by Stephen

(Author's note: this is second in a series of con reports in which I detail my adventures at Dragon*Con 2009, a large science fiction, fantasy, you-name-it convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Apologies for any inaccuracies; I'm relying on memories alone.)

On Sunday morning of DragonCon, I was glancing through my schedule while waiting for a panel on paranormal research to start. Running my finger down the page, I suddenly realized I'd made a mistake– the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast was about to start in the hotel next door! I ran out of the room and through the connecting tube between the two hotels only to find that I was too late; the door to the Skeptic Track room was locked. I sighed, turned around, and discovered Joe Nickell standing behind me.

For those who aren't familiar with Joe Nickell, he is one of the few full-time professional skeptical investigators in the field– possibly the only one. He's hunted Bigfoot, ghosts, crop circles, and UFOs, possibly all in the same day. He's appeared on Penn & Teller's "Bullshit!", and has written at least sixteen books, including an authoritative work on the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin.

I'd met him briefly before one of the X-Track lectures I'd attended that morning. He had done a joint lecture with parapsychological researcher and cryptozoologist Graham Watkins on cryptozoology that morning, and I'd been impressed with how cordially he'd handled Watkins, identifying him as an "old college buddy." They had discussed possible explanations for the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, and I thought that the friendly atmosphere had helped both of them.

Nickell and I started to chat. A talented sleight-of-hand magician, he accepted my business card, then said, "How strange. Yours is printed on both sides." When I protested that it wasn't, he flipped the card over to reveal printing on both sides. When I still balked, he repeated the demonstration to show that my card had no printing on it at all. I've got to figure out how to do that. (No, don't tell me.)

He mentioned that he was hoping to investigate a local site that afternoon. (He asked me not to give details on the location, since the investigation is ongoing.) I seized the chance and asked if he needed an assistant. He didn't need one, he said, but I was welcome to accompany him if I felt like it. Oh, hell, yes. OK, I'll say it: while everyone else was sitting around TALKING skepticism, I would be helping one of the foremost skeptical investigators on a real investigation. This was worth the whole trip!

On our way out of the hotel, Nickell made a brief stop. While I was waiting for him, I looked up to see Dave Tango and Steve Gonsalves walking by. They smiled and nodded at me, with Gonsalves' smile looking a bit strained. I don't know if they saw my Skeptical Viewer T-shirt (get your very own!), were responding to my goggle-eyed stare, or if they'd have reacted that way to anyone. It added a touch of surreality to an afternoon already tending toward the strange.

We stopped for lunch on our way to the investigation site. Over soups and salads (the healthiest meal I had at DragonCon), we mostly discussed his career. He's been a poet, a fugitive from justice, a political activist, and a private detective, among a thousand other identities and occupations. After investigating, we returned to the convention and parted ways.

That evening, I attended a lecture by Nickell and Ben Radford, who is the managing editor of Skeptical Enquirer and a paranormal investigator based in New Mexico. At the beginning, Radford started to tell a story about attending a panel by Patrick Burns of Haunted Evidence, only to be brought up short by Burns announcing his presence in the audience. "Oh shit!" replied Radford. "You're here!" He then politely praised Burns for what he'd liked about the talk.

Nickell told about a few of his investigations of ghost sites. One of them concerned a family who complained about ghostly footsteps in the middle of the night. Nickell solved this mystery by knocking on the door of their neighbor, who lived on the other side of a duplex with them. The neighbor worked a night shift, and they had been hearing him walk up and down the stairs in his side of the building!

Radford told about a reputedly haunted theater in New Mexico which he had investigated. Supposedly a performance of "A Christmas Carol" in the 1970s had been wrecked by the angry spirit of a small boy, who had caused actors to trip and lights to blow. Frankly, I would have shrugged and said "That's show biz," but Radford took it a step further. First, he determined that the performance could not have taken place on the date stated in the original story, since the theater was a porn movie palace at the time. Next, he tracked down the performance that the anecdote must have been referring to, and interviewed some of the original performers and crew, who remembered nothing unusual about the evening. A review of the performance in a local newspaper mentioned nothing out of the ordinary. The blown lights and on-stage pratfalls simply hadn't happened. Radford contrasted his investigation with that of a group of ghost hunters, who came in with cameras and EMF detectors, and came away with "proof" consisting of orb photos and EMF readings.

At one point, a woman in the audience sitting near Burns raised her hand to speak. Choked with emotion, she denounced the skeptics as smug and superior, claiming that we had mocked paranormal believers and called them "ignorant". Both Nickell and Radford denied this, but the woman was not mollified. Actually, Nickell had been using the word "ignorant" earlier in a very different context– he'd been explaining the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. Let's say, for example, that I heard a strange noise in the house in the middle of the night and had no idea what it was. If I then proclaimed that since I didn't know what made the sound, it must have been a ghost, then I would be guilty of the logical fallacy of the "argumentum ad ignorantum"– the argument from ignorance. In Nickell's words, "I don't know what it is, therefore I know what it is." Apparently the woman in the audience had not understood this term. Ironic.

At the end of the talk, just when the panel had to leave the room to clear the way for the next session, Patrick Burns rose to argue. He claimed, loudly, that this session hadn't looked at quality ghost hunters, and that good ghost hunters don't use EMF detectors to detect ghosts, but instead to rule out electromagnetic sensitivity. The meeting broke up around him at that point. Apparently he continued that discussion with the presenters and other skeptics there, but I'd heard that argument a few times before, so I headed out.

Of course, later our favorite ghost hunters tweeted their understanding of the events: that it had all been about them, and that Nickell and Radford had claimed that their show was all about demons and entirely hoaxed. Actually, the show had only come up very briefly, and neither panelist made any allegations about hoaxing or demons. The panel was about ghost hunters in general, not about Ghost Hunters the TV show. As the song says, "you probably think this song is about you…"

Ah well. That's show biz.