American Hauntings: The True Stories behind Hollywood's Scariest Movies—from The Exorcist to The Conjuring: The True Stories behind Hollywood’s Scariest Movies—from The Exorcist to The Conjuring
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In a variety of fields that are on the margins of scientific acceptance, from cryptozoology to UFOs to the Loch Ness monster, there will always be a small group of rogue scientists who believe in their existence. It does not matter whether 99.9 percent of mainstream scientists are skeptical on these topics; journalists will gravitate to maverick scientists, as it makes for an exciting, interesting story. Unfortunately, this situation can often give the distorted impression that more scientists believe in poltergeists and haunted houses than actually do. While a handful of qualified scientists claim to have observed evidence for poltergeists, their results have never been consistently replicated under strictly controlled conditions. Furthermore, when most respected researchers conduct rigorous investigations by setting up tight controls and cameras, either they uncover clear evidence of deception and fraud, or the phenomenon fails to materialize. Like UFOs, Bigfoot, and the chupacabra, given the absence of definitive proof of something extraordinary, do all poltergeist cases have mundane explanations? We have not seen any convincing evidence to indicate otherwise.
Each of the cases that we have explored contains a clear religious element. This may explain why so many of the participants were fooled. Don Decker was thought to be possessed by the Devil. In Amityville, a cross was turned upside down and a priest attacked. At Seaford, the Herrmann family placed bottles of holy water throughout the house to ward off the poltergeist, and eventually a priest came to bless the house, and the possibility of an exorcism was discussed. Religious symbolism was also prominent in the outbreaks involving the Perron family in Rhode Island and the Snedekers in Connecticut. For many people, these cases go far beyond being the temporary infestation of a “noisy spirit”; they are proof of the reality of God and the bible. To believe in their existence offers us a glimpse of a black-and-white world of good versus evil, where God is watching over us.
The Warrens
No discussion of our “based on a true story” cases would be complete without mention of the role of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their involvement in the investigations of cases that were turned into The Conjuring, The Amityville Horror, and The Haunting in Connecticut is revealing. A number of years ago, Connecticut neuroscientist Dr. Steven Novella made a sincere attempt to investigate the Warrens’ claims. While skeptical and an atheist, Novella said that he made a conscious effort not to confront their belief system. His goal was to objectively evaluate the evidence that they had accumulated after forty years of investigating hauntings. “He showed us a lot of ghost photos where if you’ve ever just gone on the web and look up ghost photos, you’ve seen them. It’s all the same thing. Basically, the three, four most common photographic artifacts. You get some flashbacks and camera cord reflect, occasional double exposure, all very unimpressive, just blobs of light on film,” he said.7
Novella estimates that 90 percent of their evidence consisted of vague photos of “ghosts.” They made little or no attempt to critically evaluate what they were photographing. “They claim that the ghostly images get on the film psychically . . . but they were surprised to find that that happened more often when you used a flash and the brighter the flash, the better. Yet, it didn’t occur to them that the flash was producing the effect that was producing the light on the film. They still thought it was psychic effects from the ghost or at least that’s what they professed to believe.” According to Novella, when he pointed this out to them, “they just quietly took that off their web site without ever acknowledging our correction.”8 So much for integrity. At best, the Warrens appear to be gullible, uncritical, and influenced by their medieval Christian beliefs about the existence of demonic forces.
When Novella and his fellow skeptics continued to politely challenge the Warrens, things began to turn ugly. During one local TV appearance, Novella said that Ed turned confrontational, produced evidence they had never heard of before, and exclaimed, “Explain that, skeptics!” Novella said he was shocked by the tactic as his group had been asking the Warrens to provide them with evidence for years. As for the remarkable evidence that Ed had produced, Novella said it consisted of a video of “a white lady” at a cemetery. Novella said that it “was at that perfect distance and resolution that it was suggestive of a ghostly figure but you couldn’t really see it well enough to know if it was Lorraine in a bed sheet. . . . It wasn’t close up, it wasn’t in focus enough . . . the quality was not there. It was like, if you were trying to fake a ghost video, that’s exactly what it would have looked like.”9 Whether they are sincere but gullible and misguided or are conscious hucksters, perhaps the best description of the Warrens was made by Joe Nickell when he confronted them on national TV. He observed that after decades of investigating haunted houses, “I’ve not met a house that I thought was haunted. I think the Warrens have not met a house that they didn’t think was haunted!”10
A good example of the Warrens’ lack of scientific rigor occurred when they “investigated” the Snedeker haunting in Connecticut. When asked why he thought that spirits had chosen that particular house, Ed speculated that it was because it had been a funeral home and necrophilia had taken place there. “You have itinerant embalmers from time to time, who will help out. . . . We think it was one of them. . . . What happened was . . . a body was abused, or maybe more than one, and we know that this can bring about terrible phenomena and hauntings.”11 For such an elaborate theory, Ed could not produce any evidence to support it. It was based on a feeling. Detectives and scientists do not make accusations based on hunches; they deal in facts and weigh evidence. In this instance, there are no supporting facts. There are two basic types of speculation: informed and wild. Police use the former all the time to solve crimes and track criminals. Ed Warren’s inklings fall into the latter category.
