Likewise, some people have invested much of their time, energy, money, and belief in things like crop circles, which occasionally turn out to be hoaxes or delusions. In an effort to maintain a secure and familiar world outlook, they will find reasons to maintain their original belief system. For instance, some may believe not all the designs could have been made by humans, or they may believe that Doug Bower is actually lying, or so on. Cognitive dissonance, however, works both ways and can affect the skeptic as much as the believer, but this will be discussed later.
Some of the most popular forms of hoaxes and trickery come in the form of psychics, fortunetellers, and mediums. In 1988 James Randi, magician and professional paranormal debunker, teamed with 60 Minutes in Australia to create a fake medium sensation known as “Carlos.” Carlos was a being over two thousand years old who would pour forth his ancient wisdom to those who listened. Randi recruited an unknown actor named Jose Alvarez and concocted a story in which Alvarez, after a nearly fatal motorcycle accident, suddenly began to channel Carlos. 60 Minutes and Randi created some faked footage of Alvarez going into a trance-like state (using crystals to focus his energy) and then speaking in the voice of Carlos. They then began to advertise for “The Entity Carlos.” The sham swept the nation of Australia. Carl Sagan describes Carlos’s first public show at the Drama Theater of Sydney.
An excited crowd, young and old, milled about expectantly. Entrance was free, which reassured those who vaguely wondered if it might be some sort of scam. Alvarez seated himself on a low couch. His pulse was monitored. Suddenly it stopped. Seemingly, he was near death. Low guttural noises emanated from deep within him. The audience gasped in wonder and awe. Suddenly, Alvarez’s body took on power. His posture radiated confidence. A broad, humane, spiritual perspective flowed out of Alvarez’s mouth. Carlos was here! Interviewed afterwards, many members of the audience described how they had been moved and delighted.12
They followed the appearances with marketing of “Atlantis Crystals,” “Waters of Carlos,” “Tears of Carlos,” and a book entitled The Teachings of Carlos. All this in an effort to show the gullibility of the masses, and when the hoax was finally revealed, the masses and other media were not pleased. Even the media had been duped by one of their own whose stated purpose, as news media, was to report the truth. The public backlash was immense. However, “Alvarez and Randi proved how little it takes to tamper with our beliefs, how readily we are led, how easy it is to fool the public when people are lonely and starved for something to believe in.”13
But this kind of hoax happens on a daily basis. Psychics, mediums, and astrologers are seemingly everywhere in today’s society. Predictions for astrological signs are printed in newspapers; there are psychic fairs, and mediums like John Edwards, whose work can easily be replicated by magicians and people practiced in the art of cold reading. There are even government-sponsored psychics. In January of 2000, the New York Times reported that the welfare department “has been recruiting welfare recipients to work from home as telephone psychics.” If you weren’t psychic, they actually provided “training” and then put you to work for the Psychic Network. Unfortunately, the Psychic Network proved to have many complaints filed against it and was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. “Investigators typically reacted with disbelief to New York City’s welfare-to-work psychic venture, but an enforcement official with the Federal Communications Commission, where 40 percent of all complaints concern psychic pay-per-call operations, laughed uncontrollably, then begged for anonymity.”14
Some psychic hoaxes have involved vast amounts of money and have degenerated into outright threats on personal safety. ABC News reported in 2006 about Jackie Haughn, a 36-year-old mother of two who responded to an ad left on the windshield of her car for a psychic reading. “After her first session, Haughn felt as if she could trust Ann Marie [the psychic], and she agreed to come back. During that next reading, Haughn said the psychic told her something dramatic: There was a curse on Haughn and her family. Haughn said Ann Marie convinced her that by performing a number of rituals, the curse could be removed, a curse that was put on Haughn’s family many years ago.”15 Haughn eventually paid a total of $220,000 to Ann Marie and then received a letter demanding $63,000 or else Satan would take someone. The police then became involved and Ann Marie, whose real name was Tammi Mitchell, was arrested for extortion. We read about these incidents, we hear about them on the news, and our skeptical side tells us that they are all scams, but there is also something that wants to believe and is looking for answers. Being deceived by one of these hoaxers isn’t necessarily a sign of ignorance. Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine states, “Smart people on some level are even more gullible if you can get them past their initial skepticism. Because most of what we believe, we believe for emotional, psychological reasons, and then we rationalize the belief after the fact, after we already hold it. Smart people are better at rationalizing these beliefs.”16
It is the rationalizing of beliefs and actions and the effects of cognitive dissonance that comprise the psychological base of both hoaxers and skeptics. However, there is more to hoaxing than merely the psychological; there are the sociological and symbolic aspects of the hoax, the belief, and the defrauders. There are reasons that these hoaxes persist, that the beliefs persist, that we repeatedly find ourselves committing to and being taken in by these tricksters. In the context of the history of hoaxing we will try to examine why people repeatedly feel the need to trick others into certain beliefs, especially when the costs—public, personal, and legal—can be very, very high. But we also need to look at ourselves; why we are willing to believe and what role the hoax ultimately plays in our world experience.
