The Science of Miracles

by Joe Nickell

  However, the skeptics are apparently having little if any effect on the Church, which canonized “Juan Diego” as a saint, fictitious or not.

  An enigmatic painting is exhibited at the church of San Francisco de Asis (St. Francis of Assisi) at Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico (figure 5.1). It depicts a barefoot Jesus standing by the Sea of Galilee; however, when the lights are extinguished, the background luminesces, as if the sky and sea were shining in moonlight, and the figure becomes silhouetted, a cross appearing at the left shoulder and a halo appearing over the head (Michell 1979, 94; Colombo 1999, 70–72) (see figure 5.2). Other mysterious effects are sometimes reported as well.

  BACKGROUND

  Known as “The Shadow of the Cross,” the life-size painting was created in 1896 by an obscure French-Canadian artist named Henri Ault (d. ca. 1912), who had a studio in the Cobalt, Ontario, region (Rawson 1914, 615–16). Ault is said to have denied being responsible for the effect, which he claimed to have discovered (quite fortuitously) upon entering his studio one night. “He believed he was going mad, and he was never able to explain the reason for the transformation,” states writer John Michell (1979, 94).

  Reportedly, British scientist and gullible Spiritualist William Crookes (1832–1919) was the first to attempt—unsuccessfully—to explain the painting (Michell 1979, 94), which toured Europe and was supposedly an attraction at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. A church brochure claims: “It is not known what causes the background to be luminous. It was painted before radium was discovered and when tested with Geiger counters the results have been negative” (Shadow of the Cross n. d.).

  Sources even allege that more extensive scientific examinations have been conducted, utilizing “Geiger counters, light tests and scrapings”—all to no avail (Michell 1979, 94). However, as reported by New Mexico Magazine, while a church archivist claimed the painting had once been analyzed “for all known luminescent substances,” she conceded “she had no documentation of the testing and was not sure who did the test or when” (Gaussoin 1998). Such alleged analyses appear to be apocryphal, representing attempts to convince the credulous that science is trumped by supernatural mystery.

  In 1948 the picture was donated to the church, and in the early 1980s it was relocated to a room of the adjacent parish hall, furnished with folding chairs. A videotape provides an introduction to the local parish.

  When the lights are turned out and the background begins to glow, subjective impressions can prevail. Observes one source (Crystal 2003): “Soon the silhouette of Jesus grows three-dimensional and appears more like a dark statue than flat image. His robes seem to billow in the breeze.”

  The church takes a cautious view of the phenomenon, and there are no reported healing cures associated with the painting. Pilgrims’ reactions vary. Some exclaim “It's a miracle!” says archivist Corina Santistevan. “There are those who are very touched and very moved and very reverent,” she says. “And those who continue to be skeptical. And those who are curious and want a scientific explanation” (Chavez 2002).

  INVESTIGATION

  I was among the latter group. I visited the historic church on October 27, 2003, accompanied by colleague Vaughn Rees. While photographs—and certainly actual examinations of the painting—are not permitted, we managed to get a close look by staying for two showings and the interval between.

  Some of the picture's touted mysteries are easily explained, such as our docent's claim that Jesus’ eyes follow the viewer wherever he or she stands. That is merely the result of a three-dimensional view being “fixed” in a two-dimensional representation, and any such portrait in which the subject's eyes gaze directly at the viewer will produce the same effect (Nickell 2003).

  The picture is also said to appear more intense the longer one views it, but that would be expected due to the viewer's eyes becoming accustomed to the dark. In the mottled background of the painting, some see a boat, angels, or other images, but these are simply simulacra: pictures perceived, Rorschach-like, in random patterns. Some people report seeing the image of Jesus “vibrate,” the docent told us; however, that is attributable to the well-known autokinetic effect by which a stationary light in the dark appears to be moving due to slight, involuntary eye movements (Schick and Vaughn 1999, 45). All such effects may be augmented by the power of suggestion.

