It happens with disgusting regularity. You will flip through the various basic cable channels which are nominally “science oriented” (often grouped together on the dial if they feature scientific topics) and come up with nothing but junk, pseudoscience, and worse. “Reality shows” about subjects with little or no science content, tons of paranormal and pseudoscientific shows promoting ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and creationism—all fill the airwaves for channels like Discovery, The  Learning Channel, History Channel, and even the Science Channel and National Geographic Channel. We watch a few minutes of these with complaints to anyone within earshot, then (usually) move on—or occasionally we get sucked in to watch the whole thing, like gawkers at a car crash. The cartoon at the top (from the great website PhdComics) says it all: four channels that used to be largely documentaries on science and history are now dominated  by guns, explosions, dangerous occupations and other “reality” TV. Their shows have  buzz words in the titles like “biggest”, “wildest”, “monsters” or “killers”, and plain old junk fill up most of their air time.

I’ve seen it from both sides. I’ve appeared in prehistoric animal documentaries that have aired on all four channels (and keep re-appearing years after I made them, so I feel like Dorian Gray, with my younger self perpetually preserved in documentary limbo). Almost all these documentaries are made by small independent film outfits that are searching for any sexy topic that they can sell to the major cable networks, so they are under great pressure to come up with something flashy, noisy, scary, and/or mysterious. If I  have any chance to review the script, I try my best to tone down the excessive hyperbole, but they usually ignore me. As I film segments with them, I try to be as dynamic and entertaining as a “talking head” can be, but they are always pushing me to oversimplify and exaggerate to make the spiel more colorful (but less scientifically accurate). And then when I see the final product, most of what I did ends up on the cutting room floor, with only a few seconds left of many hours of filming. Even worse, I’ve put in many  hours on projects that never got picked up at all. Documentary filmmaking is a high-risk, low-reward proposition—you have better odds of making big money in Vegas.

So we all complain about the changes in our basic cable channels, and wonder why such dreck can make it on the air, but seldom think hard about the process. But the excellent website TVTropes does a very nice job analyzing what happens to TV networks over time. To no one’s surprise, it comes down to one simple factor: ratings (and therefore money from advertisers), largely driven by the effort to woo those big-spending trend-setting 18-31 male viewers who already dictate the movie industry’s bottom line (although movies aim even lower to reach teenage boys, the biggest-spending and most loyal movie audience). As TVTropes points out (and those of us old enough to remember can attest to), it wasn’t always this bad on cable TV. When the laws changed and the opportunity to create hundreds of basic cable channels first emerged in the 1980s, the channels were initially set up to fill specific programming niches, from the Golf Channel to the Game Show Network and so on. In the early 1980s, all these new niche-driven cable channels were very distinct and more or less true to their niche description. But since these are commercial channels that must sell ads based on numbers of viewers, the same factors that affect every other commercial enterprise came into play: keep tweaking it and give the customer whatever sells the most. (This dynamic does not apply to non-commercial stations like PBS in the U.S., or the BBC in Britain, which can program what they feel is in the public interest).

As TVTropes documents, nearly all these niche-defined networks have undergone “network decay” since they were founded in the 1980s, as their programming shifts to find hit shows. Because they are nearly all chasing nearly the same demographic of 18-31 year old males, they end up programming a lot of the same kinds of things (or even the same shows). Their original mission and distinctive programming is lost in a sea of reality shows and junk that keeps you in your seat, whether it be explosions or dangerous occupations or whatever. Another factor has been the expansion of media conglomerates, so that these multiple cable channels are owned by just a few corporations, and the CEO of each channel must answer to corporate bosses who are only interested in their profitability, not any abstract “mission” to air certain types of programming. So much for the high-minded idealism that drove the deregulation of the airwaves in the 1970s and 1980s, with the intent of offering us dozens of distinct choices. Instead, they all “decay” to a lowest-common-denominator of “if it bleeds, it leads” bottom-line mentality, negating whatever real advantages that dozens of distinctive niche cable channels once offered. As TVTropes points out, the decisions are made by network execs worried only about their ratings and bottom lines, not any high-minded ideal like “quality television” that PBS brags so loudly about. They could (and did) notice that professional “wrestling” is popular with their 18-31 male demographic, and see no problem with programming the WWE next to a show about science.

TVTropes offers as a classic example the pioneering channel MTV, which single-handedly changed the music business in the early 1980s and made telegenic pop artists into big stars (e.g., Michael Jackson, Madonna) while ending the careers of less telegenic musicians (e.g., Christopher Cross). But soon MTV found it was more profitable to offer reality shows, cartoons, game shows, and many other kinds of programming until the original music videos that it pioneered have vanished altogether.  TVTropes analyzed the decay of the cable channels in various categories. Under “Total Abandonment” (of their original mission) they list not only MTV, A&E, G4, CMT, Biography, and The Learning Channel (TLC). In their words:

TLC, originally focusing around science and nature documentaries in the style of the Discovery Channel, drifted toward almost nothing but “home makeover”-style reality shows. In a somewhat confusing (in these days of internet porn) play at grabbing the all-important 18-30 male demographic, TLC acquired the rights to air the Miss America pageant. After sufficient decay, one would never guess that TLC used to be called The Learning Channel and was once co-owned by NASA.

