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

Secret Posts

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

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

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

A ‘Ju-Ju’ Message

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

Painted beneath the sign were these mumbo-jumbo words:

YENOH M’I DLOC!

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

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

Encoded Book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Cryptograms

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

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

Here is one message from an old autograph album:

L5CY
1992  P42
9476h  M3ddl2  64w9
B457b49  C4
         K2965cky

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oak Island’s ‘Cipher Stone’

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Phenomenology 105” is an annual conference on the paranormal that took place this year, March 22-24, in Gettysburg, PA. Hosted by North Eastern Paranormal Investigations (NEPI), about 500 people attended the zombie-themed event that featured speakers, paranormal celebrities, panel discussions, ghost hunts, and zombie prom.

What makes this type of event similar to skeptical, science, and secular-themed conferences is the sense of enjoyment in sharing a common interest, the free use of jargon particular to the specialty subject area, and interaction with people that everyone just knows. They also had a funny and personable emcee by way of Jeff Belanger. Participants were excited and enthusiastic.

The differences from science/skepticism conferences, however, are considerable. You've never been to one of these conferences? Well, let me show you around.

Demographics of a Para-Con

There are no professors. There are no suits. Instead, there are LOTS of black tee-shirts.

Black tee-shirts are the stereotypical uniform of paranormal investigators. They really do wear them, emblazoned with their group's name and acronym. Entire families wear the same tee-shirt design. Yes, families. The age range at this event was wide. The youngest child was around nine and the oldest person likely over seventy. The median age was, if I had to guess, about forty. Ethnicity was not as diverse.

At least half the attendees were women. However, this ratio did not hold for the speakers—I counted only four women among the forty or so presenters. There was no hint of or mention of sexism and no conduct policy. Everyone was courteous and friendly. But, I was not present later at the bar when alcohol entered the social mix.

Phenomenology vendor area. Jeff Belanger is horrified to see a skeptic enter. (Photo: Sharon Hill)

The vendor area featured merchandise ranging from ghost hunting implements to skull motif jewelry. This was also a meet-and-greet location to purchase autographs and pictures from authors and horror actors in attendance. The psychic reader didn't seem very busy. I asked about the parascope device that detects changes in static electricity by changing colors (pretty!). The seller demonstrated the response by placing his cell phone next to it. Also featured on this table were palm-sized geophones that lit up when nearby vibrations were detected. Great for lining them along a hallway to detect footsteps, he said. And, besides, they glowed in the dark. Cool. $90 a piece.

With the many gadgets on display, I noticed the non-gadgets even more. Vendors were selling every kind of Saintly medal, rosary, chakra, and lucky charm you could imagine. There is a trend AWAY from the sciencey-sounding activities in exchange for a greater reliance on the spiritual. Another speaker noted this exact transformation in herself which I describe a bit later.

I suspect the spiritual topics may have gained popularity beginning with the TV show Paranormal State which aired from 2006-2011 featuring college kids investigating hauntings often associated with evil forces or demons. The leader, Ryan Buell, was a devout Catholic, interpreted the anecdotes and observations as demonic in many instances, even believing he had his own demon in pursuit. He consulted with demonologists. Now, several groups consider the demonic in their investigation scenarios. The use of protective medallions, religious symbols, and holy water have become more common tools. This religious orientation is also fueled by the success of the TV show Haunted Collector featuring John Zaffis, nephew of the Ed and Lorraine Warren, America's most infamous demonologists.

An Array of Speakers

The Zaffis family was the main event on the first night of the conference. The premise of the show is the family investigates items that are supposedly giving people psychic trouble. The blooper reel they showed was a huge hit with the loud, obvious fans sitting next to me. This was my first indication that this is very much a fan con. The content is often light, mostly consisting of a Q&A session with the para-celebs. While sometimes entertaining, I admit I do not like these Q&A sessions because of the dull questions repeatedly asked by the audience: What was the scariest thing that happened to you? What was your favorite place to investigate? I don't watch the shows much so that doesn't interest me. Many of these people are entertainers and they make their fans happy.

Later, I got a chance to ask John Zaffis, an admitted “fan of all religions” how he reconciles all these different belief systems in terms of the clients' paranormal experience? What role does religion play? His answer was brilliant and enlightening: People must use the tools they have, including religion, to deal with their own situation. He can help them but they must do something on their own to feel protected. It did not matter what symbol they used—a rosary, a cross, a rabbit's foot—as long as it worked for them and they believed, that's what does it. He also noted in his talk that the sponsors, network and lawyers do not like when he does religious rituals. This is a touchy area. When I returned from the conference I checked in with some contacts who follow ghost hunting trends who assured me the shift from science to spiritual is a definite thing. Science has failed to give them the solutions (that they wanted) and so, they moved to a more “flexible” framework—whether New Age beliefs or traditional religion.

Thus ended the first evening. These people were genuinely nice and fun to listen to with one caveat…I had to suspend my skepticism and rational thought and just listen.

Friday was all day lectures. The first speaker, John Brightman, gave a presentation on the Bridgewater Triangle of Massachusetts, mainly the Freetown forest area. The area is perceived to be a hotbed of satanic rituals, hauntings, and UFO/Bigfoot sightings. Brightman correlated the events to the three mental hospitals in the area and an “Indian curse” based on a historic massacre. There were so many stories told (no references, no other evidence given) that it was very difficult to tell what was reliable. During the talk, he told of reported Thunderbird sightings in the Triangle while showing slides of pterosaur-like creatures portrayed during Civil War times. I immediately recognized the pictures as hoax photos related to a past TV show. But Brightman didn't mention that. He talked about the photos in the context that they were genuine! Perhaps he slipped on the descriptions but if he DIDN'T know these photos were faked, it would be impossible for me to take him seriously as an investigator. Later, in the vendor room, I decided not to bring up the mistakes he made but asked him about the “parascope” device he was displaying. He said the flashing colored lights are mainly for “entertainment value.” I think his stories are, too.

Jason Gowin, formerly of the roundly criticized TV show Extreme Paranormal gave a humorous and honest presentation about his experiences as a ghost hunter and reality TV participant. Jason, who is an acquaintance of mine, is a funny, sweet person who sits in the middle of the paranormal belief sphere. He knows things are often faked and that he can be fooled but still wonders about terrifying personal episodes he can't brush off. He freely admits that you will come across many people who want to believe in the paranormal so badly, they will force evidence; many of the people who claim to have experienced activity are not mentally stable. Yet, he understands that people feel isolated when they have such experiences and just want someone to help them. “Comforting people is really where it's at,” he says.

No longer under a non-disclosure agreement, Jason speaks out about his time on Extreme Paranormal. “Paranormal TV is entertainment,” he states. “They don't care about what's real or not or whether it's legitimate. Their job is to make a show people will watch.” Extreme Paranormal went down the toilet when they were directed to perform a blood ritual where one of the hosts cut themselves. Jason insisted this set a horrible example. He was ignored. To this day, he claims, he is vilified for his participation in a ruse he was not allowed to expose. The contract stated they would be fined for impeding production of the show. The show was cancelled.

Getting your own TV show is a running gag at the event as the emcee, Jeff Belanger, freely joked about it. One successful show is Destination Truth with Josh Gates. He also has the show Stranded where normal people are put into abnormal situations. Gates also admits that many things are reenacted, condensed, edited, etc. The audience clearly loves Josh: he is charming, entertaining, and witty along with being quite brave to travel all the insane places he ends up (like Antarctica and Chernobyl).

By the end of Friday, I had talked to a few people but was feeling more and more uncomfortable. The growing sense of unease was because my worldview was very far removed from all the people around me. And there were still two days to go.

What's A Skeptic To Do?

Beginning with the Zaffis discussion from the first night, I noticed the word “skeptic” was used frequently. The Haunted Collector TV crew was skeptical, investigation teams would have a skeptic included. The “skeptics” had been converted eventually, as spooky things happened and they perceived “THIS S**T IS REAL.” Interesting. At no time did anyone ask probing questions such as, “If these items are SO powerful and have demonstrable paranormal effects, why can't this be documented by scientists?”

Dave Schrader from Darkness Radio gave a well-done presentation on nightmare creatures. Who doesn't love that topic? Especially when delivered with Dave's booming radio voice. I learned some new creatures from his talk—bloody bones man, the origin of the tooth fairy, and more on the completely concocted “Slender Man.” Dave considers himself a “skeptic” in a sense. He mentioned that those people experiencing night hauntings (for example the “old hag” syndrome or alien abduction scenarios) would be advised to consult a professional regarding sleep disorders. He explained that “shadow people” are possibly related to our problems with light perception in the dark or the weird conditions of a place that make you feel uneasy. Telling the story of the Queen Mary ghosts, he was clear that the story of the little ghost girl, Jackie, arose from what looked like a footprint. It grew from there despite no evidence. But for all the admission of alternative normal explanations, he then promoted the paranormal by factually stating that ghosts like attention, bad hauntings (demons) start slowly, in the tales of black-eyed children people ended up dead, and that you need to protect yourself from the “bad stuff.” Disappointingly, his explanation for the proliferation of Slender Man reports (the character that supposedly heralds death to those who see him) took a leap from what might be characterized as meme propagation (the spreading of an idea through culture) to the hundredth monkey phenomena of group consciousness. Also, he entertains the ideas of tulpas—where creations of our mind become real. Example, Queen Mary's Jackie. Oh dear. I thought we were on the right track for a while. I asked Dave “What do you mean by 'skeptic'?” He said, “A person who questions.” Not quite…

The day went downhill from there, as many of the speakers made mistakes that I could easily pick up. Factual errors, and not little ones either, continued to be common. The scholarship at these events is sorely lacking. References are second or third hand. Or nonexistent. Credentials are created.

Dave Juliano of South Jersey Ghost Research sees his crew as “like doctors” to diagnose a situation. He teaches classes on this. One of Dave's points was about frame of mind—ghosts are drawn to anger, positivity gives you protection.

This point was similar to one Michelle Griffin made later in the day when she described how “tools” and equipment of “scientific” investigation hindered her growth and experience. I took that to mean that she (and others) are over-reliant on perception, which is subjective and unreliable. There is that shift from physical to emotional evidence. They are opening themselves up wide to creating their own story as opposed to an objective description. The audience appeared to hear this as “getting in touch with your spiritual side,” that intuition and feelings were more powerful than anything. The person is the tool.

She described how the paranormal was a stepping stone to a new spiritual outlook for her, what she calls a “Holy Shift” which is the name of an upcoming event she is producing. She admitted that the paranormal was “a gateway drug” that “opens you up to the next thing.” It suggested to me being enveloped in belief. It made no sense to me. [(4/26/2013) Edited to remove parts by request of Michelle Griffin]

Once again, some speakers just did Q&A, which was dull and to me showed a lack of preparation. Perhaps I missed an opportunity to ask some zingers but I didn't wish to reveal my secret skeptic identity. I just listened. Interesting bits were to be found as people chit-chatted waiting for the next person to set up.

