When I grew up, I renewed my interest in secret messages through investigating a number of historical mysteries as well as during ten years of research for my magnum opus, Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective (1990). Thomas Parrish was once kind enough to pen an inscription in a copy of his excellent book, The American Code­breakers (1986), “To Joe Nickell—a cracker of all ciphers.” He gives me too much credit, but here, anyway, are abstracts of some of my interesting cases, from the trivial to the profound.

Secret Posts

One little secret message I came across in an antique store had already been revealed. It was on a postcard, penned in tiny script in the little box reserved for the postage stamp. The stamp had been carefully removed, obviously by the recipient, exposing the hidden writing. I was so taken by the find that I searched the remaining large collection of postcards in the store and found a few others—all clearly from the same sender.

The hidden-under-the-stamp messages were simply miniscule love notes. One consisted of rows of little X’s (a popular shorthand for kisses), while another asked, “Do you you still love this bad boy?” The cards, postmarked between 1911 and 1913 were addressed to a young lady at a Virginia girls’ school (Nickell 1990, 177). Charming!

Another postcard, found on a different occasion, bore a curious-looking script. However, it proved to be an innocuous message, easily read by noting the picture side of the card. It depicted a lady before a mirror and was accompanied by the printed couplet, “This message is for you my dear—/Your looking glass will make it clear” (Nickell 1990, 177). (For a discussion of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous mirror handwriting, see my “Deciphering Da Vinci’s Real Codes,” Nickell 2007).

A ‘Ju-Ju’ Message

Sometimes a message is hidden in plain sight. In researching the case of a devil-baby mummy that I encountered in a Toronto curio shop and that later proved bogus, I came across a published photo of a pair of similar creatures, their arms folded in the repose of death. A sign affixed to the creatures’ coffin proclaimed: “These shrunken mummified figures were found in a crude tomblike cave on the island of Haiti in 1740 by a party of French marines. They are supposed to be the remains of a lost tribe of ‘Ju-Ju’ or Devil Men—who, after death, followed a custom of shrinking & mummifying the dead. Are they real? We don’t know, but . . . X-Rays showed skin, horn, & hooves human!” Astonishingly, however, there was no mention of skeletons, suggesting that—like the Toronto devil-baby mummy—the figures were fabricated (Nickell 2011, 148–149).

Painted beneath the sign were these mumbo-jumbo words:

YENOH M’I DLOC!

My cryptanalytical interests were piqued, and I soon divined the meaning. Can you decipher it yourself before reading further?

I discovered that the text was the simplest form of a transposition cipher, one in which the actual letters of the secret message are rearranged in some fashion. In this in­stance, it is only necessary to read each word backward in turn to reveal a witty commentary on the creatures’ nakedness: “Honey I’m Cold!” Exclamation point indeed.

Encoded Book

Figure 1. The cryptic text in an old book soon yielded up its secrets.

In 1985 my old friend, Canadian writer and bibliophile George Fetherling, sent me copies of some pages from a small 1948 book titled SENATOR, the text of which was printed in a strange sort of code or cipher (Figure 1). George wanted to know what this intriguing work was all about—and so did I!

I set to work, immersing myself in the mysterious text. Soon, I recognized that at least some of the apparent words were indeed words, only they had been abbreviated—mostly by removing the vowels. (Thus whr=“where,” stn=“station,” etc.). Also, some consonants were dropped, particularly double ones (so that rgt=“right” and al=“all”). In addition, some common words were replaced by symbols (such as “£” for “Lodge” and @ for “and” [not for “at,” which was itself “a,” although “a” could also represent “a” itself.) Finally, some of the abbreviations were just acronyms (hence, MA=“Master at Arms”). In short, the text is a very simple form of code. (A code consists of substitutes not just for letters, as in a simple cipher, but for groups of letters, words, or even entire phrases or concepts.)

In beginning to decode the text, and reading phrases and whole clauses (“My station is at the right and front of the Cc [Chancelor?]),” I saw that it concerned a lodge, various officers, and elements of ritual and mystery. I suspected it was the product of some secret order such as the Freemasons, soon realizing that “KOP” in the text clearly referred to a similar fraternal and benevolent society, the Knights of Pythias. This was founded in 1864 in Washington, DC. (“Knights” 1960; Ken­nedy 1904). Various terms in the text are consistent with Pythian use. (Although the book lacked publishing information, and a standard bibliographic search was fruitless, for this publication CFI Libraries Director Tim Binga was later able to use online sources to confirm the KOP origin.)

The book’s title page bears a brief message of a different type. It reads:

NOITINOMDA: Sliated laiceps
rof koob eulb tlusnoc ot
dehsinomda si hturt retfa
rekees dna tneduts esolc
eht.

Can you decipher it? Quickly cover the following explanation and try your hand.

You should have little trouble, since you have already been introduced to simple transposition ciphers like this. However, instead of reading each word backward in turn, you begin with the word in all capitals (which is, of course, “admonition”), then go to the end and read the whole sentence backward. Case closed.

The Cryptograms

So far, we have looked at codes and transposition ciphers. However, the majority of the secret messages I have come across in my work as a historical investigator are what are known as simple substitution ciphers. Popularly mislabeled “codes,” these are created by replacing the letters of the original text, which is known as the “plaintext,” with substitutes—such as other letters, symbols, or the like—resulting in what is termed the “ciphertext.”

I have encountered—and deciphered—many such ciphertexts, written on postcards and greeting cards, in old sentiment albums, and elsewhere (Nickell 1990, 176–77). Solving a simple substitution cipher is usually pretty straightforward. (See Nickell 1990, 177; Gaines 1956, 69–87; also, the previously mentioned Poe and Conan Doyle stories describe the rudiments of decipherment.)

Here is one message from an old autograph album:

L5CY
1992  P42
9476h  M3ddl2  64w9
B457b49  C4
         K2965cky

If you are an experienced cryptanalyst you might want to stop here and give your skills a try.

As it happened, however, the message was accompanied by a partial “key”:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
a e i o u t r s n

In brief, numbers are substituted for certain frequently used letters (vowels, and four of the most–used consonants), while the remaining letters are unchanged. Now you will have no trouble deciphering the message.

If you solved this without the key, you probably noted that the last word was offset, and so it might be the name of a state (on the assumption that such a text in an autograph album might represent a name and address). That word, omitting the numbers, was “K——cky,” and that could only be one state. Similarly “M-ddl-” looks like the word Middle, so the cryptanalyst could begin to construct a key without having been provided one. This message reads: “Lucy Anne Poe, North Middle Town, Bourbon Co., Kentucky.”

Most such texts are similarly mundane, although they are still fun to solve and help one sharpen his or her cryptanalytical skills. However, some are of a more serious nature. Sometimes a code or cipher even promises to lead to a fabulous treasure, as in the next case.

Oak Island’s ‘Cipher Stone’

What is considered by some to be among “the great mysteries of the world” (Crooker 1978, 7), derives from a mysterious shaft on Oak Island, Nova Scotia. It was allegedly discovered in 1795 when three young men came upon a shallow depression over which, hanging from a tree limb, was an old tackle block. The trio believed some treasure lay below but they were never able to recover it. Neither has anyone since, although many have tried, only to be thwarted by water flooding the “Money Pit” (as it came to be known) by means of “pirate tunnels” and other problems. Still, zealots are convinced there is a treasure to be claimed, possibly the French crown jewel or Shakespeare’s manuscripts, even perhaps the legendary Holy Grail (Nickell 2001).

Reportedly, sometime in the early nineteenth century (different dates are given), a treasure-hunting consortium dug up a flat stone that bore a cryptic message. This “cipher stone” takes its place with other such reports—of “strange markings” carved on the old tree (Finnan 1997, 28) and even of “a tier of smooth stones . . . with figures and letters cut on them” (quoted in Crooker 1978, 24). No photo exists of any of these, and the cipher stone—assuming it actually existed—has been missing since about 1919. However, its text has allegedly been preserved, although in various forms and differing decipherments. Zoologist-turned-epigrapher Barry Fell thought the inscription was ancient Coptic, its message urging people to remember God lest they perish (Finnan 1997, 148–49).

Figure 2. A cipher, allegedly inscribed on a stone (see inset, bottom center), is only one of many bogus elements of the Oak Island treasure tale. (Illustration by Joe Nickell)

In fact, the cipher text as we now have it has been correctly deciphered—and redeciphered and verified. It is written in a simple-substitution cipher (reproduced in Crooker 1993, 23). I have reconstructed what the cipher stone might have looked like, providing my drawing as an inset to my Oak Island “treasure map” (Figure 2), based on several sources and my own visit to the island in 1999. My independent decipherment, which tallies with those of several modern investigators (Crooker 1993, 19–24), reads, “FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED.” Although he is convinced there was an original inscribed stone, “mentioned in all the early accounts of the Onslow Company’s expedition,” William S. Crooker states (1993, 24): “Obviously the inscription as we know it today is a hoax—a modern invention deliberately made simple to lure potential investors. It is highly unlikely that the originators of the Money Pit left a coded message giving the amount and depth of buried treasure.”

