by Joe Nickell
Unfortunately, spiral and other winding staircases are not only problematical as to design but are also fundamentally unsafe. Explains one authority, “For safety, any departure from a straight staircase requires careful attention to detail in design and construction.” Especially, “Because people tend to travel the shortest path around a corner, where a winder s treads are narrowest, the traveler must decide at each step where each foot falls. This maybe an intellectual and physical exercise best practiced elsewhere. In short, winders are pretty but inherently unsafe” (Locke 1992, 135, 136). Other experts agree. According to Albert G.H. Dietz, Professor Emeritus of Building Engineering at MIT, winders “should be avoided if at all possible. No adequate foothold is afforded at the angle [due to the tapering] and there is an almost vertical drop of several feet if a number of risers converge on the same point. The construction is dangerous and may easily lead to bad accidents” (Dietz 1991, 341). As a consequence, winders are frequently prohibited by building codes. That is especially true of the spiral stair, which “contains all the bad features of the winder multiplied several times” (Dietz 1991, 342).
Such problems seem to have beset the staircase at Loretto, suggesting that, at most, the “miracle” was a partial one. Safety appears to have been a concern at the outset, since there was originally no railing. At the time the staircase was completed, one thirteen–year–old sister who was among the first to ascend to the loft told how she and her friends were so frightened—absent a railing—that they came down on hands and knees (Albach 1965). Nevertheless, despite the very real hazard, it was not until 1887—ten years after the staircase was completed—that an artisan named Phillip August Hesch added the railing (Loretto n.d.). No one claims it was a miracle, yet it is described as “itself a work of art” (Albach 1965). (See figure 6.1.)
Figure 6.1. The spiral stairway at Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is an alleged miracle of construction.
Figure 6.2. Iron support bracket (unmentioned in published
accounts) reveals the “miracle” is a partial one. (Photos by Joe Nickell)
There were other problems over time relating to the double helix form. The helix, after all, is the shape of the common wire spring. Therefore, it is not surprising that people who trod the stairs reported “a small amount of vertical movement” or “a certain amount of springiness” (Albach 1965) and again “a very slight vibration as one ascends and descends rather as though the stair were a living, breathing thing” (Bullock 1978, 14).
Some people have thought the free–standing structure should have collapsed long ago, we are told, and builders and architects supposedly “never fail to marvel how it manages to stay in place,” considering that it is “without a center support” (Albach 1965). In fact, though, as one wood technologist observes, “the staircase does have a central support.” He observes that of the two wood stringers (or spiral structural members) the inner one is of such small radius that it “functions as an almost solid pole” (Easley 1997). There is also another support—one that goes un– mentioned, but which I observed when I visited the now privately owned chapel in 1993. This is an iron brace or bracket that stabilizes the staircase by rigidly connecting the outer stringer to one of the columns that support the loft. (See figure 6.2.)
There is reason to suspect that the staircase may be more unstable and potentially unsafe than some realize. It has been closed to public travel since at least the mid–1970s (when the reason was given as lack of other egress from the loft in case of fire). When I visited in 1993, my understanding was that it was suffering from the constant traffic. Barbara Hershey implied the same when she stated, “It still functions, though people aren’t allowed to go up it very often” (Bobbin 1998). It would thus appear that the Loretto staircase is subject to the laws of physics like any other.
The other mysteries that are emphasized in relation to the stair are the identity of the carpenter and the type of wood used. That the latter has not been identified precisely means little. The piece given to a forester for possible identification was exceedingly small (only about ¾– inch square by 1/8–inch thick) whereas much larger (six–inch) pieces are preferred by the U.S. Forest Service’s Center for Wood Anatomy (which has made many famous identifications, including artifacts taken from King Tut’s tomb and the ladder involved in the Lindbergh kidnaping) (Knight 1997). The wood has reportedly been identified as to family, Pinaceae, and genus, Picea—i.e., spruce (Easley 1997), a type of “light, strong, elastic wood•” often used in construction (“Spruce” 1960). But there are no fewer than thirty–nine species—ten in North America—so that comparison of the Loretto sample with only two varieties (Easley 1997) can scarcely be definitive.
