Investigative Files | Skeptical Inquirer (original) (raw)
Impostor or Grand Duchess Anastasia? Secrets in Hidden Graves
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 6
November/December 2024
Joe Nickell
As an outcome of World War I, Russia’s Romanov dynasty, which had ruled for over four centuries, met a brutal end. In the 1917 revolution, military defeats with high causalities caused the forced abdication of the tsar, Nicholas II, and then, under the direct orders of Lenin, the assassination of the entire Romanov family. In …
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The Vanishing Lighthouse Keepers
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 5
September/October 2024
Joe Nickell
This mystery story, involving a lighthouse on one of a group of remote islands called the Flannan Isles, began in December 1900. The island is called Eilean Mor, meaning “big island,” and is indeed the largest of the group that lie off Scotland’s northwest coast. The island was uninhabited except for a bit of wildlife …
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The Vanishing of ‘D.B. Cooper’
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 4
July/August 2024
Joe Nickell
Carried out on the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, the D.B. Cooper skyjacking would become the only such case in U.S. history to remain unsolved. For all its boldness and mystery, the perpetrator’s real name is still unknown, as is the fate of the $200,000 in extortion money. I have continued to follow the case …
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The Horrific ‘Black Dahlia’ Murder: Killer’s Identity Revealed at Last
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 3
May/June 2024
Joe Nickell
One of the most famously shocking murder cases of all time came to light on the morning of January 15, 1947, when the naked and mutilated body of twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth “Beth” Short (originally from a Boston, Massachusetts, suburb) was found lying in a vacant lot near 39th Street and Norton Avenue in Los Angeles, California. …
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Detective’s Sidekick: Remembering My Late Wife, Diana Harris
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 2
March/April 2024
Joe Nickell
No one could investigate strange mysteries for over half a century like I have without considerable assistance. Here, I want to again acknowledge the contributions of my late wife Diana Harris, who “helped in ways too numerous to mention” (as I wrote in the Acknowledgments of my book Tracking the Man-Beasts [Nickell 2011, 11]). She …
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Whodunit? The ‘Murder’ of Edgar Allan Poe Solved at Last
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 48, No. 1
January/February 2024
Joe Nickell
Whodunit, indeed! The creator of the detective story—America’s strange genius, Edgar Allan Poe—was supposedly himself murdered! If not, then what mysterious fate actually befell him? Genius Afoot Edgar Allan Poe, the American writer best known for his macabre poems and stories, was born January 19, 1809, in Boston. His parents were young actors—David Poe, who …
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Revealing the Real Carolina Lizard Man
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 47, No. 6
November/December 2023
Joe Nickell
As part of my career as “The Detective of the Impossible,” I have investigated the world’s “cryptids” (hidden creatures) for well over half a century. I have sought their purported lairs from A to Z—literally from the Adirondack Mountains to remote Zhoukoudian, China. My successes began with an intriguing “devil baby mummy” I encountered in …
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Identifying the Enigmatic ‘Dover Demon’
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 47, No. 4
July/August 2023
Joe Nickell
According to The Field Guide to North American Monsters (Blackman 1998, 106), “Few cases in the history of cryptozoology have received as much attention as the peculiar Dover Demon affair” of 1977. All these years later, that remains even more true. But was the subject itself true? Was it really some hitherto unknown and seemingly …
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Solving the Disappearance of Judge Crater
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 47, No. 3
May/June 2023
Joe Nickell
Of missing persons, few are more notoriously unique than New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Force Crater, who, on the evening of August 6, 1930, waved goodbye to a couple he had just dined with and vanished into the night. No credible explanation has been forthcoming—until now. Meanwhile, Judge Crater was reportedly seen far …
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Identifying the ‘Spanish’ (French) Forger
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 47, No. 2
March/April 2023
Joe Nickell
From the end of the nineteenth century until about 1930, a masterful forger flourished, producing numerous “medieval” wood panels as well as illustrated manuscript pages and smaller leaves. Many of the latter were on genuine vellum (fine parchment) culled from dismembered choir books. The works were presented in a romantic style for the less sophisticated …
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History Real or Fake: Some Cases of an ‘Academic Forger’
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 47, No. 1
January/February 2023
Joe Nickell
In memory of Kendrick Frazier Several of my cases have involved my role as an “academic forger” (e.g., Nickell 2021; Nickell 2022a; Nickell 2022b). All these and more have involved my work with questioned historical writings, photos, and artifacts, for which I have had an affinity since an early age. At about eight, I began …
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Solving the Hidden-Tomb Mystery at Rosslyn Chapel
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 6
November/December 2022
Joe Nickell
Certain curious “vaults” of the “strange mysteries” variety are at far-flung sites around the world. They typically fall into two categories: burial vaults with some unusual activity, or treasure hoards that tend to be lost or perpetually inaccessible—or both. Over the years, beginning about 1979, I began to uncover the underlying secrets of these sites—which …
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Double Mystery: The Murder and Secret Life of … Jack the Ripper?
