Ramblings of an Armchair Skeptic

There are those amongst us who claim to have the ability to Astral Project . Also called Astral Travel or Out of Body Experience (OBE). Many have felt that at one time or another, their soul has left their body. Some simply float to the ceiling and say they can see their sleeping body below. Most OBEs occur when someone dies and their soul leaves their body to go to the "other side". Some claim that they can astral travel at will and go wherever they want to. In this amusing, um, I mean educational article , "expert" Jerry Gross says that not only does he project whenever and wherever he wants to but he can also teach this marvelous super power to anyone. Apparently we do it all the time without knowing it. You guessed it, it happens when we are fast asleep. What sane people call dreams, Gross calls an OBE. We have this ability in abundance as children but "lose" it somewhere along the way. Yeah, that would be called growing up and no longer believing in f...

March 31, 1848. What is so special about this date you ask? I’m glad you asked. I feel a story coming on. Once upon a time in Hydesville, New York, there lived two young sisters by the name of Kate and Margaret Fox. The house that the sisters lived in was reputed to be haunted. This was confirmed one night when the spirit that dwelled with the Fox’s began making its presence known. Banging and rapping noises would echo throughout the house effectively frightening the entire family. On the night in question, Kate Fox decided to try to communicate with the spirit. She challenged it to repeat a series of finger snaps and to rap out the ages of the girls. The ghost happily obliged and the modern spiritualist movement was henceforth born. From that night on, the Fox sisters were able to have conversations with the spook. These would consist of questions that were answered with one rap for “yes” and two raps for “no.” Or a number of raps would correspond with a letter of the alphabet. The sp...

This is what I imagine pitchfork wielding farmers are yelling into the sky after waking to find that their wheat fields have been vandalized by unearthly visitors. Crop circles first began appearing in the media in the mid 1970's when crude circles were found in farmer's fields in Southern England. These circles were a mystery until Doug Bower and Dave Chorley admitted to making the circles as a hoax. Since then, circles and other increasingly complex designs have been mysteriously forming all over the world. But is it so mysterious? There are those that study this phenomena and claim that the circles are being made by aliens wishing to send us messages. These people are called "cereologists” (after Ceres, the Roman goddess of vegetation). They have yet to provide any credible evidence for their claims. It's pretty self evident though that crop circles are man-made. Joe Nickell has done extensive studies and had the brilliant idea of creating a timeline and graph of al...

Look out! Modern medicine is trying to kill you. That's right. Every nurse, doctor and scientist is out for nothing but your blood and money. You'd best not catch a cough because I've heard that Nyquil is laced with toxins that enables the government to plant suggestions in your mind while you sleep. Big pharma is evil and is busy with over medicating the earth's inhabitants so they can keep making billions of dollars. So what's an uneducated public to do? It's okay. Don't panic. There are people out there who care about you and have the answers that big pharma and the government don't want you to know about. People like me who know about ancient cures. Cures that could potentially rid the world of such evils as cancer, autism and bad hair days. Like the natural cure for tummy aches which is as simple as rubbing a mixture of pig poop, cumin and peppermint tea on your stomach under a full moon whilst humming "Girl From Ipanema." Shhhhh. THEY don...

As you know, UFO is an acronym for Unidentified Flying Object. This simply means that you don’t know what the thing in the sky is. The key words here being “don’t know”. This is when a lot of people fall for the ad ignorantium fallacy which is the argument from ignorance and simply put means that you don’t know what it is therefore you do know what it is. That’s when you say “I can’t identify the thing in the sky, so therefore it must be an alien spaceship.” Wrong. You don’t what it is so therefore you don’t know what it is. Get it? Good because I’m getting repetitive. It might be an alien spaceship but it could also be (and likely is) many other things. Planes, clouds, earthly lights, stars, balloons, satellites, birds, etc. Many sightings and pictures have simply been the work of industrious hoaxers. I want to talk about a recent hoax that took place in Morristown , New Jersey on January 5, 2009. Joe Ruddy and Chris Russo decided to conduct a little social experiment. They wanted ...

Back in 1979 board chairman of McDonnell-Douglas aircraft, James S McDonnell, gave a $500,000.00 grant to Washington University. Thus was established the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research. This laboratory was to be headed up by physics professor Peter R. Phillips who already had a strong background in parapsychology. When James Randi heard of this, he immediately got the idea of testing some hypotheses. He was certain that the testers chosen could be fooled by a conjurer placed in the lab under the guise of being psychical gifted. Randi sent Phillips a list of caveats that he urged the professor to heed. Amongst these was the very important rule of not letting the subjects run the experiments by changing the protocols along with other suggestions that Randi has found to be a good way to rule out those who are using subterfuge to feign supernatural powers. James Randi is after all a gifted magician and conjurer and knows very well the ways of trickery. These rules were dismiss...

In 1988 Australia a phenomenon called channeling was becoming very popular indeed. Channeling is when an ancient spirit decides to enter a human body and speak through them. This is usually for the purpose of imparting some great wisdom that the spirit feels we need to know. It looks like a painful process and involves much writhing and speaking as if one just had good swift kick in the nether regions. Australia's channel 9 decided that things were getting a bit out of hand and thought they might be able to find a way to encourage some critical thinking in the populace. They contacted James Randi for some ideas and Carlos was born. Randi enlisted 19 year old Jose Luis Alvarez to play the part of a channeler who was being possessed by a 1000 year old spirit by the name of Carlos. Jose would give free performances to packed theatres. He spouted spiritual teachings and extolled the various powers of crystals. People lapped it up and worshipped the wise spirit and his nonsensical adv...