Fringe-ology

by Steve Volk

  Author’s note: See Gellene, “How UFOs” for Kinsel quote and Times quotes.

  J. Gibson, “Dennis Kucinich’s UFO Comments Prove He’s Nuts,” Fox News, October 31, 2007, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,307117,00.html

  M. M. Phillips, “What Kucinich Saw,” Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2008.

  Dave Gilson, “Kucinich’s UFO Sighting, What He Really Saw,” Mother Jones, January 4, 2008, accessed November 1, 2010, http://motherjones.com/mojo/2008/01/kucinichs-ufo-sighting-what-he-really-saw

  Merrill Goozner, “Send the Editor into Space,” Huffington Post, January 2, 2008, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/merrill-goozner/answer-send-the-editor-in_b_79224.html

  Frank Burke, Interview September 2009.

  Phil Patton, “UFO Myths: A Special Investigation into Stephenville and Other Major Sightings,” Popular Mechanics (March 2009), accessed November 2010, http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/ufo/4304170

  Glen Schulze, Interview, October 2009.

  “The Stephenville Lights: What Actually Happened,” Skeptical Inquirer 33, no. 1 (January/February 2009), accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/stephenville_lights_what_actually_happened/

  Billy Cox, “Multiple Sources Never Hurt,” De Void, blog, Sarasota HeraldTribune, February 11, 2008, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20080211/BLOG32/76223561

  Mark Murphy, Interview, September 2009.

  CHAPTER 5: WAS THERE A GHOST IN MY HOUSE?

  James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (Penguin Classics, 1979): 239.

  Laura Spinney, “We Can Implant Entirely False Memories,” Guardian, December 4, 2003, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/04/science.research1

  S. J. Ceci, “Repeatedly Thinking About a Non-Event,” Consciousness and Cognition 2 (1994): 388–407.

  K. A. Braun, “Make My Memory: How Advertising Can Change Our Memories of the Past,” Psychology and Marketing 19, no. 1 (January 2002): 23.

  E. F. Loftus, “Planting a 30-Year Investigation of the Malleability of Memory,” Learning and Memory 12 (2005): 361–66.

  K. A. Wade, “A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Lies: Using False Photographs to create False Childhood Memories,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 9 (2002): 597–603.

  Jean Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood (Norton, 1962): 188.

  Author’s note: There are a number of resources, including some complicated technical papers, describing typical plumbing problems that can lead people to believe their house is haunted. Here is a short selection of more reader-friendly items and some YouTube videos that capture some common, plumbing-related noises. An aside: I sent these to my father, sister, and oldest brother, who are the living people with the greatest recall of the noises. They all thought the examples here were ridiculously unlike the noise in our house. All the online videos and resources here were accessed on October 26, 2010.

  Plumbing Noises: http://www.factsfacts.com/MyHomeRepair/PipeNoises.htm

  Waterhammer: A complex phenomenon with a simple solution, http://www.omega.com/techref/waterhammer.html

  “Peculiar Pipes: Why That Clanging Noise May Have More to do With Porcelain than Poltergeists,” http://eisenmanagementgroup.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/peculiar-pipes-why-that-clanging-noise-may-have-more-to-do-with-porcelain-than-poltergeists/

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sdiEdwUO7A

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HCv1YRB-dk&feature=related

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XchGnLiH_o&feature=related

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snp6CkA0eYA&feature=related

  R. T. Carroll, “infrasound,” Skeptic’s Dictionary, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.skepdic.com/infrasound.html6.

  Chris Arnot, “Ghost Buster,” Guardian, July 11 2000, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2000/jul/11/highereducation.chrisarnot

  V. Tandy and T. Lawrence, “The Ghost in the Machine,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 62, no. 851 (April 1998): 360–64. Accessed November 1, 2010. http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/ghost/ghost-in-machine.pdf

  V. Tandy, “Something in the Cellar,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 64.3, no. 860 (July 2000), accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.psy.herts.ac.uk/ghost/Something-in-the-Cellar.pdf

  Mary Roach, Spook (Norton, 2005): 227–40.

  J. J. Braithwaite and M. Townsend, “Good Vibrations: The Case for a Specific Effect of Infrasound in Instances of Anomalous Experience Has Yet to Be Empirically Demonstrated,” Journal for the Society of Psychical Research 70, no. 885 (2006): 211–24.