During one of these setup times, the speaker asked the audience if anyone had gone on a ghost hunt the previous night and how it went. There was some stirring in the audience. One woman, sitting with a male partner and a teen girl spoke up and said, “We had a problem.” She proceeded to tell how they had visited General Lee's headquarters when the teen girl experienced a choking sensation. Soon after, the man did too, and then the woman, as they all sought to get out of the place. They claimed to have heard a growl and interpreted their experience as encountering a malevolent force. Perhaps the General's spirit didn't want them there (they were Yankees). Or maybe, I thought, it was a growling stomach, anxiety, fear, and mass psychogenic illness. No alternative explanations were proposed. The story was too good. Everyone was aghast. I was too, for a different reason.

At no time did anyone ask probing questions such as, “If these claims are real and these spirits are SO powerful and these items have demonstrable paranormal effects, why can't this be documented by scientists?” It was not about that. It was about belief. One black tee-shirt caught my eye...the “Spirit research” group tee said “Learn, understand, respect, believe.”

By this time, I was tired. I had heard a lot that surprised me. A nice change that I thoroughly enjoyed was the zombie panel discussion led by ParanormalPopCulture.com's Aaron Sagers. The panelists included radio personalities, paranormal investigators, and two zombie actors from The Walking Dead. Everyone knew their pop culture zombies and it was like being back at a monster discussion at Dragon*Con, the huge sci-fi/fantasy convention. The questions were great and the viewpoints insightful until someone in the audience suggested that vaccination is a possible way to turn us into a mindless horde because there are “toxins” in them. What a way to derail the discussion, lady. Sadly, she's the one who has been brainwashed. Belief in demons, astrology, chakras, etc., is more understandable than the idea that vaccinations are an evil government plot.

Finally, the featured speaker on Saturday evening was Travis Walton, author, alleged alien abductee. I knew the general story about Walton's claims but not details of the critique. So, I just listened without prejudging—my goal for the weekend. Walton is a talented storyteller who has made relating the tale of his bizarre experience his life's work. I expect he's done okay through book sales, appearances and film royalties. He tells us he is redoing the book, Fire in the Sky, with additional information discovered and is attempting to get the movie (of the same name) remade more accurately. His story is dramatic, it draws people in. But, when he got to the part describing the technology on board the ship (this was in 1975), the obvious problem was the 1970's idea of technology that was depicted. It resembled the Star Trek or Star Wars flight decks. It was laughable. But, I didn't laugh. My conclusion at the end of his talk was that he likely had a frightening and confusing experience and was dramatically misinterpreting it. Upon later discussions with those who have more closely looked into the case, they told me they believe Walton's story to be a deliberate fabrication. Did the people in this audience buy the story? Maybe. They seem very open to believing anything that sounds interesting.

I'd had all I could take. I was full up on the fantastic and simply could not muster the enthusiasm to attend the fourth and final day. I drove home, turning over all I had heard and seen from the weekend.

There was no orthodoxy there. Everyone can do their own thing, then write their own book or get their own show. I felt this was worthwhile to see this from the inside. It is a worthwhile experience for skeptics to do this in order to understand how important FEELING is in these experiences, rather than THINKING. People are very affected; it's become part of who they are. We are the foolish ones who try to rationalize them out of a belief they did not rationalize themselves into.

It’s for the latter reason that Professor Jean-Denis Rouillon of Universite de Franche-Comte has been the talk of this week’s news cycle, with headlines like Research Suggests Bras Do No Good, Do Women Need Bras? French Study Says Brassieres Are a ‘False Necessity’, and French Study Suggests Younger Women Should Stop Wearing Bras.

Here’s a quote from the CBS News effort:

Professor Jean-Denis Rouillon, a sports medicine specialist from Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Besancon in Besancon, France, published a study on Wednesday that shows that wearing bras may not prevent women’s breasts from sagging, and may in fact increase it.

With any viral story, my skeptic sense begins tingling almost immediately, but the point at which I began to really get suspicious was when I discussed it with my fellow Skepchick contributors, Mary Brock and Will Robertson, and we noticed that we each had a different idea of how many subjects were involved in this study. Was it 320 as reported here, or 330 as reported at CBS News and elsewhere, or 130 as reported here? This is usually easily solved by getting ahold of the actual published study, but unfortunately none of the articles mentioned what it was called or what journal it was in.

A search of the literature turned up nothing, and there were no press releases from the University that mentioned it. Because everything was in French, we engaged several French-speaking Twitter followers who also combed through the literature for us, but again, they found nothing (thanks to @LeBiochimiste, @ologies, and @Bookmore for the help). This was odd, especially considering that CBS News reported that there was a study and further that it was published on Wednesday.

Mary Brock found what appeared to be the oldest source: an interview Rouillon participated in with a student radio station. So it appears that by “published a study,” CBS News and other outlets actually meant, “spoke on the radio.” A fine distinction, I’m sure you’ll agree.

In the radio interview, Rouillon discusses his ongoing research and reports that his preliminary findings suggest bras don’t help with back pain or breast firmness. One twenty-eight-year old subject is interviewed as well and offers her anecdotal testimony that going without a bra has improved her breathing and posture.

Rouillon’s preliminary research, though, is based on only 330 women in total, none of whom was over the age of thirty-five. Rouillon himself has stated that his findings, when (if ever) they’re published, will have nothing to say about the population of women as a whole. He told Reuters that despite his preliminary findings, “a middle-aged women, overweight, with 2.4 children? I’m not at all sure she’d benefit from abandoning bras.”

Additionally, this research clearly suffers from a lack of proper blinding. The study isn’t even over yet, but one of the subjects is on the radio boasting about how great it is to not wear a bra, indicating that she knows what the study is about. Is it possible that she’s more cognizant of her posture? That she’s reporting less back pain because she believes strongly in the power of going bra-less? That she’s undergoing any other treatments to increase, er, “firmness”?

And what about the fact that this study is reported to have been going on for fifteen years? My first assumption upon reading that was that Rouillon was studying the long-term effects of wearing a bra or going without, but if all subjects have been aged eighteen to thirty-five, then the twenty-eight-year old who was interviewed hasn’t been in the study the entire time, and she states that she’s only been bra-free for two years. How are subjects added to this study, and for how long have they been tracked? Without an actual published study to check, it’s impossible to say. We only have Rouillon’s opinion of his own research, which could be based almost entirely on self-reported data.

Rouillon says researchers used calipers and rulers to measure “lift,” but for how long? And did they take into account the woman’s fluctuating weight, breast size, and level of activity? And considering that Rouillon is mentioned as an expert in sports medicine, did they study any women who go for jogs without a sports bra? Because, really, ouch.

Again, without a paper to look at, we don’t know. We only have the opinion of Rouillon and the intercontinental game of telephone that media outlets like CBS News play, resulting in misinformation reported as fact simply because no journalist bothered to take a few minutes to look for an actual published study at the source of the soundbite.

So, is it better to go braless? The answer is yes, if that’s what you prefer. Really, bras don’t appear to be giving people cancer or causing earthquakes in Iran. They exist to give you support if you need it, cleavage if you want it, and nipple coverage if your cultural milieu demands it. If you decide to go without, you may not get perkier breasts and less back pain, but you’ll definitely save the time and cost of a trip to Victoria’s Secret. Maybe that’s worth it.

El pequeño humanoide cabezón que Steven Greer presenta en el documental Sirius como un extraterrestre es, en realidad, un feto humano. Es la conclusión a la que llegó en febrero de 2007 el antropólogo forense español Francisco Etxeberria tras examinar el cuerpo a petición del Instituto de Investigación y Estudios Exobiológicos (IIEE), una organización ufológica. “Se trata de un feto momificado de unas 15 semanas de gestación”, dictaminó el científico, quien hace unos días no daba crédito a lo que sostienen Greer y sus colaboradores, que el ADN de la criatura no es de este mundo. "Es un disparate", me confirmó Etxeberria por correo electrónico.

La historia del ahora famoso extraterrestre comenzó hace unos diez años, cuando el huaquero -saqueador de yacimientos- Óscar Muñoz desenterró el cuerpo en un cementerio en el pueblo abandonado de La Noria, en el desierto de Atacama (Chile). El ser estaba envuelto en una tela blanca. Desde el principio, hubo quienes indicaron que era un feto. Eso dijeron el ufólogo Rodrigo Fuenzalida y el biólogo Walter Seinfeld, de la Universidad Arturo Prat, en el periódico La Estrella de Iquique en octubre de 2003. Pero el negocio del marciano arrinconó pronto cualquier atisbo de racionalidad.

Pocas semanas después, el empresario local Ricardo Clotet, que había comprado la criatura al huaquero, cobraba 500.000 pesos (860 euros) por dejar hacer una foto del ser y 750.000 por dos, además de pedir 80 millones de pesos (unos 113.000 euros) a quien quisiera adquirirlo. Al final, el pequeño humanoide fue comprado, por una cantidad que no ha trascendido, por el ufólogo español Ramón Navia-Osorio, del IIEE, quien en febrero de 2007 lo llevó al VI Congreso Mundial sobre Momias, celebrado en Tenerife (España), con la intención de que lo examinaran expertos.

Examen forense

“La primera noche en el hotel estaban reunidos una serie de investigadores, y Jaume (Ametller, otro ufólogo) indicó la necesidad de enseñarles la momia. Estábamos en uno de los salones, con una intensidad lumínica ínfima, más apropiada para parejas que para personas que se habían citado para charlar. La momia pasó rápidamente de mano en mano y nadie hizo ademán de acercarse a la luz. De por sí, el ser es oscuro y con la oscuridad reinante no podían percatarse de los detalles más elementales para hacer un somero estudio. Pues bien, esos doctores dictaminaron sobre la marcha que era un feto y, además, de pocas semanas”, recordaba años después Navia-Osorio en Espacio Compartido (Nº 50), la revista del IIEE.

Aquello fue más de lo que el ufólogo estaba dispuesto a aguantar. “Estoy cansado de soportar a tantos doctores con un puñado de títulos y cobrando del erario público para decir sandeces”, advierte en su crónica de los hechos. Decepcionados, Navia-Osorio y Ametller pidieron entonces al antropólogo forense Francisco Etxeberria que examinara el cuerpo e hiciera un informe pericial.

Etxeberria es una autoridad mundial en su campo. Es profesor de Medicina Legal y Forense de la Universidad del País Vasco, presidente de la Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi y subdirector del Instituto Vasco de Criminología. Intervino en 2011 en los análisis que determinaron que el expresidente chileno Salvador Allende se suicidó durante el golpe de Estado de 1973; participa desde 2000 en la exhumación de desaparecidos durante la Guerra Civil española y la dictadura franquista; ha colaborado en la investigación de numerosos asesinatos; y ahora mismo se encuentra en Chile intentando esclarecer las causas de la muerte del poeta Pablo Neruda.

