SGU Episode 17

This episode is in the middle of being transcribed by Jim Gibson (talk) as of {{{date}}}. To help avoid duplication, please do not transcribe this episode while this message is displayed.

This episode needs: transcription, time stamps, formatting, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing!

How to Contribute

SGU Episode 17
26th October 2005
(brief caption for the episode icon)
SGU 16                      SGU 18
Skeptical Rogues
S: Steven Novella
B: Bob Novella
E: Evan Bernstein
P: Perry DeAngelis
Guest
JN: Joe Nickell
Bart Kosko
Links
Download Podcast
SGU Podcast archive
SGU Forum

Introduction

She blinded me with science lyrics

Interview with Joe Nickell

S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics guide to the Universe. This is your host, Steven Novella, president of the New England Skeptical Society. Today is October 26th, 2005. And with me again tonight are Perry DeAngelis

P: Hello

S: Bob Novella

B: Hello

S: And Evan Bernstein

E: Salutations

S: This week we have a very special guest with us, Joe Nickell. Joe Welcome to the Skeptics Guide

JN: Hi.

S: Joe is a paranormal investigator. One of the, I think the only full time professional paranormal investigator that I know of. He's the author of the investigative files, which is a column in the skeptical inquirer. He is a senior research fellow for the comittee for the scientific investigation of the paranormal, or what we call CSICOP for short, and an associate dean for the Center for Inquirery Institute. Just his background, Joe has worked professionally as a stage musician, a private investigator, a journalist, a document analyzer and a university instructor. And you've authored or co-authored, I believe it's over twenty books now, including some of my favorites; Inquest on the Shroud of Turin and Secrets of the Supernatural, Looking for a Miracle, Missing Pieces I think is my single favorite book of yours. And your latest book that's just coming out is Secret of the Sideshows. So, uh...

JN: It is out at Barnes and Noble stores everywhere

S: And I think I found it on Amazon.com

JN: Mm-hm

S: And you can check out Joe's website: joenickell.com. Who maintains that website for you Joe?

JN: Tim Venga, who's a friend and happens to be the librarian at CSICOP, so, uh...

S: Its a pretty site.

JN: He does it on his own time...

S: So, this being October 26th, halloween is just around the corner, and this is the time of year when any skeptics who have done any ghost investigation or articles get called by all of the reporters and papers looking to do their fluff piece on halloween for the season, so you must be inundated around this time of year.

JN: Well, there are two types of articles, one type is as you suggest, just a fluff piece that usually has some ghost club people going into a haunted house with ghost hunting equipment that isn't made to hunt ghosts with and...

S: Right.

JN: The use of which they're incompetent to use. The other type of piece is of course is the piece which usually interviews me or some other skeptic and provides some actual balance. I'm not so bothered by people doing a halloween news story if they actually use it to teach some science and to teach why the ghost club approach of going in with electromagnetic detection devices and cameras and so forth with an agenda to sort of find proof of ghosts, which is simply a wrong-headed methodology and is...

S: Right.

JN: ..is not only doomed but it just fosters pseudoscience and occultism as opposed to a more scientific or investigatory approach where you go to a haunted house and say, well what's being claimed here? And when you find that out, then you try to explain it.

S: Right.

P: Those types of investigations are extremely rare. I've...youve...

S: The scientific kind are rare.

P: Right, the scientific kind. Usually its this sensationalistic, lets find some ghosts, like there's a new show on the sci-fi channel: "Ghost Hunters", have you had a chance to check that out?

JN: I'm afraid so.

P: Well they make an attempt to make it look scientific. I've only seen a couple of them, but I've never seen anything that was compelling. I wonder if they've actually ever...have they ever found anything on that show that is some sort of anomaly that they couldn't explain?

