I found Feltham more or less by accident. I was at Scotland’s famous loch for about a week following a speaking engagement in London where I discussed my original research into “America’s Loch Ness Monster,” the creature supposedly inhabiting Vermont’s Lake Champlain. I had spent much of the day near Inverness, conducting a series of experiments on judging the size and distance of unknown objects in lake waters. By mid-afternoon the weather grew too Scottish, and I had to pack it up.

Instead of conducting more experiments, I walked along a chilly beach near the town of Dores, where, to my surprise, I found about twenty Loch Ness monsters. They were various colors—mostly red, green, purple, and blue. Some were perched on rocks; others were on little acrylic ice cubes; all were on a wooden shelf supported by a waist-high tree stump. They were only a few inches high and had big, cute eyes. Above them was a multicolored, hand-drawn sign that read, “Nessie Models For Sale.” Just behind that lay a converted mini-bus with faux wood paneling and a giant logo that read, “Nessie-sery Independent Research.”

The Loch Ness monster—in doll form—can be found in the tourist traps at Inverness.

It’s part tourist shack, part library, part monster research facility, and all home to Steve Feltham, the world’s only full-time Loch Ness monster researcher. Feltham, with his easy smile, shock of gray and white hair, and clipped British accent, is a fixture at Ness. He’s lived on its shores since 1991, when he abruptly moved from England. The vehicle, which is not much bigger than some walk-in closets, has everything he needs: a bed, a desk, a tiny sink, and a cooking burner. The walls are plastered with posters, photographs, maps, and shelves with Loch Ness-related books and papers. (I was pleased to see some of my own articles and research on his shelves.)

Being both in the (very) shallow pool of serious lake monster researchers, we talked shop for an hour, swapping stories, research findings, and theories about our elusive prey. He asked me about some of my lake monster investigations and gave me a tour of his place.

Steve Feltham in his trailer at Scotland’s Loch Ness.

I perched on a tiny stool, and Steve Feltham told me his story. He spoke of a fairly ordinary childhood and rattled off a list of his previous occupations: “I was a potter for a while . . . then I installed alarm systems. You know, peoples’ houses, commercial, all that lot. And, I’m an artist, of course,” he quickly added, gesturing to the Nessie figurines. He sculpts them in his spare time (which he has a lot of) to earn a living, selling them for £10 each (about $20).

Growing up he’d always been fascinated by Scotland’s Nessie but never seriously pursued it. When he installed residential burglar and fire alarms in London, he said he’d usually make small talk with the owners, who were often elderly. As old folks are often wont to do, the pensioners shared stories of their lives. Feltham noticed a common theme: many expressed regret at not having followed the dreams of their youths. One retiree had spent years working in a pastry shop and always wanted to open his own bakery, but he never did. Another woman once had dreams of moving to America and pursuing a career in dance or theater; instead she spent thirty years in a comfortable but unfulfilling office job. Feltham took that as a sign that he should seize his dream of searching for the Loch Ness monster and dedicate himself to it full time. He quit his job; left his friends, family, and life; and drove to Loch Ness to live alone in a van and spend all day, every day, looking for the beast (and greeting the occasional tourist).

I know better than most people what a bold move that was. Monsters in Loch Ness are a possibility but a very remote one, given the fact that there is no hard evidence that they exist. No such creatures have ever been captured. If they exist (and there would have to be dozens of them in the lake to sustain a breeding population), they have miraculously managed to avoid leaving any teeth, bones, or carcasses.

Loch Ness has been repeatedly searched for over seventy years, using everything from miniature submarines to divers to cameras strapped on dolphins. In fact just three years before my meeting with Feltham, a team of researchers sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) undertook the largest and most comprehensive search of Loch Ness ever conducted. They scoured the lake using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite navigation. One of the lead searchers, Ian Florence, was quoted in a BBC press release: “We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one; we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large animal living in the loch.” No monsters; no nothing. I asked Feltham what he thought about that.

The author scans the cold, dark waters of Loch Ness near Dores Beach.

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “It was flawed,” he sniffed. “Yes, it made the papers, but they didn’t scan [the loch] all at once, so to me the results are suspect. They searched it over three days in three parts, so the animals might have moved around between the searches.”