El forense examinó el extraterrestre de Atacama en Tenerife el 24 de febrero de 2007 y, cuatro días después, redactó un informe que no deja lugar a dudas. Coincide en sus conclusiones con lo sostenido por los expertos cuyo juicio había despreciado Navia-Osorio. “En su conjunto -escribe Etxeberria-, la proporcionalidad de las estructuras anatómicas (esqueléticas y de partes blandas), el grado de desarrollo de cada uno de los huesos y su configuración macroscópica permiten interpretar, fuera de toda duda, que se trata de un feto humano momificado completamente normal”. Y añade: “La longitud de las clavículas es de unos 15 milímetros y la de los fémures de unos 20 milímetros. Tanto por la longitud total del cuerpo como por las longitudes de estos huesos, se puede estimar que se trata de un feto con una edad de gestación próxima a las 15 semanas”.

La pataleta del ufólogo

Navia-Osorio se tomó muy mal el informe de Etxeberria. En las conclusiones de su artículo de Espacio Compartido -que incluye el texto del antropólogo-, desprecia el dictamen de éste y de otros expertos. “Podemos decir que tenemos algo merecedor de estudio, pero pocos han considerado la pieza como digna de un meticuloso examen. Por lo visto, nadie se ha molestado en analizarlo anatómicamente paso a paso, los que lo han hecho han afirmado que no conocen nada igual. [...] No tenemos pruebas concluyentes que determinen la naturaleza del espécimen. En este proceso, las personas más indicadas para saber si es o no feto son las madres que han tenido hijos, pues a todas a las que hemos preguntado han dicho que es imposible que eso sea un feto. Me fío más de las madres, que de aquellos otros que por miedo dicen lo que no piensan. Y así, poco a poco, se va escribiendo la historia, naturalmente toda falsa”.

La reacción es digna de una antología del disparate. El ufólogo español miente cuando dice que nadie ha analizado el cuerpo anatómicamente: lo hicieron Etxeberria y, en menor medida, los científicos a quienes se lo mostró en el bar del hotel de Tenerife. Y, como los resultados no son de su agrado, ya en el colmo del proceder pseudocientífico, sentencia que no puede tratarse de un feto humano -lo que mantienen los científicos- porque ninguna madre que lo ha visto lo ha reconocido como tal. Ridículo, ¿verdad?

Ahora, Steven Greer asegura que sus expertos han hecho un análisis de ADN del extraterrestre de Atacama y aseguran que es alienígena. Basta ver en la web del documental Sirius el plantel de supuestos científicos que han participado en la investigación para no creerse nada de lo que diga el director del Proyecto Revelación. Es posible que Greer saque dinero de este montaje, como hizo Ray Santilli en 1995 con la falsa autopsia de Roswell, pero no va a descubrir nada que los científicos no sepan ya: el extraterrestre de Atacama es “un feto humano momificado completamente normal”.

Ankylosaur Attack was just the first book in the Tales of Prehistoric Life series from Kids Can Press. Pterosaur Trouble is out now and those attending the next Amazing Meeting in July will be treated to a preview of the book co-authored with fellow Skeptic.com blogger Professor Donald Prothero, Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids.

Daniel has written for critical thinking publications including Skeptic, Skeptical Briefs, eSkeptic and the Skeptical Inquirer, and contributed cover art to Skeptic, Yes mag, and Free Inquiry.

Kylie Sturgess: Firstly, there's a lot of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals to choose from—why this pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus?

Daniel Loxton: First of all, Quetzalcoatlus is just inherently awesome. These critters and their close relatives were the largest fliers the world has ever known—like, the size of a small airplane. The preposterousness of a creature that large taking to the air is just totally seductive. We're talking about animals that could, as Tetrapod Zoology's Darren Naish and other pterosaur enthusiasts like to point out, look a giraffe in the eyes while standing on all fours.

But what cinched this animal as the focus for Book Two of my Tales of Prehistoric Life series was learning of a specific fossil find by a young woman named Wendy Sloboda and other staffers and volunteers at the Royal Tyrrell Museum: bones from Quetzalcoatlus or a similarly enormous close relative that had been gnawed on by the small, Velociraptor-like dinosaur Saurornitholestes in Cretaceous Alberta. That's an almost Lilliputian scenario: a giant devoured by dinosaurs much, much smaller than it. How did that happen? Was the big pterosaur scavenged, or did the little dinosaurs somehow manage to hunt it successfully? The more conservative scavenging possibility is discussed in the nonfiction page at the back of the book, but I couldn't resist letting the most spectacular interpretation inspire my paleofiction bedtime story….

Kylie: What's involved in the process of creating a picture book like this - the stages and revision?

Daniel: The goal for Pterosaur Trouble and the other Tales of Prehistoric Life series books is persuasive photorealism—or heightened realism, anyway. I want it to look like I just popped back in time with my camera and took some nature photographs. That concept constrains every aspect of the creation of the illustrations. Let me tell you, the step between “cool computer generated representation of a prehistoric animal,” and “Hey, that looks real!” is a doozy.

Achieving that realism, or at least reaching for it, is a process that takes many months of painstaking steps and revisions. At its most basic, we create computer generated (CG) creatures and composite them into real world location photographs. Huge, high-resolution, panoramic photo mosaics are shot on location, which form the foundation for the backgrounds. I alter those extensively however—adding in foliage, taking out tourists, altering landscapes and sky however the story requires. Likewise, the massive sixty-seven megapixel texture maps for each animal's skin are built up from real world photoreference from live animals, museum specimens, roadkill, my friends and relatives, and even a Christmas dinner.

Pterosaur Trouble especially benefitted from behind-the-scenes access to extensively photograph bird and bat specimens from the collections at the Royal British Columbia Museum.

Once the creatures are designed, sculpted, textured, and posed, I design a virtual lighting scheme to match the lighting conditions present in the background photography. Then I render the animals out in many passes, using a 3D rendering program on a computer: a pass for the diffuse light, a pass for reflections, a pass for specular highlights, a pass for fill light, and so on. Some passes take days each to render at the massive resolutions I need for print.

I render twenty or thirty such passes for each illustration, then stack those up in Photoshop and begin to really get to work. The magic happens (assuming it happens at all!) in the very last steps of this compositing process of blending together many elements into a seamless, photorealist whole. It's a complicated and lengthy process that has to be done in a certain sequence. The illustration can't come to life until you get to Step Z—but if you don't get the foundational work for Steps A, B, and C right several months earlier, then Step Z won't ever spark the way you hope it will.

(For those who are interested in more details, I described some of the steps involved in creating the art for Ankylosaur Attack here and here.)

Kylie: Looking over the illustrations, there seems to be a lot of envious dinosaurs checking out the Pterosaur's flight! What are some of the considerations that you have to take into account when creating dinosaur art—particularly so many different kinds?

Daniel: Paleoartists tend very strongly to follow the lead of other paleoartists. That's natural—by and large, we're artists, not scientists. We speak art, we read art, and we learn from art, as artists have for millennia. So we wind up conforming, very often, to the conventions and reconstructions of other artists. That's why virtually every depiction of the pliosaur Liopleurodon since 2000 has given the animal a black and white pattern, from illustrations to toys: it's the way that the texture artists of the Walking With Dinosaurs television series did theirs, and theirs was the awesomest.

There is an interesting meta-conversation happening now in paleoart circles, with projects like the new book All Yesterdays by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen, and Darren Naish seeking to deconstruct some of the conventions of our practice. These creatures were ordinary animals in their time, after all, not movie monsters. They must have spent a lot more time strolling, playing, and having naps than they spent struggling titanically for survival—but you wouldn't know it by the ubiquitous action shots we depict in dinosaur art.

Pterosaur Trouble and Ankylosaur Attack are intended for kids, so your readers won't be surprised to hear that there is indeed a big fight in each book. But I wanted to show these animals doing other stuff, too: ankylosaurs honking curiously at the animals in the sky, pterosaurs ignoring the goings on the ground, animals waking up or poking about for breakfast, or just plain traveling on.

Kylie: What do you consult when it comes to accuracy, particularly when new discoveries are made (e.g. movement of dinosaurs)?

Daniel: For the first book, Ankylosaur Attack, I relied to begin with on my own knowledge and research. Paleontologists Donald Prothero and Jason Loxton looked over the illustrations for me informally, as I completed each one, and ankylosaur expert Ken Carpenter kindly vetted the nonfiction section at the back of that book.

For Pterosaur Trouble and the third book (in production now) we brought in paleozoologist Darren Naish right at the beginning of the process, to help me keep the book grounded in real science at every step—sculpting, illustration, plot, and story. That has been tremendously helpful—not only to help me avoid factual errors (like this one I corrected in Ankylosaur Attack after it was published) but also to illuminate new possibilities for science-based storytelling.

Kylie: I noticed (and it's fantastic timing with your book coming out!) some press on “9-Year-Old Girl Gets Dinosaur Named After Her, Makes All Other Children/Adults Jealous,” and yet I also noticed some criticism about the media labeling of Pterosaurs as dinosaurs. Is misidentification that much of an issue?

Daniel: That's a lovely story, and I was delighted to learn of it. You're right, though: many sources misidentified the creature young Daisy Morris discovered as a “dinosaur,” which it was not. Even outlets like Popular Science identified her discovery as “a small species of pterosaur, a flying dinosaur.” In reality, pterosaurs were reptiles of another branch altogether—calling them “dinosaurs” is like calling you a marsupial. As Written in Stone author Brian Switek put it for Smithsonian Magazine, “A pterosaur is no more a dinosaur than a goldfish is a shark.”

A lot of people seem to regard that distinction as “paleo-pedantry.” That reaction sort of baffles me. Why call anything what it is? Why make any factual distinctions? If we're going to talk about stuff, teach, popularize, we might as well value accuracy.

Kylie: What do you have next in the works?

Daniel: I'm working now on Book Three of the Tales of Prehistoric Life series, which will feature plesiosaurs (which were, incidentally, also not dinosaurs). That will be out next year. Before that, though, is my book Abominable Science for Columbia University Press, co-authored with Don Prothero. That's a hefty non-fiction book on legendary animals (“cryptids”) such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, examined through a critical lens. It should hit stores in the middle of 2013.

You can follow Daniel Loxton on his blog at Skeptic Blogs.

So why are Jesuits so feared among conspiracy theorists? The reasons are many and complex. The Society of Jesus was founded in the mid-16th century, just before the Counterreformation. Their founder, Ignatius of Loyola, was a Basque soldier who had a religious conversion while convalescing from wounds received in battle. Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, a formal regimen of meditation on the life of Jesus, is a foundational document still used in the training of novitiates. Indeed, Ignatius’s Exercises were innovative theology for the time, and Ignatius is occasionally considered the first of the Spanish mystics, who derived knowledge of God not through the sanctioned external authorities of gospel, tradition, and Church fiat, but through revelations from internal meditation (a potentially dangerous and heretical position during the Counterreformation).

