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Redefining Rationality:Paranormal Investigators'Humour in EnglandMichele Hanksa

a Case Western Reserve University, USAPublished online: 17 Sep 2014.

To cite this article: Michele Hanks (2014): Redefining Rationality: ParanormalInvestigators' Humour in England, Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, DOI:10.1080/00141844.2014.956775

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2014.956775

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Redefining Rationality: ParanormalInvestigators’ Humour in England

Michele HanksCase Western Reserve University, USA

abstract In contemporary England, amateur paranormal investigators are activelyengaged in attempts to produce objective knowledge about the ghostly and paranor-mal. Their project requires them to balance subjective, personal encounters withobjective, technologically mediated ones. In doing so, they struggle to align theirproject with dominant understandings of rationality. Drawing on an ethnographicstudy of knowledge production among paranormal investigators, I explore paranormalinvestigators’ use of humour and argue that they rely on humorous performances toalign themselves with a powerful, hegemonic notion of rationality. Through theirhumour, they do not contest the scope of rationality; rather, they locate themselvesas central to it.

keywords Humour, rationality, popular science, knowledge, paranormal investigators

I t was around 3:45 in the morning. Eva and I were sitting in the dark, desertedauditorium of a theatre in Darlington, England. For the past 30 minutes, shehad been ‘calling out’ to any ghosts who might be in the vicinity. ‘Is there

anyone there?’ ‘Use our energy and make yourself known to us.’ ‘Don’t beshy. We want to understand you.’ Her voice echoed through the room.Between her interjections, there was silence. Along with the other membersof Eva’s paranormal investigation group, we were at the theatre to researchghosts. Eva and the other members of her team hoped to uncover empirical evi-dence regarding the presence of paranormal forces. They saw themselves asdedicated researchers who combined scientific methods with spirituality toproduce objective, empirical data. Eva called out again in a pleading tone,‘come on! Make a noise for us’. She paused, and we sat in silence for a few

ethnos, 2014 (pp. 1–28), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2014.956775

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minutes. Suddenly, Eva began to laugh wildly. ‘Look at us sitting here callingout,’ she laughed. ‘If anyone saw us, they would think we were mad!’ Duringthe 18 months that I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with English paranor-mal investigators in 2008 and 2009, humorous interludes such as this character-ized many of my encounters with paranormal investigators during the course oftheir research, conferences, and interviews. In this article, I examine paranormalinvestigators’ recourses to humour. Rather than being meaningless displays ofwit, I argue that these enactments of humour discursively constitute investi-gators as rational, sane researchers while also deflecting potential criticisms oftheir enterprise.

For much of the history of anthropology, the scope of rationality has been afrequent topic of scholarly debate. Anthropologists who debated the relation-ships among magic, science, and religion (Malinowski 1935, 1992; Tylor 2010

[1871]; Evans-Pritchard 1976) were fundamentally fascinated by whether thepractitioners of the magical arts properly understood the causalities underpin-ning their magical interventions in the world. Stanley Tambiah observed thatthese intellectual debates centred, in part, at least, on ‘the quality of the “ration-ality” they portrayed’ (1990: 2). Indeed, the history, legacy, and significance ofmuch these debates have rightly been the subject of sustained scholarly analysis(Styers 2004; Jones 2010; Latour 2010). In this article, I seek to contribute to suchscholarship by turning to popular debates about the scope of rationality. I showhow paranormal investigators, a group that seemingly defy the contemporarystandards of science and rationality, rely on humour to reposition themselvesas not only sane but, ultimately, more rational than the sceptical public that cri-ticizes them. Investigators rely on the incongruity of humour to mediate thenature of the unknown and, ultimately, the nature of knowledge itself.

In both the British and American public spheres, debates rage on regardingpervasive belief in the paranormal and supernatural. From Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World (1996) to Richard Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), therehas been a proliferation of popular scientific critiques of popular forms of irra-tionality and ‘belief in pseudoscience’. Authors such as Sagan and Dawkins, aswell as others such as James Randi, have charged that individuals who engage ina variety of non-orthodox practices such as astrology, homoeopathic medicine,or paranormal research are less than rational. They fear that such practices willlead to the widespread public erosion of rationality. While paranormal investi-gators are not the only targets of such popular criticism, they are a frequent one.

Newspaper headlines such as ‘Man looking for “ghost train” killed by the realthing’ (Allen 2010) render explicit the doubt regarding investigators’ ability to

ethnos, 2014 (pp. 1–28)

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differentiate the real from the extraordinary or imagined. Sceptical organiz-ations call into question the mental health, intelligence, and rationality ofthese paranormal researchers. These popular sceptical debates hinge onwhether paranormal investigators adequately understand the causalitiespresent in the paranormal evidence they collect and seek out. In short, theyare popularly debating the scope of paranormal investigators’ rationality.Drawing on my long-term ethnographic research with paranormal investi-gators, I will demonstrate that through their recourses to humour, investigatorsrespond to such critiques by positioning themselves as the ultimate rationalists.

Paranormal Investigating and Belief in Contemporary EnglandIn contemporary England, thousands of people engage in research that

attempts to understand the ghostly or paranormal. According to one estimate,there were 1200 local groups engaged in such work in 2006 (Winsper et al. 2008).These self-fashioned experts call themselves paranormal investigators. Thatthese enthusiasts call themselves ‘paranormal investigators’ is significant. Para-normal investigating, they believe, requires objectively balancing a number ofperspectives and approaches, including ‘science’, mediumship, and their ownembodied experiences with the paranormal. One investigator characterizedthis approach as a ‘tool box’. She explained, ‘a good investigator’s got atoolbox. Science is a tool. Mediums are a tool. People’s experiences are a tool.It’s up to the investigator to put it all together.’ For investigators, sciencetakes the form of monitoring their environment with a range of readily availabletechnologies, such as electromagnetic field (EMF) readers, digital ther-mometers, and digital cameras. To incorporate mediumship, they invite local,established mediums, who are often affiliated with Spiritualist Churches, toperform their mediumship during an investigation while the paranormal inves-tigators take careful notes on the mediums’ claims. Finally, paranormal investi-gators consider their own embodied sensations a potential source of insight intothe paranormal. During their investigations, they attend closely to their senses,chronicling any sounds, sights, unusual feelings, sensations, or thoughts thatthey experience. Many investigators have previously experienced a paranormalevent and are eager both for another encounter and for a compelling expla-nation of it. They consider these disparate ways of knowing ‘tools’ that theyas investigators must balance (Hanks in press).

By referring to these very different ways of knowing as tools, paranormalinvestigators highlight the ‘tools’’ objectivity and minimize their subjectivity.Science figures especially prominently in their ‘tool box’, and they see it as

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the most promising method of uncovering the nature of the paranormal. Unlikemany people working at the fringes of orthodox science, such as Creationists(Butler 2010) and climate change denialists (Latour 2004), who aim to discreditscience by pointing to its socially constructed nature, paranormal investigatorsembrace an idealized version of science. While they may criticize scientists forbeing biased and failing to research the paranormal, they see science itself as thebest way of understanding the world around them.

