The wind walker

One of the most terrifying legends to come out of the Algonquian tribes of northeastern North America is about a creature called the Wendigo.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Віщун, Wendigo, CC BY-SA 4.0]

The Wendigo is a spirit that haunts the deep woods, lying in wait for unwary travelers.  When it takes corporeal form it's humanoid, skinny and bony, and its approach is heralded by a sharp drop in temperature and a foul smell.  The Wendigo uses humans as food -- cannibalism is one characteristic the legends always mention -- but it's never sated, and is always looking for new victims to consume.

This myth is found across the region.  The English name comes from the Ojibwe word wiindigoo, but most of the Algonquian tribes have some version of it.  Ojibwe scholar Basil Johnston, in his book The Manitous, gives the following rather ghastly description of the Wendigo:

The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones.  With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave.  What lips it had were tattered and bloody...  Unclean and suffering from suppuration of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption.

For me, though, the most spine-chilling thing about the legend is what you're supposed to do if you see it before it sees you.  (If it sees you first, apparently you're pretty much fucked sideways.)  You're supposed to turn around and walk -- not run -- away.  It can only get you if your gazes meet, so if you turn your back on it and act like it's not there, you have a chance.  The Wendigo will then call your name in an appealing voice, trying to get you to turn around, but you have to just keep walking until you reach safety.

For me, I think the "don't run" part would be the hardest.  If I saw something like this, my legs would look like those comical Looney Tunes characters who are running so fast the lower half of their body turns into this elliptical blur.  I might not even stop when I reach safety.  I might keep running long enough to end up in Mozambique.  (Yes, I know that Mozambique is across the ocean from where I live.  The Looney Tunes characters never let a body of water stop them, and neither would I.)

As you might imagine, the legend is creepy enough that it's appeared in many works of fiction, starting with Algernon Blackwood's 1910 short story "The Wendigo."  H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, in their Cthulhu Mythos stories, incorporated many of the characteristics of the creature into their "Great Old One" named Ithaqua the Wind Walker.  I even gave a crack at it; my novella "The Conduit" (currently out of print) featured a spirit based on the Wendigo, but I used the cannibalism thing metaphorically; in my story the Wendigo didn't eat its victims' bodies, but instead possessed them and consumed pieces of their personality -- so that when it went on to a new host it retained the knowledge and abilities of the people it had previously inhabited.

What's most interesting about this legend is how many people think it's true.  If it weren't real, the argument goes, there's no way it would have become so widespread in the Indigenous tribes of the northeast.  There was a spirited discussion over at Quora a while back over whether the Wendigo actually exists, with the consensus being "Yes, of course it does."  If you do a Google search for "Wendigo legend true" or "Wendigo real" you'll get literally thousands of hits, including ones from people who claim to have narrowly escaped getting eaten by it.

Needless to say, I'm highly dubious.  Not only do we have our old friend "the plural of anecdote is not data" here, we've also got the problem that science (i.e. determining what is real and what is not) does not proceed by popular vote, so saying something is widely believed has no impact on its truth or falsity.  Take, for example, religion.  To make at least a passing attempt to stay off the thin ice I usually skate on, pick a religion that you don't happen to believe.  Let's say Greek mythology, for instance.  (My apologies to anyone who is a Poseidon worshiper -- please don't come at me with a trident, I'm just trying to make a point, here.)  Back in the heyday of ancient Greece, damn near everyone venerated the various gods and sub-gods and spirits and whatnot; you'd have gotten close to one hundred percent agreement that of course Zeus was up there hurling lightning bolts whenever there was a thunderstorm.  

"Lots of people think so" is simply not a reliable guide to the truth.

As always, what we need is hard evidence, and in the case of the Wendigo (not to mention Poseidon, Zeus, et al.) there isn't any.  As one of the lone voices of reason on Quora put it, "Yes, the Wendigo exists.  In the imagination.  Otherwise, no."

But that doesn't make the story any less scary.  And next time I go out for a trail run in our local National Forest, if I hear a soft, beckoning voice call out "Gordon...." from behind me, I am not turning around.  Maybe it'll be some friend of mine back there trying to get my attention, but that's just too bad.

If they really want to talk to me, they can text me or something.  I doubt the Wendigo has a phone, so at least that'd be safe enough.

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Summoning up nothing

Some years ago, as part of the research I did while writing my novel Sephirot, I purchased a copy of Richard Cavendish's book The Black Arts.  It's a comprehensive look at the darker side of human beliefs, quite exhaustive and well-written (it's unclear how much of it Cavendish actually believes is true; he's pretty good at keeping his own opinions of out it).  I was mostly interested in the section on the "Tree of Life" from the Kabbalah -- the Sephirot of the novel's title -- but as is typical for me, I got sidetracked and ended up reading the entire thing.

There's a whole part of the book devoted to magical rituals, summoning up evil spirits and whatnot, and what struck me all the way through was the counterpoint between (1) how deadly seriously the practitioners take it, and (2) how fundamentally silly it all is.  Here's one passage with a spell for conjuring up a demon, taken from the Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis (The Lesser Key of Solomon), a seventeenth-century sorcerers' grimoire much used by the infamous Aleister Crowley:

I conjure thee, O Spirit N., strengthened by the power of Almighty God, and I command thee by Baralamensis, Baldachiensis, Paumachie, Apoloresedes, and the most powerful Princes Genio and Liachide, Ministers of the Seat of Tartarus and Chief Princes of the Throne of Apologia in the ninth region.

Which is pretty fucking impressive-sounding if you can get it out without laughing.  This would be the difficulty I'd face if I was a sorcerer, which is undoubtedly why even after typing all this out, no evil spirit appeared.  I guess snickering while you're typing magic words is kind of off-putting to the Infernal Host.

Anyhow, if you chant all that and nothing happens -- which, let's face it, is the likeliest outcome -- the book then takes you through an escalating series of spells, gradually ramping up in the intensity of threats for what will happen to the demon if it doesn't obey you.  Ultimately there's this one, which is pretty dire:

O spirit N., who art wicked and disobedient, because thou hast not obeyed my commands and the glorious and incomprehensible names of the true God, the Creator of all things, now by the irresistible power of these Names I curse thee into the depths of the Bottomless Pit, there to remain in unquenchable fire and brimstone until the Day of Wrath unless thou shalt forthwith appear in this triangle before this circle to do my will.  Come quickly and in peace by the Names Adonai, Zebaoth, Adonai, Amioram.  Come, come, Adonai King of Kings commands thee.

