The Mtstery Chronicles

by Joe Nickell

  The shyness factor. A fourth characteristic of the crop-field phe- nomenon is its avoidance of observation. It is largely nocturnal, and the designs even appear to specifically resist being seen, as shown by Operation White Crow. That was an eight-night vigil maintained by about 60 cereologists in June 1989. Not only did no circles appear in the field chosen for surveillance but—although almost 100 formations had already appeared that summer, with yet another 170 or so to occur—not a single circle was reported during the observation period anywhere in England. Then a large circle-and-ring formation was discovered about 500 yards away on the very next day!

  These and other characteristics are entirely consistent with the work of hoaxers. Indeed, as John Fischer and I were about to go to press with our investigative report, in September 1991, two “jovial con men in their sixties” confessed that they had been responsible for many of the crop formations made over the years. In support of their claim, the men, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, fooled cereologist Pat Delgado. He declared a pattern they had produced for a tabloid to be authentic, insisting that it was of a type no hoaxer could have made. The pair used a rope-and-plank device to flatten the plants, and even demonstrated their technique for television crews; one such demonstration was aired on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America on September 10, 1991 (Nickell and Fischer 1992, 145-48). (See Figures 14-1 and 14-2.)

  Cereologists were forced to concede that hoaxers were producing elaborate designs and that “there are many ways to make a hoaxed crop circle” (Haselhoff 2001, 34). (For example, some who go round in circles use a garden roller to flatten the plants [Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995].) Whereas in the past some cereologists thought they could distinguish “real” from fake circles by dowsing (Nickell 1995), the more cautious now admit it is not an easy matter, “certainly not as long as we do not even know exactly what mechanism creates crop circles” (Haselhoff 2001, 34).

  Nevertheless, the croppies were sure that some of the formations must be genuine, citing various “unexplained” features. More recently they have invoked new “scientific” evidence in that regard, such as that provided by “the BLT Research Team” in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The “B” and “T” are circle “researchers” and “L” is a semi-retired bio-physicist, W. C. Levengood. He finds a correlation between certain deformities in plants and their locations within crop-circle-type formations, but not in control plants outside them (Levengood and Talbott 1999). However, correlation is not causation, and there are other objections to his work (Nickell 1996a). As well, more mundane hypotheses for the effects—for instance, compressed moist plants steaming in the hot sun—appear to have been insufficiently considered.

  FIGURE 14-1. Crop-circle design in a field of oats in upstate New York.

  FIGURE 14-2. Circlemakers who produced the crop circle in Figure 14-1: Kevin Christopher, Benjamin Radford, and Joe Nickell. (Phots by Benjamin Radford.)

  Crucially, because there is no satisfactory evidence that a single “genuine” (i.e., “vortex”-produced) crop circle exists, Levengood’s reasoning is circular: although there are no guaranteed genuine formations on which to conduct research, the research supposedly proves the genuineness of the formations. Furthermore, if his work were really valid, Levengood should have found that a high percentage of the crop circles chosen for research were actually hoaxed, especially since even many ardent cereologists admit there are more hoaxed than “genuine” ones (Nickell 1996a; Nickell and Fischer 1992). For example, prominent cereologist Colin Andrews (2001) has conceded that 80 percent of the British crop circles are manmade, yet Levengood claims his research “suggests that over 95% of worldwide crop formations involve organized ion plasma vortices” (Levengood and Talbott 1999).

  Levengood and others who postulate crop-stamping, ion plasma vortices have to face the fact that those phenomena/entities remain unrecognized by science. They owe their imagined existence to George Terence Meaden, a former professor of physics who took up meteorology as an avocation. His book, The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries (1989), is still revered by many cereologists. Alas, however, he merely attempted to “explain” a mystery by creating another, and—humiliated by hoaxers—eventually retired from the scene, conceding that all oj the complex designs were fakes (Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995, 59).

