This is the story of a fiery death that became a cold case—a mystery unsolved since 1847. It begins with an elderly Frenchman, whose badly burned body suggested to authorities that it may have been set afire to conceal evidence of foul play. The victim’s son and daughter-in-law were soon charged with homicide. Subsequently, an exhumation and examination of the severely burned remains led the pathologist to conclude that the case was not one of murder but of “spontaneous combustion”—a possibility discounted by modern science. Was it murder after all, or is there still some other possibility?

Scene of the ‘Crime’

Initially reported in the journal Union Médicale, the case found its way—via the Gazette Médicale—to an American medical journal (Flint 1849) and then on to a textbook on medical jurisprudence (Taylor 1883). On the morning of January 6, 1847, the body of seventy-one-year-old Monsieur Char­bonnier¹ was found lying abed “in its usual position during sleep,” yet it was afire with a small, whitish flame that had de­stroyed, almost entirely, both the deceased’s clothing and the bed clothes, as well as part of the bedstead. Surrounding materials were scorched. Monsieur Char­bonnier was de­scribed as “neither very fat, nor given to drunkenness.”

It having been quite cold for a time, when he retired Charbonnier had, “as usual, placed at his feet a heated brick.” It was also noted that he carried matches in his waistcoat pocket. He had gone to his room sometime between six and seven p.m., and, two hours later, his son and his son’s wife, having passed his door, “perceived nothing un­usual” (Flint 1849).

The authorities came to suspect the couple in Charbonnier’s death of “having first murdered him, and then burnt the body, in order to conceal all traces of the crime.” Apparently, the suspicions were founded on nothing more than that the origin of the fire was unknown and the destruction of the body severe. A Dr. Masson was ordered to examine the remains and so make a determination as to the cause of death. Masson had Charbonnier’s body exhumed (Flint 1849).

Autopsy

A medical journal (Flint 1849) reported on Dr. Masson’s examination:

The coffin was found half filled. The body was folded in a white shroud. A cravat, nearly destroyed by the fire, and a fragment of a shirt collar, remained round the neck. The hands, burnt to a cinder, were attached to the forearm merely by some carbonized tendons, which gave way at the least touch. Lastly, the thighs were so completely separated, that, had it not been for fragments of animal charcoal, the separation might have been attributed to a knife.

The journal continued:

From the examination of these facts, it was concluded that, as it was impossible to attribute the phenomena to the action of the combustibles with which the body had been in contact, they must be ascribed to a cause inherent in the individual, put in action, perhaps, by the heat of the brick applied to the feet, but which must have found a fuel in the tissues which it de­stroyed; that, in a word, it must be classed among cases of spontaneous combustion.

As a result, “This opinion of M. Masson being fully confirmed by that of M. Orfila, the accused were acquitted” (Flint 1849).

Spontaneous Human Combustion?

But if there was no evidence of homicide, does “Spontaneous Human Combustion” (the title of the medical journal article) provide a more viable alternative as a cause of death? Debate over the possibility of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) raged throughout the nineteenth century. When Charles Dickens invoked the alleged phenomenon to kill off a drunken character in his 1853 novel Bleak House, he was following a then-current belief. Early theorists, including members of the temperance movement, had suggested that alcohol-impregnated tissues were rendered highly combustible, but scientists refuted the notion by experimentation. And they pointed out that a person would die of alcohol poisoning long before imbibing enough alcohol to have even a slight effect on the body’s flammability (Lewes 1861, 398). Dickens’s novel set off a controversy.

Response came immediately from George Henry Lewes, the philosopher and critic, who upbraided Dickens for perpetuating superstition. Lewes insisted that SHC was scientifically impossible, a view shared by the great scientist Liebig (1851), who stated: “The opinion that a man can burn of himself is not founded on a knowledge of the circumstances of the death, but on the reverse of knowledge—on complete ignorance of all the causes or conditions which preceded the accident and caused it.” In short, SHC proponents were essentially engaging in a logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance: “We don’t know what caused the fire, so it must have been spontaneous human combustion.”

Thus rationalists like Lewes were seizing the scientific high ground with the question of cause, while Dickens was arguing primarily from effect, citing several cases of the alleged phenomenon. To assess the contrary views, I teamed up with forensic analyst John F. Fischer to launch a two-year investigation of the phenomenon, culminating in a two-part report in the journal of the Inter­national Association of Arson Investi­gators (Nickell and Fischer 1984) and portions of a book (Nickell with Fischer 1988). We reviewed thirty historical cases and focused on one of the most famous, that of Mary Reeser of St. Petersburg, Florida, who in 1951 was reduced to a few bones, a quantity of “grease” (i.e., human body fat), and an intact slippered foot. In our forensic investigation, we focused on both cause and effect.

We found that the correlation of bizarre fiery deaths to drunkenness was likely due to inebriated persons being more careless with fire and less able to properly respond to an accident. We also found a more significant correlation: In those incidents in which the destruction of the body was relatively minimal, the only significant fuel source appeared to have been the victim’s clothes; however, where the destruction was considerable, additional fuel sources—bedding, chair stuffing, wooden flooring, and so on—augmented the burning. Impor­tantly, materials under the body appear also to have helped to retain melted body fat (present in significant amounts even in a relatively lean individual), which volatized and burned, destroying more of the body’s tissues and yielding still more liquefied fat to continue the process known as the wick effect (Gee 1965). In case after case, we found plausible causes for the ignition, thus removing the word spontaneous from the equation (Nickell with Fischer 1988, 161–171). For example, Mary Reeser was seen just before her death wearing flammable night clothes, sitting in a large stuffed chair, smoking a cigarette, after having taken sleeping pills. She was a proverbial accident waiting to happen (Nickell with Fischer 1988, 149–157).

The Explanation

But if the death of Monsieur Charbonnier was not a case of spontaneous human combustion, was it one of murder after all? That is doubtful. Not only was there no evidence of homicide, but a fiery death, under the circumstances given, is an unlikely—though not unheard of—means of murdering someone (Taylor 1883, 719–720). No doubt the accused family members could have staged a more convincing “accident” had they wished to do so.

No, M. Charbonnier’s mode of death was not homicidal; neither was it suicidal or natural (unless a heart attack, say, was directly involved; see below). (It assuredly was not preternatural as in “spontaneous combustion.”) The most likely mode is accidental. As to the manner and cause of death, they remain unexplained but not unexplainable. Indeed, there are many credible explanations that could account for the known data, if we allow some reasonable assumptions. For example, we do not know whether there was a fireplace in the room, but bedrooms typically had such; or whether the victim was a smoker, but matches in his pocket suggest the distinct possibility; or whether he was infirm or had dementia, but he was elderly and being cared for by his son and daughter-in-law. Here are some possibilities:

1. Since Charbonnier was still wearing his clothes (indicated by the remaining fragments of cravat and shirt collar about his neck), probably because it was so cold, he might simply have been lying abed while smoking. In such circumstances it is a common cause of death for a person to fall asleep (or much less commonly to die suddenly, say from cardiac arrest), and so drop the smoking material, thus causing the bedding to smolder, with the result that the victim dies of smoke inhalation before the smoldering process ignites the gasses produced. (If ignition occurs at all, it may be an hour or more after smoldering began.) (Spitz 1993, 427–­428; Nickell 1988, 155)

2. The friction matches in M. Char­bonnier’s vest pocket might have ignited as they rubbed together while he tossed and turned in sleep. They were described as “chemical matches” (Flint 1849) and again as “Lucifer-matches” (Taylor 1883, 722)—that is, a type of friction match using white phosphorous. (These were created in 1830; safety matches were not developed until 1855 [Bellis 2010]).

3. The “heated brick” that the deceased placed at his feet for warmth might have carried, stuck to its underside, a cinder from the fireplace; this could easily have caused smoldering of the linen in which it was wrapped. This scenario is possible even though early sources inform that the brick, “before being wrapped in linen, had been slowly cooled by water thrown over it twice” (Flint 1849). The cinder could have been picked up from the hearth even after the brick was wrapped.

4. A popping, crackling fire in the fireplace might have propelled a burning cinder, or sent adrift a spark, that landed on the bed, or even on the victim’s clothing to be thus carried to the bed. Again, all that was needed was for the smoldering process to be initiated. Such an occurrence need not have been common, since the resulting phenomenon was itself rare.

Other scenarios are possible. However, I think we may conclude not only that the mode of death was accidental but that the manner of death was, generically, carelessness with fire, and the cause of death smoke inhalation.² (Remember, the victim was found in bed in the repose of sleep.) Taylor (1883, 723) concludes that the medical investigator, Masson, probably “underrated the effects which are liable to follow from an accidental ignition of the clothes.” He says of alleged SHC—that is, of severe destruction of the body in cases where the origin of the combustion is unknown—that “In the in­stances reported which are worthy of any credit, a candle, a fire, or some other ignited body has been at hand, and the accidental kindling of the clothes of the deceased was highly probable” (Taylor 1883, 719). As true as that statement was in 1883, today—given our knowledge of how the body’s fat can contribute to its own destruction by means of the wick effect—it is even more defensible.

Acknowledgments

CSI Libraries director Timothy Binga was very helpful with research, especially in tracking down an early account of this case.

Notes

1. Flint (1849) and, presumably, his source give the name only as “Ch______,” but Arnold (1995, 46) has somehow discovered the complete surname. ( Char­bonnier is a perfectly good French name, but—as one cannot help but note with irony, given that the man was largely reduced to ash—it means “charcoal-burner.”)

2. For further discussion of mode, manner, and cause of death, see Nickell and Fischer Crime Science (1999, 254–261).

References

Arnold, Larry E. 1995. Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion. New York: M. Evans and Company.

Bellis, Mary. 2010. The history of matches. Available online at http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmatch.htm; accessed Feb. 24, 2010.

Flint, Austin, ed. 1849. Buffalo Medical Journal and Monthly Review of Medical and Surgical Science, volume 4. Buffalo, N.Y.: Jewett, Thomas & Co., 247 (citing the Gazette Médicale, which in turn quoted from the Union Médicale).

Gee, D.J. 1965. A case of ‘spontaneous combustion.’ Medicine, Science and the Law 5: 37–38.

Lewes, George Henry. 1861. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 89 (April), 385–402.

Liebig, Justus von. 1851. Familiar Letters on Chemistry, Letter no. 22. London: Taylor, Walton & Maberly.

Nickell, Joe, and John F. Fischer. 1984. Spontaneous human combustion. The Fire and Arson Investigator 34: 3 (March), 4–11; 34: 4 (June), 3–8.

———. 1999. Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detec­tion. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Ken­tucky.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1988. Secrets of the Supernatural. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Spitz, Werner U., ed. 1993. Spitz and Fisher’s Medico­legal Investigation of Death, 3rd ed. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas.

Taylor, Alfred Swaine. 1883. The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, 3rd ed., vol. Ed. Thomas Stevenson. Philadelphia: H.C. Lea’s Son & Co.

Called “the Lourdes of America” (after the famous French healing shrine), El Santuariò de Chimayó in New Mexico is a place of pilgrimages. Scores visit the little adobe church daily, while thousands walk miles to worship there on Good Friday. Some carry heavy crosses, while others approach on their knees. Many come seeking a cure for their afflictions, scooping from a small pit in the church floor a reddish soil that they rub on afflicted areas of their bodies or even sprinkle on their food or brew in tea (Eckholm 2008). (Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The author, in the persona of a pilgrim, visits the famous “Lourdes of America,” where holy dirt supposedly effects miracle cures. (Author’s photo by Vaughn Rees)

The Legend

The word Chimayó derives from hot springs that were sacred to the Tewa Indians (a linguistic group of Pueblos) who called them Tsimajopokwi (pokwì in Tewa means “pool of water”). After the springs dried up, the name was shortened to Tsimayo (Nealson 2001, 62). According to a pious legend (of which there are many versions), brethren from the secret Penitente Brother­hood were engaging in rites on a nearby hill on a dark Good Friday in 1810 when one saw a mysterious light coming from the valley. Investigating and finding a half-buried crucifix, the men sent for a priest, the nearest church being ten miles away in Santa Cruz. The priest had the wooden crucifix carried in a procession to his church, but by the next morning it had disappeared—having been miraculously re­turned to its original site! This removal and return occurred two more times before people understood the message: the crucifix was to remain on the spot, which had reportedly been a sacred area for the Pueblo Indians (Eckholm 2008).

This grafting of a Roman Catholic element onto a native one—a process called syncretism—was common. It was often similarly accomplished by the shrewd use of a “miracle.” (For example, a “miraculous,” actually tempera-painted, image of the Virgin of Guada­lupe appeared in Mexico City in 1531 to prompt the building of a Catholic shrine—on a hill where the conquered Aztecs had had a temple to their virgin goddess, Tonantzin [Nickell 1988; 2004].)

One of the Penitente brothers, Don Bernardo Abeyta, built a small hermita (shelter) onto his house to enshrine the miracle crucifix. The hermita also allegedly “covered a hole from which came a blessed dirt that cured all ailments” (Kay 1987, 35). Abeyta himself was “instantly healed” of an undisclosed illness (Kutz 1988, 46–47). Alternately, Indian stories from the twentieth century suggested that a Tewa pueblo had once stood on the spot next to a pool whose mud had healing properties (Harring­ton 1916, 342). Revealingly, the chapel’s full name (El Santuariò de Chimayó de Nuestro Señor de Esqui­pulas) evokes a shrine in Guate­mala that had long been venerated for its miraculous healing crucifix and surrounding earth with curative powers. As well, there are much-touted healing mud baths at Chilca, Peru (which I visited with a guide in 2006). In any event, in 1816 a chapel was completed on the Chimayó site by Father Fran­cisco de Otocio, who was in charge of all New Mexico missions (Kay 1987, 29–37; Eckholm 2008).

The Nitty Gritty on the Dirt

Today, pilgrims visiting El Santuariò de Chimayó stoop to enter a small, single-windowed room that is said to be Abeyta’s original hermita. The central hole, El Posito (“little well”), measures some sixteen to eighteen inches wide and less than nine inches deep. Con­sider­ing the great amount of earth that must have been scooped from it during its almost two centuries of history, however, this is a small hole indeed! Hence, there grew a pious legend “that the pit was refilled by divine intervention” (Eckholm 2008). (This was similar to the claim that regardless of how many pieces were taken from the True Cross, the alleged holy relic of Jesus’s Crucifixion, it never diminished in size [Nickell 2007, 91–92].)

But even though “legend still maintains that the hole miraculously replenishes itself,” in fact “priests periodically refill the hole with dirt from outside the church” (Kay 1987, 77). Indeed, previously tipped off to this fact by a television cameraman (Del Monte 2001), we searched for and found the storage area where five-gallon containers of the reddish soil are stored (Figure 2). In recent years, priests at El Santuario de Chimayó have increasingly taken pains to point out the shed where the trucked-in soil is stored, with one complaining, “I even have to buy clean dirt!” (Eckholm 2008).

Figure 2. Despite a legend that the dirt, scooped from a small hole in the church floor, replenishes itself, it is actually purchased from outside and kept in a storeroom until it’s time to refill the hole. (Author’s photo)

In fact, the “holy dirt” is nothing very special. An analysis conducted for The Miracle Detectives television series identified the presence of carbonates that might have a beneficial effect on heartburn by neutralizing excess acid. “Beyond that,” stated series co-star Indre Vìskontas, the show’s skeptic, “there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary” (Miracle Detectives 2011).

I agree. I had collected my own samples for testing on a visit to Chi­mayó in 2003 with investigator Vaughn Rees. In the guise of a pilgrim needing healing (again see Figure 1), I obtained a small plastic container from the gift shop, sold empty but labeled “Blessed Dirt.” My examination, in my little lab at CSI headquarters, showed that the “dirt” contains no appreciable humus but is largely sand, consisting of tiny grains of minerals and small bits of rock. (Appli­ca­tion of hydrochloric acid yielded a strong effervescence that confirmed the presence of carbonates. The addition of potassium ferrocyanide reagent produced a Prussian-blue reaction that identified a significant amount of iron, consistent with its color of red ocher, an earthy iron oxide. Stereomicroscopic examination showed grains of such common minerals as crystalline quartz and mica, as well as small lumps of sandstone and occasional bits of organic material, including tiny fragments of bone and fine root stems.¹)

Chimayó priest Father Jim Suntum concedes that the dirt itself has no miraculous power (Miracle Detectives 2011). In fact, the local dirt has actually acted in a very anti-miraculous way: it has posed a threat to the church’s artworks. As conservators found in 2003–2004, they “had to deal with the dirt.” Indeed, “It had drifted down from the ceiling and walls in the almost 200 years the church had existed, covering the paintings on the five altar screens, the crucifix and the carved bultos [sculptures] with a fine dust that needed cleaning. Dirt also had fallen behind the main altar screen to push it out of joint and threaten its very existence.” Still, a writer would claim that the preservation process itself, at least, was “almost a miracle” (Russell 2004, 36, 40).

The Healing ‘Miracles’

Nevertheless, while Father Suntum concedes it is not the holy dirt that heals but rather one’s “relationship with God,” he insists: “Something happens in this place.” However, he admits: “We can’t quantify it. We can’t document it. We do ask people to tell their story” (Miracle Detectives 2011). In fact, “officially, the Church has never investigated any of the claims” (El Santuariò ... 1994, 26).

The complete lack of records re­garding alleged miraculous experiences means that claims are entirely dependent on anecdotal evidence, such as the unverifiable stories told by an aging priest at the site. For example, in the mid-1950s, he recalled, a man carried his frail, ill mother into the church. “A few minutes later,” said the priest, “he called me, something has happened. She was kneeling in front of the altar. She was talking and full of health” (Hamm 2006, 42, 45). Yet we do not need to invoke the miraculous to explain what may have been only a simple rejuvenation of the woman’s spirits.

Or consider the tale about a girl from Texas whose family “was told she had little time to live” and that even an operation might not save her. Follow­ing their visit to Chimayó the child was well and no operation was necessary. “Two days later,” recalls the old priest, “they came back to thank God for the cure” (qtd. in Hamm 2006, 45). Now, we cannot prove this story is untrue, but fortunately we do not have to. The tellers of such unverifiable tales have the entire burden of proof.

However, when such cases can be investigated, they are invariably illuminating. For instance, The Miracle Detec­tives examined the case of a Colo­rado woman, Deseree “Dese” Mar­tinez, who claims the dirt of Chimayó helped her cancer go into remission. Diagnosed at the age of fifteen with aggressive bone cancer at numerous sites in her body, she visited Chimayó where she mixed the holy dirt with spit and applied it to a sore spot on her leg. The pain was gone by the next morning, and scans the following week showed the area healed. Inexplicably, she did not then rub dirt on the other lesion spots, but they soon disappeared too.

However, the woman’s doctor, Brian Greffe, at The Children’s Hospital in Denver, observed that with such non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in pediatric cases, the hospital’s “cure rates are quite high.” He attributed Martinez’s success to the chemo treatments, which had worked “within days” of their be­ginning. Obviously, there is no evidence that the interim application of holy dirt to a single site had any effect, although Greffe did say Martinez’s positive outlook and the support of her family were helpful (Miracle Detectives 2011).

As invariably shown by the evidence, so-called miraculous healings are never scientifically verified. Such claims, like those at Lourdes, the most famous “miracle” shrine, are derived from cases that are supposedly “medically inexplicable”; therefore, they are really examples of a logical fallacy called “arguing from ignorance”—that is, drawing a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. Besides, some illnesses are known to exhibit spontaneous remission, and other reputed cures may be attributable to a host of other factors: misdiagnosis, psychosomatic conditions, the body’s own healing mechanisms, and the like, including—as in the case of Martinez—prior medical treatment (Nickell 2008).

While the church displays crutches and canes—ostensibly cast off after previous cures—they may well have been discarded prematurely. Persons may feel better temporarily after experiencing the hope and excitement of a pilgrimage. Writer Anatole France, on visiting Lourdes and seeing the abandoned canes and crutches there, sagely remarked, “What, what, no wooden legs???” (qtd. in Hines 1988, 250).

Conclusions

As the evidence shows, therefore, claims made for holy dirt at Chimayó are unwarranted. Despite borrowed and contrived legends that the site is miraculous, the soil is actually an ordinary variety trucked in from elsewhere and merely blessed. Priests admit that the “something” that happens at the site cannot be quantified or documented—and indeed a major healing claim fell apart on investigation.

One suspects that the “something” is merely what is termed confirmation bias—the willingness to credit any supposed benefits while ignoring countless failures. One writer offers the apologetic, “It is a mystery why certain people and situations are granted a miracle and others are not” (Hamm 2006). But it is only a “mystery” if one chooses to be blind to the evidence.

Note

1. Finally, I ran a battery of standard analyses using a commercial soil-test kit determining the pH was 7.0 (neutral), and that nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash were at insignificant levels.

References

Del Monte, Steven. 2000. Personal communication, October 20.

Eckholm, Eric. 2008. A pastor begs to differ with flock on miracles. The New York Times (February 20).

El Santuariò...: A Stop on the “High Road to Taos.” 1994. Silver Spring, MD: Sons of the Holy Family.

Hamm, Elizabeth Catanach. 2006. It’s a miracle: Hope, faith bond at El Santuario de Chi­mayó. New Mexico (March): 40–45.

Harrington, John Peabody. 1916. Cited in Kay 1987, 14.

Hines, Terence. 1988. Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Kay, Elizabeth. 1987. Chimayó Valley Traditions. Sante Fe, New Mexico: Ancient City Press.

Kutz, Jack. 1988. Mysteries & Miracles of New Mexico. Corrales, NM: Rhombus Publishing Co.

The Miracle Detectives. 2011. Holy Dirt of Chimayó. Episode aired April 10.

Nealson, Christina. 2001. New Mexico’s Sanc­tuaries, Retreats, and Sacred Places. Engle­wood, CO: Westcliffe Publishers, 61–63.

Nickell, Joe. 1988. Secrets of the Supernatural. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 103–17.

———. 2004. The Mystery Chronicles. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 51–55.

———. 2007. Relics of the Christ. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2008. Lourdes medical bureau rebels (blog entry). Free Thinking (December 25). Online at http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/lourdes_medical_bureau_rebels/.

Russell, Inez. 2004. Saving El Santuario: Preservation process almost a miracle. New Mexico (December): 36–41.

Among my many interests as a boy was cryptography—the study of codes, ciphers, and other secret writings. I sent and received nighttime Morse code messages by flashlight between neighbors’ houses and mine, made and solved cryptograms, used my forensic chemistry lab to make various invisible inks and developers, and even compiled a treatise on the subject (Nickell n.d.). I was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Dancing Men,” and later by Helen Fouché Gaines’s textbook Cryptanalysis (1956), among other writings.

When I grew up, I renewed my interest in secret messages through investigating a number of historical mysteries as well as during ten years of research for my magnum opus, Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective (1990). Thomas Parrish was once kind enough to pen an inscription in a copy of his excellent book, The American Code­breakers (1986), “To Joe Nickell—a cracker of all ciphers.” He gives me too much credit, but here, anyway, are abstracts of some of my interesting cases, from the trivial to the profound.

Secret Posts

One little secret message I came across in an antique store had already been revealed. It was on a postcard, penned in tiny script in the little box reserved for the postage stamp. The stamp had been carefully removed, obviously by the recipient, exposing the hidden writing. I was so taken by the find that I searched the remaining large collection of postcards in the store and found a few others—all clearly from the same sender.

The hidden-under-the-stamp messages were simply miniscule love notes. One consisted of rows of little X’s (a popular shorthand for kisses), while another asked, “Do you you still love this bad boy?” The cards, postmarked between 1911 and 1913 were addressed to a young lady at a Virginia girls’ school (Nickell 1990, 177). Charming!

Another postcard, found on a different occasion, bore a curious-looking script. However, it proved to be an innocuous message, easily read by noting the picture side of the card. It depicted a lady before a mirror and was accompanied by the printed couplet, “This message is for you my dear—/Your looking glass will make it clear” (Nickell 1990, 177). (For a discussion of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous mirror handwriting, see my “Deciphering Da Vinci’s Real Codes,” Nickell 2007).

A ‘Ju-Ju’ Message

Sometimes a message is hidden in plain sight. In researching the case of a devil-baby mummy that I encountered in a Toronto curio shop and that later proved bogus, I came across a published photo of a pair of similar creatures, their arms folded in the repose of death. A sign affixed to the creatures’ coffin proclaimed: “These shrunken mummified figures were found in a crude tomblike cave on the island of Haiti in 1740 by a party of French marines. They are supposed to be the remains of a lost tribe of ‘Ju-Ju’ or Devil Men—who, after death, followed a custom of shrinking & mummifying the dead. Are they real? We don’t know, but . . . X-Rays showed skin, horn, & hooves human!” Astonishingly, however, there was no mention of skeletons, suggesting that—like the Toronto devil-baby mummy—the figures were fabricated (Nickell 2011, 148–149).

Painted beneath the sign were these mumbo-jumbo words:

YENOH M’I DLOC!

My cryptanalytical interests were piqued, and I soon divined the meaning. Can you decipher it yourself before reading further?

I discovered that the text was the simplest form of a transposition cipher, one in which the actual letters of the secret message are rearranged in some fashion. In this in­stance, it is only necessary to read each word backward in turn to reveal a witty commentary on the creatures’ nakedness: “Honey I’m Cold!” Exclamation point indeed.

Encoded Book

Figure 1. The cryptic text in an old book soon yielded up its secrets.

In 1985 my old friend, Canadian writer and bibliophile George Fetherling, sent me copies of some pages from a small 1948 book titled SENATOR, the text of which was printed in a strange sort of code or cipher (Figure 1). George wanted to know what this intriguing work was all about—and so did I!

I set to work, immersing myself in the mysterious text. Soon, I recognized that at least some of the apparent words were indeed words, only they had been abbreviated—mostly by removing the vowels. (Thus whr=“where,” stn=“station,” etc.). Also, some consonants were dropped, particularly double ones (so that rgt=“right” and al=“all”). In addition, some common words were replaced by symbols (such as “£” for “Lodge” and @ for “and” [not for “at,” which was itself “a,” although “a” could also represent “a” itself.) Finally, some of the abbreviations were just acronyms (hence, MA=“Master at Arms”). In short, the text is a very simple form of code. (A code consists of substitutes not just for letters, as in a simple cipher, but for groups of letters, words, or even entire phrases or concepts.)

In beginning to decode the text, and reading phrases and whole clauses (“My station is at the right and front of the Cc [Chancelor?]),” I saw that it concerned a lodge, various officers, and elements of ritual and mystery. I suspected it was the product of some secret order such as the Freemasons, soon realizing that “KOP” in the text clearly referred to a similar fraternal and benevolent society, the Knights of Pythias. This was founded in 1864 in Washington, DC. (“Knights” 1960; Ken­nedy 1904). Various terms in the text are consistent with Pythian use. (Although the book lacked publishing information, and a standard bibliographic search was fruitless, for this publication CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga was later able to use online sources to confirm the KOP origin.)

The book’s title page bears a brief message of a different type. It reads:

NOITINOMDA: Sliated laiceps
rof koob eulb tlusnoc ot
dehsinomda si hturt retfa
rekees dna tneduts esolc
eht.

Can you decipher it? Quickly cover the following explanation and try your hand.

You should have little trouble, since you have already been introduced to simple transposition ciphers like this. However, instead of reading each word backward in turn, you begin with the word in all capitals (which is, of course, “admonition”), then go to the end and read the whole sentence backward. Case closed.

The Cryptograms

So far, we have looked at codes and transposition ciphers. However, the majority of the secret messages I have come across in my work as a historical investigator are what are known as simple substitution ciphers. Popularly mislabeled “codes,” these are created by replacing the letters of the original text, which is known as the “plaintext,” with substitutes—such as other letters, symbols, or the like—resulting in what is termed the “ciphertext.”

I have encountered—and deciphered—many such ciphertexts, written on postcards and greeting cards, in old sentiment albums, and elsewhere (Nickell 1990, 176–77). Solving a simple substitution cipher is usually pretty straightforward. (See Nickell 1990, 177; Gaines 1956, 69–87; also, the previously mentioned Poe and Conan Doyle stories describe the rudiments of decipherment.)

Here is one message from an old autograph album:

L5CY
1992  P42
9476h  M3ddl2  64w9
B457b49  C4
         K2965cky

If you are an experienced cryptanalyst you might want to stop here and give your skills a try.

As it happened, however, the message was accompanied by a partial “key”:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
a e i o u t r s n

In brief, numbers are substituted for certain frequently used letters (vowels, and four of the most–used consonants), while the remaining letters are unchanged. Now you will have no trouble deciphering the message.

If you solved this without the key, you probably noted that the last word was offset, and so it might be the name of a state (on the assumption that such a text in an autograph album might represent a name and address). That word, omitting the numbers, was “K——cky,” and that could only be one state. Similarly “M-ddl-” looks like the word Middle, so the cryptanalyst could begin to construct a key without having been provided one. This message reads: “Lucy Anne Poe, North Middle Town, Bourbon Co., Kentucky.”

Most such texts are similarly mundane, although they are still fun to solve and help one sharpen his or her cryptanalytical skills. However, some are of a more serious nature. Sometimes a code or cipher even promises to lead to a fabulous treasure, as in the next case.