I understood his point, though it seemed unlikely to me that such a thorough search had somehow missed a half dozen or more large creatures. I didn’t challenge him on it.

Though I was used to being the only skeptic in the conversation when it comes to eyewitness reports, Feltham shared my doubts about many sightings. He explained that many “eyewitness” sightings of Scotland’s famous lake monster can be traced back directly to Hollywood movies about the creature. He had no doubt that eyewitnesses sometimes describe seeing things that they really saw only in fiction: “You remember the movie here on the loch that came out [in 1996]? The one with Ted Danson? Well, there’s a scene at Urquhart Castle that shows two Nessies there with long, thin necks.” That scene, Feltham told me, changed real-life eyewitness descriptions of things people saw on the loch: all of a sudden people started reporting seeing monsters with necks exactly like those depicted in the film. “Nobody reported seeing twenty-foot-long necks until after that film came out,” he said. Unless the Nessie monsters had somehow seen the film and changed their appearance to fit what people were expecting them to look like, this was a clear example of how pop culture influences the public’s sightings.

The picturesque ruins of Urquhart Castle sit along the shores of Loch Ness.

He said that a few years earlier he had been contacted by a woman offering a video of what she thought was the neck of the Loch Ness monster, low in the water. “She’d come out to the loch on holiday and had a video camera with her. She was out by the castle [the ruins of Urquhart Castle, the most famous and most photographed spot on the lake] on a tour, I think it was, and she’d panned along the shore and countryside. She didn’t think a thing of it at the time.” It wasn’t until she and her husband returned home that they watched the video of their vacation and noticed a long, dark, indistinct form seeming to come vertically out of the water. They were sure she had accidentally filmed the Loch Ness monster’s neck; what else could it be?

“It was a boat mast,” Feltham said with a weary smile. “Clear as day, a boat mast. You don’t see the rest of the boat because she was taping the hills instead of the water, but there it was.” At Loch Ness—as at many reputedly monster-haunted lakes around the world—the bulk of lake monster sightings are made by tourists. If the creatures live in the lakes, one would think that the people who spend the most time on the lakes would be more likely to see them than someone who’s at the lake only for a few days. Over and over I have interviewed fishermen and boat captains who have criss-crossed lakes daily (sometimes several times daily) for years or even decades and never seen anything unusual. Feltham’s story provides part of the explanation: people who are often around the lake recognize normal features of the lake that weekend tourists might mistake for a monster head or neck (unusual wave patterns, masts, floating logs, swimming deer, and so on).

One of the most popular theories about what the Loch Ness monster might be is a dinosaur-like plesiosaur. There are myriad problems with this theory, including that plesiosaurs died out millions of years ago and Scotland’s lochs are only about 10,000 years old. Feltham rejects the plesiosaur suggestion, offering instead his best guess: Nessies are probably fish, most likely catfish.

I asked how he would feel if he was proven correct—if, after all the monstrous speculation and blurry photos, the world-famous Loch Ness monster turned out to be an ordinary catfish (albeit a large one). How would he feel if, after spending twenty years of his life searching for the mysterious beast, the monster turned out to be something most people can find in their local supermarket? He thought for a few moments and answered in a soft voice: “I guess I’d be philosophical about it,” he said as his sweatered shoulders betrayed a slight shrug.

I bought one of his Nessie sculptures, shook his hand, and wished him luck. As I left Feltham’s van/home/research center on the windy shores of the small, cold lake in Scotland, I couldn’t help admiring his dedication. People should pursue their dreams and quests—but also realize that those dreams can come at a high cost.

When we hear news stories about Bigfoot or Nessie or ghosts (whether we believe in them or not), it is easy to forget that some people—in some cases many people—are completely convinced that they exist. Some hardcore enthusiasts spend precious years of their lives (and tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars) searching for them in vain. The lines between casual interest, serious hobby, and outright obsession can be fuzzy.

