Real-Life X-Files (12 page)

The
Times Record News
editorial writers joined other skeptics in pointing out the real factors that can lead to the perception of a curse. Tacitly acknowledging selectivity,
U.S. News
conceded that the Kennedy family was “blessed and cursed all at once” (Kelly and Walsh 1999). And former JFK special counsel Ted Sorensen (1999), wrote: “The Kennedys are not accursed but blessed. True, they have endured, with remarkable religious faith, more than their proportionate ’share’ of pain (though that is never allotted by the law of averages anyway). But they have also been endowed with good genes, good brains, good looks, good health and good fortune, with both instincts and opportunities for serving their country and helping those less fortunate.”

In addition to the selective process, there is the sheer size of the Kennedy family. With nine children producing twenty –nine grandchildren, there have been increased opportunities for tragedy. Observes Temple University mathematics professor John Allen Paulos (1999), “If we look at large families we can sometimes find more death, disease and tragedy than is generally expected.”

Still another factor is the common tendency to connect the unconnected. Much like the impulse that prompts us to see pictures in clouds or other random forms, there is the impetus to find dubious relationships between events—a sort of connect –the –dots tendency that the
Times Record News
(1999) observed “seems to be one characteristic of human nature.” Asks the editorial, “When traffic accidents cluster around one intersection, would we blame our luck on the curse of the car gods or would we recognize that congestion or some other factor might play the major role in the number of accidents occurring there?”

The
News
joined others in pointing out the evident Kennedy “propensity for risk –taking” (Paulos 1999). Although Sorensen (1999) insists that the family is characterized by an adventurous rather than foolhardy
spirit, the line between the two often blurs. Michael Kennedy died as a result of the risky family pastime of “ski football”—a game the Aspen, Colorado, ski patrol had warned against (Thomas 1998,23). And a friend of JFK Jr. stated that the son of the thirty –fifth president “loved to dance on the edge” (Barlow 1999), a tendency that may have been involved in his chancing a nighttime flight. Apart from mere adventurousness, simply seeking political office obviously brings increased risk of assassination—a factor that belies the notion of a curse in the deaths of JFK and RFK.

And speaking of assassination, there is another factor that aids the perception of a curse: visibility. Paulos (1999) notes that “When a celebrity’s private life and death become public, news gets disseminated so rapidly and so thoroughly that we’re blinded to everyone else’s lives”—as happened with JFK’s assassination. Also, the Kennedy family’s involvement in various aspects of American society—an involvement that increases the family members’ visibility—can help foster “the perception of more misfortunes” (Paulos 1999).

Especially when taken together, these factors may help promote superstitious belief in a Kennedy curse, although it is never stated who or what has cursed them or why. But as presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (1999) said of the cumulative tragedies, the family’s willingness to carry on demonstrated “a love of life that’s just the opposite of giving in to a curse.” And conservative columnist William Saffire concluded (1999), “There is no curse that hangs over anybody. It’s against our idea of free will, whether you buy the Hope diamond or enter King Tut’s tomb.”

References

Acquistapace, Fred. 1991.
Miracles That Never Were: Natural Explanations of the Bible’s Supernatural Stories.
Santa Rose, Calif.: Eye –Opener, 39 –79.

The American Heritage Desk Dictionary.
1981. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, s.v. “superstition.”

Anthony, Ted. 1999. Litany of Kennedy tragedies seen as product of risk –taking lifestyles,
Buffalo News,
July 18.

Asimov, Isaac. 1968.
Asimov’s Guide to the Bible
, vol. 1. New York: Avon.

Barlow, John Perry. 1999. Appearance on
Larry King Live,
July 19.

Beck, Melinda, et al. 1984. A Kennedy shadow legacy?
Newsweek,
July 2, 25.

Blackman, W. Haden. 1988.
The Field Guide to North American Hauntings.
New York: Three Rivers, 92 –94.

Bryant, Alice, and Phyllis Galde. 1991.
The Message of the Crystal Skull
St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 49 –63, 203 –07.

Curse or hubris—Europe’s press mourns JFK Jr. 1999. London: Reuters, July 19.

Davis, John H. 1984.
The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster.
New York: McGraw – Hill.