I suspect that the word “exercises” is a bit of a play on the Spanish word for army, or ejército, as the order has retained a hierarchical structure and members adhere to a vow of obedience, giving them a bit of military feel. Indeed, the head of the order is known as the Superior General, and the internal hierarchy gives missions to its members largely independent of the rest of the Catholic hierarchy—the Superior General is an appointment for life and he has full control over the order. (For this reason, he is often described by conspiracists as the “Black Pope.”) The vow of obedience became crucial in the development of the Jesuits’ reputation as missionaries, as members could be ordered to the far corners of the world to spread the gospel. And they were. The earliest Jesuits very quickly found themselves dispersed around the world, in India, China and Japan, as well as in the Americas. As part of their missionary charge, the Jesuits established schools around the world (indeed they had dozens of universities around the world by the time Ignatius died in 1556). As a result they are known as an especially erudite order (or to conspiracy theorists, “shrewd”), and they have had a long tradition of being especially friendly to the sciences.

While the educational aspect of Jesuit tradition is likely one source of the widespread suspicion of the Jesuits, as educational institutions nexuses of influence in conspiracy lore, the fact that Jesuits do not have a specific ecclesiastical garb is probably far more central to their perceived untrustworthiness. The Society’s founding documents detail that Jesuits’ clothing “should have three characteristics: first, it should be proper; second, conformed to the usage of the country of residence; and third, not contradictory to the poverty we profess.” Conspiracy theorists have taken this to mean that the Jesuits intend to “blend in” and pass unnoticed. This idea was transformed into a perceived political threat that the Jesuits were thought to pose, as exemplified in a note from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson in 1816:

I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. [...] Shall we not have more of them here, in as many shapes and disguises as ever a king of the gypsies … assumed? In the shape of printers, editors, writers, schoolmasters, &c? … If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth and in hell, it is the Company of Loyola.

Furthermore, during the Counterreformation, the Jesuits could not avoid political entanglements and controversy in Europe, as they worked hard and largely succeeded in keeping Poland from becoming Protestant. Additionally, a handful of Jesuits were implicated in the Gunpowder Plot, lending credence to the notion that the Order was seeking to manipulate world events. Lastly, the Jesuits maintained a special and complicated relationship to the French crown; by the time of the Revolution, the King’s confessor was traditionally a Jesuit. The aristocracy viewed the Jesuits as suspicious because of their presumed influence over the monarchy and association with the Vatican; the general public, unable to criticize the king directly, turned criticism of the Jesuits became a sort of shorthand for criticism of the crown.

The Jesuits possess a number of features that one expects to see in a group of potential conspirators. They are a transnational entity, which to some puts their loyalties in question. Their profession of loyalty to the Pope raises further concerns—indeed a whole imaginary initiation rite has been attributed to the Jesuits, which reads in part:

I do further promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex nor condition, and that will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women, and crush their infants' heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly I will secretly use the poisonous cup, the strangulation cord, the steel of the poniard, or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honour, rank, dignity or authority of the persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agents of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Father of the Society of Jesus. In confirmation of which I hereby dedicate my life, soul, and all corporal powers, and with the dagger which I now receive I will subscribe my name written in my blood in testimony thereof; and should I prove false, or weaken in my determination, may my brethren and fellow soldiers of the militia of the Pope cut off my hands and feet and my throat from ear to ear, my belly be opened and sulphur burned therein with all the punishment that can be inflicted upon me on earth, and my soul shall be tortured by demons in eternal hell forever.

This was in fact a late seventeenth-century forgery on the scale of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was authored by Robert Ware and is a prime example of what Richard Hofstadter called anti-Catholic “pornography of the Puritan.”

In nineteenth-century America, the Jesuits were singled out as especially dangerous. In the 1830s, the same decade that saw the original publication of Maria Monk’s Awful Disclosures, the publication of Richard Baxter’s Jesuit Juggling. Forty Popish Frauds Detected and Disclosed. That same year, 1835, saw Samuel B. Morse’s (yes, that Samuel B. Morse) publication of Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, which posited that Jesuits were being sent to this country by Austria (?!?) to foment revolt. One book, the 1851 publication The Female Jesuit, or, The Spy in the Family, was likely inspired by a line in the Robert Ware’s fabricated oath: “[...] I will place Catholic girls in Protestant families that a weekly report may be made of the inner movements of the heretics.”

A Jesuit berates children attending public, not private school. From O.E. Murray’s The Black Pope, or the Jesuits’ Conspiracy Against American Institutions, 1892.

By the end of the nineteenth century, fears of Jesuits (and Catholics in general) centered on the role of Catholic parochial education on the youth of the nation, with special attention to which Bible should be used in public schools, the “Romanish” or Protestant Bible. The growing influence of Catholicism in public life was indicative of the demographic shift that had started with the influx of poor Catholics in the early nineteenth century which eventually led to the political mainstreaming of the Catholicism in the twentieth (though conspiracist insinuations of Rome’s potential political influence on the White House dogged Kennedy during his election campaign).

The most visible modern incarnation of anti-Jesuit conspiracy theory seems to draw heavily on Christian fundamentalist fears of the end-times and David Icke–levels of paranoia. I am talking about Eric Jon Phelps, who runs the website Vatican Assassins. Until this week, the website looked like it had been abandoned, as the “News” section hadn’t been updated in almost 400 days, but the election of a Jesuit “White Pope” seems to have brought Phelps back to the website. According to the latest, surprisingly short post: “Vatican Assassins and Eric Jon Phelps will be making a groundbreaking announcement in the coming weeks.”

Phelps has woven a narrative of the type Michael Barkun terms a “superconspiracy,” which is characterized by vast, nested hierarchies of hidden influence. In the case of Vatican Assassins, the Jesuits are actively bringing about the end-times and are the powers behind...well, almost every atrocity, including the Holocaust. (The Southern Poverty Law Center has an excellent write-up of Vatican Assassins.) I interviewed Phelps a couple of years ago at an “alternative knowledge” convention in Atlanta a few years ago. As there were a large number of UFO conspiracy theorists in attendance, I asked him what he thought of aliens, and his answer confirmed to me that I had found my calling:

There are no such things as aliens. The ‘Grays’ are creations of the Jesuits in their deep underground military bases through their genetic experimentation. All the grays are hybrids. They cannot reproduce; they live short lives; they are lesser than what a man is—that’s one of the signs of a hybrid. What I maintain is that the Jesuits have perfected their antigravity craft, and god knows what other technology, and so what they did when they crashed at Roswell, they put those little creatures in there.

Because when you inadvertently reveal one secret technology, the really clever conspirator covers it up with…another secret project. Because nobody would expect that.

Should skeptics leave some topics alone? No.

When I researched amateur paranormal investigation groups, I saw participants strive to incorporate science on their own terms. They did not want critique and closed the door on any hint of “skeptical” inquiry. In order to even talk to them, I had to conceal my skeptical persona. I still see that evident to some degree today. Skeptical discussion of these topics gets far less attention than those persons or media that promote the outrageous and mysterious aspects.

It is obvious that many proponents of ideas on the fringe are annoyed by skeptical probing. We ask for specifics. We question assumptions. We aren't bowled over by the evidence. We are pains in the butt messing up their beloved theories.

This post is a continuation of what I wrote in my last entry for Sounds Sciencey: Burning the Mean and Disparaging Skeptic Straw Man. In that post, I explained how I had appeared on a “pro-paranormal” (for lack of a more accurate term) podcast with mostly positive, but overall mixed results. Following that appearance, irritation erupted from a few of the online paranormal writers that skeptics should just stick to certain topics and leave the ghost hunters and Bigfoot enthusiasts alone. For example, this blurb appeared on The Anomalist website (emphasis is mine):

How can one bridge the gap between paranormal researchers of all stripes with skeptics? By hearing out the other side. Tim Binnall has a long interview with skeptic Sharon Hill. The common ground covered here is going after homeopaths and antivaxxers who ultimately hurt people. We question the invective directed towards ghost hunters and company, comparing them to juggalos for instance, whose greatest crime is trespassing in a place regular people don’t care about. The application and advancement of science would be better spent pursuing curing cancer, developing renewable energy, and cleaning the environment than taunting sexagenarians with MUFON as their homepage. Whether you agree or not, this episode is provocative to say the least.

The Anomalist writer seemed to regret phrasing it this way but did not take back the sentiment. I took this as defensiveness. There are several things troubling about this attitude. First, skepticism is not the same as application of science though we use the tools of science. I can't cure cancer. Second, in no way did I intend to give the impression that paranormal investigators are a terrible thing. I happen to like the concept of an overarching body like MUFON, so this characterization does not apply to me as a skeptic. The straw man reappears.

Go Do Something More Important

When I comment on these topics on popular websites, I’ve been regularly told to go back to my cubicle, my high horse, my “lonely room,” wherever they imagine that skeptics go to feel self-satisfied. My opinion is rarely appreciated but I'm not surprised. Hey, skepticism is not the fun club. But the world is not all games and good times. In contrast to those who accuse me of being closed-minded and a “martyr” to the skeptical cause (whatever that means), I gladly put out the question on my personal blog for people to chime in about this topic: Should skeptics limit themselves to certain topics?

Oddly, an oft-repeated theme of discussion in the skeptical community is exactly this—paranormal topics are silly and unimportant, so serious subjects like health claims, religion, and even social justice issues should be in the forefront. One argument against that states that a scope that was too wide would cause “skeptical activism” to lose focus, uniqueness, and purpose.

Here, I'm going to concentrate on the premise that the paranormalists stated: There is little/no harm in paranormal pursuits. Skeptics should go do something “more important.”

Is there specific harm in ghost hunting, paranormal pursuits, and believing in Bigfoot? Harm is hard to pin down. We can't presume what is harm for one person is for another. The real conversation may be instead about risk versus benefit. Is it worth the investment of time, money, and emotion? Does it lead to positive or negative consequences?

A paranormal conference of about 500 attendees happened in Gettysburg, PA in March 2013. I spent three days surrounded by paranormal investigators and enthusiasts. What I found, among many other useful observations, was that these people are serious. For many of the speakers, this is their life.

Any hobby can become an obsession, wreck your finances, and ruin your relationships. That can be said about weekend trips to find Bigfoot or a collection of Beanie Babies that overtakes your home. But paranormal pursuits have special features. Some paranormal investigators or Bigfoot enthusiasts have defined themselves in terms of this pursuit. It becomes an integral part of who they are. They become committed to “proving” something to the world. For some that began paranormal interests as a hobby, it is now the way they interpret everything that happens to them in their lives. The spirits come home with them, they fear their lives will be drastically disrupted, some fear they may be made ill from the evil energy. It's that extreme. In a conference of 500 people, it's not a minority view.