One need only check here to see how far TLC has drifted away from “learning” and into the realm of bizarre sensationalism, or this hilarious send-up of their programming.

Under the category “Slipped”, we find The History Channel. As TVTrope comments:

[Their] programming now consists of roughneck-focused reality shows (Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men) and conspiracy theory “documentaries” about UFOs, the Bible Code, ghosts, Atlantis, Nostradamus, and the end of the world, earning the network the derisive nickname “The Hysterical Channel”. Heck, at least the “Hitler Channel,” as they used to be known (back when everything was about either World War II, Nazis or The American Civil War), was actual history.

Their analysis of Discovery Channel is even more hilarious:

The Discovery Channel still shows plenty of actual documentary material, despite having been decaying for almost as long as MTV has. In the late 80s the lineup was mostly serious documentaries, the most famous of which was Wings (no relation to the sitcom except for a focus on aircraft) but which also included classy repackaged BBC imports like Making of a Continent — and once a year there was Shark Week, which was just what you’d expect. By the mid-1990s, they showed an obscene amount of home improvement shows and cooking shows aimed at stay-at-home moms (enough to spawn the spin-off Discovery Home & Leisure Channel, now Planet Green) and Wings had proven so popular it had been farmed out to its own spin-off, Discovery Wings Channel (now Military Channel). Now, they’re being swamped with “guys building and/or blowing things up” shows in the vein of Mythbusters and Monster Garage. And about four different shows about credulous idiots with no critical thinking skills ghost hunters. In 2005, Discovery debuted Cash Cab, a game show that takes place in the back of a cab, leaving one unsure whether it even has a theme beyond “non-fiction”. It gets weird when you realize that they’re knocking some of their own shows off, especially Mythbusters into Smash Lab (with a focus on safety measures) and How It’s Made into Some Assembly Required. The latter has almost only done products featured in the former (though How It’s Made has been on for just about ten years, so it’s hard to find something they haven’t done). The Discovery Channel also used to contain a lot of nature, which is where the now-classic Shark Week (which they still air regularly) originated from. But it seems that explosions have taken the place of tigers ripping stuff to pieces. Most of the nature shows have since been relegated to Animal Planet.

Finally, the Science Channel and National Geographic Channel are the only two that still run mostly science documentaries with little junk, yet National Geographic still has “The Bounty Hunter,” “Is it Real?”, and “The Dog Whisperer.”  Science Channel has begun airing sci-fi programming, including “Firefly” and “Dark Matters: Twisted but True,” so they are running pop-pseudoscience garbage that now pollutes The History Channel.

Frankly, I don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel. As long as these are commercial TV channels, they are driven by ratings and lowest-common-denominator programming aimed at 18-31 men. Only PBS and other non-commercial stations can escape this “network decay”—but then they compensate by annoying pledge drives that rerun old shows with sentimental value so that viewers will tune in and hopefully donate. Maybe the BBC, with its government support of top-quality science and drama programming (which the U.S. market then borrows or rips off) seems immune, although there are BBC channels that are lowbr0w as well. After all, Benny Hill reruns have done well on American TV for years….

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According to a 2009 Harris Poll of 2,303 adult Americans, when people are asked to “Please indicate for each one if you believe in it, or not,” the following results were revealing:¹

• 82% believe in God
• 76% believe in miracles
• 75% believe in Heaven
• 73% believe in Jesus is God
  or the Son of God
• 72% believe in angels
• 71% believe in survival
  of the soul after death
• 70% believe in the
  resurrection of Jesus Christ
• 61% believe in hell
• 61% believe in
  the virgin birth (of Jesus)
• 60% believe in the devil
• 45% believe in Darwin’s
  Theory of Evolution
• 42% believe in ghosts
• 40% believe in creationism
• 32% believe in UFOs
• 26% believe in astrology
• 23% believe in witches
• 20% believe in reincarnation

Wow. More people believe in angels and the devil than believe in the theory of evolution. That’s disturbing. And yet, such results should not surprise us as they match similar survey findings for belief in the paranormal conducted over the past several decades.² And it is not just Americans. The percentages of Canadians and Britons who hold such beliefs are nearly identical to those of Americans.³ For example, a 2006 Readers Digest survey of 1,006 adult Britons reported that 43 percent said that they can read other people’s thoughts or have their thoughts read, more than half said that they have had a dream or premonition of an event that then occurred, more than two-thirds said they could feel when someone was looking at them, 26 percent said they had sensed when a loved-one was ill or in trouble, and 62 percent said that they could tell who was calling before they picked up the phone. In addition, a fifth said they had seen a ghost and nearly a third said they believe that Near-Death Experiences are evidence for an afterlife.⁴

Although the specific percentages of belief in the supernatural and the paranormal across countries and decades varies slightly, the numbers remain fairly consistent that the majority of people hold some form of paranormal or supernatural belief.⁵ Alarmed by such figures, and concerned about the dismal state of science education and its role in fostering belief in the paranormal, the National Science Foundation (NSF) conducted its own extensive survey of beliefs in both the paranormal and pseudoscience, concluding with a plausible culprit in the creation of such beliefs:

Belief in pseudoscience, including astrology, extrasensory perception (ESP), and alien abductions, is relatively widespread and growing. For example, in response to the 2001 NSF survey, a sizable minority (41 percent) of the public said that astrology was at least somewhat scientific, and a solid majority (60 percent) agreed with the statement “some people possess psychic powers or ESP.” Gallup polls show substantial gains in almost every category of pseudoscience during the past decade. Such beliefs may sometimes be fueled by the media’s miscommunication of science and the scientific process.⁶

I too would like to lay the blame at the feet of the media, or science education in general, because the fix then seems straightforward—just improve how we communicate and educate science. But that’s too easy. In any case, the NSF’s own data do not support it. Although belief in ESP decreased from 65% among high school graduates to 60% among college graduates, and belief in magnetic therapy dropped from 71% among high school graduates to 55% among college graduates, that still leaves over half of educated people fully endorsing such claims! And for embracing alternative medicine, the percentages actually increased, from 89% for high school grads to 92% for college grads.

Perhaps a deeper cause may be found in another statistic: 70% of Americans still do not understand the scientific process, defined in the NSF study as grasping probability, the experimental method, and hypothesis testing. So one solution here is teaching how science works in addition to the rote memorization of scientific facts. A 2002 article in Skeptic magazine entitled “Science Education is No Guarantee of Skepticism,” presented the results of a study that found no correlation between science knowledge (facts about the world) and paranormal beliefs. The authors, W. Richard Walker, Steven J. Hoekstra, and Rodney J. Vogl, concluded: “Students that scored well on these [science knowledge] tests were no more or less skeptical of pseudoscientific claims than students that scored very poorly. Apparently, the students were not able to apply their scientific knowledge to evaluate these pseudoscientific claims. We suggest that this inability stems in part from the way that science is traditionally presented to students: Students are taught what to think but not how to think.”⁷ The scientific method is a teachable concept, as evidenced in the NSF study that found that 53% of Americans with a high level of science education (nine or more high school and college science/math courses) understand the scientific process, compared to 38% with a middle level (six to eight such courses) of science education, and 17% with a low level (less than five such courses) of science education. So maybe the key to attenuating superstition and belief in the supernatural is in teaching how science works, not just what science has discovered. I have believed this myself for my entire career in science and education. If I didn’t believe it I might not have gone into the business of teaching, writing, and editing science in the first place.

Alas, I have come to the conclusion that belief is largely immune to attack by direct educational tools, at least for those who are not ready to hear it. Belief change comes from a combination of personal psychological readiness and a deeper social and cultural shift in the underlying zeitgeist of the times, which is affected in part by education, but is more the product of larger and harder-to-define political, economic, religious, and social changes.

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It has to do with a spot of light in the shape of the outline of a fish, so let me start by sparing you all the trouble of quipping that it must have been a Jesus Fish. Very droll and clever. Full marks for the spared effort.

I must have been about 11 years old. We lived in a small ranch house in Costa Mesa, California. I got up one warm summer night, when the house was dark and everyone was asleep, to visit the little boy’s room. There was plenty of moonlight and my eyes were well adjusted, so vision was not a problem. It seemed that it would have been more scary to turn the bathroom light on, thus creating a too-bright room and a too-dark abyss into which I must soon descend, so I left it off, and was secure in the generally dim house with enough filtered light to deny hiding places to monsters.

In the bathroom, I noticed a spot of bright light on the bathroom counter, in the shape of a fish, perhaps five inches long. It seemed curiously improbable, so I investigated. I fussed with the window blind until I was satisfied that it was not light from outside. I placed my hand under the light so I could follow it to its source, but the fish light would either spill off my hand or fade out as I tried to lift my hand from the counter. After some minutes of fidgeting, I gave up, intrigued but not to the point of distraction.

A week or so later, when the fish light was a faded memory, I got up late at night again for a drink. The bathroom was next door to my bedroom, so that was not much of a trek, but all the way to the kitchen was quite the brave journey. I had to pass many monster hiding places on that heart-pounding commando creep, but arrived safe at last.

There, in the center of the linoleum floor, was my old adversary, the fish light. This time I didn’t plan to retreat without a victory. I circled it, waving my arms, until I verified (to my 11-year-old satisfaction) that it wasn’t coming from anywhere. I got down on my knees and tried to put my hand under it — and here was the real surprise. My hand covered it, obscuring it, as if it was shining up from the floor itself. I could lift a corner of my hand, and saw that it was brightly lit underneath. I lay a magazine on top of it, smothering it, and went back to bed.

Unfortunately, no memory survives of whether the magazine was found in the morning where I left it, because that would be a helpful clue to whether the experience was hypnogogic or just a dream. What are your suggestions?

That’s right sports fans, you heard it here first (unless you spend as much time as I do on all the Hollywood celebrity gossip web sites). Word is that Gaga is so worried about ghosts that she spent $60,000 on EMF meters to equip a small team of ghost hunters, evidently modeled after those whom we know and love so well from the telly. Whenever she stays at a hotel, her team first sweeps it with the EMF meters to be sure there are no spooks waiting for an autograph.