Oak Island’s ‘Cipher Stone’

What is considered by some to be among “the great mysteries of the world” (Crooker 1978, 7), derives from a mysterious shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia. It was allegedly discovered in 1795 when three young men came upon a shallow depression over which, hanging from a tree limb, was an old tackle block. The trio believed some treasure lay below but they were never able to recover it. Neither has anyone since, although many have tried, only to be thwarted by water flooding the “Money Pit” (as it came to be known) by means of “pirate tunnels” and other problems. Still, zealots are convinced there is a treasure to be claimed, possibly the French crown jewel or Shakespeare’s manuscripts, even perhaps the legendary Holy Grail (Nickell 2001).

Reportedly, sometime in the early nineteenth century (different dates are given), a treasure-hunting consortium dug up a flat stone that bore a cryptic message. This “cipher stone” takes its place with other such reports—of “strange markings” carved on the old tree (Finnan 1997, 28) and even of “a tier of smooth stones . . . with figures and letters cut on them” (quoted in Crooker 1978, 24). No photo exists of any of these, and the cipher stone—assuming it actually existed—has been missing since about 1919. However, its text has allegedly been preserved, although in various forms and differing decipherments. Zoologist-turned-epigrapher Barry Fell thought the inscription was ancient Coptic, its message urging people to remember God lest they perish (Finnan 1997, 148–49).

Figure 2. A cipher, allegedly inscribed on a stone (see inset, bottom center), is only one of many bogus elements of the Oak Island treasure tale. (Illustration by Joe Nickell)

In fact, the cipher text as we now have it has been correctly deciphered—and redeciphered and verified. It is written in a simple-substitution cipher (reproduced in Crooker 1993, 23). I have reconstructed what the cipher stone might have looked like, providing my drawing as an inset to my Oak Island “treasure map” (Figure 2), based on several sources and my own visit to the island in 1999. My independent decipherment, which tallies with those of several modern investigators (Crooker 1993, 19–24), reads, “FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED.” Although he is convinced there was an original inscribed stone, “mentioned in all the early accounts of the Onslow Company’s expedition,” William S. Crooker states (1993, 24): “Obviously the inscription as we know it today is a hoax—a modern invention deliberately made simple to lure potential investors. It is highly unlikely that the originators of the Money Pit left a coded message giving the amount and depth of buried treasure.”

I agree. My own longtime investigation of the Oak Island mystery, however, indicated that the “Money Pit” and “pirate tunnels” were simply natural formations. More­­over, much of the Oak Island saga—especially certain reported actions and alleged discoveries—tally with the “Secret Vault” allegory of Freemasonry. Indeed, the search for the Oak Island treasure “vault” has been carried out largely by prominent Nova Scotia Free­masons, and it appears that the whole affair is an insiders’ one linked to high-level Masonic rituals (Nickell 2001, 219–34).

The foregoing by no means exhaust my examples. The interested reader might wish to consider the mysterious inscription of the Yarmouth Stone in Nova Scotia, which I was permitted to examine in 1999 (Nickell 2001, 190–193), or the infamously un­solved Beale ciphers that tell of a treasure lost since 1817 (Nickell with Fischer 1992, 53–67), among others. More cases no doubt await.

References

Crooker, William S. 1978. The Oak Island Quest. Hantsport, N.S.: Lancelet.

———. 1993. Oak Island Gold. Halifax, N.S.: Nimbus.

Finnan, Mark. 1997. Oak Island Secrets, rev. ed. Halifax, N.S.: Formac.

Gaines, Helen Fouché. 1956. Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution. New York: Dover.

Kennedy, William D. 1904. Pythian History. Chicago: Pythian Hist. Publ. Co.

Knights of Pythias. 1960. Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 18:804.

Masonic Heirloom Edition Holy Bible. 1964. Wichita, Kansas: Heirloom Bible Publishers.

Nickell, Joe. 1990. Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2001. Real-Life X-Files. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2007. Deciphering Da Vinci’s real codes. Skeptical Inquirer 31(3) (May/June): 23–25.

———. N.d. Secret Messages. Unpublished typescript; see “Cryptographer,” online at www.joenickell.com/Cryptographer/cryptographer1.html.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1992. Mysterious Realms: Probing Paranormal, Historical, and Forensic Enigmas. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Parrish, Thomas. 1986. The American Codebreakers: The U.S. Role in Ultra. Paperback ed. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991.

Allegedly invisible entities—popular belief notwithstanding—are indistinguishable from imaginary beings.

Popular belief aside, the best scientific evidence indicates that entities that are reputedly capable of invisibility¹—ghosts and other spirits, for example, as well as some extraterrestrials, angels, fairies, and many others—are indistinguishable from imaginary beings.

Natural Invisibility?

Invisible, in this context, does not mean transparent² (like a jellyfish), nor camouflaged³ (such as a chameleon), nor obscured (as with a magician’s rabbit), nor microscopic (like a bacterium) but instead truly invisible: that is, when the entity is in the invisible mode it is incapable of being seen by human vision in the visual spectrum. It neither reflects, refracts, absorbs, scatters, nor radiates light.⁴

No physical entity—that is, a being composed of ordinary matter⁵—can exist in an invisible state, short of being dematerialized, in which case it would not exist as matter. The very substance of such a matter-centric being—a person or other living (or even nonliving) thing of the natural world—necessarily renders it visible and at the same time incapable of invisibility. But if this is true, then what of an invisible girl exhibited at Paris in the eighteenth century?

Supposedly a prodigy born in one of the provinces, she was kept, presumably for her own safety, in a small casket. This had glass panels on the top, front, and back so spectators could see through the box, which was suspended from the ceiling by four chains. Thus there was nowhere for anyone to hide. Yet a horn attached to one end of the casket allowed people to address questions to the invisible girl and to hear her voice in reply! Theories that it was a ventriloquial trick were soon discredited. As to the theory that a tiny dwarf hid behind the trumpet, that notion was likewise rejected because—had such a miniature mortal existed—it would have been more sensible to exhibit it than to fake an “invisible girl.”

As it happened, there really was no invisible girl but rather a real one hidden in the adjacent room. She addressed spectators through a speaking tube—with its end that emerged from the wall being concealed by the large mouth of the trumpet. A picture on the wall had a secret peephole through which the hidden girl could observe objects held up to the casket and so describe them in detail (Gibson 1967, 44–45).

Advanced Technology?

Of course, one may assert that some technological advance may make invisibility possible, but this is merely a science-fiction notion. It was advanced as early as 1897 in a novella by H.G. Wells. Titled The Invisible Man, it tells of a scientist named Griffin whose optics research enables him to alter a body’s refractive index to that of air; thus it neither absorbs nor reflects light and so becomes invisible. (Griffin succeeds in making himself invisible but—unable to reverse the effect—embarks on a rampage that culminates in his own killing by a mob. As he dies, his body slowly returns to visibility.) Another science fiction story is the humorous Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951). (Mistakenly accused of murder, a man injects himself with a secret formula that renders him invisible so he can elude authorities and trap the real killer—with the help of a couple of wacky private eyes.)

Fiction notwithstanding, in 1943—according to a later book, The Phila­delphia Experiment (Moore and Berlitz 1979)—invisibility supposedly became a reality. Allegedly, the United States Navy conducted an experiment with “electronic force fields” at the Phila­delphia Navy Yard that succeeded in rendering a battleship and its entire crew invisible! Reportedly, however, the experiment had such traumatic effects on the personnel that the research was abandoned, the project classified above top secret, and the entire incident publicly denied—another great government conspiracy.

In fact, the “experiment” was nothing but an outrageous hoax, perpetrated on credulous researchers by one Carl M. Allen, who also called himself Carlos Allende. Born in 1925, Allende was considered brilliant but lazy and given to practical jokes. He later (1969) admitted the invisibility claims were “false . . . the crazyest [sic] pack of lies I ever wrote.” Still later he retracted the confession, and the subsequent book and a 1984 movie helped keep the hoax alive (Stein 1993, 176–77).

But can we really be certain that no technology in this or another universe can ever be devised to cause invisibility? Well, we certainly can imagine such. “However,” according to Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained, “although there are many theoretical suggestions as to how invisibility might be achieved, for the time being ‘real’ invisibility or perfect transparency . . . remains firmly within the realm of science fiction” (McGovern 2007, 347). (To all those who would, from their armchairs, opine, say, about theoretical physics, we would only ask them to wait until they have accomplished invisibility and then get back to us.)

Extra-Dimensional Realms?

But suppose invisibility already exists. One may hypothesize means by which an entity supposedly appears and disappears, such as a “parallel universe” (Sachs 1980, 84) or “another dimension or space-time continuum” (Sachs 1980, 239). However, these concepts also are unproven, and cases supposedly proving them typically do not withstand scrutiny.

Consider, for instance, the case of Oliver Larch, whose disappearance on Christmas Eve 1889 is one for the annals of the incredible. Leaving the Larch family farmhouse on the outskirts of South Bend, Indiana, to fetch water, the eleven-year-old boy was soon heard crying out in alarm. His parents and neighbors, who had gathered to sing to Mrs. Larch’s organ music, rushed outside. By lantern light the group followed Oliver’s footsteps in the snow until, about halfway to the well, they abruptly ended! “Because it defied logical explanation,” writes Frank Edwards (1962, 103), “the disappearance of this boy was quietly filed away and forgotten.”

Unfortunately, this story succumbed to investigation. Like another disappearance narrative—that of Tennessee farmer David Lang, who in 1880 vanished in full view of witnesses but whose voice could be heard faintly at the site over subsequent years—the Larch story turns out to have been plagiarized from a trilogy of Ambrose Bierce short stories. The Larch tale bears obvious similarities to Bierce’s “Charles Ashmore’s Trail,” just as the Lang yarn does to his “The Difficulty of Crossing a Field” (Nickell 1980; 1988, 61–73). At the end of his “Mysterious Disappearances” trilogy is a postscript in which he relates the theories of an obvious crackpot who postulates, says Bierce, that “in the visible world there are void places” likened to the “cells in a Swiss cheese,” that somehow explain disappearances (Bierce 1893).

Alien Domains

At some point, such thinking crosses over into the paranormal. Take extra­terrestrials, for example. Alien beings are sometimes said to have the power of invisibility—not unlike fairies and other magical beings (to be discussed later). According to many witnesses, an extraterrestrial may suddenly come into view, or vanish in an instant, while others report similar behavior of UFOs. Some think the disappearing craft simply “returns to its original dimension” (Sachs 1980, 84), while there is also the implication that, before and after it was perceived, it was invisible.

A major proponent of invisible UFOs was Trevor James Constable—a man with strange ideas indeed. Consta­ble stated in his book Sky Creatures (1978, 7–8) that “the main direction in which UFO phenomena lead human inquiry” is “into the invisible.” Constable postulated that UFOs were “invisible” beings in an “invisible [infrared] realm.” They “occasionally emerge into the visible portion of the spectrum,” being sustained and propelled by “orgone energy” (1978, 12, 18).

Imagined by a crank named Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), orgone energy is said to be “life energy.” It supposedly causes stars to twinkle, produces lightning and other static electric phenomena, and animates dowsing rods—among many other functions. In the human body it purportedly recharges red blood cells through breathing and provides sexual energy (Gardner 1957, 250–262). Constable notwithstanding, Reich’s orgone proved to be imaginary and, after Reich ignored an injunction against selling his allegedly curative but worthless Orgone Accumulator boxes, he was tried, fined, and sentenced to two years in prison, where he died (Randi 1995, 222).

Constable proposed that there were two main types of UFOs: 1) actual living “critters” that inhabit Etheria, an invisible world of the atmosphere (just as fish live in the sea), and 2) inanimate craft piloted by Etherean intelligences—both propelled of course by orgone energy (Constable 1978; Sachs 1980, 71). He claimed to have captured both types on infrared film, but his work seems doubtful in the extreme, has never been conducted or reported in any responsible scientific manner, and has not been replicated by mainstream science. Not surprisingly, he rants against “official science” for “evading its responsibilities” to investigate UFOs rather than engage in “organized obscurantism and ridicule” (Constable 1978, 15–17). However, to the extent scientists have engaged in ridicule of UFOs, cranks like Trevor James Constable have mostly themselves—and their runaway imaginations—to blame.

Spirit Realm

Some claim that a person does not really die at death but instead becomes a ghost or spirit, supposedly formed of energy, and lives on, invisibly, in that state. As with aliens, some speak of an “invisible realm” for spirits (Guiley 2000, 356). Proof, however, is lacking. Moreover, we know from the science of neurology that when the brain dies, brain function ceases; any energy given off by the body necessarily dissipates. Nevertheless, “ghost hunters” purport to detect such energy using gadgetry—electromagnetic-field meters, thermal imaging cameras, and so on—but that approach is just so much pseudoscience (Nickell 2006).

Some claim the invisible entity may be viewed psychically. That is to say, a spirit of the dead, for instance, may be seen by a “medium”; or an angel, deity, or the like may be perceived by a “visionary.” Invariably, however, such seers are revealed to have fantasy-prone personalities (Wilson and Barber 1983; Nickell 1995, 40–42, 157, 162, 167, 176, 211–14), or they appear to be hallucinating (Nickell 2007, 80, 245–55, 260–62) or both—assuming they are not outright charlatans. There is no convincing scientific evidence that anyone has psychic powers of any kind—hence James Randi’s longstanding offer of a substantial reward to anyone who can prove he or she has such abilities under scientifically controlled conditions (Randi 1991, 151–53).

Consider Mary Ann Winkowski, for example. The real-life model for the central character in the fantasy TV series Ghost Whisperer, Winkowski claims to see and talk to earthbound spirits (not those who have supposedly “crossed over” to the Other Side). Since she was a child of four, she says, she has been able to “see” the dead at funerals even though they are invisible to others. She maintains that the spirits “smoke, comb their hair, change their clothes—all those things we always do too. Only I’ve never been able to figure out where they get the stuff from” (Winkowski 2000, 150).

As a child, Winkowski had what seem to have been imaginary playmates, although she insists they were not imaginary. As an adult she claims to receive special messages from paranormal entities and frequently encounters apparitions—as well as exhibiting numerous other traits consistent with being a classic fantasizer. There is a distinct lack of objective evidence for her claims that spirit entities exist (for instance, an anomaly in a client’s photo, supposedly depicting spirit energy, was actually caused by the flash rebounding from the camera’s wrist strap).

The evidence strongly suggests in­stead that Winkowski is simply participating in encounters of her own imagination (Nickell 2010). Therefore, the source of the “stuff” that puzzles her—the inanimate objects that are seen in the possession of apparitions that supposedly represent life energy—is clear. As Tyrrell (1973) noted, apparitions of visibly rendered invisible people invariably wear clothes and are accompanied by objects—just as they are in dreams—because the items are necessary to the apparitional drama. In other words, the inanimate objects, like the entities themselves, are imaginary.

Visionary Experiences?

As to the perceptions of reputed visionaries, similar problems present themselves. Take Joseph Smith, for instance, the Mormon founder who claimed to receive instructions from an entity, an angel of God named Moroni. He appeared at Smith’s bedside and told him how to find a holy account, written on gold plates and now known as the Book of Mormon. Regarded by many as a veritable confidence man, and certainly a person with an extraordinary propensity to fantasize (Wilson and Barber 1983), Smith appears to have experienced common “waking dreams” (hypnagogic hallucinations) that occur in the twilight between sleeping and waking (Nickell 2004, 296–303).

Or consider the famed Catholic visionary, Lucia Santos, who at age ten was one of three shepherd children who encountered the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal, in 1910. She and her seven-year-old cousin Jacinta Marto saw the dazzling apparition, radiant in white light, and Lucia convinced Jacinta’s brother Francisco to eventually “see” her too. Only Lucia ever talked to the Virgin, who supposedly appeared on the same day during each of several months, yet remained invisible to the onlookers. As it happened, Lucia was a precocious, imaginative, and charismatic child who had earlier apparitional experiences. Clearly a fantasizer who manipulated the other children (Nickell 2009), she was, her mother said, “nothing but a fake who is leading half the world astray” (qtd. in Zimdars–Swartz 1991, 86).

Magick?

During the witch craze of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, it was sometimes reported that devils called incubuses were either “visible or invisible.” Supposedly they would copulate with “witches,” whereupon, although the female was said to be in the throes of ecstasy, the incubus was not visible, yet at other times “a blacke vapor of the length and bignesse of a man” was allegedly seen to depart from her. Reginald Scot repeats such tales in his Discoverie of Witchcraft ([1584] 1972, 43–44), albeit with profound skepticism.

According to other legends, witches are themselves said to have the power of invisibility—as well as of flying, shape-shifting, astral projection, clairvoyance, and other supernatural powers (Guiley 1991, 647–50). Then again, according to gypsy lore, a man could become invisible to witches by doing as follows: “He must rise before the sun, turn all his clothes inside out and then put them on. Then he must cut a green turf and place it on his head. Thus he becomes invisible, for the witches believe he is under the earth, being themselves apparently bewitched by this” (Leland 1995, 148).

Occasionally, invisibility magic even purports to make someone invisible from himself. Usually, however, the intent is to prevent others from seeing him. One such fourteenth-century charm involves reciting Genesis 19:11: “And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness. . . .” This is predicated on the belief that holy writ will cast a spell of blindness over others—though that is not really the same, even if it did work, as actually becoming invisible (Cavendish 1970, 11:1453).

Yet a medieval grimoire offered a talisman promising to “make you invisible, even to spirits.” Reputedly, “You will be able to traverse the bosom of the seas, the bowels of the earth. Likewise you will be able to sweep through the air, nor will any human act be hidden from you.” One needed to “say only: Benatir, Caracrau, Dedos, Etinarmi” (Wedeck 1961, 47).

Among the magical items reputed to make their bearer invisible are various cloaks, amulets, rings, and potions. These may be found in folktales and legends (McGovern 2007, 347). Ac­cord­ing to one folklore authority (Leach 1984, 526–27), “Some beings, gods and ghosts and angels, need no such paraphernalia to appear and disappear, but dwarfs and men must have some talisman to do the trick.”

Behind all such claims and practices is the belief in magic—the attempt to use spells, offerings, invocations, or the like to supplant natural processes. Whereas the latter constitute the domain of science, magical thinking—the opposite of science (Randi 1995, 193)—is rooted in superstition.

Interestingly, throughout folklore certain entities that supposedly have the power of shapeshifting (the ability to alter their shape) also typically have the power of invisibility. Such reputed shapeshifters include ghosts, spiritual entities, monsters, witches, and others (Leach 1984, 1004–1005). A good example is the vampire, which may transform itself into a bat, feline, hound, insect, etc., as well as have the power of invisibility—in addition to being unseen in a mirror (Bunson 1993, 42, 70, 100, 176–77). Another example is the fairy (see Thompson [1955] 1989, 41–44). Shapeshifting’s link with invisibility emphasizes the latter’s magical/fantasy nature.

Deistic Power?

Various demigods and deities throughout history have been attributed power over visibility. In Greek mythology, Perseus, for instance, son of Zeus and Danaë, wore a helmet that conferred invisibility. This helped him become victorious over the snake-haired monster Medusa whom he decapitated (McGovern 2007, 347).

Some gods, like those of early Hin­du literature, were not only invisible but “could assume any visible form at will to favoured worshippers” (Hastings 1914, 7:405). This was also true of the god of the Bible. It was in order to be seen that he appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush (Exodus 3:2–4). In New Testament passages are references to “the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and to “the invisible things of him” (Romans 1:20).

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (Hastings 1914, 7:404):

The attribute of invisibility is one which is shared by gods, spirits, demons, the dead and the region of the dead, or the world of the gods, while the power of becoming invisible belongs to those beings as well as to certain mortals. Where invisibility was ascribed to gods or spirits, one simple reason probably was that in the case of most of them, apart from animal-gods or worshipful parts of nature, they were in fact unseen.

And that brings us back to our original point, that allegedly invisible entities—popular belief notwithstanding—are indistinguishable from imaginary beings. That is, an invisible entity necessarily means an immaterial one, one that therefore can exist only as a product of the imagination.

Notes

1. Invisible: Not seen in the visible electromagnetic spectrum (VES) (wavelength from 400nm to 690nm; frequency from 750THz to 435THz). Light is electromagnetic radiation (EMR), i.e., energy emission (oscillating transverse wave) produced when charged particles (electrons) are accelerated. The quantum of EMR is the photon.

2. Transparency: The condition of allowing some light (EMR) to pass through.

3. Camouflage: Concealment against background environment by resembling the background and disrupting patterns and edges. Certain technological claims of invisibility—using metamaterials, nanotubes, crystal prisms, and mirrors to create a two-dimensional illusion—are nothing more than static active/adaptive camouflage.

4. Again, light is EMR (see n. 1).

5. Ordinary matter: made of atoms and molecules, which are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, composed of fermions—namely quarks and leptons.

References

Bierce, Ambrose. 1893. Can Such Things Be?; quoted in Nickell 1988, 67–68.

Bunson, Matthew. 1993. The Vampire Encyclo­pedia. New York: Grammercy.

Cavendish, Richard, ed. 1970. Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Super­natural. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation.

Constable, Trevor James. 1978. Sky Creatures. New York: Pocket Books.

Edwards, Frank. 1962. Strangest of All. New York: Signet.

Gardner, Martin. 1957. Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover.

Gibson, Walter B. 1967. Secrets of Magic Ancient and Modern. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1991. Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical, & Unexplained. New York: Grammercy Books.

———. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, 2nd ed. New York: Checkmark Books.

Hastings, James, ed. 1914. Encyclopedia of Reli­gion and Ethics. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.

Leach, Maria, ed. 1984. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Leland, Charles Godfrey. 1995. Gypsy Sorcery & Fortune Telling. Edison, NJ: Castle Books.

Moore, William L., and Charles Berlitz. 1979. The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisi­bility. New York: Grosset and Dunlap.

McGovern, Una, ed. 2007. Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained. Edinburgh: Chambers.

Nickell, Joe. 1980. Ambrose Bierce and those ‘mysterious disappearance’ legends. Indiana Folklore 13:1–2; reprinted in Nickell 1988.

———. 1988. Secrets of the Supernatural. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 1995. Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings. Amherst, NY: Prome­theus Books.

———. 2004. The Mystery Chronicles. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2006. Ghost hunters. Skeptical Inquirer 30(5) (September/October): 23–26.

———. 2007. Adventures in Paranormal Investi­gation. Lexington: University Press of Ken­tucky.

———. 2009. The real secrets of Fatima. Skeptical Inquirer 33(6): 14–17.

———. 2010. The real “Ghost Whisperer.” Skeptical Inquirer 34(4): 16–17.

Randi, James. 1991. James Randi Psychic Investi­gator. London: Boxtree.

———. 1995. The Supernatural A-Z. London: Brock­hampton Press.

Sachs, Margaret. 1980. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York: Perigee Books.

Scot, Reginald. (1584) 1972. Discoverie of Witch­craft. Reprinted 1930 edition, New York: Dover.

Stein, Gordon. 1993. The Encyclopedia of Hoaxes. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Thompson, Stith. (1955) 1989. Motif–Index of Folk Literature, vol. 3. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Tyrrell, G.N.M. 1973. Apparitions. London: The Society for Psychical Research.

Wedeck, Harry E. 1961. A Treasury of Witchcraft. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.

Wilson, Sheryl C., and Theodore X. Barber. 1983. The fantasy-prone personality: Impli­cations for understanding imagery, hypnosis, and parapsychological phenomena. In Imagery, Current Theory, Research and Appli­cation, ed. Anees A. Sheikh, 340–90. New York: Wiley.

Winkowski, Mary Ann. 2000. As Alive, So Dead: Investigating the Paranormal. Avon Lake, OH: Graveworm Press.

Zimdars–Swartz, Sandra L. 1991. Encountering Mary. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Joe Nickell continues his investigation of Scottish enigmas—based in part on his excursion following the 2012 skeptics QED conference in England, with intrepid skeptical investigator Hayley Stevens and her father Andy, who is a photographer and professional guide. Part I (SI March/April 2013) tracked “The Silly Ness Monster” from lore to shore. Part II investigates the hauntings of Sterling Castle and the Royal airfield at Montrose, as well as the strange case of “A Fairy-Taught Witch.”

Green Ghost of Stirling Castle

Atop a great volcanic crag that is believed to have been fortified since ancient times, Stirling Castle was rebuilt again and again. Its first mention is in the eleventh-century Life of St. Monenna. From 1296, it was often occupied by the English, but then it returned to Scottish control after a six-month siege in 1342. Much of the castle as seen today was created by James IV as a magnificent residence and setting for his royal court (Yeoman 2011, 36–48). (See Figure 1.)

Various colorful legends of the castle survive. In the fifteenth century, an English chronicler named William of Worcester identified the site as the home of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table—a myth repeated by subsequent writers. A more down-to-earth (quite literally) story tells of an Italian-born alchemist, John Damiano, who in 1507 attempted to impress his patron, the king, by engaging in man-powered flight from the castle walls! Unfortunately, his strapped-on wings failed the brave birdman, who plummeted to earth yet survived by landing in the royal rubbish heap (Yeoman 2011, 38, 48–49). Today’s popular Stirling Castle legend is that of a ghostly lady in green.

The Green Lady is generally ac­knowledged to be “Stirling’s most famous ghost” (“Scottish” 2012). “Some say” (reports Kinnaird 2009, 38) “she was a poor lass, driven to despair—separated from her love, trapped, starving within the castle walls during King Edward’s siege of that great fortress.” Yet another version posits that “the Green Lady was the daughter of a governor of the castle who was betrothed to an officer garrisoned there.” Supposedly, “The poor man was accidentally killed by the girl’s father and she in despair and anguish is said to have thrown herself from the battlements to her death on the rocks 250 feet below” (“Stirling” 2012).

Others tell a very different tale. They claim the Green Lady was a maidservant to Mary Queen of Scots. According to a popular legend, she saved the queen after her four-poster bed’s curtains caught fire. Versions of the tale disagree as to the maidservant’s fate at this point, one having her somehow dying in making the rescue (“Scottish” 2012), while another says the door was broken open “and anxious arms strained to carry them both to safety” (Kinnaird 2009, 38). Yet another source, however, observes of the rescue that “history has failed to record whether or not she perished as she did so” (Love 1995, 22). Attempting to harmonize the discrepancy, Kinnaird (2009, 39) ventures, “of the girl little is known, though it is feared that she quickly perished from the wounds she received that fateful night.” (Remove the word feared from the preceding and it is easy to see how speculation could be transformed to alleged fact in the retelling of a tale.)

Lack of historical record has not prevented still more elaborate versions of the tale from proliferating. For instance, the maidservant is sometimes alleged to have been alerted to the fire by a dream of the queen being in danger; on being rescued, the queen purportedly “recalled a prophecy that her life would be endangered by a fire whilst she was at Stirling Castle” (“Stirling” 2012)—although no source is given. Folklorists call differing versions of folktales “variants”; they are evidence of the folkloric process at work.

Apparently by extension from this legendary event, the apparition is said to be “most commonly encountered before some major disaster” (Love 1995, 22). This is a folk motif (or narrative element)—Ghost warns the living—that is common to the folklore of England and Scotland (Thompson 1955, 2:435).

Further evidence of the Green Lady’s folkloric origins comes from the fact that “Scotland seems to be the home of the green-colored ghost, in particular the ‘Green Lady.’” Indeed, while “Accounts of blue, white, and grey ghosts are noted throughout the world,” those of the green variety are few, even in neighboring England, according to Dane Love. She devotes the entire first chapter of her Scottish Ghosts to these numerous apparitions, stating, “Tales of the Green Ladies haunting ancient castles are told the length of the country, from Dumfriesshire’s Comlongon Castle in the south to the Castle of Mey on the northern extremity of the mainland” (Love 1995, 17).

In his cultural history of ghosts, R.C. Finucane (1984) demonstrates that as people’s expectations concerning the dead change with time and place, so do their perceived specters. The profound iconographic peculiarity of green as the dominant color of Scottish ghosts is telling: it suggests that a supernatural basis is unlikely and is instead quite attributable to Scottish lore.

Figure 1. Scotland’s ancient Stirling Castle, crowning a massive volcanic crag, is allegedly haunted by “The Green Lady.” (Photo by Joe Nickell)

None of this is to suggest that people have never “seen” the Green Lady—or at least a “misty green figure” such as described by a cook in the officers’ mess (an army garrison was located at the castle). But the condition under which the phantom was perceived—while the percipient was engaged in routine activity (“Stirling” 2012)—is revealing, since apparitional experiences are often linked to such periods of reverie. In this dissociative state, the subconscious may yield up a spectral image that thus seems momentarily superimposed on the visual scene (Nickell 2012, 345).

Haunted Airfield

Known as “the phantoms of Montrose,” ghosts allegedly haunt the Royal Air Force (RAF) airfield at Montrose, Scotland. A variety of phenomena have been attributed to them, especially to one pilot who perished on a solo flight at Montrose on May 27, 1913.