Drawing on popular depictions of science as objective, authoritative, andunchanging (Mellor 2003; Kruse 2010; Messeri 2010), paranormal investigatorsembrace an idealized, technologically mediated understanding of science as ameans of producing ultimate truth. Technology figures especially prominentlyin their understanding and execution of science. They are influenced by whatDaston and Galison (1992) have called ‘mechanical objectivity’. In their analysisof images in science, Daston and Galison suggested that ‘machines offeredfreedom from . . . the willful interventions that had come to be seen as themost dangerous aspects of subjectivity’ (1992: 83). Machines, then, seem tooffer highly objective views of the world. Drawing on these persistent under-standings of machines, paranormal investigators heavily rely on their technol-ogies, such as EMF readers and digital cameras, in their attempts to querythe paranormal. Investigators hope that such machines will either capturedirect evidence of a paranormal event, such as a ghost caught on film, or thatthey will provide corroboration for investigators’ own experiential senses,such as verifying that an investigator had in fact walked into an empiricallycolder are of a room. By using these machines, they hope to produce objectiveevidence regarding the paranormal. While paranormal investigators worryabout the objectivity of mediums’ encounters with ghosts and their ownuncanny experience, they hope that balancing these more subjective ‘tools’with their technologies will yield reliable knowledge. Paranormal investigatorsexpect the evidence yielded by these ‘tools’, in the form of stories and environ-mental data, to speak for itself, an assumption found throughout much ofpopular culture (Kruse 2010). When paranormal investigators imagined whatmight constitute a genuinely compelling piece of evidence that wouldsupport the existence of the paranormal, it often took the form of a correlationbetween a medium’s reported encounter with a ghost and a mechanical registerof an unusual presence, such as a spike in the EMF readings. Such ideal pieces ofevidence rarely emerged, and paranormal investigators often found themselvesfrustrated in their research attempts (Hanks in press). They imagine their role asamassing data to support or refute the existence of the paranormal.

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Paranormal investigators’ understanding of evidence as speaking for itselffigures centrally in their understanding of objectivity and rationality. Sincethey believe that evidence speaks for itself, producing objective knowledgesimply requires describing the evidence accurately. Downplaying the role ofinterpretation in their project led paranormal investigators to emphasize theirrole as witnesses. The act of witnessing plays a central role in configuring exper-tise across a range of domains including humanitarian intervention (Redfield2006) and science (Shapin & Schaffer 1987; Shapin 1994, 1996; Haraway 1997).Paranormal investigators’ witnessing takes the form of accurately observingand describing the emergence of evidence through technologically registereddata, mediums’ testimonies, and their own observations. Reliable witnessing,then, entails letting the evidence speak for itself and not allowing any pre-exist-ing beliefs to shape their interpretation of it. This understanding of reliable wit-nessing dates back to the Scientific Revolution. For example, Steve Shapin andSimon Schaffer, in their study of the debate between Thomas Hobbes andRobert Boyle, found that reliable witness of scientific experiments required aself-effacing quality and argued that gentleman scientists, perceived at thetime to be free from social dependencies, were especially poised to do so.Much like the gentleman scientists of the seventeenth century, paranormalinvestigators must demonstrate a ‘modesty’ (Shapin 1994, 1996) or detachmentthat allows them to remain objective, or in their terms ‘open-minded’. Being areliable witness and a good paranormal investigator required keeping an openmind when evaluating evidence and potentially paranormal events. Theirability to be good witnesses, or open-minded, was dependent on their abilityto remain, above all else, rational. ‘As I will show, much of paranormal investi-gators’ humour focused on the experiential and observational elements of theirinvestigations rather than their engagements with technoscientific apparatus.This is not accidental. Misusing a digital thermometer does not pose thesame risks to depictions of their rationality as misattributing sounds in theenvironment to paranormal forces. The former might suggest that an investi-gator is incompetent, but the latter raises questions about their rationalityitself and their ability to act as reliable witnesses.

Paranormal investigators dedicate as much of their free time as possible toexploring the ghostly and mobilizing their research ideologies. Typically,they form locally based teams and seek out haunted locations (such as thetheatre in Darlington) where they can pursue encounters with and knowledgeof the ghostly. Their research or investigations take the form of all night obser-vations of haunted spaces during which they mobilize their three investigative

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‘tools’: mediums, embodied experiences with ghosts, and technoscience. Whileacademic researchers and the press often portray them as thrill-seekers (Timms2012) or naıve believers, paranormal investigators understand their project asempirical and scientific rather than a matter of belief. This positioning is signifi-cant. Investigators are careful to portray themselves as interested in the empiri-cal reality rather than entrenched believers dedicated to merely realizing theirbeliefs.

While thousands of people are actively and enthusiastically involved in para-normal investigation, the project of attempting to establish methodologies andtheories of the paranormal is often met with public scrutiny and derision. Self-identified ‘sceptics’ are among their most vocal opponents. Organized scepticismemerged in 1976 with the founding of the Committee for the Scientific Investi-gation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) (Hall 2000). Since then, smallersceptical clubs and organizations have emerged across the UK and NorthAmerica. CSICOP and allied sceptical organizations aimed to wage an ‘activecrusade against parapsychology and other pseudo-science’ (Pinch & Collins1984: 527). Sceptics are populist pro-science activists who see their public roleas defending science from pervasive and corrosive forms of irrationality thatthreaten its hegemonic position. They fear that the growth of interest in formsof irrationality, such as the paranormal, will endanger the public by makingthem more vulnerable to the fraudulent claims of non-scientists, such as faithhealers (Pankratz 1987) and anti-vaccine activists (Novella 2007). While mostsceptics do not believe that belief in the paranormal is in itself dangerous, theythink that it reveals patterns of belief of gullibility that render the public vulner-able to more dangerous, non-scientific claims. While their concern about the pro-liferation of pseudoscientific beliefs is in many ways quite valid and shared bymany academics (Latour 2004; Allum 2011), the rhetoric of their critique isworth considering closely. They frequently suggest that either paranormal inves-tigators are simple-minded believers who allow their belief in the paranormal tocloud their judgment or they are simply scientifically illiterate. Both possibilitiesare potentially dangerous for the public. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitch-ens, and James Randi are popular icons of the movement. Randi, for example,has gained fame as a stage magician who debunks pseudoscientific practices,like psychic surgery, through his performances (Pankratz 1987). Sceptics maketheir criticisms of paranormal investigators known in a variety of public ways,including local and national meetings and online forums. They also explicitlyaddress their criticisms to investigators through trolling their online forumsand, occasionally, attending their public events.

