Dear Woo-Woos of the World,
Ten days? Ten days is all you could wait?
You just couldn't bear to have a little more time go by before you started blathering on once again about cycles and calendars and End Times? What, it wasn't enough to have four (count 'em, four -- May 21, October 21, December 12, and December 21) failed predictions of the end of the world in the last eight months, you now have to come up with a new one?
If for some reason, you want to take a closer look at the latest in idiotic prophecies, here's a page from the bizarre site Unexplained Mysteries entitled, "Quetzalcoatl: When Will He Return?" In case you were optimistic about the webpage's contents, it is far too much to hope for that the entire article consists of one sentence: "HE DOESN'T EXIST, YOU MORON." No, the writer, one L. M. Leteane, takes Central American Native mythology, and throws it in a blender with Babylonian mythology and Egyptian mythology (because of course, the more ridiculous incorrect beliefs you put together, the more logical things get), and comes up with the following:
The Egyptian god Thoth and the Central American god Quetzalcoatl are actually the same person, because obviously a dude with the head of an ibis and a winged, feathered snake are so similar that they must be one and the same. QT (as I will hereafter refer to this combined god) has a real fondness for numbers, and his magic number is either 52 or 144,000, the latter being because that's the number of blocks in the Great Pyramid of Giza. If you take 13 bunches of 144,000 days, you get about 5,125 years; that amount of years, if you start in 3,113 B.C. E. (why start there? Because the Sumerians, that's why. Stop asking questions) brings you to the year 2012. But we just finished 2012, and the world didn't end, amazingly enough. According to L. M. Leteane, that's because the year 2012 as an end date is "valid but not correct."
And no, I didn't make that quote up.
So, because QT also likes 52, add that number to 2012, and you get 2087. Add 720 years to that, and you get the year 2807, which contains "13 (almost 14) lots of 52, just as Thoth said!"
No, I didn't make that quote up, either.
Now, add 562 years to that, because of something about Pisces and astrology and who the hell knows, and you get the year 3369, which is when the "comet Marduk" is supposed to return. Marduk is a Babylonian god. Apparently, it's also a comet. Who knew? Not the astronomers, I'm guessing, because Leteane says it is "not a comet mapped in recent times."
Oh, yeah, and there was something in there about the Great Flood of Noah happening in 10,983 B.C.E. because that was when the Earth's axial tilt was "at its most precarious." What exactly this means, I'm not sure. Maybe Leteane thinks that if the Earth tilts too much, it falls over and dumps ocean all over the place. I dunno.
Anyhow, I'm gonna stop here, because the whole thing is making my head hurt. If you're curious, you can take a look at the link, or buy Leteane's book, They Came From the Sky. Me, I'm done with all this. All I can say is that I'm glad that the predicted End Date is 1,357 years from now, because even in a best-case scenario, I'll be long dead by that time and won't have to worry about nimrods further "analyzing" the situation and trying to decide why, despite all of this faultless logic, the world once again didn't end.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Monday, December 31, 2012
The year in review
Well, 2012 was an exciting year here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, which of course was exactly what we expected given all the hoopla surrounding the catastrophic End of the World that didn't occur right on schedule at its end. So I thought, as a way of ringing out the old and ringing in the new, it might be fun to look back at the top story for each month from the World of Woo-Woo. A way of celebrating, if you will, what irrational, counterfactual nonsense we had to endure to get to the end of the year. Each one comes with a link to the story, so that (if you'd like) you can go back and read the top stories of the past year at Skeptophilia.
In January, we had the announcement by the leaders of Iran that they had downed a US drone aircraft doing unauthorized surveillance of Iranian territory. Never content to let stories remain within the realm of what is, technically, real, Iranian engineer Mehran Tavakoli Keshe crowed proudly that the Iranian actions had been accomplished using spaceships powered by "field forces [sic]... generated by dark matter, regular matter, and antimatter."
In February, we were informed by Google Earth that they had not, in fact, found Atlantis off the coast of Africa. They offered explanations of why the Google Earth topographic seafloor maps seemed to show huge gridlines that looked like the remains of streets, city squares, and so on. This denial convinced everyone except the conspiracy theorists who made the claim in the first place.
March produced a story that generated the third-highest number of hits for Skeptophilia to date; the claim that NASA had discovered an alien-constructed monolith on Phobos, confirming the claims made in the famous historical documentary 2001: A Space Odyssey. Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to discover that the person who came up with this idea was our favorite frequent flyer of all: Richard C. Hoagland.
Another popular story cropped up in April, centering around the contention that "an oceanographer named Dr. Verlag Meyer" had found giant glass pyramids on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The story began to unravel when it was discovered that "Verlag" is not a name, but is the German word for "publishing house," and that the original story had come from none other than the Weekly World News.
In May, we had a claim by Seattle lawyer Andrew Basiago that the US government had developed, and was hiding evidence of, time travel. Basiago said he had been one of the test subjects, and was ready to blow the story wide open. Of course, Basiago is the same guy who said last year that he had once run into President Obama on Mars, so his credibility might not be all that great to start with.
June saw the release of a new biology textbook by a group called Accelerated Christian Education, and its adoption by government-funded charter schools in Louisiana. It was no surprise, given its origins, that the biology textbook claimed that evolution is a big fat lie made up by Satan-influenced evolutionary biologists like myself to doom your children to eternal hellfire. What was a bit of a surprise is that the textbook cites the existence of the Loch Ness Monster as evidence that evolution is false.
In July, the scientific world was rocked by the announcement from physicists at CERN that the long-sought Higgs boson -- the particle that confers the property of mass on ordinary matter -- was a reality. It didn't take long for the woo-woos to get on board, with such luminaries of the scientific world as Diane Tessman proclaiming that the Higgs proved the existence of truth, god, collective consciousness, and the "time of celestial ascension."
For much of August, I was on hiatus in the beautiful country of Malaysia for birdwatching, curry, and some much-needed R & R, but even so, there were several stories that we followed closely, here at Worldwide Wacko Watch. It is always to be hoped for that our reports will encourage people to behave in a more rational fashion, and the top story from August had a pretty important moral: don't dance on the side of a highway in a ghillie suit attempting to convince people they're seeing Bigfoot.
In September, NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity began to send back photographs from the Red Planet, exciting science buffs the world over. And it didn't take long for woo-woos with magnifying glasses and overactive imaginations to find all sorts of anomalous objects in those photographs, including a grinning alien woodchuck, a flip-flop, various UFOs, and a fossilized human finger.
October was a busy month, and it ended on a tragic note, with the late season "superstorm" Sandy striking the eastern coast of the United States, creating devastating damage from wind and flooding. And despite what you may have learned in your high school Earth Science class, this time it was not such phenomena as low-pressure systems, frontal boundaries, and steering currents that led to the formation of the storm; this one was caused by the most powerful meteorological force known to man -- gays.
