment on the 9th of October. The medium having been seated on the balance, that one of our number who had taken upon himself to watch her feet soon saw the lower folds of her dress swelling out and projecting in such a way as to hang down from the platform of the balance. As long as the attempt was made to hinder this movement of the dress (which was certainly not produced by the feet of the medium), the levitation did not take place. But as soon as the lower extremity of the dress was allowed to touch the floor, repeated and very evident levitations took place, which were designated in very fine curves on the disk that registered the variations of weight. [pp. 47-48]

The movement of the dress naturally gives rise to suspicion that some sort of fancy footwork, so to speak, was at play. But the researchers swore that Eusapia's feet were not responsible for the movement. If there is any reality to ectoplasm, then it may be the case that some sort of invisible ectoplasmic protuberance was causing the dress to move, and that contact between this ectoplasmic rod and the floor or table was necessary in order to achieve results.

In any case, the preceding observations pale in comparison to a phenomenon that Lombroso titles "The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table."

Among the most important and significant of the occurrences we put this levitation. It took place twice, -- that is to say, on the 28th of September and the 3rd of October. The medium, who was seated near one end of the table, was lifted up in her chair bodily, amid groans and lamentations on her part, and placed (still seated) on the table, then returned to the same position as before, with her hands continually held, her movements being accompanied by the persons next her.

On the evening of the 28th of September, while her hands were held by MM. Richet and Lombroso, she complained of hands which were grasping her under the arms; then, while in trance, with the changed voice characteristic of this state, she said, "Now I lift my medium up on the table." After two or three seconds the chair with Eusapia in it was not violently dashed, but lifted without hitting anything, on to the top of the table, and M. Richet and I are sure that we did not even assist the levitation by our own force. After some talk in the trance state the medium announced her descent, and (M. Finzi having been substituted for me) was deposited on the floor with the same security and precision, while MM. Richet and Finzi followed the movements of her hands and body without at all assisting them, and kept asking each other questions about the positions of the hands.

Moreover, during the descent both gentlemen repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head.

On the evening of October 3 the thing was repeated in quite similar circumstances, MM. Du Prel and Finzi being one on each side of Eusapia. [pp. 49-50]

The researchers' impression of being touched by "a hand" during this levitation is particularly interesting, and perhaps adds weight to the hypothesis of ectoplasmic extensions at at work.

Now, I'm well aware that there are ways of tilting a table and making it appear to levitate, though it would seem that the researchers' precautions were sufficient to prevent fraud in these particular tests. But even if Eusapia managed to fool them with regard to the table, how in the world could she simulate the levitation of herself and the chair she was sitting on -- transporting it from the floor to the table itself, and then back again, while closely observed?

Since several witnesses were present, a skeptic would have to posit a collective hallucination that persisted for a fairly extended period of time. I suppose mass hysteria could account for such a thing, but there is no reason to think that these investigators were hysterical.

What if the investigators simply misremenbered the event? It seems absurd. Such a dramatic development would make a strong - perhaps indelible - impression. Besides, researchers in these situations typically write up their notes immediately after the event. And all of the researchers would have to suffer the same memory lapse.

Could the researchers have lied? This is probably the only non-paranormal explanation that makes any sense. But there is no reason to suspect the researchers of dishonesty. They had nothing to gain by promoting Eusapia; quite the opposite - their endorsement of her abilities hurt their reputations and careers. At least two of them (Lombroso, Richet) were skeptical materialists by training and predisposition, who came to a belief in the paranormal only reluctantly. Lombroso's report reads like a sober record of facts, with Eusapia's occasional failures and attempts at deception plainly noted. Besides, other researchers reported similar phenomena from Eusapia on other occasions, so they must have been lying, too.

Skepticism of physical phenomena in the seance room is often warranted, as the long history of fraud in this area makes clear. But when a case is as well observed and carefully reported as this one - with the effects occurring in good light over a period of several minutes - I don't think any skeptical explanation holds up.

Eusapia Palladino was by no means the only medium to produce inexplicable effects of a "physical" (as opposed to mental) nature. Another example is Franek Kluski, who first came to my attention via Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism. This well-known book, in two volumes (complete text available online: Vol. I and Vol. II), makes rewarding reading for anyone interested in the early years of parapsychology.

That's not to say there aren't problems with the book. Doyle's dogged commitment to the reality of psi phenomena, especially as pertaining to life after death, led him to endorse some questionable characters. In Volume I, he goes to some lengths to establish the Davenport Brothers as legitimate, even though most observers then and later have made then out to be clever frauds. He endorses such dubious activities as slate-writing and spirit photography, and seems genuinely peeved at the efforts of the Society for Psychical Research to tighten up the experimental controls on mediums.

Despite these caveats, the two volumes contain many fascinating anecdotes, and a good deal of seemingly solid evidence is presented. Doyle's smooth, lucid prose style makes the pages turn quickly.

In a chapter in Volume II titled "Voice Mediumship and  Moulds," Doyle discusses the practice of producing paraffin molds of spirit forms - faces and hands, usually - in the séance room. Skeptics dismiss such claims, saying that the medium or an accomplice made the impressions surreptitiously, or that pre-made molds were smuggled into the room and substituted in the dark. This is undoubtedly true in some cases; one instance often cited is the infamous case of "Margery" (Mina Crandon), who produced a spirit thumbprint that turned out to belong to her all-too-living dentist. People argue to this day about Margery's mediumship, and the case may not be as clear-cut as it appears. Still, that exposure and others like it have made researchers understandably cautious.

But consider the case of Franek Kluski. It seems that every reasonable precaution against fraud was taken, yet positive results were obtained. According to Doyle, the following series of tests was reported in the magazine Revue Metapsychique in June, 1921: 

Dr. [Gustave] Geley carried out with Kluski a number of remarkable experiments in the formation of wax moulds of materialized hands. He has recorded the results of a series of eleven successful sittings for this purpose. In a dim light the medium's right hand was held by Professor Richet and his left hand by Count Potocki. A trough containing wax, kept at melting-point by warm water, was placed two feet in front of Kluski, and for the purpose of a test the wax was impregnated (unknown to the medium) with the chemical cholesterin, this to prevent the possibility of substitution. Dr. Geley writes:

The feeble light did not admit of the phenomena being actually seen; we were aware of the moment of dipping, by the sound of splashing in the liquid. The operation involved two or three immersions. The hand that was acting was plunged in the trough, was withdrawn, and, covered with warm paraffin, touched the hands of the controllers of the experiments, and then was plunged again into the wax. After the operation the glove of paraffin, still warm but solidified, was placed against the hand of one of the controllers.

In this way nine moulds were taken: seven of hands, one of a foot, and one of a chin and lips. The wax of which they were composed on being tested gave the characteristic reaction of cholesterin. Dr. Geley shows twenty-three photographs of the moulds and of plaster casts made from them. It may be mentioned that the moulds exhibit the folds of the skin, the nails and the veins, and these markings in nowise resemble those of the medium. Efforts to make similar moulds from the hands of human beings were only partially successful, and the difference from those obtained at the sittings was obvious. Sculptors and moulders of repute have declared that they know of no method of producing wax moulds such as those obtained at the séances with Kluski.

Geley sums up the result thus:

"We will now enumerate the proofs which we have given of the authenticity of the moulds of materialized limbs in our experiments in Paris and Warsaw.

"We have shown that quite apart from the control of the medium, whose two hands were held by us, all fraud was impossible.

"1. The theory of fraud by a rubber glove is inadmissible, for such an attempt gives crude and absurd results which can be seen at a glance to be imitations.

"2. It is not possible to produce such gloves of wax by using a rigid mould already prepared. A trial of this shows at once how impossible it is.

"3. The use of a prepared mould in some fusible and soluble substance, covered with a film of paraffin during the séance and then dissolved out in a pail of water, will not fit in with the actual procedure. We had no pail of water.

"4. The theory that a living hand was used (that of the medium or of an assistant) is inadmissible. This could not have been done, for several reasons, one being that gloves thus obtained are thick and solid, while ours are fine and delicate, also that the position of the fingers in our moulds makes it impossible that they could be withdrawn without breaking the glove. Also that the gloves have been compared with the hands of the medium and of the assistants, and that they are not alike. This is shown also by anthropological measurements.

"Finally, there is the hypothesis that the gloves were brought by the medium. This is disproved by the fact that we secretly introduced chemicals into the melted wax, and that these were found in the gloves.

"The report of the expert modellers on the point is categorical and final."

Nothing is evidence to those who are so filled with prejudice that they have no room for reason, but it is inconceivable that any normally endowed man could read all the above, and doubt the possibility of taking moulds from ectoplasmic figures.

A rebuttal of Geley's work was presented by Italian researcher Massimo Polidoro, who, with colleague Luigi Garlaschelli, cast doubt on some of his claims. In particular, they showed that thin molds could be obtained rather easily, and that it was possible for a person to twist his hand free of the paraffin without breaking the mold. Their work is important and interesting, but it does not address the most significant claims made by Geley - namely, that the medium's hands were controlled throughout the séance, and that the paraffin had been pretreated with a certain chemical (without the medium's knowledge) to expose any attempted substitution.

If substitution is eliminated as a possibility, and if the medium's hands were properly controlled, then the only remaining non-paranormal explanation is the action of an accomplice, who would make a mold of his own hand. Could Geley have been careless enough to allow a potential accomplice into the séance room, and would this person's actions pass unnoticed in the dim red light? It seems doubtful.

Skeptics will probably say Kluski fooled the experimenters into believing they had control of both his hands, when actually they were controlling only one. But remember that one of the molds was of a foot, and another was of a partial face ("chin and lips"). Maybe, just maybe, Kluski could have lowered his face into the paraffin, though it seems likely that this action would have been observed, and that some traces of the paraffin would cling to his face afterward.

More important, how would he get his bare foot onto the table and into the trough of paraffin?

After I wrote up this part of the story, a reader named Renaud Evrard pointed me to an excellent article by Mario Varvoglis on the Kluski materializations. This piece goes into more detail about the experiments and clearly shows the weaknesses of Polidoro and Garlaschelli's skeptical explanation. It appears that in presenting their case, they left unmentioned a number of crucial points.

