Public Parapsychology

Apparitional Experiences Primer: Apparitions in the Laboratory

2009-11-23T15:44:00.001-05:00

5. Experiments with Apparitions in the Laboratory

Perhaps the ideal way to experiment with a ghost would be to bring it into the laboratory, where its physical and psychological aspects could be studied under controlled conditions. While it is clearly not possible to do so, some parapsychologists have attempted the next best thing: to artificially produce an apparition that can be experienced by a witness in the lab. To do that, parapsychologists have made use of a custom-built chamber called a psychomanteum.

The psychomanteum (Greek for "theater of the mind") is a darkened room that is designed to induce apparition-like experiences through the process of scrying (gazing into a reflective surface). Its origins derive from Greek mythology, in which people would often journey to special locations (such as the oracle at Delphi) to hold audience with the gods through visions seen in reflective pools of oil or water. Sometimes, they would also see images of their deceased ancestors within those reflective visions. Dr. Raymond Moody (1992; Moody & Perry, 1993), a psychiatrist with a deep interest in Greek history, adopted the idea and created his own modern-day version of the psychomanteum in the early 1990s as a technique for bereavement and grief counseling.

Dr. Moody's technique generally proceeded as follows: The witness would first be asked to select a deceased friend or relative with whom they wished to have a visionary reunion in the psychomanteum. Prior to the actual session, extensive discussion was held between the witness and Dr. Moody about the deceased person, their relationship with the witness, and the witness' motivations for wanting to have a reunion with that person. The witness shared photographs and objects that had once belonged to the deceased person, and discussed their significance to help them remember and reconnect with that person. Towards dusk, the witness was shown into the psychomanteum, and was instructed to relax in a comfortable chair while gazing passively into a large mirror hanging on the wall a few feet across from the chair, which was angled upward to reflect the darkness. After some time had passed, the witness was brought out of the psychomanteum and discussion was held about what he or she had experienced while mirror-gazing. According to Dr. Moody (1992), about half of the people who underwent his psychomanteum technique reported seeing apparitions of the dead in the mirror.

Other researchers using the psychomanteum have had varying degrees of success in producing reunion experiences. Drs. Dean Radin and Jannine Rebman (1996) report that just over half (four, or 57%) of the seven witnesses who spent time in their electronically-monitored psychomanteum had sensed the presence of a deceased person. They found that variables in the surrounding environment (e.g., magnetic fields, radiation, and temperature) that they had monitored during the witnesses' experiences were significantly related to changes in the witnesses' physiology (e.g., heart rate, skin temperature, and brain waves), suggesting that some apparitional experiences may result from complex interactions between mind-body states and physical variables in the surrounding environment.

Dianne Arcangel (1997) had a strong degree of success, with 58 of her 68 participants (85%) having a reunion experience. Fifty-five of them reported a visual apparition as part of their experience. Dr. Arthur Hastings and his associates at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in California had 27 people participate in their psychomanteum study (Hastings et al., 2002). Of these, 13 (48%) described a reunion experience, which mostly came in the form of a mental conversation they had with the deceased person, which some witnesses said was akin to telepathy. Although none of the witnesses had reported seeing a full-blown apparition of the deceased person in the mirror, they did see a variety of visual images, including lights, dark human-like figures, animals, flowers, landscapes, and faces. An account by one of the witnesses illustrates the kinds of images seen:

Feeling deep grief at the beginning; black robed figures coming toward me; black spinning ball with trailing energy moving clockwise in mirror; unidentified faces in the mirror; energy streaming out of mirror into space in front of me. A foot (light skin then changed to dark skin). Hand and faint formulations of a human (?) shape (Hastings et al., 2002, p. 217).

The effects of a reunion experience upon a person's grief is illustrated by an account given by one witness who sought contact with his sister, who had died nearly three decades earlier:

Yes, I did sense her presence – a body state more than anything, though a couple of times it seems like I heard her voice. I got the message that I have been holding this experience of her pain, my resentment that she had to suffer so much, and my sadness that she is gone for 27 years. Though I have worked in therapy around the grief issue, I didn't know that the resentment was so strong (p. 218).

In sensing her presence, the witness further stated that he had had the impression of his sister holding him as he experienced sadness over her loss. Generally, Dr. Hastings and his associates found that the witnesses showed significant reductions in their grief following their time in the psychomanteum, as compared to before.

