Unhappy Mediums

Mary Roach, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. W. W. Norton, 2005.

Gary E. Schwartz and William L Simon, The Truth About Medium: Extraordinary Experiments with the Real Allison DuBois of NVC’s 'Medium' and Other Remarkable Psychics. Hampton Roads, 2005.

Mary Roach, an American journalist - whose previous book was Stiff: the curious life of human cadavers - takes a perhaps less than reverential look at the evidence for life after death than the traditions of psychical research and some modern researchers. She runs the gamut from the ectoplasm of Kathleen Goligher, still stored in the SPR archives at Cambridge University (and you thought archives were dry and dusty and dull places didn’t you?), through experiments with the weighing of the soul, to accounts of reincarnation, and from ghost hunting and electronic voice phenomena to work with mediums past and present. What she manages to point out is how little things change in this field and today's new and exciting experiments always seem to echo something done years and years ago with equally indecisive results.

One interesting development is her re-examination of the notorious ‘Chaffin Will’ case, in which the ghost of a North Carolina farmer is supposed to have returned to reveal the existence of a hidden will which conveniently disinherited his by then widowed daughter-in-law. While I had assumed that Chaffin Senior had written this will himself and hidden it as a back-up in case his favourite son died before he came of age and there was a danger of the widow remarrying (telling his other children about this beforehand), Roach has had this will examined by a documents expert who thinks there is a good chance than the signature on this second will is a forgery. Another case of yours truly not being sceptical enough I am afraid. Amid all the dross there is the odd incident which sends that shiver down the spine, in Roach’s case when medium Alison Dubois comes up with images of hour glasses, which Roach’s brother collects.

DuBois is one of the main subjects of Gary Schwarz’s rather wide eyed book. Schwarz performs “experiments” on mediums which seem to involve him ranking the statements they make about people he knows. Though these seem to produce hits, to the outsider many of them seem typical mediumistic waffle and clichés. None of the mediums' statements are transcribed in full, so there is no way of knowing whether Schwarz is simply selecting from a wider sea of clichés those that fit. It should also be said that many of these relate to Suzy Smith, a well known figure in spiritualist/psychical research circles whom Schwarz regards as an honorary grandmother.

The obvious way to test these claims, at least to eliminate cold reading, would be to reproduce all the medium’s statements and show them to a large group of people, to see how many they fitted. This is not done of course. As I said, few of the statements are impressive to the outsider; no one comes up with anything like this hypothetical example:

“Do you remember that holiday in Long Island when you were 10 ...never forget it... You know we were travelling in that blue Chevrolet, the one with that stain on the left back seat where your cousin Kirsten threw up that Christmas when we were visiting Aunt Rebecca. We were going to that old cabin by Globtown, nice enough except for that ghastly yellow wallpaper in the third bedroom.

Of course we never got there did we, because your dad ran into that young deer and you and your friend Colleen were so upset that we had to take it to the vet and we spent the holiday money on vet’s bills, and we took it to Puddletown zoo, you called it Mimi and we used to visit almost every Sunday for years, and you’d feed it strawberry ice-cream bought from that green van with the red flash. Then you met Jamie in junior high, funny the way he used to keep one red pen in his left shirt pocket. Honey you didn’t make out with him in that blue Chevrolet did you, on the day of Uncle Enoch’s funeral..."

But that example is really what would expect from ‘surviving personalities’: a mixture of obscure domestic details and testable facts, and a sense of real conversation, very difficult to fake. Of course much of this would be untestable to outsiders, but my example does give snippets which could be verified by independent investigators.

Better still, as some of these mediums claim to be in touch with Albert Einstein and James Clerk Maxwell, get some physicist colleague to hold a natural scientific conversation with them, using lots of technical terms and maths which they would find easy but the medium would find impenetrable. Why do I suspect though that what they would come up with is yet more spiritualistic waffle and cliché? -- Reviewed by Peter Rogerson, from Magonia Supplement 60, February 2006.

