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

The Legend

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

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

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

The Nitty Gritty on the Dirt

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Healing ‘Miracles’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

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

Note

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together, as we shall see, these cases illustrate that UFOlogy continues its long tradition of mystery mongering and the implicit reliance on a logical fallacy called “arguing from ignorance”: “We don’t know what was seen in the sky; therefore, it must have been an extraterrestrial craft.” The cases also reveal that much of what is claimed depends on the states of mind of the alleged eyewitnesses. Following the show I was able to spend more time investigating the cases, and here is a look at each of the three revealing Anderson segments in turn.

UFO: ‘Hovering’ in the Mind’s Eye

First up was Denise Murter, age fifty-two, from Levittown, Pennsylvania. Her encounters began in May 2008, when she and her husband were awakened by their growling dog, Alex. Finding nothing unusual in the apartment, she took the dog outside so he could relieve himself. Thereupon, she “noticed a light in the sky,” which she guessed to be “about 1000 feet in the air.” While it seemed to be “moving very quickly from spot to spot,” nevertheless, she stated, “It was hovering over the trees in the yard.” There was no noise and Alex became “perfectly well behaved.” The light hovered for some twenty minutes, but she does not say what became of it.

The incident was repeated about four weeks later, but the night sky was more overcast, so she said of the UFO that she “could just see parts of it creeping in the clouds.” Depending on how it moved, it appeared circular or boomerang shaped.¹ She saw windows that were “bluish green” and “were all the way around the craft.” A “little pink light” was following it, and “On the bottom there were three giant headlights in a triangle shape.”

After another month, Alex again woke her and she “immediately knew that they were back and I had to go outside again.” The craft appeared closer to the house “but still hovering over the trees.” Then she saw a beam of light and a sparkling powder that “looked like it was dancing in the trees” (Murter 2012a).

Murter stated, “I was paralyzed. I could not move.” She waited until the next day to tell her husband because this particular experience “was just too unbelievable. . . . I didn’t want people to think I went bonkers; it was like it was in a movie.” Her husband advised her not to tell others of her experience, but she “told MUFON”—the Mutual UFO Network—about it and more (Murter 2012a).² Another version of the events, citing a MUFON field investigator, describes “half a dozen sightings” beginning April 20, 2008 (Howe 2008).

The “paralysis”—together with the strange as if “in a movie” experience—provides a clue as to what probably happened on this occasion: Being half asleep (and perhaps having rested on one of the lounge chairs in her back yard to watch the hovering UFO),³ Murter had a hypnagogic experience (or “waking dream”). This occurs in the interface between being fully awake and asleep. It is typically characterized by hallucinations, often with bright lights reported, and sleep paralysis, the body’s inability to move because it is still in the sleep mode (Mavromatis 1987, 14–52). This state probably explains Murter’s perceived beam of light and sparkling powder. I suspect that during at least part of each of her reported events Murter was not fully awake, and that that affected many of her perceptions.

Regarding the UFO itself, I discussed Murter’s sightings with James McGaha, one of our organization’s UFO experts and director of the Grass­lands Observatory in Tucson. He suggested that the UFO might have a ready explanation, given the direction in which Murter was looking at the approximate times and place reported: that is, a celestial object, some twenty-five times brighter than the stars in her field of vision—namely, the planet Jupiter. That it seemed to move was probably due to the autokinetic effect (McGaha 2012). This occurs when one stares at a bright light in the dark, particularly when it is well above the horizon (so there is no frame of reference). Autokinesis is due to “small involuntary jerking movements of the human eye” (Hendry 1979, 26). (In one UFO case, for example, a light that “zigzagged” while remaining in the same basic position for forty minutes proved to be a combination of star and “autokinetic motions” [Hendry 1979, 95].)

As to the shifting colors Murter described, McGaha (2012) noted that that effect would be due to scintillation—that is, the “twinkling,” not only of stars but also of planets like Jupiter when the atmosphere is especially turbulent. Scintillation can occur on the clearest nights, even affecting a single celestial light, and it results in refraction (bending) of the different wavelengths to cause the changing colors. Like autokinesis, scintillation can also produce “an illusion of motion” (Hen­dry 1979, 26). Both probably helped cause the illusion of changing shapes Murter described, aided by her own imagination. After the show’s taping she sent me an angry note in which she said, “I know what I saw” (Murter 2012b). Actually, of course, this no doubt well-meaning lady only “knows” what she thinks she saw.

Anyway, as I told Cooper on his show, it seems farfetched that extraterrestrials would traverse the incredible distances involved—on some secret mission to Earth—then repeatedly hover over Murter’s back yard with their bright lights on!

Aliens and Hypnotic Recall

The next segment on Anderson featured two young women from Law­rence­burg, Kentucky, Brittany Fields and Jennifer Morgan, who encountered UFOs late one night, then, subsequently, under hypnosis, “recalled” alien encounters.

Their story began April 26, 2011, when, about midnight, the two went on a drive with three young male friends. As they turned down one road and looked over farmland, they saw a light above the trees speeding toward them. Jennifer first thought it could be a helicopter: It was “somewhat long” with lights on the front and back. However, when it flew over them it was “huge,” she said, “bigger than a helicopter,” and made a noise that was like no helicopter she knew. It sounded like a loud, high-pitched, thumping rhythm. There was also a high-pitched whining noise.” Soon, she says, there seemed to be lights everywhere, “red, white, and green,” that were “blinking sporadically” (Morgan 2012). Brittany described somewhat similar events, except that she had first thought their initial sighting was of a blimp (Fields 2012).

No doubt the young people saw something, and they categorically deny they were under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. However, the three males’ unwillingness to come forward does suggest that they were less inclined to become caught up in the imaginative possibilities (rather like Murter’s reticent husband in the previous case).

I also discussed this particular case with James McGaha—this time not in his persona of astronomer but as a former special operations and electronic warfare pilot. He stated that the witnesses’ UFO description had “helicopter written all over it.” He pointed out that the area was well within the reach of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is where American military helicopter training occurs. Stationed there is the famous “Night Stalkers” special-operations unit. (Indeed, it was out of Fort Campbell that the training for the days-later, successful “Night Stalkers” mission against terrorist Bin Laden took place.) The Night Stalkers unit has an impressive variety of huge and odd-looking helicopters that the public rarely sees. Major McGaha suggests that some nighttime helicopter training operation could explain the young people’s UFO sighting. As to the red, green, and white lights reported, those are the colors of lights on all aircraft—military or civilian.

In any event, Brittany says that later, “no one remembers a period of time after we turned left at a four-way stop towards the end of the night.” Because of this “missing time” and other concerns, she also contacted MUFON and “They proposed the idea of us getting hypnotized” (Fields 2012). Under hypnosis she “remembered” four small humanoid beings, one of whom held her hand, while the others poked at and examined her body. She “locked eyes” with the entity that was holding her hand and she “felt a flood of emotion.” He, too, seemed “overwhelmingly concerned” and “just wanted to make me better.” In a second session she explored the period of “missing time” and reported that she and Jen­nifer had been in a state “like frozen animation” (Fields 2012).

For her part, Jennifer says she “was not as responsive to hypnosis as Brit­tany.” Her session seemed “almost like a dream.” “The only thing I can remember,” she says, “was seeing a bright light, Brittany pulling off the road, and then literally my memory jumped from being in a car to being in a circular white room.” Completely naked, she felt a pain in the back of her head, and later her boyfriend found a scar on the back of her neck that she did not recall having. Did she think she was abducted by aliens? “There’s no other explanation. It’s the only logical explanation,” she concluded (Morgan 2012).

Actually, there is quite another, much more rational explanation for such en­counters. They have their origins in a now-ubiquitous UFO myth­ology. Brit­tany said, on describing their first sighting, “Listen, I’ve always believed in this kind of thing” (Fields 2012). The willingness to presume that an un­known object is an extraterrestrial craft (an exercise in illogic called “arguing from ignorance”) sets the stage for other expectations. The familiar humanoid likeness, the “missing time,” the unremembered scar—these are common motifs of UFO lore.

In fact, there is nothing remarkable about a scar going unremembered, especially in an out-of-sight location. As well, “missing time” may result from nothing more than the percipient having been lost in thought. As to the supposed recall under hypnosis, that is simply mistaking imagination for memory. Hypnosis is merely an invitation to fantasize (Baker and Nickell 1992, 216–31). (Being easily hypnotized is even one of the indicators, though not diagnostic in itself, of a personality type that is characterized by proneness to fantasy [Wilson and Barber 1983]—discussed more fully later.) For these reasons, on Anderson I called for MUFON and others to immediately stop using hypnosis to elicit “memories” in UFO cases.

The Star People

The final guest on Anderson was a professed psychic named Cassandra Van­zant. She claimed to be in telepathic communication with extraterrestrials, whose messages she “translates.” At Cooper’s request, she told him he had a star family—the “Lamarians”—who live in “the fourth dimension” (Vanzant 2012). Cooper struggled to keep a straight face, and when he asked the audience how many believed Vanzant could indeed communicate with aliens, just one person raised her hand.

The audience was right to be skeptical. Vanzant is only the most recent “contactee”—one who purports to be in repeated communication with alien beings. (Contactees emerged in the early 1950s but were eventually supplanted by “abductees” who now also frequently serve as cosmic messengers [Story 2001, 134; Nickell 2007, 255–56].) Like others of this ilk, Van­zant exhibits many of the traits associated with a fantasy-prone personality. This describes an otherwise normal and sane person with a great tendency to fantasize. Vanzant, for in­stance, has what seem for all the world like imaginary friends (“Artoli” and “Madascrat”), believes she receives special messages from higher beings, purports to have psychic powers, has had an out-of-body experience, and exhibits other traits that are indicative of fantasy proneness (Wilson and Barber 1983).

When she “channels” her clients’ star families, she first speaks to them in the “ET language” (“Twinkle” 2012), which sounds suspiciously like she is just “speaking in tongues.” Called glossolalia, it is typically “psychobabble,” which uses nonsense syllables to create pseudolanguage (Nickell 1993, 103–109). Vanzant subsequently provides “translations” that are rife with New Age clichés, such as “on this earthly plane” and references to people having “their own truths” (“Twinkle” 2012). Revealing, I think, is the fact that Vanzant also talks like this.⁴ The evidence suggests that she is herself the source of the “messages.” She seems to first fool herself, then other imaginative, credulous folk.

* * *

Like UFOlogical cases generally, these examples from Anderson are telling. They illustrate how distorting the eye of the beholder can be, and how—through credulity, pro-UFO bias, illusions and misperceptions, altered states of consciousness, personality traits, and other factors, including a UFO-mythmaking culture—it can transform mundane phenomena into perceived alien encounters.

Following the show, Anderson Cooper received flak from flying saucer proponents (like the Herald-Tribune’s embarrassingly gullible blogger Billy Cox [2012]) and even a bit from praise­worthy rationalists (like Ed Stockly [2012], who blogs for the Los Angeles Times and suggested I did a “fine job” while being “outnumbered”). In my view, Cooper did a very good job, from identifying himself as a skeptic at the outset to giving me the opportunity to respond throughout. As Stockly noted: “Perhaps the best measure of Nickell’s effectiveness was shown when Cooper polled the studio audience. Only a few hands were raised when asked how many believed that UFOs were alien visitors, and all but a few hands went up when asked how many didn’t believe. Mark that one for the skeptics. It seems that Cooper’s audience is on the ball.” I would add that Cooper himself led the way.

Acknowledgments

I received considerable help with this project from Major James McGaha (USAF Retired) and my trusty assistant Ed Beck, to both of whom I am very grateful.

Notes

1. A photo Murter snapped (see Howe 2008) shows a non-aerodynamic, banana-shaped effect, very grainy or pixelated, probably a photo artifact caused by a point of light photographed by a camera in motion while the shutter is still open (McGaha 2012).

