According to one writer “Those ghost hunters who wish to explore Devil’s Hole must do so at tremendous personal risk. Only those blessed with extremely good luck or who feel that they have nothing left to lose should even attempt to study this site. The forces at work in this area are so strong and unpredictable that even experienced ghost hunters with extraordinary climbing, survival, and caving skills are likely to fall victim to the cave’s intense aura” (W. Haden Blackman, The Field Guide to North American Hauntings , New York: Three Rivers, 1988, pp. 92–94).

In fact, I had visited the cave ten years earlier, on May 20, 1999, and lived to tell about it. However, the cave at the site is not the real Devil’s Hole. That is a much larger geological formation, a great vertical channel in the side of Niagara Gorge where a waterfall once existed. (It resulted from an outlet of an ancient glacial lake that spilled into the Niagara River.)

Although Devil’s Hole was the site in 1763 of the massacre of a British convoy by 300 Seneca and other Native Americans, its fearsome reputation is otherwise undeserved. According to park officials, despite heavy pedestrian traffic, the area does not have a high incidence of injury. In fact, the occasional accident is typically caused by risky behavior. (See my Real-Life X-Files , Lexington, Ky.: Univ. Press of Ky., 2001, pp. 62–63.)

So it was that Diana and I climbed down the winding, stone-stepped trail from the top of the Niagara Escarpment to the waters of Niagara River, speeding away from their recent plunge over the mighty Niagara Falls. On our return up the 300-foot cliff, we stopped to rest at the cave which looked much as I remembered—a scenic site. Like the rest of Devil’s Hole, it is dangerous only in the hyperbole of mystery mongers.

Charles Fort would have loved it. Fort (1874–1932) enjoyed taunting “orthodox” scientists with things they supposedly could not explain, like cases of alleged “spontaneous human combustion” and fish raining from the sky. In short, he was a mystery-monger. (For a discussion of Fort and latter-day forteans, see my The Mystery Chronicles 2004, 335–340.)

In his 1919 The Book of the Damned (a compendium of “data that Science has excluded”), Fort cited black rains, red rains, and variously colored snows, including yellow and pink snow. Orthodox science explained many of these, respectively, as airborne soot from forest fires (or ash from volcanic eruptions), or red sand or pollen or other substances carried on the wind. (See The Complete Books of Charles Fort , New York: Dover, 1974, 3–80; and William R. Corliss, Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena , New York: Gramercy Books, 1995, 187–188, 193–194.)

My CFI colleague Lauren Becker also called my attention to a pink snow common to certain high mountain ranges of the western U.S. Called “watermelon snow,” it is due to “blooms” of certain species of algae having a bright red carotenoid pigment in their cells like that found in red peppers, tomatoes, autumn leaves, and many flowers.

Buffalo’s pink snow had a rather unique explanation. The cause was a ruptured pipe from a building being demolished near the former Buffalo Color plant where food coloring—red dye No. 40—had been manufactured. The pipe contained an estimated five pounds of the residual powder which was carried by the wind in a westerly direction and deposited onto nearby snow-covered streets and fields. There, my wife Diana Harris and I were able to witness this solved fortean phenomenon.

A skepticalism (by analogy to a witticism, for instance) is a skeptical remark or saying. An old example is the popular instruction, “Don’t take any wooden nickels” (after the novelty coins used as souvenir fair-tokens and the like, following a bank’s issuance of some wood-veneer currency during the Great Depression). The saying means, “Don’t get taken by something that’s worthless.”

A classic skepticalism is the saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” The maxim holds that evidence should be commensurate with the nature of a claim. Another skepticalism is, “Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.” Still another is called Hyman’s Categorical Imperative (which James Alcock named after Ray Hyman, who often enunciated the point): “Do not try to explain something until you are sure there is something to be explained.”

I offer a couple of skepticalisms of my own. One is, “The person who thinks he can’t be fooled has just fooled himself” (see David Grossberg, “Joe Nickell, Autograph Detective,” Autograph Collector , April/May 2007.) Another—which is both a skepticalism and a witticism—is, “People tell me I’m too skeptical, but I doubt that.”