I agree. My own longtime investigation of the Oak Island mystery, however, indicated that the “Money Pit” and “pirate tunnels” were simply natural formations. More­­over, much of the Oak Island saga—especially certain reported actions and alleged discoveries—tally with the “Secret Vault” allegory of Freemasonry. Indeed, the search for the Oak Island treasure “vault” has been carried out largely by prominent Nova Scotia Free­masons, and it appears that the whole affair is an insiders’ one linked to high-level Masonic rituals (Nickell 2001, 219–34).

The foregoing by no means exhaust my examples. The interested reader might wish to consider the mysterious inscription of the Yarmouth Stone in Nova Scotia, which I was permitted to examine in 1999 (Nickell 2001, 190–193), or the infamously un­solved Beale ciphers that tell of a treasure lost since 1817 (Nickell with Fischer 1992, 53–67), among others. More cases no doubt await.

References

Crooker, William S. 1978. The Oak Island Quest. Hantsport, N.S.: Lancelet.

———. 1993. Oak Island Gold. Halifax, N.S.: Nimbus.

Finnan, Mark. 1997. Oak Island Secrets, rev. ed. Halifax, N.S.: Formac.

Gaines, Helen Fouché. 1956. Cryptanalysis: A Study of Ciphers and Their Solution. New York: Dover.

Kennedy, William D. 1904. Pythian History. Chicago: Pythian Hist. Publ. Co.

Knights of Pythias. 1960. Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 18:804.

Masonic Heirloom Edition Holy Bible. 1964. Wichita, Kansas: Heirloom Bible Publishers.

Nickell, Joe. 1990. Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2001. Real-Life X-Files. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

———. 2007. Deciphering Da Vinci’s real codes. Skeptical Inquirer 31(3) (May/June): 23–25.

———. N.d. Secret Messages. Unpublished typescript; see “Cryptographer,” online at www.joenickell.com/Cryptographer/cryptographer1.html.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1992. Mysterious Realms: Probing Paranormal, Historical, and Forensic Enigmas. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Parrish, Thomas. 1986. The American Codebreakers: The U.S. Role in Ultra. Paperback ed. Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1991.

Some people who believe the story is true make trips to the supposed area of Gore Orphanage in Ohio to check it out. Not only do the local folks in Ohio believe the stories, but a well-known author of books on ghosts and haunting states that “Ghost children also haunt the burnt ruins of Gore Orphanage in Medina, Ohio” (Ogden 1999). There are also local people who claim to have filmed ghostly children at the Gore Orphanage site (Petkovic 2003).

Some ghost-hunting groups have conducted investigations at the supposed site of Gore Orphanage. One group in particular has posted their investigation on their website. After giving a run-down of the legends, the author states “Regardless of which story you believe, something does seem to occur there on a regular basis. Mists and other phenomenon [sic] have been photographed near a small bridge that crosses a nearby stream on a regular basis, and lights and mists have also been seen to dance in an open field adjacent to the site” (Horodyski 2012). The ghost hunter then goes on to describe an “investigation” the team conducted on the premises. When it became dark, they headed out of the wooded area, and the author held his video camera at his side facing behind him. He captured “a bright glowing object” (Horodyski 2012). It seems the author, along with the rest of his group, believes that while some of the stories about Gore Orphanage may be dubious, their experience with this “bright glowing object” has convinced them that there must be some truth to it. The author states that “Our unearthly ‘escort’ off the property serves to convince me that something is definitely there, and that not all stories connected with the site can therefore be so readily shrugged off” (Horodyski 2012).

The first thing to find out is whether the ghost story is actually true. Was there an actual place called “Gore Orphanage”? Did it burn to the ground and take the lives of a hundred or so orphans? One would think a tragedy of that magnitude would be (pardon the pun) burned into the memory of the community in which it transpired. Since the story claims that this tragedy took place in Lorain County I began by asking the Lorain County Historical Society about it. An archivist at the historical society informed me that not only was there no fire at Gore Orphanage that killed children, but there was in fact no Gore Orphanage at all (Greenly 2010). This archivist referred me to the manager of the Lorain County Metro Parks who echoed that there was no such place as Gore Orphanage (Thompson 2010).

It’s not even clear where the name “Gore Orphanage” came from. Apparently, a Gore Orphanage Road does exist in Lorain County. That “Gore” is not referring to blood-soaked guts or anything gruesome like that but instead a surveyor’s error in the form of a thin strip of land that resembles the gore of a dress (Ellis 2003).

There is also the matter of where the “orphanage” aspect came from for Gore Orphan­age Road. It turns out there was actually an orphanage along that stretch of road at one point called the Light and Hope Orphanage. It was run by Reverend John Sprunger and his wife. It closed down after about fourteen years and there is no credible evidence that a fire there killed any children at all (Ellis 2003).

Children dying or being caught in a burning building seems to be the lynchpin of the whole story. This is the aspect of the story that has influenced people’s experiences of going to the supposed location of Gore Orphanage. The legend has it that one will hear screams of the dying children and see the spirits of children who are horribly burned. The first piece of the puzzle comes from the fact that a house called “Swift Mansion” existed there for some time. The owner, Joseph Swift, had to sell the mansion after he went broke. Swift sold it to a man named Nicholas Wilber. Wilber was married with four children. All of the children had died of diphtheria in a relatively short time. The family also took part in séances to contact spirits of the dead, maybe even their four deceased children (Ellis 2003). This explains where the story got its paranormal ghostly children aspect. That solves part of it, but not all of it.

There is still the aspect of children meeting their demise in a burning building. There is no record or evidence of an orphanage catching fire in Lorain County or all of the children dying there. However, there is the tragedy of a school called the Lake View Public School in the Cleveland suburb of Collinwood catching fire and killing many children. While there is no evidence that any place called “Gore Orphanage” in Lorain County caught fire and took a lot of children with it, this school did burn down, killing many children and some adults (Ellis 2003).

Despite claims by some amateur ghost hunters, the notoriously haunted Gore Orphanage—with its ghostly presences and horrible moans of disfigured children—does not exist. But the pieces that make up this story are based on grains of fact; elements of truth came together to make a Franken­stein’s monster of an urban legend. A surveying mistake, an orphanage that eventually went bankrupt, and the tragedies that struck the Wilber family and the Lake View Public School all came together to form one of the most popular legends in Cleveland, Ohio. In many ways, unraveling the truth behind the story is more interesting than the legend itself.

References

Ellis, Bill. 2003. Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Greenly, Eric. 2010. Personal correspondence with author, November 23.

Horodyski, Joseph M. 2012. Gore orphanage. Cleve­land Supernatural Investigations. Online at http://www.clevelandsupernatural.com/04-Gore.html; accessed August 24, 2012

Ogden, Tom. 1999. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings. Indianapolis: Alpha Books.

Petkovic, John. 2003. Doing a little goodwill haunting with ghost busters. Plain Dealer (October 24).

Thompson, Grant. 2010. Personal correspondence with author, November 29.

I had indeed heard of the film, a New Agey jumble of pseudoscience and mysticism about supposed links between consciousness and quantum physics, produced by followers of J.Z. Knight, a woman who claims to dispense in­formation from a 35,000-year-old ghost. In fact, I had done my best to keep it from misinforming the public when it was first released, writing a few short skeptical pieces about it.

Not wanting to get into an argument with my friend, I just let the conversation trail off. But before I did, she made an interesting comment: “To be honest I didn’t really understand a lot of it. . . . But you’re really smart—you would get it.”

She assumed that the reason she didn’t understand the film’s information was be­cause she had no background in science. I, on the other hand, did not understand the film precisely because I do have a strong background in science. When people don’t understand something they are told, there are three possibilities or root causes.

Most commonly, the person assumes, as my friend did, that the problem lies with the listener. Her (quite reasonable) assumption was that the film was comprehensible and that if she didn’t understand it, it was due to her limitations or lack of knowledge. This was a mainstream, feature-length documentary film with some famous people in it—in­cluding physicists. Surely these people would not appear on camera discussing self-evidently nonsensical ideas such as that thoughts can control reality.

Less often, the problem lies with the speaker’s inability to effectively communicate—perhaps he or she does not share the same native language as the listener, is disorganized, or has a speech impediment for example. In this case the information and message may be correct and clear, but communication does not occur because of a problem with the source.

Sometimes the problem lies neither with the listener nor with the speaker, but instead in the content. In this case, the reason that the listener doesn’t understand what is being said is that what is being said makes little or no sense by any objective measure. This is in­sidious and difficult to detect because people do not like to challenge authority on a topic they are presumably trying to become educated about—especially in public. The speaker is not talking gibberish; quite the opposite: he or she may be very eloquent. Furthermore, identifying nonsense often requires some basic understanding of the subject.

