One tome, hundreds of pages thick, described the author’s personal theory of gravitation. His idea was that gravity was not an attraction, but rather was caused by the pressure of things raining down from the sun. He was immune to my argument that his theory could not explain the inverse- square behavior of gravity-that is, the way the strength of the gravitational force becomes weaker as you go farther away from the earth. Indeed, he was opaque to the idea that the purpose of a theory is to explain things that are actually observed. It was his mission in life to convince me of the truth of his ideas. I, idiotically, had the idea that I could demonstrate to him the error of his ways. Inevitably I realized that this aim was a total impossibility and so stopped writing to him. This, however, did not discourage him, and letters kept arriving for many months from his indomitable word processor. Lucky for me, his mailing labels all contained a characteristic misspelling of my address, so that it was a simple matter, once I had steeled myself to the requisite ruthlessness, to consign his envelopes to the wastebasket without going to the labor of opening them.

Another correspondent published a book proposing a new (?) theory of atomic and molecular structure. Not for him are the mathematical rigors of quantum theory. Nor is there motion within an atom. His model consists of fixed arrays of positive and negative charges. I attempted to explain to him that there is a theory of electrostatics that proves the instability of any fixed array of electric charges. He scoffed at this notion, even though he had received several letters pointing out the same fallacy. Everybody was wrong except him. Undoubtedly numerous scientists had attempted to make similar models during the l9th century, but nobody could explain anything as simple as the structure of the hydrogen molecule before the advent of quantum theory. Eventually I decided there was no point trying to convince this person of the error of his ways. Let him have his fun. But it’s not going to be at my expense.

Yet another correspondent wanted to replace all of modern science with a single elegant and unified theory. Unfortunately, both my eyes and intellect gave out before I had read more than a few pages. It’s really tough understanding somebody who invents his own vocabulary, erudite though it may seem, and then proceeds to use it without defining any terms. One of the symptoms of scientific illiteracy is a failure to understand how important (and difficult) it is to define terms in a logical, consistent, and operational manner. Therefore I was forced to terminate our correspondence. No more nice guy.

A postscript to a recent column on scientific illiteracy in the media. In the Philadelphia Inquirer of April 20, 1995, the TV page sports a blurb for a “Biography” series on the Arts & Entertainment channel, as follows: “The Wizard of Menlo Park, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), is the subject of tonight’s profile. William Hurt narrates the look at Einstein’s scientific achievements and his politics.” Am I being too fussy when I rail against this illiteracy? What difference does it make that the wizard of Menlo Park was Thomas Edison and not Einstein? After all, Menlo Park is just a few miles north of Princeton, where Einstein hung his hat. So the writer was nearly correct. After all, is not consistency the virtue of small minds? Let’s relax and allow for approximations. Precision is for nerds and wonks. What difference does it make whether pi is 3.14 or 3.15? Come to think of it, I’m not sure that the above newspaper item appeared on the 20th. It might have been the l9th. But who cares?

Sometimes the consequences of scientific illiteracy take on a more sinister aspect, especially when coupled with paranoia and hysteria. Shortly after the Oklahoma City explosion, a tourist of Arab descent named Ibraham Ahmad was arrested in London on the grounds that his luggage contained materials used for bomb making. These materials turned out to be the kind of consumer electronics people from the middle east often buy in the United States: telephones, recorders, etc., plus the requisite cables. Apparently the customs officials couldn’t tell the difference between telephone wires and bomb fuses. Good thing the poor man wasn’t carrying any fertilizer.

Things are not going to get better. In March, 1995, the Alabama state board of education adopted a new set of guidelines for science teaching. (Science, 7 April 1995, p. 33.) These guidelines, which apply to textbooks from kindergarten to 12th grade, emphasize that evolution is to be taught only as a “theory.” This change opens the way for the teaching of creationism. It is part of the slide of the country towards the religious right.

Gambled? Well let me explain. As a skeptic on these panels, one is subjected to vilification by half a dozen other panelists, and by a majority of the audience, packed with believers. Also, there’s the problem of getting a word in edgewise.

In addition, the last time I was engaged for this program I was canceled at the last minute because one of the participants pushing the paranormal said he wouldn’t show up if I appeared on the panel. I swore never to accept an invitation to this program again. But when I heard that Budd Hopkins would be on this particular show, I couldn’t pass it up. The subject of this program was, of course, alien abductions.

When I entered the huge new studio, I had a feeling that something was different here, compared with the many other panel shows I've been on. The large audience had a different look: they had younger faces-and didn’t have the same appearance that I had always noted in paranormal audiences.