In November, we had noted shrieking wingnut Paul Begley claiming that Obamacare should be repealed. The reason, Begley said, was not that it was too expensive, nor that it would harm the quality of American medical care; no, the reason was that there was a provision in the bill to microchip everyone in the US, and whichever one of us got the microchip with the number "666" would become the Antichrist.
No story during the year got more press coverage than the End of the World, scheduled to occur on December 21, 2012, and which was variously thought to be caused by the Mayans, zombies, the arrival of the Borg, the arrival of friendly aliens, a collision with the planet Nibiru, and an attack by Giant Space Bunnies from the Andromeda Galaxy. Okay, I made the last one up, but it hardly matters, because December 22 arrived with all of us still here, not that this will discourage the next End Times prediction from happening.
So, that's the year in stories. I hope you had a wonderful 2012, despite all of them, and from all of us here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, I wish you the happiest of New Years. Let's renew our dedication to science, skepticism, and critical thinking in the coming year, in the hopes that progress toward a rational world -- however incremental it may seem at times -- continues to happen.
In January, we had the announcement by the leaders of Iran that they had downed a US drone aircraft doing unauthorized surveillance of Iranian territory. Never content to let stories remain within the realm of what is, technically, real, Iranian engineer Mehran Tavakoli Keshe crowed proudly that the Iranian actions had been accomplished using spaceships powered by "field forces [sic]... generated by dark matter, regular matter, and antimatter."
In February, we were informed by Google Earth that they had not, in fact, found Atlantis off the coast of Africa. They offered explanations of why the Google Earth topographic seafloor maps seemed to show huge gridlines that looked like the remains of streets, city squares, and so on. This denial convinced everyone except the conspiracy theorists who made the claim in the first place.
March produced a story that generated the third-highest number of hits for Skeptophilia to date; the claim that NASA had discovered an alien-constructed monolith on Phobos, confirming the claims made in the famous historical documentary 2001: A Space Odyssey. Regular readers of this blog will be unsurprised to discover that the person who came up with this idea was our favorite frequent flyer of all: Richard C. Hoagland.
Another popular story cropped up in April, centering around the contention that "an oceanographer named Dr. Verlag Meyer" had found giant glass pyramids on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The story began to unravel when it was discovered that "Verlag" is not a name, but is the German word for "publishing house," and that the original story had come from none other than the Weekly World News.
In May, we had a claim by Seattle lawyer Andrew Basiago that the US government had developed, and was hiding evidence of, time travel. Basiago said he had been one of the test subjects, and was ready to blow the story wide open. Of course, Basiago is the same guy who said last year that he had once run into President Obama on Mars, so his credibility might not be all that great to start with.
June saw the release of a new biology textbook by a group called Accelerated Christian Education, and its adoption by government-funded charter schools in Louisiana. It was no surprise, given its origins, that the biology textbook claimed that evolution is a big fat lie made up by Satan-influenced evolutionary biologists like myself to doom your children to eternal hellfire. What was a bit of a surprise is that the textbook cites the existence of the Loch Ness Monster as evidence that evolution is false.
In July, the scientific world was rocked by the announcement from physicists at CERN that the long-sought Higgs boson -- the particle that confers the property of mass on ordinary matter -- was a reality. It didn't take long for the woo-woos to get on board, with such luminaries of the scientific world as Diane Tessman proclaiming that the Higgs proved the existence of truth, god, collective consciousness, and the "time of celestial ascension."
For much of August, I was on hiatus in the beautiful country of Malaysia for birdwatching, curry, and some much-needed R & R, but even so, there were several stories that we followed closely, here at Worldwide Wacko Watch. It is always to be hoped for that our reports will encourage people to behave in a more rational fashion, and the top story from August had a pretty important moral: don't dance on the side of a highway in a ghillie suit attempting to convince people they're seeing Bigfoot.
In September, NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity began to send back photographs from the Red Planet, exciting science buffs the world over. And it didn't take long for woo-woos with magnifying glasses and overactive imaginations to find all sorts of anomalous objects in those photographs, including a grinning alien woodchuck, a flip-flop, various UFOs, and a fossilized human finger.
October was a busy month, and it ended on a tragic note, with the late season "superstorm" Sandy striking the eastern coast of the United States, creating devastating damage from wind and flooding. And despite what you may have learned in your high school Earth Science class, this time it was not such phenomena as low-pressure systems, frontal boundaries, and steering currents that led to the formation of the storm; this one was caused by the most powerful meteorological force known to man -- gays.
In November, we had noted shrieking wingnut Paul Begley claiming that Obamacare should be repealed. The reason, Begley said, was not that it was too expensive, nor that it would harm the quality of American medical care; no, the reason was that there was a provision in the bill to microchip everyone in the US, and whichever one of us got the microchip with the number "666" would become the Antichrist.
No story during the year got more press coverage than the End of the World, scheduled to occur on December 21, 2012, and which was variously thought to be caused by the Mayans, zombies, the arrival of the Borg, the arrival of friendly aliens, a collision with the planet Nibiru, and an attack by Giant Space Bunnies from the Andromeda Galaxy. Okay, I made the last one up, but it hardly matters, because December 22 arrived with all of us still here, not that this will discourage the next End Times prediction from happening.
So, that's the year in stories. I hope you had a wonderful 2012, despite all of them, and from all of us here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, I wish you the happiest of New Years. Let's renew our dedication to science, skepticism, and critical thinking in the coming year, in the hopes that progress toward a rational world -- however incremental it may seem at times -- continues to happen.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true...
The cryptozoological world has been buzzing the last few days over the alleged capture of a Bigfoot by a Sasquatch research group called "Quantra."
The whole thing started with a press release from Ed Smith, Quantra's spokesperson, who had remarkably sketchy information on the whole thing. Here's a part of Smith's press release (you can read the whole thing here):
Then came the announcement yesterday that "Daisy" had been released. [Source]
Tim Fasano, whose specialty within cryptozoology is the Florida Skunk Ape (yes, of course they have specialties. With so many different kinds of creatures that don't exist, you can't study them all), made the following bizarre, rambling announcement, that he released on YouTube:
Because of the Geneva Convention.
I have to admit that, much though I would love it if Bigfoot turned out to be real (if for no other reason, for the jolt it would give to the anti-evolutionists), I was suspicious of this one right from the get-go. Why, if you were a Bigfoot researcher, wouldn't you get the media and reputable scientists in there immediately? It would, I would think, be a case for verifying the veracity of the claim right out of the starting gate, rather than pussyfooting around with "Daisy is being taken to an undisclosed location for examination."
