Why Skepticism is So Important: The anti-Muslim FBI CounterTerrorist Expert and the Satanic Panic

UPDATE 5-10-12: It's even worse than you thought

A recent revelation of anti-Muslim FBI counterterrorism training suggests disturbing parallels to previous panics, including the Satanic Panic of the 1980s.

Wired Magazine is running an expose on counter-intelligence training within the FBI that trains agents that, I'll quote the Wired piece

"“main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity."

The author of the training briefings is William Gawthrop, a faculty member at American Military University, a for-profit university focused on military and law enforcement issues, aiming its recruitment especially at veterans. Gawthrop, prior to the Wired piece, was an expert on Islamic law and war for WorldNetDaily, a far-right website known for calls and dreams for secession and "civilian uprising" by actor Chuck Norris and singer Pat Boone, but more recently for being the center of "birther" conspiracy theories that claimed U.S. President Barack Obama was not born in the United States or otherwise is not a natural citizen.

This pattern should be very familiar to anyone who paid attention to the havoc wreaked by the Satanic Panic a generation ago. In the 1960s, foreign and new religions were recognized and gained ground in the United States, including the Church of Satan, driven by charismatic showman and entertainer Anton LaVey. But starting in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, a few of these new religions, or cults as their detractors called them, met disastrous ends. The Manson family and its infamous murders was not a religious movement, but was lumped in due to its cultish structure and nature. The nadir of all of this was the Jonestown murders and massacre in which 918 people were either killed or committed suicide in the self-destruction of the People's Temple after the murder of a fact-finding mission led by a U.S. Congressman.

Jonestown became the bedrock of the anti-cult movement. While the movement was already underway, the Jonestown horror gave it much more credibility. As a result, throughout the 1980s especially, the myth of a grand Satanic Conspiracy thrived in American culture. It was a popular theme in movies and television, and it wasn't hard to find media with scenes of ritual human sacrifices by robed cultists. Satanic-themed entertainment had already been popular with movies like The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, or The Omen, but the trope became commonplace. Satanists became the first explanation for rumor panics of "cattle mutilations" in the American Plains and West, until UFOs became a more popular explanation. The most public and most ridiculed component of this was the campaign against Dungeons and Dragons (let us all remember to mourn Black Leaf) and against heavy metal music, both products of 1970s pop culture that incorporated elements of fantasy and demonic imagery, just as did the previously mentioned films and television shows. However, because these were media aimed primarily at teenagers, they were seen as particular threats.

But the Satanic Panic also intersected at times with law enforcement. You can explore the extensive wiki page as a start on the topic, but people were investigated, accused, and tried for crimes based on what turned out to be faulty or misleading coaching of witnesses, in some cases alleging vast mass murders and other crimes that were simply physically impossible, and would leave overwhelming physical evidence where none existed. These investigations were at times prompted either directly or as part of a general atmosphere encouraged by "anti-cult experts" that would give instructional briefings to law enforcement, educators, and other authority figures. While not in all cases, in quite a few these experts were heavily invested as activists of a fundamentalist Christianity that was on the rise starting in the 1970s. And some of their "expert advice" reflected this, while other advice was simply silly (infamously telling parents or educators that graph paper [for Dungeons & Dragons maps] and mirrors were signs of Satanic ritual magic on the part of their children or students). I've blogged about this before as a form of "folk archaeology."

The Satanic Panic isn't old news either, at least not entirely. It made headlines again in a different way, with the release of the West Memphis Three. Likewise, such allegations have become involved in the prosecutions in the Meredith Kercher murder case, better known by the name of the woman convicted for the crime, Amanda Knox, who like the West Memphis Three has attracted considerable international support by people who doubt the case against her.

The revelation of the FBI briefing authored by Gawthrop reminds me strongly of some of the "anti-cult expertise" offered to law enforcement during the Satanic Panic. I don't know Gawthrop's religious background, but it is hard to miss the zealotry against Islam, while praising Judaism and Christianity (Gawthrop even provides a graph!).

But a bigger pattern is present. In both cases, horrific criminal acts including mass murder provide credibility to "experts" who instead push religious or political issues. The horror of these mass casualty events, as well as smaller but more gruesome events associated with the larger threat, is a powerful influence on people who might otherwise rationally dismiss some of the more absurdist ideology coming from these "experts." Further, by pointing at the wrong targets, these "experts" get to attack those people and communities they don't like, but actually cloud and damage real efforts to deal realistically with threats. Was training like Gawthrop's responsible for the detention, interrogation, and strip searching of Shoshana Hebshi this last weekend, along with other unnamed people, all of whom were either from southern or southwest Asia, or had genetic heritage as such, and committed no crimes nor ultimately were found to be at all suspicious?

The pattern of rumor panics is a familiar one. It's no accident that Arthur Miller was able to find such easily parallels between McCarthyite anti-communism and the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. In the case of McCarthyism, in addition to the general Cold War fears, that war had recently turned hot in Korea. It has been suggested that the Salem trials may have been nursed by anxiety stemming from recent bloody wars with Native Americans, wars that had not gone well and were considered incompetent or failed by the populace. The witch trials may have been an expression of powerlessness, fear, and anger over failure.