Polidoro writes,

Strictly following Geley's instructions, we prepared two basins (each had a diameter of 10 inches): one with hot water (approximately 5 litres at 55ºC), in which we poured a layer of molten paraffin (approx. 1 kg, previously melted in a pan with boiling water on a kitchen stove), and the other with cold water (5 litres), which we later used to immerse our hands and allow the paraffin to solidify. In turn, we immersed our hands first in the basin filled with paraffin and then in the one containing water.

But this is quite misleading, as Varvoglis' article makes clear. In the Kluski tests, there was no basin of cold water. Varvoglis:

Rather than using a second bowl for cooling, the IMI [Institut Metapsychique International]researchers preferred to allow the wax moulds to rigidify on their own, this being, as we shall see, a precaution against fraud.

The unnaturally rapid rate of cooling of Kluski's paraffin molds was itself a sign that something unusual was going on. Without any cold water available, the molds still cooled and set within one or two minutes - much faster than should have been possible. Kluski's hands (controlled throughout) were observed to get quite cold at times, as if he could produce a change in temperature at will.

The two skeptics, Polidoro and Garlaschelli, continue:

In all of these cases, we were able rather easily to make some fairly thin moulds (a few millimeters thick) just by immersing the hands a couple of times in the basin with the paraffin. But our most significant result was that in every instance we managed to remove our hands from the solidified paraffin glove without breaking it.

This sounds persuasive until we realize that molds "a few millimeters thick" are still significantly thicker than those produced in the Kluski tests, as Varvoglis observes:

Finally, it should be mentioned that the wax moulds were less than a millimeter thick (thinner than a sheet of paper).

And again:

the wax moulds were exceptionally delicate: at most a millimeter thick.

The thinness and fragility of the Kluski molds would have greatly complicated efforts to extricate the hand from the mold without having the mold fall to pieces - something the skeptics fail to mention.

Another fact creating difficulty for the skeptics is that Kluski's molds were much smaller than his own hands. The molded hands were child-sized; no one in the séance room had hands so small. In addition, the fingerprints of the molded hands were not those of Kluski. (It is a tribute to the thoroughness of the researchers that they actually checked this detail with the help of the police.)

Polidoro and Garlaschelli try to address this point:

It would not be difficult to conclude ... that particularly complex moulds could have been shaped with extreme care, before a séance took place, by the medium himself or his accomplices and, during the séance, jumbled up with other moulds forged at the moment of performing the spiritualist occurrence.

This won't do. The séance room was locked; only the investigators and Kluski were present. Who, then, was the accomplice? More important, there could have been no substitutions in at least three of the cases, when the investigators secretly treated the paraffin wax with telltale chemicals.

Here is one such case, per Varvoglis:   

Just prior to beginning, Richet and Geley had secretly added a bluish coloring agent to the paraffin. Control of the medium was considered excellent, with controllers regularly checking and verbally reporting ‘I am holding the right hand’, ‘I am holding the left hand’. Splashing sounds were heard about twenty minutes into the session, and one to two minutes later two warm paraffin gloves were deposited next to the controllers. Both wax moulds had precisely the same bluish tint as that of the tank, strongly suggesting that these were indeed created during the séance, and not smuggled in by the medium. An additional control was the weighing of all substance. Prior to the experiment, the paraffin was 3.920 grams, while at the end of the session it weighed 3.800 grams. The two moulds weighed 50 grams, and there was considerable wax scattered near the medium (around 15 grams), on his clothing, and on the floor 3.5 meters away from him (about 25 grams). Insofar as the sum of these weights correspond very closely to the initial weight, this further establishes that the wax gloves were produced during the session.

Moreover, Kluski's hands were held at all times throughout the sessions by investigators who were well aware of the old "substitution of hands" ploy used by fake mediums. The red light in the room, though dim, was sufficient to allow the sitters to see the outlines of the people at the table. Any gross movements occurring right in front of their faces would have been seen.

Why, then, did the researchers not see the spirit hands entering the paraffin bath? On at least one occasion, they apparently did. Varvoglis writes:

Finally, in one session the researchers actually saw the production of the wax moulds. In other words, they witnessed a continuity between the visual apparitions of luminous hands and the creation of the moulds. As Geley describes it:

We had the great pleasure of seeing the hands dipping into the paraffin. They were luminous, bearing points of light at the finger-tips. They passed slowly before our eyes, dipped into the wax, moved in it for a few seconds, came out, still luminous, and deposited the glove against the hand of one of us.

Varvoglis' complete article is well worth reading. In total, it makes a compelling case for the reality of the Kluski phenomena, and points up the extreme deficiencies of the skeptics' counterargument.

In the case of both Palladino and Kluski, multiple, trained observers using every reasonable precaution witnessed phenomena that have no credible non-paranormal explanation. There are other such cases - whole books full of them. Yet we continue to hear that there is "no evidence" for such phenomena, and that only gullible idiots believe in such things.

 

Essay: The Dark Side of the Paranormal

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of those essays, originally posted in 2004.

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The Dark Side of the Paranormal

 

Years ago, on a whim, a friend led me into a New Age bookstore in Los Angeles. At the time I was a committed rationalist and knew nothing about paranormal phenomena except what I'd read in skeptical, debunking books. Unlike my friend, who found the bookstore's atmosphere amusing, and who enjoyed pointing out the bizarre titles and covers, I felt distinctly ill at ease. There was something disturbing about being immersed in all that occult literature. I felt as if I'd ventured into unknown territory - dangerous territory. And I was glad to leave.

Later, as I became interested in the paranormal and began to grasp the extent of the evidence for such phenomena, I chalked up my earlier reaction to a form of culture shock. There I was, a rather repressed rationalist, coming into close contact with ideas I found threatening to my worldview. After all, there was nothing actually dangerous about that little bookstore - was there?

Maybe there was. Over the years, as I've studied this subject, I've encountered a fair number of cautionary tales. People who become unduly interested in psychic phenomena - interested to the point of obsession - can find their mental health deteriorating, their relationships fragmenting, and their social status undermined. Of course, obsession is a bad thing regardless of its focus, but I suspect that it's easier to become obsessed with the paranormal than with, say, stamp collecting. Something about this field of inquiry tends to draw people in and make them vulnerable to harm.

Since I'm a writer, I take particular interest in the case of Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle was one of the most popular writers of his day, and his Sherlock Holmes stories are still widely read and dramatized. Fairly late in life he became convinced that it was possible to communicate with the dead through mediums. As his interest grew, he neglected his fiction writing and spent most of his time traveling the world to attend séances and deliver lectures on spiritualism. His reputation suffered, and he was the target of ridicule from some quarters. He had a widely publicized feud with the debunking magician Houdini. Editors began to dread getting Doyle's manuscripts in the mail, for fear that his latest contribution would be yet another essay on the talkative dead. Doyle's fame was such that his essays were invariably published, but his editors weren't always happy about that fact.

With the passage of time, Doyle's critical faculties suffered. He became more credulous, more willing to vouch for even the most dubious phenomena. Many of the mediums he endorsed were later exposed as fakes. Doyle refused to accept some of these exposures. Famously, he even accused Houdini himself of using psychic powers, since - he felt - there was no way the escape artist could have carried out some of his stunts without paranormal gifts.

Most embarrassing was the often retold affair of the Cottingley fairies. Two girls, ages 16 and 10, shot some photos of "fairies" they'd allegedly found in their garden. The fairies were paper cut-outs, and the photos were obvious fakes. Nevertheless, Doyle endorsed the photos as genuine, even publishing an article in The Strand Magazine with the regrettable title "Fairies photographed – an epoch-making event." Later he put out an entire book devoted to the subject, The Coming of the Fairies. Skeptics have enjoyed skewering him for his gullibility and foolishness ever since. James Randi devotes a chapter of his debunking book Flim-Flam to a detailed dissection of the Cottingley case. And yes, there is something funny about a presumably worldly and sophisticated man, rich and internationally famous, falling for a rather inept hoax perpetrated by two young girls. At the same time, there is something about it that's both sad and troubling.

How could Doyle's rational faculty deteriorate so badly? Critics suggest that he was never much of a thinker, but I've read a great deal of his work, as well as Daniel Stashower's excellent biography, and my impression is that Doyle had a more penetrating intellect than his detractors admit. Trained in medicine, he traveled around the world as a ship's doctor, acquiring a range of knowledge and experiences that made him far more intellectually interesting than his closed-minded Victorian colleagues. He resisted prejudices - women and minorities are generally treated with respect in his work - and had an appreciation of exotic cultures and variant points of view. In short, Doyle was a sensible, astute observer of the world around him - until he got caught up in his obsession with mediums. At that point his mental and emotional stability began to suffer, and he became increasingly fanatical, blind to any interpretation of the evidence but his own.

If this were an isolated case, it would not be very important, but it is far from isolated. Some cases, in fact, have much worse consequences. One of these is described in anguished, agonizing detail in Joe Fisher's book The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts. Fisher joined an amateur circle that met regularly to "channel" information from spirits. Initially skeptical, Fisher was soon won over by the information that came through. He and his friends became increasingly obsessed with the meetings, while the woman who ran the circle began to exercise an unhealthy degree of control over some group members, exploiting them and attempting to coerce them into sexual liaisons. As Fisher became convinced that he was in contact with a female spirit guide who'd been his lover in a previous lifetime, he lost interest in his real-life relationships, an attitude that led to the break-up of his marriage. Eventually he went to Europe, intending to verify the information he'd been given. Instead, to his shock, he discovered that much of it was false. Shattered, he returned to America and shared his findings with the group - only to be met with hostility and denial. The group members were so caught up in their shared fantasy that they could not tolerate the intrusion of facts and evidence. Fisher left the group and eventually concluded that he had been victimized by what the Tibetan Book of the Dead calls pretas or hungry ghosts - malign spirits who deceive and corrupt their human interlocutors. He warns his readers to be wary of involvement in the supernatural, and on this note of caution the book ends.