Something was different. When the first panelists, five “abductees,” came on and began describing their experiences, the audience began laughing and hooting.

A young couple on the panel related how they had met on a flying saucer while being experimented upon, and later cemented their relationship on earth. The woman claimed to have a young daughter, but didn’t reveal who the father was. She took over as the narrator, and went on and on with her convoluted abduction story.

The first question shouted by an audience member was “Do you take drugs?”

“Negative,” she said.

The next panelist to chime in was a father and son duo, the son being a teenager. The father, sincere and forceful, related how he first saw a bright light when hynotically regressed by Budd Hopkins. After that came the abductions, the sexual experiments, and all the other fantasies so often related by abductees.

Shirley then turned to the youth for corroboration. He couldn’t speak for his father, of course, but he said he too had similar experiences. According to his narration he was evidently regressed by his father when he was 14. A truly sad story.

The fifth panelist was a woman in her mid-sixties, who came up with a new twist: She believed that she herself was an alien. Watching Shirley carefully during the repartee I got the impression that she agreed with this panelist. The woman somehow concluded that two events proved her point. First, she claimed to have been stung by hundreds of bees when she was 2 years old-and remembered it. Second, when she was 14 years old she became pregnant-but was still a virgin!

As is usual, the second portion of the show brought out the debaters: Donna Bassett (who had been a patient of Harvard psychologist John Mack), Budd Hopkins, another man who was billed as a therapist, and myself. I use the term “debaters” rather loosely. These sessions on "The Shirley Show” are really loud, shouted arguments, with many interruptions and much vituperation. It’s every man for himself, with Shirley slowly sinking out of sight in a fog of befuddlement. And, in this case, a delighted audience applauding, booing, and shouting out embarrassing questions to the panelists.

After having the abductees speak for about half an hour, Shirley gave Bassett a chance to contribute with some well-chosen remarks for about one minute, then she finally turned to me. Great, I thought, here’s my big opportunity to contribute the many rational arguments I've been preparing. Shirley asks, “What’s the name of the organization you belong to?” I mention CSICOP. That’s it. No more questions. I've had my ten seconds of fame.

She then turns to the therapist, asking if he believes the stories he’s heard. His answer, “I can’t say I don’t believe them.”

Poor Budd Hopkins couldn’t seem to really get started. Every time he started to say something the audience laughed and interrupted. I began to feel sorry for him, because, being able to yell louder than he can, I was able to cross-examine some of the abductees-but only briefly, because they then outshouted me. In the meantime, Shirley began to look like a frightened rabbit caught in the glare of a car’s headlights.

As the program drew to a close I really aroused the ire of all of the panelists-and Hopkins. When I asked them why they appeared on talk shows like this one, one of them said that is was to help the public. Another said that they were looking for help from the public. If they needed help, I offered, why not see a psychologist or a psychiatrist instead of going on a talk show. With this, Hopkins jumped up and stormed off the platform, pausing only to shout out to his abductees, “Come on, let’s go. They don’t want us here.” But they didn’t budge. After all, the cameras were still there. Unfortunately, this, the best part of the show, was not aired. The producer, Shirley’s husband, axed it.

For myself, the most interesting part took place after the program. Before the show I had been segregated in a separate green room from the other participants-probably for my own protection. But after, when the producers had no further use for me, I had to go to another room to pick up my coat. And all the others were there, too. I was immediately accosted by Budd Hopkins and his talk show buddies. They surrounded me, hurling insults and invective. Hopkins told me what he thought of me, of CSICOP in general, and of Phil Klass in particular. I fended them off as adroitly as I could and slipped out of there, thankfully in one piece.

I later found out, thanks to the investigative diligence of my wife, Zita, who was in the audience, that the bulk of that audience consisted of students from some local colleges. Bless them all. First time I ever received applause for my opinions on a TV talk show on the paranormal. Sorry, Budd!

Journalism training in universities does not particularly encourage a knowledge of science as a tool in the reporter’s working kit, thus reporters tend to be no more aware of the special rigors of science than do lawyers, CPAs, or dogcatchers, for that matter.

You would think that, since the press applies the skeptical razor to claims made by politicians (and, for the most part, does it well), it would make the same effort to examine critically the claims made by, say, psychics. Unfortunately, this often does not happen. As a rule, a newspaper’s best reporters are not assigned to do the traditional Halloween haunted house story; this is most often handed to a junior reporter as a quickie feature assignment. Editors see these kinds of stories as “soft” news and use them as a way to liven up an otherwise drab issue, something “light” for those readers not interested in the latest doings of the city council or the Supreme Court.