  “Infrasound Linked to Spooky Effects,” Associated Press, September 7, 2003, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077192/

  C. C. French et al., “The ‘Haunt’ Project: An Attempt to Build a ‘Haunted’ Room by Manipulating Complex Electromagnetic Fields and Infrasound,” Cortex 45, no. 5 (2009): 619–29.

  Hazel Muir, “Where Do Ghosts Come From?” New Scientist (October 2009), accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427321.200-where-do-ghosts-come-from.html

  Sheryl C. Wilson and Theodore X. Barber, “The Fantasy-Prone Personality: Implications for Understanding Imagery, Hypnosis, and Parapsychological Phenomena,” Imagery, Current Theory, Research and Application (1983): 340–90.

  Steven Novella, “The Fantasy Prone Personality,” Neurologica Blog, April 3, 2007, accessed October 26, 2010 http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=84

  Joe Nickell, “A Study of Fantasy Proneness in the Thirteen Cases of Alleged Encounters in John Mack’s Abduction,” Skeptical Inquirer 20 no. 3 (May/June 1996), accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/study_of_fantasy_proneness_in_the_thirteen_cases_of_alleged_encounters_in_j/

  Susan Clancy, Abducted (Harvard Univ. Press, 2005): 132–53.

  Peter Hough, “Alien Abductions Revisited: Study Suggests Alien Abduction Experiences Not Simply Products of Fantasy-Proneness,” Fortean Times (February 2010), accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.forteantimes.com/features/fbi/2929/alien_abductions_revisited.html

  P. Hough and P. Rogers, “Individuals Who Report Being Abducted by Aliens: Investigating the Differences in Fantasy-Proneness, Emotional Intelligence and the Big Five Personality Factors,” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 27, no. 2 (2007): 139–61.

  M. Rodeghier et al., “Psychosocial Characteristics of Abductees,” Journal of UFO Studies 3 (1991): 59–90.

  N. P. Spanos et al., “Close Encounters: An Examination of UFO Experiences,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 102, no. 4 (1993): 624–32.

  M. Eckblad, “Magical Ideation as an Indicator of Schizotypy,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 51, no. 2 (1983): 215–25.

  Joel Fischer, Measures for Clinical Practice: Adults (Free Press, 1987): 335–36.

  S. J. Lynn and J. W. Rhue, “The Fantasy-Prone Person: Hypnosis, Imagination, and Creativity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51, no. 2 (August 1986): 404–8.

  Chris French, Interview, February 2010.

  B. Colvin, “The Acoustic Properties of Unexplained Rapping Sounds,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 73.2, no. 899 (2010): 65–93.

  Society for Psychical Research’s announcement, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.spr.ac.uk/main/news/colvin-acoustic-properties-poltergeist-rapping

  Steve Volk, “The Lou Gentile Experience,” Philadelphia Weekly, September 27, 2006, November 1, 2010, http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/the_lou_gentile_experience–38419469.html

  CHAPTER 6: TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

  K. Lorenz, On Aggression (Harvest, 1963): 273.

  G. Easterbrook, “Why We Shouldn’t Go to Mars,” Time, January 26, 2004, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993172,00.html

  Edgar Mitchell, Interview, February 2009.

  Edgar Mi
tchell, The Way of the Explorer (New Page Books, 2008): 15–16 (short description of epiphany), 24–25 (childhood material, early education), 30 (naval career), 42 (space flight as evolutionary step), 73–77 (longer description of space flight and his epiphany), 102–105 (Norbu Chen story), 197–204 (dyadic model).

  Author’s note: The material cited here is woven throughout the chapter. For anyone interested in reading more about Mitchell’s conception of “dyadic model of the universe, see Mitchell, “Dyadic Model.”