Presumably, she’s just a moron; but there may be more to it than that. Assuming she’s doing her level best to interpret the information fed her by pop culture and wants to protect her own safety, one could say that her course is not an unreasonable one. It does highlight how alarming it is that almost anyone can take ghost hunting television shows seriously enough to regard them as sound, science-based documentaries. That scares me a lot more than a ghost would.

I’m not what you’d call a huge music industry insider, but my suspicion is that the careers of moneymakers like Lady Gaga are managed by people with a little more than her 24 years of experience on this planet. People who have some vague clue about the world. So maybe they’re going for some kind of Michael Jackson style weird public image campaign, and if so, fine, I understand that. But I’d bet that this story is indeed exactly as reported. I have friends twice her age who uncritically accept ghost hunting TV shows as scientific fact.

So I’m not surprised that Lady Gaga’s handlers have not advised her that ghost attacks are probably not something she needs to worry herself too much about. If buying EMF meters is what keeps her happy, fine, I’m sure the tour can spare sixty grand.

But I really would like to know how they established that ghosts show up on EMF meters.

First, you’re not going to convince a ghost believer by saying “We have no evidence that ghosts exist, nor is there any plausible hypothesis by which they might exist.” No ghost believer in history has ever heard that, said “Aaahh,” smacked themselves in the forehead, turned over a new leaf, and gone forth with a new perspective on reality. Logically, you have just as much evidence that ghosts don’t exist as they have that ghosts do exist. So it’s a weak argument. Thus, no good can come from starting off by contradicting their belief. The only thing it accomplishes is to establish an antagonistic tone.

Presumably, if they’re comfortable with a belief in ghosts, they’re also comfortable with a belief in other types of supernatural beings. Most people are religious, so this opens up the door of plausibility to angels and demons. Most people have some belief in psychic powers at some level, so this permits the introduction of mind projections, telepathy, and so on.

We always want to look for common ground, rather than for points of conflict. One thing that nearly everyone can agree upon is that none of the above phenomenon have any scientifically established known properties. There is no accepted, established body temperature for demons. There is no firm set of proven behaviors for a ghost. We cannot capture an astrally traveling being, perform a blood test, and prove that it’s an astral traveler. No supernatural being has a single known, accepted, concrete property. Most believers probably have their own general idea of what a ghost might look like and do, but everyone will acknowledge that different witnesses report different experiences.

So when someone expresses their belief that something they saw was a ghost, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask how they were able to rule out other possibilities. If you saw the apparition of your grandfather standing at the foot of your bed, how were you able to identify it as your grandfather’s ghost, rather than a demon trying to trick you? A psychic somewhere putting that vision into your head? Vibrational energy from your grandfather persisting around some of his belongings? A projection from your own subconsciousness? An angel of a yet-to-be-born person, using some image from your mind as a way to manifest itself? We don’t know what properties any of these things might have, thus there’s no way you can logically compare the details of your experience to them to determine what it was you saw. The spirit of your grandfather might be the most emotionally comforting option, but it might be important to find out if a demon is trying to trick you; so the mind should be open to that possibility too.

The more intelligent someone is, the more likely they may be to intellectually realize that there are other possibilities. A person who acknowledges that they do not know the cause of their experience is closer to the truth than a person who insists upon one specific, unsupportable conclusion.

Of course, this same logic applies to those who see something in the sky and identify it as an alien spacecraft. Consider the other possibilities: A vehicle from an unknown population of beings who live at the bottom of the ocean, or a craft from a subterranean race. Those are two possibilities that don’t require the assumption of the problems of interstellar travel having been solved. Perhaps the Earth even has its own race of beings who live in the sky, possessing all kinds of unfathomable aeronautical secrets. What would be the properties of one of their vehicles, and what would be the properties of an extraterrestrial spacecraft? How were you able to match up your observation to one, and to exclude the other? You can’t, since neither has any known properties; and so the only right answer is “I don’t know what it was.”

Notably, at no time have I advocated telling the person that they’re wrong, or that they misinterpreted what they saw, or that they imagined anything. Maybe that’s what happened, but I wouldn’t have any way to know that. I expect that in nearly every honestly reported case, the person did see something, even if was something mundane that for some reason manifested itself in a spectacular way. I find that introducing the suggestion that they were wrong or imagined something simply causes antagonism, and rarely leads to enlightenment.

One need not abandon one’s belief in ghosts or UFOs to take an important step on the journey to critical thinking. If a person can acknowledge, for the first time, that “I don’t know, therefore I know” fails the test of logic, they’ve improved their ability to interpret our world. Imagining what they’ll learn next is an exciting prospect indeed.

Even the most hardcore skeptic can still be frightened by dark or scary places. One does not have to believe in ghosts to be a little apprehensive about staying in a large medieval castle alone through the dead of night. Sure, being rational is a distinct advantage, as we  skeptics can reassure ourselves that there is nothing to be afraid of. However, sometimes it seems that our imaginations did not get the memo.

Some fears are innate and primal. We can rise above them – but they are still there. Apparently we are descended from those hominids who had such an innate fear of the dark, who wanted to stick close to their parents at night, or seek the comfort of fire’s light. Those who were fearless and more comfortable hanging out alone near the shadows probably did not fare very well. So fear is always with us, lurking in the more primitive parts of our gray matter.