Lofty assumptions about the role of the press in a democratic society aside-and reporters and editors love to quote these assumptions-media outlets are businesses, money-making enterprises that must cater to a fairly wide audience of readers/viewers. Scientists read the newspaper and watch the news, but so do believers in astrology or UFOs or ghosts, so provision must be made for them. No medium for the wide dissemination of information will long endure if it continually tells a significant portion of its users that they are stupid. So right in there with the gardening tips and food preparation guides you find a daily horoscope or a wire service report telling of a psychic who located a cat lost in an airplane baggage compartment. A little something for everybody.

This is not necessarily a cynical attitude, merely a practical one, from the point of view of those whose livelihood depends of advertising dollars.

Those dollars depend on a demonstrated readership/viewership, and no media outlet will willingly cut off a significant source of its income. Newspapers and broadcast news outlets do take frequent, sometimes bruising stands that may cost them readers or viewers, but only when they perceive the stakes are high enough. For good or ill, the stakes in reporting scientific matters with consistent accuracy do not meet this test.

That is the fundamental problem with science and pseudoscience reporting in the press. There is no perception of a need for a better public understanding of science sufficient to drive the press to take the necessary steps to provide it. That would require the wholesale re-education of thousands of journalists and editors, most of whom would frankly not see the need, and a fundamental restructuring of the journalism curriculum in hundreds of colleges and universities. But science as a prime story factor seldom crops up in the day-to-day reporting of most journalists, except for those who specialize in science. Such a reworking of the reporter’s toolkit would simply not be cost effective. A science writer might need specialized training to write intelligently about the space program, but it makes little sense to publishers to retrain staffs of feature writers on the chance that one may write about the local palm-reader someday. On the other hand, no editor is going to re-assign a science writer from an article on new discoveries in astronomy to follow up on a UFO sighting in a pasture in the next county.

The mainstream press, to remain viable, has in some way to mirror the wider culture in which it operates. Thus a popular interest in UFOs will eventually be reflected in the media, and pretty much with the same amount of skepticism (or lack of it) demonstrated by the public at large. Frankly, the average reader does not want to be told that his latest enthusiasm is a lot of malarkey, at least not right away, and the media know this.

So we are left with a chicken-and-egg conundrum: do we first change the culture to appreciate science and its methods and let the media follow, or do we re-educate the media and hope the culture will follow? I don’t know the answer to this, but I suspect all our endless harping on the scientific ignorance of the press will do little other than make us feel better for having gotten it off our chests. For all the accusations-right or wrong-of the existence of a “liberal press,” the media are extremely conservative institutionally in being so slow to change the way they do business.

And don’t expect things to get better any time soon, at least in the print media. This year, massive increases in the cost of newsprint have driven papers to cut staff, to reduce the amount of space given over to editorial content (the newshole), and to generally be reluctant to alter the traditional ways in which news is covered. An article that presents the skeptical view of a paranormal claim is more costly in resources than one that simply states the claim and lets it stand. Again, not perceiving a general need to do otherwise, newspapers will most often opt to take the easy, less costly way.

Thus I suspect that we will be complaining about their coverage of science and pseudoscience for a long time to come.

In no way, however, should this be surprising. Over the centuries, man’s impermanence has dominated his thinking and has, inevitably, been uppermost on his everyday mind. Corliss Lamont long ago reminded us in his book The Illusion of Immortality (Philosophical Library, 1950) that more books have been written on death, dying, and what-comes-after than on any other single subject. In his book Lamont noted that more than 5,000 titles are included in the bibliography on the subject of immortality compiled in 1862 by Ezra Abbot and printed as an appendix to W. R. Algor’s 1871 Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (H. J. Widdleton, London). Since that time, Lamont reported in 1950, the writings on immortality have increased rapidly, stimulated by two major wars, several minor ones, and the vogue of spiritualism. Lamont said that he himself had a bibliography on file of more than 2,200 books and articles-most in English and most written after Abbot’s impressive compilation. If one adds to all of the publications that have occurred in the 45 years since 1950 we have an impressive pile of paper indeed. If “the light” titles continue to proliferate at their present rate, however, this file may well be exceeded, since they are moving and growing at, obviously, the speed of light.

