The Science of Miracles

by Joe Nickell

  Perceived pictures of this type are called simulacra, and many are interpreted as religious images (a female face becoming “Mary,” for example). These are perhaps most often associated with Catholic or Orthodox traditions, wherein there is a special emphasis on icons or other holy images (Nickell 2004; Thompson 2004).

  In the wake of the grilled-cheese image came others, one on a fish stick hailed as “the son of Cod” (“It's the Son of Cod” 2004), another a pair of images on a pancake. A woman interpreted the latter duo as Jesus and Mary, while her mother, the actual flapjack flipper, thought they resembled a Bedouin and Santa Claus (Nohlgren 2004). The grilled-cheese icon even helped inspire an entire book: called Madonna of the Toast (Poole 2007), it treats both “Secular Sightings” (for example, Myrtle Young's famous collection of pictorial potato chips) and “Forms of Faith” (including the previously mentioned Mother Teresa “Nun Bun”—missing since it was stolen in 2005).

  A HOAX?

  The Duysers’ grilled-cheese Madonna was lampooned on the Penn and Teller: Bullshit! series on the Showtime network (“Signs from Heaven” 2006) and elsewhere by other debunkers (Stollznow 2008). Some of them found clever ways to make fake images on toast. One method involved a custom cast-iron skillet molded with Jesus’ face, another a yeast extract used to paint pictures on bread before toasting (Poole 2007, 88–89). A Holy Toast!™ “miracle bread stamper” was even marketed in 2006.

  But was the image due to possible trickery, as some implied? The rush to suggest fakery antecedent to inquiry is a most unfortunate approach. It is certainly not the method of a serious, intellectually honest investigation.

  As it happens, I was able to examine the grilled cheese in question in 2005. I had custody of it for the better part of a day, January 14, courtesy of its Las Vegas–based owners who loaned it to Penn and Teller's producer, who in turn entrusted it to me. I was in Las Vegas to tape segments for that popular program, the timing of which coincided with the James Randi Educational Foundation's annual conference, The Amaz!ng Meeting 3 (held at the Stardust Resort and Casino). There, I shared the framed pop icon with other skeptics who eagerly posed with it, including Michael Shermer and Steve Shaw (also known as the mentalist Banachek). No one thought the image looked like the Virgin Mary (as her visage is imagined in art); instead some suggested it resembled Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, or other celebrities.

  Eventually I retired to a suite where I could study the controversial sandwich. It was in what appeared to be its original plastic box, surrounded with cotton balls, and set in a deep frame. I placed a forensic centimeter scale thereon and photographed the sandwich using a 35mm camera and close-up lenses (again, see figures 8.1 and 8.2). I also examined it macroscopically, using a 10x Bausch & Lomb illuminated Coddington magnifier.

  I observed that the surface had a spotty, heat-blistered appearance (again, see figure 8.2). The spots making up “eyes,” “nose,” and “mouth” are similar to those elsewhere on the toasted bread. There was no apparent difference or incongruity with regard to hue, sheen, form, or indeed any other characteristic. That is to say, there were no facial areas that seemed more linear or in any way drawn or added (as by, say, use of a wood-burning tool or by any of various other means I considered). Therefore, it is consistent with a genuine (accidentally produced) simulacrum rather than a faked one.

  Moreover, a careful close-up look at the “face” reveals it to be far less perfect than it may at first sight appear. (Those who suggest that hoaxing may have been involved, please take notice.) The features really consist only of some squiggles, a fact perhaps best appreciated by turning the picture ninety degrees. The nostrils are missing, yet the mind—“recognizing” a face—fills them in. Again, there is a pronounced extraneous, curved mark on the lady's right cheek, yet the mind tends helpfully to filter it out (or perhaps interpret it as, say, a curl of hair). In short, the image seems a rather typical simulacrum.

  Nevertheless, Diana Duyser certainly acts as if she believes that the “Virgin Mary” image on the grilled cheese is, as she says, “a miracle.” No longer owning the sandwich, she has had its image tattooed onto one of her ample breasts (pictured in Poole 2007, 86). She thus demonstrates that with simulacra, belief—as well as beauty—is often in the eye of the beholder.