Diamond of doom. 1976. In Perrott Phillips, ed.,
Out of This World
, vol. 1. n.p.: Phoebus, 47 –50.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. 1999. Appearance on
Tim Russert,
CNBC, July 24.

Graham, Lloyd M. 1979.
Deceptions and Myths of the Bible.
New York: Bell, 157 – 63.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 1991.
Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience.
New York: HarperCollins, 472 –74.

Irresponsible: The media should rethink the “Kennedy family curse.” 1999. Wichita Falls, Texas,
Times Record News,
July 20.

Keller, Werner. 1995.
The Bible as History,
2nd revised ed. New York: Barnes & Noble, 124.

Kelly, Brian, and Kenneth T. Walsh. 1999. The curse.
U.S. News & World Report,
July 26, 17 –21.

Kennedy, Ted. 1969. Live TV broadcast, July 25, text given in James E.T. Lange and Katherine DeWitt, Jr. 1992.
Chappaquiddick: The Real Story.
New York: St. Martin’s, 171 –75.

Kusche, Lawrence David. 1975.
The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Solved.
Reprinted Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1986.

MacDougall, Curtis D. 1983.
Superstition and the Press
. Buffalo: Prometheus, 206 –09.

Mitchell –Hedges, F.A. 1954.
Danger My Ally.
London: Elek, 243.

Nickell, Joe. 1995.
Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings.
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 41,117.

———. 1989.
The Magic Detectives.
Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 55 –56.

———. 1988.
Secrets of the Supernatural,
with John F. Fischer. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 29 –46.

Paulos,John Allen. 1999. Curse of the Kennedys?
http://abcnews.go.com/sec –tions/science/WhosCounting/paulos990720.html
, July 20.

Rather, Dan. 1999 CBS live broadcast, July 17.

Saffire, William. 1999. Appearance on
Tim Russert,
CNBC, July 24.

Salkin, Allen. 1999. Clan history is written in tears.
New York Post,
July 18, 12 – 13.

Sorensen, Theodore C. 1999. The Kennedy curse, and other myths.
New York Times,
July 23.

Thomas, Evan. 1998. The Camelot curse.
Newsweek,
Jan. 12,23 –29.

Chapter 10

For years a mysterious phenomenon has been plaguing southern English crop fields. Typically producing swirled, circular depressions in cereal crops, it has left in its wake beleaguered farmers and an astonished populace—not to mention befuddled scientists and would–be “investigators”—all struggling to keep apace with the proliferating occurrences and the equally proliferating claims made about them.

The Mystery and the Controversy

The circles range in diameter from as small as three meters (nearly ten feet) to some twenty–five meters (approximately eighty–two feet) or more. In addition to the simple circles that were first reported, there have appeared circles in formations; circles with rings, spurs, and other appurtenances; and yet more complex forms, including “pictographs” and even a crop triangle! While the common depression or “lay” pattern is spiral (either clockwise or counterclockwise), there are radial and even more complex lays (Delgado and Andrews 1989; Meaden 1989; “Field” 1990). In most cases, the circles’ matted pinwheel patterns readily distinguished them from fairy rings (rings of lush growth in lawns and meadows, caused by parasitic fungi) (Delgado and Andrews 1989). The possibility that they were due to the sweeping movements of snared or tethered animals, or rutting deer, seemed precluded by the absence of any tracks or trails of bent or broken stems. And the postulation of helicopters flying up–side–down was countered by the observation that such antics would produce not swirled circles, but crashed helicopters (“England” 1989; Grossman 1990).

A “scientific” explanation was soon attempted by George Terence Meaden, a onetime professor of physics who later took up meteorology as an avocation. In his book
The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries
, he claims, “Ultimately, it is going to be the theoretical atmospheric physicist who will successfully minister the full and correct answers.” Meaden’s notion is that the “circles effect” is produced by what he terms the “plasma vortex phenomenon.” He defines this as “a spinning mass of air which has accumulated a significant fraction of electrically charged matter.” When the electrically charged, spinning mass strikes a crop field, Meaden contends, it produces a neat crop circle (1989, 3, 10–11). Variant forms, he asserts, are also allowed by his postulated vortices. However, as even one of Meaden’s staunchest defenders concedes, “Natural descending vortices … are as yet unrecognized by meteorologists” (Fuller 1988). Meaden himself acknowledges that “some from among my professional colleagues who have expressed surprise at the discovery of the circles effect and questioned why it has not previously attracted the attention of scientists, prefer to deny its existence and reject the entire affair as a skillful hoax” (Meaden 1989,15).