Which, apparently, is the black magic equivalent of your dad saying "Don't make me ask you again!"  The whole thing is even more effective, the book says, if the magician chants all this while masturbating, so that when he has an orgasm "the full force of his magical power gushes forth."

Kind of makes you wonder how teenage boys don't summon demons several times a day.

Crowley absolutely loved this kind of rigamarole, especially because it involved sex, which appears to have been his entire raison d'être.  The book tells us that he "used this ritual in 1911 to summon a spirit called Abuldiz, but the results were not very satisfactory."

Which is unsurprising.  This, in fact, has always been what is the most baffling thing to me about magical thinking; that it simply doesn't work, and yet this seems to have little effect on its adherents.  For a time during my late teens I got seriously into divination.  Tarot cards, numerology, astrology, the works.  (I hasten to state that I never tried to conjure a demon.  Even at my most credulous, that stuff exceeded my Goofiness Tolerance Quotient.)  After an embarrassed and embarrassing period when, deep down, I knew it was all nonsense but wanted desperately for it to be true because it was so cool, I gave it all up as a bad job, decided rationality was the way to go, and pretty much never looked back.  (I do still own several Tarot card decks, however, which I can appreciate both from the fact that they're beautiful and from a touch of shame-faced nostalgia.)

But it's astonishing how few people go this direction.  The combination of confirmation bias (accepting slim evidence because it supports what we already believed) and dart-thrower's bias (noticing or giving more weight to hits than misses) is a mighty powerful force in the human psyche.  Add to that the fact that for certain miserable members of humanity, hoodwinking the gullible into belief is big business, and it's sad, though no real wonder, that when I type "astro-" into a Google search, "astrology" comes up before "astronomy."

Anyhow, those are my thoughts for a Monday morning, spurred by my looking for another book and happening to notice the Cavendish book still on my bookshelf.  It resides with various other books on ghosts, vampires, UFOs, cryptids, werewolves, and the like, and several with titles like Twenty Terrifying Unsolved Mysteries.  It's still entertaining to read that stuff even if I don't believe any of it.

On the other hand, if I get visited tonight by Abuldiz or whoever-the-fuck, I guess it'll serve me right.

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Fox on the run

Seems like for each of the last few years, we've said, "Well, at least next year can't be as bad as this year was!"  Then, somehow, it is.  Or worse.  As a friend of mine put it, "I'd like to find out who started this worldwide game of Jumanji and punch the shit out of him."

And of course, with so many things going wrong, people start casting about for some kind of underlying cause (other than "humans sure can be assholes sometimes").  I wasn't surprised, for example, that the extremely Reverend Pat Robertson said the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was a sign that the End Times were beginning.

Well, "not surprised" isn't exactly accurate, because I honestly thought Pat Robertson was dead.  What is he, like 124 years old?  In any case, once I realized that he's still alive, his reaction wasn't surprising, because he thinks everything is a sign of the End Times.  I have this mental image of him shuffling around his house in his bathrobe and jamming his little toe on the leg of the coffee table, and shouting, "And the Lord sayeth, 'When thou bangest thy toe on the furniture, prepare ye well, for the Four Horsemen are on their way!  Can I get an amen?"

So I suppose it's natural enough to look for a reason when things start going wrong, even though in my opinion, Pat Robertson is nuttier than squirrel shit.  But in any case, now we have another candidate for an explanation besides the End Times as predicted in the Book of Revelation:

The Japanese Killing Stone spontaneously split in half last week.

If you haven't heard of the Japanese Killing Stone, well, neither had I until I read that it had fallen apart.  Its Japanese name is Sessho-seki (which literally means "killing stone"), and it's near the town of Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, in central Honshu.  The story is that there was a beautiful woman named Tamamo-no-Mae, who was actually a kitsune (an nine-tailed fox spirit) in disguise.  She was working for an evil daimyo (feudal lord) who was trying to overthrow the Emperor Konoe, but she was exposed as a fox spirit and killed by the warrior Miura-no-Suke, and her body turned into a stone.

But her evil influence didn't end there.  Tamamo-no-Mae's spirit was locked inside the stone but kept its capacity for inflicting harm, and anyone who touched it died.  The site of the stone is cordoned off; the Japanese government says it's because the area is volcanic and there are sulfurous fumes that could be dangerous.

Sessho-seki [Image is in the Public Domain]

To which I respond, "Sure, that's the reason.  Mmm-hmm."  I mean, really.  What am I supposed to believe?  That there are purely natural dangers caused by understood geological processes, or that the spirit of an evil nine-tailed fox woman has been trapped inside a rock that can kill you when you touch it?

I know which one sounds the most plausible to me.

Tamamo-no-Mae and Miura-no-Suke, as depicted by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1849) [Image is in the Public Domain]

So anyway, apparently people are freaking out that the rock spontaneously split in half, despite the authorities saying, "A small crack had appeared naturally some years ago, and grew deeper until finally the stone fell apart."  The idea is now that the Sessho-seki has split, it released the spirit of Tamamo-no-Mae, who will proceed to wreak havoc once again.

My response is: go ahead, Foxy Lady, do your worst.  My guess is anything you could do would pale in comparison to what's already going on in the world.  It'd be kind of an anticlimax, wouldn't it?  You wait for centuries, trapped inside a rock, concocting all sorts of evil plans, and then the rock breaks and releases you, and you explode out and start causing trouble, and... no one notices.  

Tamamo-no-Mae: Ha ha!  I am free!  I shall cause chaos wherever I go!  The weather shall go haywire!  Wars will break out!  The evil shall go unpunished!

Us:  Is that all?

Tamamo-no-Mae:  Um... what do you mean, is that all?  Isn't that bad enough?

Us (laughing bitterly):  Look around you.  You think you can do better than this?

Tamamo-no-Mae (horrified):  Oh.  Oh, my.  Okay... um... do you think you could get some Superglue and help me put this rock back together?

Us:  Yeah, it'd probably be for the best.  Can you take us with you?

Anyhow, if things start getting worse, and you're wondering what's the cause, maybe it's the depredations of an evil nine-tailed fox spirit from Japan.  And after all, the whole "End Times" thing is getting a little hackneyed, don't you think?  Especially since the evangelicals have been predicting the End Times several times a year for hundreds of years, and nothing much has happened.  Not even one Apocalyptic Horseperson, much less four.  So at least this would be a new and different reason as to why everything's so fucked up lately.

