Except me.

For some reason, I’ve never been that bothered about psychics, even though as woo goes, psychic powers are up there with the best. Psychics claim extremely ridiculous and hard-to-believe powers, yet are incredibly popular with the public. And they’re everywhere! People reading fortunes through crystal balls and tarot cards, others contacting the dead or reading your mind. You find them at seaside towns, in circuses, on the internet and on phonelines. You even get travelling fairs that run the full gamut of ‘spiritual’ woo. Most people will have heard of the ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’ festival.

I’ve not generally been that bothered by all this. I got into Skepticism through religion and UFOs (they’re especially fun if you combine the two – just ask Tom Cruise). Psychic ‘stuff’ always seemed so obviously bunk to me, that I thought if people wanted to spend money on that crap, then it’s their prerogative. It’s not like psychics turn up unannounced at your house and demand you pay for a reading. If you want a psychic reading you have to go to them. It’s your choice.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. If a pillock wants to spend £50 on a crystal pendant, fair enough, but if someone grieving for a loved one pays the same amount to a psychic just to hear a load of guff that interferes with the grieving process; well, that’s a different story, but one which others have covered better than me elsewhere.

The trouble is, I’ve found myself becoming intrigued by this whole weird psychic circus. (I blame Marsh’s blogs!) I can’t get my head around why anyone believes the claims of most of these self-proclaimed psychics in the first place, even before they empty their purses/wallets of their hard-earned cash; and here’s why: they’re terrible at being convincing! Take Derek Acorah, for instance (you don’t have to if you don’t want to). I recently came across an interview he gave for the Daily Express last month. He was promoting his forthcoming new show on Sky Real Lives, the latest in a series of masterpieces of television such as ‘Most Haunted’ and ‘Derek Acorah’s Ghost Antiques’. In this show he would be working with people’s personal objects, like jewellery, and with pet animals such as dogs and cats. Derek would use the objects, usually a brooch, to receive ‘messages’ via a process he calls ‘psychometry’. Let’s hear his personal description of this process:

“Every article that a human being touches, emits vibrations for all time. Once I start to get close to these articles, I get mental images from bygone times.”

At this point, the interviewer asked him if he “was getting any vibrations now”. He replied:

“I’m afraid not. I can either be ‘open’ or ‘closed’. I only open up to the spiritual influence when I do spiritual work. When I close down, I’m just Derek. At the moment, I’ve shut down and they know from that side to adhere to that. Otherwise I would be potty.”

Otherwise?

Let’s bypass the fact that this vibration thing is nonsense in the first place, and give ourselves up to the exciting ride of Derek’s bonkers, freewheeling guff rollercoaster. So Derek is basically a tuning fork for past events, a bit like Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone, only in reverse. He touches objects and recieves mental images from their past. Apparently, these can be quite graphic images. Whether he means graphic in terms of a good pixel ratio, or lashings of sex and violence, he doesn’t say; but Derek will fondle your jewellery and presumably tell you a story about your dead Gran. It may involve a really clear picture or her sex life. Or both. Who knows? Either way, it’s made up – I mean, the owner of the brooch will be made up.

As for communicating with animals, which is the other aspect of his new show, you’d think there would be a language barrier (there’s a reality barrier, but what the hell, we’re having fun riding the Derek Acorah guff rollercoaster), but Derek has that covered:

“What I do is get very close to the animals and even though they can’t speak, they talk in a universal language. The animal’s thought message will come through instinct and can be deciphered by me.”

Go, Derek Doolittle! Is there anything this polymath of the psychic world can’t do? He even communicates with a python, apparently. I think he’s after the Harry Potter demographic. Strangely, the Express talked about Derek’s conversation with a python as something particularly remarkable. I don’t think it’s that big a deal considering Derek can already do the amazing feat of talking to animals in the first place! It’s like sailing the world in a dinghy just to be complemented on your mooring skills when you reach harbour. Are pythons renowned for their bad communication skills or something?

I’m not that impressed myself. I once had the misfortune to catch him on TV supposedly talking to someone’s dead cat. Isn’t communicating with live animals a bit of a step down? If we’re talking skills here, communicating with the dead is definitely one up on communicating with the living.

