Ghosts of South Africa!

Anthropologist/science blogger/Minnesota resident Greg Laden presents a harrowing tale of Kimberly, South Africa, supposedly one of the most haunted cities in the world:

"Your're a scientist, like I am," said the archaeologist who lived downstairs from the Rooms of Death and Misery, as the students were carting gear and luggage up the stairs to the apartment, winging on about how they had to do all the work. "So I understand if you don't believe me, but...."

"... But what?" I said, as I glanced up the stair wondering what the students were whispering to each other about and concerned that they were taking the good rooms for themselves.

"Well, the place is haunted, or so it is said," he continued.

I stared at him. Like, what is that supposed to mean, I thought.

"The Norwegian scientists who came last month .... they were supposed to stay for three weeks but left after five days."

Seriously?

"The ghost drove them out. Oh, by the way, avoid the bedroom that is an extension of the hallway."

"Why?"

"Just avoid it."

And then he ends it with a cliffhanger. Bastard.

Return to Mounds Theater

So last night I had an opportunity to attend yet another local paranormal event, once again held at the supposedly-haunted Mounds Theatre in St. Paul, once again hosted by the friendly folks at Darkness Radio. This time, it was an all-day event consisting of a few lectures by local paranormal celebrities and followed by a gallery session by a husband-and-wife psychic team. Afterwards, a small handful of audience members (which of course included me) stayed behind to ghost hunt.

The ghost hunting portion was similar to my last visit to the Mounds Theatre, though with a smaller, friendlier crowd. I'm not going to talk much about that this time. There's really nothing new to add. I got to hear some rather creepy-sounding EVPs, but I still totally don't buy it for exactly the reasons I've discussed before. Hearing them with my own ears doesn't make them any more likely to be real. I'm just as prone to pareadolia as anyone else, after all.

Damn things do sound spooky, though.

Rather, I'd like to discuss the psychic gallery reading, starring Michael and Marty Parry. It was pretty much the standard psychic act that you've seen on TV, with Mr. Parry singling out individual audience members and pretending to contact their dead relatives. I've discussed cold reading before, and that's exactly what he was doing. It was embarrassingly obvious. To me, at least.

Here's what I did: Keeping in mind that a cold-reader's act is entirely dependent on people remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, I decided to keep a running tally. I didn't have a notebook with me (Bad journalist! No cookie!), so I improvised a system using the Notes app on my iPhone, tapping an H for every hit and an M for every miss. Now, it's important to note a few things before I show you the data. First, I thought this method would be adequate to test his performance, but I realized fairly quickly that it wasn't. I only scored definite affirmatives and definite negatives. My pre-arranged protocol didn't take into account wishy-washy stuff, which it turns out there was a lot of. Also, I noticed that he very cleverly phrased many questions as negatives, such as "Your grandmother isn't German, is she?" That's going to sound like a hit regardless of the response, so I left those unscored as well.

If I get a chance to do this again, wishy-washy responses and negatively-phrased questions will get their own separate running tallies. But this time, I figured it was better to stick with my original protocol rather to try to adjust it on the fly. Oh well. I still think the data is interesting.

So, without further ado, cut-and-pasted directly from my iPhone, here's the raw data. Each H signifies a hit (a firm affirmative from the audience member) and each M signifies a miss (a firm negative):

Mmmmmhhmmmhhmmhhmhmhmmmmmhmmhmmhmhhhhhmhhhmmhmhmhmmmmmhhmmmmmmhhmhmmhhhhmh

Mmmmmmmhmmmmmhmmhhhhhhhhmhhhhmhhmmmmmmmm

That's 66 misses and 48 hits. More misses than hits, folks. Not a particularly impressive feat. He's just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks, and most of it doesn't. Also, notice that the hits tend to be clustered together. That's exactly what we'd expect from cold reading, as one hit (or even better, a couple hits in a row) provide hints about other things that are likely true. There's nothing paranormal about it. It's just common sense. Anyone can do a "psychic" cold reading act. It's not even that hard.