Makes as much sense as any other explanation I've heard, although there's still something to be said for "humans sure can be assholes sometimes."

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Get thee behind me, Rover

If you live in Japan, own a dog, and have more money than sense, I've got good news for you: you can pay ¥ 31,000 (about US $297) to have a Shinto priest perform an exorcism on your canine companion.

I'm not making this up.  According to an article by E. S. Huffman over at UpRoxx, the D+ Spa in Kagoshima Prefecture is offering a special deal wherein you can come over with Fido, and a certified Shinto priest from the nearby Shingariyu Shrine will get rid of whatever evil spirits your dog has in attendance.

"Seven-year-old, 10-year-old, and 13-year-old dogs need to be careful of their health, as it’s easier in those years for them to get diseases of aging," the D+ website explains.  After all, it couldn't be because by the time dogs get to be ten years old, they're moving into the age bracket euphemistically known as "getting up there in years."

On the other hand, if creaky joints, bad eyesight, and wrinkles are caused by evil spirits that you could actually potentially get rid of, that'd be good news for People Of A Certain Age.  Like myself.  Unfortunately, however, D+ doesn't offer exorcisms for humans yet, only dogs.  And if the whole thing brings up mental images of Linda Blair puking up pea soup all over the place, not to worry; the exorcism ritual only lasts thirty minutes, is apparently calm and peaceful, and afterwards the newly-cleansed dogs get to go for a swim in a dogs-only pool.  Then, according to the website, they "are reunited with their owners for a relaxing meal and champagne."

Me, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to give a dog champagne.  But maybe the bubbles keep the evil spirits from returning, I dunno.

Actual photo from the D+ website of a poodle, settling in for a nice post-exorcism nosh

What comes to my mind, besides "Are you people nuts?  Or what?", is that in my experience all dogs have weird, quirky habits, so if you're attributing canine oddities to evil spirits, then every domesticated dog I've ever met must be possessed.  In my long years of dog ownership, I've known dogs who:

• never figured out that you can't walk through a sliding glass door
• tried to herd our cats
• thought a stuffed toy was a live squirrel and stared at it for hours on end waiting for it to move
• begged for cucumbers but completely ignored us when we were cooking steak
• was barking outside like a lunatic, and upon investigation, it turned out she was barking at a stick
• had a mortal hatred of ping-pong balls
• barked furiously at strangers -- until they walked in the front door, at which point everyone apparently becomes a friend
• would suddenly turn vicious and block the door, growling and snarling, when visitors tried to leave

I sort of doubt that any of this could be fixed by exorcism.  Myself, I've always thought that domestication just makes animals act weird.  In order for a formerly-wild animal to cohabit successfully with humans, it must kind of screw up the mental circuitry on some level.

On the other hand, if you want my vote for a species that really could use some intervention, evil-spirit-wise, I'd suggest looking at cats.  On a recent visit to a friend's house, I met a cat whose preferred mode of expressing affection is to jump on the top of the chair you're sitting in and bite a chunk out of your scalp.  Another friend has a cat who likes to climb into your lap, reach up with both paws, and attempt to give you a nipple piercing right through your shirt.

You have to wonder what a Shinto priest could do about that.

Anyhow, if you're ever in Japan with your dog, consider whether a family outing for a canine exorcism might be right for you.  As for me, I need to sign off here so I can go let my dog out, so she can go stand at the end of our dock and bark at her own reflection in the pond.

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I've always had a fascination with how our brains work, part of which comes from the fact that we've only begun to understand it.  My dear friend and mentor, Dr. Rita Calvo, professor emeritus of human genetics at Cornell University, put it this way.  "If I were going into biology now, I'd study neuroscience.  We're at the point in neuroscience now that we were in genetics in 1900 -- we know it works, we can see some of how it works, but we know very little in detail and almost nothing about the underlying mechanisms involved.  The twentieth century was the century of the gene; the twenty-first will be the century of the brain."

We've made some progress in recent years toward comprehending the inner workings of the organ that allows us to comprehend anything at all.  And if, like me, you are captivated by the idea, you have to read this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation: neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett's brilliant Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

In laypersons' terms, Barrett explains what we currently know about how we think, feel, remember, learn, and experience the world.  It's a wonderful, surprising, and sometimes funny exploration of our own inner workings, and is sure to interest anyone who would like to know more about the mysterious, wonderful blob between our ears.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Djinn and tonic

This week we've been looking at some pretty deep topics, such as the effects of dark matter on star position in the Milky Way, what causes some plants to be essentially immortal, and the discovery of mineral grains that predate the Earth's formation.  So it seems fitting to address next something that is, I'm sure, on all of your minds, namely: what do I do if my house is occupied by an evil djinn?

The djinn, sometimes spelled "jinn" or anglicized as "genie," are spirits who you find in Middle Eastern mythology.  While people who are in the know about such things make it clear that djinns are not inherently good or evil, they have the tendency to be swayed toward the evil side of things.  Muhammad supposedly was sent not only to bring the word of Allah to humans but to the djinn as well, but even so they have a reputation for having some seriously ill will toward the rest of us.  Folk tales from that region are rife with djinn living in "unclean places" and possessing humans (the outcome is seldom good).

So pretty clearly, this is a group of beings we should all be on the lookout for.  This is where a guy named Saad Ja'afar comes in.  Because he is the world's foremost -- perhaps the world's only -- professional djinn trapper.

My first thought on reading this was to say, "um... his name is... Ja'afar?  You have got to be making this up."  Because any of you with children will undoubtedly know that this is the name (although usually spelled "Jafar") of the evil Grand Vizier in Aladdin.  But apparently yes, the djinn trapper is indeed Saad Ja'afar, and his business (Pakar Tangkap Jin), based in Johor Bahru, at the southern tip of Malaysia, is who you want to contact if you're being bothered by scary blue guys who live inside lamps.

Zawba'a, one of the kings of the djinn, with some of his attendant djinn servants.  Which brings up the question of why so many of them are blue.  Are they cold?  Maybe they should try putting some clothes on. (From a late 14th century Arabic manuscript) [Image is in the Public Domain]

As far as Ja'afar goes, his rates are pretty reasonable.  For one djinn removal, he charges 200 ringgit ($48.75 at current exchange rates), and he can even work remotely.  "I don’t have to physically be there at the location to catch the ghost," Ja'afar says.  "Before this, the farthest I’ve captured a djinn was at Sabah.  We keep the spirit and djinn close to the mosque to encourage it to repent."