The pilot was Lieutenant Desmond L. Arthur, an Irishman, whose biplane plummeted after a wing broke off. By 1916, sightings of the phantom aircraft and a ghost presumed to be that of Lt. Arthur haunted the RAF station. Unfortunately, popular stories of “the haunted airfield” (Cohen 1984; Caidin 1996) are long on sensationalism and mystery but short on evidence and documentation. Much of what is alleged seems attributable to the dynamics of folklore, the power of suggestion, and misperceptions of various types. For instance, a 1916 sighting of a ghostly figure in flight gear occurred just after a sleeping flight instructor “came awake with a start” (Caidin 1996, 35). Under such conditions, the likely explanation for the apparition is a common type of hallucination: known as a “waking dream,” it occurs in the twilight between being fully asleep and fully awake (Nickell 1995, 290; Nickell 2012, 353–354).

Supposedly, the ghost of Lt. Arthur flew on each airman’s first solo night flight at Montrose. Often, those making such flights felt a distinct tap on the shoulder, and some even claimed the ghost remarked, “O.K., son, I’ll take control.”

I heard this tale from former RAF Sgt. Pilot Clay Bird, an acquaintance of mine in Toronto, Canada, in the mid-1970s. Bird related to me his own spooky experience at Montrose. It was February 1942, and he was then making his first solo night flight. He was of course apprehensive—ghost or no. Flying a single engine two-seat trainer, he prepared for landing by sliding back the “hood” or canopy. (This was standard procedure so that in the event of a crash, rescue would be speedier. When an instructor occupied the rear seat, he slid his hood forward, the two sections then overlapping over a central, stationary section. The cockpit would thus be open front and rear. On solo flights, however, only the front section would be pushed back.)

Sgt. Bird began to concentrate on the approach. Suddenly he felt—really felt—a tap, tap, tap! The taps were then repeated, “as if he [the ghost] were getting impatient,” Bird remarked.

Understandably unnerved, he turned and actually saw the “ghost”: It was part of the adjusting strap! An eight-inch section of harness, extending from the point of buckling, was flapping in the breeze and hitting against his shoulder!

“I don’t scare easily,” Bird said, “but I’ll tell you I didn’t fly again that night!”

A Fairy-Taught Witch

In my travels in Scotland, I picked up a book, Scottish Witches, which devotes several pages to Isobel Gowdie. Of the witch hunts of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, when untold numbers from Scottish towns were burned at the stake, Gowdie’s case stands out, both for the voluntary nature of her confession (made in four parts over a six-week period in 1662) and for the rich amount of information it offered (Seafield 2009, 116–22). (For the complete text, see Wilby 2011, 37–52.)

Gowdie, of Auldearn, detailed how she and a dozen other witches had flown to sabbats riding on rushes and corn straws (charming them into flight with an invocation of the Devil). Gowdie also went on rides to fairyland and claimed that she had been taught much of her witchcraft by fairies (Guiley 1989, 142).

She and other witches, Gowdie stated, raised storms by reciting incantations while beating a wet rag on a rock. In confession number two (recorded in an antique English script called Secretary Hand, penned by a notary) she explains:

Quhen we rease the wind we tak a rag of cloth and weitis it in water and we tak a beetle and knokis the rage on a stone, and we say thryse ower I knok this ragg upon this stone, to raise the wind in the divellis name, it sall not lye untill I please again (damaged—words missing) we wold lay the wind, we dry the ragg and say (thryse ower) we lay the wind in the divellis nam (damaged—words missing) ryse q[uhi]ll we or I lyk (word crossed out) to rease it again, And if the wind will not lye instantlie (damaged—words missing) wee call upon o[u]r spiritis and say to him thieffe thieffe conjure the wind and caws it to (damaged—words missing) we haw no power of rain bot ve will rease the wind q[uhe]n ve please, he maid us believ (damaged—words missing) th[e]r wes no god besyd him . . .

(Quoted in Wilby 2011, 43).

In addition, Gowdie said, the witches hexed children (by inflicting injuries on clay dolls), damaged a farmer’s crops (by unearthing an unchristened child’s corpse and burying it in the farmer’s manure heap), and so on (Guiley 1989, 142). When they became bored, the witches metamorphosed into animals. (For example, to turn into a cat, Gowdie recited three times: “I shall go into a cat, / With sorrow and sign and a black shot / And I shall go in the Devil’s name / Ay while I come home again” [Cawthorne 2006, 129–30].)

Sexual activity was central to the witches’ coven. At the sabbats Gowdie claimed to have intercourse with the well-endowed Devil and with various demons. She even copulated with one demon lover while she lay in her own bed, she maintained, with her husband asleep beside her (Wilson 1971, 419). The basic elements of Gowdie’s account were supported by another witch, Janet Braidhead. Together they implicated more than thirty others in their confessions. There is no existing record of any of these people’s fate, but it is widely assumed that Gowdie and Braidhead, at least, were put to death (Seafield 2009, 117).

Now researchers have wondered how to explain Gowdie’s claims. Mon­tague Summers, a believer in true magic, thought her account “substantially true” and only lamented being unable to identify the leader of the coven! (Robbins 1959, 232). Some­what similarly, skeptic Owen Rachleff (1971, 105–117) suggested that the Devil was actually the coven leader in costume, complete with “cloven-shaped boots,” that drugs induced the “flying” sensation, and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, some have suggested that Gowdie may simply have lapsed into madness (Seafield 2009, 120), what Walter Scott (1857, 281–2) termed “some peculiar species of lunacy.”

I think these views, however, represent the same false dichotomy—a choice between believing the experiences true (or at least staged) or thinking the claimant is mad—that is often posed in the matter of alien abductions. As we now know, most self-claimed abductees are sane and normal but have traits indicative of fantasy-proneness, coupled with magical thinking and common hallucinations (Nickell 2007, 251–58).

The magical thinking engaged in by Gowdie and others is ubiquitous. It can be no coincidence that the hexes and spells practiced by the “witches” were simply those common to Scottish lore. (Hitting a wet rag against a stone to conjure up a storm is only one example of sympathetic magic. The voodoo-like use of dolls as substitutes for people is another.) That witches like Gowdie believed them effectual is hardly proof that they were actually so. Instead, it suggests they counted (or reinterpreted) any seeming successes, while rationalizing away any failures. This is the effect of what is called confirmation bias.

As to Gowdie’s demonic sex encounters, these may have been only fantasies stemming from sexual repression: Gowdie was apparently the bored, childless wife of a boorish farmer (Cavendish 1970, 1143). Indeed, her description of sex with a demon in her own bed sounds like earlier reports of visits by incubi (medieval demons who came at night to copulate with women). Today we understand that the incubus is a product of the imagination, akin to such other night visitors as ghosts, angels, vampires, and aliens who appear in “waking dreams.” As discussed earlier, these are simple hallucinations that occur in the interface between sleep and wakefulness and seem particularly vivid and realistic (Nickell 2007, 254–55).

Similarly, the witches’ reports of “flying” may have been due to out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Also called astral travel, this phenomenon of seemingly leaving the body and floating or flying is another hallucinatory type of experience (Nickell 2007, 254). Often one “seems to be able to travel to, and perceive, distant locations on Earth or in nonworldly realms” (Guiley 1991, 419)—hence, no doubt, Gowdie’s trip to fairyland. (OBEs are still often reported, with one-fourth of Western adults believing they have had such an experience. It can occur when one is awake or sleeping and under certain conditions, such as stress [Guiley 1991, 420].)

Significantly, magical thinking, waking dreams, and out-of-body ex­peri­ences are all associated with the fantasy-prone personality, as Wilson and Barber (1983) make clear in their classic study. So is the tendency to have imaginary companions, such as an invisible friend, guardian angel, alien communicant, or the like; Gowdie said each of the witches “has a Spirit to wait upon us, when we please to call upon him” (qtd. in Cavendish 1970, 1144).

No one in Gowdie’s time knew what to make of her reported experiences—apparently including her. Even today many people still engage in magical thinking and believing in supernatural powers, including witchcraft. Fortunately, others of us look instead to science and reason, seeking to learn about the real, natural world in which we actually live.

References

Caidin, Martin. 1996. Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings. Lakeville, MN: Galde Press, 25–39. 2006.

Cavendish, Richard, ed. 1970. Man, Myth & Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural, Volume 9. New York: Marshal Cavendish Corp.

Cawthorne, Nigel. 2006. Witches: History of a Persecution. Edison, NJ: Chartwell Books.

Cohen, Daniel. 1984. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts. New York: Dorset Press, 111–13.

Finucane, R.C. 1984. Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1989. The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft. New York: Facts on File.

———. 1991. Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mys­tical, & Unexplained. New York: Gramercy Books.

Kinnaird, David. 2009. Tales of the Stirling Ghost Walk. Online at: www.stirlingghostwalk.com; accessed September 4, 2012.

Love, Dane. 1995. Scottish Ghosts. New York: Barnes & Noble, 17–38.

Nickell, Joe. 1995. Entities. Amherst, NY: Pro­me­theus Books.

———. 2007. Adventures in Paranormal Investi­gation. Lexington: University Press of Ken­tucky.

———. 2012. The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Amherst, NY: Prome­theus Books.

Rachleff, Owen S. 1971. The Occult Conceit: A New Look at Astrology, Witchcraft & Sorcery. Chicago: Cowles.

Robbins, Rossell Hope. 1959. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Bonanza Books.

Scott, Walter. 1857. Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, 2nd ed. London: William Tegg & Co.

Scottish Castle Ghosts. 2012. Online at: http://scotlandwelcomesyou.com/scottish-castle-ghosts/; accessed September 4, 2012.

Seafield, Lily. 2009. Scottish Witches. New La­mark, Scotland: Waverly Books.

Stirling Castle. 2012. Online at: http://www.visitdunkeld.com/stirling-castle.htm; accessed September 4, 2012.

Thompson, Stith. 1955. Motif-Index of Folk Literature. Rev. ed., 6 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Wilby, Emma. 2011. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie. Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press.

Wilson, Cheryl C., and Theodore X. Barber. 1983. The fantasy-prone personality: Impli­cations for understanding imagery, hypnosis, and parapsychological phenomena. In Imagery, Current Theory, Research and Application, ed. Anees A. Sheikh, 340–90. New York: Wiley.

Wilson, Colin. 1971. The Occult: A History. New York: Random House.

Yeoman, Peter. 2011. Stirling Castle (official souvenir guide). N.P.: Historic Scotland.

Cassandra Vanzant calls herself an “extraterrestrial communicator,” among other things. I appeared with her on CBS’s Anderson, hosted by journalist Anderson Cooper. (The show aired on April 24, 2012.) Vanzant claims to be in communication with alien intelligences whose messages she allegedly receives telepathically and then “translates.” She informed Anderson that he, too, had a star family, the “Lamarians” living in “the fourth dimension.” (See Nickell 2012.)

New Age Contactee

Vanzant’s claims are legion. At one time or another (sometimes under the pseudonym “Cheryl Hill”) she has acted as a tarot-card reader and instructor, ghost hunter, spiritualist medium, angel communicant, ordained minister (nondenominational), professional psychic (although she failed to foresee a serious car accident in which she was a passenger), and of course, telepathic “Master Alien Communicator” (“About the author” 2012; “About me” 2012; Vanzant 2012a).

When an amused Anderson Cooper asked his TV audience how many believed Vanzant’s claimed ability to communicate with aliens, a single person raised her hand. The audience was right to be skeptical. Ms. Vanzant is only the most recent embodiment of the contactee, a person who purports to be in repeated communication with extraterrestrials.

Contactees emerged in the early 1950s, following an influx of flying saucer reports. The Space Brothers were supposedly making themselves known to a select group of chosen persons (who thus function rather like the prophets in religions of yore) to spread their supposedly advanced wisdom to mere Earthlings. The contactees tended to be mystical folk of a type we would today call New Agers, embracing Eastern “mystery” religions, notably Hinduism, as well as Western Messianic traditions (Story 2001, 134). Today, contactees have been largely supplanted by abductees who themselves now also frequently serve as alleged cosmic messengers (Nickell 2007, 255–56).

Fantasizing

Revealingly, like many other claimed extraterrestrial communicants (Nickell 2007, 251–58), Ms. Vanzant has several of the traits associated with a fantasy-prone personality. Such a person is sane and normal but with an unusual ability to fantasize, according to a pioneering study by Wilson and Barber (1983).

For example, Vanzant has ostensible imaginary friends (“Artoli” and “Mada­scrat”), claims to receive special messages from higher beings (not only extraterrestrials but also angels and spirit guides), purports to have psychic powers and fortunetelling abilities, reports having had an out-of-body/near-death experience (NDE), and so on, as well as appearing to generally have a rich fantasy life (Vanzant 2012a; see also her website, http://www.starfamilymessages.com).

Describing her near-death experience Van­zant (2012a) recalls floating up to the hospital roof and onward, “toward the stars.” She soon entered a “green tunnel,” then found herself “surrounded by angels, extraterrestrials, and spirit guides,” each of whom gave her a message. The experience, she says, “started my quest.” (The NDE—although only a hallucination produced by an altered brain state—is often life-transforming for the experiencer [Blackmore 1996].)

The ET Tongue

Vanzant (2012a) purportedly “channels” her clients’ star families, first speaking to them in the “ET language” (“Twinkle” 2012). This is basically a form of glossolalia or “speaking in tongues,” like that mentioned in the Bible as “an unknown tongue” and “the tongues of . . . angels” (1 Corinthians 13:1; 14:2–9). It is practiced by Pentecostals and others. Linguistic studies show that glossolalia is typically “psychobabble”—nonsense syllables used as pseudolanguage (Nickell 1993, 103–109). In this respect, Vanzant seems to be following in the footsteps of psychic-medium Helene Smith who, in 1894, claimed to have visited the planet Mars in a trance, describing flora and fauna, houses, cars, and other artifacts of civilization, even supposedly bringing back the Martian language—although it proved syntactically to be like French (Baker and Nickell 1992, 199).

In any event, after speaking in the supposed ET family tongue, Vanzant (2012a) then provides “translations.” Here is one of her purportedly channeled “Star Family Messages”—this one “From the Counsel [sic] for Arbitrary Enlightenment”:

We of the Counsel wish to come to you to speak of the pertinent subjects that are randomly designed to complicate the matters of enlightenment or ascension on this Earth plane. Know that we are here to help you discover and put to rest the speculations of what is this and what is that, and when will this occur and when will that occur. Seek not that which you have heard or read about from others, for everyone on this earthly plane has their [sic] own truths. When you see the illusion of what is being perpetrated against the whole of the human race, then you will see clearer that which is the clearest of all—this truth is you and in you [and so on]. (“Twinkle” 2012)

Analysis

I studied Vanzant’s “translations,” finding them to be rife with New Age clichés. In the passage just quoted, examples are “on this earthly plane” and the reference to people having “their own truths.” Further on in the message, we find such additional familiar expressions as “the truth shall set you free” (a biblical quotation!), “your inner-wisdom,” “existed on a different plane,” “a parallel dimension,” “God, in His infinite wisdom,” “a higher realm,” “the Other World,” etc. (“Twinkle” 2012). Not surprisingly, Van­zant herself also talks like this, referring to “the energy we all came from,” “we’re all connected,” “on the right path,” “using me as a channel,” and so on (Vanzant 2012a). The ET texts seem indistinguishable from her own New Age speech.¹

Her meetings with those seeking star-family messages seem like a cross between a prayer session (she asks subjects to close their eyes), a séance (she supposedly channels an invisible, otherworldly entity), and a fortuneteller’s reading (she offers suggestions and expectations for the future). In short, they are just what one would expect from a fantasizer with Vanzant’s background.

Interestingly, given that the star family messages are all in “the same language,” I find it suspicious that opening passages of messages addressed to two different people—both translated as “We come to you . . .”—are composed of entirely different sound sequences.² Of course, this is just what we would expect if Vanzant were indeed only producing psychobabble. (She politely declined my request to provide both a written text and translation of the same “message” [Vanzant 2012b].) In light of the evidence, skepticism of Vanzant’s claims is warranted.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Ed Beck, who did considerable online research for this article and helped in various other ways.

Notes

1. Of course the “messages” are sometimes in a heightened form compared to her ordinary speech, just as Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” has a more elevated diction than his routine letters.

2. See Vanzant 2012a (backstage clips from Anderson).

References

About the Author. 2012. Ad for Cassandra Vanzant’s 2012: Coming Out of the Coma. Online at www.amazon.com/2012-Coming-Channeled-Extraterrestrial-Beings/dp/1466416084; accessed May 18, 2012.

About Me—Cheryl Hill. 2012. Online at www.helium.com/users/339567; accessed May 18, 2012.

Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, & Other Mysteries. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Blackmore, Susan. 1996. Near-Death Experiences, in Stein 1996, 425–440.

I Was Abducted by Aliens. 2012. Anderson show episode, CBS, aired April 24 (includes on-air statements, other taped portions, online clips, personal communications, etc.).

Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle: Weeping Icons, Relics, Stigmata, Visions & Healing Cures. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2007. Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2012. States of mind: Some perceived ET encounters. Skeptical Inquirer 36(6) (November/December): 12–15.

Stein, Gordon, ed. 1996. The Encyclopedia of the Para­normal. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Story, Ronald D., ed. 2001. The Encyclopedia of Extra­terrestrial Encounters. New York: New Amer­ican Library.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—A Channeled Message by Cassandra Vanzant. 2012. Online at http://lightworkersworld.com/2012/03/twinkle-twinkle-little-star-a-channeled-message-by-Cassandra-Vanzant/; accessed May 15, 2012.

Vanzant, Cassandra. 2012a. In “I Was Abducted” 2012.

———. 2012b. Personal communication, May 22.

Wilson, Sheryl C., and Theodore X. Barber. 1983. The Fantasy-Prone Personality. In A.A. Sheikh, ed., Imagery: Current Theory, Research and Application. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Can people move or alter physical objects simply by using a hidden power of the mind called psychokinesis? I have encountered many claims of such powers in the course of my work (since 1969) as a paranormal investigator. And I have pretended to have such ability myself—both as a professional stage magician and mentalist (a magician specializing in apparent psychic feats). In the fall of 2012, I attended a workshop that enabled me to investigate the latest popular expression of psychokinetic metal bending.

Psychokinesis

The term psychokinesis (formerly telekinesis), or PK, derives from the Greek words for “mind” and “motion.” Together with extrasensory perception (ESP), it constitutes what parapsychologists refer to as “psi” to describe the two seemingly closely related phenomena. However, the existence of psi has never been proven and, indeed, according to a sympathetic source: “Despite decades of research, psi continues to elude physical and quasi-physical theories of how it functions; it operates outside the bounds of time and space” (Guiley 1991, 468).

PK describes the alleged power of mind over matter, including such “micro-PK” acts as subtly influencing how thrown dice will land, or “macro-PK” feats like levitating a table or producing so-called “poltergeist” effects (actually, typically the tricks of children¹). Psychokinetic metal bending is another alleged macro-PK phenomenon.

Geller the PK Marvel

Figure 1. Uri Geller seemed able to bend keys and cutlery with his thoughts. (Drawing by Joe Nickell)

It appears that the first major performer of apparent PK metal bending (PK-MB) was Israeli-born former fashion model and nightclub magician, Uri Geller (b. 1946) (Figure 1). Claiming to be guided by super beings from a distant planet, Geller appeared to read minds, bend keys and cutlery with PK, see while blindfolded, and perform other feats—all of which skilled magicians easily duplicate. (I, for example, have driven a car while blindfolded [Nickell with Fischer 1992, 77].) He typically refused to perform when magicians were observing but, nevertheless, was occasionally caught cheating.

Renowned American magician and psychic investigator James “The Amazing” Randi once observed Geller up close. Posing as an editor when Geller performed in the offices of Time magazine, Randi saw the simple tricks behind Geller’s wonderworking. For example, while Geller pretended to cover his eyes as a secretary made a simple drawing, he actually peeked, thus enabling him to appear to read her mind and reproduce the drawing. Again, while supposedly bending a key “by concentration,” Geller had instead bent it against a table when he thought he was unobserved. (For more on Geller’s methods, see Randi 1982.)

More Benders

Geller was soon imitated by other “psychics” who discovered that they, too, could bend keys and spoons. One was Judy Knowles, who impressed London physics professor and parapsychologist John Hasted with her apparent ability. Hasted invited James Randi to observe tests of Knowles in a lab at Bath. Randi arrived with colleagues and his checkbook, offering Ms. Knowles $10,000 if she successfully passed the test, which was designed by Harry Collins of the University of Bath. Collins had tested other spoon benders, but none had been successful, and some children had been caught cheating.

Briefly, the test involved Knowles holding the spoon in a single hand rested on a table before a two-way mirror. Observers, equipped with a video camera, were on the opposite, see-through side of the mirror. A candle was used to blacken the bowl of the test spoon so that, if one attempted to cheat—using the thumb to press against the bowl and so cause bending—the attempt would be revealed by the resulting smudging. Knowles tried unsuccessfully to bend the spoon using PK, but after nearly two hours, she quit the test. Randi and colleagues concluded Knowles had been unsuccessful, while Hasted and associates called the results “inconclusive” (Randi 1978, 36–39).

In the early 1980s, two young Americans, Steve Shaw and Mike Edwards, convinced parapsychologists at a psychical research laboratory in St. Louis, Missouri, that they could use their PK powers to move objects and bend metal under test conditions. In 1983, however, the duo revealed that they had perpetrated a hoax—now known as Project Alpha. Having worked secretly with James Randi, they demonstrated that credulous scientists could be fooled like anyone else (Shaw 1996, 617–18; Randi 1995, 253–54). Shaw has gone on to become the internationally acclaimed mentalist Banachek.

As a colleague and friend of Bana­chek, I have seen his metal-bending effects firsthand many times, especially at one of his workshops for fellow magicians and mentalists (Amherst, New York, June 16, 2009). His remarkable fork bend, whereby the tine of the fork is seen to visibly bend without being touched, is superior to any of Uri Geller’s effects—according to no less an authority than the late skeptic and magician Martin Gardner (Shaw 1996, 615).

Evolutionary Phenomenon

Figure 2. Ron Nagy teaches well-attended workshops in “PK” spoon bending at Lily Dale spiritualist village. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

PK metal bending has evolved over time. As we have seen, performers ap­peared to bend metal by simply looking at it or stroking it lightly. Some­times they even allegedly bent metal remotely. The performer might suggest, for instance, that people’s keys have mysteriously bent in their pockets or purses. In fact keys may become accidentally bent in various ways (as by the key being used in haste so that the partially inserted key is turned in the lock prematurely). Such an already bent key may go unnoticed until the performer calls attention to it (Shaw 1996, 619).

Major claimants of PK-MB were —in addition to Uri Geller—Jean-Pierre Girard (France), Masuaki Riyota (Japan), and Stephen North (England), as well as another Israeli, Ronni Marcus. (In 1994, Unsolved Mysteries asked me to observe Marcus’s act at a conference. However, a producer subsequently called to say that the conference organizers had refused to allow me to participate, and the TV show therefore withdrew its interest. I attended anyway, undercover, but Marcus was a no-show amid revelations he had been caught cheating in California and had returned to Israel [Randi 1994].)

Soon, honest magicians and mentalists got into the act, demonstrating that very convincing PK-MB effects could be produced by trickery. The inescapable inference was that perhaps the “real” effects were accomplished by tricks also. Among various shared secrets, some were sold through magic supply houses, including Mark Walker’s book Key Bending (which also gave secrets to bending cutlery) (Abbott’s 1987, 337). Top-flight demonstrators of the magic art of pseudo PK-MB are James Randi and Banachek.

Later, laypeople began to try their hand, quite literally. Beginning in the 1980s, at metal-bending parties and workshops attendees began surprising themselves with their newfound PK-MB abilities. They typically bent spoons with their hands while insisting they did not exert sufficient force to cause the extent of bending achieved. What was going on?

Hands-On

Figure 3. Cutlery was bent by the author at a Lily Dale workshop. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

On the evening of August 23, 2012, my wife, Diana, and I showed up at a workshop in Lily Dale, a tiny village in Western New York that represents the world’s largest spiritualist community. The session was conducted by Ron Nagy, curator of the Lily Dale Museum and an old friend (Figure 2). In the spirit of openness he had invited me to attend, and we mutually agreed not to be adversarial. That is, he would not “out” me as a notorious skeptic, and I would not be troublesome.

The ad for the workshop defined psychokinesis as “the movement of objects without physical contact,” then went on to promise:

This workshop will explain the basic mind over matter aspects of bending metal objects and also explain how the mind and body can react together and cause harmonious health conditions. This workshop is intended to be fun and also provide experiences previously believed to be impossible that should reduce some of the artificial limits we have placed in our lives. It may seem remarkable that with very little training one might be able to accomplish this extraordinary proof that belief in spirit and mind over matter is more powerful than certain realities. (“Spoon Bending” 2012)

For the next two hours, we held spoons (and occasionally forks) in our hands as we implored them to respond to our thoughts. To free our minds, Ron had us—acting in unison—jump in the air and turn around twice, while thinking the metal was bending. Sure enough, for all but one or two of the thirty or so participants, we achieved bending. I had especially good results. (See Figure 3.) Some participants seemed quite mystified.

Revelation

However, I could see early on that a positive attitude was helpful: Being confident that the spoon would easily bend helped overcome the negative first impression that the metal was resistant. Such is the power of positive thinking.

What I think really happens in such situations is that one simply exerts sufficient strength to cause the bending (I was even able to put spiral twists into the handle—again see Figure 3) while being somewhat distracted from the process. An ability to dissociate (to separate a mental activity from the main stream of consciousness) seems a definite asset, because the bending relies heavily on the ideomotor effect (the psychological phenomenon in which, unconsciously, one moves his or her hand sufficiently to affect dowsing rods, Ouija-board planchettes, and the like [Nickell 2012, 348–49]).

PK-MB partygoers have inadvertently described the very processes I have explained. One wrote, “. . . we needed to create an atmosphere of excitement and emotional arousal.” The party host, an engineer named Jack Houck, “encouraged us to be noisy and excited.” The writer added, “The only thing I noticed is that spoon bending seemed to require a focused attention. You had to try to get it to bend, and then you had to forget about it. Maybe talk to someone else while you rubbed the spoon. . . . If you kept watching the spoon, worrying over it, it was less likely to bend” (“Spoon Bending” 2013).

The ad for our workshop defined PK as occurring “without physical contact”; this means that PK was not demonstrated by the participants, since they had held the cutlery in both hands in the very way one would in order to deliberately bend it. But this workshop did not involve trickery. The only deception that seemed involved was self-deception.

Acknowledgments

CFI Librarian Lisa Nolan helped with the research on PK parties and Library Director Tim Binga provided other assistance.

Note

For a discussion, see Nickell 2012, 325–31, 333–41.

References

Abbott’s Catalog 23. 1987. Colon, Michigan: Abbott’s Magic Manufacturing Co.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1991. Encyclopedia of the Strange, Mystical & Unexplained. New York: Gramercy Books.

Nickell, Joe. 2012. The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1992. Mysterious Realms: Probing Paranormal, Historical, and Forensic Enigmas. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Randi, James. 1978. Special report: Tests and investigations of three psychics. Skeptical Inquirer 2(2) (Spring/Summer): 25–26.

———. 1982. The Truth About Uri Geller. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 1994. Ronnie at Berkeley. Online at www.mindspring.com/~anson/randi-hotline/1994/0010.html; accessed April 26, 2013.

———. 1995. The Supernatural A-Z. London: Brockhampton Press.

Shaw, Steve. 1996. In Stein 1996, 613–19.

Spoon Bending. 2012. Ad for workshop, Lily Dale Assembly 2012 Program: Legacy of Love, 47.

Spoon Bending. 2013. Online at http://www.uri-geller.com/mct27.htm; accessed February 12, 2013.

Stein, Gordon, ed. 1996. The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Although Sasquatch—after 1958 generally called Bigfoot—is most associated with the Pacific North­west (a region loosely ranging from northern California to Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and southern Alaska), sightings are reported throughout the United States and Canada (Bord and Bord 2006). Many of these turn out to be hoaxes—notably Roger Patterson’s filming of “Bigsuit” in 1967. (He used a gorilla suit purchased from costume-seller Phil Morris, converted it to Bigfoot by modifying the face and adding pendulous breasts, and enlisted a man named Bob Heironimus to wear the suit [Long 2004; Nickell 2011, 68–73].) Many other Bigfoot sightings are no doubt misperceptions resulting from expectation and excitement (Nickell 2011, 94–96).

But misperceptions of what? Over my years as a skeptical cryptozoologist, I have looked for real, natural lookalikes to explain various reported “monsters.” For example, the round-faced, gliding, “Flatwoods Monster” of 1952 with its “terrible claws” seemed almost certainly to be a barn owl, just as “Mothman” of 1966, with its large, shining red eyes, could be identified as a barred owl (Nickell 2011, 159–66, 175–81). Again the legendary “giant eel” of Lake Crescent, Newfoundland, was probably inspired by otters swimming in a line (who are also known to be mistaken for some lake and sea monsters) (Nickell 2007; 2012a). Given these and other examples of monster lookalikes—I think of my work in this regard as that of a paranatural naturalist—we may ask: Are there animals that might be mistaken for Bigfoot?