Almost every bookstore in the country now has a special death-and-dying display or a separate “light” section prominently featured to placate the eager consumers. “Light” titles currently crowd the nonfiction bestseller lists. One of the best-known and an almost permanent resident on the list is Betty J. Eadie’s Embraced by the Light (Bantam, 1994), which stresses the existence of spiritual, physical, and universal laws, including the supreme law of love. Betty saw the light, met Jesus, and was given a message for mankind. Another current contender in the sales derby is Dannion Brinkley’s Saved by the Light (Villard Books, HarperCollins, 1994). Its subtitle is: A True Story of a Man Who Died Twice and the Profound Revelation He Received. Brinkley, who was struck by lightning, saw a lot of light before he was propelled to a spiritual realm inhabited by 13 angels made of light who filled him with knowledge of the future, including, Brinkley says, the coming of the Gulf War and the break-up of the Soviet Union. Some of the wonderful side benefits of the “light” experience, in case you didn’t know, include ESP and the power of prophecy. In Melvin Morse’s Transformed by the Light (Villard Books, 1992), for example, Morse argues that the NDE stimulates one’s ESP abilities and increases the number of verifiable psychic experiences three-fold.

To fully appreciate the history of the “light” books one has to go back to Raymond Moody’s Life After Life (Mockingbird Books, 1975) and his follow- up work Reflections on Life After Life (Bantam Books, 1977). If Moody was not the originator of the "light” experience as one of the most universal characteristics of the NDE he certainly deserves credit for its popularization. His own “light” book The Light Beyond (Bantam) appeared in 1988 and has been followed more recently by Reunions (Villard Books, 1993), in which Moody shows us how to talk with our dead relatives. Not to be left out, our old friend, Brad Steiger, hops aboard the gravy train with his 1994 offering One With the Light: Authentic NDEs (Signet Books). Another fascinating entry in the race is P. M. H. Atwater’s Beyond the Light: What Isn't Being Said About the ND Experiences (Birch Lane Press Books, Carol Pub. Group, 1994). Atwater herself is an ND survivor as well as an NDE researcher. She has found there are many different types of NDEs: some are good and some are bad, and there are strong similarities between NDEs and hallucinations. Since Atwater had three NDEs in 1977, she is undoubtedly an expert.

As Atwater reveals, not all NDEs lead to heaven. In Angia Fenimore’s Beyond the Darkness: My Near Death Journey to the Edge Of Hell (Bantam Books, 1995) the author tells of going in the other direction. On January 8, 1991 Fenimore committed suicide and expected to move toward the light. Instead, she moved into a realm of darkness and a world made up of terrifying visions and profound psychic disorientation, where all of her worst nightmares were real. She also met Satan and found him unattractive. Miraculously, however, after a nice chat with God and an illuminated Christ, she was restored to life. She is now a child-of-God and after receiving professional help was inspired to write her book. She warns us all, however, that “God can’t force us to choose the light.”

Of all the “light” books currently available perhaps the best one is Kevin D. Randle’s To Touch the Light (Pinnacle Books, Windsor Pub. Corp., 1994). Although this is the same Randle who, along with D. R. Schmitt, turns up alien bodies in crashed UFOs in the Southwest, e.g., The Truth About the UFO Crash At Roswell (Avon Books, 1994), he is yet wise enough about the light business to take all of the supernaturalism with a grain of skepticism. In fact, Randle quotes Paul Kurtz’s insight that a profound personality change is in no way proof of an afterlife. Failure to fear death after an NDE only proves that the person having the experience was, indeed, profoundly affected. Such experiences do, most assuredly, provide a measure of comfort and hope, and there is nothing wrong with this unless one thereby neglects his or her material world and the here-and-now in preparation for another world to come.

While most books of this sort are marked by humility and simplicity, this is not the case for Sidney Saylor Farr’s What Tom Sawyer Learned from Dying (Hampton Roads Pub. Corp., 1993). Farr supposedly learned much more from dying than he ever learned from living and he is now a source of wisdom on everything. Today Farr is an authority on the earth’s past, present, and future; the secrets of medicine and healing; humankind’s ultimate destiny; politics, science, psychology, and more.

If you are, however, seriously interested in the NDEs and the psychological experience of seeing the light, you should, of course, read Dr. Susan Blacknore’s excellent Dying to Live (Prometheus Books, 1993). If you have not yet seen the light, don’t worry. The question is irrelevant for both the living and the dying. Curiously enough, the message from all of those who have encountered the light and returned is the same. All of the beings of light are in firm agreement, and they tell the dying: Stay on Earth and resist the transcendental temptation; focus on life not death; use your human powers of love and compassion in work to make this material world-the world of the here and now and the world we all inhabit-a better world, the best world it can possibly be. This is the one thing on which all of us-the believer and the skeptic-can unanimously agree. This is the true light we all should see.