I realize that Feltham and I are in many ways more alike than different. There are millions of people around the world who are interested in unexplained mysteries, yet you can count the number of serious, scientific investigators—not the weekend warriors who go on camping trips looking for monsters or to cemeteries at midnight looking for ghosts—on one hand. We scientific investigators spend years and even decades writing, investigating, and researching these topics. For better or worse (and I’m not sure which), Feltham and I are part of a very exclusive club.

Of course I didn’t quit my job, leave my friends and family, and go live alone in a minibus on a clammy Scottish lakeshore for the sake of my research. I like to think that makes me more grounded than Feltham is, but maybe we aren’t so different. Part of me admires his certainty and wishes I had the courage of his convictions. If I were as convinced as he that some strange creatures existed out in the loch—and that I’d discover their nature if I moved there and devoted my life to searching for them—would I do it?

Maybe his obsession will pay off; maybe one day I’ll pick up a copy of The New York Times or the Albuquerque Journal to see a front-page story with a big color photo of Feltham, beaming his triumphant smile next to a monstrous beast he’s captured or found in the loch. Maybe he will go down in history books as having solved the most famous lake riddle of all time.

But maybe he won’t.

There will be a certain irony if the Nessie creatures turn out not only to exist but to be an endangered species, be it plesiosaur, monster, or catfish. The lake creatures might live and die without ever having been proven to exist. Stories and eyewitness reports of the Loch Ness monster will continue—with or without any actual creatures in the lake. Tourists will continue to mistake floating logs, boat masts, fish, wakes, and other normal lake phenomena for potential monsters. The existence of lake monsters, like that of Bigfoot and ghosts, cannot be disproved, but it takes only one live or dead monster to prove forever that they exist. Until that time, Steve Feltham will continue his search.

This article is adapted from one that first appeared in the July 15, 2010 Weekly Alibi newspaper.

The book gave me a chance to compare notes with Hawes and Wilson. Because I had preceded them in examining several of the “haunted” places featured on the show, I was able to contrast my findings with theirs. Our mutual cases include The Myrtles Plantation (in St. Francisville, Louisiana), the Winchester Mystery House (San Jose, California), and the St. Augustine Lighthouse (on Florida’s east coast).

The Myrtles

Located in the Louisiana bayou, The Myrtles Plantation is actively promoted by its owners as a haunted place. Indeed, says Jason, “Grant and I could barely contain ourselves. The Myrtles was known as one of the most haunted places in America. It was every paranormal investigator’s dream to check the place out” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 137). Well, I had been there, done that—courtesy of the Discovery Channel for a documentary.

Figure 1. The Myrtles Plantation in Louisiana is billed as “America’s Most Haunted Home.” (Photo by Joe Nickell)

In February 2005, the T.A.P.S. team got off to a good start at The Myrtles. They were shown a “ghost” photo, but it had been so enhanced by a “paranormal guy” that they promptly labeled it “tampered.” But then came the incident with the lamp: In the plantation’s “slave shack” (a structure of recent vintage that never held a slave), a lamp glided eerily across a table behind the pair while they were on camera. Although they conceded that “Grant might have snagged the lamp cord with his foot and dragged it without knowing it,” the pair later decided to attribute this incident only to “a supernatural force” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 146). Unfortunately, as reported by Television Week (Hibbard 2005, 19), “Upon close inspection, fans concluded the lamp was being pulled by its own cord. Even worse: a night-vision shot appears to show the cord extending from behind the table to Mr. Wilson’s hand.” Yet Grant maintained, “If we were looking for a sign that we were doing something worthwhile, we couldn’t have asked for a better one than the lamp.” The pair concluded, “The place was haunted” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 146, 147).

In my own investigation at The Myrtles (including staying alone overnight there August 14–15, 2001), I had reached a very different conclusion about the place. Although its owners and staff hype the tale of a murderous slave named Chloe—a “legend” that Hawes and Wilson repeat in some detail—my research revealed Chloe to be fictitious and the tale not folklore but fakelore. Ghostly phenomena reported at the site can be explained without invoking the supernatural. For instance, a mysteriously swinging door was simply hung off center, and banging noises heard at night were attributable to a loose shutter (Nickell 2003).

