by James Randi
Backster, Cleve
Mr. Backster is a polygraph (lie detector) expert who hooked up a houseplant to his instruments and discovered that even thinking about fire caused the graph to “nearly jump off the page.” He even claimed that electrically connecting two containers of yogurt resulted in rudimentary “communication” between the yogurts, but only if the two were from the same original culture.
Backster's basic claim is that plants can communicate with one another, can read the minds of humans, and can experience emotions like fear, joy, and sorrow. This was described in his 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants. Since plants do not have a central nervous system, this seems unlikely to be true.
Inspired by Backster's book, Eldon Byrd, an employee of the U.S. Department of the Navy actually petitioned Congress for funds to conduct experiments with seaweed aimed at training the plant to react to danger, thus warning naval divers.
To date, no one, not even the U.S. Navy — has taken Backster's claims seriously enough to establish a Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Plants, nor has there been any effort to legislate humane methods of chopping broccoli or making applesauce.
Bacon, Roger
(1214-1292 or 1294) The English Franciscan monk Roger Bacon (nicknamed Doctor Mirabilis, “The Admirable Doctor”) was a noted medieval advocate of experimentation and observation as a means to learning, an advanced idea for that time in history. It was said that he built a bronze head that spoke and answered questions, but such canards are often circulated about persons of accomplishment.
Bacon was probably the greatest scientific mind of his time, even before science was delineated and organized, albeit hobbled by the religious restrictions of intellectual exercise under which he necessarily labored.
In about 1240 he also briefly described the tricks of the conjurors of his time and declared them to be harmless amusements. His learned opinion on tricks was largely ignored, and conjurors continued to be persecuted by ignorant secular and ecclesiastic authorities as minions of Satan.
Bacon adopted the prophecies of Joaquim of Flore (see Appendix III, year 1260), but this and his credulous belief in astrology and other forms of mysticism aside, he was a genuine contributor to knowledge.
Bacon, Sir Francis
(1561-1626) Sir Francis is generally given credit for having prepared the intellectuals of his day for the scientific method of investigating. He was a person of remarkably clear perception and observation who refused any sort of emotional acceptance of unproven ideas. He said:
Such is the way of superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgements or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though they happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by.
Bacon's work was the direct cause of the establishment of the Royal Society, which was essentially founded to pursue his methods. His major work, among many, was Novum Organum.
Balinus
See Apollonius of Tyana.
Band writer
See thumb writer.
Banshee
(derived from the Celtic bean (pronounced ban) for “woman,” and sighe for “fairy”) A female Irish family ghost. Usually dressed in ratty white robes and with tangled hair over her skinny shoulders, the banshee wails, knocks, and carries on loudly just before the death of one of the family. One can only imagine how she carries on after the death.
The Scottish version is known as a benshie or benshee or the bodach glay, meaning “gray specter.”
Barau
In Polynesia, the name for a sorcerer.
Barbour, Nelson H.
See Jehovah's Witnesses.
Bat
A relatively harmless flying mammal. Since most varieties are nocturnal, the unfortunate creature has been assigned various evil characteristics and powers. The discovery of the South American vampire bat gave credence among the credulous to the legend of the human vampire.
In Germany, it was once believed that one who wore the left eye of a bat as a talisman would become invisible; since many persons were seen wearing such an object, the belief died out rather quickly.
Beelzebub
The Lord of the Flies is represented pictorially as a gigantic fly. He is a prince of demons, and the Canaanites dedicated a large temple to his worship. He was known to the Cyreneans as Achor. Beelzebub is also one of the alternate names of Satan.
Behemoth
See Satan.
Belial
See Satan.
Bender, Hans
(1907-1991) Impressed by the results of a Ouija board session when he was seventeen, Hans Bender became interested in psi and eventually was appointed the first chairman of the Department of Parapsychology at the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiburg, Germany. This effectively brought Germany into the world of psi, a mixed blessing. Bender worked with parapsychologist Wilhelm Tenhaeff (1894 -1981), performed experiments with the psychic Gerard Croiset, and certified it all as genuine.
For his unquestioning acceptance of psi, Bender came in for a great deal of criticism from his colleagues in science, who referred to him as der Spukprofessor (“spook professor”). He also accepted the spoon-bending of Uri Geller as a genuine example of psychokinesis.
Shortly before he died, it was discovered that Bender did not have the doctorate that he had claimed all his life and that in his extensive writings on psi, he had ignored very well established evidence against the phenomena and had greatly enhanced the facts and figures in favor of it. It appeared that Bender was requiring his readers to believe that everything of which he himself was convinced was factual. His work and writings are now no longer taken seriously.