The Walt Disney company has embarked upon a multi-pronged media blitz designed to promote its new “Alien Encounters and Extraterrestrial Experiences” attraction scheduled to open this summer at the new "Tomorrowland” exhibit at Walt Disney World in Orlando. According to Phil Klass in his Skeptics UFO Newsletter, (March 1995) Disney Chairman, Michael Eisner, visited the exhibit and found it disappointing and ordered it closed down for drastic changes. Disney decided, however, to go ahead with its planned “UFO Summit” to give news media and invited guests the opportunity to meet with leading UFO "experts” such as Budd Hopkins, Kevin Randle, and a number of abductees.

Disney has also devoted the majority of the May issue of its children’s magazine Disney Adventures to UFOs, including such articles as “Aliens in Hollywood,” “I Met an Alien-and Lived!,” “D.A,'s Handbook for UFO Hunting,” “Alien Alert (We Believe),” and “Skeptics United (We Don't).”

To further promote its attraction, Disney produced and broadcast in March a syndicated one-hour feature titled “Alien Encounters.” The Wall Street Journal (3/6/95) reported, “On hand to introduce the show is Michael Eisner, chairman of Disney, bringing word that at a top-secret military location in the United States, the government is hiding the remains of a mysterious spacecraft and that there is ‘more and more scientific evidence of alien encounters.'” The show goes on to describe government conspiracies, alien abductions, the taking of genetic material, and impending invasion.

Does this sound like somewhere you'd like to take your kids?

The Disney program did not escape the attention of Seth Shostak, a scientist with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Dr. Shostak sent the following letter to Disney and a copy of it to CSICOP.

20 April, 1995

Dear Mr. Kurtz:

The Disney corporation, in an effort to flog their newest Tomorrowland attraction “Alien Encounters,” recently produced and broadcast a particularly disturbing television show aimed at kids that promoted the view that extraterrestrials had landed and were probably up to no good. Unlike most TV fare having similar themes, this was presented as a “straight” documentary. Many viewers, I’m sure, took this to be an investigative piece, and there has been a fair amount of negative reaction on the Internet from folks in education and research.

People here at the Institute were sufficiently disappointed to prompt the enclosed letter. If you haven't seen the television special, I could arrange to make a VHS copy for you.

19 April, 1995

Mr. Michael D. Eisner, Chairman
Disney Co.
500 S. Buena Vista Street

Burbank, CA 91521

Dear Mr. Eisner:

It was with feelings of disappointment and consternation that I viewed the recent Disney television program “Alien Encounters,” produced by Andy Thomas. This program includes a long, documentary-style report on the alleged indisputable reality of UFOs, the cover-up of their existence by the government, and the prediction that we will soon be confronting aliens face to face. For good measure, the additional claim is made that microbes on Earth are the aliens’ “point men,” an infestation that precedes invasion. None of this was qualified in any way. It was presented as fact.

Unfortunately, it is all disingenuous nonsense. Despite nearly a half- century of modern UFO reports, not a single convincing bit of physical evidence attests to their existence. The many hundreds of orbiting satellites that continuously photograph the Earth’s surface and atmosphere have never seen a UFO.

Whether or not Mr. Thomas personally believes in alien visitors, this show is an unfortunate exploitation of the natural credulity of young people. I am sure you are aware of the many test results showing that America’s youth are dangerously unskilled in science. Newspapers regularly print editorials stressing the crying need for students who can think critically. In light of these national concerns, it is disheartening to find that the Disney organization apparently wishes to perpetuate the problem, rather than contribute to the solution.

I would not offer similar objections to Disneyland’s “Haunted House,” although one might argue that ghosts fall into the same category as UFOs. After all, despite popular belief in ghosts, there is no scientific evidence for their existence either. However, the subjects differ in two regards. First, I know of no television special posing as serious documentary that has told young people that ghosts really do exist (but are being kept from us by a paranoid government). Second, the “Haunted House” is not in Tomorrowland.

This latter point is important. I first went to Disneyland in 1959, and still vividly remember the attractions that presaged future scientific and engineering developments. My later studies in physics and astronomy were inspired by the “Trip to the Moon.” The Monsanto ride through “inner space” is still a subject of praise among science educators. But “Alien Encounters"-at least to judge by the television special-is devoid of science. It seems fitter fare for Fantasyland.