As to the identity of an obviously itinerant workman, it seems merely mystery mongering to suggest that there is anything strange—least of all evidence of the supernatural—in the failure to record his name. As it happens, however, the identity of the enigmatic craftsman has finally been revealed. Credit for the discovery goes to an “intrepid and highly respected amateur historian” named Mary Jean Cook. She learned of a “hermit rancher,” Francois–Jean “Frenchy” Rochas, who lived in “godforsaken” Dog Canyon, nine miles from Alamogordo. Learning that he had left behind a collection of “sophisticated carpentry tools,” Cook searched for his death notice, which she found in the January 6, 1896, issue of The Santa Fe New Mexican. It described Rochas’s murdered body being found at his isolated rock cabin and described him as “favorably known in Santa Fe as an expert worker in wood.” He had built, the brief obituary noted, “the handsome staircase in the Loretto Chapel and at St. Vincent sanitarium.”
Cook suspects the legend of St. Joseph began with the sisters at the Loretto Academy, “probably in response to questions from their students.” However, she observes that “it wasn’t until the late 1930s—when the story appeared in Ripley’s… Believe It or Not!—that the story became an icon of popular culture. Although some rued the debunking of the pious legend, Archbishop Michael Sheehan promised, ”It will always be referred to as a miraculous staircase. It was an extraordinary piece to have been done in its time” (Stieber 2000).
References
Albach, Carl R. 1965. Miracle or wonder of construction? reprint from Consulting Engineer, Dec., n.p.
Bobbin, Jay. 1998. The staircase. Review in TV Topics, Buffalo News, April 12, 1, 24–25.
Bullock, Alice. 1978. Loretto and the Miraculous Staircase. Santa Fe, N.M.: Sunstone.
Dietz, Albert G.H. 1991. Dwelling House Construction, 5th ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Easley, Forrest N. 1997. “A Stairway From Heaven?” Privately printed.
“Interior Decoration.” 1960. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Knight, Christopher. 1997. Just what kind of wood. ? Wall Street Journal, Oct. 22.
Locke, Jim. 1992. The Weil–Built House, revised ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Loretto Chapel, n.d. Text of display card, photographed by author, 1993.
“Spruce.” 1960. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
“Stair.” 1960. Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Stieber, Tamar. 2000. Loretto staircase mystery unravels. New Mexico magazine. Jan., 62–66.
Chapter 7
Flying Saucer “Dogfight”
Did an extraterrestrial craft actually fire on a police helicopter? If not, what was the nature of a UFO that two officers reported attacked them over Louisville, Kentucky, in 1993? Is this the case that proves the reality of alien invaders?
Flying Saucers
The modern wave of UFOs began on June 24, 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold was flying his private airplane over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Arnold saw what he described as a chain of nine disclike objects, each flying with a motion like “a saucer skipped across water.” Whether Arnold saw a line of aircraft or mirages caused by temperature inversion or something else, the flying saucer phenomenon had taken flight. Once again reality followed fiction. Popular sciencefic
tion magazines like Amazing Stories had been publishing wild tales of extraterrestrial visitations, complete with imaginative covers illustrating strange, circular spaceships.
UFO reports continue to be common. Most fall into two categories, the first being termed “daylight discs”—metallic, saucershaped objects. When properly investigated, these often turn out to be weather, research, and other balloons aircraft meteors kites, blimps, and hang gliders wind–borne objects of various kinds and other phenomena. Photographs of such discs often turn out to be lens flares (the result of interreflection between lens surfaces), lenticular (lens–shaped) clouds, and other causes, including, of course, deliberate hoaxing. Many faked UFO photos have been produced simply by tossing a model spaceship in the air or suspending it on a thread. One fake photo, offered by a Venezuelan airline pilot, was made by placing a metal button on an aerial photograph and then rephotographing the view (Nickell 1994,1995).