At least, that's how I would handle it. I would be on the horn to vertebrate zoologists, primatologists, and the press before you could say "Return to Boggy Creek."
So, now, we are once again left with just a bunch of random claims from random people, with no hard evidence to back it up. As usual. And the cryptid hunters wonder why we skeptics scoff whenever they trot out new "evidence."
The whole thing started with a press release from Ed Smith, Quantra's spokesperson, who had remarkably sketchy information on the whole thing. Here's a part of Smith's press release (you can read the whole thing here):
It appears that an unprecedented event is in motion, having been on the inside of this operation and now observing from the outside is a defiant [sic] change.So, just about every woo-woo blog, website, Facebook group, and Twitter feed was hopping. Would this be what everyone's been waiting for... a real, live Bigfoot, available for scientists and interested laypeople to study? Would the world finally have an answer regarding the existence of sub-human proto-hominids on the North American continent, other than the members of the Westboro Baptist Church?
So here is what I know: "Daisy" has been moved to a examination area about 12 miles from the capture site at 3:17 this morning after being properly sedated. The capture site and examination area are on private property leased and or owned in order to conduct research and operations of this type.
This was confirmed by a source in the Quantra Group.
Here is what I don't know: The weight height hair color gender or location of capture. Or the health of the specimen.
Nor the actions leading up to the capture of the specimen.
Here is what I'm speculating: the examination team is continuing to assemble, examination should take 72 hours.
Then came the announcement yesterday that "Daisy" had been released. [Source]
Tim Fasano, whose specialty within cryptozoology is the Florida Skunk Ape (yes, of course they have specialties. With so many different kinds of creatures that don't exist, you can't study them all), made the following bizarre, rambling announcement, that he released on YouTube:
My phone has been ringing a lot. One of the unique positions I've been in, being a cab driver in Tampa, Florida, is that I go onto MacDill Air Force Base to pick up people at Central Command Headquarters. There's some high ranking officers that call me on my cell phone to pick them up when they need to go to the airport. I've got a close buddy who is a retired lieutenant general. That's three stars. This guy was up there. When I first met him, I asked him two questions: did we really land on the moon in 1969, and are there UFOs? And he laughed, and come to find out, he had more than a passing interest in paranormal activities, and this type of stuff. Anyway, let me cut to the chase. My contacts know at least two operators in Quantra, and here's what's happened within the last hour. Daisy has been released. Understand that. Daisy has been released. Upon conferring, they released that based upon the tenets of the Geneva Convention, a prisoner of war cannot be held when there is no war. This is akin to kidnapping. And based upon the specifics of how they understand the nature of the creature they had in their possession, not to face criminal charges, Daisy as we speak right now is being released at the point of capture. This was all a mistake... Most of the information that revolves around this, that they have gathered, will be destroyed. And like they say in Mission Impossible, "the secretary will disavow all knowledge."After cleaning up the coffee that I spit all over my computer when he mentioned the "Geneva Convention," I sat back, and thought, "Well, how else did you expect this to end?" Of course the Bigfoot had to disappear -- whether it was that it overpowered its guards and got away; somehow unlocked its cage; was rescued by its parents, Mr. and Mrs. Squatch; or... was released by the people who captured it.
Because of the Geneva Convention.
I have to admit that, much though I would love it if Bigfoot turned out to be real (if for no other reason, for the jolt it would give to the anti-evolutionists), I was suspicious of this one right from the get-go. Why, if you were a Bigfoot researcher, wouldn't you get the media and reputable scientists in there immediately? It would, I would think, be a case for verifying the veracity of the claim right out of the starting gate, rather than pussyfooting around with "Daisy is being taken to an undisclosed location for examination."
At least, that's how I would handle it. I would be on the horn to vertebrate zoologists, primatologists, and the press before you could say "Return to Boggy Creek."
So, now, we are once again left with just a bunch of random claims from random people, with no hard evidence to back it up. As usual. And the cryptid hunters wonder why we skeptics scoff whenever they trot out new "evidence."
Friday, December 28, 2012
Viking dinosaurs
One of the main differences between skeptics and woo-woos is what we each think to be "sufficient evidence."
I ran into a great example of this yesterday, on S8intCom Blogger, which bills itself as "A Biblical View On Science." (You are told on the homepage that "s8int" is pronounced "saint;" but by my linguistic analysis, "s8int" would be pronounced "satan-t," which is probably why they felt that the reader should be advised on how to pronounce it.) In any case, most of the site is devoted to "proving" that the Great Flood of Noah happened, as per the Book of Genesis, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that evolution is a big fat lie, and so on. But one page struck me as especially interesting. It was entitled "Ancient Viking Brachiosaurus," and makes the claim that the early inhabitants of Scandinavia depicted dinosaurs on their art -- because, well, real dinosaurs existed during the Viking age.
As evidence, they produce photographs of artifacts like this one, next to which they have helpfully superimposed a photograph of a brachiosaur skull and an artist's rendition of a brachiosaur, to make sure that you don't miss the similarity:
They also bring up the mention in Norse myth of giant serpents, like Ni∂hogg, the dragon who spent his time gnawing on the "World-Tree" Yggdrasil, and Jörmungandr, or "Midgard's serpent," the giant serpent that lay underwater, coiled around Midgard ("Middle-Earth," or the home of humans). And this, we are told, is sufficient evidence to buy that dinosaurs were contemporaneous with humanity.
Okay, where do I start?
Let's begin with the artifact itself. Even the S8intCom people admit that it hasn't been authenticated as being of genuine Viking make; in fact, they got the photograph of it from eBay, where it is being sold for $140 by some guy from Latvia. Now, understand, it might be authentic; I'm not saying I have any reason to believe it isn't. And questioning the artifact's provenance is only the beginning of the problems here.
A more serious problem is that dinosaurs of the genus Brachiosaurus are only known to come from the Morrison Formation, which is a Jurassic Age sedimentary rock formation... from western North America. There were related forms, including Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Camarosaurus, and others -- but the various long-necked sauropods seem to have been largely a group confined to what is now the western United States. (There is some evidence from the fossil record that similar species may have occurred in North Africa, but that is uncertain.) In any case, what's pretty clear is that at no time in the past did Brachiosaurus and his cousins stomp their way around Scandinavia.
Well, the Vikings were great travelers, right? Maybe they saw live brachiosaurs on their travels, and were impressed (who wouldn't be?), and depicted them in their art. Okay, but the problem is, they also depicted other things, like trolls, multi-headed giants, flying horses with eight legs, guys with magic hammers, hundred-foot-tall wolves, and boars made of gold that can run through the air. And as far as I can see, S8intCom isn't claiming any of that is true. They pick the one thing from Norse myth and art that supports their claim -- that dinosaurs coexisted with humans -- and conveniently ignore the rest.