I visited Salem this summer, a weird tourism experience to say the least. But in the more serious moments, the tragedy does come through, and reminds us that just because something horrible is happened, we shouldn't just listen to whoever gives us the most lurid and enticing take on the matter, one that we can deploy against the innocent when we can't lash out against real threats.

So I'll leave this with part of the memorial to the victims of the Salem trials

Cryptids: A glaring dichotomy

The sci-fi/fantasy arm of Gawker, io9, is having a "cryptid summer," about which I was initially, well, skeptical.

But I think they've handled it fairly well. And today brings us probably the best example of this:

Compare and contrast

The Weirdest Mystery Animals in the World

with

Ten extinct animals that have been rediscovered

Look, I think monster stories and legends are fun and awesome. But it is notable that, with one "exception,", discovered land animals of the 20th century and early 21st century are more or less mundane. They aren't the monsters of folklore and cryptozoology.

The "maybe" exception is the Bili Ape. The exact nature of the Bili Ape is still a matter of controversy, but it is physiologically fairly similar to other chimpanzees (it is behavior which is more strikingly different). While extremely interesting and important for primate studies, it is not very surprising that one group of chimpanzees with different behavior might not be recognized without careful observation, and certainly isn't the stuff of cryptozoology (the typical cryptid quarry is usually something monstrous that looks nothing like any other species around it).

In the oceans, more "monstrous" creatures do continue to be discovered, which is not surprising given the largely unexplored nature of the seas (whereas exploration of the land was largely a matter of Europeans and their documentation entering the rest of the globe, a process mostly concluded by the twentieth century). However, these creatures are typically not the stuff of legends, but instead complete surprises (see the megamouth shark for example, or the coelacanth for that matter, and arguably the colossal squid). The last great discovery of a truly monstrous creature of legend from the seas would be the giant squid, and while video of a living squid has only been captured in the early 21st century, bodies of the Architeuthis dux have been collected by scientists for a century and a half.

A century of specimens of one of the "name brand" cryptids would easily move such creatures (as it did with the giant squid) out of the shadows of myth, and into the realm of biology. But body parts or complete specimens of "name brand" cryptids, on the other hand, often only surface in the context of conflicting stories, before the whole thing falls apart (any number of examples can suffice, but the Georgia Bigfoot is a good recent example).

A project for an enterprising researcher might be to count up the number of documented sightings of the giant squid during the time period specimens have been recovered (since the 1850s). I'd be curious to know which has been seen more often and with more regularity: the giant squid which produced numerous carcasses, or a sea serpent/lake monster/hairy humanoid/pteradon/bloodsucking freak that has produced no corpses.

Demons, the Great Old Ones, and the Unified Field Theory of the Paranormal

Is there a unified theory of paranormal thinking replacing the alternative belief structures of the 20th century? A recent address by conspiracy theory master Alex Jones veered into territory he normally doesn't cover, non-human entities and their role in what he believes to be a global elite bent on depopulating the earth.

The statements in the video above may not make a great deal of sense to you, but they are in fact quite in keeping with some of the more esoteric theories held by some of the more esoteric thinkers or intellectuals of the UFO community and other alternative belief sets. John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies (my review can be read here), was one of the first to suggest that rather than spaceships, UFOs and their occupants were signs of interdimensional entities that had been here for far longer than the modern era of flying saucers. Keel echoed Charles Fort's infamous phrase from The Book of the Damned, "I think we're property," while contemporary Jacques Vallee wrote of a control system that might be guiding (and not necessarily for the good) the religious and cultural development of humanity.

With the rise of abduction changing the face of ufology, Terrence McKenna's machine elves, which he said he saw while under the influence of DMT, became roped in with aliens, opening the suggestion that they weren't aliens at all, or not even necessarily physical in the sense we may suggest. Graham Hancock, famous for his books and tv shows arguing for lost Paleolithic Civilizations leaving traces like the Sphinx (or inspiring its makers), possibly from the continent of Antarctica, has picked up this idea, suggesting in his book Supernatural (review) that human modernity and civilization derives from contact and influence with such entities or constructs through the use of hallucinogens.

This is half the idea that Jones lays out in his "rant" above, that "clockwork elves" speak to DMT users, that they are not in our dimension but might be able to reach it via a machine like the Large Hadron Collider, and that they are the fairies and aliens of our legends and occult lore.

The other half of the equation according to Jones is that they are either worshiped or otherwise served by a secret global elite society. Jones himself says in the video that this sounds like David Icke's talk of a cult led by shapeshifting Reptilians (an idea lifted right from Robert E. Howard's fantasy story "The Shadow Kingdom," and alluded to in the film Conan the Barbarian). Indeed, Jones is suggesting with this statement an immense time depth and possible purpose to the Illuminati he fears are planning to install a global police state to control those who aren't killed in vast depopulation plans. But an equally appropriate link would be to a section of Christian evangelicals that have embraced the idea that UFOs are demons in disguise. One group has set up shop in the flying saucer Mecca, Roswell, New Mexico (I attended a Raelian meeting in their lobby, something I still don't entirely understand). Nick Redfern has recently published a book, Final Events, specifically suggesting something akin to Jones' concerns, of a group within the US government and US politics trying to contact and control such entities, or alternatively planning to turn America into a theocratic police state in order to fight such creatures, or rather, demons.

