A new paranatural paradigm seems to be emerging in postmodern culture. There is great public fascination with a paranatural/paranormal conception of the universe, fed in large part by the mass media and encouraged by a number of "fringe sciences,” which claim to support this outlook. The cultural backdrop for this is the development of postmodernism in the academy -- the denial that science provides us with objective truth, the belief that it is only one mythic narrative among others, and that a New Age paradigm is emerging that displaces or drastically modifies scientific naturalism.

What do I mean by the term “paranatural”? Science pre-supposes naturalism; that is, it seeks to develop causal explanations of natural phenomena, and it tests its hypotheses and theories by reference to the principles of logic, empirical observation, experimental prediction, and confirmation.

This is in contrast with supernatural explanations, which claim to deal with an order of existence beyond the visible or observable universe, and attributes events to occult causes. Supernaturalism postulates divine powers intervening miraculously in natural causal sequences. Thus it is alleged that the natural and material universe needs to be supplemented by a supernatural reality, which transcends human understanding and can only be approached by mysticism and faith. The domain of faith, it is said, supplements the domain of reason.

There are, however, two classes of events that stand between the natural and supernatural realms and enable us in some sense to deal with the occult. These refer to (1) paranormal and (2) paranatural phenomena. The term “paranormal” was used in the past century by parapsychologists (such as J.B. Rhine and Samuel Soal) to refer to a class of anomalous events that its proponents claimed were inexplicable in terms of normal materialistic sciences. “Para” meant “besides, alongside of, or beyond” naturalistic psychology. Nonetheless, these parapsychologists maintain that it was possible to describe and perhaps interpret these events experimentally, and they did so by referring to a range of psi phenomena, which referred to ESP, telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis.

There is another range of events, which I have labeled as “paranatural,” that deal with still other dimensions of reality: classical mystical or supernatural claims that allegedly intrude into our universe from without. I am here referring primarily to a theistic order of reality and to phenomena including discarnate souls, intelligent design, and “creation science.” Visitations from extraterrestrials beyond this world may be considered to be both paranormal and paranatural. Included under this rubric of “paranatural” are some classical religious phenomena, such as weeping statues, stigmata, exorcism and possession, faith healing, the Shroud of Turin, past-life regressions used as evidence for reincarnation, historical revelations by prophets who carry messages from On High, and other so-called religious miracles. All of these have an empirical component and are not completely transcendental, and hence they are capable of some experimental testing and historical reconstruction of their claims. Although these anomalous events are beyond nature, in one sense, proponents of them seek to offer some kind of empirical evidence to support their hypotheses that there are nonnatural, nonmaterial, or spiritual processes at work in the universe.

I disagree with the claims of the defenders of the para: I do not think that either the paranormal or paranatural exist outside of nature or that they constitute dimensions of reality that undermine naturalism. Para is a substitute for our ignorance at any one time in history (as is the term “miracle,” which is interjected when we do not understand the causes of phenomena). Indeed, as we expand the frontiers of knowledge, phenomena considered para can, I submit, be given naturalistic or normal explanations, and this range of phenomena can either be interpreted by the existing body of explanatory scientific principles or by the introduction of new ones.

The Paranatural Paradigm and Life After Death

I wish to illustrate this by dealing with the intriguing question: What is the evidence for life after death? Can we communicate with the dead? That is, Are we able to be in touch with people who have died? Do they have some form of existence, perhaps as “discarnate spirits” or “disembodied souls”? This is an age-old question that is related to faith in immortality and a very deep hunger for it. Although it has been interpreted as “paranormal,” it may more appropriately be considered to be “paranatural” because of its religious significance. Indeed, for the great supernatural religions of the world -- Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- belief in an afterlife and the promise of heaven are central.

At present there is intense popular interest in these questions in the United States. It is stimulated by the mass media, at least as measured by the number of popular books, magazine articles, movies, and television and radio programs devoted to the theme. The films The Sixth Sense (with Bruce Willis and Haley Osment) and Frequency are examples of the prevailing interest, as are the best-selling books by James Van Praagh (Talking to Heaven, 1997; Reaching to Heaven, 1999), John Edward (One Last Time, 1998), Sylvia Browne (The Other Side and Back, 1999), and Rosemary Altea (You Own the Power, 1999). Dan Rather on CBS, the Fox TV network, Larry King Live, and other talk-show hosts have devoted many uncritical programs to these claims. For example, the HBO TV network did a special last year, “Life Afterlife,” purporting to present the scientific examination of survival. It interviewed dozens of people, all of whom claim to have communicated with the dead, and several parapsychologists, all arguing the case for survival. Included in this special were critical comments by two skeptics -- one more than usual! This is supposed to constitute a “balanced” documentary, and it is typical of the state of American media when dealing with paranatural or paranormal claims. There are all too few objective programs examining such questions; most favor a spiritual-paranormal interpretation.

As a result of a massive media onslaught, polls in the last decade place the United States as number one in belief in life after death in the democratic world, and higher than virtually all European countries. Two cross-national surveys conducted for the International Social Survey Program in 1991 and 19931 indicate that the United States ranked highest, along with Ireland and the Philippines, for those who believe in heaven (63.17% of the population), highest for those who believe in hell (49.6%), and highest for those who believe in life after death (55%). The US was lowest of twenty-one nations on knowledge of human evolution (44.2%), lower than Poland and Russia. Recent polls have shown the level of credulity growing in the past decade. In 1996 a poll conducted by Goldhaber Associates (at the State University of New York at Buffalo) indicated that 90 percent of Americans were either “religious” or “somewhat religious.”2 A recent poll conducted for Newsweek magazine by the Princeton Survey Research Associates, based on a sample of 752 adults interviewed indicated that 84 percent of Americans said that God performed miracles and 77 percent said saints or God can cure people otherwise medically incurable.3 Paradoxically, the US is allegedly the most advanced scientific-technological society in the world.