A Candidate

As it happens, there is one especially good candidate for many sightings of Bigfoot—even for some of the non-hoaxed imprints of his big feet. The earliest record of potential Sasquatch footprints comes from an explorer named David Thompson, who while crossing the Rockies at what is today Jasper, Alberta, came upon a strange track in the snow. Measuring eight by fourteen inches, it had four toes with short claw marks, a deeply impressed ball of the foot, and an indistinct heel imprint (Green 1978, 35–37; Hunter with Dahinden 1993, 16–17).

The claws do not suggest the legendary man-beast. Indeed, John Napier, a primate expert at the Smithsonian Institution and author of Bigfoot (1973, 74), thought the print could well have been a bear’s (whose small inner toe might not have left a mark). Thompson himself thought it likely “the track of a large old grizzled bear” (quoted in Hunter with Dahinden 1993, 17).

But what about sightings? It is not uncommon for eyewitnesses to state that at first impression their Bigfoot looked like a bear, thus proving the similarity (see Figure 1). Yet many go on to rule out that identification, based on some aspect of appearance or behavior. However, as considerable evidence in fact shows, many Sasquatch/Bigfoot encounters may well have been of bears. Mistaken identifications could be due to poor viewing conditions, such as the creature being seen only briefly, or from a distance, in shadow or at nighttime, through foliage, or the like—especially while the observer is, naturally, excited. Non-expert observation is also problematic, as is expectancy, the tendency of people who are expecting to see a certain thing to be misled by something resembling it (Nickell 2012b, 347).

Comparisons

A published compilation of 1,002 American and Canadian Sasquatch/Bigfoot reports from 1818 to November 1980 is instructive (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–310). Analysis of the cases (which are presented as brief abstracts) reveals that not only general anatomy but also color variations, footprints, behavior, and geographical distribution of Sasquatch/Bigfoot are often quite similar to those of bears.

Anatomy. Bigfoot is typically de­scribed as a large, hairy man-beast. It is said to walk on two legs, to have long arms, large shoulders, and, often, no neck. Although it is frequently likened to an ape, it has been reported many times to have claws (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–310; Wright 1962).

Like Bigfoot, bears can appear as large, big-shouldered, hairy, manlike beasts. Their anatomy is consistent with bipedal standing (hence the long “arms”) though much less so with walking—and, according to the Smithsonian expert John Napier (1973, 62), “At a distance a bear might be mistaken for a man when standing still. . . .” Consider this incident of a creature on the porch of a ranch house in western Washington State in 1933 (related at second hand, years later, by the daughter of the woman who observed it):

It was moonlight outside, and at first she thought it was a bear on the porch, but this animal was standing on its back legs and was so large it was bending over to look in the window. She said it appeared over 6 feet tall and it didn’t look like a bear at all in the moonlight. She said in a few minutes it walked over [no doubt only a couple of steps] and jumped off the porch and started around the house. She went into the kitchen so she could get a good look and she said it looked just like an ape. (Lund 1969)

Ape, Bigfoot, bear? You decide, but remember, this was bear territory. And a standing black bear can be up to seven feet tall (Yosemite 2013).

During several days in April 2013 in New York State’s massive Adirondack Park, where there are scattered Bigfoot encounters, I talked to hunters and others who had witnessed standing bears. One man, at whose remote home I boarded for an evening, told me of once standing face to face with a black bear: it was on its hind legs looking in the window at him!

Figure 1. Split-image illustration compares a standing bear (left) to the creature it is often mistaken for, Sasquatch/Bigfoot (right). Drawing by Joe Nickell.

The often-reported action of Bigfoot running on all fours is entirely consistent with a bear, as in a case of late April 1897. Near Sailor, Indiana, two farmers witnessed a man-sized beast covered with hair walking on its hind legs, but it “afterwards dropped on its hands and disappeared with rabbit-like bounds” (Bord and Bord 2006, 23, 221). No doubt the “hands” were really paws. Again, in 1970, a Manitoba man saw a seven-foot, dark Bigfoot “stand up” by the roadside at night. And in 1972, at an Iowa state park, a seven-foot brown Bigfoot was shot at and “ran away on all fours” (Bord and Bord 2006, 260, 264; see also Green 1978, 246, 178).

One Bigfoot report was inspired when, in April 1978, a Maryland farmer saw a “bear” walking upright across a field, followed by two “smaller creatures on all fours” (Bord and Bord 2006, 300). This is consistent with a mother bear in alert mode with cubs. Bears often stand on their hind legs to look and to sniff the air, and black bears usually have a litter of two, born in January or early February (“Black Bears” 2013; Whitaker 1996, 703). And so, apparently, a stated bear encounter was converted by enthusiasts into a sighting of “Bigfoot.” Some months earlier, in the fall of 1977, two South Dakota boys (ages twelve and nine) saw only “long hairy legs” in the bushes (Bord and Bord 2006, 294), and that likely bear became another “Bigfoot.” Reports of Bigfoot’s gait as “peculiar” or the like (Bord and Bord 2006, 290, 291) could be consistent with the awkward gait of an upright bear.

Coloration. Like descriptions of Sasquatch/Bigfoot, black bears can not only be black but also dark brown, brown, cinnamon, blond, off-white, and white (Herrero 2002, 131–34). The same is true of grizzly (brown) bears (Ursus arctos), which—just like a Bigfoot reported in northern California (Bord and Bord 2006, 246)—often has dark-brown, silver-tipped hair (Herrero 2002, 133; Whitaker 1996, 706).

“To confuse the novice further,” states a noted authority, “there are also variations in color patterning on the coats of each species.” This is due to genetic factors and to molting. With most bears, a lightening in the color of the coat occurs between molts (Herrero 2002, 133, 134).

In nighttime sightings, color may go unreported, but the animal’s eye-shine is frequently described. There are numerous reports of “gleaming eyes,” “large glowing eyes,” “green shining eyes,” “glowing amber eyes,” and the like, including occasionally “red eyes” (Bord and Bord 2006, 259–300). Generally, bear eyeshine is reported as ranging “from yellow to yellowish orange, though some people report seeing red or green” (“Backpacker” 2013). The North American Bear Center mentions a black bear with mismatched eyes, due to an injured eye that “shines red rather than yellow” (“Mating” 2013).

Footprints. Bigfoot has been re­ported to leave tracks that had two to six toes and ranged in length up to twenty or more inches (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–310). Of course, many large tracks—like the fourteen-inch ones of Patterson’s “Bigsuit” creature—are hoaxed (Nickell 2011, 66–75; Daegling 2004, 157–87).

As to bears, Napier (1973, 150–51) observes that “The hindfoot of the bear is remarkably human-like,” and that near the end of summer when worn down, the claws “may not show up at all” in tracks. Also at moderate speeds the hindfoot and forefoot prints may superimpose to “give the appearance of a single track made by a bipedal creature” (Napier 1973, 151).

Bears’ five-toed hindprints range from about seven to nine inches long for the black bear to approximately ten to twelve for the grizzly (brown) bear, although some can be more than sixteen inches, and “In soft mud, tracks may be larger” (Whitaker 1996, 704, 707). As bear expert Herrero cautions: “I don’t give measurements because track size varies so much depending on substratum. If a track seems very large, look at other track characteristics.”

A bear’s smallest toe (the innermost one, as opposed to that of humans) “may fail to register” (Whitaker 1996, 704), no doubt explaining many four-toed “Bigfoot” tracks. As well, “In mud a black bear’s toe separation may not show” (Herrero 2002, 178), possibly giving rise to the illusion that—depending on just where there might be a slight separation—a “four”-toed track might appear to have been made with only two very broad toes, or even perhaps three. Rare, six-toed tracks (unlikely for either Bigfoot or bear) were found in Iowa in 1980 after a witness saw a “strange creature on all fours eating [a] carcass” (Bord and Bord 2006, 307). Except for the tracks (which were probably due to some anomaly like the overlapping of hind and fore feet), the creature is consistent with a bear.

None of the tracks mentioned in the 1,002 abstracts under study, representing reports from 1818–1980 (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–310), were reported to have dermal ridges (the friction ridges of, for instance, fingerprints). These are common to both apes and man, as well as, presumably, to an ape-man. (Although in 1982, a U.S. Forest Service patrolman discovered such prints in Oregon’s Blue Mountains, in the Mill Creek Watershed, noted Bigfoot skeptic Michael Dennett [1989] turned up evidence that those tracks were part of an elaborate hoax.)

Behavior. Bigfoot’s reported actions are quite varied. Aside from such outlandish reports as of a Sasquatch treating an Indian for snakebite or kidnapping people, numerous acts attributed to the fabled creature again have a ready explanation: bears. For example, Bigfoot often eats berries, fruit, grubs, vegetation such as corn, fish, animal carcasses, and human rubbish. It may be seen day or night. It often visits campsites, like one raided by a “cinnamon-colored Bigfoot” in Idaho in the summer of 1968 that left tooth marks on food containers. It also peers into homes and vehicles, and sometimes shows aggression (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–310; Merrick 1933).

Similarly, bears share these and other aspects of behavior with Bigfoot. For example, bears feed on most nonpoisonous types of berries (which they eat by moving their mouths along branches). As well, they tear open rotten logs for grubs, and they feed on fruit, corn, and other vegetation, fish, live or dead mammals, and human rubbish (Herrero 2002, 183, 149–71, 47; Whitaker 1996, 708). Bears likewise are encountered both day and night (Herrero 2002, 170; Whitaker 1996, 703–709). They visit homes, vehicles, and campsites looking for food, and they sometimes show aggression (Herrero 2002, 83–87; Whitaker 1996, 703–709). These and other parallels with Bigfoot are striking.

Then there are Bigfoot’s vocalizations—many of which could well be those of bears. For example, Bigfoot often growls (Bord and Bord 2006, 237, 256, 268). One “snarled and hissed” at witnesses (268), and another “chattered its teeth” (255), while others “screamed” when shot at (247, 252). Similarly, bears growl and snort, and they make loud huffing or puffing noises (Herrero 2002, 15, 16, 115). Their most common defensive display is “blowing with clacking teeth”; as well, they may bawl (from pain), moan (in fear), bellow (in combat), and make a deep-throated, pulsing noise (when seriously threatened). Cubs “readily scream in distress” (Rogers 1992, 3–4).

Distribution. The habitat of Bigfoot in the 1,002 abstracts we are studying—from 1818 to November 1980—is extensive. It includes most continental American states (excepting Delaware, Rhode Island, and South Carolina) and eight of thirteen Canadian provinces. The greatest number of sightings were in Washington State (110), followed by California (104), British Columbia (90), and Oregon (77)—that is, in the Pacific Northwest, the traditional domain of Sasquatch—followed by Pennsylvania and Florida (42 each). It is reportedly seen in woods and fields, along streams, and so on (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–310; Nickell 2011, 225–29).

The distribution of black bears is strikingly similar, as shown by population maps provided by the Audubon Society (Whitaker 1996, 704) and elsewhere (Herrero 2002, 80). America’s grizzly population was once quite extensive and included the western states (Herrero 2002, 4); however, grizzlies are now relegated mostly to Yellowstone Park (chiefly in northwest Wyoming) and its vicinity, and to portions of the northernmost areas of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, as well as most of British Columbia, Northwest Territories, the Yukon Territory, and Alaska (Herrero 2002, 4; Whitaker 1996, 708). Like Bigfoot, bears are also seen in woods and fields, along streams, and so on.

Assessment

Again and again come eyewitness reports of Bigfoot that sound like misreports of bears. In Washington State, for instance, in 1948, a man saw a “thin, black-haired, 6-ft Bigfoot squatting on [a] lake shore.” In September 1964 a Pennsylvania man spotted “Bigfoot peering in a window of his mother’s home at dusk,” while a man sleeping in his car in northwest California was “woken by Bigfoot shaking it.” In July 1966, a British Columbia woman saw “head and shoulders of Bigfoot above 6-ft raspberry bushes at night.” In June 1976, three Floridians saw a creature “6 ft tall, with long black hair, standing in a clump of pine trees.” In August 1980, two Pennsylvania men “Driving down a mountain, saw husky black hairy creature standing in road.” And so on, and on (Bord and Bord 2006, 230, 241, 244, 287, 309).

Let it be understood that I am in no way saying that all Sasquatch/Bigfoot sightings involve bears. After all, some are surely other misidentifications or hoaxes involving people in furry suits (Nickell 2011, 72–73). As well, Venezuela’s “Loy’s Ape” of the 1920s was identified as a large spider monkey, and two specimens of China’s legendary Yeren, shot in 1980, proved to be the endangered golden monkey (Nickell 2011, 85–87, 96).

I am merely pointing out, what should now be obvious, that many of the best non-hoax encounters can be explained as misperceptions of bears. Of creatures in North America, standing bears are the best lookalike for the bipedal, hairy man-beasts called Bigfoot. Bears also frequently behave like Bigfoot, and they are found in regions common to the legendary creature—no certain trace of which, in the fossil record or otherwise, has ever been discovered.

References

Backpacker Blogs. 2013. Ask a bear: What color are your eyes at night? Online at http://www.backpacker.com/ask_a_bear_night_eyes_shine/blogs/1944; accessed April 2, 2013.

“Black Bears.” 2013. Online at http://www.catskillmountaineer.com/animals-bears.html; accessed March 25, 2013.

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. 2006. Bigfoot Casebook Updated: Sightings and Encounters from 1818 to 2004. N.p.: Pine Winds Press.

Daegling, David J. 2004. Bigfoot Exposed. NY: AltaMira Press.

Dennett, Michael. 1989. Evidence for Bigfoot? An investigation of the Mill Creek ‘sasquatch prints.’” Skeptical Inquirer 13(3)(Spring): 264–72.

Green, John. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. Saanichton, BC: Hancock House.

Herrero, Stephen. 2002. Bear Attacks, rev. ed. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press.

Hunter, Don, with René Dahinden. 1993. Sasquatch/Bigfoot. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart.

Long, Greg. 2004. The Making of Bigfoot. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Lund, Callie. 1969. Letter to John Green, quoted in Bord and Bord 2006, 31–33.

Mating Battle. 2013. Online at http://www.bear.org/website/bear-pages/black-bear/reproduction/14-mating-battle-combatants.html; accessed April 3, 2013.

Napier, John. 1973. Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Nickell, Joe. 2007. Lake monster lookalikes. Skeptical Briefs (June): 6–7.

———. 2011. Tracking the Man-Beasts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2012a. CSI Paranormal. Amherst, NY: Inquiry Press.

———. 2012b. The Science of Ghosts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Rogers, Lynn L. 1992. Watchable Wildlife: The Black Bear. Madison, WI: USDA Forest Service, North Central Station Distribution Center.

Whitaker, John O., Jr. 1996. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals, rev. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wright, Bruce S. 1962. Wildlife Sketches Near and Far. Fredericton, NB: Brunswick Press. Quoted in Bord and Bord 2006, 35–37.

Yosemite Black Bears. 2013. Online at http://www.yosemitepark.com/bear-facts.aspx; accessed March 25, 2013.

As CSI’s Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell continued his work—now in the middle of his fifth decade—of investigating the world’s paranormal, historical, and forensic mysteries. A former stage magician, a twice-promoted operative for a world-famous detective agency, and a literary scholar (Ph.D. in English literature, with an emphasis on literary investigation and folklore), Nickell also has a strong background in both historical research and forensics. He is the author (or co-author or editor) of some forty books, including Unsolved History, Crime Science, and Looking for a Miracle. He has appeared on numerous television shows, such as Oprah, and has been profiled in The New Yorker and on the Today show.

In 2013 he published his latest book, The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible (Prometheus Books), dedicated in memory of humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz (1925–2012), “founder of the worldwide skeptics movement.” Physicist Victor J. Stenger (author of God and the Atom) called it “the magnum opus of the world’s top paranormal investigator.” And science writer Massimo Polidoro reported, “In this book, some of the most incredible supposed miracles are carefully examined by the watchful eye of the incomparable Joe Nickell, a magnificent storyteller and a splendid detective.” (Polidoro once labeled Nickell “The Detective of the Impossible.”)

The Science of Miracles was chosen by the BBC’s magazine Focus: Science and Technology for its June book-of-the-month selection. Illustrated by the face on the Shroud of Turin, the magazine’s review by Chris French stated: “There is probably no-one in the world better qualified to write a book assessing the evidence relating to alleged miracles than Joe Nickell. . . . Nickell brings a wide range of skills to the task, including expertise in forensics, psychology, handwriting analysis and folklore. The result is an expert evaluation of the world’s most famous miracle claims along with many lesser-known cases.” The review was accompanied by a “Meet the Author” interview.

In addition to his own book, Nickell contributed to others, for example, his affectionate cartoon of the late Martin Gardner (the father of modern skepticism) appearing in Gardner’s posthumously published autobiography, Undiluted Hocus Pocus. He also wrote the foreword for Edward Steers, Jr.’s Hoax: Hitler Diaries, Lincoln’s Assassins, and Other Famous Frauds. And his work was cited in several other books.

Again and again, Nickell was filmed for television shows. He was profiled on Discovery Channel Canada’s Daily Planet, featured (explaining the Lake George monster hoax) on the Travel Channel’s Monumental Mysteries, and filmed for several segments of RAW TV’s The Unexplained Files (“Mothman,” alien abductions, spontaneous human combustion, etc.), as well as MSNBC’s Caught on Camera (Bigfoot, “Alien Autopsy,” Oklahoma Junkyard Ghost). On National Geographic Wild’s Monster Fish, Nickell recreated a famous historical faux photo of a giant catfish.

In addition, the popular Travel Channel series, Mysteries at the Museum, featured two items from Nickell’s personal collection of artifacts—online as CFI’s Skeptiseum (i.e., skeptical museum of the paranormal). One was an antique séance spirit trumpet, the other a scarce bottle (with contents, in its original box) of Clark Stanley’s infamous Snake Oil Liniment. (The Skeptiseum—now a member of the Small Museums Association—is presently being given a makeover. Should donor money become available, Nickell has acquired enough artifacts to at least triple the size of the Skeptiseum.)

Nickell also appeared as a guest on several radio programs, such as a panel discussion on superstitions (Charlotte, NC), an update on the Shroud of Turin (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), analysis of various miracle claims (Dublin, Ireland), and more. He was also interviewed on podcasts, including the BBC’s Science Focus, and for various blogs, including Live Science, Alkek Library News (Texas State University), and John W. Loftus’ Debunking Christianity. He was also interviewed (about Atlantis) by Slate.com, and (on after-death communication) by Legacy.com, and he wrote for the Huffington Post (an illustrated piece on “10 Fake Historical Miracles”).

Print and online news sources that sought Nickell’s expertise included the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Kansas City Star, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Raleigh News Observer, and many others. Nickell was the prominently featured skeptic regarding the notorious Shroud of Turin in an article in the National Catholic Register. (Unfortunately Nickell’s scientific and historical evidence was followed by a proponent’s smokescreen of pseudoevidence, pseudoscience, and clever rationalizations.)

In 2013, Nickell received two special awards. The first was CFI’s The Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking for his book, The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead (Prometheus, 2012). The handsome plaque and $2500 are given “for a published work that best exemplifies a healthy skepticism, logical analysis, or empirical science.” In presenting the award, Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier said Nickell was “the epitome of a skeptical investigator,” adding: “Both in the quality and quantity of his investigations, he is a wonder, a true national treasure—international treasure really, because he investigates and is read everywhere he goes around the world. . . .”

Nickell also received the Charles Chilton Moore–John Scopes Award, presented by the Kentucky Freethought Convention. Recipients were honored for their work in science education and freethought. (With the late, great skeptic, psychologist Dr. Robert A. Baker, Nickell was a founder of the Kentucky Association of Science Educators and Skeptics.)

In addition, he gave many lectures and conference contributions (e.g., at the Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist 2013 Conference in Philadelphia, and the CFI Summit in Tacoma, Washington. Also, as he has annually for many years, he participated in Science Exploration Day for high school students held at the University at Buffalo. (On occasion his session, “Investigating ‘Paranormal’ Mysteries,” has been “the highest ranked” by the students.)

In Skeptical Inquirer science magazine, Nickell published the results of several of his investigations: the “miracle dirt” at Chimayó, New Mexico; famous Scotland mysteries (e.g., “The Silly Ness Monster,” the “Green Ghost” of Stirling Castle, and the remarkable “witch” Isobel Gowdie); and a history of detective and detectives (in and out of fiction), as well as a hands-on investigation of “psychokinetic” spoon bending. Also, he and Major James McGaha (USAF retired) provided an in-depth solution to a famous UFO cold case, “The Valentich Disappearance” and a seminal “Treatise on Invisible Beings,” with profound implications to many areas of the paranormal.

In Skeptical Briefs (CSI newsletter) and his blog, Investigative Briefs, Nickell reported on much of his other investigatory work. Highlights were “Tracking Florida’s Skunk Ape,” the “Miracle” statue of Fatima, a rare spiritualists photograph, the “haunted” Bell Witch Cave, the Turin “shroud,” and other investigations, including cases of alleged spontaneous human combustion, psychic sleuthery, communication with ETs, etc. Nickell also reported on receiving a certificate from “Bigfoot School,” and included among his blogs original poems, political cartoons, movie criticisms (“Nickell-odeon Reviews”) and various satires and comedy (?) pieces—intended for the skeptic and secular humanist (which he defines as “an atheist with a heart).”

A major, continuing investigative project of Nickell’s involves tracking what he affectionately calls “The Bigfoot Bear.” Analyzing over a thousand Bigfoot reports, he concluded that a great number are probably misidentifications of upright-standing bears—their common stance when in the alert mode. In 2013 Nickell went on excursions—as he has before at Bluff Creek, California, the Florida Panhandle, and elsewhere—into the Adirondacks of New York and the slopes (at 5,500 feet) of Washington’s Mount Rainier (the latter with a professional guide). These are all alleged wilderness homes for Bigfoot and definite habitats for its closest lookalike, “The Bigfoot Bear.” Nickell has completed further reports on the subject that await publication.

Meanwhile, Nickell continues work on numerous other investigations and has several articles and books in progress. And he continues to be sought frequently by the media. His website is at joenickell.com, and he is on Facebook and Twitter.

Called “America’s best-known poltergeist case,” Tennessee’s sensational “Bell Witch” affair of ca. 1817–1821 has gone unexplained, it is said, for two centuries (“The Bell Witch” 2006). Its most vocal proponent has called it “the greatest mystery and wonder that the world has any account of,” claiming it even surpasses the disturbances of the Epworth rectory poltergeist (Ingram 1894, 75–77, 315). (That was an early eighteenth-century case involving the Wesley family, among the children of which was the future founder of Methodism, John Wesley [Guiley 2000, 122–124].)

Dismissers and debunkers on the other hand (e.g., Hendrix 2006)—some of whom do not even list the story’s most essential text in their references—insist that most or all of the events never happened. What does an extensive investigation show?

The Witch Appears

Figure 1. Joe Nickell explores a “haunted” cave on the historic Bell Witch property in northern Tennessee. (Author’s photo by Vaughn Rees.)

The primary narrative of the Bell Witch is “Our Family Trouble,” reportedly compiled by Richard Williams Bell (1811–1857) in 1846. It tells how Bell’s father, John Bell (1750–1820), having settled his family on a farm in Robertson County, Tennessee (Figure 1), was plagued by what would today be called poltergeist phenomena, beginning in about 1817. The Bell account was later greatly supplemented by a Clarksville newspaperman, M.V. Ingram (1832–1909), in 1894.

Briefly, the events began with mysterious knocks at the door and other rapping sounds, and soon included sleeping children having their hair pulled and bedcovers thrown off. Indeed, “Some new performance was added nearly every night, and it troubled Elizabeth more than any one else” (Bell 1846, 106). Elizabeth, or “Betsy” (who was twelve when the antics began), was sent to stay with various neighbors, “but,” says Bell (110), “it made no difference, the trouble followed her with the same severity.” The apparent spirit began to answer questions, first by means of the rapping sounds; then it began to speak—first in whispers, then in a feeble voice. As the voice gained strength, those who suspected Betsy of trickery accused her of ventriloquism (much as in the case of the Enfield Poltergeist, in which such deception was effectively discovered [Nickell 2012a]).

The Lost Treasure

Nevertheless, the Bell Witch went on to speak quite distinctly. As the story continues, after a skull and other bones were found to have been taken from an old grave nearby, the witch avowed herself the spirit of an early immigrant who had hidden his “treasure” for safekeeping. After certain pledges were made and urgency implored, “lest the secret should get out,” the location was specified as under a “great stone” near a spring at “the southwest corner” of the farm. Soon a group of men set to work at the site and eventually raised the stone. Finding no treasure, however, they continued digging until they had opened a hole about “six feet square and nearly as many feet deep.” Still they found nothing and were later mocked by the witch for being so easily fooled. Bell’s narrative continues through other adventures of the witch, including attacks on old John Bell himself. In one curious incident he had first one shoe jerked off, then, when it was replaced, the other flew off. The narrative culminates in his death—with suggestions that he was poisoned.

Secrets Revealed

Now, this rather implausible, seemingly pointless account takes on real significance if it is seen as representing—with a knowing wink from those in on the meaning—important tenets of Freemasonry. Mystic Arthur Edward Waite in his authoritative A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (1970, 1:366), defines Masonry as “a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.” (An allegory is an extended metaphor in which its components carry one or more meanings in addition to the seemingly literal one; a symbol is something that stands for something else.) Waite (1970, 1:367) stresses that in Masonic stories and rituals, “the significance is in the allegory which may lie behind it.”

Among its deepest spiritual concerns, Masonry focuses on the Mystery of Death, whereby “the Mason is taught how to die” (Waite 1970, 1:174), utilizing symbols such as the skull and the grave. Masonry’s Secret Vault symbolism pertains to the grave, buried treasure, and lost secrets—secrets that in the end remain lost (see Lester 1977, 181; Nickell 2001, 219–234). Much of Masonic symbolism is based on the stonemason’s trade, and the Rough Ashlar—a stone in its original form—symbolizes man’s natural state of ignorance (Mackey 1975, 320). Masonic rituals focus on the death of Hiram, master mason and architect of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 7:13, 40), whose allegorical grave measured 6'x6'x6'—the cube in Masonry being a symbol of truth. (Significantly, in Bell’s account of the treasure search, the cube is not quite completed [120].) In Masonry, Hiram’s name is Hiram Abif, whose legend—including his murder—represents “the dogma of the immortality of the soul” (Mackey 1975, 339).

The Bell Witch treasure tale seems rife with Masonic symbolism. The location of the treasure at “the southwest corner” of the farm corresponds to “the South-West corner” of the Masonic Lodge. This is one of the four stations that the “hoodwinked” (blindfolded) initiate is ritualistically conducted to in the second, or Fellow Craft degree (in a search for light), being opposite to the starting and ending point (Lester 1977, 91). Near the end of “Our Family Troubles,” the most peculiar incident in which old John Bell has first one then the other of his shoes pulled off, presumably by the witch (176), surely invokes the Masonic Rite of Discalceation—from the Latin discalceare, to pluck off one’s shoes. One does this when approaching a consecrated place (Mackey 1975, 125–129; Lester 1977, 40–41). In the Bell narrative, the pledges the men make and their agreement to maintain secrecy evoke the Masonic society’s penchant for secrecy. So does the section “The Mysterious Hand Shaking” (in which people purport to shake hands with the witch), suggesting the Masons’ secret handshake (Morgan 1827, 105–110). At one point “Bell” (107) speaks of receiving “a sudden jerk, which raised me,” indicating the Masonic ceremony of being raised (to Master Mason status) in which, at one point, the candidate is “suddenly jerked backward” (Lester 1977, 163). And so on. References in the Bell narrative to “signs” (170), knocks at the door (104), “mauls” (159), and many more, also have their counterparts in the secret symbols, rituals, and language of Freemasonry (Lester 1977, 22, 47, 143).

Questioned Authorship

I find the parallels (e.g., the size and cubical shape of the vault) to be too many and too specific for coincidence. Moreover, there are additional apparent Masonic allusions in the portions of the story later penned by Ingram, into which Bell’s “Our Family Trouble” is sandwiched. Ingram was a longstanding Freemason who was buried in 1909 “under Masonic auspices” (“Obituary” 1909). Indeed, the evidence indicates Ingram actually wrote the narrative attributed to Bell!

The alleged Bell manuscript has no proven existence before about 1891, and, so far as we know, is today nowhere available to be examined as to its paper, ink, and handwriting. It appears to exist only as a text—and that written by Ingram.

First of all, the “Bell” narrative—which was purportedly expanded from a “diary” as well as supplemented “from memory” in 1846, but pretends to describe events decades earlier—contains apparent anachronisms. For example, it seems written in the context of modern spiritualism—which did not flourish until the decades after 1848 when the Fox Sisters sparked new interest in supposed spirit communication (Nickell 2001, 194).

Also the frequent references to private detectives—as in “a professional detective” and “the detective business” (Bell 1846, 143, 144)—are anachronistic for 1817–1821 given that the word detective did not originate until about 1840 and then in England as an adjective, and the earliest known use of the noun in America appears to be 1853. About that time Allan Pinkerton created the country’s first agency of private detectives (Nickell 2013). Of course these indications are highly suggestive that the “Bell” narrative is of much later vintage, consistent with authorship by Ingram.