In short, Jones is arguing that there is a world-wide conspiracy that either is (or believes it is) contacting ancient extradimensional entities, ones with plans dangerous for humanity, in order that they can join with these entities. The group lives without morality, practicing bizarre rituals behind closed doors and acting without concern for Christian or conventional values, instead planning a bizarre future and the mass killing of millions. They intend to bring about the end of the recognizable world and let demonic aliens through interdimensional gates, ushering in the fall of man as dominant species on this planet.

If you read my other blog, Miskatonic Museum, based on the history and science associated with the cosmic horror tales of H. P. Lovecraft, this should sound very, very familiar to you. It's the Cthulhu Cult with a bit of the Whateleys thrown in for good measure (compare with the excerpt from the Necronomicon in "The Dunwich Horror".

Nor is it to be thought (ran the text as Armitage mentally translated it) that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They had trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man's truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is Them. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraved, but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."

These stories speak of ancient conspiracies and cults of bizarre and amoral cultists who seek to allow horrific alien monstrosities known as the Great Old Ones into our world, to do horrible things to it and us, so that they can rule as humanity's masters, free from morality. Just as Lovecraft's writings were heavily influential (though not exclusively so) in creating the idea of ancient astronauts, are we now to see Lovecraft and co. birthing the 21st century's mix of demology, conspiracy theory, and paranormality?

Jones would not be the first to take this route, as David Icke has pointed to the faux-Necronomicon by "Simon" and to Doreal's Howard and Lovecraft inspired writings as evidence of his claims. Kenneth Grant's Typhonian writings also tread this territory, as ably dissected by Justin Woodman in his four-part lecture series on Lovecraft and "occulture," where he also discusses the alien astronaut tie, and briefly discusses Icke. It's a recurring theme in Nick Redfern's books, not just his Final Events (in which he reports on, but does not believe in, this worldview, an attitude echoed by Jones in the above video), but in others where he describes occultists and Fortean investigators dealing with extradimensional spirits or entities, and elite secret groups well aware of them. Cattle mutilation researcher and Trickster theorist Christopher O'Brien has also speculated that government or other shadowy operatives may be involved in animal mutilations as a method of controlling or preventing the arrival and actions of interdimensional entities through techniques similar to what ancient religions called blood magic and sacrifice.

And so on, there are others. But Jones, a commentator that has appeared on Fox News and other mainstream mass media, that has been pointed to as the underground inspiration for Glenn Beck, suggesting that the core of the secret societies he has dedicated his life to fighting, and in doing so becoming the highest profile conspiracy theory advocate in modern America, is a landmark moment. It could mean that Jones alienates (so to speak) many of his listeners. Alternatively, this may be a tipping point for mainstreaming what I believe is the coming focus of alternative or paranormal belief systems: demonology. I've outlined above how it has always been with ufology before there were flying saucers, and how it has grown. It is also a topic not too far from many discussions of ghosts and ghost hunting. The Warrens on a number of occasions emphasized the possibility of a demonic role in the hauntings they were involved in. More recently, demons and ghosts have mixed on ghost hunting television shows like Paranormal State. A recent book suggests a very similar model behind beliefs in Djinn in Muslim societies, complete with an American secret effort to capture a djinn, and a secret history of djinn as masters of the planet aiming to re-enter our world and take it over. Even cryptozoology shades into the demonological and extradimensional in the writings of some of the authors mentioned above, and in narratives such as Hunt for the Skinwalker, documenting a secret but high profile investigation in Utah in the 1990s, painted with heavy overtones of the interdimensional, an including Bigfoot in the mix.

What might this change suggest? One obvious, perhaps too obvious solution, would be to point to the growth of politicized and radicalized religion in the United States, and an increasingly loud war with science. The idea of ghost hunting and parapsychology emerged out of Spiritualism in the Victorian era (when scientific progress was the definition of civilization over barbarism, and evolution the philosophical backbone of modernity), coming into its own in the interwar period, and gaining some modicum of scientific cover with psychic research in the mid-20th century. Around mid-century, cryptozoology and ufology both took their early cues from science, either in the form of expeditions and writings with a strictly biological bent suggesting the discovery of unknown or supposedly extinct creatures, or saucer organizations modeled on amateur science clubs or scientific organizations, focused on collecting sighting data for statistical analysis.

They did this in the era of big science, when laboratories could cure diseases, win wars, and build a better tomorrow through chemistry and atomic power. But then it all changed. Anti-science sentiments grew on the political left (over concerns of ecological damage, a revulsion at modernity, and the role of science in imperialism and warfare), and on the religious right (in ways too numerous to note, but generally involving both the clash with biblical literalism, and elements of populism and class conflict, what gets labeled "the Culture War" in the media). Within scholarship, the flaws and human frailties of the scientific community were also given a greater profile through postmodern and deconstructionist techniques (most famously Thomas Kuhn's argument that science is a succession of paradigms, tied to the production of knowledge and internal politics within the scientific community, rather than a simple accumulation of knowledge and understanding). For these and other reasons, science's prestige has been tarnished, and it is more often associated with visions of a future dystopia rather than a Gernsbackian or Jetsonian wonderland of Tomorrow.

