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00:00Wondering what else is out there is a core part of the human experience,
00:04whether it's taking a peek into a dark forest, or looking out into the cosmos.
00:08We can't help but imagine what we might be missing. And in this world of ghosts, cryptids,
00:13aliens, and all other sorts of phenomena, there's a big emphasis on belief. This of course has led
00:18to a split, the true believers and the skeptics. But while skeptics are often thought of as wholly
00:24against accepting any sort of otherworldly phenomena, when we look a little closer,
00:28we often find that that isn't the case at all. They just want proof.
00:32The truth is out there, but so are lies.
00:37And that drive to disprove, or maybe even possibly prove, these seemingly unexplainable things often
00:42means that some skeptics can't help but get drawn into this world. So what keeps pulling us skeptics
00:48in? And could we even be the key to unlocking the truth about these kinds of mysteries?
00:54All right, I'm afraid. But it's an irrational fear.
00:58People have enjoyed telling stories about all varieties of cryptids, ghosts, interdimensional
01:03entities, beings from space, and more, since essentially the beginning of storytelling itself.
01:08The nature of and large scale interest in these kinds of stories has fluctuated over the millennia
01:12and across cultures. But in more recent times, there's been a particularly large surge of interest
01:16since around the mid-19th century that has continued into the present day. There's always been a desire to
01:21know what's going to happen to us after we die, and the hope that we can still somehow be in contact
01:27with our loved ones who have passed on. And so ghost stories in particular have kept a hold on our
01:32imaginations. As Casey Sepp wrote for The New Yorker, there were many reasons that interest in
01:37spiritualism spiked in the mid- and late-19th century. But one major reason lay in the fact that,
01:42at the time, an estimated 20-40% of children died before the age of 5. And scholars often point to this
01:48fact to help account for the appeal of spiritualism. But it was worse in the preceding centuries. For
01:52some time, the child mortality rate had been falling. What mattered more was that the average
01:58family size was shrinking too, at the same time that modern ideas of childhood were taking hold.
02:03Trends that combined to make the loss of any child seem that much more anguishing.
02:07But in tandem with this rise in interest came a rise of skeptics, and they had very good reasons to
02:13question much of the fervor around connections with the beyond, which we'll go into more in a moment.
02:17Maybe you're just seeing what you want to see. Aliens and cryptids also speak to the human
02:22desire to know that there's something else out there. Things beyond our understanding or
02:26comprehension that are affecting our world and maybe even changing it. According to a recent Gallup
02:32poll, 4 in 10 Americans now think some UFOs that people have spotted have been alien spacecraft
02:37visiting Earth from other planets or galaxies. This isn't an X-Files. Sure it is. It's unexplained.
02:43What do you want? Aliens? Tractor beams? In addition to this need for more, to find some new
02:49mysteries to explore that could explain things that we don't understand in a fantastical way,
02:54is that aspect of the hunt itself. To not just be a passive observer, but actually the one to go out
03:00and find these beings and connections. To make sense of something that seemed previously
03:04incomprehensible, and thus give yourself a greater feeling of control. Ben Crer wrote in his piece for
03:09Smithsonian Magazine about the continued belief in and search for Bigfoot, the hunt for Bigfoot
03:14emulates an earlier mode of discovery, when new knowledge was not the product of advanced degrees
03:19and expensive machinery, but rather curiosity, bravery, patience, and survival. This desire to
03:24root out the mysteries of the universe and prove that the paranormal or otherwise unexplainable is in
03:29fact real and true has often come to be rooted in belief rather than hard proof, which of course causes
03:35problems when other people want to see literally any actual evidence before jumping on board.
03:41There's an idea held by some that if you don't believe, then you likely won't experience these
03:45kinds of otherworldly phenomena because you aren't open to it, so if you can't get evidence, it's all on
03:50you. Skeptics, of course, aren't a big fan of this explanation. If these things are in fact real,
03:56then they should be quantifiable in some way. Especially now that we live in a world where nearly
04:01everyone has a high quality video and audio recording device on them at all times. But the
04:06skeptics, well skepticism, also rests on the fact that so much of what has been claimed as proof was
04:12in fact fake. Indeed, back in the late 19th century and early 20th century explosion of interest in
04:17spiritualism, from seances to ghost photos and more, many of those who rose to stardom for their
04:21abilities were eventually outed as charlatans. Harry Houdini even dedicated the later part of his career
04:26specifically to proving how all of their so-called proof was really just slight of hand tricks.
04:31The divide between believers and skeptics has continued at pace into the modern day,
04:35as we've seen a boom of paranormal cryptid and alien hunting tv shows.
04:39My partner, a skeptic. Myself, a believer.
04:44One of the most iconic representations of this split comes from the X-Files, which sparked an interest
04:49in the supernatural in a new generation when it hit tv screens in the 90s. The show follows two FBI agents,
04:54true believer Fox Mulder, who has never met a conspiracy theory or supernatural phenomena he
04:59can't believe in, and Dana Scully, an ardent skeptic, who was sent in by the higher-ups to
05:03take a look at Mulder's weird case files from a scientific perspective, and ideally disprove them.
05:09Admittedly, there's not a lot of hard evidence to back that up.
05:12You know why? Because those creatures don't exist, Mulder.
05:15In the pair we see the classic stereotypical divide, the paranoid believer who is often seen as crazy
05:20because of their out-there ideas, and the hardline skeptic who is going to make sure that they cross
05:25off every other possibility before they even start thinking about paranormal explanations.
05:30Why is it still so hard for you to believe, even when all the evidence suggests extraordinary phenomena?
05:34Looking for extreme possibilities makes you blind to the probable explanation right in front of you.
05:41But we also see another key element in their pairing as well, the fact that they work best together.