On a side note, Derek’s spiritual experience with the dead cat was incredibly bizarre. He stood still for a while, silently tuning himself in (or having a stroke, I’m not sure), then opened his eyes and reeled backwards, saying in a startled voice: “Whoah, you’re a big boy!”

It’s a domestic cat, not a frigging lion!

Unfortunately, it turns out Derek has plans for a show exclusively about animals, where he will be a kind of behavioural therapist for pets. Surely there can’t be much to it:

“Hm… Tiddles is telling me he likes cat food and sitting on garden walls for seven hours a day. Does this sound like the Tiddles you know?”

“Yes.”

Wow, I’m a psychic.

It’s all so preposterous! Even if I try to open my mind and take this stuff at face value, it simply comes across like the fanciful nonsense that it is. Does anyone at all, anywhere, really believe Derek was talking to someone’s dead cat on that stage? The camera shots of the audience at this point were telling: glazed, vaguely bewildered, expressions on the faces of every one of them. I don’t understand how there is any groundwork for belief whatsoever. That’s what makes the thought of people going to psychics for serious reasons, like speaking to dead relatives, so confusing to me. Yes, you’re desperate, but you may as well hold a seance with your fridge. At least with some woo, like say acupuncture, you could feasibly believe there might be something in it if you didn’t know the research, but five minutes with a psychic should be enough to leave you guffawing with laughter and vowing never to visit one again.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe they’re not all like Derek. Maybe some of them are genuine, but just don’t want the limelight, fame and money that genuine psychic powers would bring them. I would dearly love to be proved wrong, but leaving my skepticism aside for one moment and switching to cynic mode, I sincerely believe I won’t be.

As for Derek, it’s easy to claim he’s a fake, but maybe he’s just deluded. I’ll leave you with a comment he gave in response to the interviewer bringing up Derren Brown’s criticism of Derek:

“He is not a medium… he’s not a psychic with spiritual gifts. He’s not. Unlike David Blaine, who has psychic gifts.”

One word, Derek: magician.

Ghosts and the People Who Hunt Them

Trystan Swale

When: Thu, Dec 17, 2009 8:00 – 11:00 PM
Where: Crown Hotel, 43 Lime Street, Liverpool.

Summary

Who are the people that spend their weekends sat in haunted buildings hoping to capture evidence of an after life or a snapshot of a ghost? From academics to housewives, Trystan Swale blows the whistle on the profiles, methods, means, deception, poor research and bad science of the people who continue to shape popular culture and perception of ghosts.

Biography

Trystan Swale is a folklore hobbyist and between 2004 and 2009 was an active member of two paranormal investigation teams in southern England. He is a serving officer with educational charity ASSAP and has investigated a range of phenomena including ghosts, unidentified flying objects and out of place animals. When not busy pieceing together and co-hosting Righteous Indignation podcast, Trystan is a teacher by profession.

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Except, I was wrong. That’s fine though, I’m always happy to admit when I’m wrong (I am! What do you know, anyway?!). So it was with equal parts incredulity and glee I allowed my love/hate affair with the Telegraph to take me in its warm and scientifically-bereft arms with the headline ‘Do you believe in angels?‘

No, I don’t. Nor should you. Silly Telegraph.

Still, it’s been a while since we wrote about them, and it’s rude of me to deny the Telegraph their fun, so let’s see what it’s all about. Well, as Journalist Christopher Howse reports:

“A university lecturer has criticised parents for being dismissive when their seven-year-old daughter told them that she saw an angel at her bedside every night, which she felt comforted by. Quite right, too. Perhaps she had seen an angel. Children, if they are truthful and well, should be taken seriously”

So children should be taken seriously, even when what they’re being serious about is something fringe, wildly unlikely and patently silly? This is a bizarre attitude to take – we all know children are prone to make believe, and to accept their reports of angels uncritically is to teach our children that critical thinking and questioning experiences isn’t important. If we accept angels, should we accept invisible friends and monsters under the bed, too? Are these any more ridiculous claims?