For the most part, despite my rampant skepticism, I love this paranormal stuff. I love attending these events. They're just plain fun, even if ghosts aren't real. And I'd love to experience something that I can't easily explain away. It just hasn't happened yet. I hope it does someday.

But the Parrys and their ilk just piss me off. I watched the woman in front of me break down in tears as Michael Parry babbled bullshit about her dead parents, and it was very, very difficult to restrain myself from angrily speaking up. I still feel like maybe I should have. They're fucking ghouls. Vultures, preying upon the grief of those who've suffered enough already. And though they didn't take money from anyone in the audience last night, they do routinely make money from their ghoulish "services". And that makes them something even more contemptible than ghouls.

On a brighter note, I think I may be a step closer to tagging along on an actual paranormal investigation (rather than a touristy paranormal dog-and-pony show), which has been my Skeptical Holy Grail for months.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Not that such silly superstitions would actually accomplish anything.

Movie review: A Haunting in Connecticut

Wow, that movie sucked. I mean, seriously. It really, really sucked. I'm losing my faith in cinema to provide quality horror. I think from now on I'll rely on literature for all my horror needs.

I went into this movie with low expectations, and it spectacularly failed to meet them. I know there are people in Hollywood who understand the difference between startling the audience and scaring the audience. Why aren't they directing these movies? There's no artistry in having a spooky face appear suddenly, making the audience jump. Anyone can do that. But it's not scary. It's just startling.

And they didn't even have the courtesy to pan lower than the shoulders during the shower scene. I mean, come on! Give me something!

A plot that made sense would have been nice too. They never really explained why the creepy funeral home guy was practicing necromancy, which is kind of important. People usually don't ritually desecrate corpses for fun. Nobody I know, at least. He must have been trying to accomplish something. I mean, come on. Anything. Throw us a bone here, screenwriters.

I love good ghost stories. I wouldn't have started this blog if I didn't. But this wasn't one. I didn't even have to pay for it, and I still want a refund.

Email from the Edge of Town

I got an email today from Dave Schrader, host of Darkness on the Edge of Town and one of the guides at Friday night's ghost hunt. I'm posting it here because he says he tried to comment publicly but couldn't figure out how, and anyway I think his comments kind of deserve a front-page post. Besides, he said I could. So, without further ado, here's Darkness Radio Dave!

John

Checked out your blog today.

I tried to figure out how to leave a comment but I suck and couldn't find how to do it. I will just email it to you instead.

Glad you had a good time over all, man you have no idea how expensive it was for us to get all the power on the block shut off for an hour and have all the firetrucks and cops racing around outside for effect. LOL.

Sorry things didn't manifest for you. That's the issue with this field, its very hit or miss. I did have some interesting things with the Shack Hack and have them recorded, now as you state it can be prone to matrixing, that's why I record to see if I get any direct hits or responses to my questions. I would be happy to share a few of them with you sometime, I got a great audio piece with the last group, we started in the projection booth and ended up in the kids room, as soon as I turned my recorder on and the Hack was going it picks up a voice that pretty clearly says, "I thought you people left."

You mention the Franks Box and Shack Hack in the blog, let me try to clear it up for you. Frank Sumption creates the actual FRANKS BOX, he only makes a few a year and he doesn't sell them, they are given to a few select people and that's about it. An engineer by the name of Bill Chappell realized that the same effect could be made by simply hacking a radio shack radio. We do that by either clipping the MUTE wire or MUTE pin in the sets. That keeps the station from stopping on any one station and scans the dial non-stop. They are essentially the same thing, Radio Shack was just kind enough to make one for us that we couldn't get from Frank. ;)

I get a bunch of strange calls and if you would like I would be happy to have you join me on some further adventures. Let me know your thoughts. Perhaps we can both witness something to make us really stand up and take notice, since this was a ghost hunt set up by the movie PR people and was meant more for entertainment then it was for anything.

Please keep in touch and feel free to post this letter in whole on your blog since I couldn't find a way to do it myself.