JN: Well, I don't know. I don't watch that show regularly. I have my own work to do and they're approach is dubious and their methodolgy is questionable. As I say, what one needs to do is find out what is being claimed and actually investigate. Unfortunately, people doing tv shows oftentimes end up staging effects or using engaging in mystery mongering, using questionable techniques and there agenda is quite from scientific investigator who wants to explain rather than simply to entertain at whatever cost. So, I'm not happy with any of the so-called ghost hunters. They seem to me that they're not really investigating, but providing entertainment.

S: I think the reason why we get interested in this, again, what I tell reporters who interview me about it around this time of year; its not that I really care so much if people believe in ghosts, or the ghost phenomenon itself, its that there are so many people claiming to be doing scientific investigations and they're really giving the public a very distorted view of what that is because theyre not doing scientific investigations and it is interesting you know, what it is that they are doing and why it isn't science is an oppurtunity, I think, to teach the public why it isn't science for example as you say, they're not hypothesis testing. They don't actually have a hypothesis about what the phenomenon may be, and set about testing it in some way.

B: They're more like anomoly hunters

S: Right, exactly.

JN: That's right, and that, anomoly hunting is really predicated on a logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance because what they're doing, they're going in ususally with cameras and they take some pictures and they hope to find orbs or ectoplasmic strands or some other glitch

S: Right.

JN: Glitches that wouldn't be explained as reflections off of particles of dust or camera straps...what have you, and by showing these anomalies, they're implying that this is ghost energy or something supernatural, but it's no such thing, its not proof of anything, and when you claim to have been...when you are drawing a conclusion from a lack of knowledge, then you're engaging in a logical fallacy...

S: That's right

JN: thats what so much of the paranormal is

S: We have our top or faviorite top 20 logical fallacies on the podcast website, and the argument from ignorance is certainly there. That is a very very common one but the ghost hunters, although they make the argument from ignorance, they don't even quite get there because they miss a step that comes before that because they engage in anomaly hunting, but they're not even finding real anomalies. As you said they're finding things that can be explained with more mundane explanations, like the orbs of light or boxes of light on film have photographic explanations. They're not even true anomalies. So they have these false anomalies, then they make the argument from ignorance to say they can't explain this, which is wrong, therefore its a ghost, but the factual premise is wrong and the logic is fallacious.

JN: They're also occasionally suspicions for example a lamp that moved on one show was thought to have been pulled by its chord, and there was a minor scandal over that. I don't know what the true facts are, but it certainly raises the question that if sombody's filming some alleged event, if they're not playing fair...

S: Right.

JN: then we're at the mercy of that, and again I've personally known over the past 30 years, I've known a lot of cameramen who have worked for the pop tv shows and many of them admitted to at times kind of helping things along a little bit with a paranormal boosting effect, or making something look a little more mysterious or staging something because they would shrug it off oh its just entertainment...

S: That's right.

JN: ...but to the people watching this its not just entertainment. People watching it think these shows are honest and true.

S: Well, they're sort of told in the guise of news or information sometimes they're so called docu dramas. They deliberately blur the line. We had Dr. Sparks on a couple weeks ago where we talk a lot about this, about how the format of a television show has more to do with how believable it is than the content. So, if you have an information or documentary format, but its filled with utter nonsense, people are still going to believe it, it will effect their beliefs...

JN: Absolutely.

S: ...based upon the format.

JN: Maybe my, a look at my first ghost case would show how I approach things. In 1972 at mckenzie house in toronto, there were a number of phenomena reported including footsteps on the stairs late at night which the caretaker and his wife would hear when they were going to bed, there was no one else in the house, the house was locked. There were other sounds and phenomena reported including strange photos. One night the caregakers wife woke up and saw a ghostly figure standing by her bed. Now when I went there, I immediately looked at those different claims, i didnt go in with an agenda to take infrarend imaging devices and electromagnetic devices and other radio shack equipment and see if i could get some kind of glitch or anomaly and then foist that off as a ghost. What I did was specefically take those piece so f evidence or those claims and see if i could explain them, and it turned out that next door to mckenzie house was a parallel iron starecaise and it was against an adgascent wall to mckenzie house so these two staircases were about 40 inches apart and there was a late night cleanup croew next door and also a caretaker and his family who used that stair so obviously the most likely explanation was that people were hearing the footsteps on the stair just beyond and in fact a tour guide had tipped me to this. She had actually heard footsteps on the stairs once during the day and rushesd over to the staircase and got her ear against the wall and heard that there were people next door. So that was office had some evidence that was the simpler explanation and the best explanation all things considered, and as to the ghost at the bedside, of course thats a very common phenomenon called a waking dream. People going to sleep or waking up slip into a state between being fully awake, fully asleep in which they tend to see things like ghosts or angels or aliens very common type of experience, very powerful to the person it happens to...

