Horror Subsets

Copyright 2010 by Gary L. Pullman

In Terror Television: American Series, 1970-1999's "Commentary" on The X-Files, John Kenneth Muir offers a helpful classification of the show’s “subsections of horror,” breaking the types of antagonists that the FBI’s Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully face each week into ten groups:

1. “Trust No One,” which involves “secret experiments” that “the U. S. government. . . is conducting on its own people”
2. “Freaks of Nature,” which presents “mutants and monsters,” some of which are “just beasts,” others of which are “evolutionary nightmares,” and still others of which are “genetic mutants”
3. “Foreign Fears,” comprised of “ancient ethnic legends” which happen “to have a basis in fact”
4. “From the Dawn of Time,” featuring prehistoric “creatures” which “reassert themselves in present time”
5. “Aliens!,” or “extraterrestrial creatures”
6. “God’s Masterplan,” which is replete with “elements of Christian religion/mythology” which are “explored as ‘real’ concepts”
7. “The Serial Killer”
8. “Psychic Phenomena,” such as “astral projection. . . clairvoyance. . . soul transmission,
   and. . . the effect of heavenly bodies on human bodies”
9. “The Mytharc”/”Conspiracy,” comprised of “the history of the government’s association with aliens”
10. Tried-and-trued “Standards” of the horror genre, which is populated by “the vampire. . . the werewolf. . . ghosts. . . crazy computers. . . matters of time. . . succubi. . . cannibalism. . . tattoos. . . Evil dolls. . . and the like” (353).

“In addition to these ten plots,” Muir observes, “The X-Files has also showed a commendable dedication to asking the great questions of our time, and telling stories about the most puzzling mysteries humankind has yet faced,” so that an eleventh “subsection of horror” discernable in the series is the episodes that center upon “The Mysteries” (354).

Muir’s categorization of the types of threats that the series’ protagonists face is interesting in itself, but it is also interesting because it represents an approach that writers of horror may adopt for themselves in the writing and development of their own oeuvres. A writer who writes a series, whether of television episodes, novels, or even short stories that are unified by a theme, as those, for example of Ray Bradbury and H. P. Lovecraft sometimes are, can take a leaf from Muir’s classification of the “subsections” common to The X-Files’ exploration of the horror genre.

Just as a literary genre tends to develop stock characters and characteristic settings, it also tends to evolve typical themes and situations. These situations, in fact, can, and should, support the themes, as those of The X-Files do. For example, Muir assigns the following X-Files episodes to the “Trust No One” category: “Eve,” “Ghost in the Machine,” “Blood,” “Sleepless,” “Red Museum,” “F. Emasculata,” “Soft Light,” “Wetwired,” “Zero Sum,” “The Pine Bluff Variant,” “Drive,” and “Dreamland (I & II)” (353). Taken together, he says, these episodes express “paranoia” which results from the government’s violations of “its sacred trust to represent the people,” as its agents seem “capable of any atrocity, including murder and cover-ups” (353). Eugenics experiments, bioengineered disease, experiments with dark matter, mind control, bee-delivered plague, and the like are enough to make paranoia a rational, rather than an irrational, response to the an unscrupulous government that is clearly out of control.

Muir points out eleven sources for horror; others might be space, crackpot theories or visions, the biochemical foundations of animal and human existence, arcane and mystical traditions and lore, religious cults, alternate histories and universes, conspiracies and cover-ups, dangerous self-fulfilling prophecies, solipsism, actual unsolved mysteries of crime or history (what really became of the Lost Colony of Roanoke?) and, always, of course, the seven deadly sins.

Psychic Vampirism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

One of Edgar Allan Poe’s shortest short stories is “The Oval Portrait.” However, its brevity notwithstanding, it is a disturbing and horrific tale in which there is an undercurrent of what might be called psychic vampirism. For those who may be unacquainted with the story, a summary of it is in order:

The story’s narrator, who is wounded, and his valet, Pedro, seek shelter within the apartment of an abandoned Gothic chateau situated “among the Appennines.” In the apartment, the narrator finds that the walls--and even the niches within the walls--are decorated with “a number of very spirited modern paintings” and, upon the pillow of the bed, he discovers a “small volume. . . which. . . criticize[s] and describe[s]” the paintings. For some reason--perhaps because of his “incipient delirium”--he takes a keen interest in the paintings.

