by Joe Nickell
Hole, Christina, ed. 1961. The Encyclopedia of Superstitions. New York: Barnes and Noble, 149-50.
Jail may be in cards for psychic. 1997. New York Newsday June 20(reprinted in CON-fidential Bulletin, Aug. 1997, 6).
Michel, Lou. 1998. Self-proclaimed west side psychic didn’t predict own arrest. Buffalo News, Oct. 11.
Popp, Christine. 1997. Rescuing rich gypsy tradition (article reprinted in CON- fidential Bulletin,Dec., 13).
Rachleff, Owen S. 1971. The Occult Conceit. Chicago: Cowles, 172-76.
Randi, James. 1995. The Supernatural A-Z. London: Brockhampton, 148.
Rinaldo, Tom. 1998. Interview by author, Nov. 11.
Woman, 62, claims fortune teller swindled her out of $9,300.1971. Toronto Daily Star, Oct. 20.
Chapter 29
Magnetic Hill
Located in eastern New Brunswick, near Moncton, is Magnetic Hill, Canada’s third most-visited natural tourist attraction (after Niagara Falls and the Canadian Rockies). Nineteenth-century farmers going to market noticed a mysterious stretch of road where a wagon going uphill would run against the hooves of the horse pulling it. In 1933, an icecream stand with a gas pump opened at the top of the hill, sparking more interest in the site (then known variously as Fool Hill, Magic Hill, and Mystery Hill). Sightseers were invited to drive down the slope, place their vehicle in neutral, and experience being drawn back uphill! Truckers said the place must be magnetic, and the name stuck (Cochrane 1998; “Magnetic” 1997).
Visitors to Magnetic Hill—the drivers and passengers of up to seven hundred vehicles daily during the peak summer season—offer priceless quotes: “Do you stay in your car, or does it go up the hill by itself?” “I have an expensive watch. The magnet won’t hurt it, will it?” And “Do you leave the magnet on all the time, or does it get turned off at night?” (Cochrane 1998). Souvenir magnets are sold in the gift shop of the adjacent theme park. In fact, of course, the place is no more magnetic than various similar sites—including two each in Ontario and Quebec (Colombo 1988), as well as one in central Florida (Wilder 1991). As the very helpful staffers at Magnetic Hill are quick to admit, the mysterious effect is essentially due to an optical illusion. This is created, says one source, “by a hill on top of a hill, which makes people believe that they are actually travelling uphill when they are, in fact, going downhill” (Cochrane 1998).
Figure 29.1. Magnetic Hill. Driver proceeds from point A along an apparently continuous downhill course to B, places vehicle in neutral and removes foot from brake pedal. Vehicle seems mysteriously drawn backward, but in fact the distance from B to C is a slightly downward incline, and momentum propels the vehicle back toward A (but never higher than B, due to the law of the conservation of energy).
A more precise explanation is obtained by using a simple carpenter’s implement. I was permitted to “walk” my four-foot level along the route, observing the bubble frequently. This demonstrated that the course is not a straight incline but a dipped one, although higher at the top. In other words, proceeding downhill, after the initial incline the course seems to almost level off, continuing in a gentle downslope, but in fact it actually turns gently upward. (See figure 29.1). Therefore, from the point designated for vehicles to stop and be placed in neutral, they will begin to roll backward. The effect seems quite mysterious, since the driver is conscious of having driven downhill, and trees on either side of the road help hide the true horizon.
But myths die hard. One Torontonian returned annually, claiming the magnetic force helped relieve his arthritis, and an American tourist insisted he could feel the magnet pulling on the nails in his shoes. One visitor insisted, “If it was only an optical illusion, my car wouldn’t actually do it!” (Trueman 1972)
References
Cochrane, Alan. 1998. 65 years of magic. Times & Transcript (Moncton, N.B.), Aug. 8.
Colombo, John Robert. 1988. Mysterious Canada: Strange Sights, Extraordinary Events, and Peculiar Places. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
Magnetic Hill. 1997.Advertising flyer, Moncton, N.B.
Trueman, Stuart. 1972.An Intimate History of New Brunswick.1970; reprinted Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 109-14.
Wilder, Guss. 1991. Spook Hill: Angular illusion. Skeptical Inquirer 16.1 (fall):58-60.
