Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

As in other areas of the paranormal, such as prophetic dreams, a reporting bias exists that spuriously increases the frequency of dramatic ghostly encounters. Unspectacular hypnagogic hallucinations, such as hearing one’s name called, are likely to go unreported or even unremembered. However, a spectacular hallucination of a ghost, perhaps complete with groans and other auditory “special effects,” is very likely to arouse one into full wakefulness, so the hallucination will be firmly planted in memory.

Research has shown that a very large percentage of normal individuals have experienced auditory hallucinations even when fully awake. Posey and Losch (1983–84) found that more than 70 percent of a sample of 375 college students had at some time experienced an auditory hallucination of hearing voices while they were awake. Such hallucinations may readily be mistaken for ghosts or taken as evidence of the paranormal by those experiencing them. This is especially true since the high frequency of these waking hallucinations is not a well-known finding. It is the commonness of such hallucinations, along with the relatively high frequency of hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations, that accounts for the 50 percent of Americans who report that they have had some sort of paranormal experience indicative of life after death (Greeley 1987). Greeley’s research indicates that initial belief in life after death does not make one more or less likely to have an experience that is interpreted as evidence for life after death or communication with the dead. This is just what would be expected on the basis of the high frequency of waking auditory and hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. Belief in life after death does not affect the probability of experiencing such hallucinations. However, as Greeley’s research also shows, having such an experience can engender strong belief. Psychologically, then, the effects of having such a hallucination and misinterpreting it as reality are very similar to seeing a strange light in the sky and misinterpreting it as a flying saucer. Both experiences can result in very powerful beliefs.

Most reports of hauntings, however, derive from far more mundane phenomena. Strange moans, groans, knockings, and the like are heard. Or doors swing shut when no breeze was about. These are sometimes interpreted as being the work of a ghostly presence, even if an apparition is never seen. It is certainly a giant leap from a series of odd noises or a door swinging to a haunted house. Any house, but especially older ones, will creak and groan as the temperature or humidity changes. Such noises can easily be mistaken for the sound of footsteps by those inclined to imagine the presence of a deceased tenant in their abode. A well-balanced door can be readily shut by a slight breeze, too small to be detected by the witness standing a few feet away. My own experience with these sorts of reports is that, as one mentions the many nonghostly alternatives, the report becomes more and more embellished, much like an eight-inch trout that grows to a two-foot monster as the story of its catching is told over and over.

Fraud and hoax have long played a role in reports of ghosts and hauntings, especially in the most dramatic cases. MacKay (1841/1980) describes numerous cases of faked hauntings, including a 1649 case in England in which a series of dreadful ghostly occurrences drove a group of Oliver Cromwell’s administrators from a manor in Woodstock. The haunting was later revealed to have been the work of a royal loyalist. In spite of the fact that the cases MacKay relates were fraudulent, hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of people were convinced of their legitimacy before the real causes were determined.

Two of the most dramatic and allegedly well-documented modern cases of hauntings have likewise turned out to be fraudulent. The cases in question are those of Borley Rectory in England and the “Amityville Horror” in Amityville, New York.

Borley Rectory in Essex became popularly known as “the most haunted house in England” after a book of that title was published in 1940 by Harry Price. Price’s book purports to document a series of astonishing hauntings and manifestations from the time the rectory was built in 1863. The manifestations Price reported included the ghosts of a nun and several other individuals; all sorts of noises in and around the rectory that, according to Price, could not have been due to normal causes; spontaneous fires; mysterious cold spots; unexplained ringing of electrical bells that had been installed in the rectory; crockery flying through the air without any human assistance; and even mysterious messages written on the walls by the ghosts.

The phenomena Price reported in his book were said to have been witnessed by many of the inhabitants of the rectory over the years, and Price interviewed many of them for the book. He also visited the rectory on many occasions and, from May 1937 to May 1938, rented it himself, relating his own experiences at the rectory in the book.

The book was very well received and many readers found it convincing. One reader, Sir Albion Richard, K.C., C.B.E., said of the book:

The evidence which he [i.e., Mr. Price] has collected of the phenomena which appeared there is as conclusive as human testimony can ever be and is admirably marshalled.

I have not met anyone who has read the book—and it is mainly with legal friends of long experience in the weighing and sifting of evidence that I have discussed it—(many of them, like myself, previously sceptical) who has not been satisfied that the manifestations therein disclosed are proved by the evidence, to the point of moral certainty. (Quoted in Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall 1956, p. 171)

Another famous English jurist, Sir Ernest Jelf, then Senior Master of the Supreme Court, was equally impressed with the evidence in Price’s book (Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall 1956).

The rectory burned in February 1939, but until the remains were finally torn down in 1944 people continued to visit the site and report strange occurrences. Price published a second volume, The End of Borley Rectory , in 1946; he died two years later, in 1948.

In the early 1950s the Society for Psychical Research in England undertook a complete investigation of the haunting. The result is a painstaking and scrupulous book, The Haunting of Borley Rectory , by parapsychologists Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall, published in 1956. Unfortunately the book is long out of print, but a short summary can be found in Hall (1985).

Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall (1956) demolish the claim that Borley Rectory was ever haunted. They find, by comparing reports in Price’s books to the actual statements that witnesses made to Price—which are still preserved—that Price distorted and embellished reports to make them much more dramatic than they actually were. Their investigation also made it clear that during the period in which the seemingly paranormal goings-on were at their peak, Mrs. Marianne Foyster, wife of the Rev. Lionel Foyster who lived at the rectory from 1930 to 1935, was actively engaged in fraudulently creating these phenomena. Price himself “salted the mine” and faked several phenomena while he was at the rectory. When such phenomena were seen by others, as in one case where a glass of water mysteriously turned to ink, they were embellished and entered Price’s books as further evidence of the reality of the haunting.

Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall (1956) find a nonparanormal explanation for nearly every incident reported from Borley. The very few that go unexplained do not constitute support for the reality of the haunting, any more than the “irreducible minimum” number of unexplained UFO sightings constitute evidence for extraterrestrial visitation. Rather, they are merely cases about which not enough is known to arrive at the correct explanation. In any case, as was shown in chapter 1, the burden of proof should not rest on the skeptic. In their conclusion, Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall state that “when analysed, the evidence for haunting and poltergeist activity for each and every period appears to diminish in force and finally to vanish away” (p. 168).