2. MUFON obtained samples from the tree and soil where Murter says the glittering substance fell. Unfortunately, “Three independent laboratories checked the samples with different results” (emphasis added); one unidentified lab re­ported traces of magnesium and boron (Mattar 2008). However, these could potentially be found in some fireworks residues (magnesium being a common ingredient and boron compounds producing a green flame); Pennsylvania is a state where fireworks are legal. Importantly, not one speck of the “glitter” or “little squares of light” was found, either at the site or in the samples (Howe 2008).

3. See photograph in Howe 2008.

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

References

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

Cox, Billy. 2012. Memo to AC: Ditch this gig. Online at devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/12997/memo-to-ac-ditch-this-gig/; accessed May 1, 2012.

Fields, Brittany. 2012. In “I Was Abducted” 2012.

Hendry, Allan. 1979. The UFO Handbook: A Guide to Investigating, Evaluating, and Re­port­ing UFO Sightings. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Howe, Linda Moulton. 2008. Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA. Online at http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/armageddon-or-newage/message/71220?var=1; accessed August 28, 2012.

I was abducted by aliens. 2012. Anderson show episode, CBS, aired April 24 (includes aired statements, unused portions, online clips, personal communications, etc.).

Mattar, George. 2008. Fallswoman stars in UFO documentary. Bucks County, PA, Courier Times, November 25.

Mavromatis, Andreas. 1987. Hypnagogia: The Unique State of Consciousness Between Wake­fulness and Sleep. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

McGaha, James. 2012. Personal communications to Joe Nickell, April 9 and 11, May 18.

Morgan, Jennifer. 2012. In “I Was Abducted” 2012.

Murter, Denise. 2012a. In “I Was Abducted” 2012.

———. 2012b. Facebook communication to Joe Nickell, April 16.

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

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

Stockly, Ed. 2012. TV skeptic: A ‘balanced’ discussion of UFOs on ‘Anderson.’ Online at http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2012/04/tv-skeptic-a-balanced-discussion-of-ufos-on-anderson.html; accessed April 26, 2012.

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

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

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

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

Suspicious Acts

The events began on August 30 in the Enfield home of Margaret Hodgson. The divorced Hodgson lived there with her four children—Peggy, thirteen; Janet, eleven; Johnny, ten; and Billy, seven—whose names, in early accounts, were fictionalized. Two of the children, Janet and Johnny, attempted to convince their mother that their beds were unaccountably shaking. The next night brought mysterious knocking sounds and the sliding of a chest of drawers in the girls’ room. There were more knockings, and soon Hodgson had a police car making a call to 284 Green Street (Playfair 1979; 1980, 12–33).

A female police constable witnessed a chair wobble and slide but could not determine the cause of the movement. By the next morning, marbles and Lego toy pieces began to “zoom out of thin air and bounce off the walls.”

“Janet, did you throw that?” Her mother’s question began a long series of witnesses’ suspicions—or outright accusations—that Janet was the cause of the trouble that centered on her. According to Guy Lyon Playfair—who, with colleague Maurice Grosse, observed and recorded much of the phenomena over their course—Janet was the “main focus” or “epicentre” of incidents. “She was always near when something happened, and this in­evitably led to accusations that she was playing tricks, although Grosse was already fully convinced that she could not be responsible for all the incidents” (Playfair 1980, 37).

Was her sister, Peggy, partly to blame? Although Janet was by far the most frequently present suspect, with disturbances even following her to school, her older sister was also central to some events. Once, for example, when Peggy shouted, “I can’t move! Something’s holding me!” she was found on the stairs with one leg extended behind her in a manner that could easily be explained as play-acting. She was also involved in other incidents, and when on one occasion the girls were separated (with Peggy sent to a neighbor’s home), the antics continued at both houses; moreover, when neither girl was present—for example when Playfair spent a night alone in the house—there were no disturbances at all (1980, 80). Were both girls playing tricks, or could the poltergeist be in two places at once? When Janet was in the hospital for six weeks for evaluation, some incidents occurred only at home (Playfair 1980, 69, 90, 102, 263).

Still, says Playfair,

Janet was all energy, big for her age, jumping up and rushing around on the slightest pretext, and talking so fast that I had some difficulty at first in understanding her. She had an impish look, and I could understand why some visitors to the house in the later months would suspect her of playing tricks. (1980, 44)

Children’s Tricks

Even Playfair himself, who chronicled the events in his book This House is Haunted: The True Story of a Poltergeist (1980), had occasional doubts. After a chest of drawers tipped and jammed at an angle against a wall, Playfair played his tape recorder and heard suspicious creaking noises, as if someone like Janet had slipped up to the chest. “Could they have been made by her?” Playfair asked. “I was beginning to have my doubts again” (1980, 52).

There were reasons aplenty for suspicion. The poltergeist, a.k.a. “The Thing,” tended to act only when it was not being watched. Stated Grosse: “It’s smarter than we are. Look at its timing—the moment you go out of a room something happens. You stay in the room for hours, and nothing moves. It knows what we’re up to” (Playfair 1980, 53). Indeed, when Janet knew a camera was on, nothing occurred (1980, 53). Incredibly, Playfair and Grosse found that the children were sometimes “motivated to add to the activity with some tricks of their own.” When members of the Society for Psychical Re­search (SPR) made visits, the children’s trickery was the main feature of their interest, whereas, says Playfair, “it did not bother us very much. We had already seen incidents with our own eyes that the children could not possibly have done deliberately” (1980, 70). (More on this presently.)

The incidents involving “curious whistling and barking noises coming from Janet’s general direction” suggest the extent of Playfair and Grosse’s credulity. In time, the entity began to voice words, including obscenities, and although Playfair wondered if it were really Janet acting as “a brilliant ventriloquist,” he did not think so. His faith in Janet continued even though “the Voice” refused to speak unless the girls were alone in the room with the door closed (Playfair 1980, 138, 146). More­over, the credulous investigators noted that, when the growling voice occurred, “as always Janet’s lips hardly seemed to be moving” (1980, 190).

Evidence of ventriloquial fakery was even taken as proof of authenticity! Ac­cord­ing to Playfair, “The connection between Janet and the Voice is obviously very close. There have been several occasions when she says something it obviously meant to say, and vice versa. Would she slip up like that if she was faking the whole thing?” (1980, 173).

Is he kidding? Even after professional ventriloquist Ray Alan visited and concluded that the girls were producing the Voice because they “obviously loved all the attention they got,” Playfair and Grosse were not persuaded that the girls were faking. In fact, they were quick to claim that even if the girls faked the Voice, the other mysterious happenings remained un­explained (Playfair 1980, 233).

This remained Playfair’s and Grosse’s defense even when Janet was caught at trickery (Playfair 1980, 196–7) and when Janet and Peggy confessed their pranking to reporters. The two investigators soon elicited a retraction from the girls (1980, 218–21). Others, such as the professional ventriloquist, were not so quick to rationalize.

Anita Gregory, who was investigating for the SPR, reported on the events in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. She suggested that the case had been overrated, describing several episodes of behavior on the part of Janet and Peggy that were revealing. Gregory concluded that the girls were nonpsychically responsible for many of the incidents that were attributed to “poltergeist” phenomena. Although she thought the outbreak might have originated paranormally (Gregory was a British parapsychologist inclined to believe in the paranormal), she concluded it had turned quickly into a farcical performance for investigators and reporters desiring a sensational story (Gregory 1980; Clark 1981).

Even more skeptical was American magician Milbourne Christopher, who investigated briefly at the house. On one occasion, when Janet claimed she was unable to open the bathroom door to get out, Christopher stated that he could not determine paranormal causality if he could not see an incident. Playfair writes, “It almost seemed that the poltergeist was out to incriminate her, by producing third-rate phenomena in the presence of a first-rate observer” (1980, 170). Another time, when Janet was sent to her room and the Voice manifested, Christopher slipped upstairs to observe. He saw Janet quietly steal out of her room to peer down the stairs as if to make sure she was not being watched. Seeing Christopher clearly flustered her. Christopher would later conclude that the “poltergeist” was nothing more than the antics of “a little girl who wanted to cause trouble and who was very, very, clever” (1984–85, 161).

Paranormal investigator Melvin Har­ris also weighed in on a fast photo sequence that supposedly “recorded poltergeist activity on moving film for the first time” (Playfair 1980, 106). Harris (1980) demonstrated how the photos actually reveal the schoolgirls’ pranking. While demonologist Ed War­ren claimed that Janet at least once was “sound asleep, levitating in midair” (Brittle 1980, 223), the photographs did not record these levitations nor did independent witnesses see them. War­ren was notorious for exaggerating and even making up incidents in such cases, often transforming a “haunting” case into one of “demonic possession” (Nickell 2009). Harris dubbed the pho­tographed levitations “gymnastics,” commenting, “It’s worth remembering that Janet was a school sports champion!” (1980, 554). (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. An eleven-year-old girl is supposedly levitating during the poltergeist outbreak of 1977–79 in Enfield, England. (Forensic illustration by Joe Nickell based on a photo in This House Is Haunted, 1980.)

History’s Verdict

By 1979, the Enfield “poltergeist” had left the Hodgson home “inexplicably,” except for an occasional isolated incident. The motivating force—we may suspect tension in the household following the parents’ divorce—eventually ran its course. But the question re­mains: Is it true that Janet and the other children really could not have caused certain disturbances, as Grosse and Playfair insisted? Let us look at just one instructive incident. Maurice Grosse reported that “[the poltergeist] just threw a slipper while we were all in the room. It was not within the reach of the children, it was down near the end of the bed” (Playfair 1980, 82).

However, all that would have been necessary would be for Janet, say, to have earlier gotten hold of the slipper and then waited for the proper moment—when Grosse was not looking at her—to toss it. Time and again in other “poltergeist” outbreaks, witnesses have re­ported an object leaping from its resting place supposedly on its own, when it is likely that the perpetrator had secretly ob­tained the object sometime earlier and waited for an opportunity to fling it, even from outside the room—thus supposedly proving he or she was innocent.

As a magician experienced in the dynamics of trickery, I have carefully ex­amined Playfair’s lengthy account of the disturbances at Enfield and have concluded that they are best explained as children’s pranks. The principle of Occam’s razor—that the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the best one—well applies here. Inter­viewed by the Lon­don Daily Mail (Brennan 2011), Janet at age forty-five (living in Essex with her husband, a retired milkman) ad­mitted that she and her sister had faked some of the phenomena. “I’d say 2 percent,” she admitted. The evidence suggests that this figure is closer to 100 percent; however, as another eleven-year-old girl insisted after confessing to playing poltergeist to attract attention in an earlier case: “I didn’t throw all those things. People just imagined some of them” (Christopher 1970, 149).

Acknowledgments

Barry Karr, CSI’s executive director, tipped me to the forthcoming 2012 movie being made about this case (which I had discussed briefly in my book Entities), and Timothy Binga, director of CFI Libraries, assisted with research.

References

Brittle, Gerald. 1980. The Demonologist: The True Story of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the World-Famous Exorcism Team. New York: St. Mar­tin’s Paperbacks.

Brennan, Zoe. 2011. What is the truth about the Enfield Poltergeist? (October 28). Online at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054842/Enfield-Poltergeist-The-amazing-story-11-year-old-North-London-girl-levitated-bed.html.

Christopher, Milbourne. 1970. ESP, Seers & Psychics. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 124–31.

———. 1984–85. A final interview with Mil­bourne Christopher, by Michael Den­nett, Skeptical Inquirer 9:2 (Win­ter), 159–165.

Clark, Jerome. 1981. Update . . . Fate. July: 94.

Gregory, Anita. 1980. Letter to the editor. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 50(786) (December): 538–41.

Harris, Melvin. 1980. Letter to the editor. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 50(786) (December): 552–54.

Nickell, Joe. 2009. Demons in Connecticut. Skeptical Inquirer 33(3) (May/June): 25–27.

Playfair, Guy Lyon. 1979. Poltergeist on a rampage. Fate. June: 74–81.

———. 1980. This House Is Haunted: The True Story of a Poltergeist. New York: Stein and Day.