  For a live, prime-time television program, I was asked to evaluate claims that a statue in Sacramento streamed tears of blood. The case prompted me to take a retrospective look at a wide variety of related phenomena, ranging from weeping icons to perambulating statues, many of which I personally investigated over the years.

  IDOLATRY

  Belief that an effigy is in some way animated (from anima, meaning “breath”) not only challenges science's naturalistic worldview; it also crosses a theological line. It moves from veneration (reverence toward an image) to idolatry (or image worship) in which the image is regarded as the “tenement or vehicle of the god and fraught with divine influence” (“Idolatry” 1960).

  Religious prohibitions of idolatry are ancient. In the Old Testament, the second commandment is an injunction against “graven images,” but only those that were to be adored or served (Exodus 20:4–5); others were explicitly allowed (Exodus 25:18). Influenced by Islam and Judaism, a movement of iconoclasts (Greek “image-breakers”) sought to carry out the injunction between about 723–842 CE, destroying countless religious works and persecuting those who made and venerated them. In the ninth century, iconoclasm was declared a heresy.

  Images proliferated, being widely used for ornamental, instructional, and devotional purposes. In the Orthodox Church image veneration largely focused on icons (wood panels painted in the Byzantine tradition) and was generally more elaborate than the veneration in Roman Catholicism, which tended to favor statues (“Images” 1993).

  A new iconoclasm arose during the Protestant Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe. Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin listed image worship among the Church's excesses.

  Ironically, Catholic Bibles (as related in chapter 1), unlike Protestant ones, contain an extra, fourteenth chapter of Daniel that condemns idolatry with a story.

  ANIMATED STATUES

  Roman Catholicism yielded several modern instances of allegedly animated statues. In 1981, for example, in a church at Thornton, California, a sculpted Virgin Mary not only altered the angle of her eyes and the tilt of her chin, churchgoers reported, but also wept and even strolled about the church at night. Although no one ever actually witnessed the latter, the statue was frequently found several feet from its usual location, standing at the altar.

  A bishop's investigation, however, failed to support the miracle claims. Investigating clerics determined that the purported movement of the statue's eyes and chin were merely due to variations in photographic angles. Worse, they branded the weeping and perambulations a probable hoax. For their efforts, the investigators were denounced by some believers, even called “a bunch of devils” (Nickell 1998, 67).

  In 1985 came reports that a figure of the Virgin in a grotto at Ballinspittle, Ireland, began to sway gently. Thousands of pilgrims, eager to witness the phenomenon, flocked to the village to view the statue, which was adorned with a halo of blue lights.

  It remained for a group of scientists from University College, Cork, to discover the truth about the statue. They, too, saw the figure sway, yet a motion-picture camera revealed that no such movement had occurred. They soon determined that the effect was an illusion. According to the science magazine Discover (“Those Who Sway Together” 1985, 19):

  It is induced when people rock gently back and forth while looking at the statue. At dusk, when the sky is grey and landmarks are obscured, the eye has no point of reference except the halo of blue lights. Therefore, say the scientists, the eye is unable to detect the fact that one's head and body are unconsciously moving. The viewer who sways is likely to get the impression that not he but the statue is moving.

  Other phenomena were reported in Pennsylvania in 1989. Th
e case began on Good Friday at the Holy Trinity Church in Ambridge, a quiet Ohio River mill town fifteen miles northwest of Pittsburgh. During the service a luminous, life-sized crucifixion figure of Christ reportedly closed its eyes. At first, no one claimed to have seen the eyelids actually moving, only that the eyes had been about one-third open when the statue was relocated in January, and that during the special three-hour prayer meeting the eyes were observed to be shut. However, the pastor of the church was soon reporting additional claims: “At times the eyes seem to be opening and a little later seem to close again.”

  Soon, an investigation was launched by the diocese, with a commission appointed to examine the evidence and report on the astonishing phenomena. After careful study of the before-and-after videotapes, the commission found “no convincing evidence” that the statue closed its eyes during the Good Friday service. When close-up views of the face from each videotape showed the eyes in a similar, partially open position, the commission rejected claims that a miracle had occurred. Commission members stated that they felt the witnesses were sincere but could have been deceived by the church's lighting and by the angles of viewing. In the wake of the commission's report, the pastor was barred from celebrating Mass, and he responded by resigning (Nickell 1998, 65–66).