B: Hypnogogia

JN: ...but when we hear those descriptions that they were in bied and saw something at the bed we can again have an hypothesis tht thats most likely a common waking dream. So thats the way i approach these investigations, to try to explain, not to debunk or to scoff, simply to explain it and if its properly explained, then i think any needed debunking will take care of itself

S: That's right

B: Um, hypnogogia I think is such a powerful phenomenon, I think it can explain so many of these ghsotly reportings. This is a simple little test that i want people try, anyone that might be listening to this, or even you guys. When you go to sleep at night, just as you're dozing off, just think your name in your head and invariably at least when i try this, it somehow inducins, not a waking dream, it induces...

S: Its like a feedback loop

B: ...right. I mean like, I can actually hear my name being spoken aloud like someone was in the room saying it to me and it happens almost every time i try it and I think its a related phenomenon...an audible manifestation of, its not visual, but its really powerful. I mean, I had a waking dream just a few months ago, one of the most potent ones ive ever had...

S: Oh really?

B: ...where it was difficult to breathe and I heard this wierd buzzing in the room and I was actually paralyzed which id never experience before, and it was, and while its happening, I was saying to myself wowo, im finally really experiencing this. I can see how people would be completely

S: Right

JN: Sure

B: ..completely amazed by it if you didn't know what it was and...

JN: The sleep paralysis of course is a result of your body is still asleep and so you can't move your body and ...

S: Well, there's a nucleus in your brainstem that paralyzes you from the neck down so that you don't sleepwalk or act out your dreams

B: Well not reaally sleepwalk, but yeah, act out your dreams. You would act out everything in your dreams. They actually fried the part of the brain of an experimental cat. I read about this and the cat without that bit of the brain, it actually acted out all the dreams it was having. So its a safeguard t hat you would literally walk down the stair or out a window if you weren't paralyzed.

S: With sleep paralysis, that paralysis which is natural during the sleep, the REM state, the dream state persists into this waking/dreaming fusion state, so you're paralyzed you have a hallucination that there's something in the room with you, you may also have a sense that there is something heavy on your chest and you may have trouble breathing. People fill in the details with whatever is culturally appropriate. As Joe said, aliens are common in our culture now, in the past it could have been a demon or succubus...

B: Succubi

JN: Sure, in the middle ages incubuses and succubuses, in the victorian era you might have seen this sort of transfixed or paralyzed with fear as a grey lady's ghost approached

S: Right. But its a neurological phenomenon its well known, well described, it has very specific features that can identify an experince as a waking dream or a hypnogogic hallucination and yet I have yet to meet a credulous ghost investigator or ghost buster who knows about it, and knows to rule it out before proclaiming an experience an anomoly. Again why they have these false anomalies because they're not really qualified or motivated to rule out the mundane explanations

JN: Well, its just boring is the problem with so much of what the ghost hunter types do, the ghost club types that are now in every city in the united states has a ghost club and they seem just unwilling to become educated as to whats going on and what the true facts are. They continue to perpetuate the notion that orbs are some kind of ghost energy. Its simply not true and they ought to stop making these claims out of ignorance. They do the same with their electromagnetic detection devices or their attemtps to record electronic voice phenomena. They're simply getting glitches.

S: Have you ever gone on an electronic voice phenomenon einvestigation with a beliver?

