In September 2001, the mutilated body of “Boy Adam” was found by the British Police floating in the River Thames, near Tower Bridge in London. A top police source suspected that Adam might have been a victim of a style of ritual killing practiced in west and southern Africa. And forensic examination revealed that Adam lived in southwestern Nigeria.

So, early this year, British detectives arrived in Nigeria in search of Adam’s killers. Both the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and Nigerian soccer player Nwankwo Kanu, made passionate appeals for clues and information leading to the arrest of Adam’s killers.

In July, Police arrested a 37-year-old Nigerian, Sam Onogigovie (in Dublin), and twenty-one other Nigerians in Britain in connection with the murder of Adam. Generally, ritual killing is a common practice in Nigeria. Every year, hundreds of Nigerians lose their lives to ritual murderers, also known as headhunters.

These head hunters go in search of human parts-head, breast, tongue, sexual organs-at the behest of witchdoctors, juju priests, and traditional medicine men who require them for some sacrifices or for the preparation of assorted magical potions.

Recently, there have been several reported cases of individuals who were kidnapped, killed, or had their bodies mutilated by ritualists in Nigeria. The most notorious of them is the one associated with one Chief Vincent Duru, popularly known as Otokoto.

It happened this way: In 1996, the police in the southern Nigerian city of Owerri arrested a man, Innocent Ekeanyanwu, with the head of a young boy, Ikechukwu Okonkwo. In the course of the investigation, the police discovered the buried torso of Ikechukwu on the premises of Otokoto Hotel, owned by Chief Duru, and uncovered a syndicate that specialized in ritual killing and the sale and procurement of human parts. The horrifying discoveries sparked off violent protests in the city of Owerri which led to the burning and looting of properties belonging to suspected killers. Otokoto and his ritualist syndicate were arrested and put on trial, and in February 2003, they were sentenced to death by hanging.

Apart from the Otokoto incident, there have been other instances of ritual murder and mutilation in other parts of the country. For instance, in Calabar, two men plucked out the eyes of a young lady, Adlyne Eze, for money-making ritual. And in Ifo, Ogun state, a businessman inflicted the same harm on his younger sister. In Ibadan, the police in December arrested a taxi driver, Abbas, who used his fourteen-month-old baby for rituals. Abbas killed his child in order to secure a human head, which was one of the materials listed for him by a local witchdoctor for a money-making ritual.

And in another act of ritual horror in Onitsha, Anambra State, two young men, Tobechukwu Okorie and Peter Obasi, seized a boy, Monday Emenike, and cut off his sexual organ with the intention of delivering it to a man, who allegedly offered to pay 1.5 million naira ($11,000) for it. In Kaduna, Danladi Damina was arrested after he exhumed the corpse of a 9-year-old boy, plucked out his eyes and cut off his lips, intending to use them for charms. Recently a woman was caught in a bush in Warri, Delta State, decapitating a four-year-old boy for ritual purposes. And while writing this piece, I read in The Guardian (Nigeria) a report of the murder of an 18-year-old girl, identified as Chioma, by suspected ritualists in Mbaise, Imo State.

The question is: why do Nigerians still engage in such bloody, brutal, and barbaric acts and atrocities even in the twenty-first century? For me, there are three reasons:

1. Religion: Nigeria is a deeply religious society. Most Nigerians believe in the existence of supernatural beings and that these transcendental entities can be influenced through ritual acts and sacrifices. Rituals constitute part of the people’s traditional religious practice and observance. Nigerians engage in ritual acts to appease the gods, seek supernatural favours, or to ward off misfortune. Many do so out of fear of unpleasant spiritual consequences if they default. So religion, theism, supernaturalism, and occultism are at the root of ritual killing in Nigeria.
2. Superstition: Nigeria is a society where most beliefs are still informed by unreason, dogmas, myth making, and magical thinking. In Nigeria, belief in ghosts, juju, charms, and witchcraft is prevalent and widespread. Nigerians believe that magical potions prepared with human heads, breasts, tongues, eyes, and sexual organs can enhance one’s political and financial fortunes; that juju, charms and amulets can protect individuals against business failures, sickness and diseases, accidents, and spiritual attacks. In fact, ritual-making is perceived as an act of spiritual fortification.
3. Poverty: Most often, Nigerians engage ritual killing for money-making purposes. Among Nigerians, there is a popular belief in a special kind of ritual, performed with human blood or body parts that can bring money or wealth, even though such a belief lacks any basis in reason, science or common sense.