We also have the additional problem that the two actual examples of dinosaur-like creatures mentioned in Norse myth -- Ni∂hogg and Jörmungandr -- aren't, really, all that dinosaur-like. Ni∂hogg, in fact, lived underground, but liked visitors -- and he could talk, spending his time in riddles and abstruse arguments with any who would listen. (Tolkien's talking dragons Smaug and Glaurung were almost certainly inspired by Ni∂hogg.) As for Jörmungandr, he was thousands of miles long, and lived underwater, and was the offspring of the god Loki and the giantess Angrbo∂a. Neither one of these sounds like any dinosaur I've ever heard of.
Last, if the dinosaurs were contemporaneous with the Vikings, why haven't we found any bones? Or teeth? Or anything? There are animal remains that date from that age -- some that have been mummified, or partially fossilized (full fossilization usually takes longer than 1,000 years), and others that have had their bones or teeth fashioned into things like knife handles, jewelry, and the like. Why no 1,000 year old dinosaur parts?
What I find most maddening about this whole thing is that the writers at S8intCom want to take a tiny part of scientific research -- the actual dinosaur bones themselves -- and an equally tiny part of antiquarian research into the art and myth of ancient Scandinavia, and effectively jettison the rest in favor of their own favorite Bronze Age mythological explanation of the world. The rest of science -- that the Earth is a billion years old, that the dinosaurs (with the exception of the lineage that led to birds) died out during the Cretaceous Extinction 65 million years ago, that evolution is correct as per the evidence -- they ignore or argue away. The depiction of things like flying horses and hundred-headed frost giants is considered the fanciful ravings of ignorant pagans, but a piece of dinosaur-like Norse jewelry is a valuable find that could overturn everything we understand about paleontology. They're perfectly willing to take 1% of the evidence, and use it to support the ridiculous ideas they already had, and ignore the other 99% as misleading or downright wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'd just love it if the Norse myths were true. They've always been my favorites, even if they take kind of a harsh view of the universe, what with the man-eating wolves and evil jotuns and fierce Valkyries, and the world getting destroyed at Ragnarokk, and all. But at least they're better than the biblical myths, with an all-powerful, but petulant and capricious, god basically smiting the crap out of everyone for such egregious offenses as collecting firewood on the sabbath or eating shrimp or wearing clothes made of two different kinds of thread. Given the choice, I'd take my chances with Odin and Loki and Thor.
I ran into a great example of this yesterday, on S8intCom Blogger, which bills itself as "A Biblical View On Science." (You are told on the homepage that "s8int" is pronounced "saint;" but by my linguistic analysis, "s8int" would be pronounced "satan-t," which is probably why they felt that the reader should be advised on how to pronounce it.) In any case, most of the site is devoted to "proving" that the Great Flood of Noah happened, as per the Book of Genesis, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that evolution is a big fat lie, and so on. But one page struck me as especially interesting. It was entitled "Ancient Viking Brachiosaurus," and makes the claim that the early inhabitants of Scandinavia depicted dinosaurs on their art -- because, well, real dinosaurs existed during the Viking age.
As evidence, they produce photographs of artifacts like this one, next to which they have helpfully superimposed a photograph of a brachiosaur skull and an artist's rendition of a brachiosaur, to make sure that you don't miss the similarity:
They also bring up the mention in Norse myth of giant serpents, like Ni∂hogg, the dragon who spent his time gnawing on the "World-Tree" Yggdrasil, and Jörmungandr, or "Midgard's serpent," the giant serpent that lay underwater, coiled around Midgard ("Middle-Earth," or the home of humans). And this, we are told, is sufficient evidence to buy that dinosaurs were contemporaneous with humanity.
Okay, where do I start?
Let's begin with the artifact itself. Even the S8intCom people admit that it hasn't been authenticated as being of genuine Viking make; in fact, they got the photograph of it from eBay, where it is being sold for $140 by some guy from Latvia. Now, understand, it might be authentic; I'm not saying I have any reason to believe it isn't. And questioning the artifact's provenance is only the beginning of the problems here.
A more serious problem is that dinosaurs of the genus Brachiosaurus are only known to come from the Morrison Formation, which is a Jurassic Age sedimentary rock formation... from western North America. There were related forms, including Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Camarosaurus, and others -- but the various long-necked sauropods seem to have been largely a group confined to what is now the western United States. (There is some evidence from the fossil record that similar species may have occurred in North Africa, but that is uncertain.) In any case, what's pretty clear is that at no time in the past did Brachiosaurus and his cousins stomp their way around Scandinavia.
Well, the Vikings were great travelers, right? Maybe they saw live brachiosaurs on their travels, and were impressed (who wouldn't be?), and depicted them in their art. Okay, but the problem is, they also depicted other things, like trolls, multi-headed giants, flying horses with eight legs, guys with magic hammers, hundred-foot-tall wolves, and boars made of gold that can run through the air. And as far as I can see, S8intCom isn't claiming any of that is true. They pick the one thing from Norse myth and art that supports their claim -- that dinosaurs coexisted with humans -- and conveniently ignore the rest.
We also have the additional problem that the two actual examples of dinosaur-like creatures mentioned in Norse myth -- Ni∂hogg and Jörmungandr -- aren't, really, all that dinosaur-like. Ni∂hogg, in fact, lived underground, but liked visitors -- and he could talk, spending his time in riddles and abstruse arguments with any who would listen. (Tolkien's talking dragons Smaug and Glaurung were almost certainly inspired by Ni∂hogg.) As for Jörmungandr, he was thousands of miles long, and lived underwater, and was the offspring of the god Loki and the giantess Angrbo∂a. Neither one of these sounds like any dinosaur I've ever heard of.
Last, if the dinosaurs were contemporaneous with the Vikings, why haven't we found any bones? Or teeth? Or anything? There are animal remains that date from that age -- some that have been mummified, or partially fossilized (full fossilization usually takes longer than 1,000 years), and others that have had their bones or teeth fashioned into things like knife handles, jewelry, and the like. Why no 1,000 year old dinosaur parts?
