Published as an Op-Ed article in the Litchfield County Times, January 18, 2008

Wonders of the Invisible World: A Dissenting View

David Begelman

           Enough is enough, I tell myself, grumbling about why skepticism over reports of ghosts and poltergeists seems to be a dwindling sentiment. Where are the champions of doubt, the once honorable tradition of celebrities like Harry Houdini, the magician? Despite the extensive scientific—and invariably negative—literature on the subject, healthy doubt seems to be going the way of the dinosaurs, at least in the media. There, gullibility reigns supreme.  

We are regaled right and left with supposed “proofs” of spooky entities, both on television, where hauntings are investigated by teams of “experts,” and in reports of sightings that have reached epidemic proportions across the land. Even some police departments have recruited “psychic detectives” in order to solve crimes. These sleuths play the slippery statistical game of only publicizing their hits rather than their failures, leaving the impression that they have an unusual talent. Not so. Were I put to the task of generating random predictions about anything, and not reporting my wrong hunches, I too could cut a reputation as a seer extraordinaire.

Connecticut has its own eerie tradition of paranormal experiences, and Milford, Newtown, East Haddam, Seymour, and, yes, New Milford, are not above susceptibility to contagion. The latest entry in the zany pastime is the local hullabaloo over the Bank Street Coffee House, where four basement “spirits” are cavorting. The ghosts were presumably confirmed by a consultant exorcist who advised the owner to be nice to them.   

Of course, historians know that despite its natural beauty, Connecticut (not Massachusetts) was the first state to hang witches, the earliest victim of the hysteria being Alyce Young of Windsor, executed in Hartford County on May 26, 1647. Accusations against the alleged servants of the devil were often sparked by “spectral visitations,” ghostly spirits of living witches who taunted their victims with bodily torments. Specters, the existence of which was established only by the testimony of presumed victims, were touted as “evidence” of the crimes against them. Defendants were often executed on such a basis, so being spooked by the spirit world was not always the innocent indulgence it is today. It seems that enthusiasts of the paranormal have a curious spin on the notion of “evidence,” ignoring as they virtually always do the entire history of how their forbears finagled it to guarantee foregone conclusions.

To bring the reader up to date, ghost-hunting over a huge span of time is fraught with difficulty on two counts: fraud and suggestibility. The former limitation, affecting all the séances, channelings, and “readings” that have been exposed for what they are, has dampened the credibility of spiritualists claiming personal contact with the otherworldly. A case in point, and probably one over which spiritualism in this country got its jump start in 1848, was that of the Fox sisters. After a career involving a busy pipeline to the other side, one of them confessed to authoring rappings of the departed by manufacturing noises from body joints, particularly fingers and toes.

Fraud is one thing, gullibility quite another. I surmise ghost hunting is by and large an affair charged with the latter factor. The magic ingredients of suggestibility are three in number: true belief, scary surroundings like dimly lit rooms, dark houses, basements, or cemeteries, and a high arousal (a.k.a. anxiety) state in observers. With such a recipe, you can produce almost anything and be convinced that what you imagine is really out there. (A different twist on the power of imagination is the placebo effect. It may be defined as the belief that such worthless nostrums as magnetic therapy, homeopathy, and St. John’s wort are curative just because a generation of devotees believes they are.)

The next time a true believer mentions “energy fields” around invisible entities, I’m heading for the hills. Unlike the dour and lingering dead, real or imagined, at least they’re alive with the sound of music, just as Rodgers and Hammerstein predicted.