Living in Los Angeles, I've grown accustomed to seeing neon-signed psychic storefronts, sidewalk fortunetellers, aura readers, channelers, spiritualists, and New Age advocates of all kinds. The “fringe” is well represented here.

But none of this — not even the psychic cat that occasionally shows up on Venice Beach — could have prepared me for the bizarre parade of paranormal oddities appearing regularly on the late-night radio program “The Art Bell Show.” Carried live five days a week on AM stations all over the country, “The Art Bell Show,” officially known as “Coast to Coast AM,” is America’s most-syndicated late-night talk radio program. (The show “Dreamland” airs on Sundays.)

The program began roughly fourteen years ago; that’s when Art Bell says he first became interested in the paranormal. As it grew in popularity, “Coast to Coast” gradually picked up affiliates and sponsors and today leads the late-night pack in ratings with an estimated nightly audience of eight to ten million. In addition to hosting the program, Bell publishes the After Dark Newsletter, based on his show’s topics, helps maintain a large Internet site (artbell.com) filled with images and links to pro-paranormal sites, and has published two books, The Art of Talk and, most recently, The Quickening, both available only through his 800 number. (See Robert Baker’s column, ”Art Bell’s Quickening Is Sickening,” S.B. December 1997.)

If you ever down enough coffee to catch the show (it airs live on the West Coast from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.), you are likely to hear Bell and his guests discussing topics commonly found in the supermarket tabloids: ancient structures found on the moon and on Mars; extraterrestrials living on Earth — and how to spot them; the latest crop-circle sightings; the use of remote viewing to see into the far-off future and the distant past. (One “remote-viewer” settled a long-standing historical debate by confirming to Bell that Jesus did indeed look as modern artists have portrayed him.) You are also certain to endure one of the many lengthy on-air product endorsements, ranging from water filters to tape recorders, that Bell seamlessly (and rather sneakily) weaves into his monologues. The topic may occasionally switch to politics or current events, but it inevitably returns to the wild and fantastic tales of the supernatural — his five unscreened phone lines for incoming calls make sure of that.

Bell says that he’s been “in search of wisdom” throughout his life and has investigated many religions, but he claims he makes no judgments about whether the numerous paranormal topics he discusses are real or not. (He does, however, confess a personal interest in life-after-death and UFOs. And, yes, he has seen one.) Bell says he doesn't like to “tear apart his guests” with tough questions and frequently expresses his desire to “let listeners make up their own minds.” Where, then, are the tools to enable listeners to do this? Why is the show and his regularly advertised Web site so completely devoid of any critical, skeptical material?

Bell believes there is already an “automatic skepticism” about his program’s paranormal subject matter and that plenty of skeptical information is available (though he didn’t mention where). Furthermore, as Bell points out, his program is simply about the paranormal, and he feels it’s not productive for him or anyone else to criticize what are frequently subjective stories. Perhaps, but many of the phenomena discussed on his show do involve questions of a scientific nature — phenomena that have been researched and investigated and can be considered without belittling the subjective experience. Nevertheless, although Bell insists he doesn't want his listeners to blindly accept the paranormal claims of his guests, he says, in apparent contradiction, that he is comfortable letting everyone have a chance to tell his or her story, unchallenged.

Not to be eclipsed by the perpetual weirdness of his callers and guests, Bell periodically refers to his own “millennium madness” theory named, ominously enough, ”The Quickening.” Bell says that for about the last decade or so he has been noticing changes of ever-increasing severity in our culture and environment; that “in many areas of our lives the gravity of events seems to be intensifying” and may be leading to some great “change” — and this by the end of the century. Bell cites the increase in violent crime and broken families, frequent climactic catastrophes of all kinds, the growing national debt, dishonest politicians, general lack of respect for others — about any and every “bad” thing you can imagine — as evidence of this coming global transformation. The multitude of factors contributing to ”The Quickening” are conveniently vague, and, like any good apocalyptic forecast, can easily be modified and re-explained to encompass facts that may, at first, appear contradictory. For instance, when I pointed out that last year’s violent crime rate was the lowest since 1989 (this according to FBI statistics released in October of last year), Bell’s response was: “Yes, but the increase through 1989 was horrendous.”