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 5
September/October 2022
Joe Nickell
Two mysteries—one real and the second a work as questionable as it was sensational—have attended the death of James Maybrick (1838–1889), a cotton merchant of Liverpool, England, who also had a home in Norfolk, Virginia. The first enigma, immediately after his questioned passing, would result in his much younger wife’s conviction for poisoning him. The …
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Unmasking a Monster: My Role as a Nazi Hunter
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 4
July/August 2022
Joe Nickell
Among cases that are found at the margin of the “strange” genre (and so are often included in lists of paranormal phenomena) are varying types of “hidden identity,” which present varying degrees of difficulty to expose. Some whimsical impostures are inadvertently exposed. For instance, young Deborah Sampson (1760–1827), prompted by a desire for adventure, assumed …
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‘Unexplained’ Enigmas of World War II
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 3
May/June 2022
Joe Nickell
“Unexplained” mysteries are intriguing to read, but compilations of such may exaggerate mystery by omitting facts. It is certainly easier to present some supposed enigma than to try to explain it. Here are three short cases from World War II that readers may enjoy trying to solve, together with my proposed solutions. (One is a …
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Murder at Mile End: Solving ‘The Case Conan Doyle Couldn’t Solve’
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 2
March/April 2022
Joe Nickell
“Ah, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes, gazing absently out the window into the swirling fog. “I’ve been mulling over a case from before our time.” Seated beside the fire, I turned to him. “I should be glad to hear of any case you find instructive,” I replied. “Well,” said he, “It occurred in 1860, one your …
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Hidden in Plain Sight: Discovering the Bigfoot Bear
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 46, No. 1
January/February 2022
Joe Nickell
In memory of Michael Dennett As what some would call a skeptical cryptozoologist, I prefer to think of myself as a paranatural naturalist—one who first considers allegedly paranatural/paranormal entities as hypothetically natural creatures, then seeks to identify them. Here I focus on North America’s hairy man-beast. Sasquatch or Bigfoot, long presumed to be a …
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The ‘Impossible’ Murder of Julia Wallace
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 45, No. 6
November/December 2021
Joe Nickell
It has been given various descriptors—including “a perfect crime” and “a classic locked-room mystery”—but when I heard of the case and learned that mystery writer Raymond Chandler had designated it an “impossible murder” (Hunt and Thompson 2019, 37), it seemed to have my name written on it. After all, fellow investigative writer Massimo Polidoro once …
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Solving a UFOlogical ‘Murder’: The Case of Morris K. Jessup
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 45, No. 5
September/October 2021
Joe Nickell
Among the borderlands of the paranormal, few exploits are stranger than those relating to supposed extraterrestrial phenomena. Take, for example, the fate of flying saucer writer Morris K. Jessup, who became entangled in various UFO conspiracy theories. Jessup led a life that threatened to become frustratingly comic, except that its mix of far-out alien claims …
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Role-Playing Detectives and the Paranormal
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 45, No. 4
July/August 2021
Joe Nickell