Fear of the dark is also not the only innate fear. The first time I had an MRI scan, I never thought for a moment it would cause me any fear, but then the sensation of being completely helpless inside that small tight tunnel resulted in a primal claustrophobic sensation. I was able to distract myself and get through it – but the fear was there.

Most of us also like to be scared. Halloween is a favorite holiday in my family (especially with by brother, Bob, who actually runs a haunted corn maze in October). We like to be brought to the brink of terror, but then relieved in our own safety. It gives us a thrill. Perhaps it is also a way to experiment with the boundaries of our own fear – to know what is safe, or perhaps how we will react when real fear rears its head.

There are other reasons than fear that belief in ghosts persists. Our brains are not perfect tools – they are subject to a host of anomalies in perception and altered states. Our hardwiring can easily generate a sensation of an entity, perhaps right at the periphery of our vision. We can hear noises that are nothing more than neuronal echoes. We have have waking dreams – a fusion of the awake and dreaming states. Sleep deprivation (not uncommon on late night ghost hunts) can result in hallucinations and altered perception. And we are highly suggestible, often seeing and experiencing strange phenomena simply because we expect to.

Research has also shown that the more frightened we are, the more likely we are to see patterns where they do not exist. It is as if when our nervous system is put on alert for danger, we shift into hyper-pattern-recognition mode. When sifting reality for real patterns, we tend to err on the side of seeing patterns that are not there, rather than missing genuine patterns. Fright and anxiety shifts the balance further in favor of seeing patterns.

It is therefore no surprise that during ghost-hunting, or a seance, or hunting for EVP’s, etc. that people will experience strange things and attribute them to the paranormal.

Some scientists have also tried to explain such experiences (not that it is really necessary) as a response to physical phenomena – such as magnetic fields or infrasound. Research into these effects, however, have been mixed, with the best double-blind studies showing no difference in strange experience when the magnetic fields or infrasound were on or off. It is not implausible that physical phenomena contribute to spooky experiences, but the evidence for these specific causes is thin.

Understanding human nature itself is one of the key skill sets for critical thinking and skeptical analysis. We are, generally speaking, a jittery species, with some built in fears – fears that kept our ancestors alive (and still likely have some survival benefit today), and now feed the horror movie and Halloween industries, as well as the annoying ghost-hunting genre of reality TV.

______________________

Belief in the supernatural seems to be a nearly universal part of the human condition, but the details of specific paranormal belief systems depend on culture and location. In New England we have ghosts – or at least ghost hunters. So it is not surprising that in our younger days as activist skeptics, Perry DeAngelis, Evan Bernstein, my brother, Bob, and I (the investigative team of the New England Skeptical Society) cut our skeptical teeth investigating ghost hunters.

Taking on the New England ghost-busting industry led us inevitably to Ed and Lorraine Warren, the patriarch and matriarch of ghost hunting in New England. Ed and Lorraine hunted ghosts (Ed has since passed) – ghosts, apparitions, demons, possessed people, places and things. They did so for decades, and claim to have looked at nearly 4000 cases. They were made famous by books and movies, and as luck would have it lived only a couple towns over in Monroe Connecticut.

We sought to evaluate the phenomenon of ghosts (in the generic sense, referring to all manner of spiritual manifestations) and see if there was any evidence to support the hypothesis that the phenomenon exists. On the matter of hauntings, the Warrens were one of the preeminent experts, and they were local, so naturally we decided to look into their work. Also, they claim to have scientific evidence which does indeed prove the existence of ghosts, which sounds like a testable claim that we can sink our investigative teeth into.

What we found was a very nice couple, some genuinely sincere people, but absolutely no compelling evidence, or, more precisely, there was a ton of “evidence,” but none of it stands up to rigorous scientific testing, and most of it not even to cursory testing. None of it.

Like all pseudosciences, the field of ghost hunting makes bold pretense to being legitimate science. The Warrens called their organization the New England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR), but as we will see, they were a “research” organization in name only. They still have a presence on the web, and Lorraine still gives ghost lectures. Their original website proudly proclaimed that “Our mission is to move the area of psychic phenomena out of the dark ages into the mainstream of rigorous scientific thought and inquiry.” But upon inspection, their methods lack the components of genuine scientific inquiry or even the most fundamental attempt at scientific rigor. Rather than an earnest search for the truth, regardless of what that may be, their society seeks only to support their a priori assumption that the phenomenon is real.

Our investigation began with a tour through the Warren’s rather unique museum, housed in their basement, and alleged to be the most haunted place in Connecticut. From the moment we met Ed and Lorraine, two things became very clear to us. One, seem sincere – to honestly believe the things they say. And two, that they have precious little evidence to support their beliefs. What they do have in abundance are ghost stories and low-grade ambiguous evidence. During that first visit, and in the five hour interview that followed, we were treated to scores of Warren stories. However, despite their insistence to the contrary, stories are not evidence.

On the museum tour, Ed warned us not to touch anything in the main room, as we would open ourselves up to possible possession. If we did accidentally rub against something (which was nearly unavoidable in that crammed space), we were to report it, so that he could purify our auras before we left. The room was a clutter of collected stuff garnered over the Warren’s forty year career. This included paintings, masks, statuettes, and many books. One of these ghostly tomes was an “Unearthed Arcana,” a Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game book. I still have a copy collecting dust in my closet.