In my book Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us I discuss this phenomenon at length and refer to it as “the illusion of meaning.” As children we are taught to assume that the words we hear and read have meaning and comprehensible content. When we hear information we don’t understand, the common, default assumption is that we just don’t get it—not that the authoritative person we’re listening to is speaking nonsense. Yet as we grow older, we are sometimes faced with “information” devoid of content—grammatically correct and often impressive words that are either patently untrue, self-contradictory, or simply meaningless.

Too often we are embarrassed to admit that we don’t understand what we are told. We don’t want to appear stupid to the speaker or others in the audience. But more people should ask questions, because others may be just as confused but not want to speak up. There is no shame in not understanding something, and it’s a good lesson to remember that. Asking for clarification not only helps both the speaker and listener communicate more effectively, it is also a powerful tool in revealing bullshit.

Fuzzy thinking and fuzzy language often go hand in hand. Purveyors of pseudoscience usually use vague terms with unclear meanings and definitions. New Age healers, for example, use words and scientific-sounding phrases like “human energy field” and “vibrational frequency” without understanding (or clearly explaining) what it is that they are talking about. This is a case where skeptics should be emboldened to raise their hands and ask, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying. . . . What vibrations are you talking about? What exactly is this ‘energy field,’ and how can science detect it?”

The next time you hear something you don’t understand, ask for clarification. You don’t have to be apologetic about it, and the situation doesn’t have to be confrontational. Those with science and facts and evidence on their side will be happy to explain what they mean. If the speaker cannot explain what he is talking about in plain language—or without resorting to other, even less clear terms and concepts—that’s a warning sign that there’s confusion on both ends of the line.

This is the story of a fiery death that became a cold case—a mystery unsolved since 1847. It begins with an elderly Frenchman, whose badly burned body suggested to authorities that it may have been set afire to conceal evidence of foul play. The victim’s son and daughter-in-law were soon charged with homicide. Subsequently, an exhumation and examination of the severely burned remains led the pathologist to conclude that the case was not one of murder but of “spontaneous combustion”—a possibility discounted by modern science. Was it murder after all, or is there still some other possibility?

Scene of the ‘Crime’

Initially reported in the journal Union Médicale, the case found its way—via the Gazette Médicale—to an American medical journal (Flint 1849) and then on to a textbook on medical jurisprudence (Taylor 1883). On the morning of January 6, 1847, the body of seventy-one-year-old Monsieur Char­bonnier¹ was found lying abed “in its usual position during sleep,” yet it was afire with a small, whitish flame that had de­stroyed, almost entirely, both the deceased’s clothing and the bed clothes, as well as part of the bedstead. Surrounding materials were scorched. Monsieur Char­bonnier was de­scribed as “neither very fat, nor given to drunkenness.”

It having been quite cold for a time, when he retired Charbonnier had, “as usual, placed at his feet a heated brick.” It was also noted that he carried matches in his waistcoat pocket. He had gone to his room sometime between six and seven p.m., and, two hours later, his son and his son’s wife, having passed his door, “perceived nothing un­usual” (Flint 1849).

The authorities came to suspect the couple in Charbonnier’s death of “having first murdered him, and then burnt the body, in order to conceal all traces of the crime.” Apparently, the suspicions were founded on nothing more than that the origin of the fire was unknown and the destruction of the body severe. A Dr. Masson was ordered to examine the remains and so make a determination as to the cause of death. Masson had Charbonnier’s body exhumed (Flint 1849).

Autopsy

A medical journal (Flint 1849) reported on Dr. Masson’s examination:

The coffin was found half filled. The body was folded in a white shroud. A cravat, nearly destroyed by the fire, and a fragment of a shirt collar, remained round the neck. The hands, burnt to a cinder, were attached to the forearm merely by some carbonized tendons, which gave way at the least touch. Lastly, the thighs were so completely separated, that, had it not been for fragments of animal charcoal, the separation might have been attributed to a knife.

The journal continued:

From the examination of these facts, it was concluded that, as it was impossible to attribute the phenomena to the action of the combustibles with which the body had been in contact, they must be ascribed to a cause inherent in the individual, put in action, perhaps, by the heat of the brick applied to the feet, but which must have found a fuel in the tissues which it de­stroyed; that, in a word, it must be classed among cases of spontaneous combustion.

As a result, “This opinion of M. Masson being fully confirmed by that of M. Orfila, the accused were acquitted” (Flint 1849).

Spontaneous Human Combustion?

But if there was no evidence of homicide, does “Spontaneous Human Combustion” (the title of the medical journal article) provide a more viable alternative as a cause of death? Debate over the possibility of spontaneous human combustion (SHC) raged throughout the nineteenth century. When Charles Dickens invoked the alleged phenomenon to kill off a drunken character in his 1853 novel Bleak House, he was following a then-current belief. Early theorists, including members of the temperance movement, had suggested that alcohol-impregnated tissues were rendered highly combustible, but scientists refuted the notion by experimentation. And they pointed out that a person would die of alcohol poisoning long before imbibing enough alcohol to have even a slight effect on the body’s flammability (Lewes 1861, 398). Dickens’s novel set off a controversy.

Response came immediately from George Henry Lewes, the philosopher and critic, who upbraided Dickens for perpetuating superstition. Lewes insisted that SHC was scientifically impossible, a view shared by the great scientist Liebig (1851), who stated: “The opinion that a man can burn of himself is not founded on a knowledge of the circumstances of the death, but on the reverse of knowledge—on complete ignorance of all the causes or conditions which preceded the accident and caused it.” In short, SHC proponents were essentially engaging in a logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance: “We don’t know what caused the fire, so it must have been spontaneous human combustion.”

Thus rationalists like Lewes were seizing the scientific high ground with the question of cause, while Dickens was arguing primarily from effect, citing several cases of the alleged phenomenon. To assess the contrary views, I teamed up with forensic analyst John F. Fischer to launch a two-year investigation of the phenomenon, culminating in a two-part report in the journal of the Inter­national Association of Arson Investi­gators (Nickell and Fischer 1984) and portions of a book (Nickell with Fischer 1988). We reviewed thirty historical cases and focused on one of the most famous, that of Mary Reeser of St. Petersburg, Florida, who in 1951 was reduced to a few bones, a quantity of “grease” (i.e., human body fat), and an intact slippered foot. In our forensic investigation, we focused on both cause and effect.

We found that the correlation of bizarre fiery deaths to drunkenness was likely due to inebriated persons being more careless with fire and less able to properly respond to an accident. We also found a more significant correlation: In those incidents in which the destruction of the body was relatively minimal, the only significant fuel source appeared to have been the victim’s clothes; however, where the destruction was considerable, additional fuel sources—bedding, chair stuffing, wooden flooring, and so on—augmented the burning. Impor­tantly, materials under the body appear also to have helped to retain melted body fat (present in significant amounts even in a relatively lean individual), which volatized and burned, destroying more of the body’s tissues and yielding still more liquefied fat to continue the process known as the wick effect (Gee 1965). In case after case, we found plausible causes for the ignition, thus removing the word spontaneous from the equation (Nickell with Fischer 1988, 161–171). For example, Mary Reeser was seen just before her death wearing flammable night clothes, sitting in a large stuffed chair, smoking a cigarette, after having taken sleeping pills. She was a proverbial accident waiting to happen (Nickell with Fischer 1988, 149–157).

The Explanation

But if the death of Monsieur Charbonnier was not a case of spontaneous human combustion, was it one of murder after all? That is doubtful. Not only was there no evidence of homicide, but a fiery death, under the circumstances given, is an unlikely—though not unheard of—means of murdering someone (Taylor 1883, 719–720). No doubt the accused family members could have staged a more convincing “accident” had they wished to do so.

No, M. Charbonnier’s mode of death was not homicidal; neither was it suicidal or natural (unless a heart attack, say, was directly involved; see below). (It assuredly was not preternatural as in “spontaneous combustion.”) The most likely mode is accidental. As to the manner and cause of death, they remain unexplained but not unexplainable. Indeed, there are many credible explanations that could account for the known data, if we allow some reasonable assumptions. For example, we do not know whether there was a fireplace in the room, but bedrooms typically had such; or whether the victim was a smoker, but matches in his pocket suggest the distinct possibility; or whether he was infirm or had dementia, but he was elderly and being cared for by his son and daughter-in-law. Here are some possibilities:

1. Since Charbonnier was still wearing his clothes (indicated by the remaining fragments of cravat and shirt collar about his neck), probably because it was so cold, he might simply have been lying abed while smoking. In such circumstances it is a common cause of death for a person to fall asleep (or much less commonly to die suddenly, say from cardiac arrest), and so drop the smoking material, thus causing the bedding to smolder, with the result that the victim dies of smoke inhalation before the smoldering process ignites the gasses produced. (If ignition occurs at all, it may be an hour or more after smoldering began.) (Spitz 1993, 427–­428; Nickell 1988, 155)

2. The friction matches in M. Char­bonnier’s vest pocket might have ignited as they rubbed together while he tossed and turned in sleep. They were described as “chemical matches” (Flint 1849) and again as “Lucifer-matches” (Taylor 1883, 722)—that is, a type of friction match using white phosphorous. (These were created in 1830; safety matches were not developed until 1855 [Bellis 2010]).