It bears mention that Sabah isn't exactly right next door to Johor Bahru.  The only way to get from one to the other is via a two-hour flight.  So it's just as well he can trap troublesome djinn without leaving the comfort of his home.  I wouldn't want him to have to fly all the way to upstate New York if we were having djinn trouble, because I did that flight before and it was kind of miserable.  Kuala Lumpur to New York City was a sixteen-hour flight, meaning you could watch a long movie, sleep for six hours, and you'd still have seven hours left to go.

I have never been so glad to get off an airplane in my life.

Anyhow, Ja'afar has a Facebook page (because of course he does), and on it he has accounts of his successful captures, including a spirit-realm battle he got in with a bomoh, a Malaysian shaman, who brought a djinn back into a house he'd just cleared.  I can understand how frustrating this must have been.  I face that all the time with my dogs tracking in mud on floors I just cleaned, and they're not even doing it using magic.

Apparently, once Ja'afar captures the djinn, he imprisons it in a bottle, which I guess makes sense given the whole genie-in-a-lamp thing.  So it seems like he's got quite a lucrative racket going.  He never has to leave his house, and all he needs is a supply of glass bottles and corks and a good schtick to tell his customers about how dire the battle was, but he was victorious and the djinn is vanquished, and he gets paid.

Almost makes me wish I had thought of it first.

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This week's Skeptophilia book of the week is scarily appropriate reading material in today's political climate: Robert Bartholomew and Peter Hassall's wonderful A Colorful History of Popular Delusions.  In this brilliant and engaging book, the authors take a look at the phenomenon of crowd behavior, and how it has led to some of the most irrational behaviors humans are prone to -- fads, mobs, cults, crazes, manias, urban legends, and riots.

Sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking, this book looks at how our evolutionary background as a tribal animal has made us prone all too often to getting caught up in groupthink, where we leave behind logic and reason for the scary territory of making decisions based purely on emotion.  It's unsettling reading, but if you want to understand why humans all too often behave in ways that make the rational ones amongst us want to do repeated headdesks, this book should be on your list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!] 

ManBatPig

Reports are coming in from KwaMbonambi, a village in the KwaZulu Natal District of South Africa, of a shapeshifting monster terrorizing small children.

The monster was first spotted by a seven-year-old, who reported that he was at school and was cornered by "a short man with a long beard" in the bathroom.  Instead of looking for a creepy child molester type, the boy's mother came to the only reasonable conclusion: her son was being visited by an evil spirit called a "Tokoloshe."

So I started looking through my top-secret Cryptozoology Files to see if I could find anything out about the Tokoloshe, or if this was just a one-off.

Once I looked into it, I kind of regretted opening that particular can of worms.

Apparently this is far from the first time such a creature has been seen.  Reports of a Tokoloshe visitation from Karoo District back in 2013 gave us a clearer picture.  About those sightings, local warrant officer Zandisile Nelani said, "The community says that the monster changes shape while you are looking at it."  He went on to say that the monster had started out as a man in a suit, but had changed to a pig and then to a bat.  He hastened to add that although the creature had scared a number of residents, no people or livestock had been harmed by it.

This incident reminded me, against my will of the "ManBearPig" episode of South Park, which I had forgotten about, and honestly, I kind of wish it had stayed forgotten.

As little as two months ago, there were Tokoloshe sightings in Mozambique, where the creature was accused of running around having sex with married women, but was finally captured and paraded through the village.  Here are a couple of photographs:

Because that's not fake-looking at all.

There is a long-standing tradition of the Tokoloshe (or Thokolozi) from the southern parts of Africa.   Descriptions vary.  We have the little bearded man sighted by the first grader in KwaZulu Natal, and the wild-haired demon in the photograph above; but informed sources tell me that the Tokoloshe most often appears as a brown-skinned man, hairy all over, with only one buttock.  This last feature seems a little odd, and makes me wonder if he only has a right butt cheek, only a left one, or just one huge symmetrically-placed butt cheek, the last-mentioned option bringing up other anatomical considerations that I would prefer not to think about.  

On the other hand, the photograph of the sighting in Mozambique clearly shows a guy with the standard-issue two butt cheeks.  So not sure what to make of that.

Another characteristic of the Tokoloshe is that he is said to be very well-endowed in the reproductive equipment department.  Without going into graphic detail, let's just say that he is well-endowed to the point that tighty-whities would be pretty much out of the question.  Between that and having only one buttock, getting fitted at the tailor's must be a fairly humiliating experience, and possibly accounts for his legendary ill temper.

So we have here one very odd-looking dude.  But the key feature that identifies all three of the above sightings as the Tokoloshe is his shapeshifting ability.  The Tokoloshe carries around with him a magic pebble that allows him to become invisible and look like pretty much anything he wants to; in fact, he is said to be able to take the shape of many different animals, and also to fly.  So I think we have a definite match.

Being able to look like like whoever you want would also be handy given the Tokoloshe's legendary propensity for seducing women.  If you get accused of sleeping with another man's wife, you can just say, "It wasn't me, it was just the Tokoloshe impersonating me."  Which is pretty convenient.

What should the inhabitants of the villages visited by this evil spirit do?  One possibility is to make a Tokoloshe Repellant, but the problem is that the recipe I found requires Tokoloshe fat.  Obtaining that would seem to be a bit of a stumbling block, although one site I looked at said that it might be purchased from a muti, or purveyor of traditional medicine.  You can also appease the Tokoloshe by putting out food for him, but you must remember not to put salt in it; he apparently shares with many European spirit creatures the characteristic of not liking salt.  Sometimes witches subdue a Tokoloshe, and keep him around for their own purposes, about which I will leave you to speculate.  They do this by a combination of magic and luring him with food, and keep him docile by "trimming the hair over his eyes."

As for the mom of the first grader, she was counseled by Thandonjani Hlongwane, chairman of the KwaZulu Natal Traditional Healers' Association, to pay a hundred rand to get some "strong mufti" (magic) to keep the Tokoloshe away and protect her son.  The mother has taken her son out of school, a decision supported by the chairman of the local school board, Paradise Jali, who said, “We will establish a regular prayer programme.  That is the only way we can fight this.”

Because clearly fighting one superstition with a different superstition is the best way to handle things.