Does Bell fear that he may be contributing to the “dumbing down” of America by refusing to be critical of his paranormal topics? Hardly. Although he acknowledges that there is indeed a “dumbing down,” Bell scoffs at suggestions that he bears any responsibility. “If America is getting dumber it’s not because of my program. . . . There are a million shows like mine. Look at (the television show) ‘Strange Universe’ — they don’t feel an obligation to present contradictory materials.” For Bell, the root of the quandary is our educational system, but he’s emphatic that it is not his role to instruct listeners on subject matter he regards as “absolute entertainment” — even though comments from listeners that tout “Coast to Coast” as an informative and important source of news are proudly displayed on his Web site.

Not surprisingly, the real reason for the show’s divergent postures — simultaneously existing solely as entertainment and presenting supposedly reliable, scientific information — has little to do with any “search for wisdom.” The “Art Bell Show,” and others like it, exist because of a formula, one that their producers rarely concede and one that invariably precludes any meaningful, balanced discussion of the paranormal. “These programs,” Bell admits, “are on the air for a very specific reason: they're businesses. They wouldn’t be in business if people weren't watching. People watching equals ratings, ratings equals money.” He discusses the paranormal because, as he says, “it’s what people want.” And if it contributes to a population increasingly unable to critically evaluate his show’s topics? “It’s not my responsibility” is his refrain. Bell doesn't seem to care.

Jenny Cockell was born in 1953 in rural England. Now a wife and mother, she lives and works as a registered chiropodist (i.e., podiatrist) in Northhamptonshire. Her unusual story has been told on such television programs as “Unsolved Mysteries” and in her own book, Across Time and Death: A Mother’s Search for Her Past Life Children (Cockell 1993).

Therein, as a self-described “withdrawn and nervous child,” she relates how she frequently woke sobbing with her “memories of Mary’s death” and her expressed “fear for the children I was leaving behind” (p. 1). In addition to her childhood dreams, she would frequently echo Mary’s domestic work during her play: making “bread” by mixing grass seeds in water, sweeping with a broom, and acting out other chores (p. 14). “I was also constantly tidying and clearing out my room and toys,” she writes, “something that I enjoyed almost more than playing with them” (p. 5). At this time, she did not know Mary’s last name and was unaware of countless other details about her origins and life. Somewhat artistically inclined, Jenny frequently sketched maps of Mary’s Irish village, although there were admitted variations in the supposed landmarks (p. 5).

Among the reasons for Jenny’s withdrawal was the unhappy atmosphere of her home, there being, as she described it, “an impossible tension” between her parents (p. 14). “I usually played alone,” she writes, “and the only company I regularly enjoyed was that of my two imaginary male friends” (p. 15). Although she had a high IQ (which would later earn her membership in Mensa, the “genius” society), she reports that she was thought a slow learner due to her “dreamlike state of mind” that carried even into the classroom (p. 15).

Although she describes her supposed memories as “dreams” and refers to her “private trance world” in which she was “oblivious to external activity,” the memories were vivid and seemingly real. As is often the case, this was especially so under hypnosis. In 1988 — by then married and the mother of two young children — Cockell was hypnotized for the first time. Under hypnosis, she seemingly became Mary. “I cried as she cried,” she states; “I knew her pain as my own” (p. 33). Tears rolled uncontrollably down her cheeks. Although under hypnosis she seemed to exist partly in the past and partly the present, she says: “Yet I was Mary, and the past had become very real. I could smell the grass on the slopes outside a large farmhouse, and I breathed in the fresh spring air” (p. 36). Again, “As the questions were being asked and answered in this strange, mechanical way, I seemed to be free to wander through the places I saw — tangible, vivid places. I felt the wind in my hair; I could touch and smell the air as though I were there” (p. 37).

Under hypnosis she also explored what she believed were her “psychic abilities.” In addition to her past-life memories, she was already convinced she had the power of psychometry (object reading) and dream premonitions (pp. 13, 28). The hypnotic sessions also took her on an out-of-body experience as part of a dubious test of clairvoyance. (Also, in an earlier session, as “Mary,” she had died, then went out of body to see the surroundings of her “now vacant body” [pp. 40, 55].)