  W. David Woods, How Apollo Flew to the Moon (Praxis, 2008): 176.

  B. W. Sibrel, “Astronauts Gone Wild,” DVD (AFTH, 2004), accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZYpfKf3tCc

  “Edgar Mitchell’s Strange Voyage,” People 1, no. 6 (1974), accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20063934,00.html

  M. Nizza, “When an Astronaut Believes in Aliens,” The Lede blog, New York Times, July 24, 2008, accessed November 1, 2010, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/when-an-astronaut-believes-in-aliens/

  Brian Dunning, “The Astronauts and the Aliens,” Skeptoid, August 10, 2010, accessed November 1, 2010, http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4218

  D. Morrison, “UFOs and Aliens in Space,” Skeptical Inquirer 33, no. 1 (January/February 2009), accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ufos_and_aliens_in_space

  Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol (Anchor, 2009): 208.

  Institute of Noetic Sciences, “IONS Overview,” accessed November 1, 2010. http://www.noetic.org/about/overview/

  “Secrets of the Lost Symbol,” Dateline NBC, October 15, 2009.

  “Hunting the Lost Symbol,” Discovery channel, October 25, 2009.

  Barbara Bradley Hagerty, “Woman Reads Dan Brown Novel, Discovers Herself,” All Things Considered. October 12, 2009, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113676181

  Rose Welch, executive assistant to the president/board, IONS, Interview, October 2009. (Also Radin, Schlitz.)

  Frank White, The Overview Effect (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1998): 11–12 (Schweickart’s description of space flight), 35–37 (“sensing element” material), 183–85 (interview with Cernan), 187 (Michael Collins quote), 190–91 (Schweickart on the transformative aspects of space flight), 215 (quote from Allen), 247–48 (Garn’s experience).

  Michael Collins, Carrying the Fire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974): 470.

  Association of Space Explorers, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.space-explorers.org/membership.html

  Frank White, Interview, February 2010.

  Author’s note: Andrew Newberg has agreed to conduct neurological studies of the overview effect.

  Uri Geller, Interview, August 2009.

  R. Targ and H. Puthoff, “Information Transmission Under Conditions of Sensory Shielding,” Nature 251, no. 18 (October 1974): 602–7.

  A. Harrington, ed., The Placebo Effect (Harvard Univ. Press, 1999): 40–54 (good overview of placebo effect), 66 (“voodoo” or negative placebo effect in asthma), 211–16. Author’s note: Great discussion among experts, with discussion of placebo effect’s limits.

  R. Kradin, The Placebo Response and the Power of Unconscious Healing (Routledge, 2008): 169–97.

  Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Born to Believe (Free Press, 2006): 3–4.

  B. Klopfer, “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer,” Journal of Projective Techniques (1957): 21.

  B. O’Regan and C. Hirshberg, Spontaneous Remission of Cancer: Epidemiological and Psychosocial Aspects (Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1993).

  Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997): 117–33.

  Dean Radin, Entangled Minds (Paraview Pocket Books, 2006): 161–80.

  Jessica Utts, Interview, August 2009.

  Edgar Mitchell, “A Dyadic Model of Consciousness,” World Futures 46, no. 2 (1996): 69–78.

  The Overview Institute, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.overviewinstitute.org/

  Virgin Galactic promotional information, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.virgingalactic.com/overview/experience/

  C. B. Thomas, “The Space Cowboys,” Time, February 22, 2007, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1592834,00.html

  D. Freedman, “The Future of NASA,” Discover (September 2006), accessed November 1, 2010, http://discovermagazine.com/2006/sep/cover

  Elizabeth Landau, “When Being Turned On Is a Turnoff,” CNN, April 17, 2010, accessed November 1, 2010, http://articles.cnn.com/2010–04–17/health/sexual.arousal.disorder_1_arousal-disorder-orgasm-selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibitors?_s=P.M.:HEALTH

  “Diseases from Space and the Giggle Factor,” Biot Report, 456, August 25, 2007.

  Suburban Emergency Management Project, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=456

  E. J. Lyman, “ ‘Giggle Factor’ Is No Laughing Matter to Scientists,” USA Today, March 11, 2003.

  J. Johnson Jr., “His Inn Will Be Way Out,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2006, accessed November 1, 2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/aug/30/science/sci-bigelow30

  Eliza Strickland, “Scratch a Space Nut, Find a Starry-Eyed Hippie,” Wired, July 20, 2007, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/07/overview

  L. David, “Space Colonization Efforts Quietly Pick Up Steam,” USA Today, February 23, 2005.

  Marilyn Schlitz, Interview, November 2009.

