Author: Massimo Polidoro
Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the paranormal, author, lecturer, and co-founder and head of CICAP, the Italian skeptics group. His website is at www.massimopolidoro.com.
Conspiracy Theories: A Call to Adventure
Conspiracy theories are undoubtedly among the most effective and engaging stories capable of provoking intense emotions. From the idea that the Earth is flat to the belief the Moon landing was staged on a film setânot to mention theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the attacks on September 11, 2001âconspiratorial narratives …
The Double-Edged Sword of Storytelling
Once upon a time, in a distant land, a dark evil forceâled by a puppet master hiding his true nature behind an appearance of firmness and altruismâspread its terror. Only a small band of enlightened people, who saw beyond appearances, had the strength to rebel, trying to bring freedom back to the good people oppressed …
Tribal Thinking: Exposing Ourselves to Potentially Deadly Risks
âAll the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,â wrote William Shakespeare in As You Like It. A poetic license, to be sure, but one that seems to have a scientific counterpart. Three centuries after Shakespeare, Canadian-born sociologist Erving Goffman devoted much of his work to studying how people try to …
Believe It or Die!
Certain beliefs that seem absurd and nonsensical to many of us, especially because they seem to go against all evidence, start to make sense when we realize that for each member of the human species, it is often more important to be seen as a good member of its group than it is to recognize …
The Mystery of the Vegetable Lamb
There was a time when people believed lambs grew on trees. Sir John Mandeville, an English knight who lived during the reign of Edward III in the middle of the fourteenth century, writes in his memoirs of the many journeys over thirty-four years that led him to discover the remotest places in the then-known world, …
How Uncertainty Fosters Magical Thinking
Uncertainty fosters magical thinking. âPsychologically, the realization that one does not know or that one lacks certain information equals the realization that this gap in information must be filled,â Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones wrote in the first handbook of anomalistic psychology (Zusne and Jones 1989, 13). In such cases, one experiences a state …
The âFailedâ Psychic: A Sad Story and a Warning
In January 1981, U.S. television and newspapers began to pay attention to a young man who introduced himself with the mysterious and exotic name of âSong Chaiâ and claimed to possess extraordinary psychokinetic abilities. The young man recounted that he had been in Tibet for years, where a spiritual master had taught him to discover …
This article is available for free to all.Undercover in a Madhouse: The Extraordinary Story of Nellie Bly
In September 1887, New York newspapers published the story of a lost girl who was behaving strangely and was about to be locked up in Blackwellâs Island, the asylum of the city. The New York Times spoke of the girlâs face as âalmost haggard in its palenessâ and talked of the âwild, hunted look in …
This article is available for free to all.The Dreams of Our Ancestors
One criticism often directed at skeptics is that they take away mystery from the world. In reality, what is taken away by skeptical investigations are often illusions, deceptions, self-deception, and frauds. After these are taken away, true mysteries still abound on our planetâand they can be found anywhere, even in a long-forgotten cave. It was …
This article is available for free to all.The Mandela Effect: How False Memories Are Created
Have you ever heard the phrase, âPlay it again, Samâ? Many remember it as Ingrid Bergmanâs most famous line in the movie Casablanca. Upon review, however, it turns out that Bergman actually said: âPlay it, Sam. Play âAs Time Goes By.ââ Yet many remember the phrase as âPlay it again, Sam,â which was never uttered. …
This article is available for free to all.The Fabulous Land of Punt
We have Queen Hatshepsut, fifth sovereign of the eighteenth dynasty, who reigned in Egypt between 1479 and 1458 BCE, to thank that scholars and travelers have always been fascinated by an elusive place called the Land of Punt. In fact, the lost land has been mentioned several times over the course of two thousand years …
The Elusive Yorkshire Ripper: A Case of Confirmation Bias
Between 1975 and 1980, terror gripped the northwest of England. A serial killer, who with little imagination the newspapers christened âThe Yorkshire Ripper,â identified women alone on the streets in the evening, some of them prostitutes, and convinced (or forced) them into his car. The predator, armed with a hammer and screwdriver, killed thirteen women …
How Insecurity and Disinformation Create Conspiracy Theorists
On August 29, 2020, about 18,000 people gathered in Berlin, Germany, either denying the existence of COVID-19 or contesting decisions taken to contain it. Among the gatherers were conspiracy theorists of all sorts, chemtrail believers, followers of QAnon, anti-vaccination advocates, homeopaths, people like Robert Kennedy Jr., and right-wing extremists who, waving Third Reich flags, attempted …
This article is available for free to all.What Would Randi Do?
A few months after Randiâs passing, it still is not easy to talk about him. We have often heard and read about his extraordinary adventures and exploits: the unmasking of Peter Popoff, the Carlos Hoax, the Alpha Project, the Geller caper, the psychic surgeons of the Philippines, the âWater with Memoryâ affair, and so on. …
Atlantis under Ice? Part 2
Atlantis? It is hidden in plain sight, under the thick ice of Antarctica! This claim was made popular in the 1990s by pseudoarcheological theories in many popular books. But the original idea was born in Italy in 1974, when engineer Flavio Barbiero first mentioned it in his book A Civilization under Ice. The premise is …
This article is available for free to all.Atlantis under Ice? Part 1
Atlantis is seen by many as the lost civilization par excellence, the âmotherâ of all civilizations. It is a pity that, despite much searching of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean for the mysterious island described by Plato, nothing convincing has ever been found. Neither unknown submerged archaeological remains nor sunken continents have been …
This article is available for free to all.Stop the Epidemic of Lies! Thinking about COVID-19 Misinformation
Since the coronavirus pandemic started, conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and fake news about COVID-19 have spread. Is it true that the virus escaped a Chinese military laboratory? Or was it created in an American laboratory just to hit China? Is it true that it was foreseen by a novel, by Nostradamus, on The Simpsons, or by …
This article is available for free to all.King Arthur Found?
