by Joe Nickell
Real-Life X-Files
Publication of this volume was made possible in part
by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2001 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
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05 04 03 02 5 4 3 2
Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data
Nickell, Joe.
Real–life X–files : investigating the paranormal / Joe Nickell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–8131–2210–4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Parapsychology—Case studies. I. Title.
BF1031 .N52 2001
133—dc21
2001003408
This book is printed on acid–free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Case of the Petrified Girl
2. The Devil’s Footprints
3. Magicians Among the Spirits
4. The Specter of Spontaneous Human Combustion
5. Believe It or —— ?
6. Legend of the “Miraculous Stairway”
7. Flying Saucer “Dogfight”
8. A Study in Clairvoyance
9. The Kennedy Curse
10. Riddle of the Circles
11. Cult of the “UFO Missionaries”
12. The Electronic Poltergeist
13. The Silver Lake Serpent
14. Miraculous Rose Petals
15. Paranormal Lincoln
16. The Roswell Legend
17. Investigating Police Psychics
18. Ghostly Photos
19. The Lake Utopia Monster
20. Memory of a Past Life
21. Photographing the Aura
22. Mystery of the Holy Shroud
23. The Giant Frog
24. The Alien Likeness
25. In Search of “Snake Oil”
26. The Haunted Cathedral
27. Miracle Photographs
28. The Gypsies’ “Great Trick”
29. Magnetic Hill
30. Phantom Ship
31. The Cryptic Stone
32. Communicating with the Dead?
33. Jesus Among the Clouds
34. Alien Implants
35. Sleuthing a Psychic Sleuth
36. Adventure of the Weeping Icon
37. The Secrets of Oak Island
38. Enigma of the Crystal Tears
39. Death of the Fire-Breathing Woman
40. Comatose “Miracle Worker”
41. Extraterrestrial Autopsy
42. Spirit Paintings
43. Watching the Spirits Paint
44. Stigmata
45. Haunted Inns
46. The Flatwoods UFO Monster
47. Milk-Drinking Idols
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to colleagues at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York, for help in various ways, including research assistance. They include Tim Binga, Director of the Center for Inquiry Libraries; Kevin Christopher, Public Relations Director of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP); Barry Karr, Executive Director of CSICOP; Tom Flynn, Director of Inquiry Media Productions; Kendrick Frazier, Editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine; Benjamin Radford, Managing Editor of Skeptical Inquirer; and Ranjit Sandhu, Research Associate of the Center for Inquiry, who also prepared the manuscript. Specific production assistance also came from Lisa A. Hutter, Art Director, and Paul Loynes, Production, as well as staff member Allison Cossett, former Skeptical Inquirer Art Director Chris (Kuzniarek) Karr, Matt Nisbet, and Etienne Rios.
I am deeply indebted to Robert A. Baker, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Kentucky, and John F. Fischer, forensic analyst (retired) at the Orange County, Florida, Sheriff’s Department crime laboratory, who have been invaluable over the years as fellow investigators, coauthors, and friends.
I am also indebted to fellow CSICOP Executive Council members James E. Alcock, Barry Beyerstein, Thomas Casten, Kendrick Frazier, Martin Gardner, Ray Hyman, Lawrence Jones, Philip J. Klass, Lee Nisbet, Amardeo Sarma, Bela Scheiber, and Paul Kurtz, Chairman of CSICOP.
In addition to individuals mentioned in the text I am also grateful to the following: S.L. Carson, Silver Spring, Maryland; Barbara Henry, Perry, New York, Public Library; Buffalo and Erie County, New York, Public Library; the late J. Porter Henry Jr., Cincinnati, Ohio; Mike Hutchinson, South West Essex, England; Tammy Miller, Chamber of Commerce, Perry, New York; New York State Library, Inter-Library Loan Department; Tom Pickett, Department of Physics, University of Southern Indiana; Herbert Schapiro, Tucson, Arizona; and Beth Wilson, Howard County Library, Columbia, Maryland.
Introduction
Strange mysteries—UFO and haunted-house reports, claims of spontaneous human combustion and weeping icons, and even more bizarre enigmas—continue to fascinate. We call them paranormal because they are beyond the normal range of nature and human experience. It is a broad term that includes not only the “supernatural” but also such reported anomalies as the Loch Ness monster and extraterrestrials, which—if they exist—could be quite natural creatures.
I have investigated such alleged phenomena for thirty years. I joke that I've been in more haunted houses than Casper and have even caught a few “ghosts.” I have gone undercover to attend table-tipping séances, obtained police warrants against a mediumistic purveyor of fake spirit pictures, exposed bogus “x-ray clairvoyants,” tested dowsers, interviewed UFO eyewitnesses and alien “abductees,” examined “weeping” icons, and much, much more.