So the good news for the people of South Africa and Mozambique is that Tokoloshes mostly seem fairly harmless.  Apparently even the women who have been seduced by Tokoloshes report that the experience was pretty pleasant, and in fact there are some reports that women who have had sex with a Tokoloshe will never be satisfied by sex with their husbands and boyfriends.   In either case, the bad news (other than the obvious bad news to the aforementioned husbands and boyfriends) is that there doesn't seem to be much they can do about his presence.  They only have two choices, as far as I can see: either to put out food to appease a magical spirit with enormous junk and one buttock, or to try not being so damn gullible.

I know which one I think would be more effective.

Get thee behind me, Rover

If you live in Japan, own a dog, and have more money than sense, I've got good news for you: you can pay ¥ 31,000 (about US $297) to have a Shinto priest perform an exorcism on your canine companion.

I'm not making this up.  According to an article by E. S. Huffman over at UpRoxx, the D+ Spa in Kagoshima Prefecture is offering a special deal wherein you can come over with Fido, and a certified Shinto priest from the nearby Shingariyu Shrine will get rid of whatever evil spirits your dog has in attendance.

"Seven-year-old, 10-year-old, and 13-year-old dogs need to be careful of their health, as it’s easier in those years for them to get diseases of aging," the D+ website explains.  After all, it couldn't be because by the time dogs get to be ten years old, they're moving into the age bracket euphemistically known as "getting up there in years."

On the other hand, if creaky joints, bad eyesight, and wrinkles are caused by evil spirits, that'd be good news for people Of A Certain Age.  Like myself.  Unfortunately, however, D+ doesn't offer exorcisms for humans yet, only dogs.  And if the whole thing brings up mental images of Linda Blair puking up pea soup all over the place, not to worry; the exorcism ritual only lasts thirty minutes, is apparently calm and peaceful, and afterwards the newly-cleansed dogs get to go for a swim in a dogs-only pool.  Then, according to the website, they "are reunited with their owners for a relaxing meal and champagne."

Me, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to give a dog champagne.  But maybe the bubbles keep the evil spirits from returning, I dunno.

Actual photo from the D+ website of a poodle, settling in for a nice post-exorcism nosh

What I wonder, besides "Are you people nuts?  Or what?", is that in my experience all dogs have weird, quirky habits, so if you're attributing canine oddities to evil spirits, then every domesticated dog I've ever met must be possessed.  In my long years of dog ownership, I've known dogs who:

• never figured out that you can't walk through a sliding glass door
• tried to herd our cats
• thought a stuffed toy was a live squirrel and stared at it for hours on end waiting for it to move
• begged for cucumbers but completely ignored us when we were cooking steak
• had a mortal hatred of ping-pong balls
• barked furiously at strangers -- until they walked in the front door, at which point everyone apparently becomes a friend
• would suddenly turn vicious and block the door, growling and snarling, when visitors tried to leave

I sort of doubt that any of this could be fixed by exorcism.  Myself, I've always thought that domestication just makes animals act weird.  In order for a formerly-wild animal to cohabit successfully with humans, it must kind of screw up the mental circuitry on some level.

On the other hand, if you want my vote for a species that really could use some intervention, evil-spirit-wise, I'd suggest looking at cats.  On a recent visit to a friend's house, I met a cat whose preferred mode of affection is to jump on the top of the chair you're sitting in and bite a chunk out of your scalp.  Another friend has a cat who likes to climb into your lap, reach up with both paws, and attempt to give you a nipple piercing right through your shirt.

You have to wonder what a Shinto priest could do about that.

Anyhow, if you're ever in Japan with your dog, consider whether a family outing for a canine exorcism might be right for you.  As for me, I need to sign off here so I can go let my dog out, so she can spend the next three hours sitting completely motionless staring at a tree in the back yard, waiting for squirrels to spontaneously drop from its branches or something.

Ghosts of Christmas present

Ouija boards are back in the news again, perhaps because of the recent release of the movie Ouija, which has people stirred up despite getting a 7% rating over at the site Rotten Tomatoes and reviews such as, "... strikingly like High School Musical, only with screaming."

Be that as it may, there is something about Ouija boards that really scares people.  Tales abound of people getting freaked out by messages from demons or evil spirits, even though the stories are usually of the "I heard it from my best friend's uncle's barber's daughter" type.  When you try it yourself, you quickly find that any "messages" that come through are banal at best, and easily explained through the ideomotor effect.  (For a really cool experiment that demonstrates this conclusively, go here.)

Further, there was a test run by none other than James Randi, where people who believed in the powers of Ouija boards were blindfolded and then asked their spirit friends to deliver messages anyhow.  The spirits all of a sudden seemed unable to see, themselves, and what they put out was gibberish, unless there's a language in the spirit world where "GHISKNNDPSBPLG" means something.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But still, the risks from demons and ghosts is ever-present for some people, and there are many warnings to "stay away from those things," even though you'd think Hasbro wouldn't sell many of 'em if every kid who used them ended up possessed.

This fact evidently has escaped some of the devout, who are alarmed by the hype that the movie has caused.  Ouija boards are expected to be a sellout this Christmas, which has freaked out the powers-that-be enough that a priest in Ireland made a public statement -- although under conditions of anonymity.  Maybe he didn't want the demons and evil spirits to find out he's been trash-talking them, assuming the demons and evil spirits read The Independent, which is where the story was covered.

"It's easy to open up evil spirits but it's very hard to get rid of them," the priest said in an interview.  "People, especially young people and teenagers who are likely to experiment with Ouija boards on a whim, can be very naive in thinking that they are only contacting the departed souls of loved-ones when they attempt to communicate with the dead using the boards.  It's like going to some parts of Africa and saying I'm personally immune to Ebola.  But it does leave people open to all kinds of spiritual dangers.  People don't intend any spiritual harm by it, but we live in a spiritual realm and you have no way to control what may impinge on you."

Yes, it's just like saying you're immune to Ebola, except that Ebola actually exists.  

The anonymous priest wasn't the only one to make a public statement.  Church of England vicar Peter Irwin-Clark is equally appalled by the surge in popularity of the toy, and told a reporter for The Daily Mail, "It is absolutely appalling.  I would very strongly advise parents not to buy Ouija boards for children.  It’s like opening a shutter in one’s soul and letting in the supernatural.  There are spiritual realities out there and they can be very negative.  I would hugely recommend people not to have anything to do with the occult.  People find they are having strange dreams, strange things happening to them, even poltergeist activity."

I wonder if that's what's wrong with my wife, who two nights ago dreamed she was participating in a chicken rodeo.