Figure 2. The author visits San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House, a mansion of bizarre architecture and a legendary curse. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Winchester Mystery House

San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House is remarkable indeed. Even after the Gothic Victorian mansion was greatly reduced in size by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, eccentric widow Sarah Winchester continued to add to the architectural wonder until her death in 1922. At that time it contained 160 rooms and included bizarre architectural details such as stairways that led nowhere. Legend holds that a Boston spirit medium had directed Mrs. Winchester to go West and build, without ceasing, a home for spirits. This was to halt an alleged curse on the Winchesters resulting from the “terrible weapon” (the repeating firearm) they had produced.

Jason and Grant retell the legend without skepticism, although the tale is unproved and exists in many contradictory versions. Neither is there any real evidence that Mrs. Winchester was herself a spiritualist. Indeed her close companion for years, Henrietta Severs, denied that she was (Rambo 1967, 8).

Visiting the mansion in July 2005, Hawes and Wilson (2007, 225–29) “didn’t find anything of a supernatural origin”—and even concluded that “odd banging sounds” were probably “the result of a plumbing problem.” Nevertheless, they and their T.A.P.S. team continued their pseudoscientific approach to ghost hunting (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 225–29). That is, they relied heavily on alleged ghost-detecting equipment that does not, in fact, detect ghosts. A reading on an electromagnetic field (EMF) meter, for instance, can be caused by faulty wiring, microwaves, solar activity, or any of a number of other non-ghostly sources. There is no credible scientific evidence that ghosts exist, let alone that they are electromagnetic—or radioactive: the T.A.P.S. team also on occasion uses a “portable Geiger counter” (Ghost 2006). Other ghost-hunting equipment is similarly useless, especially in the hands of nonscientists (Nickell 2006).

I investigated the Winchester Mansion in 2001 (with colleague Vaughn Rees) and found that temperature variations, the settling of an old structure, and other similar characteristics accounted for cold spots, odd noises, and ghostly phenomena (Nickell 2002). I have learned that people’s level of ghost experiences is approximately proportional to their psychological tendency to fantasize (Nickell 2000)—evidence for psychologist Robert A. Baker’s wise saying that there are no haunted places, “only haunted people.”

Figure 3. The St. Augustine Lighthouse is one of the most towering “haunted” places in the United States. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

St. Augustine Lighthouse

Among the tallest such structures in the United States, the St. Augustine lighthouse is claimed to feature, in the keeper’s dwelling, a girl in a red dress who suddenly vanishes and the lingering smell of cigar smoke. In the tower, various unexplained noises are often perceived (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 40–49).

Once again, the T.A.P.S. team lugged in the fancy equipment on which their pseudoscientific approach to ghost hunting depends. They placed a wireless audio unit up in the tower; at the bottom, a thermal camera was positioned to shoot upward “just to see what we could pick up” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 234–35). The team claims to have seen a shadowy figure and heard a woman’s cry as they went up the stairs. Jason ran toward it but “couldn’t catch more than a glimpse of the dark figure” as he gained the stairs (2007, 236). Afterward, their “video footage clearly showed a shadow at the top of the stairs. A moment later, we heard a female voice crying for help, and saw the shadow dart to the right” (2007, 238). They concluded that the St. Augustine Lighthouse was indeed haunted.

That lighthouse was one of several I investigated for my Skeptical Inquirer article “Lighthouse Specters” (Nickell 2008). (My wife and I even stayed as “assistant keepers” at a couple of remote sites.) On March 23, 2004, I climbed the 219 steps to check out the St. Augustine Lighthouse’s tower and also explored the keeper’s house. The occasional perception of cigar smoke in the latter may have a ready explanation. There is often confusion as to the true nature of the smoke (attributed alternately to cigars, cigarettes, burning wiring, etc.), and real smoke can drift inside or its smell be carried in on people’s clothing (Nickell 2008, 24–25). The power of suggestion may be at work as well.

Apparitions at “haunted” sites are also explainable. For example, private citizens who rented the St. Augustine keeper’s dwelling (after the light was automated in 1955) sometimes woke to see a young girl at their bedside (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 44). Such sightings are easily explained scientifically as “waking dreams,” which occur in the state between sleep and wakefulness. Similarly, apparitions may occur when the percipient is in an altered mental state, such as daydreaming, and a mental image becomes superimposed on the visual scene (Nickell 2008, 22–23).