But this was not the end of Joe Fisher's story. He continued to obsess on his experience. Eleven years after the publication of The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts, he confided to a friend that he believed the spirits were out to get him for publicizing their activities. They would not leave him alone. In 2001, at age 53, he made his escape. He threw himself off a cliff, ending his life. (His death was not conclusively ruled a suicide. It could have been an accident. But given Fisher's mental state, suicide seems more likely.) 

There are at least two ways of interpreting this bizarre story. Either Fisher became unhinged as a result of his participation in the séances, and eventually fell victim to his own paranoia; or he actually did come into contact with malevolent spirit entities, against which he had no protection.

Fisher wasn’t the only person in the medium's circle to suffer psychological damage. Everyone in the group was affected to some extent. This is not uncommon. Immersion in the occult can have unpredictable effects on the dynamics and psychology of a group. An example that comes to mind are the ITC experiments described by Mark Macy in Miracles in the Storm.

ITC is an acronym for Instrumental Transcommunication. This activity, which has gained a surprising number of adherents, involves using technology to contact the dead. It evolved out of EVP, or Electronic Voice Phenomena, a field of amateur research in which "spirit voices" are supposedly picked up on tape recorders. ITC is more high-tech, employing video cameras, TV sets, fax machines, and computers. Enthusiasts claim they have received images and messages from another dimension, and that they are in regular contact with like-minded "experimenters" from beyond.

Macy's book details a group effort to establish and maintain contact with these forces. Such contact is said to require harmony among members of the experimenting groups on both sides of the veil. Unfortunately, such harmony proved difficult to come by, at least on the earthly side, and much of Miracles in the Storm concerns the in-fighting and mutual suspicion that led to the group's downfall. Organizational chaos is remarkably common among those who explore the paranormal, and the fate of Macy's group is unsurprising.

Although the experiments documented in Macy's book have ended, some of his colleagues have attempted to renew their work. Hildegard Schaefer reports that this team has made contact with a group of spirits who live on the extradimensional planet Marduk, which rather surprisingly bears the name of an ancient Babylonian god. According to these spirits, "Marduk is watered by only one large stream flowing with many bends across a great part of the planet," a watercourse called the River of Eternity. "We live here together with other forms of life," they explain, "with men [who had] lived on other planets before their bodily death, with dwarfs, giants and gnomes, and with bodiless entities, too." The spirits have what seem to be physical bodies, all in the prime of youth and health.

Among the spirits inhabiting Marduk is Sir Richard Francis Burton, the 19^th century explorer and linguist. Burton and his spirit colleagues, calling themselves the Timestream group, established a transmission station on Marduk, by means of which they were able to send video images and text messages to their earthly counterparts. At one point, a rival group of spirits with evil intentions seized control of the transmission station, but the Timestream faction mounted a daring counterattack and regained control.

If all this sounds like science-fiction, there's a good reason. It is science-fiction, or at least it was - in Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series. Beginning with To Your Scattered Bodies Go in 1971, the Riverworld books feature an intriguing premise: When we die, we are resurrected on an earthlike planet bisected by a single vast river. Both good and evil individuals - human, prehuman, and nonhuman - abide in this land, restored to youth and vigor. As we make our way along the river, we must form alliances and ward off enemies, sometimes in physical combat. And our hero in this adventure? None other than Sir Richard Francis Burton!

I will admit that there are differences between the ITC messages and Riverworld. Farmer's story provided a technological, rather than supernatural, explanation for humanity's resurrection, and dealt extensively with a super-advanced race of humans dubbed the Ethicals who were controlling this vast experiment. None of this relates to the ITC communiques. And other famous figures who appear in Farmer's saga - Mark Twain, Hermann Goring, and King John of England, among others - have not made any appearance in the messages from Marduk, as far as I know. Nevertheless, the vast river, the physical resurrection in youthful form, the rival alliances and mortal combats, and the presence of Burton himself all combine to create the strong suspicion that the ITC messages are only fiction. Indeed, the whole situation seems reminiscent of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, in which the players submerge themselves in a virtual world based on science-fiction archetypes - a world that can begin to seem very real.

A couple of years ago I e-mailed Mark Macy to ask him about the parallels between Riverworld and this group's findings. I received brief replies from both Macy and one of his colleagues. Neither of them was interested in pursuing the issue, and neither saw any problem in the similarities I'd mentioned.

No problem? Suppose I were to tell you that, by paranormal means, I'd established contact with the crew of an interstellar starship in the 23^rd century. Excitedly I report that the ship's captain is James Tiberius Kirk, his first mate is an alien named Spock, and the ship's doctor is McCoy. You point out to me that these characters are all found in the 1960s TV series Star Trek. "So what?" I say. "I don’t see a problem with that." I'll bet you'd decide that my critical faculties are not quite what they should be.

How can presumably serious people be willing to overlook such an obvious difficulty? I suggest that wholesale immersion in the paranormal can gradually erode one's capacity for appropriate skepticism. Arthur Conan Doyle came to believe in fairies; Joe Fisher's marriage collapsed because he fell in love with his "spirit guide"; Macy and his co-workers are caught up in what appears to be a replay of a science-fiction saga from the 1970s.

A wealth of similar cases can be found in George P. Hansen's authoritative study, The Trickster and the Paranormal, which takes a highly original interdisciplinary approach to the question of why psychic phenomena - and people associated with such things - tend to be marginalized in society. Hansen's book is too complex and densely argued to be summarized in its entirety, but one of his major themes is that long-term, active involvement in the paranormal often produces personal or collective dissociation from reality.

Hansen identifies a constellation of attributes that folklorists call "the trickster" - a mythical figure found in most ethnic traditions, whether as Coyote in Native American lore or the god Hermes in Greek mythology. The trickster is deceitful, playful, disruptive, irrational, unpredictable, often sexually adventurous or perverse, sometimes malevolent, and always to be approached with caution. He is a marginal figure among the other deities, and those humans who are associated with him - shamans, mediums - typically occupy a marginal place in society. He resists institutionalization. He hovers outside the establishment, functioning as both an escape valve and a threat.

Hansen doesn't believe, of course, that the trickster figure actually exists. Rather, he uses the image of the trickster to stand for a collection of disparate qualities. And he makes the point that paranormal phenomena not only exhibit these same qualities but often induce them in persons who immerse themselves in the field.

Like the trickster, psychic phenomena are playful and maddeningly elusive. They are irrational, in the sense that they fall outside the purview of rationalistic thinking. They are disruptive - sometimes overtly so, as in the case of poltergeist outbreaks. They are unpredictable, a fact that has led many a legitimate psychic to supplement his talents with trickery. They are sometimes malevolent - as with Fisher's hungry ghosts, not to mention the rich tradition of malign spirits in every culture, including the devils of Judeo-Christian theology. They are sometimes associated with bizarre or coercive sexual practices, as witnessed in many rituals and in the strange private lives of many mediums and psychics. They resist institutionalization; despite widespread public interest in psychic phenomena, no large institutions exist to study the field, and the only major institutional studies of psychic powers were undertaken by spy agencies, which are themselves immersed in a culture of ambiguity and deceit.

Hansen observes that people who directly engage the paranormal, or try to, sometimes fall into the role-playing trap mentioned above. A role-playing game, he writes, "can become a shared fantasy, wherein the players voluntarily suspend normal, rational considerations ... The games give more direct contact with supernatural ideas than does literature alone. Live people are involved; they participate in a drama; props may be used, and some physical action is required ... Cheating is frequent despite there being no winners or losers in the game ... Players can identify with their characters, and sometimes they prefer not to separate themselves from those roles ... [O]ccasionally the 'game' becomes obsessive and interferes with real-world pursuits." (pp. 264-266) Reading these words, I find it hard not to think of the purported messages from Marduk.

There is, then, a dark side to the paranormal. It is not all benevolent angels and comforting words from deceased relatives. There can be obsession, deterioration of rational thought, shared fantasy, even a descent into madness. There can be hungry ghosts. There can be channelers who sexually exploit their followers. There is always the risk that inquiring too deeply into these matters will lead to one's own marginalization - a fate that has befallen even prominent researchers in the field, who have seen their reputations suffer and their prestige stripped away.

Much in the paranormal is worthy of study. But if you choose to examine it, proceed with caution. And if you run into trouble, don't hesitate to turn back.

After all, I felt a lot better when I'd left that bookstore.

 

Essay: 20/20 Blindside

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of those essays, originally posted in 2003.

 

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20/20 Blindside:

John Edward Takes a Hit

 

John Edward appeared on ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 the other night (December 5, 2003). Unfortunately I missed it, for the simple reason that I didn't know about the segment until after it aired. Nevertheless I was able to get the gist of the twelve-minute segment from the ABCNews.com site, which included an apparently complete recap of the show (2024 update: web page is no longer available).

From what I can tell, it was a typical hit piece, a smash-and-grab attack designed to make Edward look bad. ABC promos on the Internet queried, "Can John Edward pass a skeptic's test?" But there was no test, just routine footage of skeptic Michael Shermer saying that Edward's claims are "baloney" and that his abilities can be explained by the mentalist trick of cold reading. I have already written about the inadequacies of the cold reading explanation in two previous essays, "Some Thoughts on John Edward" and "More Thoughts on John Edward." I won't rehash those points. Still, a few things may be worth noting about this forgettable moment in TV tabloid journalism.

First, the reporter on the story was Bill Ritter, who had previously done a hit piece on another psychic, James Van Praagh. Here is how Shermer himself reports it in an earlier article: "Later, an ABC television producer flew out from New York to film me for an investigation of Edward they are conducting [another show, not the 20/20 segment]. The segment began as a 'puff piece' (as she called it), but a chance encounter in the ABC cafeteria with 20/20 correspondent Bill Ritter, with whom I worked on an expose of medium James Van Praagh a few years ago, tipped her off that Edward was, in fact, a Van Praagh clone and that his talking to the dead was nothing more than the old magicians' cold reading trick." (Shermer, "Deconstructing the Dead," viewable here as the second entry in the thread.) 