I saw people cry with emotion. I heard people tell stories about being pushed or choked by entities. One woman described how on a ghost hunt the previous night, her daughter and then the two other family members felt a malevolent presence try to suffocate them. Listeners were either fearful or jealous they only heard knocking on their respective ghost hunt. Many seemed to completely accept that this happened exactly in the dramatic way it was related.

Of course, not everyone is this serious. Some do it just for fun. Their pursuit or belief in weird things enhances their joy of life. The trouble is that I can't see a line of demarcation between having fun and being more seriously involved. The problem is with the claims made about cryptids, UFOs, and the paranormal. They claim they are real and are a valid explanation for a phenomenon.

Paranormal people tell me they are skeptical of real snake oil salesmen and support stronger consumer protection. They also dislike the celebrity quacks and fake medical treatments. Why don't us skeptical buttinskis stick to that life-threatening stuff instead? This argument to exclude targets for skepticism does not wash. First, there will always be the argument that X is more harmful than Y. There will always be another X. Is homeopathy more of a problem than acupuncture? Are fake cancer cures worse than homeopathy? What about campaigns against fraudulent psychics? Everyone has their own pet subject that gets on their nerves and makes them passionately angry. As with interests, expertise is specific. We all have our knowledge specialties. There is plenty of room for various topics. For all the positive play on any subject, there ought to be a fair critique to balance it out. If it's out there, it's open for comment.

“Go pick on someone else, we don’t want you here,” they say. Of course you don’t. But, I’m not picking on you personally; I’d attempt to apply this protocol to ANY claim out there. Skeptics don't harass the neighborhood ghost hunters. We argue about the claims ghost hunters make—that they have evidence for paranormal activity, that there is spirit energy in the house, that anomalies in environmental variables are the effects of psychic energy. Scientists work long and hard to obtain their expertise and are subject to community criticism. If you start making claims, especially ones that go against well-established natural laws, you are GOING to get called on it. The portrayal of ghost hunters as “scientific” or having credible knowledge feeds public scientific ignorance. We can’t afford that.

There are paranormal clubs that cater to kids and students. At the paranormal convention, which was quite a family event for all ages, there were dozens of kids that attending the Junior ghost hunt. It can be argued that teaching kids to seek out paranormal activity is encouraging belief-based thinking, contributing to the willful ignorance of the students by teaching them how NOT to be skeptical.

To be clear, I’m not about taking away freedom to believe, to spend your money on whatever you wish (even unproven cancer treatments). Obviously, the paranormal field brings excitement and a feeling of purpose to many who participate. I admit I have some confusion over the goals of paranormal investigators these days.

Fun or Do You Want to Know?

Either you want to understand the phenomena for real or you don't and just play around instead. When does it cross the line from being just fun to serious stuff? Even if you say this is for “entertainment purposes only” some people will confuse it with reality. Psychics and astrologers are advertised for entertainment but people make life decisions based on their advice. Another example is the TV show Finding Bigfoot. Is it entertainment? It is for some. Many people, however, absolutely think it's scientific and real. Even though they know they are watching a TV show, they imitate what is done, and by the exposure alone, it increases the familiarity of the concept that Bigfoot is real. I gleefully poke holes in the Finding Bigfoot nonsense because they are making claims that the creature is out there. If they were portraying this as less than serious, I'd have no issue. Instead, they are making factual claims. I am going to call it out as ridiculous for anyone who wants to listen.

If you want actual answers, then you need a skeptical approach, not the half-baked idea of skepticism that most paranormalists have. (A “skeptic” is anyone who asks questions.) Systematically eliminating the options takes work and objectivity. If you really want to best explain the experience, you need to be open-minded enough to consider that your current interpretation is wrong.

To immerse yourself in the paranormal culture means you run the risk, however small, of becoming detached from reality, obsessed with communicating with the dead or discovering the monster in the woods. Listening to one conference speaker talk about “holy shifts,” she described how the paranormal was her gateway drug to new spirituality. She started out with the scientific outlook and now is more religious. Perhaps this makes her happy and fulfills a need or perhaps this is the wrong path. It's not for me to say. But when she claims that she spoke to a ghost, this is certainly fair game for rational critique.

Acknowledgements: Tim Binnall, Cherry Teresa, Barbara Drescher, Mike McRae, Ben Radford, Samuel Rich, Blake Smith, Ken Summers, George Stadalski, David Bloomberg, Jeff Wagg, Sciencism Admin, Cuttlefish Poet

Cognitive science research on belief in the 2012 “apocalypse” demonstrates that dissociative processes contribute directly to this belief through reduction of the “feature-intensive” cognitive processing that would engender appropriate skepticism.

The Earth’s rotation, angle of inclination, and passage around the sun result in astronomical and meteorological regularities. These regularities allow us to use a variety of relatively arbitrary mathematical systems to provide dates for all sorts of useful things, such as the proper seasons for agriculture. In view of the arbitrary nature of these systems, however, it is reasonably obvious that specific dates within any given system have no particular significance for sweeping change in the human or natural realms.

This leads to a fascinating psychological question: Why do such arbitrary dates cause so many human beings to become so hysterical?

We are currently being told by some media sources that the world will end on December 21 of this year. It is suggested that this was predicted by the Maya, given that this date coincides with the end of a specific calendric cycle, a baktun, within their “long count.” This date has also been suggested to coincide with a “galactic alignment,” a phenomenon that would seem to rely more on vague terminology than on actual astronomy for its very existence (Krupp 2009), but that would, even if valid, have no terrestrial significance whatsoever. It is also true that there is at least one Maya document that mentions this date without affording it any apocalyptic significance whatsoever (Bower 2012).

However, we are also told that the same date was of significance for the Hopi people of the American Southwest. Of course, the Mexican (Aztec) pochtecatl, or long-range merchants, maintained a trade network that reached from the Maya country at least to the southern reaches of the American Southwest. It is not an impossible speculation that a few calendric ideas, together with tourmaline, obsidian, and Central American parrots, might have been passed along these trade routes.

Although this possibility presents an interesting question for archaeology, the alleged Maya/Hopi coincidence in dates simply doesn’t provide sufficient cause to sell your house and move up into the mountains, away from this doomed civilization, with a rifle and a staggering number of canned goods. This is especially true in view of the fact that human beings have an abysmal record of predicting the future. Of course, this is not surprising, as the future hasn’t happened yet. Even so, from the oracles at Delphi and Cumae all the way through the surprisingly inaccurate predictions of the precise consequences of climate change in the modern world, people have always sought accurate knowledge of the specifics of the future. Human beings have repeatedly failed, and these failures have occasionally been horrendously consequential.

During the Greco/Persian wars, for example, the Delphic Oracle’s prediction that the Athenians would be safe behind their “wooden wall” did not work out so well for the Athenians, who built such walls around the Acropolis and were promptly slaughtered by the Persians (wooden walls are amazingly flammable). This prophecy of wooden walls was immediately fine-tuned by the admiral Themistocles to refer to his ships at Salamis (Herodotus 2006); admittedly, they were made out of wood, but a ship is not a wall, and to claim them as such was, and is, something of a stretch.

Apocalyptic dates have come and gone many times. In recent years, we have seen the “Heaven’s Gate” hysteria (Vick 1997), in which people sold their possessions, gathered under a charismatic leader, and prepared to leave Earth in a UFO apparently hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet (a physical impossibility). Physics aside, the Heaven’s Gate devotees committed mass suicide so that at least their souls could travel to Heaven, Nirvana, or somewhere else, flying to this indefinable infinity in the company of hypothetical space aliens in their physics-proof starship.

The Y2K phenomenon provided another well-documented instance of apocalyptic revelation (Nolte 2009), in which many people sold all and headed for the hills because, somehow, all of our computers were going to fail, providing the basis for the death of civilization.

Obviously, these things didn’t happen.

Despite these facts, however, many people remain wedded to the idea of apocalyptic prophecy. We are currently inundated with cable-television programs on the forthcoming end of the world. The authors, together with the rest of the world, have seen numerous documentaries “proving” the apocalyptic significance of December 21, 2012. These programs have roped in everything from the Maya and the Hopi to the predictions of Nostradamus and even the influence of space aliens.

What is the psychological basis for this phenomenon? What do people actually think is going to happen on December 21?

We decided to find out.

The Psychology of 2012

One hundred and ten college students at a California university completed several surveys in which they were asked to rate the degree of their belief that major world changes would happen on December 21, 2012. They were also asked about the sources of this belief; about their beliefs in a variety of related areas, including various kinds of prophecies; about their specific beliefs concerning what, precisely, is supposed to happen on the infamous date; and finally about their own characteristics. One of these characteristics lay in the realm of dissociation.

Dissociation was measured by means of the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), which directly addresses this psychological attribute. Dissociation leads to a diminished critical assessment of reality. As discussed in an earlier Skeptical Inquirer article (Sharps 2012), dissociated people may feel “strange” about themselves and the world around them. They may have anomalous perceptions of the passage of time or of their own experience. The world may appear to be “not quite real or . . . diffuse” (Cardena 1997, 400). Practically everyone feels this way, to a limited extent, from time to time; dissociation per se is not a mental illness. However, the disconnection with reality might incline those with even subclinical levels of dissociation—levels typical of many people in the general population and in no way diagnostic of mental illness—to view impossible or highly improbable things with an enhanced level of credulity (see DePrince and Freyd 1999).

Is this supposition correct? In previous published work (Sharps et al. 2006; Sharps et al. 2010), including a recent article in the Skeptical Inquirer (Sharps 2012), our laboratory addressed the role of dissociation in paranormal beliefs. We found that not only are the dissociated likely to believe in ghosts, aliens, and “cryptids” such as Bigfoot, but they are actually more likely to see these things, to interpret ambiguous stimuli as paranormal in nature. Where others see a hoax, the dissociated see Bigfoot. It is important to reiterate that dissociative tendencies are endemic in the general population; anyone, in any walk of life, may possess dissociative tendencies that influence the accurate judgment of reality.

Given the relationship between dissociative processes and beliefs in the “paranormal” realm, it was anticipated that people with dissociative tendencies would be prey to paranormal beliefs, such as those surrounding the 2012 phenomenon, at a higher level than those without such tendencies.

Do People Really Believe in the 2012 Apocalypse?

The population for this research, college students, is continually involved in the scientific evaluation of textbook information and media sources, together with courses that emphasize critical thinking. Even so, this population gave evidence of unexpected levels of credulity in the case of the 2012 apocalypse. When asked if “major changes” would occur as a result of December 21, 44.6 percent stated that they anticipated no such changes, or that such changes would be very unlikely. However, 9.8 percent anticipated such changes as either very likely or certain. 45.6 percent endorsed such changes as possible, without a strong opinion either way. The inference is that over half of this population, 55.4 percent, is at least somewhat influenced by the 2012 hype, either believing or at least entertaining the hypothesis that this date may result in major changes to Earth and to human ways of life upon it.