For example, there has never been a single proven instance of any Nigerian who became rich through a moneymaking ritual.

And still the belief in “ritual wealth” or “blood money” remains strong among the people and features prominently in the nation’s media and film industry. Most times, what we hear are stories and speculations founded on ignorance and hearsay. For instance, Nigerians who enrich themselves through dubious and questionable means, like the scammers who swindle foreigners, are said to have indulged in money-making rituals using the blood or body parts of their parents, wives, children, or other close relations.

So driven by ignorance, poverty, desperation, gullibility, and irrationalism, Nigerians murder fellow Nigerians for rituals. But ritual killing is not a practice limited to Nigeria. Ritual sacrifices also occur in other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, like in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Uganda, etc. In fact in some parts of Uganda, a child is sacrificed before a major building is erected. There is therefore an urgent need for an international campaign to end this murderous practice and other horrifying traditions and superstitions in Africa. Personally, I am recommending that the United Nations’ Inter-Africa Committee includes ritual killing in its programs and campaigns as a harmful traditional practice.

Also, skeptics groups should strive to expose the ignorance, superstition, and unreason that underlie the belief in and practice of ritual killing by organizing public education, awareness, and enlightenment campaigns on science education, critical thinking, and rational inquiry.

The case of Adam underscores the need to internationally confront and combat religious obscurantism, dogmatism, and occultism in Africa and the world at large.

In 2001, there were so many cases of ritual killing in the Lagos metropolis that one of the nation’s major newspapers, The Punch, published a scary headline: “Ritualists Lay Siege to Lagos.”

Personally, I think that caption would have better read: “Pseudoscience Lays Siege to Nigeria.” Because that was the case. And that is still the case.

Many times I have taken pictures and later discovered that light reflecting off a mirror in a corner, for example, had created a large, orb-like light. Sometimes there might be smoke, mist, or fog, which the photographer simply was not aware of at the time the picture was taken. When this occurs it certainly isn’t the result of a fraud, it’s simply a mistake. This is how most unexplained photographic effects occur. But the infamous William H. Mummler is a good example of turning an accident into a profitable attraction.

Mummler is the grandfather of fraudulent ghost pictures. In fact, the first claims of ghosts caught on film were made by Mummler in 1862. Mummler’s first “ghost pictures” were an accident. Because of poor cleaning of his glass plates, an old image ended up on the same plate with a new picture. But Mummler soon realized he could use his mistakes for making money by claiming to have the ability to take pictures of spirits that were watching over us. Years later he was exposed as a fraud.

But what about the real ones, the genuine pictures of ghosts? Do genuine ghost photographs even exist? How could one be certain that something more probable wasn’t causing the appearance? What we have to know is if there are ghosts among us, then what are they? Theories range from ghosts being the spirits of dead people coming back from an afterlife to energy that the earth (or ground, or air, etc.) has recorded and plays back when triggered or when conditions are right. Some experts believe that there are multiple types of ghosts, which would fall into different categories depending on the ghost’s characteristics.

Maybe it is possible for ghosts, angels, and other beings to defy science and try to show us that they are very real. But how can one be sure, especially with the chance of being fooled by either an accidental apparition or a purposely faked one?

M.F. “Chance” Wyatt certainly chooses to take his chances. Wyatt is a Melbourne, Australia, ghost hunter who wrote Spirits Visit Earth: Documented and Recorded Spiritual Happenings. He says that orbs are actually the fingerprints of spirits caught on film.

“Some of us can see them with the naked eye,” said Wyatt on Halloween 2001 in an article in Florida Today. “But they're the ones that decide whether or not they want to be photographed. So, when you get one in a picture, essentially what you've photographed is the result of pure thought or consciousness.” He justifies the “choice” of sphere shape (orb) by stating, “Spirits are magnetic energy fields that take on any shape they want, and a sphere is the easiest shape to attain, because it gets stronger when you apply equal pressure to all sides.” So there you have it. Orbs in photographs are spirits, which result from a thought process, and the chosen orb shape is justified because it’s the easiest to produce. However, the skeptics have a different explanation.

Robert Baker, an investigator with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), has a different view. In the same article, Baker suggests that orbs might be “electrical emissions coming out of the ground.” The orbs in photographs could be simply the result of processes that create subterranean heat leakage, which apparently shows up on film and looks odd.

Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow for CSICOP, notes that orbs never appeared in photographs until modern cameras came out. Yet there have always been dead people. Thinking that the dead are just beginning to make contact since modern cameras have been available is absurd. Since the “ghosts” from earlier cameras have been exposed as fakes, how can one truly believe that the dead are just waiting to be photographed?

Back in the days of Mummler, one would have to sit still for a long time in order for a picture to be taken. A common trick was to have a person (the spirit) quietly come up behind the people getting their picture taken. Since they could not move during the process, they would never know that anyone had come up behind them. When the picture was developed the people would be delighted to see their “spirit guide.”

Benjamin Radford, an investigator for CSICOP and managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer brings up this interesting point. “There should be billions and billions of ghosts everywhere,” states Radford, “but there aren’t.” He goes on to say, “Why are ghosts seen with clothing? Do your jeans die with you?”

But what about the unintentional apparitions, the ones without a fraud behind them?

Nickell says, “We do know that dust, fingers, camera straps, mist, and lint can reflect the camera’s flash and produce ghostly effects. Dust particles are a major source of orbs. We do not know that ghosts are the explanation of any orbs.” In fact, Nickell has intentionally produced orbs in experiments.

I have gotten a few pictures of orbs myself. In many cases, the explanation of dust seems plausible. In figure 1, for instance, I was at a horse show riding Virginia Intermont College’s Tux. Dust produced by the horse’s hooves might have caused that brilliant orb above my head and the two smaller orbs under Tux’s jaw. I do not know, however, that a spirit or ghost (of any type) was the cause of it. I certainly have no high hopes that I have a little spirit guide following me around while I’m riding! In figures 2 and 3, the bright sphere is simply a reflection of my camera flash in the mirror, not a “ghost light.”

Figure 2 & 3: Bright spheres, Camera flash. . . or ghosts?

So why is it that people are so quick to jump to the conclusion that spirit activity is the cause of circles of light in photographs when those phenomena can easily be explained by natural effects? Often the first-and the only-explanation offered is a paranormal one. What about the possibility that something natural has occurred? Skeptics call this true-believer syndrome, in which a person continues to believe in something despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Just because it’s proven fact that dust, lint, mist, etc. can produce orbs does not mean that every single orb captured on film falls under this category. The true believers will therefore base their beliefs on a foundation that upholds that orbs could be ectoplasm left behind by traveling spirits. In their minds this is perfectly acceptable, and they choose to ignore the possibility that their beliefs are potentially based on a misunderstanding.

M. Lamar Keene, who came up with the expression “true-believer syndrome,” says that when it comes to true believers, “No amount of logic can shatter a faith consciously based on a lie” (Keene 151). True believers often exercise what philosophers call an ad hoc hypothesis (Blackburn 6), which often runs arguments in circles. For instance, if Bob believes that ghosts exist, I would ask how he knows that they exist. He might then refer to an orb in a photograph as proof of a spirit. When pushed further into how he knows that a ghost caused the orb, he would say because nothing else could have caused it so it must be a ghost. And how he knows ghosts exist is because he has “evidence” of them in a photograph, etc. . . . So basically we've gotten nowhere, and Bob has convinced himself that ghosts exist because he is arguing from ignorance.

While a few arguments for ghosts may seem logical, there simply is not enough evidence to support these arguments. This is based on the assumption that an argument is invalid if, for instance, there is no evidence to support theory A, therefore theory B is the answer even if little or nothing is known about theory B. Perhaps one day there will be proof that ghosts can and do appear in photographs and that some orbs are something more than just lint, mist, and photographic error. Skeptics are only asking for good evidence.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Kevin Christopher, Joe Nickell, and Benjamin Radford for sharing their valuable insights and field experience.

References

• Blackburn, Simon. 1996. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Cox, Billy. 2001. Ghost orbs haunt couple’s snapshots. Florida Today, October 31.
• Keene, Lamar M. 1997. The Psychic Mafia. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books.

According to Ronald Numbers, author of the definitive early history, The Creationists (Knopf 1992), the term creationism did not originally apply to all forms of anti-evolution. Opponents of evolution were not always committed to any unified view of creation. However, by the 1920s, the Biblical creation myth became the standard alternative to evolution and the creationists its champion.