  Regarding the appearance of the halo and cross, it must be noted that—contrary to some sources (for example, Michell 1979, 94; Crystal 2003)—the halo is always visible, consisting of a simple outlined ellipse. It merely becomes silhouetted when the background luminesces. Such an effect—as my own experiments demonstrated—could easily be created by painting the halo outline with ordinary, opaque paint over a background rendered with a phosphorescent (glow-in-the-dark) one.

  The same principle could explain the appearing-cross effect, except in that case the phosphorescent paint would need to visibly match that of the nonglowing background areas—something easy for an artist to accomplish. This was my preferred hypothesis to explain the mystery, after I first learned of it from Canadian writer John Robert Colombo (1996).

  Supporting this hypothesis is the observation that the painting's background—in contrast to the other areas—is badly cracked and flaking, consistent with its having a different composition. (Underneath, where the upper layer has flaked off, is a very bright blue, whose presence suggests the picture was repainted—as with a phosphorescent paint.)1 Further corroborative evidence comes from the fact that the glowing of the paint begins to diminish after a few minutes—just like phosphorescent paint—and must be re-exposed to light for the effect to continue (Casper 2004).

  Proponents’ insistence that the picture was created before radium was discovered (by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898) is largely irrelevant, since nonradium luminous paints had long been available commercially. The first, Balmain's paint (a calcium sulfide phosphor to which was added a small amount of a bismuth compound as an “activator”) appeared in 1870 (“Phosphorescence” 1911; “Luminescence” 1960). In 1879 an English patent was awarded “for the use of phosphorescent salts, such as sulphid [sulfide] of lime, of strontium, barium, etc., for the purpose of illumination by mixing them with paint or varnish.” (“Phosphorescent Paint Patented” 1879).2

  Although in 1896 Ault's “The Shadow of the Cross” was a novelty, some modern artists now produce luminous paintings as a special genre (Duffy 1995), and there are commercial transformational pictures (such as a “daylight” seascape, using four glow-in-the-dark colors, that, in the dark, becomes a “sunset” scene [Spilsbury 1997]).

  CONCLUSIONS

  Evidence suggests that despite his reported protestations to the contrary, artist Henri Ault deliberately and cleverly created “The Shadow of the Cross” effects. Just such a metamorphosing picture could have been accomplished using glow-in-the-dark pigments or paints that were well known and even commercially available at the time the painting was produced. It is no longer much of a mystery and certainly no miracle, notwithstanding the disingenuity with which the painting's custodians claim science is baffled while at the same time avoiding the testing that could lay the matter to rest.

  It has long been common, especially within the Catholic tradition, to discover faces of holy personages in random patterns and to suggest these are miraculous. In my book Looking for a Miracle (Nickell 1993), and in an article in Free Inquiry magazine (Nickell 1997), I recounted several of these including the famous image of Jesus discovered in the skillet burns on a New Mexico tortilla in 1978. Usually, these simulacra are the result of the ink-blot or picture-in-the-clouds effect: the mind's tendency to create order out of chaos. On occasion, however, they are faked.

  On Good Friday, 1995, when I appeared on a special live episode of Oprah to discuss miracles, I met a daughter of Maria Rubio, the woman who had discovered the tortilla Jesus mentioned in chapter 8. Afterward, as we were waiting in a limousine for a ride to the airport, I also talked with a self-styled visionary who had been on
the show. She showed me a “miraculous” rose petal that bore a likeness of Jesus, one of several such items that supposedly came from the Philippines. Examining the petal with my illuminated Coddington magnifier (a pen-lighted loupe), I was suspicious and asked to borrow the object for further study (see figure 6.1).

  I subsequently examined the rose petal by viewing it with transmitted light, using a fluorescent light box and a stereomicroscope (figure 6.2). I noted that everywhere there were markings there was damage to the rose petal, resembling hatch marks made with a blunt tool (figure 6.3). In contrast, ordinary rose petals had no such markings (see figure 6.4, top right).