Ingram as ‘Bell’

Moreover, “Bell” and Ingram often use the same distinctive expressions—both, for example, referring to the events as “high carnivals” (Bell 1846, 132; Ingram 1894, 34). “Bell” refers to the occurrences as representing “the greatest of all secrets” and “the great mystery” (1846, 130–131, 185), and Ingram calls it “this greatest of all mysteries” and “the greatest mystery and wonder that the world has any account of” (1894, 6, 315). Both refer to one’s facial features as “physiognomy” and characterize old John Bell in the same words—the “Bell” text saying he “was always forehanded, paid as he went” (1846, 102), and Ingram writing, “He paid as he went. . . . He was always forehanded” (1894, 37). It could be argued that Ingram was simply influenced by Bell, but Ingram uses “forehanded” elsewhere (1894, 62), and there are many more stylistic similarities, as we shall see.

Both “Bell” and Ingram use multi-page paragraphs (e.g., Bell 1846, 104–112; Ingram 1894, 38–43). Also, both texts contain sentences of over a hundred words (Bell 1846, 143–144; Ingram 1894, 206). Although Bell was a farmer, the text attributed to him is rife with learned words (like personation, declamation, vociferator, beneficience, and felicity [Bell 1846, 122, 126, 127]), just like writer Ingram’s (e.g., lodgement, unregenerated, indomitable, mordacity, and alacrity [Ingram 1894, 10, 4, 35, 189, 213]).

The “Bell” text frequently promotes the Bible and Christianity (1846, e.g., 121–123, 126, 173, 178), as does Ingram’s writing (1894, 19, 33–34, 36, 43, 86–87). Both use literary allusions, with “Bell” (1846, 171) citing evil spirits driven “out of the man into the swine” (See Mark: 5–13), and Ingram (1894, 67) referring to a spirit “from the vasty deep” (an allusion to Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I [III. i. 52]). “Bell,” in wondering at length, regarding old John Bell, “if there was any hidden or unknown cause why he should have thus suffered” (1846, 173), evokes the Book of Job (e.g., Job 10:2–18), and Ingram’s imperative to “observe the warning on the wall, whether it be written by the hand of the spectre, or indicted by the finger of conscience” (1894, 101), clearly alludes to Belshazzar’s feast and the famous story of the handwriting on the wall (Daniel 5). And there are additional literary elements.

Applying to samples of both texts a standard “readability formula” (based on the average length of independent clauses together with the number of words of three or more syllables [Bovée and Thill 1989, 126]) shows that “Bell” and Ingram had comparable reading levels. These were respectively 14.3 and 14.4, indicating the number of years’ education required to read the passage easily—and presumably to write it. The levels, which are close, are high, placing each at the sophomore level of college. This is not surprising for writer Ingram, but for rural farmer Bell it would seem unlikely (although Ingram says he was “cultured” [1894, 43]), adding to the inference that Ingram could have written “Bell.”

Some shared writing features are also consistent with single authorship of both texts. For instance both occasionally use myself for I (Bell 1846, 149, 150; Ingram 1894, 14), and that for who (Bell 1846, 117; Ingram 1894, 82). Also, both are sometimes guilty of comma-splicing (Bell 1846, 139, 145; Ingram 1894, 193, 196), and incorrect use of the question mark (Bell 1846, 126; Ingram 1894, 32) as well as the semicolon (Bell 1846, 144, 171; Ingram 1894, 37, 187). And both sometimes commit subject-verb agreement errors (Bell 1846, 156; Ingram 1894, 189, 190).

Given all of these similarities be­tween the texts, in addition to the other evidence, I have little hesitation in concluding that Ingram was the author of “Bell.”

Folklore vs. Fakelore

This does not mean that the entire Bell Witch story is bogus, but it does warn that its central source may be largely fiction. Unfortunately, some other sources given by Ingram are also doubtful. For example, he claims that The Saturday Evening Post published a lengthy account of the case “about 1849” (Ingram 1894, 218), but an online search by CFI Director of Libraries Tim Binga failed to turn up any such article in 1849 (issues for which are complete) or indeed the 1840–1860 period (although there are some missing issues). A colorful account of General Andrew Jackson having paid a visit to the Bell farm at the time of the alleged incidents, told by a Tennessee lawyer (Ingram 1894, 229–238), lacks support from any known historical source. (Jackson was a prominent Freemason [“Masonic” 2013].)

Although some have claimed the story to be at once a “legend” (folklore) and a work of complete “fiction” (fakelore) by Ingram (a contradiction in terms¹), the basic story does actually predate Ingram’s 1894 book by several years. Its outlines are given in Goodspeed’s History of Tennessee (1886):

A remarkable occurrence, which attracted wide-spread interest, was connected with the family of John Bell, who settled near what is now Adams Station about 1804. So great was the excitement that people came from hundreds of miles around to witness the manifestations of what was popularly known as the “Bell Witch.” This witch was supposed to be some spiritual being having the voice and attributes of a woman. It was invisible to the eye, yet it would hold conversation and even shake hands with certain individuals. The freaks it performed were wonderful and seemingly designed to annoy the family. It would take the sugar from the bowls, spill the milk, take the quilts from beds, slap and pinch the children, and then laugh at the discomfiture of its victims. At first it was supposed to be a good spirit, but its subsequent acts, together with the curses with which it supplemented its remarks, proved the contrary. . . .

In two chapters of his book titled “Recollections and Testimonials,” Ingram presents the statements of numerous “Citizens Whose Statements Authenticate the History of the Bell Witch.” Unfortunately, many of those attesting—including forty-three signers from Cedar Hill—are only stating that several men mentioned by Ingram were early settlers and “trustworthy”; their collective statement makes no mention of the Bell Witch claims (1894, 292–293).

However, several other persons, writing in 1891–1894—including Charles W. Tyler, Mahala Darden, Rev. James G. Byrns, Nancy Ayers, Joshua W. Featherston, R.H. Pickering, John A. Gunn, Zopher Smith, James I. Holman, W.H. Gardner, and A.E. Gardner—all claim to have heard stories about the Bell Witch directly from reliable persons since deceased (Ingram 1894, 251–308). At least one, John A. Gunn, makes clear that he has recently seen the alleged Richard Williams Bell manuscript, “Our Family Trouble,” and that he had heard his father, both grandfathers, and others relate incidents that confirm the general accuracy of the manuscript. (This rather suggests that newspaperman Ingram sent advance printed copies to persons from whom he was soliciting testimonials, and thus no doubt influenced their memories.) It does seem unlikely that Ingram would have fabricated the testimonials of so many persons still living, or that they would have knowingly endorsed a deception.

Conclusions

If, therefore, as some evidence indicates, there were indeed some poltergeist-like incidents at the Bell farm—beginning about 1817 and mostly ending soon after the death of Betsy’s father, John Bell, in 1820—it is still difficult to say exactly what occurred and therefore how to explain the events.²

Fortunately, skeptics do not have the burden to disprove that for which there is uncertain evidence. As best we can tell from the secondhand accounts of those still alive when Ingram composed his fictionalized, allegorical text in 1894, the events centered around Betsy Bell. Indeed, Ingram (1894, 247) admits that many of Betsy’s contemporaries suspected her at the time, “charging her with the authorship of the mystery.” This is also stated by others who provided alleged information to him, including Lucinda E. Rawls and Mahala Darden (Ingram 1894, 238–240, 261).

As with other “poltergeist” cases, the Bell Witch story sounds suspiciously like an example of “the poltergeist-faking syndrome” in which someone, typically a child, causes the mischief (Nickell 2012b, 331). As the term suggests, while science has never confirmed a single poltergeist, again and again cases occur in which such phenomena are faked by the disturbed or immature. n

Acknowledgments

CFI Librarian Lisa Nolan helped considerably with this research, as did CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga.

Notes

1. A legend is “a traditional tale believed to have a historical basis” (Axelrod and Oster 2000, 303).

2. For a critical analysis of the case at face value, see Fodor 1951.

References

Axelrod, Alan, and Harry Oster. 2000. The Penguin Dictionary of American Folklore. New York: Penguin Reference.

Bell, Richard Williams. 1846? “Our Family Trouble”: The Story of the Bell Witch as Detailed by Richard Williams Bell. Alleged authorship and date; given in Ingram 1894, 101–186.

The Bell Witch. 2006. Online at http://paranormal.about.com/od/trueghoststories/a/aa041706.htm; accessed May 9, 2006.

Bovée, Courtland L., and John V. Thill. 1989. Business Communication Today, 2^nd ed. New York: Random House.

Fodor, Nandor. 1951. The Bell Witch, in Hereward Carrington and Nandor Fodor, Haunted People, New York: Dutton, 142–72.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits, 2nd ed. New York: Checkmark Books.

Hendrix, Grady. 2006. Little Ghost on the Prairie, Slate Magazine, May 4. Online at http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2006/05/Little_ghost_on_the_prairie.html.

Ingram, M.V. 1894. Authenticated History of the Bell Witch and Other Stories of the World’s Greatest Unexplained Phenomenon. Reprinted, Adams, Tennessee: Historic Bell Witch Cave, Inc., 2005.

Lester, Ralph P. 1977. Look to the East! A Ritual of the First Three Degrees of Masonry. Chicago: Ezra A. Cook Publications.

Mackey, Albert G. 1975. The Symbolism of Freemasonry. Chicago: Charles T. Posner Co.

Masonic Presidents Tour. 2013. Online at http://www.pagrandlodge.org/mlam/presidents/jackson.html; accessed Oct. 21, 2013.

Morgan, Capt. William. 1827. Illustrations of Masonry; reprinted Chicago: Ezra A. Cook Publications, n.d.

Nickell, Joe. 2001. Real-Life X-Files. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.

———. 2012a. Enfield Poltergeist. Skeptical Inquirer 36:4 (July/August), 12–14.

———. 2012b. The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2013. “Detective: Uncovering the Mysteries of a Word.” Skeptical Inquirer 37:6 (November/December), 14–17.

Obituary of M.V. Ingram. 1909. Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, October 5; reproduced at http://bellwitch02.tripod.com/martin_van_buren_ingram.htm; accessed October 31, 2012.

Waite, Arthur Edward. 1970. A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, in two vols. New York: Weathervane Books.

After years of crossing paths with it, I finally met up with the Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Fatima (Figures 1 and 2), which has been traveling the world to relate the “message” of the Lady of Fatima—that of world peace. At times, the statue “weeps,” with some believing that the purportedly miraculous tears “are related to the tragic legalization of abortion” (“Miracles” 2012).

Figure 1. The Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Fatima was available for “veneration” at a Catholic church in Amherst, New York. Figure 2. Close-up of statue shows its glass eyes that are frequently said to “weep” (photographs by Joe Nickell).

Fatima Events

Fatima, Portugal, was the site where—in 1917—the Virgin Mary appeared to ten-year-old Lucia Santos and her two cousins. The only one to talk with the apparition, Lucia clearly exhibited the traits of a fantasy-prone personality. Her own mother would come to declare her “nothing but a fake who is leading half the world astray.”

At the end of a six-month period of ap­pearances, there occurred the famous “Mir­acle of the Sun,” proclaimed as such by the Catholic Church. Of thousands in at­tendance, some maintained that the sun spun pinwheel-like, while others claimed it danced or seemed to fall toward the spectators.

However, since people elsewhere in the world—viewing the selfsame sun—did not see the reputed gyrations, it is likely that the effects were optical ones caused by temporary retinal distortions (from staring at the intense light) or by darting the eyes to avoid fixed gazing. Meteorological phenomena and so-called “mass hysteria” may have also played a role. Sun miracles have since been reported elsewhere (Nickell 1993, 176–185; 2009).

In 1947, the statue was created, based on Lucia’s description of her apparition, and sent on its travels. A year after the attempt on his life in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, Pope John Paul II ordered that the bullet removed from the vehicle he had been riding in be set in the statue’s crown—in gratitude for his life being saved. The attempt was supposedly predicted by one of three “secrets” that had supposedly been delivered to Lucia by the apparition. The message told of a bishop in white being killed by soldiers in a hail of bullets and arrows that also killed other bishops and priests. In fact, the visionary “prediction” could only be associated with the pope by ignoring or rationalizing its many errors in that regard. (For example, in the attempted assassination no one was killed, there were no arrows, and so on.) (Nickell 2009)

Weeping Statue

The statue has frequently been reported to weep, most notably in 1972 at New Orleans. As an archdiocesan spokesman stated at the time, “There are all sorts of possible causes. This is a very humid climate here.” The suggestion of condensation is underscored by the fact that the wooden statue has glass eyes. Hoaxing is another possibility, as evidenced by numerous cases of bogus “weeping” statues and icons, many of which I have investigated on site. (See, for example, my case study in Nickell 2011.) Imagination is another factor: according to the statue’s website, “Frequently, an individual sees the tears on the statue while others at the same time do not” (“Miracles” 2012).

When I saw the statue on its visit to St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Amherst, New York (September 16, 2012), it looked quite ordinary. However, claims that it sometimes miraculously weeps are ironic in light of the anti-idolatry teaching in Catho­lic bibles. They contain an extra, fourteenth chapter of Daniel, which tells about the worship of an idol that daily consumed food and wine placed before it. But Daniel said to King Cyrus: “Do not be deceived, O king; for this is but clay inside and brass outside, and it never ate or drank anything.” Daniel proposed a test. The food and wine would again be placed, but, before the temple door was sealed with Cyrus’s royal signet, Daniel secretly sprinkled ashes on the floor. The next morning footsteps were discovered in the ashes, leading to secret doors used by the priests and their wives and children (Daniel 14: 1–22, Revised Standard Version, Catho­lic Edition). It is unfortunate that this pointed lesson against idolatry is not re­called more often.

References

“Miracles.” 2012. Online at www.pilgrimvirginstatue.com; accessed September 6, 2012.

Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2009. The real secrets of Fatima. Skeptical Inquirer 33:6 (November/December), 14–17.

———. 2011. The case of the miracle oil. Skeptical Inquirer 35:3 (May/June), 17–19.

The 2013 scary movie The Conjuring was very loosely based on the story of Roger and Carolyn Perron and their five daughters who moved into a “haunted” Rhode Island farmhouse in January 1971. There, hysteria soon reigned, the flames of which were fanned by the infamous paranormal “investigators” Ed and Lorraine Warren. Now the Perrons’ oldest daughter Andrea is at work on a trilogy on the case called House of Darkness House of Light (Perron 2011, 2013).

Dramatis Personae

The Perrons—he of French Catholic descent, she part Cherokee—married in 1957. In short order they had five children. (Writes Andrea, “It’s a Catholic thing” [I: 446].)

Roger Perron’s work took him on long road trips, a fact that harmed his marriage (he and his wife eventually divorced) and kept him largely a stranger to his children. He was skeptical of most of the occult phenomena reported by the six others. Andrea Perron (I: 112, 195) characterizes the situation as her mother’s integrity “being overtly challenged by disbelief, as though her opinion was entirely irrelevant, her recounting of events fraudulent.” The girls were “squarely in her camp.” (Roger eventually seemed to acquiesce, possibly to promote domestic harmony—something I have observed on occasion in my fieldwork.)

Carolyn Perron was highly impulsive. When she saw an ad for a colonial farmhouse at Harrisville, Rhode Island, she viewed the property and—without consulting Roger—made a down payment, even though they were strapped for cash. Effectively a lapsed Catholic, Carolyn became something of a New Ager. She “felt” and “sensed” various “presences” (e.g., I: 59, 63, 108), practiced dowsing for water (I: 146–147, 153), saw apparitions, and—once—seemed “possessed” (I: 156–159, 185; II: 355–363, 393). After one experience she developed a neck pain for which a doctor could find no physical basis (I: 355). She had fainting spells, typically in front of the fireplace and in Roger’s presence, and he would rush to save her from the fire (I: 249, 278, 279).

Like mother like daughter. “Each of the girls developed a real emotional attachment to the spirits in the house,” Andrea says casually (I: 454), “while bonding between dimensions.”

Andrea (or Annie) was the Perrons’ first child, born in 1958. No wallflower, when their previous house was vandalized and Andrea thought she knew who the culprit was, she pounced on the boy, pummeling him and breaking his nose. About three years later she was dismissed from a confirmation class when she had an “altercation” with the priest, challenging him about masturbation and homosexuality (I: 7–8, 260–261). Andrea sometimes saw “shadows” and heard voices (I: 192–193).

Nancy, the second daughter, was a “nine-year-old spitfire,” explains Andrea (I: 25). When spirits began to appear to the new residents, Andrea says of her sister, “Competitive in every way, Nancy had to claim credit for the first official sighting” (I: 213). A girlfriend once accused her of faking poltergeist-type occurrences in her presence, but friendship prevailed as the girl reconsidered (I: 484–485). Odd things happened to Nancy. For example, once becoming lost on the way home by taking an unfamiliar trail, she encountered an apparitional “family” (I: 131). She and a girlfriend played with a Ouija board, whereupon, she said, “The spirits talk to us through it” (II: 293).

Christine (or Chrissy), Andrea insists, “developed supernatural skills acquired only through the use of a sixth sense” (I: 121). On one occasion, “something wicked,” says Andrea, “had rudely awakened Christine in the middle of the night.” For months at a time, however, Chrissy would sleep undisturbed by “the presence” (I: 392–393).

The fourth child, Cynthia (or Cindy), “attracted supernatural activity unlike any of her siblings,” and, Perron adds, had “passive/aggressive tendencies” (I: 431, 438). She reported multiple apparitional experiences (I: 73–74, 223; II: 69, 164); the receipt of “telepathic messages” (II: 2); an invisible entity coming to her aid (I: 314–315); and entering “another realm of the house, another dimension” (I: 434). Her bed, she claimed, vibrated at times and, when she was thirteen, “levitated,” or at least rocked wildly once, while she screamed incessantly—although the rest of the family downstairs heard none of this (I: 435).

April, the youngest child, was only five, a preschooler, when the Perrons moved into the old farmhouse. April had what most people would call an imaginary friend. “Oliver” became her frequent “playmate,” and their communication was “telepathic” (I: 454; II: 95–97). The “baby” at home, April watched “as her sisters begged for the same type of attention she received all day, every day” (I: 1). When she did go to school, her behavior landed her from time to time in “parochial purgatory”—detention.

Then there were Ed and Lorraine Warren—the demon-hunting duo—who visited the home a few times. They were not sought out by the Perrons, as The Conjuring portrays, but simply showed up there one day. That it was on a night “just prior to Halloween” (II: 258) is typical of the Warrens. Seeking publicity, their modus operandi was to arrive at a “haunted” house that they soon transformed into a “demonic” one, in keeping with their own medieval-style Catholic beliefs. Again and again they were attracted to the homes of Catholics: the Lutzes at Amityville, New York; the Smurls at West Pittston, Pennsylvania; the Snedekers at Southington, Connecticut. Coauthors of the Warrens’ books have since indicated they were encouraged to fabricate elements to make the books “scary,” and at least one such writer has effectively repudiated the book he wrote. I appeared with the Warrens on Sally Jesse Raphael for a pre-Halloween 1992 promotion of their book with the Snedekers, and found Ed Warren a belligerent, manipulative character (Nickell 2012, 281–286).

Ghosts

Ghostly apparitions and pranks reportedly assailed the Perrons from the outset, sparing only the father, Roger. I read accounts of many of their apparitional experiences with an old familiarity. Such reports represent a common phenomenon well known to psychologists and skeptical investigators. Consider an early experience in the house when Carolyn was abed: she saw her dresser erupting in flames! Trying to react she found herself “paralyzed”—able only to watch the blaze and the sparks it shot off. Subsequently, however, she found not a singe to confirm what she had seemingly seen (I: 156–159).

She had clearly experienced a common waking dream, a type of hallucination that occurs in a state between being fully asleep or awake. This was accompanied—as often happens—by sleep paralysis, the inability to move because the body is still in the sleep mode (Nickell 2012, 41–43, 109).

Carolyn Perron had another characteristic waking dream in which, stirring from sleep and “sensing a presence” (a common experience), she opened her eyes and saw “The grotesque figure of a woman hovering above her.” Again “immobilized,” she watched the ghostly form approach as she reacted in terror, then—“It was gone” (I: 185–187). Andrea had a similar “nightmare,” saying, “It woke me up but then I couldn’t move” (I: 191). One doesn’t have to be in bed to have a waking dream. Eight-year-old Cindy was playing with toys on her bedroom floor, and “many hours passed without her recognizing it.” Then she saw the figure her mother had told the children about, and that Cindy had later seen “in a dream” (original emphasis). Now, in a “soft glow,” the figure emerged from the closet, and seeing it “instantly paralyzed Cindy” (I: 222).

Sometimes, however, Carolyn or the girls had an apparitional experience other than a waking dream. Andrea, for instance, during daily activity, saw “a family: a man, a boy and his dog, standing side-by-side, peering through the wall of her bedroom” (I: 473). Cindy, who exhibited many of the traits associated with a fantasy-prone personality, once whispered to her mother, “Mom, there’s a whole bunch of people eating in our dining room” (II: 69–70). On another occasion, Cindy saw several “little ghosts”—“native children”—playing in a nearby pine grove (II: 164–165). Apparitions tend to be perceived during altered states of consciousness. Many occur while the percipient is tired, in a relaxed state, daydreaming, or performing routine work—conditions in which, particularly with imaginative persons, a mental image from the subconscious might be briefly superimposed on the visual scene, rather like a camera’s double exposure (Nickell 2012, 110).

Poltergeists

In addition to ghosts, so-called poltergeist phenomena were common at the Perron farmhouse. Although the superstitious attribute such pranks and disturbances to an invisible agency, a supposed spirit called the poltergeist, history indicates that the occurrences typically center around one or more real mischief makers in a household, perhaps acting from hostility or just seeking attention. Many have been caught at their secret misbehavior, while, on the other hand, science has never confirmed the existence of a single poltergeist (Nickell 2012, 325–331).

A good example of an apparent little “poltergeist” at the Perron home occurred for a period when older sister Andrea set up after-school classes with herself as teacher, using an old oak-framed slate blackboard. However, she tells us that “some scoundrel spirits from the Netherworld did not appreciate having to attend school and would play nasty tricks. . . .” The chalkboard was a target, being repeatedly smeared, often even erased, and was eventually completely smashed. Although Andrea believed it was all of the girls’ “favorite pastime,” I suspect that one of them secretly resented the extra “school” time their big sister was subjecting them to. To such reports, Lorraine Warren gave a knowing smile and said, “poltergeists”—as if her “clairvoyance,” rather than her fantasy proneness, told her so. States Andrea (I: 448):

As one of the most active rooms in the house, the kitchen attracted someone, maybe more than one spirit. The telephone was frequently tampered with, as were several appliances. Antique bottles were routinely arranged and rearranged, moved from open shelves to windowsills then back again; someone had a flair for interior design! A pile of dirt left on the floor, the broom propped beside it, leaning against a chair; a message received then ignored. Household provisions spilled and splashed about the premises, chairs pulled out from beneath children; hair pulling was always a less-than-gentle reminder of their omnipresence. And the flies!

Investigators, however, will need more and precise evidence than the recollections of schoolgirls some thirty to forty years late in order to conclude who the real poltergeists were. But suspects are readily at hand.

We must ask, did the supernaturally inclined Cindy really have her hair “knotted” by a spirit? Was she actually “dragged to the floor”? Was she genuinely “trapped” in a wooden box in the shed (where she had hidden during a game of hide-and-seek)? Or was she deliberately play-acting or even just fooling herself? (Perron II: 53, 48; cf. Nickell 2012, 347). The late psychologist Robert A. Baker, my long time ghost-hunting colleague, found that sometimes events that were attributed to a pranking entity (such as a telephone flying off a table) could have a simpler explanation (the cord was snagged by the leg of a chair and pulled when the chair was scooted forward) (Baker and Nickell 1992, 135–139).

Witches and Demons

Even when the best evidence warrants a mundane explanation, Andrea still invokes the supernatural. For instance, her father was once angry about something and “touched a handle on the pot of meatballs” cooking in the kitchen, whereupon “it flew off the stove and hit the floor,” splattering him with sauce. Andrea insists she “saw that pot of meatballs go flying off the surface of the stove without the assistance of her furious father.” She wondered if the “Kitchen Witch”—a historic local figure named Bathsheba Sherman the Perrons obsessed on—was actually responsible (II: 236; I: 298).

Carolyn Perron had researched local history and found that Bathsheba had been charged with the murder of a child, although the case was dismissed. Nevertheless, people purportedly whispered she was a witch who had sacrificed an infant to the Devil (II: 299, 321, 404). But was Bathsheba instead—as Mrs. Warren told them, according to Andrea (I: 328)—“the lone demonic presence in their house?” Did Lorraine Warren really use her psychic powers to divine this? Apparently not: Carolyn Perron had told the Warrens about Bathsheba Sherman. Andrea says her mother let the Warrens have her notebook—filled with “meticulous notes” and sketches of frightening entities—but it was never returned (I: 404–405; II: 298–299, 314).

Mrs. Warren went on to suggest that some specific reported incidents—some knocking sounds, the house shaking—were not due to fierce winds but were instead “demonic in nature” (I: 53, 311, 313). Soon, whereas the Perrons had intended what they were telling the Warrens to be kept in confidence, they found otherwise when curiosity seekers began showing up unexpectedly. Among them were a “cluster of ghost hunters” and a man “with only one tool-of-the-trade in hand: his Holy Bible.” The Warrens, it turned out, were giving public lectures about the “case”; they even “named the town and described the farmhouse.” Carolyn Perron “felt utterly betrayed” by the Warrens (II: 324–329).

Nevertheless, their relationship culminated in Carolyn’s agreeing for the duo to hold what was supposed to be a séance. But it became an “infamous séance”—part ghost-hunting session, with lots of cumbersome equipment (which does not of course detect invisible beings), and part intended exorcism, including, in addition to a medium/shaman/holy woman and a parapsychologist from Duke University, a priest. Carolyn Perron told her husband nothing of this until the Warrens’ entourage showed up again at their door. Roger was livid.

As the “cleansing” ritual progressed, the suggestible Carolyn began to work herself into the state obviously expected of her. As the group prepared, she looked “unresponsive” with “vacant hollow eyes.” When the group held hands—except for the protesting Roger—Carolyn began to mumble incoherently. “A low-pitched guttural utterance emerged from deep within her being as her quaking body trembled in place.” Suddenly, “Carolyn’s chair lifted from the floor and flew straight back, traveling at light speed into the parlor. She hit the floor with such force everyone present could hear the air rushing from her lungs” (II: 346–358).

No doubt Carolyn—perhaps unaware—was simply acting like those folk who “go under the power” at a Pentecostal service, falling, twitching, or what have you, just as expected of them. The process is akin to stage hypnosis, involving suggestion, compliance, and role-playing (Nickell 2013, 206–209). Although Andrea suggests Carolyn’s chair was propelled supernaturally and perhaps even levitated, this simply smacks of her usual exaggeration. The chair, I take it, was scooted back by Carolyn and—far from levitating—acted in accordance with the laws of physics, indeed moving “straight back” until it stopped abruptly and tipped over.

Roger Perron did not respond like one who had witnessed a defiance of natural law. Commendably, he first rushed to his wife’s aid, and as Ed Warren attempted to pull him back, “He whipped around and punched Ed directly in the face, dropping him to the floor.” Seeing Ed’s nose bleeding, Lorraine wiped his face. Roger ordered the bunch out of his home, whereupon—when the ghost “techs” went to fetch their equipment from the haunted cellar—they discovered that one or two, ah, poltergeists had managed during the hubbub to smash every one of their ghost/demon-hunting devices. Two of the girls, Andrea and Cynthia, had secretly watched the dining-room séance “through a crack in the door,” putting them near the cellar door; Chrissy had, unbelievably, slept through it all; and April was in and out of her room. Apparently no one could or would say anything about the broken devices (II: 358–362).

After slamming the front door behind the group, Roger said what he really thought. As Andrea tells us (II: 362): “He bitterly resented the intrusion, the theatrical farce of a pseudo-intellectual endeavor: ritualistic nonsense. Fake. . . . Roger considered their little sideshow a charade. . . .” After an earlier visit of the demonological duo, Roger had asked his wife: “Don’t you realize when you’re being played?” Calling them “a pair of two-bit charlatans,” he warned, “They’ll only use you for notoriety, for their own purposes” (II: 263).

Conclusions

There were no magical beings—ghosts, poltergeists, witches, or demons—in the Perron home, only an erstwhile Catholic family given to occult beliefs. Influenced by folktales, their waking dreams, contagion (the spreading of belief from person to person by suggestion), and probable pranking by one or more of the five girls, the mother and daughters excitedly hyped their experiences and feelings into a full-blown case of haunting. Provoked by the father’s skepticism, the other six dug in their heels and were seemingly motivated to exaggerate and even create evidence.

It remained for a phony demonologist and clairvoyant to seek to capitalize on the family troubles, to emphasize demons over ghosts, and to plant the idea of potential possession. Although the horror film The Conjuring (2013) greatly exaggerates the case and suggests a possessed Carolyn Perron was freed of her “demon” after a wild exorcism, in fact it is apparent Mrs. Perron was simply caught up in suggestion and role-playing. Moreover, the Perrons continued to be plagued by nine spirits—or rather their belief in same—for several years to come (Elsworth 2013).