JN: Not per se. Not just an EVP, but ive gone with ghost hunters who have lots of equipment and who have talked about those things. They're just getting, in my opinion, they're simply getting a kind of electronic version of a simulacrum. They're getting some kind of random...

S: Random noise...

JN: ...they play it and they think I think it said get out and you think that maybe if left alone you didnt hear that, but it was suggested to you that thats what the sounds say, then thats what you hear just as someone might see a random stain on a wall and see a silhouette of the virgin mary they...

S: Scientists promote t..

B: Its a form of paradolea, just with audible ...

S: Its an audio paradolia...

JN: Right...

S: Its what the scientists would call dredging the data. In this case youre dredging it for pattern recognition. Its called paradolea if the patterns not real. Its what your brain does if its looking to make the closest match it can. Its part of how our brain works. So, its not surprising that you would find that if you look at enough random visual images, you're going to see faces if you listen to an hour of random noise on the audio, youre going to be able to match some kind of random phrase or word. Evan and I did go on an investigation with some EVP or EVP hunters a few months ago. I was also struck by how much background noise is going on, and how far away you can hear things. People out on the street. We were in the carousel restuarnt in CT, and on the third floor, and obviously tryign to be very quiet while we record whats going on, but there was continuous background noise. I don't see how you can listen to the noise back on the tape. How can you say what the source of any sound you hear is. Its actually worthless evidence.

E: And these people are largely ametures when it comes to analyzing audio signals. If they were to take those tapes or recordings that they have to professional audio folks, they'll tell them straight out that there is absolutely nothing unusual going on there.

JN: Absolutely, and thats the case with their photographs and everything else that theyre doing. The equipment that theyre using is not made to detect ghosts. The equipment is made to be used a certain way and it is simply being applied to a purpose for which it is not intended and it is being done so by people who are not competent to rule out the various things that should be ruled out and theyre sort of saying again, arguing from ignorance saying we dont know what caused this, therefore its a ghost.

E: I remember you saying once in a lecture that there is no established test for figuring out what is or what isn't a ghost...

S: No gold standard.

E: That's right. There is no measuring stick. There's nothing to determine what it is.

JN: Well that's right because in most forensic science you identify something by comparing it to a known standard. In fact in most of science you say we compare this rock to the minearal pyrite and you see it has similar cleavage and luster and hardness and so forth to identify it. Or even more precisely in forensic science we compare a questioning fingerprint to a known fingerprint. But In ghost photos, they're all question. We don't have a single ghost photo anywhere that's been authenticated. In fact, I was going over with a reporter recently as far as the brief history of ghost photography and i thought it was kind of interesting that when photography was first invented in 1839 with daguerrotypes, there were no ghosts. Im not aware of any ghosts on daugerrotypes other than maybe someone staging a fake goist in a theatrical picture or something. But no ghost images. There were no ghosts in ambrotypes, and none in tintypes. This leaves you wondering where a lot of the ghosts were, why they didn't show up. The first ghosts appear when glass plate negatives made double exposures possible and a boston spirit photographer named william momer began to produce these fake spirit photos, and throughout the 19th century, most were wavering transparent out of focus people because they were camera fakes. Some of them looked like paste ups. Cut out and paste up figures in pictures. All of this trick photography related to spiritualism, but ghosts looked like people. And then you startt getting in modern times, you start getting these orbs and other shapes that quit looking like people. They're looking like balls of light or strands of light...

S: With the introduction of flash photography...

JN: Yeah.

S: They're flash artifacts

JN: YEah, and people the ameturs carried little pocket flash cameras that produce these anomalies. So you look at that quick look at the history of photography and you think that ghosts are either really acting very very differntly across time or youre simply dealing with the way that cameras and film and photographic processes produce anomoalies that are adapted to people who believe in the ghosts. So i think its really kind of illuminating and it seems to me kind of less likely that ghosts have seemed to people and begun to look like orbs than it is for the technology and photography has changed that we've quit making double exposures and started photographing, getting pictures of particles that manifest through the flash

S: So, Joe, you investigate of course many more different kinds of things than just alleged ghosts. I know that youve recently been doing a lot of work investigating lake monsters. Why don't you tell us about that.