Skepticalisms should be distinguished from cynicalisms (to coin another word). A good example of the latter is Ambrose Bierce’s definition of positive : “Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.” Another (from Anonymous, not P.T. Barnum as often attributed) is, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The Aykroyds come by their interest in spirits naturally—if not supernaturally. Dan’s great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Aykroyd (b. 1855), was an ardent spiritualist as well as a dentist of Sydenham, Ontario, Canada. The book reproduces a “spirit” photograph of Dr. Aykroyd, taken at the spiritualist village of Lily Dale, New York, in the early 1900s and showing four ghostly heads hovering over him. Dr. Aykroyd eventually convinced himself that two of the faces bore some resemblance to people he had known. Actually, the picture is an obvious fake: As is often the case, the subject was placed unnaturally low in the photo, indicating that the photographer knew in advance just where the “spirits” would appear in the picture!

The Aykroyd family farmhouse hosted townsfolk who came for meetings of Dr. Aykroyd’s Circle—séances in which they believed they communicated with the dead. The family medium was one Walter Ashurst, who developed, through the aid of a local medium, into a trance channeler of spirits—ranging from an Irishman named “Mike Whalen” and several Native Americans to an ancient Egyptian prince called “Blue Light.” One identified himself as “Lee Long”—who said he had lived in China in the Ming Dynasty and who became one of Walter’s “controls” (or “guides” to the spirit world).

Dr. Aykroyd’s notebooks—discovered after half a century in an old trunk—record some 80 of Walter’s séances. At one, Dr. Aykroyd’s own great-grandfather reportedly appeared, whereupon certain allegedly clairvoyant members of the circle saw him, while others could not. Sometimes a “whitish substance” appeared in the dark. (This was supposedly “ectoplasm”—a mediumistic substance, completely unknown to science and often fraudulently produced by mediums out of chewed paper, strips of muslin, even animal entrails.) The circle hopefuls waited in vain for a true “materialization.”

Nevertheless, speaking through an apparently entranced Ashurst, “Mike Whalen,” “Blue Light” and especially “Lee Long” chatted on. The latter discoursed in Chinese, supposedly, but Peter concedes that no member of Dr. Aykroyd’s Circle could understand the language. Therefore, it might well have been gibberish. Peter, who as a boy sat in on some of Walter’s séances, is convinced he was not a deceiver.

However, Walter may have been deceiving himself. Too little is known about him to be certain, but he seems to have had several of the traits that are indicative of a fantasy-prone personality: He experienced childhood “visions” (which his father insisted were nightmares), thought he was clairvoyant, engaged in apparent self-hypnosis, and believed he communicated with invisible entities. (For more on fantasy proneness, see my The Mystery Chronicles , 2004, pp. 111, 210, 296–297, 303.)

A History of Ghosts is too easy on spiritualists. For example, the Davenport Brothers were indeed caught faking spirit activity (see my “The Davenport Brothers: Religious practitioners, entertainers, or frauds?” Skeptical Inquirer 23:4, July/August 1999, pp. 14–17). But it is by no means a one-sided treatise. And it is an entertaining and often informative read. A bonus is Dan Aykroyd’s own account of the genesis of Ghostbusters .

No book or other informational source is left unturned in his quest to help solve mysteries—as I can well attest. I remember when we visited the new shrine of Spiritualism at the former village of Hydesville, N.Y. There we studied the excavated foundation of the cottage where, in 1848, the Fox Sisters purportedly communicated with the spirit of a murdered peddler. Then we went on to nearby Newark, N.Y., looking into claims that a man’s bones had once been found in the cottage cellar, supposedly verifying the schoolgirls’ tale. At the library, I deadpanned that this work was so important I had “brought my own librarian.” In time, after much other research—including tracking down early newspapers and very rare pamphlets—we learned that the bones’ discovery had been a hoax, and the tale gave up its ghost. (See my “A Skeleton’s Tale: The Origins of Modern Spiritualism,” Skeptical Inquirer , July/August 2008.)