3. The “heated brick” that the deceased placed at his feet for warmth might have carried, stuck to its underside, a cinder from the fireplace; this could easily have caused smoldering of the linen in which it was wrapped. This scenario is possible even though early sources inform that the brick, “before being wrapped in linen, had been slowly cooled by water thrown over it twice” (Flint 1849). The cinder could have been picked up from the hearth even after the brick was wrapped.

4. A popping, crackling fire in the fireplace might have propelled a burning cinder, or sent adrift a spark, that landed on the bed, or even on the victim’s clothing to be thus carried to the bed. Again, all that was needed was for the smoldering process to be initiated. Such an occurrence need not have been common, since the resulting phenomenon was itself rare.

Other scenarios are possible. However, I think we may conclude not only that the mode of death was accidental but that the manner of death was, generically, carelessness with fire, and the cause of death smoke inhalation.² (Remember, the victim was found in bed in the repose of sleep.) Taylor (1883, 723) concludes that the medical investigator, Masson, probably “underrated the effects which are liable to follow from an accidental ignition of the clothes.” He says of alleged SHC—that is, of severe destruction of the body in cases where the origin of the combustion is unknown—that “In the in­stances reported which are worthy of any credit, a candle, a fire, or some other ignited body has been at hand, and the accidental kindling of the clothes of the deceased was highly probable” (Taylor 1883, 719). As true as that statement was in 1883, today—given our knowledge of how the body’s fat can contribute to its own destruction by means of the wick effect—it is even more defensible.

Acknowledgments

CSI Libraries director Timothy Binga was very helpful with research, especially in tracking down an early account of this case.

Notes

1. Flint (1849) and, presumably, his source give the name only as “Ch______,” but Arnold (1995, 46) has somehow discovered the complete surname. ( Char­bonnier is a perfectly good French name, but—as one cannot help but note with irony, given that the man was largely reduced to ash—it means “charcoal-burner.”)

2. For further discussion of mode, manner, and cause of death, see Nickell and Fischer Crime Science (1999, 254–261).

References

Arnold, Larry E. 1995. Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spontaneous Human Combustion. New York: M. Evans and Company.

Bellis, Mary. 2010. The history of matches. Available online at http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmatch.htm; accessed Feb. 24, 2010.

Flint, Austin, ed. 1849. Buffalo Medical Journal and Monthly Review of Medical and Surgical Science, volume 4. Buffalo, N.Y.: Jewett, Thomas & Co., 247 (citing the Gazette Médicale, which in turn quoted from the Union Médicale).

Gee, D.J. 1965. A case of ‘spontaneous combustion.’ Medicine, Science and the Law 5: 37–38.

Lewes, George Henry. 1861. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 89 (April), 385–402.

Liebig, Justus von. 1851. Familiar Letters on Chemistry, Letter no. 22. London: Taylor, Walton & Maberly.

Nickell, Joe, and John F. Fischer. 1984. Spontaneous human combustion. The Fire and Arson Investigator 34: 3 (March), 4–11; 34: 4 (June), 3–8.

———. 1999. Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detec­tion. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Ken­tucky.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer. 1988. Secrets of the Supernatural. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Spitz, Werner U., ed. 1993. Spitz and Fisher’s Medico­legal Investigation of Death, 3rd ed. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas.

Taylor, Alfred Swaine. 1883. The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence, 3rd ed., vol. Ed. Thomas Stevenson. Philadelphia: H.C. Lea’s Son & Co.

There is no real misunderstanding of what people are getting at these conferences, except for when they go outside of their realms of spiritual beliefs and enter the domain of science. This particular conference is described as being more of a “continuation” of previous gatherings referred to as the “Language of the Spirit” dialogues. These meetings are professed as being an attempt “to bring understanding between Indigenous ways of knowing and Western science.”

Indigenous elders, social visionaries, ecologists, philosophers, and healers with different backgrounds from around the world are asked to help prepare for the future by taking pages out from the tribal culture system of religious belief. SEED is attempting to examine and discuss the prophecies associated with various cultures to reconcile them under one common theme by declaring that “we see this time as an unprecedented opportunity to co-create our collective future; a time when people of all traditions and races are called to come together to explore and rediscover what it means to be human.”

History of SEED

SEED was initially run as an “open university,” not for credit, but for those with a personal interest in the course material. It was not until more recently that the SEED Institute began to sponsor the event known as the Language of Spirit Conference.

This eclectic group featured physicists, elders, linguists, philosophers, authors, and even an astronaut. According to the SEED website, “The 1992 dialogue coincided with the 500th year since Columbus came to Turtle Island, and completed a cycle in which indigenous, wholistic [sic] thinking, once suppressed and disregarded, reemerged on equal footing with leading edge Western science.”

SEED considered these series of meetings to be “Science and Cosmology conferences” that helped branch out into their latest programs, one being the Wisdom from the Origins. The SEED Graduate Institute states that, “The master’s program in Sci­ence and cosmology (Fire) integrates Native science and new scientific models of wholeness, including quantum theory, general systems theory, chaos theory, and complexity theory with comparative philosophy and religion, mythology, depth psychology and cosmology.”

By no means is this a clear definition of science; however, it is an indication of what they believe it to be. There is a recurring theme of mentioning cosmology and science, whereas “cosmology” appears as the more general definition, the study of the universe. This more broad usage of cosmology by SEED incorporates philosophical and metaphysical questions that are not relevant to science. A religious cosmology, if you will, attempting to blur the lines and blend the commonalities found in various religious creation myths and brandish them as useful tools to inform our future lives as human beings. It seems they are operating under the premise that these spiritual beliefs of our ancestors gave us a better understanding of the universe or our place in it. The major concern is that there is no real standard for “knowing” or “knowledge” as described by SEED. They do acknowledge the abundance of misunderstandings surrounding the subject of the Mayan calendar. But they overlook or ignore the inaccuracies and see it as “an opportunity to educate and prepare the people for the times we are in, and to rebirth a wisdom consciousness based on the natural rhythms of the Earth.”

Under the section, “The SEED Vision for Original Education,” the following intro­ductory quote from Mark C. Taylor reflects the basis for their proposed education model, in which a claim gets made about the current state of higher education in America: “Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields and publication in journals read by no other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans)” (SEED Graduate Institute 2012b).

The argument that education does not work due to “fragmented thinking” serves as the motivation for this idea that we need to unify beliefs through “participatory thought.” Which is also the common motif found throughout the official website of the SEED Institute and their offered programs as described in their following vision: “What is needed is an original model of education that is coherent, cohesive and whole in itself, in which all aspects of a school are in relationship to each other. SEED is seeking funding to establish a graduate institute with such a structure, bringing together four lodges of learning in one whole: Science and Cos­mology; Ecology; Ex­pres­sive Arts; and Inte­gral Healing” (SEED Graduate Institute 2012b).

There does seem to be some genuine interest in knowledge. SEED believes that its brand of open-mindedness holds an advantage to other methodologies because, “. . . dialogue has the potential to diffuse seemingly intractable dichotomies.” But they never establish any standards of logic or reasoning. Therefore, every idea is just as good as the next according to this system. For example, they offer this almost skeptical sounding passage describing the answer to this type of “fragmentary thinking” according to physicist David Bohm, “He developed unique method of dialogue that asked participants to suspend their present assumptions and beliefs and listen deeply for the purpose of understanding, rather than to convert another to one’s point of view” (SEED Graduate Institute 2012b).

Bohm was said to have postulated that this “participatory consciousness” might be found in tribal societies. While the idea of opening a dialogue between various cultures does appeal to me, through this lens the enticing allure of pseudoscience becomes stronger and the potential for being susceptible to falsities grows. These science dialogue initiatives between Native American elders and “Western scientists” seem to introduce more uncertainty and confusion into their concepts of the universe and our place in it. The Integral Healing program that SEED provides introduces alternative modalities of healing from the Ayurvedic Institute and the Institute of Chinese Medicine teaching to view the human body as being connected with the environment in a mystical way.

A quick search on the background of some of the speakers and sponsors reveals much of the same brand of pseudoscience that is found permeating through the entire institute, its offered programs, and the Wisdoms of the Origins conference. Gregg Braden is an author known for his books attempting to bridge the gap between science and spirituality, with titles like The God Code, The Divine Matrix, and Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012. Author Barbara Marx Hub­bard has been praised by Deepak Chopra as “the voice for conscious evolution of our time.” The list of sponsors also includes the Institute for Noetic Sciences and the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine. Both of these writers and the mentioned sponsors rely on the complexities found in quantum physics to overcomplicate and maneuver around the fact that these metaphysical and philosophical notions are not science.