  However, I found that faces could easily be drawn with a blunt stylus (figure 6.4, top left). I obtained dried rose petals, rejuvenated them with boiling water, then smoothed out the wrinkles on the surface of a light box and drew the requisite pictures. They have characteristics similar to the “miraculous” one.

  As this case shows, paranormal claims are not solved by assumptions (for example, that rose petals have mottled patterns that could yield a facial image) but rather by investigation on a case-by-case basis.

  On Friday, October 27, 1995, the television program Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment, “Kentucky Visions,” that included investigative work by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (now Committee for Skeptical Inquiry [CSI]). The popular, prime-time television series had requested CSICOP's opinion of some “miraculous” photographs taken at a recent Virgin Mary sighting at a hillside spot in central Kentucky. This was my first significant case as senior research fellow—or as the narrator termed me, “Paranormal Investigator” (a “P. I.” nonetheless).

  The photographs were made by a Sunday school teacher who had visited the Valley Hill site (near Bardstown, Kentucky) with eight girls from her class. I did not see the photographs until the day I was brought on location for filming, but I was sent color photocopies of them in advance. The lack of reproductive quality put me at more of a disadvantage with some photos than with others. I did recognize that the claimed “faces of Jesus and Mary” in one photo were simply due to random, out-of-focus patterns of light and shadow caused by mishandling of the film pack (more on that later).

  I also recognized in another photo the now common effect at Marian apparition sites, a phenomenon known as the “golden door.” This is an arched door shape, filled with golden light, that is believed by some to be the doorway to heaven mentioned in Revelation 4:1. In fact, as explained in an earlier Skeptical Inquirer (Winter 1993), it is simply an artifact of the Polaroid OneStep camera, which, when flooded with bright light, as when pointed at the sun or a halogen lamp, produces a picture of the camera's own aperture (Nickell 1993a) (figure 7.1). This was codiscovered by Georgia Skeptics members Dale Heatherington and Anson Kennedy, who tutored me in making such photos. (Together we have wasted much Polaroid film, all in the interest of scientific experimentation.)

  I telephoned Kennedy about two of the other “miracle” effects, and he was already familiar with one of them. Sight unseen, simply from my description of the alleged “angel wings,” he diagnosed light leakage into the Polaroid film pack. My subsequent experimentation confirmed his explanation and showed how the leakage could have occurred (figure 7.2).

  Fortunately, my experimentation also provided an explanation for the remaining effect—one that had at first puzzled both Kennedy and me, as well as some professional photographers and film processors I consulted. The effect was that of a chart superimposed on one picture. The chart was slightly out of focus, but nevertheless unmistakable. One of the girls at the site thought she could see in the blurred printing the name of a deceased friend. Where had the chart come from? It appeared to have resulted from a double exposure, although the Polaroid OneStep camera should not ordinarily permit that to occur.

  Suddenly, I realized that the card atop the film pack, which protects the film from light and is ejected when the pack is first loaded into the camera, has a chart printed on its underside! Indeed, that was clearly the mysterious chart in question, somehow appearing in mirror image in the photograph taken by the Sunday school teacher. But how had it gotten onto one photo? My subsequent experiments showed it was possible to produce such an effect by light leakage (the same culprit that produced the “angel wings”). The light had leaked in, between the card and the first potential photograph, bouncing off the white card and onto the light-sensitized surface of the film, thus making an exposure of a portion of the chart. In this way it was superimposed on the first photograph made from that pack (figures 7.3 and 7.4).

  Taken together, the evidence from all four photographs, some of which had multiple effects, provided corroborative evidence that the film pack was somehow mishandled and admitted light, maybe by the front having been pulled down with the thumb on being inserted into the camera, or maybe by someone having sat on the pack. Since the other major effect, the golden door, was due to the construction of the camera, there was therefore no indication of hoaxing with any of the pictures.

  On the television program, my comments were edited down to very brief but sufficient explanations. The treatment of the photographs was uneven from a skeptical point of view. The “faces” were greatly enhanced to make them look more realistic. Commendable was the use of an effective graphics technique whereby the chart was placed on the screen beside the chart-bearing photo, then flopped so as to superimpose it on the photo.

