Tag Archives: Rational

New Loch Ness Photo: a disappointing reaction from the skeptical community

It was March, and as we walked along the shore of the lake in Bowness I was telling Joe Nickell about the most popular theories about what had caused the ‘monster’ photographed by Tom Pickles and Sarah Harrington. I told him that most people believed it was a tyre, or a bunch of tyres tied together and floating in the water and how, days after the photo hit the newspapers, a sliced up tyre was found on the shore of the lake (pictured right).

Joe asked ‘does a tyre float upright when sliced up?’ and the answer was of course ‘I don’t know, nobody has tested it’. He then gave me that look, the look that says ‘I know you already know the answer to this so I’m not going to patronise you’. So many people had speculated about the cause of the Pickles photo without taking the time to ask the right questions or to speak to the people involved, myself included. Most people concluded it was a tyre in the lake but nobody had checked to see if it was possible for a tyre to look like that. We were making a claim but not providing the evidence to back it up.

The realisation that so many people had been so eager to be the first to comment on the story that they’d overlooked the basic principles of good research stunned me into realising that I needed to change the way I behaved when it came to research. It is more important to be correct and last to comment than it is to be first to comment while lacking facts.

Yesterday various news sources covered the latest Loch Ness monster photo taken by the skipper of a boat called The Nessie Hunter – various people tweeted and emailed the story to me to see what I thought. Click here to see the full photo. The story made me chuckle because just days before it broke I had been speaking to an audience of about Forty children at Camp Quest UK about paranormal research and one child in the audience had asked about the likely hood of there being a dinosaur in Loch Ness. Another child had responded by explaining he thought the Loch Ness monster was a commercial enterprise which I agree with. I don’t personally think it’s a travesty though, especially when the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre is slap bang in the centre of it all in Drumnadrochit and is the best example of educational outreach I’ve ever seen when it comes to a paranormal myth.

When the media report on something paranormal like this latest Loch Ness photo I never trust their coverage, having been misquoted myself more times than I can remember. The first thing I did was email the people I knew on the ground around Loch Ness to ask for their opinions and what they know about the photo and I also contacted the man who took the photo himself to ask him some questions about it, about the boat he was on, and his thoughts on the Loch Ness Monster. I’m still waiting for a response, which I shall do patiently. I am in no rush to reach a conclusion about the photo, unlike many others.

Within hours of the story spreading around social networking sites many skeptics were dismissing it as a hoax despite there being very little to suggest it is a hoax photo. I had posted the story on the Facebook page of the brilliant Monster Talk podcast in the hopes that their US audience might know of anyone in the US referring to themselves as ‘US military monster experts’, as referred to in news coverage. The conversation turned to how the ripples and wake surrounding the object in the water didn’t look as though the thing was moving towards Urquhart castle as suggested in the news coverage by the eye witness. One comment surprised and annoyed me, here is part of the conversation that took place:

Hayley Stevens: Doesn’t the wake look a bit weird for it to be heading towards the castle?
S: I didn’t get the impression that it was even moving, the way he described it
Hayley Stevens: It looks like something in the process of diving. “It was slowly moving up the Loch towards Urquhart Castle and it was a dark grey colour.It was quite a fair way from the boat, probably about half a mile away but it’s difficult to tell in water.”
M: Looks like a log to me or a branch. I’ve seen floating debris in the Loch and that looks just like one of them. It isn’t a monster, obviously.
A: The wake is all wonky, that looks shopped to me.
Hayley Stevens: because the wake is wonky? It could be an animal twisting and turning. It’s more likely to be a misidentification than a hoax, and suggesting a hoax straight off like that is extremely cynical and, with no other evidence of a hoax, illogical.
A: There was no twisting and turning. I’m thinking either it’s a prop on a string behind the boat, or it’s photo shopped.
Hayley Stevens: Where is your evidence?
A: Where is the evidence that it is a Giant Unclassified Aquatic Monster, that lives in a lake that until 15,000 years ago, was covered with 1.5 miles of Ice? Provide some of that, and then I’ll provide some evidence for my opinion that it is shopped. Deal? Do I need to provide evidence that The famous Bigfoot film is really a guy in a costume? Sorry.
Hayley Stevens: I’m not claiming it is a monster so the burden of proof for that claim doesn’t fall to me. I don’t know what it is in the photo, but I’m not claiming to know either. On the other hand, you are claiming it is a hoax photo. You can’t just dismiss things as hoaxes without evidence to back up such a claim even if it seems a more likely explanation. Also yes, if the Patterson and Gimlin film was new and you were claiming it was a hoax you would need to be able to demonstrate how or why you thought it was a hoax. You can’t just make or dismiss claims based on hunches or past cases. That’s irrational behaviour. ’There was no twisting and turning’… if you were there I’m willing to accept that information from you. If not, then I don’t understand how on earth you could know that.