What I find most maddening about this whole thing is that the writers at S8intCom want to take a tiny part of scientific research -- the actual dinosaur bones themselves -- and an equally tiny part of antiquarian research into the art and myth of ancient Scandinavia, and effectively jettison the rest in favor of their own favorite Bronze Age mythological explanation of the world. The rest of science -- that the Earth is a billion years old, that the dinosaurs (with the exception of the lineage that led to birds) died out during the Cretaceous Extinction 65 million years ago, that evolution is correct as per the evidence -- they ignore or argue away. The depiction of things like flying horses and hundred-headed frost giants is considered the fanciful ravings of ignorant pagans, but a piece of dinosaur-like Norse jewelry is a valuable find that could overturn everything we understand about paleontology. They're perfectly willing to take 1% of the evidence, and use it to support the ridiculous ideas they already had, and ignore the other 99% as misleading or downright wrong.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'd just love it if the Norse myths were true. They've always been my favorites, even if they take kind of a harsh view of the universe, what with the man-eating wolves and evil jotuns and fierce Valkyries, and the world getting destroyed at Ragnarokk, and all. But at least they're better than the biblical myths, with an all-powerful, but petulant and capricious, god basically smiting the crap out of everyone for such egregious offenses as collecting firewood on the sabbath or eating shrimp or wearing clothes made of two different kinds of thread. Given the choice, I'd take my chances with Odin and Loki and Thor.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
The shrieking skulls of Calgarth
A couple of days ago, I was doing some genealogical research on the family of my Scottish grandmother, whose roots hail mostly from Maryland and Pennsylvania, and I ran across records of an early Maryland settler (not a direct ancestor) named Matthew Howard.
The Howards intermarried with various members of the Iams family, which is a direct line of mine (yes, I'm a cousin of the pet food people), so I spent a few minutes glancing through what was known of Matthew Howard. And I found that his grandfather was an English landholder named Miles Phillipson, of Calgarth, Westmoreland, England.
Something about those names rung a bell. Being that at the time I was puttering about with genealogy, my mind was occupied with family history, so at first I thought I must have seen the name in some old record or another. But something about that didn't ring right, and I kept thinking about it. I had seen "Miles Phillipson of Calgarth" before, somewhere unrelated to genealogy, but I couldn't place where. Finally, I googled it.
The first page of hits consisted of retelling after retelling of a famous story -- the tale of the screaming skulls of Calgarth. That's where I'd seen the name before; decades ago, in a book with a title like Strange True Tales of the Supernatural (yes, my obsession with the paranormal goes back a ways).
The story goes something like this. [Source] Miles Phillipson was a wealthy landowner in 16th century England, and his property abutted a tract of land with a hill overlooking Lake Windermere. This adjacent land belonged to a middle-aged couple named Kraster and Dorothy Cook, who (according to most versions of the legend) were simple, kind people. Phillipson, however, was a mean, grasping so-and-so, and he wanted the Cooks' property, but they refused to sell at any price. Finally, he appeared to give up, and as a gesture of goodwill and no-hard-feelings, he invited the Cooks to dinner. While there, Phillipson had one of his servants hide in Kraster Cook's satchel a valuable cup that Cook had admired earlier in the evening. When the Cooks left, Phillipson "noticed" that the cup was gone, gave the alarm, and before the Cooks knew what was happening, they'd been arrested for theft of the cup (which, of course, was found in Kraster Cook's possession).
In due time, the Cooks were put on trial for theft, and found guilty, and sentenced to death.
Oh, did I mention that Miles Phillipson was the county magistrate?
On the day of the execution, as Kraster and Dorothy were readied to be hanged, they were asked if they had any last words before the sentence was carried out. Kraster shook his head, but Dorothy said, "Look out for yourself, Miles Phillipson. You think you have done a fine thing. But the tiny lump of land you lust for is the dearest a Phillipson has ever bought or stolen. You will never prosper, nor any of your breed. Whatever scheme you undertake will wither in your hand. Whatever cause you support will always lose. The time will come when no Phillipson will own an inch of land and while Calgarth walls shall stand, we will haunt it night and day. You will never be rid of us!"
It is not recorded how Phillipson reacted to this, but given the rampant superstition of the time, I can only imagine that he wasn't particularly thrilled. That didn't stop him, however, from seeing the Cooks both hanged, and taking their property, tearing down their cottage, and building himself a sumptuous manor house, which he named Calgarth Hall.
Of course, it wouldn't be a tale worth the telling if it stopped there. Shortly after the completion of the manor, the members of the household were awakened one night by a horrifying shrieking. Coming down into the great hall, from which the noise seemed to be coming, Phillipson and his family and servants saw two grinning skulls on the mantelpiece, screaming in an earsplitting fashion. (Mrs. Phillipson, being an Elizabethan lady, of course "fainted dead away.") The next day, Miles Phillipson, figuring he knew what was going on, had the coffins of Kraster and Dorothy Cook exhumed -- and unsurprisingly, found the skulls missing. He replaced the skulls, and reburied the coffins, only to have the same thing occur the following week.
Well, things went from bad to worse. The skulls wouldn't stay buried, but reappeared in the great hall with terrible regularity. All the servants quit. Mrs. Phillipson and their only son took sick and died. Miles Phillipson's reputation sank so fast there weren't even any bubbles, and he was forced to sell off his land a piece at a time until he had nothing left, and finally died in abject poverty. Of later generations the legend doesn't speak, but Calgarth is said to still be standing, and although an exorcism was pronounced there in the 19th century, it is still subject to "strange sights and sounds."
What I find fascinating about all of this is not that an ancient manor house in England is the focal point of a wild tale of terror; heaven knows that it is not unique in that regard. It is the intersection between legend and fact that interests me. When I first read the tale of the screaming skulls of Calgarth, when I was perhaps 15 years old, I figured that (like most of those sorts of legends) the men and women who peopled it were fictional, even if the places weren't. I never dreamed that Miles Phillipson had actually lived and died in Calgarth, as per the legend, had had a surviving daughter (Anne Phillipson) whose son, Matthew Howard, emigrated to the United States in the mid-1600s and was the founder of a large and prosperous family in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. (Why the curse didn't affect him, I'm not sure -- maybe it only applied to people who had the last name of Phillipson.)
What is interesting about this, too, is that for the most part, one side doesn't know what the other knows. The genealogists have all of the dates and places; Miles Phillipson was born about 1540 in Westmoreland, married a woman named Barbara Sandys, had one surviving child (Anne) born in Calgarth in about 1575 or so. None of the databases on the Howard family mention the (literal) skeletons in the family closet. And I don't think it's because as genealogists, they'd be hesitant to include a wild legend; genealogists, I've found, absolutely love weird legends about their relatives, even if most of them are careful to include a disclaimer that "this is only a story." But apparently almost none of the Howard family descendants are aware of the screaming skulls that supposedly haunted their distant ancestor.
Likewise, none of the recountings of the Calgarth story mention that the real Phillipson had one surviving child, and his grandson ended up being a wealthy planter in Maryland. I guess I can understand why they'd be reluctant to include that; it makes Dorothy Cook's curse from the gallows have a little less punch, to know that the hex only lasted one generation. But still -- you'd think that it would show up somewhere, but I couldn't find any reference to it at all.