JN: Yeah, benjamin radford and i. Ben is managing editor of SI magazine and he and I are skeptical cryptozoologists. We are investigating various things from lake monsters to bigfoot to chupacabras and from argentina to the yaoi in australia to whatever. Strange and elusive creatures. We have a book coming out called lake monster mysteries and we have looked at some of the more noteworthy and even some of the more obscure lake monsters around the world. We do of course cover loch ness, but loch ness has been done to death and we only provide the standard stuff on loch ness and then try to go beyond that and take the really fresh look at lake champlaign, the monster champ or the nearby smaller lake, lake minfrimagog and its monster memfri or one of the top lake monsters in north america, supposedly, ogopogo in lake okonogan BC. And for that one, national geographic television invited us to create an expidition and we went to lake okonogan and with the cameras and crew in toe, we talked to people all along the lake and we went out on a very large boat with professional divers and side scanning sonar and everything you can imagine in the way of equipment and we had a seaplane. We really covered the most important part of the lake. Of course sightings were predominant and we really came up empty as far as finding such a creatre. What I found very very interesting and evidence for it at many of these lakes is that it seems to me that poeple really are seeing, and im talking about sane and credible sober people, who are reporting that theyve seen a long 50 to 70 foot serpentine creature multi humped or swimming in an an up and down, undulating fashion, long neck, dark colored and of course science says this is not very likely for several reasons. Most of these lakes are 10,000 years or so old, newer than the ice age and ought not to have any kind of prehistoric creature in them. In any case you would need not one creature but a breeding herd, and yet people are reporting somewhat similar creatures and I suspect we know what they're seeing. I think, again, this idea of people seeing something that looks sort of like something and then theyre minds filling in a little bit. I believe that lake okanogan some of those reports people have indeed such a creature and we know its scientific name and its lutric canadidsis. In loch ness, a similar creature known as lutre lutre. That is in loch ness, he european otter and in north america, the north american river otter.

S: How big do they get?

JN : Well, its not that any one otter is so big, its that they swim in a line.

S: So they're seeing a colony if you will of otters?

JN: And they dive and resurface. Once youve seen film of otters swimming, it just is like a revalation. Its amazing how the otters dive and resurface. They make this sort of undulating movment as they swim along and just two or three of them will create the effect of a gian serpentine creature that does in fact look just like them. And so, if you look at where these lakes are across the world, invariably they're in otter territory. We found that thats the explanation for clearly for some cases and I don't mean to explain all lake monsters with one simplistic explanation, just as all UFOs are not weather balloons, but many of the cases are otters, I believe

S: IT sounds like a very plausible explanation for at least partly driving the belief and is responsible for some of the sightings

JN: Particularly when you see actually if you see this with your own eyes, you see people who haven't seen it sort of they think of it as some kind of hypothesis osomeone has come up with, but if youve actually seen it, the way i got on to it was very dramatic and since then ive appreciated how pwoerful it is. I was interviewing a new york state wildlife expert and he told me how he was hiding in a duck blind on lake gallus and he saw this giant serpentine creature coming towards him and of course he eventually realized it was otters. and he was just shaken by how deceptively like that it looked and i had put that together with some other reports and much of the same had been known in terms of loch ness, but as i began to see photographs and video of otters swimming, my goodness how they looked like lake monsters its just rather stunning.

SL Well there you go. I think the bigger lesson here is that its interesting what you have are cases of sane well meaning reaonable people but theyre having an unexpected unusual experience and they dont know quite how to interpret it so if there werent any background story or belief in a lake monster thay would say oh, i just saw something wierd and i dont know what it was...i dont know what it could possibly be, if theres a legend of a lake monster that looks something like a plesiasour as you say, their minds fill in the details...

JN: They absolutley do.