The second type of UFO sighting consists of nighttime UFOs—so called “nocturnal lights”—which represent the most frequently reported UFO events. They are also the “least strange” ones, according to the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer and former consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s UFO research program, Project Blue Book (1952–1969). According to him, “An experienced investigator readily recognizes most of these for what they are: bright meteors, aircraft landing lights, balloons, planets, violently twinkling stars, searchlights, advertising lights on planes, refueling missions, etc. When one realizes the unfamiliarity of the general public with lights in the night sky of this variety, it is obvious why so many such UFO reports arise” (Hynek 1972,41–42). (Note that balloons appear in both categories. They were extensively used in the past and were frequently reported as strange craft. A balloon can achieve high altitudes and, if caught in jet–stream winds, can reach speeds of more than two hundred miles an hour. Or it can stop and seem to hover, or move erratically, or execute sharp turns, depending on the winds. It can even appear to change its shape and color. Depending on how sunlight strikes the plastic covering, the balloon can appear to be white, metallic, red, glowing, and so on. In fact, so often have balloons of one type or another been reported as UFOs that, when lost, these chameleons of the sky have often been traced by following the reports of saucer sightings [Nickell 1989,21].)
Most UFO researchers—proponents and skeptics alike—agree that the majority of UFO reports can be explained. The controversy is over a small residue—say two percent—of unsolved cases. Proponents often act as if these cases offer proof of extraterrestrial visitation, but to suggest so is to be guilty of the logical fallacy called argumentum ad ignorantiam (that is, “arguing from ignorance”). Skeptics observe that what is unexplained is not necessarily unexplainable, and they suspect that if the truth were known, such cases would fall not into the category of alien craft but into the realm of mundane explanations. But what about the attack on a patrolling police helicopter?
Close Encounter
“UFO Fires on Louisville, Ky. Police Chopper” was the headline on the Weekly World News’s May 4, 1993, cover story, complete with fanciful illustration. But if the tabloid account seemed overly sensational in describing the “harrowing two–minute dogfight”—before vanishing into the night—it was only following the lead of the respected Louisville Courier–Journal The Courier had used similar wording in relating the February 26 incident (which had not been immediately made public), headlining its front–page story of March 4—“UFO Puts on Show: Jefferson [County] Police Officers Describe Close Encounter.”
Unfortunately, the Weekly World News did not cite the Courier’s follow–up report explaining the phenomenon. Yet the tabloid s tale contained numerous clues that might have tipped off an astute reader. The first sighting was of what looked like “a fire” off to the patrol craft–s left the “pear–shaped” UFO was seen in the police spotlight “drifting back and forth like a balloon on a string”; after circling the helicopter several times, the object darted away before zooming back to shoot the “fireballs” (which fortunately “fizzled out before they hit”); and then—as the helicopter pilot pushed his speed to over one hundred miles per hour—the UFO “shot past the chopper, instantly climbing hundreds of feet,” only to momentarily descend again before flying into the distance and disappearing. That the “flowing” object was only “about the size of a basketball” and that it had “hovered” before initially approaching the helicopter were additional clues from the original Courier account that the tabloid omitted.
The Courier’s follow–up story of March 6 was headed “A Trial Balloon?” It pictured Scott Heacock and his wife, Conchys, demonstrating how they had launched a hot–air balloon Scott had made from a plastic dry–cleaning bag, strips of balsa wood, and a dozen birthday candles—a device familiar to anyone who has read Philip J. Klass’s UFOs Explained (Vintage, 1976, 28–34, plates 2a and 2b). No sooner had the balloon cleared the trees, said Heacock, than the county police helicopter encountered it and began circling, shining its spotlight on the glowing toy.
The encounter was a comedy of errors and misperceptions. Likened to a cat chasing its tail, the helicopter was actually pushing the lightweight device around with its prop wash. In fact, as indicated by the officers’ own account, the UFO zoomed away in response to the helicopter’s sudden propulsion—behavior consistent with a lightweight object. As to the “fireballs,” they may have been melting, flaming globs of plastic, or candles that became dislodged and fell, or some other effect. (Heacock says he used the novelty “relighting” type of birthday candles as a safeguard against the wind snuffing them out. Such candles may sputter, then abruptly reflame.)