Ed claimed that the most dangerous item in the house, however, was a Raggedy-Ann doll that was said to still be possessed by a demonic entity. He keeps this enclosed in a glass case for safety, and chillingly relates the tale of the man who ignored his warnings and taunted the doll, only to die hours later in a tragic motorcycle accident.

Born in 1926, Ed Warren has been involved with the ghostly world since the age of five when he saw the apparition of a recently deceased landlady. Ed’s father was a Connecticut State Trooper who went to mass everyday. His grandfather was also very pious, and bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the Catholic church for the purchase of a stained glass window. It is not difficult to see the basis of Ed’s belief structure, being reared in such a devout environment. The Catholic church does hold that supernatural entities can and do interact with the physical world.

Ed also refers to NESPR as a “theological institute,” and states that his investigations are intimately associated with his religious convictions. In fact, one of his first questions to us, just as with other skeptics he has confronted in the past, is whether or not we believe in God, for without faith we could not understand his research.

Lorraine, born in 1927, is said to be a “sensitive,” or clairvoyant. This is a person that can feel things psychically. When the Warren’s go into an alleged haunted dwelling for the first time, three sensitives are utilized. If all three come up with positive “readings,” or feelings, it is said to be powerful evidence of a supernatural presence. Of course, using an unproven method to measure an unproven phenomenon is of little scientific value.

As our probing into the Warren’s evidence continued, proceeding next into a prolonged interview, we asked to examine their most impressive or most convincing evidence, a request that we would repeat many times. But first, we needed to learn at least some of the jargon that is associated with the ghost phenomenon. Ed was kind enough to give us a crash course.

The “psychic” hours, Ed told us, are from 9 PM to 6 AM and the most vicious hauntings occur around 3 AM. Why? Because that is an insult to the Holy Trinity. A “ghost” is a luminescence without definable form, but on the other hand, an “apparition” has form and features. The countless photos we have seen of balls of light, are known as “ghost globules,” and the elongated patches as “light rods.” There are human spirits, and then there are the real bad guys, inhuman spirits. These are, of course, the essences of things never alive, or demonic entities. Ed also gave us some tips: always keep a vial of blessed water on your person to compel entities; if a possessed person meets your gaze, never be the first to break it, as that demonstrates weakness. And on it went, rules and jargon of the trade.

The Photographic Evidence

The vast majority of the Warren’s physical evidence is photographs. They have hundreds of ghost shots, taken by them and those who work for them. The Carousel Restaurant, a frequent “haunt” of the Warrens and said to be haunted, have their own collection of such photographs. Other ghost hunting societies, such as the Cosmic Society, another local group comprised of defectors from NESPR, also have a collection of such photos as their primary claim to evidence. But quantity is not a substitute for quality.

The bulk of these photos are simply blobs of light on a piece of film. There are dozens of ways to get such light artifacts onto film, but most fit into one of three categories: flashback, light defraction, or camera cords. Rare double or multiple exposures create more interesting, but still artifactual, photographs. It is significant to note that in almost every occurrence of a ghost photograph, the ghost is not seen at the time the photo is taken. It is not until the picture is developed that the ghost or glob or rod is seen, a strong indication that the picture is a result of photographic artifact.

Flashback is simply light from the camera flash reflected back at the lens, causing a hazy overexposed region on the film. The result is often a whispy and blurry light image on the film. It is easy to tell when a flash was used, because of the sharp shadows that are created and because objects in the foreground are brightly lit. The Warren’s website even suggests that using a flash will help create ghost photographs, and “the brighter the flash the better.” It also recommends to include a foreground object – something to reflect the flash. Although they admit that this is paradoxical and was not expected at first, especially since they claim that such photographs are the result of psychically created images. However, there is no discussion or any recognition at all that the light images might be the result of photographic artifact created by the flash.

So-called “ghost globules” are spheres of light, rather than whispy forms. The images, however, are curiously reminiscent of light defracting around a point source. A small amount of condensation on the camera lens is enough to mass produce such ghost globules. Under the right conditions, any discrete source of light can produce this effect.

Paranormal investigator for CSICOP, Joe Nickell, made a valuable contribution to the field of photographic artifact when he discovered through experimentation and common sense the camera cord effect. The cord or strap of an instamatic camera can easily fall in front of the lens, and go unnoticed with cameras that do not view through the lens but through a separate aperture. Even black cords will look like white blobs or streaks of light when they reflect the light of a flash. We were able to reproduce this effect (see photograph on this page) on our first try, creating a “ghost” photograph as good as any we have seen.

The age of digital photography has also created some new sources of photographic artifact. We were asked to investigate a curious photo with several colored streaks across an otherwise still and focused picture. After some digging (the advantage of digital cameras is that the image files contain all sorts of technical information about the picture – exposure time, etc.) we figured out that the camera was accidentally set to “twilight mode.” This mode will use the flash, but then keep the shutter open for a second or two to expose a dim background.