Not surprisingly the hypnotic sessions also tapped other past-life experiences. “By chance I found myself,” she reports, “In one of the memories that had been with me since childhood. . . . ” One of several such memories, this involved a little French girl from the eighteenth century (pp. 40-41).

Ultimately, however, the hypnosis helped little in her quest to identify Mary or Mary’s family, leaving her “almost where I was before the hypnosis started” (p. 69). She bemoaned “the lack of concrete details such as that forever elusive surname” (p. 70).

She turned then to actual research, publishing an ad in a Mensa magazine, sending out numerous form letters, acquiring maps, and so on. Eventually she turned up a village (Malahide), a road (Swords Road), and finally a woman named Mary Sutton who roughly fit the target. The story ends with Mrs. Cockell making contact with some of Mary’s surviving children. Although they are supposedly her own offspring, they are — ironically and somewhat bizarrely — old enough to be her parents (pp. 117-153). Nevertheless, she is satisfied with her “reunion” and already is looking into her “next life” — as a Nepalese girl in the twenty-first century (p. 153).

Unfortunately, Cockell’s intriguing and no doubt sincere saga does not withstand critical analysis. First, consider the overwhelming lack of factual information provided by the dreams and hypnosis. Unknown were Mary’s surname, either maiden or married, or the names of her husband or children. Similarly, the village’s name and even its location were a mystery. Cockell was ignorant of dates as well, including Mary’s birth date or even the year of her birth. And so on and on.

She employs circular reasoning. She sent out queries that sought a village with certain sketchy requirements and, when such a village was — not surprisingly — discovered, she adopted it as the one she was looking for. Obviously if it did not fit she would have looked further. Such an approach amounts to drawing a target around an arrow once it has struck something.

In addition, the technique of retrofitting (after-the-fact matching) is employed. For example, Mrs. Cockell made a sketch of a church after one of her hypnosis sessions that is matched with a photo of an actual church, St. Andrew’s, in the village of Malahide. But the sketch is simplistic, showing only a gable end and revealing no awareness of the greater overall structure. In addition, it entirely omits the central feature of the church’s gable end — a massive gothic window — and there are many other significant omissions and mismatchings. Moreover, St. Andrew’s is not the one Mary had actually attended, which was St. Sylvester’s Catholic Church, but instead merely one she would have walked by, one belonging to the Church of Ireland.

Rationalizations for errors and omissions abound throughout Cockell’s book. “A lot of the remembering was in isolated fragments, and sometimes I would have difficulty making sense of them,” she says (p. 6). “I still find it hard to see Mary herself. It was easier to see the surroundings, which is not too surprising as I see through her and the life remembered as her. I feel her personality mostly . . .” (p. 9). Mary’s husband was “hard to remember” but then “he seemed to be home less and less” (p. 20). That she lacked even a surname for Mary “was no surprise to me, since I have always been bad at names” (p. 27). Under hypnosis she gave the husband’s name, wrongly, as Bryan; it was John. At one time she thought the family name was O'Neil, rather than Sutton (pp. 37, 38). When the name of the road Mary lived on is found to be Swords, not Salmons, Road, Cockell notes that both begin with S and that the accuracy was “about as close as I usually get when trying to remember names” (p. 66). A village resident “could not quite place the roads” on the map Cockell had drawn, but later found it “to be more accurate than he had expected, given that it had been drawn from dreams” (pp. 64-65). Again, when viewing the Catholic church “struck no chords of memory,” she “wondered, however, whether the frontage had changed in the intervening fifty years or so: the lawns might once have been a graveyard, and the driveway certainly looked new.” She concluded that “so little of what I remembered had stayed intact” (p. 84).

But if Jenny Cockell’s story is untrue, where did it come from? The best evidence suggests that such past-life memories are not memories at all. The alleged remembrances made under hypnosis are simply the products of an invitation to fantasize. According to one authority:

For a long while it was believed that hypnosis provided the person hypnotized with abnormal or unusual abilities of recall. The ease with which hypnotized subjects would retrieve forgotten memories and relive early childhood experiences was astonishing. . . .

