There’s no denying that wacky beliefs have spawned some truly great art. It might sound like I’m an apologist for non-skeptical thinking when I ask this, but…where would art be without unfounded beliefs? Art would still exist, to be sure. We’d still have the prehistoric cave paintings of Lascaux, the Mona Lisa, and the breathtaking imagery of “Avatar”, but we’d be denied “Ride of the Valkeyrie“, the “Harry Potter” series, and…well…so much else. Of course, belief in the paranormal and mystical isn’t necessary to create the art that’s based on them, but had the belief not existed in some form at some time, then neither would the art it inspired. I suppose, in some way, I’m trying to take lemons and make lemonade, and here’s one of my favorite draughts:

Everything Annie Lennox touches turns to gold. She truly is the Queen Midas of Music. Seances have been so thoroughly debunked as frauds that they’re more a subject of sarcasm than serious conversation (I freakin’ hope!), but they’re also the vehicle for this compelling music video. I don’t know if The Lennox believes in this sort of thing or not, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters here is the sheer artistry – both visual and musical – that we’re treated to, and you don’t have to be a “true believer” to be the beneficiary of that, nor to be the creator of it.

Rocketboom FAIL!

This is fairly disappointing – generally Rocketboom has at least the quasi-skeptical position of big-city hipster intellectuals who are smart enough not to get suckered by bullshit. But this is total credulous Huffpo dreck.

(How does a multimeter work, exactly, without any probes? Or do they just wander around jabbing them into the atmosphere?)

The Tampa Theatre in Tampa, FL is a true architectural treasure. It was opened in 1926 and is largely unchanged since that time.  Its glory has faded, but its still the best places in the Tampa Bay area to see an art film or a revival. This summer I saw Creature from the Black Lagoon there, and it was great.

A story in today’s St. Pete Times called my attention to a new activity going on at the theater — paranormal activity. Being both a skeptic and a regular at the theater I’ve long known about the ghosts that are supposed to haunt the building, but now the theater is holding a regular “Ghost Hunt,” complete with EMF meters and thermometers. It sounds incredibly silly, of course, but unlike the normal daytime tour the ghost hunt allows access to the projection booth and other features in the bowels of the theater. To me that would be well worth the price of admission, though the next tour is sold out already.

I’d like to address a couple points in the Times article.

Strand proceeds to tell the story of Fink, a.k.a. Foster “Fink” Finley, who worked as a theater projectionist for 35 years before his death in 1965. A short, balding guy who took the bus to work, Fink arrived early every morning to shave and enjoy a cup of cafe con leche.

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Fink fell ill with cancer and one day collapsed in the projection booth. Two months later, he died.

The next year, strange things started happening in the theater, according to its archives. A jingling of keys. Ghost-like apparitions. The scent of old-fashioned shaving lotion.

This is the most common ghost story associated with the Tampa Theater. (There’s also a Lady in White story, but what self-respecting building of any age doesn’t have a Lady in [White/Grey/Black, choose one] story?) Leaving aside the supernatural elements, did Foster Finley, the person, really exist? The alliterative name seems a bit suspicious, especially when there is a less common version of his story that includes companion ghosts named “Hogley Higley” and “Godfrey Gidget.” Also, the theater’s very real centenarian organist is named Rosa Rio, which could be an inspiration for the alliteration of a fictional character. I did a quick look for Mr. Finley’s obit in the Tampa Tribune and couldn’t find it, and I should have the authoritative word on that soon. I’ll update this piece with what I find. [Update - I have Foster Gaines Finley's obit, from the Dec 18th, 1965 edition of the Tampa Times. While the Tampa Theatre isn't mentioned specifically, from what little info there is I wouldn't doubt that he was an employee there. "Godfrey Gidget" and "Hogley Higley," on the other hand, remain fictional.]

One guide, Bob Pierce, said two nine-volt batteries burned up in his backpack while he was in the green room. (He assured the batteries weren’t touching.) Lea Williamson, a longtime Tampa Theatre member, took some interesting photographs of orb-like objects in the mezzanine area.