Warmest regards-

Dave Schrader

I sent him a friendly email back. I've been trying for months to establish contacts within the paranormal community, and it looks like I'm finally having some success on that front. It's turning out better than I expected, actually; I don't think I could do better than the host of a frickin' paranormal radio show. I think my next step is to participate in an actual paranormal investigation, and Dave might be able to help me do that. Stay tuned.

Report from the Battlefront

Well, last night's ghost hunt failed to convince me of the existence of ghosts. Anyone surprised? I may be a hardened skeptic, but you can't say I'm not trying. If there is anything to this paranormal stuff, I genuinely want to see it. The evidence just keeps coming up short. Way short.

As previously stated, the event was held at Mounds Theatre in St. Paul. A bit of background on its supposed haunting is available here. It's a fascinating old building with an interesting history, and it was definitely cool to have an opportunity to explore it after hours, regardless of whether anything otherworldly is actually present.

One nice touch: The power went out for about an hour. The whole block was out, not just the building we were in, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't a gimmick by the event organizers (if it was, they certainly went to great lengths). But how awesome is that? You're out ghost hunting, and the frickin' power goes out. That's just beyond cool.

I took some photos, but it wasn't a very photo-friendly event. Even when the power wasn't out, they kept the lights off, limiting us to flashlights. I did experiment a bit with low-light, long-exposure shots, and got a few cool pics, but the occasion didn't really lend itself well to photography. And I certainly didn't capture anything paranormal. Oh well.

I started out in the basement, watching an investigation/demonstration led by Adrian Lee, who regularly appears on both Darkness on the Edge of Town and Dead Reckoning. Apparently, on an earlier investigation of the theatre, Adrian collected some EVPs telling him to "fuck off" and "get the fuck out" and other such vulgarities. Aren't ghosts lovely people? Anyway, no such luck this time. At one point, Adrian invited us to hold our hands out in front of us and see if we could get a ghost to touch us. One guy claimed he felt something like a feather brush against his knuckles. I didn't feel anything like that, though I could feel subtle temperature shifts and currents in the air. What does that mean, though? Exactly nothing. How often do I hold my hands out in front of me, concentrating intently on the tactile sensations I'm feeling? Almost never. I tried the same thing when I got back to my very not-haunted apartment, and could feel similar shifts and currents in the air. Nothing paranormal about it.

Apparently some pretty freaky stuff happened in the basement later in the evening, after I'd moved on to other parts of the theatre. Figures. I always miss the cool stuff.

Then it was off to the attic with Dave Schrader, the host of Darkness on the Edge of Town. There's one room up there that's supposedly haunted by the ghosts of children, and the projection booth is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a man named Red, who used to work there. Apparently Red's past employment with the theatre has been historically verified, though I have not personally verified it. Anyway, neither the children nor Red seemed to be there last night. Oh well.

Both Adrian and Dave used a device they called a "shack hack," a term they used interchangeably with "Frank's box." I'd heard of Frank's boxes before, though I was unfamiliar with the term "shack hack." I'm still not sure if they're exactly the same thing, but whatever. It's a modified portable radio, hacked so that it endlessly scans up and down the dial. The idea is that it allows ghosts to communicate via tiny snippets from radio stations, assembled into sentences. I guess it's similar to how Bumblebee talks in the Transformers movie. So you'll hear a word or two from different stations, assembled into whatever the ghost is trying to tell you. Something like, "I think..." "...you are..." "...a..." "...swell guy..." "...John..." "...and your blog..." "...is the best..." "...on the..." "...inter..." "...tubes!" Yeah. I totally don't buy it. It smacks of self-primed pareidolia even more than EVPs (I've linked to the same past entry twice in one post now. Is there some law against that?).

After that, I headed to the stage area with Dead Reckoning's Lisa Lee. Nothing particularly interesting happened here. One member of our group said he could see two mysterious white lights off to one side of the stage. I'm not sure if I even managed to see the same lights, but it hardly matters, because the same guy later decided that they were merely reflections from a nearby electrical light source.

In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't really expect to be swayed from my skeptical position. But I was hoping to see or experience something that might be difficult to explain away, and I really didn't. So in that sense, I was disappointed. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun, and I'd definitely do something like this again.

Stay tuned.