“Angels are not cuddly toys, and it is not just children who believe in them. They have become an adult craze. Gone are the merely jokey fancies. Unjokey books like Angels in My Hair by Lorna Byrne or Angels Watching Over Me by Jacky Newcomb sell millions”

Bzzzt! Argument from authority – just because it’s the belief of adults rather than children does not make the claim any less ridiculous. Unjokey books selling millions? Bzzzt! Argumentum ad populum – a million people can be wrong, just because something sells in vast numbers doesn’t make it true. The Bible, for example…

“Miss Jacky Newcomb, at the paranormal end of the angel spectrum, enjoys endorsements from Uri Geller.”

Bzzzt! Argument from authority again – and a lame authority at that. Uri Geller is an oft-debunked and wildly-ridiculed spoon bender who has been proven time and time again to have no paranormal ability. Even if he had (he hasn’t), his expertise would be in spoon bending and mind-reading (plus these days he flogs crystals on QVC). He’s not an authority on angels, then.

“Miss Lorna Byrne, whose memoir Angels in My Hair was bought for a six-figure sum by the publishers of The Da Vinci Code, is more devotional. “Remember strangers give you messages from your Angels too.” she says. “It could be a shop assistant, a bus driver, a neighbour’s child.”

Bzzzt! No true Scotsman fallacy? What they’re doing here is shifting the definition – if you’re definition of ‘angels’ allows for the inclusion of shop assistants, bus drivers and other people’s kids, then yes angels do exist. But they’re not angels. They’re shop assistants, bus drivers and other people’s kids. That’s not what the word ‘angel’ means.

“Guardian angels remain most popular, with 38 per cent of us believing in them, if we credit a single opinion poll”

Bzzzt! Argumentum ad populum. Just because 38% of people believe in guardian angels doesn’t mean guardian angels exist.

“But it doesn’t take a vision of a winged messenger with a flaming sword to convince people, once the possibility of angelic intervention is entertained. Gloria Hunniford has found angels very helpful in finding parking places.”

OK, you’ve got me there – I can’t begin to find a logical fallacy which describes this sufficiently. Argumentum ad bullshitum? What I will say is those angels do a damned noble job – thank the Lord in all of his wisdom that he deploys his ambassadors to Earth, his guardians from Heaven, to do His chosen work right here on this plane. And what does he, in his infinite and beardy wisdom, deign worthy of his interjection and aid? Cancer patients? Genocide? Keeping clergy from interfering with altar boys? No, blessed are the drivers, for they shall inherit a parking space. Sometimes. Brilliant.

“One day, after lunch, the late Jennifer Paterson, formerly one of the Two Fat Ladies, accidentally locked me out of my house in Shepherd’s Bush by closing the front door behind us in the front garden. What impressed me was her instant success in attracting the attention of a passing youth and persuading him to shin over the back wall and break into the house. I assumed he was part of the skilled Shepherd’s Bush burgling community. Later I wondered: perhaps it was an angel”

So angels can be burglers as well as kind strangers and parking attendants? Is there anything those angels won’t do for us? Angels – I salute you, and your fence-shimmying, car-park-watching glory!

“Theologically, angels are perfectly respectable. God is an uncreated spirit; human beings are bodily creatures with a spiritual component; angels are spiritual creatures with no bodily component. They have intellect and will and are much cleverer than we are. Satan is an angel gone to the bad.

Traditional Jewish, as well as Christian, speculation holds that there are millions more angels than there are human beings. So encountering one at your bedside would be only too likely”

Hear this and more on Righteous Indignation

Bzzt! Back to ad populums and authority arguments! Back on safe, clear irrational ground then. Just because the authority of religion says angels are real doesn’t make it so; just because there is speculation that there are millions of angels doesn’t make it so.

On the whole, this Telegraph article really is bizarre to read – if you ask me I’d guess that it’s some kind of blatant attempt to get into the SGU’s ‘Spot the logical fallacy’ feature, but then again I’m prone to those kind of outlandish statements based on little evidence…

This was difficult and I tried not to say “The Creed” out loud, mouthing it instead. I knew I was a fraud in a cassock. I was about 13.

