SI July August 11_SI new design masters 5/25/11 12:18 PM Page 47 ‘Messages’ from the 9/11 Dead The terrorist attacks of 9/11 triggered a massive investigation and a retaliatory war. They also prompted numerous surviving family members to believe they were receiving otherworldy communications from their deceased loved ones. But were they? JOE NICKELL n the morning of September 11, 2001, concerted terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center Oand the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, claimed nearly 3,000 victims. They also resulted in Amer- ica’s largest criminal investigation, a war in Afghanistan, and endless controversy sparked by conspiracy theorists. Many of the family members and friends of the victims also began to convince themselves that there was a mystical aspect to the tragedy. Some claimed there had been intu- itive foreshadowings of the event; others claimed that they had received certain signals from, five-level garage capable of parking two or even experienced actual encounters thousand vehicles. The World Trade with, their deceased loved ones. Now Center was a huge target for terrorists. Bonnie McEneaney, whose husband, Indeed, more than eight and a half years Eamon, was a 9/11 victim, has collected before the towers were brought down, numerous such anecdotal accounts. Her the garage was the site of a massive book, Messages: Signs, Visits, and Premo- bombing that rocked the towers, led to another target—probably the U.S. nitions from Loved Ones Lost on 9 /1 1 an intense investigation by the FBI and Capitol—and instead caused it to crash (2010), bears a jacket blurb from spiri- the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Fire - in a rural Pennsylvania field. tualist medium James Van Praagh. The arms and Explosives (ATF), and culmi- The attacks prompted an immediate evidence is revealing—if not in the way nated in the arrest and conviction of four investigation by the FBI, which linked McEneaney intended. terrorists, each sentenced to 240 years in the strikes to the terrorist organization Background the U.S. penitentiary (Nickell and Fis- al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin cher 1999, 237–45). Laden (who initially denied involve- At a quarter of a mile high, only eighty- The horrific events now known as ment). On July 22, 2002, the National six feet shorter than the Sears Tower in “9/11” occurred on September 11, 2001. Commission on Terrorist Attacks Chicago, the Twin Towers of Man - Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists comman- Upon the United States issued its re- hattan’s World Trade Center were the deered four commercial airplanes, port, which gave an account of the cir- second- and third-tallest buildings in the crashing one into each of the World cumstances that surrounded the suicide United States. One steel tower was Trade Center’s Twin Towers and an- attacks—including issues of prepared- crowned with a restaurant; the other with other into the Pentagon near Wash - ness and response. an observatory. Far below, be neath the ington, DC; only the heroic actions of The United States Department of multi-building complex at the towers’ passengers and crew aboard a fourth hi- Commerce’s National Institute of Stan- bases, was a giant basement containing a jacked plane prevented it from reaching dards and Technology (NIST) con- Skeptical Inquirer | July / August 2011 47 SI July August 11_SI new design masters 5/25/11 12:18 PM Page 48 9/11: Conspiracy Theories Ten Years Later ducted a technical investigation of the and his al-Qaeda followers) and enacting writes, “Everything around me was Twin Towers’ collapse, culminating in a the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and still—not a ripple in the air. Then all of 10,000-page report explaining that the Strengthen ing America by Providing [a] sudden, somewhere above me, I crashed planes caused severe initial Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept heard the beginning rush of a gust of damage and that the subsequent fires and Ob struct Terrorism) Act, which ex - new wind building up in intensity” weakened the floors’ support trusses, panded both anti-terrorism legislation (McEneaney 2010, 10). As she looked causing floors to sag and pull on the ex- and law-enforcement powers. Osama up, “I could see the wind! It created terior steel columns, which then buck- bin Laden has been caught and killed, an such a pattern through the leaves and led and became unable to support the architect of the terrorist attacks, Khalid the trees that it was easy to follow. It structures (Dunbar and Reagan 2006). Sheikh Mohammad, and other cocon- had the outline of a river.” She con- As it happens, I was invited to lecture spirators have been apprehended, repair cludes, “I didn’t know how to explain on critical thinking at