Then there was the time a Western New York archeological dig turned up a very old “catarrh remedy” bottle, and colleague Tom Flynn advised it be sent to me—a bottle scholar, among other personas. Of course I alerted the Masked Librarian, and soon we had subscribed to an online source of long-forgotten newspapers and perused volume after volume of city directories at the Buffalo Historical Society (where our hero, incidentally, serves on the library board). After we traced the “Dr. Sage” bottle to the infamous Dr. R.V. Pierce, “Prince of Quacks,” I wrote a report , while the Masked Librarian created an online catalog of my own Pierce collection and prepared to display it in the CFI Libraries’ reference room.

At one time or another, he has kept me posted on a developing story; has helped me brainstorm, strategize, and research such seemingly unlikely topics as otters (relating to the lake and sea monsters), the location of a fifteenth-century village (concerning a pious Italian folktale), the history of phosphorescent paint (regarding an antique “miracle” picture), and so on ad infinitem ; and on occasion has put me in touch with distant librarians who could better help with research in their areas. He has even gone so far as to participate in experiments (as in my demonstration of a Gypsy-curse effect for a Discovery Channel documentary).

Only recently, as I went off in search of the Holy Basin in Genoa, Italy, he prepared me with advance research materials on that fabled emerald bowl, a.k.a. the Holy Grail. Again, as I sought to translate several of the 16th-century seer Nostradamus’ murky quatrains, the Masked Librarian supplied an armload of volumes, including an antique French dictionary, and repeatedly helped search out—in atlases, encyclopedias, and online sources—such terms as Hister (or Ister, an old name for the lower Danube), des Montaignes Noriques (the Noric Alps), Saurome (a Slavic area, now Lithuania), and so on.

Of course his assistance to my investigations is only one aspect of his wide-ranging work as Director of Center for Inquiry Libraries that includes cataloguing books, purchasing rare volumes, acquiring private collections, maintaining archives, serving on various boards and committees, writing articles, attending to CFI’s computer network, and much more. But it is his role as the Masked Librarian—whose behind-the-scenes nature often keeps his identity from view—that I wanted to emphasize. I would have written about this earlier, but I was helping him get fitted for his cape.

This much-ballyhooed show does indeed provide a strong cinematic experience. Apart from the 3D and powerful, beyond-cutting-edge special effects—and despite characters and plot that (observes one critic) “rarely rise above 1D” (see Andrew Jack on culturekiosk.com )— Avatar takes us into the future for an illuminating view of our sometimes ignominious past.

In this through-the-looking-glass view, Earthlings are the futuristic aliens on Pandora, the moon of a planet, 4.3 light years away, called Polyphemus. They are on a mission to mine Unobtainium, a mineral which is the answer to Earth’s energy crisis. As fate would have it, the largest deposit is located beneath the great Hometree which is sacred to the inhabitants.

Called Na’vi, these are humanoids—blue-skinned and tailed, to be sure, but modeled after ourselves nonetheless (like most of our fantasy beings: gods, devils, angels, Sasquatches, and our own Earth-visiting extraterrestrials). The aboriginal Na’vi are armed with bows and arrows and ride on horselike animals or on great flying creatures called Mountain Banshees—all of which they are in life-energy contact with.

The Earthlings, known to the Na’vi as the Sky People, operate from a military base. There, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Steven Lang) and his soldiers seem, despite all their futuristic paraphernalia and contraptions, to still embody the old mentality of Earth’s militarists, who have sometimes engaged in ruthlessly slaughtering their brethren: the native peoples of America, Africa, Vietnam, and elsewhere. A few of the Earthlings have avatars, genetically engineered human-Na’vi hybrids into which their consciousness can be transferred. One such is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic veteran whose avatar-self is wheelchair-free; he is sent on a mission to gather intel from the Na’vi.

As it happens, Jake not only becomes accepted by the Na’vi but chooses as his mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the daughter of the king and queen. When the information he has provided leads to an attack from giant bulldozers, Jake tries to stop the assault. He fails, but chooses to defend the Na’vi against the onslaught. He is joined by the avatar project’s scientific director, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), and a handful of others.

