To Be or Not to Be—Is That the Question?

The main function of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)¹ is to keep evolution in schools and keep creationism out.

NCSE Executive Director Eugenie Scott once said to me: “Our goal is to do our work so well that we’ll eventually be out of our jobs.”

“You want to go out of business?” I asked.

“Yes. That’s the purpose,” she confirmed.

Some organizations aren’t meant to last. Or rather, it is hoped that the need for them won’t last.

Ideally, educational and relief organizations would not need to exist. To that end, some organizations have project plans, milestones, and deliverables. They have specific, achievable objectives, for example, the aim to teach evolution in schools and exclude pseudoscience from the school syllabus. Skeptical organizations endeavor to promote critical thinking in schools and society at large. But this last lofty goal raises a few questions, such as “should skeptical groups aim to go out of business?”

It has occasionally been said that skeptical movements should, like some other educational organizations, aspire to ultimately become redundant. I’ve heard a range of suggested estimates: that we should plan to disband in ten years, or twenty years, or fifty years. There are as many vague, unsupported predictions for the end of skeptical groups as there are predictions for the End of Times.

But there won’t be a paranormal and pseudoscientific apocalypse. There won’t be some sort of Hundredth Monkey Effect whereby we’ll all wash our skeptical sweet potatoes and critical thinking will disseminate instantaneously. There is no instant gratification. Skepticism is spread by stealth.

How will we know when our job is done? When homeopathic products are no longer sold on pharmacy shelves? When astrology columns are no longer published in newspapers? When the crystal ball becomes a desk weight? When the “Going out of Business” sign appears on the Church door?

The skeptic’s role isn’t like educating people about evolution or eradicating smallpox. There is no single task or single solution. There is no one theory or theme. Skepticism has a broad mission, and there are a wide range of topics that we need to tackle—constantly. We need to be vigilant. Often we’re putting out fires and quashing the myths as they rear their heads. There are ever-emerging fads, ever-shifting concerns, and seemingly “unsinkable rubber ducks.” Beliefs and practices evolve, and so skeptics must also evolve with our methods, our marketing, and our message.

These are changing and continuing challenges. But these complexities don’t mean that skeptics are misguided, that our objectives are hopeless, or that our efforts are ineffective.

Skepticism is an anti-propaganda machine that teaches people how to think, not what to think. However, since skeptics are in the business of changing minds, our effects are not always obvious. We need to be patient; our achievements aren’t always immediate but are mostly observable over time.

Our results aren’t as testable as the approaches we use to arrive at our conclusions. Often we only see these results on a case by case basis. For example, the Lancet’s retraction of the Wakefield study that erroneously linked autism to vaccinations², the dissolution of anti-vaccination organizations³, and the victory of evolution over creationism in the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial⁴.

Ironically, like the anecdotal evidence we criticize, the positive feedback we receive is often testimonial and personal. For instance, my mother ceased making her own colloidal silver after I supplied her with evidence that showed that this is an ineffective and dangerous practice. I was also able to help convince my friend with skin cancer to stop seeing alternative practitioners and start undergoing chemotherapy.

Often we will never see the results of what we do. Often we will never know the good we do.

But we do hear about the “bad” we supposedly do. The motives of skeptics are frequently misunderstood. Skeptics are stereotyped as cynics, naysayers, self-righteous snobs.

In the hunt to explain skepticism, some accuse skeptics of being antagonists. We are portrayed as adversarial, pitting James Randi against Uri Geller in a cynical sport. It was once said to me, “You skeptics thrive on people like Sylvia Browne and John Edward.” I replied that skeptical organizations exist because of these people; these people don’t exist for us.

Skepticism isn’t a game. I have yet to meet a skeptic who thrives on news stories like the one about a young girl who died of whooping cough because parents in her community neglected to vaccinate her on the advice of anti-vaccination groups. I have yet to encounter a skeptic who relishes family arguments about religion around the holiday dinner table. I have yet to find a skeptic who enjoys watching a psychic medium tell a crying widow that he has a message from her deceased husband. And I have yet to find a skeptic who delights in the unsolved mystery above the solved one.

We are dedicated volunteers and grassroots activists with humanitarian motives. Pseudoscientist Frank Sumption⁵ once disparagingly asked me, “Who pays you bozos for the work you do?” We are skeptics for love, not money. We are skeptics because a lack of critical thinking can affect our lives negatively. We are driven by ethics and by practical, real-world concerns. We want our children to be safe from preventable diseases such as polio; we want our education systems free from misinformation; we want our society free from superstition; we want to find truths and preserve them.

And we’re skeptics because we can’t live any other way; As Isaac Asimov says, we are skeptics “because we must”:

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.⁶

Alternatively, skeptical groups are accused of being self-propagating. Some believers perceive us as skeptical vampires who feed on pseudoscience and the paranormal. It was once said to me, “You need the supernatural to justify your existence!” But skepticism fills a gap, it doesn’t create one.

There is a multi-faceted and ongoing need for skepticism.

Skeptical organizations and publications have a practical purpose in addressing this need. These outlets create a sense of community, raise awareness of critical thinking, examine beliefs and practices, and engage in activism, especially beyond our own groups. We aim to educate, motivate, and inspire the public to think—critically, of course.

Reading skeptical magazines has a practical purpose too. This isn’t like flicking though a gossip column while you wait in the foyer of your dentist’s surgery (where you are no doubt having those dangerous amalgam fillings taken out of your mouth). We are readers with responsibilities who walk away with an everyday duty to society and a personal duty to friends and family.

You warn your father that the grapefruit juice he drinks is contraindicated against his heart medication. You advise your colleague against participating in that multi-level marketing scheme. You gently explain to your friend that the belief he is dabbling in is more cult than religion. You comfort your frightened child with the truth that there’s no ghost in the cupboard.

We are all on the front lines of skepticism.

Is a lack of critical thinking something we can eliminate entirely? Have we effectively purged ourselves of credulity?

A self-professed “hard-core skeptic” I know praises the benefits of water divining his rural property during drought. He doesn’t invariably find water, but there are times he does, so it obviously works! Whether we buy lotto tickets, give acupuncture a go, or pop vitamins, skeptics are not immune to uncritical beliefs.

Even skeptics are really skeptics-in-training. There will always be something for us to teach, but also something for us to learn. We need to preach beyond the choir but also continue to preach to the choir. No one knows all the songs.

Skepticism is a work-in-progress for all of us. Just as there will always be a need for reason, science, logic, critical thinking, and plain old common sense, there will always be a need for skepticism.

Will skepticism go out of business?

I doubt it.

References:

1. National Center for Science Education. Accessed 02/22/10.
2. Bad Astronomy. AVN may be closing doors; Meryl Dorey stepping down. Accessed 02/22/10.
3. Lancet Retracts Study Tying Vaccine to Autism. The Wall Street Journal. Accessed 02/02/10.
4. National Center for Science Education. Intelligent Design on Trial: Kitzmiller v. Dover. Accessed 02/22/10.
5. Frank’s Box: The Broken Radio. Naked Skeptic CSI Web column. Accessed 02/22/10.
6. The Humanist Community of Central Ohio (PDF). Accessed 02/22/10.

One person’s broken radio is another’s groundbreaking invention that enables human contact with aliens, angels, and the dead.

The Ghost in the Machine

Instrumental Transdimensional Communication (ITC) refers to the use of electronic devices such as tape recorders, fax machines, television sets, and computers to attempt to contact nonhuman entities. These are usually standard machines used in nonstandard ways to collect “paranormal” images and sounds. Auditory data are the most common types of ITC, known specifically as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP, also known as Raudive Voices, named after early proponent Konstantin Raudive). This communication is believed by some to be evidence for the existence of an afterlife.

Unlike the machines listed above that are built with more orthodox purposes in mind, the Frank’s Box is designed specifically to capture EVP. It was invented by amateur radio enthusiast Frank Sumption, who was inspired by a “How To” hobby article about recording EVP that appeared in the now defunct Popular Electronics magazine.¹ Upon receiving design instructions from the spirit world and the article, Sumption built a radio receiver that reputedly facilitates real-time communication between the living and the dead, not to mention extraterrestrials, angels, spirits, and assorted entities from other dimensions.

The Frank’s Box device is one of several incarnations. It is also known as the Ghost Box, Joe’s Box, the Spiricom, the Mini-Box, the Telephone to the Dead, or the Shack Hack, according to the design, the manufacturer, and the faction.

How Frank’s Box Works (or Doesn’t Work)

The Frank’s Box is a homemade radio frequency receiver. However, this radio isn’t designed to find your favorite religious radio station; it’s built to be broken.

Frank's Box - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

The scan-lock mechanism is disabled on this “radio.” Therefore, the machine continuously scans radio frequencies at a predetermined rate. This is like twisting the knob on a radio backwards and forwards quickly, producing random noise. This “sweep method” creates an untunable radio of erratic white noise. The rushing sound of unused frequencies is punctuated by mostly unintelligible fragments of speech or music when the scanner momentarily picks up a station. It is Sumption’s belief that “spirits” and other entities from beyond manifest in an “echo chamber” built into the unit and harness the random signals to create messages intended for the mortal listener.

The Association TransCommunication explains that the Frank’s Box is like a radio for alien DJs.

“Radio-Sweep” is a technology that involves rapidly changing the tuning of a radio receiver to produce a sound track composed of bits of sound from whatever radio programming is on the air and from whatever radio station is detected by the radio at the time. In theory, the communicating entity somehow arranges for the radio programming of local stations to have the needed sounds and that the sweep will detect that sound at the right time to produce the desired message.²

Inside the Box - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

Sumption describes how he believes his device works as a medium. (Nb: all quotes in this article are unedited.)

[This is] Simply another method of supplying “raw” audio that spirits and other entities can use to form voices. Raw audio is a sound source that contains bits of human speech, music and noise, and a convineint source of raw audio is a radio with it’s tuning swept across the entire band, AM, FM, or shortwave. The sweep can be random, linear, or even done by hand.³

On his discussion group EVP-ITC, Sumption expands on his belief that the Frank’s Box channels spirits, not channels.

It’s been my experience that if one supplies something that the spirits/entities can use to make voices out of “they” will speak. That something is called “raw audio”, and contains bits of speech, music and noise. The entities re-modulate this raw audio to form voices. At least I think that’s how it works, and who really knows? A swept radio is a convenient source of raw audio, and that is all the Ghost Box is, and we are spirit as well-hint hint..and it alsoseems to be a form of quantum communcation, allowing instantaneous communication over stellar distances.”⁴

Sumption added in personal correspondence:

“I think it’s no more unbelievable than the so called thought experiments of quatum physics. If I had a Ph.d, maybe what I say would be accepted without question as well.”

EVP-ITC list member “Tom” explains his theories of how the Box may be powered by electromagnetic waves, Sumption’s remodulation hypothesis, or psychic powers.

We Don’t really KNOW how it works, but only that it DOES seem to work.

In EVP we have at least two major theories. In the EM (Electromagnetic)theory, we assume thatthe spirits are communicating with voice modulated EM waves--either via a kind of “radio technology” or the “fact” that sound waves from the other side are Electromagnetic relative to our own universe. This explains why we often need a device like a electric sound recorder to hear the waves.

The other major theory, and the one I subscribe to, is that the voices are made from existing background sounds. This is sorta like using an electronic larynix or holding an electric razor to one’s lips and “mouthing” words. The vocal appratus changes shape and resonance characteristics, making a sufficiently randomized sound(like a buzzing razor) sound like words. Spirits may do something similar, near an EVP recording microphone, either “semi-manefesting” a vocal apparatus or by utilizing some of their own sound altering technology.

The third theory involves the listener putting the background noise together somewhat selectively--in one’s own mind, so to speak. The noise itself which forms which is called a “random field”--- One of the “psychic levers” which effectively enhances one’s psychic abilities to useful levels.

Wiring - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

Since radio stations provide the fodder for any “speech” heard, the broader, unspoken claim is that the “entities” are controlling the airways in general, on the off chance that a human is using a Frank’s Box through which “they” can communicate.

The Light Bulb Goes Off

In a contentious claim popular among the paranormal community, prolific inventor Thomas Edison is credited as the father of EVP and real-time spirit communication. There is an urban legend that while Edison was inventing the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb, he was also in the process of creating an apparatus enabling communication with spirits. This belief appears to be traceable to an 1890 interview in which Edison spoke about the fringe idea of communicating with the “life units” or atoms of the deceased.⁵ In an article published in a 1920 issue of Scientific American Edison speculated about the possibility of building a device that could communicate with the dead, and he was quoted as saying:

“If we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something.”⁶

There was also gossip that Edison held séances and endorsed the abilities of several psychics. Some believe the talk of spirit machines was a marketing prank. Edison was apparently agnostic, although he lived during the height of the Spiritualism movement, when belief in an afterlife and the ability to communicate with the dead were common. However, with over one thousand patents, he never registered any machine for contacting spirits, and there is no evidence to suggest that he built or was building such a device.

Most damning to the claims is the refutation on the Edison National Historic Site:

Did Edison make a machine that could talk to the dead?

This seems to be another tall tale that Edison pulled on a reporter. In 1920 Edison told the reporter, B.F. Forbes, that he was working on a machine that could make contact with the spirits of the dead. Newspapers all over the world picked up this story. After a few years, Edison admitted that he had made the whole thing up. Today at Edison National Historic Site, we take care of over five million pages of documents. None of them mention such an experiment.⁷

Unfortunately, the rumors have given credence to the concept of electronic spirit communication and to the Frank’s Box. Moreover, claims that Edison pioneered spirit communication have further mutated to assert that he dictated the design of the Frank’s Box to Sumption, and that he actually communicates through the device. Sumption has made, withdrawn, and denied these claims over the years. His latest statement on the matter was:

“I have in fact heard a voice that said ‘Edison here’ there was no real information conveyed that I could understand.”⁸

However, Sumption added that these spirits could have been “mimicking” Edison’s voice.

Frank’s Assumptions

Sumption initially e-mailed me in response to a series of articles I published in which I mention the Frank’s Box as a tool for collecting EVP.

I make those boxes. What you say about it/me is highly exagerated. I don’t even use it for the usual paranoraml BS, as in Ghost Hunting. I don’t buy the usual Hollywood/TAPS paranormal crap that’s mostly urban legend. “skeptic” usually just means your mind is made up, and no other evidence is required, sought, or wanted. I don’t sell this shit, I don’t do ghost investigations, and don’t believe in hauntings. Something talks that is not radio broadcasts, often addresses people present by name, and sometimes cusses and swears.

He extended an invitation to demonstrate his invention should I ever be in the area. And so, accompanied by Matthew Baxter of the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, I recently met Sumption in his hometown of Littleton, Colorado.