This need not have been the case. Our institute, as well as organizations such as the Planetary Society, the University of California, and Ohio State University, are engaged in a serious effort using radio telescopes to find evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations. Numerous researchers, many of them within NASA, are busy trying to uncover planets around other stars. The question of whether life once existed on Mars is being actively investigated.

Not all of these research projects will bear fruit immediately. But some will. At that point “Alien Encounters” will be in striking discordance with scientific evidence. This is reminiscent of Chester Gould’s elaborate descriptions of Moon Maid and other characters in his comic strip, “Dick Tracy.” Although he never pretended to portray reality, Mr. Gould’s lunar characters were suddenly and completely upstaged when Neil Armstrong stepped onto a sterile moon in 1969.

Why Disney has chosen to ignore the real story of life in space is puzzling. In 1992, Dr. John Billingham, who then headed up the NASA project to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, was approached by Hank Robitaille about the possibility of incorporating some ideas from the NASA effort into an exhibit at Epcot Center. Nothing seems to have come of this contact. Has a decision been made to offer the sizzle instead of the steak?

I had hoped that a company that has been so closely identified with responsible-even educational-products such as the award-winning Living Desert, might wish to offer kids something better. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is accessible science, not the arcane research of theoretical physics or abstruse mathematics. The ideas and the consequences can be appreciated by school children and the lay public. Our institute has developed very successful curriculum materials that capitalize on children’s natural curiosity about E.T. to introduce them to basic concepts in astronomy, biology, and geology. It is no great surprise to find that kids are interested in science when it is presented as exciting discovery.

In closing, let me emphasize that my concern is not with the imaginative aspects of “Alien Encounters.” After all, even Albert Einstein noted that in research, imagination is more important than knowledge. But imagination alone should not be sold as science, especially when the science is every bit as interesting as the fantasy. Slimy critters intent on human abduction are no more than ciphers for the real civilizations that might be scattered among the half-trillion stars of our galaxy. You should at least temper your skewed presentation of contact with cosmic inhabitants by mentioning the scientific attempts to answer one of the most enduring questions ever posed by human-kind: Are we alone in the universe? Kids love fantasy, but in matters of discovery nothing rivals the power of fact.

Dr. Seth Shostak
SETI Institute

Effects technology has made countless strides since Star Wars launched the revolution in 1977. Still, one of the major reasons fanciful creatures and objects look better in today’s productions is that effects artists have largely solved the problem of injecting suitable blur into their work. In this column, we'll see how.

For Star Wars, effects supervisor John Dykstra developed the first practical motion-control camera system for dynamic photography of spaceship models. Highly repeatable stepper motors drove a camera boom that swept over almost-stationary models. Multiple passes of the same shot could be made in perfect alignment: one to capture the model itself, one for its on-board lighting, one to obtain a perfect silhouette for later use in “matting” the model into a background image, and so on. With early motion- control systems, a two-second model ship fly-by might take hours to shoot. Camera speed was slowed down proportionately; for each frame, the shutter might open for several minutes while the camera crept past the model. During each frame the camera moved approximately as far relative to the model as it would have in a “real” shot. Near-perfect blur was automatic. The result was a more realistic impression of fast and violent motion than had ever been achieved before on the screen. In Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), effects designer Douglas Trumbull used similar technology to produce realistically-blurred multipass images of glowing UFOs.

By the time Spielberg made his ill-advised John Belushi comedy 1941 (1979), technicians at Industrial Light and Magic (the Marin County, California, effects factory that grew out of Star Wars) were experimenting with a technique called “go-motion.” As the name implies, go-motion was a direct attempt to address the blur problems inherent in stop-motion photography of miniatures. Additional computer-controlled stepper motors were attached not to the motion control camera boom, but to the miniatures themselves. Instead of being posed by animators between frames and photographed at rest, go-motion miniatures would move, repeatably, at microscopic speed. In 1941 go-motion contributed to a few long shots of a Japanese submarine on the surface. Spielberg wanted to do camera moves over the sub and matte it into background imagery of the Pacific Ocean even though crewmen were visible on the sub’s deck. This would have created an insuperable compositing challenge if go-motion had not made the little crewmen on the model sub move exactly the same way in pass after pass.

Go-motion came into its own in Spielberg’s E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). Remember that film’s signature image: E.T. and his young human friend crossing before the moon on a flying bicycle? Go-motion motors repeatably rotated the bike’s spoked wheels, making possible complex composite shots where the smooth, realistic wheel movements “sold” the effect.