S: ...what they're supposed to be seeing just like people see something in the sky and their brain fills in the details of a classic flying saucuer because thats what youre sppoesed to see when you see something flying in the sky.

JN: Rupert Gould, the author of one of the loch ness monster books, rupert gould, who wrote a lot of books on the paranormal years ago, a british writer. He used the term expectant attention. I think thats a pretty good label for what you were just talking about. You have this expectancy that theres a lake monster. So when you see something that looks even sort of like it...Ive seen people, for example on lake champlain a fisherman told me how he was with some people and they saw this moving lake monster and large head and so forth and some of the people were quite frightened by it. There was some squaling from some of the ladies and it turns out that it was simply a bobbing log. Under just the right conditions something doesnt ...because its partially submurged or an odd shape maybe twisted or gnarled, it doesn't look readily like a log or might not look like a line of otters. These are things people are not going to be very familiar with in the first place, and yet they have this mental image of undulating multi-umped serpentine like creature and they do see something that looks rather like that so they fill in.

S: Yeah again, thats how we know from neurological and psychologica studies, thats how our brain works. It matches our sensory stimuli to the closest fit it has in its reportaoire. It will happily fill in any deatals. Over time, our memories converge on whatever the image that we have in our mind. You can't distinguish that from an accurate or a genuine memory. In fact, theres very little relationship between how certain we are about the accuracy of our memories and their actual veracity. Memory can be very very deceptive and there are other things that determine how much we belive in them with their emotional content etc and again not their accuracy.

B: Steve, even memories have what is called flashbulb memories. You know what were you doing when the challenger exploded or when kennedy was assasinated and you know people are just so certain of those memories over even oabove other types of memories because something tragic happened and they think it just sears the memory into their brain and its almost infallible. But theyve studied flashbulb memories and they're extremely erronneous just like regular memories and youre even more convinced that theyre accurate and they're not.

S: Even after a few years the accuracy degrades incredibly and yet the confidence in the accuracy of the memory remains high. Which we were looking through some material on the internet just in perp for this talk and we came across some ufologist, i think bob sent it to us, their criticism of you because they appeared on a show with you and one of the things he says is he claims he stumped you with or that you were dismissive of testimony of competent and credible witnesses such as astronauts and high ranking military personell. Its such a fallacy, theres no such thing as a credible or competent witness or human observation, memory etc is extremely fallible.

JN: Yes, even in some studies that suggest that airline pilots who have given a great deal of credibility of ufo reports are actually maybe more apt to mispercieve that theres I remember one study that showed they were really not very good at what they observed. That they saw something odd

B: Well heres a funny anectodet. Something quick. Years ago i was being vuaudiered for jury duty. I was being questioned by the lawyers to see if i was a good fit for the case, and after they went through the introductions. They asked me so bob, what do you do in your spare time. I just happened to be writing an article on the fallability of human memory at that time. So i said i was the co founder of the new england skeptical society and that i was writing this article on the fallability of human memory and i was out of that room within minutes and walking to my car. They completely dismissed me. I was gone. So from then on I always tell people if youre going for jury duty just tell them youre a member of the NESS and youll be out of there fast.

S: Lawyers dont want skeptical jurors. They want jurors they can manipulate

B: And the article, i just happened to be wriring at the time was just icing on the cake for them. Just get out of here

S: The fallability of eyewitness testimony

B: Right?

P: Joe, on your website joenickell.com there is a large list of personas of various things youve done over the course of your life. Its really quite daunting. I suggest everyone go there and take a look at it. And of course, one of them is paranormal investigator and when i clicked on that, you come up with a collage of photos of you doing various investigations over the years, now theres no text accompanying it, so I have to ask you, theres a picture perhaps youll recall joe, investigating a statue of the virgin mary with a stethescope. Did you in fact detect a heartbeart in that statue joe?