I have believed in things that I no longer do. Ghosts are a good example. It always seemed plausible that the spirit was so powerful it could defy death. And hearing various theories of parallel universes crossing over and strange quasi credible time theories seemed to open up at least the possibility of ghosts really existing. Something that shouldn’t be ruled out. Something that I should be open minded about.

But now I’m absolutely the wrong person to talk to if a close relative just died. Recently I was faced with an elderly relative whose son had just died, tragically and too young, from cancer. She was, still is, understandably distraught. She asked me whether I believed in the afterlife. Conversationally. Not to provoke a meaningful debate. So I should have just said “yes” and “you’ll be with him again soon” shouldn’t I? I didn’t say that. I said “No. He’ll live on in all our memories though, until we also die”. She wasn’t comforted in any way. Was I wrong?

I don’t believe in God (none of them), ghosts, miracles (not literally anyway), psychics, acupuncture, reiki, reflexology, phrenology, the afterlife, spirits, mediums, tarot, aliens visiting (not the same as aliens existing), conspiracy theories in general and 9/11 theories in particular, gremlins, gorgons, demons, devils, heaven, hell, Roman Gods, the River Styx, chanting, ranting, …need I go on?

So what do I believe in? First off, do I really need to have some deeply held existential belief in order to function in society and be a productive and acceptable part of it? No, I don’t. In fact there are plenty of people who fit into that category. Some people just aren’t bothered about a higher level. And they’re absolutely fine, most of them. Even if they go through the motions of being spiritual, religious or whatever.

It is, however, good to have beliefs, as protection from the absolute drivel we are occasionally asked to believe. And it does seem to me that we have a belief system that needs feeding. For example, if I didn’t believe that there is no God, how can I protect myself from the attempted indoctrinations of any mystical messenger? Without opinion how can I raise sufficient energy to attempt repelling psychic boarders and their snake oil? Agnosticism just isn’t enough sometimes, I find. It’s a paradox really because I’d like to be more moderate and considered. But sometimes I just want to shake people really hard. Often by the neck! That just makes me feel guilty and pompous as though I think I am the possessor of some mighty and revelatory information that only the enlightened few can understand (sound familiar?)

Lack of conviction seems to equal vulnerability to the acceptance of illogical claims. Or at least their tolerance. Is this because we have a belief system that is effectively shelves waiting to be filled? If you don’t believe in a point of view on a subject, then anything could be true. You’ve not ruled anything out. The shelf needs filling. So an idea comes along, even a ridiculous one, and inhabits that shelf, perhaps on a temporary basis. Then, because that idea is on that shelf and doesn’t get dislodged early (remember that the person wasn’t looking for a belief in that area and may not get round to challenging it) it gets reinforced instead and when the topic comes up again that’s all they have in the cupboard and so they argue from that position. People just don’t seem to say “Well to be honest, I don’t really think I know enough about that to form an opinion.”

There are other problems to be dealt with in critical thinking too. Especially if, like me, you only started putting flesh on the skeptical bones recently. There is the potential that friends who you previously thought would be friends for life turn out to be raving woo peddlers. Every time you bring them to mind you’re having to battle with the growing opinion that you are having less and less in common with them as time progresses. Increasingly you get frustrated and you want to persuade your friends to your critical point of view. But they’re not listening. Because it’s not important enough to them to think critically. What to do? There was nothing wrong with your friendship before, was there?

I’ve come up with a mathematical formula to describe vulnerability to woo. I’m calling it the woo ranking

Where b is Credulous Belief, l is Lack of Opinion, t is time, w is Exposure to Woo and a is Apathy,

Therefore: Credulous Belief = Lack of Opinion x Exposure to Woo x Apathy / Time

As a skeptic the matter to be addressed is the apathy. This is where we should expend our efforts. Building narratives that cause the spider senses to tingle. Stimulating interest with soundbites and then having a quick and accessible way to put the main point across.

Effectively we need to get people to revisit that time when they first filled the gap with woo, and just loosen it slightly. Then give them a bit more information that prevents them from considering that a proven belief. Then stop. When that topic arises again it’ll be harder for them to maintain the woo position. Woo is based upon belief. All we really need to do is stop it being a belief and start it being only a possibility. Raising doubt is the objective. Not winning the argument.