Confirmation received!

That big announcement I alluded to in my previous post? It's official. I will be going on a real live ghost hunt with real live ghost hunters tomorrow night! And not just any ghost hunters. These people are the closest thing we have to ghost-hunting celebrities in Minnesota: Cast members from the Darkness on the Edge of Town radio show and the Dead Reckoning TV show!

It'll be at the supposedly-haunted Mounds Theater in St. Paul, MN. And before you ask, no, you can't come. It's by invitation only, and I don't have the authority to invite.

I will, however, be taking a very nice still camera and a rather mediocre video camera to document the experience, so you'll get to see at least some of what I see. I tried to get my hands on a professional audio deck for the weekend, but no dice. Oh well. I will, however, be live-twittering the event to the best of my ability. And of course, I'll be be posting a full report right here within a day or two.

I've been trying to arrange something like this ever since starting this blog. Jackpot, baby.

The Ghost of Dr. Manhatten?

It's about damn time I started this blog up again, eh? It's been lying dormant for far too long. It's no coincidence, really; something big is about to happen. I'm still waiting for final confirmation, so no official announcements yet, but, yeah. It's awesome. You'll agree. And you'll understand why it necessitates the revival of Ghosts of Minnesota.

In the meantime, let's take a look at a photo that's been making the rounds in the paranormal blogosphere. These images were first submitted to the British newspaper The Sun by a Mr. Colin Foster. Amazing, really, how the UK can produce such awesome and such crappy journalism at the same time. But never mind. Paranormal blogs, podcasts, and radio shows have been a-twitter about this image ever since.





Now, I've had a bit of image analysis training, but I am by no means a digital forensics expert. There are people who can look at a doctored image and tell you exactly which pixels have been altered, and when. I'm not one of those people. There is, however, something very simple and (at least to me) very obvious about this picture that makes me suspicious. Notice how sharp the ghostly figure is. There's a very clear delineation between the figure itself and the surrounding scenery. This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself, except that nothing else at the same focal depth is that sharp. One would expect our ghostly friend to be at least as blurry as the trees and fences he's immediately adjacent to. He's not. I strongly suspect, therefore, that he was added to the image later.

Mr. Foster, the gentleman who took this image, has been making the rounds in the blogosphere, swearing up and down that it's real, and calling any skeptics "haters." So allow me to preemptively say this: Colin, I don't hate you. Really. If you ever find yourself in the Minneapolis area, feel free to drop by my place. I'll cook you dinner. So, you see? I don't hate you. I just don't believe your image is genuine.

That's all I have for you today, folks. But stay tuned. Big announcement. Coming soon. Probably later today. I hope.

Fishy smelling Fort Snelling.

Yes, yes, I know I promised you an in-depth look at witches and witchcraft, and it's coming. But first, let's take a look at perhaps the most famous haunted site in Minnesota: Fort Snelling.

Historic Fort Snelling is a 19th-century military fortification built in 1819, and contains some of the oldest and most well-preserved buildings in Minnesota. It is located just outside of St. Paul and is officially categorized an unorganized territory, independent of any local municipal governments. The site is currently under the administration of the Minnesota Historical Society, and though the fort was used for military purposes as recently as World War II, today it serves only as a historical landmark and tourist attraction. Check it out some weekend. Take your kids. It's a fascinating place.

But is haunted?

Zuko.com's page on Haunted Castles and Fortifications has this to say:

While much of the original fort was left to go to ruin over the years, it should not be surprising to experience an uneasy feeling or one of foreboding when exploring the grounds around the old fortification.  Even though many of the structures have been restored in modern times, they are restored upon the original foundations and much of their dark history lingers. Accordingly, it is not uncommon to hear the odd tale of strange occurrences from the re-enactors, the park employees, or the visitors. 

In one tale, friends were waiting in one of the stone buildings for a co-worker finishing his shift as the fort was closing for the day. As they talked, a low, melancholy moaning sound emanated from one of the solid stone walls, stopping their discussion cold.  It continued but faded away, as their friend entered from the other side of the room. Together they searched the building and found that no one else was around.