Ritter, then, was evidently not an impartial reporter, but someone who was out to get Edward right from the start, and who had already tried to "expose" him once before.

Commenting on the piece, on air, was 20/20's John Stossel. Stossel sent out an email to his fans, dated December 4, that touted the show: "Bill Ritter quizzes the hottest psychic of the moment, John Edward. Edward makes big bucks claiming he 'talks to the dead' on his syndicated TV show. His audiences are often convinced he's speaking to someone's dead uncle or boyfriend. Edward says it's not his job to be right all the time; his job is to be a medium and to pass on the information. Ritter assembled a group for Edward and he did make some connections for them … but he had a lot more misses. I was pleased that Ritter then invited Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptics Society, to comment on Edward's 'cold reading.' Shermer says that so-called psychics rely on unleashing lots of numbers, names, illnesses, events - things that are bound to resonate with at least someone - until he finds a 'hit.' Then audiences are impressed. Thank goodness for the Skeptics Society, which offers a more rational explanation for Edward's hits, and continually uses science to challenge claims of the paranormal." (Ellipsis in original; this page is no longer online.)

Evidently, then, Stossel was also not impartial, since he had already sided with Shermer's Skeptics Society in condemning Edward's technique as "cold reading." The two reporters covering the story - Ritter, who reported it, and Stossel, who commented on it - had strong, overt, preexisting biases against Edward.

Note that Stossel says the Skeptics Society "offers a more rational explanation" for Edward's abilities. "More rational," in this context, seems to mean "more in agreement with the materialist-rationalist philosophy that I subscribe to." That this is the case is evident when we take a look at Stossel's intellectual bona fides, revealed in an interview with Full Context, an Objectivist (i.e., Ayn Rand-oriented) magazine. He tells the interviewer, "I am now reading Atlas Shrugged for the first time and I am thrilled and astonished that this woman could know so much so many years before everyone else did and express it so beautifully. And express some of the theories I feel in my stomach, as I go out to do battle." (2024: link has expired.) 

Ayn Rand is another subject I've dealt with elsewhere. Suffice it to say that anyone who feels Rand's angry, militant worldview "in [his] stomach" or anywhere else in his anatomy may be a paragon of Objectivism but hardly of objectivity. And a journalist who sees his work as "go[ing] out to do battle" is less interested in a dispassionate, impartial review of the facts than in proselytizing for his belief system - a belief system that is, of course, "rational." (Aren't they all?)

Naturally, with one reporter hungry to bag his second psychic, and another who comes to the table with a full-fledged rationalist-materialist ideology already in place, there was no hope for Edward to come out on top. Michael Shermer, featured on the show as the voice of reason, knew enough about the agenda of the segment's producers to lavish praise on the story even before he had seen it. In an email sent to readers of e-Skeptic magazine, dated December 5 (no longer online), he writes,

Tune in to ABC's 20/20 Friday night, December 5, to see Bill Ritter's piece on Crossing Over with John Edward ... They filmed at the studio where Crossing Over is taped, although there were restrictions imposed by the producers, of course. They also taped him doing readings on a small studio audience of their own that ABC culled from the folks waiting in line for The View, so there were no plants or shills ... I went to New York to review the tapes. Edward did not know I was involved.

I'll comment more in next week's e-Skeptic after I see how the edited version looks, but what struck me about Edward's approach was how different it now is from James Van Praagh, on whom Ritter and I did a debunking piece for ABC several years ago. Van Praagh is very sympathetic, even empathetic, with his subjects, and lets them guide the reading by what clues they give him. John Edward, by contrast, is more aggressive in his approach, insisting that his original statement is correct and that the subject is wrong ... Ritter told me that he thought Edward was much more sociable with the camera crew, jovial really, mixing it up with them on the breaks, etc. (almost used car salesman-like--my description), whereas Van Praagh, he said, was much more reserved and kept to himself. All of the production crew on the piece were totally skeptical, so I would imagine that the segment will reflect that.

This is interesting, partly for what it says and partly for what it doesn't say. What it says is that "all of the production crew on the piece were totally skeptical," an interesting admission of the segment's pervasive bias. Moreover, "Edward did not know I was involved." This, then, is the big showdown, the High Noon duel, between psychic and skeptic - Shermer waits until after Edward has done his job, then secretly reviews the tapes, with Edward never informed and never allowed to offer a rebuttal. Is it my mistake, or do these skeptics seem an awful lot like cowards, willing to pontificate in front of a friendly reporter, but afraid to confront their nemesis directly?

What Shermer doesn't say is also worth noting. He doesn't say what the onerous "restrictions imposed by the [Crossing Over] producers" were (although why Edward or Crossing Over would cooperate with 20/20 in the first place is beyond me). He also doesn't mention any successes Edward had in his reading with the panel. He doesn't mention that when Edward sticks doggedly with an audience member, the person frequently remembers a salient fact that does, in fact, validate what Edward was saying. He doesn't mention that Edward's insistence that he is right even when the other person disagrees is a violation of the most basic principles of "cold reading."

The ABCNews.com recap of the show describes Edward's reading of the specially selected volunteers as follows: "He then rubbed his hands together, closed his eyes and meditated before launching into a nearly 90-minute barrage of random names and numbers."

Random names and numbers? But isn't the whole point of Edward's approach that the information he gets is not random? I understand that skeptics disagree, but should the producers insert their editorial views into the factual content of the story so baldly?

ABCNews.com allows that Edward got some hits, but quickly explains this by citing Shermer, who "believes Edward has a strategy. He says he simply rattles off a lot of names until an audience member tells him the right one. 'He also offers up an assortment of common diseases,' Shermer said. 'All of us are gonna go, and we're gonna go from something pretty standard — cancer, heart disease. You can't go wrong with that,' he said."

So what we're being told is that the information Edward imparts is vague, generic, and random. Keep this in mind; we'll come back to it in a minute.

The piece continues: "One hour into 20/20's session with Edward, he turned to the side, toward the 20/20 crew and producer Michael Pressman. 'Is there a joke about somebody supposed to be a doctor?' Edward asked. Pressman told Edward he has a daughter who's a pre-med student. For more than 35 minutes, Edward quizzed Pressman with dozens of questions and observations and names. Only a handful turned out to be vaguely relevant; only one thing he mentioned was a concrete 'hit.' He guessed Pressman's wife's name. One good hit — out of 41 tries."

Notice, again, the slanted wording: Edward "guessed" the wife's name. Of course, if everything he says is purely random, then any hit would just have to be a guess – wouldn’t it?

Even so, one hit out of forty-one tries! Not good. We might notice that even the ABCNews.com write-up appears to indicate that he got two hits – the "doctor" reference and the wife's name. One plus one is two, or so I recall from my schooldays. Somebody at ABC can't count. Still, even two out of forty-one is embarrassing. One wonders, in fact, how John Edward ever got to be so famous if that's the best he can do.

But is it?

20/20 lets us see only what the segment's producer and editor allowed on the screen. Still, thanks to the Internet, the other side of the story has gotten out, largely in the form of message-board posts from a fellow named Chris, who seems to have been part of the panel assembled for the 20/20 reading. I say "seems" because it is, of course, possible that the postings are fake, and that Chris isn't who he claims to be. To me, his statements have the ring of truth. Judge for yourself. (2024: the postings are no longer online.) 

In a message posted on December 8, 2003, at 08:14, and titled "I was one of the people on the 20/20 panel," Chris writes, "Let me tell you, I was the guy with beard in the back row on the 20/20 panel. 20/20 did not show ANY of the things he [Edward] got correct. He told my wife (next to me) that she had a sister type figure who had a cancer in the chest area (she had breast cancer) that was cured, but now there is another cancer that is back (which is true). He also told my wife that she pretends to be stronger about the cancer than she really is. This is also true."

Remember Michael Shermer saying, in his analysis, that Edward "offers up an assortment of common diseases." Presumably he was referring, in part, to the comments directed at Chris's wife. But note that Edward did not simply mention cancer in a general way. He said that Chris's wife "had a sister type figure who had cancer in the chest area." "Sister type figure" is somewhat vague but indicates someone roughly of the same generation as Chris's wife, thus eliminating parents, grandparents, young nieces, etc. "Cancer in the chest area" is tolerably specific. The cancer "was cured, but now there is another cancer" – quite specific and apparently accurate. "She pretends to be stronger about the cancer than she really is" – perhaps a generic comment, but not everyone acts brave in the face of a possibly terminal disease.

Apply this "skeptic's test" to yourself: Do you have a sister-type figure who had cancer in the chest area, which was cured, but unfortunately has been superseded by a new cancer, which she is fighting with admirable but perhaps somewhat forced bravado?

If Shermer were going to respond intelligently to Edward, he would have to address details like these. Instead he relies on hazy hand-waving. Ironically, for all their talk about vague, general guesswork on Edward's part, it's the skeptics who seem to be guilty of issuing vague generalizations while indulging in specious guesswork of their own.

In a later post on the same day, Chris adds, "From the MOMENT Bill Ritter began interviewing us I knew what direction this segment would take. He was continually asking us 'negative' type questions. When all was said and done I knew they could take this segment either way but WOULD take it in a 'Let's show them how fake John Edward is' direction."

And the next day:

My wife and I went to Good Morning America and were chosen from that audience by Michael Mendelson (sp) a 20/20producer. They asked us who would be interested and my wife raised her hand.

The group reacted pretty well to JE, he is a VERY nice guy who allowed us to get pictures with him and autographs from him.

The funny thing is that the people who were negative along with Bill Ritter were the 4 people that did NOT get read that day. I believe if they had been read it would have been a different song they were singing.

As far as Michael Pressmen (the producer JE did read for), WEEELLLL, let me tell you.... There was a part in his reading to Michael that went as follows, I am writing this from memory, SO do NOT quote me but this is ABOUT what was said... this was NOT on the segment

JE - Are you going for a test of some kind for your chest?

MP - Ummmm, not really.

JE - Cause I see a problem in the chest area, you're going to have some type of scan done?

MP - Ummmm, not really.