Whenever possible, I have taken a hands-on approach in my investigations. I have visited relevant sites (like England's crop-circle fields and the shrine of Santiago in northern Spain), experimented to recreate phenomena (such as the liquefying blood of Saint Januarius and the giant Nazca ground drawings of Peru), challenged psychic and other claimants, and devised innovative strategies to investigate strange mysteries.
I have risked lawsuits and charges of trespass, inflicted “stigmata” on myself with a knife, flown in a hot-air balloon over a “monster”-inhabited lake, walked across a twenty-five-foot bed of fiery coals—even appeared twice on The Jerry Springer Show and lived to tell about it.
My interest in the paranormal grew with my involvement in magic, a childhood interest rekindled in 1969 while I was employed as a young—and restless—advertising writer. I soon worked as a carnival pitchman, then began to perform professionally as a stage magician. Subsequently, to develop my investigative skills, I became an operative for a world- famous private detective agency, going undercover to investigate arson, grand theft, and other crimes. Still later, after stints as a blackjack dealer, museum exhibit designer, riverboat manage
r, newspaper stringer, armed guard, stuntman trainee and movie extra, among other roles, I returned to the University of Kentucky to teach technical writing and obtain a Ph.D. in English (with an emphasis on literary investigation and folklore). I studied hoaxes, frauds, and forgeries, as well as myths and mysteries of all types.
With my hands-on investigative approach, I sought to avoid the pitfall of so many who encounter paranormal claims as either “believers” or “debunkers”—that is, with their minds already made up. I decry both a credulous and a close-minded approach, holding that mysteries should neither be fostered nor dismissed but rather carefully investigated with a view toward solving them.
Investigation is predicated on a rational, scientific approach. Therefore, since proving a negative is difficult (often impossible), the burden of proof must fall on whomever advances a claim. In addition, the maxim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” must apply, meaning that evidence must be commensurate with the extent of a claim. The principle of “Occam's razor” also applies; it holds that the simplest tenable explanation—the one requiring the fewest assumptions—is to be preferred as most likely correct.
I have attempted to follow these principles in the studies and adventures that follow, representing some of my most interesting and challenging cases. They are taken from the pages of Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptical Briefs, the magazine and newsletter, respectively, of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). I became CSICOP's Senior Research Fellow in 1995 and soon launched an “Investigative Files” column, as well as producing other articles, reviews, and news analyses.
I hope readers will find them as engaging as I have. To be sure, the solving of a mystery can bring disappointment, but there is compensation in the knowledge gained, because—as I have discovered over the years—learning the truth about the paranormal ultimately teaches us about ourselves.
Now turn the page: as Sherlock Holmes would say “The game is afoot!”
Chapter 1
The Case of the
Petrified Girl
Raised in the hills of eastern Kentucky, I grew up with the legend of the “petrified girl.” Set in the little farming village of Ezel, near my hometown in Morgan County, the story evokes religious accounts of “incorruptible” corpses as well as ghoulish tales of the “undead.”
Late in the last century—one account says “in 1880,” another “the 1880s,” still another “around 1900”—workmen were moving graves from the old Ezel burying ground to a new cemetery site. In some accounts, the reason for the relocation is not recalled, but most state it was due to a typhoid epidemic that stemmed from the graveyard’s pollution of local wells. In the course of the disinterments, the men uncovered the grave of a young girl. Some vague accounts have neither name nor age for her, while others reach near agreement that she was “a 17–year–old daughter of a Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler” or more specifically “Minnie Wheeler, a seventeenyear–old girl.”
When her casket was reached, it was reportedly too heavy to be lifted. But more men and ropes were obtained, and a hole was drilled in the coffin to let water out. Finally the still–heavy casket was lifted out of the grave and opened, whereupon the girl was discovered to have been petrified even her clothing, says one narrative, had turned to stone (Nickell 1994). (See figure 1.1.)
Supposedly—some say because of fears the grave would be robbed and the body exhibited in a sideshow—the girl’s body was reburied in an unmarked grave, the location of which was thereafter kept a secret. However, one versified account claims that the fears were actually realized “To this day, her body had never been found, / Because her brother George sold her stone body for many crowns / to a museum for display she brought in crowds. / People viewed her with awe in disbelief with frowns” (Plumlee 1993).
Figure 1.1. A relocated cemetery in Ezel, Kentucky, supposedly holds among its secrets a “petrified girl,” believed buried among these graves. (Photo by Joe Nickell)
Documentation
Involving aspects of folklore analysis, historical and paranormal research, forensic pathology, and other disciplines, my investigation began with the collection of various narratives and personal interviews, then progressed to a search through the death notices in the Hazel Green Herald. There was no “Minnie Wheeler” listed, but there was this entry in the Wednesday, October 7, 1885, issue “Miss Nannie Wheeler, daughter of J.W. Wheeler, of Grassy, died of flux [unnatural discharge] on last Thursday, and was buried at Ezel on Friday. Miss Wheeler was about 17 years of age.” (“Last Thursday” would have meant that she died on October 1, 1885.) Federal census records revealed that “Nannie” was actually Nancy A. and that among her five siblings was a younger brother, George W. The matching surnames and the similarity of given names (“Nannie” easily being garbled into “Minnie”), together with other parallel details, including the same age and a brother George, persuaded me I had found my quarry. The burial at Ezel was an especially corroborative fact, and so (I would soon learn) was the time period in question.