Adolescents Behaving Badly
There is no credible evidence to conclude that poltergeists result from the hypothetical existence of “psychic energy” or are the noisy spirits of the dead. Instead, they appear to be a reflection of the troubled minds of the living, which have a propensity for deception and mischief. Poltergeists are universal because the belief in ghosts and spirits is universal, and the propensity to hoax and deceive is found in every culture. The global belief in otherworldly entities allows adolescents who are experiencing feelings of rage and revenge a convenient label under which to blame their destructive actions, getting their point across while deflecting the attribution of guilt. They didn’t do it—it was the ghost. Poltergeist behaviors are temporary and soon pass as the adolescent matures or fears being caught, because ultimately, outbreaks are unsustainable. A young boy who is unhappy in his new home and desperately wishes to move can argue that the spirit is sending them a message, when in reality, it is the boy. In the case of “Robbie,” he wanted to go to St. Louis after his aunt died and conveyed his message by carving “LOUIS” on his chest. Not long after, the family was on a train bound for St. Louis. Why are these deceptive acts so common among adolescents? Perhaps it is because they are old enough to pull off these deceptions successfully in the absence of a fully developed set of moral values; they possess a state of mind where “the ends justify the means.”
In the early twenty-first century, advances in technology have failed to produce definitive proof of monsters, extraterrestrials, or poltergeists. More often than not, instead of recording mysterious happenings, the “haunted” subject is captured in the act of deceiving investigators by throwing objects, setting fires, or rattling pots and pans. In the rare instances where a seemingly mysterious act is recorded, the circumstances are such that the image is of dubious origin. If the outbreaks we have examined are the best available, then these episodes likely reveal more about the researchers and the claimants themselves than any poltergeists they are supposedly depicting. A classic example occurred at Seaford, Long Island, when William Roll and Gaither Pratt lost their objectivity and failed to recognize numerous signs pointing to Jimmy Herrmann as the poltergeist, while rejecting the offer of help by Milbourne Christoph
er, who was able to duplicate every disturbance created by the poltergeist. Despite this, Christopher’s name never once appeared in their final report. Neither did the negative findings of Dr. Osis. Roll and Pratt were simply reinforcing an existing dogma under the guise of science. In the case of Don Decker, the investigating authorities and the families involved were blinded by their religious beliefs. As a result, a leaky roof became a manifestation of evil, an apparent trance state became demonic possession, and sweat on Warden Keenhold’s shirt was interpreted as proof of supernatural powers. But more than this, these events became proof of the presence of the Devil and served to reinforce a belief in God. The main participants saw what they wanted to see.
Every psychologist should be made aware of the poltergeist faking syndrome, so that when they encounter a family where a “noisy ghost” is supposedly causing disturbances, they can focus immediately on the subject who is the center of the events and seek the underlying causes of that person’s anger. Poltergeists are signs of distress and signals that something is amiss. In this regard, instead of reflecting spirits of the dead, poltergeists reflect problems of the living. They are not signs from the hereafter but from the present. Like UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster, their existence tells us more about ourselves than it does about them, because they originate in the human imagination and reflect our hopes and fears.
A common factor in all of the cases in this book is that they were supposedly “based on a true story” and immortalized in films and on TV. It may be a good selling point to gain viewership, but did the events really happen as described? The unequivocal answer is no. When we carefully examine the original claims and compare the testimony of the participants over time, each story unravels. In every case in our study, there is clear evidence of human deception. In every instance, there are gullible bystanders and outsiders who come in to “examine” the case and accept the story at face value—either other family members or journalists and paranormal investigators. They share a common element: their lack of expertise in deception. It is worth remembering that these are not just any cases that we have put under a microscope. We chose seven of the best cases we could find: cases that were so compelling that they inspired Hollywood directors to invest large sums of money so as to bring these stories to wider public attention; cases that researchers point to for their meticulous documentation; cases that witnesses have attested to as being genuine and truly inexplicable.