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That accusations of belief lay at the heart of sceptics’ critique should not besurprising. The ontology of Western modernity is grounded on interconnectedand pervasive understandings of the relationship between reality and percep-tion. At the heart of this relationship lies a distrust of belief. As Latour (2010),among others (Kapferer 2001; Styers 2004; Jones 2010), has noted, belief isoften seen as the antithesis of rationality or dedication to science, which isamong the chief virtues of modernity. Identifying belief in others is a mechanismof distancing and identifying them as ‘naıve’ or ‘foolish’. Ultimately, belief inreason requires a denunciation of belief in all else. Latour writes that ‘amodern is someone who believes that others believe’ (2010: 2). NormativeWestern modernity, then, requires a distancing from positions of belief. Scep-tics’ critiques ultimately challenge paranormal investigators’ status as modern,rational thinkers.

Paranormal investigators’ humour and jokes provide a privileged site for ana-lysing the ways in which they critique and adapt normative Western under-standings of rationality and modernity. Much anthropological analysis ofhumour has foregrounded the role of jokes and brevity in addressing socialinequality and power. This inequality often takes the form of colonial encoun-ters (Basso 1979; McCullough 2008; Redmond 2008), gendered relations (Seizer1997; Yoshida 2001; Alexeyeff 2008), the changes wrought by globalization(Alexeyeff 2008), class relations (Saltzman 1994), and research relationshipsbetween anthropologists and their interlocutors (Rasmussen 1993; Beckett2008; Dwyer & Minnegal 2008). In many of these instances, humour worksto configure or reconfigure social identities. While paranormal investigators’humour allows them to reconfigure their identities, the stakes of this reconfi-guration differ significantly from those of the postcolonial subjects addressedby anthropologists such as Basso (1979) or McCullough (2008). While paranor-mal investigators may be the butt of jokes in the media, they do not face theeconomic and social marginalization that provides the context for WesternApache and Australian Aboriginal jokes. Rather, humour allows English para-normal investigators to reconfigure and critique their social marginalizationas irrational, believers. Laughing at themselves allows them to occupy thesubject position of sceptics, believers, and scientists while transforming theminto a newer, more effective mode of rationality.

The Role of Incongruity in the Construction of HumourThe dearth of anthropological analyses of jokes and humour has been well

noted (Seizer 1997; Carty & Musharbash 2008). Carty and Musharbash

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contend that there has been an ‘historical marginalisation of humour as anobject of sustained enquiry’ (2008: 212). Historically, the anthropologists whohave addressed humour have focused on what constitutes humour in a techni-cal, structural sense (e.g. Radcliffe-Brown 1940; Douglas 1975). Such studies havenot always foregrounded the cultural logic and significance of the humour.However, in recent years, this trend has been changing as anthropologistshave begun to turn their attention to the sociohistorical contexts of humour.Anthropological studies focus increasingly on ‘what the joke says about thepeople who make it, how they make it and, more specifically, about the circum-stances (social, historical, gendered or colonial) in which they and their sense ofhumour are situated’ (Carty & Musharbash 2008: 211).

In addressing the circumstances that give rise to humour, theorists haveargued that incongruity is a central component of the social and linguistic con-struction of humour. For example, Tony Veale observes, ‘of the few sweepinggeneralizations one can make about humour that are neither controversial ortrivially false, one is surely that humour is a phenomenon that relies on incon-gruity’ (2004: 419). Indeed, within psychological, anthropological, and rhetoricalexaminations of humour, scholars agree that incongruity is a nearly ubiquitouselement of humour. By incongruity, scholars typically refer to situations thatcan sustain multiple interpretations. Potential encounters with ghosts areamong the more markedly incongruent situations. Paranormal investigatorswho seek out the ghostly are never sure when they have found it. Their experi-ences with the seemingly extraordinary are always marked by persistent doubtgrounded in the incongruity of the situation, namely the uncertainty regardinghow to interpret external stimuli. Is a gust of wind caused by natural phenomenaor is it a ghostly breath?

In order to begin thinking more concretely about paranormal investigator’shumour, it is necessary to operationalize incongruity. Anthropologists haveoften found it helpful to deconstruct jokes and humour through their multipleframes (Handelman & Kapferer 1972; Beeman 2001). Beeman (2001) examinesthe operationalization of incongruity at a linguistic level. He observes thathumorous incongruity functions at the linguistic level, noting:

a communicative actor presents a message or other content material and contextua-lizes it within a cognitive ‘frame’. The actor constructs the frame through narration,visual representation, or enactment. He or she then suddenly pulls this frame aside,revealing one or more additional cognitive frames which audience members areshown as possible contextualizations or re-framings of the original content material.

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The tension between the original framing and the sudden reframing results [inhumour]. (2001: 103)

For paranormal researchers, the introduction and linguistic manipulation ofmultiple frames in their tellings and retellings of events in their research is apowerful mechanism for examining, critiquing, and countering challenges totheir project.

The Encounter with a Leaky TapDuring the course of interviews, investigations, and casual conversation,

paranormal investigators shared many humorous stories with me. Thesestories typically pivoted around an incongruity between their engaged, com-mitted participation in a research situation and what this commitment wouldlook like from the perspective of an outsider. The tension between these twoframes of references not only results in humour but also reveals paranormalinvestigators’ awareness of critical perspectives of their research. The humourcreated through their acknowledgement of these incongruent frames of refer-ence attempts to supersede this tension by demonstrating paranormal investi-gators’ rationality.

Jack and Rose led a paranormal investigation group in the North East ofEngland. They were good friends in their late 30s who enjoyed each other’scompany and shared a passion for investigation. By the time I met them in2008, they had been active paranormal investigators for over seven years. Jackand Rose told the following humorous story about one of their investigativeexperiences on several occasions. They first told it to me during our initialmeeting and interview. In the story, their investigation team, Eastern GhostResearch, had the chance to spend the night at the Roman Baths, a pub andmuseum, in York for research. Members of the group were engaged in avariety of activities. Jack and Rose settled into one area of the Baths andbegan ‘calling out’, an activity in which investigators speak directly to anyspirits present and ask them to reply in some capacity.

Jack: So, we’re sat there, calling out. Normal things. Is there anybody there? Are you aman? That sort of thing. And we start getting responses. These little knocks startcoming so we’re excited- -Rose: We’re dead excited. We’re really going for it. Asking all sorts of things. And itkeeps knocking away, answering us.Jack: We’re thinking, this is great! Dead interesting. We’re finding out all of this infor-mation that we think we’re going to go look into after the investigation . . .

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Rose: Then, Sam [another member of the team] comes up to us and says, ‘you knowthere’s a pipe that’s leaking over there’.[Pause]Jack: I go and have a look. The pipe is leaking. It’s making the taps we’d been talkingto.Rose: We’d been sat there talking to a pipe! (Laughing)Jack: For quite awhile. We’d been sat there maybe fifteen, twenty minutes talking to apipe! (Laughing)Rose: Ace investigators, we are! (Laughing)

Jack’s and Rose’s narrative was deeply funny to them; it also amused almosteveryone who heard it. The humour stems largely from the incongruity thatemerges late in the story, between Jack and Rose’s paranormal interpretationof the knocks and the tapping pipe revealed to have been the cause of the noise.