As to noises in the tower, there are a number of plausible explanations, beginning with the wind. Indeed, Hawes and Wilson themselves found one culprit in the form of a window “free to swing with the wind” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 235). Temperature changes can also cause old steel to make noises as it expands and contracts (Thompson 1998, 73). One such screeching sound was interpreted as “a female voice crying for help” (Hawes and Wilson 2007, 238). (Another possibility is seagulls; the birds may “shriek” and “sound almost like humans screaming” [Vercillo 2008, 50].)

Glimpsed shadows might have an equally simple explanation. I studied the T.A.P.S. team’s St. Augustine Lighthouse video episode (Ghost 2006) with two colleagues, Tim Binga and Tom Flynn, and all of us were underwhelmed. Flynn, CFI’s video expert, summed up the evidence by stating: “These visual effects are so ambiguous that they may signify nothing at all.” He added, “The observed effect might even be the shadows of the ghost hunters themselves as they moved about, several landings below” (Flynn 2009).

* * *

As this comparison of cases shows, the approach of so-called “ghost hunters” is simply one of mystery mongering. Like claims for the paranormal in general, their assertions that certain places are haunted are based on the logical fallacy of arguing from ignorance: “We don’t know what caused such-and-such (a noise, say), so it must have been a ghost.” In fact, one cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. The problem is exacerbated by the pseudoscientific use of scientific equipment and by the distinct possibility that ghost hunters are actually causing—even if unintentionally—some of the very phenomena they are experiencing!

In contrast is the scientific investigator’s approach: begin with the phenomenon in question, try to ascertain whether it in fact happened, develop hypotheses to explain it, and seek to find the most likely explanation—keeping in mind that one cannot explain one mystery by attributing it to another.

References

Elizabeth, Norma, and Bruce Roberts. 1999. Lighthouse Ghosts: 13 Bona Fide Apparitions Standing Watch Over America’s Shores. N.p.: Crane Hill Publishers.

Flynn, Thomas. 2009. Video analysis and interview by Joe Nickell, September 1.

Ghost Hunters Season Two: Part 2 (DVD). 2006. “St Augustine Lighthouse.”

Hawes, Jason, and Grant Wilson, with Michael Jan Friedman. 2007. Ghost Hunting: True Stories of Unexplained Phenomena from the Atlantic Paranormal Society. New York: Pocket Books.

Hibbard, James. 2005. In search of ghost stories. Television Week, August 22; 1, 19.

Nickell, Joe. 2000. Haunted inns. Skeptical Inquirer 24(5) (September/October): 17–21.

———. 2002. Winchester mystery house. Skeptical Inquirer 26(5) (September/October), 20–23.

———. 2003. Haunted plantation. Skeptical Inquirer 27(5) (September/October), 12–15.

———. 2006. Ghost hunters. Skeptical Inquirer 30(5) (September/October): 23–26.

———. 2008. Lighthouse specters. Skeptical Inquirer 32(5) (September/October), 22–25.

Rambo, Ralph. 1967. Lady of Mystery. San Jose, California: The Press.

St. Augustine Lighthouse. 2009. Available online at www.staugustinelighthouse.com/abt_ghosts.php; accessed August 25, 2009.

Thompson, William O. 1998. Lighthouse Legends and Hauntings. Kennebunk, Maine: ’Scapes Me.

Vercillo, Kathryn. 2008. Ghosts of Alcatraz. Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing.

Philosophy Bites: 25 Philosophers on 25 Intriguing Subjects. By David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN: 978-0199576326. 216 pp. Hardcover, $15.95.

The cover of Philosophy Bites: 25 Philosophers on 25 Intriguing Subjects, by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton, sports a simple line drawing of a duck. Or does it? Mentally re-orient the picture, and the duck’s bill becomes a rabbit’s ears. The classic illusion makes a fitting mascot for philosophy, a field in the business not of collecting new facts about the world but of figuring out how to look at the facts one already has.