Sometimes people fall prey to the idea that having an answer is better than not having one at all—even if it’s the wrong one. Sometimes people simply stop searching for alternative explanations because they be­come accustomed to the pre-existing ones. When the stories are taken for what they are and examined with the frame of reference in mind of the time and place that people lived, the purpose of each tale comes into focus.

The Cheyenne have an account involving a “great pole” that gets described as being like the ones used for their sacred sun dance, except this one is significantly more impressive and large enough to hold up the entire earth. Their version of “the end of times” is expressed through the story “The Gnawing,” as originally told by Mrs. Medicine Bull (1984):

The Great White Grandfather Beaver of the North is gnawing at that pole. He has been gnawing at the bottom of it for ages and ages. More than half of the pole has already been gnawed through. When the Great White Beaver of the North gets angry, he gnaws at it faster and more furiously. Once he has gnawed all the way through, the pole will topple, and the earth will crash into bottomless nothing. That will be the end of people, of everything. The end of all ends. So we are careful not to make the Beaver angry. That’s why the Cheyenne never eat his flesh, or even touch a beaver skin. We want the world to last a little longer.

The White River Sioux have their own version told through the story, “The End of the World,” illustrated through the life of an old woman, over a thousand years old, who is sitting in a cave next to a fire working endlessly on a blanket while a black dog watches. A pot rests above the fire that the woman gets up to periodically stir, and every time she does so, the black dog pulls out some of the porcupine quills used to make the blanket: “The Sioux people used to say that if the old woman ever finishes her blanket strip, then at the very moment that she threads the last porcupine quill to complete the design, the world will come to an end” (Leading Cloud 1967).

The Brule Sioux culture incorporates a “creating power” into their story, called Remak­ing the World, in which it is revealed that the world we live in today is actually the third created version. In 1974, Leonard Crow Dog (1974) told the story to Richard Erdoes on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. After the first two unsuccessful attempts of starting a new world, the Creating Power says, “Now, if you have learned how to behave like human beings and how to live in peace with each other and with the other living things—the two-legged, the four-legged, the many-legged, the fliers, the no-legs, the green plants of this universe—then all will be well. But if you make this world bad and ugly, then I will destroy this world too, it’s up to you.”

When it comes to Native American be­liefs, the focus is often placed more heavily on the journey than the destination. Cultural stories are often used to encourage or teach others about specific behaviors or life lessons. Stories are simply a way to make learning fun. The more outlandish a story is, the more memorable it will be. But if the cultural relevance is missing from the experience the purpose becomes fragmented and that initial power of the story gets lost as well.

References

Crow Dog, Leonard. 1974. Remaking the World. Re­corded by Richard Erdoes in 1974. In American Indian Myths and Legends, selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 496–499.

Leading Cloud, Jenny. 1969. The End of the World. Recorded By Richard Erdoes in 1969. In American Indian Myths and Legends, selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 485–486.

Medicine Bull, Mrs. 1984. The Gnawing. Recorded by Richard Erdoes with the help of an interpreter. In American Indian Myths and Legends, selected and edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 484–485.

SEED Graduate Institute. 2012a. Wisdom from the Origins Conference: The Mayan Calendar and Other Prophecies on the Future of Humanity. Albu­querque, New Mexico. From September 13 to September 17, 2012. Available for download on­line at http://seedgraduateinstitute.org/pdfs/brochure-for-emailing.pdf.

SEED Graduate Institute. 2012b. Source for Educa­tional Empowerment and Community Dialogue (SEED). Available online at http://www.seedgraduateinstitute.org/.

The Shaker motto was “Hands to work, and hearts to God.” Their craftwork em­bodying Shaker design was renowned for its aesthetic simplicity. They sold to the outside world furniture, brooms, nesting boxes, and myriad other craft items and marketed herbs and other goods.

In Kentucky in 1805, the Shakers founded a farming community they called Pleasant Hill. Spanning some 3,000 acres of largely rolling land, it is located about twenty-five miles southwest of Lexington. It consists now of thirty-three restored buildings where Shaker-costumed interpreters demonstrate crafts, give tours, and perform authentic Shaker songs and dance in the Meeting House. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The “haunted” Farm Deacon’s Shop at Pleasant Hill was built in 1809 and remains the oldest permanent structure there. (Pen and ink drawing by Joe Nickell.)

Enter Spirits . . .

Thomas Freese, who became one of the Pleasant Hill Singers in 1996, has collected accounts of alleged spirit encounters there, publishing them in his book, Shaker Ghost Stories from Pleasant Hill, Kentucky (Freese 2005). We met when we had tables next to each other at the Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort. I read my autographed copy of the book with the interest of one who has himself often toured, lectured, and re­searched at Shakertown at Pleasant Hill. (I even prowled the outlying grounds looking for the possible site of a reputed paper mill, only to finally determine the Shakers never had such an enterprise there.)

Freese acknowledges (2005, 3) that “a number of the sightings of Shaker spirits were assumed to be encounters with Pleasant Hill employees who were dressed in Shaker style clothing.” (This is like re-enactment soldiers being mistaken for ghosts at Gettysburg and other historic battlefields [Nickell 2012]). Other apparitions are at­tributable to the percipient being tired or in a daydream state or the like, in which imagery may well up from the unconscious and be superimposed on the visual scene (Nickell 2001).

An overnight guest had a rather common ghostly experience. She awoke at about 3 AM feeling a “heaviness” and seeing a “series of faces” that was, she said, “almost as if I was watching an old movie reel” (Freese 2005, 26–27). She is giving an excellent description of a common “waking dream” that occurs in the twilight between being fully asleep and awake. The heavy feeling is due to the body being still in the sleep mode, and the hallucinatory imagery is common to the experience (Nickell 1995, 41, 214).

A former employee who worked night security at Pleasant Hill recalled his first evening there: “I was in the Trustee’s Office and I went up to check on one of the security locks. When I went up the spiral stairs and reached the top floor, I felt something breathing down the back of my neck. But there wasn’t anyone there.” However, the man concedes that while the sensation may have been “a ghost or the boogie man,” it could also be attributed to “first-night jitters” (Freese 2005, 19).

. . . Or Not

Indeed, a maintenance worker acknowledges that many of the sounds made by old buildings have nothing to do with spirits of the dead. “Pipes will moan,” he says. “I’ve heard that.” And creaking sounds can result from an old building’s settling, from woodwork that yields knocking and popping noises due to temperature changes, and from various other causes. This could well explain the report of a man at work below the floorboards of a shop building who heard “bumps and stomping” (Freese 2005, 10, 19). It could also account for “footsteps” heard here and there (Freese 2005, 9, 20, 45).

There could be similar mundane causes for other spooky happenings: a rocking chair moving by itself (possibly caused by people walking on a rickety floor), rattling pots and pans coupled with an unaccountably open back door (due to a forceful wind), during a storm the repeated sound of something falling (thought to have been possibly “a loose shutter,” but the earwitness was too fearful to investigate), and other incidents (attributable to overactive imaginations or even the outright pranks of others) (Freese 2005, 13, 23, 25, 74).

Sheer superstition can cause someone to imagine the supernatural from the merest coincidence. For instance, when some employees visited the Shakers’ secret worship site that was being excavated by archaeologists, they were greeted with an “unusual sleet storm” that drove them to their cars then “suddenly stopped.” Freese (2005, 106) ventures, “Perhaps the Shaker spirits were restless and had not approved of the excavation?” Yet no unusual storm plagued the actual archaeologists before or after. In any case, to suppose that spirits of the dead were capable of causing a sleet storm is an exercise in magical—superstitious—thinking.

That the Shakers themselves engaged in trancelike behavior, “speaking in tongues,” and channeling “prophecy” has obviously set the stage for impressionable people to expect mystical happenings at Pleasant Hill and to interpret almost any out-of-the-ordinary occurrence accordingly. But are there really spirits of the dead at the site, or are they just expressions of our own hopes and fears?

References

Freese, Thomas. 2005. Shaker Ghost Stories from Pleasant Hill, Kentucky. Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse.

Houran, James, and Rense Lange. 2001. Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company.

Nickell, Joe. 1995. Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

———. 2001. Phantoms, frauds or fantasies? In Houran and Lange, 2001, 214–223.

———. 2012. The Science of Ghosts (in press). Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our solar system and habitable exoplanets outside our solar system, the study of prebiotic chemistry, laboratory and field research into the origins and early evolution of life on Earth, and studies of the potential for life to adapt to challenges on Earth and in outer space. Astrobiology ad­dresses the questions of whether life exists beyond Earth and how humans can detect it if it does.

Astrobiology grew out of a previous discipline called “exobiology,” and often the two terms are used interchangeably. Exo­biology, however, is somewhat narrower—it focuses on the search for life beyond Earth and the effects of extraterrestrial environments on living things. The transition to the term astrobiology at NASA in the mid-1990s was a response to several discoveries that suggested that the space exploration program might help provide answers to fundamental questions about the origin, distribution, and future of life on Earth as well as beyond. These events included the evidence that Mars rock ALH84001 might contain microbial fossils, the amazing life found deep in the ocean at hydrothermal vents, recognition that Jupiter’s moon Europa had a vast ocean of liquid water, and the discovery of the first planets orbiting other stars. Today astrobiology has become a major area of space research globally, although we have not yet found evidence of life on other worlds.