Defining yourself as a rational thinker and dismissing something as a hoax without good reason is irrational and unhelpful. Using newspapers such as the Daily Mail as the source for the information you base your conclusion on is NOT good research practice and provides weak conclusions. The media are the middle man, retelling an eyewitnesses story to you – given the fact that eye witness testimony is untrustworthy in itself, why on earth would any rational person trust this retelling as a source to base their research from?

Many people have also picked up on the part of the news coverage in which the skipper of the boat says the oddity in the water was half a mile away from him when he took the photo despite it appearing to be much nearer to him in the photo, as though this demonstates it is a hoax. Yet the eyewitness said himself that it is difficult to judge distance in water so he wasn’t sure

“It was quite a fair way from the boat, probably about half a mile away but it’s difficult to tell in water.” – George Edward (source)

It is also important to remember that the photo was taken nearly ten months ago and that it is easy to misremember experiences you’ve had in the past,which is why it is hard to rely upon eye witness testimony alone when it comes to reports of paranormal phenomenon.

It’s an interesting photo and poses many questions, and it would be good to find an answer to those questions. It’s fine to hypothesise about the photo and to discuss and suggest ideas regarding its origin and to make comparisons to previous lake monster photos and their causes. However many skeptics are quick to reach conclusions about these sorts of stories without having evidence to back themselves up – this is behaviour that goes against the very thing that skepticism is about – assessing claims for their supporting evidence. Stating that ‘it is a hoax’ or that ‘tourist numbers must be down’ or that ‘it is a log in the water’ are claims, and when you make a claim like this you need to have evidence to back it up. It could possibly be a hoax (though I don’t have any reason to believe it is right now), it could possibly be a log in the water, or perhaps a seal diving back under the water – but these suggestions are merely speculation. Presenting them as anything else is irrational and deserving of skeptical scrutiny.

Accusing a man of hoaxing a photo without having any good evidence to base that accusation on is disrespectful and intellectually dishonest.

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My trip to Camp Quest: Engaging with children

When I was Ten nobody asked me what I thought about politics and the influence that it has upon personal identity and freedom. I like to think that if they had I would have provided them with answers or ideas that were as brilliant and as insightful as those I heard offered today in the ‘Philosophy for Children’ session I was allowed to sit in on at Camp Quest UK.

I was invited to give a talk at Camp Quest about the things that make us mistakenly think we’ve seen a ghost. I approached this subject by talking about the two things that often make eye witness testimony impossible to trust as a true account of what took place.

‘What we remember isn’t always what happened’ and ‘What we see isn’t always what was there’

I used various examples and ways of looking at these two problems and offered the audience examples of cases I’ve worked on in the past that show how the way in which we process that which we’ve experienced can leave us thinking we’ve experienced something completely different than what we actually experienced.

It was one of the more interesting talks I’ve delivered because this audience were really switched on and really open minded about what it was we were discussing. I didn’t have anyone interrupting the talk to suggest that ghosts were caused by Quantum Mechanics or to tell me they thought ghost research was absurd, and they were really open about the things they had experienced or things their families and friends had experienced that were considered as paranormal, and they weren’t afraid to ask me questions about it.

It was a really positive environment that encouraged questioning. When someone asked what might be considered a silly question there was no condescending laughter, just children beating me to it by answering the question for their fellow camper – sharing their thoughts and ideas. It was beautiful, really.

Professor Chris French had spoken at Camp the day before me and he had used songs played backwards to demonstrate audio illusions. I used a memory game to implant false words in the minds of the campers – and it is these hands on demonstrations that really stuck in the minds of the children in the audience. They even asked if I had any backwards songs I could play them as they’d enjoyed the effect it had had on their minds the day before.