Bermuda Triangle
(also, Devil's Triangle) A huge triangle formed by the islands of Bermuda and Puerto Rico, and the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is said to be an area of profound danger for anyone or anything venturing into it. It was first so designated by a writer for Argosy magazine.
The whole legend began in December 1944 when five Avenger bombers of the U.S. Navy were lost while on a routine training mission out of the Fort Lauderdale air base. A sensational 1974 book by Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle, brought this supposed mystery to the attention of the public.
The Berlitz book, written thirty years after the loss of the bombers, contained invented details, distorted and exaggerated figures and descriptions, and even fabricated radio conversations that were claimed to have taken place between the naval pilots and the Fort Lauderdale air base. The event was not that unusual, if the invented details are ignored, and as evidence for any sort of mystery in the triangle, the Avenger bombers matter is a very poor example, but it remains as the event most quoted by the believers.
Other ships that are said to have vanished in the area either did not exist, or sank or capsized in other areas — even in the Pacific or Mediterranean — or went down due to perfectly ordinary and well understood causes.
The Bermuda Triangle, an area subject to violent storms and rough seas, does produce problems, but no more than any other similar area anywhere in the world. There is no need to ascribe supernatural or even unusual causes to any losses that occur there. Unless, of course, you want to sell lots and lots of books.
Bernadette Soubirous
See Soubirous, Bernadette.
Besant, Annie
See Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna.
Bezoar
A reddish stone found in the entrails of animals, usually a concretion like a kidney stone. It is also said to be extracted from an aged toad's head. Used as a powerful amulet or charm, particularly against poison.
The aetite or aquilaeus is a similar stone found in the stomach of an eagle, a hollow stone formed of iron oxide, and claimed to be able to detect a thief and to heal epilepsy. When bound to a woman's arm, they say, it prevents abortion, and fastened to her thigh, it aids in giving birth. It is actually just as effective when fastened to the father's key chain or, better
still, left inside the eagle.
In Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the duke says:
The toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
Which goes to show how much dukes know.
Aside from the spurious magical qualities ascribed to these concretions, the term bezoar is now properly used to designate any sort of antidote to a poison.
See also charms.
Bible
The book upon which the Christian religion is based. It is divided into the Old and the New Testaments, the former dealing with events before the time of Christ and the latter — in the four Gospels — with events of the life of Christ and the period following his death, plus events in the history of the many early Christian churches.
Early editions in English were many and varied. The Breeches Bible was so named because Genesis 3:7 refers to Adam and Eve preparing “breeches” from sewed-together “figge-tree leaves” upon discovering that they were naked. In the Vinegar Bible, the “Parable of the Vinegar” was given in Luke 20, rather than the “Parable of the Vineyard.” A 1632 edition had the seventh commandment as “Thou shalt commit adultery.” It earned the title of the “Wicked Bible.”
In the reign of Henry VIII (1491-1547) it was decreed that
. . . no woman (unless she be noble or gentle woman) no artificers [craftsmen], apprentices, journeymen, servingmen, under the degree of yeomen . . . husbandmen or labourers could read any part of the Bible without danger of fines or imprisonment.
The 1611 King James Version of the book is now recognized as the authorized edition. Though in the almost four centuries since its first publication scholars have become aware of many serious discrepancies in that edition, it is still accepted as correct.
The Bible deals with many magical events, aside from the miracles (such as resurrection of dead persons or multiplying food and drink) ascribed to Christ. In the Old Testament are found a number of references to the punishment of sorcerers, and the process of trial by ordeal appears in Numbers 5:11-13. In Jonah 1:7, we find a reference to chance being used for divination:
Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.
This process is justified and validated by another biblical passage, Proverbs 16:33, where we read:
The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.
This conclusion apparently still stands, despite our present better understanding of the laws of chance and probability.
A witch is found in Exodus 22:18. Immediately following the official amounts established for a virgin bride-price and the money penalty to be paid by the seducer of a not-yet-betrothed virgin is found the rule that:
You shall not allow a witch to live.
The famous witch of Endor was said (1 Samuel 28) to exorcise spirits, and the High Priest of the Israelites carried with him two magical stones called Urim and Thummim that enabled him to prophesy.
In Genesis 20:3, 31:23, and 37:5; Job 33:15; Numbers 12:6; and 1 Kings 3:5, sorcery is referred to, and at least twenty methods of foretelling the future are described in the book.