However, when the veridicality of such memories was examined, it was found that many of the memories were not only false, but they were even outright fabrications. Confabulations, i.e. making up stories to fill in memory gaps, seemed to be the norm rather than the exception. It seems, literally, that using “hypnosis” to revive or awaken a person’s past history somehow or other not only stimulates the person’s desire to recall and his memory processes, but it also opens the flood gates of his or her imagination. (Baker 1992, p. 152)

As to the genesis of “Mary,” I think we must look to Jenny’s unhappy childhood and her consequent tendency to fantasize. An analysis of her autobiographical statements shows her to have many of the traits of a fantasy-prone personality. (See Wilson and Barber 1983) For example, (1) she is an excellent hypnotic subject (pp. 35, 39); (2) as a child she spent much time fantasizing (p. 16); and (3) had imaginary playmates (p. 15), as well as (4) a fantasy identity (i.e., “Mary”). In addition, (5) her imagined sensations are quite vivid and real to her (pp. 36-37); (6) she not only recalls but relives past experiences (pp. 36-37); (7) she also has had out-of-body experiences (pp. 40, 54-55); and (8) believes she has a variety of psychic abilities (pp. 13, 28, 55). Taken together, these traits are strong evidence of fantasy proneness.

As she herself acknowledges, she was forever dreaming: “Sometimes it was about the future, sometimes about the past, but hardly ever about the present.” Indeed, she says, “My escape into the past grew as I grew, and it was like a little death in my own life, a death of part of me that replaced part of my life” (p. 16). Such is the admission of a classic fantasizer, whose need to retreat from an unpleasant reality led her to manufacture a reality — one that took on, in a manner of speaking, a life of its own.

References

• Baker, Robert A. 1992. Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Cockell, Jenny. 1993. Across Time and Death: A Mother’s Search for Her Past Life Children. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Wilson, Sheryl C., and Theodore X. Barber. 1983. “The fantasy-prone personality” in Imagery, Current Theory, Research and Application, ed. Anees A. Sheikh, New York: Wiley, pp. 340-390.

The event had been poorly advertised, so only about eighty truly obsessed fans could be found eagerly awaiting his appearance. Finally, there he was: the vile, loathsome, conniving, infamous Cigarette-Smoking Man. He politely thanked everyone for coming and humbly confessed that he was a little nervous about coming to Buffalo, mentioning the “X-Files” episode in which Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM) vowed that Buffalo would never win the Super Bowl as long as he was alive. He also thanked everyone for coming on the last night of the world series, but said we needn't watch anyway: he had arranged it so that Cleveland would win. (Maybe Buffalo still has a chance after all!)

Opening a typed manuscript with an alien head on the cover, he began his lecture by pointing out a common misconception about the show. “You see,” he paused for effect, “I think that CSM is really the hero, and Mulder and Scully are the bad guys.” He explained that if Mulder got his way and the truth was revealed, everyone would panic and terrible things would result. But if CSM got his way, everything would stay the same. So why is everyone rooting for Mulder? He went on, comparing and contrasting the different characters, each time making it seem like CSM was doing the honorable thing. Finally, he asked us, if we were to chose a leader, who would we want: a young, inexperienced guy who acts on the spur of the moment and pulls out his gun, waving it around at the first sign of danger, or an older gentleman who has a lot of experience, is very level-headed, and doesn't even carry a gun? He figured the choice was clear.

After his prepared speech, he opened up the floor for questions. Not surprisingly, one of the first questions asked was whether he was a “believer.” Instead of answering right away, he turned the question on us. “How many of you believe aliens are among us?” he asked. About half of the audience raised their hands. Then he smiled and surprised a good deal of the audience by confessing that he was, indeed, a skeptic. That’s right, Mr. Conspiracy himself is, in real life, a skeptic. To the disappointment of a few audience members, he made it very clear that he didn’t believe aliens are among us. Then he asked if anyone knew who John Mack was, and smiled a sly grin.

One of the audience members asked if Davis knew that Chris Carter was in Buffalo a while back “for some skeptical thing” (the June 1996 First World Skeptics Congress). Not only did Davis know, he also informed the audience about CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer, which he said he reads whenever he can. He said many people think that, because he’s in the show he’s a believer, but for him it’s just a job.

