The law of entropy, or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is one of the bedrocks on which modern theoretical physics is based. It is one of a handful of laws about which physicists feel most certain. So much so that there is a common adage that if anyone has a theory that violates the Second Law then, without any discussion, that theory must certainly be wrong. The Second Law states that the entropy-or disorder-of a closed system always increases. Put simply, it says that things fall apart, disorder overcomes everything -eventually. But when this principle is applied to small systems such as collections of molecules there is a paradox.

Contrast this report with one provided the previous day by the American Institute of Physics in its online Physics News Update. The article by Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein stated that Australian researchers have experimentally shown that microscopic systems (a nano- machine) may spontaneously become more orderly for short periods of time-a development that would be tantamount to violating the second law of thermodynamics, if it happened in a larger system. Don't worry, nature still rigorously enforces the venerable second law in macroscopic systems, but engineers will want to keep limits to the second law in mind when designing nanoscale machines.

This is a far more accurate statement than the one provided by the BBC. In the nineteenth century, Lord Kelvin introduced the second law to describe the observation that heat always flows from hot to cold. The first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, allows for energy to be exchanged in any direction. Students and patent officers are taught that the second law forbids a perpetual motion machine-an engine that can do work by taking energy from its environment. Rudolph Claussius framed the second law in terms of a quantity called entropy which is required to remain constant or increase for any isolated system. This implied that certain thermodynamic processes such as heat flow are irreversible.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Boltzmann showed that that second law of thermodynamics is a statistical statement about the behavior of particles. He proved that the molecules of a system tend to approach their equilibrium distribution when started off away from equilibrium. That equilibrium is characterized by a certain quantity H, which is essentially negative entropy, approaching a minimum. In short, Boltzmann basically derived the second law by assuming that matter was composed of particulate bodies-atoms and molecules-and applying Newtonian particle mechanics along with principles of statistics.

So, has a violation of the second law of thermodynamics been demonstrated in an Australian laboratory? Hardly. This minimum in H, or maximum in entropy, is just a statistical average and real systems will fluctuate about this average. These fluctuations are very small for the large number of molecules in common objects, but the fact remains that entropy will fluctuate up and down. About the only surprise in these new results is that violations can be found in a system as large as micron-sized beads in water. The authors claim they are consistent with their previously published fluctational theorem, derived from established physics.

If the experiment is correct, the beads momentarily gained energy from their environment. However, this perpetual motion machine only worked for about two seconds and is not a likely practical device. Over longer time periods, the average behavior will be governed by the statistics of the second law. The main implication is that engineers building nanoscale machines need to be prepared for them to behave strangely, occasionally running backwards. Such effects may also be seen in microbiology where cells and microbes are of comparable dimensions.

An interesting philosophical issue is raised by these results. It has long been known that a direction of time cannot be found in the equations of classical physics. In modern physics, a small time asymmetry is seen in very rare processes, but no known mechanism provides for the stark time irreversibility of common experience. Although the issue is still hotly debated, some quantum processes may even provide evidence for “backward causality,” as I discussed in my book Timeless Reality (Prometheus, 2000).

Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term “Arrow of Time” to describe the direction of time provided by the second law. In that case, the second law is really not a “law” at all but a definition of the Arrow of Time. The direction of time is simply the direction in which the total entropy of an isolated system increase. As such, it is useful only for systems of large numbers of particles, such as those of common experience. While no physicist will be astonished by the Australian result, philosophers should regard it as an empirical confirmation of the fact that the direction of time is arbitrary. All that prevents sequences of events from happening in the time direction opposite to that of common experience are the laws of chance.

During over thirty years of paranormal investigation, I have encountered countless claims of such direct contacts (as opposed to those supposedly made through spiritualist mediums [Nickell 2001a; 2001b]). I have also occasionally been interviewed on the subject-most recently in response to some books promoting contact claims (Voell 2001). Here is a look at the evidence regarding purported signs, dream contacts, apparitions, and deathbed visions.