It is important to me that I am true to myself, so it is unlikely I will permit woo peddlers to go unchallenged when I encounter them. However that cannot be the focus of my effort. Based on the formula above what I really need to do is figure out how to make people care about being a critical thinker. (wrong language for most people BTW. Sounds like you need a degree to do it)

I can start the ball rolling if you like. If you take a 125 ml homeopathic preparation that costs $16 and is a 12C formulation, how much water do they have to throw away in its preparation? And what are the disposal guidelines?

Or to a God believer “which are you favourite bible stories, the miracles or the incest?”. Ok maybe that one’s a bit inflammatory. Perhaps, “I quite like some aspects of the Bible. Miracles are very uplifting and morally informative. But it’s difficult for me to be inspired by them because of the incest and stuff. What do you think about that?”

They’re just two ideas and not necessarily good ones. We need to come up with better ways to loosen the apathy all the time. Not arguing point by point. Killer questions, if you like. Rather than carefully considered arguments.

Then there are the other topics – the ones where everyone knows it’s nonsense, but you might not have the facts to hand next time you’re accosted by a woo-peddler on the subject.  Bigfoot.  Crop Circles.  Dowsing.  For me, Astrology falls firmly into this second category.

Twelve signs, twelve months, twelve types of people.  In the whole world. From looking at the positions of the stars and planets at precisely the moment of birth, it’s possible to predict character, future events, love life and a whole manner of cold, hard facts about a person.  Except it isn’t.  Because that’s ridiculous.  We all know that.  So here’s your at-a-glance guide to the woo that is astrology.

How does it work?

It doesn’t.  There, done.  That was easy.

Wait, you need more?  OK OK OK.  Here goes – well, believers are pretty fuzzy on this.  A few things come up time and time again, though:

1. Gravity: ‘The moon’s gravity is responsible for the tides, and our bodies are made up of 70% water so imagine what the moon can do to us!  And that’s just the moon – there are so many other planets and things out there that are even bigger!’  Gravitational force as a working method for astrology is impossible – sure, there are some pretty big things out there in space.  But they’re out there.  In space.  Any mathematicians out there (reading this, I mean – not out there in space) will tell you the inverse square law takes gravity out of the equation – for every step you get away from an object, it’s gravitational pull drops off by a proportionally larger amount.  Two steps, and it drops off by four times.  Three steps, and it’s nine times weaker.  Twenty-five steps, and it’s six-hundred-and-twenty-five times weaker.  And those things are a long way away.  The upshot of this is, at the moment of birth the gravitational pull of the midwife’s gloves far far far exceeds all of the combined gravitational pull of everything out there in space.  Phil Plait makes this point a billion times better than I could, on his BadAstronomy blog.  That’s the benefit of a PhD and some genuine expertise/physics I suppose…

2.  Radiation and Electromagnetic Frequencies: Similar to gravity, but with the argument that radiation is the cause – that each planet and body emits a frequency that somehow interacts with us.  At the precise moment of birth. Why birth, and not conception?  Who knows.  Fortunately, inverse square law also kills off radiation and magnetic frequencies (you don’t have to move the paperclip far from the magnet before it’s completely unaware of the magnetic field, for instance).  Also, the biggest source of radiation and electromagnetic force in our solar system – by a looooooong way – is the Sun.  Yet the Sun isn’t so important in astrology, it’s more planets and star systems that seem to matter.  Go figure.  Phil Plait covers this very well too.

3.  Quantum Mechanics: ‘Some astrologers believe that planetary energies themselves generate events in our lives — and given recent advances in quantum mechanics, they may be right’ (Source: Astrologycom.com) Quantum theory is something that, as a skeptic, you’re going to wish hadn’t been discovered.  Or at least was kept secret.  Or perhaps at the very least was given a totally un-cool name that wasn’t useful for the titles of major sci-fi shows.  Because every woo-peddler out there uses quantum theory to bash scientists over the head – science doesn’t understand it, so it can’t rule out that quantum theory explains astrology/mediums/homeopathy/bogus chiropractic/aliens.  But, obviously, that’s just an argument from ignorance fallacy – quantum theory doesn’t explain that the world isn’t flat, other observations do (including being out there and seeing for ourselves that the Earth is round).  Quantum theory doesn’t rip up the rule book, we still have other science to separate real from woo.