Not Quite the Best

Illobrand von Ludwiger. Best UFO Cases Europe, National Institute for Discovery Science, 1998.

This illustrated A4 document presents a number of UFO cases both old and new from Europe, but one cannot say that they are the 'best' cases; most are simply reports of lights in the night. It is possible that some of these may be poorly understood atmospheric phenomena, but my gut feeling is that most if not all would resolve into very conventional IFOs if subjected to detailed, critical investigation. Of course the Belgian triangles and Trans-en-Provence get the obligatory look in.

There is a physical evidence case, a mysterious lump of metal found after an alleged UFO sighting, in Sweden in 1956, first actually investigated, it would appear, some 22 years after the event, though this is difficult to work out. The results of analysis showed that it was made from pulverised tungsten carbide and cobalt, and had nothing special about its manufacture. It comes as no surprise that ufologist von Ludwiger takes the line that until the exact manufacturer and use of the block can be found, it must be assumed to have come from a flying saucer. In other words, assume everything is paranormal until you can prove otherwise. There is one more interesting case, a CEIII from Lake Constance in 1977, but even there I suspect that the main UFO sighting would turn out to be an IFO, and the occupant report a fantasy.

The report also features introductions from representatives of the American UFO establishment, Messsrs Maccabee, Schuessler and Haines, the last devoting the space to his own quarrel with the Sturrock committee rather than discussing the work in hand.

Compared with UFO research in the English- and French-speaking worlds, UFO research in Germany has a distinctly cultic character, being largely staffed by disciples of the maverick physicist Burkhart Heim, and von Ludwiger is no exception. It is unclear whether Heim has any influence outside the ranks of ufologists and paranormalists.

Von Ludwiger's own explanation of the UFO phenomenon is that it is time travellers, though why time travellers would want to draw attention to themselves is anyone's guess.

This work is yet another example of how ufologists are their own worst enemies. The summaries do not give actual reports, merely the ufologists' interpretations of what is happening; basic details are missing; there is little of evidence of genuine open-minded inquiry; there is the credulity and the resort to out-of-date and fringe science, and frank science fiction speculation. It is clear that ufologists as a class have no idea at all as to what constitutes scientific evidence, or scientific inquiry, or even basic public relations. -- Peter Rogerson, from Magonia 37, October 2001.

Is There an Afterlife?

David Fontana. Is There an Afterlife? O Books, 2005.

In this study, David Fontana analyses what he sees as the evidence for an afterlife from an examination of apparitions, hauntings, poltergeists, mental and physical mediumship, electronic voice phenomena, near death and out of the body experiences and reincarnation claims. This covers a wide field, and there is no doubt that much of the coverage is thorough. The exception is Ian Stevenson’s studies of childhood memories of past lives. This might seem puzzling given that this is the evidence that many students of this field find most persuasive. It would appear however that reincarnation does not really fit in with Fontana’s own Spiritualist beliefs.

Despite the obvious effort put into this book, and the voluminous references, it is unlikely that it will impress those not already among the converted; indeed many parapsychologists are likely to groan inwardly and think that with friends like this, who needs CSICOP. The problem is the usual toxic mix of credulity and snobbery which undermines so much of the work of the SPR. Material of varying degrees of credibility is piled together, and Fontana never really comes to grips with the possibilities of fraud or artefacts of perception and memory.

Again and again his argument seems to boil down the to the belief that nice middle class people don’t lie, and that the right education and upbringing can make one proof against other people’s fraud and your own malobservation. For a psychologist Fontana seems to have an incredibly naive and one-dimensional view of human nature and motivation. We are told for example that a woman diplomat engaged in EVP research couldn’t possibly be engaged in fraud because she would have too much to lose if found out. Of course the rest us recognise that nice respectable people sometimes lead very strange double lives, and indulge in all sorts of inappropriate and risky behaviours, the catastrophic consequences of getting found out only adding to the thrill. (The truly cynical would say that as diplomats lie for a living it should come easier to them than the rest of us).