“Signs”

In her co-authored book Childlight: How Children Reach Out to Their Parents from the Beyond, Donna Theisen relates a personal contact she believes she received from her only son, Michael, who had been killed in an auto accident a month before. She was browsing in a gift shop when she noticed a display of dollhouse furnishings. Nearby, on a small hutch, were a pair of tiny cups that were touching, one bearing the name “Michael,” the other the words “I love you, Mom.” Although at the time a “strange, warm feeling” came over her, she was later to wonder: “Was I merely finding what I so desperately wanted to see? Was I making mystical connections out of ordinary circumstances?”

On the other hand, the fact that the two cups were displayed together, out of dozens of others sold there, convinced Theisen that the incident “defied the odds.” Soon she “began looking for more strange occurrences” so as to confirm that the cups incident was “a real sign.” Her book chronicles them and the experiences of other grieving parents (forty of forty-one of them mothers). One, whose son was killed by a train, was wondering whether to give his friend some of his baseball equipment when she heard a train whistle blow and accepted it as an affirmation. Others received signs in the form of a rainbow, television and telephone glitches, the arrival and sudden departure of pigeons, a moved angel doll, and other occurrences (Theisen and Matera 2001).

To explain such “signs” or “meaningful coincidences” (conjunctions of events that seem imbued with mystical significance), psychologist Carl Jung (1960) theorized that-in addition to the usual cause-and-effect relationship of events-there was an “acausal connecting principle.” He termed this synchronicity. However, in The Psychology of Superstition, Gustav Jahoda (1970) suggests there may often be causal links of which we are simply unaware.

Even in instances where there may in fact be no latent causal connections, other factors could apply. One is the problem of overestimating how rare the occurrence really is. Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez (1965) told how, while reading a newspaper, he came across a phrase that triggered certain associations and left him thinking of a long-forgotten youthful acquaintance; just minutes afterward, he came across that person’s obituary. On reflection, however, Alvarez assessed the factors involved, worked out a formula to determine the unlikeliness of such an event, and concluded that 3,000 similar experiences could be expected each year in the United States, or approximately ten per day. Synchronous events involving family and friends would be proportionately more common.

A related problem is what psychologist Ruma Falk (1981-82) terms “a selection fallacy” that occurs with anecdotal events as contrasted with scientifically selected ones. As he explains: “Instead of starting by drawing a random sample and then testing for the occurrence of a rare event, we select rare events that happened and find ourselves marveling at their nonrandomness. This is like the archer who first shoots an arrow and then draws the target circle around it.”

Some occurrences that are interpreted as signs probably have mundane explanations. Although unexplained, they are not unexplainable. For example, the mother of a severely handicapped little boy reported that on the morning of his funeral, she awoke to see a small, glowing red light on the dresser where his baby monitor had been. It was in fact a tiny lantern on her keychain. “It had never been turned on before,” she says. “In fact, I didn’t even know it worked! The moment I touched the light, it went out.” This happened for several subsequent mornings (Theisen and Matera 2001, 192). How do we explain such a mystery? One possibility is that the light was not turned on at all but only appeared so as sunlight reflected off its red cover; when it was picked up, the illusion was dispelled.

Photographic “signs,” which are also becoming common, may be easily explained. I recall a Massachusetts woman approaching me after a lecture to show me some "ghost” photographs. I immediately recognized the white shapes in the pictures as resulting from the camera’s flash bouncing off the stray wrist strap-a phenomenon I had previously investigated and replicated (Nickell 1996). In fact, in one snapshot, the strap’s adjustment slide was even recognizable, silhouetted in white. But the lady would not hear my explanation, instead taking back the pictures and stating defiantly that her father had recently died and had been communicating with the family in a variety of strange ways.