So anyway.  Predictably I'm siding with James Randi et al., who think that the Ouija board is just a silly toy.  I'd invite anyone who is looking for a Christmas present for me, though, to get me one, and it will occupy an honored spot next to my decks of Tarot cards.  I'm assuming that this will be a more economical choice than the other thing I want, which is a "haunted sword" that appeared over at Craigslist a couple of days ago, with a price-tag of $150.  You can get a Ouija board over at Target for around $20, which I think you have to admit is quite a savings.

Demon-B-Gon

I usually try not to spend much time on stories from people who are simply delusional, but this one was too good to pass up.

Paul Schroeder is a frequent writer for UFO Digest, which should put you on notice right from the get-go.  He made a brief appearance in Skeptophilia a couple of years ago, with a claim that a Reptilian had visited him in his shower, causing "unprovoked sexual urges and negative ideations."  But Schroeder hasn't made the pages of this blog with near the regularity of, say, Diane Tessman or Dirk VanderPloeg.

This time, though, Schroeder seems to have a winner, with a piece called "Self-help Against Demons."  In it, we learn how to detect a demonic presence (I wouldn't have thought it'd be that hard, what with the sulfur and brimstone smell, not to mention the appearance of a giant half-naked guy with wings), and also how to get rid of said demon once he shows up.

He starts off with a bang -- literally:

Lightning flashes in a thunderstorm, which hit trees and go into the ground, act as a food media, a power grid for demonics to utilize and to manifest.  When kaleidoscopic colors and animated figures storm your mind's eye, when you close your eyes to retire to sleep, you are with a demonic, standing gauntly by your bedside.

They use this animated psychic fascination to keep children awake all night, night after night, to weaken them towards jumping onto and then into, children's energies field.  Demons and other nasty spirits, often visit, but don't normally reside for long in our 3-D physical dimensional plane of existence.  Since demons do not have a corporeal, earthly form, it is very energy costly and quite difficult for them to wander freely, or to have their full destructive force, in our physical dimensional world.  But they CAN and DO hitchhike around, bound to human- others' energies.

So that's why horror movies usually seem to involve thunderstorms.  I'd wondered why, for example, evil ghosts always waited until night fell, and the storm started up, before appearing.  If what they're trying to do is terrify people, I've always thought it would be far more effective for a spirit to appear in broad daylight, right in the middle of a tenth-grade biology class, for example.

I know that's what I'm going to do, if I ever get to be a ghost.

Be that as it may, Schroeder tells us that it's easy to get rid of a demon, once it appears:

It is remarkably true, as is much, in wrongly scorned and forgotten legends, that ghosts and demons cannot cross a running stream.  Running water creates a subtle yet powerful electrical current, that will easily de-manifest them.  One beset with demons can easily surround one's feet with a running garden hose to break connections.  Underground streams, sewers, water mains, and below pavement conduits exist, and in much the same fashion, function as major obstacles to demonic motility and mobility.

Man, I bet Faust wishes he'd known that!  Of course, he lived in the days before garden hoses, so that might have been a problem.  But if running water is all it takes, I wonder if you could just pee on a demon?  If I were a demon, I'd find that highly discouraging.

In other good news, Schroeder tells us that demons can't stick around for long unless we let them:

(D)emons are vested with temporary powers to be used here - unless and until they can find a way to gather more energy.  For them, it is much as swimming is, for us; one can dive down deeply into the water and hold one's breath for some time...  After a short while, out of oxygen, we need to come back to "our world" breaking the water's surface.

It's the same for demons.

Demons "hold their breath"to come into our world for a time, but can't stay for long.  A major exception is similar to swimming.  Just as longer dives are enabled with breathing apparatus, a demonic can have longer stays in our existence if they have energy.

Given that there's not much we can do about lightning storms, we have to be careful about our own "negative energy," Schroeder says:

To keep demons from affecting you, control your energy.

Visualize that you have large extension (imagined) arms, that lightly brush your body's skin, from top to bottom and back again; this astral exercise changes the magnetic field of your body and affects a demon like a magnet affects iron filings on a sheet of paper, dislodging EMF connections.

Avoid anger and unlearn fear and remain calm as a heavy stone dropped into a deep lake; abandon resentments and grudges; let absolutely nothing ruffle your feathers.

Evil spirits need negative energy, so starve a demon of all negative energy, effectively suffocate it from this world, a diver with no oxygen.

Negative energy is the engine that makes it work.

Well, that seems like good advice for a variety of reasons, even if you don't weigh in "suffocating demons" with the rest.

So, anyhow, that's our self-help advice for the day.  Stay away from lightning strikes, always have your garden hose handy, and accentuate the positive.  Sure seems like an easier solution than the Catholic Church's answer, with all of the exorcism rituals, and having to remember to say "Vade retro Satana," and all that.

On the other hand, I think if a demon ever shows up in my house, I'm gonna just try peeing on him.  So be forewarned, Beelzebub.

The backfiring demons of Romania

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're keeping a close eye on a story out of Romania.  It's got all of the necessary elements -- some religious guys who are a little loony, a true believer who is even loonier, and a supernatural entity with an unfortunate problem.  [Source]

The whole thing began when Madalin Ciculescu, a 34-year-old lawyer from the town of Pitesti in Romania, enlisted the help of four priests in ridding his business of demons.  According to Ciculescu, the problem wasn't just the presence of the evil spirits, but that they had a rather... um... malodorous gastrointestinal condition, the results of which were making it impossible to do business.

"When I am at home," Ciculescu told reporters, "they switch the TV on and off all the time, they make foul smells that give me headaches and basically roam unhindered around my house and my business."

So, anyway, the priests dutifully showed up to show the farting demons the door, and performed the ritual exorcism to remove them.  Unfortunately for Ciculescu, though, the whole "vade retro satana" routine didn't make any difference, and the disturbances continued.

And Ciculescu sued the church for "religious malpractice."

"If they (the priests) represent the way of God, then God's ways are crooked.  They did not remove the demons that made these bad smells as they promised to do, and I still see all sorts of demons in the form of animals, usually crows but also other such things, that are making my life miserable."

He included the bishop of the diocese, Constantin Argatu, in the suit, alleging that since the bishop was supposed to be overseeing what the priests were doing, he was guilty of malfeasance as well for not instructing them properly.

Now, you can see how to an atheist, this is all kinds of funny.  A guy plagued by nonexistent evil spirits call priests who are supposed to get a nonexistent god to expel them, and then is surprised when nothing happens.  The flatulence adds a whole extra middle-school-level humor to the whole thing, but I'm not so sophisticated that I can't laugh at a good fart joke.

