Joe Nickell

Joe Nickell (December 1, 1944 – March 6, 2025) was an American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal.

He helped find out that the diary of Jack the Ripper was a hoax. In 2002 he was one of a number of experts asked by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to see if the manuscript of Hannah Crafts' The Bondwoman's Narrative (1853–1860), possibly the first novel by an African-American woman, was real.^[1] He earned a B.A. degree in 1967 from the University of Kentucky.^[2]

To avoid the wide draft for the Vietnam War, the following year in 1968, at the age of 24, he moved to Canada. There he began his careers as a magician, card dealer, and private investigator. After President Jimmy Carter granted unconditional pardons to draft dodgers in 1977, Nickell returned to the United States.^[3] Nickell is senior research fellow for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) and writes regularly for their journal, the Skeptical Inquirer.

He is also an associate dean of the Center for Inquiry Institute. He is the author or editor of over 30 books. In late 2003, Nickell reconnected with his college girlfriend Diana G. Harris. He learned he had a daughter by her, named Cherette, and two grandsons.^[4] Harris had married before but divorced. She and Nickell married April 1, 2006.^[5] Harris had since assisted Nickell in his investigative work.^[4]

Diana Harris had told Cherette that Cherette's biological father was Diana's first husband, but the daughter questioned her lack of resemblance to him. On Cherette's wedding day, one of the guests mentioned that her parents weren't married when she was conceived. Later, based on intuition, Cherette challenged her mother directly about her father and sensed equivocation. After more conversations and a DNA test, Cherette learned that Nickell was her biological father.

Nickell used his daughter's claim that she had made an intuitive search for him as the basis for an article on the unconscious collection and processing of data. In it he concluded: "Cautions notwithstanding, I must admit to a new appreciation of intuition, without which I would not have known of my wonderful daughter – and two grandsons! It's enough to warm an old skeptic's heart."^[6] Nickell died in March 2025 at the age of 80.^[7]