Members Editorial
The Fake Ghost: Suggestibility
in Percipients of the Paranormal
Members editorials are the expressed personal opinions of the members who wrote them and do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the Haunt Masters Club as a whole.
In Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time: The Unexplained, Volume 10 by H. S. Stuttman Co. reveals that in the summer of 1970, editor of the Man, Myth and Magic series, Frank Smyth published the story of the “Phantom Vicar of Ratcliff Wharf,” telling the story of a clergyman from nearby St. Anne’s Church who owned a boarding house and killed the guests who had just received their pay. His apparition, Smyth said, had been seen walking the fog-cloaked highway on London’s Isle of Dogs. In 12 months, different authors had written eight separate books about the apparition and some gave historical accounts of brushes with this shade. The story had been modified by one author, who sited the priest was robbed and murdered on the wharf long ago.

The funny thing was, there was never a ghost of Ratcliff Wharf. Smyth soon revealed to the Sunday Times that it was an all experiment in suggestibility he had concocted to fill a blank space in the back of his magazine.

The final episode of the BBC2 documentary program, A Leap In the Dark, dealt exclusively with this apparition and host Colin Wilson even interviewed people who claimed to have seen the shade.

This experiment makes an excellent point “ghost hunters” should consider when dealing with percipients of paranormal phenomena. Once someone thinks there’s a ghost in their house, suddenly every strange noise becomes phantom footsteps, ghosts are blamed for misplaced items, etc. These are simply illusions, perceiving natural events as supernatural in origin.
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