Real-Life X-Files

by Joe Nickell

  After Mr. B had done readings for the audience and after the other psychics had given dubious performances, I was brought on. My anger showed: unknown to the audience, backstage I had had an exchange with a producer; I had expressed my suspicions about the refrigerator test, and his response was what I interpreted as a guilty look. After Springer introduced me, I made a skeptical statement about the lack of evidence for psychic ability and disparaged the readings that had been given. (A later analysis showed that Mr. B. had indeed achieved a very poor score.)

  I then suggested there was something odious about the “fridge” demonstration, to which Springer replied, “I have to tell you … I do not believe the staff would lie to me, but they swore to me that he did not know what was going to be put in there. That’s the only thing I can vouch for I can’t vouch for anything else … but that I know, he did not know what was in that refrigerator.” Remaining unconvinced, I said, “That’s why I brought my own test,” explaining that in twenty years of investigation I had yet to discover anyone who could “reveal a simple three–letter word” under test conditions. Suiting action to words, I produced a set of three envelopes (each containing a three–letter word) and a check for one thousand dollars, which I offered as a reward for a successful demonstration.

  The psychics were immediately defensive, claiming among other things that the TV studio did not represent test conditions. Springer seemed to shift from annoyance with me to delight at the sparks of conflict that had begun to fly. He pointed out to Mr. B that “You could tell us what was in the refrigerator, okay? With the studio lights and the live audience you could tell us what was in the refrigerator.” I added that, if it would help, I would draw a picture of a refrigerator on the front of the envelope! Mr. B did not appear to find that amusing but finally did attempt to divine the three target words. But although he afterward rearranged letters and then words to produce a semblance of accuracy, in fact he failed completely, and during a break I tore up the check.

  After the show, I continued to be rankled over the suspicious demonstration, although I did appear on a later Springer show (Dec. 16,1992) about guardian angels. Over subsequent years, the show degenerated even further in quality as it soared in ratings. Episodes about cross–dressers and unfaithful lovers typically lapsed into on–camera brawls (Springer 1999). In 1998, as the fisticuffs and hair–pulling fights proliferated, there were accusations that the fights were staged (Good Morning Sunday 1998). Indeed, former guests told Inside Edition (May 1,1998) that Jerry Springer producers encouraged antagonism and promised combatants one hundred dollars per blow. Springer was dubbed “the ringmaster of TV’s best– watched circus” (Gray 1998). When ratings slipped from the top slot to a tie with Oprah, Broadcasting Cable magazine cited sources at the show who maintained the fights were even “turned up a notch” during the sweeps’ period ("Brawls continue” 1998). Springer denied the charges. He responded to critics by saying he did not know what all the fuss was about, that his was only “a silly show” (Good Morning Sunday 1998). Certainly Jerry Springer has been no stranger to controversy. A one–time Cincinnati councilman, he left office after an FBI raid on a nightclub turned up a $25 check he had tendered for a “tryst with a prostitute” (Inside Edition 1998). (Undaunted, Springer went on to become mayor, then ran a failed campaign for governor before becoming a TV anchor in the 1980s.)

  In light of evidence that the Jerry Springer shows may have involved staged elements, I decided to reexamine the refrigerator–divination segment. First of all, recall that it was Springer himself who raised the prospect of fakery by using the phrase “unless the staff is lying to me.” Obviously, the possibility had crossed his mind. Moreover, it would have been quite easy to rig Mr. B’s demonstration. All that would have been required would have been a few words relayed to the “psychic” before the show. Since producers invariably speak to guests prior to their appearing before the audience and cameras, this would have been easily accomplished.

  In addition, as already indicated, a critical analysis of Mr. B’s audience readings and his failure in the envelope test indicate an utter lack of extrasensory ability. That alone raises questions about his fridge demonstration. So does his demeanor. He trivialized what was supposed to be a significant accomplishment by making silly puns about “carrots”/”carats” and “a head”/“ahead,” giving the distinct impression that he was doing nothing more than trying to entertain.