In addition to numerous glitches caused by camera, film, and other factors, photos may also exhibit simulacra, random shapes that are interpreted, like inkblots, as recognizable figures (such as a profile of Jesus seen in the foliage of a vine-covered tree [Nickell 1993]). These can easily become visitation “signs,” as in the case of a photo snapped from a moving vehicle at the site of a young man’s auto death. “When this photo was developed,” the victim’s mother wrote, “the tree branches formed a startling figure that looked just like Greg wearing his hat. In addition, there appeared to be an angel looking out toward the road.” She added, “we all viewed this photo as more evidence of Greg’s ongoing existence” (Theisen and Matera 2001, 47).

Dream Contacts

A significant number of after-death “contacts” come from dreams. They have been associated with the supernatural since very ancient times, and attempts to interpret them are recorded in a papyrus of 1350 b.c. in the British Museum (Wortman and Loftus 1981). Now New Age writers like Theisen and Matera (2001) are increasingly chronicling instances of people having dreams about their departed loved ones.

It has been estimated that the average person will have approximately 150,000 dreams by age seventy. Although most are forgotten, the more dramatic and interesting ones are those that are remembered and talked about (Wortman and Loftus 1981). But people’s reports of their dreams may be undependable due to the effects of memory distortion, ego, superstition, and other factors.

Even an ordinary dream can be especially powerful when it involves after-death content, and there are types of dreams that can be extremely vivid and seemingly real. They include “lucid dreams” in which the dreamer is able to direct the dreaming, “something like waking up in your dreams” (Blackmore 1991a).

A powerful source of “visitations” is the so-called “waking dream” which occurs in the twilight between wakefulness and sleep and combines features of both. Actually an hallucination-called hypnagogic if the subject is going to sleep or hypnopompic if he or she is awakened-it typically includes bizarre imagery such as apparitions of “ghosts,” “angels,” “aliens,” or other imagined entities. The content, according to psychologist Robert A. Baker (1990), “may be related to the dreamer’s current concerns.”

For example, here is an account I obtained in 1998 from a Buffalo, New York, woman: “My father had passed away and I was taking care of my sick mother. I went to lay down to rest. I don’t remember if I actually fell asleep or if I was awake, but I saw the upper part of my father and he said, ‘Mary Ellen, you’re doing a good job!’ When I said ‘Dad,’ he went away.”

To say, correctly, that this describes a rather common hypnagogic event, does not, however, do justice to the person who experienced it. For her, I think, it represented a final goodbye from her father-and therefore a form of closure-and provided a welcome reassurance during a period of difficulty.

Sometimes, a waking dream is accompanied by what is termed “sleep paralysis,” an inability to move caused by the body remaining in the sleep mode. Consider this account (Wills-Brandon 2000, 228-229): “My sister said she was abruptly awakened from a very deep sleep. When she woke up, she said her body felt frozen and she couldn’t open her eyes. Suddenly she felt a presence in the room and knew it was Mother. She felt her standing at the foot of the bed.”

By their nature, waking dreams seem so real that the experiencer will typically insist that he or she was not dreaming. One woman, who “hardly slept” after her daughter’s suicide, saw her, late at night, standing at the end of a long hallway, smiling sadly then walking away into a brilliant light. “At first I thought I was hallucinating,” the mother said, “But after a new round of tears, I realized that I was wide awake and I had indeed seen Wendy” (Theisen and Matera 2001, 130). Another, describing a friend’s “visitation” experience of her deceased mother-in-law, said, “At first my friend thought she was dreaming but quickly realized she was wide awake” (Wills-Brandon 2000, 60)-a confusion typical of a waking dream.

Apparitions

Some “visitations,” however, are reported as quite undreamlike, in the sense that they occur during normal daily activity. However, my own investigatory experience as well as research data demonstrates that apparitions are most apt to be perceived during daydreams or other altered states of consciousness. Many occur, for example, while the percipient is in a relaxed state or concentrating on some activity like reading, or is performing routine work. In some instances the person may simply be tired, as from a long day’s work. Under such conditions, particularly in the case of imaginative individuals, a mental image might be superimposed upon the visual scene to create a “sighting” (Nickell 2001a, 291-292).