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU
When you buy tickets to a magic show, what are you really buying? You are buying a time during which you are willing to suspend your disbelief in order to view the supernatural. The ticket is a contract of sorts between the audience and the performer; show us something we cannot explain for which we will graciously acknowledge your “supernatural” ability. Of course, no one actually thinks that Criss Angel or David Copperfield is actually supernatural. In the back of our minds, we know that it is ultimately a trick that has a very real and logical, if not scientific, method for fooling the eyewitness. We know this; it’s part of the fun—being amazed at first, trying to figure out how it was done, and when we can find no answer, walking away with the knowledge that it was a trick but also with the slight hope that maybe magic is real.
The hoaxer is in a similar position in that he or she is playing a trick with a very real methodology that is designed to confuse and create wonder and belief in the mind of the viewer. The difference is that the viewing audience has not purchased a ticket, has not entered into that contract with the performer, and has not willingly suspended its disbelief. The magic show is performed in a theater in which people allow their beliefs to be molded; the hoax is performed in the everyday, real world, where we do not allow our beliefs to be molded, but rather, we allow our beliefs to mold us. The hoax is the ultimate deception and betrayal because the victims are deceived by the hoaxer and betrayed by their beliefs. The believer allows the hoax to change them, and when it is revealed as a fraud, they are left with a loss of self. The rationale given in a majority of the hoaxes is, “it was all for fun.” But the reaction of the fooled public is one of anger and betrayal, and the public will ultimately make the hoaxer pay. The “fun” can be very costly, as shown in the case of Whitton and Dyer’s dead Bigfoot.
But why the drive to create these hoaxes in the light of such public, and often legal, recourses? There are three aspects to the motivation of the hoaxer. The first is the fun aspect, the second is monetary gain, and the third is the magical aspect. Let’s begin with the fun.
When Whitton and Dyer said that they did it for fun, who was it that was actually having the fun? Certainly not the Bigfoot researchers, the media, or the public; rather, it was for their own amusement. Th
e “fun” is knowledge of the truth in a world of lies. The fun is watching others who are ignorant of the truth talking about, acting out, and believing in a fraud of the hoaxer’s design. The hoax is really a malevolent thing, in spite of the “fun” for the hoaxer. Symbolically the hoaxer retains a god-like knowledge of truth and the masses are beneath him, lost in an illusion. “Dyer, asked whether he ever thought that the hoopla had become more than just a joke, implied that everyone should have known it was a hoax. ‘Well, we told 10 different stories,’ he said. ‘Everyone knew we were lying.’ ”17 The implication is that anyone with intelligence—any knowledge of truth—should have immediately known that this was a trick and that the two were lying. However, there was a vast and public effort made by the two to confirm their story: press conferences, discussions with research organizations, and the acceptance of money for the body.
In the case of Whitton and Dyer, they were the possessors not only of the truth in a world of lies, but also possessors of the mysterious; namely, Bigfoot. As possessors of the mysterious they were immediately given nearly god-like influence and power. Suddenly camera crews and news organizations were at their feet, researchers and scientists offered them money—the world was focused on them as the possessors of the paranormal. As the possessors of truth, they enjoyed a personal god-like knowledge; as possessors of the mysterious, they enjoyed god-like treatment by the masses.
The hoax is ancient—as ancient as man’s desire for power to act as a god over the masses. The hoaxer imbues his or her self with magical ability. This is not the kind of magic that David Copperfield and Criss Angel perform, because that is a magic that functions on the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. This is a more ancient form of magic; it reaches back to the time when magic was real, and the magician was a priest-like figure allied with the gods.
In ancient Egypt, the god Thoth was the possessor of knowledge and magic. Thoth was the originator of both literacy and astronomy but was also credited with religion, magic, and philosophy. Therefore, the magician in ancient Egypt wielded great divine knowledge. In effect, the magician took on a role normally reserved for priests and prophets. “Priests, magicians, and monks all offered concrete supernatural help to other people. Ancient magical spells promised to tell the future, heal illnesses, curse enemies, create pregnancies, instill erotic passion in desired mates, and so on.”18 These are precisely some of the issues that hoaxers claim to address or the public seeks answers for. Psychics and mediums claim to be able to influence these issues through their interaction with the divine. Someone who is having difficulty getting pregnant may not approach Whitton and Dyer, but they may travel to the cornfields of England to bask in the residual “energy” left in the crop circles by visiting alien beings, or perhaps they will purchase expensive, magical crystals. The hoaxer is an ancient magician; one who uses his tricks not for entertainment but for manipulation.
The hoaxer is the possessor of truth in that he or she is the only one who knows what is actually going on in the hoax, and as the sole possessor of the truth, that individual takes on a god-like knowledge. He or she is also looked upon as having a special connection to the divine, and thus, is sought out by the public. Think of the “fun” that Doug Bower and David Chorley, creators of the crop circles, must have had. While they never publicly claimed their connection to the circles until much, much later, imagine them watching the television as the news analysts, scientists, and believers all debated what the crop circles were and what they meant. Imagine them as they watched people from around the world travel to these circles to bask in their energy or seek out healing. It was “fun” because Bower and Chorley were the only two men on earth who definitively knew the truth of the circles—they were a hoax dreamed up by two artists over a couple pints at the local pub. And when science claimed to have an answer in the form of a weather anomaly, they altered their designs to be sure that everyone knew there was something mysterious, otherworldly, and divine occurring in the fields.