JE - Hmmm, I can't let this one go ... You sure?

After SEVERAL minutes of this......

JE - I still see a chest scan of some kind.

MP - Look, I don't want to open my medical record here in front of my co-workers.

JE - I understand, no problem.

To me that was an admission that there was something there. There were several things that JE got correct when reading for Michael Pressmen. Of course, Michael was not going to give him an INCH! [All ellipses in original.]

So when ABC tells us that Edward, when reading the producer, had only one hit in forty-one tries, is the count accurate? From what we now know, there appear to have been three hits: the doctor connection, the wife's name, and the chest scan or chest problem. Since producer Pressman was obviously being uncooperative and refusing to validate anything Edward said, it is impossible to know how many other details Edward may have gotten right. And by the way, if Edward was trying to con everybody, why would he insist on reading the openly skeptical producer of the show - the person least likely to cooperate? Why would he persist in the reading if the producer was stubbornly giving him no feedback at all – feedback being the lifeblood of the cold reading technique that Edward supposedly uses?

In my two previous essays on Edward, I've expressed my own doubts and uncertainties about what he claims to do. Still, the more I see of the skeptics and debunkers, the more I begin to think that this guy is for real.

Which, come to think of it, puts a little different spin on things. After all, if it was 20/20's intent to undercut my skepticism and make me more willing to accept John Edward as genuine, then I have to congratulate them on a job well done!

 

Essay: Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms: The Sequel

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of those essays, originally posted around 2003. As the title indicates, it's a follow-up to Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms, also reproduced on this blog. 

 

Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms: The Sequel

 

A short time ago, in a perhaps uncharacteristically skeptical frame of mind, I posted an essay speculating that some well-known paranormal phenomena -- the ectoplasmic materializations in the early 20th Century credited to the medium Marthe Beraud, also known as "Eva C." -- had been produced by trickery.

After posting this essay, I read more about the later stages of Marthe's career and began to have second thoughts. I was particularly struck by a series of experiments carried out in Munich by psychiatrist Albert von Schrenck-Notzing under the sponsorship of a wealthy widow, Juliette Bisson. These experiments are described in some detail in Brian Inglis's Natural and Supernatural and its sequel, Science and Parascience. Although I was aware of these tests and even mentioned them in the first essay, I had given them little consideration, preferring to focus on Marthe's earlier work with the physiologist and psychical researcher Charles Richet.

In his two massively documented volumes, Inglis takes pains to establish his credentials as an objective historian of the paranormal, but it is clear that he is sympathetic to the claims of psychics and mediums, and impatient with the objections raised by skeptics. He puts the best possible face on Schrenck-Notzing's investigations of Marthe Beraud, and in the process makes those who have criticized her look petty and narrow-minded.

Having just placed myself in the company of the critics, I felt the sting of this implied rebuke. Could it be that I had defamed Marthe without cause? Could she have been genuine after all?

To address this question, let's first take a look at the kind of phenomena photographed by Schrenck-Notzing. Here is a photo of an ectoplasmic face purportedly being extruded from Marthe's head:

 

As is immediately obvious, this phantom face is  not very realistic. In fact, it resembles a crude sketch. The material -- perhaps cheesecloth or muslin -- on which the portrait is displayed has visible creases, as if it had been folded up for concealment prior to the seance.

In this connection, a comment by British skeptic Susan Blackmore may be relevant: "In the archives of the Society for Psychical Research in London, there is still a piece of [mid-20th Century medium] Helen Duncan's ectoplasm. This looks very much like a large piece of fine muslin and even has stitching around the edges."

Even in Marthe's day, skeptical investigators and magicians argued that ectoplasm was actually paper or fabric regurgitated by the medium or expelled, via abdominal contractions, from her vaginal cavity. Seances were nearly always performed in darkness or very dim light, and Marthe's were no exception. In those conditions, even crude portraits on muslin could look genuine. But when photographed in the light of a popping flash bulb, the phenomena looked markedly less persuasive.

The unconvincing face in Schrenck-Notzing's photo is bad enough. Worse, in another photo from the same period, the letters MIRO can be seen on the back of an ectoplasmic shape issuing from Marthe's head. MIRO was part of the masthead of the newspaper Le Miroir, from which many of the faces seem to have been taken. The obvious implication is that Marthe simply cut out a sketch from Le Miroir and "manifested" it during the seance. (This photo is included in Science and Parascience; I haven't found it reproduced on the Web.) In other cases the face appears to be a hand-drawn copy of a published sketch or photo -- perhaps a copy drawn by Marthe on fabric which was wadded up and concealed on (or inside) her person.

Surely Schrenck-Notzing guarded against such fakery? Yes, he did. Marthe was undressed and subjected to a search before each sitting, a search that even extended to a gynecological examination. Sometimes she was fed an emetic to eliminate the possibility that she was regurgitating previously swallowed items. Given these efforts at preventing deception, it is hard to see how Marthe, unaided, could have smuggled anything into the seance cabinet.

But who says she was unaided? It is not impossible that she had an accomplice -- namely, the sponsor of the experiments, Madame Bisson.

It was Juliette Bisson who undressed Martha and performed the gynecological exam. And it was Juliette who hypnotized Martha to put her into a mediumistic trance. At the very least, Juliette appears to have had a psychological hold on Marthe. One author refers to Bisson as "Eva's Svengali," adding, "Schrenck-Notzing was struck by the medium's passivity, the most memorable evidence of which were physical examinations per rectum et vaginam ... to check for concealed materials. Schrenck-Notzing watched as Bisson probed Eva's vagina; but he himself consented to feel her body only through her leotard ..." (Malcolm Gaskill, Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches.)

Juliette Bisson was a widow, Marthe Beraud an unmarried woman in middle age. What was the nature of their relationship? Could they have been lovers? Admittedly, I have no evidence to support this speculation, and it is hard to imagine what evidence for or against it could come to light after ninety years. Still, in those days a romantic relationship between two women could not be made public without serious repercussions. Some pretext would have to be found if Marthe were to live in Juliette's house and spend a great deal of time with her. How about a series of sober scientific investigations? Such tests, especially if presided over by a respected medical doctor like Schrenck-Notzing, would be sufficient to forestall any questions.

Since it was Juliette who stripped Marthe and searched her body cavities, Schrenck-Notzing had to take Juliette's word that the she had found nothing. If Juliette had been untrustworthy, Schrenck-Notzing would never be the wiser.

As I said, the actual nature of Marthe's relationship with Juliette can never be known. We can, however, take a look at some of the other precautions that Schrenck-Notzing reported. It is often stated that Marthe was sewn into "a close-fitting garment" (Science and Parascience). Was she? Look at this photo from the Munich experiments:

 

 

The outfit worn by Marthe does not look especially "close-fitting," much less "skintight," as some have described her attire. Nor does it qualify as a "leotard," a word used in some material quoted earlier. Indeed, the outfit would seem to afford copious possibilities for concealment.

Perhaps the "tights" were put on first, with the heavy, loose dress donned over them for modesty. This would still be an unsatisfactory arrangement. The dress itself could have had muslin "ectoplasm" loosely sewn into it, and its heavy folds could have covered up any number of bodily movements.

Another argument made by Marthe's supporters is that she produced ectoplasm even with a veil over her face. Obviously, however, she didn't always wear a veil. No veil is apparent in the photos above, for example, or in the other widely circulated photos of her ectoplasmic manifestations.

Even when she was wearing a veil, did she actually extrude anything through it? Harry Houdini, who witnessed a performance by Marthe, said she did not. Now, it must be admitted that Houdini was not always a reliable witness. His well-known hostility to mediumship almost certainly biased his observations on some occasions, and in one instance he may have resorted to framing a medium (Mina Crandon, a.k.a. "Margery") when he was unable to properly discredit her.

Still, for what it is worth, here is Houdini's report on a sitting with Marthe, which he recorded in a June 22, 1920, letter to Arthur Conan Doyle:

They made Eva drink a cup of coffee and eat some cake (I presume to fill her up with some food-stuff), and after she had been sewn into the tights, and a net over her face, she manifested.

1st. Some froth-like substance, inside of net, 'twas long, about five inches long; she said it was elevated, but none of us four watchers saw it "elevate." ...

2nd. A white plaster-looking affair over her right eye.

3rd. Something that looked like a small face, say four inches in circumference ...

4th. Some substance, froth-like, exuding from her nose, and Baggally and Feilding say it protrudes from her nose, but Dingwall and I are positive that it was inside of net and was not extending from her nose, as I had the best view from two different places I deliberately took advantage to see just what it was ...

5th. Medium asked permission to remove something in her mouth; showed her hands empty, and took out what appeared to be a rubberish substance, which she disengaged, showed us plainly, we held the electric torch, all saw it plainly, when presto! it vanished. (Doyle, The Edge of the Unknown, 1930)

Later, in print, Houdini dismissed the disappearance of the "rubberish substance" as sleight of hand and concluded, "I have no hesitation in saying that I think the two [i.e., Marthe and Juliette] simply took advantage of the credulity and good nature of the various men with whom they had to deal." It is perhaps significant that Houdini implicated both Marthe and Juliette in the scheme.

Still, we may wonder if the two women would have persisted in such a complex hoax for years, when other ways of concealing a romantic relationship could have been found. After all, they made no money off the work -- but then, Madame Bisson did not need money. She was already rich. What she and Marthe did get, perhaps, was the pleasure of fooling a succession of eminent, worldly men who attended their seances and went away baffled. People have been known to conduct elaborate hoaxes for more slender reasons.

Whatever their strengths and weaknesses, Schrenck-Notzing's experiments were not the end of the story. Additional tests were performed by other investigators -- but although Schrenck-Notzing was not always involved, Madame Bisson continued to play the role of Marthe's hypnotist and, often, was the one who stripped and searched her before a sitting.

