Belief in intentional agents is one of the most common attributions for humans to make. Even the non-religious, who will not attribute events to God or the devil, seek meaning in patterns and may subscribe to conspiracy theories (orchestrated by higher-ups) instead of accepting random and complex explanations. Conspiracies and cover-ups are another way to provide a life preserver for the belief that can’t stay afloat due to lack of reasonable evidence. Conspiracies are handy things in that they cannot be falsified—because you can propose anything to be true and no one can prove you wrong. It’s all hidden; there is no way to confirm it. It’s simultaneously the most ideal and the most worthless way of explaining a mystery.
Skepticism
Any discussion of the paranormal invokes the flip side of belief which is skepticism. Skepticism is roundly misunderstood and misapplied. “Skeptics” and “believers” are not exactly opposite ends of a spectrum as often portrayed. Some skeptics accept that there are indeed UFOs (unidentified objects) and understand that some people will interpret strange events as encounters with ghosts or unknown monsters. The difference is that skeptics will not readily accept a paranormal explanation. When the skeptic asks for evidence, and relies on reason and the tools of science, as appropriate, to examine the claim, this is seen as an adversarial act. To debunk or demystify, to pull away the mask, show the string holding up the UFO, and expose the hoaxers is seen as a bad thing. Questioning and demanding quality evidence are not inherently negative actions, though, and requiring sound support to make an informed decision is the basis of critical thinking. Debunkers provide a useful service to society by rooting out the truth from myths, misconceptions, and fakery. Skepticism—critical questioning and calling out nonsense—is one of Merton’s scientific norms writ large.
ARIGs typically invoke skepticism in two ways—one positive, one negative. First, many ARIG members will say that they themselves are skeptical or was were once skeptical about the topic—the “avowal of prior skepticism” (Lamont 2007). Stating that they were once doubtful of this claim appears to strengthen their current position or conclusion by suggesting they considered all sides and were subsequently convinced (by experience, persuasion, or evidence). That’s not necessarily true, though. It is more often used as a rhetorical attempt to establish the source as trustworthy and credible. This ploy also is a way to undermine alternative explanations and to persuade the listener to accept the conclusion provided. Often, it serves as a dramatic introduction to the explanation.
The second way ARIGs view skepticism is as a negative state. A skeptical person can be too doubting to the degree that she may create “negative energy” that could impede the investigation. This is one reason ARIGs aren’t keen to have self-styled skeptics on an investigation. At least that’s their explanation. One can surmise several other reasons why they regularly reject a skeptical presence.
Almost always missed in the ARIG concept of skepticism is the value of skeptical thinking as a method to find the best and most likely answer to a question, to eliminate bias and subjectivity as well as to apply logic and sound reasoning. Without skepticism in the practical sense, ARIGs easily fall prey to gullibility and wishful thinking that will make their work unsound. Without skepticism, you can easily be led astray from reality. Consider this statement: “[The] open-minded healthy skeptic considers that the paranormal explanation may be the more plausible answer.”7 The concept of open-mindedness is construed to mean a paranormal explanation should be considered a reasonable option. This way of thinking shows a profound misunderstanding of the natural world. Since we can never rule out all the potential natural explanations to reasonably conclude something is “paranormal,” to call something “paranormal” is to give up on finding the real answer. It would be correct to say “I don’t know,” but the huge error ARIGs make is to take it a step beyond by saying, “I don’t know, therefore, it’s paranormal.”
Skeptics who are willing to examine the evidence for a paranormal claim, will often ask for the best cases, whether that be for hauntings, UFO mass sightings, or cryptid encounters. In countless skeptical reviews of cases deemed to be genuinely paranormal by ARIGs and the public, critical analysis has revealed mistakes, flaws, and errors of all kinds. Skeptics will reject poorly supported and shabbily formed conclusions. Criticism is just an act of making a judgment (Nickell 2012) but the reaction to criticism is defensive and negative if it throws shade on the recipient’s conclusion.