Ciculescu wasn't laughing, though, and at his court date brought his mother as a witness.  I'm not sure that she helped his credibility, though.  On the witness stand she agreed that her son was plagued by flatulent demons (so far, so good).  But then she added that she sees a "black shadow" following her around, said that the evil spirits liked to hang out in the fridge, and mentioned that her hair dryer was "possessed."

Okay, mom, thanks for helping... you can get off the witness stand, now.

The outcome of the case is interesting.  The courts found in favor of the church, which is unsurprising from the standpoint of "who is richer and more powerful?", but which casts a rather harsh light on the church's claims.  Do evil spirits exist?  The church is the one who is claiming that they do.  Can priests perform an exorcism, or is the whole thing a pointless ritual?  I thought the whole Christian idea was that god is more powerful than the devil, and that you can accomplish anything in god's name.  So, do you people really believe in what you're preaching, or not?

The double standard is curious, and it doesn't just apply here.  Consider all of the biblical stories of god telling so-and-so to smite various people.  The Old Testament in particular is full of references to "holy men of the lord" killing the unworthy, in several places even the children (I'm remembering especially the lovely line from Psalm 137, "Happy the man who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rock").  And they got nothing but approval for these actions.  Today, if a person kills somebody, and then tells the authorities they did it because "god told them to," they're referred for psychiatric evaluation.  No Christian I've ever heard has spoken up and said, "Wait, god told him to do that!  That makes it okay!"  What, doesn't god like his followers to kill the unworthy any more?  Why was that kind of thing edifying (and justifiable) 3,000 years ago, and now it means you're crazy?

Or does it just mean that deep down, you know that god isn't really talking to anyone?

Anyway, Ciculescu lost his suit, and he and his mom have to return to dealing with farting demons in the house.  You have to feel at least a little sorry for them; they obviously believe that their house is possessed (not to mention the fridge and hair dryer).  Also, being around someone with GI problems is no picnic.  I have a dog, Grendel, who gets periodic gas attacks that can clear a packed room in five seconds flat, and that's bad enough.  I can only imagine how much worse a demon would be.

You know, sulfur and brimstone and all.

For sale: one wine cabinet. Comes with an evil spirit.

Coming on the heels of yesterday's post about a study that showed that once our brains are primed to notice paranormal occurrences, we will, and in fact, will proceed to notice more and more as time goes on -- today we have the story of the haunted wine cabinet.

This one is courtesy of a friend, who asked me if I'd ever heard of the "Dybbuk Box," and said she had a co-worker who found the story terrifying.  I told her I hadn't.  But anything that scares someone is bound to be interesting to me, so I looked into it, and lo and behold, it has its own Wikipedia page and a website devoted to the legend.

The basic story goes something like this.

In 2003, a writer named Kevin Mannis bought a wooden wine cabinet at an estate sale.  The box had belonged to a Holocaust survivor named Havela, and Mannis found out from Havela's granddaughter that the box was a family heirloom.  At that point Mannis offered to sell, or even give, the box back to the family, feeling that given the family's history they should probably have it.  The granddaughter didn't want it; she said, in fact, that no one ever used it, because a dybbuk lived inside it.  "Actually," she told Mannis, "I don't advise you to open it."

*cue scary music*

A dybbuk is, according to Jewish folklore, the disembodied spirit of a dead person -- usually not a nice dead person, but someone who made people miserable while (s)he was alive and whom you can well imagine wanting to continue to do the same after kicking the bucket.  The difference is that the dybbuk, now that it is freed from its mortal body, can latch on to another one (the Jewish answer to demonic possession) or -- as in this case -- attach itself to an object.

So, of course, Mannis did exactly what you would do, if you were the stupid character in a horror movie who is the bold one and (not coincidentally) the first one to die: he opened the box.  And inside, he found an odd collection of items.  There were two pennies from the 1920s, a lock of blond hair bound with cord, a lock of dark hair bound with cord, a small statue engraved with the Hebrew word "shalom," a small wine goblet made of solid gold, one dried rose bud, and a candle holder with legs shaped like octopus tentacles.

Pretty atmospheric stuff, isn't it?  Suggestive.  And suggesting something is apparently exactly what it did.  Mannis proceeded to have a series of horrific nightmares of a terrifying old hag, and started getting terrible headaches.  The box, obviously, was to blame.  He realized that he had to somehow get rid of it, that the story of its being haunted was real and was clearly responsible for his experiences.  So he thought, "Here I have this box which is infested with a horrifying spirit of the damned, and which is making me miserable.  Hmm, what should I do with it?"  And he found the perfect solution.

He gave it to his mother as a birthday present.

And mom proceeded immediately to have a stroke.

After that, Mannis had second thoughts.  So he sold it on eBay.  Once you've given True Evil to your mother, and nearly killed her in the process, the next step is to sell it to an unwitting victim for profit, right?   The box was bought by Iosef Neitzke, a student at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, who reported that the box smelled either like "cat urine or jasmine flowers" (which is kind of an odd pairing), and that after he bought the box the light bulbs in his house started to burn out, and he started losing his hair.  So he sold it to Jason Haxton, who had been following Neitzke's experiences on a blog, and when Neitzke wrote that he had enough of cat piss, dead light bulbs, and hair loss, and was ready to get rid of the box, Haxton jumped at it.

Haxton proceeded to start coughing up blood, developed "head-to-toe welts," and had strange dreams.  So he thought that it was time to get the experts involved.  He got a hold of a couple of rabbis, who successfully locked the dybbuk back in the box, and then he hid the box in a secret location.

And no, he won't tell anyone where it is.

It's an interesting story; and significant, I think, that the first person who brought the box to light was a writer.  I'm speaking purely from personal experience, here, but fiction writers are pretty good at making weird shit up.  (See the sidebar for examples.)  And, as we saw yesterday, once you're looking for strange occurrences, you will find them -- or take perfectly normal things (like hair loss and bad dreams) and attribute them to the paranormal explanation you had already decided was true.  As far as the welts -- hives are known to be a common psychosomatic symptom, triggered not only by allergens but by emotional stress.  As skeptic Chris French of Goldsmiths College said of the dybbuk box, "(all of the owners were) already primed to be looking out for bad stuff.  If you believe you have been cursed, then inevitably you explain the bad stuff that happens in terms of what you perceive to be the cause.  Put it like this: I would be happy to own this object."