Some 216 years later, “Patience” made her debut one July evening while Curran and a friend, who was a writer, were playing with a Ouija board. With their fingers pressing on the planchette, it began to spell out a strange message:

Many moons ago I lived. Again
I come — Patience Worth
my name —

Figure 1. Pearl Curran channeled “Patience Worth” from 1913 until her death in 1937. (Photo by Joe Nickell from original at Missouri Historical Society)

The message unleashed a flow of Patience Worth writings that eventually filled whole volumes: The Sorry Tale, Hope Trueblood, and The Pot Upon the Wheel were followed soon by Light from Beyond and Telka. By 1918, the phantom writer had her own Patience Worth Magazine, which lasted ten issues (Christopher 1970, 128–30).

Historical Fiction

Curran eventually abandoned the cumbersome Ouija board, discovering that Patience Worth could guide her fingers while she typed and could speak through Curran’s voice while a friend took dictation “at a tremendous speed” (Cavendish 1974). “Go Ye to the lighted hall to search for learning?” asked Patience in a typical communication. “Nay, ’tis a piddle, not a stream, ye search. Mayhap thou sendest thy men for barleycorn. ’Twould then surprise thee should the asses eat it.” And so on, in her quaint, facile manner.

A New York Times reviewer praised her style: “Notwithstanding the serious quality and the many pitifulnesses and tragedies . . . [there is] much humor of a quaint, demure kind . . . [and] the plot is contrived with such skill, deftness, and ingenuity as many a novelist in the flesh might well envy” (qtd. in Christopher 1970, 128).

One Elizabethan scholar, a Profes­sor Shelling, was less impressed. As he stated:

The language employed is not that of any historical age or period; but, where it is not the current English of the part of the United States in which Mrs. Curran lives, it is a distortion born of superficial acquaintance with poetry and a species of would-be Scottish dialect . . . the borrowing of some dialect words and the clear misuse, misunderstanding and even invention of many others. . . . There is an easy facility of phrase almost wholly in our contemporary idiom and showing nowhere the qualities of the language of Elizabeth’s or any previous age. (qtd. in Christopher 1970, 129)

I concur with this assessment.

Moreover, as is now well known, the productions of the Ouija board are actually due to “the involuntary muscular actions of the players”—as the effect was described in toy maker Isaac Fuld’s application for a patent on the device. Although Fuld added, “or through some other agency,” an explanation adopted by Spiritualists and other mystics, the truth can be easily demonstrated (as magician Milbourne Christopher has explained): when the board is out of sight and the alphabet scrambled, only gibberish is spelled out. (Curran rejected such “conditions” [1920, 399].)

Fantasy Proneness

Indeed, I find that Pearl Curran exhibits several traits consistent with having a fantasy-prone personality. Such persons are sane and normal but generally enjoy a rich fantasy life, which may include experiencing a previous lifetime. “While they are pretending,” state Wilson and Barber in their classic study (1983, 354), “they become totally absorbed in the character and tend to lose awareness of their true identity.” They may believe they receive special messages from paranormal entities, possess psychic powers, or the like. A short autobiographical sketch penned by Curran reveals her to have been an imaginative child who played the piano at her uncle’s Spiritualist church. Of her supposed communication with Patience Worth, she wrote: “I am not a Spiritualist, but am in sympathy with the furtherance of psychic facts and believe that the pioneers of today are but groping toward fact. I am not a ‘medium’ in the common sense. Am deeply interested in the study of psychic phenomena, using myself as a study” (emphasis added, Curran 1926, 15).

“Patience Worth” seems to have been, according to philosopher Charles E. Cory (1927, 432), Curran’s “other self,” a form of alter ego. He characterizes the phenomenon as follows (1927, 433–34):

I accept the judgment that Patience Worth is a genius of no mean order. And, perhaps, there is in the genius of this writer a concrete illustration of what freedom a mind may achieve when released from the inhibitions that clog and check the normal consciousness. She is a dissociated self, and this dissociation has taken place in such a way as to free her from the burdens and concerns of life, from all the claims that split the will and bind the fancy. And perhaps in this fact, and all that it implies, lies the condition of her genius. The division of the self has resulted in a division of labor. To Mrs. Curran falls the care of the needs of the body, and the interests of the social life. Their reactions and distractions are hers. . . .

But turn to this dissociated mind and the conditions have changed. The work of adjusting the organism to the environment being left to the other self, the inhibitions which perception places upon the imagination are removed. This sets free and un­fettered the mind of Patience Worth. In the realm of the idea she lives, and there she sustains herself without effort. She acknowledges no tie or bond that might take her out of her dream. She is a dreamer that never awakens. And the conditions of this spell are, in a way, the conditions of her genius. With her our moments of abstraction, moments that life affords us the luxury of thought and imagination, are prolonged indefinitely. They are, in fact, a fixed condition. In other words, she lives only in a world of thought. And so far she has shown no desire to displace the other self, and alternate with her in the role of action. To do so would result in essential modification of her consciousness, and put her under inhibitions from which she is now free.

Although Curran refused to be hypnotized, and it is said she did not go into a “trance” while writing (Prince [1927] 1964, 428, 431), her dissociated mode is clearly similar to what today would be recognized as “self-hypnosis”—a state she entered and left easily. Therefore she probably would have been an excellent subject had she agreed to undergo hypnosis. Interest­ingly, Curran eventually discovered she could write short stories of her own but emphasized that she could “feel the difference between the conscious effort of the ordinary manner of writing, as against the unconscious manner in which the Patient Worth material comes to me” (1920, 403).

Smoking Gun

But Curran was not just receiving “dictation.” Like other writers (including me) before and since, she embarked on the creative process and was carried to that far-away place in the mind whence inspiration comes, producing things that often seemed quite mysteriously bestowed—as if from one of those goddesses of art in Greek mythology, the Muses. Curran may have simply perceived her muse as a character named Patience Worth.

Figure 2. The “Patience Worth” papers at the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis are a trove of “automatic” writings.

I have researched the matter over the years. In 2010, after speaking to the Rationalist Society of St. Louis on “Hunting for Ghosts and Spirits,” I was able to study Pearl Curran’s writings at the Missouri Historical Society Archives (which very graciously accommodated me on a day they were otherwise closed). For five hours I pored over the Pearl Cur­ran/“Patience Worth” papers—numerous boxed documents and twenty-nine bound volumes of typescripts (Figure 2). Even though it is known that “Patience” could compose on demand (Prince [1927] 1964, 56, 281–300), I found evidence that some of the writings were the product of the creative process—showing various revisions—rather than, as alleged, mere dictation from the supposed spirit of the nonexistent “Patience Worth” of the seventeenth century.

For example, I found two versions of a 1920 poem, “My Love Is Old.” In the bound typescript, vol. 12, p. 2302, the last line of the poem reads, “Who bending whispers forget, forget.” But there is an earlier loose manuscript of that same page with the typed line originally reading, “Who bending responds forget, forget”—but the word responds has been stricken and the word whispers penned instead.

Several poems had fold marks in the paper, indicating they had been mailed to persons for whom they were written—one “For Grace Parrish,” for in­stance. When that poem appeared in the bound typescripts, numerous changes in punctuation and line divisions had been made, and stanza divisions had been added. More telling is another poem for Parrish containing some very different text in the typescripts, revised wording, a line added, and changes in punctuation and line divisions.

Quite revealing is a typed page of yellowed copy paper with penciled notation (“3 carbons please”) that is rough­ly typed and marked over. A few typed lines have been crossed out (having read, “How could I know until you came how close God was/How could I comprehend the Cross and all the agony . . .”). There are also numerous penned edits and revisions in Pearl Curran’s handwriting, as well as a note to someone addressed as “honey” (presumably a typist) to “break it up—it will look better I think,” apparently referring to the line breaks (see Figure 3).¹

Figure 3. A few surviving telltale documents like this reveal that Pearl Curran did not merely take spirit dictation but engaged in the revision process—like ordinary writers. (Photo by Joe Nickell at Missouri Historical Society)

I suspect that there were once many more such drafts but that they were subsequently destroyed, replaced by what manuscript experts call “fair copies”—that is, neat, final versions as preserved in the bound volumes.

Conclusions

The weight of the evidence—the lack of historical record for “Patience Worth,” the fantasy proneness of Cur­ran (consistent with producing an imaginary “other self”), the writings’ questionable language, and the evidence of the editing and revision process—indicates that Patience was merely a persona of Curran’s.

I can relate to that: When I visited the archives I was accompanied by a number of my own personas, including paranormal investigator, historical
document examiner, poet, fiction writer, editor, literary critic, forensic linguist, handwriting expert, photographer, and more—all of which played their role in my examination of the manuscripts. The century-old case can now be closed. It is about time.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the many people who assisted with my research, including Kath­leen Kelly and Larry Jewell of the Ration­alist Society of St. Louis, the generous staff of the Missouri Historical Society Ar­chives, CFI Libraries Director Timothy Binga, and my assistant, Ed Beck. I am especially grateful to John and Mary Frantz for their crucial financial support.

Note

1. This document is in the third of three folders of loose documents dated September 8–15, 1924, Patience Worth Collection, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Missouri.

References

Cavendish, Richard. 1974. Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 278.

Christopher, Milbourne. 1970. ESP, Seers & Psychics: What the Occult Really Is. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 124–31.

Cory, Charles E. 1927. In Prince (1927) 1964, 428–37.

Curran, Pearl. 1920. A note for psychologists. In Prince (1927) 1964, 392–403.

———. 1926. Autobiographical sketch. In Prince (1927) 1964, 11–15.

Prince, Walter Franklin. (1927) 1964. The Case of Patience Worth. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books.

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

Figure 1. The author researches ginseng at the Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The Origins

One of the oldest forms of medical practice, Chinese medicine had ancient antecedents that are lost to history. Archaeological evidence of magical practices—including divination to determine the will of one’s ancestors, who were considered a major cause of illness (along with environmental factors, such as snow and, especially, wind)—dates from as early as the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 BCE). Still, the system that would develop into traditional Chinese medicine stems from the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–219 CE) (Ancient Healing 1997, 278, 282–83).

China’s oldest medical text, the Huangdi Neijing (or “Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon”), stems from circa 200 BCE, when it was probably compiled by several different people rather than the mythical Huang Di (who supposedly lived from 2698 to 2598 BCE—a convenient one hundred years). It influenced future generations of medical theorists and is still cited in support of today’s Chinese medicine (Ancient Healing 1997, 282). (It also laid the foundation for most Asian medicine—that of Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and other Asian countries—although India de­veloped its own medical system, Ayur­veda [Monte 1993, 20].)

Traditional Chinese medicine is based on a pair of central concepts. The first, the Doctrine of Two Principles, holds that there are two opposing forces—yin and yang—that combine in various ways to create all phenomena. Yin and yang’s attraction creates an energy called qi (pronounced “chee”), which is held to be the life force permeating the entire universe. In the body, where it supposedly flows through certain channels called meridians, an imbalance of qi causes illness.

The second key concept in Chinese medicine is that of the Five Elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, each associated with a particular planet, one of the five Chinese seasons, and a pair of the body’s organs, among other associated qualities. Traditional Chinese medicine is a complex system that combines these two main concepts with other diagnostics. Various treatments—the use of herbs, acupuncture, and other means—are intended to balance qi and thus restore health (Monte 1993, 19–29; Porter 1997, 94–113; Ancient Healing 1997, 296–98).

Materia Medica

An entire floor of the Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine is de­voted to eastern materia medica (Latin for “medical matter”), the herbs and other natural substances used for making traditional medicines. The impressive collection of 2,850 substances in­cludes 300 taxidermy specimens; fish, starfish, turtles, owls, snakes, and bear, for example, all have their purpose. Powdered deer antler, for in­stance, is prescribed for women’s menstrual problems. Among several ancient pharmacopoeia to survive in some version, the principle one is a sixteenth-century herbalism text by a physician named Li Shih-chen. It de­scribes nearly 2,000 herbs and provides some 10,000 herbal remedies (Shealy 1996, 32).