A History of Life After Death Claims

What do scientists have to say about life after death? As the readers of Skeptical Inquirer know, science has been investigating our ability to communicate with the dead for at least 150 years and it has attempted to discover empirical evidence in support of the claim. It began to do so with the emergence of spiritualism in the nineteenth century; more specifically, with the Fox sisters (Margaret and Kate), two young girls in Hydesville, New York (outside of Rochester), who in 1848 first claimed that they could receive messages from “the spirit world beyond.” In their presence, there were strange rappings; people would receive answers to their questions spelled out by the number of taps (Kurtz 1985). The basic premise was that human personality survived death and could communicate with specially endowed mediums. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century spiritualism swept the United States, England, and Europe. Thousands of mediums soon appeared, all seemingly capable of communicating with the dead. The most popular method of investigation was to try to communicate in a specially darkened séance room, wherein the discarnate entity would make its presence known by physical or verbal manifestations: table tipping, levitation of objects, ectoplasmic emissions, teleportation, materializations, automatic writings, etc.

A committee of medical doctors at the University of Buffalo tested the Fox sisters in 1851 and attributed their raps to the cracking of their toe knuckles or knee caps against a wooden floor or bedstead. The physicians did a controlled experiment by placing the girls’ feet on pillows, and nothing happened. The great physicist Michael Farraday investigated table tipping (1852) and found that it was due to pressure exerted by the fingers of the sitters (whether voluntarily or involuntarily). Sir Walter Crookes investigated the most colorful mediums of the day, D. D. Home (1871) and Florence Cook (1873), and thought that they had special abilities of mediumship -- though critics believe that he was duped by both (Hall 1962, 1984).

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 in Great Britain by Henry Sidgwick, Richard Hodgson, F. W. H. Myers, Edmund Gurney, and others to investigate survival of life after death, among other questions. The American branch of the Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1885 by William James at Harvard. These researchers examined reports of apparitions and ghostly hauntings. It was difficult to corroborate these subjective eyewitness accounts and so these investigations focused on physical manifestations. There were numerous photographs of ghosts -- which it was soon discovered could easily be doctored. Many famous mediums such as Eusapia Palladino (in Italy) and Leonora Piper (in Boston) were tested under controlled conditions in an effort to determine whether they possessed extraordinary powers.

Palladino was especially elusive, and the scientific community was split as to whether she was fraudulent. The Feilding Report was an account of sittings done in Naples (1909) by a team of scientists who thought she was genuine. Palladino was also tested in the United States at Harvard by Hugo Muensterberg (1909) and at Columbia University (1910) by a team of scientists; and in both cases the physical levitation of the table behind her and the feeling of being pinched by her spirit control (called John King) was found to be caused by her adroit ability to stretch her leg in contortions and to pinch sitters with her toes, or levitate a small table behind her. This was detected by having a man dressed in black crawl under the table and see her at work. A subsequent Feilding report (1911) also found that she had cheated (Kurtz 1985).

Late in his career the famous magician Houdini (1874-1926) exposed several bogus mediums. By the 1920s the spiritualist movement was thoroughly discredited, because when the controls were tightened, the effect disappeared; skeptics insisted that if a person claims to be in contact with a spiritual entity, there must be some independent physical corroboration by impartial observers (Houdini 1924, 1981).

In the 1930s the survival question in science was laid aside. J.B. Rhine and others focused instead on psi phenomena, again with controversial results, because scientists demanded replicable experiments by neutral observers, which were difficult to come by (Hansel 1980). In any case, whether or not psi existed was independent of the survival question.

Spiritualism Returns

In recent decades interest in the survival question has reappeared. This is rather surprising to skeptical investigators. No doubt this revival of interest is due in part to the growth of religiosity and spirituality on the broader American cultural scene, but is also due to the sensationalism of the mass media. I can only briefly outline some of the claims that had been made and the kinds of research that has been done. Most of this work is highly questionable, for the standards of rigorous methodological inquiry so essential to science seem to have declined drastically from what occurred in the early part of the last century.

(1) Channeling to the other side. Surprisingly, a new class of mediums, now called channelers, have emerged (such as James Van Praagh, John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and Rosemary Altea previously cited) who claim to be able to be put themselves into immediate contact with a dead relative or friend and to convey a message back from them. Thus, what we have are subjective reports based on the word of the channeler that he or she is in touch with the departed spirit. There are two ways that this is done. First, there are “hot” readings, when the channeler may know something by previous research about the person being read. A good case of this is Arthur Ford, who did a reading of Bishop James Pike and claimed he was in contact with his son who had committed suicide. It was discovered after Ford’s death that he had done extensive background investigation of Pike’s son before the reading. The most common method used, however, is the skillful use of “cold readings” by the channeler. The public here is taken in by flim-flammery, and there is all too little effort to critically examine the claims made.

There has been a massive shift in the methodology used. If in previous decades scientists demanded some corroborative and/or physical manifestation of mediumship, today all rigorous standards of evidence and verification seem to have been abandoned. Psychologist Ray Hyman has shown how a psychic gives a general cold reading: if he throws out messages from the spirit world to an audience someone will usually emerge to whom it fits (Hyman 1977). Thus, he may ask, “Does anyone know a Mary, or a William?” And most likely a person will step forth who does, and then the reading proceeds, on a hit-and-miss basis. The skillful channeler simply has to have one or two lucky hits to mystify the audience.

(2) Apparitions and other sightings. Similar considerations apply to the epidemic of eyewitness testimonials that people have been reporting of ghostly apparitions, angels, and other ethereal entities. Such stories are pervasive today, since a tale once uttered may spread rapidly throughout the population; this is facilitated by the mass media and becomes contagious. If someone claims to see ghosts or angels, other people, perhaps millions, may likewise begin to encounter them.

What is so curious is that people who see ghosts usually see them clothed. It is one thing to say that a discarnate soul has survived, but that his or her clothing and other physical objects have survived is both amusing and contrary to the laws of physics.

The most parsimonious explanation that we have for this phenomenon is that it is in the eye of the beholder, satisfying some deep-felt need, a transcendental temptation or will-to-believe. The demand for independent objective verification seems to be ignored. It is puzzling why so many people will accept uncorroborated subjective reports, particularly when we find them unreliable. The death of a loved one can cause untold psychological trauma, and there are powerful motives, psychological and indeed sociological, for believing in their survival. Thus there are naturalistic psychological and sociological explanations that better account for the prevalence of such phenomenological givens, without the need to postulate discarnate beings or our ability to communicate with them.

Let me briefly outline two other areas of survival research, which at least claim to be more carefully designed.