  Nevertheless, many circles aficionados have begun to photograph supposed vortex effects which, curiously, resemble some of the same photographic anomalies that are the stock-in-trade of ghost hunters. For example, in her Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles, credulous journalist Linda Moulton Howe (2000, 137, 255) exhibits a flash photograph taken in a crop circle that shows a bright “mysterious arch with internal structure that seems to spiral like a plasma.” Unfortunately for Howe (erstwhile promoter of cattle mutilations and similar “mysteries”), the effect is indistinguishable from that caused by the camera’s unsecured wrist strap reflecting the flash (Nickell 1996b). As corroborative evidence of this mundane cause, the bright strand-like shapes typically go unseen by the ghost hunter or cereologist, appearing only in their snapshots.

  Again, Howe shows several photos containing “transparent spheres” that the croppies variously call “energy balls,” “light orbs,” “atmospheric plasmas,” and so on (2000, 169-76). They are indistinguishable from “orbs” of “spirit energy” typically seen in photographs of graveyards and other “haunted” places and that sometimes appear in snapshots as UFOs. Skeptics have demonstrated that these globelike effects can be produced by particles of dust, water droplets, and the like reflecting the flash (Mosbleck 1988; Nickell 1994; Burton 1999). Other simulators of paranormal “energy” in photos include lens flares (the result of interreflection between lens surfaces), bugs and debris reflecting the flash, and many other causes, including film defects and outright hoaxes (Nickell 1994).

  Sometimes, however, “hovering balls of light” and other “energy” effects are reported by eyewitnesses, though not only in the vicinity of crop circles (Haselhoff 2001; Howe 2000). These too may have a variety of causes, including pranksters’ parachute flares (“Flares” 1999), various misperceived aerial craft and other phenomena (such as ball lightning), false claims, hallucinations, and others. In some instances, small lights observed moving about cropfields at night might have come from the flashlights of the circlemakers!

  It appears that for the foreseeable future, the crop-circle phenomenon will continue. At least it has moved from the level of mere hoaxing—“a form of graffiti on the blank wall of southern England” (Johnson 1991)—to represent an impressive genre of outdoor art. The often breathtaking designs (best seen in aerial photographs, like the giant Nazca drawings in Peru) are appreciated not only by the mystery mongers but by skeptics as well. In fact, as reliably reported (Hoggart and Hutchinson 1995), skeptics have helped to make many of them!

  REFERENCES

  Andrews, Colin. 2001. Cited in The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles, edited by Eltjo H. Haselhoff, 37-38. Berkeley, Cal.: Frog, Ltd.

  Burton, Garry. 1999. Welcome to “Orb World.” Retrieved from http://member s. aol. com/Analogsys/index2. html.

  Delgado, Pat, and Colin Andrews. 1989. Circular Evidence. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes Press.

  Flares spark reports of UFOs. 1999. Cornish Guardian, 19 August (quoted in Howe 2000, 166-67).

  Haselhoff, Eltjo H. 2001. The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles. Berkeley, Cal.: Frog, Ltd.

  Hoggart, Simon, and Mike Hutchinson. 1995. Bizarre Beliefs. London: Richard Cohen Books, 52-61.

  Howe, Linda Moulton. 2000. Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles. New Orleans,La.: Paper Chase Press.

  Johnson, Jerold R. 1991. Pretty pictures. MUFON UFO Journal 275,18 March.

  Levengood, W. C, and Nancy P. Talbott. 1999. Dispersion of energies in worldwide crop formations. Physiologia Plantarum 105: 615-24.

  Meaden, George Terence. 1989. The Circles Effect and Its Mystery. Bradford- on-Avon, Wiltshire: Artetech.

  Mosbleck, Gerald. 1988. The elusive photographic ev
idence. In Phenomenon: Forty Years of Flying Saucers, edited by John Spencer and Hilary Evans, 210. New York: Avon.

  Nickell, Joe. 1994. Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky.

  ————. 1995. Crop circle mania wanes. Skeptical Inquirer 19, no. 3 (May/June): 41-43.