Should we be surprised that belief communities that had once modeled themselves after prestigious science, have now backed away from this role, and that some have turned to demonology in the face of a resurgent movement of Biblical literalism in religion and politics?


EDIT: Found an even more illustrative passage from "The Dunwich Horror." Read and compare with Jones' video.

'It was—well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn't belong in our part
of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws
than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things
from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to.
... if you men are wise you'll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull
down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that
brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of—the beings they were
going to let in tangibly to wipe out the human race and drag the earth off to
some nameless place for some nameless purpose.

When Prophecy Fails and the May 21 Apocalypse

By now, you may have heard of the Christian sect that believes that the world is going to enter its final days on May 21 of this year, concluding with the planet's destruction in October.

I could pontificate about this, but really, the best thing you could do between now and then, is to read the classic work on apocalyptic cults and cognitive dissonance, Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter's When Prophecy Fails (link leads to amazon.com for purchase). It focuses on a flying saucer contactee group in the 1950s (more info at the wiki). The group advertised the end of the world, looking for others to be saved by their space brothers (the one leading them, Sananda from the planet Clarion, also appeared in the past as Jesus according to the group's views). Since it has been written there have been rebuttals and debate regarding the book's key element, the idea of cognitive dissonance. The authors argue that apocalyptic groups invest themselves so much in a falsifiable event (either the world ends, or it doesn't) that when it is falsified, they redouble their efforts and modify their ideology, because admitting their error (often accompanied by public and potentially embarrassing decisions such as quitting a job or leaving a community due to the end of the world) would be too painful. But never minding that, it is easily comparable to the current May 21 group, except that the May 21 group is closer to a much bigger religious tradition, while the followers of Sister Thedra were part of a much more fringe subculture.

The opening of When Prophecy Fails makes it clear exactly how unoriginal such apocalyptic groups are, and how often they follow a similar pattern: once the prophecy fails and the world continues, the group decides that their faith saved the planet, and they launch into a surge of proselytizing. It won't be terribly surprising if we see the same thing here.

Spooky News - Now on Twitter!

Sometimes something weird comes across my desk, and I don't have too much to say other than "Hey, look at this weird thing, but don't touch it you fool!" If headlines such as "Whitest Voodoo Priests Ever Team Up to Fight Hitler" or "US Military to Weaponize Flying Snakes" pique your interest, just follow me on Twitter by hitting the button on the right. These and other strange stories will show up in your electro-tickertape fresh from the workshop.

All the Myths are True (a little fun)

One of my favorite songs over the last few years, and one eminently suited for the topics this site covers is Abney Park's "All the Myths are True." It's all about legends, monsters, lost cities, zombies and the like. They had me at "Scientists unearth enormous skeletons" You'll hear what I mean.

Now, you can listen to it with Abney Park's Electro-Mechanical Music Listening Machine. Just twist the dial until the song you want is lined up with the selector cog within the machine's face. Or the winding stem. It's a little cantankerous.

If you haven't guessed already, Abney Park is one of the music groups flying the steampunk flag. The band flies the H. M. S. Ophelia, on the lookout for zeppelin freighters to plunder, and dodging air krakens of the sort we covered over the last two years.

You can check more of their music (I loved their last album Aether Shanties, and they've got a new one coming out this week) and other sundry goods at their site or myspace.

Fantasies of Control: Government and Supernatural Fears

Image by RadioKirik (Wikicommons)

A recent news item, and two book releases concerning UFOs and the US government, got me thinking about the concept of government reaction to claims of the paranormal.

According to a recent Freedom of Information disclosure from the Dyfed Powys police in Wales, UK. In the past five years, they've dealt with 86 calls concerning witches, as well as

"one call about a werewolf, seven about vampires, 19 about UFOs, 13 about big cats, 73 reports of ghosts, 16 of zombies, 35 of demons, five regarding big foot sightings, 33 of monsters and 18 about wizards"

One of the more cliched ideas in fantastical fiction is that of the government agency that polices the supernatural. While there are more fantastical examples in fiction, the most cliched version boils down to a secret organization, with an odd number or acronym in its name, that investigates and eliminates paranormal threats, often containing them in some fashion. I don't know what the earliest version of the concept is in either folklore or fiction, but by the 1980s it had already become something of a humerous trope (warning: link to addictive tvtropes site, where they call this is some variation on the Extranormal Institute and its subtype Secret Government Warehouse). Current examples include the MiB in the Men in Black Films, Warehouse 13 and Fringe on television, the B.P.R.D in comics, X-Com and Delta Green
in games, and amongst plenty of examples in print, Charles Stross' "The Laundry" (such as his recent The Fuller Memorandum).