One of the strongest reports in Marthe's favor was issued by Gustave Geley, a researcher who claimed to have seen "a substance at first amorphous or polymorphous [exuding from] the natural orifices [with] a crawling reptilian movement" and producing fingers, hands, and "a living head, whose bones I could feel under a thick mass of hair ... Here and there from the mass appear temporary protrusions, and these for a few seconds assume the form of fingers, the outline of hands, and then re-enter the mass ... I can see then the extremity thicken like a swelling, and this terminal swelling expands into a perfectly modelled hand. I touch it; it gives a normal sensation. I feel the bones, and the fingers with their nails. Then the hand contracts, diminishes and disappears in the end of the cord. The cord makes a few movements, retracts, and returns to the medium's mouth."

In summary, Geley announced, "I do not say 'There was no trickery.' I say 'There was no possibility of trickery.'" (Quoted in Science and Parascience)

This certainly sounds definitive. After Geley's death, however, his investigation was called into question when, as Inglis recounts, a researcher named Osty "found some photographs which appeared to show that some of the materialisations had been faked -- attached to her by threads, or wires. He showed them to some psychical researchers, but did not publish them; on the advice, he claimed, of Schrenck[-Notzing] and [Charles] Richet. Thirty years later Rudolf Lambert, a German who had been a psychical researcher in the 1920s, explained what happened ... According to Lambert, Osty had shown him the photographs but pledged him to secrecy about them on the ground that it would be disastrous if the story [got out. The consensus formed that the] photographs Osty had found must surely have shown that the phenomena had been faked. All the research carried out with Marthe Beraud in her role as 'Eva C.,' it was assumed, must be set aside as discredited."

Inglis is careful to make the point that other suspicious-looking photos of Marthe's ectoplasmic manifestations had been published by Bisson, Schrenck-Notzing, and Geley (including the MIRO picture), so there was nothing necessarily incriminating about Geley's decision to withhold these particular photos. Nevertheless, as Inglis acknowledges, "the outcome... was that 'Eva C.' was effectively discredited in psychical research circles, along with her investigators." 

Parapsychologist George P. Hansen makes reference to this development in his article "Deception by Subjects in Psi Research." "Previously," he writes,"it has been common practice not to report a subject’s known ability and practice of deception. In the case of Eva C., several prominent researchers protested publishing discoveries of fraud (e.g., see Lambert, 1954)." Hansen gives further examples involving other subjects: "In the very first issue of the Journal of Parapsychology, Pratt (1937) did not report that he had caught Mrs. M. cheating in one of his sessions ... Similar practice continues to the present day. For instance Subject #4 in Baumann, Stewart, and Roll’s (1986) study was Tina Resch, who had received extensive media coverage and had admitted to trickery in the past ... yet none of this was mentioned in the report. In the papers at the 1986 PA convention involving reportedly fraudulent subjects, none of the authors acknowledged the fact in their reports ... I am personally acquainted with the authors of these recent papers and am sure they had only the best intentions (believing their controls to be adequate). However, to those not familiar with the researchers, such practices can appear to be deliberate attempts to mislead the reader. This has long been understood. For instance, Verrall (1914), speaking of reports of Eva C. wrote: 'The omission of any such statement [regarding alleged trickery] would naturally be interpreted as implying that she had [an absolutely clean record]'."

All such criticisms, however, lay in the future. At the time when Geley published his report, he created quite a stir. In an attempt to settle the controversy, the Society for Psychical Research investigated Marthe. This time, though, there was a significant change in procedure. Madame Bisson's involvement appears to have been curtailed.

"On arrival for a seance," Inglis writes, "Marthe was stripped and examined for possible concealed objects by a doctor [note: a doctor, not Juliette Bisson], who 'examined the oral cavity, ears, and hair' (a gynecological examination was considered, but thought unnecessary ...). During the seances, investigators sat on either side of her, each holding a wrist ... The seances were conducted in a faint electric light, but with two flash-light cameras prepared for action at any moment, and a torch [i.e., flashlight] which could be used whenever there were signs of a materialization."

Such precautions, especially the examination by a doctor, were entirely sensible. And the upshot was that, under this protocol, Marthe was not able to produce anything close to her usual range of phenomena. "On a number of occasions," Inglis continues, "what appeared to be saliva oozed from her mouth, solidifying into ectoplasm and taking curious shapes. A photograph showed what looked like a bony hand placed on her shoulder; another revealed what looked like a locket under her chin, on which there was a portrait." These effects were a far cry from the more dramatic and much larger-scale phenomena reported in earlier seances, though they were still sufficient to convince some of the investigators.

To me, what is noteworthy is that when the role of Juliette Bisson was minimized, the materializations were minimized also.

Clearly, the controversy over Marthe Beraud will continue. Various opinions are possible, and any argument can be met by a counterargument. As is true of many subjects in parapsychology, the topic does not lend itself to casual or superficial study. It would take years to wade through all of the literature pertinent to the various investigations of Marthe Beraud. I make no claim to having the necessary patience or leisure time to undertake such an effort, and so I can only report a provisional opinion.

On balance, given the unconvincing nature of the photographs, the fact that the seances were conducted in darkness or near darkness, the apparently less-than-skintight garment, the ambiguous relationship between the Marthe and Juliette, the abatement of the phenomena when Juliette was not closely involved, and the photos by Geley that cast additional doubt on the materializations, I'm content to stand by my original conclusion.

Marthe Beraud, a.k.a. "Eva C.," was a fraud, though an uncommonly good one.

I do, however, reserve the right to change my mind. 

Essay: Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms

NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of those essays, originally posted in 2003. 

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Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms: Some Dubious Phenomena 

Readers of my essays know that I think the skeptics' case against the paranormal is often badly flawed, and that the evidence for psychic powers is much greater than most people suppose. Nonetheless, not all the evidence is equally strong. Some investigations - even some that were noteworthy in their day and continue to attract respectful attention - are less than impressive when viewed with a critical eye. What follows is a case in point.

But first, a brief detour from the world of spirits into the realm of the dinosaurs.

In 1922 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle played a trick on an audience of magicians. As told by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner, "A movie projector was brought in, a screen erected and the lights extinguished. In a brief speech, Doyle said that he would answer no questions about the film he was about to present ... [which] was then screened without titles or comment. The audience was astonished. The [New York] 'Times' reported that 'dinosaurs of one tribe appeared on the screen and rubbed jowls in an affectionate manner. Then entered the tyrannosaurs or dinosaurs of the killing type which preyed on the browsing members of their family. The tyrannosaurs fought among themselves, interlocked their great jaws and wrestled ...'" After more effusive descriptions, the newspaper ended its report by declaring that the monsters on screen "were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces." (The Making of King Kong, 1975; pp. 46-47)

The footage, of course, was fake. It was a reel of stop-motion animation created by special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien for the screen version of Doyle's adventure novel The Lost World. What is remarkable about this story is that no one watching The Lost World today could possibly be fooled by its illusions. The dinosaurs were indeed "masterpieces" of their time, but by modern standards, they are obvious miniatures occupying even more obvious miniature sets, and their movements are jerky and unconvincing. In the era of Jurassic Park, I doubt that even a small child would be fooled by O'Brien's jittery latex-rubber creations. In 1922 the footage could fool an audience of magicians, who prided themselves on their ability to detect trickery.

 

Photo: A family of triceratops, observed by human explorers in the bottom left corner, from The Lost World (1925)

 

What does this musty old anecdote tell us? Only that people living in the early years of the last century had not yet developed the visual sophistication we take for granted today. The art of trick photography and of related visual illusions was new and unfamiliar. To them, seeing was believing. While they were no less intelligent or well-educated than we are, they were in some respects easier to fool. This fact has important implications when we look at early investigations into mediumship, especially so-called "physical mediumship," which involved the manifestation of physical entities, usually phantoms, in the darkness of the séance room.

One of the more notable researchers in this area was the Frenchman Charles Richet. No mere crank, Richet was a celebrated physiologist honored with a Nobel Prize. His investigations in parapsychology were a sidelight to his main work, but one that he took most seriously. Nor was he blindly credulous. He drew sharp distinctions between the "psychic" entertainers of his day, such as the Davenport brothers (who produced apparitional effects on stage) and legitimate mediums who could be tested under controlled conditions. He conceded that nearly all the physical phenomena of mediumship - spirit raps, table tilting and levitation, and the materialization of phantoms - could be simulated through trickery, but felt that adequate precautions would eliminate the possibility of fraud.

He certainly believed that his own precautions were adequate. Indeed, Richet said that fear of being tricked was "my chief, and even only anxiety throughout my experiments," and he exposed one fake medium, Anna Roth, who claimed to be able to materialize flowers out of thin air. Richet found that she had hidden them on her person.

Despite his initial skepticism, Richet came to believe in most forms of physical phenomena. He felt that a properly attuned "sensitive" could emanate an enigmatic substance called ectoplasm - Richet, in fact, coined this term - and that the ectoplasm could shape itself into a variety of physical forms, including hands, faces, and even whole figures that walked and talked. His most memorable experiments in this regard involved Marthe Beraud, who in later years was known by the pseudonym "Eva C."

Marthe had been engaged to the son of General and Madame Noel, and although the young man died on the battlefield before the marriage, Marthe went to live with the Noels anyway. It was at the Noels' home in Algiers that Richet performed a series of experiments with Marthe, producing what he considered to be spectacular and irrefutable results. These sessions, though given little if any weight by most parapsychologists today, are still cited as solid evidence by some proponents of the paranormal.

Nevertheless, there are reasons to suspect that Richet's experimental conditions were not nearly as stringent as they should have been. Consider his own description of the procedures, as presented in his 1923 memoir, Thirty Years of Psychical Research.

The sessions, he writes, "were held in a small, isolated building over a stable. The window was blocked up and remained shut at all times. The only door was locked at the beginning of every séance. It is the only room in the building, and before every séance everything was minutely inspected by [Richet's associate] Delanne and myself. Two curtains were stretched across one corner of the room ... so as to make a kind of dark cabinet ..." As was almost invariably the case in physical mediumship, the enclosed space, or cabinet, was said to be necessary so that the medium could concentrate her psychic powers.

