My recent blog is about the tragic shooting of Jazmine Barnes days before New Years, and how mistaken eyewitnesses and mistaken assumptions led to the search for a non-existent racist serial killer in Houston.... On December 30, 2018, a seven-year-old Houston girl...
News
New SouthWest Writers Interview
I'm a member of the SouthWest Writers group, and I'm featured in a new interview about some of my books and the process of writing... What is your elevator pitch for Investigating Ghosts? Investigating Ghosts is an in-depth look at scientific attempts to...
Holocaust Denial Headlines: Hatred, Ignorance, Or Innumeracy?
Last week during Holocaust Remembrance Day, many memes circulated claiming that a significant number of Americans, Canadians, and Britons are Holocaust deniers, or support white supremacy. In the wake of racial incidents such as the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue...
Still Waiting for History Channel Clarification on Earhart…
I wonder if 2019 will be the year that the History Channel finally completes its investigation into how its much-hyped 2017 special on Amelia Earhart got the story so spectacularly wrong that a half-hour Google search debunked its crack team of experts and their bogus...
How False Reports Target Muslims And Minorities
From the archives: Skeptics and skeptical researchers routinely encounter and investigate a wide variety false reports: False reports of Bigfoot, UFOs, miracle healings, alien abductions, psychics, illnesses, and so on. I’ve personally investigated many such reports,...
‘Squaring the Strange’ Archives Highlight: Good Times With Pink Slime
As my awesome podcast Squaring the Strange (co-hosted by Pascual Romero and Celestia Ward) has passed its anniversary, I will be posting episode summaries from the past year to remind people some of the diverse topics we’ve covered on the show, ranging from ghosts to...
Psychic Said to Solve Missing Persons Case… Or Not
A Fox News story claims that a psychic and ghost hunter found the remains in a basement of a father who went missing 57 years ago. If you read past the headlines you find that a) the remains haven't been identified, so the bones may or may not be of that man; b) he...
‘Why Isn’t The Media Covering This Story?’—Or Are They?
Distrust of the news media is, or at least seems to be, at an all time high. A recent report by Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that 42 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of independents, and 94 percent of Republicans say they have lost some trust in the media....
‘Investigating Ghosts’ Wins at New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards
I'm pleased to note that my newest book Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits was a winner at this year's New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards! You can order the book from your local indie bookstore, or find it on Amazon! ...
Squaring the Strange: Episode 77 – Halloween History, Hell Houses, and Scares!
The new episode of Squaring the Strange is out! The show is all about Halloween strangeness . . . We unravel the origins of a few traditions and look at "Hell Houses," the much, much, much lamer alternative to haunted houses. And a quick report from CSIcon as well as...