Question: How could we find life on other planets? Does life in the universe have to be rare because life requires very specific environments?

Never having found any life outside the Earth, we cannot answer the question of whether life is abundant or rare. However, recent research with the Kepler mission and other astronomical observations suggests that habitable planets are common, with Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone orbiting at least 1 percent of stars. Even if only one-tenth of these planets actually support life, there are still roughly a billion living planets in our galaxy alone. We have no reason to think that our own planet Earth is unique or even unusual among the rocky worlds orbiting distant stars. But until we have data, this is just speculation.

There are three ways that we might discover life on other worlds: (1) Within our solar system, where we have direct access through spacecraft missions. We are especially interested in Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa, and Saturn’s moon Titan. It is possible to search directly for microbial life on these worlds. (2) If abundant microbial life exists on an Earth-like planet orbiting another star, it is likely to change the atmosphere in ways that can be detected using large telescopes. On Earth, life has contributed oxygen and methane to our atmosphere, both “biosignature gases” that can be detected remotely. (3) Finally, if an intelligent, technological civilization has developed on any planet, and if “they” choose to broadcast radio or optical signals, then perhaps these signals could be detected by SETI searches.

Question: Why is the U.S. government building bunkers to house the elite in case of a global disaster? Also I heard about two suns in China. Is one of them Nibiru?

These two questions both illustrate the Big Lie, which can happen when a story goes viral on the Internet. Both are old hoaxes that just won’t go away. The government bunker rumor has two sources. First is the well-known fact that the U.S. government built many deep air raid shelters during the early stages of the Cold War, including the underground complex at Greenbrier, West Vir­ginia, which was supposed to provide protection for the President and his staff, and the Cheyenne Mountain complex in Colorado, which is still used by the Strategic Air Com­mand. Second is an episode on bunkers in Jesse Ventura’s TV series Con­spiracy Theory. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize this is an entertainment show, not journalism—something that is given away by the title, since the phrase “conspiracy theory” implies an interpretation that is not based on facts. But even his episode about shelters is all innuendo; Ventura does not actually interview anyone who claims to have seen one of the phantom “government bunkers.”

The source of the “two suns in China” report is even less well understood by the public. If you watch the original news video with a friend who speaks Chinese, you will see that this is about a single photo, broadcast by a local TV station on a small island near Taiwan. It is based on a still picture (not a video), apparently rephotographed with a hand-held video camera. As far as I can tell, the “two suns” were not seen elsewhere in Taiwan, let alone across China. And obviously if this phenomenon were real, billions of people everywhere could have verified it just by looking up at the Sun.

Question: Is it true that the reason the far side of the Moon has more impact craters than the near side is because the Earth shields the near side from incoming comets and asteroids?

The Earth shield is not large enough to in­fluence crater densities. Just using simple straight-line geometry, you can calculate how much of the lunar sky is obscured by the Earth: about four square degrees out of 41,000 square degrees for the whole sky. Only one in ten thousand incoming projectiles would be intercepted by the Earth. The real reason there are more impact craters on the far side of the Moon is that the near side has a thinner crust that allowed volcanoes to erupt about three billion years ago, and these large lava flows have covered the craters that were formed early in the Moon’s history. It is likely that each side of the Moon has received equal numbers of impacts, but the resurfacing by lava results in fewer craters being visible on the near side than the far side.

Question: I’ve recently been hearing a lot about something called global/solar dimming. Are we headed for another ice age or will some horrid catastrophe be caused by the Sun?

Global dimming or solar dimming usually refers to the reduction in sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface due to atmospheric aerosols (smog). During the middle of the twentieth century, the increase in industrial smog partly compensated for the greater greenhouse effect by adding carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, thereby slowing the global warming that would have been expected. One effect of the environmental movement of the last third of the twentieth century was to clean up the emission of smog, which had the unintended effect of accelerating global warming from the greenhouse effect. The other effect that you mention, a decrease in solar energy output during time of low solar activity, is much smaller. The Sun’s energy output (which we measure with satellites built for that purpose) varies by less than one percent, as you might expect since the number of sunspots or flares at the surface can’t influence the rate of nuclear fusion in the core of the Sun. The Sun’s brightness cannot drop enough to counteract current global warming due to the greenhouse effect. There will be no more ice ages if humans keep polluting the atmosphere with more carbon dioxide and methane and other greenhouse gases.

Question: A recent spate of furious eruptions on the Sun hurled a huge amount of heat toward Earth, the biggest dose our planet has received in seven years. The solar storm of March 8–10, 2012, deposited twenty-six billion kilowatt-hours of energy in the upper atmosphere, enough energy to power every home in New York City for two years. Would this intense heating have any effect on the Earth’s climate?

Your question is an excellent example of how solar activity is being hyped as if it were a major threat to Earth. The Sun is the source of almost all of our energy, and Earth intercepts almost 200 trillion kilowatts from the Sun continuously in the form of light and infrared (heat) radiation. Thus in the three days (seventy-two hours) of March 8 through 10, we received about 10¹⁶ kilowatt-hours of ordinary sunlight. Compare this with 26 billion kilowatt-hours from the solar eruption. The energy from the eruption is less than that from sunlight by a factor of nearly a million, negligible compared to regular sunlight. Solar outbursts make no contribution to heating the Earth or to global warming. In the report you read, don’t you think it would have been more realistic if they had noted this fact rather than talk about the solar storm in comparison to the energy needed to light New York City?

Signs of the Times (www.sott.net) was created by historian and author Laura Knight-Jadczyk. The About section on the site mentions that her husband is “one of the world’s few living experts in hyperdimensional [HD] physics” (Knight-Jadczyk 2002). Another notable person that claims to be an “expert” in hyperdimensional physics is Richard “Face on Mars” Hoag­land. HD physics has been associated with energies at the “mysterious” Coral Castle in Florida and Comet Elenin, and it has even been linked to the Mayan Calendar (Scott 2011). The network page QuantumFuture.net lists Cassiopaea.org, Cassiopaea.com, and QuantumFuture.net as separate websites founded by Arkadiusz Jadczyk and his wife (Jadczyk and Knight-Jadczyk 2000).

In 2011, Signs of the Times featured an intriguing article under the category “Science of the Spirit” titled “The Truth about Hair and Why Indians Would Keep Their Hair Long.” The author, C. Young, sets the tone of things to follow: “Our culture leads us to believe that hair style is a matter of personal preference, that hair is a matter of fashion and/or convenience, and that how people wear their hair is simply a cosmetic issue” (Young 2011). However, just a little further along in the article, another more interesting claim pops up: “Back in the Vietnam War however, an en­tirely different picture emerged, one that has been carefully covered up and hidden from public view.”

This particular story involves an account from a woman going by the name of Sally (to protect her privacy) who reported a shocking discovery made by her husband while he was working at a VA Medical hospital as a “licensed psychologist.” Sally is quoted in the article:

I remember clearly an evening when my husband came back to our apartment on Doctor’s Circle carrying a thick official looking folder. Inside were hundreds of pages of certain studies commissioned by the government. He was in shock from those contents. What he read in those documents completely changed his life. From that moment on my conservative middle of the road husband grew his hair and beard and never cut them again. What is more, the VA Medical center let him do it, and other very conservative men in his staff followed his example.

According to the author, the contents supposedly contained details about special departments being sent undercover to infiltrate Native American reservations in an attempt to recruit young scouts who ap­peared to have “almost supernatural” abilities. It also allegedly mentioned that these men were “. . . extensively documented as experts in tracking and survival.” However, much to the dismay of the military re­cruiters, “Once enlisted, an amazing thing happened. Whatever talents and skills they had possessed on the reservation seemed to mysteriously disappear, as recruit after recruit failed to perform as expected in the field” (Young 2011).

This was said to have been followed by a government-led investigation into what could cause such a drastic reduction in performance. The investigators’ findings are presented in the following quote from Young’s article: “When questioned about their failure to perform as expected, the older recruits replied consistently that when they received their required military haircuts, they could no longer ‘sense’ the enemy, they could no longer access a ‘sixth sense,’ their ‘intuition’ no longer was reliable, they couldn’t ‘read’ subtle signs as well or access subtle extrasensory information.”

More trackers were recruited in order to carry out further testing. This time, men who received similar scores were tested in pairs; one of them got a military haircut and the other kept the more traditional longer hair length. When these changes were put into effect, the testing resumed and “time after time the man with long hair kept making high scores. Time after time, the man with the short hair failed the tests in which he had previously scored high scores.”