How can we show it doesn’t work?

This is much much easier.  At the base of it, every astrological reading is essentially just a collection of barnum statements and other simple cold reading tricks.  As such, skeptical hero James Randi was able to demonstrate that when people are presented with what they assume to be individual readings tailored to their own data, they are likely to give the reading a very high score for accuracy – even when everyone is unknowingly presented with identical readings.

In his excellent book ‘Quirkology‘, Richard Wiseman tests the claims of a financial astrologer, picking stock investments using a star chart, against the random picks of a 4 year old girl called Tia.  Tia made a 4.6% loss; the astrologer lost 10.1%.  (Bizarrely, the control – an investment banker – lost 7.1%, so from these results at least, if you want financial advice you should head to your nearest nursery school!)

In 1968, French statistician Michel Gauquelin sent the horoscope for one of the worst mass murderers in French history to 150 people and asked how well it fit them. Ninety-four percent of the subjects said they recognized themselves in the description.  Just to be clear – ninety-four percent of French people are non mass murderers, so something else was going on with the reading…

In 1989, researchers in Kansas City went to five professional astrologers with the birthdate and location of convicted serial murderer John Wayne Gacy.  John Gacy was convicted for the murder of thirty-three men and young boys – murders committed using his cover as ‘Pogo the Clown’, a children’s party entertainer.  Without knowing who the birthdate and location belonged to, the astrologers gave readings describing Gacy as having a “well rounded personality”, that he could “offer a good role model” and that he would “be excellent for working around young people.” (republished in the Indian Skeptic, referenced in Quirkology)

In 2002, comedian Dave Gorman spent 40 days and 40 nights following exclusively the advice of astrologers.  At the same time, his twin brother (who, being born in the same location and at the same time, has an identical star chart) lived his normal life, as a control.  The results are very tongue in cheek, but tellingly their lives did not run parallel or in any way comparable courses.

Finally, and the most fun thing to do in my opinion – pick up a paper, and ask a credulous friend their star sign.  Read out the reading, and ask them casually how accurate they think it is.  Once they’ve confirmed that many of the elements were indeed accurate, you can merrily reveal you read them someone else’s star sign.  It’s that simple, that straightforward to debunk this old and entirely lame form of woo.

Further reading

• The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has a great breakdown of astrology, including its ‘Astrology Defence Kit‘.  The 10 embarrassing questions for astrology are especially worth a read
• Geoffrey Dean and Ivan W. Kelly’s paper ‘Is Astrology Relevant to Consciousness and Psi?’ is a very detailed study of various astrological claims
• As ever, the Skeptic’s Dictionary is a great resource on astrology, as is the JREF Encyclopedia

The shop had been quiet all day. Books were piled high around him, and what few customers had been in had barely given him enough money for the day’s bread. Samuel sighed deeply, but stopped himself short as a mouse looked out from behind a bookshelf. He watched it silently, as it sniffed at the thick air and eyed the mottled floor. Timidly, it scurried a couple of feet along the edge of the wall, before gaining confidence and darting to the table at which Samuel was sitting, in order to better investigate the scraps he had spilled during breakfast.

Suddenly, the mouse stopped shock still, pricking up its ears. Samuel was still holding his breath, frozen like a gargoyle. It wasn’t him who had startled the mouse. It stood up on its hind legs and sniffed the air and then, with a panicked leap, it ran back to its home behind the books.

Still Samuel was silent, intent, listening. Then he heard it too. Distant shouts, and the confused murmurs of a large gathering. The noises were getting louder, closer. His stomach sank slightly. Was this what he had been waiting for? Had the time come?

With a deep breath to calm himself, and with nervous resignation, he crept to the door. The shouting was almost audible now, and he could see the mob coming down the road. He knew what they wanted, but he was rooted to the spot, no matter how hard he tried to run.