(3) Death-bed visions. Osis and Haraldsson (1974, 1977) sent out questionnaires to doctors and nurses to ask them to describe the verbal accounts of death-bed visions of people in their last moments of dying. The question is whether these persons were able to communicate with departed friends or relatives at the last moment or were merely hallucinating, as skeptics suggest they were. In any case, virtually all of this data is second-hand, and is influenced by cultural expectations that when we die we will meet people on the other side.

(4) The phenomenology of near-death experience. This is a very popular area of research today, widely touted as evidence for communication, and based on first-hand testimony. Much research has gone into this intriguing area by Raymond Moody (1975, 1977), Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (1981), Kenneth Ring (1980, 1984, 1998), Michael Sabom (1982), and Melvin Morse (1990), among others. These extended phenomenological reports claim to give us evidence from the other side from people who were dying and resuscitated. There is an out-of-body experience, a vision of a tunnel, a bright light, a recall of one’s life, and perhaps a meeting of beings on the other side.

Critics claim that the descriptive collage offered is of the dying process, and that in no case do we have reports of persons who have died (i.e., experienced brain death) and communicated with those on the other side. There are a variety of alternative naturalistic explanations. Skeptics maintain we are most likely dealing with psychological phenomena, where the person facing death has either hallucinations, has reached a state of depersonalization, and/or there are changes in brain chemistry and the nervous system (Blackmore 1993). Some have postulated that the discarnate entities or divine beings encountered on the other side are colored by the socio-cultural context (Kellehear 1996); though proponents maintain that in spite of this there is a common core of similarities. Some have said that falls or accidents where a person thinks he is about to die, but survives, can cause analogous out-of-body experiences and panoramic reviews (Russell Noyes 1972, 1977). Not everyone who is dying reports near-death experiences; many and people who are not dying report having them. Sleep paralysis and hypnopompic and hypnagogic dream states are factors in common out-of-body experiences. Ronald Siegel (1981) maintains that similar NDEs can be induced by hallucinogens. Karl Jansen (1996) has presented evidence that they can be stimulated by the dissociative drug ketamine. Various conditions can precipitate an NDE, such as low blood sugar, oxygen deprivation, reduced blood flow, temporal-lobe epilepsy, etc., and can lead to an altered state of consciousness. For skeptics, in no case can we say that the person has died and returns; what we are dealing with is the process or belief that one is dying.

Analytic philosophers have pointed out additional serious conceptual difficulties in the hypothesis that nonphysical beings are communicating with us -- there is a sharp mind/body dualism here. Perhaps the real question is not whether there is sufficient evidence for “x,” but the meaning of “x"; and whether we can communicate with “disembodied entities” who have a level of consciousness without sensory organs or a brain. Some have claimed that the communication is “telepathic,” but the experimental evidence for telepathy is itself questionable.

Conclusion

After a quarter of a century in this field of research, I find that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and that unless carefully controlled studies and standards are applied, people can deceive themselves and others into believing that almost anything is true and real -- from past-life regression and extraterrestrial abductions to satanic infestations and near-death experiences.

What should be the posture of the scientific investigator about paranatural survival claims? Clearly, we need an open mind, and we should not reject a priori any such claim; if claims are responsibly framed they should be carefully evaluated. After a century and a half of scientific research, what are we to conclude? I submit that there is insufficient reliable or objective evidence that some individuals are able to reach another plane of existence beyond this world and/or communicate with the dead. As far as we know, the death of the body entails the death of psychological functions, consciousness, and/or the personality; and there is no reason to believe that ghosts hover and haunt and/or can communicate with us.

I realize that this flies in the face of what the preponderance of humans wish to believe, but science should deal as best it can with what is the case, not with what we would like it to be. Unfortunately, scientific objectivity today has an uphill battle in this area in the face of media hype and the enormous public fascination with paranormal and paranatural claims.

Notes

1. Currently based at the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago.
2. “Religious Belief in America: A New Poll,” Free Inquiry 16(3) (Summer 1996), pp. 34-40.
3. Religion News Service, April 13, 2000.

References

• Altea, Rosemary. 1999. You Own the Power: Stories and Exercises. New York: William Morrow.
• Blackmore, Susan J. 1993. Dying to Live. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Browne, Sylvia, with Lindsay Harrison. 1999. The Other Side and Back: A Psychic’s Guide to Our World and Beyond. New York: Dutton.
• Edward, John. 1998. One Last Time: A Psychic Medium Speaks to Those We Have Loved and Lost. New York: Berkeley Books.
• Feilding, E., W.W. Baggally, and H. Carrington. 1909. Report on a series of sittings with Eusapia Palladino. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 23: 306-569.
• Feilding, E., and W. Marriott. 1911. Report on a further series of sittings with Eusapia Palladino at Naples. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 25.
• Hall, Trevor H. 1962. The Spiritualists: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes. London: Duckworth.
• ——. 1984. The Enigma of Daniel Home: Medium or Fraud? Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Hansel, C.E.M. 1980. ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Evaluation. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Houdini, Harry. 1924. A Magician Among the Spirits. New York: Harper.
• ——. 1981. Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: A Complete Expose. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Hyman, Ray. 1977. Cold reading: How to convince strangers that you know all about them. The Zetetic (Skeptical Inquirer) 1(2).
• Jansen, K.L.R. 1996. Using ketamine to induce the near-death experience: Mechanism of action and therapeutic potential. Yearbook of Ethnomedicine and the Study of Consciousness, no. 4.
• Kellehear, Allan. 1996. Experiences Near Death: Beyond Medicine and Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth. 1981. Living with Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan.
• Kurtz, Paul, ed. 1985. A Skeptic’s Handbook of Parapsychology. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Moody, Raymond A., Jr. 1975. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon-Survival of Bodily Death. Covington, Calif.: Mockingbird Books.
• ——. 1977. Reflections on Life After Life. New York: Bantam Books.
• ——. 1999. The Last Laugh: A New Philosophy of Near-Death Experiences, Apparitions, and the Paranormal. Charlottesville, Va.: Hampton Road Publishing Co.
• Morse, Melvin, and Paul Perry. 1990. Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near-Death Experiences of Children. New York: Ballantine Books.
• Neher, Andrew. 1981. The Psychology of Transcendence. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
• Noyes, Russell Jr., and Roy Klette. 1972. The experience of dying from falls. Omega 3:45-52.
• ——. 1977. Depersonalization in response to life-threatening danger. Comparative Psychology 18: 375-384.
• ——. 1977. Panoramic memory: A response to the threat of death. Omega, 8.
• Osis, Karles, and Eilendur Haraldsson. 1974. Survey of death visions in India. In W.G. Roll, et al., eds, Research in Parapsychology 1973. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press.
• ——. 1977. Deathbed observations by physicians and nurses: A cross-cultural survey. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 71: 237-259.
• Ring, Kenneth. 1980. Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan.
• ——. 1984. Heading toward Omega: In Search of Near-Death Experience. New York: William Morrow.
• ——. 1998. Lessons from the Light: What We Can Learn from the Near-Death Experience. Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books.
• Sabom, Michael B. 1982. Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. New York: Harper & Row.
• Siegel, Ronald. 1981. “Life After Death.” In Science and the Paranormal: Probing the Existence of the Paranormal, ed. by G.O. Abell and B. Singer. New York: Scribners.
• Van Praagh, James. 1997. Talking to Heaven: A Medium’s Message of Life after Death. New York: Dutton.
• ——. 1999. Reaching to Heaven: A Spiritual Journey through Life and Death. New York: Dutton.
• This paper was delivered at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, held in Minneapolis, March 22, 2000.