At a deeper level, Dewan (2013) says that the friction between skeptics and believers in the paranormal isn’t so much about the reality of entities but about control over accepted views of reality. In this view, ARIGs have succeeded in making the paranormal view more acceptable to be discussed in public while skeptics remain as a voice of reason and a check to keep unsupported ideas from become too popular. Skepticism is most usefully thought of as a way to assess claims—a tool, an attitude, a method. ARIGs, however, may find it useful to use skepticism as a straw man or to couch skeptics as closed-minded to further their own positions. Eschewing sound skeptical practices makes your proposed conclusion far more likely to be seriously flawed and less likely to be taken seriously.
Conclusion: Beyond the Veil
Participation in an ARIG is a perfect opportunity to find “belief buddies”—one or more people around you that reinforces and strengthens each other’s belief to further a shared goal or agenda. Dissent is discouraged in these types of belief environments (Pigliucci & Boudry 2013). But sometimes people make U-turns, spurred on by inherent curiosity, a genuine quest for the truth, a baloney detection filter, and, most helpfully, a friend of like mind who joins you in taking this new direction. What follows are two stories that illustrate belief buddies. The first is that of two former ghost hunters, Bobby and Jason, who took the path not taken by their colleagues, but not without resistance. The second is of Chris and Mark who stay on the path no matter what. The observations and actions of these two pairs illustrate many of the concepts in this book.
Once and Former Ghost Hunters
At age 16, Bobby Nelson began ghost hunting at his friends’ houses. He had personal experiences in his own home that he interpreted, at the time, as paranormal. A devout Christian, Bobby was taught that if you believed in evolution, you were going to hell, that demons were real, and that there was life after death. Harry Price was his idol. William Roll was his mentor. He aspired to obtain a degree in parapsychology and started his own paranormal investigation group.
For Jason Korbus, it was curiosity about the unknown and macabre that drew him to paranormal investigation. From a non-religious background, he never had an experience that he would have labeled “paranormal” but was a fan of true- crime stories and TV shows like Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings that had actual scientists contributing. The stories looked legitimate, like a news broadcast. These shows reinforced his belief in ghosts. When he saw Ghost Hunters he was amazed people did this for a living. Why not give it a try? So he did and joined a paranormal group. Bobby and Jason related their time as ARIG members and paranormal believers in an interview with me in 2013.
In their twenties, Bobby and Jason became friends through their mutual interest in the paranormal. With their respective groups joined into one team, named “Phase 3 Paranormal,” they visited people’s houses in and around Toledo, Ohio, collected EVPs and electromagnetic readings, interviewed witnesses to the events and wrote up case reports, just like all other paranormal groups. They believed they had found paranormal activity on several occasions and that this was evidence of ghosts. EVPs, they concluded, were voices of the dead. Bobby recruited interested individuals for the group via Myspace, Craigslist, and the local paper. No special qualifications were needed to join although they administered an exam to new recruits to see how much they knew about the paranormal. Bobby remembers the ease in which people would give their Social Security number to him under the pretense of a “background check.” This was his ploy to test for trustworthiness, since he
had no means to run a legitimate background check. He figured if they would give him their personal information, they had nothing to hide.
Jason says they definitely were a “sciencey” group. They “absolutely” thought they were doing science—because of the equipment. For example, they would take a “baseline reading” of the house, Jason related to me, by walking around the rooms very slowly, waving the EMF meter around, and recording the numbers on paper. Later, after they “provoked” the ghost, they would do the same thing a second time and record the numbers. Bobby says: “For some reason, when you have that meter in your hand and you are looking for ghosts, that meter makes you feel like an expert. The piece of equipment in their hand that they think is giving them data they can use to somehow correlate with a ghost … they feel sweet!” Equipment made them feel important and ARIGs judged each other by their equipment. While thermal imaging cameras (especially FLIR systems) were the epitome of the equipment bragging rights (TAPS, the Ghost Hunters TV show group, had a FLIR), the next best was the tri-field meter. “If you could afford a tri-field meter, you were badass,” says Bobby. “I had a tri-field!” Jason adds. They would make fun of other groups who used dowsing rods or mediums as not being “scientific.”