Still, that hasn't stopped the woo-woo crowd from capitalizing on the whole thing.  The dybbuk box story has been featured on Paranormal Witness, Mysterious Universe, and Paranormal State, and was the basis of the movie The Possession...

... which, of course, used the tag line "Based on a true story."

Interesting, given my fascination with weird claims, and all of the coverage it's gotten, that the whole thing was completely new to me.  So I give my friend some props for throwing it my way.  It's a fun story, even if I don't buy the supernatural explanation, which you pretty much knew I wouldn't in any case.  And like French, I'd love to own the box, not that that's likely.  I think I would be pretty resistant to its ill effects.  I'm firmly in possession of all of my hair, am not prone to welts, and given the fact that I own two aging cats there's already enough of a pervasive cat-piss smell in my den that it probably wouldn't make much difference if I stored it there.  And I'm already prone to insomnia and bad dreams.

Of course, there's the whole coughing-up-blood thing.  That would kind of suck, and I am sort of susceptible to bronchitis, especially in the winter.  So maybe I'm better off without it, after all.

Bias, self-awareness, and evil spirits

If there's anything that is a sign of true intelligence, it's caution regarding accepting ideas at face value.  The tendency of many, unfortunately, is to accept whatever is being said, or read, without question, especially if the claim comes from a reputable-looking source.

The issue becomes further complicated when we're biased ahead of time to accept (or reject) the source itself.  A study (here) by Charles Lord and Cheryl Taylor, of Texas Christian University, indicates that people are more likely to accept as correct false statements if they're told that the false statement came from someone whose political or religious stance they share, and conversely, to think true statements are false if they're told that the true statement came from a source in the opposite ideological camp.  Another study (here), by Emily Pronin, Daniel Yin, and Lee Ross of Stanford University, further indicates that just about everyone believes him/herself to be unbiased as compared to others; and worse still, a study by David Dunning (here) suggests that we are likely to rate ourselves as "above average" in knowledge, even in realms in which we score in the bottom quartile.

In other words, none of us is aware of how unperceptive, biased, and ignorant we actually are.

So, the salient question becomes: given that this is the case, how do we know what is true or false?

Well, in the absolute sense, we can't.  We're trapped inside our own skulls, and certainty about anything is probably unrealistic.  Science helps, because it establishes a baseline for validity, along with a reliance on hard data.  But even science doesn't solve the problem entirely; as James Burke, one of the finest thinkers I know of, said, in his wonderful documentary series The Day the Universe Changed, "Even when you get the raw data, the situation doesn't improve.  Because it isn't raw data.  It's what you expected to find.  You'd designed your equipment based on what you already thought was going to happen, so what your equipment is good at doing is finding the kind of data you reckoned you were going to find."

Still, the situation isn't as dire as all that, or we'd be in doubt about everything.  There are ways we can detect specious thinking, and an assortment of red flags that will alert us to bias, slant, and outright lies.  Let's look at one fairly simple example, which appeared in the rather goofy online magazine Who Forted? (although let's not dismiss it just because of the source; see paragraph 2).

Entitled "Bad Vibes: Can Dealing With Evil Spirits Kill You?", this article makes the claim that delving too deeply into the occult puts you in touch with "forces" that can have negative effects on your health.  "(W)hat about those few people who make it a career to deliver the mortal souls of sinners from the grip of evil?" the author, Greg Newkirk, asks.  "What of exorcists, demonologists, and ghost hunters with a flair for the dramatic and a reality show audience?  Is there a risk in placing yourself between a negative spirit and it’s [sic] prey?  Surely the religious will believe that it’s your own soul at stake, but do the scars of spiritual warfare have a physical manifestation?  What I’m asking essentially amounts to one question: Can the pursuit of evil spirits affect your heath?"

Newkirk then goes on to describe the various ways in which evil spirits could cause you harm, including (to his credit) the practitioner simply experiencing continuous stress, fear, and negative emotions -- i.e., the effect could be real even if the spirits themselves aren't.  (This, then, might qualify as a sort of nocebo effect -- a documented phenomenon in which a person who believes himself to be in harm's way from supernatural causes actually experiences negative health effects.)

The most interesting part, to me, is when Newkirk begins to list off various psychic researchers, exorcists, black magicians, and so on, gives a brief curriculum vitae for each, and describes how and at what age each died.  If you want the complete stories, check out the link, but here's a list of names, ages, and causes of death:

• Malachi Martin, 78, brain hemorrhage
• Ed Warren, 79, cause not listed (but was chronically ill during the last five years of his life)
• Lou Gentile, early 40s, cancer
• George Lutz, 59, cancer
• Tom Robertson, still alive (from his photograph, he appears to be 60-ish), has prostate cancer
• Ryan Buell, still alive (age 30), has pancreatic cancer

Several things jump out at me about this list:

1) It's short.  Beware of small sample sizes.  Given a small enough sample size, you can find just about any sort of statistically unlikely pattern you'd like.  (Sort of like if you rolled a die four times in a row, and got four sixes -- and decided that the chance of rolling sixes on a fair die was 100%.)

2)  Given that the writer already had decided that working with evil spirits is dangerous, it's pretty likely he'd have selected examples that supported the conclusion he already had, and ignored ones that didn't.  This kind of cherry-picking of data isn't always this obvious -- unfortunately.

3)  Even despite #2, this was the best he could do?  The first two men listed actually lived longer than the average American (US male average life expectancy currently stands at 75.6 years).  A third, Tom Robertson, is still alive, and has a form of cancer that is often treatable.  A fourth, George Lutz, died young of cancer -- but one of two photographs of Lutz in the article shows him sitting with a cigarette in his hand, in front of a full ashtray!

My point here is that there's a middle ground between accepting a source whole-cloth or rejecting it out of hand.  There's no substitute for taking a cautious look at the argument presented, asking yourself some pointed questions about bias and slant (especially, given the Lord and Taylor study, if the source is one you habitually agree or disagree with!), and engaging your brain, before deciding one way or the other.  And, if there isn't enough information to decide, there's nothing wrong with simply holding a judgment in abeyance for a while -- indefinitely, if need be.

A wonderful take on the whole idea of how to analyze claims is the chapter entitled "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" in Carl Sagan's wonderful book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (which, in my opinion, should be required reading in every high school science curriculum in the world).  Check it out, while you're taking a break from expelling evil spirits.  It'll be good for your health.