The whole thing is kind of curious, especially given that the other two examples of ancestral hauntings I've come across seem to be well known both to the genealogical researchers and to the haunted house aficionados. On my side of the family, we have Alexander Lindsay, the notorious "Earl Beardie," who supposedly lost his soul to the devil in a dice game and now haunts Glamis Castle in Scotland, swearing, drinking, and rolling dice (my dad's comment on finding out that this was one of our ancestors was, "Yeah, sounds like my family, all right."). On my wife's side, we have the Frys, who owned Morants Court in Kent, the site of the creepy story that became Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman."
I suppose that every family has legends, but not many can beat the Shrieking Skulls of Calgarth for having all of the classic elements -- a false accusation, a grasping miser who gets his due, a curse delivered from the gallows, skulls, unearthly screams at night. Seems like a good tale for a dark midwinter day, doesn't it?
Yeah, I thought so.
The Howards intermarried with various members of the Iams family, which is a direct line of mine (yes, I'm a cousin of the pet food people), so I spent a few minutes glancing through what was known of Matthew Howard. And I found that his grandfather was an English landholder named Miles Phillipson, of Calgarth, Westmoreland, England.
Something about those names rung a bell. Being that at the time I was puttering about with genealogy, my mind was occupied with family history, so at first I thought I must have seen the name in some old record or another. But something about that didn't ring right, and I kept thinking about it. I had seen "Miles Phillipson of Calgarth" before, somewhere unrelated to genealogy, but I couldn't place where. Finally, I googled it.
The first page of hits consisted of retelling after retelling of a famous story -- the tale of the screaming skulls of Calgarth. That's where I'd seen the name before; decades ago, in a book with a title like Strange True Tales of the Supernatural (yes, my obsession with the paranormal goes back a ways).
The story goes something like this. [Source] Miles Phillipson was a wealthy landowner in 16th century England, and his property abutted a tract of land with a hill overlooking Lake Windermere. This adjacent land belonged to a middle-aged couple named Kraster and Dorothy Cook, who (according to most versions of the legend) were simple, kind people. Phillipson, however, was a mean, grasping so-and-so, and he wanted the Cooks' property, but they refused to sell at any price. Finally, he appeared to give up, and as a gesture of goodwill and no-hard-feelings, he invited the Cooks to dinner. While there, Phillipson had one of his servants hide in Kraster Cook's satchel a valuable cup that Cook had admired earlier in the evening. When the Cooks left, Phillipson "noticed" that the cup was gone, gave the alarm, and before the Cooks knew what was happening, they'd been arrested for theft of the cup (which, of course, was found in Kraster Cook's possession).
In due time, the Cooks were put on trial for theft, and found guilty, and sentenced to death.
Oh, did I mention that Miles Phillipson was the county magistrate?
On the day of the execution, as Kraster and Dorothy were readied to be hanged, they were asked if they had any last words before the sentence was carried out. Kraster shook his head, but Dorothy said, "Look out for yourself, Miles Phillipson. You think you have done a fine thing. But the tiny lump of land you lust for is the dearest a Phillipson has ever bought or stolen. You will never prosper, nor any of your breed. Whatever scheme you undertake will wither in your hand. Whatever cause you support will always lose. The time will come when no Phillipson will own an inch of land and while Calgarth walls shall stand, we will haunt it night and day. You will never be rid of us!"
It is not recorded how Phillipson reacted to this, but given the rampant superstition of the time, I can only imagine that he wasn't particularly thrilled. That didn't stop him, however, from seeing the Cooks both hanged, and taking their property, tearing down their cottage, and building himself a sumptuous manor house, which he named Calgarth Hall.
Of course, it wouldn't be a tale worth the telling if it stopped there. Shortly after the completion of the manor, the members of the household were awakened one night by a horrifying shrieking. Coming down into the great hall, from which the noise seemed to be coming, Phillipson and his family and servants saw two grinning skulls on the mantelpiece, screaming in an earsplitting fashion. (Mrs. Phillipson, being an Elizabethan lady, of course "fainted dead away.") The next day, Miles Phillipson, figuring he knew what was going on, had the coffins of Kraster and Dorothy Cook exhumed -- and unsurprisingly, found the skulls missing. He replaced the skulls, and reburied the coffins, only to have the same thing occur the following week.
Well, things went from bad to worse. The skulls wouldn't stay buried, but reappeared in the great hall with terrible regularity. All the servants quit. Mrs. Phillipson and their only son took sick and died. Miles Phillipson's reputation sank so fast there weren't even any bubbles, and he was forced to sell off his land a piece at a time until he had nothing left, and finally died in abject poverty. Of later generations the legend doesn't speak, but Calgarth is said to still be standing, and although an exorcism was pronounced there in the 19th century, it is still subject to "strange sights and sounds."
What I find fascinating about all of this is not that an ancient manor house in England is the focal point of a wild tale of terror; heaven knows that it is not unique in that regard. It is the intersection between legend and fact that interests me. When I first read the tale of the screaming skulls of Calgarth, when I was perhaps 15 years old, I figured that (like most of those sorts of legends) the men and women who peopled it were fictional, even if the places weren't. I never dreamed that Miles Phillipson had actually lived and died in Calgarth, as per the legend, had had a surviving daughter (Anne Phillipson) whose son, Matthew Howard, emigrated to the United States in the mid-1600s and was the founder of a large and prosperous family in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. (Why the curse didn't affect him, I'm not sure -- maybe it only applied to people who had the last name of Phillipson.)
What is interesting about this, too, is that for the most part, one side doesn't know what the other knows. The genealogists have all of the dates and places; Miles Phillipson was born about 1540 in Westmoreland, married a woman named Barbara Sandys, had one surviving child (Anne) born in Calgarth in about 1575 or so. None of the databases on the Howard family mention the (literal) skeletons in the family closet. And I don't think it's because as genealogists, they'd be hesitant to include a wild legend; genealogists, I've found, absolutely love weird legends about their relatives, even if most of them are careful to include a disclaimer that "this is only a story." But apparently almost none of the Howard family descendants are aware of the screaming skulls that supposedly haunted their distant ancestor.
Likewise, none of the recountings of the Calgarth story mention that the real Phillipson had one surviving child, and his grandson ended up being a wealthy planter in Maryland. I guess I can understand why they'd be reluctant to include that; it makes Dorothy Cook's curse from the gallows have a little less punch, to know that the hex only lasted one generation. But still -- you'd think that it would show up somewhere, but I couldn't find any reference to it at all.