  Skeptics who watched the segment with me laughed loudly at the conclusion of my interview when the narrator commented, “Rational explanations may satisfy some people, but….” This comment was followed by various “miracle” claims that went unchallenged. I had not only explained how the “golden door” photos are made; I had also showed several of them for the Unsolved Mysteries camera (figure 7.1); but this was omitted from the program even though such photos were described as “mysterious.” Also omitted were my explanations for silver rosaries supposedly turning to gold—either due to tarnishing or the rubbing off of the silver plating to expose the copper or brass beneath (Nickell 1993b). I included an explanation for a new claim: glass-beaded rosaries were supposedly turning, momentarily, a golden color; I theorized that the faceted beads were reflecting the golden light of the sun.

  Much was made about people reportedly seeing the sun pulsate, spin, or exhibit other phenomena—all due to optical effects resulting from staring at the sun, which I discussed at some length in my Looking for a Miracle (1993b). Many pilgrims also had claimed to see showers of golden flakes, which I attributed to their having looked at the bright sun (even though some insisted they had not looked directly at the sun), or to a dappling of sunlight through the canopy of tree leaves, or to the power of suggestion—or a combination. All of my comments about such other phenomena, including faith healing, ended up on the cutting-room floor.

  The program did end on a rather skeptical note, with program host Robert Stack stating, “It is interesting to note that the local Catholic church has declined to recognize Valley Hill as anything out of the ordinary. The rest of us will have to decide for ourselves.” Unfortunately, they will have to decide without the benefit of all of the skeptical evidence. That's why I sometimes refer to the television show as “Unsolving Mysteries.”

  Since it came to light in 2004, it has become the quintessential holy image to appear on an item of food: the face, many say of the Virgin Mary, on a grilled-cheese sandwich. While it has sparked little piety—the Catholic church has not sanctioned it as divine—it has become the subject of controversy and ridicule and has even suffered insinuations of fakery. I once had custody of the curious item, and I was actually able to photograph and examine the image under magnification (figures 8.1–8.2). Here are my findings.

  BACKGROUND

  The image reportedly appeared ten years earlier in the Hollywood, Florida, home of Gregg and Diana Duyser. Mrs. Duyser, fifty-two, said she had grilled the sandwich without butter or oil and had just taken a bite
when she noticed—staring back at her—the image of a woman's face in the toasting pattern. She perceived it as the face of “the Virgin Mary, Mother of God.” Placing it in a plastic box with cotton balls, she kept it enshrined on her nightstand.

  Duyser was impressed that the sandwich never molded. However, toast and hardened cheese that are kept dry naturally resist molding.

  The Duysers received $28,000 when they auctioned the sandwich on the Internet site eBay. The site had initially pulled the item—which supposedly broke its policy of not allowing “listings that are intended as jokes”—but the couple insisted that the item was neither a joke nor a hoax. Soon the “‘Virgin Mary’ sandwich” was back, attracting bids. It was purchased by an online casino—GoldenPalace.com—whose CEO, Richard Rowe, stated that he intended to use the sandwich to raise funds for charity (“‘Virgin Mary’ Sandwich” 2004).

  SIMULACRA

  The image-bearing sandwich received—possibly outdistanced—the notoriety accorded other sacred food icons. They include Maria Rubio's famous 1977 tortilla that bore the face of Jesus, also in the pattern of skillet burns; a giant forkful of spaghetti pictured on a billboard in which some perceived the likeness of Christ; and the image of Mother Teresa discovered on a cinnamon bun (see Nickell 2004).

  Queried by the Associated Press during the holy-grilled-cheese brouhaha, I explained that such images are nothing more than evidence of the human ability—termed pareidolia—to interpret essentially random patterns, such as ink blots or pictures in clouds, as recognizable images. The most famous example is the face of the man in the moon.