The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [52]
I persist: “Consistency … as in what, ninety-five percent, fifty-one percent?”
“A lot,” Moon rejoins.
Figure 7. Telephone to the Dead
“Frank’s Box,” also known as the “telephone to the dead,” rumored to have been first invented by Thomas Edison, is today constructed by a Colorado man named Frank Sumption. PHOTOGRAPH BY THE AUTHOR.
* * *
“A lot, as in…?” Our impromptu Q&A ended there, as the next session was about to start and I didn’t want to miss the lecture on “Quantum Mechanics: Is It Proving the Existence of the Paranormal?” by another ponytailed speculator with the uni-name Konstantinos.
That evening in my keynote address I explained how “priming” the brain to see or hear something increases the likelihood that the percepts will obey the concepts. I played a portion of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” first forward with the words on the screen: If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow / Don’t be alarmed now / It’s just a spring clean for the May queen / Yes, there are two paths you can go by / But in the long run / There’s still time to change the road you’re on. I joked that I’m not sure what the lyrics mean forward, but that when I was in high school they were deeply meaningful. Then I played this portion of the song backward with no words on the screen, and almost everyone heard “Satan,” with some also hearing “sex” or “666.” Finally, I played it again after priming their brains with the alleged lyrics on the screen. The auditory data jumped out of the visual primes, and everyone could now clearly hear: Oh, here’s to my sweet Satan / The one whose little path will make me sad / whose power is Satan / He’ll give you / Give you 666 / There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.12 The effect is stunning to audiences who, with their unprimed ears, can hear one or maybe two words, but when primed can make out the entire lyrical score.13
These are all examples of patternicity and agenticity, and the next day I put them to the test when Moon gave me a personal demo. With the telephone to the dead squawking away I tried to connect to my deceased father and mother, asking for any “validation” of a connection—name, cause of death … anything. I coaxed and cajoled. Nothing. Moon asked Tyler to intervene. Nothing. Moon said he heard something, but when I pressed him he came up with nothing. I willingly suspended my disbelief in hopes of talking to my parents whom I miss dearly. Nothing. I searched for any pattern I might find. Nothing. And that, I’m afraid, is my assessment of the paranormal. Nothing.
Agenticity and the Sensed-Presence Effect
One of the most effective means we have of understanding how the brain works is when it doesn’t work well, when something goes wrong, or under extreme stress or conditions. As an example of the latter, there is a phenomenon well known among mountain climbers, polar explorers, isolated sailors, and endurance athletes called the “third-man factor,” but what I call the sensed-presence effect. The sensed presence is sometimes described as a “guardian angel” that appears in extreme and unusual environments.14 Particularly in life-and-death struggles for survival in these exceptionally harsh climes, or under unusual strain or stress, the brain apparently conjures up help for physical guidance or moral support. The descriptive phrase third man comes from T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land”:
Who is the third who always walks beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together.
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded.
In his footnotes to these lines, Eliot explained that they “were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.”15 In fact, in Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton’s account it was a fourth man who accompanied