Figure 7.1. Scott Heacock (left) puts the finishing touches on
a model hot–air balloon like the one he had launched in
Louisville, Kentucky, on February 26, 1993. Looking on
is psychologist Robert A. Baker. (Photo by Joe Nickell)
Although one of the officers insisted the object he saw that night traveled at speeds too fast for a balloon, he seems not to have considered the effects of the helicopter’s prop–wash propulsion. Contacted by psychologist and skeptical investigator Robert A. Baker (with whom I investigated the case), the other officer declined to comment further, except to state his feeling that the whole affair had been “blown out of proportion” by the media. Be that as it may, a television reporter asked Scott Heacock how certain he was that his balloon was the reported UFO. Since he had witnessed the encounter and kept the balloon in sight until it was caught in the police spotlight, he replied, “I’d bet my life on it.” To another reporter, his Mexican wife explained, “I’m the only alien around here.”
References
Hynek, J. Allen. 1972. The UFO Experience. New York: Ballantine.
Nickell, Joe. 1989. The Magic Detectives. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus.
———. 1994.Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 15.
———. 1995. Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 190–92.
Chapter 8
A Study in Clairvoyance
On March 16, 1992,1 appeared on The Jerry Springer Show with what were billed as “today’s outrageous psychics.” They included an “aura” photographer, a pet prognosticator, and the self–proclaimed ”world’s greatest psychic,” who was introduced as “Mr. B of ESP.” Mr. B, Springer promised, would “use his extraordinary powers” to peer clairvoyantly inside a locked refrigerator. A uniformed security guard, baton in hand, stood dramatically beside the chained–and–padlocked appliance. After engaging in a bit of banter with Springer and boasting further of his psychic prowess, Mr. B approached the refrigerator. He asked “everybody to concentrate on the power of my eyes,” adding with braggadocio that provoked smirks and giggles from some members of the audience, “If you can see these eyes, they penetrate through you, and I will now do the same thing with the refrigerator, and then I will
come back and read you people like a book…. This I promise you.”
As he began, he said, “It’s kind of weird, ladies and gentlemen, because I’m not getting a clear vision, but what I’m getting here is—I’m looking at—looks like some apples are in here.” Also he said there was what “looks like a cantaloupe.” (There was some more banter as Springer, who had begun writing a bold list of Mr. B’s pronouncements, admitted he was unsure how to spell the last word and wrote “c–a–n–t–e–l–o–p–e.”) Mr. B continued, stating that he could see what “looks like jewelry, so I’m looking at some carrots,” he said; “I would relate that to jewelry” (apparently making a pun on carats). He went on to say that he saw a carton of low–fat milk and jars of spaghetti sauce. Then he stated, “Basically, the last thing I’m going to say—which is totally incredible—is, I’m looking at a skull which looks to be almost like a human head.” Springer responded by announcing (to applause), “If you’re right, we’ve got another show!” And Mr. B made a punning quip that” [I] t’s also a good way to get ahead in this world,” adding, “Anyway, I do see something that looks like a human head.” When Springer suggested, “Maybe it’s a head of lettuce,” Mr. B replied, “It could be. And this is basically—at this moment this is all I’m able to pick out.”
Springer then unfastened the padlock, removed the chain, and opened the refrigerator. Reaching in and holding up each item in turn, to applause, he brought out “the milk, low fat, two percent,” next an apple, a honeydew melon (not a cantaloupe but “pretty close,” Springer noted), then a bunch of carrots. Impressively, he next extracted a grotesque novelty head! During the hubbub that followed, he also discovered a jar of sauce. Displaying the head, Springer gushed to Mr. B, “I swear to God, unless the staff is lying to me, you really didn’t know what was in here!” He added, “This guy’s special.” After a commercial break he stated, “I have to tell you, I’m blown away. I’m very, very impressed!”