The Trickster and the Paranormal

by George P. Hansen

  Analysis of CSICOP illuminates many issues, but here I’ll select only three for brief summary comment: the trickster figure, the Committee’s concern with status, and rationalization (in Max Weber’s sense). These are central to this book.

  Trickster characteristics manifest overtly with CSICOP. Magicians have been involved in paranormal controversies for hundreds of years, and many conjurors are now associated with the Committee. In fact James Randi and Martin Gardner have been the most effective publicists for the skeptical movement. The mythical Prometheus is a trickster associated with humanism and with anti-religious feeling. Thus it is entirely appropriate that CSICOP’s Chairman, Paul Kurtz, used his name for his publishing company, Prometheus Books.

  Status consciousness is one of the Committee’s salient characteristics. CSICOP goes to considerable lengths to assure its status and respectability in the eyes of scientific, academic, and media elites. It has gathered an impressive roster of members, including five Nobel laureates (though none of them have ever published research on the paranormal). The readership of its magazine, The Skeptical Inquirer, is very highly educated, with 54% holding an advanced degree. The Committee is an influential voice, and it reflects and reinforces beliefs of scientific elites.

  Because CSICOP is so status conscious, scientific investigation is inappropriate for it. If a serious, sustained effort were undertaken to investigate the paranormal, that by itself would confer status upon the topic. It would signal the paranormal to be worthy of study. Instead, the Committee belittles such efforts, and its magazine carries cartoons and caricatures that ridicule researchers.

  Perhaps the Committee’s most striking feature is its intimate affiliation with rationalist and anti-religious organizations. Such groups have long opposed paranormal claims and psychical research. The explicit connection with rationalist belief manifests a fundamental pattern, for CSICOP is an aggressive agent for the rationalization and disenchantment of the world. As Max Weber explained, those require the attenuation of charisma, and the elimination (or marginalization) of the magical and miraculous. The Committee furthers those ends, and it provides a living example of Weber’s theories.

  Rationality and rationalization have limits, but those are rarely recognized. In its (unconscious) avoidance of scientific research, CSICOP subtly signals the limits of science and rationality. Science is part of the foundational myth of much of academe. But rational methods cannot fully establish their own foundations, and probing them provokes anxiety. As will be explained in later chapters, wariness toward the supernatural is nothing new for humankind; it goes back millennia. There have always been taboos, prohibitions, and restrictions surrounding the supernatural. There are undoubtedly good reasons for this. Religious orthodoxy decrees dabbling in the paranormal to be a sin; CSICOP ridicules such dabbling. The effect is the same. Both religious orthodoxy and atheists enforce a taboo; both shun paranormal phenomena, and this commonality is key to understanding them.

  CHAPTER 13

  Small Groups and the Paranormal

  James McClenon is a sociologist who has extensively studied the paranormal and is one of very few who have published scholarly books and articles on the subject. His book Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief (1994) noted that many dramatic paranormal manifestations involve small groups of people. Some of these phenomena are spontaneous, often occurring to the dismay of those present, but other groups seek to induce paranormal occurrences. In either situation, typically small numbers of people are involved; rarely are large organizations engaged. The implications of this simple observation have not been fully appreciated.

  Groups that intentionally try to elicit paranormal phenomena have some common characteristics, and they deserve closer inspection than they have heretofore received. Examples include sitter groups conducting séances, psychotronics hobbyists trying to use electronic devices to amplify psychic abilities, UFO aficionados that attempt telepathic contact with flying saucers in order to induce them to appear, and treasure hunters who use channeling and map dowsing. There are numerous others, but rarely are many people involved in any given undertaking.

  A number of groups are quite open, and studying them presents few problems (although some are secretive). Some publish newsletters, and in others insiders have written books about their experiences, and participants are publicly identified with the paranormal. There is considerable information readily available for analysis. Even if most material is from an insider’s “biased” perspective, it can still be valuable.

  Parapsychologists have neglected these groups in the past and even actively avoided them for fear of being tainted in the eyes of establishment science. However, much useful information is lost by such policies. Nevertheless the avoidance is understandable; trickster and anti-structural features are abundant in these groups. All of the above mentioned endeavors have con artists, tricksters, and hoaxers, and they play particularly visible roles. Irrational beliefs abound; psychic battles sometimes develop; paranoid ideas, rumors of death hexes and magical attack are common. Further, groups that strive to elicit strong psi frequently become unstable. Often interpersonal tensions develop, and the groups dissolve.

  At this point I am not concerned whether these groups actually induce real paranormal events. Attempts to engage the phenomena have consequences. The dynamics of the process need to be understood because similar problems will frequently arise when others elicit, or believe that they have elicited, strong, real phenomena, some of which can be quite disconcerting. Anyone who tries to produce large psi effects faces the same difficulties.