What was it about collecting EVPs, I asked, that was “scientific”?
“Sharon,” Jason explains to me slowly in a fake patronizing tone, “it was a RECORDER and it was DIGITAL! We were getting voices from dead people!” At the time, they relied on such devices, it was no joke. They felt they were on the verge of finding something extraordinary, documenting evidence of ghosts. Believing that science was unjustly ignoring the paranormal, they were seeing it on display for themselves. While they didn’t want to admit it then, they were basing their techniques and jargon on dialogue from the Ghost Hunters TV show. They assumed what was on TV was valid because everyone else was doing it too. They did the “reveal” for the client just like on TV. Jason remembers he used to always say, “We’re here to help,” exactly as on the show.
Half of their cases seemed to be attributable to haunted people rather than haunted houses. “I don’t know what you found before, but this house is REALLY haunted,” was a frequent repeat quote. Often they were told that other ghost groups had been to a location and reported “crazy” EVPs. Confirmed paranormal activity freaked out the residents and reinforced their fears. Investigators and the residents attributed everything that went wrong in the house to the “negative energy” present—health issues, bickering, even an abscessed tooth, was reasoned to have something to do with a paranormal presence.
Jason and Bobby mused about the paranormal mantra of “there are no real experts in this field” as “a bubble you can put over yourselves.” It was an anything-goes atmosphere without standards. They couldn’t help but wonder how people on different teams could get such different results. Why didn’t Bobby and Jason see ghosts like others did? When they began asking questions, the façade began to erode. They couldn’t find definitive answers regarding a paranormal cause for electromagnetic field readings. Other explanations seemed more plausible and tested positively. When they did flashlight tests and EMF readings at non-haunted locations, they got similar results as in a reportedly haunted location. Jason described a simple test they set up to check best-quality, supposedly unmistakable “Class A” EVPs: “We’d play an EVP for five or six different people and we’d say, ‘Write down your answer independently. Don’t tell us what you think its saying, we’ll go over it later.’ We’d get six different answers. Remember these were supposed to be Class A unmistakable EVPs….”
Bobby owned a recording studio. He took some EVPs to his sound engineer who was only able to tell him that it was within the range of human hearing but not if it was anything unique. He certainly didn’t say they were paranormal. They recalled one incident where Jason knew he’d zipped up his backpack during an investigation. On the audio playback, another ARIG member reported they captured an EVP that sounded like a voice saying, “Del Rio.” Maybe these EVPs were not all that reliable. If it was this easy to mistake a real sound for a ghost voice, what about all the other “evidence” they had?
Their new inklings of doubt made the two uncomfortable. Bobby called them “woo woo moments”: “I would say ‘Am I being too skeptical here? Am I being so skeptical that I’m preventing my brain from seeing paranormal activity?’” There was no final “Aha!” moment for either of them; it eroded away little by little, gradually slipping away.
On October 31, 2008, Ghost Hunters aired a show live from Fort Delaware. The episode prompted an outcry from viewers that some of the evidence had been faked. The team that had inspired thousands of others to do paranormal investigation was accused of duping their audience, fans, and followers. This event was further material for Bobby and Jason’s evolving views. “We were disillusioned specifically with the team that we looked to for inspiration,” Jason says. “Maybe all this stuff on TV is fake.”
Bobby says Jason “gave up the ghost” before he did. When Jason admitted he didn’t believe in it anymore, Bobby was upset. “I was fucking crushed! It killed me inside to hear him say he didn’t believe in ghosts.” Yet Bobby was also well along the path of skeptical thinking.
Peer influence and community interaction affects how we relate to issues in our society. In the case of Bobby and Jason’s paranormal investigations, they had been influenced by pop culture and the paranormal community. Now, their circles of influence were changing.
