Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.
A point I've made here at Skeptophilia more than once is that I don't automatically disbelieve in anyone's claim of having a paranormal or religious experience, it's just that I'm doubtful. The reason for my doubt is that having a decent background in neurobiology, I know for a fact that our brains are (in astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's pithy phrase) "poor data-taking devices." We are swayed by our own biases -- put simply, what we expect to see or hear -- and are often overwhelmed by our own emotions, especially when they're powerful ones like fear or excitement.
What's alarming about this is that it doesn't honestly matter whether you're a skeptic or not; we're all prone to this. I heard a loud noise downstairs one evening -- it was, unfortunately, shortly after I'd been watching an episode of The X Files -- and as the Man of the House bravely volunteered to go investigate. I looked around for something with which to arm myself, and picked up a pair of fireplace tongs (prompting my wife to ask, "What're you gonna do, pinch the monster's belly fat?") By the time I actually went downstairs, I had worked myself up into a lather imagining what fearful denizens of the netherworld might have invaded our basement.
Turned out our cat had jumped up on the counter and knocked a ceramic mug onto the floor. I did not, for the record, pinch her belly fat with the tongs, although I certainly felt like she deserved it.
The thing is, we're all suggestible, and our imaginations make us prone both to seeing things that aren't there and misinterpreting the things that are there. It's why we have science; scientific tools don't get freaked out and imagine they've seen a ghost.
When I taught Critical Thinking, one of my assignments was for students to use PhotoShop (or an equivalent software) to create the best fake ghost, cryptid, or UFO photo they could. This was that year's winner. Pretty good, isn't it? [Image credit: Nathan Brewer, used with permission]
The reason this topic comes up is a pair of unrelated links I happened across within minutes of each other, that are mostly interesting in juxtaposition.
The first one is by "paranormal explorer, investigator, and researcher" Ashley Knibb. Knibb is a UK-based writer and ghost hunter who spends his time visiting sites of alleged hauntings with his team, then writing up their experiences. The one I stumbled across yesterday was about their recent investigation of Royal Gunpowder Mills, Waltham Abbey, Essex. The building, now a "Historical Site of Special Interest" maintained by the government, was (as you might guess from the name) originally an industrial complex for the manufacture of explosives. "Hundreds of lives had passed through these grounds; some of them cut short by the very materials that gave Britain its military edge," Knibb writes. "It’s no wonder the place has a reputation for being haunted... Nothing stirred, but there was an eerie sense that the building’s history had left an imprint. This was a place where weapons of war had been made, where accidents had claimed lives. Sometimes you don’t need voices; the atmosphere says enough."
The rest of the article, which is evocative and creepy, describes what Knibb and his assistants felt, saw, and heard during the night they spent in the Mills. One of them heard the name "Cooper" being spoken; another heard a faint "hello." They saw the sparkle of flashing lights that, upon arrival in the room where they seemed to originate, had no material source. More prosaic, one of their videocamera lights itself began to strobe. There were areas where the visitors experienced chills, and one of them had a profound experience of vertigo and nausea at one point. (To Knibb's credit, he recounts hearing a loud thud, which turned out to be the movement of a very-much-living staff member retrieving something from an upper room. "Ruling out," Knibb observes correctly, "is as important as ruling in.")
The second link is a paper in The Journal of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion, and is called "Sensing the Darkness: Dark Therapy, Authority, and Spiritual Experience." The gist of the paper is that there is a new trend called "Dark Therapy" where volunteers agree to spend a given amount of time in complete darkness, in search of numinous or otherwise enlightening experiences. Other senses are allowed; in fact, one of the purposes of being in the dark, proponents say, is to heighten your other sensory experiences. Some of these episodes are guided, and others not. The paper recounts the experiences of twelve participants who agreed to spend a block of time between seven and fourteen days in a well-furnished room that was completely dark.
Their responses are intriguing. The researchers (to their credit) do not weigh in on whether the experiences of the participants reflected an external truth, or were simply artifacts of the sensory deprivation and the workings of their minds. I would encourage you to read the original paper, but just to give you the flavor, here's what one person said after her stay in the dark room:
For the first time [in the dark] there was a lot of fear. Somehow like manifestation of fear that was coming, well, differently and sometimes it was like... sometimes sounds, sometimes some images, (. . .) some demonic visions (. . .) were appearing and finally I understood that this is all me, my projection, but that you have to go through it, but it was such realistic experiences, very realistic. (. . .) sometimes I heard something, or I had the feeling that somebody is there with me, and I don’t like it, I don’t like it at all.
What strikes me here is that like with ghost hunting, how much of what you experience is what you expected to experience? I don't doubt that Dark Therapy might be an interesting way to learn about your own mind, and how you cope with being deprived of one of your senses, and might even result in profound enlightenment. But there's a real danger with someone crossing over into believing that something like the "demonic visions" the volunteer experienced are manifestations of an external physical reality. We all come primed with our preconceived notions of what's out there; when in an unfamiliar situation where our emotions are ramped up, it'd be all to easy for those mental models to magnify into something that seems convincingly real.
Like I said, it's not that I'm saying I'm certain that Ashley Knibb's scary night at Royal Gunpowder Mills, or anyone else's experiences of the holy or the demonic or the supernatural, are one hundred percent imaginary. It's just that my generally skeptical outlook, and (especially) my training in neuroscience, makes me hesitant to accept personal anecdote as reality without any hard evidence. I'm convincible, but it takes more than "I saw it" (or, in the dark room, "I heard/felt it").
I might find your personal anecdote intriguing, or suggestive, or even worthy of further investigation. But to move from there into believing that some odd claim is true, I need more than that. The human mind is simply too frail, biased, and suggestible to trust without something more to back it up.
I'll end with a quote from John Adams, then a lawyer, later President of the United States: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
