The Woman in Black

Directed by James Watkins

In the new horror/thriller The Woman in Black, Arthur Kipps, a lawyer whose grief over his dead wife has put his career in jeopardy, is sent to a remote English village to sort out the affairs of a recently deceased woman. Upon his arrival, he learns that everyone in the town is keeping a deadly secret: the woman’s house is haunted by a ghost-the titular woman in black.

The Woman in Black shamelessly dips deep into the well of horror clichés, ladling on more fear and dread with each scene. The list is fairly comprehensive: creaking doors; spooky little girls in finery; candlelit faces; rocking chairs with unseen occupants; close-ups of creepy dolls; wall-scrawled scary message; the local, spooked oddball who turns out to be not so crazy; scary faces and handprints on windows; dark shadows moving in the background behind an unsuspecting hero; ghostly figures seen, then unseen a second later; and so on. 

While many of these are used to good effect, the film isn’t above cheap scares: there’s a few animals that jump or flutter out of the darkness-accompanied, of course, by a pounding, jumping score. (My rule of thumb is to give horror directors three such cheap-shock red herring freebies before I complain.)

The film’s gothic setting and scenery serve the story nicely. The woman’s house (situated somewhat strangely on a tiny island beyond a cold gray marsh) is ivy-covered and decrepit; the town is small, tight-knit, and superstitious. The era is relevant as well: Spiritualism and belief in ghosts was flourishing in England at the time, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes) publicly endorsing mediums and séances.

I appreciated the film’s slow, deliberate pacing-this is a thriller horror film in the tradition of the classic Hammer Films, not today’s quick-cut slasher flicks-though the many scenes of Kipps exploring the house and grounds gets repetitive. For an apprentice lawyer who desperately needs to prove himself to his employers, he spend an awful lot of time doing anything but what he’s being paid to do. Instead of sorting through the dead woman’s effects in search of relevant legal paperwork, he’s wandering the house following weird noises and phantoms.

Daniel Radcliffe as Kipps looks a bit like a soulful Edgar Allan Poe in his black frock coat and pocket watch. The film is of course Radcliffe’s first non-Harry Potter film, and he seems to be doing his best to play against type. He’s a quite good actor in his own right, and well on his way to shedding Potter for good.

The script was adapted from a 1983 novel by Susan Hill, though the basic plot is ancient. From a folkloric point of view, the story is an interesting blend of ghost traditions from around the world, including the Irish legends of the banshee, a woman whose terrifying wail is a portent of death and doom. There’s also elements of La Llorona, the Hispanic Weeping Woman who drowned her children and returned as a vengeful ghost. He’s seen and heard calling and weeping for her babies, and is said to abduct and kill children.

Though The Woman in Black is good overall it falters a bit toward the end, as if the screenwriter wasn’t sure how exactly to wrap it up into a satisfying conclusion. It doesn’t give too much away to say that Kipps tries to figure out what the ghost wants so that her spirit can rest. This is of course classic ghostlore, and a scenario I have seen enacted during real-life ghost hunts by psychics and alleged ghost hunters. Given the rich source material The Woman in Black could have been better, but it’s a respectable ghost story. 

The Mayan calendar, also called the Long Count, is too complex to describe in much detail, but here are the basics: It’s divided up into different units, including the kin (one day), uinal (20 days), tun (360 days), katun (7,200 days), baktun (14,400 days) and 13 baktuns (1,872,000 days). Adding notation from another Mayan calendar system (blending a 260-day tzolk’in cycle and a 365-day haab cycle-don’t ask), the first day of the 13 baktun is written as “0.0.0.0.0 4 ahau, eight cumku,” and the final day is written as “13.0.0.0.0 4 ahau, three kankin.” The calendar began Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. (0.0.0.0.0) and will end on Dec. 21, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0).

Thus it is technically true that the Long Count ends in December.

 “So what?” you’re asking? Good question. Perhaps you’re wondering why we should pay special attention to the Mayan calendar. What’s so special about it anyway? After all, there are hundreds of calendar systems. This year may be 2012 to most folks, but in the Jewish calendar it’s 5772, a difference of about three millennia, give or take; the Hijri Arabic calendar says it’s 1433. And so on. Since all calendar systems are man-made, it can be whatever year you want it to be. The calendar on my wall “ends” on Dec. 31, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a Jan. 1. 

I recognize that my blog was flawed in several ways and deserved much of the criticism it got. Critics brought up questions that deserve an answer, and I hope this will suffice. By way of context, I write about 15 columns, blogs, and articles per month on a wide range of topics for many outlets ranging from Skeptical Inquirer to Discovery News. That’s an average of about one piece every other day, totaling six books and over 1,000 items in the past decade. If you write enough material day after day and year after year, inevitably some material will be better written or clearer than others. And mistakes will slip through.

The Disputed Facts

1) I wrote, “The choice of blue for infants has its roots in superstition. In ancient times the color blue (long associated with the heavens) was thought to ward off evil spirits, and the color distinction between the two genders dates back millennia.” (An earlier draft noted “Originally only boys were swaddled in blue, and girls were later assigned the color pink for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.”) These assertions were challenged for factual accuracy. My information for the association of blue for infants (and specifically male infants) came from three sources: “Blue Protects” in A Dictionary of Superstitions, Ed. Opie and Tatem (Oxford, 1989, p. 33); How Did They Do That?, by Caroline Sutton, (Morrow and Co., 1984), p. 54; and The Big Book of Amazing Facts, by Malvina Vogel, (Moby books, 1980), p. 349. If my sources are wrong I’m happy to admit that, but that’s not my error. I did not offer an opinion about why (or at what point in time) pink was chosen for girls; the “millennia” and “color distinction” I refer to is that if blue has historically been for boys then other colors would by default be for girls. I cited research that, though accurate, does not apply to the question of current gender/color distinctions. In retrospect I should have made that clearer.

2) In my piece I spent about three sentences offering a reason why most toys for girls are pink: “since most girls play with dolls, and most dolls are pink, or roughly Caucasian skin-toned…. it makes perfect sense that most girls’ toys are pink.” It can be boiled down to this syllogism: 1) Most things girls play with are dolls; 
2) Most dolls are pink things; 
3) Therefore, most things girls play with are pink. Some insisted it was a tautology-valid and true but pointless; others that it was invalid because the conclusion didn’t logically follow from the premises; still others said that dolls aren’t really pinkish.  (Interestingly, commenters couldn’t agree on what color most dolls actually are; the most common response was “peach,” followed by “ivory” and “beige.”) I stand by my logic, but I admit this is in some ways a subjective argument. This discussion is within the context of a four-year-old’s perceptions; if you ask most preteen girls what color most of their dolls are, I’m guessing they’ll say pink, not beige or peach-but I could be wrong. Can the color most people describe as “peach” (once known as the Crayola color “flesh”) be reasonably interpreted as a light “pink, or roughly Caucasian skin-toned”? Watson says that’s “ridiculous,” but I think reasonable people can disagree.

3) In my blog I accurately and correctly reported the results of a peer-reviewed study published in a reputable journal suggesting that girls may have a predisposition for the color pink. PZ Myers offered an incisive critique of it, which I fully accept, and a follow-up study finding no such gender-specific effect was helpfully presented to me by a poster on the CFI blogs, “infinitegames,” and I accept its conclusions. In hindsight I should have looked for more research, and/or more clearly qualified the conclusions as tentative.

While hundreds of people put my claims and logic under a microscope, almost no one addressed Watson’s logic, research, and scholarship in her response. While I’m criticized for not double-checking the scholarship of all my sources, for example, no one commented on Watson’s research “proving” her point that dolls aren’t pink by zooming in on colors in a screen capture of Riley taken with a cell phone.

Denying Gender Issues

One thing kept confusing me as I read through the responses. After I replied with some variation of “That’s not what I wrote, I don’t know why you think that…” for the thirtieth time, I realized that somehow people had gotten the impression that I dismissed the importance or relevance of gender issues. I didn’t fully realize this until I had a discussion on the CFI blogs. Responding to commenter “Sally Strange,” I wrote, “We are talking about Riley specifically-what she says and does in the video. I made no statements about the presence or lack of social pressure to conform to gender roles. I wrote nothing of the sort. I didn’t even bring it up.” Sally replied: “Yes, I know you didn’t bring it up-which is rather startling, since that is exactly what Riley is talking about. It amounts to an attempt to deny that gender roles exist.”

That’s when a big piece of the puzzle fell into place. It had not occurred to me that anything I’d written had been interpreted as actually denying that gender roles exist or that girls feel social pressure to conform to beauty and gender-stereotyped expectations. I had missed that completely. I was being criticized not for something I wrote, but for something I didn’t write-something that many readers obviously felt should have been included but conspicuously wasn’t.

I do not accept the premise (which served as the basis for much of the criticism) that the fact that I didn’t discuss gender roles in my piece amounts to an attempt to deny that gender roles exist. That is a non-sequitur; there are countless arguments and statements I didn’t bring up in my short blog, and the fact that I didn’t discuss them holds no implication for whether or not I endorse them. No single article or blog can reasonably be expected to comprehensively address all aspects of a topic.

It is self-evident to me that gender stereotypes exist, that women feel pressure to conform to those stereotypes, and so on. I do think that pop culture has less demonstrable effect on kids than popularly assumed (for example research shows that parents are far more influential in their children’s lives than pop stars or TV commercials), but that’s a separate issue. To suggest that you either accept that media marketing is an incredibly influential force in kids’ lives-or that it has no effect at all-is a false-choice logical fallacy.

I assumed it was so obvious that it didn’t need to be explicitly stated; I was wrong. So, just to clear up any lingering confusion and for the record: I believe, and have always believed, that gender stereotypes exist in society and are used by marketers to try to sell different colors and types of dolls and toys to boys and girls. It’s also clear that kids receive both direct and indirect messages and pressure about their expected gender roles, from parents, friends, TV, and elsewhere. Those exact influences are often complex and difficult to quantify, but that does not mean that they don’t exist.

Why didn’t I include a discussion of gender issues? First, my piece is explicitly framed as a marketing discussion. Second, that aspect of the story had already been discussed elsewhere as the majority, orthodox discussion angle on the Riley video. I can see why there was legitimate confusion about my position. Still, one element to critical thinking is weighing alternative explanations: Is it likely that a professional journalist and author of three books on the media (the latest subtitled, “A History of Media-Driven Panics”)- really believes that the media have no effect on people (or everyone but women)? Or maybe there’s a misunderstanding somewhere?

Disputes in Interpretation & Taking Riley Literally

Some have suggested that most of my blog was taken up with debunking Riley’s literal words; in fact I spend only about three sentences on that. Some of the discussion centered around Riley’s statement that boys or girls “have to buy” certain colored items or types of toys. Watson and others acknowledged I was correct that girls are not forced or required to buy anything. The problem was not that I was technically wrong, but that I missed or ignored Riley’s larger point.

She’s four, they say. We can’t take what she said literally, we have to extrapolate, generalize, and read into it. In my response to Watson I demonstrated that Riley’s words could be (and indeed had been) interpreted in different ways by different people. If I read too little into Riley’s comments, I think it’s a fair question whether some people read too much into them. The problem with the argument, as Watson frames it, is that it is representing Riley’s words (which appeared in a very specific context) as part of a discussion about gender issues in general, and they’re not. Riley’s comments are no more about girls who don’t wear makeup being called dykes than they are about women’s suffrage or the right to an abortion. That’s why I didn’t discuss gender issues-not because I deny them but because that wasn’t what I was writing about. We framed the issues differently and thus are talking about two different things. The blurring of the two was subtle and unnoticed-the association (that I never made) between a literal quote and interpretation of gender issues had been made with nary a comment.

When I re-read it I understood how it could have been read differently than I intended (especially since I added, “It’s bizarre… it’s not like anyone cares,” which I meant to refer to the idea that anyone should care if a girl plays with superheroes). That was poor and unclear writing on my part. Though I disagreed with Riley’s literal words, I agreed with her overall intent, and I did not make that clear.

I got comments from people who said they appreciated my work and investigation skills but expressed disappointment that I didn’t appear to apply those same skills when it came to gender issues. Julia Lavarnway and others helped me recognize that the same set of investigation skills I’ve employed for years don’t necessarily translate well into other areas. I don’t have the space to get into a full discussion here, but it’s important to realize that examining people’s exact words is a fundamental part of investigation; the exact words and specific details a person uses can be critically important to solving a mystery. When a lake monster eyewitness describes its skin as looking like “bark,” that can crack a case. Or, for example, see Richard Wiseman’s research into psychic séances where a person swears “the psychic knew my mother’s name was Ann, and that she died of a heart attack,” while a recording of the exact words reveals the psychic asking if her mother’s name began with an “A” and died of a problem in the “chest area.” I’ve solved many mysteries with what may appear to be pedantic attention to detail and insistence on verbatim quotes.

I recognize that a four-year-old is not the same as a Bigfoot eyewitness, but the basic analysis is the same, and I don’t think a close analysis of what she literally said was unfair or inappropriate. My mistake, I believe, was not in abandoning the critical analysis that serves me so well in other areas, but instead adhering too closely to it. Julia helped me see that I also tend to be very literal-minded in my analyses, searching for clues that connect dots and real-world causes and effects. That approach, while very successful in some areas, runs into trouble in the social sciences where influences are often tentative, vague, and tenuous.

Bias Complaints

The issue has been framed by a few people as being about sexism on my part. There’s nothing new about bias complaints. Before the complaint that something I wrote was anti-women (or anti-four-year-old girl), the complaint was that one or more of my columns showed “hatred for fat people.” Before that, I was accused of homophobia; before that I was accused of hating short people. And so on. When I question claims about alternative medicine, it’s because I’m biased and paid by Big Pharma. And when I write blogs like the one I did about Riley, to some it’s obviously because I have sexist bias. I discussed this in my response to Watson’s piece, so I won’t repeat it here except to quote the words of CSICOP co-founder Ray Hyman: “The principle of charity implies that, whenever there is doubt or ambiguity about a claim, we should try to resolve the ambiguity in favor of the claimant….”

The implicit (and sometimes explicit) suggestion that I or my writings are sexist is false and offensive. I’ve long supported women in general and especially within skepticism, including seeking out women (and minority) writers for special issues of Skeptical Inquirer and Skeptical Briefs newsletter. During a Dragon*Con panel on women last year I encouraged female skeptics to get involved in skepticism and contribute to Skeptical Inquirer magazine; at TAM last year on a panel on monsters I ended my Power Point presentation complimenting several prominent female skeptics including Karen Stollznow and Sharon Hill and encouraging more women to join. I concluded with a photo of an eight-year-old girl named Cassie who I’d met at a Bigfoot conference, and who I encouraged to go into science so she could grow up to look for monsters.

I’ve written many pieces for Web sites dedicated specifically to women in skepticism: SheThought, We Are SkeptiXX, and, yes, even for Rebecca Watson on Skepchick (most recently I wrote a glowing profile / interview on young feminist activist Shelby Knox which also appeared in Free Inquiry magazine). I don’t need to defend my long record promoting women and feminism, but it’s unfortunate that some have carelessly insinuated sexism in my writings. I made mistakes in the blog, but they were not borne of sexism.

Differing Skeptical Approaches

Many people who saw my original post (though not necessarily agreeing with it or even knowing what to make of it) were shocked by the vitriolic and abusive tones of the responses. I wasn’t just mistaken in matters of fact or opinion; I was “idiotic” and “ridiculous” and so stupid that I clearly had “no idea that [I] live in a society with fairly well-defined gender roles.” I was less intelligent than a four-year-old, and my errors were so outrageous that PZ Myers felt ashamed to be an old White male.

Perhaps the starkest contrast in all this is the difference between how Julia Lavarnway treated the exchange and how Rebecca Watson treated the exchange. In one case I was having a respectful dialogue; in another I was subjected to insults. Lavarnway was genuinely interested in trying to understand what my points were, while Watson was eager to mock and ridicule.

These represent larger issues in the skeptical community. Which of these approaches will change minds and engage people? If we wish to reach out to the public and get them to embrace skepticism and critical thinking, we can tell them how stupid they are and refuse to engage them. Or we can try to have a respectful discussion to see if we can understand what’s going on: Is there a difference of opinion or interpretation? Are we using a different set of facts or premises? Is there a misunderstanding? Speaking from my experience, the only people I learned anything from were those willing to engage in a respectful dialogue.

Skepticism is a big tent, and there’s room for all styles and personalities, from philosophers to investigators, from Penn & Teller to The Amazing Randi. Diversity (in race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, point of view, etc.) is a strength, and I’ll continue to fight for it. The type of skepticism I want to be a part of-and that I have worked to promote for the past fifteen years-is respectful, inclusive, and tolerant. It is not afraid of nuance, dissenting points of view, or acknowledging errors. To each his (or her) own. For my own part, I’ll try to do better in the future.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Julia Lavarnway, Kate Hemenway, Gwyn MacRae, Joya Beebe, “SallyStrange,” “infinitegames,” Ron Lindsay, and others who may prefer to remain anonymous for their thoughts, comments, and support. I very much appreciate their invaluable insights and assistance in analyzing this issue.

NORTON, Mass.—A woman was mistakenly shot by a hunter while walking her dogs in Norton. It was an agonizing 911 call after the accident on New Year’s Eve 66-year-old Cheryl Blair wounded. The call was placed by the hunter who accidentally shot her. “I just shot a person—a woman she’s shot in the woods,” the hunter told a 911 dispatcher. “I’m in Norton behind Jim Blair’s house.” Cheryl Blair can be heard yelling in pain in the background of the recording.
Blair was walking her two retrievers on a trail when she was hit in the side. The man who fired the single shot from a rifle was an off duty state trooper. The accident left Blair with a bullet lodged in her hip, but she’s expected to return home in a few days. The off duty trooper is not facing charges. Investigators say the accident happened on property where hunting is permitted.

There are a few things about this case that are important to understand in the context of skepticism. The most obvious one is that people can (and often do) misunderstand what they see, and that eyewitnesses are often mistaken. However there’s another important point in that this was not a stray bullet; the hunter hit what he was aiming at, mistaking the two retrievers she was walking for a deer. This was not some half-blind, drunk yahoo shooting in the dark; this was a police officer (a state trooper, in fact). Proponents of Bigfoot and UFOs place especially strong weight on eyewitness reports provided by police officers: these are trained observers they claim, people who don’t make mistakes.

Cases like this one—and there are many more—show just how flawed this assumption is. Anyone can misunderstand what they see, and if a trained observer like this state trooper can look at a pair of retrievers and be sure enough that he’s seeing a deer to pull the trigger, then he can surely mistake a bear for a Bigfoot.

Here’s another example: In February 2010, a group of people on the shore of Maine’s Moosehead Lake encountered a terrifying sight out on the (mostly) frozen lake: a drowning snowmobiler in desperate need of help.

The figure, dressed in black and wearing a black helmet, was partly submerged in the freezing water and struggling to climb back onto the ice. The three witnesses called 911, and emergency crews were immediately dispatched to the scene in an airboat. But when the rescuers arrived, they saw no sign of the drowned snowmobiler—nor, for that matter, any sign of a snowmobile or anything wrong at all. Instead searchers found pieces of crawfish and a small bloodstain on the ice: clear evidence that one or more otters had recently been feeding there. Furthermore, there were no reports of any missing persons in the area.

How could three eyewitnesses mistake an otter for a drowning man?

Actually, it’s quite easy: They misjudged the distance to what they were seeing, and therefore overestimated its size. This same process occurred in the investigation that Joe Nickell and I did into the most famous photo and sighting of Lake Champlain monster: the eyewitness dramatically overestimated the size of what she saw. The bright sun’s glare reflecting off the ice made it difficult to see the animal clearly, and it’s likely that once one person decided it was a drowning snowmobiler dressed in black, the others agreed with that interpretation. Joe has demonstrated that otters can be—-and have been—mistaken for lake monsters; now we can add drowning snowmobilers to the list of otter doppelgangers.

Examples like this remind us of how inaccurate eyewitness testimony can be, whether it’s a witness to a crime in a court of law, or a hunter who claims he saw Bigfoot in the Oregon woods: You can’t always trust your eyes.

Rebecca recently wrote a piece for her Skepchick blog called “Intellectual Cage Match: Ben Radford Vs. A 4-Year-Old,” in which she critiqued a blog piece I wrote for Julia Lavarnway’s recently-launched blog “We Are SkeptiXX.” It was an analysis of a viral video featuring a four-year-old girl named Riley who complains about gender stereotyped marketing. In order to understand the context it’s important to read my original post, which can be found at the link above.

There’s much wrong about Rebecca’s rebuttal to my article, so I’ll jump in.

1) Rebecca begins by accusing me of “misrepresenting” research last year on a different topic; we had a long, drawn-out discussion on the subject which is easily available for anyone who wishes to look for it. I explained why Rebecca was wrong in her interpretation, and the whole thing ended with Rebecca contacting one or both of the authors who she claimed I misquoted; a year later, neither one has yet claimed that I misquoted or misrepresented them, their research, or the conclusions I quoted from their papers. Strange that Rebecca neglected to mention that…

2) Rebecca writes, “It takes a lot to strawman a 4-year old, but Ben’s done it. For starters, most of his takedown involves literally taking the 4-year old’s words at face value instead of comprehending what she’s saying with her limited vocabulary.”

There’s a very specific reason I focused on Riley’s words “at face value” for the purposes of discussion: They are concrete and objective. We can all agree on what exactly she said, we can read it and listen to it and quote it for reference in case of dispute. Anything much beyond her words is interpretation (more on this later). Julia’s statement, in her response to my article on the We Are SkeptiXX blog that the point of Riley’s rant was that “aisles in the toy store are often specifically labeled ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls’” is a perfect example. To Julia, that was obviously the gist or thesis of Riley’s comments. But that was not the gist that I, or another viewer I corresponded with, interpreted from her Riley’s words.

The point isn’t that Julia, Rebecca, or any one of us, is necessarily wrong, but that the problem with discussing interpretation is that it brings us back to subjective opinions. Like a piece of art, a dozen different people may have a dozen different interpretations. Certainly we can each argue for our own interpretation, but it’s like people arguing about different interpretations of the Bible: It’s often circular, and there’s rarely a meeting of the minds or consensus about interpretations.

Of course it’s not enough to just analyze her words (that’s why I did so only briefly); it’s only a starting point. There’s nothing inherently wrong with discussing various interpretations, as long as people acknowledge that they are essentially subjective opinions, and that other people may have equally valid interpretations. When we stick to the original, objective, indisputable words that Riley spoke-whether she’s four or forty-we stick to things we can all agree on. This is actually standard practice for skeptical investigation, which is my specialty (and something Rebecca has, to my knowledge, never done): You focus on what exactly the person said.

So when I insisted that Riley was wrong in her claim that girls are forced or “tricked” into buying or liking pink items or princesses, my purpose was not to be pedantic, but instead to keep the discussion grounded and rooted in objective evidence.

3) “Ben goes on to guess at why society has decided that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. One of his guesses is that girls’ toys are pink because their dolls’ skin is pink.”

Apparently Rebecca was so busy facepalming herself that she didn’t read what I wrote closely… Do I explain why girls decided that pink is for girls? Nope, I say that no one knows; here’s the direct quote: “girls were later assigned the color pink for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.” Misrepresentation or misreading? Either way, Rebecca is wrong. A closer reading shows that I never claimed or suggested any link between “why society has decided that pink is for girls and blue is for boys” and “that girls’ toys are pink because their dolls’ skin is pink.”

Rebecca confuses two separate issues; the question “Why are most toys and clothing items for female babies and young girls pink” is a different question than why society chose pink and blue to represent girls and boys, respectively. I did not even try to answer the latter question (in fact I wrote that “reasons that aren’t entirely clear”), while the former question can be analyzed as follows:

“One obvious reason is that dolls are by far the most popular toys for girls. What color are most dolls? Pink, or roughly Caucasian skin-toned. There are, of course, dolls of varying skin tones and ethnicities (the popular Bratz dolls, for example, have a range of skin tones). But since most girls play with dolls, and most dolls are pink (a green- or blue-skinned doll would look creepy), it makes perfect sense that most girls’ toys are pink.”

Rebecca apparently believes that most dolls do not have “pink, or roughly Caucasian skin-tones.” To Rebecca, the claim that most dolls have “pink, or roughly Caucasian skin-tones” is a “ridiculous fantasy story.” What’s her evidence for this? Did she do any research? Nope, she zoomed in on a screen capture of Riley taken with a cell phone and concluded that few if any of the dolls are pinkish. (Watch the first ten seconds of the video and see how the background colors change every few seconds; this is pretty much the definition of a flawed experiment, as she’ll get different tones depending on when she freezes the picture.)

Who’s right, me or Rebecca? I could cite studies about the dearth of minority skin tones in children’s dolls, but there’s a much easier way to do it. Decide for yourself: the next time you’re in a toy store, craft store, or anywhere else where dolls are sold, look at the skin tones on the majority of the dolls. Are they roughly pink tones, or are they another color? Or do a simple Google image search for “dolls” and see what skin color most of them show up as; according to Rebecca, it will be anything but pink.

4) “Here’s another reason Ben made up for why girl toys are pink: Pink is also the most popular color for girls’ items for the same reason that white is the most popular color for new cars: that’s what most people prefer. Get it? Popular things are popular because they’re popular. Pink things are popular because people prefer them.”

I’m not sure what Rebecca doesn’t understand about this, but I’ve spelled out the logic below, maybe this will help:
1) Most girls play with dolls
2) Most toys that girls play with are dolls (i.e. they are by far the most common girls’ toy)
3) Most dolls are pink
4) Therefore most girls’ toys are pink.

I can do a Venn diagram for her, but it’s valid.

5) This is perhaps my favorite Rebecca-ism:

“Girls who don’t dress up or wear make-up are called dykes or unfuckable prudes. Boys who wear skirts are called fags or treated for mental instability. Riley understands this, but apparently Ben does not.”

Yes, Rebecca is really saying that four-year-old Riley understands that “girls who don’t dress up or wear make-up are called dykes or unfuckable prudes. Boys who wear skirts are called fags or treated for mental instability.”

It’s clear that Rebecca is putting her own spin or interpretation on Riley’s comments. Julia Lavarnway, in her piece on We Are SkeptiXX, had a very different interpretation than Rebecca does, saying that “Aisles in the toy store are often specifically labeled ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls.’ That is what Riley is really complaining about.” Of course Rebecca assumes that her interpretation is the only correct one; I’m wrong, Julia is wrong, and anyone else that doesn’t agree with her is an idiot.

But if you listen closely you find that Riley doesn’t talk about gender roles; that’s Rebecca’s spin on it. Riley’s not talking about unfuckable prudes or boys being called fags; she’s noting, correctly, that toys marketed for girls tend to be pink (and princesses), and toys marketed for boys tend to be superheroes (and not pink). She complains that girls are “tricked” into buying pink items, a claim Rebecca apparently agrees with. Riley actually contradicts herself at least once in the video, for example when her father points out that boy are not forced to buy “different colored” (i.e., non-pink) items. I’m not sure which contradictory position of Riley’s Rebecca endorses; probably both.

Are there people and parents who freak out if their young daughter plays with G.I. Joes or acts like a tomboy? Of course. Are there people and parents who freak out if their young son likes to play dress-up and wear pink? Sure there are. No one is saying that those people don’t exist, or that their narrow-mindedness is not a problem. But this is specifically about Riley Maida, her comments, her father’s comments, and the public’s reaction to them, not about whether gender stereotypes exist (of course they do).

6) I actually wrote (and submitted) a much more detailed piece than the one that appeared on We Are SkeptiXX blog. It’s unfortunate that it was not posted earlier (and is still not available) so that Rebecca could read the whole piece, since she misunderstands a lot of it.

Instead of trading insults with Rebecca, I’d rather look critically at the issues Riley raises. Of course marketing and advertising is going to feature pink toys (since many girls prefer pink-whether it’s genetic, cultural, or both is another matter) and girls playing with dolls and princesses. Most TV commercials don’t depict girls playing with gender-stereotyped male toys like WWF action figures and rockets-and why would they, since girls prefer dolls? If you’re a company marketing to girls, you’re going to depict girls playing with toys that girls prefer to play with; you could of course make gender-contrary ads (boys playing with princesses and girls playing with racing cars, or even men in lingerie), but why would you? No advertiser in their right might would do that—not because they are part of some sinister sexist stereotyping marketing conspiracy, but because there’s little point in funding a marketing campaign that will appeal to a minority of consumers. Rule #1 in communication and marketing is “Know Your Audience”; you don’t pitch BMWs to teenagers, beef to vegetarians, or princesses to boys. There are lots of toys that girls rarely appear in commercials playing with…. I’m not sure where the assumption comes from that girls only play with toys that they see girl actors in commercials playing with.

I think the discussion gets more interesting and much more productive when we as skeptics focus on real-world evidence and objective claims. We can speculate all day about why a particular girl likes pink, or whether boys or girls are harmed by not having opposite-gender toys marketed to them, but in the end it’s mostly opinion. If there are studies showing that girls or boys who play with gender-stereotyped toys are damaged in some way, let’s review them and discuss them. If there’s some evidence (or reason to believe) that removing the “Boys” and “Girls” aisle signs in toy stores would have some beneficial effect on girls, let’s talk about it.

Personally, I think the whole idea of distinguishing Boys and Girls toys is silly. I don’t have a problem with girls being tomboys and playing with Superman, or boys playing with princesses. It doesn’t bother me either way, I think Riley and every other kid should do what he or she wants. I’m not defending gender-stereotyped colors and toys, in fact I think the whole idea is ridiculous, and if parents buy into that they need to get over their hangups. But nor do I see any sexist marketing conspiracy in it. I don’t see any specific harm or damage done if a girl plays with a pink princess, or a boy is given blue instead of pink or another color. Who cares?

Parents—not toy companies or toddlers—control what their children play with, from clothing to toys. Instead of blaming toy marketers for providing products that parents are free to buy or ignore (as Riley seems to), parents need to take responsibility. If you don’t want your little girl to play with Barbie, don’t buy her one. Ideally parents should offer their boys and girls a variety of gender-neutral toys and colors, and let them express their own preferences.

But little girls who express a desire for pink dolls and “girlie” items should not be denied them, nor made to feel like they “shouldn’t” like those things because they reinforce gender stereotypes. It’s insulting to suggest that the reason a girl wants pink is that she must have been influenced by marketers and the media: “I don’t care what you say, you don’t really like pink or want a Barbie… you’re just buying into consumer culture’s sexist expectations of what you should want.” She might like pink dolls because she saw them in a commercial, and/or because her friends have them, and/or because she just likes the way they look, and/or because her mother or grandmother had one like it, and/or countless other reasons. Or she just might like pink dolls, and shouldn’t have to justify her preference. I think kids should be kids, and allowed to like or dislike any toys or colors or clothes without their decisions being second-guessed by adults. Riley may be four years old, but she’s not stupid.

It’s clear there are social and cultural expectations for women about beauty and appearance, I don’t think anyone is arguing or disputing that. It’s the link between that and what Riley says in this video that’s much less clear and focused. We all agree that what Riley said is not literally true: girls aren’t tricked or forced into buying anything. So let’s broaden the scope to a larger claim: Marketers encourage girls to buy (actually, their parents to buy) pink items and princesses, and boys to buy superheroes and non-pink items. Okay, so where does the discussion go from there? What exactly is the evidence of harm, and the proposed, evidence-based remedy? What is anyone suggesting be done about it?

Rebecca doesn’t offer any answers; she’s too busy hurling insults, being outraged, and trying to keep her head from asploding. I’ve tried to provide a level of considered, critical analysis about this topic. In the end, I think that Rebecca, Julia, and I more or less agree about 95% of this topic, and that much of the perceived disagreement is either factual (Rebecca claims that most dolls aren’t pink; I claim most are); or interpretation.

I’ll end on a different note. Rebecca and I can disagree about this and other topics, but it’s disheartening to be called “idiotic” and described as less intelligent than a four-year-old by a friend and skeptical colleague. I counted about a half-dozen insults in her piece, and it’s clear Rebecca enjoys being outraged at various things. It’s often the case that outrage and insults substitute for truth and accuracy; it’s easier to call someone stupid than it is to engage them respectfully. It’s easier to have knee-jerk, facepalming reactions than it is to thoughtfully see if there’s some misunderstanding on someone’s part-or, god forbid, even some common ground. For my part, I take my cues from Ray Hyman, one of my heroes and one of the founders of both CSCIOP and the modern skeptical movement.

If you haven’t read Ray’s piece “Proper Criticism,” you should; it’s what guides editorial policy in Skeptical Inquirer. It’s a short piece explaining how best to deal with people and claims you disagree with. I’ll quote a few short sections: “Many well-intentioned critics have jumped into the fray without carefully thinking through the various implications of their statements. They have sometimes displayed more emotion than logic, made sweeping charges beyond what they can reasonably support, failed to adequately document their assertions, and, in general, failed to do the homework necessary to make their challenges credible…. If we envision ourselves as the champions of rationality, science, and objectivity, then we ought to display these very same qualities in our criticism. Just by trying to speak and write in the spirit of precision, science, logic, and rationality-those attributes we supposedly admire-we would raise the quality of our critiques by at least one order of magnitude….  The principle of charity implies that, whenever there is doubt or ambiguity about a…claim, we should try to resolve the ambiguity in favor of the claimant until we acquire strong reasons for not doing so. In this respect, we should…convey the opponent’s position in a fair, objective, and non-emotional manner. We should avoid using loaded and prejudicial words in our criticisms. If the proponents happen to resort to emotionally laden terms and sensationalism, we should avoid stooping to their level. We should not respond in kind.”

Just because someone disagrees with you, or has a different opinion than you do, doesn’t mean the other person is a stupid, dishonest asshole. Even a four year old knows that.

This past year saw two high-profile cryptozoological (monster) mysteries finally solved, that of the Puerto Rican chupacabra and the French Beast of Gévaudan. There were also three new UFO / alien cases that made international news before eventually being solved (in Russia, Isreal, and Los Angeles). I participated in solving several of these mysteries. Here’s to a new year of fresh investigation, and hopefully 2012 will end with an even longer list of solved mysteries!

The Los Angeles UFO

In November 2010, a strange contrail was seen approximately 35 miles off the Californian coast. A news helicopter filmed the contrail rising like an arced pillar in the sunset, and the news media ran wild with the story. The government said it had no knowledge of what it was, and conspiracy theorists had a field day. These theories ranged from UFOs, to a secret missile launch, to government testing of so-called toxic “chemtrails.” Some researchers including CSI’s veteran UFO investigator Robert Sheaffer suspected that the “missile” was in fact simply an airplane contrail: “the object seems to have been simply an aircraft contrail, with tricks of perspective making it look like a missile flying away from you, when in fact it was an aircraft flying toward you. It depends on an effect of perspective.” By January of 2011 the mystery had been definitively solved. The UFO turned out to be a simple jet contrail, just as myself, Sheaffer, and other skeptics had said all along: UPS flight 902 from Hawaii to California.

The Beast of Gévaudan

Of all the monsters said to roam the earth, perhaps none was more feared than a mysterious creature that terrorized the French countryside in the 1760s. This monstrous Beast of Gévaudan, as it became known, killed peasants, farmers, and shepherds with impunity, often leaving its scores of victims a gory mess. The identity of this monster has been a source of wild speculation, especially in France, for over two centuries. Many believe it was a werewolf; others say it was some sort of supernatural demon (owing to the fact that legends said could not be stopped by bullets); still others insist it was a serial killer. Cryptozoological writers Ken Gerhart and Joe Nickell, among others, have suggested that the Beast was a hyena. However the mystery was finally solved earlier this year. Historian Jay M. Smith, in his book Monsters of the Gévaudan, convincingly showed that there actually was no singular Beast of Gévaudan responsible for the deaths, as widely assumed; in fact the killings were consistent with wolf attacks.

The Jerusalem UFO Video

Just a few weeks into 2011 a stunning UFO video circulated around the world. On Jan. 28, a mysterious glowing light hovered high above the Dome of the Rock, an ancient Islamic shrine in Jerusalem. It was touted as possibly the best video ever taken of an extraterrestrial spacecraft-made all the more apparently authentic because it was captured by at least two other people at the same time, from different angles. When the videos appeared on YouTube UFO interest was whipped into a frenzy. Skeptical analyses soon suggested that the video had been faked, but true believers insisted that the videos were legitimate. Finally in March 2011 even MUFON, an organization dedicated to proving extraterrestrial visitation, joined the skeptics in branding the whole thing a hoax.

The Chupacabra

The Beast of Gévaudan was not the only monster mystery finally solved in 2011. Since the mid-1990s, people around the world (and especially in Puerto Rico and Latin America) have reported a bizarre vampire beast which became known as the chupacabra (Spanish for “goat sucker,” since it was said to drain blood out of small animals including goats). According to the first eyewitness, the chupacabra had two legs, stood 4 to 5 feet tall, and had spikes down its back. The monster had long, thin arms and legs, and an alien-like head with red or black eyes. Later alleged chupacabras found in America (mostly Texas and New Mexico) turned out to be diseased dogs, foxes, and coyotes. Though widely believed to be a real creature, the chupacabra mystery was finally solved when the original eyewitness-whose description became the “standard” chupacabra image-was shown to have confused a monster from the 1995 horror thriller Species for something she saw in real life. More on the monster can be found in my book Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore.

The Russian ET

In April a video of what appeared to be an extraterrestrial alien body recovered in Russia set off a new furor among UFO believers in the blogosphere. According to one story in The Daily Mail, “On its side with its mouth slightly agape, the slender, badly-damage body lies half-buried in snow close to Irkutsk, Russia. Video of the alien’s corpse has become a massive worldwide hit with hundreds of thousands of followers after being posted on the internet. The corpse of the badly-damaged creature which resembles ET is two feet high. Part of the right leg is missing and there are deep holes for eyes and a mouth in a skull-like head.” The video’s authenticity was fiercely debated for weeks, until finally two Russian teens confessed to the hoax; police found the “alien” hidden in one of the teen’s bedrooms.

The survey was conducted in April 2011 with the research firm TRU and consisted of a national sample of 1,141 girls aged 11 to 17. The same questions were asked of two groups, one of whom regularly watched reality TV shows, and the other group that did not.

One interesting finding was that the majority of girls in both groups reported that they did not think that a girl’s value is based on how she looks. Sixty-two percent of reality TV viewers (and 72% of non-viewers) responded No to a question asking, “Do you think a girl’s value is based on how she looks?” Thus only 28% of non-viewers (which would represent most teens) say that a girl’s value is based on how she looks.

I suspected that most people would overestimate the number of girls who would say yes to that question, and so on my Facebook page I posted a query asking the following: “According to a poll of 1,000 U.S. teen girls, what percentage do you think said they believe a girl’s value is based on how she looks? 30%, 60%, or 90%?”

I got 25 responses from people: seven said 30%; ten said 60%; and eight said 90%. This was of course not a scientific poll, but I do find it interesting that most people (72%) overestimated the number of girls endorsing the belief that a girl’s value is based on how she looks-in some cases by a factor of three.

As with any survey question you can criticize the wording (though it’s much more straightforward than other poll questions I’ve seen), and I’m not endorsing nor denouncing this survey, suggesting that it’s valid or invalid. I can tell you that the results of the Girl Scout / TRU survey and my own informal Facebook poll both generally agree with my previous research: Namely that most people tend to overestimate the incidence and severity of self-image/body image issues in teen girls (and women in general).

That 28% of non-viewers and 38% of reality TV viewers endorsed the idea that a girl’s value is based on how she looks is concerning, but we need to recognize that they are in the minority. The fact that most (nearly three-quarters of) girls said that they don’t think a girl’s value is based on her appearance (and therefore reject the ubiquitous “beauty myth”) should be welcomed as good news, not buried in fine print. (I wrote about the tendency for social activists to emphasize the negative aspects of polls and surveys in my 2003 book Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us.)

I’ve had discussions with people about this and one occasion the person, after being confronted with valid research data, polls, and surveys demonstrating that her opinion about what most teen girls thought was wrong, basically said to me, “Well, I don’t care if it’s 90% or 9%. Even one girl with bad body image is too many.”

I was stunned, and didn’t even know how to reply. Everyone agrees that issues like body image and anorexia and self-esteem are serious and important; no one is saying that if a disease or problem doesn’t affect the majority of people it’s not worth being concerned about. But to suggest that incidence numbers are not relevant-that most teens having body image problems is really the same as most teens not having body image problems (as long as some of them do)-demonstrates a shocking indifference to truth and reality. In order to find solutions to problems we first must understand them.

New Mexico’s Rio Grande river looks nothing like British Columbia’s Lake Okanagan, but it was close enough for TV when I was interviewed on November 14 for a Canadian science show called Daily Planet. Daily Planet, which is produced in Toronto and launched in 1995, features daily news and discussion on the scientific aspects of current news stories. It airs on Discovery Channel Canada, Monday through Friday at 7 and 11 p.m. ET.

A producer from Daily Planet called me up not only because I’d been on the show twice before, but also because I co-authored a book (with Joe Nickell) about lake monsters, Lake Monster Mysteries: Investigating the World’s Most Elusive Creatures. They wanted me to comment on a news story that had been making the rounds about a Canadian man who claimed to have sighted, and videotaped, the monster said to dwell in the lake: Ogopogo.

The show dispatched a cameraman to interview me, hoping for a background that suggested something watery-and the scrub dunes near my Rio Rancho home did not fit the bill. So, thinking fast, I remembered the area where the rope swing used to be, down by the river in the woods near the Rio Grande, and we headed down there.

According to a Nov. 3 article in the Vancouver Sun, “An Okanagan man has video he says proves the Ogopogo may be more than just a figment of our imagination. Richard Huls says he always believed in the possibility of the monster rumored to be living in Okanagan Lake. Last Thursday, while visiting a West Kelowna winery, Huls shot video that he believes proves something does indeed live in the water. ‘It was not going with the waves,’ Huls said. ‘It was not a wave obviously, just a darker color. The size and the fact that they were not parallel with the waves made me think it had to be something else.”

Huls admitted that his video is not definitive proof: “It proves something is down there,” he said. “Whether it’s Ogopogo or not, it’s a different story.” Huls is certainly correct about that; he did videotape something in the lake. But is it a monster? When I first heard about the Huls video, I was intrigued. I had investigated the monster and its history in-depth for a National Geographic television series, and devoted a chapter in my book Scientific Paranormal Investigation to the beast. I have a strange monstery affection for the creature, and though I doubt it exists I’d love to see evidence proving me wrong.

Many who live around the lake have also embraced the monster as their pet mystery; the coat of arms for the city of Kelowna, on the shore of Lake Okanagan, features a seahorse, which, according to a city brochure, “in heraldry is the closest approximation of our Ogopogo.” Ogopogo sightings date back to at least the 1920s, and the creature is often described as having dark skin and a characteristic series of humps. There are only a handful of photos and videos allegedly of Ogopogo, though none have provided any real evidence for the creature, and at least one famous video was later revealed as footage of a beaver.

So what about the new video evidence? I examined it all in preparation for the TV interview, and it’s difficult to know what Huls’ video shows.

The video quality is poor, and the camera is shaky, so it’s hard to tell what the object is, or even if it’s moving. But a closer look at the 30-second video reveals that, instead of one long object, there are actually two shorter ones, and they seem to be floating next to each other at slightly different angles. There are no humps, nor head, nor form; only two long, darkish, more or less straight forms that appear to be a few dozen feet long. Perhaps most frustratingly, the video only lasts half a minute. If we’d been able to see what the “monster” did over the course of several minutes, that would have provided important information about its identity. Significantly, the objects that Huls filmed don’t move at all.