Beeman’s notion of frames is helpful in analysing the production and man-agement of incongruity in this narrative. He suggests that there are typicallyfour stages to linguistic enactments of humour: the setup, the paradox, thedenouncement, and the release. He notes that the setup ‘involves the presen-tation of the original content material and the first interpretive frame’ (2001:103). In the case of the above story, the first frame is the typical paranormalinvestigative frame. Until the introduction of Sam’s intervention, the narrativeencourages listeners to assume, just as Jack and Rose assumed, that the narratorsare engaged in routine acts of paranormal investigating. Indeed, Jack and Rose’stelling of the story encourages listeners to assume that the audible taps may becaused by ghosts or some other paranormal entity.

The incongruity is introduced when Sam mentions that there is a leakingpipe. Beeman writes that the second stage, the paradox, ‘involves the creationof the additional frame or frames’ (2001: 103). With the knowledge that thereis a pipe leaking water, another source potential interpretation for the audibletaps emerges, namely, that there is a natural cause for the raps. This calls intodoubt the initial interpretation introduced in the first frame.

At this point, the denouncement, the third stage, emerges. Beeman observesthat the ‘denouncement is the point at which the initial and subsequent framesare shown to coexist’ (2001: 103– 104). Here, the fleeting ambiguity regarding thecause of the taps acts as the denouncement. The release, or, the resulting enjoy-ment or pleasure, results from this denouncement. When Jack and Rose declarethemselves ‘ace investigators’, they manage that humour and show that, even atthe point of denouncement, their rationality remains undiminished.

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Understanding the source of humour here requires special attention to theconflict between the two frames that underpin the setup and the paradoxbecause this reveals an important and central tension in paranormal investi-gating and popular, sceptical interpretations of it. The typical logic of paranor-mal investigating guides the first frame: Jack and Rose attempt to engageparanormal or ghostly forces, question them, and embrace the results as poten-tial evidence. While Jack, Rose, and other paranormal investigators considersuch forms of inquiry as viable, if not entirely conclusive, mechanisms forexploring and learning about the paranormal, sceptics conceive of them in avery different light. Indeed, opaque references such as these to sceptical critiquesinform much of paranormal humour.

The story of the leaking pipe reveals two key and interrelated elements ofparanormal investigation: (1) the indeterminacy of the data and (2) the precarityof investigators’ position. Their position and their data are both insecure. Thepossible symptoms of a ghost’s presence are highly ambiguous. A rap couldbe the sign of a ghost or a mundane manifestation of a leaky pipe. Determiningthe difference requires skill and scepticism on the part of Jack and Rose;however, Jack and Rose present their own perceptions as flawed and notabove error. This recognition and acceptance of their flawed perceptionaligned them with idealized forms of scientific objectivity that position research-ers as detached, ‘modest’ observers (Shapin & Schaffer 1987; Shapin 1996).

A Sceptical InterpretationSceptics would interpret Jack and Rose’s story very different. At social gath-

erings of sceptics, such as Sceptics in a Pub meetings or major national conven-tions, sceptics often point to apocryphal incidents along the lines of the onedescribed by Jack and Rose as an indication of paranormal researchers’ faultylogic and questionable grasp of causality and science. A common critiquelevelled by sceptics against paranormal investigators is that their belief in theparanormal leads them to misinterpret common noises or sights and incorrectlyinterpret them as paranormal. In the above story, Jack and Rose’s initialinterpretation of the taps would serve as evidence of investigators’ problematicunderstanding of the natural and built environment around them.

In fact, sceptics often engage in what humour theorists refer to as disparage-ment humour to deride the efforts of paranormal investigators. For example,while I was waiting in line in 2009 to attend the Amazing Meeting London,a meeting of sceptics, I talked to several young sceptics. In the course of describ-ing how troubling and unbelievable they found the efforts of paranormal

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investigators and ghost hunters, sceptics often resorted to humour as a means ofemphasizing their contempt for the intellectual project of paranormal investi-gating. One of them, Jay, a man in his 20s, recounted a story that sparkedmuch laughter among the sceptical listeners. He had been watching ‘one ofthose paranormal programmes’ when he observed the incident in question.1

As he recounted:

it was bloody hilarious. A bunch of grown men are sat around in a dark room in anold house talking to nothing. They think they’re hearing knocks and creaks or whathave you and they’re on about what spirit is talking to them. Bloody hell, they’re in anold house. It’s night! There’s wind! There are literally a thousand things it could havebeen, but they just knew it was ghosts.

Jay’s story elicited laughter from his friends. Revealingly, this humorous storydepicts a scene similar to the one recounted by Jack and Rose. Investigatorsobserve noises and incorrectly assume that a paranormal force engendersthem. In both narratives, the first frame is grounded on the legitimacy of theparanormal interpretation. In Jay’s case, the legitimacy of this interpretation isweakened by his narrative style; however, it remains present. Similarly, inboth narratives, the second frame and the ensuing humour or release resultfrom the incongruity between the first frame and the second frame, in whichit is revealed that ghosts are not causing the noise but, rather, natural,mundane causes are likely the source.

The depiction of investigators found in Jay’s narrative parallels broader scep-tical depictions of investigators. He concluded the story by asserting that theparanormal investigators’ confidence in the existence of ghosts blinded themto the likely possibility that something far more natural caused the creaks. Para-normal investigators’ presumed belief in the existence of ghosts prevents themfrom correctly understanding the material reality surrounding them and keepsthem from accurately distinguishing the real from the imaginary. Jay’s story,then, casts paranormal investigating as a magical rather than scientific practice,echoing the understandings of Victorian anthropologists, such as James Frazeror Edward Tylor, who saw magical thought as malformed science. Scepticspresent investigators as trenchant believers who misdiagnose simple, naturallyoccurring causalities, preferring to interpret them in ways that comply withtheir predetermined beliefs. Sceptics, like earlier anthropologists, point tosuch presumed malformities as a way of demonstrating their intellectualsuperiority over believers. As their humour shows, paranormal investigators

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themselves do not contest this understanding of rationality; rather, their storiesportray them as embodying such rationality.

When Jack and Rose choose to recount a humorous story in which thecomedic incongruity hinges on their misunderstanding of the cause of taps, itis a risky choice, given the proliferation of critiques of ghost hunting thatdismiss it on such grounds; however, by actively acknowledging and manipulat-ing such periodic oversights, Jack and Rose attempt to neutralize sceptical cri-tiques of investigating. Jack and Rose’s introduction and comedic deploymentof the second frame in the above story directly address and attempt to neutralizethe critiques levelled against paranormal researchers generally by sceptics. Byintroducing the second frame and playfully engaging with it, Jack and Rose pos-ition paranormal investigating as a balanced field of inquiry that embraces andaccepts a multiplicity of causalities for events, not simply, as their critics wouldposit, the ghostly explanation. Their story shows that while at first they rushedto accept an occult explanation, they quickly realized and accepted that thecause was natural rather than supernatural. In telling the story, Jack and Roseaim to show that they are not entrenched believers, but open-minded, rationalresearchers.