Dr. William Roll (2004) held a series of psychomanteum workshops with 41 people who sought a reunion with deceased friends and relatives. Using an approach similar to Dr. Moody's, Dr. Roll helped the people through their grief by discussing their deceased relatives and friends and handling their objects before having each person sit in a psychomanteum facility built into the basement of his home. Despite only nine of the 41 people (22%) experiencing a reunion, the workshops seemed to help the people reduce their grief and unresolved feelings toward the deceased person, consistent with the findings of Dr. Hastings and his associates. Dr. Roll found that people who previously reported having a survival-related experience (such as an apparition or a near-death experience) tended to report strong reunion experiences.

Devin Terhune and Matthew Smith (2006) used the psychomanteum to explore the effects of suggestion on the occurrence of apparitional experiences. They randomly assigned 40 people into one of two groups: a suggestion group and a non-suggestion group. The suggestion group was told that they could experience anomalous sensations (including seeing an apparition) while in the psychomanteum, while the non-suggestion group was told that they might only experience unusual bodily sensations or perceptual distortions while gazing into the mirror. The suggestion group was later found to report significantly more visual and auditory apparitions in the psychomanteum than the non-suggestion group, possibly indicating that the experience of an apparition may be influenced by such things as suggestion and rumor. In a similar fashion, some people may be more likely to report haunt experiences in a particular location when told beforehand that the location is supposedly haunted (Lange & Houran, 1997).

Bryan Williams, University of New Mexico

Annalisa Ventola, CERCAP, Lund University

Mike Wilson, Psi Society

References

Arcangel, D. (1997). Investigating the relationship between the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and facilitated reunion experiences. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 91, 82 – 95.

Hastings, A., Hutton, M., Braud, W., Bennett, C., Berk, I., Boynton, T., Dawn, C., Ferguson, E., Goldman, A., Greene, E., Hewett, M., Lind, V., McLellan, K., & Steinbach-Humphrey, S. (2002). Psychomanteum research: Experiences and effects on bereavement. Omega: Journal of Death & Dying, 45, 211 – 228.

Lange, R., & Houran, J. (1997). Context-induced paranormal experiences: Support for Houran and Lange's model of haunting phenomena. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 84, 1455 – 1458.

Moody, R. A. (1992). Family reunions: Visionary encounters with the departed in a modern-day psychomanteum. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 11, 83 – 121.

Moody, R., with Perry, P. (1993). Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones. New York: Villard Books.

Radin, D. I., & Rebman, J. M. (1996). Are phantasms fact or fantasy? A preliminary investigation of apparitions evoked in the laboratory. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 61, 65 – 87.

Roll, W. G. (1994). Are ghosts really poltergeists? Proceedings of Presented Papers: The Parapsychological Association 37th Annual Convention (pp. 347 – 351). Durham, NC: Parapsychological Association, Inc.

Terhune, D. B., & Smith, M. D. (2006). The induction of anomalous experiences in a mirror-gazing facility: Suggestion, cognitive perceptual personality traits and phenomenological state effects. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 194, 415 – 421.

Apparitional Experiences Primer: Spontaneous Cases and Field Research

2009-11-18T15:31:00.000-05:00

4. Experiments with Apparitions in Spontaneous Cases and Field Research

As a way to gain better insight into their possible nature, some parapsychologists and psychical researchers have attempted to experiment with apparitions in a number of different ways. We take a look at some of the more interesting ways in this section.

One of the earliest ways came in the form a quasi-experimental effort made by the correspondents of some psychical researchers, and could be seen as a way to informally explore the folklore-based notion of apparitions as spirits leaving the body upon death. In many respects, it was a form of early survival research done with living persons.

In general, the effort consisted of people attempting to willfully make themselves appear as a spectral figure to an unsuspecting friend in a distant place; in other words, it is an intentional effort by a person to produce an apparition of him or herself that can be seen by others. One of the most detailed accounts of such an effort was given in 1886 by the Rev. Clarence Godfrey, an acquaintance of the prominent psychical researcher Frank Podmore. In a letter to Podmore, Rev. Godfrey wrote of his effort:

Retiring at 10.45 (on the 15th November 1886), I determined to appear, if possible, to a friend, and accordingly I set myself to work with all the volitional and determinative energy which I possess, to stand at the foot of her bed. I need not say that I never dropped the slightest hint beforehand as to my intention, such as could mar the experiment, nor had I mentioned the subject to her ... I endevoured to translate myself, spiritually, into her room, and to attract her attention, as it were, while standing there. My effort was sustained for perhaps eight minutes, after which I felt tired and was soon asleep (in Myers, 1903, Vol. I, p. 688).