  The most telling evidence, I think, comes from a careful analysis of what Mr. B claimed to “see” in the refrigerator, compared with what was actually inside it. If Mr. B did as Springer advertised (to “psychically look inside”) or as he himself claimed (to use the “power of my eyes,” eyes that “penetrate through” targets, etc.), he would be demonstrating a form of extrasensory perception (ESP) known as clairvoyance (from the French for “clear seeing"). More specifically he would presumably be exhibiting a form known as “X–ray clairvoyance,” defined as “the ability to see through opaque objects such as envelopes, containers, and walls to perceive what lies within or beyond” (Guiley 1991)—hence the appropriateness of my envelope test. If Mr. B indeed used X–ray clairvoyance, the resulting match of predicted items and actual objects in the refrigerator should be visually significant. On the other hand, if some other mechanism were employed (for example, information secretly imparted by a producer), the match might be only cognitive, consistent with a verbal communication. That the latter is the case is shown repeatedly. For example, Mr. B’s first pronouncement is that “I’m looking at—looks like some apples are in here,” whereas there is but a single apple, a visual non sequitur. Little can be made of the cantaloupe or the carrots, although the punning reference to “carats” works only verbally or cognitively—not visually.

  The description of the next item, the milk, is telling. Whereas Mr. B described a “carton” and gratuitously mentioned it “looks like it’s a little bit dented,” the actual article was visually quite unlike that description. It was instead a white plastic milk jug, with a handle. Mr. B’s statement that it “looks like some kind of skim milk or some kind of milk that’s not very high in calories” indicates confusion, that he may not have been quite sure of what was meant by “two percent,” the type of milk provided. Then there were “jars of some kind of spaghetti sauce or—I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.” In fact, there was what Springer called “the sauce,” a single container, that looked like a jar of salsa. Once again, the match was a confused, cognitive one, not visually similar. Finally there was the “skull which looks to be almost like a human head.” This was not a skull at all, but a comically grotesque head with one bulging eye. Mr. B’s description indicates he did not know exactly what the object was, hence his agreement with Springer when the host suggested it might be “a head of lettuce.” Of course it looked nothing like that.

  In addition to the visual inaccuracy of Mr. B’s alleged viewings, there is the fact that he missed some items completely: a large bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale (which stood beside the milk) and a bunch of bananas. If Mr. B was peering (psychically) into the refrigerator, he should have seen and named those items, but if he had been given a quick verbal list, it might have been incomplete or Mr. B might have incompletely remembered it. Assuming the hypothesis that Mr. B was tipped off as to the refrigerator’s contents, we can almost reconstruct the wording of the list that would have been provided: “apple,” “melon,” “carrots,” “two–percent milk,” “sauce,” and “severed head.”

  Of course, this is only one interpretation of the evidence. Mr. B might claim, for instance, that he was receiving information from spirits, who translated what they saw inside the fridge into verbal statements. Or there might be some other rationalization for the visual inaccuracy. For example, Mr. B’s guesses might have been only that. While such luck would seem phenomenal, all of the items in the refrigerator were rather common ones except for the head, and Mr. B might have thought of it for the same reason that a Springer produc
er probably did: news reports about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer told how he had kept the severed head of one of his victims in his refrigerator (Ubelaker and Scammell 1992). In any event, the question is begged, why does the evidence not support what the “world’s greatest psychic” claimed to do? It would seem that the least likely interpretation of the results is that ESP was involved.

  References

  Brawls continue on Jerry Springer show. 1998 Good News, Sept.

  Croteau, Maureen, and Wayne Worcester. 1993. The Essential Researcher. New York: HarperCollins, 106,108.

  Good Morning Sunday. 1998. ABC television, April 26.

  Gray, Ellen. 1998. Here are television’s least fascinating people of 1998, Buffalo News, Dec. 28.

  Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1991. Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical Paranormal Experience. New York: HarperCollins, 111–13.

  Springer offers little defense for show. 1999. Buffalo News, Jan. 3.

  Ubelaker, Dr. Douglas, and Henry Scammell. 1992. Bones: A Forensic Detective’s Casebook. New York: HarperCollins, 265.