  But if that statue's eyes did not close, what about another's that allegedly opened? They belonged to a “sleeping” figure of Jesus that a Hoboken, New Jersey, street “preacher” had once rescued from a garbage bin. He claimed in July 2005 that while he was cleaning the figurine it opened its right eye. Stories soon spread of the statue “blinking” its right eye, turning its head, and performing other unverifiable feats.

  Actually the statue's eyes were never closed. I studied high-resolution photos of the figure and determined that it had glass eyes and that portions of its upper and lower right eyelids had been broken off, the explanation for the opening-eye effect (Nickell 2005).

  Other statue animations have been reported, including chameleonesque effects. For example, the previously mentioned 1989 eye-closing statue at Ambridge, Pennsylvania, also reportedly changed color—from vivid tones on Good Friday to dull ones after. However, these were attributed to the lighting and to pious imagination.

  Similar explanations applied to a thirty-inch figure of Mary in a church at Patterson, New Jersey, that reportedly changed color in 1992. One witness saw the base of the statue turn a “dark, dark pink,” while another said the figure once “turned the brightest blue.” The statue was actually white with pink and blue tones, and the effect appeared to correlate with the emotive force of the believers. Not surprisingly, therefore, many people were unable to witness the color change and went away disappointed (Nickell 1998, 66–67).

  Still other statues were supposedly even more remarkably alive: they were said to have heartbeats! The statues were at a Marian apparition site in Conyers, Georgia. Asked by an Atlanta television station to investigate the claims (and others), I found that there were no heartbeats detectable by stethoscope (figure 9.1). In fact, people were reaching up to feel the throbbings and were instead either feeling the pulse in their own thumbs or once again suffering the effects of pious imagination (Nickell 1996).

  EXUDING EFFIGIES

  Not only statues but also icons and other images may seemingly become animated. (Icons are common in Orthodox churches.) According to D. Scott Rogo, in his Miracles: A Parascientific Inquiry into Wondrous Phenomena (1982, 161),

  Cases of religious statues, paintings, icons, and other effigies that suddenly begin to bleed or weep have been documented throughout history. Before Rome was sacked in 1527, for instance, a statue of Christ housed in a local monastery wept for several days. When the city of Syracuse in Sicily lay under Spanish siege in 1719, a marble statue of St. Lucy in the city cried continually.

  Similar manifestations have been increasingly reported in modern times. Interestingly, Syracuse was the site of another “weeping” statue in 1953. It was reported that the liquid was consistent with real tears, although doubts were raised about the scientific competency and impartiality of the investigators. The woman who owned the original statue had received it as a wedding gift in March, and it began to weep in her presence in late August, the culmination of several weeks of upheaval in her household. She was pregnant, and for several weeks she had been suffering “seizures,” fainting spells, and attacks of blindness. Local doctors were unable to diagnose her condition, and she may have been seeking attention. The case was followed by an epidemic of similar manifestations across Roman Catholic Italy. Rogo (1982, 178) remarked that they were “no doubt spawned by wide press coverage of the Syracuse miracle.”

  Two other Italian cases are especially instructive. In one, which took place in Pavia in 1980, no one witnessed the initial weeping, and the woman who owned the plaster bas-relief was soon caught surreptitiously applying “tears” with a water pistol! In 1995 an epidemic of crying effigies followed one that began weeping in Sardinia. However, tests on the blood were clinically analyzed and the DNA was shown to be that of the statue's owner. Her attorney explained, “Well, the Virgin Mary had to get that blood from somewhere” (Nickell 1997).

  Another instructive case transpired in 1985 when a statue of the Virgin began first weeping then bleeding in the home of a Quebec railroad worker. Soon the phenomenon spread to other nearby icons, statues, and crucifixes. Thousands of pilgrims waited in the brutal winter cold to view the “miracle”—as many as twelve thousand in a single week. The local bishop went largely ignored as he implied that the affair was a false miracle. Then, suddenly, the Associated Press reported that the affair was “all a hoax—not even a very clever hoax.” Newsmen from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had been permitted to borrow an icon and had had it examined. The blood had been mixed with animal fat so that, when the room warmed from the body heat of pilgrims, the substance would liquefy and flow realistically. The owner confessed that he had used his own blood to produce the effects (Nickell 1998, 58).