Among the museum’s extensive collection of herbs (the bulk of the materia medica) is a display of both eastern ginseng (Panax ginseng) and Amer­ican ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) (Figure 1). I found this of particular interest because as a boy growing up in eastern Kentucky I knew rural “’sang” hunters who dug, dried, and sold the root to meet the East’s insatiable demand for an herbal remedy used to treat any lack of vitality, including impotence. In China, I sampled ginseng tea in tea houses and “tonic soup” in restaurants (including “pigeon with ginseng,” said to be efficacious for “regulating one’s energy, strengthening one’s body,” ac­cording to the menu description).

Ginseng’s root is often forked, giving it a vague semblance of a person’s body. It is probably because of this shape (the English word ginseng is de­rived from a Chinese term meaning “man root”) that medicinal properties were first attributed to the plant. The genus name Panax is Greek for “all-heal,” the same origin as panacea (Chevalier 1996, 25, 116; Encyclopedia Britannica 1960, s.v. “ginseng”).

Whereas western herbalists typically prescribe a single herb at a time, Chinese and other Asian therapists may concoct a mixture of medicinal substances—vegetable, animal, mineral—tailored to a particular person and condition. Each ingredient is based on its qi or energy value (said to be hot, warm, cold, cool, or neutral) (Shealy 1996, 72).

While herbs have a definite place in modern science-based medicine—some mainstream medical compounds are derived from plant sources—the efficacy and safety of each plant must be determined through double-blind clinical trials before it can be deemed suitable for medical use. Although many people believe “natural” medicines are inherently safe, the fact is that there are important safety issues of drug interaction, contamination, dosage, and other concerns, including the fact that use of an ineffective medicine means that expected health benefits are not realized. There is also the risk of long-term adverse effects with some herbs (Porter 1997, 92–93).

Figures 2–3. The author undergoes “cupping” treatment (shown here), together with acupuncture, at a Beijing clinic. (Photos by Joe Nickell)

Acupuncture

Even more important than herbalism is acupuncture, “the preeminent form of therapy in Chinese medicine” (Monte 1993, 23). Among the oldest therapies still in use, it consists of inserting needles at any of over 350 “acupoints,” which are supposedly located along in­visible meridians through which qi flows. The purpose is to drain any excess of qi, remove blockages, and stimulate the flow of qi, thus correcting imbalances and thereby treating illnesses (Porter 1997, 19; Shealy 1996, 31).

Acupuncture, however, has begun to be subjected to the rigors of science with generally negative results. The existence of neither qi nor the meridians through which it is supposedly carried has been proven, notwithstanding the claims made from faulty studies. As to the efficacy of the treatment, evidence is mounting that previous positive studies are flawed and that acupuncture lacks intrinsic clinical value.

Researchers have demonstrated that “sham” acupuncture (i.e., phony treatments using incorrect acupoints or needles that retract like the blades of stage knives) can work as well as real acupuncture. (See Steven Novella’s “What Is Acupuncture?” SI, July/August 2011). In fact, acupuncture ap­pears to be no more successful in relieving pain than can be attributed to the placebo effect, and there is no credible evidence that acu­puncture is effective in treating any other medical condition (Slack 2010).

Some additional Chinese medical treatments are related to acupuncture. There is acupressure, a needle-less form that “involves the surface stimulation of acupoints digitally, manually, or with tools held in the hand” (Raso 1996, 4); moxibustion, the burning of moxa (dried leaves of Artemesia vulgaris) to apply heat to acupuncture points (Shealy 1996, 31); and cupping, where­by a vacuum is created in a cup (by burning combustible material inside it) that is quickly placed on the patient’s body, often at an acupoint (see Figures 2 and 3).

Acupuncture, herbalism, and other aspects of traditional Chinese medicine are viewed with nationalistic pride, not unlike the art of Chinese brush calligraphy, and criticism of it is often met with some defensiveness. Nevertheless, the practice appears to be slowly declining in China—just as, ironically, it has been gaining favor among New Agers in the West. Meanwhile, as an advanced doctoral student at the Beijing Uni­versity of Chinese Medi­cine admitted to me, Chinese traditional medicine and Wes­tern medicine are not well integrated but function in a rather parallel manner; the practice is to use both. In other words, one might be given a Western diagnosis that included labwork followed by prescription of an antibiotic and also separately be given acupuncture treatment, based on looking at the patient’s tongue and taking his or her pulse, coupled with an herbal concoction. One hopes that in both hemispheres, science-based medicine—not “Western” medicine—will prevail.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Chinese Research In­sti­tute for Science Popularization (CRISP) in Beijing, especially Zhang Yunjing and Hu Junping; the Center for Inquiry (CFI), especially CEO Ron Lindsay and CSI Executive Director Barry Karr. CFI Libraries Director Timothy Binga and librarian Lisa Nolan also helped with this project.

References

Ancient Healing: Unlocking the Mysteries of Health & Healing Through the Ages. 1997. Lincoln, Illinois: Publications International.

Chevalier, Andrew. 1996. The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants. New York: DK Publishing.

Encyclopedia Britannica. 1960. Chicago: Encyclo­pedia Britannica.

Monte, Tom, and the editors of East West Natural Health. 1993. New York: Perigee Books.

Porter, Roy, ed. 1997. Medicine: A History of Healing. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

Raso, Jack. 1996. The Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare: Alternative Medicine, Para­normal Healing, and Related Methods. Loma Linda, California: The National Coun­cil Against Health Fraud.

Shealy, C. Norman, ed. 1996. The Complete Family Guide to Alternative Medicine. Shafts­bury, Dorset, England: Element Books.

Slack, Robert. 2010. Acupuncture: A science-based assessment: A position paper from the Center for Inquiry Office of Public Policy.

It was like déjà-vu. In 2008, in a traveling exhibition called “Vatican Splendors,” I had seen the Holy Mandylion, also known as the Image of Edessa, which was once held to be the miraculous self-portrait of Christ (Nickell 2009). Now, in Genoa the following year, I was seeing another such image and recalling how in the Dark Ages the Image was said to be able to miraculously duplicate itself—one way to explain how there could be so many “originals.”

Pious Legend

The original, according to legend, was produced for King Abgar of Edessa after he sent a messenger, Ananias, with a letter to Jesus requesting a cure for the king’s leprosy. If Jesus was unable to come, Ananias was instructed, he was to bring the holy man’s portrait instead. But as Ananias attempted to paint a picture Jesus himself intervened, washing his face in water and inexplicably imprinting his visage on a towel—hence the name Mandylion, a unique word of Byzantine Greek coinage describing a holy facecloth (Wilson 1979, 272–290; Vatican 2008).

Alas, this legend is unknown before the fourth century; moreover, there are conflicting versions. One attributes the Image to the bloody sweat exuded by Jesus during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44). A later legend holds that a woman named Veronica, who pitied Jesus as he struggled with his cross on the way to his crucifixion, gave him her veil or kerchief with which to wipe his bloody, sweaty face. In fact, however, this made-up tale obviously derives from the fact that veronica is simply a corruption of vera iconica, medieval Latin for “true image” (Nickell 2007, 71–76). In one revealing fourth-century text of the Edessan legend, the image is not claimed as miraculous but instead merely the work of Hannan (Ananias), who “painted a portrait of Jesus in choice paints” and gave it to the King (qtd. in Wilson 1979, 130).

Astonishingly, many Shroud of Turin devotees, following Ian Wilson (1979, 119–121), believe the “shroud” is the lost original of the Edessan Image! How do they equate the latter’s face-only image with the full-length, front-and-back bodily images of the Turin cloth? They imagine the shroud was folded so that only the face showed—never mind its lack of record for over thirteen centuries, a bishop’s report of the forger’s confession, pigments and paint that make up the image and “blood,” and radiocarbon dating to the time of the forger’s confession: about the middle of the fourteenth century (Nickell 1998; 2007).

Competing Mandylions

According to the authoritative source The Dictionary of Art (Turner 1996), the Edessan Image “entered Christian iconography during the 11th and 12th centuries, first in manuscript picture cycles that were elaborated to accompany narratives of the Edessan legend and then as part of a fixed scheme of images in church decoration.” Three of these “original” Mandylions have received the most attention, each supposedly having been the very one brought to Constantinople in 1204 by crusaders. One, the Parisian Mandylion, was acquired by King Louis IX in the thirteenth century and became lost in 1792, probably destroyed in the French Revolution.

Of the two surviving examples, the Vatican Mandylion has no certain history prior to the sixteenth century. In 1517 the nuns of San Silvestro in Capito were reportedly forbidden to exhibit it so that it would not compete with their church’s “Veronica” (Wilson 1991). The Vatican now concedes (in the official Vatican Splendors exhibit text [Vatican 2008]) that “. . . the Mandylion is no longer enveloped today by any legend of its origin as an image made without the intervention of human hands. . . .” I understand this to be an admission that not only is the Vatican version merely an artist’s rendering but that such is true of all Mandylions.

This brings us to the other surviving image, the Genoese Mandylion. It, too, lacks meaningful provenance. It is allegedly traceable to the tenth century, but its verifiable history dates only from 1362. At that time Byzantine Emperor John V donated it to Genoa’s Doge Leonardo Montaldo after whose death in 1384 it was bequeathed to the Genoese Church of St. Bartholomew of the Armenians. It arrived there in 1388; that is where it remains and where I photographed it (Figure 1), displayed in a gilt-silver enameled frame of the fourteenth-century Palaeologan style.

Interestingly, fragments of ancient Persian and Arabian fabrics were found stuck on the back of the Genoese icon panel. The Arabian fragment is from the sixteenth century, whereas the figural silk Persian one has been attributed to the tenth century on stylistic grounds. However, radiocarbon testing of the wood gave a more reliable date range of 1240–1280 (Wolf 2005).

Similarities

Both the Vatican and the Genoese Mandylions are painted (the Genoese in egg tempera, the Vatican apparently the same) on linen cloth that has been glued to a wood panel (Vatican 2008; Church of St. Bartholomeo degli Armeni 2009; Wilson 1991, 113–114, 137–138). However, both X-rays and tomography (an X-ray technique whereby selected planes are photographed) reveal that the Genoese image-bearing cloth covers an original image painted on wood (Bozzo 1994). Also, the Vatican’s on-cloth image shows alterations (in X-rays and reflectographic and thermographic photographs), especially in the nose, which was originally shorter, “so that the image originally must have had a different physiognomy” (Vatican 2008, 58).

In 1996, the Vatican Museum’s experts concluded (according to Vatican 2008, 58):

The version in the Vatican and the one in Genoa are almost wholly identical in their representation, form, technique, and measurements. Indeed, they must at some point in their history have crossed paths, for the rivet holes that surround the Genoese image coincide with those that attach the Vatican Mandylion to the cut-out sheet of silver that frames the image. . . . So this silver frame, or one like to it must also have originally covered in the Genoa.

See my summary comparison of the two Mandylions (Table 1—based on Vatican 2008; Bozzo 1974; Wolf 2005).

Table 1. Summary comparison of the Vatican and Genoese Mandylions.

Indeed, the images themselves, as they now appear to the eye, are remarkably alike. Measurement ratios—involving the most critical areas: the eyes, lengthy nose, and mouth—are strikingly similar. Therefore, when photographs of the images are brought to the same scale (based on inter-pupillary distance), those features effectively superimpose, as I determined by using computer-generated transparencies. (These were prepared by CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga using photos taken by art experts [Wilson 1991, plates 13 and 14]. However, the lack of a forensic scale in each prevents reaching a definite conclusion as to whether tracing might have been involved.)

Conclusions

Since the prototypical image for the later Mandylions and “Veronicas” first appeared in Constantinople in the tenth century, many copies have been made. In one known seventeenth-century instance, no fewer than six “exact” facsimiles were carefully made. Such replicas could later be mistaken for or misrepresented as the original, as happened, for example, with one that was specially made and sent to plague-ridden Venice in the 1470s; it later became known as the Holy Face of Alicante in Spain (Wilson 1991, 101–108).