More intriguing are the two sorts of groups that appear in both folklore and reporting in the real world. The UFO world in particular has had an obsession with government conspiracies and secret organizations for decades, crystallizing in the form of the Majestic documents, discredited in the eyes of many within and without of ufology. The original documents describe a high-level, shadow-cabinet of sorts, set up after various flying saucer crashes in the 1940s and early 1950s, but subsequent documents include operations manuals and other suggestions of active operations. The operations of Project Moon Dust and other government agencies (US and otherwise) to retrieve objects fallen from space have been brought into the larger UFO mythology. Such efforts, aimed at collecting and exploiting foreign military and aerospace technology, have been enmeshed into Majestic and other ufolore. Paranormal researcher Christopher O'Brien has suggested government or other secret special forces-style occult teams as explaining part of the patterns he finds in cattle mutilations, as he discusses with Greg Bishop on the podcast Radio Misterioso in January 2005. Like something out of the B.P.R.D., he suggests that copycat cattle mutilations may be rituals by such a group to counteract the activities of possibly non-human entities, ultramodern blood sacrifices to deal with ultraterrestrials, if you will.

As exciting as these ideas are, more documented paranormal task forces within government seem to be much less proactive, or active at all. The fall into one of two categories.

The first are those willing to use paranormal beliefs as psychological and propaganda weapons. Legends and supernatural beliefs, most famously Filipino vampire myth, have been used in combat, with mixed success. The CIA thought flying saucers made a great human interest story to flood the Guatemalan papers when their plans for a coup had been exposed, and also were happy for some UFO reports to continue when they were actually sightings of the U-2 and other spy planes (the Soviets made similar efforts regarding space launches). Mark Pilkington's recent book Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs suggests that much of the UFO phenomenon can actually be chalked up to such intelligence activities. I have not read this book and cannot evaluate its claims. Arguably Project Bluebook would fall into this category. The very public US Air Force project was in reality a small operation based out of Ohio, and while it did occasionally conduct field investigations of UFO sightings, such as the Socorro, New Mexico landing or the Kelly-Hopkinsville goblin siege, scientific advisor J. Allen Hynek and others have made it clear that the office was primarily an effort to minimize public concerns and interest in UFOs, in keeping with the recommendations of the Robertson Panel.

The second type is intriguingly close to the fictional and more impressive folkloric concepts. Harold Blum's Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials suggested back in 1992 that there was an informal UFO study group composed of officers of the intelligence and military communities. Blum's findings would eventually be echoed by the work of Jon Ronson and others culminating in The Men Who Stare at Goats, including some of the same individuals and groups, as well as the release of information on Project Stargate, the CIA psychic/remote viewing project. Despite plenty of myth-making all around, there was clearly at least one set of officers within the military and intelligence establishment that pursued paranormal interests and studies. Similar projects have been declassified by the British Ministry of Defense.

So it is with both interest and skepticism that I mention the most recent high profile claim of an intra-governmental paranormal study and action group. Nick Redfern chronicles (I have listened to and read several discussions of Mr. Redfern's findings, including some on his blog for this book, but not the book itself) in FINAL EVENTS and the Secret Government Group on Demonic UFOs and the Afterlife the tale of a loose group that became convinced that UFOs are actually demonic in nature, and that the transformation of American society to a Christian fundamentalist culture is necessary to defend against these forces. This belief is persistent amongst a subset of UFO followers, and I believe it is growing. Given the public resurgence of the Christian right in recent years, and especially in the training and top-level conduct of the military and government, the concept is controversial but timely. I would like to see some of the evidence that such a group might exist, but its existence is eminently plausible. Just as eastern religious ideas influenced the individuals described in The Men Who Stare at Goats, we would expect more radical Christian ideas to be reflected by some in the power establishment, no matter what you think of those ideas.

All of these groups and efforts, real or imagined, are about control. A classic skeptical critique of conspiracy theory is that people unable to accept that an unruly world is chaotic, imagine secret controlling factions, placing events in someone's hands (even if they are sinister hands), belieinv that someone is in control. While I am a skeptic, I've never liked that idea much, it doesn't make a lot of sense either logically or from experience. Sure, we might feel more comforted if we believe that in the case of catastrophe, say an asteroid impact, that there is some super-secret organization which will spring into action and save us. But I don't see how belief in all-powerful conspiracies controlling the world to the detriment of the believer and society is terribly comforting. Instead, in many cases it seems, in my experience, that belief in a powerful evil conspiracy allows for belief in a powerful counterforce. The New World Order/Satan will rouse good patriots or Christians to battle in a final war and be victorious. Moral decay and oppression acts as a backdrop for enlightened consciousness and transformation into a New Age. This perhaps is comforting, not in imagining control in the hands of a conspiracy, but instead providing the believer with an enemy to fight, something to focus angst upon rather than ill-defined unease.

In the cases of psychological warfare and propaganda, control is the obvious goal. Here, the right words or symbols, including powerfully charged supernatural symbols, are hoped to magically bend a population's or an enemy's will, without the application of brute force physical violence. A push button society, controllable through manipulation, is a technocratic dream of the modern era, by the intelligence officer and the ad man alike.

And lastly, in the case of government paranormal action groups, control is indeed sought over an unruly world. The UFO phenomenon is believed to be maddeningly chaotic to many who study it, to the point that the "trickster" concept from anthropology and mythology has become a popular buzzword in the community. Likewise, parapsychology has a long history of fitful starts and stops, vague and problematic findings and methods, and lack of scientific progress. Individuals feeling as such, but with organizational power at their fingertips, have a tool to possibly control some of that chaos. On the other hand, such beliefs can be a key to understanding and controlling the logic of a chaotic world. Projects like Stargate, the remote viewing effort of the CIA, are shortcuts to hopefully better results than those obtained through traditional intelligence work.