I knew I was a detective at the age of eight, but my career did not actually begin until I was twenty-five in 1969. In the more than half a century since, I became various kinds of sleuth—ranging from paranormal to literary to homicide—including police-licensed private investigator for the first American detective agency, the Pinkerton’s. …
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The Wyoming Death Ship: Truth Be Told
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 45, No. 3
May/June 2021
Joe Nickell
Ghost ships are said to be “sufficiently abundant” in certain locales as “to make them a hazard to navigation” (Beck 1973, 395). Some—seen in storms or fog—are probably mirages. (For example, a fiery, phantom-ship mystery I investigated in Nova Scotia was solved by witnesses who cited fog in front of the moon coming over the …
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Incredible Vanishings and the Case of Ambrose Bierce
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 45, No. 2
March / April 2021
Joe Nickell
American writer Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914?)—in his collection of mystery and horror tales, Can Such Things Be? (1893)—included a trilogy of stories of incredible disappearances. They are not mere accounts of missing persons such as those that police and private detectives are involved in every day. Instead, in each instance the disappearance has elements of the …
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Occult Angel: The Mormon Forgeries and Bombing Murders
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 45, No. 1
January / February 2021
Joe Nickell
In October 1985 in Salt Lake City, Utah, two bombing murders drew attention across the United States. Then a third bombing occurred, but the victim survived. When detectives went to his hospital room to interview the man—a young Mormon who sold rare historical documents—they caught him in a lie about how he had reached in …
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Skeptical Inquirer Volume 44, No. 6
November / December 2020
Joe Nickell
In amazing sea voyages seven centuries ago, Polynesians discovered and settled the island country they called Aotearoa—today’s New Zealand. Their descendants became the Maori people, with a distinct culture that was less nomadic, more dependent on garden food (such as gourds and sweet potatoes), and largely directed by utu (“reciprocity”), whether as gift-giving or by …
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The Incredible Saga of Coghlan’s Coffin
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 44, No. 5
September / October 2020
Joe Nickell
The astonishing story of Charles Coghlan’s coffin has been among the most intriguing claims in the annals of the mysterious, raising the very insistent question: Could a corpse actually develop a “homing instinct”? Could it direct its coffin—freed from its vault by a great natural disaster—across ocean waters many hundreds of miles away back to …
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Alaska’s Lady in Blue: How Baranof Castle Became Haunted
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 44, No. 4
July / August 2020
Joe Nickell
Among the earliest recorded ghost stories in Alaska is the tragic tale of the lovelorn bride of Baranof Castle. I encountered the promontory once topped by that historic site—and later learned of its captivating legend—when I arrived at Sitka in 2006 on a Center for Inquiry cruise.1 Baranof Castle The great rock outcrop known as …
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Secrets of Beijing’s Forbidden City
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 44, No. 3
May / June 2020
Joe Nickell
China’s Forbidden City is a 178-acre ancient palace complex in the heart of Beijing. Constructed in the early fifteenth century, it is not only a national treasure but also a UNESCO World Heritage site (since 1987)—fittingly so, because it is the largest such palace site in the world. Double walled and ringed with a wide …
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Lizzie Borden’s Eighty-One Whacks: Table-Tipping Testimony from a Spirit?