In that decade, fundamentalists in the U.S. took over the front line of the battle. Under their influence, three states-Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas-made teaching evolution a crime. Oklahoma prohibited textbooks promoting evolution, and Florida condemned the teaching of Darwinism as “subversive.”

In 1925, biology teacher John Scopes was arrested in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching evolution. This led to the sensational “Monkey Trial,” with Clarence Darrow pitted against three-time losing Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Although Scopes was convicted (later overturned on appeal), the trial is still widely regarded as a public-relations triumph for the Darwinians, as depicted in the play and film Inherit the Wind.

A new strain of creationism appeared in 1961 with the publication of The Genesis Flood by John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and Henry M. Morris, strongly influenced by an earlier book by George McCready Price. The authors argued that science was compatible with Genesis, and although their scientific claims were not credible, conservative Christians sat up and took notice, recognizing a new strategy for combating hated Darwinism. Around 1970, Morris founded the Institute for Creation Science, which then led a movement to have the new creationism presented in public-school science classrooms. Duane Gish traveled the country giving talks and ambushing naíve scientists in debates before huge, receptive audiences of churchgoers. Arkansas and Louisiana passed laws mandating the teaching of creation science alongside evolution. In 1982, a federal judge in Arkansas tossed out the law in that state, declaring creation science to be religion and not science. The Supreme Court ruled the Louisiana law unconstitutional in 1987. Still, polls in the 1990s indicated that about half of Americans continue to believe that humans are the result of special creation within the last 10,000 years.

About this time creation science speciated into two main branches, one holding to the more literal Biblical picture of a young Earth and another that attempts to use sophisticated arguments that appear, at least to the untutored eye, more consistent with established science. The second group has developed a new, stealth creationism called Intelligent Design.

Learning from the mistakes of the creation scientists, proponents of Intelligent Design hide their sectarian motives. They have avoided the more egregious scientific errors of the creation scientists, such as the young Earth, and presented this new form of creationism as “pure science.” They claim that design in nature can be scientifically demonstrated and that the complexity of nature can be proved not to have arisen by natural processes alone.

The story of how this strain of creationism is fed and watered by a well-funded conservative Christian organization called the Discovery Institute is fully documented in the excellent recent book by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross, Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design (Oxford, 2004). The clearly stated goal of the Wedge is to “renew” science and culture along evangelical-Christian lines. Intelligent Design has been a wholesale failure, as both science and strategy. None of its scientific claims, especially the work of the main theorists William Dembski and Michael Behe, have stood up under scientific scrutiny. None of their claims is published in scientific journals. Numerous books and articles refute their positions in great detail. Not only have their arguments been shown to be flawed, but in several instances, the factual claims on which they rest have been proven false.

Furthermore, so far Intelligent Design has also failed in the political arena, which is really its primary focus. Numerous attempts to have Intelligent Design taught in science classrooms as an “alternative” to evolution have been successfully fought off by the heroic efforts of scientists and citizens’ groups in a number of states. The argument that Intelligent Design should be taught “out of fairness” has been successfully countered by pointing out that only legitimate science belongs in the science classroom. Intelligent Design has been shown to not be science at all but pseudoscience dressed up as science for the purpose of promoting a religious agenda.

Still, creationism is not yet extinct. Recent indications are that another change in its genetic structure has taken place. The new buzzphrase being promoted at school boards and textbook hearings these days is “critical thinking.” Creationists have achieved success in at least one state by writing into lesson plans and core standards the requirement that students have their critical thinking skills developed by studying the arguments against as well as for evolution. Like the “fairness” argument mentioned above, this strikes many members of boards and legislatures as perfectly reasonable. Who can deny the value of teaching critical thinking? And, who can deny the reasonableness of discussing the evidence against a theory as well as for it? The trouble is, what is being written into the new lesson plans and standards are phony examples of evidence against evolution. For example, the Ohio Board of Education has adopted a lesson plan requiring a “critical analysis of evolution.” Here is an example of the type of “brief challenging simple answers” for a grade-ten lesson: “Transitional fossils are rare in the fossil record.” While disagreement exists over precise ancestral groups, empirical evidence for many transitional forms is common and well documented in the scientific literature.

Science is also grossly misrepresented in the Ohio lesson plans. Anomalies are presented as “ideas” rather than observations that disagree with theoretical predictions. Theories are called “suppositions” rather than well-established systems of explanations for large numbers of observations. Science education in the U.S. will be severely damaged if this type of bogus “critical thinking” becomes widespread.