References

Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, and Other Mysteries. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Elsworth, Peter C.T. 2013. “‘The Conjuring’ depicts family’s reported haunting . . . ,” The Providence Journal (July 17).

Nickell, Joe. 2012. The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2013. The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Perron, Andrea. 2011, 2013. House of Darkness House of Light: The True Story. In two vols. (of a projected trilogy). Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.

Combining myths of the American Sasquatch—better known since 1958 as “Bigfoot”—and various swamp monsters, Florida’s “Skunk Ape” is reportedly a large, shaggy, man-beast that haunts, especially, Florida’s wilderness areas (Coleman and Huyghe 1999, 56–57). On a trip to the state’s Panhandle region in October 2011, I was able to begin to look into the various legends and sightings—first, with a day’s excursion into the remote Tate’s Hell¹ wilderness area (Figure 1) and part of a night in the Apalachicola National Forest with Dr. Gary A. Stillwell as guide, and, second, research trips to the state’s Wildlife Commission offices and State Library and Archives of Florida in Tallahassee.

Figure 1. The author looking for Skunk Apes in Florida’s Tate’s Hell region. (Author’s photo by Dr. Gary A. Stillwell)

I have since conducted much additional re­search on the fabled creature, which is essentially only a regional variant of the North American Bigfoot itself—see my “Bigfoot Lookalikes” (Nickell 2013). (After the Pacific Northwest, Florida and Pennsyl­vania are the most Bigfoot-reported regions of North America—at least through 1980 [Nickell 2011, 225].) In addition to Skunk Ape, it has been called Stink Ape, Skunk Man, Skunk Monkey, Swamp Man, The Swamp Monster, and, among many others, the Bardin Booger. (The latter beast—reported in the region around the logging community of Bardin—is a sub-variant, itself having such names as Wooly Booger, Bardin Goomer, and several others, including even The Boogie Man, a name that reveals something of its status as a folk monster [Jenkins 2010, 80, 102].) Here is some of what I discovered about the Skunk Ape.

Skunk Ape Portrait

I studied a wealth of hairy man-beast en­counters, selecting—from a pro-Bigfoot data base of 1,002 reports (1818–1980 [Bord and Bord 2006, 213–310)—all forty-two entries for Florida, to which I added thirty-five more from another such source (1818–2008 [Jenkins 2010, 77–128]) for a total of seventy-seven case studies. I then extracted data to determine the averages for the following characteristics of the Skunk Ape.

Physical description. The Florida Skunk Ape has generally black or “dark” long hair or fur—one report described it as seemingly “covered in fur, as if wearing a fur coat” (Jenkins 2010, 114). It may also be brown, or—in one 1848 instance—white. It has a large, round head with big, shining eyes, no appreciable neck, and broad, rounded shoulders. When standing upright, it has “long dangling arms,” in one case being ob­served “swinging its arms as dogs yapped at it” (Bord and Bord 2006, 244).

However, it is seen in various positions: one creature was “close to the ground, as if kneeling,” while another “stood up in a half crouch,” then took a “huge stance with hunched shoulders”; still another was “a huge shape” that “stood up,” while often the creatures were first seen standing, watching people. Estimates of its height vary greatly, from as short as four feet to as tall as ten, but the average is 7.45 feet (slightly smaller than the overall North American Bigfoot average of 7.57, determined from the 1,002 cases cited previously). Limited estimates of its weight yield an average of 508.3 pounds.² Its gait is sometimes said to be unusual—for instance, “exaggerated.” One witness said the creature “wobbled” as it walked (Jenkins 2010, 96, 105).

Odor. The Skunk Ape is supposedly distinguished as “smelly,” occasionally likened to its namesake, but more often it is characterized descriptively as having a “rancid, putrid odor,” like “that of rotten food and dead animal” (Bord and Bord 2006, 245; Jenkins 2010, 898), or having “the usual scent of cabbage and rotten eggs” (Jenkins 2010, 99). In fact, however, similar Bigfoot creatures across North America are also commonly described as “smelly,” “strong-smelling,” having a “strong animal smell,” “nauseating odor,” or a smell as of a “sewer” or “rotten eggs,” and the like (Bord and Bord 2006, 23, 234, 247, 249, 270, 272).

Behavior. The Skunk Ape’s behavior is typically similar to that of Bigfoot everywhere. It is frequently seen standing among trees, crossing a road (and occasionally being hit by a car), rummaging in garbage, drinking water or catching fish from a lake or stream, visiting campsites, standing to peer into windows, and so on. It typically vocalizes by growling, grunting, grumbling, or producing “stressed breathing” and, at least once, “clicking sounds,” among others (although at times there is no sighting and so no certainty that the sound was that of a Skunk Ape) (Jenkins 2010, 111, 117, 123).

Habitat. Skunk Apes are encountered generally in remote areas, notably forests and swamps, including the Everglades, as well as other national and state parks. They are attracted to human habitations—campsites, cabins and other outlying homes, and garbage dumps—in search of food (Jenkins 2010, 77–128).

Sign. Any evidence that a certain type of animal has been in a given area is called its sign. This can include tracks, indications of feeding (such as food remnants), scat (fecal matter), and the like. In the seventy-seven cases studied, the Skunk Ape’s signs include large tracks, typically up to 17.5 inches and with five toes (Bord and Bord 2006, 257, 262). Other on-site indicators were broken branches, a puddle of apparent urine, and uprooted plants (Jenkins 2010, 88, 95, 101).

Suspects

As it happens, there is a known animal that actually has the foregoing characteristics: the black bear (Ursus americanus). It is typically covered with shiny black fur and has a tan or grizzled snout. Black bears can also be other colors, including cinnamon and even white (Herrero 2002, 131–32). A large one can stand seven feet tall (Yosemite 2013), weighing in the range of 203–587 pounds (Whitaker 1996, 703). When it stands, its “arms” dangle. It has a big head, large shining eyes, “no neck” (as is said of the Skunk Ape), and rounded shoulders.

Bears can be malodorous, and some people claim they can smell them when they are nearby (Herrero 2002, 115). Since bears often scavenge on dead animals and rummage in garbage bins and open dumps (Herrero 2002, 43, 156; Whitaker 1996, 706), they might be expected sometimes to be “smelly.”

Bears stand on their hind legs for various reasons, such as when necessary to peer in a window or when trying to sense something, sniffing the air. They can walk in ungainly fashion this way. States one expert, “No doubt the ability of bears to stand on two feet has influenced some people’s perception of them as being humanlike . . .” (Herrero 2002, 139). Indeed, the bear’s hind footprint is “remarkably human-like,” especially when, in late summer, the claws are worn and “may not show up at all” in its tracks. At moderate speeds the hind and fore feet may superimpose to “give the appearance of a single track made by a bipedal creature” (Napier 1973, 150–51).

Bears behave like Bigfoot often does. They stand and watch people, visit their camps and homes, wade in streams seeking fish, climb trees for protection, and so on. They vocalize with growls, snorts, and loud huffing noises; common defensive display is “blowing with clacking teeth” (Whitaker 1996, 703–706; Herrero 2002, 15, 16, 115; Rogers 1992, 3–4).

Black bear habitat is similar to that of Bigfoot, since it consists of “primarily forests and swamps” (Whitaker 1996, 704). The big mammals once occupied all of Florida’s mainland, as well as some coastal islands and the larger Keys, but settlement reduced their range to scattered core areas now designated as primary range (containing core bear population) and secondary range (where bear movement is also significant although the range is less optimal) (“Black Bears” 2013). In addition to tracks, scat, and other signs, bears leave feeding signs that include broken vegetation (mangled berry patches, broken fruit-true branches, uprooted plants) and remnants of carrion and large prey.

Some Brief Case Studies

Here are a few reports of Florida Skunk Ape encounters that could be explained as misidentifications of bears:

• In 1957, in the Everglades in late afternoon, a wild-boar hunter encountered “What looked like a bear squatting,” but then “the thing slowly stood up to a staggering height of about eight feet.” As he backed away out of the dark thicket, he glimpsed sunlight on the eyes yielding “a yellow-orange glow like the eyes of a wild animal,” and the hunter ran to his truck (Jenkins 2010, 89–90.). Apparently the only thing that made him think the bearlike creature was not a bear was his mistaken belief that bears do not stand upright.

• In 1960, in a sparsely populated area near Hollywood (near the outskirts of the Everglades), an “adolescent skunk ape” walked out of a drainage ditch after midnight, then stood in the center of the road. From fifty yards away, the driver of a car saw that the creature was no more than five feet tall, had long arms and a round head. It was “covered in dark fur and had no observable facial features” (Jenkins 2010, 91–92).

• In 1966, near the Andote River, a man reported seeing Bigfoot “standing in trees” and having a “rancid, putrid odor” (Bord and Bord 2006, 245).

• In 1969, near Davie, Florida, a man encountered a “smelly, growling Bigfoot” in an abandoned guava orchard, and another man saw a “huge black Bigfoot treed by dogs” in an orange grove; “it swung away through the trees,” then dived into a canal (Bord and Bord 2006, 256). Black bears feed on various fruit and even climb trees for food, with broken fruit-tree branches being among the common signs of black-bear activity (Whitaker 1996, 703, 705). I suspect the phrase swung away through the trees in the account crept in because of the notion that Skunk Apes are apelike; I suggest the man misperceived how the bear made its mad scramble through the branches to the canal.

• In 1971, at Crystal River, four men saw four manlike animals on an embankment outside “a massive forest.” They were picking at some plants (later found “pulled away from the earth”). The creatures were furry “from head to toe” and had “long arms and large heads that were not proportionate to their bodies” (Jenkins 2010, 100). The description is quite similar to bears, among whose feeding signs is “ground pawed up for roots” (Whitaker 1996, 703).

Conclusions

Of course not all Skunk Ape reports represent sightings of bears. Some are the product of folklore (as Jenkins [2010, 79–81] readily admits), or the misidentification of other wildlife (especially those “encounters” consisting of northing more than sounds or eyeshine), and many could well be outright hoaxes. In fact, Bigsuit-style pranks were common regarding north-central Florida’s Skunk Ape known as the Bardin Booger (Daegling 2004, 237–45).

However, considerable evidence suggests that bears, which are known to exist, can be mistaken for the Skunk Ape as well as Big­foot in general, the existence of which lacks proof. We must recall the principle of Occam’s razor (named for fourteenth-century philosopher William of Ockham), which holds that the simplest tenable explanation—the one with the fewest assumptions—is most likely to be correct.

Acknowledgments

In addition to Dr. Gary A. Stillwell, to whom I am most indebted, I am also grateful to the staff of the State Library and Archives of Florida in Tallahassee, to CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga, and CFI Librarian Lisa Nolan.

Notes

1. Tate’s Hell State Park is said to be “One of the prime habitats for the swamp-dwelling Sasquatch” (Hinson 2010).

2. For two of the cases in Bord and Bord (2006, 246, 262), I found weight data from another source (“Skunk Ape” 2013), thus making a total of six estimates of weight for all of my seventy-seven cases.

References

Black Bears Distribution Map. 2013. Available at http://myfwc.com/conservation/you-conserve/wildlife/black-bears/distribution-map/; accessed April 22, 2013.

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. 2006. Bigfoot Casebook Updated: Sightings and Encounters from 1818 to 2004. N.p.: Pine Winds Press.

Coleman, Loren, and Patrick Huyghe. 1999. The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide. New York: Avon Books.

Daegling, David J. 2004. Bigfoot Exposed. NY: Alta­Mira Press.

Herrero, Stephen. 2002. Bear Attacks, rev. ed. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press.

Hinson, Mark. 2010. Florida is a haven for vampires, Skunk Apes and Pig Men. Tallahassee Democrat (October 31).

Jenkins, Greg. 2010. Chronicles of the Strange and Uncanny in Florida. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press.

Napier, John. 1973. Bigfoot. New York: E.P. Dutton.

Nickell, Joe. 2011. Tracking the Man-Beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More. Amherst, NY: Prome­theus Books.

———. 2013. Bigfoot lookalikes. Skeptical Inquirer 37(5) (September/October): 12–15.

Rogers, Lynn L. 1992. Watchable Wildlife: The Black Bear. Madison, WI: USDA Forest Service, North Central Station Distribution Center.

Skunk Ape. 2013. Available at http://www.weirdus.com/states/florida/bizarre_beasts/skunk_ape/; ac­cessed April 22, 2013.

Whitaker, John O., Jr. 1996. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals, rev. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Yosemite Black Bears. 2013. Available at http://www.yosemitepark.com/bear-facts.aspx; accessed March 25, 2013.

An old book I discovered in an antique store—Maria Monk: Secrets of the Black Nunnery Revealed—seemed intriguing. Undated, it bears signs of being a cheap reproduction of an earlier volume (see Figure 1). Indeed, its title page not only gives a different title (Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk of the Hotel Dieu Convent of Montreal: The Secrets of the Black Nunnery Revealed), but revised publishing information (“Patriotic Defense League, P.O. Box 796, Chicago, Ill.”) has been added. (It is off-center, crooked, and in a different typeface.) The words “New Edition,” also appear (Monk n.d.).

Figure 1. Maria Monk’s “Awful Disclosures” saw numerous printings and reprintings, such as this undated copy (probably from the first part of the twentieth century). (Author’s Collection)

In brief, the book purports to be the account of a young Canadian woman, Maria Monk (1816–1849), who had been a nun in a convent in Montreal in the 1830s. Purportedly, priests routinely entered the premises through a secret tunnel and forced themselves upon the defenseless young women. If they became impregnated, Monk claimed, the infant would, on delivery, be baptized, strangled, and dumped in a basement lime pit (Monk n.d., 130–31). Finding herself pregnant, Monk escaped, had her baby, and penned the tell-all tale—or so we are urged to believe.

Imposture

I had not read far into the book before I found suspicious elements. For instance, the descriptions of Catholic practices seemed those an outsider would make. Monk seemed scarcely to know what an “Agnus Dei” was but described it as “something . . . we were required to regard with the highest degree of reverence” (n.d., 157).1 Moreover, the language is too elevated—often rhetorically verbose and pompous—for the “uneducated” female that Monk is described as in the preface (Monk n.d., xi).

My suspicions aroused, I turned to my late friend Gordon Stein’s Encyclopedia of Hoaxes (1993), where—under “Religious Hoaxes”—I found an entry on “Maria Monk.” It turns out that the fantastic assertions she made were investigated thoroughly at the time by Protestant clergymen who were permitted to inspect the actual convent, discovering that its interior was in­compatible with Monk’s descriptions. Much additional debunking evidence followed.2 Nevertheless, the book saw many editions, and by the 1920s reportedly sold over 300,000 copies. Over four decades later, states Stein, it “was still going strong.” Copies like the one I found continue to lie in wait for unsuspecting readers.

Double Imposture?

But surely Maria was not alone in the im­posture. The text, as we have seen, was clearly not written by such an uneducated girl.

For example, “Maria Monk” wrote (n.d., 82):

The preservation of silence was insisted upon most rigidly, and penances of such a nature were imposed for breaking it, that it was a constant source of uneasiness with me, to know that I might infringe the rules in so many ways, and that inattention might at any moment subject me to something very unpleasant. During the periods of meditation, therefore, and those of lecture, work, and repose, I kept a strict guard upon myself, to escape penances, as well as to avoid sin; and the silence of the other nuns, convinced me that they were equally watchful, and from the same motives.

Now this excerpt yields a readability level (using a formula in Bovée and Thill 1989, 125–126) of seventeen school years—that is, the first year of graduate school (at least by today’s standards). Quite an achievement for an “uneducated” person! Of course, the text may simply have been ghostwritten. While the preface claims her tale was “carefully written down from her lips” (n.d., xiii), that is not only clearly untrue but a tacit admission that she was unable to actually write such a text herself (Stein 1993; Thompson 1934). So who actually wrote the “Awful Disclosures”?

Will the Real Author . . .

Various persons connected to Maria Monk and her book have been proposed as the author. First, there was her companion and acting manager, Rev. William K. Hoyt, a Canadian Protestant minister, who was also rumored to be the real father of Monk’s child (Stein 1993, 226). Another minister in­volved, a Rev. John Jay Slocum, was her guardian for a time and, says Stein (1993, 226), also her “apparent lover.” Finally, a Theodore Dwight (a nephew of theologian Timothy Dwight, president of Yale), was identified as having taken “dictation” from Monk (Thompson 1934). Generally authoritative bibliographic records note that Maria Monk’s personal narrative has been ascribed either to Hoyle and Slocum—“as related to Theodore Dwight”—or to Dwight himself.3 Those sources, however, do not give evidence for preferring one suspect over another. I propose to do just that.

Actually, there is prima facie evidence to identify Dwight as the likeliest suspect. The pen—already in his hand in reportedly taking down Monk’s story—remains there as we come to recognize that the “dictation” was really at best ghostwriting, if not a complete fabrication.

As far as bibliographic records show, Hoyt was not the author of any substantial published work, while the readability level of Slocum (1837)—almost nine school years—is much lower than “Monk’s” and his style different.

On the other hand, Theodore Dwight (1796–1866)—a graduate of Yale in 1814—had published several books. In fact, one of them was an anti-Catholic work titled, Open Convents: Or Nunneries and Popish Seminaries DANGEROUS to the Morals, and Degrading to the Character of a Republican Community (1836). It was published shortly after Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures, and indeed, it cites Monk’s claims at length, though without identifying his role in writing for her.

Here is a sample of Dwight’s text (1836, 6)—where he refers specifically to Monk’s book:

If this book is entitled to credit, no person who has any regard for female virtue or sound morals, can hesitate for a moment to say that these Catholic institutions demand, of every community where they exist, a strict inspection and oversight, so that such enormities as are charged against them should not be suffered to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Breaches of the wholesome laws of society ought not to be tolerated among Catholics any more than among Protestants. Nor does the idea of toleration extend so far as to justify the greatest outrages upon the morals of the public, or even to extenuate the perpetration of the most heinous crimes in the penal code.

Interestingly, like the Monk book itself; this exhibits a readability scale of twenty, slightly higher than “Monk” but compatible with it.

Moreover, certain similar grammatical errors are instructive. For example, “Monk” sometimes incorrectly uses a question mark to punctuate a sentence that is only indirectly an interrogative (e.g., “. . . I would ask . . . whether my duty has not been discharged?” [p. x]). Dwight does likewise (for instance, “It may be well . . . to inquire what would be the effect of . . . the general establishment of Catholic colleges . . .? [pp. 157–58]). Often, “Monk” uses a semicolon to separate, not just two independent clauses but, incorrectly, an independent and a dependent one (e.g., “She told me she must make some inquiries . . .; and proposed to me to take up my abode . . . at the house of a French family . . .” [p. 31]). Dwight also frequently does this (for example, “If there is any such person, he will of course encourage and support Catholic schools, seminaries, and convents; and will exert himself to the utmost to establish and multiply them . . .” [p. 160]). These and other similarities—indeed, an overall resemblance in style—add to the already strong circumstantial evidence for Dwight’s authorship.

Conclusions

As the person who reportedly took down Maria Monk’s story, Dwight was not only the most capable of the three suspects of producing such a book but, indeed, he actually wrote an anti-Catholic tract on the same theme. And Dwight’s writing style is quite similar to that of “Monk.”

It seems clear that Theodore Dwight either ghostwrote the Monk book in his own words or made it up entirely on Monk’s behalf. It is possible that, coached by Hoyt, say, she fooled first Dwight and then others. (These included such notables as Samuel F.B. Morse, later famed inventor of the electric telegraph and the telegraphic code that bears his name [Morse 1836].)

Two points of evidence are against Dwight’s having been a deliberate hoaxer. First, his reputation seems otherwise intact. And second, in his own writing he goes to great pains to admit uncertainty regarding Monk’s story, using such phrases as “This work professes,” “If this book is entitled to credit” (repeated in variant forms), and the like (pp. 5, 6, 113, 148).

As to Maria Monk herself, a pro-church response to her claims had chronicled an early life of theft and prostitution (Awful 1836, 71–82). She died in 1849, imprisoned on New York City’s Welfare Island. Her arrest came after she had picked the pocket of a man with whom she had apparently engaged in sex for hire (Stein 1993, 226).

Acknowledgements

CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga provided essential bibliographic and research information, and my former assistant, Ed Beck, helped in various other ways.

Notes

1. Cf. Stravinskas 2002, 46.

2. A response to Monk was issued, giving a purely Roman Catholic view (Awful 1836).

3. I refer to OCLC (via WorldCat.org).

References

Awful Exposure of the Atrocious Plot Formed by Certain Individuals against the Clergy and Nuns of Lower Canada, Through the Intervention of Maria Monk. 1836. Reprinted New York: W.P. Mitchell & Sons, 1905.

Bovée, Courtland L., and John V. Thill. 1989. Business Communication Today, Second ed. New York: Ran­dom House.

Dwight, Theodore. 1836. Open Convents: Or Nun­neries and Popish Seminaries DANGEROUS to the Morals, and Degrading the Character of a Republican Community. New York: Van Nostrand and Dwight. (Digitized by Google.)

Monk, Maria. N.d. Secrets of the Black Nunnery Revealed. Chicago: Patriotic Defense League. (Re­print of an earlier edition of a book first published in 1836.)

Morse, Samuel F.B. 1836. Testimonial for Dwight 1836; from New York City University, May 25.

Slocum, Rev. J.J. 1837. Further Disclosures by Maria Monk . . . preceded by a Reply to the Priest’s Book. New York: Published for Maria Monk.

Stein, Gordon. 1993. Encyclopedia of Hoaxes. Detroit: Gale Research, 224–226.

Stravinskas, Peter M.J. 2002. Catholic Dictionary. Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor.

Thompson, Ralph. 1934. The Maria Monk affair. The Colophon 17: 6, unpaginated.

Sparking an international media frenzy, a house in Gary, Indiana, was—according to two unnamed “clairvoyants”—besieged by over 200 demons. Of three “possessed” children, the daughter “levitated”; one son, who talked with an invisible boy, growled and spoke in a deep voice; and his older brother walked backward up a hospital exam-room wall! Investigating Gary police confessed themselves baffled. A captain’s personal car seemed to have become possessed when its driver’s seat began to move inexplicably to and fro.

After the family moved out, the subsequent renter found herself besieged by curiosity seekers after the events were publicized and sought relief. At one point she called police to complain of reporters and photographers who were on her property. The mother of the “possessed” children also was not talking—except to a national TV show with which she reportedly had an exclusivity agreement. Various agencies and individuals were noncommittal as well, citing issues of medical confidentiality and privacy. Nevertheless, CSI dispatched me to investigate the case. As I would discover, the devil was in the details.

Demon House?

The alleged demon house is a nondescript rental cottage with enclosed porch at 3860 Carolina Street in Gary, the onetime “murder capital of the U.S.”

Figure 1. At the Gary, Indiana, “200 demons” house, the later resident talked with Joe Nickell (out of view at right). Photo by Steve Duerr.

Although not reported publicly until January 28, 2014 (Kwiatkowski 2014a), the strange events began soon after Latoya Ammons moved into the house with her three children (then seven, nine, and twelve, respectively) and her mother, Rosa Campbell, in November 2011. Campbell recalled a profusion of flies that swarmed their porch in December; that motif recalls the Amityville horror house of the mid-1970s—a case that proved to be a hoax (Nickell 2012, 293).

Soon came noises that Ammons interpreted as footsteps on the basement stairs and the creaking of the basement door—consistent with the sounds old houses commonly make with changes in temperature (Nickell 2012, 111–112). In one incident, her mother reportedly awoke to see a “shadowy figure” and “leaped out of bed” to find “large, wet bootprints” (Kwiatkowski 2014a). However, the earlier report of a priest seeking permission to conduct an exorcism (Maginot 2012) stated that it was the next morning that “they saw on the wooden floor of their living room what looked like muddy footprints like from a boot.” Campbell probably had a common “waking dream,” which occurs between being fully awake and asleep (Nickell 2012, 353–354). As to footmarks that might have been made at any time, one does not need to invoke the supernatural to explain them.

Significantly, there were never any reported haunting or demonic activities in the house other than during the Ammons family’s tenure. The landlord, Charles Reed (2014), insists there had never been any such problems before they took up residence. While to the Department of Child Services (DCS) Ammons blamed her children’s irregular school attendance on the demons—saying “the spirits would make them sick, or they would be up all night without sleep”—in fact the family had a “previous DCS history regarding educational neglect” (Washington 2012). Records show the agency made that finding in 2009 (Kwiatkowski 2014a).

As well, as Charles Reed (2014) noted, there were no alleged demonic activities during the tenure of the subsequent renter. The only thing that was scaring the new tenant was local curiosity, notably that Gary police officers were frequently driving by the house, and Reed phoned the department to ask them to stop. Reed, who has thirty-three years’ experience as a landlord, told The Indianapolis Star: “I thought I heard it all. This was a new one to me. My belief system has a hard time jumping over that bridge.” I called to ask if anything had occurred since to change his view, and spoke with his wife Nancy Reed (2014). Although she stated that they were making no further comments about the case and had obtained an attorney, she did answer my question: She said her husband’s skepticism remained unchanged.

Although Mrs. Reed told me that the current tenant did not want to be disturbed—and that was obvious, given that woman’s having called police to report bothersome reporters and photographers—nevertheless I was on assignment for CSI and determined to take my best shot. Arriving at the residence (with Steve Duerr of CFI–Indiana, who took the photo in Figure 1), I saw the woman resident in the doorway and a male companion putting something in a car parked in front. I bailed out of Steve’s car and approached. I began by identifying myself and apologizing for the interruption. Although she continued her position of making no comments, she was not unpleasant to me and we actually spoke for ten to fifteen minutes.

When I said offhandedly that she no doubt knew of the alleged incidents better than I, she quickly replied, “Not really,” explaining that she had not followed the case and only wanted to live in peace. The gentleman interjected, pointedly calling the reputed demonic events there “hocus-pocus”—adding, “or whatever.” He informed me they were moving out. The house had been purchased—for $35,000—by Zak Bagans, the executive producer and host of the Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures (Kwiatkowski 2014b).

Poltergeists?

Soon after the Ammonses had moved into the house on Carolina Street, the ghostly goings-on transformed into a full-blown case of poltergeist activity—after the German word for “noisy spirit.” The oldest son told a child psychologist that “doors would slam and stuff started moving around.” The youngest son, according to Ammons “was once thrown from the bathroom when no one was even near him” (Kurp 2014). A religious statue was broken (Maginot 2012). Ms. Ammons told DCS that if the children were not asleep by eleven in the evening, “the spirits would come out and keep them up all night throwing things, moving things in the home,” and so on (Washington 2012).

Countless historical examples show that such disturbances typically center around a child or children and involve mischief a child could cause and, indeed, many times was actually caught causing. I call this activity the poltergeist-faking syndrome (Nickell 2012, 325–331). Motivation varies: In one newly tenanted home mysterious fires resulted when a boy missed his former playmates; a schoolhouse outbreak was inspired by the gullibility of their teacher and townsfolk; and other “poltergeist” antics were produced by an eleven-year-old girl looking for attention. All such motives could apply to the Ammons children.

First, the children’s move to a new neighborhood might have caused difficulty. Lacking new playmates, they may have begun to irritate each other, resulting in Ammons reporting to their physician “that the children fight one another and are abusive to one another and then they pass out” (Washington 2012). (In other words, they act out their anger but pretend not to be responsible.)

Second, the mother’s response to the occurrences encourages their misbehavior. Consider the DCS report giving information from a knowledgeable confidential informant—apparently a medical professional—who complained to the department. He is referred to as “RS” (for Report Source, cited in Washington 2012):

RS states [one of the boys] reported there are ghosts in the home, thousands of them and he can see them. . . . [T]hey don’t talk to him but after the mother tells [him] that he can tell the medical professionals the truth he later says yes. . . . RS states they believe the children are performing for the mother and that she’s encouraging the behavior.

Mother Sets the Stage

Latoya Ammons is a religious believer who has a high superstition quotient. She believes in invisible entities and consults “clairvoyants,” one of whom told her “the house was infested by demons.” She insisted to Inside Edition, “I know that for a fact” (Ammons 2014). At the suggestion of one of two clairvoyants who claimed the house was “filled with more than 200 demons,” a frightened Ammons created an altar in the basement where the terrifying events were believed to have begun. It consisted of a statue of the Holy Family—Mary, Joseph, and Jesus—and a white candle and incense burner (Maginot 2012). The Gary police observed “multiple religious shrines” and “bibles throughout the home” (Washington 2012).

She told medical personnel that her home had “various demons and evil spirits due to someone dying in the home,” and that she had “taken the children to various temples and churches to remove the demons.” One psychologist said of Ammons that she did not appear to be “experiencing symptoms of psychosis,” but another wondered “whether her religiosity may be masking underlying delusional ideations or perceptual disturbances” (qtd. in Kwiatkowski 2014a).

Several professionals concluded that the children were acting deceptively and in accordance with their mother’s beliefs. For example, a psychologist who evaluated the youngest son reported that he tended to “act possessed” whenever he was challenged or redirected, or when he was asked questions that he did not wish to answer. She went on to observe that the boy seemed both coherent and logical—except when he was talking about demons. Then, his stories became “bizarre, fragmented and illogical,” she said, adding that the stories changed every time he related them (Wright 2012).