When ILM tackled Return of the Jedi (1983), the finale of the original Star Wars trilogy, go-motion technology wasn’t ready for the challenges it posed. (Jedi featured scores of composite shots with bright backgrounds: forests, deserts, smoky rooms with lots of backlight-far harder to composite than shots with dark outer-space or night-sky backgrounds.) To produce the Rancor, a fifteen-foot lizardlike biped that menaced Luke Skywalker in Jabba the Hutt’s lair, effects supervisor Dennis Muren rejected both stop-motion and go-motion. Instead, animators Phil Tippett and Tom St. Amand used puppetry and concealed rods and wires to manipulate the miniature Rancor, which was shot “live”-that is, actually moving-with slow-motion photography.

James Cameron’s The Terminator (1984) was the last major film to offer an old-fashioned, jerky stop-motion character. The Terminator robot (supposedly Arnold Schwarzenegger’s endoskeleton) was realized with life- sized puppets wherever possible. For certain long shots, there was no way to avoid stop-motion (and no money for go-motion). Animator Peter Kleinow used a Vaseline-smeared glass plate between the lens and the model to suggest blur, but it didn’t work.

Back on the high-tech front, The Golden Child (1986) gave ILM a chance to try out a new real-time motion control recorder. For a sequence of Eddie Murphy battling a man-sized demon, director Michael Ritchie shot live-action footage of Murphy fighting a non-existent opponent. The camera moved freely; in some shots it was hand-held. Effects technicians used field recordings of all that movement to apply precisely matching moves to their go-motion footage of a miniature demon. The shots were amazingly good, especially considering that Ritchie jerked his live camera more enthusiastically than the ILM gang originally had in mind.

Robocop (1987) showed that a gifted animator could get good results even with plain old stop-motion. Shots of the ED-209 “enforcement droid” were done stop-motion in front of rear-projected backgrounds-just the way Ray Harryhausen did films like Jason and the Argonauts (1963), whose failings I discussed in my previous column. Tippett, by then Hollywood’s master stop-motion artist, added convincing blur in a refreshingly low-tech way. While exposing each frame, “we introduced blurs basically just by wiggling the puppets,” he told Cinefex. It was the last sustained used of stop- motion in a major Hollywood picture, and it worked remarkably well.

When Spielberg started planning Jurassic Park (1993), effects artists planned to execute long shots of the T-rex, velociraptor, and other dinosaurs using go-motion miniatures. Advances in computer graphic (CG) animation persuaded the makers to abandon go-motion in midstream. A huge ILM crew under supervisor Dennis Muren realized the full-body dinosaurs as perfectly- realized three-dimensional computer constructs. (Continuing the vocabulary of “stop-motion” and “go-motion,” they called the new method “full- motion.”)

Mathematically-exact blurs were incorporated right into the images as the computers rendered them; as every living human knows, the results were perfect. Phil Tippett had been hired to direct the go-motion work; instead he shared with the CG artists his deep understanding of how to make artificial creatures “perform,” and helped develop a number of “waldoes” (wearable hand or body rigs that let animators feed motions to their computers in a more lifelike way than by typing start points and end points into a computer console).

Another ILM crew under supervisor Mark Dipp used Jurassic Park technology to create more fanciful CG dinosaurs for The Flintstones (1994). One “must-have” scene replicated the familiar cartoon gag in which Dino, Fred Flintstone’s purple pet dinosaur, drags Barney (Rick Moranis) across Fred’s living room at the end of his leash. The background shot was a blurry pan shot that followed Barney across the soundstage living-room set. For the computer, applying proper blur to Dino’s movement plus matching the blurs introduced by the background camera’s movement was a piece of cake; stills from this sequence are amazing in the realism and correctness of the blur they displayed.

Where do we go next? High-end CG imagery is migrating onto simpler and less costly computers. Instead of the high-end Silicon Graphics workstations used in Jurassic Park and The Flintstones, several shots of the Enterprise-D starship in Star Trek: Generations (1995) were created entirely as 3-D CG constructs. They were rendered, blur and all, on ordinary Apple Power Macintoshes using off-the-shelf software by ElectricImage, Inc. Rendering at motion-picture resolution took an average of just six minutes per frame.

Next time you go to the movies, don’t expect jerky, failed stop-motion shots to tell you how the shots were done. Hollywood’s effects artisans have long understood that convincing motion requires not only changes of position in successive frames, but appropriate blur as well. And the problems of creating it have been conclusively solved. Heck, by the time this column sees print you may be able to do it on your own desktop.