  Chapter 9

  The Kennedy Curse

  The tragic death of John F. Kennedy Jr. on July 16, 1999, sparked renewed claims of a “Kennedy curse”—only the latest in a series of alleged popular hexes such as the Hope Diamond jinx and the curse of King Tut’s mummy. During live CBS coverage of the search for Kennedy’s missing airplane, anchorman Dan Rather referred to “the alleged Kennedy curse,” while after the bodies of Kennedy and his wife and sister –in –law were recovered, U.S.News World Report (July 26, 1999) ran a front – cover story unequivocally titled “The Kennedy Curse.” A Buffalo (New York) News headline spoke more factually of a “litany of Kennedy tragedies” (Anthony 1999), a list that varies from source to source but generally includes the following misfortunes in the family of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy:

  1941: Daughter, Rosemary, is institutionalized due to retardation and the effects of an unsuccessful lobotomy.

  1944: Son, Joseph Jr., dies in airplane explosion in World War II.

  1948: Daughter, Kathleen, dies in plane crash in France.

  1963 (August 9): Grandchild, Patrick, (son of President John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy) dies after premature birth.

  1963 (November 22): Son, President John F., is assassinated.

  1964: Son, Edward, is injured in plane crash that kills an aide.

  1968: Son, Robert F., is assassinated while campaigning for Democratic presidential nomination.

  1969: Son, Edward, narrowly escapes death when car plunges off bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing passenger.

  1973: Grandson, Joe (son of Robert and Ethel), overturns a Jeep, paralyzing a passenger.

  1973: Grandson, Edward M. Kennedy Jr., has leg amputated due to cancer.

  1984: Grandson, David (son of Robert and Ethel), dies of drug overdose.

  1991: Grandson, William Kennedy Smith (son of Jean Ann Kennedy), is charged with rape but acquitted in trial.

  1994: Daughter –in –law, Jacqueline, dies of cancer.

  1997: Grandson, Michael (son of Robert and Ethel), is killed in “ski football” accident.

  And this is only a partial list. Senator Edward Kennedy’s son Patrick sought treatment for drug addiction in 1985, and Michael Kennedy, before his fatal accident, was disgraced due to an alleged affair with a fourteen – year –old baby sitter (Davis 1984; Thomas 1998; Anthony 1999; Salkin 1999; Kelly and Walsh 1999).

  Certainly the list is as long as it is filled with tragedy. But is it evidence of a curse? What exactly is meant by the term?

  Curses: Foiled Again

  Actually a “curse”—also known as a “hex” or “jinx”—is an alleged paranormal assault that can supposedly result in physical or mental injury or illness—even death. Known to New Age mystics as a“psychic attack” (Guiley 1991), it is an ancient concept said to have either human direction (as from a sorcerer) or a supernatural one (such as by angry gods, demonic spirits, or the like). As an example of the first, in the Old Testament when Noah became displeased by his son Ham, he placed a curse on him (Genesis 9:21 –27), and as a supernatural example, Jehovah dealt with an intransigent pharaoh by visiting upon him ten plagues (Exodus 7 –12).

  Various occurrences could spark belief in the existence of psychic attacks. For example, although the plagues on pharaoh are not mentioned in any source other than the Bible (Asimov 1968), and some see the account as pure allegory (Graham 1979), such phenomena can occur naturally. (Proliferations of locusts and frogs, for instance, are not unknown, and the water turning to “blood” could be equated with a “red Nile” wherein flood waters are colored by lake deposits [Keller 1995 Acuistapace 1991].)

  A phenomenon that can actually simulate a psychic attack is the “hag syndrome.” Typically the “victim” awakens to feel a weight pressing on the chest and to see bizarre imagery (e.g. an “old hag, ” incubus, vampire, or the like). Known from ancient times, and estimated to occur presently in some fifteen percent of the worlds adult population (Guiley 1991), the syndrome is popularly termed a “waking dream” and occurs in the twilight between being asleep and awake (Nickell 1995). Because such an experience may seem quite real to the “victim,” it could appear to prove to that person that he or she was actually accursed.

  Apart from such dramatic “evidence,” however, belief in curses is simply a superstition—that is, “a belief that some action not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome” or “any belief, practice, or rite unreasoningly upheld by faith in magic, chance or dogma” (American Heritage 1981). As with other superstitions (such as the fear of Friday the Thirteenth), once the idea of a curse is planted, it can take root in the imagination so that any harmful occurrence is counted as evidence for the jinx, while beneficial events are ignored. In this way, superstitious or magical thinking tends to start with an answer and work backward to the evidence, in contrast to scientific or rational thinking that allows evidence to lead to an answer.5

  Tut et al.