Also, as indicated earlier, faulty recall, bias, and other factors can betray even the most credible and sincere witness. Consider, for instance, an anecdotal case provided by Sir Edmund Hornby, a Shanghai jurist. He related how, years earlier, he was awakened one night by a newspaperman who had arrived belatedly to get the customary written judgment for the following day’s edition. The man would not be put off, and-looking “deadly pale"-sat on the jurist’s bed. Eventually Judge Hornby provided a verbal summary, which the man took down in his pocket notebook. After he left, the judge related the incident to Lady Hornby. The following day the judge learned that the reporter had died during the night and-more importantly-that his wife and servants were certain he had not left the house; yet with his body was discovered the notebook, containing a summary of Hornby’s judgment!

This apparent proof of a visitation was reported by psychical researchers. However, the tale soon succumbed to investigation. As it was discovered, the reporter did not die at the time reported (about 1:00 a.m.) but much later-between 8:00 and 9:00 in the morning. Furthermore, the judge could not have told his wife about the events at the time since he was then between marriages. And, finally, although the story depends on a certain judgment that was to be delivered the following day, no such judgment was recorded (Hansel 1966).

When confronted with this evidence of error, Judge Hornby admitted: “My vision must have followed the death (some three months) instead of synchronizing with it. . . .” Bewildered by what had happened, he added: “If I had not believed, as I still believe, that every word of it [the story] was accurate, and that my memory was to be relied on, I should not have ever told it as a personal experience.” No doubt many other accounts of alleged visitations involve such confabulation-a term psychologists use to refer to the confusing of fact with fiction; unable to retrieve something from memory, the person-perhaps inadvertently-manufactures something that is seemingly appropriate to replace it. “Thus,” explain Wortman and Loftus (1981, 204), “the man asked to remember his sixth birthday combines his recollections of several childhood parties and invents the missing details.”

Tales such as that related by Judge Hornby represent alleged “moment-of-death visitations” (Finucane 1984). In that story the reporter had allegedly died approximately the same time ("about twenty minutes past one”) that he appeared as an apparition to Judge Hornby, although, as we have seen, the death actually occurred several hours later. This case should serve as a cautionary example to other such accounts, which are obviously intended to validate superstitious beliefs.

Deathbed Visions

Another type of alleged visitation comes in the form of deathbed visions. According to Brad Steiger (real name Eugene E. Olson), who endlessly cranks out books promoting paranormal claims, “The phenomenon of deathbed visions is as old as humankind, and such visitations of angels, light beings, previously deceased personalities and holy figures manifesting to those about to cross over to the Other Side have been recorded throughout all of human history.” Steiger (2000) goes on to praise writer and family grief counselor Carla Wills-Brandon for her “inspirational book,” One Last Hug Before I Go: The Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions (2000).

Like others before her (e.g., Kubler-Ross 1973), Wills-Brandon promotes deathbed visions (DBVs) largely through anecdotal accounts which, as we have seen, are untrustworthy. She asserts that “the scientific community” has great difficulty explaining a type of DBV in which the dying supposedly see people they believe are among the living but who have actually died. She cites an old case involving a Frenchman who died in Venezuela in 1894. His nephew-who had not been present-reported:

Just before his death, and while surrounded by all of his family, he had a prolonged delirium, during which he called out the names of certain friends left in France. . . .

Although struck by this incident, nobody attached any extraordinary importance to these words at the time they were uttered, but they acquired later an exceptional importance when the family found, on their return to Paris, the funeral invitation cards of the persons named by my uncle before his death, and who had died before him.

Unfortunately, when we hear two other accounts of the reported events, we find there is less to this story than meets the ear. A version given by one of the man’s two children says nothing of his being delirious, implying otherwise by stating that “he told us of having seen some persons in heaven and of having spoken to them at some length.” But she had been quite young at the time and referred the inquirer to her brother. His account-the most trustworthy of the three, since it is a firsthand narrative by a mature informant-lacks the multiple names, and the corresponding funeral cards, as well as other elements, indicating that the story has been much improved in the retellings. The son wrote:

Concerning what you ask me with regard to the death of my father, which occurred a good many years ago, I recall that a few moments before his death my father called the name of one of his old companions-M. Etcheverry-with whom he had not kept up any connexion, even by correspondence, for a long time past, crying out, “Ah! you too,” or some similar phrase. It was only on returning home to Paris that we found the funeral card of this gentleman.

