By Jennifer Hewlett/Lexington Herald-Leader, Aug. 11, 2005:

Robert Baker, considered an expert in the workings of the human mind and one of America's pre-eminent ghost busters, died Monday at his home in Lexington. He was 84. Mr. Baker, former chairman of the University of Kentucky psychology department, spent a good deal of his time using science and reason to explain away things that seemed to defy natural laws for others. He was known for saying "there are no haunted places, only haunted people."

Astronomer Carl Sagan sought out Mr. Baker when he was working on an article about alien abductions. Joe Nickell, a nationally known fellow ghost buster with whom Mr. Baker once investigated alleged haunted houses, often relied on Mr. Baker's expertise.

"He was just really very, very wise and understanding of how the mind worked -- how easily we could not only be fooled ... but how we fool ourselves," said Nickell, a former UK English professor and now a senior research fellow for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in Buffalo, N.Y.

"One of his cases involved a woman who was ... seeing a little ghost girl," Nickell said. "Bob went and very carefully interviewed her and her husband and neighbors, and found that only the woman would see the ghost. He found that she wanted very much to have a child of her own and could not. Bob steered the conversation away from the ghost and counseled the couple to adopt a child. When they did, the little ghost girl went away forever."

Mr. Baker also was involved in a number of more run-of-the-mill cases, such as houses that had seemingly unexplainable noises and moving objects in them.

In addition, Nickell said, "No one knew more about alien abductions than Robert Baker." Nickell said that he and Mr. Baker shared a common view that paranormal claims should not simply be accepted or dismissed, but carefully investigated, with a view toward solving any mystery. 

Mr. Baker, he said, was sensitive to people's feelings and gentle in his dealings with them. "I would say he had an international reputation, particularly among rationalists, people who looked to science and reason to explain things, as opposed to superstition," Nickell said. "Whenever I had a question about some case where I was sort of guessing at the psychology of something, I would pick up the phone and call him," he said. "He was very, very important to the work of our organization and magazine." The magazine is called Skeptical Inquirer.

Mr. Baker was an organizer and had served as president of the Kentucky Association of Science Educators and Skeptics and was a fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. He also was a past president of the Kentucky Psychological Association and a fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Mr. Baker retired from UK in 1989 after teaching humanistic psychology for about 20 years. Humanistic psychology deals with issues of human existence, such as love, aging, personal fulfillment, and the meaning of life and death.

During his career he also spent many years designing training methods for the U.S. Army, and he worked as a psychologist for the state department of corrections.

He also had been a staff scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a professor at Chico State College and Indiana University S.E. He said he started investigating claims of the paranormal to help ease the panic some people feel about ghosts and to protect the public from those who claimed supernatural ability for financial gain. He taught workshops on investigating paranormal claims.

He wrote several books, including Hidden Memories, They Call It Hypnosis, Mind Games, Psychology in the Wry and Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown.

He co-wrote a book called Private Eyes and contributed articles to professional magazines. He and Nickell wrote a book called Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFO's, Psychics & Other Mysteries. "All areas of human thought were of interest to him, I think. He was just very, very wise," Nickell said.

Mr. Baker was a native of Blackford in Crittenden County and a World War II Army veteran who held bachelor's and master's degrees from UK and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

He is survived by his wife, Rose P. "Dolly" Baker; three sons, Michael Baker, Robert Baker and John Baker, all of Lexington; three daughters, Kathryn Franklin of Florence, Carol McGinnis of Bardstown, and Belinda Dorsch of Lebanon, Ohio; and seven grandchildren.
http://www.legacy.com/kentucky/LegacySubPage2.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=14800978

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CSICOP Laments Passing of Two World-class Paranormal Experts, Philip 
Klass and Robert Baker 

AMHERST, N.Y. (August 12, 2005) -- The Committee for the Scientific 
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) mourns the passing of Philip J. Klass and Robert A. Baker, two long-time authors and investigators who passed away this week -- one a skeptical ufologist, the other a noted ghostbuster.

Philip Klass (1919-2005) was a founding member of CSICOP and one of the world's foremost experts on UFOs. Trained as an electrical engineer, Klass was senior avionics editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology for over thirty years. He received numerous awards for his work as a technical journalist, from such organizations as the Aviation/Space Writers Association and the Royal Aeronautical Society, and was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He wrote several books, including UFOs -- Identified (1968), The Real Roswell Crashed-saucer Coverup (1997), and UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game (1989).

Klass was known for explaining UFO sightings with pragmatic explanations. Although his detractors styled him a "debunker," in fact, debunking was the consequence, not the purpose, of his efforts. He sought to investigate "flying-saucer" reports and thus convert UFOs (unidentified flying objects) to IFOs (identified flying objects) such as celestial bodies, research balloons, advertising planes, and even secret aircraft.
Robert Baker (1921-2005) was a CSICOP fellow and one of the world's preeminent authorities on such phenomena as ghosts, alien abductions, religious apparitions, and reincarnation. During his diverse career, Dr. Baker worked at the MIT Lincoln Lab, conducted training research for the U.S. Army, and taught at the University of Kentucky, chairing the psychology department there until his retirement. The author of more than a hundred professional journal articles, Baker also wrote fifteen books, including They Call It Hypnosis (1990), Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within (1992), Mind Games (1996), Child Sexual Abuse and False Memory Syndrome (1998), and (with Joe Nickell) Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics, and Other Mysteries (1992).

An expert in the workings of the human mind, Dr. Baker explained apparitions as mental experiences (such as hypnosis and hypnopompic hallucinations) and viewed "hypnosis" skeptically as a product of imagination and fantasy (as in so-called past-life regressions and alien-abduction "memories"). A true investigator, he believed paranormal claims should neither be accepted nor dismissed, but carefully investigated and solved.