Helen Ackley forgot to address the last question when, in 1990, she attempted to sell her 18-room mansion in Nyack, and she had to return the $32,500 deposit she received on her $650,000 asking price because of it. It seems that Jeffrey and Patrice Stambovsky fell in love with the stately old home (which bears a resemblance to the abode on Thirteen Thirteen Mockingbird Lane where the Munsters once resided), and were all set to move in, when a local architect made a passing remark that “Oh, you’re buying the haunted house.” Haunted? The Stambovskys did some research, and found out that Mrs. Ackley had been claiming for years that the home was the habitat for an army of poltergeists, one of whom was “a cheerful, apple-cheeked man” who looked like Santa Claus. A 1977 article in Reader’s Digest-one of the world’s most read publications-contained that quote, while a 1989 article about real estate in suburban Nyack described the mansion as "riverfront Victorian - with ghost.” A 1982 article in the local Nyack paper quoted Ackley as describing the ghosts as “dressed in Revolutionary period clothing, perhaps frozen in a time warp, waiting for someone or some reason to move on.”

It was her buyers, though, who decided to move on. Mr. Stambovsky, a 38-year old bond trader, was a good skeptic, but his wife, who was pregnant at the time, reacted much like she'd, well, seen a ghost. She refused to move into the home. Stambovsky promptly demanded that the deal be terminated, and asked for his deposit back. “We were the victims of ectoplasmic fraud,” he told the press. He and his wife were irate that Ackley never said boo to them about the ghosts residing within. They had expected to move into premises that were vacant.

Ackley, who had moved to Orlando, Florida, refused to allow them to renege on the deal, standing pat on the tried-and-true seller defense: caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. In this case, beware of spooks.

While their friends warned them they didn’t have a ghost of chance to get out of the deal, the Stambovskys sued. A lower court ruled against them, saying that it was the buyers’ responsibility to search for problems in the house. But the plucky couple appealed, and in a 3-2 decision of July 18, 1991 the Appellate Division of State Supreme

Court ruled in their favor. Writing for the majority, Justice Israel Rubin stated that he was “moved by the spirit of equity” to allow the couple to break the contract. Since Ackley “had deliberately fostered the belief that her home was possessed by ghosts,” she should have mentioned this to the Stambovskys. Because they were from out of town, they could not be expected “to have any familiarity with the folklore of the Village of Nyack. Not being a ‘local,’ plaintiff could not readily learn that the home he had contracted to purchase is haunted. Whether the source of the spectral apparitions seen by defendant seller are parapsychic or psychogenic, having reported their presence in both a national publication (Reader’s Digest) and the local press, defendant is estopped to deny their existence, and, as a matter of law, the house is haunted.”

While skeptics should be critical of the assertion that “as a matter of law” the house is haunted, there is no doubt that the Stambovskys got a raw deal. Unbeknownst to them, the place had been included in a five-home “haunted house” walking tour of Nyack, and, the ruling continued, “the impact of the reputation thus created goes to the very essence of the bargain between the parties, greatly impairing both the value of the property and its potential for resale.”

Justice Rubin couldn’t resist adding that, “a very practical problem arises with respect to the discovery of a paranormal phenomenon: ‘Who you gonna call?’ as a title song to the movie Ghostbusters asks. Applying the strict rule of caveat emptor to a contract involving a house possessed by poltergeists conjures up visions of a psychic or medium routinely accompanying the structural engineers and Terminix man on an inspection of every home subject to a contract of sale. In the interest of avoiding such untenable consequences, the notion that a haunting is a condition which can and should be ascertained upon reasonable inspection of the premises is a hobgoblin which should be exorcised from the body of legal precedent and laid quietly to rest.”

This is without a doubt one of the funniest court rulings to come down the pike in years, although the implications might not be so laughable if others decide to rely upon legal precedent to break their contracts. I think I might try to get back the damage deposit from my last apartment by claiming that the holes in the walls weren't a result of the drunken parties I’d thrown, but rather came from crockery-tossing poltergeists my landlord never warned me about. Likewise, when your neighbors complain about loud noises, tell them that the ghosts of Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin have infested your abode, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

As for Mrs. Ackley, she was finally able to resell the mansion for slightly less than the $650,000 asking price. Stambovsky took a rather pragmatic attitude toward the event. “My feeling is that Mrs. Ackley is a very neat old lady who likes to spin tales,” he said. “But if my wife is influenced enough by that stuff to feel uncomfortable, that’s a good enough reason not to sink our life savings into the place.” Now that’s the spirit.

(Thanks to Dave Henehan for sending me the hilarious Appellate Court Decision.)