After Pedro drops off to sleep, the narrator changes the position of the candelabrum so that its candlelight better illuminates the pages of his book, and, as a result, he discerns a painting in an alcove that had been previously lost in the room’s shadows. Bordered by an oval frame, the painting depicts the head and shoulders of “a young girl just ripening into womanhood.” Her “arms. . . bosom. . . and. . . hair” seem to dissolve into “the vague yet deep shadow” that represents the “background of the whole,” and the narrator, upon first glimpsing it, is startled, mistaking the picture for a disembodied head.

After returning the candelabrum to its original position, the narrator again consults his book, reading about the picture in the oval frame. According to this text, the young woman had been the wife of the “passionate, studious, austere” artist who, married to his art before he’d taken the young woman as his wife, painted her portrait. A happy person, she’d disliked only the art that kept her husband from her. When he’d asked to paint her portrait, however, she’d obediently sat for him, for days on end.

At last, the book declares, the artist finished his work, declaring it to be nothing less than “life itself!” and, turning to “regard his beloved,” he found that she was dead.

In a tale so short and simple, a lesser artist than Poe might have had great difficulty in elevating the story to the level of art, but Poe, of course, is one of the great masters of the horror genre. Because of the subtlety with which he writes and because of his own knowledge of human nature, which was more than a little tinged with cynicism, he imparts to his tale an unexpected psychological richness. Much that the story conveys is left unsaid and must be inferred by those readers who are able, as it were, to read between the lines.

The wife is in the flower of womanhood, and has a carefree, loving, and happy heart. Her husband, however, seems to love his art--which is to say, himself, since his art is an expression of himself--more than he loves her. It is to her beauty that he is attracted more than to her, as a person. He views her as a fitting subject for his art, and asks her to model for him, despite her dislike of “the Art which was her rival” and her dread of “the pallet and the brushes. . . which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.” As he paints, spending all his time with the very “pallet and brushes” that she detests as her rivals for her husband’s affection, rather than with her (as other than a model), her health fails, and she becomes “daily more dispirited and weak.”

According to the book that “criticise[s] and describes[s] the paintings,” the color in the portrait’s cheek is obtained at the expense of her own lifeblood: “he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.” The last brushstroke with which his masterpiece is completed ends her life. Symbolically, his art represents his nature, which is as narcissistic as it is “passionate, studious,” and “austere.” Paradoxically, as an artist, he is a creator; at the same time, his creativity destroys the woman whom he claims to love. His passion for his work sucks the life from his bride. The artist is a psychic vampire who is willing to kill in order that his art may thrive. Artists are like Brahma and Shiva of the Hindu Trimurti, both a creator and a destroyer at once, and every work of art is a still life of sorts, a Vishnu, or preserver, created of the essence of the life (or lives) upon which the artist’s imagination has fed and, daily, continues to feed.

The theme of Poe’s story is reminiscent of that of a poem, “My Last Duchess,” by one of the author’s contemporaries, Robert Browning (1812-1889), although Poe’s story was written before Browning’s poem and there is no evidence that the two works have anything to do with one another:

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

It is more likely that these artists both understood the paradoxical creative-destructive duality of the artist. In Browning’s poem, a duke appreciates the portrait of his late wife more than he appreciated her (whom, the poem suggests, he may have killed), because it is both beautiful and passive. (The young wife in Poe’s story is also beautiful and obedient.) The women’s passivity or obedience allowed the artists to create beautiful portraits, although these qualities also allowed them to destroy the realities that these portraits represent. Therein, Poe suggests, lies the horror of art in general and of "The Oval Portrait" in particular.