He added: “Perhaps my father may have mentioned other names as well, but I do not remember.”

It is hardly surprising that a man’s thoughts should, at the close of life, turn to an old friend, or that-having long been out of touch with him-he should have thought him already dead. (The individual reporting the case conceded that there was no certainty the friend had even died before the vision occurred.) Since the most trustworthy account is the least elaborate, lacking even the vision-of-heaven motif, it seems not a corroboration of the nephew’s hearsay accounts (Barrett 1926, 22-24) but rather evidence of confabulation at work.

In their book The Afterlife, Jenny Randles and Peter Hough (1993, 98-99) tell of a dying man who had lapsed into a coma: Then the patient became wonderfully alert, as some people do very near the end. He looked to one side, staring into vacant space. As time went by it was clear he could see someone there whom nobody else in the room could see. Suddenly, his face lit up like a beacon. He was staring and smiling at what was clearly a long-lost friend, his eyes so full of love and serenity that it was hard for those around him to not be overcome by tears.

Sheila [his nurse] says: “There was no mistake. Someone had come for him at the last to show him the way.”

But how did the nurse know it was “a long-lost friend” and not, say, Jesus or an angel? Indeed, how did she know he saw “someone” at all, rather than something-perhaps an entrancing view of heaven? The way the nurse makes such assertions-emphasized with words like “clearly” and “no mistake"-suggests she is speaking more of faith than of fact, and her belief is accepted and reported uncritically by Randles and Hough. In fact, the tale contains no evidence of a visitation at all.

Instead, it would appear to represent what is termed a near-death experience (NDE) in which a person typically “comes back” from a state close to death with a story of an otherworldly visit, perhaps involving an out-of-body experience, travel down a dark tunnel, and an encounter with beings of light who help him or her decide whether or not to cross over.

Susan Blackmore (1991b) describes the NDE as “an essentially physiological event” prompted by lack of oxygen, the structure of the brain’s visual cortex, and other factors. She recognizes that the experiences are hallucinations-albeit, seemingly, exceedingly real. And she points out that one does not actually have to be near death to have such an experience, that “Many very similar experiences are recorded of people who have taken certain drugs, were extremely tired, or, occasionally, were just carrying on their ordinary activities.”

Many of the DBVs reported by Wills-Brandon (2000) and others are similar to NDEs and are probably hallucinations produced by the dying brain. Some of the effects are similar because people share similar brain physiology. For example, the “tunnel” effect “probably lies in the structure of the visual cortex” (Blackmore 1991, 39-40). Other effects are probably psychological and cultural. Wills-Brandon (2000, 115) concedes: “I agree that when the dying are passing, they are visited by those who will comfort them during their travel to the other side. For a dying Christian, that might mean Jesus; a Buddhist may see Buddha. For others, an angel, a beautiful woman or Druid priest would bring more comfort.” But she rationalizes, “If I’m following a particular philosophy of religion, wouldn’t it make sense for me to be visited at the moment of my death by an otherworldly escort who is familiar with my belief system?” Perhaps, but of course the simpler explanation is that people see what their expectations prompt them to see.

And that is the problem with the anecdotal evidence for “visitations.” The experiencer’s will to believe may override any temptation to critically examine the occurrences. Some proponents of after-death contact adopt an end-justifies-the-means attitude. One (quoted in Voell 2001) states: “Whether any of the connections or feelings or appearances are true or not, I've finally figured out it doesn't make a damn bit of difference. If it has any part in healing, who cares?” The answer is that, first of all, people who value truth care. While magical thinking may be comforting in the short term, over time estrangement from rationality can have consequences, both on individuals, who may suffer from a lack of closure, and societies, which may slide into ignorance and superstition. That potential peril is why Carl Sagan (1996) referred to science as “a candle in the dark.”