“Heretic!” shouted one. “Alchemy is the Devil’s work” another. There were many more voices, but what they were saying was lost in the hubbub. Samuel turned to run, but it was as though he were running through sinking sand. The harder he struggled, the slower he moved, and the more he panicked, the more ineffectual these movements were.

The crowd were upon him in a second, surrounding him and preventing his escape. Some had flaming torches, others rudimentary weapons – farming implements, stout sticks a noose.

Sam the Spectacular screamed and sat bolt upright. He was safe. Covered in sweat, panting heavily, but safe in bed. It had been a dream, a horrible dream, but he was safe now. Safe at home. He went to the bathroom and washed his face, before returning to bed. He’d best try and get some sleep. He had to stay fresh while writing his book.

———————————————————————————————–

Despite the garish adverts for his new book, “The Man Who Listens To Coma Victims”, that had been plastered in the shop window for an entire week, Sam had barely sold any books, signed fewer, and had covered an entire sheet of notepaper with his signature out of sheer boredom. He hadn’t been feeling quite right all day, either. A creeping unease hung heavily on his shoulders, and he had eyed everyone entering the shop with the same paranoid suspicion. It was almost time to go home, and it wouldn’t have been unusual, given the slow day, if he had left early, but Sam was desperate to sell just a couple more books.

There they were again. That person had been in and out of the shop almost an hour earlier. They had barely stayed for five minutes, and didn’t pick up a single book in their brief perusal of the shelves. Now they were back, looking around again. Sam swore they caught his eye.

Suddenly, his mind flashed back to the dream he had had six months ago. Books piled up around him, that endless waiting. The mob coming to get him.

A shudder ran through Sam. It was time to give up on the books. He had to leave.

They walked up the stairs to the large bookshop’s second floor. This was his moment.

Sam stood up quickly, and announced his departure with a hurried apology. He picked up his few belongings – his notebook, pen, and bag that contained nothing more than a wallet and set of keys – and hurried out of the door, phoning his wife as he did.

She had been shopping with their child only a short distance from where he had been signing, so it was with great relief that Sam saw them walking towards him, his wife still talking to him on the phone. He hugged her and for a brief second his panic faded away. At that moment though, his head resting on her shoulder, he saw them coming towards him. Two young men, looking dead at him, walking straight for him. Now the entire dream flooded back to him, in vivid detail, from the dust motes in the still air inside the alchemist’s shop, to the mouse, to the mob, to the noose.

He couldn’t get away now. He felt the beads of sweat form on his palms and on his brow. Panic gripped him again, and he was sure that his wife, still hugging him, must be able to feel his beating heart.

As he finished hugging his wife, they strode up to him. There was no escape. They had found him. He had been caught.

“Mr Spectacular?” They asked. “We are from the Musty Slide Sceptics’ Society – would you be interested in taking part in Jim Brandy’s Billion Pound Challenge?”

The dream returned again, this time in the briefest of flashes. Each image felt like a cannonball landing on his chest. The flaming torches. The pitchforks. The noose.

“Dickarse!” He shouted.

The sceptics looked puzzled. One of them arched an eyebrow. “Sorry?” They asked.

“Gaytheist!” What was he saying? In his panic, words were snaking through his brain, leaping out of his mouth of their own accord. Whatever word first came into his head was the first to leave his mouth. As the dream flashed into his mind, image after image, his terror left him powerless.

“Paedophile! Festerhole!”

The two skeptics looked at him for a while. He felt their piercing eyes, their inquisitorial stares. Inquisitors… Suddenly the shouting in the dream filled his ears; “Heretic!”, “The Devil’s work!”. He felt as though a balloon were expanding inside him, squeezing his insides together and constricting his lungs. He had to take quick, shallow gasps. His breathing hastened and he started to feel dizzy.

The two sceptics looked at each other, and shrugged. They handed him the Billion Pound Challenge form, shook his hand and left, scratching their heads.

His heart rate was still pounding, but the balloon inside him was slowly deflating, and the vortex in his mind settling down.

That dream…

That dream proved it, he told himself…

He was right.

He knew it for certain now.