Paranormal and Supernatural Hoaxes

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

A number of paranormal and supernatural hoaxes have been, and continue to be, perpetuated upon the public; many of these, whether from a position of belief or skepticism, are of interest to published and aspiring writers of fiction concerning horror, fantasy, and science fiction. Some of the more familiar and long-standing of these frauds are included in this post.

Cottingley fairies

Cousins Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffith (10), of Cottingley, England, photographed themselves with cutouts of cardboard fairies. Experts confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, but Kodak refused to follow suit. The pictures sparked a huge controversy, which involved, among others, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories, who wrote an article on the incident, “Fairies photographed--an epoch making event,” for Strand magazine. He wrote a follow-up account of the fairies in The Coming of the Fairies, expressing his personal conviction that they were real beings. In 1981, the girls finally admitted that the photographs were a hoax, the fairies being cardboard cutouts mounted upon hairpins.

Crop circles

Geometric patterns that appear overnight in crops or pastures, as in the film Signs, are alleged to be the handiwork of extraterrestrial visitors who, perhaps, intend the designs to be navigational aids for their more navigationally challenged peers. However, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley have explained how they created such designs as a prank. Using nothing more than planks of wood, rope, hats, wire, and ingenuity, they created a 40-foot circle in only 15 minutes. When publicity proved to be less than they’d anticipated, they repeated the procedure near a natural amphitheater near a busy roadway and increased the complexity of their designs when critics were unimpressed by their simple circles. The wire was used to fashion a loop that, suspended from a hat, allowed the men to focus on a distant landmark as an aid to keeping lines straight. Their hoax was exposed when Bower’s wife, noting the high number of miles on her husband’s odometer, confronted him as to his many outings, and, afraid she’d think he was being unfaithful to her, he confessed his and Chorley’s hobby. Others have since taken up the practice, which has become something of an international pastime.

Hundredth Monkey Effect

Lyall Watson claimed that Japanese scientists observed the so-called hundredth monkey effect, in which, once a number of the animals learned to wash sweet potatoes, the practice was instantly performed by other monkeys on nearby islands as well. However, this account ignores the fact that one of the monkeys who had learned to wash the vegetables by imitating older monkeys (the same way that all the others also learned the practice) had swum to one of these islands, where it lived for four years, and that sweet potatoes were introduced by humans into the area at about the time that the so-called effect was supposedly observed.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSICOP) Internet article, “Don’t Be Fooled: Strange Hoaxes That Endure,” debunks several paranormal hoaxes:

• The Roswell incident, in which a crashed alien spaceship and its crew, killed in the impact, were supposedly recovered and sent to secret military installations.
• Spiritualism, which is predicated upon channeling spirits or otherwise communicating with the dead.
• Psychic networks, which the gullible can telephone for help with the future.
• The Shroud of Turin, which is said to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
• The Cottingley fairies (see above).
• Crop circles (see above).
• The Amityville Horror, the story of a supposedly haunted house, wherein a previous resident “murdered his parents and siblings,” was created by homeowners George and Kathy Lutz “over many bottles of wine” and became a major motion picture.
• The Piltdown Man, who was comprised of a human skull and an orangutan’s jawbone.
• Psychic surgery, which involves the supposed removal of “'tumors' and other diseased tissue” sans scalpel and anesthesia.
• King Tut’s curse, which was supposedly inscribed over the doorway to his tomb and has caused the deaths of his final resting place’s plunderers, whereas, “in fact, ten years after the tomb was opened, all but one of the five who first entered it were still living.”

The Cardiff giant, mentioned among the “C” entries of our own “A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly” post, is also mentioned.

For those who are interested in the subject of paranormal and supernatural hoaxes, two excellent sources are The Skeptic’s Dictionary and James Randi Educational Foundation's An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. We also recommend Chillers and Thrillers own four-part “Alternative Explanations” series: Part 1 , Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

About.com’s Stephen Wagner sponsors an annual “Paranormal Photo Hoax,” inviting the public to send him “a fake paranormal photo of any kind,” such as one of monsters, ghosts, poltergeists, fairies, UFO’s, or “anything else you can dream up.” Stories concerning the photographs are also welcome, he says. He’s the judge, and certain “terms and conditions” apply. Interested parties can read more at his blog, Paranormal Phenomena.

