You Know That You Know That You Know

Through the span of a person's life there are numerous time stamped events that define our paradigm shifts. They are personal, private, and rarely discussed. Just when you think you've figured out your place in the cosmos, BAM, the Universe has other intentions and the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper. My stubbornness co-conspiring with arrogance led me to believe I was cocooned in a fortress of irrefutable truths that later proved to be a house of cards. Once bitten twice shy as the band Warrant put it, I became cautious of any opinion or statement that alluded to the certainty of innumerable findings. How can we definitively stake a claim that can withstand the on slot of other's scrutiny? Can we 'uphold these truths to be self evident' even though they can be argued through personal interpretation? Can an institution or governed body vote a truth into existence (hello, Council of Nicea)? Through the process of verification I discovered that no one has the monopoly on truth and just knowing that actually freed me of the entanglements that were drowning me in my own pool of logic and reasoning. An example of this is the murder of Cincinnati Police officer Donald Martin, March 11, 1961.

My father was a fellow police officer and friend of Officer Martin and devoted many man hours on and off the clock to chasing down leads in the hopes of bringing his killer to justice. I'm not privvy to the how, but my father found a man of interest involving the case. The man in question immediately became suspect number one when his opening comment was, "I know what you're here for. It's about that cop that got killed Saturday night; actually it was early Sunday morning." Through strategic questioning, my father brought him in and passed him on to be processed and questioned by the lead detectives. He was all ready to hoist a beer in celebration when in passing the detective informed him that the suspect was released. He smugly smiled and said, "You got nothing, Franklin." My dad never found that man again and for years it has weighed on his mind. The case remained unsolved until around 1995 our local channel 12 ran a story revealing the killer's identity. My dad looked at the name and told me they had the wrong guy. I contacted Deborah Dixon, the Crimestoppers reporter covering the story, and passed on what I knew. She spoke with my father and assured him that the suspect's wife said he confessed and everybody was happy that this could be put to rest, besides she was going on the air in less than two hours and she couldn't change the story even if she wanted to. That wasn't very comforting knowing that truth is contingent upon deadlines.

Ten years later in October 2005, authorities said they had identified the man responsible for killing a Cincinnati police officer with his own gun 44 years ago, but the suspect died several years ago. They did not release his name but it wasn't the man they were so adamantly convinced was responsible because of his wife's corroboration. My father wrote the police chief and asked for the first and last letter of the suspect's last name. He received no response and stated to me that it was time to let it go. He knew he had him and that was good enough for him. So my father's personal experience became his cornerstone of truth. Regardless of other's conclusions through the years he felt validated because his own spirit took solace in the knowledge that he knew that he knew that he knew. This prompted thinking about my recent involvement in paranormal investigations and how evidence is determined scientifically sound enough to present to the world or merely chalked up as a personal experience. As with any discussion where others are equally as passionate about their own positions, it can be a hard tango.

Growing up my family was limited to information on the paranormal. It wasn't talked about in our home even though we were constantly being besieged by things that go bump in the night. Leonard Nimoy, of In Search Of, was the closest we had to an explanation regarding the spirit world and the mysteries of the unknown. The mid 1980's brought Art Bell to the airwaves and we began to realize that we were not alone. Perhaps we weren't crazy or cursed as some family and friends suggested. One of those paradigm shifts I spoke of happened on Halloween night in the mid 1970's. Enjoying my well earned candy and watching 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,' an ambulance passed our home. My mother got up, went to the closet and started putting her shoes on. My father asked her what she was doing and she simply stated that the ambulance was for Jenny, my sister who was out appropriately raising hell that night. The eerie silence was deafening. You could tell my dad was uncomfortable and was venturing into uncharted territory. He quietly asked her to put her jacket and shoes away to no avail. After the show was over the ambulance raced back by our home heading towards civilization, you could cut the tension with a knife. Finally after about an hour he settled on every parent's trump card and forcefully interjected, "You're scaring the children!" My mother just stared at him, and then the phone rang. We all stared at it like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. My father answered it while my mom was putting on her jacket. My sister Jenny was in the hospital. She spent ten days in a comma from a fall she took toilet papering a house. I looked at the world and whatever was opening my closet door at night differently from that moment on. How can I ever prove scientifically that my mother knew through whatever medium of intuition, divine intervention, or "the sight," that she knew that she knew that she knew? I can't, but I can historically prove through my witness of the events that it happened.