  This process of focusing only on negative evidence clearly perpetuates many popular “curses,” including alleged “Jinxed Seas” like the so –called “Devil’s Triangle” of the Atlantic, where ships and planes supposedly vanish without a trace. In fact, however, as Lawrence David Kusche demonstrated in his investigative classic The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved (1975), the disappearances are actually tragedies involving a combination of bad weather, heavy sea and air traffic, equipment failure, human error, and journalistic exaggeration and misattribution. (Many incidents attributed to the zone in fact occurred elsewhere.)

  Another such example is the site near Niagara Falls known as “Devil’s Hole” that is allegedly “cursed with an aura of sheer bad luck.” Indeed, asserts one writer, “Those ghost hunters who wish to explore Devil’s Hole must do so at tremendous personal risk. Only those blessed with extremely good luck or who feel that they have nothing left to lose should even attempt to study this site. The forces at work in this area are so. strong and unpredictable that even experienced ghost hunters with extraordinary climbing, survival, and caving skills are likely to fall victim to the cave’s intense aura” (Blackman 1998). Actually, Skeptical Inquirer managing editor Ben Radford and I challenged Devil’s Hole on May 20, 1999 (see figure 9.1) and lived to tell about it. (In fact, park official Barry Virgilio told us that despite heavy pedestrian traffic, there was not a high incidence of injury in the area and that accidents were typically due to risky behavior.)

  Figure 9.1. Cursed cave? Skeptical Inquirer managing editor Ben

  Radford tempts gloomy Devil’s Hole near Niagara Falls

  Other examples of “curses” involving a selective focus include those attributed to King Tut’s tomb and the infamous Hope Diamond. After the discovery of Tutankhamen’s lost burial chamber in 1922, expedition financial Lord Carnarvon died of blood poisoning from an infected insect bite, and in 1926 his former nurse died in childbirth. The archaeologist who discovered t
he tomb, Howard Carter, lost two assistants to what newspapers began to call “King Tut’s Curse.” They reported that there was an inscription over the tomb’s entrance that read, “Death shall come to he who touches the tomb.” Over the years, some archaeologists and tourists became ill or even died after they visited the site. Some have suggested that a mysterious bacteria or fungus in the tomb causes people to become ill.

  In fact, there was no curse inscription on or in the tomb. In 1980, the site’s former security officer admitted the story of the curse had been circulated in order to frighten away would –be grave robbers. As to the misfortunes, there was no pattern to them, the “victims” dying of a variety of causes. Some may have been ill anyway, and the added effects of travel, climate, and other stressful factors may have contributed to any illness –related deaths. In fact, balancing the list of misfortunes is the fact that ten years after the pharaoh’s tomb was opened, all but one of the five who first entered it were still living. Carter himself lived on until 1939, dying at the age of sixty –six. Lord Carnarvon’s daughter and others associated with the tomb, including the photographer and Egypt’s Chief Inspector of Antiquities, lived normal life spans. And Dr. Douglas Derry—the man who actually dissected the mummy of Tutankhamen—lived to be over eighty years old (Nickell 1989).

  But has the Hope Diamond—a.k.a. the “Diamond of Doom”—indeed “left a trail of death, debt and disaster among its owners” (“Diamond” 1976)? The seventeenth –century French trader, Jean Baptist Tavernier, who first acquired and sold the magnificent blue gem to Louis XIV for a King’s ransom, later suffered financial ruin. Louis XVI, who cut the diamond into the shape of a heart, gave it to his queen, Marie Antoinette, before both were taken to the guillotine by French revolutionaries. Stolen by thieves, the gem—or rather a portion of it, cut to its present oval shape—surfaced in London, where it was bought in 1830 by a rich banker named Henry Thomas Hope. The faceted stone then passed through a succession of owners who reportedly suffered such misfortunes as bankruptcy, suicide, even murder. In the obituary for one alleged victim who died in 1947, a United Press story declared, “The Hope diamond has a long reputation as a ’jinxed’ stone whose ownership carried with it a cloud of tragedy” (MacDougall 1983).