I recently rekindled a friendship with someone I knew in elementary school. We hadn’t seen each other since high school graduation in the 1980s. When it was my turn to fill her in on what I have been busy with the past decade, I of course mentioned the psychic stings and my interest in the paranormal. She looked at me, laughed, and said, “I believe in psychics, it’s in my culture.” I didn’t have a snappy comeback at the time other than to think it was a very strange thing to say. Do you have to persist in a belief because it was what you were taught? Does she know that Santa Claus isn’t real?

She went on to tell me a creepy story of a time she was living alone in an old rickety house with weird sounds, something about shadows and a lock on the door that should have been locked, and I said, “Great story, I love ghost stories. All interesting. It could be because of a lot of things, but last on the probable list are ghosts.” Again, she laughed and said something about me “not being fun” and repeated that it was in her culture to believe these things were spirits. I heard her tell this story twice more, each time with new details.

Possibly she did think the story was true. Science tells us that memories might be overwritten each time the memory is assessed; remembering the details make it seem very real. I don’t know what was going on with my friend. Possibly she didn’t think it was a big deal though it did seem to be important enough to her to retell often. Maybe she felt special to be visited by spirits.  

I’m facilitating a series of workshops, in person and over Zoom, throughout 2023 to teach us skeptics one main lesson: how to become the person people come to when they have questions about weird things. I think during the lockdowns we lost a lot of our ability to relate to people we don’t see often. We make assumptions about what they are going to say, interrupt, make judgements, and roll our eyes if we don’t agree. Before people fall into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, there is a time when they are balancing on the precipice and the intervention of someone they respect not to laugh at them and give them some thoughtful wisdom might make the difference and hopefully they will start to walk back from the edge. If you can find a way to do this in a nonjudgmental way, making them feel like they were the one that figured it out, allowing them to save face, then probably when they have another question about something weird, they will talk to you about it. This is the goal of my workshops.

This mode of thinking, to have kinder conversations, is often a struggle I have. I haven’t practiced good listening skills though out the pandemic and before. I like to think of this as inoculating people with better critical thinking skills, a sort of pre-bunking. Maybe if I get better at this kind of communication, they will start asking me to parties and I can be fun again.

I’m going to give you three case studies that I have begun to see in a new light. Three people who are true believers even when the evidence against their beliefs is strong and readily available. Not only do they double down, they triple down. Nothing can be said to persuade them; it has become a part of their culture, their identity, and challenging it may do real damage to their perceptions. I obviously don’t know how accurate I am—I’m not diagnosing anyone—but let me know what you think. I’m not going to name them, though at least two could be figured out if you fell into the rabbit hole of my work, but don’t bother. Let’s think about these as case studies.

Case study 1: I’ll call her Eloise. So, Eloise is a multi-decade anti-vaxxer. She was quite prominent years ago, and over the COVID-19 outbreak, she started showing up from time-to-time. Years ago, I rewrote her Wikipedia page and took a deep dive into her history. If you were to read Eloise’s Wikipedia page today, you would see no mention of what I’m about to tell you; that’s because it was mentioned on blogs and comment threads, which are not usable citations for Wikipedia, but they made me think. According to this gossip I stumbled upon, Eloise was married with one child. That child became very ill with a rare disease I won’t mention, but it was very rare. It happened soon after the child was vaccinated with whatever was required of children forty years ago. It was soon after that Eloise determined that it was the vaccine that killed her child. She argued with the doctors, and apparently that didn’t go well. The relationship with her husband also deteriorated. It is not known to me how the father felt about Eloise’s conclusions, but they ended up divorcing. She remarried and had three more children, who were never vaccinated. Here is where I get to my speculation based on the comments and blog articles I read. The disease that killed her child was genetic. She had the possibility of being responsible for her child’s death, unknowingly obviously. She might have internalized that guilt and looked for an answer that was external to her own genetics. When she raised three more children who apparently were healthy, her beliefs were confirmed: it was the vaccines. And if she could lecture, write, and cause a ruckus to end vaccination, maybe she feels she is saving the lives of other children.

Case study 2: Chuck. My friend and I were having a discussion recently about someone we both know who is an avid believer in chemtrails. Chuck’s social media page is full of posts about them being used to calm society. He takes photos of the sky and shares them with comments about staying inside to keep from breathing whatever the government is releasing. He will allow no discussion of the matter. In conversation with my friend, I think we uncovered what was behind Chuck’s firm belief in chemtrails. Apparently Chuck’s father was stern and forceful; he also was in the Air Force. I believe he died when Chuck was in his teens, and Chuck was raised by his mother and several sisters. His father’s influence on Chuck was never superseded by another male figure. And that father told Chuck about chemtrails. I have no idea if the father was joking with Chuck or even if he told him the government was trying to calm the population or any kind of story that was conspiratorial. It could have been something as simple as him saying that the government is doing something weird and putting something on the planes in drums. Over time when Chuck started running across the chemtrail conspiracy theories on the internet, his memories of what his father told him might have morphed into what he now believes. What my friend and I are starting to see is that to Chuck, he can’t start challenging what he believes, because to do so would be an attack on his father, who he respected and felt that because he worked in the Air Force was in a position better than anyone else to know what nefarious plot the government had in for us.