Of course some of the cases reported here, if they occurred exactly as reported, would be very difficult to explain. It is also true that these cases tend to be the older ones, all dating to 70 or more years ago, and as such likely to impervious to reinvestigation.

Part of the problem is that like many in this field, Fontana is really only interesting in these odd experiences as a battering ram against modernity and ‘materialism’ both of which he disapproves. Indeed he writes like someone from the 1930s much of the time, and, yes, he does quote from Sir James Jeans. -- Peter Rogerson, from Magonia Supplement 59, November 2005.

Stories from the Vaults

Michael David Hall. UFOs: a Century of Sightings, Galde Press, 1999.

This is the first history of ufology and UFO cases by a professional historian since David Jacobs's The UFO Controversy in America a quarter of a century back. As a historian, Hall declines to supply 'explanations' for the cases, and notes the problems with the ETH, though readers will detect in his selection of cases, and commentary, a general pro-UFO bias. However, he has little time for Roswell, pointing out that if something as exotic as a spacecraft had been discovered in 1947, it would have been months before anyone realised what they were dealing with. In Roswell they knew what was up at first sight. Hall hints that perhaps some sort of really big military, possibly nuclear, secret was involved. He also has a few kind words to say about Phil Klass.

The strength of this book is the detailed study of the US government policy, and his use of the private papers of Ed Ruppelt, which gives some idea of the complexities involved. Of particular interest is his naming of a new candidate for the 'father of the ETH', the aeronautical engineer Alfred Loedding, who seems to have been the driving force behind the infamous Estimate of the Situation. The trouble is that no one since Ruppelt has seen the Estimate, and we cannot say what the arguments used were, though other Air Force documents from this period suggest that the idea being floated around was that the Martians had seen the nuclear bomb explosions and were coming to see what was going on. Hall has met with members of Loedding's family, and his son claims to have remembered investigating landing reports back in the 1940s. Is this a false memory? If not this is very interesting indeed.

The case reports should be very useful, and there is much early material for the ufologists to get their teeth into. One low-level report from Circleville, Ohio now appears on the basis of the report here to be a CEIII, and there are a lot of cases, which if they occurred exactly as reported would be very puzzling indeed. Looking at these stories reminds us of how easy it was in the early 1950s to argue for the ETH. Hall points out that Loedding and others who supported the ETH never had any positive evidence in its favour; they argued from elimination. There is evidence of an exotic technology, it isn't ours, it isn't the Russians, it must be the ETs (which usually meant the Martians).

Looking at these stories today, what strikes us is that they don't so much represent what we in 2001 would think of as an advanced technology or of the work of ETs, but a kind of advanced 1940s and 1950s technology, a mixture of speculative ideas about revolutionary aerospace designs and 1930s comic-book ideas of 'spaceships'. This is the 'advanced technology' of the world before satellites and computers, and remote imaging.

Though Hall notes the role of the Cold War from time to time, I was surprised that as a historian he really paid very little attention to the cultural climate. For example, it seems obvious now how much war-time experience and imagery pervades these stories. The flying saucers behave in many ways like ultra-high-performance German or Japanese fighters, flying in formation, engaging in dog fights, etc. Just how many of the pilot UFO witnesses had been on active service in the war, and how many had been trained either explicitly or implicitly to see an enemy aircraft behind any ambiguous light in the sky and react accordingly? We don't know the answer to that question.

Is it a coincidence that as the War receded into memory, UFO reports become more tenuous, more exotic and "paranormal". Hall notes how ufologists now have become diverted into the pursuit of crashed-saucer rumours and wild abduction stories, because there are no good classical UFO cases around. (It also might be that whilst access to the Project Blue Book files is relatively simple for anyone willing to fork out for the microfilms, access to the records of civilian UFO groups is next to impossible.)

One should be able to recommend this book as an excellent source of good-quality UFO reports, and when I first obtained it, that's what I intended to do, but reading through it gave me some serious doubts. For I have come to doubt the accuracy of the accounts given, because in a number of cases that I know well, the accounts here are inaccurate; indeed the report of the Hill case is one of the most inaccurate I have come across. Were the reports compiled from memory, reconstructed from hastily written notes or what? Also, though Hall does introduce more foreign reports than most American UFO writers, I came to the conclusion that his knowledge of the subject was not all that deep. Perhaps one can only evaluate it after being deeply involved for decades.