Chapter 30
Phantom Ship
In 1999, at Nova Scotia’s Mahone Bay, I investigated the twin riddles of the Teazer Light and the Oak Island “Money Pit.” (The latter, one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries, is discussed in “The Secrets of Oak Island” chapter of this book.) The Teazer Light is an example of “ghost lights” or “luminous phenomena”(see Corliss 1995)—in this case, the reputed appearance of a phantom ship in flames. On June 26,1813, the Young Teazer, a privateer’s vessel, was cornered in Mahone Bay by British warships. Realizing they were doomed to capture and hanging, the pirates’ commander had the ship set ablaze, whereupon—at least according to legend—all perished (Blackman 1998). Soon after, however, came eyewitness reports that the craft had returned as a fiery spectral ship. It has almost always been observed on foggy nights, according to marina operator (and private investigator) Jim Harvey (1999), especially when such nights occur “within three days of a fall moon” (Colombo 1988,32).
In the late evening of July 1 (approximately three days after the full moon), I began a vigil for the Teazer Light, lasting from about 11:00 p.m. until 1:00 a.m. Unfortunately, the phantom ship did not appear, although that came as no surprise since one of the last reported sightings was in 1935 (Colombo 1988). I wondered if the diminishing of apparition reports might be due, at least in part, to encroaching civilization, with its accompanying increase in light pollution (from homes, marinas, etc.) obscuring the phenomenon.
In researching the Teazer Light, I came across the revealing account of a local man who had seen the fiery ship with some friends. They shook their heads in wonderment, then went indoors for about fifteen minutes. When they came out again, “[T]here, in exactly the same place, the moon was coming up. It was at the full, and they knew its location by its relation to Tancook Island.” The man appreciated the sequence of events: “It struck him then that there must have been a bank of fog in front of the moon as it first came over the horizon that caused it to appear like a ship on fire, and he now thinks this is what the Mahone Bay people have been seeing all these years. If the fog had not cleared away that night he would always have thought, like all the other people, that he had seen the Teazer” (Creighton 1957).
References
Blackman, W. Haden. 1998. The Field Guide to North American Hauntings. New York: Three Rivers, 65-66.
Colombo, John Robert. 1988.Mysterious Canada: Strange Sights, Extraordinary Events, and Peculiar Places. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
Corliss, William R. 1995. Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena.New York: Gramercy, 1-87.
Creighton, Helen. Bluenose Ghosts, 1957. Reprinted Halifax, N.S.: Nimbus, 1994, 118-20.
Harvey, Jim (Oak Island Marina). 1999. Interview by Joe Nickell, July 2.
Chapter 31
The Cryptic Stone
During an investigative tour of Canada’s maritime provinces in 1999 (Morris 1999), my final adventure (before ferrying two hundred miles across the Atlantic to the coast of Maine to begin the drive back to Buffalo) focused on the intriguing case of the Yarmouth Stone, now located in the Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia, Museum. This is a four-hundred-pound boulder bearing an inscription that has been variously “translated” since it came to light in 1812 (figure 31.1). In that year, a Dr. Richard Fletcher claimed to have discovered the stone near the head of Yarmouth Harbour.
The stone began to receive serious attention in 1875 when an antiquarian convinced himself the markings were Norse runes that read “Harkko’s son addressed the men” (Phillips 1884). But in 1934, another amateur runeologist (said by one critic to be “able to find runes in any crevice or groove in any stone and decipher them” [Olessen n.d.]) decided the “runes” actually read
“Leif to Eric Raises [this Monument]” (Archives 1999).
As qualified runic scholars disparaged the imaginative “translations” and debunked a Viking source for the inscription (Goldring 1975), others came forward to “identify” the apparent writing as an “old Japanese” dialect, or the work of early Greeks, Hungarians, or others, including Nova Scotian Micmac Indians. Zoologist-cum-epigrapher (decipherer of ancient texts) Barry Fell thought the writing ancient Basque, which he interpreted as “Basque people have subdued this land,” but he later changed his mind to favor a Norse source (Archives 1999; Surette 1976; Colombo 1988,44-45). (Fell believed America was extensively visited by Old World peoples far in advance of Columbus, but critics accuse him of lacking “a scientific, skeptical, or deductive approach” [Feder 1996,101 ]). An editorial in the Yarmouth Vanguard expressed the view of many local skeptics when it asked regarding the inscription, “Why don’t we just say it was left by aliens?” (“Runic” 1993)
Figure 31.1. Yarmouth Stone. Discovered in 1812, these markings have been described as representing a mysterious—possibly Viking—inscription, an accident of nature, or a deliberate hoax. (Photo by Joe Nickell)
I began my own investigation of the stone by consulting Viking archaeologist Birgitta Wallace Ferguson (1999) and Nova Scotia Museum ethnologist Ruth Holmes Whitehead (1999) who concluded, respectively, that the inscription was neither runic nor Micmac. It appears, in fact, to represent no known alphabet (Ashe et al. 1971) and is “not translatable” since, reportedly, “the characters were taken from a number of different alphabets” (Goldring 1975). Therefore, it was probably “made by the later English, either for amusement or for fraudulent purposes” (Webster n.d.).