Sumption told us that he is in frequent communication with a number of “higher-level spirits” via his Boxes. These regular contacts include “Otto” and “about ten women with German names.” Because he wears a purple-striped shirt and a purple earring, Sumption explained that “the guys” deem him to be royalty and have dubbed him their “Purple Princess.” He refers to himself as Purple, the Purple Space Friend, the Purple Princess, and the Purple Alien Girl. Sumption’s original e-mail explains: “I use the name ‘purple alien girl’ cuz ‘they’ claim I’m their long lost Purple Princess from some other planet. The only actual voice I heard in my head was ‘Kiera(key-ra), it’s time to come home,’ the name of the Princess.”

Purple's Ghost Box - Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, 2010

He has maintained this claim all along, stating on his EVP-ITC list:

“They” claim I’m their long lost Purple Princess, kidnapped from my home planet long ago when Earth had space flight by the ancient Egyptians. I couldn’t be rescued at that time, so I was transported forward in time, to now, at the end of the current Earth cycle when I could go home. It gets wierd from there. Other entities that talk though the box claim they see a woman where I should be.

Sumption also claims his Boxes have provided doomsday prophecies and predicted world events and disasters, including the May 12, 2008, earthquake in China.

They have told me I go home at the end, and Earth is doomed since day one, but who knows really? Besides, the main message of EVP is life is forever. I get stuff that seems to be talking about 2012, like they talk about the “Monster,” or gioant asteoid of comet thats supposed to hit. They also say “Earth goes Boom.”

When the predictions fail, the spirits are to blame for their dishonesty.

You can’t take this shit like it’s written in stone, or some kind of friggin’ gospel, as most seem prone to do. So far, irregardless of how clear the voice is, or what method is used, the only thing that can be said with certainty is that they consistently lie!

You can ask questions of the box, and many get direct, and immediate answers, as well as names and other information. I don’t ask questions because “they” always seem to turn deceptive and misleading to me.

Sumption’s followers claim they can assist the deceased victims of catastrophes to “cross over.” A group of users are trying to contact the victims of the Haiti earthquake that struck January 12, 2010.

My guide David just came back for a few hours tonight Bruce, then he just now left again, had to go back, seems they have now over 400,000 coming in, either to the light or going to lower plains, he says they are “not all Christian” it’s because they have a bit of the Voodoo religion mixed in with it I guess He says, “it’s a mix of Christianity and Voodoo.”⁹

Sumption’s cronies also claim that the Frank’s Box can be used for solving crimes, finding missing persons, medical research, and in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. One user reports: “I asked about Autism and I heard: ‘MAN MADE’ and when I asked about vaccines (being a cause) I heard ‘YES.’¹⁰

Sumption believes that the Frank’s Box is not the sole means by which he is contacted by entities. He believes he has psychic abilities, revealing that he has “visions” and also hears “voices” through his television, through running water, and that he even hears messages in his head, such as his wife calling him to dinner. He also invented the Video-Box, a device made from a VCR tuner module, with which he claims to have captured an image of a “Man In Black.”

Sumption contends that his devices provide “proof of an afterlife.” However, he insists that the phenomenon is “not paranormal,” which to him refers to magic and witchcraft. To Sumption, Frank’s Box is technology. “It functions on the quantum level,” he explained.

“What do you mean by ‘quantum’?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and admitted, “I don’t know.”

Sumption’s beliefs and claims are inconsistent, and once he announced on his site Frank’S Boxes: “The box does not work… But I will leave the site up for people that would like to tinker with it.”¹¹

Sumption explained that making the Frank’s Boxes is a hobby that he does not profit from. He has made over sixty of these devices, but they have not evolved considerably in design except in size and one recent addition. The spirits told him to add crystals but did not explain what kind to use or how to attach them; they are not connected to the wiring in any practical manner, “But they seem to help clarify the voices for some entities, as do magnets used in the same way.”

Sumption has posted his schematics online so anyone can build a similar device from scratch. But apparently, the most “effective” boxes are the Sumption originals.

Sumption brought along a Frank’s Box Number 63, a compact unit stored in a Rubbermaid container. We each took turns using the device. Sumption suggested we select the AM band as these channels feature more speech than music, but none of us could produce more than a string of unintelligible noise.

Sumption suggests users record their sessions and try techniques to elicit messages:

For me, it works better to announce out loud I’m doing an EVP recording, and just record a few minutes, then I give a five second count down to indicate I’m stopping--just to be polite, and don’t forget a “thank you.” I don’t do any protection BS, and no prayers, that just seems to tell yourself there’s something to fear. I prefer to listen off tape--analog tape. I use tape recorders that have the “que” and “review” functions. Digital recorders work ok as well, and have the que and review function, but they tend to lack a large speaker. Curiously, I have on rare occasion been able to ask a question, or make a comment while listening to a recording and get a meaningful-instant response from tape. I can’t tell if the recording changed, they made it like that ahead of time, or it’s just perception.

For those wondering about the nature of these miraculous messages, Sumption lists some recent examples on the EVP-ITC list: “This is from tonight, start out ‘crystals inside the box’—‘Frank Sumption is keeping this’---‘C’mon Purple--Keep This –box’—‘we love you Princess,’, and ‘this is Otto.’”

Sample recordings of messages such as “Purple - Good Morning” and “Purple Bitch – We use the radio” can be downloaded at Frank’s Boxes. Sumption is also a proponent of Reverse Speech and believes some messages are hidden in the data but are revealed when played backwards.

At the end of the meeting Baxter asked, “Can we take a photo of the Frank’s Box?”

“You can borrow it,” Sumption offered.

Testing, Testing, Testing…

Sumption has a history of loaning Frank’s Boxes to interested parties to “test.” These loans have often resulted in bitter battles about ownership and application.

Despite Sumption’s generosity in making his devices available for “research” purposes, he is resistant to experimental research and the critical evaluation of his claims. Sumption and his biased believer beta testers are not interested in testing their hypotheses but in collecting data that is confirmation bias for their beliefs. They also have a suspicion of science and misunderstand the scientific method. In e-mail correspondence he states:

I opened it up to all experimentors in and attempt to verify my results, which is in fact an application of scientific method, known as peer review.

I am open to honest box discussion, however, believe it or not I am not a true believer. I don’t buy anyone’s dogma- religeous, newage or scientific. I don’t sell anything, I share all information freely, I do this work strickly out of curiosity, and I don’t have an agenda to prove or disprove.

Sumption seems to believe that as the builder of the Boxes only he knows how the devices truly work and how they are to be used: “What really chaps my hide, as maker of the box, is to have someone who knows nothing of electronics, and technology completely ignore everything I say about the box, and presume to tell me how it really works, how it should be used, and what is acceptable from it.”¹²

Sumption claims that any results are private messages intended for the listener only, and that subjectivity is the strength of his device.

Testing is irrelavent! It’s not the device, it’s the user. The messages received are for the user, and rarely does anyone hear the same thing as the original listener. You test it by use, you judge it by what comes through and what it means to you, you can’t play the sound snipets to a panel of numbnuts(objective listeners)) and expect to get an unbiased/honest test. No two people hear the same, so an “objective listener” is an insult to most people doing this work.¹³

In personal correspondence, Sumption denied the existence of objective fact, saying “There is no objective hard physical truth or universe. We all create what we want to see, and everyone thinks their truth supersedes everyone else’s truth.”

However, some users claim that the occasional recording of a word, identifiable to some listeners, means that the results are objective. If there is no consensus, the operator is psychic. “Tom” explains:

The fact that the operator CAN and DOES make recordings and files of understandable words and phrases shows that we are dealing with an OBJECTIVE rather than a subjective phenomenon here. Two things appear to be going on though. First there is an actual voice modulated signal. Different people who listen to it often hear the same thing. The sound is not perfect and is very noisy, so that would explain others who cannot hear the message. The second thing is that some people can listen to the noise as a “random field,” and with a slightly altered state of mind, this field will induce latent “mediumship” ability in the operator and he or she will get a lot more information and voice material than another listener.¹⁴

There are no consistent claims about the Box. Different users have conflicting theories and agendas.

That Which We Call A Frank’s Box By Any Other Name… Wouldn’t Work Either

After Sumption, Christopher Moon is the biggest advocate of the Frank’s Box. Moon is a “professional paranormal investigator,” senior editor of Haunted Times magazine, and founder of Ghost Hunter University. He was once a “primary tester” of the Box, spurring Sumption to remark that Moon was the only person who understood how the device “should” be used. That is, until Moon turned the Box into a business. He permanently borrowed a few Frank’s Boxes from Sumption, installed the device in a fancy display case, rebranded it the “Telephone to the Dead,” and fashioned himself as a necromancer who “summons the dead.” Haunted Times tells the story as Moon sees it.

Skeptical, Christopher met with Mr. Sumption at his workshop for a demonstration. Christopher was astounded to find that the device that Frank Sumption had built was actually designed through the EVP of deceased scientists. It quickly became obvious to Christopher what Frank Sumption had done; he had completed the infamous Thomas Edison Telephone to the Dead.¹⁵

Sumption retorts: “I did not make a ‘telephone to dead,’ I don’t kow what the f--- that is, and I don’t endorse it! Nor do I appreciate my name being connected to the so called ‘Telephone to dead’ on every friggin’ ad for Moon’s public appearances.”¹⁶

If it was even possible, Moon exaggerates the wild claims. Further to Sumption’s belief that he has regular spirit contacts such as Otto, Moon developed the idea that each Box has an operator assigned on the other side, known as a “Spirit Technician.” Contrary to Sumption’s belief that the message is intended for and meaningful to the user only, Moon claims that he can decipher the “messages” like an oracle with the assistance of his Technicians. Thomas Edison is one of these spirit operators, but the dependable “Tyler” is his favorite Technician. As Engineer Paul Turner explained in personal correspondence: “Mr. Moon claims to be one of the few who can interpret these random noises and claims to be making direct real-time contact with the dead using Thomas Edison’s spirit as some type of cosmic switchboard operator.”

Sumption responds to the Spirit Technician theory but in doing so contradicts his own view that the messages are personal and intended for the listener only. “Even if anyone else could hear the voices, why do you need someone to interpret what’s veing said. I say if not many can hear it, of something similar, it ain’t real!”¹⁷

Confusingly, he told me in person that there “may be something to the idea of Spirit Technicians.” However, Sumption disputes Moon’s claim that Edison is a contact with the persuasive EVP, “Grandpa Edison never spoke to Chris,” as evidence.

Moon further claims there are only thirty chosen people who can correctly hear and “translate” the messages received via the Box. The spirits told him so. Unsurprisingly, Moon is a chosen one, as is his psychic mother and theatrical medium Chip Coffey. Foolhardy amateurs who are not chosen run the risk of encountering evil entities and opening portals to demons.

Unfortunately, Moon has a cult-like following. With his assistants Dina Everling and Michelle “Babs” Babiarz in tow, Moon provides a (dis)service with the glorified Frank’s Box. He conducts private consultations and public readings, charging $100 per fifteen minutes. For an additional fee he offers his spirit translation and third-party expert analysis of the “messages.” Unlike the inane “phrases” and “words” that Sumption receives, Moon’s messages include whole sentences—that only Moon can hear. His machine produces an incomprehensible snippet of sound, but his translations suddenly decode long-winded messages featuring complex concepts and complete sentences.

Like a magic wand, rabbit, and hat, Moon has featured the Telephone to the Dead as his gimmick in productions such as TruTv’s patently ridiculous Door to the Dead, a television show following a team of credulous ghost hunters in their investigation of a Hollywood hired “haunted” house.

Herein lies the most poignant criticism of the Frank’s Box and all other forms of spirit “communication.” Using these devices to provide a service is a scam; while using them at all is futile, charging money from vulnerable, grieving victims is unconscionable.

Moon’s ploy is to carry out personal or public readings and then to leverage this client list by contacting these people and promising, “The telephone is calling for you.” But you’ll have to pay for a session to receive the message.¹⁸ Turner adds:

Many of Moon’s customers or victims have spoken out against him saying that they were not happy with the session, then weeks after the session he contacts them again saying he has talked to their loved one and that he has the information they were looking for. But it will cost an additional fee.

A YouTube video shows Moon giving a public performance of the device at a college. It is distressing to watch. In this cold reading, a young girl asks the tragic question, “I love you, and I want to know…was it an accident?” We hear nothing but white noise as Moon announces flatly, “No.” The girl bursts into tears, and Moon adds, “But you knew that.” He tries to console her with feigned sympathy, “He said it’s okay. He said it’s okay. He said it’s okay.”¹⁹

Jeannette Osborne, a former client of Moon’s, is a guest on the Reap Sow Radio episode “Dark Side of the Moon.” Seeking “something tangible” to prove there is life after death, Osborne spent thousands of dollars having sessions with Moon. During these readings she was told her family was plagued by demons, and she underwent two exorcisms via the device, which she calls “Boxercisms.” She received unsubstantiated warnings about her son, a soldier stationed in Iraq, and she even exposed Moon’s deception by planting bogus information, which he fed back to her as fact. She also recounts the heartbreaking story of nursing her dying brother, and how she created a code word for him to send from beyond the grave via the Telephone to the Dead.²⁰

Sumption has publicly criticized Moon’s methods and ludicrous theories, but his complaints often center around the fact that Moon has neglected to return, or pay for, the Boxes Suption has loaned to him, with which Moon turns a considerable profit. While Sumption’s assumptions are scientifically ignoble, he believes his “personal research” and noncommercial use of the device are somehow noble compared to Moon’s money-making schemes. Neither position makes the public use of Frank’s Box any more ethical or the device any more legitimate.

Both Sumption and Moon exploit the public with their claims and practices.

Opening a Pandora’s Box

I was very fortunate to be able to enlist the assistance of a number of skeptics with backgrounds in engineering and electronics to assess the Frank’s Box. Because I would have had difficulty getting the Frank’s Box through airport security, the device remains in Colorado. Project Engineer Paul Turner examined a series of photographs of the device, and after originally commenting that it was an “elementary school class project,” he provided the following technical explanation of the model.

The Frank’s Box Model 63 that you possess is an alleged Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) device, the term would imply a two-way communication between the spirit world and that of the living. However, after examining the photographs you provided and the builder’s own schematics, I fail to see where or how this two-way communication occurs as the device itself is nothing more than an AM/FM receiver with modifications. Without a personal examination it is of course difficult to unlock any great secrets the box may contain. The results that the builder claims would be a matter of personal belief in the metaphysical.

The First Circuit in the chain is a salvaged RCA AM/FM tuner card. It would appear to have come from an older tabletop style radio. The first thing that struck me as unusual about the card is that the builder placed two quartz crystals on the tuning coil using antenna lead and silicon to secure them between the coil and the housing. It is not possible for these crystals to interact with the tuner, except for the slight possibility the crystals, acting as spacers for the excess antenna lead, could slightly change the characteristics of the reception of the tuner, perhaps reducing its selectivity. Or this is an attempt by the builder to make the device seen more magical.

There are two hand wired circuit boards, which again seen to be populated with a combination of new and salvaged parts. These parts are wired to a proto-board, normally used for prototype circuits. One containing the modifications necessary to linear scan the tuner, this is accomplished using the XR 2206 function generator integrated circuit. This IC generates the sawtooth wave which enables the modified tuner to scan frequencies from top to bottom then back again. This is the same process as spinning a tuner knob on an old-style radio up and down the dial. The adjustment for the rate of scan is controlled by an attenuator on the front face.