I’ve got an area on my upper thigh where I can only feel a tingling sensation because I’ve had so many nine-volt batteries burn up in my pocket, especially back in high school when I used to do lots of circuit board projects. It doesn’t take much to short them, so I’m going to call that a coincidence. As to the pictures of orbs, I say that if you only have a few pictures of orbs at the Tampa Theatre, you aren’t trying. This picture is just one of the many, many orb photos I’ve taken in the theater. Those little glowing specs are without a doubt my camera flash reflecting off dust particles floating in the air. A lot of the fixtures in the theater are at least 60 or 70 years old, so there’s no shortage of stuff shedding tiny particles. I’ve also been led to believe that some camera lenses are more likely to create these anomalies, and mine happens to be one of the worst. That plus my crappy skills, and you can see orbs in most of the pictures I take there.

With the Halloween season just behind us, it seemed timely to take a glance back at what Americans think of supernatural creatures roaming the Earth.

Haloed and Horny – er, Horned

Let’s start with the big guns: angels and demons.  No, not Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.  The “real” ones.

A 2007 Pew Research survey found that 68% of Americans completely or mostly agree that “angels and demons are active in the world,” while only 14% completely disagreed with this idea.

Interestingly, 4% of those attending evangelical churches completely disagreed with the statement that “angels and demons are active in the world.”  Perhaps these apparently conflicted folks were only showing up at church to score some of that sweet puritanical lovin’ they couldn’t find on ChristianSingles.

[BTW, ChristianSingles, "marriage minded" should be hyphenated.]

Ghosts – Do They Prefer Chicks?

What about ghosts?  A Harris poll published in 2003 found that 51% of Americans believe in the existence of ghosts.  In 2005, a CBS News poll found that not only did 48% of Americans believe in ghosts, but that 22% believed they had actually “seen or felt the presence” of a ghost.

While this potential market may help explain the existence of the “ghost-hunter” shows on cable television, such supportive numbers are at odds with the lack of verifiable evidence, and a dichotomy present in the poll numbers is of interest.

While 22% overall of the CBS poll respondents believed that they had “seen or felt the presence” of a ghost, only 14% of men made that claim, while over twice that percentage of women (29%) felt they had experienced such an occurrence.  Why such a discrepancy?  Do ghosts prefer chicks?  Or vice-versa?

“Ghost” was a chick flick, after all.  You make the call.

Good news first. Today the St. Petersburg Times ran a story about how poisoned Halloween candy is a myth. If you read Bryan’s piece last week you got most of the same info plus a lot more. The money shot from the Times article:

Commercial interests, like malls and candy companies, are all too willing to exploit Halloween myths such as these, said Lenore Skenazy, writer of the Free Range Kids blog, which urges parents to let go of irrational fears of strangers and boogeymen. And police and federal agencies continue to reinforce them.

“There is a big echo chamber of fear,” Skenazy said, author of Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry, “and nobody will ever criticize you for saying ‘Please watch your kids,’ even though there hasn’t been a case of a child getting poisoned on Halloween. Ever.”

And now the bad news. The Times also ran a column by Howard Troxler about an alleged ghost photo. On one hand Mr. Troxler does stress that there is “no doubt” it’s a trick of the light (or more correctly, a blurred exposure), but then he spends most of the rest of the column suggesting that there’s something creepy about the situation, based on such evidence as an old dog staring down a hallway.

Mr. Troxler also talks to a ghost hunter, and is surprised that the ghost hunter talks about how most ghost photos have conventional explanations. This should come as no surprise to anybody who follows such people. Ghost hunters love to affect an air of skepticism, because it gives them false credibility. What they don’t do is apply serious scientific standards to the evidence they present as genuine. In the column, notice how the ghost hunter says that ghosts can be attached to antiques. How can he possibly know this? What evidence does he have for the claim? None, unless you count Amityville IV: The Evil Escapes.