Loveland Frog Festival, Saturday October 2

This Saturday, the people of Loveland, Ohio will be celebrating the 3rd Annual Loveland Frog Festival, in honor of one of the weirder creature legends in the United States. Published reports vary widely, but in 1955 several sightings in the area of bug-eyed "trolls," as labeled by Loren Coleman in his Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, with sparking electrical equipment have become conflated with two separate reports from 1972 of a humanoid frog or lizard like creature.

In both years, even more dramatic reports of humanoids from the deep were reported in North America, in Indiana in 1955 (when a hand nearly grabbed an unfortunate swimmer in the Ohio River) and in 1972 in Thetis Lake Vancouver (which has largely been written off as a hoax). It has not escaped notice, especially in the Indiana case, that The Creature From the Black Lagoon had been released in theaters the previous year. Humanoid sightings in general were big in both years. In 1955, all sorts of sightings of odd humanoids were centered in the Ohio River valley (see Albert Rosales' 1955 entry in his compilation of humanoid sightings in the context of UFO lore). This was the same year that the infamous Kelly-Hopkinsville "goblin" UFO encounter occurred in Kentucky. No such wave occurred in 1972, but UFO sightings would skyrocket in 1973.

There is no real back story, that I'm aware of, to the Loveland Frog. The 1955 reports have been seen as possibly relating to UFO sightings, similar to the wave of humanoid reports in France in 1954. But no one has tried to stake out a taxonomy for the frog, claim it as part of some larger picture, or even suggest some Innsmouth folk moving out west. But this hasn't stopped the legend from growing into a festival, and a local football club.

I very briefly stopped in Loveland two years ago, in the area where the iconic sighting by Officer Ray Shockey (the second of the officers has since said he only saw an iguana) occurred.


Riverside Avenue, where the sighting took place

The Little Miami River in the area of Shockey's report

Spooky Dissertations Part 5: The Paranormal and Belief

This is the final installment of the Spooky Dissertations miniseries.

Part 1 introduces the series and covered cryptozoology
Part 2 explores the increasingly popular topic of UFO culture
Part 3 finishes off the UFO topic and included the larger context of Theosophy
Part 4 examines ghost culture and parapsychology
Part 5 covers paranormal culture

Finally in part 5, we conclude with a general overview and miscellaneous of paranormal culture, largely but not exclusively falling under the rubric of "the occult" (though as noted, I've been fairly limited in what goes here, so as not to replicate the vast literature on anthropology of magic and religion). We then have a number of belief-oriented more quantitative studies of belief in psychic powers, and general paranormal beliefs and thought processes.

I will add to this when any new dissertations and theses on any of these topics comes to my attention, and if you know of one, feel free to leave a comment.


Paranormal Culture

Libraries and the Occult – 2004 MA, Cecile Dubuis, University College London

Industrial light and magic: Popular science, technology, and the occult in the late Victorian period – 2003 PhD, Sylvia Amy Pamboukian, Indiana University

Spectral realities: Intersections of science and the occult in modern American literature – 2003 PhD, Stephanie Lee Hawkins, State University of New York at Buffalo

Faith by demonstration: The connection between the history of paranormal phenomena and a New Age spirituality – 2003 PhD, Sonja C. St. Amant, State University of New York at Albany

Rhetorics of darkness: Modern occultism and the popular imaginary - 2002 PhD, Joshua Gresham Gunn, University of Minnesota

Wonder shows: Science, religion, and magic on the American stage, 1845-2001 - 2002 PhD, Fred Robert Nadis, University of Texas – Austin

Multiple views of multiple realities: The rhetorical and social construction of the occult - 2000 PhD, John Dale Richards, Ohio University

H. Rider Haggard and the Victorian occult – 2000 PhD, Janet Elizabeth McIntire, Northeastern University

Avatars of the soul: Cultures of science, medicine, and the occult in modern Germany - 1999 PhD, Corinna Adele Treitel, Harvard University

The significance of the near-death experience in Western cultural traditions – 1999 MA, Alan J. Pew, California State University, Dominguez Hills (DASH)

Psychics, readers, visionaries and other paranormal personalities: A social movement analysis of “gifted” people in the metaphysical movement – 1999 PhD, Gary A. Steward, Jr., Oklahoma State University

Witchcraft and occult crime within a contemporary Canadian context – 1999 MA, Tracesandra Jade McDonald, University of Ottawa

The profession of brujeria on spiritual entrepreneurship in Puerto Rico – 1998 PhD, Raquel Romberg, University of Pennsylvania

Dark star rising: The emergence of modern occultism, 1800-1950 – 1997 PhD, Bradford J. M. Verter, Princeton University

Places of power: sacred sites, Gaia's pilgrims, and the politics of landscape. An interpretive study of the geographics of New Age and contemporary earth spirituality, with reference to Glastonbury, England, and Sedona, Arizona – 1997 PhD, Adrian Iwachiw, York University (Canada) (DASH)

Identifying the spiritual experience – 1996 PhD, Sara Horsfall, Texas A&M University

Belief, Explanation and Rhetoric in the Crop Circle Phenomenon of Southern England – 1991 MA, Bruce Lionel Mason, Memorial University of Newfoundland (PUFOI)