  There are not always such definitive results. An icon I investigated in Astoria, Queens, New York, May 11, 1991, was no longer weeping and my stereomicroscopic examination showed little. However, a videotape of the earlier weeping revealed that the “tear” rivulets flowed from outside the eyes and were greatly disproportionate to the diminutive size of the saint's face, observations that suggested a rather crude hoax (Nickell 1998, 54). Later, the priest who had presided over the Astoria church when it was visited by the weeping phenomenon was presiding over a Toronto church with an icon that had also begun to weep, as discussed in the next chapter.

  An interesting feature of the exuding icons is the variety of substances involved, together with some apparent trends. In Catholicism the images tended to yield watery tears or blood, until relatively recently when—seeming to tap the Greek Orthodox tradition that has received media attention—there has been an occasional shift to oil. And in the Russian Orthodox tradition, the icons tend to exude myrrh (a fragrant resin) or myrrh-scented oil—as in a case I investigated in Moscow. The “myrrhing” involved an icon of the assassinated czar Nicholas II and occurred at a time when there was a campaign to bestow sainthood on him and his family (Nickell 2002).

  INVESTIGATIVE APPROACH

  As these examples show, more and more frequently we are seeing news reports of “weeping” and other animated effigies. Not one has ever been authenticated by science. However, rather than simply dismiss such claims, I actually investigate them—whenever possible.

  Sometimes I am contacted on short notice, as when CNN asked me to assess the case of the Sacramento statue that appeared to be crying blood. Fortunately, I had been able to see photos and videos of the supposed weeping. I observed that the streams of “blood” came only from Mary's left eye, and that one of the rivulets in fact began above and outside the eye itself. Moreover, the streams were not flowing but rather remained static, as if there had merely been an application of the red substance. These observations led me to
tell Paula Zahn when I appeared on her show (Paula Zahn Now, CNN, December 2, 2005) that I had good news and bad news: the bad news was that the weeping was fake; the good news was that few of the faithful would believe me.

  I told the Sacramento Bee (Kollars and Fletcher 2005) that the weeping was a “clumsy, obvious hoax.” When a church spokesperson, Reverend James Murphy, said there were no plans to investigate the incident, I responded, “If a statue is a fraud or a hoax, or even just a mistake, it should be determined and that should be that. If it's a fake, then it should be repudiated.”

  However, Reverend Murphy expressed an all-too-typical attitude, stating, “If people view this as a miracle and it brings them closer to God, then that's a good thing” (Milbourn 2005). But such an end-justifies-the-means approach is untenable—especially given the seriousness of the matter: an affront to science, religion, ethics, and good sense, as well as truth, all in one.

  On September 3, 1996, at the request of the Toronto Sun, I traveled to Canada to investigate the world's latest “weeping icon.” I was to meet with reporters at the newspaper's King Street offices and from there be escorted to a Greek Orthodox church in Toronto's East York district. Church officials had promised staffers at the Sun that they would be able to examine the icon at 11 p.m., and I was enlisted for that purpose. In addition to my overnight bag, I also packed a “weeping icon kit” consisting of a camera and close-up lenses, a stereomicroscope removed from its base, and various vials, pipettes, bibulous paper, and other collection materials.

  THRONG OF PILGRIMS

  As we arrived in the neighborhood, however, I saw not the nearly deserted church I had expected to be awaiting our special appointment but rather traffic congestion and a line of pilgrims stretching far off into the night. I waited outside with my conspicuous case while reporters went to learn that the promise of an examination had been retracted. I was determined to proceed anyway and to do the best I could. A Sun reporter of Greek extraction feared I might start a riot, but his colleague, Scot Magnish, who had brought me there, was only concerned for my safety. (It was not wise for him to go inside, given rumored responses to his critical article on the phenomenon published in the latest edition of the newspaper.) After retrieving some essentials from my kit, which I stuffed into my pockets, I handed Scot my case, turned, and bounded up the steps of the little church. Behind me, Sun photographer Craig Robertson rushed to keep up. We passed a lady who shouted the admission price (“two dollars fifty cents”) at us; I shouted back, “Toronto Sun!” and kept going.