  CHAPTER 7: THE OPEN MIND

  Barack Obama, Tucson Memorial, January 12, 2011, accessed January 13, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/12/remarks-president-barack-obama-memorial-service-victims-shooting-tucson

  Joe Henry, “Flag,” Tiny Voices (Anti, 2003).

  Andrew Newberg, Interviews, class lectures conducted through the fall of 2009.

  Andrew Newberg has since joined the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital, where he can devote more time to research and writing in the area of neurotheology and medicine. He remains affiliated with Penn as an adjunct professor and still teaches a class on Neurotheology.

  Andrew Newberg, Principles of Neurotheology (Ashgate, 2010).

  Andrew Newberg, Michael Persinger, and Vilayanur Ramachandran, God on the Brain: A Neurological Basis for the Religious Impulse, DVD featuring Richard Dawkins, (BBC, 2003).

  Andrew Newberg et al., Why God Won’t Go Away (Ballantine, 2001): 1–10.

  Andrew Newberg et al., “The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During the Complex Cognitive Task of Meditation: A Preliminary SPECT study.” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 106 (2001): 113–22.

  Andrew Newberg et al., “The Neurophysiological Correlates of Meditation: Implications for Neuroimaging,” Journal of the Indian Academy of Clinical Medicine 3 (1998): 13–18.

  “Robertson’s True Story,” January 13, 2010, The 700 Club (via Media Matters for America), accessed October 26, 2010, http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201001130024

  Laurie Goodstein, “Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys,” New York Times, March 24, 2010, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html

  N. Kulish and K. Bennhold, “Memo to Pope Described Transfer of Pedophile Priest,” New York Times, March 25, 2010, accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/world/europe/26church.html

  Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great (Twelve, 2007): 53, 56.

  Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Simon and Schuster, 1995): 18.

  Richard Dawkins, “Has the World Changed?” Guardian, October 11, 2001, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/11/afghanistan.terrorism2

  Andrew Newberg, How God Changes Your Brain (Ballantine, 2009): 24–31 (meditation study, memory, plasticity), 137–41 (prejudice, us and them thinking, fundamentalism), also 131–46 (clash of worldviews), 244–48 (
Newberg’s own feelings on God).

  Andrew Newberg et al., “The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Glossolalia: A Preliminary SPECT Study,” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging (2006): 67–71.

  Gospel According to Al Green, R. Mugge, dir., DVD (Acorn Media, 2009).

  J. T. Richardson, “Psychological Interpretations of Glossolalia: A Reexamination of Research,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 12, no. 2 (1973): 199–207. Author’s note: This study argues that “maladjustment” should remain a consideration in further studies of glossolalia.

  N. Spanos and E .C. Hewitt, “Glossolalia: A Test of the ‘Trance’ and Psychopathology Hypotheses,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 88, no. 4 (August 1979): 427–34.

  L. J. Francis et al., “Personality and Glossolalia: A Study Among Male Evangelical Clergy,” Pastoral Psychology, 51, no. 5 (2003): 391–96.

  Religulous, DVD (Lion’s Gate, 2009).

  S. Harris et al., “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief,” Plos One (2009), accessed November 1, 2010, http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007272 Author’s note: Though some, including me, occasionally accuse Harris of being too strident by a factor of 72, I find this paper remarkably even-handed in assessing the way our most cherished religious and nonreligious beliefs become a part of us.

  Dinesh D’Souza, “Atheism, Not Religion, Is the Real Force Behind the Mass Murders of History,” Christian Science Monitor, November 21, 2006, accessed October 26, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html

  Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win (Random House, 2005): 208–16.

  The Reality Club. Author’s note: Atran’s critique of his fellow atheists can be read, in full, at the Reality Club web site, accessed October 26, 2010,http://www.edge.org/discourse/bb.html

  A. Newberg and M. Waldman, Born to Believe (Free Press, 2006): 45–65 (human perception), 75–76 (belief formation), 90–95 (limits and benefits of reductionistic thinking).

  Author’s note: These papers, about the philosophical questions raised by the nature of human perception, are well worth a look. While from an operational perspective, it simply doesn’t work to go around behaving like our every perception might be in error, the lessons here are worth keeping in mind when we are approaching each other or trying to make our minds up about the nature of reality and human experience.