Importantly, in the denouncement of this narrative, Jack and Rose, the nar-rators and actors in the narrative, realize and accept the second frame as validand likely correct. They gladly accept dripping water as a likely cause for thetaps they had initially interpreted as paranormal. Ultimately, Jack and Rosedemonstrate their legitimacy as researchers and attempt to defy sceptical depic-tions of investigators by demonstrating their willingness to accept a plurality ofcauses and acknowledge their own mistakes. Their story suggests that theireagerness might lead them to make mistakes, but they are not blinded bybelief. They are capable of recognizing their own mistakes. Rose’s joking state-ment, ‘Ace investigators, we are!’ acts as a means of dismissing their mistake andacknowledging their fallibility, perhaps even positioning them as better investi-gators because of their willingness to learn from their mistakes. Ultimately,learning from an oversight positions them not as the recalcitrant believers scep-tics mock. That they can laugh at their oversight demonstrates their self-aware-ness. Their capacity to understand and maintain a degree of self-awarenessregarding their fallibility demonstrates their objectivity and their capacity tobridge scepticism and serious queries into the extraordinary. By good naturedlyaccepting their mistakes and moving on, they align themselves with powerfulforms of objectivity and empiricism. Like the modest witness described byShapin and Schaffer (1987), Jack and Rose portray themselves as simple,

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dispassionate observers, thus allowing them to deflect sceptical critiques. Indeflecting these critiques, paranormal investigators show themselves asembodying the very rationality that sceptics suspect they lack. Further, thisself-presentation allows them to tentatively position these two poles – extra-ordinary event and rational, even sceptical thought – as reconcilable. Suchreconciliation points to some of the transgressive work implicit in paranormalinvestigating, namely, the reconciliation of an enchanted world with the scien-tific reasoning and methodology many see as banishing the potential for suchenchantments.

The Perils of Open-MindednessInterestingly, Jay’s narrative as well as Jack and Rose’s narrative pivot along

many of the same issues as sceptical and paranormal investigative understand-ings of belief, believing, and believers. In Jay’s story, the willingness of investi-gators to consider a paranormal cause identified them as entrenchedbelievers, whereas, for Jack and Rose, their willingness to consider and acceptmultiple possible understandings of taps demonstrates their open-mindednessand refutes their status as dogmatic believers. Paranormal investigators’ empha-sis on open-mindedness connects to the forms of witnessing that that theyvalue. Open-mindedness, which they see as the key to good witnessing andreal objectivity, is grounded in a willingness to consider any explanationwithout bias. This includes the likely, natural explanations as well as the lesslikely, supernatural ones. For paranormal investigators, that a sceptic, such asJay, would dismiss the possibility that the taps in Jack and Rose’s story were trig-gered by anything other than a natural cause points to sceptics’ entrenchment ina belief system. Open-mindedness, paranormal investigators argue, requiresconsidering all possible explanations before settling on one. Indeed, many para-normal investigators would interpret Jay’s humorous story, which is groundedon the presumed obviousness of a natural cause for ‘knocks and creaks’ as a signthat Jay is an irrational believer, so entrenched in what investigators call a ‘thebelief system of science’, that he is blind to the possibility that something elsecould be at work. Belief in science, paranormal investigators maintain, can beas blinding as belief in the paranormal.

Most investigators would understand Jack and Rose’s willingness to considermultiple possibilities when encountering taps, both paranormal and mundane,as indications that they were not entrenched in a particular ‘belief system’regarding the paranormal and that, ultimately, they occupied the identity ofgood investigators. In paranormal investigation terms, they would appear as

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neither ‘believers in the paranormal’ nor ‘believers in science’. Rather, they drewconclusions based on available evidence and reconsidered them when necess-ary, much like testing hypotheses with an eye on evidence. In the narrative,they appear as ‘open-minded’, a trait highly valued by members of the paranor-mal investigating community. Investigators often emphasized the importanceof ‘open-mindedness’ in conversations about critical, especially sceptical,responses to paranormal research. As Harry, an investigator who embracedscientific research and professionally worked in a biotechnology laboratory,observed,

science is great. It makes huge innovations all the time. Of course we should payattention to it. The thing is that it doesn’t know everything yet. I think it’s good topush, to be open-minded. A lot of ghost hunting is absolute rubbish, but so what? Ithink it’s better to be open-minded.

Harry’s comments rang true with what many investigators valued in ‘open-mindedness’.2

Investigators realize that their brand of ‘open-mindedness’ has pitfalls,including, the very real potential to lead them into possibly silly or ridiculouscircumstances and they humorously engage this as a means of deflecting scep-tical critique. For example, John, a well-known psychical researcher in his early40s, routinely and often publicly recounts an instance of open-mindedness thatpaints him in a very silly light. Rather than allowing this to varnish his image,however, he repositions his misstep as an indication of his seriousness andopen-mindedness. John, who also has a doctorate in psychology, often lecturesat paranormal conferences with his colleague, Jeff, who is pursuing postgraduatestudy in parapsychology. I observed him tell the following story at two paranor-mal research gatherings.

John: I was 16 or 17 when I first decided to become an investigator. I had read somebooks and I decided that the best course of action was to post signs in my village tosee if anyone had anything they wanted me to investigate. [The audience laughs.] Iknow! I was very enthusiastic to get started. So, it’s pretty late one night and I geta phone call. This was before the days of email, and I actually put my family’sphone number on the signs, can you believe that? [The audience laughs.] So, I getthis call. The man calling says that the Flying Dutchman is heading up his streetand he sounds really concerned and sort of out of it so I race over to his house.3

Jeff: I’m sorry, John, but I’ve got to interrupt you for a minute. [The audience laughs.]The Flying Dutchman? [Audience and John laugh.]

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John: I know!Jeff: Didn’t you grow up near Coventry? [Audience laughs.]John: I did. [Audience laughs.]Jeff: And you thought the Flying Dutchman was coming up the road there? [Audiencelaughs.]John: (Laughingly) I thought I should at least check it out.Jeff: All right. Go on then. [Audience laughs.]John: I get to the house and knock on the door. Something strange does seem to behappening. Everyone inside is pissed or high. [Audience laughs.]Jeff: So, no Flying Dutchman that night?John: [Laughingly] No, not that night. [Audience laughs.]

John went on to comment on the story, noting that it was good to take eachclaim seriously even if, as in the above case, it amounted to nothing. Thesource of humour in John’s narrative hinges on his seeming gullibility. Thefirst instance of audience laughter emerges when he recounts that as a teenagerhe was willing to publicize his family’s phone number in order to pursue inves-tigations. Out of all of the comedic releases in John’s narrative, this instance ofhumour has the least to do with investigating. Indeed, the incongruity hereemerges from comparing youthful understandings of confidentiality in the1970s with the necessarily more nuanced understandings requisite in thetwenty-first century world of online communication.

