Joe Nickell is Senior Research Fellow with the non-profit educational organization the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has been called “the modern Sherlock Holmes,” the “real-life Scully” (from the X-Files), and other appellations. He is well into his fourth decade as an investigator of historical, paranormal, and forensic mysteries, myths and hoaxes. In contrast to mystery-mongerers on the one hand and so-called debunkers on the other, he believes that mysteries should actually be investigated with a view toward solving them.

Nickell is the world’s only full-time professional paranormal investigator — the “Investigative Files” writer for Skeptical Inquirer science magazine who travels around the world investigating strange mysteries at the very fringes of science. The role utilizes his varied background: former stage magician (Resident Magician at the Houdini Hall of Fame), private investigator (for a world-famous detective agency), and academic (Ph.D in English, focusing on literary investigation and folklore, and author of some two dozen books).