This board also contains the preamps and microphone amplifier for an external echo box which is optional. The speaker for the echo box is driven by the RAW speaker output on the front panel, the volume being controlled by the RAW drive attenuator on the front panel. The return microphone from the echo box when the switch is engaged would only feed the line output jack, which then could feed a recording device.

The workmanship of the device is sloppy, it would appear to be an effort of trial and error as opposed to a well-thought out design. While some of the circuits are clever it is in no way elegant or innovative; perhaps a better classification would be haphazard. I speculate that the builder has a rudimentary knowledge of electronics, perhaps at a ham radio level or late 1970’s trade school. So if entities indeed gave him the knowledge to build the device as he states in his schematics apparently they did not keep up with the technical journals.

In conclusion, the Frank’s Box Model 63 does an adjustable linear sweep of the AM or FM band depending on which is selected. The result is a random noise generator. It does not have the capability of receiving any signals except that of the AM or FM broadcast band. It does not have transmit capability. Its sole function is to linear sweep the broadcast band producing bits and pieces of audio from those broadcast stations. Since the claim is that spirits speak through the random noise, I could well see that after a few moments of listening to this random audio, the sensory trait of pareidolia would come into play creating false positives. This is the only logical explanation to the builder’s claims.

You Say Potato; I Say Gobbledygook

The supposed efficacy of the Frank’s Box hinges on its output. However, these results are unconvincing. The communication is incomprehensible, subjective, and incapable of being replicated. Most of all, it isn’t actually communication.

The recordings made by the Frank’s Box and similar devices include random words, word fragments, language-like sounds, music, and radio noise. They do not exhibit the features that characterize natural language. There is no grammar; the “messages” are pieced together, and they do not produce authentic utterances. The most important distinction to make is that these collective sounds do not constitute “speech.” The data from the Frank’s Box may contain bits of speech, but it isn’t speech.

The alleged messages are construed to suit the agenda of the listener. The claim that “I love you” is heard confirms the bias that the believer has contacted Uncle Bruce, while the skeptics laugh when their question, “Is Chris Moon a fraud?” is answered by a car salesperson-like “Guaranteed!”²¹ This kind of evidence is anecdotal only.

Frank’s Box aficionados listen to their devices obsessively to acquire “Class A” recordings (that are still very poor). For them it is addictive like a psychic slot machine, and they are convinced by the pay-offs: the subjectively more intelligible sounds. But these are merely better quality gibberish.

Moreover, the “messages” are nonsensical and do not contain information. They are meaningless from a pragmatic perspective, but they are infused with meaning by the listener. This is idiosyncratic meaning based in personal experience; it is individual but not shared meaning.

However, sometimes this meaning can be shared artificially. Listeners are suggestible and want to hear something meaningful. As believers, they are often expecting to hear something. They are selective listeners who mark the hits and ignore the misses, sometimes even “recognizing” the “voices.” In this mindset they have a tendency to be lead and to conform their perception to what others think they hear. Michael Shermer calls this “priming” the brain to see or hear something.²² Having others hear what you hear seems to legitimize the results. However, even if more than one person arrives at the same interpretation, it is still subjective.

Indeed, many believe there is a special way to “hear” the messages and that this ability requires practice, sensitivity, training, and time. Tom explains, “In some cases the ‘impression’ is not as ‘clean’ and one has to develop ‘an ear’ so to speak, to hear them (like sea legs, but for EVP).”²³

To make the results more persuasive, some users edit the recordings, ostensibly cleaning up the ambient noise, but often affecting the result. It’s not that the messages are garbled or inaudible to begin with, it’s that they aren’t messages at all. As Baxter put it to me in conversation, “The longer you listen to it the more it seems to make sense, like looking for patterns in clouds.”

In personal correspondence, Sumption states:

When I first started making the linear sweep boxes, at first all I could hear was gibberish, then all the sudden I could hear “the guys” talking to me. It seems not everyone can hear it, especially just starting out. It takes time to tune in the ear, and maybe develop some intuition. The box is extremely complicated, and talking about it for a mere two hours just is not enough time, two years would be better. It takes time to develop a feel for the communications. I get very frustrated when I get voices that seem perfectly clear, and no one else can hear it. I don’t know the mental mechanisms involved, maybe a new brain circuit has to be created, or maybe the the possibility of the box function has to be “allowed.” I don’t think the skeptic allows this possibility, there fore they are stuck on “it doesn’t work.”

The best explanation for this phenomenon is that listeners are experiencing a form of pattern recognition known as apohenia, a kind of audio pareidolia. Shermer prefers the more user-friendly term patternicity, which he explains in this instance as “finding meaningful patterns in meaningless noise.” The “messages” are perceptual errors.

The Frank’s Box and similar devices have even been debunked by promoters of EVP. In a listening test of the Mini-Box made by Paranormal Systems, the author determines that the radio sweep method for collecting EVP only produces pareidolia. The paper concludes: “While we have not been able to find reason to think the technology produces EVP, we have found substantial reason to think it does not.”²⁴

One theory down, one to go…

The Frank’s Box is used as a cold reading tool. The meaning is supplied by the reader, the listener, and the client. The responses are coincidental, like finding water when dowsing, randomly selecting a “prophetic” reading from the Bible, and all other forms of divination. These devices are tarot cards for the technological age. The Frank’s Box is no more “technology” than a Parker Brothers Ouija board…but with its underlying malicious intent and mental instability, it’s no game.

Ironically, the natural explanation for the data acquired from the Frank’s Box can be found in a quote from Sumption himself: “It’s not ‘picking up’ the dead, presummably. As I understand it’s operation ‘they’ use the existing bits of speech, mucis and noise to remodulate inot their own voices. Of course, that remains a guess as to how it works.”²⁵

As he admits, his “remodulation” theory is a guess, and the alleged messages are simply composed of ordinary speech, music, and noise.

We’ll allow Sumption to have the final say about his broken radio: “EVP is useful only to the experience, I guess. Yet another reason why I hesitate to build more boxes, there’s no way to determine if it works, or is it just imagination/perception.”²⁶

Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks to Paul Turner, Matthew Baxter, Bryan Bonner, and Stu Hayes for their invaluable assistance in researching, examining, and testing the Frank’s Box.

Notes:

1. Konstantinos. 1995. Ghost Voices: Exploring the mysteries of electronic voice phenomena. Popular Electronics. October issue, pp.37–41.
2. Association Transcommunication. Available at atransc.org. Accessed 1/21/10.
3. Frank’S Boxes. Available at purplealiengirl.tripod.com. Accessed 1/17/10.
4. EVP-ITC. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
5. History Detectives. PBS. Season 7, Episode 1. Available at pbs.org.
6. Museum of Hoaxes. Available online at museumofhoaxes.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
7. Thomas Edison National Historical Park. Available a www.nps.gov/archive/edis/edifun/edifun_4andup/faqs_fables.htm#talk. Accessed 1/20/10.
8. Bonner, Bryan. In print. The History of the Frank’s Box. Modern Paranormal Investigator.
9. Inside the Box/Ghost Box Research. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/20/10.
10. Speaking to the Dead with Radios. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/16/10.
11. Frank’S Boxes. Available at purplealiengirl.tripod.com/. Accessed 1/18/10.
12. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/20/10.
13. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
14. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/18/10.
15. What is the Telephone to the Dead? Haunted Times. Volume 4, Issue 3, Winter 2010, p.28.
16. Bonner, Bryan. In print. The history of the Frank’s Box. Modern Paranormal Investigator.
17. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
18. Dark Side of the Moon. Reap Sow Radio. Available at reapsowradio.podomatic.com.
19. You Tube. Available at youtube.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
20. Dark Side of the Moon. Reap Sow Radio. Available at reapsowradio.podomatic.com. Accessed 1/19/10.
21. Ibid.
22. Michael Shermer. Telephoning to the dead. Scientific American. January 2009. p.46.
23. EVP-ITC Yahoo Group. Available at tech.groups.yahoo.com. Accessed 1/20/10.
24. Butler, Tom. Radio Sweep: A Case Study. Association TransCommunication. Available at atransc.org. Accessed 1/20/10.
25. Skeptic Blog. Box of Fiends. Available at skepticblog.org. Accessed 1/19/10.
26. Ibid. Accessed 1/19/10.

Located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountain National Park, the Stanley Hotel—the inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining—has all of the qualifications needed to be considered haunted.

The Stanley Hotel is a majestic mansion in the scenic town of Estes Park, Colorado. Despite the hotel’s grandeur and opulence, it was probably destined to remain obscure until a famous guest changed its future—and its past.

Stephen King stayed in the atmospheric resort during Halloween 1974. An isolated, off-season evening spent in the already “haunted” room 217 motivated King to pen The Shining: his story of addiction, psychosis, psychic abilities, and ghosts.

Immersed in fame and folklore and plagued by invented and stolen history, is the Stanley Hotel haunted by anything more than its reputation?

Paranormal Claims Investigators

During an interview on Warning: Radio, hosts Bryan and Baxter invited me to attend one of their investigations. A few months later, the opportunity arose to investigate the infamous Stanley Hotel.

The investigation was conducted by Bryan and Baxter’s group, the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society (RMPRS). In the hunt for a neutral title that neither contains the perceived negative connotations of skeptic nor implies believer like ghost hunter, the members call themselves “Paranormal Claims Investigators.”

However, the group often finds itself in No Man’s Land. The word paranormal in their title is a neon sign portraying them as believers to skeptics, although it was adopted to keep from deterring believers by avoiding the label skeptic. Labels aside, they are investigators who adopt a skeptical, scientific approach to examining claims of the paranormal. Importantly, they do not dismiss claims a priori but rather assess and challenge them.

Striving for impartiality for maximum influence, they manage diplomatic relations across both the skeptical and paranormal movements. That is, except for the paranormalists who they doggedly pursue and expose, including Chris Moon, proponent of the “Telephone to the Dead” and alien aficionados Jeff Peckman and Stan Romanek, who are campaigning to introduce an E.T. Commission in Denver, Colorado.

Shhh… I’m Hunting Ghosts!

A major criticism of paranormal groups is that they use scientific tools in an unscientific manner. Like the beautician wearing a lab coat and talking about “liposomes,” ghost hunters have all the (dubious) authority afforded by their electromagnetic field (EMF) meters, voice recorders, and thermometers. But no, they’re not about to test for electrical currents, record a voice memo, or check the temperature of the turkey. They’re hunting ghosts.

The RMPRS hunts the ghost hunters. Given the stereotype of the ghost hunter who views an EMF meter as a “ghost detector,” I was initially disconcerted to learn that the RMPRS use EMF meters, seismographs, and other seemingly irrelevant devices. However, the group uses this equipment against other groups. Rather than using an EMF reading to “prove” paranormal claims, the group uses EMF meters to disprove claims and provide natural explanations for any activity.

For example, they showed me footage from the TV special The Stanley Effect, where an EMF meter is waved over a man’s body. The device beeps frantically, and he swoons like he’s been struck by an evangelist. The group demonstrated that a human body emits a mild electromagnetic field; an EMF meter detects this, rather than ghosts or demonic possession. The group members receive formal training in the equipment they use, so they know what each instrument does and doesn’t do.

Complete with microphones and cameras, the team of Bryan, Baxter, Nitor, Stu, and “Trash” of the RMPRS were stationed on site between the hours of 7 pm and 5 am to record and monitor the Music Room, the Pinion Room, and the Billiards Room, where the phantom sounds of billiard balls dropping are heard, although there is no table there anymore.

“So, what do you expect to find on an investigation?” I asked. “Nothing,” Bryan admitted before adding, “We try to find explanations for what people claim to have found before.”

As the cameras recorded empty rooms, the group carried out their most important work: outreach.

From No Man’s Land to the Trenches

The Stanley Hotel is more successful as a tourist destination than a hotel. The staff conducts daily ghost tours, attracting a staggering 500 visitors every day. These people visit for a haunting experience.

Equipped with cameras, these ghost-hunting guests eagerly snap images of unlikely subjects: stairwells, doors, chairs, and halls. When their images produce “orbs” in the dusty halls, or “ghostly footstep” are heard on the creaky stairs above, they have their supernatural souvenir.

Then the visitors discovered that a “paranormal team” was conducting surveillance in the hotel. Like a cat bringing in a mouse, these visitors proudly displayed their orb photos to the group. But they didn’t anticipate the response they got. They expected confirmation bias from a sympathetic audience. Instead, they found skepticism. Countless times Bryan and Baxter repeated the mantra, “Orbs aren’t ghosts,” as they explained concepts including Occam’s Razor and pareidolia and provided rational, natural explanations for the phenomena reported by visitors.

This is grassroots skepticism. Bryan and Baxter acted as activists and ambassadors for skepticism, engaging in vital public outreach. They answered numerous questions with extraordinary patience, logic, and compassion for the budding paranormalists whose beliefs were being deflated gently and replaced with critical thinking skills.

These visitors all showed that they were observant and had inquisitive, questioning minds. But they also displayed a misguided curiosity for normal events and a distinct lack of skepticism for anything but skepticism. They were driven by a determination to unearth paranormal phenomena, even at the expense of fact.

Bryan and Baxter chipped away at the uncritical work of TV shows, sensationalist books, and the tour conducted by the hotel itself. They spoke with ever-materializing groups of visitors, and the last ghost hunting guests didn’t vanish until 4 am.

Stealing History?

“Which rooms are claimed to be haunted?” I asked.

“That depends on which rooms are still available for the night,” quipped Bryan.

The Stanley Hotel is allegedly haunted by at least twelve ghosts, including the ghost of the founder, Freelan O. Stanley, who appears in the billiards room, resplendent in a tuxedo. There is a haunted piano that plays phantom music, a spectral party in the ballroom, and the ghost of several small children that haunt the hallways and stairs.

History is muddied by folklore at the Stanley Hotel. In an unwitting historical revisionism, elements of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel are pasted onto the Stanley Hotel. For example, it is believed incorrectly that character Jack Torrance was based on Stephen King, and that the book tells of his own cabin-fever experiences. Although the plot was conceived at the Stanley Hotel, it is not based on it. The mini-series was filmed there, but Stanley Kubrick’s original movie was filmed in Oregon and England. However, scenes from the movie Dumb and Dumber were filmed there.

The book’s fictional ghosts have also become the resort’s ghosts. But this is not the only history adopted by the Stanley Hotel. Close to downtown Estes Park is the lesser known Elk Horn Lodge. Bryan reports that a previous owner relayed the lodge’s ghost stories to an author who was penning a book about the Stanley Hotel and needed a few more tales to embellish the book. The owner was asked if these stories could be “borrowed,” and she agreed to the transfer of these tales. Some of the Stanley Hotel’s ghosts could be the legends of the Elk Horn Lodge.

