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It is the beginning of flu season in the northern hemisphere, which means it's time to get your flu vaccine. Each year the debate about the safety and efficacy of the flu vaccine is renewed, mostly by anti-vaccine ideologues, despite the fact that the evidence shows that the vaccine is both safe and effective.

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For more than eighty years after a British woman named Sarah Ellen Roberts was buried in the local cemetery in Pisco, Peru, local residents continued to spread the story that she had been executed in the United Kingdom for being a vampire and a murderer.   According to the legend, Sarah Ellen Roberts had been tried and executed in Blackburn, E after being seen biting the neck of a child and sucking the blood.  Her husband, John Roberts, reportedly brought her to Pisco because the Church of England had denied her burial on consecrated ground.  Since there was nowhere else that was willing to take the body due to her terrible crimes, he settled on an obscure city in Peru. To ensure that she would remain in her grave, Roberts purchased a lead-lined coffin and, after burying his wife, went home and never returned to Peru.  In a more elaborate version of the story, Sarah Ellen Roberts was actually one of three sisters, all executed for vampirism at Blackburn and reportedly known in the U.K. as the "Brides of Dracula".    The other two sisters had been buried by John Roberts in different countries to ensure they were widely separated.  

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Our video of costumed 'zombies' visiting James Van Praagh's Spirit Circle in Laguna Beach has been featured at the Los Angeles Times, the OC Weekly, the Laguna Beach Patch, and the Huffington Post. You can read skeptical coverage of the event on Skepchick and SkepticBlog.

Enjoy these behind-the-scenes photos of the event!

Action photos from this album also appear on our Facebook page.

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I live in Salt Lake City, where the Mormon Church is headquartered. As you might expect, a certain amount of anti-Mormon sentiment centers here as well. In times of crescendo, one could forgive the casual observer for inferring that Salt Lake comprises naught but two, polarized, contentious populations. After all, the vast numbers of Mormons and non-Mormons who coexist problem-free tend not to make much noise.

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Dodging questions, James Van Praagh won't even talk to dead people about JREF's Million Dollar Challenge

Laguna Beach, Calif.—James Van Praagh has made himself rich by claiming he talks to the dead on daytime TV and at pricey ticketed seances—but he wouldn’t talk at all when ‘the dead’ actually turned up at his $100-a-head seminar to ask why he won’t prove his psychic powers.

A video released today by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) shows a small horde of costumed ‘zombies,’ carrying signs reading “Van Praaaaaaagh” and “talk to us, we won’t bite,” shambling up to the building where Van Praagh’s “Spirit Circle” was set to begin, and asking to speak with him. Led by JREF President D.J. Grothe, the groups asks why Van Praagh is dodging questions about whether he’ll accept the Foundation’s million-dollar challenge to prove his claimed psychic medium abilities.

  1. Skeptic History: Vaccines
  2. Sunday Comics: Flim-Flam! Anti-Dowsing
  3. Weekly Media Roundup, October 21, 2011
  4. SkeptiCamp New Hampshire 2011 This Weekend