When I had been asked to speak to the children at Camp Quest I was a bit apprehensive because I’ve never spoken to a younger audience before and wasn’t entirely sure what the best way of approaching my subject was. I figured that it was probably best to use interactive demonstrations – such as the memory game – to demonstrate my points rather than just speaking about psychological causes.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that some of the children already knew about things like the ideomotor response and how involuntary muscular movement could cause a glass to move when doing a Ouija board. I was also delighted when, during the Q&A session after my talk, the subject moved to monsters and the children started to recall news coverage of various monster sightings and the logical causes behind them. Suddenly I wasn’t the speaker in a Q&A anymore – I was a speaker in a group discussion about whether a plesiosaur was in Loch Ness, or whether the people on Lake Windermere were cashing in on the monster phenomena like those at Loch Ness (not my suggestion, this all came about completely unprompted by me or the camp leaders.)

It showed me that the uncritical media coverage of these subjects was reaching a younger audience, and that these kids in front of me were well equipped with the critical thinking skills needed to assess the claims such coverage makes because of things such as Camp Quest. Yet there are children out there that probably don’t have those skills. There are probably children out there who are like the younger me, getting terrified at the idea than panthers are prowling in the wild and that ghosts lurk in the shadows.

Camp Quest is a wonderful, beautiful thing and does something very important. I am really pleased that I got a chance to visit camp and to engage with such a wonderful group of children and young adults. I am thankful for being allowed to sit in on the ‘Philosophy for Children’ session and being able to see that the youth of today… they’re okay, if you just show them how to think for themselves.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to the organisers and volunteers at Camp Quest. It was a great experience and I hope you carry on doing what you do for years to come. We need you. Also, thanks for the t-shirt – I love it!

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Turning your back on nonsense

In reflecting my previous blog post called ‘When claims of authority fall flat on their face’ I realise I was too quick to judge the Bomber County Paranormal team. Since writing my criticism is has been brought to my attention that Kerry, who is the founder and organizer of the group, is attempting to turn the team into a rational one after splitting from what is described as a less rational former team. I applaud that attempt, however the original blog post was written based on my initial impression of their team website and that’s an impression that unfortunately no amount of good intent can change.

The impression was based upon the claims the team made about being objective and rational coupled with photos of them, and reports of their investigations, demonstrating behaviour that wasn’t rational or objective. For example, on the front page of their website are photos of table tipping and glass divination. This is the problem that is faced by most paranormal researchers who want to change from being belief-led, biased and pseudo-scientific researchers into those who are objective and reasoned in their actions and investigations. I know now that the Bomber County Paranormal Team used the ASSAP logo on the front of their website to say ‘look, we’re trying to do this right’, rather than to say ‘, yeah! Look how good we are!’. Yet all of that effort is undone by those methods used that make no logical sense, that are justified in the name of fair balance and keeping people happy.

I get that. I’ve been there.

In fact, I recently wrote about my own experiences with this transition and about the lies you tell yourself when you try to defend the irrational things you do despite knowing deep down they’re not rational. This is normally done in the name of trying to keep everyone within your team happy and it puts immense, and unfair pressure upon a team founder or leader. It’s like an internal tug-of-war and you know that at some point someone is going to end up falling into the mud defeated. As the founder of a paranormal research team who went through the same transition I have one piece of advice for any team founder trying to make their team into a rational one, but struggling to stop people doing table tipping, séances, glass divination and other such methods: Put your foot down.

I did.

It was ugly because most of my team members left, but I don’t regret it because I wasn’t being selfish by wanting to change the team into a more rational and less unethical team, but those members who left were being selfish by wanting to continue to act irrationally and unethically for the sole purpose of validating their own belief in the paranormal, ghosts and an afterlife. They didn’t stop to consider how their desire to validate their beliefs could negatively effect those they came into contact with.

Although it is illogical and irrational, there’s nothing wrong with someone wanting to do table tipping or a séance in their own home or in private, but it does become a problem when they take that behaviour into property owned by somebody else in the name of ‘research’.

When I explained to the team I formed and ran that we would no longer be doing glass divination, table tipping and séances, nine out of twelve members of the team left and formed their own irrational team (which lasted a grand total of 3 months before splitting).

Sabotage: This text message was sent to a location owner our team were working with by a former team mate with a grudge.

When those nine people left I was called names on paranormal forums and in email. People sabotaged investigations I organised and I was threatened over the phone by people I considered as friends. One ex team mate even attempted to get me fired by telling my boss at the time that I was secretly filming people for BBC’s Watchdog (shortly after the company I worked for was exposed on Watchdog). To this day I get abuse from people I used to be friends with because I turned my back on irrational belief-led behavior and attempted to stop the team I formed in my name from continuing with unethical behaviour.