Dissociative Tendencies

As suggested by our previous research, dissociative tendencies played a role in this phenomenon. A series of regression analyses was conducted, examining dissociation with reference to the variables discussed above.

There was some good news. Dissociative tendencies were not associated with belief that major changes, either physical or social, would occur. However, there was bad news as well: regression analyses showed that those with more dissociative characteristics tended to believe that Maya prophecies, together with the Maya calendar, predicted these changes if they in fact occurred.

More dissociated individuals did not endorse the predictive power of the Hopi prophecies, nor of biblical prophecies, nor such prophecies as those of Nostradamus. Nor were they more likely to believe in the return of Quetzalcoatl, other messiahs, or the advent of space aliens. Specific predictions of the apocalypse, including terrestrial causes such as global warming, also remained unendorsed. So did those of human origin (e.g., war, terrorism) and extraterrestrial origin (e.g., asteroids). However, dissociation did predict belief in the power of unspecified prophecies, including those that were “religious” or derived from “computer simulations.”

Taken together, these results provide a complex but revealing pattern. Although the dissociated did not evince belief in major physical or social changes as a result of December 21, they believed in the power of the Maya prophecies to predict these changes, an obvious cognitive incoherency. At the same time, no additional specific prophecies, other than those of the Maya, were endorsed. However, more general realms of prophecy (religious, computer, etc.) for which no specific features were provided were endorsed as having predictive power. How are we to explain this psychological pattern?

Gestalt and Feature-Intensive Processes

In previous research (Sharps and Nunes 2002; Sharps 2003; Sharps 2010) we discussed a continuum in human information processing. This continuum ranges from feature-intensive processing, in which a given concept is subjected to the consideration of its specific features, to gestalt processing, in which such feature-based considerations are absent and therefore moot, and in which the logical consideration of specific details is reduced in favor of a more global, uncritical acceptance of the given phenomenon as a whole.

This continuum is strongly relevant to the pattern of results observed here. In the present research, we see a statistically significant relationship between dissociative tendencies and the tendency to process the 2012 phenomenon as a gestalt whole, without attention to the details (feature-intensive processing) that might otherwise give rise to an appropriate skepticism. This interaction of gestalt and dissociative processes appears to be a major source of credulity and to the essential cognitive incoherency that makes apocalyptic beliefs possible.

What is the evidence for this pattern of cognitive processing? As mentioned above, a major incoherency is immediate and obvious; dissociation led to an acceptance of the Maya prophecies of apocalypse, even when there was no belief in the apocalypse predicted. Those with dissociative tendencies believed in the Maya prophecies, but not in the phenomena that those prophecies predicted.

Also, there was a notable absence of feature-intensive processing in the cognitive systems involved. There was no endorsement of specific causes of change (e.g., war, global warming). In other words, when the specific causes of the apocalypse were “pinned down” in a feature-intensive manner, the dissociated were not inclined to believe that anything was going to happen. Even when the prophecies in question were specific (biblical, Nostradamus, etc.), no endorsement of the end of the world was forthcoming. However, when the prophecies were left without specificity (with only vague, gestalt references to “computers” or “religion”), dissociative tendencies predicted significant apocalyptic beliefs.

What Makes the Maya So Special?

This argument might seem to be contradicted by the specific endorsement of Maya prophecies observed. However, “Maya prophecies” are a major emphasis of the vast corpus of apocalyptic nonsense currently infesting television and the Internet. According to the availability heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman 1973), sources of information that are relatively available are likely to influence human judgment even when there is no factual basis for this influence; and nonspecific, quasi-mystical references to the Maya are nothing, at the present time, if not available. Also, the average believer in these prophecies is typically not a Maya scholar. Lacking the feature-intensive information characteristic of the relevant expertise, it would be anticipated that, in general, the Maya references to 2012 would be processed by the average person in a gestalt manner, with an absence of the feature-intensive considerations that would engender reasonable skepticism.

In Summary

In this study, we have seen that dissociative tendencies, at a subclinical level and in the general population, incline people to cognitive incoherency; the dissociated believe in prophecies of apocalypse, even when they do not believe in the apocalypse itself. There is a belief in prophecies of the apocalyptic future, even in the absence of belief that major physical or social changes will actually take place.

How is this incoherency possible? The answer lies in gestalt/feature-intensive theory. Those who tend toward dissociation generally fail in the feature-intensive dynamics that would lead to appropriate skepticism. Rather, they deal in gestalt processing, in which the relative absence of definable features and cognitive structure makes it possible to hold conflicting thoughts simultaneously. In the present study, this was demonstrated in the rejection of specific apocalyptic considerations, even by the relatively dissociated, in favor of more amorphous, general predictions of doom. This was highlighted by general dissociated acceptance of the Maya prophecies, both because of the availability heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman 1973) and because of relatively nebulous and ethereal understanding of the specifics of Maya thought and culture.

How to Promote Rational Skepticism

These results provide a scientifically coherent explanation of current beliefs in the 2012 apocalypse. These beliefs have their source entirely in scientific human psychology, rather than in parapsychology or in unknown mystical factors. Of potentially greater importance, however, these results may also point the way to the reduction of absurd, mystical, or apocalyptic thinking in the future. It should be noted that even those of high degrees of dissociation did not endorse “prophecies” when these were made explicit and amenable to feature-intensive processing.

The implication here is that the key to the avoidance of superstitious thinking, including apocalyptic thinking such as in the current 2012 absurdity, lies in the promotion and facilitation of feature-intensive processing. If concepts are dissected in terms of their features, elements, and processes, there is no room for the vague, gestalt ideas that lead to such nonsense as the uncritical acceptance of such ethereal concepts as “Maya prophecies” and “the end of the world.”

This idea is not unprecedented; a similar insistence on the specific (feature-intensive) definition of terms was demanded by Plato (Cornford 1957). However, in the present research, it is shown that such attention to detail, to the feature-intensive nature of argument, leads to the ability to reject such vague, gestalt concepts as “Maya predictions of the end of the world,” and thus to the beginning and basis of rational consideration.

The implication is obvious. Better education in the scientific basis of reality, in the precise, feature-intensive consideration of facts, can reduce vague, gestalt processing, and can even provide a defense against the superstitious inclinations inherent in dissociative tendencies. It is hoped that the present results will incline educators to provide such feature-intensive analyses of ethereal and apocalyptic concepts, such as those inherent in the current 2012 hysteria, thus reducing the cognitive incoherency of those caught up in the hype, and further enhancing the rational consideration of the realities of the natural and social worlds.

References

Bower, B. 2012. Apocalypse not written in stone. Science News 182(3): 15.

Cardena, E. 1997. Dissociative disorders: Phantoms of the self. In S.M. Turner and Michel Hersen, eds. Adult Psychopathology and Diagnosis, third edn.: 400. New York: Wiley.

Cornford, F.M. 1957. Plato’s Theory of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

DePrince, A.P., and J.F. Freyd. 1999. Dissociative tendencies, attention, and memory. Psychological Science 10(5): 449–452.

Herodotus. 2006, reprinted. The Histories. London: The Folio Society.

Krupp, E.C. 2009. The Great 2012 Doomsday Scare. Online at http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-guest.html; accessed October 12, 2012.

Nolte, C. 2009. False alarm of millennium: Y2K cost counties millions. San Francisco Chronicle (December 12): A2.

Sharps, M.J. 2003. Aging, Representation, and Thought: Gestalt and Feature-Intensive Processing. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction.

———. 2010. Processing Under Pressure: Stress, Memory, and Decision-Making in Law Enforcement. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law.

———. 2012. Eyewitness to the paranormal: The experimental psychology of the “unexplained.” Skeptical Inquirer 36(4): 39–45.

Sharps, M.J., J. Matthews, and J. Asten. 2006. Cognition, affect, and beliefs in paranormal phenomena: Gestalt/feature intensive processing theory and tendencies toward ADHD, depression, and dissociation. Journal of Psychology 140(6): 579–590.

Sharps, M.J., E. Newborg, S. Van Arsdall, et al. 2010. Paranormal encounters as eyewitness phenomena: Psychological determinants of atypical perceptual interpretations. Current Psychology 29(4): 320–327.

Sharps, M.J., and M.A. Nunes. 2002. Gestalt and feature-intensive processing: Toward a unified theory of human information processing. Current Psychology 21(1): 68–84.

Tversky, A., and D. Kahneman. 1973. Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology 5(2): 207–232.

Vick, K. 1997. The purgatory behind Heaven’s Gate: Ex-member breaks his silence on cult. The Washington Post (May 2): C1.

Appeals to righteous indignation or sanctity—which attempt to shield ideas from contemplation, discussion, investigation, or criticism—are common, impede rational discourse, and should be recognized as logical fallacies.

This article was previously published online as a Skeptical Inquirer Online Extra. Continue to article »

Most skeptics are familiar with the questionable nature of the scientific arguments made by young-Earth creationists—those who take the Bible literally and believe that Earth is less than ten thousand years old. What is less often appreciated is the violence some creationists wreak on works of literature and fine art, especially those that feature dragons and other monsters. In particular, Beowulf has recently enjoyed great popularity with creationists. For instance, Kent Hovind’s now-defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land featured a Beowulf display,¹ and the Creation Museum in Kentucky has a statue of Beowulf over the door of its Dragon Hall Bookstore.² Curiously, creationists not only interpret the Bible as the literal, inerrant word of God, they read fictional works like Beowulf as literal, if not inerrant, accounts of actual events.

The most thorough creationist treat­ment of Beowulf appears in the book After the Flood: The Early Post-Flood History of Europe Traced Back to Noah by Bill Cooper, a trustee of the Creation Science Movement, the “oldest creationist movement in the world,” according to its website (https://www.csm.org.uk/index.php). Cooper’s primary purpose is to test the accuracy, veracity, and validity of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 and 11 and, by extension, the rest of the Bible. He compares the Table of Nations, which describes the descendants of Noah’s sons, with Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian gene­alogies that trace various European dynasties back through a collection of pagan heroes and gods to a son of Noah, often one born on the ark. Cooper argues that these genealogies more or less accurately preserve pre-conversion traditions that are independent of the Bible. However, since they mention Noah, his sons, and the ark, Cooper interprets them as independent corroboration of the biblical account. In fact, the evidence suggests that Noah and his sons were a late addition to the genealogies.³

In the last two chapters, Cooper shifts from genealogies to stories of monsters and suggests that these monsters were actually dinosaurs. To Coop­er, tales of dragons and sea monsters provide evidence that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time and that Earth is therefore much younger than scientists will admit. Beowulf ties his themes together: it mentions the Flood and Cain; it refers to some of the characters who appear in the genealogies; and it contains monsters. As in the case of the genealogies, Cooper finds it necessary to move the date of Beowulf back to a time before the Anglo-Saxon conversion to Chris­tianity. Indeed he argues that the “poem pre-dates the migration of the Saxons to these isles” (147). While the date of Beowulf is controversial,⁴ such an early date is impossible. For one thing, the Anglo-Saxons began arriving in Britain in the fifth century, slightly before the main events of the poem unfold. Further­more, if Beowulf is a continental composition, it is in the wrong language. Since it focuses on Scandinavian tribes, one would expect it to be in Old Norse or perhaps even Proto-Norse, but it’s not: it’s in Old English, a language that evolved in England after various tribes had migrated there from their continental homelands.