In contrast to Meaden’s approach is that of Pat Delgado and Colin Andrews (1989), two engineers who have extensively studied and recorded the crop–circle phenomenon. The pages of their
Circular Evidence
are filled with digressions and irrelevancies—all calculated to foster mystery. Overall, Delgado and Andrews hint most strongly at the UFO hypothesis—perhaps not surprisingly, since both have been consultants to
Flying Saucer Review
(Grossman 1990). Although they profess “guarded views” about whether circles and rings have an extraterrestrial source, they frequently give the opposite impression. For example, they go out of their way to observe that a 1976 circle “appeared about seven weeks before a Mrs. [Joyce] Bowles had seen a UFO [and a silver–suited humanoid] just down the road.” Again, after visiting one circle Andrews met two teenagers, one of whom had earlier seen “an orange glowing object” nearby. Other mysterious lights and objects are frequently alluded to in connection with crop circles (Delgado and Andrews 1989, 17, 63, 98).

Almost predictably, a hybrid of the main theories has appeared in “eyewitness” form. Late one evening in early August 1989, or so they claimed, two young men witnessed a circle being formed near Margate, Kent. One of them, a nineteen–year–old, described “a spiraling vortex of flashing light” (a nod to Meaden et al.), which, however, “looked like an
upturned satellite TV dish with lots of flashing lights” (a gesture to flying saucer theorists). The youth kept a straight face while posing with the circle for a news photo (“A Witness” 1989–1990).

As the crop–circle phenomenon entered the decade of the nineties—bringing with it the emergence of ever more complex forms that earned the sobriquet “pictograms”—the main circular theorists rushed into print their various “Son of Crop Circles” sequels. For example, Paul Fuller and Jenny Randles (who are Meaden’s disciples, although, ironically, they are ufologists) followed their
Controversy of the Circles with Crop Circles: A Mystery Solved
. Several periodicals devoted to the phenomenon also sprang up, such as
The Cereologist, The Crop Watcher, and The Circular
, which was published by the Centre for Crop Circle Studies (Chorost 1991). If critics of the main theories were not capitalizing on an expanding market of interest in crop circles, they were nevertheless busily poring over the data and pointing out that the prevailing circle theories were, well, full of holes.

Data Analyses

Forensic analyst John F. Fischer and I launched an investigation into the crop–circle mystery. It soon seemed apparent that the crop–circle phenomenon had a number of potentially revealing characteristics. Cereologists—whether of the “scientific” or “paranormal” stripe—tend either to deny these characteristics or to posit alternative explanations for them, for the implications are serious. While any single attribute may be insufficient to identify a phenomenon, since other phenomena may share that feature, sufficient multiple qualities may allow one to rule in or out certain hypotheses so as to make an identification.

The identification alluded to is hoaxing. The characteristics that point to it include an escalation in frequency, the geographic distribution, an increase in complexity over time, and what we call the “shyness effect,” as well as a number of lesser features.

An Escalation in Frequency

This aspect of the phenomenon has been well reported. Although there have been reports of circles and rings in earlier years and in various countries—e.g., circles of reefs in Australia in 1966 and a burned circle of grass in Connecticut in 1970—only a few had the flattened swirl feature, and not many of those were well documented at the time (Delgado and
Andrews 1989, 179–89; Story 1980, 370–71). In any case, by the mid 1970s, what are now regarded as “classic” crop circles had begun to appear. In 1976, swirled circles in tall grass were shown near a Swiss village by a man who claimed he was regularly visited by extraterrestrials (Kinder 1987), and Delgado and Andrews (1989) claim an instance in England that same year. When Delgado saw his first circles in 1981, his response was “to share the experience with other people, so I contacted several national papers, along with the BBC and ITN.” Then, he says, “Local papers jumped on the bandwagon as soon as they could get the story into print” (Delgado and Andrews 1989, 11–17).