The whole thing is kind of curious, especially given that the other two examples of ancestral hauntings I've come across seem to be well known both to the genealogical researchers and to the haunted house aficionados. On my side of the family, we have Alexander Lindsay, the notorious "Earl Beardie," who supposedly lost his soul to the devil in a dice game and now haunts Glamis Castle in Scotland, swearing, drinking, and rolling dice (my dad's comment on finding out that this was one of our ancestors was, "Yeah, sounds like my family, all right."). On my wife's side, we have the Frys, who owned Morants Court in Kent, the site of the creepy story that became Alfred Noyes' poem "The Highwayman."
I suppose that every family has legends, but not many can beat the Shrieking Skulls of Calgarth for having all of the classic elements -- a false accusation, a grasping miser who gets his due, a curse delivered from the gallows, skulls, unearthly screams at night. Seems like a good tale for a dark midwinter day, doesn't it?
Yeah, I thought so.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Space cubes
I have good news and bad news.
The good news is that we survived (1) the Rapture, (2) the Mayan apocalypse, and (3) the 2012 Christmas shopping season. The bad news is that the Borg are on their way. [Source]
At least, that is the claim of such pinnacles of rationality as David Icke and Alex Collier, both of whose names you may have seen once or twice in Skeptophilia before. Icke, you may recall, is the one who believes that American public schools are being run by aliens; Collier, on the other hand, claims that there was a giant alien/human war back in the 1930s, which none of us have heard about because the war propelled us through a rip in the space-time continuum into an alternate timeline, and now we have to try to get back into our correct timeline, without even being able to consult Geordi LaForge for advice.
Now, because two minds of this caliber are clearly better than one, Icke and Collier have teamed up to analyze the data coming in from NASA's SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), and have come to the terrifying conclusion that the Borg cube has arrived, and is hovering menacingly just inside the corona of the sun.
So, let's just take a look at some of the photographs in question, whatchasay?
Spokespeople for NASA say that these images aren't of a giant cubical spacecraft; they're basically just blank spots where there's missing data. Icke and Collier aren't convinced, however. They take the evidence from the photograph, which consists solely of a couple of blank squares, and come to the only conclusion you could draw from this:
The cube is a "GOD" (Galactic Obliteration Device) launched by an evil alien race, which is coming to Earth to destroy it as per the Book of Revelation Chapter 21, wherein we find out that the "City of God" that is supposed to descend during the End Times is square in shape, and since squares are kind of like cubes, this thing is going to come to Earth and the Borg are then going to annihilate the human race in the Battle of Armageddon, which fulfills the scriptural prophecy even though I've read the Book of Revelation and I don't remember any mention of the Second Coming of Locutus.
Apparently, this idea didn't originate with Icke and Collier, but was the brainchild of the LLF (Luciferian Liberation Front). Which gives it ever so much more credibility, given that this is the same group of wingnuts who believe that the biblical story is literally true, except that Jesus was actually a superpowerful cyborg from another planet.
Of course, Icke, Collier, and the LLF aren't the only ones who have weighed in on the anomalous squares in the SOHO photographs. Scott Waring, of UFO Sightings Daily, thinks that the cube is a giant spacecraft, but that it doesn't have anything to do with either the Borg or the Book of Revelation. No, Waring said, don't be a loon. There are two other, much more likely, possibilities: "Such huge objects are present either because the sun is hollow or because energy is being harvested from the sun."
Oh. Okay. That makes all kinds of sense.
My own personal opinion is that NASA should hire someone whose sole job is to scan their photographs, looking for ones with glitches, dead pixels, missing data, and so on, and make sure that those flawed photographs never make it online. We rationalist skeptics have enough trouble keeping everyone's eye on the ball without goofed-up pics from NASA making it worse.
Of course, if NASA did hire someone to do this, Icke, Collier et al. would eventually find out about it, and then there's be allegations of a conspiracy and coverup designed to keep all of us from finding out about the impending alien invasion. Accusations would be leveled. The word "sheeple" would be used.
You can't win.
The good news is that we survived (1) the Rapture, (2) the Mayan apocalypse, and (3) the 2012 Christmas shopping season. The bad news is that the Borg are on their way. [Source]
At least, that is the claim of such pinnacles of rationality as David Icke and Alex Collier, both of whose names you may have seen once or twice in Skeptophilia before. Icke, you may recall, is the one who believes that American public schools are being run by aliens; Collier, on the other hand, claims that there was a giant alien/human war back in the 1930s, which none of us have heard about because the war propelled us through a rip in the space-time continuum into an alternate timeline, and now we have to try to get back into our correct timeline, without even being able to consult Geordi LaForge for advice.
Now, because two minds of this caliber are clearly better than one, Icke and Collier have teamed up to analyze the data coming in from NASA's SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), and have come to the terrifying conclusion that the Borg cube has arrived, and is hovering menacingly just inside the corona of the sun.
So, let's just take a look at some of the photographs in question, whatchasay?
Spokespeople for NASA say that these images aren't of a giant cubical spacecraft; they're basically just blank spots where there's missing data. Icke and Collier aren't convinced, however. They take the evidence from the photograph, which consists solely of a couple of blank squares, and come to the only conclusion you could draw from this:
The cube is a "GOD" (Galactic Obliteration Device) launched by an evil alien race, which is coming to Earth to destroy it as per the Book of Revelation Chapter 21, wherein we find out that the "City of God" that is supposed to descend during the End Times is square in shape, and since squares are kind of like cubes, this thing is going to come to Earth and the Borg are then going to annihilate the human race in the Battle of Armageddon, which fulfills the scriptural prophecy even though I've read the Book of Revelation and I don't remember any mention of the Second Coming of Locutus.
Apparently, this idea didn't originate with Icke and Collier, but was the brainchild of the LLF (Luciferian Liberation Front). Which gives it ever so much more credibility, given that this is the same group of wingnuts who believe that the biblical story is literally true, except that Jesus was actually a superpowerful cyborg from another planet.
Of course, Icke, Collier, and the LLF aren't the only ones who have weighed in on the anomalous squares in the SOHO photographs. Scott Waring, of UFO Sightings Daily, thinks that the cube is a giant spacecraft, but that it doesn't have anything to do with either the Borg or the Book of Revelation. No, Waring said, don't be a loon. There are two other, much more likely, possibilities: "Such huge objects are present either because the sun is hollow or because energy is being harvested from the sun."
Oh. Okay. That makes all kinds of sense.
My own personal opinion is that NASA should hire someone whose sole job is to scan their photographs, looking for ones with glitches, dead pixels, missing data, and so on, and make sure that those flawed photographs never make it online. We rationalist skeptics have enough trouble keeping everyone's eye on the ball without goofed-up pics from NASA making it worse.