Bower and Chorley’s work is largely looked upon with a wink and a nod from the public. They are generally viewed as pranksters rather than criminals because they did not take their hoax to the next level—profiting from the falsified beliefs. While there were people who sought to make money off the crop circles by selling New Age materials supposedly connected with the circles, the two originators never made any money because they never came forward publicly to proclaim the circles as otherworldly. In essence, they let the public deceive themselves.
But there are those who use the hoax for monetary gain, sometimes as psychics and mediums as illustrated earlier, but other times posing as legitimate investigators or believers who try to create sensationalism through the media in order to sell the rights to book publishers and movie companies. Much like an episode of Scooby-Doo, the true source of the haunting of a place is often the owners themselves who need an excuse to either get out of a mortgage or create revenue through selling their paranormal story. This is where the Drummer Cycle comes into play. I will use an example of a hotly contested and very well-known case of a haunting in order to demonstrate.
The Amityville Horror captured the nation’s attention. It sparked massive interest from both skeptics and believers when it was reported in newspapers that a family in Amityville, New York, completely abandoned their home in the middle of the night, leaving behind all their possessions, only a month after purchase because the home was demonically infested. The house had been the site of a mass murder before being purchased by the Lutz family. Following the newspaper stories and subsequent investigation by Ed and Lorraine Warren, who proclaimed the house demonically infested, there was a best-selling book, The Amityville Horror, written by Jay Anson and based on the family’s testimony, and then a hit movie that spawned several sequels. The Amityville Horror became a part of American legend and is largely thought to be one of those “true stories” of a haunted house.
However, the story was contested from the beginning. The case was contested on television and radio as skeptics and even other paranormal researchers came forward to debate the legitimacy of the “true” haunting. Stephen Kaplan, a New York–based paranormal researcher, authored the book The Amityville Conspiracy, in which he asserts that the Amityville Horror was a deliberate hoax perpetrated by the Lutz family and their attorney in an effort to get out of a mortgage they could not afford. Let’s look at this story through the Drummer Cycle.
First, there is the report of paranormal activity in the house through a public forum. In this case it was the newspapers that originally broke the sensational story. Secondly, there was confirmation by those connected with the divine and paranormal, in this case, Ed and Lorraine Warren. Thirdly, there was the public fascination; not only was there the book and film which resulted in great profit for the Lutzes, but people traveled from all over the country to trespass on the property. There were reports of vandalism as people stole shingles (pieces connected with the mysterious), and eventually, the name of the street had to be changed because of the number of people trespassing and causing property damage. Then there were the skeptics and others who descended on the story and called it a hoax after conducting their own investigations. There were numerous on-air debates between the Warrens and fellow paranormal investigator Stephen Kaplan, in which the Warrens vehemently defended their conclusions that the house was indeed haunted and also accused Kaplan of being jealous because he was not invited into the house. The arguments got ugly and, as the Warrens’ reputation was at stake, they defended it in light of some damning testimony from the Lutz defense attorney, William Weber, and admitted “artistic license” taken by author Jay Anson. This defense by the Warrens was necessary in order to preserve their belief systems and their characters. The Amityville Horror story fits perfectly in the Drummer Cycle of hoaxing, however, this is not to say that the Horror was or is a definitive hoax. The reader can look at the material and decide for himself; this was just a very well-known case that worked within the p
arameters of the Drummer Cycle.
It is a cycle that has been repeated throughout history in hoaxes and disputed hoaxes. It should be noted that the Drummer Cycle works for nearly every well-known paranormal case also, though all paranormal cases are suspected of being a hoax. If everyone agreed that it was true, then it would no longer be disputable; hence every paranormal claim has its detractors that claim it is a hoax. This simple fact actually keeps many people from coming forward with their story; they don’t want to be thought of as a liar or of as being insane.
The debate between the Warrens and Kaplan, which played out on both radio and television during the late seventies, leads us to a strange form of hoax that does not fit into the mold of previous motivations. It is a hoax perpetrated by the believer in an effort to reinforce their existent belief system and convince others to believe as they do. The motivation is not money or fame or even to align oneself with a god, because often the hoax is not perpetrated by the believer on the public, but rather on fellow believers. The Warrens and Kaplan both believe in the spirit world; there was no debate on that issue. However, what was at issue was the Warrens’ credibility; their character was on trial and when one’s character is on trial, one will generally use all necessary means to defend it. Thus, in spite of certain evidences presented that seemed to contradict the Warrens’ story, they still had to maintain and defend their position, because that position was directly tied to their character.
Of course, there is another possibility in the case of the Amityville Horror and the Warrens—the possibility that the Warrens were tricked by the Lutz family, and their willingness to believe forced them into a corner that they were unable to escape from without sacrificing their characters and reputations due to the public nature of the haunting. We will discuss this further in the next section.
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