In other instances, people have reported fleeting glimpses of what appears to be of a diaphanous human form near the old tower and around the lower levels of the bluff just below the walls of the fort.

Unfortunately, the True Believer web pages don't have much else to say about Fort Snelling, as the Minnesota Historical Society seems rather reluctant to let paranormal investigators traipse around the grounds. Good for them. And unfortunately, anecdotal accounts of strange noises and apparitions fall into the realm of the unfalsifiable. There's no talking a True Believer out of that kind of unreliable evidence, even though such things can often be accounted for via audio or visual paradolia, imaginations run wild, psychological power of suggestion, and other perfectly mundane factors. Remember, kids, human perception and memory are notoriously unreliable. Including yours. And mine.

But a common theme among those who believe the fort is haunted, echoed on Zuko.com, is that in 1862, it was the site of the largest mass hanging in US history:

Following the failure of the government at that time, to fully honor the terms of two treaties with the native peoples, the area along the Minnesota River was besieged by the Dakota War of 1862. In which nearly eight hundred settlers and an unknown number of Native Americans died.

Following the 6th and 7th Minnesota militias putting down the up-rising, 303 Sioux prisoners were tried six months later and convicted of the murder and rape of civilians. 

They were all sentenced to death by hanging, however  President Abraham Lincoln reviewed the transcripts of the trials and distinguished between those who had engaged in warfare against the United States, and those who had committed the crimes of rape and murder against civilians.  The president then approved the execution of 39 and commuted the death sentence of the other 264 men.  Of the 39, 38 were hanged in a single day.

Thus adding to its ‘dark’ notoriety, Fort Snelling then the site of the largest mass execution by hanging in U.S. history on December 26, 1862.

This, however, is factually incorrect. Fort Snelling did indeed play a major role in the Dakota Conflict of 1862, which did indeed lead to the largest mass hanging in US history. However, it served only as a temporary holding location for the prisoners, who were then forcibly marched to Mankato, MN, where the executions actually occurred. The Minnesota Historical Society delivers the goods:

In 1862, Minnesota was still a young state, part of a frontier inhabited by more than one million Indians. Times were hard and Indian families hungry. When the U.S. government broke its promises, some of the Dakota Indians went to war against the white settlers. Many Dakota did not join in, choosing to aid and protect settlers instead. The fighting lasted six weeks and many people on both sides were killed or fled Minnesota. Former Minnesota governor Henry Sibley led an expedition of soldiers and Dakota scouts against the Dakota warriors. The war ended on December 26, 1862, when thirty-eight Dakota Indians were hanged in Mankato in the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

It comes down to the credibility of the source. Which site is more credible, Zuko.com's Haunted Castles and Fortifications, or the Minnesota Historical Society? You be the judge.

I'm especially amused by the captions Zuko.com has for their orb photos, which of course the Ghosts of Minnesota have discussed before.

Many skeptics offer the "dust particles close-to-the-camera-lens" explanation for the orb photo phenomenon.  

As we all know from dusting our homes, dust is somewhat fleeting, and it is most definitely affected by the slight breezes caused by movement in the room.  And of course we all know that dust particles are heavier than air and very quickly settle to the floor.

In this case however, our ghostly orbs seemed to hover in these same positions, regardless of our movement around the room.

Um, well, yeah, if you're in a particularly dusty area, that's pretty much exactly what you would expect.

Dust? I think not.


Alrighty, Mr. Zuko, you go with that.

Is Fort Snelling haunted? I think not.

Awesome Announcement of Awesomeness!

Attention Ghosts of Minnesota fans! Be sure to tune in to the Atheists Talk radio next Sunday morning, when the guest for their special Halloween edition will be... Me! I'll be talking about Minnesota hauntings, paranormal phenomena in general, and why we should be skeptical of them.

They had world-famous physicist Lawrence Krauss on this week. Tough act to follow. Wish me luck.

If you're in the Twin Cities, it'll be on AM 950 at 9:00 am. If you're not local, you can stream it here (you'll need to enter a top-secret Minnesota zip code, which of course I'm not at liberty to divulge. In completely unrelated news, my favorite five-digit number is 55404. What's yours?) or download the podcast later in the day from here.