About 7:15 p.m. on that day, at Flatwoods, a little village in the hills of West Virginia, some youngsters were playing football on the school playground. Suddenly they saw a fiery UFO streak across the sky and, apparently, land on a hilltop of the nearby Bailey Fisher farm. The youths ran to the home of Mrs. Kathleen May, who provided a flashlight and accompanied them up the hill. In addition to Mrs. May, a local beautician, the group included her two sons, Eddie 13, and Freddie 14, Neil Nunley 14, Gene Lemon 17, and Tommy Hyer and Ronnie Shaver, both 10, along with Lemon’s dog.

There are myriad, often contradictory versions of what happened next, but UFO writer Gray Barker was soon on the scene and wrote an account for Fate magazine based on tape-recorded interviews. He found that the least emotional account was provided by Neil Nunley, one of two youths who were in the lead as the group hastened to the crest of the hill. Some distance ahead was a pulsing red light. Then, suddenly, Gene Lemon saw a pair of shining, animal-like eyes, and aimed the flashlight in their direction.

The light revealed a towering "man-like" figure with a round, red "face" surrounded by a "pointed, hood-like shape." The body was dark and seemingly colorless, but some would later say it was green, and Mrs. May reported drape-like folds. The monster was observed only momentarily, as suddenly it emitted a hissing sound and glided toward the group. Lemon responded by screaming and dropping his flashlight, whereupon everyone fled.

The group had noticed a pungent mist at the scene and afterward some were nauseated. A few locals, then later the sheriff and a deputy (who came from investigating a reported airplane crash), searched the site but "saw, heard and smelled nothing." The following day A. Lee Stewart, Jr., from the Braxton Democrat discovered "skid marks" in the roadside field, along with an "odd, gummy deposit" -- traces attributed to the landed "saucer" (Barker 1953).

In his article Barker (1953) noted that "numerous people in a 20-mile radius saw the illuminated objects in the sky at the same time," evidently seeing different objects or a single one "making a circuit of the area." Barker believed the Flatwoods incident was consistent with other reports of "flying saucers or similar craft" and that "such a vehicle landed on the hillside, either from necessity or to make observations." (At this time in UFOlogical history, the developing mythology had not yet involved alien "abductions.")

In addition to Barker’s article and later his book (1956), accounts of the Flatwoods incident were related by another on-site investigator, paranormal writer Ivan T. Sanderson (1952, 1967), as well as the early UFOlogist Major Donald E. Keyhoe (1953). More recent accounts have garbled details, with Brookesmith (1995), for example, incorrectly reporting five of the children as belonging to Mrs. May, and Ritchie (1994) referring to the monster’s hoodlike feature as a "halo," which he compared with those in Japanese Buddhist art. However, Jerome Clark’s The UFO Encyclopedia (1998) has a generally factual, sensible account of the affair, appropriately termed "one of the most bizarre UFO encounters of all time."

The UFO

On June 1, 2000, while on a trip that took me through Flatwoods, I was able to stop off for an afternoon of on-site investigating. I was amused to be greeted by a sign announcing, "Welcome to / Flatwoods / Home of / the Green Monster." Although the village has no local library, I found something even better: a real-estate business, Country Properties, whose co-owners Betty Hallman and Laura Green generously photocopied articles for me and telephoned residents to set up interviews.

Johnny Lockard, 95, told me that virtually everyone who had seen the alleged flying saucer in 1952 recognized it for what it was: a meteor. He, his daughter Betty Jean, and her husband Bill Sumpter said that the fireball had been seen on a relatively horizontal trajectory in various states. In fact, according to a former local newspaper editor, "There is no doubt that a meteor of considerable proportion flashed across the heavens that Friday night since it was visible in at least three states -- Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia" (Byrne 1966). The meteor explanation contrasts with the fanciful notions of Sanderson (1967). He cites several persons who each saw a single glowing object. Although observing that "All of the objects were traveling in the same direction and apparently at the same speed and at exactly the same time," he fails to draw the obvious conclusion: that there was one object, albeit variously described. (For example, one report said the object landed on a nearby knoll, while another described it as "disintegrating in the air with a rain of ashes.") Instead of suspecting that people were mistaken or that they saw a meteor that broke apart, Sanderson asserts that "to be logical" we should believe that "a flight of aerial machines" were "maneuvering in formation." For some reason the craft went out of control, with one landing, rather than crashing, at Flatwoods, and its pilot emerged "in a space suit." Observed, it headed back to the spaceship which -- like two others that "crashed" -- soon "vaporized" (Sanderson 1967).

Such airy speculations aside, according to Major Keyhoe (1953), Air Force Intelligence reportedly sent two men in civilian clothes to Flatwoods, posing as magazine writers, and they determined that the UFO had been a meteor that "merely appeared to be landing when it disappeared over the hill." That illusion also deceived a man approximately ten miles southwest of Flatwoods, who reported that an aircraft had gone down in flames on the side of a wooded hill. (That was the report the sheriff had investigated, without success, before arriving at the Flatwoods site.)