The other instances of humour, however, result from John’s willingness totrust the anonymous caller’s assertion that the Flying Dutchman was presentin a village near Coventry. Part of the humour emerges from John’s uncriticalacceptance that a ghost ship unable to make port was present in a villagenear Coventry. Given that Coventry is landlocked and that the Dutchman istypically considered to be a seafaring vessel, it seemed unlikely to the audiencethat the ship would be spotted in its ghost form in or near Coventry.

Despite these humorous incongruities, John does not emerge as a pitiful char-acter in these narratives. Indeed, since he is telling this story, it is unlikely that hewould tell it if there was not a redeeming element to it. While John willingly showshimself as gullible and overly trusting in the beginning of the narrative, by the con-clusion, he has shown that he is not overly or entirely gullible. In the conclusion ofthe story, when John visits the household that reported seeing the Flying Dutch-man, he quickly realizes that drunken people have summoned him. By acknowl-edging this, he demonstrates that open-mindedness does not entirely equate withgullibility. As he later emphasized in the commentary to this story, although this

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query was a waste of time, it is ‘important to take claims seriously . . . until you canprove them wrong’.

Humorous depictions such as this inscribe open-mindedness with a morality.Investigators are trusting and willing to take seriously and respect all claims,even if they come at a sacrifice to their dignity. John’s positioning of paranormalinvestigators echoes popular, heroic narratives of scientists who brave theelements as well as popular disapproval to unveil new truth. This understandingof open-mindedness, complete with its emphasis on discounting illegitimateclaims as part of being open-minded, starkly contrasts with sceptical depictionsof investigators.

That John acted in good faith is central to his story. In John’s narrative, hetrudged out into the night to investigate the unlikely presence of the FlyingDutchman because he trusted that people would not report things incorrectly.John had to alter his understandings of the situation. He quickly realized thatthe people reporting a sighting of the Flying Dutchman were not sober and,thus, were unreliable witnesses. This story enacted two chief characteristics ofthe ‘good investigators’: investigators are open-minded within reasonablelimits and they will alter their initial sense based on the evidence they collect.

Telling stories like this and laughing at their mishaps allowed John and Jeff tonot only deflect sceptical criticism but to present themselves as experts and theirresearch as almost heroic. In many fields, scientists and social scientists tellstories about their journey from novice to expert, which foreground earlier mis-steps or mistakes. In science, these stories both instruct novices on correct be-haviour and emphasize the seniority and accomplishment of senior researchers.Anthropologists (Traweek 1988) have shown that such stories play a significantrole in socializing new scientists. John and Jeff’s story readapts such narratives tohighlight the role of open-mindedness in achieving expertise in paranormalinvestigation. In sharing this story with an audience of paranormal investigatorseager to learn from recognized authorities in the field, John and Jeff emphasizethe importance of evaluating paranormal claims with an open-mind whilegently urging them to do so in a professional way.

The Rational SelfThe source of the humour typically generated by paranormal investigators

nearly always incorporates references to others. Although these others arenot typically specified, the character of these others seems to be informedheavily by sceptics and sceptical discourse. As in my opening story of Eva’s see-mingly spontaneous laughter, a frequently enacted genre of paranormal humour

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rests on the introduction of an unknown, hypothetical observer into a paranor-mal investigation. It typically takes the form of an observation such as, ‘whatwould someone think if they saw this?’ or ‘can you imagine what a strangerwould think?’ Examining the identity of the imagined spectator offers an impor-tant insight into the production of paranormal investigating self-identificationand even self-policing.

During a conversation with Dora, an investigator in her late 40s, such a nar-rative emerged. Dora and I were sitting in a coffee shop in Wakefield on aSunday morning talking about her weekend paranormal investigation. Sheand four other members of her group had carried out an illicit investigationof a decrepit, abandoned hospital on the outskirts of their town with a repu-tation for paranormal activity. They had arrived well after nightfall andparked their cars about a mile up the road from the hospital, to avoid suspicionfrom the local authorities. They walked the mile to the hospital in the dark,climbed over a fence, and then set about investigating. Dora explained thatthe group did the ‘normal things’: they called out to potential ghosts, askingthem to make the team aware of their presence; the team’s medium wanderedaround and collected a variety of psychic impressions of the building; and theyused their electromagnetic readers to detect any unusual electromagneticenergy. During the course of the night, they heard several noises that theyfound difficult to explain and they considered them potentially paranormal innature. Around 3 am, they began to hear clear footsteps approaching them.They stood very still and listened. Then, one of the members panicked andyelled, ‘leg it!’ He began to run out of the hospital. Dora and the other two fol-lowed. They raced across the field towards the fence and hurled themselvesover it as quickly as possible. For Dora, it was too quick and she lost herfooting and fell flat out in a muddy stretch of the ground. As she recountedthis to me, she dissolved into an uproarious fit of laughter.

‘Can you imagine, at my age, being out in an abandoned hospital runningaway from footsteps? Can you imagine what anyone would have thought ifthey could have seen us? What a team of crack investigators we are!’ Sheerupted into another fit of laughter. The image that Dora conjured wascomical in its absurdity and I joined her in laughing at her adventure.

In Dora’s narrative, the source of the footsteps is never specified. Indeed, theincongruity underlying the humour is based on the premise of investigatingmore generally, not a specific mistake or act. The first frame that she introducesin the narrative – that she and her team were investigating – is called into ques-tion not by a mistake but the introduction of an external, general perspective.

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In the second frame, the denouncement and the release, to use Beeman’s terms,result from the gaze and perception of an unspecified other. If someone who didnot understand investigating observed their actions, these acts would seemunreasonable or even irrational. The humour emerges from how easily theiractions could be misconstrued.

Other anthropologists have noted the role of absent gazes in engenderinghumour. For example, Megan McCullough noted that a humorous Murri per-formance resulted, in part, from participants’ sense that ‘their subjectivitylabours under the weight of a judgmental White gaze’ (2008: 284). Their per-formance provided them with a means to ‘transmit important informationand modes of being to their children, and to communicate to themselves andone another the inexpressible tensions within and of their experience’(McCullough 2008: 284). This tendency to imagine, speculate and, ultimately,find humour in the critical gaze of unspecified others marks much of paranor-mal investigative humour. During the course of multiple investigations, it wascommon for an investigator to remark, ‘can you imagine if someone saw us?’Such questions consistently elicited laughter from all of the present participants.For example, during a small group investigation at Chillingham Castle, Harryand Ginny, paranormal investigators, were interested in conducting a seriesof sensory experiments in two reportedly haunted places in the Castle, in the‘torture room’ and by the ‘hanging tree’. For these experiments, Harry andGinny dressed one participant in either soundproof earphones or a blindfold,left the other one with all of his or her senses, and left them in the hauntedspace alone for 30 minutes. They were interested in comparing the embodied,sensory experiences of people with a full range of sensing and those with alimited range. I participated as a subject in one of these experiments. Ginnyand Harry left me and Rose by the hanging tree for 30 minutes at 3 am. Ispent the 30 minutes blindfolded. When Harry and Ginny returned to endthe experiment and interview us about our experiences, Ginny remarked, ‘canyou imagine what people would say if they could see us? Especially you,Michele!’ This elicited enormous laughter from the participants, includingme. The humour here emerged from subjecting what was a well thought-outact of investigating to the gaze of uninitiated others.