The psychologist determined that the boy did not have an actual psychotic disorder, concluding, “This appears to be an unfortunate and sad case of a child who has been induced into a delusional system perpetuated by his mother and potentially reinforced,” she said, by other relatives (Wright 2012).

As a consequence of their evaluations, the DCS removed the children from Ammons. The agency stated that she needed to employ “alternate forms of discipline not directly related to religion and demon possession” (DCS Case Plan 2012). Ammons was permitted supervised visitation and, after about six months, the children were returned to her in November 2012. Meanwhile—outrageously—no fewer than four exorcisms were performed on her by a priest named Michael L. Maginot, one with his bishop’s official permission—though not on the children who were allegedly possessed! Ammons now says her children left their demons behind, but she credits God, not psychologists or the DCS, with resolving the family’s problems (Kwiatkowski 2014b).

Demonic Phenomena

It remains to discuss the phenomena that so astonished other superstitions folk involved in the case—including the priest, his bishop, and one Captain Charles Austin of the Gary police. Like Ammons, Austin has a high superstition quotient. Already an admitted believer in the supernatural, including ghosts, he became a believer in demons after visiting the house on Carolina Street (Kwiatkowski 2014a). It didn’t take much: He and other officers naïvely played ghost hunters. They used cameras and Austin’s iPhone
to snap pictures in which they could see—in mottled shadows and cloudy white forms (such as can be caused by a rebounding flash)—shapes that resembled faces and figures. These are called simulacra, the result of one’s ability to perceive images in random patterns (Nickell 2012, 64–65).

One such exterior photo, showing what looks vaguely like a blurry image of a person standing in a porch window, might have been a simulacrum, or a reflection of someone on the sidewalk, or a fake photo, as from a cell phone’s hoax app (Flynn 2014). Although The Indianapolis Star captioned it “Photo by Hammond Police,” it was not. The Hammond Police Chief assured me it was not an official police photo, that agency having had no involvement in the case, never mind what may have been produced unofficially by an individual (Miller 2014). At present, the photo is too questionable to be admissible as evidence.

Again influenced by television ghost shows, the officers used a tape recorder to supposedly record spirit sounds—or rather a sound, perceived as the word hey (Kwiatkowski 2014a). Such electronic voice phenomena (EVPs, as they are called in the parlance of ghost hunting) are typically verbal simulacra—that is, syllable-like effects perceived in the randomness of static and background noise (Nickell 2012, 146, 273). In this instance it appears to have been an inadvertent aspiration (it is not the word hey) made by a person close to the microphone at the time (Flynn 2014). Ghost hunting involving such equipment is a pseudoscientific pursuit and a fool’s errand. As to Captain Austin’s self-moving car seat, his mechanic found that his driver’s seat motor was simply broken (Kwiatkowski 2014a).

Turning to the phenomena attributed to the children, these were obviously produced by the children themselves. Anyone who has seen any of the countless TV shows and movies that have proliferated since the 1973 horror movie The Exorcist would know how to manipulate his or her eyes, growl, speak in a deep voice, feign a trance, scream and thrash, or otherwise simulate being “possessed.” When the youngest Ammons boy was “lifted and thrown into the wall with nobody touching him” (Washington 2012), it is apparent he simply launched himself.

Similarly, when his sister “reported being thrown across the room and grabbed by dark shadows” (Washington 2012), she was no doubt self-propelled—if, given the word “reported,” the event happened at all. Much has been said about her having been “levitated” above a bed (Kwiatkowski 2014a)—part of the stock effects of alleged demon possession as shown in numerous movies. However, no levitation has ever been documented by science. The girl’s mother has given different versions of the feat, but when she mentioned the incident on Inside Edition (Ammons 2014), she did not use the word levitation. Rather, she stated that as she watched, “It [a demon] attacked [her daughter] and it raised her up off the bed, snatched her off the bed”—describing a quick action, not a prolonged floating. I take it that, as with the other incidents, the twelve-year-old simply propelled herself upward, no doubt taking advantage of the springiness of the mattress. (If she arched her body, supported at head and feet, she might have appeared to float briefly.)

The most significant claim involved the oldest son and described him—as sources endlessly repeated—“walking backward up a wall” in front of witnesses including a DCS case manager and a nurse. The incident happened at Lakewood Methodist Hospital, where I talked with a public relations official (Morrison 2014) but was not allowed to speak to the nurse; I also met the case manager Valerie Washington (2012), but her superiors also did not permit her to speak about the matter to me. Nevertheless, I can say that there was more to the incident than people learned from some sources—such as the New York Daily News (Golgowski 2014), which had the mother claiming demons caused her son “to walk on a hospital ceiling.”

The accounts tend to imply that gravity was overcome, proving a supernatural occurrence. In fact, while the boy put first one foot, then the other, onto the wall of a small hospital exam room, his grandmother, Rosa Campbell, was holding his hand (Washington 2012) or both of his hands (Ammons 2014). Thus the laws of physics were not contravened. The boy was obviously supported, braced by the rigid arms of Campbell who no doubt instinctively steadied him and helped him maintain his balance as he progressed, perhaps to the ceiling, “and he never let go. He flipped over and landed on his feet in front of the grandmother and sat down in the chair. A few minutes later he looked up as if he was back to himself” (Washington 2012). In short, this was a stunt of an agile boy, not in the least proof of the supernatural.

The priest (Maginot 2012) reported flickering lights, appearing oil, and a litany of other incidents, including some that he was only told about. For instance, a bottle “levitated” and wobbled before being thrown into Latoya Ammons’s bedroom, a common “poltergeist” act) where it broke a lamp. (Too bad the object was not dusted for fingerprints. I suspect Ammons misperceived, first seeing the bottle in mid-flight traveling approximately toward her—conditions like those that sometimes cause airplanes to be reported as “hovering” UFOs [Hendry 1979, 37–38]). Ammons took the family to her brother’s, “but the entity seemed to follow them there”—a fact that should surprise no one. Maginot’s report (2012) is rife with the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance (‘we don’t know what caused this, so it must have been demons’).

Continuing Saga

It was not enough that the Rev. Michael Maginot helped foster ignorance and superstition in the case, at the expense of science and reason, but he seemed happy to become a star—presumably with his bishop’s blessing (if that is the right word). Maginot contracted with Zak Bagans of Ghost Adventures to produce a documentary on the case. He also signed a contract with Evergreen Media Holdings—whose chairman, Tony DeRosa-Grund, produced the horror movie The Conjuring (previously exposed in SI as nonsense [Nickell 2014]). Worldwide, that movie grossed $318 million. Apparently with a straight face, Maginot told a reporter the reason he signed with Evergreen was that he felt DeRosa-Grund would not sensationalize the case (Kwiatkowski 2014c)!

Another hopeful is Captain Charles Austin, whom I twice tried to reach on visits to the Gary police station. According to the Indianapolis Star, he “said he expected notoriety and figured a movie would come of this” (Kwiatkowski 2014b). He is right so far, but if he is not careful, his legacy may be that of one more person lampooned for being on a fool’s errand.

As to Ammons, she was apparently so eager to tell her story to The Indianapolis Star that she signed releases giving access to her family’s medical, psychological, and social records in otherwise restricted files. Stated the reporter (who made them available to researchers: see Kwiatkowski 2014a for urls), they were “not always flattering.”

In summary, no demons possessed anyone in this case, except in the figurative sense. What were really unleashed were the dark aspects of superstition, ancient dogma, lust for notoriety, the greed of cynical hucksters, and the stubborn unwillingness of some to be reasoned with.

Acknowledgments

Barry Karr, CSI executive director, arranged for me to go to Gary, and CFI’s CEO Ronald Lindsay authorized the funding. CFI–Indiana’s Reba Wooden had requested my investigation, but I first spent several days in telephone and online research—assisted by CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga. Subsequently, CFI volunteer Steve Duerr of Indianapolis accompanied me over three days of traveling and interviewing. Thanks are also due to Steve’s wife Sue and mother Shirley for comfortable accommodations, and I am grateful to Pat Beauchamp, Paul E. Loynes, and other staff members for help in various ways, especially Tom Flynn for technical audio-visual analysis.

References

Ammons, Latoya. 2014. Interview on Inside Edition television program, “Homeowner Claims Her House Was Haunted by Demons,” January 30.

DCS Case Plan. 2012. Cited in Kwiatkowski 2014a.

Flynn, Thomas (audio-visual expert). 2014. Consulted February 20–21.

Golgowski, Nina. 2014. Haunting in Indiana leads to family’s exorcism, child’s levitation: Reports. Online at http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/haunting-indiana-home-leads-exorcism-levitation-report-article-1.1593169; January 27. Accessed Jan. 28, 2014.

Hendry, Allan. 1979. The UFO Handbook. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Kurp, Josh. 2014. Can you hear the “demon” voice that cops in Indiana are taking seriously? Online at http://www.uproxx.com/up/2014/01/can-hear-demon-voice-indiana-police-officers-taking-seriously/; January 28. Accessed January 30, 2014.

Kwiatkowski, Marisa. 2014a. The exorcisms of Latoya Ammons. Indianapolis Star (January 28).

———. 2014b. Alleged demon home sells for $35,000. Indianapolis Star (January 30).

———. 2014c. Priest signs film deals after well-publicized exorcisms. Indianapolis Star (February 6).

Maginot, Rev. Michael L. 2012. Report Seeking Permission of Bishop for Exorcism, submitted to Bishop Dale J. Melczek, May 21.

Miller, Brian (Hammond police chief). 2014. Return call to Joe Nickell, February 7.

Nickell, Joe. 2012. The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2014. The Conjuring: Ghosts? Poltergeist? Demons? Skeptical Inquirer 37:2 (March/April), 22–25.

Morrison, Evelyn (Methodist Hospitals spokesperson). 2014. On-site interview by Joe Nickell, February 7.

Reed, Charles. 2014. Quoted in The Indianapolis Star (Kwiatkowski 2014a).

Reed, Nancy. 2014. Interview by Joe Nickell, February 5.

Washington, Valerie. 2012. Intake Officer’s Report of Preliminary Inquiry and Investigation, State of Indiana Department of Child Services, April 23.

Wright, Tracy. 2012. Cited in Kwiatkowski 2014.

The late Western New York priest, the revered Father Nelson Baker (1841–1936), devoted himself to Catholic works, including replacing a fire-damaged church with an impressive basilica and creating a hospital, a boys’ orphanage, a boys’ protectory, and other institutions. My collection of Father Baker memorabilia (Figure 1) includes a set of old newspapers that range over a several-day period in 1936 with full-page spreads telling of his death (July 29), the viewing of his body, and his funeral and burial. Crowds swelled, and the faithful vied to touch the dead monsignor’s ring or to press against it “holy relics” they brought (Thousands 1936). As one news article explained, “This, in the tradition of the Church, is tantamount to a blessing bestowed by a living divine” (Father Baker 1936). An honor guard around the open coffin, which lay in state in the basilica, kept a watchful eye as some attempted to snip a lock of his hair or cut a piece of his vestment for a “relic” of the envisioned future saint (Anderson 2002, 113).

Since then, parishioners of the city of Lackawanna, New York, where Baker’s Our Lady of Victory Basilica stands, have advanced the “cause” of elevating him to sainthood, and formal efforts began in 1987. To facilitate this possibility, in 1999 Baker’s body was disinterred from the Holy Cross Cemetery near the basilica and transferred to a crypt inside the basilica itself. In 2011, the Church officially elevated Baker to “venerable” status, the first of three steps to sainthood. Now, two miracles are needed to complete the process—leading first to beatification, then to canonization (Tokasz 2013). Here we look at a few of the unusual incidents that some have called “miraculous,” although none has been accepted as such by the Catholic Church.

The Eyes of Beholders

Science has never authenticated a single miracle. Miracle claims, in fact, are invariably based on a logical fallacy called “arguing from ignorance”—that is, drawing a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. Take “miraculous” healings for example. Insisting that a given case is medically inexplicable does not constitute proof that a miracle occurred. Some illnesses are known to exhibit spontaneous remission, while other reputed cures may be due to misdiagnosis, psychosomatic conditions, the body’s own natural healing ability, and other factors, including the delayed benefits of previous medical treatment (Nickell 2013, 183–184).

Among the numerous supposedly miraculous healings attributed to Baker are several that involve eye conditions. In a case reported in 1948, for example, a malfunctioning machine caused a piece of metal to lodge in a worker’s eye. While one specialist reportedly recommended the eye’s removal, the victim and his wife chose instead to chance surgery, and this was a success in that the patient regained some sight (Koerner 2005, 44–45). But this can hardly be called a miracle, even a partial one, and is instead a lesson about assessing risk and getting a second opinion.

In 1950, a Kansas man received an injury to both eyes, and, we are told, “The doctors gave no hope for the eye or the sight in the other eye either.” Now, such no-hope-from-doctors claims are almost obligatory in miracle tales, but we usually hear this at second hand, not from the doctors themselves. In any case, doctors may be mistaken. So when we learn the man did not lose his eye and regained all but 10 percent of his sight, do we really have a miracle—the man’s wife linking the success to her having invoked Baker (Koerner 2005, 45)—or is this simply another case (such as the previous one) in which someone credits a superstitious practice rather than skilled medical performance?

In still another case, in 1953 a Wisconsin boy’s homemade bomb exploded, seriously damaging his eye. At first, the doctors held out little hope and asked permission to remove the eye. However, during another examination prior to surgery, the boy reported some sight, and his vision then steadily improved. Because the boy’s mother had prayed to the Virgin Mary and Father Baker, she credited them with a miracle (Koerner 2005, 45–46), rather than acknowledging that her son’s condition was not as bad as it had appeared and that his body’s own natural healing mechanisms were activated.

Such reports betray the claimants’ eagerness to believe that science is trumped by the supernatural, no matter the actual facts. Their spin that Baker was somehow involved in their cases—say as an unaware intercessor—is ironic in light of his own situation. For Nelson Baker—having had some trauma in his own right eye—suffered for approximately his last decade with just half his vision, indeed having a glass eye (Koerner 2005, 47). The old proverb (recalled in Luke 4:23) comes to mind: “Physician, heal thyself.”

The Still-Liquid Blood

When Baker’s coffin was unearthed in 1999 for reinterment in the basilica (where it would be more accessible for people to venerate the priest and so further the canonization campaign), something remarkable occurred. Discovered in a small vault resting on the coffin were three vials of his blood that had been obtained at the time his body was embalmed. The purpose behind this is unknown, but, as it turned out, the blood was surprisingly still liquid. Was this a miracle, as some were quick to claim? (In Catholicism, evidence of “incorruptibility” of bodies was touted over the centuries, but modern investigations have revealed proof of corpses’ embalming, repair, faces covered with wax masks, and other explanations [Nickell 2013, 169–172]).

A small portion of the author’s collection of Father Baker memorabilia: an old postcard of Our Lady of Victory Basilica, a statuette, and a bottle of holy water from the basilica. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

The opinions of several pathologists were sought, and I followed the issue with interest—visiting the old grave site and the new crypt in the basilica (which now has a museum to Baker in its basement), talking with various persons, including one of the consulted pathologists, and doing additional research, even conducting experiments in my paranormal lab at the Center for Inquiry. I wrote a letter, cosigned by Paul Kurtz (CSI founder) and Barry Karr (executive director), to the then Bishop of Buffalo, Henry J. Mansell, asking for information on tests of the blood. Mansell (2000) replied that “The tests, affidavits, and testimony in the cause of Father Baker are all confidential as the case goes forward, so I am not at liberty to share the documentation with you.” It was the kind of noncooperation in such matters with Catholic authorities (e.g., the Shroud of Turin) that I was used to.

In my forensic and related inquiries, I learned that it is not without precedent for what has been removed from a body to be buried with it. It happens at autopsy, for example (Loghmanee 2007). However, the Baker blood vials seem different in their selectivity and special presentation.¹ There are a number of hypotheses to explain how blood might remain liquid for over sixty years. “If the vial is sealed,” reported Dr. Ken Blumenthal (2003), who chairs the Department of Biochemistry at the State University of New York at Buffalo’s School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, “there’s no reason to expect it to have evaporated.” And if the vial “was sterile to begin with, and was filled with no air left inside, the sample could very well remain intact indefinitely.”

Dr. John Wright (2003), a professor of pathology and anatomical sciences at the same university, offered a similar opinion and added: “I presume Father Baker was not anti-coagulated pre-mortem but he could have died with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) syndrome (a common mode of death), and used up all of the coagulants that would normally make blood clot. There are probably a host of other possible explanations, however.”

Among other possibilities is that some preservative may have been added to the blood, which, after all, had obviously been intended to be preserved. In one discussion, the suggestion was made that the blood, if taken from that forced out of the body by the embalming fluid, might have contained some of the latter. However, most embalming fluid contains some formaldehyde, which—as my own experiments show—has the effect of thickening or even solidifying the blood rather than keeping it liquid.² Still, there are various solutions that can both preserve and prevent the coagulation of whole blood, if the blood were removed so that formaldehyde-containing embalming fluid was not present (Bloodindex 2013).

Whatever the actual facts, however, the church has not accepted that the blood’s having remained liquid is evidence a miracle occurred. As a rule of thumb in such matters, I try never to be less skeptical than the Catholic Church.

Miraculous Awakening?

At 6:54 am, December 29, 1995, the roof of a burning house collapsed on Buffalo fireman Donald J. Herbert. Before being rescued, he had been starved of oxygen for some six minutes, resulting in brain damage. For almost the next decade, he was in a minimally responsive state, unable to communicate effectively.

Then, suddenly, on April 30, 2005, while sitting in his wheelchair in Father Baker Manor, a nursing home in Orchard Park, New York, Herbert began calling aloud for his wife, Linda, and four sons. He was soon talking and recognizing family, friends, and fellow firefighters. The change in his condition was remarkable (Lakamp 2013).

Many called it a miracle. One of his physicians at Father Baker Manor thought so, saying at a press conference, “I can’t explain it any other way. It’s phenomenal.” Indeed, some thought it was just the case they were looking for to spark the canonization of the priest the rest home was named for. They believed the Herbert case could well be one of the two requisite miracles needed to declare Baker a saint. Soon, however, such hopes were all but dashed. Herbert’s “recovery”—already limited—was uneven, and it suffered a decline after a nighttime fall from bed sent him to a hospital emergency room for stiches to his head. He died February 22, 2006, eight months after his awakening (Koerner 2009, 44–47; Lakamp 2013).

Herbert’s unusual case did not seem to meet the requirements for canonization. The Vatican requires such a miracle not only to be medically inexplicable but also complete and permanent—Herbert’s was neither—and for the candidate for sainthood to have interceded. The latter act could not be effectively established, since Linda Herbert had prayed not only to Father Baker but also “to every saint and holy figure on record” (Blake 2007, 235). So to whom should the supposed intercession be attributed?

In fact, Donald Herbert’s wonderful improvement—limited and temporary though it proved to be—was apparently due to science. About three months before, Herbert’s physician, Dr. Jamil Ahmed of the University at Buffalo, had prescribed a “cocktail” of medications for Herbert. The drugs targeted chemicals in the brain such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine to treat problems of attention, cognition, and so on. (See Hitti 2005).

Monsignor Robert Wurtz, a pastor involved in the crusade to canonize Father Baker, reportedly credited Herbert’s improvement to the drug cocktail rather than to Baker’s intercession. This effectively eliminated the Herbert case from consideration as a miracle (Blake 2007, 243; Koerner 2009, 47).

It should be emphasized that the Herbert case is unlike another high-profile one—that of Terry Schiavo, who was in a persistent vegetative state and so had her life ended by the removal of her feeding tube. Herbert’s situation was such that he was severely disabled but apparently minimally conscious—not vegetative (Hitti 2005).

* * *

As these several examples make clear, claims of miracles attributed to Father Nelson Baker seem endless but are, at best, only examples of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance. As I stated in a letter to The Buffalo News (Nickell 2011) “. . . Not only is such an argument unscientific in its implication. It’s obviously meant to keep science in a position subservient to the supernatural, when in fact there is no credible evidence for other than a real, natural world. If the Church wishes to honor Baker for his public service, it should by all means do so. But let there be an end to the miracles game.”

Acknowledgments

Many people assisted with this article. In addition to those mentioned in the text, I am grateful to the CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga and former librarian Lisa Nolan.

Notes

1. The jars were “enclosed in a leather case and then placed in a conolite box on top of Baker’s steel coffin” (Koerner 2005, 66).

2. I used formalin (diluted formaldehyde) and the anti-liquid effect was still profound.

References

Anderson, Floyd. 2002. Father Nelson Baker: Apostle of Charity. N.p. [Lackawanna, NY]: Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity.

Blake, Rich. 2007. The Day Donny Herbert Woke Up: A True Story. New York: Harmony Books.

Bloodindex. 2013. Online at http://www.bloodindex.org/blood_anticoagulation_preservation.php; accessed July 25, 2013.

Blumenthal, Dr. Ken. 2003. Cited in Koerner 2005, 67.

Father Baker. 1936. The Buffalo News (July 31): sports section, 31.

Hitti, Miranda. 2005. Firefighter’s miracle recovery rare in long-term coma cases. Fox News (May 6). Online at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,155608,00.html; accessed June 17, 2013.

Koerner, John. 2005. The Mysteries of Father Baker. Buffalo, NY: Western New York Wares.

———. 2009. The Father Baker Code. Buffalo, NY: Western New York Wares

Lakamp, Patrick. 2013. The fight behind the miracle. The Buffalo News (June 16).

Loghmanee, Dr. Fazlollah. 2007. Interview by Joe Nickell, December 25.

Mansell, Rev. Henry J. 2000. Letter of reply to Paul Kurtz, Joe Nickell, and Barry Karr, December 4.

Nickell, Joe. 2011. A so-called miracle has never been proved. Letter to The Buffalo News (February 26).

———. 2013. The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Thousands Bid Farewell. . . . 1936. The Buffalo Times (August 2): 6–A (photo caption).

Tokasz, Jay. 2013. Parish seeks aid funding Father Baker sainthood. The Buffalo News (July 24): A1–2.

Wright, Dr. John. 2003. Cited in Koerner 2005, 67–68.

During an investigative tour of Germany in 2002 (Nickell 2003), I explored along the beautiful Rhine Valley guided by my Center for Inquiry–Germany colleague Martin Mahner. There, we tracked a headless ghost (Nickell 2012, 33–34) and viewed the lair of the beautiful, enchanting Lorelei (associated with a massive rock 430 feet high, near St. Goar [Zieman 2000]). And therein lies a tale—or rather, conflicting tales. Lorelei is described variously as a “sorceress” (Stories 1870, 67), “siren” (Encyclopedia Britannica 1960), “water nymph” (Leach 1984, 645), “mermaid,” and even, in the plural, “mermaids” (Conway 2002, 164). In any case, at least she represents a romantic legend of the Rhine—or does she?

Introducing Lorelei

My notes on Lorelei remained in my files gathering dust for a decade until I came across a tattered old booklet, Stories and Legends of the Rhine between Worms and Cologne (1870), in an antique shop. It was in English and I bought it at once, discovering therein that “Lorelay” [sic] was in­cluded. The entry consisted mostly of two poems, a ballad by Clemens Brentano (1772–1842) and a shorter poem by Heinrich Heine (1797–1856). I give the latter, in my own translation, in the accompanying panel.

The Lorelei

By Heinrich Heine
(Translated by Joe Nickell)

I know not what it means,
This sadness that I find;
But an olden tale, it seems,
Has overcome my mind.
The air is cool at sunset,
And quietly flows the Rhine;
In the fading evening light,
The mountain summits shine.

The fairest maiden dwells
In marvelous radiance there;
Arrayed in gleaming jewels,
She combs her golden hair.
Combing with a golden comb,
All the while sings she,
A song with a wondersome,
Overpowering melody.

The boatman in his little craft—
Captivated by its might—
Sees not the looming reef,
Stares only at the height.
I think the waves are devouring
Both boat and boatman gone;
And all this with her singing
The Lorelei has done.

Folklore or Fakelore?

Now the Rhine has long been a source for romantic tales, and the German epic poem The Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) associates it with a dragon, a treasure of gold, a cloak of invisibility, and other fabulous elements (Benét’s 1987, 692; Leach 1984, 791).

Yet the Lorelei narrative is, in fact—in folkloristic terms—“neither myth nor local legend” but is rather a “fabrication” by the previously mentioned Clemens Brentano (Leach 1984, 645). Genuine folklore consists of traditions (tales, customs, rituals, songs, etc.) accumulated through folk transmission. It includes not only the simple folktale but also the legend (a localized narrative that is more historicized than the folktale) and the myth (which presents preternatural topics as explanations or metaphors of cosmic or natural forces or the like; folklorists do not use the term to mean “a false belief”) (Brunvand 1996; Benét’s 1987). But whereas folklore is the product of tradition, fakelore—a spurious form named by great folklorist Richard M. Dorson (1950)—is deliberately created, as by writers. For instance, many of the tall tales about American herculean logger Paul Bunyan “were literary embellishments of a small amount of oral tradition” produced by William B. Laughead, a lumber company advertising executive (Walls 1996). (Sadly, such distinctions are often confused, as by one pop skeptic who declared that a certain story was “a legend” that he then branded as complete “fiction” by a certain author!) In his Lorelei fakelore—represented by a ballad (a narrative in verse form) inserted in his novel Godwi (written 1800–1801)—Clemens Brentano became “the first to associate the [Lorelei] rock with a woman of the same name.” However, “The poem is so convincingly folklike in style that Bren­tano’s invention came to be regarded as a genuine folk legend” (Benét’s 1987, 581).

Heine’s Siren

Indeed, Heinrich Heine may well have regarded Brentano’s ballad as presenting a legend, referring to the Lorelei story as Ein Märchen aus Uralten (i.e., “an ancient folktale”). Or perhaps he was simply following Brentano’s lead in presenting a newly written tale as a handed-down one in order to provide what writers call “verisimilitude” (from the Latin verisimilis; verus, true, and similis, like), that is, a semblance of being true or real. In any event, whereas Brentano’s “Lore­ley” was a Zauberin (“sorceress”), it re­mained for Heine (ca. 1823) to create the concept of Lorelei as a siren whose singing lured boatmen to their destruction (Benét’s 1987, 581). Of course, Heine did not invent sirens. As far back as the ninth century bce, the Greek poet Homer in his epic poem Odyssey presented sirens: half-woman, half-bird creatures whose singing so enticed sailors that they died by forgetting to eat. To escape their irresistible attraction, Odysseus (Ulysses in Latin) filled his men’s ears with wax and had himself lashed to his ship’s mast (Benét’s 1987, 904). Sirens are not to be confused with another woman/bird hybrid, the Har­pies. Those were hideous, vulturelike monsters that seized the food of victims and otherwise tormented them (Nickell 2011, 201–202). Only in some later traditions were sirens depicted as mermaids (Nickell 2011, 201–202). In his great poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot (1915) plays on this tradition when “Prufrock” laments his inconsequentialness:

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.

Neither bird-woman nor mermaid, Hein­rich Heine’s “The Lorelei” was no hybrid but simply a water nymph or beautiful Rhine maiden such as is now represented at the Lorelei/Loreley rock: on the rock itself is a stone sculpture depicting her, and at the base another, in bronze (which appears on picture postcards) (Zieman 2000).

* * *

Ironically, it was by way of Heine’s poem that the pseudolegend of Lorelei finally did become something more than fakelore. The poem attracted English readers, and—especially when set to music by Friedrich Silcher (adapting a folk song [Encyclopedia Britan­nica 1960])—became to tourists “a local legend of sorts.” Also because the rock is attended by a peculiar echo, “the romantic literary fiction has had an excuse for passing to a degree into tradition” (Leach 1984, 645).

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Lisa Nolan, former CFI Librarian, for her research assistance.

References

Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. 1987. New York: Harper & Row. 2012.

Brunvand, Jan Harold, ed. 1996. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing. Conway, D.J. 2002.

Magickal Mystical Creatures. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.

Dorson, Richard M. 1950. Folklore and fakelore. American Mercury 70: 335–43; cited in Brunvand 1996, 242.

Eliot, T.S. 1915. The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Poetry (April).

Encyclopedia Britannica. 1960. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Leach, Maria, ed. 1984. Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Nickell, Joe. 2003. Germany: Monsters, myths, and mysteries. Skeptical Inquirer 27:2 (March/April), 24–28.

———. 2011. Tracking the Man-Beasts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2012. The Science of Ghosts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Stories and Legends of the Rhine between Worms and Cologne. 1870. Heidelberg: Charles Groos.

Walls, Robert E. 1996. “Paul Bunyan,” in Brunvand 1996, 105–07.

Zieman, Johanna M., ed. 2000. Der Scharze Führer: Deutschland (i.e., The Black Guides: Germany). Freiburg: Eulen Verlag.

As part of the Pacific Northwest, Washington State is a prime location for reports of Sasquatch—usually known since 1958 as Bigfoot. In one study (Nickell 2013, 15), involving 1,002 reports from 1818 to November 1980 (Bord and Bord 2006, 215–30), Washington had the greatest number of incidents: 110 (followed by California, 104; British Columbia, 90; and Oregon, 77).