Cooper needs to push the date of Beowulf as far as he can into the past, partly so he can argue that the poem is independent of the Bible and Christian thought and therefore confirms the biblical account of the Flood, and partly so he can argue that it is a poetic but basically historical account of real people, real events, and real animals. He notes that the poem preserves “not just the physical descriptions of some of the monsters that Beowulf encountered, but even the names under which certain species of the animals were known to the Saxons and Danes” (150). In an appendix, he includes a list of “Zoo­logically applied terms in the Beowulf epic” (Appendix 10, 238–40). None of these resemble what we usually think of as zoological descriptions, and many of Cooper’s translations, such as “devil,” “demon,” “fiend,” “evildoer,” “night evil,” “wicked destroyer,” “wicked ravager,” and “unholy monster,” belie his argument that Beowulf is a pre-Christian poem.

While Beowulf recounts stories of feuds, battles, and alliances, the poem focuses primarily on the protagonist’s encounters with monsters. In his youth, the Geatish hero travels to the court of the Danish king Hroðgar to fight Grendel, who has been ravaging the hall and killing and eating the men. When Grendel’s mother seeks revenge for her son’s death, Beowulf tracks her to her lair and kills her as well. In his final battle, Beowulf, now an old king, faces a dragon that is attacking his own homeland. In addition to his main antagonists, Beowulf also encounters a number of sea serpents.

In his analysis of Beowulf, Cooper discusses words, phrases, and passages in some depth, giving the impression that he has some familiarity with Old English. In one instance, he provides his own translation of a short passage. The passage is not particularly difficult, and the gist of his translation is accurate enough but reveals that he does not actually understand how the language works.⁵ Elsewhere, he relies on the translation by Michael Alexander, although it is not always clear from his citations when he is using Alexander’s translation. He calls Alexander’s translation “the best translation” of the poem (154).⁶ To be clear, there is nothing wrong with Alexander’s translation, but it is a verse translation, and Alexander uses poetic license in adapting the story. For a discussion of precise word usage, a verse translation is largely useless. For such a discussion, a fairly literal prose translation is necessary—at the very least. Much better would be a text in Old English that has a good glossary, such as an edition by Frederick Klaeber. Cooper cites and quotes Klae­ber—and in places criticizes Klaeber’s commentary—but to a large extent, he ignores Klaeber’s glossary in favor of Alexander’s translation. In doing so, he ends up making mistakes, such as discussing at some length the name of a sea serpent “species,” unaware of the fact that the word he’s discussing, yðgewinn, does not refer to the creature but to its movement.⁷

Cooper turns Beowulf’s three main antagonists into dinosaurs by interpreting poetic descriptions as zoological terms and cherry-picking details of a poetic translation, while giving the impression that the Old English text backs up his argument. Unsurprisingly, Cooper identifies the dragon as a pterosaur. More specifically, he believes the use of the term widfloga (far-flyer, ll. 2346, 2830) “would have distinguished this particular species of flying reptile from another similar species which was capable of making only short flights” (152). He therefore concludes that it is a pteranodon, despite the fact that pteranodon remains have been found exclusively in North Amer­ica. In addition, the word pteranodon means a winged, toothless creature, while the dragon in Beowulf definitely has teeth. More importantly, he assumes that the creature can be identified as a specific animal based on a poetic de­scription. Old English poetry is based on alliteration rather than rhyme. A poet may use many different terms to refer to the same creature, person, or object, often choosing the term that best fits the alliteration and meter. Occasionally, this can lead to confusion for the reader. For instance, in Beowulf, the terms “East Danes,” “West Danes,” “North Danes,” and “South Danes” are all used to describe the same people. Both times widfloga occurs, it alliterates and fits the meter of the line.⁸

Cooper also mentions that the poet calls the dragon ligdraca or fire-dragon (ll. 2333, 3040),⁹ but he does not explain how this appellation is appropriate to a pteranodon. The poet re­peatedly associates the dragon with fire. It uses fire to wreak its vengeance on Beowulf’s land, burning homes and killing people, and Beowulf has a shield of iron prepared to protect him from the dragon’s flames. Yet the paleontological record is conspicuously silent about pterosaurs’ ability to breathe fire. Another notable characteristic of the dragon is its inordinate love of treasure. It had spent 300 years in its barrow, lying on its treasure until the theft of a single cup spurred it to fury. The love of treasure is common among Germanic dragons, mentioned in many Old English and Old Norse works. If the Beowulf poet were describing a real animal as Cooper claims, we would expect to find pteranodon bones on top of or near treasure hoards, yet the massive Anglo-Saxon treasure trove recently discovered in Staffordshire, England, is surprisingly free of pterosaur remains, as are the great ship burials, such as Sutton Hoo in England and Gokstad and Oseberg in Norway.

While the association between dragons and dinosaurs is common among young-Earth creationists, Cooper goes a step further and argues that the other monsters in Beowulf are dinosaurs as well: “Our attention must now be drawn towards another reptilian monster which was surely the most fiercesome [sic] of all the animals encountered by Beowulf, the monster called Grendel” (152–53). In the poem, the Danish king Hroðgar provides the following description of Grendel and his mother:

Ðæra oðer wæs,

…………………………………….

idese onlicnæs; oðer earmsceapen

on weres wæstmum wræclastas træd,

næfne he wæs mara þonne ænig man oðer. (ll. 1349b-1355)

Cooper then provides Alexander’s translation of the passage:

[A]nd one of them

……………………………………

was in woman’s shape, but the shape of a man,

though twisted, trod also the tracks of exile

—save that he was more huge than any human being. (ll. 1348-52)¹⁰

“But,” asks Cooper, “what exactly do the descriptive terms tell us that is of such importance? Simply this: that the female was in the shape of a woman . . . and the male was in the shape of a man. . . . In other words, they were both bipedal, but larger than any human” (155, emphasis in original). Actually that’s not really what the description tells us at all. Alexander, presumably for poetic reasons, leaves out one word: oðer, “other” (l. 1355b). Grendel was larger than any other man. Cooper’s entire argument hinges on the omission of one little adjective.¹¹ Grendel was abnormally large, but he was man-shaped, and his mother had the likeness of a woman. Twice the Beowulf poet connects the Grendel-kin to the race of Cain (ll. 104–114, 1256–68), and several times he either calls Grendel a giant or associates him with giants.¹² Never does he describe them in a way that would suggest that they are reptiles. He calls the dragon wyrm (serpent) and draca and repeatedly refers to it as “coiled.” Similarly, the water monsters (that are not called yðgewinn) are called wyrm and draca. No such terms are applied to Grendel or his mother.

Having turned more or less human creatures into mere bipeds, Cooper twists the description of Beowulf’s battle with Grendel into something quite different from what the poet describes. Cooper says that the Danes “had themselves attempted to kill Grendel with conventional weapons. . . . Yet his im­penetrable hide had defied them all, and Grendel was able to attack the Danes with impunity. Beowulf considered all this and decided that the only way to tackle the monster was to get to grips with him at close quarters” (155–56). In fact, Beowulf chooses to fight unarmed because he knows that Grendel does not use weapons. He regards it as a matter of honor (ll. 433–40).¹³ It is only during his battle with Grendel’s mother, to which he does bring a sword, that he discovers that the two are invulnerable to ordinary weapons.

Despite Beowulf’s explanation for his actions, Cooper argues that it was a strategic position because “the monster’s forelimbs . . . . were small and comparatively puny. They were the monster’s one weak spot, and Beowulf went straight for them. He was already renowned for his prodigious strength of grip, and he used this to literally tear off one of Grendel’s weak, small arms” (156). Cooper is coy about identifying what kind of dinosaur Grendel is. “Is there,” he asks “a predatory animal from the fossil record known to us, who had two massive hindlegs and two comparatively puny forelimbs?” (159). He answers that there are several. After describing the species he refers to as “the Grendel” for another page, he concludes, “I doubt that the reader needs to be guided by me as to which particular species of predatory dinosaur the details of his physical description fit best” (160). Though he refuses to say it directly, he clearly means to imply that Grendel is a Tyrannosaurus Rex.¹⁴

The problem is that his description is inaccurate. The poet never says that Grendel’s arms are puny, weak, or small, or that his hind legs are massive. As Cooper says, Beowulf’s strength is prodigious: he is said to have the hand-grip of thirty men (ll. 379–80). Grendel immediately recognizes Beowulf’s strength and wants to get away (ll. 750–56). Strictly speaking, Beowulf does not tear off Grendel’s arm at all. Rather, it is the combined strength and determination of the two combatants that results in Grendel’s injury. Beowulf is determined to retain his grip on Grendel, while Grendel is desperate to escape. In the end, both achieve their goals: Grendel flees to the mere, and Beowulf is left holding his arm.

Although Cooper misidentifies Gren­­­­del as Beowulf’s most formidable foe (each fight is more difficult than the previous one),¹⁵ he diminishes Grendel’s significance and Beowulf’s accomplishment by continuously misrepresenting the text. Cooper’s Grendel is not only puny-armed but is “only a youngster, and not by all accounts a fully mature adult male of his species” (156). I’m not sure what “accounts” Cooper is reading, but the poem in no way supports his assertion. Grendel, as we have established, is much larger than any other man and unusually strong. He is not an immature, puny-armed T-Rex; he is a large, strong, man-shaped creature who has a taste for Danish.

Cooper’s book may seem a slightly silly contribution to the creationist arsenal. Certainly, it is easy for anyone with a background in medieval history, languages, or literature to refute many of his arguments. Unfortunately, his target audience probably does not in­clude many medieval scholars. Very few people have expertise in the medieval genealogies of Wales, Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, or Scandinavia, for instance. The scholarly trappings of Cooper’s work give it an air of authority, and it has become extremely popular among creationists. A Google search of the words “Beowulf” and “dinosaurs” returns over twelve million hits. Some of these sites refute creationist claims, but many are verbatim copies of all or parts of After the Flood or adaptations of it.

Most disturbingly, Cooper’s ideas are repeated in works intended to educate children. Ruth Beechick recycles Cooper’s arguments in “Beowulf: Fic­tion or History” on Crosswalk.com, a homeschooling site.¹⁶ Although her language is geared toward young children, she follows Cooper’s arguments very closely, occasionally adding her own errors.