Dora’s narrative and Ginny’s reaction to the deprivation experiments raise animportant question: why are investigators so often concerned with the perspec-tive of imagined others? Furthermore, who are these others? The answer is, Ibelieve, twofold. There is a general other and a specific other. The generalother is anyone who might misunderstand or misconstrue the (often seemingly

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odd) behaviour of investigators out of genuine misunderstanding. The scepticembodies the more specific, hostile other.4 The act of imagining these observingcritics allows investigators to articulate the ideological constraint that curtailsmuch of investigating. This figure of the sceptic other actively misconstruesand denigrates the activities of investigators; however, I suspect that investi-gators are less concerned with actual sceptics than with a constant naggingsense that what they are doing is somehow illegitimate. It emerges in theirhumour and in their inability to convert their embodied experiences into aform of evidence during the course of investigations.

Investigators themselves were uncharacteristically un-reflective about whothese others might be. When I tried to talk with Ginny about the source ofthis humour on several occasions, she had difficulty identifying the others orwhy this was funny. In response to my question about these incidents, sheobserved:

I don’t know who the who is. I think it’s that . . . well . . . I don’t know! People whodon’t know what we’re doing would think we’re mad to be out in the middle ofthe night like this messing about in torture rooms with deprivation and all.[Laughs.] We would seem like nutters. Then, there are people who do try to takethe piss [make fun of] what we do. I guess that’s it.

As Ginny’s comments demonstrate, she is aware of two varieties of others: thebenignly unknowledgeable others who might not understand what investi-gators were doing and the hostile others who seek to mock or denigrate inves-tigators. The common thread connecting these two others is their potential tocast investigators in a negative light. Indeed, by submitting, even hypothetically,to the surveillance of others, the legitimacy of investigators’ actions is called intoquestion. The presumed gaze of external others calls into question their ration-ality, seriousness, and even sanity.

Ginny, Harry, and Dora’s invocation of the gaze of an external other can beunderstood as acts of self-effacing humour or self-effacement. This places theseinvocations in an amusing light, allowing investigators to attempt to resolve thecriticism surrounding their investigations. As I noted earlier, Freud argued thatsuch forms of humour must be considered tendentious. He observed, ‘a particu-larly favorable occasion for tendentious jokes is presented when the intendedrebellious criticism is directed against the subject himself, or, to put it more cau-tiously, against someone in whom the subject has a share – a collective person’1960[1905]:111– 112). Freud cites the nation as an example of such a collective

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person and other humour theorists have suggested that ethnic groups constituteanother frequent target of such self-directed humour. For investigators, theinvocation of an external other who criticizes the rationality of their projectas well as their selves allows them to constitute themselves as a coherent collec-tive of investigators and to ward off perceived criticisms.

In his essay ‘On Narcissism’, Freud (1989) expanded on his earlier theoriza-tion of the role of humour. He argued that self-effacing/self-directed humouris a way for the more advanced, mature self to laugh at the ‘primitive’, immatureself. Humour that targets the speaker, for Freud, is a means of punishing the selfin hopes of appeasing the critical (and, ultimately, correctly critical) other. ForFreud, this is an adaptation that allows the self to laugh at itself while simul-taneously releasing emotions of dread and anger. Samuel Juni and BernardKatz summarize Freud’s argument, observing that ‘within the humiliation andapparent masochism . . . there is an uncanny sense of control and an attemptto seduce the perceived aggressor to accept the self-inflicted punishment as ade-quate punishment’ (2001: 120– 121).

Without fully embracing the entirety of Freud’s association of humour andmasochism, Freud’s approach allows for the possibility that investigators’humour reveals a very real, central tension they experience in approachingtheir work, namely, the other’s gaze and its implicit critique of their work.Such invocations of ‘what would they think’, rather than acting as a mechanismfor punishing investigators, instead, act as an aggressive defence against realand/or imagined critiques. That investigators consistently experience theneed to engage in such defences, however, points to a central tension in theirlives and work.

Several theorists have argued that one of the functions of humour is the for-mation and solidification of collective social identities. Scholars who haveobserved humour in workplace settings have noted that humour acts tocreate solidarity and ease tension. For instance, Owen Lynch observes,‘humor is the binding ingredient of social relations at work’ (2010: 130).Drawing on his ethnography of kitchen workers, Lynch argued ‘that in-group humour is a means in which organizational members organize and(re)produce both their self identity and labor practices and process’ (2010:155). For investigators, I think that the humour of imagining an external otherobserving their practices plays a role in solidifying their identities as rational,daring investigators. This is the more productive element of their humour.

More broadly, this tendency for self-effacing humour points to the unyield-ing, unresolved central crisis for investigators: their self-doubt. Their regular

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references to being observed by critical outsiders and the ensuing humour reveala simmering sense of insecurity in their project. This insecurity appears else-where, for instance, in the problems they have making sense of their ownencounters with ghosts. Indeed, a sense of rationality that excludes their endea-vours seems to haunt the investigators.

Performing and Internalizing RationalityWhile I have focused on investigators’ deployment of humour in their stories,

not all humour unfolds in articulated narratives. As Mady Schutzman remindsus, ‘humor itself is a performative trope’ (2006: 283). Investigators engage in avariety of humorous performances. Like their narrative humour, these perform-ances act as a means for investigators to pre-emptively dismantle potential cri-tiques of their intellect, reason, and project of investigating.

One such instance occurred during an investigation at Chillingham Castle.Ginny and Harry organized a large group of friends and colleagues fromassorted investigating groups to spend three nights investigating the notor-iously haunted castle. Ginny and Harry prided themselves on their scientificapproach to investigating. The night in question had been a quiet nightplagued with problems outside their control. The management of the castlebecame a burdensome presence during the investigation, limiting the group’saccess to desirable interiors such as the torture chamber. This frustrated thegroup considerably. At around 4 in the morning, five of us found ourselves gath-ered in the living room of our rented apartment. We were all watching the fourCCTV cameras that monitored the interior of the apartment in which we werestaying.

Ginny had a sudden burst of energy. She turned to me and asked if I wantedto see something. I tentatively said that I did. She laughingly said that she wouldshow me some orbs. Orbs are one of the most contested and scorned phenom-ena in all veins of research into the paranormal. Orbs appear as little balls of lightin photographs. Some people consider them to be the condensed, materializedsoul or energy of a spirit. All sceptics, parapsychologists, and nearly all paranor-mal investigators dismiss orbs as nothing more than dust or moisture particlesthat reflect the flash of a camera or some other source of light; however, scepticswere likely to suggest that all paranormal investigators ‘believed’ in orbs,meaning that investigators believed orbs were evidence of ghosts. Scepticsand paranormal investigators agreed that individuals who consider orbs mean-ingful lacked a thorough understanding of the underlying causes of these balls oflight. For investigators, belief in orbs was an indication that someone was a

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dilettante rather than a proper investigator. Among the investigators I knew,Ginny and Harry were among the more outspoken critics of orbs.