Was the castle of King Arthur found? Thatâs what newspaper headlines stated some time ago in reference to excavations conducted on the archaeological site of Tintagel, north of Cornwall in England. The town has always been a destination for fans of the legendary figure of the sovereign, but the remains of the existing castle date …
Living on Air? The Crazy Ideas and Consequences of Breatharians
Could there be any more extreme beliefs than those held by people who are convinced that the earth is flat or that we live in a computer-generated matrix? Some people are convinced that it is possible to live without eating or drinkingâliterally claiming to be âexisting on air.â These âbreathariansâ claim to be feeding on …
This article is available for free to all.The Trapped Ghost
Cover Image: The late medium Eddie Burks along with the author (at the time beardless and still with his Medusa-like hair). The old man sitting in a chair put his hands to his chest and grabbed his sweater, his fingers tightening. He spoke in a whisper, his eyes shut. âYes ⊠I feel that …
The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 2
It may be worth considering what it means to âgo against the flowâ in science. What makes a genius rather than a mere mortal or, worse, a fool? Think of Mozart or Van Gogh, artists who revolutionized music and painting. In the arts, genius has often been associated with the idea of the artistâs opposition …
The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the âuniversal genius,â and since I have been working a lot on him (two of my books in Italian on Leonardo just came out, and I am lecturing everywhere about him), I thought I would share with my readers some glimpses into …
How to Be Skeptics 2.0 with the Help of ⊠YouTube
Today things have changed. In less than a generation, we’ve reached a point where what we watch, read, and listen to is no longer determined solely by corporate monopolies but by the viewer. And things can be a lot different for skeptics as well.
This article is available for free to all.A Telepathy Investigation
Sound reading,â as this technique is called, is a classic trick of mentalists who wish to simulate telepathy phenomena.
This article is available for free to all.Does the Vatican Hold a Painting of a UFO?
Did RaphaelââThe Divine One,â as this great painter was often describedâdocument a UFO crash during the Renaissance? Itâs a story that resurfaces from time to time on some UFO websites. It all starts with a beautiful painting, The Madonna of Foligno, created in 1511 by Raphael on a commission from Sigismondo deâ Conti, chamberlain to …
Myths and Secrets of the Colosseum
The Flavian Amphitheater, better known as the âColosseum,â is the largest and most majestic amphitheater of ancient times. It is the second most visited monument in the world (after the Great Wall of China), and in 2007 was included among the new seven wonders of the modern world.
This article is available for free to all.The Conspiracy of the Fairies
This year, 2017, marks the hundredth anniversary of one of the most famous hoaxes in history: the Cottingley fairies photos, taken by two Yorkshire girls in 1917. Or were they? A new hypothesis, recently put forward in the pages of Fortean Times magazine, suggests that the photos may actually have been taken later, after very …
The Monster of Florence: Case Closed? The Terrifying Story of the Most Infamous Ritual Murders in Italian History, Part 2
The story of the Monster of Florence, after consuming energies and investigative efforts on the inconclusive Sardinian lead (see previous column), forced the investigators to start from scratchâalmost. On September 11, 1985, just three days after the last murder attributed to the serial killer, an anonymous person wrote to the police of San Casciano naming …
The Monster of Florence: Case Closed? The Terrifying Story of the Most Infamous Ritual Murders inItalian History, Part 1
Fernando Pucci recently died at age eighty-six. He was the last of the serial killers collectively known as the âMostro di Firenze,â the Monster of Florence, or âi compagni di merende,â the âpicknicking friends,â as they started to be called during trials after one of the convicted killers, Mario Vanni, described his relationship with the …
The Return of the Fairies
âIn this case, the gnome is seen as a guardian of nature, just like our Corp is recognized as the environmental protector.â
This article is available for free to all.Ten Practical Tactics to Unravel the Uncanny
The plural of anecdote is not evidence.
This article is available for free to all.Theresa Caputo: The Fake Long Island Medium
Today mediums really have an easy life.
This article is available for free to all.In Search of Mary Magdalene
But why today is there so much discussion about Magdalene? Whatâs so special about this woman to attract the attention of fans of mysteries?
This article is available for free to all.The Charlie Charlie Challenge
This is the latest web craze known as the âCharlie Charlie Challenge,â perhaps dating back to an ancient Mexican tradition, an experience that intrigues kids and scares adults. Through a sort of sĂ©ance, some claim people can ask questions to some unseen entity that should be able to reply.
This article is available for free to all.The Mystery of TJIPETIR
Mysterious rectangular rubber-like blocks, with the enigmatic word TJIPETIR engraved into them, have been washing up for the past few years on the beaches of northern Europe.
This article is available for free to all.Enter the Boy Wonder, Part 1 Randi vs. Geller: How the Giant Battle Began
This article is available for free to all.