Perhaps this is what occurred in the case of the two existing Mandylions. The Genoese image, with its older provenance and two-stage creation, appears to be the earliest. Its original image was certainly an artist’s copy, since it was painted not on cloth but directly on the wood panel. (One source reports that it has the same dimensions as the missing central panel of a triptych in the St. Catharine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai [Wolf 2005].)

Vatican experts acknowledge the evidence suggesting that their Mandylion is “a later replica of the one now in Genoa; that it was produced in the fourteenth century, when the Genoese version . . . was given its existing Palaeologan frame; and that it was then placed in the silver frame of the older version,” thus explaining the matched rivet holes (Vatican 2008, 57). Their main reservation is that the alterations in the Vatican image’s features (especially the nose) may be inconsistent with a simple, direct copy. However, it would seem that the alterations might be due only to the image having been alternately painted and corrected in the freehand process of copying it. Expert examination, in fact, showed “no signs of overpainting” (Vatican 2008, 57).

In brief, then, the totality of evidence is most consistent with the hypothesis that the Genoan Mandylion is a replica, made no earlier than the thirteenth century, and that the Vatican Mandylion is a fourteenth-century copy of that replica. There is no proof that either was directly copied from the now-lost twentieth-century “original,” and instead there is proof against it. Neither is there any credible evidence that there was an authentic first-century image of Jesus—miraculous or otherwise. The Shroud of Turin is not such an original, having been proven to be the work of a confessed forger in the middle of the fourteenth century. Thus, the shroud image simply followed the traditional likeness and not the other way around.

Acknowledgments

Many people helped with this research project. Massimo Polidoro saw to it that I was invited to Italy’s largest science festival (October 30–November 1, 2009); he and others, including Luigi Garlaschelli, Enrico Scalas, Beatrice Mautino, Stefano Bagnasco, Marta Annunziata, and Andrea Ferrero, showed me many kindnesses and accompanied me to various sites for research. I am also most appreciative of Fabio Lottero of Genoa, who returned to St. Bartholomew’s to obtain for me an English translation of the official brochure. Closer to home, I am grateful to Tim Binga, Lisa Nolan, Henry Huber, Matt Cravatta, Paul E. Loynes, Chris Fix, and Barry Karr for their help with various aspects of my travel and research—in addition to my longsuffering wife, Diana Harris, who accompanied me in 2008 to view the traveling Vatican exhibit.

References

Bozzo, Collette Dufour. 1974. Il ‘Sacro Volto’ di Genova. Rome: Instituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’ Arte; summarized in Wilson 1991, 88, 113–114, 138.

Church of St. Bartholomeo degli Armeni. 2009. The Holy Face (Official brochure, in English).

Nickell, Joe. 1998. Inquest on the Shroud of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.

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

———. 2009. The Image of Edessa revealed. Skeptical Briefs 19(2)(June): 9–10, 15.

Turner, Jane, ed. 1996. The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 20:251, s.v. Mandylion of Edessa.

Vatican. 2008. Mandylion of Edessa. In Vatican Splendors: From Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Museums and the Swiss Guard. Vatican City State: Governatorato, 55–58.

Wilson, Ian. 1979. The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Cloth of Jesus Christ? Revised ed. Garden City, New York: Image Books.

———. 1991. Holy Faces, Secret Places: An Amazing Quest for the Face of Jesus. New York: Doubleday.

Wolf, Gerhard. 2005. Das Mandylion von Genua. Available online at www.mpg.de/840449/forschungsSchwerpunkt1.

Massimo Polidoro and I explored the great labyrinth beneath Buda Castle, a network of caves and rock vaults created by hot water springs and used as refuge by prehistoric man; it was later linked by cellars, dungeons, and military store rooms into a complex that runs for 1,300 yards (Eyewitness 2007, 65) and is billed as “one of the seven underground wonders of the world” (“The Labyrinth” n.d.). Polidoro and I also went in search of a fabled statue of the Virgin. Legend says it was enclosed in the wall of Mátyás Church during the Turkish occupation, and when the edifice was all but destroyed in 1686, the statue miraculously appeared (Eyewitness 2007, 62). Alas, however, it would not reappear for us: it was in a part of the church undergoing renovation, and we could not beg or buy our way in.

Another investigation had me accompanying scholar Benedek Lang to the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to assist him in studying a most mysterious manuscript, the Rohonc Codex. This—like the famed Voynich Manuscript (Schmeh 2011)—is written in an unknown language. Using techniques from my book Pen, Ink, and Evidence (Nickell 1990), I provided information relating to the codex’s authenticity, date of composition, and other issues. Still another excursion took me to the purported birthplace of Harry Houdini at No. 1 Csengery Street, District 7, Budapest.

The remainder of my investigative work in Hungary—which relates more or less to the field of parapsychology—was conducted with the untiring assistance of Gabor Hrasko (who negotiated arrangements, drove, took photographs, and much more), and Veron Eles (who has a definite talent for undercover work). Here is a very brief account of each of four excursions.

Experiencing Healing Energy

Our first visit was to a site called Attila Domb (Attila Mound), part of a commercialized Kincsem Horse Park near the village of Tápiószentmárton. The site’s supposed connection with Attila the Hun is tenuous, but the name Kincsem (“My Treasure”) was that of a “wonder mare” of the nineteenth century who never lost a race. The 37.5-acre site was said to have an energy emanation that attracted horses and endowed them with better health and a greater foaling rate than elsewhere. A “seriously ill” horse was reportedly also healed there (“Attila” 2011; Olsen 2007, 128–29). From this folklore grew rumors that the site was a “healing mound” that could cure sick people.

Figure 1. Village mayor prepares to catch the author, who seems under the power of a mystical energy.

The owner (and local mayor), Kocsi János, graciously hosted us and gave us a demonstration of the site’s supposed magical energy. He sat Eles and me down in his on-site restaurant and suggested that our hands, placed flat on a table, would mysteriously rise and a warmth or tingling or other effect would spread from our fingers throughout our bodies. Eles followed my lead as I played along, and she did so again when János took us just outside and suggested the energy could cause us to fall backward—much the same as at an American Pentecostal healing service where people supposedly “go under the power” of the Holy Spirit but actually are role-playing in response to suggestion and expectation (Nickell 2002). János played catcher as we fell backward on cue (see figure 1).

Hrasko, Eles, and I then walked to the mound, a gentle knoll where “geomancers,” or dowsers claim to detect the crossing of “a strong ley line”—leys are imagined lines of “earth energy” that supposedly connect ancient mounds, churches, legendary trees, and other alleged mystical “power” sites (Tietze 2004, 12; Olsen 2007; Guiley 1991, 329–30; Nickell 2003). This mix of superstition and pseudoscience will have no medical benefit of course, although the site can take advantage of the same factors that are behind the touted successes of faith healing: misdiagnosis, prior medical treatment, psychosomatic conditions, spontaneous remissions, the placebo effect, and so on. As always, believers emphasize any supposed successes while ignoring the numerous failures.

Across the top of the mound is a ditch where an archaeological dig took place in 1924 in a search for traces of Attila the Hun’s wooden palace. (His grave is also located at the site, according to legend.) Nothing was discovered relating to Attila, but of several unearthed objects, one, attributed to the Scythians and now reposing in Hungary’s National Museum, is descriptively called the Golden Stag. Its namesake is János’s restaurant, and the wonderful lunch to which he treated us there—beginning with palinka (an alcoholic peach drink) and including Kincsem ragout (a stew named for the famous racehorse) along with many other treats—was the most magical part of our visit.

Hanging Up on Phone Psychics

We three investigators next met with Jeno Torocsik, a Hungarian mathematician who operates a number of interactive television shows. These include game shows that, critics complain, are essentially gambling enterprises (since they depend more on chance—the winning caller being picked randomly—than skill) (“TV” 2006). Torocsik also operates several psychic telephone networks—in Spain, Romania, and the United States, as well as Hungary. (Do the psychics know who will win on the game shows? Apparently not.)

We skeptics had a debate with Torocsik over the evidence for and against psychics and psychic phenomena. He was opposed to his “psychics” being tested by famed magician and psychical investigator James Randi, whose James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offers one million dollars to anyone who can, under scientific test conditions, demonstrate genuine psychic ability. Torocsik asserted that Randi is not impartial (when in fact JREF protocols eliminate tester bias), and he claimed that “psi” (psychical phenomena) is too elusive to be tested effectively! When I attempted to make the case for the necessity of scientific testing, pointing out that it was he who appeared not to be impartial, he became rather impatient.

Figure 2. An operator connects hopeful callers with work-at-home telephone “psychics.”

Nevertheless, he did permit me to photograph an operator who handles psychic-seeking callers (figure 2). Using a computer screen, she matches callers with at-home fortunetellers who, he insisted defensively, were at least effective counselors, if not actually psychic. (In a Skeptical Inquirer exposé of telephone psychics, C. Eugene Emery, Jr. [1995] describes how some admittedly phony psychics attempted to gently provide traditional counseling as a substitute for supernatural insights. But callers resisted. For example, one woman wondered if her husband was going to beat her but rejected the advice to call 911 or turn to available sources of assistance. Indeed, only after the “psychic” concocted a tarot-card reading to support her commonsense recommendation did the caller seem inclined to accept the advice.)

Tapping My Telepathic Powers

I was much intrigued by our visit to Budapest’s Esoteric University and its Psi Lab, where researcher Paulinyi Tamás gave us an overview of the experiments he and his colleagues are conducting. They gave a demonstration (not an actual experiment of record) using me as a test subject for a ganzfeld experiment. This involves parapsychologists creating an environment of sensory deprivation to supposedly stimulate the subject’s receptivity of ESP (Guiley 1991, 225–26). This particular laboratory has claimed quite significant results, in contrast to others that have reportedly gotten only average or low scores.

Figure 3. The author serves as the subject of a ganzfeld demonstration—an experiment in telepathy—in a “psi” laboratory.

For the experiment, a random number generator was used to select one of a set of four pictures. I was then subjected to mild sensory deprivation (involving diffuse light and white noise) in a soundproofed test room (figure 3) where Tamás joined me. Unknown to me, Eles was chosen as “sender”—that is, one tasked with looking at the target picture and attempting to convey it to me telepathically.

On request, I made verbal descriptions and later a sketch of what I had envisioned in my mind’s eye, then was shown the four pictures and asked to pick the one best matching my impressions. As it happened, my selection was the one Eles had “sent.” This was only a one-in-four guess, but everyone was amused—both at the outcome and at my pretense of having discovered I was actually telepathic.

Joking aside, I had some criticisms to share, and the parapsychologists listened earnestly. I thought the person who monitors the experiment by sitting in the room and interacting with the test subject should not have seen (or actually been familiar with) all of the two hundred or so photos used in the series of ganzfeld experiments. And I wondered why the researchers did not attempt to further test those subjects who scored consistently well (or poorly, for that matter), to see if their results might represent only a statistical fluke or could have some other explanation.

(This entire subject is complicated and deserves a more detailed description and analysis than I am able to provide here. Those who are further interested should read the critiques of ganzfeld and other psi experiments by CSI’s Ray Hyman [1996; 2008], who is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon and an expert in cognition, the psychology of deception, and the evidence for paranormal claims, including parapsychological ones.)

Wondering at the Gypsy’s Trance

The most sensational of our investigative adventures was surely our encounter with a “gypsy” (Roma) fortuneteller and medium at her apartment in Budapest. She wore a colorful scarf and treated us to music from Radio C, the local Roma channel, while I idly looked at her well-worn deck of fortune-telling cards. For an unstated fee (more about that later) she offered to enter into a trance in order to get some important advice that Eles was seeking from the spirit of her deceased twin.

Eles had invented the dead twin in a conversation with me on the way to the medium’s apartment. Her original imaginary creation was female; however, when the Roma woman (who does soothsaying weekly on Radio C) began to fish for information and asked if the twin had been male, Eles decided to go with that. She also agreed with other gleanings by the medium that culminated in the tale of the brother having died in a car accident caused by his own drunkenness. Eles played her role admirably, and the medium swallowed the bait, hook and all.