The stage is set for war between the Sky People, who attack with a great bombship flanked by helicopter-like craft, and the Na’vi, whose many clans join together in defense of their world. I will leave the ending for viewers to see, but let me sum up. To the extent that Avatar derives from our own paranormal myths—of alien hybrids, fantasy creatures, and New Age beliefs, including the supposed life-energy interconnectedness of all living things—it is just more silliness. On the other hand, a movie that disparages imperialistic wars and environmental abuse can’t be all bad—and did I mention the 3D and wonderful special effects, all of whjch make Avatar well worth seeing.

During the centuries-long pen-and-ink era, good penmanship was a saleable commodity. Then it largely began to be replaced by typing ability with the advent of the typewriter. And now it is computer skills that are being sought—at the expense of cursive writing. In 2011, eighth- and ninth-graders will be required to compose on computers for the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Fourth-graders will follow in 2019. Stated the president of the Whole Language Umbrella (a conference of the National Council of Teachers of English), “We need to make sure they’ll be ready for what’s going to happen in 2020 or 2030.”

I sense that is to be, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy. It certainly gives pause to this calligrapher and handwriting expert (who is called upon to examine questioned historical documents, like the Jack the Ripper Diary). I share the concern of a mother whose eighth-grade daughter could scarcely sign her name: “It looks like a little kid’s signature,” she laments. That is not surprising when the largest school system in her state (West Virginia) teaches cursive only in the third grade.

I’m trying to think positively: One bright note may be the consequent decline in graphology, the pseudoscience of handwriting “analysis.” Most forensic handwriting experts distance themselves from graphology, which purports to divine character traits from certain penned elements (such as the height of one’s t -bars). Unfortunately, graphology lacks a suitable experimental foundation, in part because of the difficulty of measuring such vague traits as “generosity” (whether overt or “latent”). (For a discussion, see my Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents , 1996, pp. 17–24. See also Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science , 1957, 196–197.)

I’m an optimist. We’ve lost the fine art of writing hieroglyphics with a reed pen on papyrus, but we also no longer spend much time attempting divination from the entrails of sheep. Once again, things may be looking up.

“As you know, I have more than once remonstrated with you over your own accounts of my cases—romanticizing when you ought to be analyzing. But your deviations are as nothing, my good fellow, when compared to the liberties this ‘movie’ Sherlock Holmes has taken. Why, they might just have renamed it Sheerlack Qualms .

“Of course it was admirably free of those infernal clichés others have resorted to: the deerstalker, for instance. Really, Watson, some portrayals have me wearing that outdoorsman’s cap to the opera! Why, you’d think I even slept in it. And I’ve wanted to punch the next fellow who had me perpetually declaring, ‘It’s elementary my dear Watson’—when I have never even uttered that precise combination of words.

“On the other hand, speaking of punching someone, the movie did correctly acknowledge my pugilistic skills. You’ll recall your account, “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist,” in which I took on that bully, ‘Roaring Jack’ Woodley, in a country pub and sent him home, sprawled in a cart. But I say, there was enough action in this movie for one of those ‘James Bond’ features that are all the rage.

“And that business of me engaging in indoor pistol-practice was also right on target—eh, what? It did so mortify our long-suffering landlady, Mrs. Hudson. But this movie makes me a truly funky, Bohemian character—hence, the choice of the unlikely Robert Downey, Jr., to play me. And then it’s treated as a sub-genre of fantasy fiction called steampunk , wherein technological developments are cast back in time—in this case a Victorian setting.

“Oh, I’m sure I’ll survive it all. The movie did manage to touch on my powers of deduction—albeit as a sort of afterthought to the story. For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of the whole affair was its portrayal of the paranormal —to use another modern word, Watson. As you’ve been kind enough to chronicle, in several of my cases—involving that hell-hound of the Baskervilles, for example, and ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’—I have had the persona not only of consulting detective but of paranormal investigator as well. But I have always been an advocate of naturalism, and so I announced (in that tale you titled, ‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’), ‘This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.’ I continue to hold that view.

“Now, it seemed there were supernatural powers exhibited in the movie at hand, but in the end they were all revealed—just as I might have done—as so many ‘conjuring tricks.’ It was all entertaining enough, but now, I fear, again comes the stagnation at which my mind rebels. If I am not to reach for the cocaine bottle, for a seven-per-cent solution, then I must know that, once again Watson, the game is afoot, and that I can put to use those powers that have allowed me to create my own unique profession.”