The Stanley Hotel’s ghost stories appear to be a jumble of tales from the Elk Horn Lodge, local history blended with urban legend, staff anecdotes, and the creation of visiting psychics, guests, ghost hunting groups, and TV shows such as Ghost Hunters.

Busting Myths…

What proof is there of these hauntings? Beyond anecdotal evidence, there is some video data obtained by Ghost Hunters Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. Their “evidence” of a “jumping table” and a “ghost thief” were captured in Rooms 1302 and 401, respectively.

Bryan and Baxter took me on a tour of these rooms, where they replicated the reputed phenomena and systematically debunked these stories and others.

The “Jumping Table”

Tables have been “haunted” since the table-tipping escapades of the spiritualism movement, but usually they put on a more convincing display.

Room 1302 contains an alcove with a round table and two chairs. In an episode of Ghost Hunters Grant Wilson is in a darkened room with a few cronies. Using black and white filming, the camera is focused on the fascinating floor, as we see part of a table slide suddenly into view and hear gasps. “Who’s in here with us?” someone demands of the thin air. They muse that the table is far too heavy to be moved by mere humans and conclude quickly of the unremarkable event, “Let’s chalk it up as a ghost.”

First, we tackled the claim that the table was too heavy to move. We took turns “levitating” the table by lifting it with our thumbs so our fingers could still be seen above the table top. This demonstrated that not only could someone pretend to levitate the table but that the table is sufficiently light in weight that two people can raise the table with minimum effort.

On the TV show, the sliding table became known as the “jumping table,” and the action of its subtle movement became the table “jumping two feet into the air.” Next, Bryan replicated the table’s performance. While Bryan’s hands were placed demurely on the table and he bantered casually, the table moved abruptly and violently! “The table danced almost completely out of the alcove!” commented Baxter for effect. Bryan’s hands on the table removed the possibility of using them for trickery—but not of using his feet to kick the table, a movement that was obscured by the camera angle.

In the Ghost Hunters footage we need to consider the dim lighting and the awkward camera angle that obstructs vision for both the attendees and the viewer. In all likelihood, the “jumping” was caused by one of the crew bumping the table accidentally, or someone pushing the table deliberately to liven up an otherwise dull episode.

A video of the reputed evidence and the replication can be viewed on YouTube.

The “Ghost Thief”

Room 401 is reputedly haunted by a troublemaker known as the “Ghost Thief.” This is the ghost of a man who appears at the end of the bed and allegedly steals or moves guests’ possessions.

Ghost hunter Jason Hawes spent the night in this room and was tormented by a series of mundane events, including a closet that opened and closed and a glass that cracked.

It doesn’t take much of an imagination to construct plausible explanations for these phenomena. Bryan and Baxter used a seismograph to demonstrate the almost constant ground vibration that could cause subtle movement. Moreover, the room lies flush against the elevator; a slow, creaking lift that emits a low rumble. As the elevator rises and falls, it shakes the floor and walls gently. This movement is sufficient to reposition guests’ belongings and rattle furniture, including opening and closing a closet.

As Hawes was lying in bed, a glass on the bedside table cracked, which he blamed on paranormal activity. After the show had aired, Bryan raised the topic with Hawes in personal correspondence. The ghost hunter admitted that there was a simple explanation for the incident. The glass in his room was dirty, so he ordered a clean one from the kitchen. When the replacement glass arrived, it was still hot from the dishwasher. He poured chilled water with floating cubes of ice into the piping hot glass, and in an unwitting (?) physics experiment, the glass fractured. The unseen forces were thermodynamic, not paranormal.

Sometimes ghost stories are not about what is told but what isn’t told. Hawes hasn’t provided this explanation publicly, and his fans and viewers have been fooled into thinking that this ordinary, predictable outcome was a paranormal event.

A Load of Schist

The Ghost Hunters came up with the pseudoscientific theory of “residual hauntings” to explain this supposed hotbed of paranormal activity. They claim that there are large deposits of quartz underneath the Stanley Hotel and that unnamed, unsourced “researchers show us” that this mineral “causes hauntings” by “storing” and regenerating the event. Hawes asserts: “We did a lot of research on the Stanley Hotel. One thing we did find is that the mountain it’s built on actually contains a lot of quartz stone; and one of the theories that we’ve been working with for a long time is residual hauntings, they seem to have a lot of quartz and limestone deposits within the area of what activity is going on.”

Wilson adds: “When you take some of the stories you’ve accounted to us, such as the children running down the hallway, the party in the ballroom, things like this, they all have the feel of a residual haunting, which is just captured energy that gets released under the right circumstances.”

Hawes concludes: “A residual haunting you can think of it like a tape player that keeps on rewinding itself and playing itself over and over again. So when it comes down to it, a lot of quartz stone under the building, it really does fit into our theory.”

The Ghost Hunters also stated that the Stanley Hotel was built upon “a large deposit of magnetite.” These assertions are testable. Bryan and Baxter researched these claims, which have also been made by other paranormal groups, but they weren’t able to locate the source or the facts. They contacted the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), who expressed interest in the project since no soil survey had previously been undertaken on the premises.

A team of scientists arrived at the Stanley Hotel, where they conducted a two-day soil survey of the site, accompanied by Bryan and Baxter. The examination included an Electromagnetic Induction (EMI) survey to assess for patterns of electromagnetic energy.

They soon had the dirt on the Ghost Hunters’ claims, as the USDA concluded formally that the soil is primarily metamorphic rock known as schist. This rock can contain minerals, such as talc, graphite and quartz, although the survey found that there were no “large deposits of magnetite or quartz under the property.” The USDA report of the EMI survey concluded: “There did not appear to be any ‘unexplainable’ spatial patterns of apparent conductivity or ‘mysterious’ anomalous features resulting from the EMI pedestrian survey or the EMI mobile survey completed near the Stanley Hotel. All observable features associated with changes in apparent conductivity were thought to have reasonable explanations.”

From Busting Myths to Birthing Myths

While Bryan and Baxter were busy putting out paranormal fires, the supernatural treadmill was busy birthing three new myths; the “Haunted Rocking Chair,” “The Vortex,” and “The Ghostly Bacon Smell.”

Folklore formed before our very eyes.

The “Haunted Rocking Chair”

On the front porch of the hotel entrance is a curious rocking chair that rocks unaided.

The story began when a female staff member noticed the chair rocking when no one was sitting in it. Anecdotally, this was in the middle of the day and there was no wind. Alarmed, the woman approached the chair, strangely asking it, “Do you want me to go?”According to the woman, the rocking sped up. She took this as a sign that the chair “wanted” her to leave, so she left in fear. It was soon believed that this was the ghost of F.O. Stanley, who enjoyed sitting in his rocker on the porch.

The RMPRS hypothesized that the rocking was caused by either the wind or the residual kinetic energy after someone had sat in the chair or rocked it by hand. Further to this, a guest reported seeing the original event occur, just after someone had walked into the hotel foyer. Presumably, this visitor had sat in or rocked the chair beforehand. Baxter tested this theory by sitting in the chair and observing that upon standing, the chair continued to rock for about three minutes. To test the possibility that wind had been the culprit, they attached toilet paper to several chairs nearby, using this as a wind sock to detect movement. As predicted, the wind rocked the chair as the toilet paper fluttered in the breeze.

“We’ve officially made toilet paper a ghost hunting tool!” observed Bryan.

The “Vortex”

Bryan and Baxter were called upstairs to witness “something weird” that was occurring at that very minute. A group of people had gathered around a very unassuming door built into a stairwell. “The door knob is haunted!” exclaimed a woman with a digital camera. She had been taking a photograph of the door, as one does, when she noticed red, blue and green lights appearing on the door knob. Bryan, Baxter, and Stu identified this as “artifacting” caused by the low quality of the display on the camera’s live view screen. This was hardly paranormal.

Despite the natural explanation, this became known instantly as “The Magic Door Knob,” and the site became “The Vortex”, a hub for orb photographs, mysterious lights and…phantom smells.

Cooking Up a Ghost Story

The kerfuffle over the flash issue was interrupted by the sudden pervasive scent of bacon. Someone mused that the kitchen was nowhere nearby; by default explanation, it must be ghostly bacon! The story morphed like olfactory pareidolia, and the smoky bacon scent was re-interpreted as cigar smoke, probably to fit in with common claims that ghosts produce scents associated with their lives, such as perfumes or pipe smoke.

Out of either curiosity or hunger, a few people went in search of the smell. They tracked it down to a room where a family was using a hotplate to cook bacon cheeseburgers, avoidng the prices in the Stanley Hotel’s restaurants. But the damage was done, and visitors were already chatting excitedly about the “ghostly bacon smell” and the “ghostly cigar smoke.”

Don’t Give Up the Ghost

During the investigation, The Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society researched popular beliefs and claims; they solved some mysteries, they performed valuable outreach, and they maintained the historical integrity of the Stanley Hotel. However, they didn’t discover any anomalous phenomena. They found a leak in the ceiling but no ghosts. But this is no reason to give up the ghost (investigations).

There is great merit in the assessment rather than immediate rejection of claims. There is value in employing the scientific method when examining claims rather than the uncritical methods employed by ghost hunting groups. There is worth in solving mysteries rather than claiming a site is “haunted” or that an activity is “inexplicable.” There is importance in educating the public; this is what skepticism is all about.

Faced with seemingly “unsinkable ducks,” the popularity of the paranormal, and the continual creation of legend, it is tempting for skeptics to become despondent in our mission. Some skeptics are simply fed up with treating these “classic” paranormal themes, but the task of disseminating critical thinking is nowhere near complete.

Skeptics shouldn’t give up the ghost until the public does.

If a doctor engages in malpractice, the practitioner is accountable to professional organizations. However, if a ghost hunter is accused of misconduct, there is no regulatory board, no code of conduct, and no guide to good ghost practices. What recourse does the client have when the poltergeists come back or the ghosts don’t leave?

Following accusations of unethical and illegal practices, the ethics of ghost hunting is currently a controversial topic among the paranormal community. In an effort to legitimize the practice, some ghost hunters have attempted to create a set of standards and ethics. Why, even the pet psychic community has a code of ethics!¹

Do Ghost Hunters Need a Hippocratic Oath?

To address this need, “Investigation Morality” in Haunted Times presents a protocol for ghost hunting. This consists of a superficial list of obvious rules: respect private property, no illegal drug use, no intoxication, no discriminatory language. Strangely, the article then creates procedures of how to capture photographs of orbs and tips for recording electronic voice phenomena. Then the list of “standards” starts sounding like a playground warning: “There will be no running or horseplay at any time during an investigation. This type of behavior does not befit an investigator and it does not give the proper respect to the place or owner.”²

Creating a code of ethics obscures the fact that ghost hunting is the problem itself. The very beliefs, practices, claims, conclusions, and cures of ghost hunters are often unethical. Is it simply unethical for ghost hunting groups to investigate at all?

Ghost hunting is hardly a civil right, but anyone can do it. Indeed, it is encouraged by “haunted” restaurants, hotels, and other businesses that thrive on their folklore and often rely on the bias of ghost hunters. Many “haunted” sites are public places. Within certain hours, cemeteries are open to visitors whether they want to mourn by a graveside, dangle a pendulum over a grave, or attempt to raise a spirit from beneath it.

The potential ethical problems arise when a troupe of ghost hunters forms a group, sets themselves up as a “business,” advertises their spurious “services,” attracts “clients,” and sets foot into private houses, even with the consent or invitation of their residents. It’s like phoning your local Kingdom Hall and inviting a few Jehovah’s Witnesses into your home…

Ghost hunting is an industry today. Inspired by the plethora of reality TV shows, ghost hunting groups are as popular today as video shops were in the 1990s. There are potentially thousands of these groups nationally. In one informal online search, an estimated 140 paranormal groups were found in Denver, Colorado, alone.³ A few of these groups even claim nonprofit status.

These groups exist because there is a need, however illegitimate it may often be. The need is not only provoked by these TV shows but stems from popular beliefs. When members of the public fear their businesses and homes are haunted, they contact these paranormal groups; they don’t come to us. From skeptics they expect a lack of sympathy and ridicule. From believers they expect sympathy and similar belief systems. When they should want fact, they seek familiarity. But the assurance is that these teams are comprised of ghost hunters who claim to be “professional,” “trained,” and “qualified.”

PhD (Ghost Hunting)

© Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society 2009.

Put simply, none of us are “qualified.” There are no ghost hunting qualifications. There is no apprenticeship, training, course, or degree needed to become a ghost hunter, ghost chaser, paranormal investigator, or skeptical investigator of the paranormal. That is, there are no legitimate courses. Ghost Chasers International and other organizations offer courses that ensure you will become a “Certified Ghost Hunter,”⁴ if not certifiable…

By this description, no one is “unqualified” either, but some are more unqualified than others. Some professions can be more relevant to the field: physicists can explain the way the natural world works; historians can compare claims of dates, people, and places against records; and electricians can explain strange behavior caused by faulty circuits. Even the infamous plumbers of television’s TAPS⁵ can bring to bear specialist knowledge…until they go beyond their knowledge base.

It is important that the investigator doesn’t venture beyond his or her area of expertise. Unfortunately, it is venturing beyond their area of expertise for some ghost hunters to investigate at all.

All investigators are varying degrees of amateur. For most, it’s a haphazard hobby. No degree in physics or “metaphysics” will prepare someone to investigate the paranormal. It takes many people from many different backgrounds to piece together paranormal puzzles; provided all players are playing the same game.

© Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society 2009.

There is no professional organization, regulatory body, union, or code of ethics to regulate ghost hunting research and practices. Should such courses and resources exist? Probably not; ghost hunting is not a structured field or standardized practice. It is based in legend and myth, and many claims involve the paranormal interpretation of natural phenomena. To date, there is no solid evidence for the existence of ghosts.

Ghost hunting seems to be the alchemy of our day.

The (Not So) Scientific Method

Ghost hunting is not a science, but any claim can be studied scientifically. By and large, investigating the paranormal is a legitimate study studied illegitimately.

There is no formal or rigorous model or methodology to investigating claims of hauntings. There is no one right way to approach it but many wrong ways. Ghost hunting can and should employ the scientific method, but most hunters don’t, or even worse, they do … but badly.

It is not field work when the data consists of photographs of orbs, recordings of electronic voice phenomena, and anecdotal evidence of ghost sightings. It’s not the scientific method when the premise is that ghosts exist.

It is not experimental research when dubious tools are used. Some devices are bogus: the “Telephone to the Dead,” a bad radio that reputedly receives garbled messages from the deceased that can be “translated” for a price.⁶ Some equipment is overkill: using a Geiger counter to find spirits is like using a concrete mixer to blend cake batter (and an imaginary cake at that). Some instruments are irrelevant: as the name suggests, Electromagnetic Field Detectors measure electromagnetic fields, not ghosts. Thermometers, ion meters, and motion sensors were not designed for the purposes of ghost hunting.

Just because someone is using scientific equipment does not mean they are using the scientific method.

Diagnosis: Paranormal

© Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society 2009.