Figure 4. Gypsy fortuneteller and medium is about to return from the Other Side. (Photographs by Joe Nickell)

As the medium prepared to communicate with the alleged twin, she warned us not to be afraid if she should fail to emerge from her trance state but simply try to revive her by calling her name and having some water ready. I took the warning as an indication that the woman was going to put on a good show, and I was not disappointed. She knelt to pray, then sat in a chair where she embarked on her voyage to the Other Side (figure 4).

Suitably “entranced,” she was soon spinning a “message” from the nonexistent twin to Eles, who seemed obviously moved by the heartfelt outpourings. At length, the alleged communication over, Eles dutifully attempted to revive the medium, who appeared to be immersed in her role, eventually coming to with great histrionics, including a bout of sobbing. After she had finally calmed down, I asked her about her gifts, and she told us that her maternal grandmother had also been clairvoyant. We were not quite prepared for what would soon be the most elaborate act of all: her attempt to wrest from us a whopping fee.

She apparently thought—wrongly again—that we were wealthy gorgios (non-gypsies) who would cough up a lot of cash. Not a speaker of Hungarian, I left it to Hrasko and Eles to conduct the negotiations, which I could see were filled with reasoned if angry discourse from our side and more anger, bluster, and histrionics from the Roma woman. I had thought at one point we might throw down some cash and walk out, but I did not know that—surreptitiously following our entry into her apartment—she had locked us in! What a gal! Still, I will not use the term “attempted extortion.” Maybe she just did not want us to be disturbed. In time, for a fee of about fifty U.S. dollars—excessive, considering the mediumistic communication was at best a work of imagination—we were on our way, and the Roma woman was all smiles. We were smiling too, from our different perspective.

References

Attila Hill. 2011. Available online at www.caboodle.hu; accessed February 24.

Eyewitness Travel: Hungary. 2007. New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing.

Emory, C. Eugene. 1995. Telephone psychics: Friends or phonies? Skeptical Inquirer 19(5) (September/October): 14–17.

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

Hyman, Ray. 1996. The evidence for psychic functioning. Skeptical Inquirer 20(2) (March/April): 24–26.

———. 2008. Anomalous cognition. Skeptical Inquirer 32(4) (July/August): 40–43.

The Labyrinth of Buda Castle. N.d. Advertising card, obtained September 17, 2010.

Nickell, Joe. 1990. Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective. Reprinted New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press, 2000.

———. 2002. Benny Hinn: Healer or hypnotist? Skeptical Inquirer 26(3) (May/June): 14–17.

———. 2003. Dowsing mysterious sites. Skeptical Inquirer 27(3) (May/June): 14–17.

Olsen, Brad. 2007. Sacred Places—Europe—108 Destinations. San Francisco, California: Consortium of Collective Consciousness, 128–32.

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

Schmeh, Klaus. 2011. The Voynich manuscript: The book nobody can read. Skeptical Inquirer 35(1) (January/February): 46–50.

Tietze, Harald. 2004. Dowsing Manual. N.p.: Harald W. Tietze Publishing.

A TV show makes millions with a call-in quiz that critics consider gambling. 2006. International Herald Tribune (November 20).

In the old-town portion of Genoa, Italy, the city where Christopher Columbus was born, stands the great Romanesque-Gothic cathedral of San Lorenzo (Saint Lawrence).¹ Here in the subterranean Museum of the Treasury—which houses reputed pieces of the True Cross, relics of John the Baptist, and other religious objects—is displayed Il Sacro Catino, “The Holy Basin.” This is one of the most famous embodiments of the legendary “Holy Grail,” and I was able to study both it and its legend there in the fall of 2009 (figure 1), attempting to resolve some of the mysteries and controversies concerning it.

Grail Legends

Romantic stories about the quest for the San Gréal, or “Holy Grail”—reportedly the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper—have proliferated for centuries. Popularly, the Grail (originally the word meant “dish”) is the talisman sought by the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table. The quest is known to English audiences largely though French romances compiled and translated by Sir Thomas Malory in his Morte d’Arthur in 1470. Therein the Grail is represented as the chalice from which Jesus and his disciples drank at the Last Supper and which was subsequently used to catch and preserve his blood from the Crucifixion. This act was usually attributed to Mary Magdalene or Joseph of Arimathea (the latter having claimed Jesus’s body for burial—see Mark 15:43–46).

The earliest Grail romance is Le Conte du Graal (“The Story of the Grail”), which was composed by Chrétien de Troyes around 1190. It describes how, when a girl “entered holding the grail, so brilliant a light appeared that the candles lost their brightness like the stars or the moon when the sun rises…. The grail... was made of fine, pure gold, and in it were precious stones of many kinds….” Two other grail stories, both written by Robert de Boron circa 1200, were Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin. These gave the Grail quest a new Christian focus, representing it as a spiritual rather than chivalrous search. This epic constitutes the most important and best-known English version of the Arthurian and Grail adventures (Barber 2004, 19; Cox 2004, 75–76).

Other legends represent the Holy Grail variously as a silver platter, a miraculous cauldron or dish of plenty, a salver bearing a man’s severed head (like that of John the Baptist in Matthew 14:3–12), or a crystal vase filled with blood. Over time the Grail has also been represented as a reliquary (containing the Sacred Host or holy blood), a secret book, an effigy of Jesus, the philosopher’s stone, and many other portrayals. Around 1205 in a Bavarian poem titled Parzival, it was described as a magical luminous stone, more specifically as an emerald from Lucifer’s crown that had fallen to earth during the struggle in heaven. The term Holy Grail now popularly refers to any object of a quest, usually an unattainable one (Nickell 2007, 50–53).

The Historical Evidence

Unfortunately, there is no story about Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail in any text until the close of the twelfth century, when Robert de Boron penned his romance. Notably, the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s death do not suggest that Joseph or anyone obtained a dish or other vessel from the Last Supper and used it or any other receptacle to preserve Jesus’s blood. Records of the Holy Blood—the reputed contents of the cup Joseph possessed—are also of late vintage, perhaps the earliest coming from Mantra, Italy, in 804 (Nickell 2007, 53–56).

Nevertheless, several vessels lay claim to being the true Holy Grail—some twenty of which had surfaced by the sixteenth century. John Calvin ([1543] 2009, 62, 63) reported on several of the rival claimants for the title of “the cup in which Christ gave the sacrament of his blood to the apostles” (at the Last Supper). Calvin mentioned one at Notre Dame de l’Isle, near Lyons; another was in a monastery in the Albigéois; still another could be found at Genoa. This was “a vessel or cup of emerald” so “costly,” says Calvin sarcastically, that “our Lord must have had a splendid service on that occasion.” (See also my introduction to Calvin [1543] 2009, 32–33.)

The Emerald Bowl

Figure 2. A Genoese palace fresco depicts Guglielmo Embriaco, merchant and military leader, with the Catino as war booty.

Calvin is clearly referring to Il Sacro Catino, “The Holy Basin.” Most sources allege that this vessel—actually an emerald-green, hexagonal bowl—was brought to Genoa by Guglielmo Embriaco, following the conquest of Caesarea in 1101.² A fresco on the main façade of the Palazzo San Giorgio (figure 2) depicts crusader Guglielmo (“William” in English) holding as war booty the distinctive Catino. Twelfth-century writers acknowledged the purported intrinsic value of the bowl. For example, William of Tyre noted circa 1170 that it was “a vase of brilliant green shaped like a bowl” and that “the Genoese, believing that it was of emerald, took it in lieu of a large sum of money and thus acquired a splendid ornament for their church.” He adds, “They still show this vase as a marvel to people of distinction who pass through their city, and persuade them to believe it is truly an emerald as its color indicates” (quoted in Barber 2004, 168).

Others have seemed even more skeptical. States George Frederick Kunz in his The Curious Lore of Precious Stones ([1913] 1971, 259):

A queer story has been told regarding the Genoese emerald. At one time when the government was hard pressed for money, the Sacro Catino was offered to a rich Jew of Metz as pledge for a loan of 100,000 crowns. He was loath to take it, as he probably recognized its spurious character, and when Christian clients forced him to accept it under threats of dire vengeance in case of refusal, he protested that they were taking a base advantage of the unpopularity of his faith, since they could not find a Christian who would make the loan. However, when some years later the Genoese were ready to redeem this precious relic, they were much puzzled to learn that a half-dozen different persons claimed to have it in their possession, the fact being that the Jew had fabricated a number of copies which he had succeeded in pawning for large sums, assuring the lender in each case that the redemption of the pledge was certain.

Be this anti-Semitic folktale as it may, the Catino was pawned in 1319 and redeemed in 1327 (Marica 2007, 7; “The Dish of the Last Supper” 2010). It is still owned by the municipality of Genoa (Marica 2007, 12).

In any event, the Catino is not made of emerald—no matter how much its color and hexagonal shape give it the appearance of a faceted gemstone. At about fifteen inches in diameter it would have been an immense emerald indeed! Actually, according to the museum’s guidebook (Marica 2007, 12), it is simply of “mould-blown green glass.” Its manufacture is said to be Egyptian (Barber 2004, 168) or ninth-century Islamic (Marica 2007, 12), or possibly later.

Figure 3. Supposedly made of emerald, the Catino was broken in the early nineteenth century, disproving the claim. (Photos by Joe Nickell)

Its glass composition was revealed when it became broken (figure 3). According to the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica (s.v. “Genoa”), the Catino “was long regarded as an emerald of matchless value, but was found when broken at Paris, whither it had been carried by Napoleon I., to be only a remarkable piece of ancient glass.” (Another view is that it was broken on its return to Genoa [Marica 2007, 7], and a 1914 New York Times story claimed—possibly because of erroneous translation—that it had just been “accidentally broken” and was “beyond the possibility of repair” [“‘Holy Grail’ Shattered” 1914].) In any case, the bowl was restored in 1908 and again, finally, in 1951, when it received the metal armature that holds the pieces together (“The Dish of the Last Supper” 2010; Marica 2007, 7). (A rumor claims that the missing piece—again see figure 3—was kept in Paris in the Louvre [“The Dish of the Last Supper” 2010].)

Unholy Grail

When the belief that the Catino was made of emerald was broken to pieces, so was the claim that it was the Holy Grail. Its alleged Christological link was asserted long after the bowl arrived in Genoa, and it was predicated on the basis of its supposed emerald composition. This leap of faith was made by Jacopo da Voragine, archbishop of Genoa and author of Legenda Aurea (Golden Legend).

In a chronicle of Genoa written at the close of the thirteenth century, Jacopo, believing the vessel was indeed made of emerald, linked it to one of the Grail traditions. He cited certain English texts that claimed that Nicodemus had used an emerald vessel to collect Jesus’s blood when his body was placed in his tomb and that these texts called it “Sangraal”—that is, “Holy Grail” (Marica 2007, 7; Barber 2004, 168).

Alas, there is nothing to credibly connect the Sacro Catino to a first-century Grail, and the same may be said of other supposed Grail vessels. Indeed, observes Barber (2004, 170), “there is little or no evidence that anyone claimed in the thirteenth century to possess the Grail.” Certainly, claims for all such vessels date from after the period when most of the Grail romances were penned: between 1190 and 1240 (Nickell 2007, 60). This realization should put an end to fanciful Grail quests, but it probably will not: witness the popularity of such books as The Da Vinci Code (Brown 2003) and the book on which its author drew heavily, Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Baigent et al. 1996)—silliness all.

Acknowledgements

I appreciate the help I received from Massimo Polidoro, who in 2009 not only saw to it that I was invited to Italy’s largest science festival, held in Genoa, but who, with other skeptics including Luigi Garlaschelli, accompanied me to the Cathedral of San Lorenzo. CFI Libraries Director Timothy Binga and CFI visiting scholar Christina Stevens provided valuable research assistance.

Notes

1. St. Lawrence was a deacon of the Roman Church, martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258.

2. Another source reports that the bowl was booty from Almeria, Spain, taken in 1147. (See Marica 2007, 7.)

References

Baigent, Michael, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln. 1996. Holy Blood, Holy Grail. London: Arrow.