There has long been speculation that the markings were mere fissures, glacial striations, or the product of some other natural agency (Nickerson 1910; Surette 1976), possibly subsequently enhanced, but that view has been challenged (Wickens 1967).The museum’s curator, Eric Ruff, graciously gave me full access to the stone, and I proceeded to do a rubbing (using Japanese art paper and a lithographic crayon) as well as an obliquelight examination (used to enhance surface irregularities). I saw no significant evidence of similar natural markings elsewhere on the stone.
Using a stereomicroscope removed from its base, I examined the in-scription at considerable length and was able to determine the successive stages of alterations the inscription had undergone, “enhancements” confirmed by knowledgeable sources. According to an early account, the original carving was done somewhat “delicately” and “barely penetrated the layers of quartz” (Farish [1857?]). Later, the characters were traced over with white paint, and still later—in the 1930s—a well-meaning curator further altered the markings by rechiseling them (Ruff 1999)—their dashed-line appearance suggesting the use of a slotted screwdriver or narrow chisel pounded, punchlike, with a hammer or mallet.
The superficiality of the original carving, together with the diminutive size of the inscription and the stone s location—in a marshy area, in a cove, at the head (rather than mouth) of the harbor—does not inspire confidence that the inscription was meant to command the attention of others. (Fell, for example, believed it was intended as a warning sign to other explorers that the land had already been claimed [Surette 1976].) Thus, scrutiny must fall back upon the original “discoverer,” Dr. Richard Fletcher. A retired army surgeon, Fletcher had moved to the area in 1809 and lived there until his death a decade later. His descendants say he had a reputation as “a character,” and there is a family legend that he had probably carved the inscription himself (Ruff 1999). According to one direct descendant, “It was always believed in the family, that he had done it as a joke” (quoted in Goldring 1975). So it would appear that the Yarmouth Stone is but another in a series of fakes that includes the Grave Creek, West Virginia, sandstone disc of 1838; the Davenport, Iowa, “Moundbuilder” tablets of 1877; and the notorious Kensington, Minnesota, rune stone of 1898 (Feder 1996,114-15,131).
Indeed, a second Yarmouth-area artifact was the Bay View Stone “discovered” in 1895 but since lost (Ruff 1999). It bore a similar inscription to that of the Yarmouth Stone but “was proven to be a hoax perpetrated by a local hotel owner and displayed outside the hotel for several years” (Maclnnis 1969).
References
Archives of Yarmouth County Museum. 1999. Display text for artifact No. 1993: 3; file Y MS 13 (including letters, clippings, etc.).
Ashe, Geoffrey, et al. 1971. The Quest for America. New York: Praeger, 162-63.
Colombo, John Robert. 1988.Mysterious Canada: Strange Sights, Extraordinary Events, and Peculiar Places. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.
Farish, G.J. [1857?] Quoted in Goldring 1975.
Feder, Kenneth L. 1996. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries, 2nd ed. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield.
Ferguson, Birgitta Wallace. 1999. Telephone interview by Joe Nickell, June 17.
Goldring, Charles Spencer. 1975. The Yarmouth “runic stone” explained. The Vanguard (Yarmouth, N.S.), Aug. 13; letter to editor, Aug. 27.
Maclnnis, George A. 1969. Vinland map hoax? Light-Herald (Yarmouth, N.S.), May 1.
Morris, Chris. 1999. Skeptic shoots holes in Maritimes tales. Globe and Mail (Toronto), June 30.
Nickerson, Moses H. 1910. A short note on the Yarmouth “runic stone.” Nova Scotia Historical Society, vol. 17, 51-52.
Olessen, Tryggvi. n.d. Quoted in Goldring 1975.
Phillips, Henry, Jr. 1884. Runic inscription Near Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Yarmouth Herald, July 23 (reprint in Archives 1999).