NIST on June of the Pentagon has been completed, re- the river of wind I had just seen and 28, 2007, and I was able to view some building has begun at the World Trade felt…. Yet I knew absolutely it was con- of the steel girders from the collapsed Center site, and various memorials to the nected to Eamon and that the sad mes- Twin Towers that had been analyzed by dead have been created. sage it brought was true and real.” NIST experts (see figure 1). (In 2002, I Signs This seems a classic case of wishful had visited the “Ground Zero” site where thinking and the power of expectation. the towers had stood.) It is not surprising that controversies McEneaney reveals (2010, 11) that her In time, however, conspiracy theorists and irreparable damages remain, among father had twice promised, before his began to make outlandish claims—some them the effects of the loss of so many own death in 1993, “You know, Bonnie, based on “scientific” evidence—that the victims. Although surviving family when I die, I’ll speak to you through the towers’ collapse was due not to airplane- members and friends have tried to get wind.” Thus she was predisposed to ac- crash damage and fire but to explosives on with their lives, much grief and long- cept wind as a form of spirit communi- previously installed in the buildings! ing remains—and the lure of supersti- cation, and when she witnessed a partic- Supposedly the U.S. Govern ment in- tion is not far away. Hence the quest for ular breeze after her husband’s death, she tended to frame terrorists and so gain an “messages” from the dead and the like- interpreted it accordingly. Those looking excuse to launch the Iraq War (Griffin lihood of a book such as Bonnie Mc- for a sign are likely to find something 2007, 2). Eneaney’s Messages appearing. they can interpret as such. Some pored Meanwhile, the United States has re- McEneaney gives a personal exam- over the things their loved ones left be- sponded to the 9/11 attacks by launching ple of one of the myriad “signs” that hind and selectively mined them for the War on Terror, beginning with the supposedly indicates contact with vic- signs, engaging in a process of after-the- invasion of Afghanistan (whose Taliban tims. Seeking some such indicator re- fact matching known as retrofitting. rulers had harbored Osama bin Laden garding her husband, Eamon, she Many of the supposed signs cata- Figure 1. Steel girders from the collapsed WTC Twin Towers that have been analyzed by NIST experts. (Photo by Joe Nickell.) 48 Volume 35 Issue 4 | Skeptical Inquirer SI July August 11_SI new design masters 5/25/11 12:18 PM Page 49 logued by McEneaney seem truly mun- awake helps identify the experience as claim to encounter spirits during waking dane: finding a coin (25–32, 195), hav- a common “waking dream,” which oc- activity, it is usually when they are tired, ing an experience with a bird or butter- curs in the interface between being performing routine work, concentrating fly (25, 28, 158), seeing a rainbow over awake and asleep. This is the explana- on some activity such as reading, or in an the place where the World Trade Cen- tion for many paranormal encounters altered state of consciousness such as ter once stood (134), and so on. A color through the ages: visits from demons, daydreaming. [Nickell 2001].) photo that graces the back cover of ghosts, aliens. Along with ordinary Children also often have ghostly ex- Messages was taken by a woman whose dreams, events that are surely waking periences just like adults. Lisa’s little husband died in the South Tower on dreams are reported frequently in Mes- daughter Jacie once told her: “Daddy is 9/11. It shows their daughter with a sages (56–59, 101). here too. He comes in the middle of the streak that she interprets as a “beam of A rather typical waking dream was night and sits at the bottom of the bed. light” (4) but is probably only an effect described by another friend of Welles Sometimes he pats your hair and kisses caused by the intrusion of her camera Crowther, who—while lying on the sofa you” (69). Such experiences typically ex- strap. (As is typical of photographic watching television (and having possibly press the percipient’s own hopes and glitches, nothing was seen until the drifted toward sleep)—heard footsteps fears: the desire for a comforting message photo was processed.) Over and over, and saw his late friend, who said, “Chuck, from a deceased loved one or the fear of McEneaney and those whose stories it’s okay. I’m okay.” Like most people who an encounter with an extraterrestrial. she features emphasize that an occur- experience a waking dream, he thought Jacie, at age four, was also seen at rence is “something that we can’t ex- he was not dreaming: times to laugh and appear “to have con- plain” (e.g., 117), as if therefore it is First of all I don’t dream very much.