Bien Boa
See Carrière, Eva.
Bigfoot
See Abominable Snowman.
Bilocation
The presence of an individual, object, subject, or definition in two different places at the same moment. Conte Alessandro Cagliostro is said to have displayed this ability to impress his clients. Saint Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) and, in modern times, Padre Pio (1887-1968) are also said to have performed bilocation. The conjuror Pinetti (1750-1800) made a sensation when he apparently drove out of the gates of Paris at two different locations at the same moment.
An absolutely impossible phenomenon.
Bimini Road
Beginning in 1968, when an interesting pattern of natural rock was discovered underwater off the coast of Bimini, occultists began claiming that the formation was actually a road built on the site of the lost continent of Atlantis and thus was strong evidence for the existence of this mythological place.
The “road” is actually the now-submerged former coastline of the island and is made of beach rock, a concretion of shells and other debris formed in modern times. This fragile material tends to fracture in more or less straight lines and then at right angles to those fractures, resulting in a pattern of large fragments resembling an area of paving stones. Such natural formations, also referred to as tessellated pavement, are extremely common along the eastern shore of Australia, and almost entirely around Tasmania, where they are plainly exposed to view along the coast. For a hundred miles along the coast of Venezuela there is a similar undersea formation.
Perhaps Atlantis was much, much larger than we'd thought.
Biorhythms
A notion originated in the 1890s by German doctor Wilhelm Fliess (1859 -1928), biorhythm theory says that three cyclical influences are set in motion at the moment of birth, and that by charting these cycles it can be determined which days are propitious and which not. Fliess originally postulated only two cycles, but later a third was added.
The three cycles — physical, emotional and intellectual — are respectively 23, 28, and 33 days in length, and a day when any curve crosses the zero line (a node) is a “critical” day. When two nodes coincide, it is said to be an especially dangerous day. As for three nodes, well, don't ask. The triple-critical will occur for everyone at the age of fifty-eight years and sixty-eight days, which should produce a plethora of deaths at this point, but no such actuarial bump has ever been noticed. Then, at the age of just more than 116 years, four months, and a couple of weeks, the second triple-critical arrives. If one has lived through the first, this crisis should definitely do one in.
Followers of this modern form of prophecy look assiduously for correlations between the theory and actual fact, and of course are thus able to find many such relationships which they believe support the theory. Such a process is the antithesis of scientific research.
Studies in which control groups were established have shown that there is no value to the theory. It is a form of magic and pseudoscience.
Bishop, Washington (Wellington) Irving
(1856-1889) This American mentalist was famous for his blindfold drive and other astounding feats. A mountebank who learned his trade as an assistant to John Randall Brown, a newspaperman who specialized in “muscle reading,” Bishop flourished in the 1880s.
He started his career working with the famous spiritualist act of Anna Eva Fay, first functioning as her manager. Then in 1876 he chose to expose her methods in the New York Daily Graphic newspaper and at that point he began doing his own show.
At first Bishop denied the existence of any paranormal powers, then apparently decided that the easier path was with the fakers, and he became a “real” psychic overnight.
Bishop is credited with originating the blindfold drive trick (in 1885) in which the performer is able to navigate in a vehicle while his eyes are covered. Bishop used a horse and carriage, while modern practitioners depend on an automobile.
One of Bishop's favorite routines, copied from Brown, was to have a fictitious murderer, a weapon, and a victim chosen from among the audience members while he was out of the area. Upon his return he would identify all three. He performed this and other mysteries in the United States and in Britain, with great success.
In Britain he made great but spurious claims of wealth, even turning over the proceeds of several performances (less “expenses”) to charitable causes. His pretensions of riches were part of his pose, apparently to attract huge fees for specialized projects in which he tried to become involved.
It was also in Britain, however, that he lost a lawsuit brought against him by the famous conjuror J. N. Maskelyne, who objected to his claims of genuine psychic power. This provoked libelous remarks from the American, and J. N. promptly sued him, winning the case and driving Bishop from England to esca
pe paying the £10,000 penalty.
Bishop was fond of claiming that he'd been tested by scientists, but when the conditions for the tests were not of his own making, he failed. When challenged to do specific feats that he claimed he could do with regularity, he either refused to be tested or switched tests or the conditions for the tests, and only then succeeded. His claim was that he did not understand his own powers, but when a newspaper editor named Charles Howard Montague learned to do Bishop's act, successfully duplicating a drawing made by one of his audience, he declared:
