Actually yhe stement is icncorrect: "there is not a single documented case of a missing person being found or recovered due to psychic information." here one from a group I participate in form the police chief in charge: "Thank you for all your help with our missing person in the City of Perry, Kansas. Our victim Mr. Shawn Fowler was found about an eight of a mile from his home. He was found at approximately 1345 hours on March 19,2009. He was found floating in the Delaware River within 100 feet of one of the GPS readings your team provided. The river had been searched a couple of times by boat and scanner with no results the day prior to the body coming to the surface. Part of the information we concentrated on was the area around a submerged tree as predicted by one of your Team members. I have shared your Team efforts with Deputies, Firemen and Medical persons who assisted in the three month long search. Again THNK YOU ... THANKS TO THE TEAM !!!! The Family now has closure! Respectfully: Ramon C. Gonzalez, Jr. Police Chief"

My heart sank as I read this! Could it be that I was wrong about this? Was there really a case as recently as last year when a missing person was found or recovered due to psychic information? Had I overlooked an important exception that would require me to reconsider my position on the topic? I spent a few minutes searching the Web, and then posted the following reply:

Good try, but you really should read more carefully. Missing man Shawn Fowler was NOT found by a psychic at all, but instead by a random fisherman:

"Jefferson County Sheriff's officials said Fowler was found about 3:36 p.m. Thursday by a man fishing in the Delaware River in Perry."

http://cjonline.com/news/local/2009-03-20/missing_man_found_in_perry

This offer will be welcome news to the thousands of people who claim to have psychic powers. If psychics have access to information beyond the normal senses (and can predict the future, locate missing persons, talk to the dead, “remote view,” etc.) there’s presumably no reason they shouldn’t be able to determine what’s wrong with the recalled Toyotas.

This is a no-lose proposition! Not only will Edmunds award $1 million to the psychic, but the James Randi Educational Foundation would also throw in its own $1 million. The psychic would also be a national hero, saving the lives of innocent people—not only Toyota drivers, but others who may be injured or killed by the runaway cars whose defects remain unknown. If I had psychic powers, this would be a perfect opportunity to become rich and do some real good in the world at the same time.

Of course, if psychics don’t really have any special ability, and can’t provide any valid, reliable, useful information, then I wouldn’t expect them to take up the challenge.

The episode (“The Legend of Rose Hall,” Season 2, episode 13) aired last week. 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.” Another account adds that Annie brought in her paramour to make love to her next to her dying husband. She then hid her husband’s corpse, “most effectively, it seems, since it has never been found.” As for Annie’s fourth husband, he also died under murky circumstances. His fate was apparently sanguineous, for “the room in which he died received no visitors, as the blood stains could not be removed from the floors.” Annie not only left a trail of dead husbands, she also delighted in acts of unspeakable cruelty and perversion. Annie’s sadism was legendary, her wrath feared by all. She was said to enjoy watching the slaves being whipped from her balcony. Once, when a servant displeased her, Annie had the poor fellow’s head cut off and placed on a bamboo stake, left to rot in the tropical sun, the bloated flesh and horrible stench a warning to others.

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 Hal l, 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.

I wonder what they’ll say when they look at the proof that their ghost never existed. That’s gotta be awkward. Will the Ghost Hunter crew head to London and claim to find evidence of the ghost of Sherlock Holmes? Or maybe they will head to a city called Metropolis and discover Superman’s ghost...

The original piece appeared in Fortean Times magazine, and will be included as a case study in my upcoming book Scientific Paranormal Investigation .

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.

No drunk chupacabra were reported.

Three parts of the film are available on YouTube and at the Cryptomundo Web site . At Loren’s request, I posted the following comments about what I saw, and my thoughts on the quality of the investigation so far"

1) I understand the video is meant as entertainment, but I saw very little investigation, at least not in the parts available so far. Much of Part 1 seemed like tourist mugging and filler. Some people like Nick’s goofing around, “frat-boy-looks-for-monsters” style (as seen in his books, esp, Memoirs of a Monster Hunte r). If that works for him, that’s great, though I personally prefer a more serious approach.

2) In the first minute of Part 2, Nick is told about an alleged chupacabra attack in which 65 pigs were mysteriously killed in a local prison. Nick follows up with:

NR: “Were they attacked like the classic chupacabra attack?”

OP: “They had a hole, a perforation in the armpit.”

NR: “In every one?”

OP: “In every one.”

NR: “Huh.”

That concludes the exchange, and Redfern seems like he is satisfied with the answer he got. But he doesn’t seem to notice that his question was never really answered; in fact, if anything, the answer he got suggests it was NOT a chupacabra attack!

The main characteristic of a “classic chupacabra attack” is a loss of blood; a secondary typical characteristic is puncture marks on the victim’s neck. Not only was there no mention of blood sucking, but the marks were on the shoulder instead of the neck! It is baffling to me as an investigator that neither of the two “classic” characteristics of the chupacabra attack were mentioned in this case (or at least in the parts presented in the video), yet Nick doesn’t comment on this and instead asks if “every one” of the pigs died that way. Either he’s assuming that the pigs were drained of blood (assuming facts is not a good idea in scientific investigations), or he was told this off-camera, or for some reason he doesn’t notice that the answer to his question was basically, “No, the pigs attacks were NOT like the classic chupacabra attack.”

He seems to simply assume that what he’s being told is valid and accurate, without doing any research or investigation to confirm it. This case is presented as a chupacabra attack, but it’s all an anecdote. There’s no follow-up, no eyewitnesses interviewed, no nothing.

3) In Part 3, Nick hears one man’s story that Men in Black government agents showed up at a rural farm following an incident in which a machete had been broken supposedly while fending off a chupacabra. These men confiscated the broken machete and took it away, presumably to hide evidence. Nick seems to accept this wild conspiracy story without a shred of evidence other than one man’s story, commenting that “That might suggest that whoever they were, they knew where this creature was that night and a good idea where it had attacked, and what it had attacked.” Again, no effort whatsoever is made to confirm any details, seek any other eyewitnesses, or anything else.

4) Also, in Part 3, I note there’s mention of a 2003 alleged chupa attack in which 3 pigs were killed. One of the speakers (Pla, I believe) states that “they were all dead in a straight line,” as if this is somehow mysterious or significant. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but what’s curious is that they then show a photo of the pigs (at 1:40), which are clearly NOT in “a straight line.” They are facing roughly the same direction, but it’s quite possible that whoever photographed them moved them that way for a better photo. But the “straight line” claim is self-evidently not true, as viewers can see for themselves!

I don’t offer this necessarily as a criticism of Nick (who I have met, and to whom I bear a passing resemblance); I am responding to Loren’s request for a sort of “peer-review” comment on this topic as an expert on the chupacabra. I support anyone who wants to spend their time and money out in the field doing research, and I’m glad that Nick and his friends had fun in Puerto Rico.

I hope his search for the Puerto Rican chupacabra is successful, but from my decade of experience investigating these creatures, solving this mystery will require more investigation and skepticism than I’ve seen so far.

Dina Leone, an uninsured mother of two from Baltimore, reached out to old friends through Facebook telling them she had stage-four stomach cancer and asking for help. In daily Internet posts and text messages starting in 2008, Leone, 37, they said, described the pain of treatments and the struggle to pay for chemotherapy, often asking old high school classmates to help pay for doctors' visits or to help in fulfilling dying wishes, like visiting Disneyland. Friends say they spent countless hours on the phone and visiting Leone in person for more than a year, lending a thoughtful ear and shoulder to cry on. Some apparently sent her thousands of dollars to help pay for her treatment. One even said she flew her to California for a final trip to the theme park.

But it was all a lie. Her heartbreaking story unraveled, and Leone was indicted on theft and conspiracy charges.

And it’s only one of many similar hoaxes in recent years.

In 2009, a pregnant young woman spent months blogging about her compelling personal journey of anguish. Her unborn child (named April, after the month she was due), had a rare and fatal birth defect. Tiny April's brain would not form properly, and doctors said she would likely die before birth or shortly thereafter. Still, the plucky and courageous "April's Mom" was determined to bring the child in accord with her beliefs.

At first the blog drew only a trickle of readers, but soon the word spread and tens of thousands of people visited the site to read her latest blog, detailing doctor's visits and her friends' wonderful support. Mothers of sick and dying children sent prayers and gifts, offering encouragement and sympathy.

Last June, when April was finally born (several weeks late), she tragically died within hours. What few suspected was that it was all a lie; April did not exist. She was the fictional creation of her "mother," Becca Bueshausen. Every detail of April's life and death had been made up; all the tears that had been shed, all the prayers that had been sent, were for a tiny child that never existed. When the lie was exposed, the blog's readers reacted with outrage, feeling betrayed and suckered. Bueshausen offered a tepid apology on her blog.

One main theme in such hoaxes is that they deal with diseases. This ruse is especially effective because it's an issue that most people can relate to; almost everyone has either had a serious disease or knows a friend or family member who has. Hoaxers like Beushausen exploit their readers' uncertainty and fear about their health to add credibility to their stories.

Most such hoaxes are done for attention, money, and sympathy. In some cases, however, there's a political angle as well. In this case, Beushausen was promoting her Christian beliefs and anti-abortion agenda. She described at length and in detail the hard choices she struggled with, and anti-abortion readers praised her for standing by her strong Christian values.

In a letter dated March 19, Darwin had written of the gullibility of physician James Manby Gully, who had treated Darwin's father: "Dr. Gully was a spiritualist & believer in clairvoyance. He bothered my father for some time to have a consultation with a clairvoyant, who was staying at Malvern, and was reputed to be able to see the insides of people & discover the real nature of their ailments."

Darwin's father finally agreed to meet with the self-proclaimed psychic who had so impressed the gullible Dr. Gully. But, he insisted, he wanted to test the psychic's power for himself. "Accordingly, in going to the interview he put a banknote in a sealed envelope. After being introduced to the lady he said 'I have heard a great deal of your powers of reading concealed writings & I should like to have evidence myself: now in this envelope there is a banknote—if you will read the number I shall be happy to present it to you.'" It was a very simple test: if the psychic could see through a patient's clothing and flesh to diagnose diseases, surely she could see through a simple, paper-thin envelope and determine the denomination of a bank note.

The psychic refused, saying she was insulted at being asked to prove her amazing abilities: "The clairvoyante answered scornfully 'I have a maid-servant at home who can do that.'" Though she couldn't use her powers to read the contents of an envelope, she proceeded to do her "medical intuitive" act.

Darwin (played by Paul Bettany) struggles to write his books as he battles poor health, internal and external pressures, and personal demons, especially regarding his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and his brightest daughter, Annie (Martha West). In one of the most moving and impassioned scenes, we see Darwin’s furor after Annie is punished in Sunday school for questioning her vicar and asking about dinosaurs. Darwin’s outrage is palpable as he prepares to confront the priest about punishing his daughter for simply speaking a self-evident scientific truth—not blasphemous impertinence.

Charles Darwin was clearly a man as enamored with his family as with his study of the world around him. Charles explains the naturalistic world to his children: how a camera works, how the geological strata of rocks tells a story of what happened millions of years ago, and so on. Several fanciful segments appear, essentially miniature documentaries depicting nature’s life cycles. Rarely has a film so effectively conveyed a wonderful, humanistic sense of the magic and awe of science.

When Annie dies, Charles is devastated and struggles to find the faith in himself to complete his book. While Emma takes solace in the idea that their beloved daughter is in heaven with God, Charles can’t bring himself to share her comforting belief. Nor is he willing to accept the insulting and feeble “comfort” that Annie’s death is part of some greater divine plan; he has studied nature’s cruelties and is too much a scientist to pretend that his family is exempt from them.

While Charles struggles with personal demons, the rest of the world waits for the product of his work. In one pivotal scene, Thomas Huxley (a piss-and-vinegar brimming Toby Jones) confronts Darwin, urging him to complete his long-gestating book. When Darwin says he needs more time and more evidence, Huxley barks: “Mr. Darwin, either you are being disingenuous, or you do not fully understand your own theory. Evidently what is true of the barnacle is true of all creatures—even humans. Clearly the Almighty can no longer claim to have authored all species in under a week. You’ve killed God, sir. You’ve killed God.”

Never before has the threat of Darwin’s ideas to creationism been so clearly depicted in a mainstream movie. While other films have downplayed or glossed over the friction between On the Origin of Species and the Bible, Creation tackles it head-on. Stephen Jay Gould’s conciliatory notion of the non-overlapping magisteria of science and religion is out the window; here we have the bare-knuckled, Richard Dawkins view.

Creation ’s most remarkable achievement is to humanize one of the most important and influential scientists in history. It’s no secret that most scientists in films are depicted in an unflattering light. Horror films often depict scientists as Dr. Frankenstein-like evil geniuses whose experiments bring death and destruction. Comedies show scientists as socially inept nerds obsessed with numbers and data crunching. In the wake of the recent “Climategate controversy,” climate scientists were portrayed as deceitful and conspiratorial hoaxers trying to mislead the public about global warming. Rare indeed are films that show scientists as real humans with problems and struggles who do their best to reveal scientific truths. (A few of the best are Contact , The Dish , and A Beautiful Mind .)

Creation premiered on the opening night of the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival in September. At the time, Creation producer Jeremy Thomas lamented the fact that the film had not yet found a distributor in the United States. Creation was eventually picked up by Newmarket Films—ironically perhaps best known for releasing Mel Gibson’s controversial 2004 religious gorefest The Passion of the Christ .

The performances in Creation are as remarkable as the script. Paul Bettany evokes Charles Darwin with seeming effortless ease, and truly inhabits the role. His Darwin is deeply conflicted, afraid of how his ideas may hurt those he loves, and wracked with guilt that he may have contributed to Annie’s death. Jennifer Connelly is wonderful as Emma, depicting not only her strength and devotion to Charles, but her own conflicted devotion to her faith and her husband’s work.

The film was directed by Jon Amiel, from a screenplay written by John Collee, which in turn evolved from the biography Annie’s Box , written by one of Darwin’s great-great grandsons. Though Creation has been well received, some early reviewers groused that the film is boring; perhaps they were expecting the story of the theory of evolution would be told amidst action-packed swashbuckling and explosions. Creation is beautiful and powerful, with great performances and important ideas about faith, love, loss and truth.

I have donated money to the relief effort, but beyond that, there's not much I can do. I don't have (and don't claim to have) any psychic abilities at all. I can't locate missing persons, I've never said I helped police solve crimes. If you can really do what you claim to do, please use your powers to save countless lives.

This means you, Montel-beloved Sylvia Browne. And you, Medium TV show inspiration Alison DuBois. And Carla Baron of TV's Haunting Evidence . And you too, Nancy Weber. And John Edward. Will any of you step forward and help?

Many of you charge money for your psychic services. Fair enough; doctors, police, and others earn a living helping others. If that's the issue, please contact me at jaminradford@gmail.com and we can negotiate a fee for saving innocent lives. If cost is an issue and you need to visit Haiti in person, I will offer to personally pay round-trip airfare to Port-au-Prince or Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) for any nationally-known psychic who is willing to use their claimed powers to help those in desperate need.

Some of you have claimed that you don't get involved in a case unless specifically asked. Well, I'm specifically asking each one of you. If, for some reason, you need a particular devastated Haitian to specifically request you and your services, I might be able to arrange that.

Maybe you may feel it's not your responsibility, that it's not your job to help others. There's a saying, "With great power comes great responsibility." It means that those who have power, resources, and special abilities have a responsibility to use them for the greater good. I hope you would agree.

I understand that most of you are busy with "reality" TV shows, talk shows appearances, book tours, seminars, and $200 per hour phone consultations. But please consider joining the international relief effort. Your claimed psychic powers have helped you all achieve fame and fortune. How about giving something back to the poorest people in the Western hemisphere, desperate for the kind of aid that only you all (allegedly) provide.

This is not a cynical exercise. You all have made successful careers out of your reputed psychic powers; I am taking you at your word. I suspect none of you have the powers you claim, but I would love to be proven wrong, especially if it will save lives. Whether I (or other skeptics, or the scientific community) believe you have psychic powers or not is irrelevant.

Don't accept this offer to prove your powers to skeptics; do it because it's the humane thing to do. Do it because, if what you say is true, you have powers and abilities that most of us only dream of, and you could save countless innocent lives over the next few days. If psychics such as yourselves have the power to help in this time of need but refuse, what should the public think of you when we see you on TV or buy your books or attend your seminars?

If, deep down, you know that you don't really have psychic powers, please stop claiming to help find missing persons; please stop giving families false hope. If your psychic abilities can't or won't help, please at least consider making a donation to help Haiti via SHARE (Skeptics and Humanist Aid and Relief Effort); you can donate online at SHARE .

Sincerely, Ben Radford

Feel free to contact the following psychics and ask them if they plan to join the international aid effort and volunteer their services to the rescue workers and others searching for missing persons in Haiti.

John Edward: John Edward

Carla Baron: Carla Baron

Nancy Weber: Nancy Weber

Convicted Felon Sylvia Browne: Sylvia Browne

Allison DuBois: Allison DuBois