IN UPSTATE NEW YORK in 1848 there lived two little girls, Margaret and Kate Fox, about whom marvelous stories were told. In their presence could be heard mysterious rapping noises, later understood to be coded messages from the spirit world: Ask the spirits anything-one rap signifies no, three raps signify yes. The Fox sisters became a sensation, embarked on nationwide tours organized by their elder sister, and became the focus of rapt attention from European intellectuals and literati such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The “manifestations” brought about by the Fox sisters are the origins of modern spiritualism, the belief that by some special effort of will a few gifted people are able to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Keene’s associates owe a substantial debt to the Fox sisters.
Forty years after the first “manifestations,” provoked by an uneasy conscience, Margaret Fox produced a signed confession. The raps were made-in a standing position with no apparent effort or movement-by cracking the toe and ankle joints, very much like cracking knuckles. “And that is the way we began. First, as a mere trick to frighten mother, and then, when so many people came to see us children, we were ourselves frightened, and for self-preservation forced to keep it up. No one suspected us of any trick because we were such young children. We were led on by my sister purposely and by mother unintentionally.” The eldest sister, who organized their tours, seems to have been fully conscious of the fraud. Her motive was money.
The most instructive aspect of the Fox case is not that so many people were bamboozled; but rather that after the hoax was confessed, after Margaret Fox made a public demonstration, on the stage of a New York theater, of her “preternatural big toe,” many who had been taken in still refused to acknowledge the fraud. They pretended that Margaret had been coerced into the confession by some rationalist Inquisition. People are rarely grateful for a demonstration of their credulity.
IN 1869 THE FIGURE of a larger-than-life stone man was unearthed by a farmer “while digging a well” near the village of Cardiff in western New York. Clergymen and scientists alike asserted that it was a fossilized human being from ages past, perhaps a confirmation of the Biblical account: “There were giants in those days.” Many commented on the detail of the figure, seemingly far finer than a mere artisan could have carved from stone. Why, there were even networks of tiny blue veins. But others were less impressed, including Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, who declared it to be a pious fraud, and execrable sculpture to boot. A meticulous examination then revealed it to be of very recent origin, whereupon it emerged that the Cardiff Giant was merely a statue, a hoax engineered by George Hull of Binghamton, who described himself as “tobacconist, inventor, alchemist, atheist,” a busy man. The “blue veins” were a natural pattern in the sculpted rock. The object of the deception was to fleece tourists.
But this uncomfortable revelation did not faze the American entrepreneur P. T. Barnum, who offered $60,000 for a three-month lease on the Cardiff Giant. When Barnum failed to secure it for traveling exhibition (the owners were making too much money to give it up), he simply had a copy made and exhibited it, to the awe of his customers and the enrichment of his pocketbook. The Cardiff Giant that most Americans have seen is this copy. Barnum exhibited a fake fake. The original is today languishing at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Both Barnum and H. L. Mencken are said to have made the depressing observation that no one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. The remark has worldwide application. But the lack is not in intelligence, which is in plentiful supply; rather, the scarce commodity is systematic training in critical thinking.
IN THE EARLY YEARS of the twentieth century there was a horse in Germany who could read, do mathematics and exhibit a deep knowledge of world political affairs. Or so it seemed. The horse was called Clever Hans. He was owned by Wilhelm von Osten, an elderly Berliner whose character was such, everyone said, that fraud was out of the question. Delegations of distinguished scientists viewed the equine marvel and pronounced it genuine. Hans would reply to mathematical problems put to him with coded taps of his foreleg, and would answer nonmathematical questions by nodding his head up and down or shaking it side to side in the conventional Western way. For example, someone would say, “Hans, how much is twice the square root of nine, less one?” After a moment’s pause Hans would dutifully raise his right foreleg and tap five times. Was Moscow the capital of Russia? Head shake. How about St. Petersburg? Nod.
The Prussian Academy of Sciences sent a commission, headed by Oskar Pfungst, to take a closer look; Osten, who believed fervently in Hans’s powers, welcomed the inquiry. Pfungst noticed a number of interesting regularities. Sometimes, the more difficult the question, the longer it took Hans to answer; or when Osten did not know the answer, Hans exhibited a comparable ignorance; or when Osten was out of the room, or when the horse was blindfolded, no correct answers were forthcoming. But other times Hans would get the right answer in a strange place, surrounded by skeptics, with Osten not only out of the room, but out of town. The solution eventually became clear. When a mathematical question was put to Hans, Osten would become slightly tense, for fear Hans would make too few taps. When Hans, however, reached the correct number of taps, Osten unconsciously and imperceptibly nodded or relaxed-imperceptibly to virtually all human observers, but not to Hans, who was rewarded with a sugar cube for correct answers. Even teams of skeptics would watch Hans’s foot as soon as the question was put and make gestural or postural responses when the horse reached the right answer. Hans was totally ignorant of mathematics, but very sensitive to unconscious nonverbal cues. Similar signs were unknowingly transmitted to the horse when verbal questions were posed. Clever Hans was aptly named; he was a horse who had conditioned one human being and discovered that other human beings he had never before met would provide him the needed cues. But despite the unambiguous nature of Pfungst’s evidence, similar stories of counting, reading and politically sage horses, pigs and geese have continued to plague the gullible of many nations. [2]
ONE OF THE MOST striking apparent instances of extrasensory perception is the precognitive experience, when a person has a compelling perception of an imminent disaster, the death of a loved one, or a communication from a long-lost friend, and the predicted event then transpires. Many who have had such experiences report that the emotional intensity of the precognition and its subsequent verification provide an overpowering sense of contact with another realm of reality. I have had such an experience myself. Many years ago I awoke in the dead of night in a cold sweat, with the certain knowledge that a close relative had suddenly died. I was so gripped with the haunting intensity of the experience that I was afraid to place a long-distance phone call, for fear that the relative would trip over the telephone cord (or something) and make the experience a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, the relative is alive and well, and whatever psychological roots the experience may have, it was not a reflection of an imminent event in the real world.
[2] For example, Lady Wonder, a horse from Virginia, could answer questions by arranging lettered wood blocks with her nose. Since she also replied to queries posed privately to her owner, she was pronounced not only literate but telepathic by the parapsychologist J. B. Rhine (