Bogus Nostradamus Prophecies Circulate Following Terrorism - Brief Article

Within days of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City, a flurry of e-mails circulated the Internet claiming that the attack had been foreseen by the French astrologer Nostradamus. A dozen or so quatrains were proffered; some were entirely fictional, others were partly embellished actual verse, but not one truly foretold the tragedy.

Such stories are not new, of course: After nearly every national tragedy, prognosticators claim to have predicted the events. Psychics come out of the woodwork with stories of premonitions of doom, or clutching predictions they wrote ahead of time.

Meanwhile, those who believe in prophecy sift through reams of vague writings and quatrains of writers like Edgar Cayce and Nostradamus, trying to breathe new life into stale words. This is perhaps part of a psychological need to participate in the outpouring of emotions or to seem important.

The following is a typical example of the e-mailed prophecies:

Two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis.

The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude.

Fire approaches the great new city.

Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up.

Within months, rivers will flow with blood.

The undead will roam the earth for little time.

Much was made of the second line, as New York City (the putative Metropolis), lies at about forty degrees north latitude--though not forty-five. New York, despite its appellation, is hardly a "great new city," and is in fact one of the oldest cities in America.

This piece is a hybrid of actual Nostradamus verse and fiction, though the author was sloppy and even a glimmer of skepticism betrays this as a fraud. Not only does it lack the usual quatrain form, but the bit about the "two steel birds" is particularly strange, as steel wasn't in wide use until nearly 300 years after Nostradamus died. Another quatrain read:

In the city of God there will be a great thunder.

Two brothers torn apart by Chaos while the fortress endures.

The great leader will succumb, The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

--Nostradamus 1654

Given the fact that Nostradamus died in 1566, eighty-eight years before the quatrain was supposedly written, it seems a remarkable piece indeed.

This verse was actually published several years ago on the Web page of a student at a Canadian university as part of an essay on how easily important-sounding prophecy can be created using vague imagery. It is ironic that what began as an essentially skeptical, anti-prophecy piece became (intentionally or otherwise) circulated as the real thing.

A similar experiment was reported in the May/June 2001 issue of the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, "The Antinous Prophecies," in which author Clifford Pickover created nonsensical poems and presented them as recently discovered prophecies. Many people created elaborate, real-world interpretations of the fictional lines. Pickover termed the prophecies "verbal ink blots" which rely on modern readers to easily interpret vague descriptions.

As with all such predictions, they only come "true" after the fact as people reinterpret phrases based on what happened.

The Nostradamus prophecies were only one of many rumors and bits of misinformation that circulated following the attacks. For more information, see CSICOP's Hoaxwatch page at www.csicop.org/hoaxwatch or the urban legends reference page at www.snopes.com.

Benjamin Radford wrote about Nostradamus's failed 1999 prophecies in the May/June 2000 issue of SI, and has written on Internet hoaxes and urban legends.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group