The tomb, discovered in a first-century cemetery, contained the remains—bones, hair, and burial wrapping—of a man whose DNA, interestingly enough, yielded evidence of both leprosy and tuberculosis. Because the tomb had been sealed with plaster 2,000 years ago, the hair and cloth had been spared the high humidity of Jerusalem cave burials and could be radiocarbon dated. They were in the A.D. 1–50 range.

In contrast, the Turin cloth was radiocarbon dated to between 1260 and 1390. That is consistent with the time an artist confessed to having “cunningly printed” it—with the front and back images of an apparently crucified man—circa mid 1350s. It is also consistent with the red ocher pigment found on the “Shroud” image, and with the red ocher and vermilion tempera paint composing the “blood” stains. (See my Inquest on the Shroud of Turin , 1998, chaps. 1, 11, 12.)

The real shroud from the sealed tomb—now called the Tomb of the Shroud—casts still more doubt on the Turin cloth’s antiquity and therefore its authenticity. Whereas the newfound shroud is described as a “patchwork” of linen and wool cloths of simple weave, the Turin “Shroud” is a single fourteen-foot length of linen woven in a complex, striped twill pattern. That weave, observed archaeologist Gibson, was not known to have been available in the Jerusalem area until the Middle Ages. (See Mati Milstein, “Shroud of Turin Not Jesus’, Tomb Discovery Suggests,” Dec. 16, 2009)

Indeed, I made this very point in my book (1998, p. 35): “The weave of the cloth of Turin is a three-to-one-twill, striped in the herringbone pattern. This is suspect in itself, since most linens of Jesus’ time—whether Roman, Egyptian, or Palestinian—were plain weave.” I quoted the Rev. David Sox (who turned from Shroud believer to skeptic when the evidence warranted it): “ All of the ancient Egyptian linens extant are different. All of the extant Palestinian linen, including the wrappings from the Dead Sea Scrolls, is of a regular weave—quite different from the shroud.”

Although the newly discovered cloth is the only shroud found in a Jesus-era tomb, another Jerusalem tomb yielded clothing. Both examples argue against the belief that the Turin “shroud” is from first-century Jerusalem—not that any more evidence against authenticity is really needed.

It isn’t just that it has a great cast (George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Ewin McGregor, “and goat”), a skilled director (Grant Heslov, who co-authored Clooney’s movie about Edward R. Murrow, Good Night and Good Luck ), and a script based on a non-fiction bestseller (by Jon Ronson). The Men Who Stare at Goats should please skeptics of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims for this reason: it is an inspired, absurdist satire—not just on modern warfare (like Dr. Strangelove ), But on the hole New Age silliness. Think about it: a special unit of “soldiers with super powers”—like psychokinesis.

Hence, staring at goats. The top-secret unit of “psychic spies” experiments with telepathic assassination: attempting to knock off goats (people are more sentimental about dogs) with mere stare power. The would-be psychic “Jedi Warriors” seek guidance from a book that actually emerged in 1970 to promote the idea that the Soviets were outdistancing the U.S. on the parapsychological front. Provocatively titled Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain , it was written by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder.

The book capitalized on the Cold War, promoting belief in such potentially militaristic paranormalities as the supposed ability to “see” without sight. This is shown in the movie in the form of driving while blindfolded (a magician’s stunt I have occasionally done—see my Adventures in Paranormal Investigation , 2007, 215).

Other New Age pursuits satirized in The Men Who Stare at Goats include psychokinetic spoon-bending, firewalking, and more, including clairvoyance that is restyled “remote viewing.” The latter was actually embodied in the United States’ own secret project code-named Stargate (see my The Mystery Chronicles , 2004, 61–72). In one instance in the film, remote-viewing is attempted via a psychic medium’s spirit guide named Maude.

Of course, The Men Who Stare at Goats is not the place to learn the secrets behind all such paranormal claims. For that, you of course subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. But effective satire, and this movie is very effective satire, has a way of making a direct hit on the emotions—in this case, with fitting irony, beating psychics at their own game. It is a must-see for skeptics.