Copious examples of all of the three above common artifacts can be seen on the websites of the Warrens, the Cosmic Society, and other similar sites. What is lacking in all of them, however, is any consideration of alternate explanations of the photographs other than genuine ghosts. There is no investigation into natural sources for the blobs of light, no discussion of alternatives, no discussion at all, in fact. There is only the simple and unquestioned pronouncement that such blobs of light are evidence of the paranormal.

Video Evidence

The other evidence that the Warrens possess is video. Their piece-de-resistance is Ed’s video of the famous White Lady of Union Cemetery, in Easton Connecticut. We have only been able to view this tape in the Warren’s home because Ed refused to give it to us for analysis, a common theme in our investigation. The tape shows an apparent white human figure moving behind some tomb stones. Like videos of UFO’s, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster, however, the figure is at that perfect distance and resolution so that a provocative shape can be seen, but no details which would aid definitive identification. Ed Warren has not investigated the video with any scientific rigor, and refuses to allow others to do so. Despite Ed’s insistence that he was engaged in scientific research, he continued to jealously horde his alleged evidence, rather than allow it to be critically analyzed, as is necessary in genuine scientific endeavors.

The Warrens did, however, give us one of their other pieces of video evidence. This showed a man “dematerializing.” It was taken by a mounted camera in a dining room in the middle of the night during one of their investigations. On the tape, a young man walks into the room, scratches his head, and “Poof!” disappears. This extraordinary occurrence is quickly followed by a “ghost light” appearing momentarily on the window behind the scene.

We gladly accepted the tape and took it to the HB Group for detailed video analysis. An excerpt from that analysis is below:

“We are witnessing a wipe in this segment of videotape. Although there are several different ways in video editing to achieve a wiping effect, the most simple of ways has been employed here. Deliberately or accidentally, the camcorder stopped recording on the final frame of the person in the room and resumed recording just a few seconds after the person had moved outside of the view of the camera.
“On a related observation, the properties of light alone could dictate a hundred different explanations for the mysterious “dot” of light that appears a few seconds after the man “vanishes.” However, I believe that this dot of light was caused by the reflection through the dining room window of the headlights of a passing car. The passing headlights can be seen if you watch the right hand side of the screen just after the “dot” of light fades out.”

As you can see, the only piece of evidence that we were given turned out to be less than compelling. It was, in fact, a simple malfunction at best, and fraud at worst. Even cursory analysis of this piece of tape would have revealed what we found to the Warrens. Yet no one in the Warren’s investigatory network bothered to check it out. Rather then take this obvious first step, one of their investigators simply declared that the “ghost light” was “unexplainable.” This turned out to be the reflection of a car headlight. Further, none of the people in the tape were aware that anything had even occurred until the following day when the tape was viewed (again, the fingerprint of artifact), including the young man who allegedly dematerialized! Ed put his credibility in serious jeopardy when he looked at that tape, and without any verification, stated that experts, “… can only come to one conclusion, that kid disappeared.”

Despite numerous attempts to examine other physical evidence the Warrens claim to possess, we were given nothing else. Instead, we were given excuses such as “The film was erased,” “The people in the film want privacy,” “We had just turned off the recording equipment, when…” Forty years of “research” into a phenomenon and precious little to show for it.

Eyewitness Testimony

Vastly outnumbering the Warren’s low grade physical evidence, is their copious anecdotal evidence. They are great tellers of ghost stories, leading, in no small measure, to their popularity on the lecture circuit, which Lorraine continues now that Ed is gone. They did not seem to understand, however, that the case for the reality of ghosts will never be made by stories alone.

In this respect, however, the Warrens are typical of the majority of people, who are compelled by a gripping story and lack a deep understanding of how flimsy and unreliable human memory and perception really is. Good skeptics, like good scientists, strive to increase their awareness of such weaknesses, so that they can be controlled for in the quest for knowledge. Ed and his ilk, on the other hand, are continuously seeking the “reliable witness.” But even pilots, firefighters, police chiefs, and physicians are just people. Their gray matter is the same as everyone else’s.

In short, memory is fallible. This is due to the fact that all of our perceptions are filtered through our own unique polyglot of prejudices, preconceptions, misconceptions, insecurities and physical frailties. The mind can dilute, mix up, and even manufacture memories. And we have no way to determine which are which. Without external verification, there is no way to distinguish a delusion from a hallucination from a genuine experience.

Further, many sightings or interactions with an entity (whether ghost or alien) take place in the bedroom, late at night, or very early in the morning – times and places connected with sleep, or, more accurately, the near-sleep state. A classic example is Jack Smirle, investigated by the Warrens themselves, who related the tale of awakening in the early morning, being paralysed, sensing an entity in the room, being overcome with terror, then being raped by a ghost.

There is a well described neurological phenomenon known as hypnagogia. This occurs when we are between the waking and sleeping states, semi-conscious, but not fully aware. It is during these times that the majority of such experiences occur. Many believe that they are being abducted by aliens from their beds, others, such as the case above, and others investigated by the Warrens, that they are visited by ghosts. During a hypnagogic hallucination our brain shuts off the neurons that connect to our spinal column during REM sleep to keep us from acting out our dreams.

When we offered this to Ed as a possible alternate explanation, he seemed intrigued. “But,” he continued confidently, “What about the pressure on the victim’s chest when the entity is trying to get into them…?” Well, we were sorry to tell Ed that pressure on the chest and shortness of breath are also a well described aspect of hypnagogia.