A Dictionary of the Paranormal, the Supernatural, and the Otherworldly (P - R)

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Note: Unless otherwise noted, definitions are courtesy of dictionary.die.net, an Internet dictionary in the public domain.

P

Paganism--any of various religions other than Christianity or Judaism or Islamism.

Palmistry--telling fortunes by lines on the palm of the hand.

Pandora--in Greek mythology, the first woman; created by Hephaestus on orders from Zeus who presented her to Epimetheus along with a box filled with evils.

Panspermia--The theory that microorganisms or biochemical compounds from outer space are responsible for originating life on Earth and possibly in other parts of the universe where suitable atmospheric conditions exist (American Heritage Dictionary)

Pantheism--belief in multiple Gods.

Papyromancy--divination using paper (the author).

Paradigm shift--“a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science” (Wikipedia).

Paranormal--seemingly outside normal sensory channels; not in accordance with scientific laws.

Parapsychology--phenomena that appear to contradict physical laws and suggest the possibility of causation by mental processes.

Penile plethysmograph--“that measures changes in blood flow in the penis in response to audio and/or visual stimuli. It is typically used to determine the level of sexual arousal as the subject is exposed to sexually suggestive content, such as photos, movies or audio” (Wikipedia).

Pentagram--a star with 5 points; formed by 5 straight lines between the vertices of a pentagon and enclosing another pentagon.

Perpetual motion machine--a machine which, once it is set in motion, moves continuously thereafter, requiring less energy to operate than it generates; perpetual motion machines are impossible, as they violate the first law of thermodynamics (the author).

Pets, homing of--the ability of pet animals to find their way home over long distances by unknown means (the author).

Phrenology--a now abandoned study of the shape of skull as indicative of the strengths of different faculties.

Philosopher’s stone--a substance that is alleged to be able to transform a base metal, such as lead, into gold (the author).

Physicalism--the doctrine that only physical things exist and that, consequently, all things that exist are physical (the author).

Physiognomy--the human face, believed to be a key to interpreting character (the author).

Piltdown Hoax--a fraud in which the jawbone of an orangutan was represented to belong to and a human skull which had belonged to an undiscovered early form of human being (the author).

Placebo effect--a therapeutic effect without a pharmaceutical or medical basis, simply as a result of the belief that the substance provided will help to alleviate symptoms or remedy physical condition (the author).

Plant perception--the theory or belief that plants are sentient or conscious of their environment and react to stimuli (the author).

Plesiosaur

Plesiosaur--extinct marine reptile with a small head on a long neck a short tail and four paddle-shaped limbs; of the Jurassic and Cretaceous (dictionary.die.net); some believe that the Loch Ness monster may be a plesiosaur (the author).

Pluto--the Greek god of the underworld.

Poe, Edgar Allan--American author of “tales of the grotesque and the arabesque”; Poe gave the modern horror story its structure and many of its themes (the author).

Poltergeist--a noisy ghost, which is alleged to cause mischief and may be destructive and dangerous (the author).

Polygraph--see “lie detector.”

Possession, demonic or Satanic--the alleged take over and control of a person’s body by Satan or a lesser evil spirit; priests may attempt to evict the spirit by exorcising it (the author).

Post hoc fallacy--see “magical thinking.”

Pragmatic fallacy--“the pragmatic fallacy is committed when one argues that something is true because it works and where ‘works’ means something like “I’m satisfied with it,” “I feel better,” “I find it beneficial, meaningful, or significant,” or “It explains things for me” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Precognition (foretelling the future)--knowledge of an event before it occurs.

Prometheus--in Greek mythology, the Titan who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to mankind.

Pseudo science--knowledge that appears to be or is represented as being scientific but does not conform to scientific principles or cannot be demonstrated as true or false by use of the scientific method; see pyramidology (the author).