Barber, Richard. 2004. The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Brown, Dan. 2003. The Da Vinci Code. New York: Doubleday.

Calvin, John. (1543) 2009. Treatise on Relics, from a translation of 1854. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books (introduction by Joe Nickell).

Cox, Simon. 2004. Cracking the Da Vinci Code. New York: Barnes and Noble.

The dish of the Last Supper. 2010. Available online (in Italian) at http://www.cicap.org/new/articolo.php?id=102013. Accessed January 26, 2010.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed. 1910. New York: The Encyclopedia Britannica Co.

‘Holy Grail’ shattered. 1914. The New York Times (April 18.)

Kunz, George Frederick. (1913) 1971. The Curious Lore of Precious Stones. New York: Dover Publications.

Marica, Patrizia. 2007. Museo del Tesoro. Genoa, Italy: Sagep Editori Sri.

Museum of the Treasury of the Cathedral of St. Lawrence of Genoa. N.d. Museum handout in English. Copy obtained by author, October 31, 2009.

Nickell, Joe. 2007. Relics of the Christ. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. (Additional sources given in this source.)

For a new television series on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) called Miracle Detectives, I was invited to a home in Northern California where myriad icons, statues, and other religious effigies were “miraculously streaming oil”—“healing” oil, some claim. There I joined cohosts Randall Sullivan (whose book The Miracle Detective [2004] prompted the series) and Indre Vískontas (a neuroscientist and skeptic) (figure 1). Indre introduced me on the show by announcing: “Joe Nickell is one of the most prominent debunkers of purported miraculous or supernatural events in the country—maybe even the world.” As it happened, I had long ago suggested the case was one of pious fraud (Fernandez 2001). What would an on-site investigation reveal?

Background

The home I visited in Union City, California, belonged to a diminutive Philippine-American woman named Cora Lorenzo. There, in 1991, she hung by the front door in her living room a holy-water font she had bought on a trip to Lourdes, the French healing shrine. One November evening in 1995, Lorenzo noticed that the water had dried up. The next morning, however, which happened to be the Catholic feast of the Pentecost, the font had mysteriously been refilled with scented oil. Both her husband and twenty-four-year-old son denied that they had placed it there.

Soon, word of the “miracle” spread, and visitors—mostly the Catholic faithful—began to come in swarms. Some left their own icons and holy figurines overnight, only to retrieve them the next day drizzled with oil. Claims of healings—from headaches to rashes to arthritis—began to be reported. More visitors came from as far away as Indonesia, Australia, Holland, and Nigeria.

In 2001, the San Jose Mercury News featured the oil story but included more than a trickle of skepticism. A spokesperson for the Diocese of San Jose urged such claims be given “great caution.” Described as “a professional debunker,” I was quoted in observing that nondrying oils like olive oil could remain fresh-looking for long periods of time. (Since they do not evaporate like water, such oils have become favored for weeping-icon trickery.) I mentioned other cases of “miraculous” oily or bloody effigies that ranged from those that remain unproven and those that have been determined to be fraudulent. Moreover, although there were unverified claims of the oil samples miraculously increasing in quantity (rather like the self-replenishing jar of oil in the Old Testament [2 Kings 4: 1–7]), the Mercury News reported that this did not happen to the vial of oil the newspaper received from Cora Lorenzo (Fernandez 2001).

Figure 2. The author poses with Cora Lorenzo, whose home is famous as a shrine that pilgrims visit for “healing” oil.

Investigating on Site

When I met Lorenzo at her home on May 24, 2010, she hugged me and said she had wanted to meet me ever since I appeared on a Discovery Channel special on miracles some ten years before (figure 2). The home was filled with effigies, including statues of the Virgin and the children of Fatima, multiple copies of the image of Guadalupe and the Shroud of Turin, and other such reproductions.

Initially puzzled by the proliferation of oil, Vískontas nodded understandingly as we toured the display and I pointed out, using a magnifier, how the oil was often suspiciously placed (figure 3): it was spattered onto a mirror, placed above or outside the eyes of statuary for an unconvincing “weeping” look, separately placed (not dripped from the eyes) onto hands, and indeed was indistinguishable from careless human placement. In addition, Vískontas wondered aloud why the oil would appear not only on religious items but also on walls, door jambs, and the like.

Figure 3. The author examines an oil-weeping Madonna on the porch of the Lorenzo home. (Photos by Joe Nickell)

The Miracle Detectives segment on the case, “Mysterious Oils” (the second part of the January 5, 2011, episode), featured a forensic construction expert, Robert G. Cox, who has fifty years’ experience in building inspection. Cox’s findings matched my own. Demolishing the idea that the oil was somehow seeping into the room from outside—as by Lorenzo possibly having “leaky oil tanks in her attic” (Fernandez 2001)—Cox pointed out that the gypsum drywall was covered with enamel paint, which he observed “is a fairly dense material.” Using a pocket microscope he observed “dots” of oil, indicating it had been splattered onto the wall—similar to the spatter patterns I had noted here and there. Cox concluded the oil was therefore appearing from inside the room.

But was the oil freshly flowing as some people believed? It was never doing so, apparently, when the scene was properly observed. As the Mercury News reported nearly a decade earlier (Fernandez 2001), “During a reporter’s two visits to Lorenzo’s house, oil was present on the walls and statues, but did not flow on either occasion.” I showed Vískontas how a trickle that is already on a statue or icon could go unnoticed from one low-light vantage point, then, as the viewer moved, catch light and glint as if it had suddenly appeared. (I have been at sites where flickering candles placed before an oil icon could cause the trickles to seem to be moving—flowing—
although they were actually static.) There were no unambiguous fresh flows during the two days I was on site.

Still, we agreed to test the issue using video surveillance, although Sullivan was somewhat uneasy, feeling it amounted to “testing God.” However, he said to me, “That’s what you’re here to do is test God, so, yeah.” Lorenzo gave her permission to do whatever we wanted, so we wiped down a large oil-exhibiting statue of the Virgin, emptied the Lourdes font, and then trained a surveillance camera on each. We also placed a small statue in a plastic bag, which Vískontas and I heat-sealed to prevent tampering, and (although not shown on the program) I took custody of another that I monitored overnight in my hotel room. The next day the three of us reconvened at the Lorenzo home to check the results of our tests. Not a single trace of fresh oil had appeared anywhere, as far as we could tell—certainly not on the effigies and font we had under observation. Things were not looking very miraculous.

Healing Oil?

Nevertheless, how do we explain the reported healings? First of all, they are just that: reported. Besides, claims of “miraculous” healing are invariably predicated on being medically inexplicable, so claimants are simply engaging in a logical fallacy, argumentum ad ignorantiam (an “argument from ignorance”)—that is, drawing a conclusion based on a lack of knowledge.

In fact, there are many potential explanations. For example, some illnesses such as multiple sclerosis are known to exhibit spontaneous remission. Other reputed cures may be attributable to such factors as misdiagnosis, prior medical treatment, psychosomatic conditions, the body’s own natural healing mechanisms, and other factors. For such reasons, the international panel of physicians appointed by the Catholic Church to identify “miracles” at Lourdes, the French “healing” shrine, announced in 2008 that it would end the practice. Now the panel will only indicate that some cases are “remarkable.” And remarkable healings may happen to anyone—independent of supposedly magical oil (Nickell 2008).

Miracle Detectives examined the claim of a woman named Marlene Alberto who reported having been miraculously healed of an eye ailment. Her “symptoms suggested” that she had a macular hole in her left eye. Reportedly, doctors recommended she have surgery; she preferred not to accept the risk, instead anointing her eye with oil from the Lorenzo home, whereupon the hole surprisingly closed. The show consulted Ronald P. Gallemore, MD, PhD, who pointed out that “spontaneous closure” sometimes occurs in such cases, with the opening filling in with scar tissue as a result of the body’s own healing processes. Although such spontaneous closures are rare, they are not medically inexplicable and do not warrant the term miracle.

A Case of Deception

When we emptied the Lourdes font using a syringe, we filled some flint-glass vials with the oil—one of which I kept while two others were sent to Flora Research Laboratories for testing. Meanwhile, the show consulted David Stewart, author of Healing Oils of the Bible (2002)—which is published by an aromatherapy company and touts the inclusion of God and his creations (e.g., oil-producing plants) in health care. Stewart sniffed a sample of the Lorenzo oil and found it to have a “spiritual” quality. However, he did suggest that analysis of the oil could be significant since “God’s oils are not synthetic by definition.”

Often, the testing of substances from weeping icons is of little benefit because, presumably, a deity could use any substance it wished and, anyway, it is the question of how the substance got on the effigy in the first place that matters. For example, actual “salty tears” were reported to flow from a plaster bas-relief in Pavia, Italy, but then the owner was secretly observed applying the liquid with a water pistol (Nickell 1997). Nevertheless, in several cases tests have been revelatory. In 1913, a color print that “bled” was exposed when the substance failed tests for human blood; in 1985 a bleeding statue of the Virgin at a home in Quebec was exposed as a hoax when the blood was tested and found to be mixed with animal fat (so that when the room warmed from pilgrims’ body heat the substance would liquefy and flow realistically); and a case in Sardinia in 1995 was solved when DNA tests showed the blood was that of the statue’s owner. In yet another instance, involving a home with statues on which oil appeared in the presence of a comatose girl, the substance proved to be 80 percent vegetable oil and 20 percent chicken fat, consistent with the use of kitchen drippings (Nickell 1999).

With such cases in mind, I was happy the Lorenzo oil was to be tested. The laboratory report was instructive. While the substance was a vegetable oil, tests also revealed the presence of a glycol ether—a synthetic compound used as a fixative by the perfume industry (“in order,” Vískontas explained, “to keep elements together”). Sullivan agreed with Stewart that it was unlikely God would need to use a synthetic material.

With regard to the other evidence (especially the placement of the oil), he said to Vískontas that although he was disappointed, “You and I both agree, I think, that somebody’s putting that oil there.” That had always seemed likely to me, but now there was a preponderance of scientific evidence to that effect thanks to the Miracle Detectives investigation.

References

Fernandez, Lisa. 2001. Pilgrimage: Many doubt mysterious oil can heal pain. San Jose Mercury News (February 3).

Nickell, Joe. 1997. Those tearful icons. Free Inquiry 17(2) (Spring): 5, 7, 61.

———. 1999. Miracles or deception? The pathetic case of Audrey Santo. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 23(5) (September/October): 16–18.

———. 2008. Lourdes medical bureau rebels (author’s blog). Available online at http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/lourdes_medical_bureau_rebels/; accessed April 12, 2010.

Sullivan, Randall. 2004. The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Vassula

Born to Greek Orthodox parents in Heliopolis, Egypt, on January 18, 1942, Vassula Ryden emigrated to Europe when she was fifteen. She says as a teenager she saw herself surrounded by souls of the dead, although she claims to have been indifferent to religion for a time. Following marriage, the birth of two sons, divorce, and remarriage, she claims to have begun receiving messages from her own invisible “guardian angel,” Daniel. “I almost freaked out,” she said (Ryden 2004). That occurred in late 1985 while she was living in Bangladesh. Five years later, she “regularized” her marriage in the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church, to which she still belongs (“Vassula” 2010). Nevertheless, Ryden says that God revealed to her the Sacred Heart (a Catholic symbol of Christ’s love for the human family) to show her the equality of all faiths (Ryden 2004).

In the mid-1990s, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued two notices of concern about Ryden. The first came in 1995, pointing out “several negative elements and errors.” It requested that bishops refuse to give her the opportunity to spread her questionable ideas within their dioceses and asked them not to treat her writings or speeches as “supernatural.” The following year, another notification encouraged priests to “exercise serious spiritual discernment” regarding Ryden’s messages, declaring that they must be considered merely “private meditations” and not divine revelations. However, some of her Catholic supporters observe that the church does not completely discount her teachings, and the publications of her organization, the American Association for True Life in God, have obvious Catholic trappings (“Vassula” 2010; Tokasz 2004).