I realize that it’s the silly season, and there’s a good chance that Mr. Troxler is just having a bit of fun. Still, it would be nice if a major paper wouldn’t spread the impression that there is physical evidence for ghosts.

Today’s pop quiz comes from an article in the Utah paper “Deseret News” about a community college that offers a class in ghost hunting and other paranormal subjects. One student in the class is quoted as follows:

The class has made believers out of many students. “Yeah, I believe in ghosts now. Oh yeah,” said Holladay resident P.J. Rodgers, 33. “After what I captured in this class, wow, I don’t have any other explanations for it.”

Which logical fallacy does this quote demonstrate? Highlight the redacted text below to find out.

This is a textbook example of the Argument from Ignorance. This fallacy is invoked all the time in situations involving the paranormal. Basically, the student is assuming that, because he can’t explain something, the only possible explanation is the supernatural. If you can’t explain something, it’s exactly that: unexplained. It being unexplained is not evidence for the supernatural, or anything else, for that matter.

The unseasonable heat we’ve been suffering through here in St. Pete broke last Friday, finally making it feel like fall, or as close to fall as you feel surrounded by trees that stay green year round. Time to go on a ghost tour!

Ghost tours are traditional in many cities across the country. St. Petersburg is a relatively young city, so it doesn’t have ghost stories that go back to colonial times, or even the Civil War. In fact, most of the stories I heard on this year’s tour were post-1980, if they had historical truth to them at all. I went on a tour put on by GhostTour.net, which leaves from the Full Monty Cafe downtown. The guide was a friendly woman named Laurie, who was wearing a cape and skull earrings. There were about 25 other people on the tour the night I went.

Basically, Laurie took us on a mile long hike to the oldest buildings still extant in downtown. At each stop she talked a bit about the history and significance of the building, and then followed up with some creepy tales about ghosts or other mysterious happenings. Most of the stories ended with the equivalent of a wink, as if she were letting us in on a joke.

Perhaps the most interesting story was attached to the Detroit Hotel, the oldest and arguably the most historically important building downtown, built by the city’s founder John Constantine Williams. In 1981, workmen knocked down a partition to an unused portion to the building’s attic and found a portrait of a man that appeared to date back to at least the early part of the 20th century. The find was reported in the local paper along with a request for information as to whom it portrayed. A couple weeks later, the paper printed a follow-up that came to no firm conclusions. However, Laurie told a story that took the identification of “the Captain” and ran with it. She claimed that some nights when there is a concert at Jannus Landings (a venue that is essentially a courtyard the hotel overlooks) people will see a shadowy figure in old timey clothes on one of the balconies of the hotel, watching the ladies, as the Captain was wont to do. I can attest to seeing mysterious shadowy figures while at Jannus Landings, but they might have been attributable to the fact that I was at a Meatloaf concert, and some of the other concertgoers were smoking what can only be described as a heroic amount of weed.

The next stop was the Ponce De Leon Hotel, currently host to the tapas restaurant Ceviche. At one point, the hotel, by virtue of having a basement (nonresidents can be excused for finding that odd) was used as a morgue, so all kinds of creepy things happened there. Mysterious attacks, falling bottles, suicides (including that of Thom Street, who was mentioned in the first newspaper story about the Detroit Hotel portrait), and even hints of conspiracy. Laurie did tell one story I suspected was a complete fabrication, about the mysterious death of an elderly resident of the hotel. It sounded suspiciously like a conflation of the story of Mary Reeser (St. Pete’s famous spontaneous human combustion victim) and Norma Desmond.

The final two stops on the tour were the Fine Arts Museum (no ghosts, but maybe a curse) and The Vinoy resort. The latter is supposed to be home to a Lady in White, which is such a standard feature in ghost stories that I wonder if it’s mandated by the afterlife entity union, and some stories involving baseball players that showed up in Haunted Baseball.