Following this fundamentally flawed experimentation, it is not conclusive when the ghost hunters pronounce a location “haunted.” Belief often gets in the way of reality, and it’s easier to have blind faith than to undertake double-blind tests. Ghost hunters and clients often live in a supernatural symbiosis. The claims justify the existence of the ghost hunters, and the ghost hunters substantiate the claims, which leads to confirmation bias. It’s often the ghost hunters themselves who bring the ghosts.

Occasionally, paranormal cases are driven by underlying physical or mental health conditions, which the ghost hunter is incapable of discerning unless he or she moonlights as a medical doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. And unless they are the client’s chosen or assigned therapist, it’s not ethical for them to become involved at all even if they are a licensed therapist. To corroborate these claims is unconscionable, and to attempt to resolve these cases is dangerous; the ghost hunter is sorely out of his or her depth.

To be truly ethical, ghost hunters should avoid private investigations and avoid becoming embroiled in the personal lives of others.

Finally, once the ghost hunters have “diagnosed” a site as haunted, it is not ethical for them to attempt to “cure” the still-alleged phenomena. Some paranormal groups enlist psychics, demonologists, and other paranormal practitioners to “treat” hauntings with protective rituals, ghost clearings, cleansing ceremonies, blessings, exorcisms, and other Hollywood cures. “Curing” a haunting is at best a placebo for the apparent victim and at worst a fraud.

An investigation should aim to solve a mystery, not claim to be curative. The goals in investigating claims of the paranormal should be to establish whether or not there is a claim, to examine the claim carefully and logically, and hopefully to explain the phenomena. Sometimes our job is simply to accept explanations as they are found, as mundane as they may sound in comparison to the claim.

The simplest explanations can be the most difficult to accept by those who are already convinced of the presence of the paranormal.

Ghost hunting is fraught with potential ethical concerns for all parties involved. The ghost hunter and clients faces legal, moral, and safety issues. The locations are vulnerable to vandalism, theft, and damage. Then there are the more intangible dangers of ghost hunting: the destruction of history, the creation of pseudoscience, and the misrepresentation of the natural world as supernatural.

Perhaps ghost hunters don’t need a code of ethics because no one needs “ghost hunters.”

References:

1. Code of Ethics for Animal Communication. Available at http://www.herbsandanimals.com/codeofethics.html (accessed November 6, 2009).
2. Schill, Brian. 2009. Investigation Morality: Moral Dilemma—Investigating Cemeteries and MCIs. Haunted Times 4, no. 2.
3. Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society. Available at http://www.rockymountainparanormal.com/ (accessed November 9, 2009).
4. Ghost Chasers International. Available at http://www.ghosthunter.com/ (accessed November 9, 2009).
5. The Atlantic Paranormal Society. Available at http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/ (accessed November 9, 2009).
6. The Telephone to the Dead. Available at http://thetelephonetothedead.com/ (accessed November 9, 2009).

New age spiritualism has its origins in the nineteenth century spiritualism movement that introduced the world to mediums, channeling, Ouija boards, and séances (and paranormal fraud). Today, spirituality encompasses a diverse range of beliefs and practices.

Is New Age Spiritualism a Religion or a Gateway to Leaving Religion?

Spiritualism in and of itself might not be religion, but it can include religion. Spiritualist beliefs often integrate facets of philosophy, culture, jargon, and rituals from historical religions blended with pseudoscience and the paranormal (like voodoo). Spiritualism draws mainly from Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism but also indigenous and other faiths.

Spiritualist beliefs can be polytheistic or monotheistic, and the theistic higher being could be a God, Goddess, Creator, Supreme Being, or Omnipotent Presence. However, spiritualism is not invariably theist. For those who perceive themselves as nontheistic but still “spiritual,” spiritualist beliefs are compatible with atheism. For these believers, the nontheistic higher power could be the Cosmos, Chi, Prana, Love, Light, or Life Force.

Spiritualism is often conceptualized as religion, much as atheism is, because the structure of religion is our comparative cognitive model. However, there is no clear-cut continuum of belief to nonbelief. There are parallels because spiritualism is a belief system, but it is eclectic, unstructured, dynamic, and idiosyncratic. People who practice some form of spiritualism might describe themselves as spiritual persons, but they wouldn’t necessarily employ spiritualist as a label of self-identification or spiritualism as a designation for their beliefs.

Without denominations or sects, spiritualism is composed of loose communities that often evade classification. Alternatively, there can be in-group categorization, such as the theory of homeopathy or the various schools of yoga. This broadness and factionalism gives rise to the continual emergence of new beliefs, like psychic medium Sylvia Browne’s “religion,” the Society of Novus Spiritus.

Many proponents value spiritual beliefs for this very lack of labelling and rigid structure. It is religion without a rule book. There is no unified theology, no universally defining characteristics nor collective history. There is no doctrine. The holy book of spiritualism is whatever self-help book is currently on The New York Times Best Seller list. The priests and popes of spiritualism are authors and celebrities, including fire-walking motivational mentor Tony Robbins, psychic medium John Edward, and Wayne Dyer and Phil McGraw, the prophets with PhDs.

The intersection of religion and spiritualism is often mysticism. Customs of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches, such as speaking in tongues, divination and healing through the Holy Spirit, are also spiritualist practices. But there is no single spiritual House of Worship; the temporary “church” is the yoga class or reiki workshop. Although there is no formalized liturgical service, spiritualism is often ritualistic. Advocates of spiritualism enact their beliefs and petition the powers not only with prayer but other forms of intercession, including meditation, mantras, Pilates, and positive affirmations.

Instead of entrance to Heaven, spiritualist beliefs have more esoteric goals of attaining enlightenment, consciousness, awareness, oneness, and mindfulness. Depending on cultural preference, its goal is an individualist spiritual quest to find your true self or is collectivist: you become part of the Greater Whole or Overmind.

Spiritualism offers not only salvation for the soul but also Chicken Soup for the Soul.¹ It is concerned with mind, body, and spirit and promises a practical function. It is a religion of self-help that preaches to its parishioners about alternative medicine, aging, activism, diet, environmentalism, relationships, art, music, finance, career, peace, politics, psychology, science, sexuality, quality of life, and the afterlife.

God tells us to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us,” but He can’t help you lose weight. Spiritualism is more holistic than holy and claims to treat a bizarre range of “life issues”: it teaches us how to develop confidence, read body language, interpret our dreams, boost brain power, develop our ESP, overcome stress, navigate gender differences, enjoy better sex, cure impotence, look ten years younger, win friends, and influence people.

God helps those who help themselves, but religion is often about fate and acceptance of one’s lot. Spiritualism doesn’t wait for God to reveal His plan; a psychic can do that. Nostradamus and the Bible Code provide us with prophecies (that are interpreted subjectively). Intuitives, sensitives, and astrologers supposedly offer us glimpses into the future (using cold reading). Why wait for God to remember you when your life will improve in the time it takes to read Enjoy Life and Be Happy in 30 Seconds?²

Spiritualism is instant karma! New age books are replete with spiritual quick fixes to transform your life—for awhile. Religion seems to be about the power wielded over us, but spiritualism promises to empower, affording us control over our lives. Advocates promise that reading their books and attending their lectures will be a life-changing experience…for a price.

For Mormon Elders and Jehovah’s Witnesses, their faith is free. It is “good news” to be shared, be it door-to-door or from the pulpit. Bibles are usually complimentary, and you will even find one in your hotel room should you forget to pack your copy. However, spiritualist promoters often have a we-know-something-you-don’t-know manner, although they are prepared to sell you this knowledge. The keepers of the secret have been silenced, until now. It’s a conspiracy. Like Kevin Trudeau’s books, this is information “they don’t want you to know about.”³

Celebrities become missionaries for their beliefs. If you loved their movies and music, now try their religion. Madonna promotes the Kabbalah, and Tom Cruise promotes Scientology. Spiritualism is also faddish. The latest products and techniques are hailed as miracles until they fail to work even as placebos. In a spiritualist treadmill, new concepts soon replace old ones. Believers go from wearing copper bracelets to magnetic necklaces and following macrobiotic diets to food combining, low-carb, Superfoods, and clean eating. Tahitian Noni Juice and Himalayan Goji Berries are modern snake oils claimed to be the elixirs of youth and eternal life. Hair shirts and self-flagellation are penance for sin, but in spiritualism the punishments are “treatments” of detox. The eleven-hour sessions of yoga, colloidal silver, ear candling, cupping, purgation, colonic irrigation, and nasal irrigation with a Neti Pot are so bad they must be good for you.

Like a cup of chamomile tea, spiritualism is soothing. It tells us what we want to hear. We have past lives and will continue to be reincarnated. We don’t die; our souls are in transition. There’s a spiritual afterlife where our guardian angels watch over us and protect us. Having passed on and crossed over to the Other Side, our loved ones await us there. Psychic mediums claim they receive messages from our friends and family if we’re satisfied with the stock message, “Your mother loves you.”

Spiritual beliefs can give people false hope. Alternative therapists claim to be able to cure the incurable. For thousands of dollars, a clinic in Tijuana guarantees to cure patients of cancer. For thousands more, a peculiar zapper device will supposedly heal your dysfunctional liver, purify your blood, boost your immune system, and cure you of illnesses you didn’t know you had. Chiropractors and acupuncturists promise to treat your chronic pain. Spiritual healers promise to heal terminal diseases with their bare hands without surgical instruments or anesthesia (or success). For a substantial “donation,” evangelists will perform miracles Jesus-style, wherein the blind will see and those in wheelchairs will walk again (because they are plants in the audience).

And if you don’t like it, don’t believe it. With no fixed ideology, believers can afford to go spiritual shopping. This gives rise to the ad hoc adoption (and abandonment) of beliefs and practices. Some see the freedom of choice as its strength, but this cherry picking often masks underlying problems, breeding hypocrisy. People try a bit of everything and discard what doesn’t work or suit their biases. Sylvia Browne’s motto summarizes the spiritualist ethos: “Take what you want and leave the rest behind.”⁴

Should Skeptics Be Skeptical about New Age Spiritualism?

Overall, spiritualist beliefs are pseudo-religious, but they are often pseudoscientific too. Belief systems tend to be outside the realm of skepticism for many skeptics, but irrational, dangerous, and unscientific practices are always our concern and are often testable.

Spiritualism is often framed as religion but also framed as science. This can be confusing for the consumer. Proponents claim that they too were skeptical until they were convinced by the evidence. Anecdotal evidence is still evidence, isn’t it? The homeopathic preparations are beside the aspirin on the pharmacy shelves. The herbs are natural so they must be safe. Traditional Chinese Medicine has been around for thousands of years. The naturopath has a nicer bedside manner than the medical doctor. The only thing that supersedes science is the exotic; if it is foreign (and especially Eastern), it is imbued with unquestionable authority and wisdom.

Science has credibility, and spiritualism can appear to be integrative. Parapsychology and Postmodernism have a scientific facade. Dr. Deepak Chopra is a medical doctor. Bruce Lipton aims to “bridge science and spirit.”⁵ Feng Shui is adapted for business, and there are psychic financial advisors. Homeopathic doses of physics are blended with hyperdimensional physics and linguistics with Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Astrology aligns itself to astronomy, and birth chart declinations give the semblance of science. Electromagnetic readers are scientific tools, used irrelevantly for ghost hunting. Spiritualism does not use the scientific method; its approaches are metaphysical, not empirical.

Some proponents of spiritualism promulgate inaccurate and often unsafe ideas. Anti-vaccination organizations engage in fear-mongering campaigns, leaving communities susceptible to contagious diseases. Moon landing conspiracy theorists jeopardize the public’s understanding of science. Historical revisionists rewrite history erroneously. Even if a spiritualist theory is proven wrong, it’s reinterpreted as “correct.” The end of the world is always nigh, but suddenly this becomes a metaphor for any current global problem. Of course, the next scheduled Armageddon is the real one!

Some spiritualism is guilty of undoing science and is harmful when it actively undermines what is known. Scientists turned pseudoscientists commit this academic irresponsibility. They disregard science and discard their formal education yet flaunt their qualifications, invoking the lexicon of science with convincing authority. The metalanguage of physics, math, and neuroscience is adopted to appeal to the intellect of consumers. Fringe scientists try to persuade the public with conventional yet ambiguous terminology like “quantum” and “energy.”

Recognizable, trusted terms are used to peddle spiritual concepts persuasively. Spiritual practitioners are psychic surgeons, psychic detectives, and herbal therapists. The unorthodox is portrayed as orthodox, giving us Ayurvedic medicine and Homeopathic vaccines. Science is name-dropped in The Science of Getting Rich⁶ and Christian Science. Scientologists and Raëlians blend science fiction into their theories.

“Gut feelings,” “intuition,” and “knowing” are employed to defend extraordinary claims for which there is no extraordinary evidence. Instead of addressing the Burden of Proof, claimants expect skeptics to disprove their outrageous claims. Correlation equals causation to some non-skeptics, and Occam’s Razor is simply ignored.

Cold Comfort or Culture?

New age spiritualism fills the void created by secularization. Spiritualist beliefs and practices try to address the shortfalls of religion and the gaps of knowledge, offering a modern alternative. Self-identifying as a “spiritual person” conveniently addresses the question, “What do you believe in?” Otherwise, you’re just a soulless, immoral atheist.

Spiritualism is not overtly religious, and perhaps this is why it appeals to some people as a non-committal, secular belief system for those not ready to give up the trappings of religion. But it is a break away from religion. Spiritual beliefs can be stepping stones on the path to letting go of religion.

Perhaps we’re all a little spiritual by social necessity. Spiritual beliefs and practices tend to reflect popular culture and lifestyle. In a sense, we’re merely living in our own times when we utter “Thank God,” speak of a “soul” or “spirit,” burn an incense stick, shop for organic food, read our stars in the newspaper, or self-medicate with vitamin supplements. These seem to be customary, but we don’t want to assign unrelated significance to these acts.

Some see spirituality in every experience. To pattern-seeking minds, a simple thought becomes an epiphany. Emotions become intuition. An earthquake becomes an Act of God. A solar eclipse becomes a bad omen. Bonding with an animal becomes mystical. Surviving an accident triggers religious sentiment. Birth becomes miraculous. Death becomes sacred.

Some find spiritual experiences in society. Coincidences become synchronicity. Luck is not made. Outside influences affect our lives. We choose our parents before we’re born. Our friends are kindred spirits. Our partner is our soul mate. We tend to observe the hits and ignore the misses. We recall that chance encounter that led us to meet our partner, but we forget the car accident and the unsuccessful relationships. Alternatively, we put these down to “bad luck” and read the failures as “life lessons” we’re “meant to have” on the path to finding our true selves.

Some find spiritual experiences in nature. The complexity of nature is misinterpreted as evidence for a creator or designer. We derive incredible emotional satisfaction from physical phenomena. Some wish on shooting stars and rainbows. Sunsets and night skies inspire romance, wistfulness, and hope. These powerful feelings can be so overwhelming that they seem to come from beyond, but they come from within. This is the naturalist connection to the universe of which Carl Sagan spoke⁷, but the sense of awe is misconstrued as divine.