References

• Alvarez, Luis W. 1965. A pseudo experience in parapsychology. Letter in Science 148: 1541.
• Baker, Robert A. 1990. They Call It Hypnosis. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 179-182.
• Barrett, Sir William. 1926. Death-Bed Visions: The Psychical Experiences of the Dying. Reprinted Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press, 1986.
• Blackmore, Susan. 1991a. Lucid dreaming: awake in your sleep? Skeptical Inquirer 15:4 (summer), 362-370.
• —. 1991b. Near-death experiences: In or out of the body? Skeptical Inquirer 16:1 (Fall), 34-45.
• Falk, Ruma. 1981-82. On coincidences. Skeptical Inquirer 6:2 (winter), 24-25.
• Finucane, R.C. 1984. Appearances of the Dead: A Cultural History of Ghosts. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 195.
• Hansel, C. E. M. 1966. ESP: A Scientific Evaluation. New York: Scribner’s, 186-189.
• Jahoda, Gustav. 1970. The Psychology of Superstition. Baltimore: Penguin, 118.
• Jung, C.G. 1960. Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle; in Sir Herbert Read et al., eds. The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Bollingen Series, no. 20. New York: Pantheon, 418-519.
• Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth. 1973. On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock.
• Nickell, Joe. 1993. Looking for a Miracle. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 34-41.
• —. 1996. Investigative files: ghostly photos. Skeptical Inquirer 20:4 (July/August), 13-14.
• —. 2001a. Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.
• —. 2001b. John Edward: hustling the bereaved. Skeptical Inquirer 25:6 (November/December), 19-22.
• Randles, Jenny, and Peter Hough. 1993. The Afterlife: An Investigation into Life after Death. London: BCA; reprinted 1995.
• Sagan, Carl. 1996. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House. Skretny, Judith. 2001. Quoted in Voell 2001.
• Steiger, Brad. 2000. Promotional blurb in Wills-Brandon 2000.
• Theisen, Donna, and Dary Matera. 2001. Childlight: How Children Reach Out to Their Parents from the Beyond. Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon Press.
• Voell, Paula. 2001. Visitations. The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.), May 27.
• Wills-Brandon, Carla. 2000. One Last Hug Before I Go. Deerfield Beach, Fla.: Health Communications, Inc.
• Wilson, Ian. 1987. The After Death Experience: The Physics of the Non-physical. New York: William Morrow.
• Wortman, Camille B., and Elizabeth F. Loftus. 1981. Psychology. New York: Knopf, 380.

After the town lost its appeal in the mid-1900s, guesthouses and hotels were spectacularly restored, making Cape May a unique destination for a romantic weekend or a family vacation.

In a town with unique architecture, history, and ever-increasing tourism, themed walking tours are popular with visitors. One of the most popular is the Haunted Cape May Tour. Billed as “the only authentic walking ghost tour of Cape May,” the brochure advertises “no folklore, no fairy tales, no fantasies.” This is the eighth year of the tour, founded by paranormal investigator Al Rauber.

Rauber only guides the tours himself on occasion. In the busy summer months, you will have a pleasant guide for the half dozen stops on the ninety-minute tour. According to the bio given on the Haunted New Jersey Web site, Rauber is far too busy conducting investigations, serving as the expert consultant for the Sightings TV program (SciFi Network), and appearing as a talking head in paranormal documentaries.

Rauber also is a self-proclaimed expert on electronic voice phenomena (EVP), which he uses to conduct his research. EVP is claimed to be voices from beyond the grave captured by using a fresh, blank audio tape recorded during an investigation. The voices are not heard until the tape is analyzed, sometimes by adjusting the tape speed, enhancing the hiss, or even locating sounds on the opposite side of the tape.