The reader can perform a similar mental morph on the book itself, which is a collection of twenty-five interviews with professional philosophers, adapted from the popular Philosophy Bites podcast (www.philosophybites.com/). Look at it one way, and it’s an introduction to a broad range of topics in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, religion, politics, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. Shift your focus from the answers to the questions themselves, and it becomes another book altogether: a practical manual on how to talk to philosophers.

There’s no shortage of potential pitfalls in philosophical discussions, but interviewer Nigel Warburton leads by example in avoiding many of them. The first step: never hesitate to ask, “What do you mean by that word?” It’s a simple rule, yet its perennial neglect has resulted in countless intractable arguments between people who never realize they’re talking about different things. So Warburton wisely kicks off each interview by inviting his guest to define what she or he means by the word minority or natural or rights or whatever that particular philosopher specializes in.

Sometimes the answers Warburton gets are surprisingly thought-provoking. It may seem odd at first to hear bioethicist Peter Singer define person as “someone who is aware of their own existence over time,” but upon reflection it seems even odder that our language doesn’t have a separate word for this concept. Why do we use the words person and human interchangeably? There are humans who are not self-aware, such as infants, and there are non-humans who are at least somewhat self-aware, such as chimpanzees. Singer’s implication is that making this distinction in our language allows us to make a corresponding distinction in our ethics: when deciding what rights to bestow on other beings, should we be considering their species or their personhood?

While good definitions can clarify our thinking, bad ones make it only foggier. Theologian Don Cupitt, for example, says he does not consider himself an atheist because he defines the word god to mean “a goal of life” or a “symbol of perfection.” One is tempted to ask, “Why? What is the point of redefining god so that it must exist simply by definition?” Warburton is a little too polite to ask these questions, unfortunately, but it’s a prime example of the kind of verbal sleight-of-hand that philosophy should ideally be debunking, not promoting.

The fog hangs heavily around several other chapters as well. Asked to define infinity, metaphysician Adrian Moore replies that it is undefinable because “if you’re trying to define the concept, then what you’re trying to do is pin it down in some way, circumscribe it, give it parameters,” he says, which in his view contradicts the concept’s very nature. This evidently strikes Moore as appealingly paradoxical, but it leaves him in the unfortunate position of being unable to say anything more coherent about his topic than “the infinite embraces everything.”

This sort of nebulousness is another hazard of philosophy, but Warburton generally succeeds in bringing the conversations back to Earth by following a second rule: use examples. Test-driving his guests’ abstract arguments on specific cases not only keeps the questions well-defined but also makes us aware of why the answers might be important. In order to address the age-old issue of whether everything people value can be viewed as a form of pleasure, Alex Neill examines our reactions to a tragedy like King Lear. Similarly, the abstract question of what constitute “natural” human limitations becomes tractable when Michael Sandel discusses why it doesn’t ruin the satisfaction of watching a marathon if we allow the runners to wear shoes, but it does ruin a baseball game if we allow the players to take steroids.

Philosophy Bites could have had an even sharper bite if Warburton had more consistently applied another guideline for discussing philosophy: make sure your questions have answers. Sometimes they don’t, which should be a tip-off that they are poorly formed questions to begin with. The interview with Timothy Williamson on vagueness is a particularly frustrating case in point. Williamson raises examples of cases in which it’s not clear if a particular word applies: is this color red or not red? Is that man tall or not tall? He agrees the answers depend on the cutoff point, but he still thinks there is some objectively right answer in the borderline cases, albeit an unknowable one. “Yes, even if we could be bothered to count the exact number of hairs on Tony Blair’s head we still wouldn’t necessarily know whether he was bald or not. But either he is or he isn’t,” Williamson argues.

That kind of hair-splitting helps neither one’s understanding of the world nor one’s opinion of philosophy. Especially when contrasted with the examples of genuinely good philosophy sprinkled throughout the book—examples in which careful questioning of our language yields new insight—it’s clear that once we know how many strands of hair are on a man’s head, we learn nothing by inquiring whether he is really bald or not. It’s like looking at the cover of Philosophy Bites and wondering: “Yes, but is it really a duck, or is it really a rabbit?”