Spiritualism is what we make spiritual. It is about meaning. We tend to think our “spiritual experiences” are unique and deeply meaningful, and they are…to us. They are no doubt profound, but they are human experiences and individual experiences. Assigning additional importance to them is a subjective attempt to understand the objective world.

For many, spiritualism is an ongoing quest. The search for truth ends in falsehood. The shamans and gurus are false gods. Enlightenment becomes disillusionment.

But many seekers of new age spiritualism never seem to find what they’re looking for…

Notes

1. Canfield, Jack. 1993. Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit. Florida: Health Communications, Inc.
2. Lluch, Alex. 2009. Enjoy Life and Be Happy in 30 Seconds: Daily Steps to Enrich Your Life. San Diego: W.S. Publishing.
3. Trudeau, Kevin. 2005. Natural Cures "They" Don’t Want You To Know About. Birmingham, Alabama: Alliance Publishing.
4. Sylvia Browne, www.sylvia.org/home/aboutnovus.cfm (accessed September 14, 2009).
5. Bruce Lipton, www.brucelipton.com/ (accessed September 14, 2009).
6. Wattles, Wallace. 2007. The Science of Getting Rich: Find the Secret to the Law of Attraction. Waterford, Michigan: Wilder Publications.
7. Sagan, Carl (edited by Ann Druyan). 2006. The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God. New York: Penguin.

Photo CC-BY Roy Kerwood

In 1966 John Lennon said that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” This was an observation of secularization to some, but to others, this was sacrilege.

The Beatles have always been the subject of urban legends, from the “Paul is Dead” rumor to the claim that when played backwards, Sgt. Pepper’s reveals hidden satanic and sexual messages. However, the most contentious incident of the band’s career was the so-called “Jesus Controversy”.

This began in a rather inauspicious way. In March 1966 the interview “How Does A Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This” appeared in the London Evening Standard, without incident. Nor did the article cause a stir when it was republished in the July issue of TIME magazine. However, when the following snippet appeared on the cover of the August issue of US teenage magazine Datebook, all hellfire and brimstone broke loose.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first — rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.¹

Lennon’s theological musings were taken out of context, misinterpreted and misconstrued, reduced to the sound bite, “We’re more popular than Jesus”, and then further reinterpreted as “The Beatles are bigger than Jesus”.

In response, radio stations across the United States, Mexico, Spain and South Africa banned The Beatles from their playlists. Some two dozen US radio stations boycotted Beatles’ music, although this was symbolic, because many were country music stations that never played their songs anyway…

With an upcoming 14-city tour of the US, The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein attempted damage control by appearing at a press conference in New York. He explained that Lennon’s words were taken “out of context” and he expressed regret “that people with certain religious beliefs should have been offended in any way.”²

But the public bayed for the blood of the Beatle to blame - John Lennon, “The Smart One” who made the smart ass comment. When the group arrived in the States Lennon gave the following apology at a press conference, surrounded and supported by the other Beatles.

I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I wasn’t knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it’s true more for England than here. I’m not saying that we’re better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it’s all this.³

To placate his once faithful followers, Lennon reaffirmed his own belief in God, or something, “but not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us”.

But much of the damage was already done. With the same zeal in which they followed the Beatles, their fans turned on them. Concerts for the tour were canceled throughout the country, and many tickets remained unsold for shows in Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Detroit. However, nowhere was the hostility more palpable than in the “Bible Belt” states.

In the South, Lennon’s remarks were interpreted as sacrilegious.

The South wasn’t accustomed to these “Scousers”; these blunt Liverpudlian lads. Lennon’s words were a far cry from the conditioned “Yes, Ma’am,” “No, Sir,” of Elvis, remote-controlled by Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis may have sneered and gyrated his hips suggestively, but he was a Good Ol’ Boy who sang gospel and lived in “Graceland”.

In the South, some radio stations organized public protests. Anti-Beatles demonstrations were held against these supposed anti-Christs. Much to the chagrin of modern collectors, records, t-shirts, books, wigs and other memorabilia were destroyed in “Beatles Bonfires”. Several Baptist ministers threatened to excommunicate their congregation members if they dared attend the concerts. Some still did attend, if only to picket.

Extremist groups also reacted to the quote. In South Carolina, a “Grand Dragon” of the Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles’ album to the base of a wooden cross. Other Klan members went further than burning records and burned effigies of the band, or even issued death threats. Some Klan spokespeople made derogatory comments about the ethnicities of the band members. These fanatical acts, reminiscent of burning crosses and Nazi book burnings, soon tempered the public response. Even the most ardent protestors didn’t want to be associated with the Klan.

The “Jesus Controversy” contributed to the end of the Beatles’ touring. Receiving telephone threats before concerts, The Beatles feared an assassination attempt. A show in Memphis was halted when a firecracker exploded and was feared to be gunfire. The inflammatory quote had been published in August, and that same month the Beatles played their final tour concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

There were other contributing factors. After 1400 live concerts, the lads were tired of the travel. The band also cited the increasing complexity of their music, and the unsuitability of their newfound psychedelia to a live show format. Also, they were keen to develop their music in the studio, rather than trying to hear themselves over the screams of their adoring fans. In fact, this “fan worship” landed them in this trouble in the first place…

The mass hysteria of Beatlemania was analogous to religious ecstasy. To describe this semi-religious allure, the press invoked religious metaphors. The Beatles were “Gods”, “prophets”, “idols” and “icons”, and the fervent fans that flocked to their concerts were “pilgrims” and “disciples”. To some fans, The Beatles were sacred.

Press Agent Derek Taylor said of The Beatles’ arrival in Australia, “Cripples threw away their sticks [and] sick people rushed up to the car. It was as if some savior had arrived and all these people were happy and relieved. The only thing left for the Beatles is to go on a healing tour.”⁴

This was obviously facetious, but some truly saw The Beatles as musical messiahs. John, Paul, George and Ringo reported that fans would bring sick people to their concerts, in the belief that the band had a divine healing presence. The Beatles were perceived as the Peter Popoffs of pop.

In Lennon’s own write:

When we would open up, every night, instead of seeing kids there, we would see a row full of cripples along the front. When we’d be running through, people would be lying around. It seemed that we were just surrounded by cripples and blind people all the time, and when we would go through corridors they would all be touching us … They’d line them up, and I got the impression The Beatles were being treated as bloody faith healers.⁴

This reverence was enough for any of the members to develop a messiah complex. And Lennon did, if only for a day. His friend Pete Shotton recounts the drug-induced incident.

One night, after a few joints, a bit of LSD, we were sitting around at Kenwood playing tapes when John suddenly said: “Pete, I think I’m Jesus Christ.”

“You what?” I said.

“I’m Jesus Christ. I’m back again.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I’ve got to tell the world who I am.”

“But they’ll kill you.”

“That can’t be helped,” said John. “How old was Jesus when they killed him?”

“I reckon about 32.”

“Then I’ve got at least four years to go,” said John. “First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll go into Apple and tell the others.” Next morning, I contacted Apple to arrange an emergency board meeting. All four Beatles turned up, plus Neil Aspinall (Apple’s managing director) and Derek Taylor, their press officer.

“Right,” said John, sitting behind his desk. “I’ve something very important to tell you all. I am...Jesus Christ. I have come back again. This is my thing.”

The Beatles looked rather stunned, but said nothing. It was totally surreal. But nobody cross-examined him. No plans were made to announce the Messiah’s arrival. There was a bit of muttering, then silence, till somebody suggested the meeting was adjourned for lunch. “In the restaurant over lunch a man came up to John and said: “Really nice to meet you, how are you?”

“Actually,” said John, “I’m Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, really?” said the man. “Well, I liked your last record.”⁵

In light of Lennon’s lyrics “they’re gonna crucify me” in The Ballad of John and Yoko, and his subsequent murder in December 1980, some might ascribe meaning to the above story as a prophetic ‘vision’.

The press and public not only availed themselves of religious metaphors, but also drew parallels between The Beatles and royalty. In the infamous article, Cleave also wrote:

They are famous in the way the Queen is famous. When John Lennon’s Rolls-Royce, with its black wheels and its black windows, goes past, people say: “It’s the Queen.”

Religious or royal, these metaphors were stylistic and humorous, but they were mostly employed as comparative devices. This was how the press and public conceptualized the unprecedented fame of The Beatles.

Lennon uttered those fateful words at the height of Beatlemania. The “British Invasion” happened to also coincide with the decline of Christianity, especially in England, and especially amongst the younger generations. This was a time when Mods, Hippies, schoolgirls and the general public were more likely to buy a Beatles record than a Bible.

Today, even the Vatican has pardoned Lennon. The Holy See’s newspaper L’Osservatore Romano dismissed his comments as, “showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success.”⁶

Lennon wasn’t anti-Christ, or an Anti-Christ. In God he would later sing “I don’t believe in Jesus”, but he also said he didn’t believe in “magic”, “tarot” or even “Beatles”. He asked us to “imagine no heaven” and “no religion”, but spiritual motifs appeared frequently throughout his music. He also promoted peace, freethinking and humanism. Perhaps Lennon was a skeptic…

The “Jesus Controversy” was an uncritical interpretation of Lennon’s quote. His remarks were indeed boastful, taboo and offensive to some people; but they were also a comment on popular culture, and an observation of the slow secularization of society. As the Catholic magazine America conceded at the time, “Lennon was simply stating what many a Christian educator would readily admit.”⁷

When John Lennon said The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus,” they were.

References

1. Cleave, M. March 4, 1966. How Does a Beatle Live? John Lennon Lives Like This. Evening Standard (London).
2. Rock ‘n’ Roll: According to John. August 12, 1966. TIME. Retrieved August 23, 2009.
3. Gould, J. 2007. Can’t Buy Me Love. NY: Three Rivers Press.
4. Lennon, J., McCartney, P., Harrison, G., and Starr, R. 2002. The Beatles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 142-143.
5. Shotton, P., and Schaffner, N. 1994. John Lennon: In My Life. NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press.
6. Willey, D. Vatican ‘forgives’ John Lennon. BBC News. November 22, 2008. Retrieved August, 23, 2009.
7. America. The National Catholic Weekly. Editorial. August, 20, 1966.

Bonaventure Cemetery is yet another “World’s Most Haunted Cemetery” in yet another “World’s Most Haunted City”. I traveled to the Old South to visit this extraordinary place, and encountered its rich history, and vibrant pseudo-history.

Haunted or not, Bonaventure Cemetery can certainly lay claim to being a famous cemetery. In its stateliness, it’s the Père Lachaise Cemetery of the United States; the grand final resting place of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Bonaventure’s residents aren’t nearly as famous, although Wilde once visited there, praising the place as “incomparable”. The cemetery’s permanent population still includes many celebrated citizens; songwriter Johnny Mercer, novelist Conrad Aiken, numerous town dignitaries, and veterans from the American Revolution and Civil War.

Bonaventure Cemetery is also famous for its beauty. Resting in peace beside the Wilmington River, some claim this view was the inspiration for Mercer’s Moon River. The atmospheric cemetery is a sculpture garden of towering obelisks, elaborate crypts covered in ivy, intricate headstones carved with poetic epitaphs, and strikingly realistic statues.

The cemetery is a tranquil park of pink azaleas and roses, and avenues of Savannah’s ubiquitous live oaks, draped with swaying tentacles of Spanish Moss. The grounds are teeming with birds and butterflies (and mosquitoes and snakes). During his “Thousand Mile Walk” naturalist John Muir visited Bonaventure Cemetery. He wrote passionately about its flora and fauna in his Chapter “Camping Among the Tombs”.

Bonaventure is called a graveyard, a town of the dead, but the few graves are powerless in such a depth of life. The rippling of living waters, the song of birds, the joyous confidence of flowers, the calm, undisturbable grandeur of the oaks, mark this place of graves as one of the Lord’s most favored abodes of life and light¹.

Awaiting a parcel of money, Muir lodged in the cemetery for a week, sleeping upon a grave at night. Unafraid of the local legends, he found the cemetery “an ideal place for a penniless wanderer. There, no superstitious prowling mischief maker dares venture for fear of haunting ghosts, while for me there will be God’s rest and peace.”

But Bonaventure Cemetery is most famous as the “Garden” in the murder mystery Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Clint Eastwood film of the same name. This non-fiction book with fictional elements recounts some folklore, and creates some too...

The Garden of Fact and Fiction

The cover of the book features a statue of a young girl. Little Wendy, also known as the “Bird Girl”, wears a long dress and a contemplative expression; her head titled to the left as she holds a bowl in each outstretched hand. This ethereal girl is synonymous with the book. The statue was selected as a subject by the photographer Jack Leigh, although she is otherwise irrelevant to the plot. This hasn’t stopped the statue from becoming “haunted” by the ghost of Lorraine Greenman, the little girl who posed for the artist, Sylvia Shaw Judson. Little Wendy once stood sentinel over the Trosdal family plot, but she is so idolized that the owners donated the statue to Savannah’s Telfair Museum of Art to avoid her destruction.

Inside the book, the author asserts that Bonaventure Cemetery stands on the grounds of a former plantation. According to the story, the main house caught fire sometime during the late 1700s. Inconveniently, the blaze occurred during a dinner party; but this was no good cause for a party to end, so they took it outside. “The servants carried the table and chairs after them, and the dinner party continued by the light of the raging fire.”² The host graciously continues to entertain his guests who raise their glasses to him, the house, and the glowing fire. At the conclusion of the toast, the host dramatically smashes his crystal glass against an oak tree, and the guests follow suit. This event echoes across time...

Tradition has it that if you listen closely on quiet nights you can still hear the laughter and the shattering of crystal glasses. I like to think of this place as the scene of the Eternal Party. What better place, in Savannah, to rest in peace for all time--where the party goes on and on.

The Bonaventure Historical Society confirms that the cemetery was indeed a former plantation, and that the mansion on the estate caught fire twice; once in 1771, and again in 1800.³ However, there is no evidence that either fire interrupted a party that resumed blithely as the house continued to burn. This is either poetic license, or the retelling of a ripping yarn.

In another section of the book, the narrator and a character known as Minerva the Voodoo Priestess arrive at the cemetery by boat at night. The grounds are closed, the visitors are trespassing, and the narrator expresses concern that there could be guard dogs on the premises. This reference seems to have created the myth that Bonaventure is haunted by ghostly dogs. Second-hand sources report that visitors hear the barking of phantom dogs, that some have actually seen these dogs, or even been chased out of the cemetery by the snarling, snapping animals.⁴ The simplest explanation is that the phantom dogs are mortal dogs. Below is a reference to the fact that the cemetery lies in a residential zone, and there are neighbors, with pet dogs, who enjoy the grounds as a park.

We live down the street from this cemetery. And we have voted it the best Sunday morning walk in Savannah! Bring the dogs⁵.