What could those two unmoving long, dark, straight objects be?

The most likely explanation is that Huls spied two logs that had escaped from a timber boom. Logging is one of the major industries in the Okanagan Valley, and there are countless logs floating in the lake that look exactly like the objects that Huls recorded. It is of course possible that a mysterious monster lurks somewhere in the cold depths of Lake Okanagan. But if so, it seems that it’s as camera-shy and elusive as ever.

I reviewed all this in my head as I drove through Corrales with the cameraman in tow. I knew I’d only be able to explain about one-tenth of this because it would appear in the five-second sound-bite world of television. But I’d do my best.

I reviewed my notes as the cameraman set up, and I took my mark on a small sandbar a few feet from the bank. The only real difficulty was hearing the host’s interview questions. Normally on television you’re addressing someone just off camera, or at least a face on a television screen you can hear through an earpiece. But in this case I was addressing the camera directly, which can be a very strange experience. The cameraman’s cell phone wasn’t getting reception, and so we had to use mine; I put it on speakerphone and carefully balanced it atop a camera tripod I’d brought along just off camera. It would have looked odd if I did the whole interview holding a cell phone to my ear!

The interview only lasted about five minutes, and we recorded it “as live,” meaning that it wasn’t live (and wasn’t claimed to be live), but looked like it was live. Therefore we didn’t do multiple takes of the same thing as you might do in a sit-down interview, though we did go back and record a short segment with a plush Ogopogo doll prop that I had brought along.

I didn’t see the show when the episode aired (I don’t get the Discovery Canada channel, and even if I did, I don’t like seeing myself on television). I ended up writing a column on the case for Discovery News. You can read the full account, and see the video online at http://news.discovery.com/animals/canadian-lake-monster-capturedon-video.html.

One group in the United Kingdom that has raised concerns over the rise in fake ghost photos is the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP). I interviewed Carrie Searley of ASSAP, who told me, “Fortunately, for my department, fake ghost photography is in the minority, however, it does occur. One of the palpable effects of fabrication with these types of photos, can be wasted time spent by the person making the analysis. However, here at ASSAP we like to turn it into a positive.  We are not here to merely ‘debunk’ a subject or phenomena; one of our aims is to offer a scientific explanation as to the methodology used in creating a fake ghost photograph.  Our initial concern pertaining to these photographs would be that they have been intentionally produced to misinform others; this could include people who may be of a susceptible nature.”

I asked Searley about the different types of fake photos. “There is a clear distinction between a photo that has been purposely faked and a photo that contains something xenonormal (an anomaly that appears to be mystical but has a natural cause.) I can quite confidently say that 95% of photographs that I receive contain explainable causes, and 3% of photos are thought to have been faked by the photographer. Whilst the remaining 2% cannot be scientifically explained.” Agree or not, ASSAP has requested the public’s help in cataloguing known fakes created by sneaky smartphone apps.

Here’s some background on a famous haunted house mystery I solved:

The ghost hunting team of Ghost Hunters International traveled to Montego Bay, Jamaica, to investigate “one of the world’s most haunted places”: Rose Hall, said to be haunted by the ghost of an evil woman named Annie Palmer, “The White Witch of Rose Hall.” The episode (“The Legend of Rose Hall,” Season 2, episode 13) aired last year. It’s a shame that the Ghost Hunters didn’t do any actual research on the White Witch of Rose Hall, because I could have saved them some effort (and embarrassment).

Had they read my thorough 2007 investigation into the place, they would have discovered that the ghost of Annie Palmer cannot possibly haunt Rose Hall, because Annie Palmer was never a real person. But I’m getting ahead of the story. According to reports: Annie was “beautiful beyond compare; she had a rich throaty voice with black penetrating eyes… Her complexion was smooth, and she could shift from a gentle smiling creature to a haughty, cruel, sensual, cat-like woman, gracefully exuding both anger and sensuality… Annie had strength besides her cruelty. She had the power of a mind trained in sorcery. She believed in spirits and had the ability to project death fears in her slaves.” As a young girl living in Haiti she had become the favorite of a high voodoo priestess: “It was this woman who taught Annie to believe in spirits, to regard the air as charged with the supernatural, over which she could gain control. She attended forbidden voodoo orgies, summoned by eerie drumbeats in the dead of night.” She moved from Haiti to Jamaica, and soon met and married Rose Hall master John Palmer. According to one account, “John Palmer lived for three years after their marriage. Annie claimed he drank, that the second husband went mad and the third married her for money. The slaves said poison, stabbing, and strangulation did them in one by one.”

Jeff Belanger, in his book The World’s Most Haunted Places, states “Annie killed John Palmer with poison, and then she closed off his bedroom and would not allow anyone to enter it.” It’s all very dramatic-and completely fictional. Annie Palmer is in fact the title character in a famous Jamaican novel, The White Witch of Rose Hall, published in 1929 by Herbert G. de Lisser. There was no real Annie Palmer even remotely resembling that of the White Witch. Thus Annie Palmer never existed, thus they presumably could not have found any evidence of her ghost. Rose Hall, “the most haunted house in the Western Hemisphere” and indeed one of “the world’s most haunted places” is in reality merely myth passed off by careless writers as fact.

Apparently the Ghost Hunters crew believe that fictional characters can have ghosts! It’s one thing to say that a human being has a spirit that can survive in the afterlife and haunt a location. It’s quite another to say that a person who is created by another person’s thoughts or words also has a ghost…

So has my skeptical investigation been heeded or ignored in the years since it was published? The Rose Hall case provides us with an interesting comparison. In one case, the writers acknowledged that the case had been solved; in another, not so much…

Ghost enthusiast Jeff Belanger has recently updated the World’s Most Haunted Places and it includes Rose Hall, where I debunked the White Witch that’s supposed to haunt the place. Jeff has known about my investigation for years, and it’s even on the Wikipedia page! Surely there’s some mention of my work in this updated edition, at least a passing reference….

Nope. That’s very strange. It’s not clear whether he omitted the information because he was unaware of it (sloppy research), or because he was intentionally ignoring skeptical investigation (intellectual dishonesty). I’ve spoken with Jeff, and he seems like a nice guy, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt… I’m sure it was just an oversight.

In contrast, the International Reggae Wine Festival offers tours of Rose Hall, and states at the bottom of the tour offering that “An investigation of the case in 2007 by Benjamin Radford showed the case to have been based on a fictional story.” Ethics in advertising and tourism! Who knew?