Bobby is proud of the regular phone conversations he used to have with William Roll, an esteemed parapsychologist who investigated poltergeists and haunting cases. Roll died in January of 2012. Roll had mentioned James Randi in his conversations in a not-very-complimentary way. Bobby wondered, who was this guy, Randi? He was, in fact, one of the world’s foremost magicians, skeptics, and arch-nemesis of pseudoscientists. Randi agreed to come on Bobby and Jason’s radio show for an interview. Bobby recalls how he tried to nail Randi with the standard sciencey tropes such as invoking the law of thermodynamics. It’s an embarrassing memory to them now, as are many of their past public pro-paranormal pronouncements. Jason and Bobby consider Randi to have been a critical influence on their change in thinking as well as Michael Shermer, Ben Radford, and Kenny Biddle (another ghost-hunter-turned-skeptical-advocate). The tone of their radio show/podcast, Strange Frequencies Radio, has changed drastically over the years as they transitioned from paranormal believers to paranormal skeptics. The supernatural and paranormal ideas had all evaporated. Their enthusiasm and curiosity, however, had not.
There was clearly something about their friendship that played a part in their individual journeys from paranormal advocates to counter-advocates. I asked them how much of an influence they had on each other. They both agreed it had been significant. They had reinforced each other in the practice of questioning, examining, and gaining new perspective just as they had previously reinforced each other’s belief in the paranormal. Bobby would ask questions, and then would buy a book about it. Jason would borrow the book. They would discuss their new ideas. “It was good to have Bobby there—the only one willing to go down that road with me,” Jason states, “Anyone else would get hostile.” No criticism was allowed in the ghost hunting clubhouse. It still isn’t. If no critique is allowed, no mistakes are ever corrected. Thus, no progress is ever made. And that’s how it currently stands, years later, with popular paranormal investigation.
The case reports from “Phase 3 Paranormal” investigations remain in binders and in boxes. Media requests dried up when their new stance became “demons don’t exist” and “Ouija boards aren’t a portal to the afterlife.”
It’s easy to believe. A much greater effort is needed to be skeptical and to examine all options for the best answer. Jason and Bobby had to stop and re-train themselves to think in this new way and let go of a previously sacred idea. Bobby discovered and accepted the explanation that his paranormal experiences long ago were not demons but episodes
of sleep paralysis which he still occasionally experiences. He says he was comforted, not disappointed, by the reality-based explanation. Many people invested in paranormal belief and research will not be able to let their decades of emotional investment go. Bobby reasons that he didn’t have as strong of an emotional tie to paranormal ideas as some people. He understands that people don’t want to accept their time and money has been wasted. And to some, there is a deep-seated need to validate the afterlife—“that orb is Grandma.” No matter what.
Jason is clear about his beliefs: no ghosts, no paranormal, no supernatural at all. “I don’t care that people believe that stuff but keep your hobby out of other people’s houses.” Both men regret that they may have done harm to people by telling them what they thought was true at the time. They thought they were helping. Now they hope they are helping spread critical thinking about the paranormal by sharing the evolution of their own philosophies. “Don’t visit your BS beliefs on other people,” Jason warns. “Don’t make the same mistakes as us.”1
Into the Swamp
In July of 2016, I was interviewed by a journalist who was profiling two men seeking proof of the skunk ape, Bigfoot’s smaller cousin, in Florida. The writer, Bill Kearney, talked to me before he ventured into the Green Swamp with the monster hunters whose interest in the cryptid was piqued by the show Finding Bigfoot. According to my model of ARIGs that I’d developed by this time, I had a good idea of what he would find. The resulting piece indeed revealed that these guys also fit the typical ARIG characteristics.2 Chris and Mark admit they struck out on their quest as “a big hobby” and “therapy”—something interesting to do to get away from uncomfortable realities. They gave creative names to portions of the swamp, “Creepy Hollow” and “Thunderdome,” where they believe the skunk ape is living. They say it’s watching them—they hear it, they feel it. They “know” what it eats, how it behaves, and what it’s thinking. Via their videos posted to their YouTube channel, they collected a small following of fellow cryptozoologists. The men believe that skepticism expressed about this topic has scared off scientists and they decry skeptics (particularly me) who have never been out in the swamp to see for themselves.3
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