Keyhoe’s sources told him that "several astronomers" had concluded that the UFO was indeed a meteor. As well, a staff member of the Maryland Academy of Sciences announced that a meteor had passed over Baltimore at 7 p.m. on September 12, "traveling at a height of from 60 to 70 miles" (Reese 1952). It was on a trajectory toward West Virginia, where the "saucer" was sighted minutes later.

Spaceship Aground?

If the UFO was not a spaceship but a meteor, then how do we explain the other elements -- the pulsating light, the landing traces, the noxious smell, and, above all, the frightening creature? Let us consider each in turn.

As the group had proceeded up the roadway that led to the hilltop, they saw "a reddish light pulsating from dim to bright." It was described as a "globe" and as "a big ball of fire" (Barker 1953), but Sanderson (1967) says they "disagreed violently on their interpretation of this object." We should keep in mind that it was an unknown distance away -- and that there was no trustworthy frame of reference from which to estimate size (reported to Sanderson as over twenty feet across).

Significantly, at the time of the incident, a local school teacher called attention to "the light from a nearby plane beacon," and Sanderson (1952) conceded that there were three such beacons "in sight all the time on the hilltop." However, he dismissed the obvious possibility that one of these was the source of the pulsing light because he was advocating an extraterrestrial explanation.

But if a UFO had not landed at the site, how do we explain the supposed landing traces? They were found at 7 o'clock the morning after the incident by A. Lee Stewart, Jr., editor of The Braxton Democrat, who had visited the site the night before. Stewart discovered two parallel "skid marks" in the tall meadow grass, between the spot where the monster was seen and the area where the red pulsating light was sighted. He also saw traces of "oil" or "an odd, gummy deposit" (Barker 1953).

Johnny Lockard’s son, Max, describes Stewart in a word: "windy." Max had tried to explain to him and others the nature of the unidentified object that left the skid marks and oily/greasy deposit, namely Max’s black, 1942 Chevrolet pickup truck. Soon after news of the incident had spread around Flatwoods that evening, Max drove up the hillside to have a look around. He told me he left the dirt road and circled through the field, but saw nothing, no monster and no landing traces in the meadow grass.

At the time of the incident a few locals who had been skeptical that a flying saucer had landed on the hill attributed the skid marks and oil to a farm tractor. When several others told Gray Barker that the traces had actually been left by Max Lockard, he recalled his old high school chum and decided to telephone him. They had a proverbial failure to communicate and Barker -- who admitted to seeing "an opportunity to get my name in print again" -- concluded that Max’s truck had not been at the exact spot where the alleged UFO markings were found.

Reading Barker (1956), one senses his impulse to dismiss the tractor and pickup hypotheses and never even to consider the possibility of some other vehicle. It is not clear that Barker ever saw the traces. He arrived one week after the incident and during the interval rain had obliterated evidence. He could find "no trace of the oil reported to have been on the ground," and although he saw "marks and a huge area of grass trampled down," he conceded that could be due to the "multitudes" that had "visited and walked over the location" (Barker 1953, 1956).

Max Lockard took me to the site (figure 1) in his modern pickup. A locked gate across the road prompted him to shift into four-wheel drive and take us on a cross-country shortcut through a field, much as he had done in his search for the reported UFO and monster nearly a half century before. He has convinced me that he indeed left the supposedly unexplained traces. With a twinkle in my eye I posed a question: "Max, had you ever piloted a UFO before?" His smile answered that he had not.

As to the nauseating odor, that has been variously described as a sulfurous smell, "metallic stench," gaslike mist, or simply a "sickening, irritating" odor. Investigators first on the scene noticed no such smell, except for Lee Stewart who detected it when he bent close to the ground. The effect on three of the youths, particularly Lemon, was later to cause nausea and complaints of irritated throats (Barker 1953, 1956; Sanderson 1967; Keyhoe 1953).

This element of the story may be overstated. Ivan Sanderson (1967), scarcely a militant skeptic, also noticed the "strange smell in the grass" but stated that it was "almost surely derived from a kind of grass that abounds in the area." He added, "We found this grass growing all over the county and it always smelt the same, though not perhaps as strongly." Keyhoe (1953) reported that the Air Force investigators had concluded that "the boys’ illness was a physical effect brought on by their fright." Indeed Gene Lemon, the worst affected, had seemed the most frightened; he had "shrieked with terror" and fallen backward, dropping the flashlight, and later "appeared too greatly terrified to talk coherently" (Barker 1956). As to the strange "mist" that had accompanied the odor (Barker 1953), that seems easily explained. Obviously it was the beginning stage of what the sheriff subsequently noticed on his arrival, a fog that was "settling over the hillside" (Keyhoe 1953).

The Creature

Finally, and most significantly, there remains to be explained "the Flatwoods Monster," a.k.a. "the Phantom of Flatwoods," "the Braxton County Monster," "the Visitor from Outer Space," and other appellations (Byrne 1966). Many candidates have been proposed, but -- considering that the UFO became an IFO, namely a meteor -- the least likely one is some extraterrestrial entity. I think we can dismiss also the notion, among the hypotheses put forward by a local paper, that it was the effect of vapor from a falling meteor that took the shape of a man ("Monster" 1952). Also extremely unlikely was the eventual explanation of Mrs. May that what she had seen "wasn't a monster" but rather "a secret plane the government was working on" (Marchal 1966). (Both she and her son Fred declined to be interviewed for my investigation.)

I agree with most previous investigators that the monster sighting was not a hoax. The fact that the witnesses did see a meteor and assembled on the spur of the moment to investigate makes that unlikely. So does the fact that everyone who talked to them afterward insisted -- as Max Lockard did to me -- that the eyewitnesses were genuinely frightened. Clearly, something they saw frightened them, but what?

The group described shining "animal eyes," and Mrs. May at first thought they belonged to "an opossum or raccoon in the tree" (Barker 1956, Sanderson 1967). Locals continued to suggest some such local animal, including "a buck deer" (Barker 1956), but a much more credible candidate was put forth by the unnamed Air Force investigators. According to Keyhoe (1953), they concluded the "monster" was probably "a large owl perched on a limb" with underbrush beneath it having "given the impression of a giant figure" and the excited witnesses having "imagined the rest."