The strangest part of this story is that Minerva the Voodoo Priestess did exist, as Savannah resident Valerie Fennel Aiken Boles. Boles has since died, but she is immortalized in the book, casting spells and hexes, and collecting cemetery dirt for use in her rituals. This has led to the practice of visitors collecting souvenir soil from Bonaventure. Ironically, they are purloining dirt from the wrong cemetery. The biggest misconception is that Bonaventure Cemetery is the actual “Garden of Good and Evil”. In the Chapter of this very name, the characters are in a cemetery in nearby Beaufort,

not Bonaventure...

Cemetery Citizens

Many of Bonaventure’s alleged ghosts were around long before the book...

The Cemetery is inhabited by an abundance of angels and cherubs. According to folklore, some of these haunting images also haunt, such as the angel that reputedly “changes facial expressions”.⁶ People believe her countenance transforms from showing anguish, to sorrow, to peacefulness. But it depends on the angle of the angel, the perspective, and the interpretation.

Bonaventure is also populated by evocative statues of its inhabitants. Anecdotally, these lifelike monuments come to life; babies cry, children play, and Corinne, a beautiful young woman, smiles because she was “allured to brighter worlds, and led the way”, that is, she committed suicide.

The most infamous “ghost” of Bonaventure Cemetery is Little Gracie. In her perpetual pose, the little girl with chubby cheeks and sharply-cut bangs sits beside a tree trunk, clutching a flower. She wears a high neck frilly collar, a buttoned sailor dress and spat boots. A plaque by her grave shares her poignant story.

Little Gracie Watson was born in 1883, the only child of her parents. Her father was manager of the Pulaski House, one of Savannah’s leading hotels, where the beautiful and charming little girl was a favorite with the guests. Two days before Easter, in April 1889, Gracie died of pneumonia at the age of six. In 1890, when the rising sculptor, John Walz, moved to Savannah, he carved from a photograph this life-sized, delicately detailed marble statue, which for almost a century has captured the interest of all passersby.

Perhaps it is because her statue bears such an uncanny resemblance to her, or because it is tragic that she died at such a tender age, that some like to believe Little Gracie still lives. Visitors leave toys for her ghost to play with, and claim she cries tears of blood if her playthings are removed. There is always a collection of toys near her tomb, especially around Christmas time; but no sign of tear-stains running down the mould that grows over the delicate features of her marble face.

There’s a belief that if you place a quarter in Gracie’s hand and encircle her statue three times, the coin will disappear. With her down-turned marble hands, nothing can be placed on her palms, but her tomb is still a wishing well of coins. The grave is fenced off because visitors would also rub the statue for good luck; being bad luck for the statue. But some claim the statue materializes, the graveyard becomes her playground, and that the wrought-iron fence is designed not to keep people out, but to keep Little Gracie in...

Pseudo-History

Bonaventure Cemetery has a lively past, but its history is buried by pseudo-history. The locals favor the site as a park for picnics and Sunday walks, but the tourists visit for these legends. However, the folks at the City of Savannah don’t take too kindly to the folklore.

The cemeteries were designed to inter and memorialize the dead and it is inappropriate to sensationalize these sacred sites. Please show respect for the dead and their survivors who frequently visit their grave sites. Visitors are encouraged to appreciate the historical and cultural significance of the sites and the people interred there, the cemetery architecture, the scenery and the natural ecosystems which inhabit the sites.⁷

It seems that for many people, history means haunted.

References

1. Muir, J. 1998 (1916). A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
2. Berendt, J. 1994. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. New York: Random House.
3. Bonaventure Historical Society. http://www.bonaventurehistorical.org/ Retrieved 07/26/09
4. Belanger, J. 2008. Encyclopaedia of Haunted Places. New York. Castle Books.
5. Yelp, Savannah, Georgia. www.yelp.com Retrieved 07/26/09
6. Bonaventure Cemetery Tours. http://www.bonaventurecemeterytours.com/ Retrieved 07/26/09
7. City of Savannah. http://www.savannahga.gov/ Retrieved 07/26/09

“I’m not a psychic!” sniffed the woman. “I’m an intuitive!”

You might ask, “Aren’t psychics and intuitives the same thing?” or, “What is an intuitive?” This article considers the changing names and claims of psychics.

Once a psychic, not always a psychic.

No one calls themselves a seer anymore, this seems archaic, while sibyls, sages and soothsayers sound like historical or fictional characters. It would be ostentatious to call yourself an oracle, and the only prophets are the supposed spokesmen of God, the Modern or Living Prophets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Mind reader makes us think of a magician rather than a mystic, and mystic sounds, well, too ethereal and intangible. Rather than being “clear” as suggested by their etymology, clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient, and clairalient are obscure. Fortune teller sounds like a con-artist at a carnival; a Madame Something-or-rather in a tent, wearing dangling earrings and a scarf wrapped around her head as she gazes into her crystal ball.

These labels are outdated, obscure, or they’ve undergone some degree of pejoration. This latter expression means that a word has become tainted by negative connotations. These factors can lead to eventual obsolescence. Think of words you don’t think of, such as the archaic augur and vaticinator that have suffered this linguistic fate. To survive, pejorating words need to be reclaimed, that is, seized by the referent community and infused with positive connotations, or they need to develop polysemy, i.e., new senses, like the Mormon Prophets, or Oracle Corporation.

What other words do we have left to refer to psychics? Palm readers read palms, reader is too vague, and mediums are specifically channelers. So, the only modern, superordinate and neutral term left is psychic...or is it?

In my estimation, we are witnessing psychic undergo pejoration right now, not only for the average speaker of English, but amongst the psychic community in general. Interestingly, psychic is becoming the dispreferred term of psychics, who now appear to prefer intuitive, sensitive or empathetic. Some new labels sound more self-help than psychic, such as life coaches or spiritual teachers, counselors, and advisors; or spiritual healers and therapists that make them seem like healthcare practitioners.

Of these new labels, intuitive is by far the favored term. This has been used for awhile, particularly as part of the phrase medical intuitive, those psychic practitioners who claim to diagnose and even cure illness. As suggested by the above exchange, and advertising such as the “Intuitive Readings” sign outside my local New Age store, intuitive is slowly supplanting psychic; at least within the community. As intuitive Laura Day¹ says, “I’ve developed a career in practicing intuition (a word I prefer to psychic, the more popular but misleading esoteric expression.”

What is happening to psychic is a phenomenon called the “Euphemism Treadmill”, as identified by Steven Pinker² (Cf. Gresham’s Law in Economics). Forget perpetual motion, this is a process of perpetual pejoration whereby a highly-charged word becomes so stigmatized that a euphemism is introduced to replace the contaminated label. However, the replacement word will eventually acquire the same dysphemistic connotations of the preceding term, and so on.

A good example of the Euphemism Treadmill is the lexicon of words used to refer to people with disabilities. Cripple was supplanted by handicapped, then special, and now challenged. The phrasal “people with disabilities” is also preferred over “disabled people”. Within this trend I’ve noticed that the substitution is invariably more vague than the preceding term, nevertheless it still becomes associated with the preceding term, and tainted by the subject matter.

Why does this happen? This ongoing pejoration of introduced terms probably occurs because the subject itself is stigmatized; in the above example, disability, and in this article, the concept of psychic abilities.

So, why is psychic stigmatized? Historically, witches, warlocks, wise women and other people with alleged psychic abilities were ostracized in the belief that they brought bad luck to their community. They were blamed for fire, draught, ruined crops and seemingly inexplicable deaths.

Today, for some speakers, the belief in psychic abilities lacks rationale and logic, and by extension, implies that someone who believes they have psychic abilities is considered irrational, illogical, and, well, a bit silly. Stereotypically, psychic abilities are perceived as hocus-pocus and mumbo-jumbo, and psychics themselves as a bit crazy or mad...

The pejoration of psychic may be due in part to the efforts of skepticism, and is likely most affected by the above social stereotypes. Language is loaded, and there are positive or negative connotations associated with any label; think about the stereotypes associated with attorney, nurse, and of course, psychic...

My linguistic prediction is that psychic is on its way out, at least, among the community of believers. Whether people beyond the community embrace this change and start using the alternatives is another matter entirely.

That which we call a psychic, by any other name would be psychic?

There is an observable shift in the meaning and usage of psychic, resulting in a growing in-group preference for intuitive. Furthermore, it appears there is a related shift in the actual claims of psychics (intuitives).

Our folkloric understanding of a “psychic” is a person who claims to have extrasensory perception (ESP). These are abilities beyond the normal range of senses. Modern psychics normalize this ESP as another kind of sense, a “sixth sense” or “second sight”.

Traditionally, psychics harnessed this apparent ability to “see” the past, present and future. Readings provided specific prophesies, like Mother Shipton’s visions of “carriages without horses”, steel ships and aircraft, and Nostradamus’ foretelling of three Anti-Christs. (These predictions are still anecdotal, or subjective interpretations of extant writings.) In contrast, today’s psychics and intuitives don’t provide specific predictions of births, deaths, impending misfortune and events. Psychic abilities, as they are perceived today, are described ambiguously as a sense, feeling, knowing, inkling or hunch. This is cognition perceived as coming from the heart or gut. Some appeal to the language of creativity, and see their talents as inspiration bestowed upon them by a muse. Some see their ability in terms of consciousness, as insight, awareness or precognition. They claim to receive messages via the senses, although these are only vague ‘clues’; letters, names, incongruent images, sounds and smells. However, these symbols are left up to the imagination of the subject to interpret...

Psychics once regarded their alleged ability as a natural born “gift”, a special faculty or power they perhaps inherited. In contrast, some modern psychics and intuitives claim that everyone is psychic, including you! To their way of thinking, psychic abilities are natural and normal, and an inherent capacity. By this theory, we don’t all access this “forgotten sense”, sometimes our abilities go unrecognized, untapped and undeveloped. These dormant skills must be nurtured and trained; perhaps through a psychic’s workshops or courses.

These cryptic concepts pose problems for testing these phenomena. Abstract descriptions make it harder to define psychic abilities, and therefore harder to disprove, but no more plausible. In an attempt to lend credibility to the claims, psychic abilities are often framed in the theories and language of the social sciences. They are spoken of in terms of universality and innateness, and explained in conventional terminology, such as “intuition” and “perception”. This is much like the borrowing of energy and quantum into other areas of pseudoscience.

Client concerns have changed too, and psychic abilities have adapted to suit these needs. Modern psychics offer general advice about relationships, and most popularly, career and finances. Like reports of UFO sightings where the machines mimic available technology, supposed psychic abilities and readings reflect contemporary beliefs and address the human condition.

In the end, seer, psychic or sensitive, to the skeptic it’s always cold reading of some kind...

Notes

1. Day, L. 1997. Practical Intuition. New York: Broadway Books.
2. Pinker, S. 2002. The Blank Slate. New York: Viking.

Belief in witchcraft is rampant in rural Papua New Guinea, and murder for suspected sorcery is a common practice. In 2008, some fifty people were victims of witchcraft-related murder in the Highlands provinces. While there are no exact figures, many incidents occur in remote areas and remain unreported. When a death occurs, the locals often close ranks and refuse to cooperate with the authorities.

This modern witch craze is worldwide. As Leo Igwe of the Center for Inquiry/Nigeria has noted, ritual killings and witchcraft-related murders are prevalent in many parts of Africa. These crimes are also widespread in South America and Asia, especially in India and Malaysia. There are scattered cases in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom, and even in Australia.

The practice also exists in America. Last year there were two reports of witchcraft-related murder trials in the United States—the cases of Carla Mendez in Los Angeles and Lawrence Douglas Harris Sr. in Sioux City, Iowa. Voodoo, santeria, animal sacrifice, and other forms of “black magic” are still practiced in some parts of the country, particularly in communities in Miami and New Orleans.

Belief in sorcery is strongly rooted in Papua New Guinea. Many believe in the existence of sangumas, witches, sorcerers, or people with magical powers. Sangumas are accused of invoking curses, hexes, and spells to bring misfortune to their villages. These victims are held responsible for occurrences where natural explanations can be offered but aren’t recognized. Sangumas are often blamed for natural disasters and seemingly inexplicable deaths, for example, from cancer or HIV/AIDS.

The legal proceedings that follow the accusation are a sham. The victims are usually tried by church pastors and unqualified officials presiding over a kangaroo court. The inevitable punishment is execution, performed immediately in a public place by a frenzied group of tribespeople. Victims are sometimes hanged, stoned, shot, beheaded, butchered, buried alive, or burned at the stake after being doused with gasoline and set on fire. Others escape death but suffer attempted murder, sexual abuse, and torture, often to extract a confession.

Disturbingly, accusations of witchcraft are not invariably indicative of superstitious belief. Sometimes there are ulterior motives underlying the claims. Some deaths are crimes of vengeance or of an accuser seeking resolution in an ownership dispute. Some murders are drug-related. In a real-life version of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, some victims have violated social taboos and are guilty of socially stigmatized behavior, such as infidelity, unmarried pregnancy, or homosexuality. To shift blame and avoid punishment for real crimes, charges are often laid against innocent individuals or even animals. In Kwara, Nigeria, a goat was held in custody for attempting to steal a vehicle. A literal scapegoat, it is claimed that the human culprit transformed magically into a goat to escape arrest.

Papua New Guinea is in dire need of skepticism, education, and legal reform. It appears that the latter is finally happening. These latest horrific killings, and no doubt the ensuing media outrage, have prompted the country’s Constitutional Review and Law Reform Commission to create new laws to prevent (or at least reduce) witchcraft-related deaths.

I wanted to test a pet psychic, but there was a slight problem. I didn’t have a pet.

Fortunately, my neighbors Matt and Bekah Johnson have two cats. There is Bizzy, a painfully shy toothless tabby, and Tennessee Jed, a plump, rambunctious tomcat. Since Bizzy rarely emerges from beneath the bed, Jed seemed the preferable feline subject for the investigation.

“Can I borrow Jed so I can test a pet psychic?” I asked my neighbors. “Sure!” they obliged, as though I’d asked if I could simply borrow a hammer or for the proverbial cup of sugar. I had the pet; now I needed a pet psychic.

Call it animal communication, animal whispering, or interspecies telepathic contact; this is big business for a clientele of doting owners, nervous trainers, and exasperated farmers. These psychic Doctor Dolittles claim variously to be able to perceive and understand the “words,” thoughts, and feelings of non-human animals (including deceased pets) using clairvoyance, clairaudience, telepathy, and channeling and often to be able to diagnose and treat their diseases. There are hundreds of pet psychics in California alone. Here are some samples of their claims.

Reverend Sylvia Shaules, pictured clutching a terrified-looking rodent, specializes in the mysterious-sounding “dreamtime messengers,” “totem animals,” and “Giving Your Animal a Voice” (yes, her voice). Animal analyst Patrice Ryan is pet psychic to the stars of Hollywood. For $400 per hour she’ll perform “energy healing” on your pet. This sounds vague, but Ryan enthuses, “It’s truly a profound and enlightening experience.” Lori Wright will practice hands-on or remote reiki on your kitty and claims to be able to contact deceased pets, but she won’t (can’t?) “consult on lost animal situations.”