Mysticism: A comparative historical study – 1988 PhD, Jess Byron Hollenbeck, University of California, Los Angeles

Spiritism and science in Brazil: An anthropological interpretation of religion and ideology – 1987 PhD, David John Hess, Cornell University

Otherworld journeys: A comparative study of medieval Christian and contemporary accounts of near-death experience. (afterlife, visions, imagination) – 1984 PhD, Carol Goldsmith Zaleski, Harvard University

Irrationality in current American culture – 1983 PhD, Kathleen Ann Dempsey, Saint Louis University

The new transcendentalism in post-industrial society: life styles and the search for meaning in the New Age – 1980 PhD, Gloria Ann Young, The University of Texas at Austin


Belief and Psychology – General Paranormal

Development of an instrument to measure understanding of the nature of science as a process of inquiry in comparison to pseudoscience – 2008 MS, Brighton Oothoudt, California State University, Long Beach

From Bigfoot in the backyard to ghosts in the attic: Predictors of paranormal belief – 2010 MA, Jeff Tranguch, West Virginia University

Psychological processes in perceived paranormal phenomena- 2008 MA, Stephanie Ann Van Arsdall, California State University, Fresno (UFOs vs. Bigfoot)

Psychopathological symptoms and their relation to paranormal belief and illusory judgment – 2006 PhD, Michael P. Cofrin, University of New Hampshire

Attributional style and irrational beliefs as related to para-psychological belief – 2004 Psy.D, Jennifer I. Millman, Hofstra University

The relationship between paranormal beliefs and the personality trait Openness to Experience: A comparison of psychology majors with students in other disciplines- 2003 PhD, Eric Dogan Ozkan, Central Michigan University

Information seeking and interest in the paranormal: Towards a process model of information action – 2001 PhD, Jarkko Teuvo Johan Kari, Tampereen Teknillinen Korkeakoulu (Finland)

Paranormal beliefs: Developmental antecedents, perceived control, and defensive coping – 2001 PhD, Stefanie L. Perkins, Long Island University, the Brooklyn Center

Belief and reasoning: The effects of beliefs on syllogistic reasoning – 1999 PhD, Mary Merla-Ramos, Long Island University, The Brooklyn Center

The influence of religious affiliation and religious orientation on beliefs in science, religion and the paranormal – 1998 PhD, Brigham Young University

The relationship of ego identity status and ego development stage to a belief in paranormal phenomena in Puerto Rican females – 1993 PhD, Rosie Rodriguez, New York University

The structure and correlates of metaphysical beliefs among a sample of behaviorally committed participants – 1993 PhD, Richard Peter Kaczynski, Wayne State University

The pseudoscientific beliefs of high school students – 1992 Ed.D., Duane Starrett Nickell, Indiana University

A description of the paranormal beliefs of preservice teachers at Indiana University – 1991 PhD, Robert Martin Craig, Indiana University

The influence of undergraduate research methods and statistics courses on the transfer of reasoning skills to everyday events, and belief in the paranormal – 1990 MA, Davina Mill, Concordia University

The Relationships Among the Experience of the Dying, the Experience of Paranormal Events, and Creativity in Adults – 1987 PhD, Mary Dee McEvoy, New York University

An Investigation of the Empirical Relationships Among Beliefs in Science, Religion, and the Paranormal – 1985 PhD, Carl Ben Taylor, Brigham Young University

Beliefs in paranormal phenomena: Their relationship to involvement in esoteric practices and locus of control – 1979 PhD, James Joseph McGarry, Kent State University


Belief and Psychology – Psychic Powers

Paranormal belief, personality traits, and subjective well-being - 2010 PhD, Inga Simonian, Alliant International University

Illusory judgments under conditions of uncertainty: Reasoning errors related to paranormal and religious beliefs - 2008 PhD, Erin C. Goforth, University of New Hampshire

Critical Thinking Ability, Dogmatism, Ambiguity Tolerance and Belief in Paranormal – 1987 PhD, Michael James Nanko, United States International University

Childhood Development and Personality Functioning of the Psychic (Parapsychology, Hypnosis, Multiple) – 1985 PhD, Mark Howard Goldenthal, Georgia State University

Interrelationships among belief in psychic abilities, psychic experiences, and sensation-seeking – 1982 PhD, James Stephen Anthony, United States International University

Personality Variables Associated with Response in Dissonant Situations – 1981 PhD, Caren Rae Gertner, The University of Texas at Austin

Spooky Dissertations Part 4: Ghost Culture and Parapsychology

Ongoing series on Spooky Dissertations

Part 1 introduces the series and covered cryptozoology
Part 2 explores the increasingly popular topic of UFO culture
Part 3 finishes off the UFO topic and included the larger context of Theosophy
Part 4 examines ghost culture and parapsychology
Part 5 covers paranormal culture

We've previously had bibliographies of dissertations and theses on cryptozoology, UFO culture, and a grab bag of other UFO topics with an emphasis on the past. Today we take a look at studies of ghost culture, spiritualism and parapsychology, and actual paranormal research. Tomorrow, we conclude with works on general belief in the paranormal.