Of course, if NASA did hire someone to do this, Icke, Collier et al. would eventually find out about it, and then there's be allegations of a conspiracy and coverup designed to keep all of us from finding out about the impending alien invasion. Accusations would be leveled. The word "sheeple" would be used.
You can't win.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Santa Claus is comin' to town
Well, a very happy Christmas Eve to all of you who celebrate it. I'm sure that many of my readers are eagerly awaiting tomorrow morning, for the joy of seeing what Santa brought for yourself and your loved ones.
I mention St. Nick deliberately, because, you know, I can never be certain if someone who's reading this blog believes in Santa Claus or not, and far be it from me to burst anyone's bubble. And I'm not just talking about little kids, here.
A recent piece in the Boston Globe (read it here) describes "paranormal expert" Stephen Wagner's fascination with "Santa sightings." Yes, folks, I'm talking about presumably sane, intelligent adults who have seen the Big Guy for real on Christmas Eve. For many of these people, it was a life-changing experience. I know it would be for me; my life would change from "living at home" to "living in a psychiatric ward."
But that's not how most of the people who got to see the Jolly Old Elf in person feel. Sarah, a 41 year old Californian who saw Santa Claus back in 1975, said the experience was transcendent. "Seeing Santa changed my outlook forever," she told Wagner, "to the point that I am comfortable with tattooing ol’ Big Red onto my body. It means that much to me."
Others report confirmation of many items from Santa's familiar accoutrement. "We [were] driving by a lonely McDonald’s and we [saw] something dashing through the clouds," said one of Wagner's respondents. "We could all make out Santa’s sleigh and nine reindeer including Rudolph’s nose." "He was in full Santa attire," Sandra, a 51-year-old Missourian, told Wagner, recounting a sighting from the 1960s. "He was bent over, then he stood up and took a puff from a pipe."
It may be uncharitable of me, but in this last case I suspect that Santa might not have been been the one smoking the pipe, if you get my drift.
Wagner, for his part, seems simply to recount the experiences without trying to interpret them or weigh in on their veracity. Not so Loyd Auerbach, who teaches a parapsychology course at Atlantic University. "I've never even heard of people seeing Santa," Auerbach scoffs. "The Grim Reaper, yes, but not Santa."
Because, after all, the Grim Reaper is orders of magnitude more real than Santa Claus, for heaven's sake. Everyone knows that.
Auerbach goes on to state that these Santa sightings might have a common origin, though. "The only reason this could be real," he states, "is if it's an alien or a ghost pretending to be Santa."
This is why I could never be an investigative reporter. I would, on occasion, guffaw directly into people's faces while interviewing them. I suspect that this would put people off, somehow.
So given that I'm not especially taken with Auerbach's explanation of Ghost Santa or Alien Santa, I think I'm going with "suggestible people with overactive imaginations." This is the position of Rebecca Knibb, a reader in psychology at the UK's University of Derby. Knibb attributes St. Nick sightings to people who are "fantasy-prone," and whose daydreams were already colored by the imagery and mythology of the Christmas season. At another time or place, Knibb suggests, these same people would be seeing ghosts.
If you are one of the people who have seen Santa Claus -- or any other weird, unexplainable occurrence, for that matter -- you should report it on Stephen Wagner's site, Paranormal Phenomena, wherein you will find a link to the original Santa Sightings report, as well as sightings of Christmas Angels, Christmas Ghosts, and a paranormal explanation for the Star of Bethlehem. As for me, I'm just going to go wrap a few last presents, because I think the likelihood of Santa showing up in the flesh for someone like me is slim to none. He knows if you've been bad or good, after all, and I suspect that frank disbelief would fall clearly into the "bad" column.
I mention St. Nick deliberately, because, you know, I can never be certain if someone who's reading this blog believes in Santa Claus or not, and far be it from me to burst anyone's bubble. And I'm not just talking about little kids, here.
A recent piece in the Boston Globe (read it here) describes "paranormal expert" Stephen Wagner's fascination with "Santa sightings." Yes, folks, I'm talking about presumably sane, intelligent adults who have seen the Big Guy for real on Christmas Eve. For many of these people, it was a life-changing experience. I know it would be for me; my life would change from "living at home" to "living in a psychiatric ward."
But that's not how most of the people who got to see the Jolly Old Elf in person feel. Sarah, a 41 year old Californian who saw Santa Claus back in 1975, said the experience was transcendent. "Seeing Santa changed my outlook forever," she told Wagner, "to the point that I am comfortable with tattooing ol’ Big Red onto my body. It means that much to me."
Others report confirmation of many items from Santa's familiar accoutrement. "We [were] driving by a lonely McDonald’s and we [saw] something dashing through the clouds," said one of Wagner's respondents. "We could all make out Santa’s sleigh and nine reindeer including Rudolph’s nose." "He was in full Santa attire," Sandra, a 51-year-old Missourian, told Wagner, recounting a sighting from the 1960s. "He was bent over, then he stood up and took a puff from a pipe."
It may be uncharitable of me, but in this last case I suspect that Santa might not have been been the one smoking the pipe, if you get my drift.
Wagner, for his part, seems simply to recount the experiences without trying to interpret them or weigh in on their veracity. Not so Loyd Auerbach, who teaches a parapsychology course at Atlantic University. "I've never even heard of people seeing Santa," Auerbach scoffs. "The Grim Reaper, yes, but not Santa."
Because, after all, the Grim Reaper is orders of magnitude more real than Santa Claus, for heaven's sake. Everyone knows that.
Auerbach goes on to state that these Santa sightings might have a common origin, though. "The only reason this could be real," he states, "is if it's an alien or a ghost pretending to be Santa."
This is why I could never be an investigative reporter. I would, on occasion, guffaw directly into people's faces while interviewing them. I suspect that this would put people off, somehow.
So given that I'm not especially taken with Auerbach's explanation of Ghost Santa or Alien Santa, I think I'm going with "suggestible people with overactive imaginations." This is the position of Rebecca Knibb, a reader in psychology at the UK's University of Derby. Knibb attributes St. Nick sightings to people who are "fantasy-prone," and whose daydreams were already colored by the imagery and mythology of the Christmas season. At another time or place, Knibb suggests, these same people would be seeing ghosts.
If you are one of the people who have seen Santa Claus -- or any other weird, unexplainable occurrence, for that matter -- you should report it on Stephen Wagner's site, Paranormal Phenomena, wherein you will find a link to the original Santa Sightings report, as well as sightings of Christmas Angels, Christmas Ghosts, and a paranormal explanation for the Star of Bethlehem. As for me, I'm just going to go wrap a few last presents, because I think the likelihood of Santa showing up in the flesh for someone like me is slim to none. He knows if you've been bad or good, after all, and I suspect that frank disbelief would fall clearly into the "bad" column.
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