There were a few questions about the upcoming movie, but CSM wasn’t revealing anything; finding out details about the movie would be harder than breaking into the defense department. The one thing Davis could confirm was that he would appear in the film; something he never expected at the beginning of the show when he got the part of CSM, a character with no lines who stood mysteriously in the background. At that point, not even Chris Carter knew how important his role would become.

A night of preaching skepticism didn’t seem to deter his fans though, who were lined up afterwards for autographs and pictures. One imaginative fan even brought a cigarette lighter for him to sign. One thing is for certain about “X-Files” fans: they're “out there.”

Today’s college students, in the United States and elsewhere, hear this line of reasoning from many of their social science and (with less solidarity) humanities professors. The students’ natural science professors, with their heads buried as usual in their research, hardly take notice. When scientists happen to hear assertions that science is just another tall tale, they generally flippantly dismiss the notion as nonsense. As usual, this is an ineffective argument that convinces no one.

But the assertion that Western science is unexceptional cannot be summarily dismissed. This claim begins with a plausible, though ultimately misleading, notion that we humans lack access to any mechanism by which we can learn the truth about an objective reality that exists independent of human thought processes. Certainly, science relies on thought processes and does not always follow a clear, logical path to the conclusions it makes about reality. True, it never proves the correctness of these conclusions. Science knows nothing for certain about the world and must always couch its results in terms of probabilities or likelihoods. Often the choice between competitive scientific theories is based on taste, fashion, or subjective notions of simplicity or aesthetic appeal.

Agreed. Scientists can never be certain of the “truth” of their theories. Nevertheless, the predictions of scientific theories are very often sufficiently close to certainty that we all bet our lives on them, such as when we are in an airliner or on an operating table. When predictions are that reliable, we can rationally conclude, if not prove, that the concepts on which they are based must have some universal validity. That is, they must somehow be connected to the way things really are.

For example, we cannot predict with complete certainty what will happen if we jump off a tall building. It is always possible that we might land in a crate of feathers that, by luck, just happens to protrude from a window on the floor below. However, a prediction based on the law of gravity can be made, with rather high likelihood, that we will pass that floor and hit the ground with an unhealthy splat. Performing the experiment many times, with different subjects of course, this is usually what happens. We can safely conclude: Something associated with the concept of gravity is surely “real.”

Reality acts to constrain our observations about the world, preventing at least some of those observations from being completely random, arbitrary, or what we would simply like them to be. Although much of what we do in fact observe is random—far more than most people realize—not everything is. And while we humans can exert a certain amount of control over reality, that reality is not merely the creation of our thought processes. In a dream about jumping off a building, we might float to the ground unharmed. In thinking about jumping off the building, we can imagine whatever we want about the outcome. Superman can fly by and rescue us, in our fantasies. An airplane with a mattress on its wings can appear just in time. But, in reality, we fall to the ground no matter how we might wish otherwise.

Without getting too pedantic about defining reality, let me just say that our own observations in everyday life make it quite clear that we and the objects around us are subject to externally imposed constraints that neither we nor those objects can completely control. If I could control reality with my thoughts, I would look like I did when I was twenty and still be as smart as I am now. I don’t. In science, we use our observations about what happens when we are not dreaming or fantasizing to make reasonable inferences about the nature of what supplies the impetus for the constraints we record with our measuring apparatus.

Modern physics strongly suggests a surprisingly uncomplicated, non mysterious “ultimate reality” that may not be what we wish it to be, but is supported by all known data. Furthermore, this reality is very much like what was inferred by some remarkable thinkers in the ancient world: a universe composed of elementary objects that move around in an otherwise empty void. I call this atomic reality.

This proposal flies in the face of current fashion. That fashion repudiates all attempts, within science and without, to describe a universal, objective reality. I repudiate that fashion. Where the validity of certain ancient and modern concepts of truth and reality are denied, I affirm them. Where arguments are made that Western science tells us nothing of deep significance, I assert that it remains our foremost tool for the discovery of fundamental truth.