I believe this generic solution is correct, but that the owl was not from the family of "typical owls" (Strigidae, which includes the familiar great horned owl) but the other family (Tytonidae) which comprises the barn owls. Several elements in the witnesses’ descriptions help identify the Flatwoods creature specifically as Tyto alba, the common barn owl, known almost worldwide (Collins 1959). Consider the following evidence.

The "monster" reportedly had a "man-like shape" and stood some ten feet tall, although Barker (1953) noted that "descriptions from the waist down are vague; most of the seven said this part of the figure was not under view." These perceptions are consistent with an owl perched on a limb (figure 2).

Also suggestive of an owl is the description of the creature’s "face" as "round" with "two eye-like openings" and a dark, "hood-like shape" around it (if not the "pointed" appearance of the latter) (Barker 1953). The barn owl has a large head with a "ghastly," roundishly heart-shaped face, resembling "that of a toothless, hook-nosed old woman, shrouded in a closely fitting hood" and with an expression "that gives it a mysterious air" (Jordan 1952, Blanchan 1925).

Very evidential in the case of the Flatwoods Monster is the description of its cry as "something between a hiss and a high-pitched squeal" (Barker 1953). This tallies with the startling "wild, peevish scream" or "shrill rasping hiss or snore" of the barn owl. Indeed its "shrill, strangled scream is a most unbirdlike noise." Its "weird calls" include "hissing notes, screams," and "guttural grunts" (Blanchan 1925, Peterson 1980, Bull and Farrand 1977, Cloudsley-Thompson et al. 1983). The latter might explain the monster’s accompanying "thumping or throbbing noise" (Barker 1953), if those sounds were not from the flapping of wings.

Descriptions of the creature’s movement varied, being characterized as "bobbing up and down, jumping toward the witnesses" or as moving "evenly," indeed "describing an arc, coming toward them, but circling at the same time" (Barker 1956). Again, it had "a gliding motion as if afloat in midair." These movements are strongly suggestive of a bird’s flight. When accidentally disturbed, the barn owl "makes a bewildered and erratic getaway" (Jordan 1952) -- while hissing (Blanchan 1925) -- but its flight is generally characterized with "slow, flapping wing beats and long glides" (Cloudsley-Thompson et al. 1983).

According to Barker (1953), "Not all agreed that the 'monster' had arms," but "Mrs. May described it with terrible claws." Sanderson (1967) cites the witnesses’ observation that "the creature had small, claw-like hands that extended in front of it," a description consistent with a raptor (a predatory bird). The barn owl is relatively long-legged and knock-kneed, sporting sizable claws with sharp, curved talons that may be prominently extended (Peterson 1980, Forshaw 1998).

It is important to note that the youths and Mrs. May only glimpsed the creature briefly -- an estimated "one or a few more seconds," and even that was while they were frightened. Barker (1956) asks, "If Lemon dropped the flashlight, as he claimed, how did they get an apparently longer look at the 'monster'?" Some said the being was lighted from within (probably only the effect of its "shining" eyes), while Nunley stated that it was illuminated by the pulsing red light (ostensibly from the supposed UFO but probably from one of the beacons mentioned earlier). This might also explain the "fiery orange color" of the creature’s head (Sanderson 1967), but as an alternative explanation, while the barn owl is typically described as having a white facial disc and underparts, in the case of the female those parts "have some darker buff or tawny color" ("Barn Owl" 2000).

For this reason, as well as the fact that in this species (a medium-sized owl, measuring about 14-20” [Peterson 1980]) the male is typically the smaller (Blanchan 1925), I suspect the Flatwoods creature was a female. It is also interesting to speculate that it may not have been too late in the year for a female to have been brooding young. That could explain why "she" did not fly away at the first warning of intruders (given barn owls’ "excellent low-light vision and exceptional hearing ability" ["Barn Owl" 2000]); instead, probably hoping not to be noticed, she stood her ground until invaders confronted her with a flashlight, a threatening act that provoked her hissing, attack-like swoop toward them.

Significantly, the locale where the Flatwoods Monster made its appearance -- near a large oak tree on a partially wooded hilltop overlooking a farm on the outskirts of town -- tallies with the habitat of the barn owl. Indeed, it is "the best known of farmland owls" (Cloudsley-Thompson 1983). It builds no nest, but takes as its "favorite home" a "hollow tree" (Blanchan 1925). It "does not mind the neighborhood of man" (Jordan 1952), in fact seeking out mice and rats from its residence in "woodlands, groves, farms, barns, towns, cliffs" (Peterson 1980).

Considering all of the characteristics of the described monster, and making small allowances for misperceptions and other distorting factors, we may conclude (adapting an old adage) that if it looked like a barn owl, acted like a barn owl, and hissed, then it was most likely a barn owl.

How "Monsters" Appear

It may be wondered, however, why the creature was not immediately recognized for what it was. The answer is that, first, the witnesses were led to expect an alien being by their sighting of a UFO that appeared to land and by the pulsating red light and strange smell that seemed to confirm the landing. Therefore, when they then encountered a strange creature, acting aggressively, their fears seemed to be confirmed and they panicked.

Moreover, the group had probably never seen a barn owl up close (after all, such birds are nocturnal) and almost certainly not under the adverse conditions that prevailed. The brief glimpse, at night, of a being that suddenly swept at them -- coupled with its strange "ghastly" appearance and shrill frightening cry -- would have been disconcerting to virtually anyone at any time. But under the circumstances, involving an inexperienced group primed with expectations of extraterrestrials, the situation was a recipe for terror.

And so a spooked barn owl in turn spooked the interlopers, and a monster was born. A "windy" newspaperman and pro-paranormal writers hyped the incident, favoring sensational explanations for more prosaic ones. Such is often the case with paranormal claims.