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 44, No. 2
March / April 2020
Joe Nickell
Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks; When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one! —Anonymous On August 4, 1892, in the Massachusetts seaport and cotton-mill town of Fall River, a unique double axe murder occurred that shocked the citizenry at the time and continues to fascinate. …
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Skeptical Inquirer Volume 44, No. 1
January / February 2020
Joe Nickell
A poltergeist is said to be a sort of prankster entity, after the German word for a “noisy” (poltern) “spirit” (geist). Poltergeist phenomena include mysteriously thrown objects, strange noises, or unusual fires (Nickell 1995, 79). Those who promote belief in poltergeists often attribute the effects—fiery or otherwise—to the repressed hostilities of a child or other …
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Haunted Asylums: Imagining Scary Ghosts
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 43, No. 6
November / December 2019
Joe Nickell
In the Middle Ages in Europe, the mentally ill—or those considered so—were kept in various settings, ranging from benign monasteries to “fools’ towers” where apparent madmen were housed. In London, the Priory of Saint Mary of Bethlehem evolved into a hospital (now six centuries old) that cared for the poor and aged and “lunatic.” Bethlehem, …
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Gloucester Sea-Serpent Mystery: Solved after Two Centuries
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 43, No. 5
September / October 2019
Joe Nickell
A “wonderful sea-snake” was repeatedly seen in the area of Gloucester Bay and Nahant Bay, Massachusetts, in August 1817 and again in 1819. Although attracting “hundreds of curious spectators,” plus a large reward for “his snakeship” alive or dead, the great creature escaped any such fate (Drake 1883, 156–159). The visitations have been reported in …
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Premonition! Foreseeing What Cannot Be Seen
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 43, No. 4
July / August 2019
Joe Nickell
An article in the March 4, 2019, New Yorker gave the regrettable impression that some people could do what science—and common sense—say cannot be done: see something (usually a tragedy) before it has occurred. (The magazine followed other outlets that have recently hawked paranormal claims—The New York Times regarding UFOs in 2017 and 2018 [Nickell …
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The Trapped Miners’ Holy Visions: Investigating the Sheppton ‘Miracle’
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 43, No. 3
May / June 2019
Joe Nickell
On August 27, 1963, two Pennsylvania coal miners were rescued after two weeks of being trapped underground. The pair would soon relate how, confined in the pitch black, they had witnessed humanoid figures, bathed in strange light, and saw a door that opened onto marble steps leading to a great celestial city with angels playing …
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The Saga of Tom Horn: Is the Hanged Man’s Ghost Still at Large?
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 43, No. 2
March / April 2019
Joe Nickell
At the turn of the twentieth century in Wyoming, the “range wars” claimed many victims, among them fourteen-year-old Willie Nickell (yes, one of my distant cousins).1 This is the story of his murder and the hanging of his killer—a legendary lawman and now “ghost.” It begins over a quarter of a century earlier in my …
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Skeptical Inquirer Volume 43, No. 1
January / February 2019
Joe Nickell
The Kraken—a massive sea monster—legendarily rose out of the ocean to pluck sailors off ship decks or even to grasp whole vessels and carry them to the depths.
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Outside the Box: Solving Diverse Mysteries
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 42, No. 5
September / October 2018
Joe Nickell
In contrast to mystery mongers, I insist that mysteries should not be fostered but investigated with the intent of solving them. I like them so much I have never really cared whether some case could be pigeonholed into a specific category, let alone what that category might be. “Probing Paranormal, Historical, and Forensic Enigmas,” I …
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Secrets of ‘The Flying Friar’: Did St. Joseph of Copertino Really Levitate?
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 42, No. 4
July / August 2018
Joe Nickell
Supported by records citing eyewitness testimony, St. Joseph of Copertino was a seventeenth-century religious marvel who laid claim to the power of levitation.
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Hawking ‘Ghosts’ in Old Louisville
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 42, No. 2
March / April 2018
Joe Nickell
How could a press that represents all of the universities in the Commonwealth of Kentucky publish such nonsense—even in an age of fake news and fake science?
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The Giant Panda: Discovered in the Land of Myth
Skeptical Inquirer Volume 42, No. 1
January / February 2018
Joe Nickell
Its immense popularity today belies the fact that the panda was once among the world’s most obscure creatures, “as mythical and elusive as Bigfoot” (Edwards 2009). Bigfooters are prone to emphasizing such creatures that were only discovered comparatively recently—for example a giraffe relative, the okapi (1901), and a “living fossil” fish, the coelacanth (1938)—because they …
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