“Oh,” said Ed.

Many investigations of haunted houses take place into the wee hours of the night. Investigators are often called upon to stay up all night, creating sleep deprivation. In the sleep deprived state our brains are highly susceptible to hallucinations, and here is yet another fertile source of ghostly experiences.

Another prolific source is the human imagination. Different people have different capacities for imagination and fantasy. At the far end of the spectrum are individuals who are particularly prone to fantasy. Coupled with a desire to believe and immersion into a belief system with group support, such fantasy prone people can generate a tremendous amount of alleged paranormal experiences.

There is good reason to believe that groups such as NESPR would attract such individuals. With their widespread exposure, there is ample opportunity to inadvertantly “screen” many individuals. Hundred or thousands will see one of their lectures in a year. Out of those, dozens will make the effort to go to one of their weekly classes. The ones that stay on for the long haul are invited on investigations. And among those, a few are deemed to be “sensitive,” which means that they can see things that other people cannot.

Now, we do not expect everybody to be versed in hypnagogia, the effects of sleep deprivation, and the vagaries of the human imagination, but we do expect it from someone who claims to be conducting scientific research in a field where such phenomena play an important role. Ed Warren, however, had clearly not heard of hypnagogia prior to his association with us. Although he claims that his critics are closed-minded, he himself dismissed out-of-hand any alternative explanation of his evidence to the paranormal hypothesis, without investigation designed to do so. What passes for research in NESPR, and the field of ghost hunting in general, is passive documentation of anecdote and summary paranormal interpretation.

Conclusion

In the final analysis, the field of research into spiritual and ghostly phenomena lacks any scientific rigor. The field is fully and unreservedly a pseudoscience. Although they claimed to be engaged in a scientific quest for the truth, the Warrens and their society were suspicious, overly sensitive to criticism and any attempt at seeking mundane alternative explanations for their experiences, completely lacking in knowledge of scientific method, and completely lacking in any compelling evidence to support their claims. They refused to allow us to observe one of their investigations, and they refused to allow scientific scrutiny of their alleged evidence. Although nothing can be learned about the reality of ghosts from their activities, a great deal can be learned about the human psyche.

In the years since we investigated the Warrens, the ghost-hunting industry they helped to create has flourished. The Warrens themselves spun off dozens of ghost hunting organizations in the New England area. With the rise of the internet and reality TV, ghost hunting shows have also taken off. They employ more sophisticated gadgets – which amount to nothing more than the trappings of pseudoscience – but their methodology is the same. What they are really hunting for are anomalies – anything even slightly strange. In the ghost-hunting world, anomaly = ghost. Scientific investigation does not enter into the equation.

As part of the continuing adventures of the Cast and Crew of The Skeptologists, I would like to share with you a bit of rough-edited never-before seen footage. This was shot during the Pilot of The Skeptologists and for reasons you will soon understand, it was never included in the final version of the pilot. I found the event interesting and it solidified my thoughts about how people interpret events based on their own predispositions.

Halloween is a great deal of fun, and I’m a big fan of fantasy horror. And I have no problem with news outlets covering seasonal topics. I also understand that not all news reporting is goin to be dead serious – outlets need their superficial fun pieces too.

But I do have a problem with the tendency to cover fringe science as “fluff” reporting. There is already a problem in mainstream journalism with overall quality. Like any profession, there are good and bad reporters, with a heap of mediocrity in the middle. Recently, probably due primarily to declining readership and therefore resources, the overall quality of journalism seems to have dipped.

But even these mediocre standards are tossed aside when a reporter thinks he is writing a fluff (charitably called a “human interest”) piece. They now feel no need to do any actual investigation, to understand the topic, or to discover what the “real” story is. Rather, the reporter is now in the business of entertainment. Their job is to showcase someone with weird beliefs, and perhaps accentuate that weirdness by having a scientist or skeptic throw out a negative quote. This is a problem when the topic concerns science.

Ghost stories intersect science because there are many gullible ghost-hunting groups who claim to be doing science but are actually just playing at pretend science. For those of us trying to teach the public a better appreciation for the methods of science, such groups can be counter-productive as they distort the public image of what science is.

Therefore, when Halloween fluff ghost stories focus on “scientific” investigations of ghostly phenomena, they are contributing to the scientific illiteracy of the public. Token skepticism actually makes it worse, as it gives the impression that the topic is a real or serious scientific question – otherwise why would some skeptical scientist bother even having an opinion on the topic.

There are a few occasional bright spots. I learned over the years to be very discriminating before giving interviews to reporters. I invest a few minutes discussing with the reporter what their angle is with the story, who else they are interviewing, and if they have written on the topic before.  Experienced reporters know to make it seem as if they are on your side, no matter what they intend to ultimately write, but you can still get a sense of what kind of piece they are looking to write.

Here is the best halloween article for which I was interviewed. The reporter, Jim Shelton, understood skepticism and that was the focus of his piece, not the believers. He knew that the real ghost story is why people believe in ghosts despite an utter lack of evidence or plausibility. Skepticism is more about the psychology of belief than about the beliefs themselves.

Happy Halloween, everyone.