PSI--”A term used to demarcate processes or causation associated with cognitive or physiological activity that fall outside of conventional scientific boundaries (ESP, for example)” (Wikipedia).

Psychic--pertaining to forces or mental processes outside the possibilities defined by natural or scientific laws; "psychic reader"; "psychical research"; a person apparently sensitive to things beyond the natural range of perception.

Psychic detective--a person who uses alleged osychic abilities to investigate crime (the author).

Psychic surgery--allegedly, the use of psychic means to perform surgical procedures (the author).

Psychoanalysis--a set of techniques for exploring underlying motives and a method of treating various mental disorders; "his physician recommended psychoanalysis."

Psychokinesis (moving objects by mental means)--the power to move something by thinking about it without the application of physical force.

Psychologism--the explanation of physical, social, historical, cultural, religious, or other facts, principles, beliefs, or values through psychological theory; often used derisively, when this approach is considered reductionistic (the author).

Psychology--the science of mental life.

Psychometry--any branch of psychology concerned with psychological measurements; The art of measuring the duration of mental processes, or of determining the time relations of mental phenomena.

Pterodactyl--extinct flying reptile.

Pyramidiocy--the supposedly scientific study of pyramids and their effects; a pseudo science (the author).

Q

No entries.

R

Rama--avatar of Vishnu; any of three incarnations: Ramachandra or Parashurama or Balarama.

Ramtha--“a 35,000 year-old spirit-warrior who appeared in JZ Knight’s kitchen in Tacoma, Washington, in 1977” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Randi's paranormal challenge--the offer of “a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power,” made by James Randi, a “magician and author of numerous works skeptical of paranormal, supernatural, and pseudoscientific claims” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary)

Reflexology--the massaging of feet to diagnose and cure disease” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary)

Relic

Relic, holy--a memento, such as bones, a garment, or a body part, that is believed to have belonged to a holy person or saint; see “Christ, foreskin of” (the author).

Reincarnation--a second or new birth.

Remote viewing--the use of psychic powers (and map coordinates) to discern targets or other items of intelligence at specific locations from which the “viewer” is physically absent (the author).

Repressed memory--”the memory of a traumatic event unconsciously retained in the mind, where it is said to adversely affect conscious thought, desire, and action” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Retrocognition--“a type of clairvoyance involving knowledge of something after its occurrence through psychic means” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Revelation--The act of revealing, disclosing, or discovering to others what was before unknown to them.

Rod--“an insect caught in the act of flying by a video camera” and passed off as “some sort of unknown alien life form” (The Skeptic’s Dictionary).

Roswell (New Mexico), UFO--site of the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spaceship and the recovery of its injured occupants (the author).

Rumpology--“the art of reading the lines, crevices, dimples, and folds of the buttocks to divine the butt owner's character and get a glimpse of what lies ahead by analyzing what trails behind” (The Skeptic's Dictionary).

Rune--any character from an ancient Germanic alphabet used in Scandinavia from the 3rd century to the Middle Ages; "each rune had its own magical significance."

Alternative Explanations, Part II: Clairvoyants

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In “Alternative Explanations, Part I: Demons and Ghosts,” we considered ways by which skeptics seek to debunk these paranormal or supernatural phenomena. In Part II, we will take a look at how the skeptical character in your horror story may seek to dismiss or explain alleged clairvoyants.

A clairvoyant is a person who can see things beyond the limits of ordinary vision, including things that haven’t taken place yet (precognition) or things that have occurred already (retrocognition). One might say that he clairvoyant is blessed with phenomenal foresight and hindsight. These powers are said to derive from psychic abilities, except when they are given to one by the devil, and are (except in the devil-made-me-do-it instances), as such, paranormal, rather than supernatural, in nature.