After confirming that everyone in the group was interested in seeing orbs,Ginny left the living room and went to her bedroom. She took a pillow fromthe room and then went and stood in front of one of the cameras. She exagger-atedly waved at us and then ducked off screen. From where we were sitting, wecould hear the sound of her hitting the pillow. Soon, little orbs appeared on oneof the CCTV screens. She yelled up the stairs to us that she would get ‘somecoloured orbs’ for us as well. She returned with a pink sweater that she hitand produced dust particles that appeared on screen as orbs.

Harry and the other investigators present found this performance highlyamusing. When Ginny returned, she triumphantly declared that she hadshown me some orbs. She and the others laughed quite a bit. This seguedinto a discussion of the foolishness of ascribing meaning to orbs duringwhich these paranormal investigators again demonstrated their rationality bymaking clear that they were not uncritical believers, but rather serious research-ers who rely on evidence.

In her parodic imitation of ghost hunters, Ginny actively played with framesof interpretation. The appearance of the orbs was obviously staged. In herobvious staging of the orbs, she demonstrated her (and indirectly our) abilityto correctly identify chains of events. She indexically pointed to true believers’inability to do so. In the process, she also mocked their use of technology. Byshowing that she could manipulate a camera to produce what they wouldtake as ‘evidence’, she demonstrates the partiality and fallibility of technology– something she and other investigators tend to think ghost hunters do notunderstand and, additionally, something sceptics might think paranormal inves-tigators do not understand.

I do not think that the timing of this performance was coincidental. While noone in the room had questioned or challenged Ginny’s legitimacy as an inves-tigator or accused her of misinterpreting causalities, I suspect that the encoun-ters with the castle management earlier in the night reminded her of thesometimes hostile or mocking public perception of investigating. The‘someone’ of the imagine-if-someone-saw-us trope assumed the identity ofthe castle’s management staff. While the staff did not question the rationalityof investigators, they did not treat their desires to conduct experiments in themiddle of the night as warranting unlimited access to the castle. Many in thegroup perceived them as dismissive. The castle staff came to represent all exter-nal criticisms – both real and imagined – of investigators.

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In this instance, the self-doubt and internalized anxiety regarding the legiti-macy of investigating are evident. Here, it is clear that investigators, who oftenseek to distance themselves from sceptics and popular discourses that constitutescience in heroic terms, do internalize the elements of this underlying world-view. Namely, they equate the ability to identify chains of causality correctlyas a chief component of rationality. This has been evident in each of the ethno-graphic vignettes in this essay.

Butler (1993) has argued that there is no necessary relationship betweenparody and subversion. She observed that drag performances, which aremarked by parody, can be ‘a site of a certain ambivalence, one which reflectsthe more general situation of being implicated in the regimes of power bywhich one is constituted and, hence, of being implicated in the very regimesof power that one opposes’ (Butler 1993: 125). In the case of Ginny’s parodyof ghost hunters’ interpretation of orbs, this sense of ambivalence is clear.This parody provided Ginny with a means of criticizing ghost hunters’ senseof causality; however, this very misapprehension of causality is at the heart ofmuch of sceptics and outsiders’ criticism of paranormal investigators. (In fact,they rarely differentiate between ghost hunters and paranormal investigators.)Her performance parodied believers, but also provided a mechanism for paro-dying criticisms levelled against investigators. It did little to disentangleGinny and the others from the webs of power in which they were situated.Indeed, her parodic performance reinstated the sense that belief in the see-mingly ridiculous was an indication of irrationality.

This performance struggled to legitimize investigating by demonstrating theability of investigators to identify chains of causality correctly. Ginny’s perform-ance both distanced investigators from ghost hunters and reaffirmed the validityof criticisms directed at investigators. Her performance realigned investigatorson the side of power by making them the ones to voice the criticism ratherthan receive it. As such, her performance further dispersed dominant under-standings of rationality.

ConclusionThrough these instances of humour, investigators actively characterize

themselves as rational. Indeed, these performances implicitly define theirrational. In short, irrationality is tantamount to belief. As Bruno Latour hasobserved ‘like knowledge, belief is not an obvious category referring to apsychological state. It is an artifact of the distinction between constructionand reality. It is . . . always an accusation leveled at others’ (1999: 304).

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Investigators’ performances reiterate again and again that they are not believers,that they are committed to an understanding of causality and an expansionof science rather than a rebuttal of it. Above all else, they are not believers.They are the ultimate rational researchers; they are open-minded, but nevergullible.

Their commitment to this form of rationality may be surprising. After all,they are untrained researchers labouring in what is widely considered an illegi-timate or pseudoscientific arena. As their humour demonstrates, they seek toalign themselves with dominant discourses of rationality rather than challen-ging or disrupting them. Their humour, then, acts as a way of performingtheir painful self-awareness and their commitment to the rational.

As I have argued throughout this paper, humour is intimately tied with theincongruous or unresolvable. This is very much the case in paranormal investi-gators’ performances of humour. Their humorous stories portrayed the investi-gators as rational and question the rationality of their sceptics; however, theseperformances did little to alter the public perception of investigators or easeinvestigators’ own concern at being painted as irrational. The uproarious fitsof laughter engendered by my interlocutors’ misadventures and misapprehen-sions highlighted their project’s fragile and tentative tie to the rational.

Notes1. He did not specify which programme he watched. There are several television pro-

grammes that are aired regularly in the UK, such as Most Haunted, Ghost Hunters Inter-national, and T.A.P.S. I am not at all sure that he was referencing a specific scene in aparticular programme. Most people who are involved, even tangentially, in pursuingor critiquing paranormal investigation are able to conjure stereotypical scenes such asthese. To be fair, such imaginings do bear a strong resemblance to some segments ofparanormal television programmes; however, in most shows, the presenters and crewtypically acknowledge the possibility that ‘environmental factors,’ like wind or creakyfloorboards, might contribute to sounds.

2. This is not to say that sceptics do not refute these understandings and valuations of‘open-mindedness’. In much the way that investigators reinterpret the term sceptic,sceptics alleged that investigators’ definition of open-mindedness is a misnomer.

3. The Flying Dutchman is a famous ghost ship that is unable to dock. It has beenpresent in folklore since the eighteenth century. Novels, poems, and operas oftendepicted stories about it. In twentieth- and twenty-first-century sightings, it is typi-cally depicted as a collection of eerie lights moving in the form of a ship.

4. Indeed, it is also possible and perhaps likely that my presence constituted anotherother. While I am fairly certain that most of my interlocutors did not perceive meas hostile or demeaning, I, nonetheless, was an anthropologist and not an investi-gator.

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