Ghost Culture

Never Give Up the Ghost: An Analysis of Three Edinburgh Ghost Tour Companies - 2005 MA, Joy Fraser, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Gothic Realities: The Emergence of Cultural Forms through Representations of the Unreal - 2005 PhD, Lawrence Andrew Cooper, Jr, Princeton University

Visions of an unseen world': the production and consumption of English ghost stories, c.1660-1800 – PhD 2005, Sasha Handley, University of Warwick (DASH)

Possessions: The history and uses of haunting in the Hudson Valley – 2001 PhD, Judith Ann Richardson, Harvard University

Specters of war: An analysis of ghost stories and other stories of the occult set in the American Civil War – 1994 MA, Maureen Rush Bradley, University of Hawai’i

Aspects of supernatural belief, memorate and legend in a contemporary urban environment – 1985 PhD, Gillian Bennett, University of Sheffield


Spiritualism

The commercialization of the afterlife: Spiritualism's supernatural economy, 1848—1900 – 2010 MA, Richard W. Fink, II

Ventriloquising the dead: representations of Victorian spiritualism and psychical research in selected nineteenth and late twentieth century fiction – 2006 PhD, Tatiana Kontou, University of Sussex (DASH)

Rei(g)ning mediums: Spiritualism and social controls in 19th-century American literature – 2006 PhD, Mitzi Schrag, University of Washington

Sacred conspiracies: Spiritualist and occult politics in Britain, 1843 – 1916 – 2005 PhD, William J. Dotson, The University of Chicago

Automatic writing: A history from Mesmer to Breton – 2004 PhD, Diane Dearmont, University of Washington

Materialisation Phenomena in British and French Spiritualism and Psychical Research – 2004 PhD, Corinne Montenon, University of Birmingham (DASH)

"I saw it with my own eyes": An ethnography of visions and other anomalous phenomena among participants in Candomble, Umbanda and Spiritism from Rio de Janeiro and Abadiania, Goias – 2002 PhD, Yves Marton, University of California, Los Angeles

Without crucible or scalpel: A sympathetic history of American Spiritualism - 2002 PhD, Robert Sayre Cox, University of Michigan

Feminine channeling: Technology, the occult, and women's mediation of communications, 1870—1915 – 2001 PhD, Jill Nicole Galvan, University of California, Los Angeles

'Fifty-cent sybils': Occult workers and the symbolic marketplace in the urban United States, 1850-1930, - 1998 PhD, Tammy Lee Stone-Gordon, Michigan State University

Soft murder by the camera eye: Photographic fears and the Victorian writer – 1992 PhD, Nancy Martha West, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Spiritualism and psychology in the works of Robert and Elizabeth Browning and Henry and William James – 1991 PhD, Charles Lloyd Meredith, University of Cambridge

Subversive spirit: women and nineteenth century spiritualism – 1987 PhD, A. Owen, University of Sussex

A harmony of worlds: spiritualism and the quest for community in nineteenth-century America – PhD 1981, Michael Anthony O’Sullivan, University of Southern California


Parapsychology and Science

To the Summerland: William James, psychical research and modernity – 2003 PhD, Krister Dylan Knapp, Boston College

"The coping stone on psycho-analysis": Freud, psychoanalysis, and the Society for Psychical Research – 2002 PhD, James P. Keeley, Columbia University

Fantasies of transmission: Psychical research and the mediation of intimacy, 1880 – 1916 – 1998 PhD, Pamela N. Thurschwell, Cornell University

Interpretations of quantum physics, the mystical and the paranormal: Einstein, Schroedinger, Bohr, Pauli and Jordan – 1989 PhD, Peter Anton Degen, Drew University

The penumbra of science: A sociological investigation of the debate between parapsychology and science – 1988 PhD, Catherine Boyd Withers, York University (Canada)

Deviant Science: The Case of Parapsychology – 1981 PhD, James Maris McClenon, University of Maryland College Park


Paranormal Research

Field notes from the light: An ethnographic study of the meaning and significance of "near-death experiences" – 2007 PhD, Laura Suzanne Gordon, University of Maryland, College Park (DASH)

Moments of transcendence: A psychospiritual interpretation of psychic, conversion, and mystical experiences – 1998 M.Ed., Marie H. Bousquet, Acadia University

Beyond the near-death experience: An investigation of the effects of near-death experiences – 1996 PsyD, Patricia H. Carr, Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology (DASH)

L'épreuve de la preuve. La photographie et le phénomène des ovnis - 1994 MA(?), Jean-Phillipe Dain, Université Paris VIII, UFR Arts - Dep. Image Photographique (EUROUFO)

Event horizons of the psyche: Synchronicity, psychedelics, and the metaphysics of consciousness – 1993 PhD, David Bruce Albert, Jr., University of California, Riverside

The social dialogue of the near-death experience – 1992 PhD, Liane Gail Pedersen-Gallegos, University of Colorado at Boulder

The Relevance of Philosophy to Psychical Research: A Critical Examination of Claims and Methods – 1988 PhD, John Anthony Lord, University of Surrey

Archaeology and parapsychology – 1976 MA, Constance C. Cameron, California State University, Fullerton

An Investigation of the relationship between paranormal phenomena and altered states of consciousness – 1975 PhD, Justin Donald Fair, United States International University