  Groups tend to reinforce their members’ beliefs and expectations, and when this involves the paranormal, the effects can be insidious. If paranormal manifestations persist and grow, the usual rules of what is possible, reliable, etc. no longer apply. The trickster constellation strengthens. One consequence is the blurring of distinctions between subjective and objective, between imagination and reality. The problems are not limited to groups of “marginals.” I have watched as medical doctors, high ranking military officers, university professors, and other normal, respectable people were overtaken by preposterous occult beliefs. The full force of this perhaps cannot be appreciated unless one experiences it firsthand. Trickster-induced irrationality is not trivial, and the skeptics’ charges, if anything, are often understated. A full analysis of the patterns of such irrationality could be very fruitful.

  There are numerous historical examples of occult groups available for detailed study. Here I will discuss a few recent cases in order to emphasize that direct encounters with the supernatural are not limited to distant times and places.

  Legend-trips

  “Legend-trip” is a term folklorists use to designate a short journey taken by a small group of teenagers to visit a spooky place. It typically begins when someone recounts a story about an allegedly haunted site; the group decides to visit it, usually traveling some distance by car. Hundreds of these accounts have been collected from college students, and the reports have been archived. Pennsylvania State University folklorist Bill Ellis has had a special interest in them, and he reviewed a

  number of cases in his paper „Legend-Tripping in Ohio.“2 The trips are typically made by those between the ages of 16 and 18, a period of often turbulent transition as teenagers take their first jobs or prepare to leave home for college. Legend-trips are very short, typically less than one-night duration, and they are explicitly taken for the purpose of exploring the supernatural.

  Though Ellis did not mention it, legend-trips display parallels with rites of passage described by Turner and van Gennep. In addition to geographic boundary crossing (highlighted by the name legendtrip), the adventures sometimes involve vandalism, such as toppling of gravestones. Drinking, drug use (altered states of consciousness), and sexual experimentation are reported, as well as attempted contact with supernatural forces. The parallels with the liminal periods of initiations in primitive cultures are striking. Though le
gend-trips are much attenuated compared with initiations of the primitives, they share the key properties of liminality and anti-structure. Disruption (vandalism), lowered sexual inhibitions, and contact with the supernatural are all part of the trickster constellation; additionally, personal transition, travel, and altered states of consciousness appear.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross And Shanti Nilaya

  Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is internationally acclaimed for her pioneering work on death and dying, and she is probably the most well-known person associated with the topic. Born in 1926 as one of triplets, as a young woman she studied medicine and eventually specialized in psychiatry. She emigrated to the U.S. and worked with the terminally ill. In 1969 her book On Death and Dying appeared and became a best-seller. This led to innumerable invitations to speak, and she spent much time traveling in order to lecture. By her own account, she had many interpersonal conflicts and many battles with establishment medicine (and established institutions generally). Her personal life was tumultuous, and her husband divorced her. Her memoir The Wheel of Life (1997) seems generally candid and quite illuminating.

  The paranormal was central in her life’s mission. After she began working with the dying, spirits spontaneously appeared to her and gave her advice and encouragement. She continued to seek their counsel, both during séances and when she was alone. In 1976 she met spiritualist medium, Jay Barham, and shortly thereafter they founded Shanti Nilaya, a healing and growth center near San Diego, California. The center drew a clientele that included many psychotherapists. Séances were a common attraction, and in some of them “spirit entities” engaged in sexual “therapy.” During one séance, a light was turned on abruptly, and Barham was discovered to be naked. Kubler-Ross dismissed the incident saying that a spirit had cloned his body. Despite the exposure, a number of followers continued to participate, and the therapies started to become violent. Some participants were held down, beaten, and even partly suffocated. Eventually Kubler-Ross recognized Barham’s deceptions, and before she confronted him, she discussed the situation with her most trusted co-workers. Three of them then admitted that they had been party to the fraud, claiming to have fallen under the medium’s control after he had entranced them.

  The case shares anti-structural and trickster features found in many others. Sex in the séance room is encountered in countless cases. In my own experience with occult groups, I’ve noted that a disproportionate share of the people involved had experienced a recent major transition (e.g., divorce, completion of an education program, a geographical move). They were looking for change and reintegration and hence were especially open and vulnerable to promises of hope. The prevalence of psychotherapists visiting Kubler-Ross’s center suggests that many of the participants were concerned with human change, not only in themselves, but also as a primary career interest.

  Shanti Nilaya lasted only a few years. During that time her house burned down, and arson was suspected. She later moved to rural Virginia and tried to set up a center for babies infected with AIDS, but local opponents vandalized her property. She was not able to establish a long-term existence for that center either. Though she helped inspire the hospice movement and bereavement groups, she did not establish and direct any long-lasting institution, despite her sizeable following around the world. This is in keeping with the anti-structural nature of her work.

  Kubler-Ross’s life was devoted to exploring, and even denying, the life-death binary opposition. She often proclaimed that there is no death. Kubler-Ross was suffused with liminality, but she did not understand that nor its implications. From the earliest times, there have been specialists who facilitated the transition between life and death. Today we have morticians, funeral directors, priests, ministers, and rabbis. Kubler-Ross was different from those professionals. She had no ritualized religious approach and did not use rational, detached, scientific methods in studying the matter. She immersed herself in the realm and tried to chart the life-death transition anew, essentially outside of conventional religious, medical, and scientific frameworks. She entered this liminal area “unprotected,” didn’t grasp the consequences, and frequently fell victim to the trickster.