  ————. 1996a. Levengood’s crop-circle plant research. Skeptical Briefs 6, no. 2 (June): 1-2.

  ————. 1996b. Ghostly photos. Skeptical Inquirer 20, no. 4 (July/August): 13- 14.

  Nickell, Joe, and John F. Fischer. 1992. The crop-circle phenomenon: An investigative report. Skeptical Inquirer 16, no. 2 (Winter): 136-49.

  Spencer, John, and Hilary Evans, eds. 1988. Phenomenon: Forty Years of Flying Saucers. New York: Avon.

  15

  Zanzibar Demon

  The scene is modern-day Zanzibar, where a terrible monster, the infamous “popobawa,” is swooping into bedrooms at night and raping men—particularly skeptical men. The demonic beasfs name comes from the Swahili words for bat and wing, and indeed the creature is described as having, in addition to a dwarfs body with a single cyclopean eye, small pointed ears, and batlike wings and talons. According to local villagers, it is especially prone to attack “anybody who doesn’t believe” (McGreal 1995).

  One 1995 victim was a quiet-spoken peasant, a farmer named Mjaka Hamad, who said he does not believe in spirits. He first thought he was having a dream. However, UI could feel it,’1 he said, “something pressing on me. I couldn’t imagine what sort of thing was happening to me. You feel as if you are screaming with no voice.” He went on to say: “It was just like a dream but then I was thinking it was this popobawa and he had come to do something terrible to me, something sexual. It is worse than what he does to women.”

  The demon struck Zanzibar in 1970 and again briefly in the 1980s. According to The Guardian, “Even those who dismiss the attacks as superstition nonetheless admit that for true believers they are real. Zanzibar’s main hospital has treated men with bruises, broken ribs and other injuries, which the victims blame on the creature” (McGreal 1995).

  I was given an article on the Zanzibaran affair by a colleague who half-jokingly remarked, “Here’s a case for you to solve.” I read a few paragraphs and replied, “I have solved it.”

  I only needed to recall some of my earlier research to realize that the popobawa is simply a Zanzibaran version of a physiological and psychological phenomenon known as a “waking dream.” One of the characteristics of such a dream, known more technically as a hypnopompic or hypnagogic hallucination (depending on whether one is, respectively, waking up or going to sleep), is a feeling of being weighted down or even paralyzed. Alternately, one may “float” or have an out-of-body experience. Other characteristics include extreme vividness of the dream and bizarre and/or terrifying content (Baker and Nickell 1992, 226-27; Nickell 1995, 41, 46, 55, 59, 117, 131, 157, 209, 214, 268, 278).

  Similar feelings were also experienced by persons in the Middle Ages who reported nighttime visitations of an incubus (a male demon that lay with women) or a succubus (which took female form and lay with men). In Newfoundland the visitor was called the “Old Hag” (Ellis 1988). In the infamous West Pittston, Pennsylvania, “haunted house” case of 1986, tenant Jack Smurl claimed he was raped by a succubus. As “demonologist” Ed Warren described it:

  He was asleep in bed one night and he was awakened by this haglike woman who paralyzed him. He wanted to scream out, of course—he was horrified by what he saw, the woman had scales on her skin and white, scraggly hair, and some of her teeth were missing—but she paralyzed him in some manner. Then she mounted him and rode him to her sexual climax. [Warren and Warren 1989, 105-6].

  Such accounts come from widespread places and times. For example, consider this interesting encounter, which occurred in the seventeenth century. It concerned one Anne Jeffries, a country girl from Cornwall. According to Ellis (1988):

  In 1645 she apparently suffered a convulsion and was found, semi-conscious, lying on the floor. As she recovered, she began to recall in detail how she was accosted by a group of six little men. Paralyzed, she felt them swarm over her, kissing her, until she felt a sharp pricking sensation. Blinded, she found herself flying through the air to a palace filled with people. There, one of the men (now her size) seduced her, and suddenly an angry crowd burst in on them and she was again blinded and levitated. She then found herself lying on the floor surrounded by her friends [264].