In its’ Voice of Reason series, Live Science’s “Choosing Psychic Detectives Over Real Ones,” by Joe Nickell, discusses the remote viewing capabilities that psychic detectives allegedly have. According to the article, psychic detectives use a variety of once “discredited techniques” to acquire their visions of tomorrow, yesterday, and far away, including “astrology. . . spirit guides. . . dowsing rods and pendulums . . . psychometry,” or the use of “psychic impressions from objects connected with a particular person,” and “auras,” noting that neither “such disparity of approach” nor “specific tests” offer “a credible basis for psychic sleuthing.”

Clairvoyants are regarded as having been successful by naïve law enforcement officers on occasion because they fall for a technique known as retrofitting:

. . . this after-the-fact matching -- known as "retrofitting" -- is the secret behind most alleged psychic successes. For example, the statement, "I see water and the number seven," would be a safe offering in almost any case. After all the facts are in, it will be unusual if there is not some stream, body of water, or other source that cannot somehow be associated with the case. As to the number seven, that can later be associated with a distance, a highway, the number of people in a search party, part of a license plate number, or any of countless other possible interpretations. . . . Many experienced police officers have fallen for the retrofitting trick.

In addition, psychic detectives, Nickell, maintains, rely on a number of other simple, but sometimes-successful ploys:

Psychics may also enhance their reputations by exaggerating their successes, minimizing their failures, passing off secretly gleaned information as psychically acquired, and other means, including relying on others to misremember what was actually said.

Your horror story’s skeptical character may also critique claims of the paranormal and supernatural nature of clairvoyance by debunking the sources that clairvoyants claim for their powers: “astrology. . . spirit guides. . . dowsing rods and pendulums . . . psychometry,” or the use of “psychic impressions from objects connected with a particular person,” and “auras.” If the underlying source for clairvoyance can be shown to be false, any powers that are said to derive from these sources must also be seen as false or non-existent.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary gives a succinct definition of “astrology”:

Astrology, in its traditional form, is a type of divination based on the theory that the positions and movements of celestial bodies (stars, planets, sun, and moon) at the time of birth profoundly influence a person's life. In its psychological form, astrology is a type of New Age therapy used for self-understanding and personality analysis (astrotherapy). In both forms, it is a manifestation of magical thinking.

Even in William Shakespeare’s time, it was difficult for educated people to believe that the movements of heavenly bodies had any cause-and-effect on people. “The fault. . . lies in ourselves, not in the stars,” he has Julius Caesar tell Brutus.

Astrology is an ancient and complex system, and, as such, it cannot be completely debunked here, but some critical notes that your horror story’s skeptical character could address to the clairvoyant who maintains that his or her power to see past, future, or distant events include these, which appear in The Skeptic’s Dictionary’s essay concerning “astrology”:

Astrologers emphasize the importance of the positions of the sun, moon, planets, etc., at the time of birth. However, the birthing process isn’t instantaneous. There is no single moment that a person is born. The fact that some official somewhere writes down a time of birth is irrelevant. . . . Why are the initial conditions more important than all subsequent conditions for one’s personality and traits? Why is the moment of birth chosen as the significant moment rather than the moment of conception? Why aren’t other initial conditions such as one’s mother’s health, the delivery place conditions, forceps, bright lights, dim room, back seat of a car, etc., more important than whether Mars is ascending, descending, culminating, or fulminating?. . . . Why isn’t the planet Earth—the closest large object to us in our solar system--considered a major influence on who we are and what we become? Other than the sun and the moon and an occasional passing comet or asteroid, most planetary objects are so distant from us that any influences they might have on anything on our planet are likely to be wiped out by the influences of other things here on earth. . . . Initial conditions are less important than present conditions to understanding current effects on rivers and vegetables. If this is true for the tides and plants, why wouldn’t it be true for people?

