Real-Life X-Files (28 page)

Implementation of the Pure Food and Drug Act forced many medicines off the market and compelled others to change their advertising or product content, or both. But sale of patent and proprietary medicines continued, including Princess Tonic Hair Restorer (which was guaranteed to be “absolutely harmless”), Dr. Worden’s Female Pills (for “Female Diseases and Troubles, Peculiar to the Sex and Women’s Delicate System”), a product called Vin Vitae (or “Wine of Life,” a “tonic stimulant” that listed among its ingredients port wine and coca eaves, the source of cocaine), Dr. McBain’s Blood Pills (“a blood cleanser and purifier”), and Princess brand Hair Restorer and Bust Developer (both reassuringly described as completely harmless and sporting money-back guarantees). Such products were sold by mail-order companies (Sears 1909), drug and other retail stores, and traveling salesmen. One of the latter was “Snake-Oil Johnnie” McMahon (great-grandfather of former
Free Inquiry
editor Tim Madigan), who sold his wares in New Jersey during the 1920s.

Today, nonprescription medicines are more carefully regulated, but a new form of snake oil is on the rise. Broadly termed “alternative medicine,” it includes treatments ranging from the dubious to the bizarre, from acupuncture to zone therapy (Raso 1996). Some of the new versions of snake-oil-like aromatherapy oils and the resurgent homeopathic “remedies” (which supposedly restore the “vital force”)—even come in bottles.

References

Craigie, William A., and James R. Hurlbert. 1944.
A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, IV: 2161.

Fowler, Gene, ed. 1997.
Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows.
Santa Fe, N.M.: Ancient City.

Holbrook, Stewart H. 1959.
The Golden Age of Quackery.
New York: Macmillan.

Killing snakes for a living. 1880.
The Spectator
(Hamilton, Ontario), Aug. 7, 3.I am most grateful to Ranjit Sandhu for discovering this significant 1880 newspaper article.

Lewis, Clarence O. 1991.
The Seven Sutherland Sisters.
Lockport, N.Y.: Niagara County Historical Society.

Marquart, John. 1867.
Six Hundred Receipts
… Reprinted Paducah, Ky.: Troll.

Morris, William, and Mary Morris. 1988. Morris
Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origin.
2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 535.

Munsey, Cecil. 1970.
The Illustrated Guide to Collecting Bottles.
New York: Hawthorn, 65-75.

Nickell, Joe. 1978. “Notes on James Harrison Murphy and His Wife, Martha Baker Murphy," in Lucille N. Haney,
Lineage of John Curren Nickell and Emma Golden Murphy
(Lexington, Ky.: Privately printed, 1987), 71-72.

Raso, Jack. 1996.
The Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare.
Loma Linda, Calif.: National Council Against Health Fraud.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1909.
Consumers Guide.
Reprinted New York: Ventura, 1979, 380-403.

Chapter 26

Built between 1845 and 1853, Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, New Brunswick, is considered “one of the most fascinating ecclesiastical buildings in Canada” (Trueman 1975). Certainly with its imposing spire and lofty interior arches it represents an excellent example of Gothic Revival architecture (
figure 26.1
). Supposedly, the Anglican sanctuary also has a resident spirit.

Some describe only a vague sense of a presence, while others say a shadowy figure has been sighted—reportedly the ghost of Mrs. John Medley, wife of the first bishop. Just who is alleged to have seen her usually goes unreported, but according to a former assistant curate, the Reverend David Mercer, “She’s supposed to come up Church Street and enter by the west door. What she does after that, I really don’t know” (Trueman 1975, 85). One source of apparent late vintage attempted to supply the motive: in life the faithful Mrs. Medley had been accustomed to carry her husband’s dinner to him at the church, a practice she supposedly rehearsed after she passed into spirithood (“Haunted” 1999). Unfortunately, this charming tale was debunked when I visited the Medleys’ graves, located just beyond the east end of the cathedral (
figure 26.2
).As carved inscriptions made clear, it was the bishop who passed first, in 1892, his widow living on to 1905. Even a local storyteller, who had often repeated the anecdote about the dutiful ghost but who accompanied me to the grave site, quickly conceded that the tale lost rationale in light of this evidence (“Haunted” 1999). Another “it-is-said” source claims Mrs. Medley’s alleged visitations are malevolent, resulting from her extreme dislike of her husband’s successor (Dearborn 1996), while still another states that the perambulating spirit merely “surveys the Cathedral, as if in wonderment, and then disappears” (Colombo 1988).Such variant tales are an obvious indication of the human tendency for legend-making.