  This account obviously has striking similarities to many UFO abduction accounts—some of which, like those of Whitley Strieber’s own “abduction” experiences described in Communion (1988), are fully consistent with hypnopompic or hypnagogic hallucinations (Baker and Nickell 1992). Still other entities that have appeared in classic waking dreams are ghosts and angelic visitors (Nickell 1995).

  As these examples illustrate, although the popobawa seems at first a unique, Zanzibaran creature, it is actually only a variant of a well-known phenomenon—one that Western skeptics, at least, have little to fear.

  REFERENCES

  Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. 1992. Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics and Other Mysteries. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

  Ellis, Bill. 1988. The varieties of alien experience. Skeptical Inquirer 12, no. 3 (Spring): 263-69.

  McGreal, Chris. 1995. Zanzibar diary. The Guardian, 2 October.

  Nickell, Joe. 1995. Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

  Streiber, Whitley. 1988. Communion: A True Story. New York: Avon. Warren, Ed, and Lorraine

  Warren, with Robert David Chase. 1989. Ghost Hunters. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks.

  16

  Winchester Mystery House

  It is the work of an eccentric widow, who was supposedly guided by spirits and a construction project that lasted 38 years. It began in 1884 with an existing but unfinished 8-room farmhouse near San Jose, California, and culminated in a 7-story, turreted, Gothic Victorian mansion that once comprised an estimated 500 rooms. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake significantly reduced the stacked and sprawling architectural wonder, but when Sarah Winchester died in 1922 it still “contained 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and 6 kitchens” (Winchester 1997).

  Even more remarkable, the round-the-clock construction yielded “an interminable labyrinth” of “miles of twisting hallways” (Winchester 1997, 14). Indeed, the house became “an architectural nightmare,” featuring rooms with odd angles, stairways leading to nowhere, secret passageways, doors and windows opening onto blank walls, and railing posts set upside down (Guiley 2000, 405-407; Murray 1998, 57-66).

  FIGURE 16-1. This view of the Winchester Mystery House, with the author standing in front, fails to convey the immensity of the mansion.

  FIGURE 16-2. View from a window shows part of the sprawling grounds, including the bell tower that, allegedly, was once used to summon spirits. (Photographs by Joe Nickell.)

  Fascinating in its own right, Sarah Winchester’s remarkable story has been embellished—rather like her strange mansion itself—with implausible incidents, ornate details, and “facts” that lead, tortuously, to dead ends. The truth is elusive because she was never interviewed and left no diary or other written record. Moreover, “wild stories” about the lady proliferated in her lifetime as well as after her death, and popular writers garbled—and invented—details to suit their own purposes (Winchester 1997,11).

  In an attempt to sort truth from fiction, I toured Winchester Mystery House (accompanied by Vaughn Rees of the Center for Inquiry-West) on October 24, 2001, as part of a California speaking and investigations tour. Subsequently I delved into many of the books and other sources of lore and legend about Sarah Winchester and her curious obsession. Here is some of what I found.

  Fancy: The story begins in 1862 in New Haven, Connecticut, with Sarah L. Pardee’s m
arriage to William Wirt Winchester. He was the son and heir of Oliver Fisher Winchester, whose repeating firearm became famous as “The Gun That Won the West” (Winchester 1997, 46). However, according to one tale, “[d]uring a Connecticut thunder storm, Mrs. Winchester’s husband and baby lost their lives in a tragic fire” (quoted in Rambo 1967, 6). But wait: Another source (Smith 1967, 35-43) states, “When tragedy struck this woman, it pulled no punches. Her husband died a lingering death from tuberculosis, and her little girl passed away almost immediately afterward.” In yet another source, The National Directory of Haunted Places, Hauck (1996, 75-76) separates the deaths with a bit more time, stating that “her husband and only child died within months of each other.” Fact: Actually, the Winchesters’ infant daughter Annie died first, in 1866. It was not until 1881, 15 years later, that Sarah’s husband passed away (Winchester 1997, 8).