I earnestly researched all I could about the unknown after that. At the time pickings were slim. All we had were the sensational references like The Amityville Horror which was America's first real coming out of the closet experience with the other side that dealt with a physical haunt and not a demonic possession or influences like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. England was a hot spot for haunts and had been for centuries so stories from across the pond about investigators and haunted locations found their way to my book shelf next to my Hardy Boy's collection. One such English investigator I tried to follow but never really understood was Andrew Green.

Green had his first personal paranormal experience in 1944 at the age of 17 when he accompanied his father who was called to inspect a home that was built in 1883. While there, Green felt invisible hands helping him to the top of a seventy foot tower and upon reaching the rooftop he heard a whispering encouraging him to climb over the parapet to the garden below. His father grabbed him before he could make the fatal fall. Intrigued by that and other events, his father inquired with the local police about this building and found that twenty suicides and one murder had taken place there. All had occurred by jumping or being thrown off the tower to their deaths.

Other strange occurrences happened there at 16 Montpelier Road like a room that had a stifling sulfur smell. The plaster and flooring were replaced but the odor remained. A photo that the young Green took from the outside shows a shadowy figure at the window of the room in question. I have always been disturbed by nay sayers that feel the need to throw wet blankets on events that defy rational and Mr. Green takes the prize. He is either the most skeptical or ignorant of investigators I've ever read about. How can you have a personal experience that unknowingly coincides with twenty deaths at the same location and in the same manner in which you are prompted by an unseen force and still conclude that 'most disturbing hauntings are not genuine impressions left at a site, but created by imagination and psychokinesis, which literally means 'movement from the mind' on the part of the living?' Furthermore, he believes that a successful exorcism alleviates the mental conditions that create a haunting. Mr. Greene never addressed his mental or emotional state upon entering that building nor did he tell us how he happened to imagine the same thing as twenty other suicide victims. He has the experience, a photo that suggests something 'other' was watching, and verification of past history that coincides with his event….but he lacked scientific proof.

Wikipedia defines Scientific Evidence as that which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical and properly documented in accordance with a scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry. To be empirical, or empirically based, that is, you need be dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. In conventional terms these are described as sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. Other senses are temperature, pain, balance and acceleration, and body awareness. Sounds pretty damned personal to me and all can be subjective and open to personal interpretation and misrepresentation, but at whose determination or conclusions? As my friend Marty asked, "How many bishops have to agree on a heresy before it becomes the truth?"

The recent explosion of paranormal TV shows has people debating yet again over what can be believed or proven. At least it's getting people to open up and talk. Some like the scientific approach that consists of instruments used to measure electromagnetic fields, ambient air, and infrared imaging along with old school audio, film, and video. Still others like the touchy feely approach of mediums and psychics combined with the technical instrumentation approach. It still comes down to personal experiences. People ask for help because they are experiencing something beyond their scope of understanding. As investigators we can verify their experiences if we experience events of like manner or capture anomalies such as photos, EVP's or OAP's through audio recordings that suggest a presence. We still can't be sure even with hard evidence that the spirits captured are grounded, attached to an object or person in the home, or came with the investigators themselves? Who's to say that any findings are conclusive? No one. The variables can not be contained. We have only to trust our instinct and experiences however frightfully unconventional they may be.

The world laughed at the idea that giant hairy beasts were lurking in the Virunga Mountains until Robert von Beringe discovered the mountain gorillas there in 1902. There's hope for us Fortean kooks yet! The point is that no matter what evidence we obtain in the field of paranormal research we will always fall under the category of inconclusive because we will never be able to reproduce our findings under any type of scientific method to the satisfaction of those that can't be confused by the facts because they already made up their minds. When it comes to the other side, just like love, you just know that you know that you know.