I enjoy these kinds of tours, so long as the whole paranormal angle isn’t pushed too hard. Laurie did encourage us to take pictures and look for orbs, but I suspect that was a just a little theater. I may be projecting, but I don’t think she took the whole ghost thing very seriously. I didn’t get any history of the area I didn’t know already (I take history tours on a regular basis, too), but the stories were amusing. If you’re in the area and would like to have a pleasant evening out, tickets are available at this website. They’re doing tours every night until at least Halloween.

With all the hubbub over Paranormal Activity I remembered a scary ghost story I read years ago about the dangers of falling asleep in a haunted house in London. It was presented as a true story, and I remembered enough details to find it on the web. Though I can’t remember the book I read it in, the following, from the website alienbodies, is close to word for word what I remember reading.

In 1943, two sailors from Portsmouth, Robert Martin and Edward Blunden, after having squandered their lodging funds on an evening of drunken ribaldry, broke into the then abandoned Berkeley Square home in search of a night’s rest. Discovering that the lower levels of the house were uncomfortably damp, the sailors migrated upwards, finally settling down in the now infamous room.

Blunden, presumably the more sober of the two, expressed the anxiety he felt upon entering the room, but these fears were promptly dismissed by his shipmate, who used his rifle to prop open a window to allow for a breeze. It wasn’t long before the two men were huddled on the floor, fast asleep.

Sometime after midnight Blunden awoke to see the door to the room creaking open. Little by little a sliver of dim, grayish light crept across the wooden floor. Too terrified to move, Blunden managed to wake his accomplice. The two men sat up as they heard a strange, moist, scraping sound slowly approach them. Later, Martin claimed that it sounded as if something were dragging itself across the floor.

Suddenly, the terrified men leapt to their feet and came face to face with the abhorrent visage of what could only describe as a hideous monstrosity. The creature undulated between the sailors and what was their only hope for escape; the open door. Then, just as the trembling Blunden began to reach toward the rifle – which was still wedged in the window frame – the creature suddenly lunged forward, wrapping itself around the young sailor’s throat.

Seizing the opportunity, the panic stricken Martin ran from the house, screaming for help. Soon enough he stumbled upon a patrolling police officer. Although skeptical of the young sailor’s frenzied tale (and no doubt attributing it to the almost overwhelming stench of alcohol which permeated his uniform) the officer dutifully followed Martin back to Berkeley Square.

Martin and the officer ran up the stairs, but found no sign of Blunden in the 4th floor room. Martin reclaimed his rifle as the two men continued to search the house. Their efforts seemed to prove fruitless however, until the men entered the basement and were greeted to an image which would scar them for the remainder of their lives.

Lying at the base of the stairs in Berkeley Square’s moist, rock walled cellar was Blunden’s dismembered corpse. His body lay in a mangled heap, with his head wrenched viciously to the side. The officer reported that the young man’s eyes were wide with unimaginable horror, and his face frozen in a grimace of twisted terror.

That’s a hell of a story. Is there any truth to it? Certainly not in this form. While there is a long tradition of ghost stories at 50 Berkeley Square, where this story is supposed to have taken place, it wasn’t abandoned in 1943. It was a booksellers. This is also a very odd ghost story, in that the ghost is described in almost science fiction terms. It could be alien or a mutant that the sailors saw.

There is a parallel tradition of this story where it’s set farther back in time and with a more conventional ghost. For example, there’s this version, which is set in 1887 and ends with the sailor being found dead outside the house, impaled on a fence because of ghost-caused defenestration.  Here’s another version, set in 1843, with a conventional ghost but the non-mangled body being found in the cellar. It seems unlikely any of these could be true stories because they include many elements that should have left copious evidence in the public record (the names of the sailors, where they were from, the involvement of a police officer, and of course a dead body to be explained), yet no newspaper I could find reported on any of this. I assume the Berkeley Square story has its origin as some piece of fiction that accidentally leaked into the “real” annals of the paranormal, but I have no idea when or how that happened.