In his book Science in the New Age, anthropologist David Hess briefly surveys films on hauntings and observes that Hollywood tends to lend credence to ghosts, hauntings, and possession claims and typically features believers in heroic roles, while skeptics fare poorly.12 Media studies expert Emily Edwards concurs. In her review of popular film and television portrayals of “ghostly narratives,” she writes that the typical horror film featuring the paranormal makes scientists “appear helpless, even silly. The skeptic in the narrative must convert to belief or be defeated.” Thus, skeptics in films like Poltergeist must embrace the fringe discipline of parapsychology in order to successfully do battle with the spirit world.13 Yet when one looks at the evidence for poltergeists and kindred phenomena, there is a huge gulf between public perception and the scientific reality. The story of poltergeists is the story of us—of the human condition that faces the possibility of death on a daily basis. The desire to believe in an afterlife is the driving force behind the poltergeist myth. It is the same desire that blinds those who look at the evidence and see what they want to see.
Notes
Introduction
1. Myrna Blyth and C. Winston, How to Raise an American (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008), p. 91.
2. A Harris Poll released in December 2013 found that 42 percent of those surveyed believed in ghosts. See “Americans’ Beliefs in God, Miracles and Heaven Declines” (Harris Poll number 97, released December 16, 2013). Unlike other polls, Harris does not use the term “margin of error,” as they consider it to be misleading. They write, “All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.” A 2012 poll of a representative sample of American adults places this figure at 45 percent. Refer to “Omnibus Poll,” accessed April 22, 2014, at http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/ghosttoplines.pdf. The poll was conducted on December 17 and 18, 2012, and had a margin of error of 3.1 percent. The question was asked as follows: “Do you believe in ghosts, or that the spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations?” These polls are in line with earlier surveys such as the CBS poll conducted between October 3 and 5, 2005, with a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percent. The question asked was worded as follows: “Do you believe in ghosts?” See http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-majority-believe-in-ghosts/. The reference in the title to a majority believing in ghosts refers to those samples between the ages of 18 and 45, which was placed at 56 percent. Older persons were more skeptical. See also the Online Paranormal Society Directory, accessed March 14, 2015, at http://www.paranormalsocieties.com/, which lists 3,220 active paranormal organizations in the United States alone.
3. This is a rough approximation, as there is no precise translation from German to English. It has been described in various definitions as a boisterous, troublesome, mischievous, playful, knocking, rattling, or rumbling spirit or ghost.
4. Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 29.
5. Pamela Rae Heath, Mind-Matter Interaction: A Review of Historical Reports, Theory and Research (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011), p. 65; Leo Ruickbie, Ghosts, Vampires and the Paranormal (London: Constable and Robinson, 2012).
6. Prominent paranormal historian Colin Wilson mistakenly gives the date as “858 BC.” See Colin Wilson, Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Hauntings (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2009), p. 83, citing the chronicle Annales Fuldenses. However, references to the “Bishop” and “holy water” show the truth of the matter—positively confirmed by other numerous sources. For a brief survey of possible very early cases, see Heath 2011, op. cit., pp. 65–67.
7. Cheryl A. Wicks, Ghost Tracks (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2004), pp. 41–42.
8. Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell, Poltergeists (Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 227.
9. Also known as telekinesis, some fancy-sounding names have been used by parapsychologists to describe this process, such as “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis” and “repressed psychokinetic energy.”
10. Guy Playfair, This House Is Haunted: The Amazing Inside Story of the Enfield Poltergeist (Guildford, UK: Whitecrow Books, 2011), p. 279.
11. James C. Bozzuto, “Cinematic Neurosis Following ‘The Exorcist’: Report of Four Cases,” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 161(1) (1975): 43–48.
12. Several books have examined so-called real hauntings in Hollywood. See Tom Ogden, Haunted Hollywood: Tinseltown Terrors, Filmdom Phantoms and Movieland Mayhem (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2009); Laurie Jacobson, Haunted Hollywood: A Ghostly Tour of Filmland (Santa Monica, CA: Angel City Press, 1999); Tammy Mahan, Hometown Hauntings: Celebrity Ghosts of Hollywood (New York, NY: Aurora Borealis, 2013); Frank McSherry, Charles Waugh, and Martin Greenberg, eds., Hollywood Ghosts: Haunting, Spine-Chilling Stories from America’s Film Capital (Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1991). Several books analyze claims of hauntings and poltergeists in terms of plot, genre, and cinematography. Examples include Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson, The Ghostly and the Ghosted in Literature and Film (Lanham, MD: University of Delaware Press, 2013); Tom Ruffle, Ghost Images: Cinema of the Afterlife (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004); Joseph Natoli, Hauntings: Popular Film and American Culture 1990–1992 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994); Lee Kovacs, The Haunted Screen: Ghosts in Literature and Film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999).
Chapter 1
1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reader: From Sherlock Holmes to Spiritualism (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002), p. 53.
2. Box Office Mojo, “An American Haunting,” accessed August 2, 2014, at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=americanhaunting.htm.
3. Trailer for An American Haunting, accessed November 20, 2013, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxcfXDBqpUQ.
4. Nick Schager, “An American Haunting.” Slant Magazine (2006), accessed November 20, 2013, at http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/an-american-haunting.