SkepticBlog is a collaboration among some of the most recognized names in promoting science, critical thinking, and skepticism. It also features the cast and producers of The Skeptologists, a pilot skeptical reality show.
Have you ever had the chills? You know, the frights, spooks, willies, nerves, jitters, heebie-jeebies? Do you get these feelings when you have to enter a dark room alone, or if you find yourself on a lonely street at night?
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.
I will be away this week, so I am dusting off some of my oldest skeptical writings and updating them. Below is a piece I wrote 12 years ago on ghost hunters, Ed and Lorraine Warren. The article is still relevant, and I enhanced it with some updated info. I also employed the wayback machine to provide links to old websites that are no longer active. I will be mostly out of touch, and only rarely monitoring the comments, so forgive me if I don’t respond quickly or at all.
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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.
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 upon us, which means that every local news outlet has to come up with their fluff stories on ghosts, hauntings, electronic voice phenomena or something equally seasonal. If your name is attached to a skeptical society this also means that you are likely gong to be contacted by a clueless reporter looking for some token skepticism for “balance”.
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.