Clairvoyance of a type, known as remote viewing, was once popular with the U. S. federal government, which has way too much taxpayer money on its hands. Supposedly, remote viewing clairvoyants, supplied with nothing more than paper, pencils, and map coordinates of distant points of military or intelligence interest could sketch whatever actually existed on these sites. The Federation of American Scientists published the findings of a study of remote viewing’s effectiveness. The study concluded that the remote viewers’ sketches were sometimes interpreted according to the researchers’ own familiarity with the targets, which made them believe that the drawings were more detailed and accurate than they were; that results that included information supplied by historical sources were always ,ore accurate than results that required predictions on the part of the remote viewers themselves; and that sketches were too vague and general to be of any use to the military or intelligence agencies. The agencies underwriting these experiments in remote viewing--at taxpayer--meaning your and my--expense discontinued them as unworthy of continued research.

The same conclusions might well be reached with regard to the efficacy of clairvoyance in general, since remote viewing is a specific type of the same activity.

Although the use of spirit guides need not include channeling, the criticisms against channeling may be directed against the idea of spirit guides as well. The language and dialect that spirit guides use is often at odds with the time period from which they are alleged to hail. The Skeptic’s Dictionary offers an example:

1987, ABC showed a mini-series based on [Shirley] MacLaine's book Out on a
Limb, which depicts MacLaine conversing with spirits through channeler
Kevin Ryerson. One of the spirits who speaks through Ryerson is a contemporary
of Jesus called "John." "John" doesn't speak Aramaic--the language of Jesus--but
a kind of Elizabethan English.

The banality of spirit guides is also susceptible to doubt:

One of MacLaine's favorite channelers is J. Z. Knight who claims to channel a
35,000 year-old Cromagnon warrior called Ramtha. . . . Some of her patrons pay
as much as $1,000 to attend her seminars where she dispenses such wisdom as "[we
must] open our minds to new frontiers of potential."

Shouldn’t spirits who have gone on to enlightenment utter proverbs equal in wisdom to those of Buddha and Christ?

Dowsing rods and pendulums--what would such dubious devices have to do with clairvoyants’ supposed abilities to see past, present, and remote events? Nothing, other than the use of dowsing rods is supposed to help their users detect subterranean substances such as oil, water, and metal. According to The Skeptic’s Dictionary:

In 1949, an experiment was conducted in Maine by the American Society for
Psychical Research. Twenty-seven dowsers "failed completely to estimate either
the depth or the amount of water to be found in a field free of surface clues to
water, whereas a geologist and an engineer successfully predicted the depth at
which water would be found in 16 sites in the same field."

The same article also recounts an experiment in which

James Randi tested some dowsers using a protocol they all agreed upon. If they could locate water in underground pipes at an 80% success rate they would get $10,000 (now the prize is over $1,000,000). All the dowsers failed the test, though each claimed to be highly successful in finding water using a variety of non-scientific instruments, including a pendulum. Says Randi, "the sad fact is that dowsers are no better at finding water than anyone else. Drill a well almost anywhere in an area where water is geologically possible, and you will find it.

It seems clear that dowsing is a highly dubious enterprise, but, even if it works, what has it to do with seeing future, past, or future events? None that many can detect.

Not to be deterred, if astrology, spirit guides, and the use of dowsing rods and pendulums can’t explain how clairvoyants can do what they claim they do, maybe clairvoyance is the result of psychometry. According to psychometry, by handling objects associated with a person, the handler can discern facts about the property’s owner, often by seeing the owner’s aura, the “a colored outline or set of contiguous outlines, allegedly emanating from the surface of an object.”

Most critics--including your horror story’s skeptical character, perhaps--associate psychometry with magical thinking, selective thinking, cold reading, subjective evaluation, and shot gunning, all of which themselves have fatal logical and scientific flaws. Like many paranormal and supernatural beliefs, clairvoyance is interlinked with a complex of other such ideas and attitudes, which makes debunking it in a space less than that of a large volume difficult, if not impossible.

Therefore, the reader must take upon him- or herself the task of researching these lesser, but related, topics. To assist the aspiring horror writer in this task, we list these sources:

The Skeptic’s Dictionary
Live Science
Federation of American Scientists
NOVA Online
MythBusters

In Part III of “Alternative Explanations,” we’ll consider how your horror story’s skeptical character might debunk claims about other paranormal and supernatural phenomena.