JN: Well that was what was being alleged in conyers GA, the people alledeg that there were heartbeats in the statues. I was asked by atlanta channel 5 to go there, check that and some other claims out and I went with the GA skeptics and we were able to kind of post guards along some of these trials where there were shirnes here and there so that we could have a good look at these things without really intefereing with people worship or being seeen to be causing any trouble. So we posted a guard and i climbed up and i opened my trenchcoat and took out a stethescope and at first one of the skeptics thought I was just joking or clowning around and i said no, no, we're actually going to check this out...

P: Well, if the claim is a heartbeat...

JN: Yea, exactly, just check it out. So we checked out a few of the statues and none of them had heartbeats, suroprise surprise. It turns out that people were not , the pilgrims were not using stethescopes. It turns out they werent listening for heartbeats, they were feeling them. They were reaching up and feeling the statue. And i suspect that feeling the pulse of their own thumb or even just in some cases just the power of suggestion just their imagination just caused them to feel something

S: I'll tell you that that is very very common as regular listers will know, im a physician, when youre learning how to take a pulse, the most common error you make is that you feel your own pulse and you have to theres a certain amount of practice and training you need to avoid feeling your own pulse. Its very simple to do

JN: Yes.

S: Your hand have a strong pulse in them

JN: Yes, and that was my assumption that when i found that people were just feeling the statues, that was the most likely explanation given that there were no heartbeats, so that it was kind of a two step plan, but thats a funny picture and sometimes when i show it in my lectures, people just burst out laughing, its incongrous

P: Oh, its a great picture. It's worth admission to joenickell.com

JN: But you raised a couple of interesting points that I might just say a little about. One is that there aren't captions. This website is relatively new and a work in progress the personas are nearly clearly we will have over 100. Some of these are things that i did very briefly, some i did as a child. I expect eventually to have eventually popcorn vendor and surveyors. These are things I did as a young fellow as we all do. Some I did full time and very seriously professional. I was a private investigator for a world famous detective agency. Even with them i did undercover jobs and i had several other personas like steel worker and forklift driver and tavern waiter. I loved doing these things. ive been a magician, ive been a reiverboat manager, ive been a blackjack dealer. Even paranormal investigator breaks down into cryptozoologist, and ufologist and psychic investigator and so forth.

S: Carny?

JN: Ah, yes, i was very briefly a carnival pitch man in the carnival at the canadian national expidition in 1969 i believe it was. I talked about that in my new book secrets of the sideshows where i certainly have been more of a carny afficianado but i certainly hobnobed over the last 6 years with carnys like bobby reynolds and ward hall and ned kuball the firing dwarf, or la...fire myself or ...bits of nails and so forth and i do a little shpieling you can just hear bobby go freaks wonders and curiosities, fat alice from dallas. Just wonderful colorful slice of americana. Sort of crude and tacky and full of put ons and fakery and real strange things and so forth all mixed togehter in ways that sort of force you to kind of think and sort it all out. When I first started, I think that carnival sideshows are great training growns for skeptics. If you have a chance, go to a carnival and if they have any side shows just look and see whats going on because you may see a genuine oddity, you may see a cheap fake and the difference may be require a little bit of thinking or a little sharp eye. But I got them after a while to begin to tell me their secretes, little by little, at first it was like pulling teeth, and eventually get down to gib town as carnys call it down in gibson florida...this summer i was travelling around with some of the carnivals. I would meet up with them and when they would tear down I would go and stay up much of the night taking pictures and talk to t thiem as they tore down the rides and i would ride on the truck as they hauled the ferris wheel over to the next town. I was thinking about maybe even doing another book carnival culture. I just find it fascinating, its just very interesting. Ive been writing some poems about carnivals, im sure im one of the very few carnival poets.

P: Would you care to recite one for us joe?

JN: I dont think i could remember a carnival poem. Probably could remember some other poem

S: Any paranormal poetry?

JN: Yes I have one on lake monsters even. So I have been...im a serious poet, so im not someone writing rhyming jingles. When I was an undergraduate at the U of KY when i graduated i was offered a scholorship at johns hopkins as ....robert craley and allen ginsberg and i was sort of a protoje as Last Timestamp: 42:01

References