Also aimed at homeschooled children is the “audio adventure,” Jonathan Park and the Hunt for Beowulf. The Hunt for Beowulf is volume IV (of eight) of the Jonathan Park Adven­tures, radio dramas that are also sold as CD sets. The series is sold by Answers in Genesis¹⁷ and the Creation Museum gift shop (as is After the Flood), was originally developed by the Institute for Creation Research,¹⁸ and is currently produced by Vision Forum Mini­stries.¹⁹ The series follows the Creation Response Team, led by Jonathan’s father, Kendall Park, a paleontologist who, based on “scientific evidence,” has converted from a belief in evolution to strict adherence to young-Earth creationism. In The Hunt for Beowulf, the Creation Response Team seeks to recover the stolen Beowulf manuscript, “the oldest English manuscript ever discovered.”²⁰ The team is eager to find the manuscript (far more eager than either the British police or the British Library, apparently) because it contains evidence that dinosaurs and man lived together. As in Cooper’s book, Grendel has been added to the list of (comparatively) modern dino­saurs. In the Jona­than Park adventure, he has also become a dragon. Each audio adventure comes with a substantial study guide that includes fun activities and much false information and pseudoscience. Earnest advertisements after each installment also encourage listeners to find more study material at www.jonathanpark.com.

When creationists co-opt Beowulf as a tool for their agenda, they contribute to the misinformation they are providing their homeschooled children. Beo­wulf is twisted and mangled to ac­commodate pseudoscience and pseudo-history. Al­most as disturbing is the way it limits the appreciation and understanding of one of the earliest masterpieces of our language. Literary criticism allows multiple interpretations of any work, as long as those interpretations can be supported by textual and contextual evidence. Crea­tionists allow only one interpretation of Beowulf, and it is one that is in direct conflict with textual and contextual evidence. By trying to force the poem to fit a rigid and fallacious understanding of world events, creationists also ignore the literary merits of the work. Cooper condescendingly de­scribes the poetic language of Beowulf: “The Anglo-Saxons (like the modern Ger­mans and Dutch) had a very simple method of word construction, and their names for everyday objects can sometimes sound amusing to our modern English ears when translated literally. . . . It was thus an intensely literal but at the same time highly poetic language possessing great and unambiguous powers of description” (150). This definition of the language of Beo­wulf fits Cooper’s agenda: the word construction is simple, and the descriptions are unambiguous, making his interpretations self-evident. In reality, there is much in Beowulf that is obscure or ambiguous, and the cultural and linguistic gap between modern readers and the poet makes interpretation all the more challenging. In addition, it is difficult to see how a poem that heavily employs kennings, a type of metaphor, can be considered “intensely literal,” though Cooper’s view may help us understand why he mistakes poetic de­scriptions for “zoologically applied terms.”

Though Cooper and his followers may occasionally give lip service to Beo­wulf’s poetic power, it is clear that to them, its only value is as a tool of in­doctrination, and children cannot be trusted to interpret it for themselves.

Notes

1. See G. Martinez, “Stupid Dino Tricks: A Visit to Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land,” Skeptical Inquirer (November/De­cem­ber 2004): 47–51. Available online at http://www.csicop.org/si/show/stupid_dino_tricks_a_visit_to_kent_hovindrsquos_dinosaur_adventure_land/. In 2009, the park was closed down. It will be sold to help pay off the taxes owed by Hovind, who is currently in prison. In April 2010, Hovind’s Crea­tion Science Evangelism ministry opened The Creation Store not far from Dinosaur Adv­en­ture Land. See http://www.dinosauradventureland.com/aboutDAL.php.

2. K. Ham, “Serbia and Beowulf,” Around the World with Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis (September 30, 2008). Available at http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2008/09/30/serbia-and-beowulf/.

3. In particular, most of the Old English ac­counts seem to date to the reign of Alfred the Great, the Christian king of Wessex in the late ninth century, and the Norse accounts are based in part on the English genealogies. See Anlezark (2002) and Faulkes (1983). Anlezark traces the Anglo-Saxon tradition of an ark-born son of Noah, and Faulkes traces the complex history of the Norse genealogies.

4. Most scholars place the composition somewhere between the eighth and late tenth or early eleventh centuries. Robert E. Bjork and Anita Overmeier discuss the dating in “Date, Prove­nance, Author, Audiences” in Bjork and Niles (1997).

5. Cooper translates lines 815b–818a as, “Searing pain seized the terrifying ugly one as a gaping wound appeared in his shoulder. The sinews snapped and the (arm-)joint burst asunder” (155). He assumes that the noun that precedes the verb in the first clause is the subject, and the noun that follows it is the direct object; in fact, the second noun is in the nominative case and must therefore be the subject. To accommodate the reversal of subject and direct object, he changes the meaning of the verb. Later he makes a plural noun singular. A more accurate translation of the passage is “The terrible, ferocious fighter experienced bodily pain; a very great wound became apparent on his shoulder; the sinews sprang asunder; the joints burst.”

6. He says this specifically about the passage that describes Grendel and his mother. We will see why he favors Alexander’s translation of this particular passage.

7. Cooper translates yðgewinn as “wave-thrasher” (51, 61 n. 9). It actually means “wave-strife,” a kenning or short metaphor for “swimming.” When shot with an arrow, the creature is “deprived of life, of wave-strife” (ll. 1432–35). “Wave-thrasher” comes from Alexander (l. 1433), although Cooper does not cite him in this in­stance. Alexander’s version poetically captures the feel of the passage, but it is far from being a literal translation.

8. Beowulf, l. 2346: “þæt he þone widflogan weorode gesohte” ([Beowulf scorned] to attack the far-flyer with a war-band); l. 2830: “þæt se widfloga wundum stille” (. . . so that the far-flyer, still from wounds. . .). Emphasis added to highlight alliteration.

9. The dragon is also called fyrdraca (fire-dragon, l. 2689).

10. When Cooper quotes Alexander, he prints the lines as prose, as he does with the Old English. This may be a quirk of formatting, but it disguises the fact that Alexander’s translation is a non-literal verse translation. He also leaves out the subtitle “A Verse Translation” when he cites it (Cooper cites the 1973 edition, but it too was subtitled “A Verse Translation”).

11. This omission is particularly glaring be­cause, when Cooper quotes Old English, he transliterates þ and ð as th. Consequently, he in­cludes the phrase, “thonne aenig man other,” which is not difficult to translate into modern English; however, since he prints a large chunk of Old English (ll. 1345–54) as a block of italicized prose, with two phrases bolded (idese onlicness, the likeness of a woman, and weres wæstmum, the form of a man), it’s unlikely that most readers will look too closely at it.

12. Eoten, ll. 761 and 112; þyrs, l. 426. In l. 112, giants (eotenas) are said to have sprung from the race of Cain, along with elves and monsters. The poet says that Grendel lived for a time among the race of Cain.

13. Beowulf says, in part, “I have also heard that the wretch, because of his recklessness, does not care about weapons. Therefore, I . . . scorn that I should bear sword or large shield, yellow shield, to battle, but rather I shall grapple with the fiend with my grasp.” Later he says, “I do not claim for myself any lowlier battle-stature than Grendel [claims for] himself; therefore, I will not put him to sleep with a sword, deprive him of life, although I can” (677–80), clearly indicating that he doesn’t realize that a sword would be useless against Grendel.

14. As with the pteranodon, the T. Rex has only been found in North America. In their book Claws, Jaws, and Dinosaurs (Pensacola: CSE Pub­lications, 1999), born-again cryptozoologist William J. Gibbons and Kent Hovind echo Cooper’s arguments concerning Grendel and the water monster, although they don’t credit him. However, they suggest that Grendel was “the fearsome Megalosaurus, a dinosaur found in Britain and similar to Tyranosaurus-Rex [sic]” (19).

15. Beowulf successfully fights Grendel un­armed, but he brings a sword to face Grendel’s mother. When that sword fails, he uses a magic sword he finds in her lair. For the fight with the dragon, he is fully armed and has a specially made shield. In addition, he is only able to overcome the dragon with the assistance of Wiglaf, and he is mortally injured in the battle.

16. The article is no longer on crosswalk.com’s website. It is, however, available at http://www.christianity.com/1261413/, among other places. It was originally published in The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, another homeschooling re­source. A review of Beechick’s arguments appears in J.P. Walter, “Dinosaurs, Mnemonic Com­munities and Rewriting the Literary History of Beowulf,” Machina Memorialis 31 Aug. 2006. Available at http://www.jpwalter.com/machina/archives/352.

17. Http://www.answersingenesis.org/PublicStore/product/Jonathan-Park-Complete-Audio-Series,5478,188.aspx.

18. Jonathan Park behind the Scenes: The Unofficial Website of the Jonathan Park Audio Adventures includes a video of the actors recording an episode at the Institute for Creation Re­search. Available at http://www.creationadventurefamily.com/jonathanparkbts.

19. Vision Forum Ministries discuss their views on education in “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy,” http://www.visionforumministries.org/home/about/biblical_patriarchy.aspx.

20. The Beowulf manuscript, written c. 1000, is not the oldest English manuscript. Among the earliest copies of Old English poetry are texts of “Cædmon’s Hymn” included in Latin copies of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Cambridge, University Library MS kk 5 16 and St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia MS lat. Q.v.I.18. Both date to the eighth century. Possibly even earlier is the Ruthwell Cross, which preserves part of the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood. This, however, is not a manuscript, but a runic inscription on a stone cross. There are prose works that pre-date Beowulf as well. For instance, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History was translated into Old English in the late ninth or early tenth century. All four major Old English poetic codices (the Beowulf MS, the Exeter Book, the Vercelli Book and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11) date from roughly the same period.

References

Alexander, Michael, tr. 2003. Beowulf: A Verse Translation. Rev. ed. London: Penguin. Cooper cites the original edition from 1973.

Anlezark, Daniel. 2002. Sceaf, Japheth and the origins of the Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon England 31: 13–46.

Bjork, Robert E., and John D. Niles, eds. 1997. A Beowulf Handbook. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Cooper, Bill. 1993. After the Flood: The Early Post-Flood History of Europe Traced Back to Noah. Chichester: New Wine Press.

Faulkes, Anthony. (1978–79) 1983. Descent from the gods. Orig. published in Scandinavia 11: 92–125. Corrected and revised version available from the Viking Society for Northern Research Web Publications at http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Descent-from-the-gods.pdf.

Fulk, R.D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds. 2008. Klaeber’s Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg. 4th ed. University of Toronto Press. All quotations are from this edition. This updated edition is based on Fr. Klaeber’s 3rd edition (1950) with first and second supplements (Lexington, MA: Heath), the edition Cooper cites, although he prints the lines as prose. All translations are mine unless indicated otherwise.