If there is any doubt as to what is going on here, the author of the article provides an example of some typical tests. One scenario describes a recruit sleeping outside in the wilderness who would suddenly wake up before anyone approached within earshot. Another example involves an attack situation where the recruit “pretending to be sleeping” would turn things around and subdue the potential assailant. After this series of tests, a military haircut was administered, and the recruit would start to fail “many other tests that he had previously passed. . . .” In the end, the government “recommended that all Indian trackers be exempt from military haircuts. In fact, it required that trackers keep their hair long,” according to Young.

Close investigation into various tribal beliefs might help explain the origin of this story. Though Native American legends and belief systems do incorporate terms for the supernatural, they do not use phrases found in New Age mysticism like “aura” or “sixth sense.” The aspects surrounding the long hair of Native American boys and men cannot be accurately understood without in­sight from a part of American history that might not be as widely known. While there might be some variability in the details re­garding the reasons for long hair from tribe to tribe, there is one major component that has remained consistent: long hair has never been about aesthetics but instead is a religious concern. Generally, long hair has strong religious implications based on tribal beliefs that often go unnoticed, but it is commonly more known to be associated with a connection to the ancestors; severing it symbolizes the mourning of a close loved one or family member.

During the early periods of America’s history, Native Americans were subjected to a conversion process administered by the United States government. The religious be­liefs of the government agents and other missionaries led them to consider long hair offensive, simply labeling Native American religions to be un-Christian. The aspect of this government program that makes it an infamous part in Native American history is the notion of using boarding schools to systematically remove tribal cultures and traditions from the lives of young Native people in an attempt to “civilize” them. During this time, phrases like “Kill the Indian and save the man” and “The only good Indian is a dead one” (Pratt 1892) became quite popular and were ultimately adopted as slogans by the federal government.

Most of the struggles that Native Amer­icans face seem to come from the fact that their spiritual beliefs are not recognized as a legitimate religion. Not only is this reflected in society, but it also floods over the walls of institutions and into the system itself. Most recently, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling in the case A.A. ex rel. Beten­baugh v. Needville Independent School District, which involved a young Lipan Apache boy attending kindergarten in Texas. A trial court originally settled in favor of the parents, but the school district appealed the ruling. The Circuit judges’ ruling appears in the official document filed in the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals as follows: “A Native Amer­ican boy and his parents challenge a school district’s requirement that he wear his long hair in a bun on top of his head or in a braid tucked in his shirt. We agree with the district court that the requirement offends a sincere religious belief and hold it invalid under Texas law” (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 2010). Accord­ing to tribal historian Nancy Minor, many considered this a “. . . victory for the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, since it validates the fact that we are a legitimate American Indian tribe with members who practice traditional beliefs” (Minor 2010).

C. Young also claims that “Hair is an extension of the nervous system, it can be correctly seen as exteriorized nerves, a type of highly evolved ‘feelers’ or ‘antennae’ that transmit vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex” (Young 2011). However, this does not fit the description of what hair is according to Hairbiology.com (2012), an informative website that is solely dedicated to helping explain the biology of hair. There is mention of hair being used for everything from trapping heat to protecting the scalp from ultraviolet light from the sun and even providing “. . . tactile information about the environment.” There is actually a variety of different types of mammalian hair, but human does not fit the antennae description. While the hair that grows on a person’s head might provide some sensory input, it functions more like cat whiskers than insect antennae. Even in this case, the whiskers of a cat are not really doing the feeling; it is in the follicles below the whiskers where most of the sensing is occurring. In fact, Robert Kunzig’s (2002) article in Discover magazine, “The Biology of . . . Hair: Zeroing in on the Molecular Switches That Regenerate Hair Growth,” tells us that “The hair we see, fuss over, curse, write lyrics about, is just dead stuff, pushed up and out of the skin by the follicles below. It is those follicles that are alive, and that drive the growth and shedding we see.”

Not only are there many holes in the presented account of the government using Native Americans in special experimental research, but also records pertaining to the special tracker units seem to be missing. The only source that appears associated with this account comes from United Truth Seekers, a website that promotes itself as “A ‘SOCIAL NETWORK’ & Was Created To: Expose The New World Order! Join Us Exposing The Evil New World Order!” (Suggs 2012).

However, the Signs of the Times site also has another conspiracy-tinged statement providing insight into the perspective shared by its contributors: “Our work has been attacked, suppressed, and marginalized by the Powers That Be in ways that no other work has been, leaving us with the distinct impression that we must be on the right track!” (Knight-Jadczyk 2002).

Laura Knight-Jadczyk also makes another revealing statement by highlighting the point that her website “. . . stands out from the crowd . . . for its commentary on world events and tracking of global trends, patterns, and energies” (Knight-Jadczyk 2002). While the author and the website presenting the article both seem to show a genuine interest in science, there is a serious lack of the necessary critical thinking skills needed to effectively engage these specific subjects. For example, the following is the logic that Young offers as explanation for unique qualities of hair: “Not only does hair in people, include[ing] facial hair in men, provide an information highway reaching the brain, hair also emits energy, the electromagnetic energy emitted by the brain into the outer environment. This has been seen in Kirlian photography when a person is photographed with long hair and then rephotographed after the hair is cut” (Young 2011).

For those unfamiliar with Kirlian photography, or electrophotography, it involves fun with some conductive material and an electrode (Carroll 2010). Photo­graphing the corona discharge produces an impressive effect and array of streaking colors that some people allege is the depiction of the “human energy field” commonly referred to as the body’s “aura” (Barrett 2001). It is pure pseudoscience.

The following is another indication that this entire account of Native American “trackers” being used in any research resembling the sort mentioned is more than likely completely fabricated: “SOTT can’t confirm this story or the research it suggests took place, however, we have wondered on many occasions, what is the use of hair and why so many legends refer to hair as being a source of strength, from Samson, to Nazarenes, to the long haired Franks” (Young 2011).

In the end, Young finally manages to make one reasonable statement stick out through this aura of mystical energy and pseudoscience: “In searching for solutions for the distress in our world, it may be time for us to consider that many of our most basic assumptions about reality are in error. It may be that a major part of the solution is looking at us in the face each morning when we see ourselves in the mirror.”

References

Barrett, Stephen. 2001. Kirlian photography. Quack­watch (June 2). Online at http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/kirlian.html.

Carroll, Robert T. 2010. Kirlian photography (electro­photography). The Skeptics Dictionary (Decem­ber 9). Online at http://www.skepdic.com/kirlian.html.

HairBiology.Com. 2012. Hair fiber function. Online at http://www.hairbiology.com/hair-fiber/hair-fiber-function.shtml.

Jadczyk, Arkadiusz, and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. 2000. Quantum Future.net (May 6). Online at http://quantumfuture.net/.

Knight-Jadczyk, Laura. 2002. About sott.net. Online at http://www.sott.net/page/1-About-Sott-net.

Kunzig, Robert. 2002. The biology of . . . hair: Zeroing in on the molecular switches that regulate hair growth. Discover Magazine (February). Online at http://discovermagazine.com/2002/feb/featbiology.

Minor, Nancy. 2010. Arocha case won in fifth circuit court of appeals! The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas Official Website (July 31). Online at http://www.lipanapache.org/AdrielArocha/AA.html.

Pratt, Richard C. 1892. ‘Kill the Indian, and Save the Man’: Capt. Richard C. Pratt on the Education of Native Americans. History Matters. Online at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4929/.

Scott, Greg. 2011. What Is Hyperdimensional Physics? Conscience Life News. Online at http://consciouslifenews.com/hyperdimensionalphysics/1120831/.

Suggs, Pam. 2012. United Truth Seekers. Online at http://unitedtruthseekers.com/.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. 2010. Ruling of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas Official Website. (July 9). Online at http://www.lipanapache.org/AdrielArocha/AApages/1.html.

Young, C. 2011.The truth about hair and why Indians would keep their hair long. Signs of the Times (September 8). Online at http://www.sott.net/articles/show/234783-The-Truth-About-Hair-and-Why-Indians-Would-Keep-Their-Hair-Long.

“It never happened,” says the retired high school math teacher and self-described physicist, who has been following NASA for years.

Concerns have been raised over pictures showing NASA’s annual employee picnic where the Exploration Systems Division claims to have battled the Space Operations Division for the Mission Directorate softball championship. According to Williams, NASA faked these pictures “just liked they faked the moon landing.”

“We can’t have our government lie to us about what NASA is up to, or what they claim to be doing,” Williams says as he points out irregularities in the photos. He claims they have been airbrushed. “It ain’t been softball, I’ll tell you that,” he says. “These pictures have been doctored.”

As he scans the photos strewn across his kitchen table and tacked to the walls, Williams selects a few and proceeds to explain the evidence—evidence, he says, that proves NASA has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the American public for decades. Williams points to the shadows of the people in line at the BBQ fixins table as inconsistent with a single light source such as the sun. He believes that another picture of NASA employees playing softball is the smoking gun.

“Look here at the length of the shadows on the ground. It’s the middle of the summer, when the sun is at its highest . . . im­possible,” he argues.