That caveat means that two of the most important cases in the book, apparent EM-type cases from before the modern UFO wave, need to be re-examined in the original sources. US readers should try to get hold of a magazine called Sky Trails for June 1933 and check the story of Colin Murphy who is reported as claiming that, in late September 1926, seventy miles from Salt Lake City his DC4 biplane was 'buzzed' by a sort of wingless cylinder, ninety feet long and eight to ten feet thick. Every time the object came within 150 ft his engine misfired, forcing him to make an emergency landing only to see the object shoot away.

British researchers need to get access to History of the III Fighter Squadron RAF, London Press, 1947, for the following story from 5 July 1933, when at night a flight of four Hawker Fury fighters encountered a "huge circular light" which dropped down from above into the centre of their formation. Captain Nigel Tomkins's engine cut out forcing him to crash land. Another pilot, Bruce Thomas, came even closer, suffering not just an engine failure but burns to his hands and face. Clearly if the book can be traced and confirms that this account is reliable, then all efforts should be made to track down flight logs and other original documentation, check the local press for the period, and even try to track down descendants of those involved. [A preliminary and subsequent checks with the library at the RAF Museum, and the British Library, has failed to trace this book. J.R., December 2011]

British resesarchers might also like to try to find something more about a vague reference by Ruppelt to an incident on 16-17 January 1947, in which two fighters intercepted a violently moving object over England.

Despite the errors this is an important book, and one that ufologists should add to their collection. Peter Rogerson, from Magonia Supplement 37, October 2001.

Crsh, Bang, Wallop!

Jenny Randles. UFO Crash Landing? Friend or Foe? Blandford, London, 1998.

By her own confession Jenny Randles says she is obsessed by the Rendlesham Forest mystery. What were UFOs and aliens doing there during the Christmas of 1980? Has there been a cover-up? What is being covered up? Who is telling the truth?

Like most aspects of ufology, a fog of confusion surrounds this case. Randles gives most credence to the sightings on the evening of 25 December and early morning of 26 December. Over the same period Cosmos 749 and 1226 re-entered our atmosphere, and were viewed throughout Britain. From this Randles speculates that a project named Cobra Mist, based at Orford Ness, had used some form of electrical beam energy weapon to shoot at these satellites.

Another possibility is that a Soviet satellite's nuclear motor might have been recovered at Rendlesham, or that a secret USAF plane had crash landed. Then again it could have been an extraterrestrial visitor, or some form of natural phenomenon. Randles likes to keep her options open and her conclusions as slippery as a tin of grease!

Such events would necessitate a cover-up, but if one was needed why would USAF officers blab needlessly to personnel at RAF Watton about a UFO landing? More to the point, why did "Steve Roberts" tell Brenda Butler, only a week after the events, that aliens had communicated with USAF personnel through sign language, and were protected by armed guards whilst they repaired their craft? This account is similar to Larry Warren's, yet his testimony is disputed by those who were in Rendlesham Forest at the time in question. Furthermore, Steve Roberts's post on the base was later found to be connected with public affairs.

The actual evidence itself is not that great either. There is Halt's memo that mentions "unexplained lights", the infamous tape recording made during the sightings (which even Randles notes, compares well with sightings of the Orford Ness lighthouse beams), landing marks in the ground and radioactivity. Unfortunately, the site itself was quickly destroyed and its exact location is so confused that Randles wonders if a false landing site was created to put people off the scent. No substantial documentary evidence has been discovered, and the testimony of the eyewitnesses is contradictory or just plain ludicrous.

The whole saga is mainly a great laugh at the gullibility of ufologists running around chasing their own tails/tales. In comparison Roswell seems like a sensible case to believe in. -- Nigel Watson. From Magonia Supplement 13, March 1999.