References

• Barker, Gray. 1953. The monster and the saucer. Fate, January, 12-17.
• ———. 1956. They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. New York: Tower.
• "Barn Owl." 2000. www.vetmed.auburn.edu.
• Blanchan, Neltje. 1925. Birds Worth Knowing. Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday, 180-182.
• Brookesmith, Peter. 1995. UFO: The Complete Sightings. New York: Barnes & Noble, 54.
• Bull, John, and John Farrand, Jr. 1977. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Eastern Region. New York: Knopf, 500.
• Byrne, Holt. 1966. The phantom of Flatwoods, Sunday Gazette-Mail State Magazine (Charleston, W. Va.), March 6.
• Clark, Jerome. 1998. The UFO Encyclopedia, second edition. Detroit: Omnigraphics, I: 409-412.
• Cloudsley-Thompson, John, et al. 1983. Nightwatch: The Natural World from Dusk to Dawn. New York: Facts on File.
• Collins, Henry Hill, Jr. 1959. Complete Guide to American Wildlife: East, Central and North. New York: Harper & Row, 137.
• Forshaw, Joseph. 1998. Encyclopedia of Birds. San Diego: Academic Press.
• Jordan, E. L. 1952. Hammond’s Nature Atlas of America. Maplewood, N.J.: C. S. Hammond and Co.
• Keyhoe, Donald E. 1953. Flying Saucers from Outer Space. New York: Henry Holt.
• Marchal, Terry. 1966. Flatwoods revisited, Sunday Gazette-Mail State Magazine (Charleston, W. Va.), March 6.
• "Monster" held illusion created by meteor’s gas. 1952. The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, W. Va.), Sept. 23.
• Peterson, Roger Tory. 1980. A Field Guide to the Birds. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 174-175.
• Reese, P.M. 1952. Cited in Sanderson 1967.
• Ritchie, David. 1994. UFO: The Definitive Guide to Unidentified Flying Objects and Related Phenomena. New York: MJF Books, 1994, 83, 96.
• Sanderson, Ivan T. 1952. Typewritten report quoted in Byrne 1966.
• ———. 1967. Uninvited Visitors: A Biologist Looks at UFO’s. New York: Cowles, 1967, 37-52.

Because a basic tenet of both skeptical thinking and scientific inquiry is that beliefs can be wrong, it is often confusing and irritating to scientists and skeptics that so many people’s beliefs do not change in the face of disconfirming evidence. How, we wonder, are people able to hold beliefs that contradict the data?

This puzzlement can produce an unfortunate tendency on the part of skeptical thinkers to demean and belittle people whose beliefs don't change in response to evidence. They can be seen as inferior, stupid, or crazy. This attitude is born of skeptics’ failure to understand the biological purpose of beliefs and the neurological necessity for them to be resilient and stubbornly resistant to change. The truth is that for all their rigorous thinking, many skeptics do not have a clear or rational understanding of what beliefs are and why even faulty ones don't die easily. Understanding the biological purpose of beliefs can help skeptics to be far more effective in challenging irrational beliefs and communicating scientific conclusions.

Biology and Survival

Our brain’s primary purpose is to keep us alive. It certainly does more than that, but survival is always its fundamental purpose and always comes first. If we are injured to the point where our bodies only have enough energy to support consciousness or a heartbeat but not both, the brain has no problem choosing-it puts us into a coma (survival before consciousness), rather than an alert death-spiral (consciousness before survival).

Because every brain activity serves a fundamental survival purpose, the only way to accurately understand any brain function is to examine its value as a tool for survival. Even the difficulty of successfully treating such behavioral disorders as obesity and addiction can only be understood by examining their relationship to survival. Any reduction in caloric intake or in the availability of a substance to which an individual is addicted is always perceived by the brain as a threat to survival. As a result the brain powerfully defends the overeating or the substance abuse, producing the familiar lying, sneaking, denying, rationalizing, and justifying commonly exhibited by individuals suffering from such disorders.

Senses and Beliefs

One of the brain’s primary tools for ensuring survival is our senses. Obviously, we must be able to accurately perceive danger in order to take action designed to keep us safe. In order to survive we need to be able to see the lion charging us as we emerge from our cave or hear the intruder breaking into our house in the middle of the night.

Senses alone, however, are inadequate as effective detectors of danger because they are severely limited in both range and scope. We can have direct sensory contact with only a small portion of the world at any one time. The brain considers this to be a significant problem because even normal, everyday living requires that we constantly move in and out of the range of our perceptions of the world as it is right now. Entering into territory we have not previously seen or heard puts us in the dangerous position of having no advance warning of potential dangers. If I walk into an unfamiliar building in a dangerous part of town my survival probabilities diminish because I have no way of knowing whether the roof is ready to collapse or a gunman is standing inside the doorway.

Enter beliefs. “Belief” is the name we give to the survival tool of the brain that is designed to augment and enhance the danger-identification function of our senses. Beliefs extend the range of our senses so that we can better detect danger and thus improve our chances of survival as we move into and out of unfamiliar territory. Beliefs, in essence, serve as our brain’s “long-range danger detectors.”

Functionally, our brains treat beliefs as internal “maps” of those parts of the world with which we do not have immediate sensory contact. As I sit in my living room I cannot see my car. Although I parked it in my driveway some time ago, using only immediate sensory data I do not know if it is still there. As a result, at this moment sensory data is of very little use to me regarding my car. In order to find my car with any degree of efficiency my brain must ignore the current sensory data (which, if relied on in a strictly literal sense, not only fails to help me in locating my car but actually indicates that it no longer exists) and turn instead to its internal map of the location of my car. This is my belief that my car is still in my driveway where I left it. By referring to my belief rather than to sensory data, my brain can "know” something about the world with which I have no immediate sensory contact. This “extends” my brain’s knowledge of and contact with the world.

The ability of belief to extend contact with the world beyond the range of our immediate senses substantially improves our ability to survive. A caveman has a much greater ability to stay alive if he is able to maintain a belief that dangers exist in the jungle even when his sensory data indicate no immediate threat. A police officer will be substantially more safe if he or she can continue to believe that someone stopped for a traffic violation could be an armed psychopath with an impulse to kill even though they present a seemingly innocuous appearance.

Beyond the Sensory

Because beliefs do not require immediate sensory data to be able to feed valuable survival information to the brain, they have the additional survival function of providing information about the realm of life that does not deal directly with sensory entities. This is the area of abstractions and principles that involves such things as “reasons,” “causes,” and “meanings.” I cannot hear or see the “reason” called a “low pressure zone” that makes a thunderstorm rain on my parade, so my ability to believe that low pressure is the reason assists me. If I were to rely strictly on my senses to determine the cause of the storm I could not tell why it occurred. For all I know it was dragged in by invisible flying gremlins that I need to shoot with my shotgun if I want to clear away the clouds. Therefore my brain’s reliance on my “belief” in the reason called “low pressure,” rather than on sensory data (or, as in the case of my car, my lack of it) assists in my survival: I avoid an experience of incarceration with myriad dangerous characters following my arrest for shooting into the air at those pesky little gremlins.