The books. The man looking for him. Being challenged. Being surrounded by the mob.

The dream had all come true.

He was psychic, after all.

—

Colonel Molerat (But you predicted that, didn’t you?)

• Frank claims: “God is real.”
• Bill claims: “God is real.”
• But Bill disagrees with Frank’s claim;
• and Frank disagrees with Bill’s.

The solution to this simple problemette is that Bill and Frank define the word “God” in different ways. Bill, a fundamentalist Christian, worships the abrahamic god Yahweh.  Frank is a pantheist, and worships a spinozan god who might also be called “nature”.  The apparent contradiction in their conversation arises because they both use the word “god” to refer to the object of their worship, even though the concepts they are expressing are not equivalent.

It is easy, especially in western culture, to assume that any reference to “god” refers to the character as he appears in christian mythology.  A christian told me once that the commandment “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image” forbade me from defining the god I do not believe in.  I briefly attempted to define god anyway, only to be told that the god I described was a “very small god” and therefore not representative of the god she believed in.

I learned from that experience and understand now that it isn’t necessary for me to define god.  When arguing with a believer, I try to remember to ask them to define their god before I respond to any claims made about him/her/it.  Often I’ll forget and assume they’re referring to Yahweh… it’s usually a safe bet, but one day I’ll get tripped up.

Last year I was involved in a conversation with a skeptic, who insisted that ghosts are real.

Over the course of the conversation it became clear that when he said “ghost” he was referring to something completely different to everybody else.  By “ghost” he meant “the reported experience of sensing the presence of a person or animal which cannot be physically accounted for”.  Not, as the majority of people would likely have it, “the spirit of a dead person”.

He argued that pointing out the dearth of credible evidence supporting the existence of spirits unjustifiably devalues the experiences of people who claim to have seen a ghost.  Rather than undermine them, we would be better to engage with them and try to help them better understand what they have experienced.  To this end, we should redefine the word “ghost” as described and then shift the public understanding of the word to be in line with the new definition.

In this sense, we would reposition the term “ghost” to be more like the term “UFO”.

“UFO”, in case you’ve been hiding under a rock for sixty years, is short for Unidentified Flying Object.  To claim you have “seen a UFO” is to do no more than suggest you have seen an object in the sky which you were unable to identify.  One possible explanation for what you saw is that aliens are covertly visiting Earth, but it is by no means the only explanation–you may simply have seen an aircraft of human manufacture, with which you were not familiar.

My problem with this approach is that language depends for its function upon a broad consensus regarding the meaning of words.  If we don’t agree on the meaning of the words we are using, it makes it difficult (or impossible) to have any sort of meaningful discourse about the topic at hand.  When an eyewitness claims to have seen a UFO, few of them (unless they’re being deliberately pedantic) actually mean they saw something in the sky they couldn’t explain.  What they are claiming is that they have seen an alien spaceship.

There is a distinction to be drawn between the description of a scientifically unexplained experience and the suggested paranormal explanation for that experience.  Although “UFO” started life as a description, it is now very much an explanation.  The term has become so loaded that it is now inextricably linked with the concept of alien spaceships – and it is in this way that the word would likely be understood when used in conversation.

When a person sees the image of a person they know could not have been present, then claims “I saw a ghost”, they are not describing their experience–they are attempting to explain it.  There are other explanations, such as a hypnagogic episode, hallucination, mistake, prank or even just a plain lie.  I don’t think it is meaningful to also refer to these as “ghosts”, even though they can explain the same phenomenon.

Like Bill and Frank discussing god, using the term “ghost” in this way will lead only to equivocation problems.  Ghosts are real only when we change the definition of the word “ghost” to refer to something real. I’m not very comfortable with the idea of redefining the word “ghost” just so I can tell somebody that they exist.  Substitute the words “pixie”, “bigfoot” or “loch ness monster” for “ghost” if you’re struggling to understand why.

The chances are good that the person I’m talking to will not have an equivalent understanding of the words I’m using.  If that person is not relating the words to the same concepts I am, then at best I’m telling them nothing.  At worst I’m contributing to the very culture of credulity and magical thinking that, as skeptics, we seek to dethrone.