Why would NASA do this? Why would they spend so much time and effort to fabricate such an event? Williams admits he gets asked that question a lot and explains that NASA has been unable to safely conduct an organization-wide picnic for decades.

“Sure they’ve had some small outings here and there but whenever they take on something big, the complexity of the event is simply too overwhelming,” he says.

Many believe Williams has a point. The year before, two mid-level managers and a flight engineer got struck by lightening just as the picnic started. The year before that, the entire Aeronautics Research directorate came down with the stomach flu just days before the outing. “There are just too many coincidences!” Williams said.

“NASA has been so desperate to pull off a big event—like the family day the Treasury Department was planning that year—that they were prepared to take an extreme risk and fake a monumental cookout and softball game.”

Some people have suggested that NASA had much to gain from a successful event. For the last two years, Administrator Charles F. Bolden has been competing with Depart­ment of Transportation’s Ray LaHood for the highly sought-after JFK fields near the reflecting pool on the National Mall. Show­ing that NASA could pull off such an outing would have played well with Wash­ington, DC, Parks and Recreation.

Williams cites more photographic evidence that NASA’s summer BBQ was a hoax. “You see this lady right here?” he says as he points to a picture of Communi­cations Planning Director Rachel Sampson handing out drinks to players. “Her hair is perfect and it’s July . . . she ain’t even sweating.” Williams then runs a video showing Roger Flay, the deputy director of the Advanced Capabilities Division, fielding a pop fly. “There’s no way this is real. Look at his speed, his vertical leap. You mean to tell me this 200-pound man in his sixties has that type of agility?” asks Williams, who believes that special effects and increasing the film speed must have been used to fake the action on the field. “If you look closely you can see the wires used to lift this man.”

A NASA spokesperson has responded by noting that they hold this picnic and softball game nearly every year and that any claims of a cover-up are not to be taken seriously. Williams claims that NASA’s official re­sponse is exactly what you would expect them to say if they were hiding something. He wraps up the interview with this observation: “[There’s a] sound stage; definitely a sound stage. You got your lighting, industrial fans to simulate the wind, and rigging, lots of rigging.”

Figure 1. This photo of the Montauk Monster was widely circulated on the Internet, causing much speculation.

Before long, the original creature was credibly identified as a raccoon by wildlife biologist Jeff Corwin (Boyd 2008). Al­though questions remained, I gave the matter little more attention—for a time.

Case of the Missing Hair

However, when—on an investigative outing on September 19, 2009—I came across a dead raccoon by the roadside, I quickly decided it might be profitable to study the issue further. My wife, Diana, drove the getaway car while I retrieved the roadkill in busy traffic. I subsequently deposited it at a convenient wooded site she dubbed the Raccoon Body Farm (after the famous forensic site maintained by the University of Tennessee). (See Figure 2.) I monitored it to observe developments.

Figure 2. Raccoon roadkill is studied at the author’s Raccoon Body Farm. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

The experiment raised questions. The already putrid carcass decomposed quickly, and in about three days it was largely gone, leaving behind a swarming mass of maggots plus all of the raccoon’s fur (Figure 3). As I looked again at the Montauk Monster photo, I thought the creature’s fur loss needed explaining. One suggestion was mange (Radford 2009), which can produce strange-looking creatures. (Indeed, Diana and I once went in search of a Bigfoot in Pennsylvania that turned out to be a mangy bear [Nickell 2008; “Big Foot” 2008]. More recently I examined, up close, a mangy coyote mistaken for a “chupacabra” near Springfield, Missouri [Nickell 2011].) However, long familiar with mange from my boyhood days in eastern Kentucky, I did not think the Montauk Monster looked like a case of mange.

Figure 3. After three days, the decomposition is advanced, but the animal’s fur remains. (Photo by Joe Nickell)

Paleontologist and science blogger Dar­ren Naish (2008) observed that water-logged creatures often lose their fur. But what was a raccoon doing in the ocean in the first place—if it did not just die on the beach, and if it really was a raccoon?

A housefly on the creature’s back allowed photo enlargement (by colleague Tom Flynn) to be made approximately life size (assuming an upper limit for the fly as 12mm) and the carcass to be measured as about 65cm (approximately 25.6 inches) long. This is well within the range of the adult common raccoon, Procyon lotor (accord­ing to the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to North American Mammals [Whitaker 1996, 748], which gives a length range of 24–37 inches).

Those who doubted the raccoon identification had their main arguments refuted by Darren Naish (2008). First, whereas the creature was said to be too long-legged for a raccoon, Naish observed: “Raccoons are actually surprisingly leggy”; he asserted that “claims that the limb proportions of the Montauk carcass are unlike those of raccoons are not correct.” Secondly, claims that the creature had a “beak” prompted Naish to say of raccoons: “The tendency for the soft tissues of the snout to be lost early on in decomposition immediately indicates that the ‘beak’ is just a defleshed snout region: we’re actually seeing the naked premaxillary bones. . . . The Montauk animal has lost its upper canines and incisors (you can even see the empty sockets [in one photo]). . . .”

Viking Funeral?

I recalled an earlier claim that the presence of a hairless raccoon at Montauk had been explained—and then the explanation dismissed as not credible. Reportedly, three young men had found a dead raccoon on nearby Shelter Island two weeks earlier. As a lark, they gave it a “Viking funeral”: sending it adrift on a makeshift raft (made of twigs and an inflatable toy)—containing a watermelon and cloth scraps—after setting the carcass afire. (Their prior revelry involved a “waterboarding endurance competition,” and later hijinks included a “clothespins-on-your-genitals challenge.” Many were skeptical of the trio’s story, pointing out what a circuitous fifteen-mile route the carcass would have had to travel to get to Montauk (“The Latest” 2009).

However, an investigator is not a dismisser who ignores evidence because it is inconvenient or merely because someone’s behavior does not comport with what he or she thinks someone would do in a situation. Neither is an investigator the equivalent of a newspaper’s rewrite staffer. Mysteries are solved by the use of the best, corroborative evidence, together with the principle of Occam’s razor (that the preferred hypothesis is the one that makes the fewest assumptions consistent with the evidence). It turns out there is considerable corroborative evidence for the “Viking funeral” claim.

Figure 4. A “Viking funeral” appears to account for the presence and condition of the Montauk Monster.

First, data on the surface currents and winds in the area show that the “Viking funeral” critter would likely have been pushed in the proper direction (“The Latest” 2009). Significantly, the trio provided photographs documenting their launching. The snapshots (see Figure 4) clearly show a dead raccoon—first being launched on a raft of sticks as claimed, then blazing and adrift. Also the Montauk Monster has what appears to be a strip of cloth around its right foreleg, possibly linking it to scraps of cloth used with the “Viking funeral” raccoon. (Enlarge­ment of one of the trio’s photos shows what could be a band around the raccoon’s right foreleg.) Moreover, the forelegs of the latter are in the same approximate position with respect to each other as those of the Mon­tauk Monster (“Has the Montauk” 2009). Finally, the latter’s flesh has a decidedly baked appearance, consistent with the re­ported burning.

Therefore, the best evidence thus far indicates—until perhaps better evidence comes to light—that the Montauk Monster was neither a hoax (involving either a fake latex creature or a skinned animal) nor a mangy, gone-swimming-and-drowned critter; instead, it is an identifiable raccoon whose dead body was set ablaze and adrift on a makeshift raft as part of a comically wry ritual dubbed a “Viking funeral.” The dead raccoon does seem to be achieving a kind of immortality as a result.

Acknowledgments

I appreciate the research assistance of Tom Flynn and Henry Huber as well as CFI Libraries Direc­tor Timothy Binga.

References

Big Foot in the Pennsylvania wilds. 2008. Online at http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/stonemanguitars/bigfoot.html; accessed February 27, 2008.

Boyd, Aaron. 2008. Naturalists confirm Montauk Monster is relative of Rocky Raccoon. Online at http://www.hamptons.com/print.php?articleID=4474; accessed December 23, 2009.

Has the Montauk Monster mystery been solved? 2009. Online at http://gawker.com/5278112/has-the-montauk-monster-mystery-been-solved; publ. June 4, 2009; accessed December 22, 2009.

The latest Montauk Monster theory: A compleat accounting. 2009. Online at http://gawker.com/5280493/the-latest-montauk-monster-theory-a-com; accessed December 22, 2009.

Naish, Darren. 2008. What was the Montauk monster? Online at http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2008/08/the_montauk_monster.php; accessed October 27, 2009.

Nickell, Joe. 2008. Personal journal entry, February 24.

———. 2011. Chupacabra attack (blog post). Avail­able online at http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/Chupacabra_attack/; accessed Febru­ary 17, 2012.

Radford, Benjamin. 2009. Hide the kids and wake the neighbors: The Montauk Monster returns! Skeptical Briefs 19(3) (September): 14.

Whitaker, John O. Jr. 1996. Field Guide to North American Mammals, revised ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.