The Catholic Church is skittish about such freelancers—urging caution toward supposedly supernatural phenomena (such as stigmata or weeping effigies) and any reputed visions or messages. The Church is all too aware of delusional persons and pious frauds. However, such matters are usually left to the local bishop, and investigations are typically less about science than about how a claim comports with Catholic teachings.

I determined to take an objective look at three aspects of Ryden’s purported messages (within my own areas of expertise): first, the distinctive handwriting (I am author of textbooks on writing and forgery, including Pen, Ink, and Evidence [Nickell 1990]); second, the text (I have a PhD in English, experience in examining unusual texts, and membership in the International Association of Forensic Linguists) [Nickell 2008]; and third, whether Ryden might have a fantasy-prone personality (I have studied this trait for years, especially under the direction of the late psychologist Robert A. Baker [Nickell 1997]).

Handwriting

Ryden insists that the messages she receives and writes down are not the result of spiritualistic phenomena such as channeling or automatic writing (“Vassula” 2010). However, neither phenomenon is defined as being limited to spirits of the dead; either may involve interaction with any type of alleged nonphysical beings, such as angels, deities, extraterrestrials, or the like (Guiley 2000, 25–26, 70–71). So, Ryden is by definition a channeler and an automatic writer.

Reportedly, the messages began in late November 1985 when Ryden was about to make a shopping list. Her hand suddenly began to move, seemingly without her control, to form words and drawings, initiating a phenomenon that continues to the present day. The self-styled visionary reportedly receives about four to six hours of guided-hand “dictation” each day (Carroll 1995, ix; “Vassula” 2010). From a scientific perspective, (assuming it is not deliberately contrived) such a phenomenon is attributed to the ideomotor effect, in which a participant unconsciously produces a movement. The same psychological phenomenon is responsible for the motion of dowsing rods and pendulums, Ouija-board planchette movement, table tipping, and the like (Randi 1995, 169–70).

Ryden’s messages supposedly “come through dictation by an audible voice within, then are written in a stately handwriting—distinct from her own—as she allows her hand to be guided supernaturally” (“About” 1995). Interestingly enough, the same “distinct” script that is used for messages from the angel “Daniel” is employed by “Jesus,” “Mary,” and “Yahweh” (see figure 1), rather than each entity having his or her own individual handwriting.

Figure 1. Handwriting produced by artist Vassula Ryden—supposedly “supernaturally guided”—is drawn rather than freely written. (The same mannered script is used for messages from “Yahweh,” “Jesus,” “Mary,” and her guardian angel, “Daniel.”) It contrasts with her own handwriting.

Keeping in mind that Ryden is an artist (“About” 1995), it seems noteworthy that the “guided” handwriting has the characteristics of a script that is artistically drawn rather than naturally and freely written. It is a “mannered” or affected hand, rendered in a self-consciously non-slanted style—rather like the so-called “vertical writing” that was taught in American and Canadian schools from 1890 to 1900 but was deemed too time consuming to produce practically and subsequently abandoned (Nickell 1990, 124, 126; Osborn 1978, 140). Most mainstream scripts, intended for right-handed persons to render with some speed, slope in the forward direction, as does Ryden’s ordinary handwriting. Interestingly, an alteration in slant is one of the most common ploys used for disguising handwriting (Hilton 1982, 169; Osborn 1978, 147, 149, 211). Use of this simple change can thus instantly impart a new look to an entire page. The “stately” hand also differs from Ryden’s in size (being larger than hers), another common disguise ploy (Nickell 1996, 49).

Apart from the “stately” affectation, the supposedly supernatural handwriting is essentially a formal, copybook version of Ryden’s own naturally jotted script that alternates with the “stately” hand in her notebooks. The “stately” hand avoids some of her script’s idiosyncrasies, yet it still has mostly printed capitals just like her own handwriting. On occasion, one of the copybook forms sneaks back into her natural script (replacing, for instance, her individualistic f, which has a backwardly made loop, with the standard copybook f) (see Ryden 1995, 171, 223).

Consistent with its neat, drawn appearance is the fact that the “guided” handwriting is done on lined paper, with the lines showing in some of the reproduced pages (Ryden 1995, e.g., 232–33). This is consistent with the use of eye-hand coordination. One suspects that if Ryden were prevented from seeing what was being written, the entities supposedly guiding her hand would be unable to so faithfully follow the lines! I invite Ryden to accept my invitation to perform a scientific test to refute or confirm this suspicion.

Text

On January 25, 1987, Ryden wrote:

Courage daughter, I, Jesus Christ have instructed you that the cross you bear is My Cross of Peace and Love, but to bear My precious Cross, daughter, you will have to do much self-sacrifice; be strong and bear my Cross with love; with Me you will share it and you will share My sufferings; I was pleased to hear your prayer of surrender; in surrendering to Me I will lift you to the heights and show you how I work; I will mould you, if you let Me, into a better person; you have given Me your consent to become My bride, so what [sic] more natural for a bride to follow her Spouse? I am glad you realize your worthlessness, do not fear, I love you anyway. . . . (Ryden 1995, 233–34)

Is this really a message from Jesus guiding Ryden’s hand? Not only is the handwriting the identical, mannered script that is also used for her “Daniel,” “Yahweh,” and “Mary,” but the perpetual use of semicolons is another similarity from alleged speaker to alleged speaker. All—except, appropriately, Daniel—call her “daughter” (Ryden 1995, 153, 188, 225), and they refer to themselves with the same construction: “I, Jesus,” “I, God,” “I ‘i Panayia’ ” (Greek for “Our Lady, most Holy”) (Ryden 1995, 155, 231, 293).

Ryden’s purported messages can be compared with other alleged communications from Jesus. One set of writings was “received from Jesus” by Lilian Bernas (1999), a purported stigmatic. (Stigmata are the supposedly supernaturally received wounds resembling those of Christ. However, Bernas’s wounds—which I have seen up close—appear to be consistent with self-infliction [Nickell 2007, 59–66].) In one communication with Bernas, Jesus supposedly said (Bernas 1999, 23):

My Suffering Soul—

This is your Beloved. I have come as promised to embrace you with the spirit of peace. Take this time, and have respite from the wicked assaults of the evil one. My child, you have bent, but you have not broken. This pleases your Beloved. . . .

My child—humble yourself now, and ascend the hill of your Beloved with your Beloved. . . .

Nancy Fowler, a homemaker in Conyers, Georgia, claimed for several years to be receiving messages from both Jesus and, more often, the Virgin Mary. (The latter appeared punctually on the thirteenth of each month, and I was able to attend a session [Nickell 1993, 196–97]). One message from “Jesus” instructed the faithful (Fowler 1993):

Come through My Mother on your journey back to Me. From this very cross I give the world My perfect love. I give the world, I give everyone in the world, My dear, Holy Mother. Please, if you accept My Love, then how can you reject, ignore, not honor, not love My Mother. I come through My Mother and I want you, dear children, to come through My Mother on your journey back to Me.

I choose the word “Come” intentionally, not past tense. I still come through My Mother. Graces are poured forth through My Mother, the Graces come from Me.

I am especially familiar with these two groups of writings, although they are supposedly received by clairaudience (trance hearing) rather than by automatic writing. (Therefore, errors of grammar and the like could be attributed to mistaken transcription by the percipient.)

Now, whereas Vassula Ryden’s “Jesus” frequently identifies himself as “I, Jesus,” Lilian Bernas’s Jesus persona never does, nor does the one channeled by Nancy Fowler. There are many other differences among the three sets of texts; for example, the dominant theme of each: Fowler’s is the near-deification of the Virgin Mary (an emphasis sometimes disparagingly referred to as “Mariolatry”), Bernas’s is the importance of suffering, and Ryden’s is the need for divine love and guidance.

Style also differs from channeler to channeler. Ryden’s “God” and “Jesus” (as well as “Daniel”) speak similarly, often using convoluted diction (for example, “do not leave yourself be drifted away” [144], instead of “do not let yourself drift away”); wrong prepositions (e.g., “irrespective to their deeds” [146], rather than “irrespective of”); missing prepositions (such as in “I, Yahweh will remind them in this call many events” [150], wherein “of” is missing after “call”); subject/verb agreement error (e.g., “the reasons that makes” [44]); faulty auxiliary verbs (such as “I have restored you since the time you have accepted Me” [158], the second “have” being unnecessary); incorrect verb forms (e.g., “I will progress you” [163], “I fragranced you” [34], and “Jesus flourished you” [42]); and so on.

Ryden’s messages also have occasional misspellings: for example, “God” says, “work with Me writting [sic] down My messages” (231), and he also uses the misspellings “joyfull” (138) and “analising” (101, 105). If God deigns to use the English language, should we not expect it to be rendered accurately?

Before we become invested in imagining what a deity might or might not do, we should note that Ryden’s own written text has similar faults—for example, using “sprung” when “sprang” would be correct, the misspelling “panick,” faulty subject/verb agreement (e.g., “Joy and Peace is”), and many others. At times the respective errors are eerily similar, as when “God” uses “do” for “make” (e.g., “do not get discouraged when you do errors”) just as Ryden does (e.g., “I do so many mistakes”) (see Ryden 1995, 22, 89, 93, 235).

Fantasy-Proneness

From the evidence, it looks like Ryden’s channeled automatic writings are merely emanations from a single source: her imagination. Indeed, she exhibits many traits of what is known as a “fantasy-prone” personality: sane and normal but with a propensity to fantasize, as described in a pioneering study by Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber (1983). Since childhood, Ryden has had various “mystical” experiences. She has encountered apparitions (such as the souls of “dead people”), had vivid or “waking” dreams (with paranormal imagery), experienced religious visions, interacted with invisible companions, received messages from higher entities, and had other experiences common to many fantasizers (Carroll 1995; Ryden 1995, xx–xxl).

Taken together, the contrived handwriting, the linguistic lapses, and the indications of fantasizing all suggest that Vassula Ryden is not in touch with supernatural entities but is simply engaging in self-deception that in turn deceives the credulous. Her automatic writings therefore are not works of revelation but simply of pious imagination.

References

About Vassula Ryden. 1995. Publisher’s book-cover text, Ryden 1995.

Bernas, Lilian. 1999. This Is the Home of the Father.... Poole, England: privately printed.

Carroll, Robert J. 1995. I am your guardian angel and my name is Daniel. In Ryden 1995, ix–xiv.

Christopher, Milbourne. 1970. ESP, Seers and Psychics: What the Occult Really Is. New York: Crowell.

Fowler, Nancy. 1990–93. Purported messages from Jesus, in Journal 1993. 3–8.

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

Hilton, Ordway. 1982. Scientific Examination of Questioned Documents, revised ed. New York: Elsevier Science.

Journal of Reported Teachings and Messages of Our Lord and Our Living Mother at Conyers, Georgia, USA. 1993. (“Compiled by Our Loving Mother’s Children,” P.O. Box 309, Conyers, GA 30207), December.

Nickell, Joe. 1990. Pen, Ink, and Evidence. Reprinted New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press.

———. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 1996. Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 1997. A study of fantasy proneness in the thirteen cases of alleged encounters in John Mack’s abduction. In The UFO Invasion, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Barry Karr, and Joe Nickell. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 237–44.

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

———. 2008. Linguist. Accessed April 3, 2010. Available online at http://www.joenickell.com/Linguist/linguist1.html.

Osborn, Albert S. 1978. Questioned Documents, second edition. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.

Randi, James. 1995. The Supernatural A–Z. London: Brockhampton Press.

Ryden, Vassula. 1995. My Angel Daniel. Independence, MO: Trinitas.

———. 2004. Lecture at St. John Maronite Rite Catholic Church. Amherst, NY, May 31.

Tokasz, Jay. 2004. Controversial “messenger” to speak. The Buffalo News, May 31.

“Vassula Ryden.” 2010. Wikipedia. Accessed April 30, 2010. Available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassula_Ryden.