Richet, Delanne, General and Madame Noel, and a woman known in the reports as "Mademoiselle X" were all present for the séances. In addition, Marthe's two younger sisters, Marie and Paule, were in attendance. At times, there was another participant, an African woman named Aischa, apparently a member of the household staff. When Aischa was there, she actually sat in the curtained-off cabinet with Marthe. What purpose she served, and why she was allowed inside the cabinet, are questions Richet does not raise or answer. He does claim, "The part played by Aischa seems absolutely nil. Mme. Noel made a point of her being present, but our best results occurred in Aischa's absence." He also says, reflecting the casual racism of his era, "It is useless to incriminate Aischa, an unintelligent creature sitting passively beside Marthe."

A couple of concerns might occur to us at this point. First, why did Madame Noel want Aischa to attend the séances? Possibly she was worried that Marthe might suffer harm while in her entranced condition, and ordered the servant to stay close to her so as to offer protection or sound an alarm. But there is a less charitable explanation - that Aischa acted as Marthe's confederate.

Second, how closely were Marthe's two younger sisters observed during the séances? Richet states that they "sat far from the curtain," i.e., the cabinet. Even if they were initially seated far away, could they not have come closer once the lights went out? How certain is it that one or both of the sisters did not smuggle props into the room? Were they searched? Was Aischa searched?

The answer to each of the two last questions appears to be no. In fact, astonishingly enough, even Marthe herself was not searched. Richet comments, "Marthe was not undressed, but in that very hot climate she wore only a thin dress, and as I made magnetic passes over her to awake her from trance, I could be sure, by passing my hand all over her body, then she had nothing on but this thin garment."

Surely this is inadequate. By "magnetic passes," Richet means hypnotic gestures (hypnotism being originally associated with "animal magnetism"). These passes probably would not have touched the body, and of course no actual magnet was used. Moreover, Richet carried out this procedure only when waking Marthe from her trance - after the phenomena had been observed. There was nothing to prevent her from hiding items in her dress, carrying them into the cabinet, deploying them in the séance, and then secreting them somewhere else or giving them to Aischa before being "awakened."

Richet states that the room was lit by a photographer's red lamp. "Everything that took place in the room could be seen perfectly well, and I am absolutely certain that no stranger could enter during the séances. As Marthe was not tied, nor her hands held, the conditions of control were less severe than in [a previous] case; they were, however, strict enough to allow of a definite opinion."

Again, this hardly sounds adequate. There were no restraints on the medium. She was free to carry out any sort of trickery. While reddish lamplight was preferable to the total darkness that often prevailed in séances, it probably still did not permit clear viewing.

Even so, Richet feels confident enough to state, "It is therefore established that there was no instrumentation and no theatrical accessories that the medium could use, and that no stranger could enter the room."

If one can judge by his own description, his confidence is badly misplaced. Instruments or theatrical accessories could have been smuggled in by Marthe under her dress, or by either of her sisters, or by Aischa. For that matter, since the stable was on the property where Marthe lived, there was probably nothing to prevent her or an accomplice from entering it prior to the séance and stashing items in a secret location - under a loose floorboard, for instance. There is also no way to ascertain whether or not an accomplice might have concealed himself on the premises before the search was conducted. Someone hiding under the floor or behind a sliding panel in the wall or ceiling would not be found.

Richet then describes one of the more noteworthy appearances of the phantom customarily summoned by Marthe - the spirit, it was said, of an Indian prince named Bien Boa. Although the scientist was skeptical of the claim that Bien Boa was actually who he claimed to be - believing instead that the apparition was an ectoplasmic production of Marthe's subconscious mind - he nevertheless had no doubt as to the phantom's corporeal reality. How could he, when Bien Boa had taken form right before his eyes?

"[A]fter a long wait," Richet writes, "I saw close to me, in front of the curtain which had not been moved, a white vapour, hardly sixteen inches distant. It was like a white veil or handkerchief on the floor; it rose up still more, enlarged, and grew into a human form, a short bearded man dressed in a turban and white mantle, who moved, limping slightly, from right to left before the curtain. On coming close to General Noel, he sank down abruptly to the floor with a clicking noise like a falling skeleton, flattening out in front of the curtain. Three or four minutes later ... he reappeared rising in a straight line from the floor, born from the floor, so to say, and falling back on it with the same clicking noise.

"The only un-metapsychic explanation possible [metapsychic was Richet's term for paranormal] seemed to be a trap-door opening and shutting: but there was no trap door, as I verified the next morning and as attested by the architect."

When I read this, my first thought was that Richet had looked in the wrong direction. Rather than inspecting the floor for a trap-door, he should have inspected the ceiling. I thought that the bearded phantom could have been a life-size marionette, operated on strings from above. In this scenario, an accomplice of the medium would have lowered the figure from the ceiling.

This hypothesis, however, is probably wrong. A more plausible explanation is suggested by Richet's description of a photo taken of Bien Boa: "A thick, black, artificial-looking beard covers the mouth and chin ... Bien Boa would seem to be a bust only floating in space in front of Marthe, whose bodice can be seen. Low down, between the curtain and Marthe's black skirt, there seem to be two small whitish rod-like supports to the phantom form."

Presumably the beard was "artificial-looking" because it was, in fact, artificial, and Bien Boa "seem[ed] to be a bust" because he was a bust. But what is really interesting are the "two small whitish rod-like supports to the phantom form" - the kind of supports that are still used in puppetry today, to manipulate so-called "rod puppets" from behind or below.

Photo: Bien Boa hovering in front of the curtain, with his "artificial-looking beard" and legless body. Note that the curtain appears to be partly open, possibly allowing manipulation of the figure from behind

 

A rod puppet would make an altogether more satisfactory phantom than a marionette. No overhead wires or hidden accomplice was needed. Marthe, operating behind the curtain, manipulated the figure herself. The puppet, lying flat, was pushed out from underneath the curtain, its appearance concealed by smoke effects ("a white vapour"). Marthe then pulled the figure upright ("it rose up still more, enlarged, and grew into a human form"), and made it walk ("limping slightly" - i.e, moving jerkily). After a few steps (which Richet describes elsewhere as "halting"), the puppet was simply made to collapse to the floor, "with a clicking noise like a falling skeleton" - the "clicking noise" of its hollow or lightweight components. The act was then repeated ("he reappeared rising in a straight line from the floor ... and falling back on it with the same clicking noise").

"The phantom of Bien Boa," Richet writes, "appeared five or six times under satisfactory conditions in the sense that he could not be Marthe masquerading in a helmet and sheet. Marthe would have had not only to bring, but also to conceal afterwords, the helmet, the sheet, and the burnous [in modern spelling, burnoose - a hooded cloak]. Also Marthe and the phantom were seen at the same time. To pretend that Bien Boa was a doll is more absurd still; he walked and moved, his eyes could be seen looking round, and when he tried to speak his lips moved."

But rod puppets can move and walk around, and the impression of eyes moving and following the viewer can be created even in a painting. It is interesting that Bien Boa merely "tried to speak" - apparently he could actually speak only through Marthe herself, whose voice at such times was described as "halting and wooden and guttural."

Richet himself points out, though without attaching much importance to the fact, that in one photo of Marthe and Bien Boa together, Marthe's left sleeve "appears empty, though the vacuity is not complete." Could the sleeve have been empty because Marthe's arm was actually engaged in holding up the puppet figure at her side?

It might be objected that only a child could be tricked by a puppet, a thing of stiff rods supporting a sheet and a mask. No adult, and certainly not a sophisticated scientist alert to any sign of chicanery, could be taken in by such a device. But remember O'Brien's dinosaurs, and the magicians who fell for them.

Although a rod puppet could explain some of Bien Boa's appearances, there were other times when a living person must have masqueraded as the phantom. On one such occasion, Richet asked the phantom to blow into a flask of water, which Bien Boa did, producing visible bubbles. A possible explanation was provided by a coachman in General Noel's employ, a man named Areski, who claimed that he had "played the ghost." This assertion was made only after Areski had been fired for theft, and it may be that he was simply seeking revenge on his former boss. Aleski's claim is made somewhat less probable by the fact that he said he had disappeared via a trap door, but as we have seen, no trap door was discovered.

In any case, it was not necessary for the coachman to act as an accessory. There were others who might have been in a position to impersonate the phantom - Aischa for example, or one of the two younger sisters, or Marthe herself.

Sometime after Marthe completed her experiments with Richet, the story circulated that she had confessed to producing her effects by trickery. Whether or not she actually did confess remains unknown. The story was attributed to an anonymous source and could never be checked, and Marthe evidently did not endorse it.
Indeed, she went on to work with other researchers. In these later sessions, far more extensive precautions against trickery were said to have been taken. Marthe was stripped and searched before each séance, a search that included the examination of her hair, nose, mouth, armpits, knees, and even her rectum and vagina. On some occasions she was said to have been given an emetic, forcing her to void her stomach and esophagus, thereby removing any suspicion that she had swallowed some muslin to be later regurgitated as ectoplasm. In addition, detectives were employed to follow Marthe and investigate her background and associates; they found no evidence of fraud.

This all sounds convincing enough, except that if Marthe had secreted her materials in the séance room prior to the session, then no amount of bodily searching would avail the investigators, and if she was acting alone, then the detectives' trail would inevitably be cold. In any case, photographs produced in these later investigations are no more believable than those taken of Bien Boa.

Richet himself seemed to acknowledge this. When writing of some "faces" that seemed to extrude from Marthe's body, he admitted, "these faces (and many others) are not in relief. They are like drawings; and, more strange still, something like folds in the paper of a drawing are visible; as if a drawing had been folded three or four times and unfolded to be photographed, so that the materializations are in these cases flat, or materialized drawings. These folds in flat images gave immense suspicion of fraud. But that presumes extreme stupidity in [Marthe], since she knew that the photographs would be taken."Perhaps it merely presumed extreme boldness in Marthe, who by that point had found that she could get away with almost anything.

 

Photo: Ectoplasmic "face" produced by "Eva C." (Marthe Beraud)

 

Another "face."