Buddy Love is “California’s Finest Male Pet Psychic” for whom “no problem is to big” [sic]. Love’s client reviews accuse him of being a slow typist during chat room readings while user “mykidzrule” complained of Love’s reading, “Completely opposite of what he told me last time.” Paula Brown styles herself as an “animal feng shui expert” and prepares remedies for your pet’s health needs. Small animals have delicate constitutions, so this is a particularly dangerous practice, but since Brown’s preparations are “flower essences,” they probably only serve as pet placebos (or owner placebos).

Animal Intuitive Cindy Western claims the incredible ability to “hear the voices” of animals. She explains, “it’s like having a conversation with a person, but it’s a conversation between the minds.” Western “heals and cares” for your beloved pets with herbs, vitamins, aromatherapy, and massage (is that like patting?). Animal communicator Kazuko Tao offers pet acupuncture and chiropractic. As a registered veterinary technician, Tao should know better than to offer these integrative services.

Like Ace Ventura, Lydia Hiby fashions herself as a “pet detective.” A Dr. Kevorkian for pets, she advises clients “when it is time to put an animal to sleep.” Hiby further claims she can communicate with non-verbal people, including “comatose, stroke victims, autistic children, etc.” But she won’t read deceased pets. Instead she recommends the John Edward of pet psychics, Teresa Wagner. Wagner is a “grief counselor” and pet medium who conducts séances with animals that have “crossed over Rainbow Bridge.”

But don’t be concerned about these wild claims; the pet psychic industry is regulated by a stringent “Code of Ethics” devised by “pioneer animal communication specialist” Penelope Smith. Smith claims that telepathic communication enables “universal communication” across species. . . .

Unfortunately, these pet psychics were either too far away or unavailable. Instead, they all offered remote appointments, email or telephone readings upon supplying the name, age, sex, color, breed, and a photo of the animal. It was back to the clawing board for me. Finally, I located Reverend Ann Savino, “The Bay Area Pet Psychic.” Savino is a “professional clairvoyant and staff member of the Academy for Psychic Studies. Her advertisement beams, “Psychic readings for animals. Animal communication and healing. Pet readings lovingly done—Give to those who give so much to you.” For a fee of $80, Ann agreed to travel from Berkeley to San Rafael to read “my” cat. The following is a report of this appointment, laced with commentary and Matt’s responses to the reading. With Ann’s permission I video recorded the entire session.

On the appointed day, Bekah arrived with a very skeptical-looking Jed. He wasn’t happy about being wrenched from his turf. Released in my lounge room, Jed slunk around close to the ground and darted under a futon, where he stayed. Normally a cocky kitty, this behavior was highly uncharacteristic. At first, I indulged Jed’s shyness, hoping that he would quickly assimilate to his temporary environment. Then he fell asleep. The time drew nearer to the appointment, and I needed to extricate him from his hiding spot. It wouldn’t take a pet psychic to deduce that something was wrong.

I called his name excitedly, but he stared coolly at me. I tried to lure him out with a very fun-looking fuzzy pineapple toy and a tasty turkey snack to no avail. So I had to adopt the tough love approach. I dragged aside the futon, grabbed Jed, held him firmly on my lap, and began petting him enthusiastically. It worked! Within minutes he was purring, frolicking around, and rubbing against me.

I heard a knock at the door and did a last dash around the house, hiding copies of The Skeptic. Ann entered the room and Jed took one look at her before retiring to the corner, wrapping himself up in a ball and sleeping with one eye open, fixed on her. She seemed nervous, so I made small talk. “Have you ever read any bizarre animals, like a llama?” She seemed to relax a tad; “Mostly cats and dogs. Once I read a guinea pig.”

“I’ll need a few minutes to center myself and warm-up,” Ann explained. She sat there, eyes closed, hands outstretched as though she was warming herself over an imaginary fire. For five minutes. When she came to, like a mountaintop seer she asked sagely, “What questions do you have?”

“Can you tell me about Jed’s past?” I asked. Of course, this implied that I didn’t know Jed’s past.

“How long have you had him?” Ann asked.

“Can’t Jed answer that question for you?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m just wondering.”

“About six months,” I claimed, waiting for Jed to “speak” up.

“Is he from a shelter?” she asked.

“Can’t Jed tell you about his background?” I urged again, wanting to witness the psychic action.

“I think he’s from a shelter. I can tell you haven’t had him long,” she stated.

Matt comments: “The psychic guessed that one. We got him from a rescue society that got him from the pound. He was one of a litter of kittens someone brought in.” Cat adoption is popular here in the States. Pet stores regularly hold “rescue days” for abandoned cats and kittens that are typically tabby moggies like Jed. But can we count this as a “hit”? As rescuing is a common practice, this was a logical question, followed by “I think he’s from a shelter,” admittance of a cognition-based conclusion. Ann also assumed that I hadn’t owned Jed for a “long” period of time. Was this supposition based on my accent, that I “hadn’t been in the country very long” myself? Or because I implied that I was unaware of Jed’s past? Or was this an observation based on Jed’s size? The latter is suggested by the following exchange.

“How old is Jed?” I continued.

“He’s one year old,” Ann answered immediately, “but I can tell that by just looking at him.” Although not a psychic vision, this visual conclusion was inaccurate anyway. Matt reveals, “Jed is roughly three years old. We’ve had him since he was twelve weeks old.”

I was beginning to become frustrated with this un-psychic performance and Ann’s shameless questions. “How does Jed actually ‘talk’ to you?” I inquired.

She replied, “He sends me images. I read his aura. It’s like an energy field that contains pictures and information. I ask him specific questions and he shows me images.” So Jed “understands” Ann’s complex questions, uttered in her English-speaking “inner voice”? Then she offered a disclaimer, “This reading isn’t full of hard-wired facts. I see images, like Jed playing in the grass and rolling over.” If I had to visualize a specific cat, I’d probably “see” it playing, eating, sleeping, or enacting other such typical cat behavior too.

“Is Jed aware that you’re communicating with him?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ann replied. I looked across at Jed, who was fast asleep.

“Where was Jed born?” I asked.

Ann closed her eyes momentarily. When she opened them she announced, “He was born not far from here. It was here in Marin County. This was somewhere hilly, not downtown San Rafael. It was maybe a little north, like Petaluma. It was definitely in this area, within a 10–15 mile radius.” The truth was unpredictable. Jed wasn’t even born in California. Matt replies: “Jed was born in/around Jackson, Mississippi. This is over 2,000 miles from Marin and not so much as a large hill in sight.”

I asked next, “Does Jed feel at home here?”

“Let me tune into him,” she said as her eyes rolled back into her head. “He’s happy here. He feels secure and safe. He definitely feels at home.” She paused, “This is the most secure he’s ever felt. He knows that this is his home.” Surely, if Ann were psychic, she would “see” images of Jed’s real home and real owners? But then she really drove the nail in, “Jed’s secure, happy, and safe in this home. He knows he’s loved. He knows that you’re his mummy.”

This recalled to me the previous scene before Ann arrived. As Bekah left, she bent down towards Jed and said endearingly, “Goodbye son. I’ll be back soon.” It was very clear that she is the cat’s mother. Weeks later, I met Matt’s mother, Miss Linda, who said to me, “I hear you’re writing about our grandson.”

“I’m sorry?” I replied, confused.

“I hear you’re writing about Jed.” Either she wants grandchildren, or Jed is seriously entrenched as a member of the Johnson family.

But don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. I allowed Ann to continue her storytelling. She began weaving a tale about Jed that would have been plausible if his past wasn’t known. “For the first few months Jed didn’t think he’d stay here with you. He used to live outside on the streets as a feral cat. He had to find food on his own. It was traumatic for him; a daily struggle for survival.” In reality, Jed’s daily struggle is trying to strategize how to eat his food and Bizzy’s.

In contrast, we know that Jed was taken straight to the shelter as a kitten and he barely spent any time there before being adopted by his existing owners. Matt comments: “He was the picture of health at 12 weeks when we got him, and was already house trained. He has no survival skills whatsoever and is embarrassing to watch in his attempts to ‘hunt’ bugs around the house.” A truly “traumatic” incident that Jed experienced in 2005 was Hurricane Katrina. Ann didn’t “see” that one, but according to her, Jed wasn’t even born yet.

In Ann’s story, Jed was impounded after a life on the streets. “He didn’t get a lot of attention in the shelter. There were lots of other cats.” He then became a foster cat foisted upon different homes. “He never had a steady owner before you. Until you, no one ever made the commitment to say, ‘You’re my cat.’ Now he’s confused. All the fuss and attention you give him, it’s all new to him. He’s had other owners but he’s never been someone’s pet before you.”

“Jed had other owners before me?” I repeated in surprise.

“Yes, Jed had three previous homes. They were all temporary, and they all neglected him. They didn’t give him any affection and then abandoned him,” she claimed. Jed had led quite an adventurous life during his first six months! I asked Matt if this could be possible: “No, other than the person that brought him and the other kittens to the pound when he was quite small.”

The story continued. “Jed also had three different names.” I asked her what these names were. She paused. “He was called something beginning with “P.” Also he was called “Buttons.” The previous owner just called him “Cat.” They didn’t care about him at all.” To me, “Buttons” doesn’t sound like the name of a neglected cat, but I asked Matt if Jed had any previous names of which he was aware: “Nope, just Tennessee Jed. (That’s if you discount profanities and vulgarities directed toward him almost daily from his loving parents.)” I asked Matt to specify the PG-rated names, and he replied, “We also call him Beastly One, Kingly One, Wretch, Tiger, Foul One, and Tubbs.” Among this lengthy list there’s no name beginning with “P,” no “Buttons” or “Cat.”

Eerily, Ann’s hand would occasionally float above her lap, but she’d continue to talk as though nothing strange was happening.

“Would he benefit from having another cat around?” I asked, seeing if Jed would tell Ann about his beloved Bizzy, whom Matt calls Jed’s “Sister-Wife.” Ann said, “Jed’s not a dominant cat. Another cat would freak him out. That would be too much of an adjustment for him now.” She advised, “This isn’t a good time for another cat. He would stay away from another cat. He’s shy. He’s now used to being the only one. In the past, other cats were his family, not people. The other cats were more dominant than him.”

Matt responds with: “My butt! Jed is delusional in thinking that he is ‘Shere Kahn’ from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. And he freaks out when Bizzy is not around. He searches for her and yowls pathetically when she is at the vet or when she was missing.”

Ann continued, obviously analyzing Jed’s current introverted behavior. “He’s very sensitive. He’s not the kind of cat that just walks up to people he doesn’t know. I know other cats like this too. My sister has a cat. He knows me well. He hides as soon as he sees me.” Who said pet psychics have a sensitive connection with animals?

Matt responds: “Jed can be shy, but that quickly diminishes into a forceful attitude as I’m sure you are aware. He lived with his grandparents for the summer and took over their home in about 10 minutes, re-arranging things to his liking. Some folks he likes, some he ignores, and some he attacks (mainly small children) with swift slaps to the top of the head.” I have personally witnessed Jed terrorizing Bizzy and attacking Matt, ambush style.

Ann began to wind down the session, “I’m going to take a look at your agreements; why you two came together.” Would Jed “say,” “we came together to be neighbors?” Or, “so Karen could investigate pet psychics for The Skeptic?” Ann closed her eyes and proceeded to gesticulate exaggeratedly with sign language-like motions. “You’re a healer, a nurturer. You like to save people. Jed needed saving.” Then she went into a surreal reverie. “I see Jed finger painting now. He’s creative and expressive. Now he can blossom. He has trust. He’s never had this before. He is now loved and safe. He is a sweet, sweet boy. He’s very gentle.” This comment reminded me of the time that Jed took a casual swipe at Matt, drawing blood as he lodged a claw in Matt’s eyelid.

“I’ll do some energy clearing and healing for Jed.” Now in her role as pet medical intuitive, she began clawing and flicking away the air with her fingers as she mouthed gibberish. Then she said calmly, “I can now confirm he’s 1 year old. One to 15 months.” However, we know that Jed is three years of age, therefore Ann was incorrect both in her psychic and visual verdicts. Then Ann had a message for me. “I just saw an image of your lower body lighting up, showing an issue down there. Did you lose a baby?”

“No,” I replied honestly.

“Oh,” she tried to recover, “Jed is showing me a picture of you being sad. He doesn’t like to see you sad.”

Then she diagnosed Jed. “There aren’t any blocks in his body. But there’s been something wrong with his stomach area.”

Matt responds: “He’s rather large, but not obese. We just found out that he has herpes, which is rather amusing. But other than that (which only results in an ulcer on his lip) he has never even had a good case of fleas. He likes to drag his butt on the ground. It is quite disturbing to witness but more than one vet has assured us that it is simply something he enjoys due to his perverse nature and not a sign of illness.”

In closing the session Ann asked, “Do you have anything you want to communicate to Jed?” He was still fast asleep. “Tell him, he’s home. He’s not going anywhere,” I said in a last attempt to see if Jed would reveal the truth.

“I gave him your message,” she announced.

“And what did he say?” I asked.

“He said, ‘I know that mummy.’” On her way out the door she stooped down and tickled Jed’s tummy, “You’ve never been anybody’s cat until now, have you? Now you’re somebody’s cat! Now Karen’s your mummy!”

Overall, the reading was characterized by Ann’s questions, assumptions, and generalizations and based simplistically in folkloric knowledge of cat behavior. Ann contributes to the online American Spirit psychic newspaper, where she conducts free readings for readers. There I found simple queries and answers about characteristic cat behavior, as though Ann were a pet psychologist. My reading with Ann was a cat cold reading.

Joe Nickell (2002) cites five general cold reading techniques that he has observed in pet psychics:

1. Noting the obvious.
2. Making safe statements.
3. Asking questions.
4. Offering vague statements that most people can apply specifically to themselves.
5. Returning messages to animals. (It was the message I received in response that invalidated this ability!).

On the basis of this session, Ann didn’t provide any evidence of psychic abilities but instead appeared to employ similar techniques, either consciously or not. As confirmed by Jed’s owners, Ann was completely inaccurate in her reading of Jed’s age, place of birth, background, behavior, health, and my health. The shelter “hit” was more miss, posed as a question, and then an uncertain claim with the caveat “think.” Most damning of all, Jed is not my cat, and my home is not his!

It’s an easy gig to speak on behalf of the voiceless. Animal communication, of a paranormal nature, presupposes that the pet is telepathic, is able to understand human language and thought, and able to “respond” in kind. “Interspecies communication” appears to be a visual and subjective or imaginative interpretation of the physical and behavioral traits of non-human animals. No matter how many commands your dog responds to, no matter how many words Koko can sign, no matter how many words your parrot can mimic, language is human-species specific. We don’t and can’t “know” what animals think. Despite our own linguistic abilities, it’s difficult enough to know what people think.

This article appeared in Summer 2008’s The Skeptic and is reprinted with kind permission.

Reference

• Nickell, J. 2002. Psychic pets and pet psychics. Skeptical Inquirer. 26(6) (November/December).