Ruff, Eric. 1999. Interview by Joe Nickell, July 3 (citing conversation with Katryn Ladd some twenty-five years before).
The “runic stone”—why don’t we just say it was left by aliens? 1993. Editorial, The Vanguard (Yarmouth, N.S.), Aug. 17.
Surette, Allan. 1976. Runic stone? Another explanation. Light-Herald (Yarmouth, N.S.),May 12.
Webster, K.G.T. n.d. Quoted in Goldring 1975.
Whitehead, Ruth Holmes. 1999. Interview by Joe Nickell, July 1.
Wickens, A. Gordon. 1967. The runic stone. The Vanguard (Yarmouth, N.S.), Feb. 8.
Chapter 32
Communicating
with the Dead?
Thanks to modern mass media, old-fashioned spiritualism is undergoing something of a revival. Witness James Van Praagh’s best-selling Talking to Heaven (1997) and the talk-show popularity of Van Praagh and other mediums like Rosemary Altea, George Anderson, and John Edward. Like Van Praagh before him, Edward was featured on the June 19, 1998, Larry King Live television show. King promoted Edward’s forth-coming video and book, both titled One Last Time—“meaning,” King explained, “saying good-bye to someone who is gone.”
Although purported communication with spirits of the dead is an-cient (for example, the biblical Witch of Endor conjured up the ghost of Samuel at the request of King Saul [1 Sam. 28:7-20]), modern spiritualism began in 1848 at Hydesville, New York (as mentioned in Chapter 3). Two young girls, Maggie and Katie Fox, pretended to communicate with the ghost of a murdered peddler. Although four decades later they confessed how their “spirit rappings” had been faked, in the meantime spiritualism had spread like wildfire across the United States and beyond. The great magician and escape artist Harry Houdini (1874-1926) spent the last years of his life crusading against phony spirit mediums and exposing their bogus “materializations” and other physical phenomena such as spirit photography.
A case I investigated in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1985 illustrates the dangers fake mediums risk in producing such phenomena. Laboratory analyses of certain “spirit precipitations” (figure 32.1) revealed the presence of solvent stains, and a recipe for such “precipitations” from the book The Psychic Mafia (Keene 1976)—utilizing a solvent to transfer images from printed photos—enabled me to create similar spirit pictures (figure 32.2). With this evidence, as well as affidavits from a few séance victims, I was able to obtain police warrants against the medium, who operated from the notorious Indian
a spiritualist center, Camp Chesterfield (Nickell with Fischer 1988).
Figure 32.1. Alleged “spirit precipitations” on cloth, produced at a 1985 séance.
Today’s mediums—whether charlatans, fantasy-prone personalities, or a bit of both—tend to eschew such physical phenomena. On my visits to New York’s spiritualist community, Lily Dale, I have been told that all such productions are now effectively prohibited there due to fakery in the past. Anyone claiming to produce authentic physical phenomena—like trumpet voices, slate writing, or apports (objects allegedly transported by spirits)—must pass the scrutiny of a committee. As a consequence, the dark-room séance is becoming a thing of the past.
Like the mediums at Lily Dale (figure 32.3), Van Praagh, Edward, and most others now limit themselves to the other major category of spiritualist offerings: “mental phenomena,” the purported use of “psychic ability” such as clairvoyance (inner sight), clairaudience (perceived voices), and clairsentience (extrasensory feelings) to obtain messages from the spirit realm. Because such mediums avoid the tricks of producing physical phenomena, it is more difficult to expose spiritualist charlatans—that is, to distinguish between mediums who practice intentional deception and those who may be self-deceived (believing they really communicate with the dead). What can be done, however, is to focus not on the medium’s motives but on his or her ability, such as by setting up suitable scientific tests (e.g. to measure supposed clairvoyance) or by analyzing a medium’s readings.
Figure 32.2. Images produced experimentally by author.
When I appeared on radio programs to debate James Van Praagh (on “The Stacy Taylor Show,” San Diego, May 19, 1998) and Dorothy Altea (on “The Gil Gross Show,” New York, June 15, 1998), I began by inviting each of the two to contact a deceased relative whom I named. Both declined my very open-minded invitation, saying they had nothing to prove to skeptics. (At one point I remarked to Van Praagh that I believed I could contact spirits as well as he—meaning not at all. He missed my point and challenged me to do a reading for him! I responded that I visualized the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, who was telling me that Van Praagh had never contacted anyone “over there.” Van Praagh did not think this was funny.)