 

Great latitude was given to the medium when photographs were taken. Richet complains that photography interrupted a session, necessitating "intermissions of observation while the curtain is drawn," because "continuous observation is not permitted by the medium when waiting for the photograph." Marthe herself would signal the photographer when it was time to take the shot. Obviously this setup gave her both the time and the privacy necessary to arrange her materials for the camera.

During these later researches, accounts of her manifestations became ever more elaborate. Marthe was said to emit ectoplasm from her mouth, navel, breast, and armpits. The damp, enigmatic material, which "resembles moist and sticky muslin," proved elusive. Richet says that when one researcher tried to seize a strand of ectoplasm, he "could grasp nothing, for it disappeared at once." In other instances, some ectoplasm was recovered and subjected to microscopic examination, revealing "vestiges of epithelium, bacterial forms, and a notable amount of fat. In certain cases it looked like vegetable tissue; in others like a filament of cotton surrounded by a granular substance whose nature could not be determined."

One seemingly paranormal phenomenon eagerly cataloged by Marthe's later investigators was the production of paraffin gloves - molds of human hands produced in paraffin wax, ostensibly during the séance. It was asserted that these molds, which endured long after the séance was over, constituted proof that a hand had materialized in the liquid wax and then dematerialized after the wax had set. How else, it was asked, could such molds have been made? If a living hand had been inserted in the wax, it would have broken the mold when it was removed. In fact, when artisans made such molds of living hands, they had to separate the mold into two pieces to release the hand, then reattach the halves. Richet wrote, "We defy the skilful modellers to obtain such moulds without using the plan of two segments separated by thread and afterwards reunited."

It took many years for "skilful modellers" to take up this challenge - but in 1997 a pair of Italian investigators, Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli, decided to give it a try. They found that it was possible to make an excellent paraffin glove of a living hand and to extract the hand, slowly and carefully, without cracking the mold. The extreme maneuverability of the hand allows it to work its way free of the mold in the same way that one might free one's hand from a very tight glove. Even when the mold in question was extremely fragile, made with only a thin shell of wax, it was still possible to extricate the hand and leave the mold undamaged. Whether this technique was actually used during the séance, or was employed in advance, with the completed molds hidden in the room and produced when needed, may never be known. It is worth pointing out that the report on producing paraffin gloves was published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, as just one of many skeptical assessments of paranormal phenomena to appear in that publication. ("Spirit Moulds: A Practical Experiment"; Vol. 62, No. 848; July 1997 p. 58-62).

Some have maintained that Marthe would not have subjected herself to years of tedious testing merely to pull off a hoax. Brian Ingliss writes, "There was no money in it for the investigators and little enough for the medium; certainly far less than she could have earned displaying her powers on the halls. And there was no kudos; such research attracted only mockery, if it were noticed at all." (Natural and Supernatural, 1992; p. 435)

But human motivation is a tricky thing. There are other rewards besides money and fame. Doctors are familiar with the condition known as Munchausen syndrome, in which a patient makes himself ill - sometimes seriously so - in order to garner the attention of the medical staff. Members of religious cults may surrender all their worldly goods and personal freedom, abandoning even their families, for no obvious gain. Recently there have been news reports of people who opt to have healthy limbs amputated because of an irrational aversion to their own bodies.

Plainly, it is not enough to say that Marthe and her investigators had no reason to cheat or to delude themselves. People's reasons are not always reasonable.

In making these points, I don't mean to say that all the evidence of physical mediumship is equally suspect. Table tilting and the levitation of tables, other objects, and even persons are phenomena that have been widely reported and reproduced. So-called "spirit raps," a catchall term for a variety of sounds and vibrations, have been known since antiquity. There are even cases of spirit manifestations that may be strong enough to count as evidential - as in some sittings of the famed 19th century medium D.D. Home. By no means am I dismissing the great mass of evidence for these assorted phenomena, many of which I believe to be genuine.

But for Marthe Beraud, what evidence is there? In the end, all we have are paraffin gloves that could have been faked, photos of apparitions and ectoplasmic extrusions that are less than convincing, a record of Richet's inadequate precautions against cheating, and the reports of witnesses who may or may not have been reliable.

On the other hand, in Marthe's favor, we have the insistence on the part of later investigators that thorough precautions were taken and that the phenomena continued and became even more impressive. Certainly if we take the researchers at their word, then no amount of trickery can explain what they saw.

Here, for example, are Richet's contemporaneous notes on a session with Marthe:

In the quite small room which I search thoroughly ... Mme. de S., whom I will call A., is alone with Marthe and myself. We both sit close to Marthe, so close that I can touch her hands without getting up. The light is an electric lamp covered with red stuff, and gives light enough to show all the white in Marthe's garments and the white ribbons in her hair. After about half an hour, I open the curtains and see a faint luminosity on the floor, so feeble that I doubt its reality. By degrees this light increases; it is like a small, luminous handkerchief lying on the floor. Marthe's whole body is motionless. The luminous spot grows; its outlines are milky, undefined and cloudy, less defined and softer than would be those of woven stuff. It approaches the chair, increases in size, and takes a serpentine form which tends to rise towards the left arm of A.'s chair. Its outlines become sharper; it is like a mass of half-empty fabric. Then follows an extraordinary sight: a point detaches itself from the mass, mounts up, bends and directs itself to Marthe's breast, her hands being held the whole time. The point continues to advance in a terrifying way like an animal pointing its beak; and as it advances, on the rigid stalk there appears a thin gauzy structure like a bat's wing, so thin and transparent that Marthe's garments can be seen through it. The stem is easily distinguishable from the membrane round it. Marthe is motionless and speaks at intervals.

I can approach and look very closely, only an inch away. I see what looks like a swollen substance, moving as if alive, and changing its form. For five or six minutes I examine it attentively. I see extensions like the horns of a snail, which start up to right and left; these horns are like transparent gelatin, they project from and sink back into the more defined central mass.

And in a later session:

Fairly good light. The curtain remains closed for about an hour. I open it; a white spot on the floor grows rapidly, and two horns protrude from the mass X, from which other horns appear, very mobile, pointing in every direction. The mass, then much larger, disaggregates into particles, taking on the semblance of a hand ... a greyish hand with ill-defined outlines.

This hand moves, looking like the hand of a mummy emerging from some stuff; it raises and lowers itself like a hand. Marthe's hands are firmly held by me and are quite motionless. The fingers of the ectoplasm, thin and spindly, seem to end in cloudy masses. I can examine them very closely. I touch one of these spindles; it feels like a cold liquid. I can press it and it feels like the bone of a finger covered with skin. The hand rests on my knee and I feel the slight friction of a body of little resistance. The hand then rises of itself, swaying on a long stem that connects it with the floor; it falls back on to the floor with a slight noise; it remains there and I think I see the two bones of the forearm as though wrapped in cloudy muslin.

The hand then rises, bends, and moves towards me. The wrist is lowered and the fingers pendant; they move and there seems a torsional movement of this strange fore-arm. I still think I see the carpal bones in the muslin-like cloud.

The hand rests on my knee again. I feel its weight (very light), it makes little movements at my request that I can feel quite well. Then Marthe says to me, 'That is the muscles beginning to form,' and I see, or I think I see, something dark in the space between the two bones. The hand rises and moves very close to me, having no connection with the ground but a slight white trail. It then falls to the ground with a slight noise, rises from it and suddenly disappears at the moment that Marthe gets up.

The key to the whole question is in a few words of the preceding paragraph: "I see, or I think I see."

If Richet really did see these things, then his confidence in Marthe's genuineness must have been justified. But did he only think he saw them? In the dim light (described only as "fairly good"), in the excitement of the moment, perhaps urged on by Marthe's own suggestions ("That is the muscles beginning to form"), did he see what was really there or what he wanted to see?

It may never be possible to know. But we do know that when an audience of magicians watched Willis O'Brien's animated dinosaurs, they saw something that no modern viewer would perceive.

If there are fewer spirit materializations in the modern world, perhaps it is because we now see with clearer eyes.

***

Postscript: After posting this essay, I became aware of some comments by psychical researcher Montague Keen which bear directly on the topic. These comments are found in Keen's essay"The Scole Investigation: A Study in Critical Analysis of Paranormal Physical Phenomena" (2001). 

Keen criticizes the skeptical assumption 

that, because the purported [spirit] communicators do not behave as we would expect ..., they must be figments of the medium's brain ...

The assumption underlying this criticism has very widespread implications. Among the most frequently reproduced photographs designed to illustrate the obviously fraudulent nature of so-called ectoplasmic images of the past are those of somewhat grotesque and crude paper masks. They featured in Baron von Schrenck Notzing's celebrated series of tests on a medium known to history as Eva C. [Marthe Beraud]. But a study of the elaborate precautions taken by the medical investigator and his two qualified colleagues shows that, if Eva had contrived to smuggle in the mask during the séance of August 7th 1912 (to take one example), she would have had to have packed and concealed about her body a plastic mask of natural size, a head shape of paper or textile fabric, and a quantity of a substance, the size of a hand, which would leave traces on her dress. In spite of all the precautions, including prior examination of her bare body, hair, mouth and ears, and being sewn into a séance costume which was found after the sitting to have remained unopened, the medium would have had to pack this equipment in or on her body, open it up, use it before the cameras, fold it all up again and conceal around her bare body so that it would remain undetected despite a subsequent body search. Such precautions, which extended to hand-holding and the unexpected shining of torches and taking of flashlight plates, have had not the slightest effect on those who consider it obvious that no genuine spirit would want, even if able, to project an image with such manifest signs of crude human fabrication.

Nearly a century after the Beraud investigations, the debate goes on.

 

Sources

Orville Goldner and George E. Turner, The Making of King Kong, 1975

Charles Richet, Thirty Years of Psychical Kesearch, 1923

Massimo Polidoro and Luigi Garlaschelli. "Spirit Moulds: A Practical Experiment," Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. (July 1997.) Vol. 62. No. 848, 58-62 

Brian Ingliss, Natural and Supernatural, revised edition, 1992

Montague Keen, "The Scole Investigation: A Study in Critical Analysis of Paranormal Physical Phenomena," (2001). Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 15 No.2, 167-82