Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

The Resch poltergeist turned out to be so elusive that no one ever actually saw a single object even start to move of its own accord. This included the newspaper photographer, who found that if he watched an object, it stubbornly refused to budge. So he would hold up his camera and look away. “While Tina sat in a soft chair with two telephones within easy reach, Shannon (the photographer) looked away. When he saw a movement from the corner of his eye, he pressed the shutter” (Randi 1984–85, p. 224). One of the photos obtained in this way was distributed by the Associated Press and touted widely as proof of the reality of the phenomenon. Examined closely, the photographic evidence in this case strongly suggested that Tina was faking the occurrences by simply throwing the phone and other “flying” objects when no one was looking. Randi’s careful analysis of the other photos, many unpublished, of Tina and her flying phone strengthen the conclusion that she was faking. Interestingly, the editor of the Columbus Dispatch , Luke Feck, embarrassed by the revelation that he and his paper were taken in by so obvious a fake, refused Randi permission to print the photos he had given him earlier, in an apparent attempt to suppress the evidence of Tina’s trickery and the newspaper’s credulity.

This refusal came only after Randi had uncovered even more direct evidence of Tina’s faking: She was caught faking on videotape. A camera crew from WTVN-TV in Cincinnati had been filming in the Resch home. While the crew was packing up to leave, a camera pointed at Tina was accidentally left on and recording. Randi (1984–85) describes what the camera caught: “Seated at one end of the sofa, near an end-table, and believing the camera was no longer active, she watched carefully until she was unobserved, then reached up and pulled a table lamp toward herself, simultaneously jumping away, letting out a series of bleating noises, and feigning, quite effectively, a reaction of stark terror” (p. 228). This all was revealed when the tape was processed. When confronted with the evidence, Tina said she had only done it to get the television crew to leave.

Typically, this incident and Tina’s explanation led some to conclude that Tina only cheated “sometimes”; the rest of the time the paranormal phenomena were genuine. For example, Mike Harden, the reporter who first reported the poltergeist, wrote in the Columbus Dispatch that the same day that Tina had been caught cheating, the television crew had witnessed a true poltergeist occurrence in the form of a moving table. But WTVN crew member Robb Forest saw Tina move the table with her foot.

What of parapsychologist Roll’s statement as to Tina’s genuineness? It turned out that he, like others, had not actually seen any object start to move. In one incident, he was facing away from a picture when it fell from the wall. This took place upstairs in the Resch house and Tina had been up there, apparently alone, for half an hour before this event. As Roll was attempting to rehang the photograph, using a pair of pliers to drive in the nail, a small tape recorder flew some feet from the dresser where it had been left. The layout of the room shows that Roll had his back to the recorder when it made its short journey and, attending to the task of rehanging the fallen photograph, couldn’t have been watching Tina closely at all. Randi (1984–85) further points out that “Roll is myopic and wears thick glasses; he is a poor observer” (p. 233).

So, the Tina Resch case crashes in flames. But how many television stations and newspapers that initially reported it as verified evidence of the reality of poltergeists have informed their viewers or readers of the results of the full investigation of the case? Not many, as you might expect. Randi (1984–85) makes an important point in his discussion of the Resch case, saying:

I have long believed that the major difference between the skeptic and the parapsychologist is one of expectation. The former does not believe that validation of paranormal claims is imminent; the latter depends upon that event for justification. Also, the skeptic will invoke parsimony—the simplest explanation consistent with the facts—where the parapsychologist eschews it. Personally, I find it much more reasonable, when objects fly around the room in the vicinity of an unhappy 14-year-old, to suspect poor reporting and observation rather than a repeal of the basic laws of physics. (p. 222)

Perception and memory being constructive, the expectations of the parapsychologist are frequently met.

The badly injured victim of an automobile accident is rushed to the nearest hospital emergency room. Working frantically, the doctors manage to save him. Later, after his recovery, he tells a strange story. He saw, as if from a vantage point near the ceiling of the emergency room, the entire scene as the doctors worked to save him. It was as if he were floating above his physical body, looking down on it. Then he found himself moving down a tunnel with a blazing white light at the end. As he neared the end of the tunnel, a being dressed in white, together with a dead relative, came toward him and told him his time had not yet come. During the entire experience, he felt a great sense of unity and profound understanding and a total lack of anxiety.

Reports such as this have been collected by several investigators, who argue that they represent true reports of an afterlife (Ring 1980; Moody 1976; Osis and Haraldsson 1977). These investigators make a point of the great similarity of these “deathbed” visions, even across different cultures. This is what would be expected if the visions were really memories of a trip to the threshold of the afterlife. However, proponents of the afterlife interpretation of these reports grossly underestimate the variability among reports. One researcher (Rawlings 1978), for example, found that the patients he talked to often reported visiting hell. In Ring’s reports, the tunnel imagery is rarely found. Moody has explicitly called attention to the great variability in the reports: “There is an enormously wide spectrum of experiences, with some people having only one or two of the elements, and others most of them” (p. 87). In addition, reports of this type are quite rare. Most people lying critically injured in the emergency room don’t experience them.

The way in which the reports are collected poses another serious problem for those who want to take them seriously as evidence of an afterlife. Osis and Haraldsson’s (1977) study was based on replies received from ten thousand questionnaires sent to doctors and nurses in the United States and India. Only 6.4 percent were returned. Since it was the doctors and nurses who were giving the reports, not the patients who had, presumably, actually had the experience, the reports were secondhand. This means they had passed through two highly fallible and constructive human memory systems (the doctor’s or nurse’s and the actual patient’s) before reaching Osis and Haraldsson. In other cases (i.e., Moody 1977) the reports were given by the patients themselves, months and years after the event. Such reports are hardly sufficient to argue for the reality of an afterlife.

Near-death visions are actually hallucinations. Siegel (1980) has described the high degree of similarity between near-death visions and other types of hallucinations (such as drug-induced hallucinations) in both form and content. Thus, hallucinations caused by drugs frequently contain images of long tunnels, blinding light, otherworldly beings, friends and relatives (alive and dead), and so forth. However, most of the individuals who experience deathbed visions are not drugged. What, then, is responsible for their hallucinations? The answer is cerebral anoxia. When the body is badly injured—especially if the heart stops, even if only for a brief period—the brain is deprived of oxygen. Even a very brief period of cerebral anoxia, such as sixty to ninety seconds, can result in impairment of neuronal function (Brierley and Graham 1984). Blackmore (1993) has reviewed the biology and psychology of near-death experiences in detail.