In October 2013, led by a professional guide, I visited Mount Rainier and its vicinity, the locale of numerous alleged sightings, track discoveries, and photographs of the elusive creature (Bord and Bord 2006, 194, 259; Green 1978, 93, 392–95). Some screams—assumed without justification to be from Bigfoot—have also been recorded in the area (Green 1978, 393–95).

The Bigfoot Bear

Bigfoot tends to be spotted in bear territory, to mimic a bear’s behavior, and even to resemble a bear when—as it does in alert mode, especially—it stands upright (Nickell 2013). Consider these cases:

• In the autumn of 1912, near Oakville (between Mount Rainier and the Pacific) a woman saw a tall, bearlike/apelike creature looking in the window of her small ranch house (Green 1978, 389–90). Was it actually a bear, as she first thought?

• In about 1948 (as recalled many years later), a man named Clarence M. Foster was at Mad Lake (northeast of Rainier) when he saw what some have concluded was a Bigfoot. Foster saw it on the opposite shore and described the creature as thin, six feet tall, and squatting with its “arms” in the water. Foster first “thought it was a man but it seemed to be covered with black hair. Later he went to where it had been and could find no sign of a camp” (Green 1973, 15).

• In the summer of 1964, a prospector from Missouri was camping between Spirit Lake and Mount Adams (i.e., approximately due south of Mount Rainier) when he woke to see a seven-foot-tall man-beast, a “dirty brown” in color. He saw it for only “about thirty seconds” and only from the back, but, he recalled, “his legs seemed stuffy in comparison to the rest of his body” and “his front legs or arms” seemed to swing from side to side (Green 1973, 28). He insisted it was not a bear, but I suspect he had not previously encountered one standing upright. Apparently, as bears so often do (Herrero 2002, 116–24), this one had come into his camp looking for food.

• More recently (date not given), two bow hunters near Orting (northwest of Rainier) saw what they thought was a Bigfoot approximately three hundred yards away and watched it for a while. It reportedly stood upright, had a simian appearance, and was covered with black fur. One pro-Bigfoot source commented that “If they had been watching this creature with only their naked eyes, we might think it was just a bear, but since they used binoculars, that explanation is unlikely” (Davis and Eufrasio 2008, 91–92). Actually, binoculars do not necessarily prevent a misidentification at such a distance. The fact that the animal was standing upright may have led them to conclude it was not a bear but a Bigfoot, and that is what they then saw.

In short, can we be certain that eyewitness reports of hairy creatures, even if seen standing or briefly walking upright, are really Bigfoot—or could a witness be fooled by a bear? This could be not only because of poor viewing conditions (caused by distance, vegetation, darkness, etc.), but also because he or she has Bigfoot on the mind. My late colleague, the psychologist Robert A. Baker, called attention to “the power of expectation and how our activities and mental sets can influence our perceptions and beliefs” (Baker and Nickell 1992, 135–39).

On the Trail at Mount Rainier

At Mount Rainier National Park in late October 2013, accompanied by experienced guide Diann Sheldon, I spoke with an official at the park entrance (Challup 2013) who told us that the most active alleged Bigfoot sighting area was around Reflection Lake. He also informed us of someone dressing as Bigfoot—what I call “Bigsuit”—in outlying areas, specifically along Skate Creek Road (Forest Service Road 52, which we intersected coming and going). (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. “Bigsuit” outside Mount Rainier National Park. (Photo credit: Steve Wilson)

Sheldon took me into definite bear country—snow-covered trails at about 5,500 feet elevation on Rainier. There she pointed out some bear “scat” (droppings)—which, she observed, showed the bear had been feeding on the mountain ash berries that were common there. Farther on, we came across more such scat. Later, below the trails, we ate at the Paradise Visitor Center and Inn where I spoke to park rangers and volunteers.

One of the latter (Hollinger 2013) told me how, the previous summer, she had encountered a standing bear on Rainier, just fifty feet away from her—for what seemed a very long time! She pointed out that, with its front legs hanging at its side like arms, such a bear could resemble Bigfoot—especially if it was looking directly at the observer so that its face seemed flatter. She pointed out also that Mount Rainier black bears were often brown or cinnamon colored, which could make them seem even more Bigfoot-like.

She also stated that, at ranger housing at the Sunrise Visitor Center across the mountain, it was not uncommon for bears to be seen standing upright and looking in the windows in their perpetual search for food (Hollinger 2013). This common bear behavior (Nickell 2013) is also frequently reported of Bigfoot (e.g., Bord and Bord 2006, 224, 239–41, 251, 264, 271–72, 300, 303; Green 1973, 28, 38, 58; Green 1978, 252–53, 389–90). Before leaving Mount Rainier we staked out Reflection Lake on the mountainside (Figure 2), but no “Bigfoot bear” appeared.

Figure 2. Author searches, in vain, for Bigfoot at Reflection Lake, Mount Rainier National Park. (Author’s photo by Diann Sheldon)

Wild Creek Photos

Perhaps the most notorious “evidence” of Bigfoot in the Mount Rainier area consists of several photographs allegedly made in 1995 at Wild Creek in the nearby foothills by a forest patrol officer. However, numerous red flags are noted—as by Bigfoot authors Janet and Colin Bord (2006, 195) who state:

With any event where the subject is known to be elusive, clear photographs are naturally suspect. In this case we note that Bigfoot seems not to have moved from shot to shot, which seems unlikely, and the photographer must have been a very brave man indeed, to have stayed around long enough to shoot 14 photographs of an unpredictable monster. Also problematic about the Wild Creek photographs is the lack of good scale, the sense that computer manipulation software is involved, and that the supposed “forest patrol officer” has never been identified.

This lack of provenance for the photos is alone highly suspect (having served as a warning sign on the introduction of such notorious fakes as the Shroud of Turin, the Jack the Ripper diary, a forged copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and many other artifacts I have exposed as fakes [Nickell 2009, 42, 67–79, 167]).

Bigfoot in Rainier’s Crater?

Among the most far-fetched of alleged Bigfoot tales is one dating from 1895, but then—it may not be about Bigfoot at all!

The story appears in snippets (e.g., Lee 2013) in works billing it, for example, as a “fantastic encounter with what appears to be Bigfoot” (Dennett 2001, 36). Written by Mount Rainier explorer Major E.S. Ingraham in 1895, “The Old Man of the Crater” tells how he and an unnamed companion “were exploring the steam-caves at the time of my second visit to the crater of Mt. Rainier.” There, he spied some “peculiar marks” on the cave floor, along with a strange glow in the atmosphere. He determined to return later, and did so when his “three bedfellows were sound asleep.”

Creeping back into the cave, Ingraham says, he encountered “a figure of strange and grotesque appearance . . . writhing and floundering very much as a drowning man would do. . . .” He continued:

Its shape was nearer to that of a human being than of any other animal. The crown of its head was pointed, with bristled hair pointing in every direction. The eyeballs were pointed too; and while they appeared dull and visionless at times, yet there was an occasional flash of light from the points. . . . The nails of its fingers and toes were long and pointed and resembled polished steel more than hardened cuticle. I discovered that the palms of its hand and the soles of its feet were hard and calloused. In fact the whole body, while human in shape . . . seemed very different in character from that of the human species. (Ingraham 1895, 42, 44, 46)

When the light formed “an arch” above and between them, Ingraham soon found himself in a sort of telepathic communication with the creature, and for the next hour “received impressions.” However, when the Old Man of the Crater commanded Ingraham to follow him, he instead “broke the spell” and returned to his sleeping companions (Ingraham 1895, 46, 48).

This is clearly not about Bigfoot. Ingraham not only omits reference to the creature being covered in hair, but he goes on to say (1895, 48):

This is no myth. The old man told me of his abode in the interior, of another race to which he belonged and the traditions of that race; of convolutions and changes on the earth long, long ago; of the gradual contraction of a belt of matter around the earth until it touched the surface hemming in many of the inhabitants and drowning the remainder, and of the survival of a single pair. All was shut out and the atmosphere became changed. Gradually the remaining pair was enabled to conform to the new order of things and became the parents of a race which for the want of a better name I will call Sub-Rainians. This Old Man of the Crater had wandered far away from the abode of his race in his desire to explore. Far away from my home we had met, each out of his usual sphere.

Rather than Bigfoot, Ingraham is describing a creature of myth, while declaring otherwise as an element of verisimilitude (or semblance of truth), often used by writers—Poe for instance—to urge the reader to accept the fanciful as real. The creature is from an antediluvian¹ (pre-Flood) world of which a pair (like Adam and Eve) survive the deluge to repopulate the species. Calling them the “Sub-Rainians” suggests subterranean, that is, the Underworld, the realm of the dead. And Ingraham’s caves ostensibly lead down into the fiery interior of the volcano, an unmistakable suggestion of death and Hell.

But what is the nature of this fantasy? Did it begin, say, with a hallucination caused by high-altitude oxygen deprivation—a “visionary” experience? Or was Ingraham merely penning a tale in the science-fiction tradition of hollow-earth adventures, like Jules Verne’s 1870 Journey to the Center of the Earth, as a whimsy for his readers? Could it even be a Masonic allegory of the Secret Vault (in Freemasonry, a subterranean repository of secrets that in the end, remain hidden)?² E.S. Ingraham was, in fact, a Freemason (Sherman 1890, 66). Among their secrets, Masons teach that death—both literally and figuratively—is a continuation toward perfection (Macoy 1989, 117–18).

Whatever Ingraham intended, his creature is not Bigfoot as traditionally portrayed. Yet the two entities do have something in common: both are, as far as current evidence suggests, imaginary.

Acknowledgments

In addition to individuals cited in the text, I am grateful to former CFI librarian Lisa Nolan for extensive research on E.S. Ingraham.

Notes

1. This is a term of significance in Free­masonry (Macoy 1989, 418), the relevance of which will be noted presently.

2. In Freemasonry the ritual of the Secret Vault is part of the Royal Arch degree, so Ingraham’s use of the words vaulted, arch, and the like seem to take on allegorical significance. (Masonry has been defined as “a peculiar system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols” [Masonic Bible 1964, 26].) The “peculiar marks” suggest Masons’ Marks (inscribed signs by which Masons are distinguished) and the “mysterious glow” could signal Darkness Visible (which in Masonry serves “only to express that gloom which rests on the prospect of futurity” [Macoy 1989, 479]—a theme indeed of Ingraham’s tale). (See Nickell 2001, 227–33.)

References

Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, and Other Mysteries. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. 2006. Bigfoot Casebook Updated. N.p.: Pine Winds Press.

Challup, Matthew S. 2013. Interview by Joe Nickell, October 27. (Note: Challup is Nisqually Supervisory Visitor Use Assistant, Mount Rainier National Park.)

Davis, Jeff, and Al Eufrasio. 2008. Weird Washington. New York: Sterling Publishing Co.

Dennett, Preston. 2001. Early American mountain Bigfoot. Fate 54(5) (May): 36–37.

Green, John. 1973. The Sasquatch File. Agassiz, BC: Cheam Publishing Ltd.

———. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. Seattle, WA: Hancock House.

Herrero, Stephen. 2002. Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press. Hollinger, Jodie. 2013. Interview by Joe Nickell, October 27.

Ingraham, E.S. 1895. The Pacific Forest Reserve and Mt. Rainier. Seattle: WA: Calvert Company, 42–48.

Lee, Regan. 2013. Frame 352: The Stranger Side of Sasquatch. Online at http://paranormalbigfoot.blogspot.com/2007/08/1895-encounter-sasquatch-on-mt-rainier.html; accessed November 6.

Macoy, Robert. 1989. A Dictionary of Freemasonry. New York: Bell Publishing Co.

Masonic Heirloom Edition Holy Bible. 1964. Wichita, KS: Heirloom Bible Publishers.

Nickell, Joe. 2001. Real-Life X-Files. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2009. Real or Fake: Studies in Authentication. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2013. Bigfoot Lookalikes: Tracking Hairy Man-Beasts. Skeptical Inquirer 37(4) (September/October): 12–15.

Sherman, Edwin A. 1890. Brief History of the A. & A.S. Rite of Freemasonry, new ed. Oakland, CA: Carruth & Carruth, Printers.

Canada’s Yukon Territory is a wild, rugged land, its summers having a “midnight sun,” and its winters a day-long dark. Bordered on the west by Alaska, the east by the Northwest Territories, the south by British Columbia, and the north by the Beaufort Sea, the Yukon became famous for the Klondike gold rush of 1897–1898. In addition to gold, its treasures include the breathtaking northern lights and rich flora and fauna. The latter’s mammals include the caribou (the same species as reindeer), moose, mountain goat, Alaskan and timber wolf, red fox, mink, otter, and many others, including the black and grizzly bear. In modern times, some say, it is also home to the legendary Sasquatch, usually known since 1958 as Bigfoot.

Bigfoot Country?

I spent most of two adventure-filled years, 1975–1976, in the Yukon, living in frontier Dawson City and working as a casino dealer, museologist, riverboat manager, and newspaper stringer, among many other activities (Nickell 2008). I have reported elsewhere on my investigations of Yukon gold dowsers (Nickell 1988, 89–102) and Dawson’s “haunted” Palace Grand Theatre (Nickell 2012, 167–170).

I had not yet begun my search for what I now call the Bigfoot Bear—referring to an upright-standing bear’s propensity to be mistaken for Bigfoot in general anatomy and coloration as well as behavior and geographic distribution (Nickell 2013). However, both my work and leisure put me in contact with many Yukon outdoorsmen—like riverboat captain Dick Stevenson, numerous salmon fishermen and gold miners, dog-sled-traveling trappers like Ed Wolfe and “Skipper” Mendelsohn, and many, many more, including old Joe Henry, a nationally famous Native American snowshoe maker and my favorite wintertime bar companion. I never heard mention of Bigfoot from any of these people, but they were all familiar with bears. I was often out in bear country myself, hunting, prospecting, and the like—most often with Captain Stevenson—and I once helped him as he bravely caught (by manually operating the game warden’s defective mobile bear-trapping cage) a large, nuisance brown bear (Nickell 1976).

Despite a lack of convincing evidence for Bigfoot, belief persists, and Bigfoot buffs are active almost everywhere, including the sparsely populated Yukon. Indian legends are often trotted out, like the Kushtaka or “Land Otter Man” of the Tlingits of the Pacific Northwest. Kushtaka, it is said, “moves like the wind and disappears at will only to reappear again elsewhere, all the time keeping its hand before its face and peering out at times through its fingers” And “Whenever Kushtaka catches and breathes on its captive, he loses all sense of reality until the Kushtaka leaves” (Coleman 2011). Clearly Kushtaka is a kind of supernatural bogeyman of the Tlingits—not the supposedly real object of Sasquatch hunters’ quests. Yukon Sasquatcher Red Grossinger, a retired Canadian Army officer, admits he has never seen a Sasquatch/Bigfoot, but he assumes an unidentified smell he experienced in 2003 may have been from one. He says his Canadian Sasquatch Research Organization (CSRO) would like to “prove its existence” (Patrick 2009), a kind of cart-before-the-horse motivation that seems a recipe for bias. In this light, let us look at some published reports of creatures that are supposed to be Bigfoot but may well be familiar creatures instead.

‘Black Giants?’

As one source notes of the interest in Bigfoot:

So intense is this fascination that some Bigfoot enthusiasts seem to have labeled just about every mythological creature ever known in the western hemisphere as another name for Sasquatch. There are amusing collections of “Native American names for Bigfoot” online that include the names of giants, dwarves, ghosts, gods, underwater monsters, four-legged predators, an enormous bird, and a disembodied flying head. (“Native American” 2013)

Dolores Cline Brown, in her book Yukon Trophy Trails (1971, 153), along with another writer (Kristian 2013), tells of one such Yukon “Indian” legend (no further identification given) about one bogeyman known as the Bushman or Black Giant. Authentic native lore or not, this man-beast sounds curiously familiar, resembling a bear standing upright, a common posture with a “human appearance” (Van Wormer, 1966, 30). The creatures were very large and covered in black hair like the typical Ursus americanus, the black bear, or even like the much larger Ursus arctos, the grizzly (brown) bear, which can on occasion be black (Herrero 2002, 37, 133). They were said to live alone in caves or recesses during winter—like bears in their dens—and to have enormous feet (Brown 1971, 153; Kristian 2013). Bears, in fact, leave very “humanlike” hindprints—up to sixteen or more inches for a grizzly—that can appear larger in soft ground or when, at moderate gaits, hind- and forefoot prints may superimpose to appear as a single track (Nickell 2013).

A black-colored bear may well explain reports (relatively modern ones) of the Black Giant looking through cabin windows—the common behavior of bears who stand upright and peer into dwellings looking for food. It may also explain a reported instance of a presumed Black Giant heavily rattling a Yukon cabin door in the middle of the night, attempting to gain entry, which was thwarted by occupants shoving furniture against the door (Brown 1971, 153).

Reportedly, the fearsome Black Giants also occasionally “ate Indians” (Brown 1971, 153). True accounts of grizzlies and black bears eating people are gruesome indeed. One woman, carried off from camp by a grizzly, was heard to cry, “He’s got my arm off,” and “Oh God, I’m dead,” and then was heard no more. Her body was subsequently found, partially devoured. Later, park rangers hunted down and killed the bear, actually an old female, and an autopsy revealed human hair still in her stomach (Herrero 2002, 49–50).

But why would Native Americans not recognize the Black Giant as a bear? Perhaps the putative legends got started (and we do not know how old they are) with the appearance of a rare black grizzly, standing upright (as they do in alert mode), and resembling for all the world a man-beast—indeed a black giant. To a people who believed in many imaginative beings and who were inveterate storytellers, such accounts are not at all surprising—especially if they are of modern vintage and influenced by the Bigfoot myth.

A Bearlike Creature

It pays to backtrack sources. One compendium (Bord and Bord 2006, 231) related a case from the Yukon Territory in the 1940s, in which a witness shot his .30-06 rifle at a ten-foot Bigfoot (no further description given) that reportedly left tracks eighteen to twenty-two inches long. The original source, however, had been a letter from the man, who actually admitted he was “not sure it was not a bear” (Green 1973, 17).

We need be no less skeptical than the witness himself, and the solid evidence for the existence of bears trumps that for Bigfoot, which is zero. As to the tracks, we have only the man’s memory about them—a memory so lacking that he could not even remember the exact year of the event “in the 1940s.” Also, recall our earlier discussion about bear tracks.

‘Bluish’ Bigfoot?

On October 4, 1975, a man named Ben Able reported a strange encounter near Jake’s Corner, Yukon. He passed a bipedal figure on the road at night but, when he backed up to offer a ride, the figure moved away from the road. Covered with fur, it was about five and a half feet tall—generally the appearance and size of a small black bear (a standing one can be up to seven feet tall) (Bord and Bord 2006, 283; Green 1978, 242).

Curiously, however, its fur was “bluish” and it had a gray face—odd coloring for Bigfoot. However, it happens that rare “blue” or “bluish-tinged” or “blue-gray” black bears, known as “glacier” bears, are found in the Southwest Yukon, as well as nearby coastal areas of Alaska and British Columbia (Gloia 2011; Whitaker 1996, 703; Herrero 2002, 132; Van Wormer 1966, 20). This is rather unique evidence in favor of identifying the mystery creature as a regional black bear.

Encounters at Teslin

Another somewhat similar case occurred in June 2004 near Teslin (a village just north of the border with British Columbia). Two men driving a truck on the Alaska Highway after one o’clock in the morning passed a figure standing by the road. Going back to see if it was someone who needed a lift, they saw a hunched-over creature approximately seven-feet-tall, covered with dark hair. In their headlights, however, they thought they saw “flesh tones” beneath the hair. Driving away, they looked back and observed it cross the road “in two or three steps,” according to a source, apparently at third hand or worse (Bord and Bord 2006, 209).

Crossing a highway in just three steps from a standing position seems remarkable even for a seven-foot man-beast. Given that the observation was made under poor conditions (behind them, without benefit of headlights, and having to use mirrors or turn awkwardly), I suspect the witnesses were mistaken. A bear seems the most likely culprit.

Some additional sightings were reported in 2005 in Teslin, culminating in the discovery of some “sasquatch hair.” This was sent to a conservation office in Whitehorse, the Yukon capital (“Sasquatch” 2005). The results were good news and bad news for Bigfooters: The hair was not from a bear! Alas, it was also not from a Bigfoot—no authentic trace of which has ever been found—but from a “buffalo,” that is, an American bison (Kirk 2006).

Conclusions

As the foregoing cases show, much of the evidence for Bigfoot depends on selective reporting of eyewitnesses’ descriptions, the weakest kind of evidence. They may easily be mistaken due to poor viewing conditions, excitement, and even what cryptozoologist Rupert Gould (1976, 112–113) termed “expectant attention.” That is the tendency to see what one expects to see—itself due, in the case of Bigfoot, either to wishful thinking or to what I call “Bigfoot programming.” This refers to the fact that people are often assailed with images of Bigfoot—on TV shows, for instance, far more than they are with, say, those of bears.

Acknowledgments

I was assisted with online research by Lisa Nolan of CFI Libraries.

References

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. 2006. Bigfoot Casebook Updated. N.p.: Pine Winds Press.

Brown, Dolores Cline. 1971. Yukon Trophy Trails. Sidney, B.C.: Gray’s Publishing Ltd.

Coleman, Loren. 2011. Wood knocking: More histor­ical background. Online at http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/woodknock-2; accessed De­­cem­­ber 10, 2013.

Gloia, Carol. 2011. Facts about the American Black Bear. Online at http://www.critters360.com/index.php/facts-about-the-american-black-bear-4012/; accessed December 18, 2013.

Gould, Rupert T. 1976. The Loch Ness Monster and Others. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.

Green, John. 1973. The Sasquatch File. Agassiz, BC: Cheam Publishing Ltd.

———. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. Saanich­ton, B.C.: Hancock House.

Herrero, Stephen. 2002. Bear Attacks, rev. ed. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press.

Kirk, John. 2006. Sasquatch in the Yukon. Online at http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot/sasquatch-yukon; accessed December 9, 2013.

Kristian, Ken. 2013. Notes from my database on the Bushmen. Online at http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sbs/blackgiants.htm; accessed December 9, 2013.

Native American Bigfoot figures of myth and legend. 2013. Online at http://www.native-languages.org/legends-bigfoot.htm; accessed December 11, 2013.

Nickell, Joe. 1976. A “grin and bear it” story. White­horse Star (Yukon), June 21.

———. 1988. Secrets of the Supernatural. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2008. Autobiographical Essay. Contemporary Authors 269: 278–297.

———. 2012. The Science of Ghosts. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2013. Bigfoot lookalikes, Skeptical Inquirer 37(4) (September/October): 12–15.

Patrick, Tom. 2009. Slow year for sasquatch sightings. Online at http://www.yukon-news.com/sports/slow-year-for-sasquatch-sightings; accessed Decem­ber 10, 2013.

Sasquatch sightings reported in Yukon. 2005. CBC News (July 13). Online at http://www.freedomcrowsnest.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=14641; ac­cessed December 11, 2013.

Van Wormer, Joe. 1966. The World of the Black Bear. New York: Lippincott.

Whitaker, John O., Jr. 1996. National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals, rev. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

In the middle off his fifth decade of investigating the world’s strangest mysteries, CSI’s Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell continued to address paranormal, historical, and forensic mysteries—both in new investigations and media appearances.

Nickell’s background makes him uniquely suited for such work. He has been a professional stage magician and mentalist (serving as Resident Magician at the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame), a twice-promoted investigator for a world-famous detective agency (including work as an undercover operative), and a literary scholar (his Ph.D. in English Literature emphasizing literary investigation and folklore). Nickell also has considerable training and field experience in both historical research and forensics, and he has spoken at various forensic conferences, including the International Association for Identification, The American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, and the New York State Academy of Fire Science, among others.

Nickell is often sought by the media for his expertise. He has appeared on numerous television shows, including multiple appearances on series like National Geographic’s Is It Real? and the History Channel’s Monster Quest. Nickell has been interviewed by such notables as Oprah, Larry King, Anderson Cooper, Joan Rivers, Bill Maher, and many others. He is author (or co-author or editor) of some forty books, including Crime Science, and The Science of Miracles, the latter chosen by the BBC’s magazine Focus: Science and Technology for its June 2012 book-of-the-month selection. (The magazine’s review by Chris French stated: “There is probably no one in the world better qualified to write a book assessing the evidence relating to alleged miracles than Joe Nickell.”)

As always, in 2014 Nickell was filmed repeatedly for television shows. He recorded portions of several episodes of Miracles Decoded, shown internationally by the History Channel. He was also featured on multiple episodes of America: Facts Versus Fiction (American Heroes Channel), as well as other shows, appearing here and there in reruns, as well as live on shows in Buffalo and Montreal (on CTV). Filmed appearances at symposia included Nickell’s participation on a cryptozoology panel (from England’s QED 2012) and the Trottier Science Symposium in Montreal (about which more presently).

Nickell also appeared as a guest on several radio programs, notably on CBC radio in Toronto for an investigative look at Lily Dale, the spiritualist village, and alleged talking with the dead. He appeared in person in the studio for The Tommy Schumacher Show in Montreal, with call-ins, and on other radio shows, and podcasts. For example, he conducted an annual Houdini Séance for CFI’s Point of Inquiry, with Nora Hurley. (Once again, though, Houdini was a no-show.)

Various print and online sources that sought Nickell’s opinions included USA Today, The New York Times, and the Detroit Free Press, as well as such diverse sources as the Missoula Independent (Montana), McGill Tribune (Montreal), Ocala Star Banner (Florida), Richmond Times-Dispatch (Virginia), and Phoenix magazine (Arizona). CNN.com featured Nickell’s comments in an in-depth article titled “Beyond Goodbye” on so-called “shared death experiences” (not to be confused with reputed near-death experiences).

In addition, he gave many lectures and conference contributions. These included such large venues as the annual Mensa conference (in Boston), where he also had a book signing, and the previously mentioned Loren Trottier Public Science Symposium (October 6–7) at McGill University. The 2014 theme was “Are We Alone?” Speakers included Jim Bell, Planetary Society president; Jill Tarter, SETI Institute; Sara Seeger, MIT professor and planetary scientist; and Nickell, who spoke on “UFO Mythologies.” Nickell’s media duties included—in addition to The McGill Tribune, CJAD Radio, and Canadian television previously mentioned—being interviewed by The McGill Reporter and the podcast Within Reason, as well as participating in a symposium round table that included additional participants like astronaut Julie Payette. There were also luncheons, VIP receptions, dinners, and book signings. . . . The symposium was recorded and posted online.

Also, as he has annually for many years, Nickell participated in Science Exploration Day for high school students held at the University at Buffalo campus. His session—“Investigating ‘Paranormal’ Mysteries” which teaches critical thinking—has often been “the highest ranked” by the students. Nickell also appeared once again at CFI’s popular Camp Inquiry near Holland, New York, where each attendee received a copy of Nickell’s interactive children’s book, The Magic Detectives (thanks to Barry Karr).

In Skeptical Inquirer science magazine, Nickell published the results of several of his investigations. (Editor Kendrick Frazier has called him “the master solver of major popular mysteries. . . . No one does such investigations better than Nickell”). These included: “The ‘Bell Witch’ Poltergeist”; “The Conjuring: Ghosts? Poltergeist” Demons?”; “The ‘200 Demons’ House: A Skeptical Demonologist’s Report”; “The ‘Miracles’ of Father Baker”; “Bigfoot at Mount Rainier”; and “Era of Flying Saucers.” Also he and Major James McGaha (USAF retired), provided a special report on additional flying saucer cases. (The March/April 2014 issue also featured Nickell’s receipt of the Balles Prize in Critical Thinking for his 2012 book, The Science of Ghosts.)

And in Skeptical Briefs (the CFI newsletter) and in Nickell’s blog, Investigative Briefs, he reported on some of his other investigatory work. In the Briefs he investigated the celebrated historical mystery of Maria Monk, the latest claims regarding the Amityville Horror, “Bigfoot Bears” in the Yukon Territory (where Nickell worked 1975–76 as a blackjack dealer, riverboat manager, museum exhibit designer, and newspaper stringer), and the legend of Germany’s siren, Lorelei, an example of historical fakelore. In his blogs, he investigated numerous examples of early quack medicine, miracles, UFOs, Bigfoot, and more, also offering the occasional review, report, cartoon, poem, or satire (including his “RIDDLEculous” series).

Nickell continues work on other important investigations and has several articles and books in progress. In 2015, he will be featured in an anthology of Western New York poets; expect also, in audio book form, his Secrets of the Sideshows, and the appearance of a major new (co-authored) book that is sure to be of interest.

Nickell also continues to operate his online Skeptiseum (or skeptical museum) which is now a member of the Small Museums Association. Two items—a snake-oil bottle and rare spirit trumpet—were featured last year on the Travel Channel’s popular series, Mysteries at the Museum. The Skeptiseum is currently undergoing a makeover. Meanwhile Nickell continues to use his own money to acquire artifacts for the collection which is attracting attention in many quarters.