Case study 3: Let’s call her Ruth. She has been working for a psychic grief vampire for the past five years. I don’t know if Ruth is actually paid with money or not, but she handles a lot of the scheduling and emails. I and my team of Guerilla Skeptics have wondered how Ruth can work for this grief vampire and not know he is no more psychic than my right toe. He has been shown to be hot reading his sitters. He’s been called out repeatedly not only by me and my team, but by his past customers who post on social media, Yelp, and other places. Complaints are about how the information on their family’s obituaries and their personal social media posts are the exact same thing as what the psychic tells them. One woman complained that the psychic called her dead bother by his real name as it was listed in the obituary but would never ever have used if he was communicating to his family; it was a name he hated. When Ruth has been asked about the evidence I have provided showing that the psychic is hot-reading, Ruth responds, “Susan Gerbic is an atheist and does not believe in the afterlife, so ignore everything she says.”

We have been wondering about her for a long time, how can she continue to believe, even if she throws out everything I say. Well, a couple years ago I watched a video of her and two other women talking about how the psychic was in touch with their sons (they each had lost a son). The statements they made were so vague to be unbelievable; one said she felt him sit on the edge of her bed. She said she told a common friend of hers the story, and then very soon after the psychic had said that the son came to him and wanted to apologize for scaring her when he sat on the bed. She was stunned! How could the psychic have known this story that she had told to other people including a good friend of the psychic; he must be speaking to her dear child. I’m not kidding; this is the quality of the best evidence they have for belief in this psychic.

I just came across some posts by Ruth on a fan Facebook page (started by this specific psychic she works for), and it was eye-opening. She writes, “As most of you know I have been working for (psychic) for almost five years. I can tell you that he gets the most incredible drop-ins from my son in spirit (child’s name). There aren’t just insignificant messages, they are messages that are relevant to things going on in my life at the time. Sometimes they are messages no one else knows about, sometimes they are meant to help me cope, sometimes they are just funny to make me and (psychic) laugh. …(child) comes through (psychic) so strongly. I could write a book on all the messages I have received. I am truly blessed to have (psychic) in my life because without the constant validations that my son lives on, it would be difficult for me to go on.” Then Ruth shares some of the screenshots the psychic sends her. One is a post of about fifty emojis of a hatching bird; no words just the same emoji over and over again. Then the psychic writes, “he made the buttons on my phone move” meaning Ruth’s child.

In other screenshots, the psychic sends her messages from her son saying, “he wishes he had taken more selfies hahahaha” and “He said Tim thinks he is so cool in his car” and “Who is tuna (child) brought up someone named tuna.” And of course, Ruth is going to find a connection somehow, or if not she will think that her child is just being funny or she can’t remember who he is talking about. Or more likely the psychic who knows Ruth well, who shares common friends, will hear a story (or read it on Ruth’s social media) and just embellish it. I bet “Tuna” will refer to someone Ruth knows named “Tina.”

To Ruth who wants so badly to believe, she is going to never look critically at what the psychic is telling her. She says that she gets “constant validations,” and she could “write a book on all the messages she has received.” Very possibly she is being paid in this way; I don’t know but I wouldn’t be shocked. And further, she says “It would be difficult for me to go on.” Imagine if she finally had to deal with the fact that her psychic employer was just making up crap and sending her messages as if they came from her son. What would that do for a grieving mother’s mental health? It would be like losing her son yet again and being ashamed that she fell for the con and encouraged others to also believe in the con.

All three of these people are functioning adults. One is college educated, all are well-spoken, obviously having some education. Two have their own small businesses, one is an author, another has a successful trade. I’m sure none of these people have conservatories over them, can vote, have bank accounts, and function. They could easily be your next door neighbor, and you would never notice anything odd. But in each occurrence I believe I can see them once standing on the edge, about to fall into the rabbit hole, and with no one in their lives they felt comfortable going to. So when they started to have questions about weird things, they plunged in. Maybe it happened in steps, just descending a few feet to see what was in the hole, and then a little further and a little further on until getting out of the hole would be too difficult for them. Their entire identity is wrapped up in the belief; they don’t want to look back to see you calling down at them. They can’t look.

I remember a couple years ago when the QAnon stories started being told all over. There was this man in Australia who had fallen hard for Q, and then one day he started to question. When he started questioning, there were people waiting to help him find his way back. It was something so small and insignificant that you might not think was important. The media lapped up the story as if it was the first case of someone reasonable who had been in the depths and got back out and was willing to tell the tale. The Australian had been told by his QAnon friends that when the current American president (you know who I’m talking about) said the phrase “okey-dokey,” it would mean something really important; he was sending a special message to the Q people. So, the Australian man was watching and heard the odd phrase and was shocked that it had happened. He really heard this strange phrase “okey-dokey” on a video in front of the world. Truly the Q people were right. Or so he thought for a few days, until he noticed that the president said the phrase again, and then again, and then again … he realized he said it often. And that was the moment the Australian QAnon man started to question and started the journey up out of the rabbit hole, until he came to the point he could tell the story to the media and try to explain how intoxicated he was by the special knowledge and the community he had found.

So, I might not be right, I might only be sorta right, or completely wrong about these three case studies. It really doesn’t matter what the true answer is. I am trying to be more understanding when I encounter people like this. They might not always have been this way; they might have had a completely different life if someone had seen them standing there with one foot about to go over the edge. Nothing is ever as straight forward as it seems; life and people are complicated. There probably is a reason they went down this path. You don’t have to drill down to discover it, but realize that there is a reason. We need to slow down, have some compassion, and perhaps we could be the next on the edge given the right circumstances. Wouldn’t you want someone to be there for you? I know I do.

If you are interested in attending my workshops in person or over Zoom, please contact me directly at SusanGerbic@yahoo.com or send me a Facebook message. I’m hoping to roll these out all year, and I have detailed training instructions including slideshows if you want to improve on my workshop ideas and hold one for your group. I think we all can use practice becoming the person people come to when they have questions about weird things. And maybe start being invited to fun parties again.