I wouldn’t change a thing though. If I was offered the chance to go back in time I’d do exactly the same because ultimately the decision to right your wrongs and stop irrational behavior that has a potentially unethical outcome is a good thing.

You should never expect the members of your team to let go of their beliefs, but you’re certainly entitled to ask that they don’t bring those beliefs into your investigations and research. Anyone who cannot respect that is being slightly selfish.

The Wiltshire Phenomena Research team is still going, by the way. We hardly do investigations as a group, but there’s about ten of us on standby should anyone get in touch for advice or an answer. We don’t do investigations every Saturday night like the old team did, but those odd rare cases are still fun and interesting. A successfully rational paranormal research team know that not every case is possible to investigate, that you don’t need more than a few people at a time, that you don’t need to turn the lights off to research experiences, and that the most valuable research often happens over a cup of tea.

I genuinely wish Kerry and any other team founder trying to turn their team into a more rational team the best of luck, if anyone needs advice, you can get in touch via this site. It’s not easy making a change, but trust me, it’s worth the effort.

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How do you hunt for a ghost?

Numerous people have pointed out that I’m rather quick to point out how you shouldn’t conduct paranormal research but I don’t outline how you should (or more specifically, how I personally) conduct paranormal research.

Recently I began to produce ‘The Ghost Field Guide’ podcast that will be a short series of podcasts that look at various areas of paranormal research and the flaws or mistakes people make without necessarily doing so. The topics that will be covered by me and my guest hosts are mistakes that I personally made when I first began conducting paranormal research, I thought it would be useful to look at the general gaps of knowledge I had, what I found difficult to understand and what I could necessarily find information on easily and focus on these things in a bid to help others.

However, to summarise my methods of investigation and research in a nutshell is what people want me to do, and that is what I shall try to do here in this article.

To answer the question in the title of this post, how do you hunt for a ghost? – You don’t. You can’t. Not without flawing your research from the start.

It’s quite difficult to explain what it is I actually do when confronted with a possible case of ghost phenomenon because no two cases are alike. One case could be in a pub where six members of staff work on a rota and experience weird things in the kitchens, another case could be in a family home where a single mother and three children reside and are terrified by odd noises and the sensation of being watched or the feeling they’re not alone.

These two cases throw up different sets of problems and different opportunities for research and study. For example, to go straight into the home where the children reside could be unethical – it might be easier to give each family member a diary in which they can note down anything strange that concerns them. A problem shared and all that.

If you can identify patterns that emerge from what they are writing down, that can really help you to identify what could have caused the odd experience.

With children, it’s very likely that one reporting of something strange can lead to numerous reports of numerous strange things that didn’t necessarily happen. Children often play up to what is expected of them and it’s important to be able to see past this and to not include testimonies that aren’t as sound as they could be in the overall case.

When I have a case reported to me I don’t like to instantly assume the best action is to visit the location – not everyone wants that, and sometimes doing so can issue a false authority that because a paranormal researcher has visited a location, the location has something paranormal there. It is a link people make in their heads and it’s something I’ve learnt through mistakes.

When telling some people that you don’t think anything paranormal is the cause you could be greeted with odd looks and the question “why did you come here then?”

It’s not a logical link to make, but then if you don’t know anything about ghost phenomena and you have a horrible feeling a ghost is in your house you’re probably not going to act logically all the time – fear is consuming. It can be very easy to presume that a paranormal researcher is an expert in what they are doing – this means any claim made is accepted as fact.

Generally the best thing to do with a reported case of phenomenon is to try and understand what is normal about the place it happened .

How can you tell what isn’t normal is you don’t know what is normal? You can’t.

A lot of ghost hunters visit a location one or two times and that will be all they need before they reach their conclusion – but in my mind that doesn’t make any sense. I have to be used to a building before I can even start to consider questioning what may have caused the reported phenomenon/phenomena.

There are various locations that I have been investigating for years and it’s very much an on-going process.

Normally, simply by spending time at a location it’s quite easy to pinpoint causes for the odd things that have been experienced – especially if you haven’t gone there looking for a ghost like a lot of people do.

I hope this can give you some insight into what I do if, and when, I have a case of phenomenon reported to me, it’s not as exciting as running around in the dark with some gadgets that beep and “detect ghosts”, it’s not as thrilling as table tipping or a seance, but it’s certainly more realistic.

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