05:46Mulder is often too willing to believe any and everything without even stopping to think about
05:51some more rational explanations. So having Scully around to pull him back down to Earth,
05:55sometimes literally, actually helps him in his quest to find real proof. And for her part,
06:00Scully remains a pretty ardent non-believer even after she's seen some pretty wild, unexplainable
06:04phenomena. But being around Mulder and actually having these experiences does open her mind to the
06:10possibilities of it. But she importantly never gives up her drive to find concrete evidence.
06:14But this is also something that causes yet another rift between the two camps.
06:19What really counts as evidence?
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07:36The idea of what constitutes concrete proof of any of these phenomena varies wildly depending on who you
07:42ask. But to say that they've been riding around and flying saucers, it's crazy, Mulder. There is
07:47nothing to support that. Nothing scientific, you mean. Some people see any speck of dust or noise that
07:52goes bump in the night as incontrovertible evidence of the paranormal, and actually become quite upset when a
07:57skeptic comes in and points out that it's just a light flare or a possum rummaging around in a
08:01nearby trash can. This anger can arise from the fact that having evidence shot down can feel like
08:07having one's entire belief system shot down. But the more clearly not real evidence that is
08:12touted as hard proof, the more people who don't already believe get pushed into skepticism.
08:16While Scully was confronted with a lot of actual, weird, mysterious, and often literally out of this
08:21world phenomena before she finally started to give in and open herself up to believing a little bit,
08:25the amount of proof we've been provided in the real world has often worked to tip the scale in
08:30the other direction. You put the whammy on him. Please explain to me the scientific nature of the
08:35whammy. With the rise of paranormal hunting shows, searching for ghosts, cryptids, aliens,
08:39and anything else that can be seen in night vision, we've also seen a rise in pretty obviously fake,
08:44or if we're being generous, very hard to take seriously, evidence. These shows often start out
08:49feeling quite genuine, like the people involved really do feel like they'll be able to capture
08:53something amazing and undeniable. But as the seasons roll on, they often come to feel more
08:58and more produced, clearly more concerned with filling time and finding places to put big red
09:02circles on the screen than finding any real proof. Many have even been charged with straight up
09:07faking evidence. Ghost hunters, who had long framed themselves as regular people just looking for
09:11truth, using their knowledge of the inner workings of buildings to help debunk a lot of alleged
09:15haunting activity, ended up falling into a huge scandal when one of them was caught seemingly faking
09:20evidence during a hunt. And all of this, unsurprisingly, just adds to the skepticism.
09:24If people who literally hunt these things for a living, with thousands of dollars of equipment
09:28and ample time, can't find seemingly any undeniable evidence for these phenomena,
09:33it doesn't bode well for their existence.
09:35That same moth is flying to each lit candle in sequential order, passing through the flames
09:42without catching on fire or dying. Not to mention the way that these shows are often presented,
09:48leads one to wonder how much even the people involved really believe in any of it.
09:52If you really genuinely believed that you were conversing with the spirit of, say,
09:56a woman who had been brutally murdered, would you really approach that by yelling,
10:00Hi! Say my name! How do you feel about being murdered? Scream into this glorified bop it if
10:04you didn't like being murdered. Wave your hands over this evil disco ball if the person that murdered
10:08you was also here. Hopefully not.
10:10Of course, this is all television. Of course they're going to ramp things up for fun. The entire point of it is
10:16entertainment. But when all of the evidence that's ever presented follows along the same lines,
10:21blurs in dark corners of photos, static that's supposed to sound like a threatening voice if you
10:25listen really hard, weird lights in the sky that no one can capture high definition footage of for some
10:30reason, it can make it difficult not to be a skeptic. But despite it all, there's just something that
10:36keeps pulling us back in. Whether it's a fictional show or film or reality TV, it makes a lot of thematic
10:42sense to pair a skeptic with a believer. It gives you the chance to explore everything from more sides,
10:47and to ideally uncover even more facets than might have been initially apparent. But skeptics
10:52who enjoy this kind of media often get hit with the question, if you don't believe, then why are you
10:57even interested in those kinds of things at all?
10:59Oh yay. A seance. I haven't done that since high school.
11:04The reality is that being skeptical doesn't mean that you don't have that inner desire to explore the unknown,
11:09it just means that you connect with it in a different way, and have a higher bar for what
11:13it'll take to accept it into your thinking. Trying to go at these larger existential questions in a
11:18scientific way can ruffle some feathers, but it's the only way we'll ever be able to get real concrete
11:24proof of anything. If we're going to be open to a cryptid or ghost or alien or other phenomena,
11:28it's going to have to meet the same burden of proof as anything else. But that doesn't mean it'll never happen.
11:33Spontaneous human combustion. Dear diary, today my heart leapt when Agent Scully suggested
11:39spontaneous human combustion. Well there are one or two somewhat well-documented cases.
11:44And there have been plenty of things that were thought to be fake that were eventually proven
11:48to be true, so it's not like it's impossible. Because the FBI has nothing to hide.
11:53And if anything, the skeptics' drive for real undeniable evidence is what can help make it possible.
11:59If you put salt around us, doesn't that mean, like, Goatman can't get to the Ouija board?
12:03It would trap him in here with us. What if he was outside of it when you did it?
12:07Whether you're a skeptic believer or somewhere in between, it's always fun to think about what
12:11might be going on beyond our understanding. The interest in unexplained phenomena all stems
12:16from a desire for connection with and understanding of our world and the people and things in it,
12:20so it's not surprising that everyone gets pulled in sometimes. If we take on the search together,
12:25who knows what we might find out there.
12:27If it's not too big a deal, maybe you can get me a few photographs of that thing,
12:30which bears absolutely no resemblance to a horned beast.
12:33Sure, fine. Whatever.
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