Further searching through back issues of the Herald turned up the following report, dated February 17, 1888 “The people of Ezel, feeling that the location of the grave yard [sic] has had much to do with the epidemic of sickness, on Wednesday commenced to remove those who are there buried to a more suitable place. We understand fifty graves will be required to accommodate the coffins removed.” The following issue reported “Ezel, Feb. 20 … A beautiful site has been procured for the public grave yard at this place, and the work of transferring the dead from the old to new grave yard has begun, and will continue until all are moved.”
I expected next to see a report on the discovery of Nannie’s “petrified” body, but in one of the most disappointing moments in my career as an investigator, I learned there was a gap in the record—missing issues of the newspaper during the relevant period. I was therefore forced to rely on hand–me–down narratives. Although, as I have already indicated, these are quite variable as to details, the effect of the discovery comes through quite clearly. But was Nannie’s body really petrified?
Petrifaction?
On the one hand, the water that was reportedly drained from the coffin could be an indication that conditions were right for petrifaction. That occurs when groundwater containing dissolved mineral salts infiltrates buried organic material, replacing the decaying matter with the minerals while preserving the shape and even the cellular structure of the original material (“Petrifaction” 1986).
On the other hand, true petrifaction in the case of a coffin burial would be exceedingly unlikely. Several “petrified” people have been outright hoaxes, including the Forest City Man, shown at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893; the Pine River Man (made of water–lime, sand, and gravel) “discovered” in 1876; the Colorado Man (faked for P.T. Barnum at a cost of $2,000) and others, including the notorious Cardiff Giant (unearthed at Cardiff, New York, in 1869) (MacDougall 1958,23–24 Stein 1993,13–14,145).
Often, bodies are said to be petrified when observers are simply astonished to find them in a surprising state of preservation. For example, there is a persistent legend that the corpse of Abraham Lincoln was “petrified” and indeed had “turned to stone” when it was observed in a well-preserved state while his body was on tour after his assassination in 1865, as well as upon reburials in 1886 and 1901. On the latter occasion, his corpse was described as resembling “a statue of himself lying there.” In fact, the body had been expertly embalmed and had been kept in an airtight coffin (Lewis 1929).
I researched another Morgan County case that occurred in 1921 when the body of a woman who had died elsewhere was brought home by train. Those who touched her well–preserved body said it felt “hard,” and several thought it was “petrified,” although the railway company physician explained that the body was simply embalmed—something the rural folk were relatively unfamiliar with (Nickell 1994).
In the case of you
ng Nancy Wheeler, the excessive weight of her coffin could well have been due to its having been waterlogged (as in fact described) and/or due to the story’s exaggeration over time. But what about the unusual preservation itself? It is extremely unlikely that her body was embalmed, yet after nearly thirty months it had remained free, or apparently free, of decomposition.
Although comparatively rare, there are numerous reports of “incorruptible” corpses. In more than one instance, investigation has shown that the body had in fact been embalmed. In many other cases, the body is actually mummified—i.e., desiccated—a condition that can occur naturally under certain conditions (such as being kept in sandy soil or in a dry tomb or catacombs; it can also be induced by embalming). Several supposedly “incorruptible” bodies of Catholic saints are revealingly described as “having brown, dry skin with the texture of leather,” or being “darkened and wrinkled with age,” even “completely mummified” (Cruz 1977). Some of the corpses on display in glass coffins have had to be extensively repaired—for example, being treated with resin and braced with wire, and even, like Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, having the exposed face covered with a wax mask (Cruz 1977; Nickell 1993, 85–93).
But what about cases in which the corpse had not been kept in dry conditions but rather was found intact despite perpetually wet conditions? As forensic pathologists and anthropologists know, a body that has been submerged in water or in wet soil for a long time may form a soaplike substance called adipocere, which may develop in the outer layer of fat after three months or more (Spitz 1993, 38). It is estimated to become “complete in adult bodies” after “a year to a year and a half” (Gonzales et al. 1954, 68). Adipocere was once thought to be caused by the body’s fat turning literally into soap actually it is due to the decomposition of the fat into insoluble salts of fatty acids, producing a yellowish-white substance popularly known as “grave wax.” It usually forms in the face and buttocks but may affect any part of the body. Depending on the subsequent conditions, the body may eventually take on the leathery effect of mummification, or may in time decompose completely (Ubelaker and Scammell 1992 Geberth 1993). (Many of the “incorruptible” bodies of saints are only temporarily preserved and are later found to be reduced to skeletons [Nickell 1993]).