Each stop on the tour is said to have been investigated by Rauber and his team. The “investigation” constitutes interviews with witnesses, EVP taping, photographs, and a hand-held meter to measure electromagnetic fluxes. However, during the tour, you are not given much information about the results of the investigations for each location, just the entertaining story of the alleged haunting.

You may be guided by one of the group members that participated in the investigation. Otherwise, the tour guide uses a scripted talk-she makes it clear that she doesn't know the details of the investigation and, unfortunately, may not be able to answer particular questions. She also begins the tour by stating these stories are entertaining, but never does she state they are absolutely accurate. In fact, during a tour, the guide prefaced the stories with “from what we are told... ” or “witnesses say...”

On a lovely night in July, our 7 p.m. tour consisted of a group of about twenty people. (The 9 p.m. tour is more popular due to the extra ambience created by darkness.) After the introduction, the first stop was the Hotel Macomber (also the location of the tour’s ticket office and gift shop). The weathered, wood-shingled Hotel Macomber was restored in the early 1900s. Restoration apparently triggered specters to reveal their presence-a ghostly waitress in the kitchen and a long-time patron who haunts room number 10.

Remodeling of old buildings serves as the catalyst for many of the hauntings described along this tour, we are told. The guide posed the hypothesis that psychic energy released by an individual from an emotional event can be recorded in the location (on rusty nails or other construction materials, for example) and these are later released upon disturbance to be replayed. Of course, no evidence whatsoever exists for this explanation.

Later, the group stops in a side alley of the crowded downtown street mall. The guide describes the charming purple-painted store as being haunted by the ghosts of two unconventional sisters and a dentist in a white coat apparently still tending to patients long after death. The store is now split into two shops. The owners of one half do not like talk of ghosts associated with their business, but the owners and employees of the Winterwood Christmas store served as witnesses for Rauber and sell the three volumes of local ghost tales (one of which includes their own story) in the store.

Since the tour guide does not take you into the buildings, I visited the Winterwood store later. As I expected, there were no apparitions. Yet, the wood flooring, walls and low ceiling together with holiday decorations on every inch of wall space gave me a hint of claustrophobia. Of course, there is also the sense of anticipation if you've already heard the story. Plus the sound effects from the Halloween decoration exhibit set the mood.

The group next stopped along Jackson Street, arguably the most beautiful street in town. Pedestrians would briefly slow their pace to listen in on the stories about several houses along the block. Not all the owners have agreed to promote their guesthouses via haunting tales, however. Therefore, some ghostly locales were generalized-permission had not been granted to Rauber’s endeavor. In addition, not all the passers-by were interested in what the guide had to tell-it’s not uncommon to get giggles or snide comments aimed at the group or guide.

At the last stop, the tavern/restaurant at the corner of Beach and Decatur currently known as Cabanas bar, the melancholy tale of a child’s accidental death and her mother’s despair and ultimate suicide. This was capped off by a sample of the EVP taken during the investigation. In the brief excerpt you could hear a man and then a woman’s voice give a comment. The woman possibly says “She’s pretty” which was taken to perhaps be a reference to the female investigator with Rauber at the time. If you were not told what the voices supposedly said, it would take many listenings to decipher the low, garbled, ambiguous tones.

Curiously, the night before, I visited the second floor bar at Cabana’s, unaware that it was on the tour route. The two young bartenders were answering a patron who asked if the story given on the tour was true. Had they had paranormal experiences in the house? The pair squabbled a bit about what the true story was. One said she had heard the story of the little girl who ran into the street and, tragically, was struck by a carriage-nearly exactly the story as the guide described. But, she noted, the mother had hung herself in the uppermost room, not near the stairwell as Rauber’s tour guide indicated. The other told of going into the upper storage rooms and getting a "weird feeling” but having no unexplainable episodes. She also told of a supposedly haunted mirror somewhere in the place in which a ghostly person appears in the background if you look into it. She also said she stopped to listen in on the guide one night and commented on how much the occurrences in the building were embellished. Neither could confirm any other spooky incidents at Cabanas but they had heard about them from others.