Figure 26.1. “Haunted” Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, New
Brunswick, Canada.

Figure 26.2. Graves of Bishop John Medley and his wife, the latter’s ghost being reported to haunt the sanctuary.

I talked with two elderly churchgoers (each with about fortyfive years’ membership) and a young tour guide, none of whom had ever seen a ghost in the church. The latter stated that the notion the cathedral was haunted was not supported by current parishioners and was largely regarded as folklore (Meek 1999). The impetus for ghostly inklings may well have been the cathedral’s own “spooky atmosphere” and indeed “haunted air”—an effect stemming from the somber setting and play of subdued light and shadow, and heightened by the presence of a stone cenotaph, its figure of Bishop Medley recumbent in death (Trueman 1975). (See
figure 26.3
.) Such an atmosphere, admits one writer, is “enough to spark the most dormant imagination” (Dearborn 1996).

Figure 26.3. Stone cenotaph of Bishop Medley, which helps add to “spooky atmosphere” of the cathedral.

References

Colombo, John Robert. 1988.
Mysterious Canada: Strange Sights, Extraordinary Events, and Peculiar Places
. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.

Dearborn, Dorothy. 1996.
Legends, Oddities & Mysteries … in New Brunswick
. St. John, N.B.: Neptune, 15-16.

“Haunted Hike” tour guide. 1999. Personal communication. Fredericton, N.B., June 28.

Meek, Hilary. 1999. Personal communication, June 28.

Trueman, Stuart. 1975.
Ghosts, Pirates and Treasure Trove: The Phantoms That Haunt New Brunswick
. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 84-85.

Chapter 27

On Friday, October 27,1995, the television program
Unsolved Mysteries
aired a segment, “Kentucky Visions,” that included investigative work by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. The popular, prime-time television series had requested CSICOP’s opinion of some “miraculous” photographs taken at a recent Virgin Mary sighting at a hillside spot in central Kentucky. This was my first significant case as Senior Research Fellow—or as the narrator termed me, “Paranormal Investigator” (a “P.I.” nonetheless).

The photographs were made by a Sunday school teacher who had visited the Valley Hill site (near Bardstown, Kentucky) with eight girls from her class. I did not see the photographs until the day I was brought on location for filming, but I was sent color photocopies of them in advance. The lack of reproductive quality put me at more of a disadvantage with some photos than with others. I did recognize that the claimed “faces of Jesus and Mary” in one photo were simply due to random, out-of-focus patterns of light and shadow caused by mishandling of the film pack. (More on that later.) I also recognized in another photo the now common effect at Marian apparition sites, a phenomenon known as the “golden door.” This is an arched-door shape, filled with golden light and believed by some to be the doorway to heaven mentioned in Revelation 4:1. In fact, as explained in an earlier
Skeptical Inquirer
(winter 1993), it is simply an artifact of the Polaroid OneStep camera, which when flooded with bright light (as when pointed at the sun or a halogen lamp), produces a picture of the camera’s own aperture (Nickell 1993a) (
figure 27.1
). This was codiscovered by Georgia Skeptics members Dale Heatherington and Anson Kennedy, who tutored me in making such photos. (Together we have wasted much Polaroid film, all in the interest of scientific experimentation.)