The Resilience of Beliefs

Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information. The loss of either one endangers us. Without our senses we could not know about the world within our perceptual realm. Without our beliefs we could not know about the world outside our senses or about meanings, reasons, or causes.

This means that beliefs are designed to operate independent of sensory data. In fact, the whole survival value of beliefs is based on their ability to persist in the face of contradictory evidence. Beliefs are not supposed to change easily or simply in response to disconfirming evidence. If they did, they would be virtually useless as tools for survival. Our caveman would not last long if his belief in potential dangers in the jungle evaporated every time his sensory information told him there was no immediate threat. A police officer unable to believe in the possibility of a killer lurking behind a harmless appearance could easily get hurt or killed.

As far as our brain is concerned, there is absolutely no need for data and belief to agree. They have each evolved to augment and supplement one another by contacting different sections of the world. They are designed to be able to disagree. This is why scientists can believe in God and people who are generally quite reasonable and rational can believe in things for which there is no credible data such as flying saucers, telepathy, and psychokinesis.

When data and belief come into conflict, the brain does not automatically give preference to data. This is why beliefs-even bad beliefs, irrational beliefs, silly beliefs, or crazy beliefs-often don't die in the face of contradictory evidence. The brain doesn't care whether or not the belief matches the data. It cares whether the belief is helpful for survival. Period. So while the scientific, rational part of our brains may think that data should supercede contradictory beliefs, on a more fundamental level of importance our brain has no such bias. It is extremely reticent to jettison its beliefs. Like an old soldier with an old gun who does not quite trust that the war is really over, the brain often refuses to surrender its weapon even though the data say it should.

“Inconsequential” Beliefs

Even beliefs that do not seem clearly or directly connected to survival (such as our caveman’s ability to believe in potential dangers) are still closely connected to survival. This is because beliefs do not occur individually or in a vacuum. They are related to one another in a tightly interlocking system that creates the brain’s fundamental view of the nature of the world. It is this system that the brain relies on in order to experience consistency, control, cohesion, and safety in the world. It must maintain this system intact in order to feel that survival is being successfully accomplished.

This means that even seemingly small, inconsequential beliefs can be as integral to the brain’s experience of survival as are beliefs that are "obviously” connected to survival. Thus, trying to change any belief, no matter how small or silly it may seem, can produce ripple effects through the entire system and ultimately threaten the brain’s experience of survival. This is why people are so often driven to defend even seemingly small or tangential beliefs. A creationist cannot tolerate believing in the accuracy of data indicating the reality of evolution not because of the accuracy or inaccuracy of the data itself, but because changing even one belief related to matters of the Bible and the nature of creation will crack an entire system of belief, a fundamental worldview and, ultimately, their brain’s experience of survival.

Implications for Skeptics

Skeptical thinkers must realize that because of the survival value of beliefs, disconfirming evidence will rarely, if ever, be sufficient to change beliefs, even in “otherwise intelligent” people. In order to effectively change beliefs skeptics must attend to their survival value, not just their data-accuracy value. This involves several elements.

First, skeptics must not expect beliefs to change simply as the result of data or assuming that people are stupid because their beliefs don't change. They must avoid becoming critical or demeaning in response to the resilience of beliefs. People are not necessarily idiots just because their beliefs don't yield to new information. Data is always necessary, but it is rarely sufficient.

Second, skeptics must learn to always discuss not just the specific topic addressed by the data, but also the implications that changing the related beliefs will have for the fundamental worldview and belief system of the affected individuals. Unfortunately, addressing belief systems is a much more complicated and daunting task than simply presenting contradictory evidence. Skeptics must discuss the meaning of their data in the face of the brain’s need to maintain its belief system in order to maintain a sense of wholeness, consistency, and control in life. Skeptics must become adept at discussing issues of fundamental philosophies and the existential anxiety that is stirred up any time beliefs are challenged. The task is every bit as much philosophical and psychological as it is scientific and data-based.

Third, and perhaps most important, skeptics must always appreciate how hard it is for people to have their beliefs challenged. It is, quite literally, a threat to their brain’s sense of survival. It is entirely normal for people to be defensive in such situations. The brain feels it is fighting for its life. It is unfortunate that this can produce behavior that is provocative, hostile, and even vicious, but it is understandable as well.

The lesson for skeptics is to understand that people are generally not intending to be mean, contrary, harsh, or stupid when they are challenged. It’s a fight for survival. The only effective way to deal with this type of defensiveness is to de-escalate the fighting rather than inflame it. Becoming sarcastic or demeaning simply gives the other person’s defenses a foothold to engage in a tit-for-tat exchange that justifies their feelings of being threatened ("Of course we fight the skeptics-look what uncaring, hostile jerks they are!”) rather than a continued focus on the truth.

Skeptics will only win the war for rational beliefs by continuing, even in the face of defensive responses from others, to use behavior that is unfailingly dignified and tactful and that communicates respect and wisdom. For the data to speak loudly, skeptics must always refrain from screaming.

Finally, it should be comforting to all skeptics to remember that the truly amazing part of all of this is not that so few beliefs change or that people can be so irrational, but that anyone’s beliefs ever change at all. Skeptics’ ability to alter their own beliefs in response to data is a true gift; a unique, powerful, and precious ability. It is genuinely a “higher brain function” in that it goes against some of the most natural and fundamental biological urges. Skeptics must appreciate the power and, truly, the dangerousness that this ability bestows upon them. They have in their possession a skill that can be frightening, life-changing, and capable of inducing pain. In turning this ability on others it should be used carefully and wisely. Challenging beliefs must always be done with care and compassion.

Skeptics must remember to always keep their eye on the goal. They must see the long view. They must attempt to win the war for rational beliefs, not to engage in a fight to the death over any one particular battle with any one particular individual or any one particular belief. Not only must skeptics’ methods and data be clean, direct, and unbiased, their demeanor and behavior must be as well.