(You'll have to do any necessary time zone conversions yourself. If I could do math, I wouldn't have majored in journalism.)

And stay tuned for an in-depth report on witches and witchcraft! This one is turning out to be much more fun than I expected.

Psychics, and why they can suck it.

Imagine, if you will, the following conversation:

"I'm getting something, yes, yes... I'm getting... the letter 'M'."

"Yes, yes! My mother's name was Marge!"

"Right, yes, and she wants me to tell you... That picture you keep of her..."

"You mean the one hanging by the stairs?"

"Yes, right, that one. She wanted to tell you that that picture relates to someone very important..."

"My uncle, her brother! He's in the picture with her! It was taken when they were teenagers!"

"Right, your uncle... His name starts with... a J?"

"No, his name is Robert."

"Well, somebody's name starts with a J. We'll just let that go for now and move on..."

And so it goes. You get the idea. Later, the following conversation is overheard:

"That psychic I talked to is amazing! She knew that my mother's name was Marge, and that I have a picture of her and her brother as teenagers hanging by the stairs in my house! I mean, I've heard so-called psychics before, but she actually knew all those details! She must be for real!"

Meanwhile, the "psychic" is cashing a check.

It is a discredit to our species that this kind of thing happens all the damn time.

What's happening here is a well-known mentalist trick known as cold reading. Stage magicians use it all the time to amuse and entertain, which is fine. "Psychic" con artists use it to defraud the gullible, which is not fine.

Wikipedia defines cold reading as follows:

Cold reading is a technique used by mentalists and fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums to determine details about another person in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than he or she actually does. Even without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by carefully analyzing the person's body language, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. Cold readers commonly employ high probability guesses about the subject, quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.

In essence, they don't know anything but what you communicate to them. You just don't realize you're doing it.

With enough practice, you can learn do it too. There's nothing psychic about it. Wikihow is a great place to start, and many more resources are merely a Google search away.

Seriously, try it. I've done it. It's fun, and it's easier than it looks, and it's a big hit at parties. And once you see just how easy it is, you'll never be fooled by a so-called psychic again. Their schtick will become embarrassingly obvious.

Just make sure you never use your new power for evil, or I'll... I'll... blog about you! I mean it, too.

But let's be fair. Not all so-called psychics are out-and-out swindling scumbags. Some of them are just delusional. They may even be well-meaning. Some may actually believe that they have real psychic powers. But once you've trained yourself to spot cold reading (which is not difficult), it's fairly obvious that it's exactly what they're doing. Whether they realize it or not.

Once you understand how cold reading works, it's fun and easy to turn the tables on psychics. One neat trick is to deliberately lead them down the wrong path and watch as they eagerly take the bait. Another is to remain stone-faced and silent, giving them no reactions to build from, and watch as they desperately spin their wheels. Both go a long way toward debunking any supernatural phenomena. The hardest part is keeping a straight face. It's hard not to laugh at a con artist making a fool of himself.

So can psychic claims be tested? Abso-friggin'-lutely. If psychics can really do what they claim they can do, testing their abilities would be a very simple matter indeed. All you need is an experimental protocol that does not allow them to cheat. The problem here is that they'll never agree to such a protocol, or they'll fail miserably, in which case they'll immediately commit the logical fallacy of special pleading, blaming their failure on the presence of skeptics and their negative psychic energy or some such nonsense.

Are you psychic? Do you live in the Twin Cities area? Would you like to prove me wrong? I'd love to be proven wrong. Seriously, I would. And how awesome would it be for your business to say that you proved the hardened, closed-minded skeptical asshole wrong? Email me, and we'll work something out**. I require only a protocol that does not allow you to cheat, which should not be a problem if you don't plan on cheating.

I will, however, point and laugh if you fail and then resort to special pleading.

** Standard disclaimer: I'm not a scientist and claim no scientific expertise, but the fact that someone as dumb as me can come up with a workable protocol is a testament to just how easily-testable these claims really are.