  SORRAT

  The Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT) was founded by John Neihardt, a professor of English at the University of Missouri and author of Black Elk Speaks, a widely known work on the Sioux Indian medicine man.5 In the early 1960s, Neihardt gathered a group of friends, family members, and students and began holding Victorian-style séances. This was in the Bible Belt, and not surprisingly, some of the members encountered severe opposition from their families and university authorities. Despite the persecution the group persisted, and many large-scale PK phenomena were reported over a period of years, some quite dramatic. There were levitations of tables and people, psychic photography, and apports; items mysteriously entered sealed containers, and innumerable rappings from floors and tables communicated and intelligently responded to questions.6

  SORRAT members wrote to J. B. Rhine telling him about their activities, and in the late 1970s W. E. Cox, one of Rhine’s long-time associates, moved from North Carolina to Rolla, Missouri in order to study the group. At that time, many phenomena centered around Dr. John Thomas Richards, a former student of Neihardt and a medium, and now a writer and English teacher. Cox’s research focused on Richards and his wife Elaine, and through his efforts many phenomena were caught on film. Pens wrote by themselves; small objects materialized and dematerialized; balloons inflated without any apparent source of air pressure, and numerous other events were filmed. These occurred in or near a “mini-lab,” an inverted fish tank kept in the basement of the Richards’ home. Sensors in the mini-lab detected when events occurred and triggered a spring-wound camera to record them. However, the phenomena happened when no one was around, or so it was claimed. This gave rise to suspicions that some human was actually responsible, and the quality of the films didn’t add to their credibility. Some of them looked as though they were produced using frame by frame photography. Virtually all had a silly, surreal quality, like a small theatre of the absurd.

  Cox’s reports attracted additional investigators to Rolla, but they usually stayed only for a day or two. I spoke to several who were impressed with what they had witnessed, and none put forward any substantial evidence for fraud. In 1981 I spent five nights at the home of the Richards, who were exceptionally gracious hosts. During my visits I heard hundreds of intelligently communicating raps, for which I have no explanation, though these were under uncontrolled conditions. I was also shown a mini-lab film in which Zener cards emerged from their box, sorted themselves into suits, and then jumped back into the box, penetrating the cardboard! However bizarre, this seemed to be an ideal phenomenon to test because good controls could be easily implemented. All that was needed was to glue a box closed and record a number of security features that would indicate if someone had tried to enter it via normal means.

  When I returned to North Carolina, Richard Broughton and I prepared three boxes of cards. We glued them shut and embedded hairs in the glue. We microscopically examined features of the boxes and made photographic records of precautions. After preparation, we randomly selected one of the three boxes and sent it to Missouri along with a request for the SORRAT entities to sort the cards. The remaining two boxes were to serve as controls, and if the cards were sorted successfully, the control boxes would be offered to skeptics to see if they could duplicate the feat without disturbing the security markers. After several misadventures, the box was returned to us, and we found clear evidence of attempted deceit. At that point I abandoned research with the SORRAT.7

  Since my study, others investigated, and additional accounts of deception were revealed. Other tricksterish and anti-structural features of the group have been reported. Loren Parks spent some time with the SORRAT and commented on the sexual undercurrents he observed during one of their séances.8 John Thomas Richards has since published a fictionaliz
ed account of the early years of the group (The Year of the Sorrats, 1992), and one can glean from it that many participants joined during periods of tumultuous change in their lives, and there were strong interpersonal tensions.9

  Despite the problems, the SORRAT is of continuing interest because of its longevity (well over 30 years) and because it still reports strong phenomena (though many outsiders question its genuineness). Dr. and Mrs. Richards remain pivotal figures, but the SORRAT maintains only informal and fluid membership. It has no formalized hierarchy with designated officers, written constitution or bylaws, and the group is not affiliated with any larger organization. The phenomena continue to play a central role, and the SORRAT remains nondogmatic. Given its long existence, this group could be profitable for study because it exemplifies the marginality and other anti-structural qualities associated with the paranormal.

  As a final note on the SORRAT, I should mention that my research with them was some of the very first that I undertook as a professional parapsychologist. In retrospect, I have to attribute much of my interest in the psi-deception problem to that experience. I had observed psychic tricks and fraudulent mediumship previously, and I knew that I could be fooled. But I must admit that I was shocked and bewildered to discover the deceit with the SORRAT. The people did not seem like the kind who would try to dupe me. SORRAT members were warm and friendly, invited me into their home, and were quite unlike charlatans I had met elsewhere. The experience made me realize how others could be lulled into complacency, and it reinforced my view that extremely strict controls are required in psi research. Looking back, my SORRAT investigation was exceptionally valuable, though dismaying at the time. I still do not understand the motives for the deception, and I remain puzzled, and intrigued, by the SORRAT.