Along the tour, there had been hints that Rauber and his investigators had experienced strange incidents themselves at haunted sites. I assumed that his findings had been documented somewhere. In the tour gift shop, copies of Haunting Notes, a quarterly newsletter for the tour, were available for free. These one-page flyers have a feature article, the tour schedule, advertisements for the tour and comments from participants. No author is credited for the main article but Rauber is featured in each-quoted about past investigations and various paranormal phenomena.

I searched listings of new and used books authored by Rauber only to come up empty. Rauber has evidently not published his work. The Haunted New Jersey Web site cites only two articles-in New Jersey Living and The InPSIder Magazine (currently ceased publication) but lists numerous publications that contained articles about Rauber or his popular attraction.

The Cape May Public Library had two books of local ghost stories, volume 1 and 2 of Seibold and Adams’ Cape May Ghost Stories (published in 1988 and 1997, respectively). Reading of these small paperbacks, found in various local stores, are amusing pastimes for your beach vacation. But they contain no references for the historical claims within consisting of eyewitness accounts or homeowners hearsay about strange doings in the Victorian mansions, or at local beaches and ponds. The third volume of this series was recently published, attesting to their popularity.

Throughout my survey of Cape May’s spirited legends, a number of common threads ran through the yarns. First, the witnesses and the investigators tended to assume pieces of history to fit their observations. The apparition of the waitress at the Hotel Macomber was described in odd clothing so she must have worked here in the early Victorian heyday of the hotel. The sound of a crying woman at Cabanas must mean she was guilt-ridden, weeping for her lost child. The presence of a chair returning to the same spot at the top of the stairs was her futile attempt even after death to prevent the child from leaving the house to meet her demise. In no case was there documentation presented that these events actually happened. Wouldn't local newspapers likely have reported such a horrific incident as a child’s death on a busy street?

The resident ghosts were not described as violent or threatening. Instead, they were frequently named by the homeowners and referred to in a lighthearted manner. “Oh, have you met Esmerelda, the ghost of a nanny who once lived here?” Qualities bestowed on Esmerelda were passed on in the stories to visitors and guests.

Not every homeowner was keen to discuss their experiences with the team of paranormal investigators. There exists a curious contradiction between the popularity of ghost tours and those people who consider the whole idea ridiculous or something to be left unspoken.

As Charles Adams notes at the beginning and end of his second volume of Cape May Ghost Stories, Cape May looks haunted. The stories of the paranormal blend with the colorful history of the town and give certain locations even more character. Mostly, the effect is positive.

It certainly is positive for Al Rauber, who takes in $10 each from 75 to 100 or more patrons on a summer night. Locals are encouraged to relate new encounters to him and have their establishment added as a tour feature. Rauber also advertises his audio tapes at $10 each- you can own genuine ghostly voices captured by EVP and listen to his commentary. Or, how about just buying a shirt at the gift shop?

There are other fright-themed attractions at Cape May. The rival walking ghost tour does not carry the clout of association with a self-proclaimed "world-renowned paranormal investigator,” therefore it’s not as popular. And then there is the Haunted Mansion tour which makes no bones about being a production rather than a scientific investigation.

While the history presented on this Haunted Cape May tour is interesting, ninety minutes of pure storytelling may not be worth the price of a ticket to everyone. I’d have to disagree with the claims for “no folklore” because most of it obviously is just that. The theme of the tour is summed up with a rehearsed final comment by the guide: “To those of you who believe, no further proof is needed. Those of you who don’t believe, no amount of proof will be enough.”

I undoubtedly did not expect to be a believer but I left with “not enough.” I had hoped there might be more to chew on than campfire tales. Hence, I was highly amused when my digital photos taken at a turn-of-the-century guesthouse on Beach Avenue revealed perfect orbs (hypothesized manifestations of ghostly energy; more likely flash reflection from a normal airborne substance). With this suitable “evidence,” perhaps Mr. Rauber would like to add a new location to the tour.