Around 3:40 A.M., Rev. Godfrey suddenly awoke from a dream in which he had seemingly been successful in appearing to his friend. The next day, November 16, he directly received an account from his friend of what she had experienced, which she wrote down as follows:

Yesterday – viz., the morning of November 16th, 1886 – about half past three o'clock, I woke up with a start and an idea that some one had come into the room. I heard a curious sound, but fancied it might be the birds in the ivy outside. Next I experienced a strange, restless longing to leave the room and go downstairs. This feeling became so overpowering that at last I rose and lit a candle, and went down, thinking if I could get some soda-water it might have a quieting effect. On returning to my room I saw Mr. Godfrey standing under the large window on the staircase. He was dressed in his usual style, and with an expression on his face that I have noticed when he has been looking very earnestly at anything. He stood there, and I held up the candle and gazed at him for three or four seconds in utter amazement, and then, as I passed up the staircase, he disappeared. The impression left on my mind was so vivid that I fully intended waking a friend who occupied the same room as myself, but remembering that I should only be laughed at as romantic and imaginative, refrained from doing so.

I was not frightened at the appearance of Mr. Godfrey, but felt much excited, and could not sleep afterwards (p. 689).

Podmore then added:

On the 21st of the same month (says Mr. Podmore) I heard a full account of the incident given above from Mr. Godfrey, and on the day following from Mrs. --- [Godfrey's friend]. Mrs. --- told me that the figure appeared quite distinct and life-like at first, though she could not remember to have noticed more than the upper part of the body. As she looked it grew more and more shadowy, and finally faded away. Mrs. ---, it should be added, told me that she had previously seen two phantasmal figures, representing a parent whom she had recently lost (p. 689).

Rev. Godfrey made two more attempts to appear to his friend, one successful, and one not. In relating her account of the successful attempt, his friend "... states that she was awakened by hearing a voice cry, 'Wake,' and by feeling a hand rest on the left side of her head. She then saw stooping over her a figure which she recognised as Mr. Godfrey's" (p. 689).

Another way that researchers have experimented with apparitions has been to bring psychics and mediums to an allegedly haunted location to see if they could sense an apparition in the areas where it has been seen (haunt areas), as compared to other areas within the location where no apparition has been reported (control areas). This particular method of experimentation was initially developed and applied by the late Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler (1966), and for that reason, we shall adopt the phrase "Schmeidler's method" as a shorthand term.

To illustrate, Schmeidler's method generally proceeds as follows: After interviewing the witnesses living or working in the haunted location, the researcher asks each of the witnesses who reported seeing a ghost to fill out a checklist. On this checklist is a series of words that could potentially describe the ghost's actions or personality. The witness circles those words that seem to closely match the ghost, and crosses out those that do not match the ghost at all. Then, the researcher gives each witness a floor plan of the haunted location and asks them to mark the areas where they had seen the ghost (the haunt areas). Once this process is completed, the witnesses' checklists and floor plans are stored in a secure place for safekeeping.

Not long afterward, the researcher brings a group of psychics/mediums to the haunted location at a time when the witnesses are not there. Handing each psychic and medium a blank checklist and floor plan, the researcher asks them to tour the location one by one, sensing for ghosts or anything else unusual. If a psychic or medium receives an impression in a certain area of the location, they are asked to mark that area on the floor plan. If this impression seems to relate to the ghost's actions or personality, they are asked to circle the related words on the checklist. After all of the psychics and mediums had completed their tour, their floor plans and checklists are also stored in a secure place. Then, on another day, the researcher brings in a group of skeptics and has them do the same thing, instead asking them to guess on the checklist what the ghost's actions or personality must be like, and to mark any areas on the floor plan that just seemed "spooky" or "weird" to them.

To see if the responses of the psychics and mediums matched those of the witnesses to a degree beyond that expected by chance, Dr. Schmeidler compared them by adapting and applying the methods of statistical analysis commonly used in laboratory experiments on psychic phenomena. A statistically significant result would suggest that the psychics and mediums were somehow able to sense the haunt areas where the witnesses had previously experienced a ghost (the floor plan test), as well as accurately describe the ghost (the checklist test).

Naturally, one must also consider the possibility that the psychics and mediums, rather than sensing a ghost, may have been responding on the floor plan test to cues embedded in the surroundings of the haunt areas. For instance, a haunt area may contain dark hallways or spooky-looking corners that could give the impression that it would be the place where one might find a ghost. Similarly, on the checklist test, the psychics and mediums could have responded based on the stereotypical notions about a ghost that come from imagination, folklore, and superstition. To see if cues or stereotypes could have factored into the results, Dr. Schmeidler also compared the floor plan and checklist responses of the skeptics with those of the witnesses to see if they showed any significant matches as a control comparison.

Human behavior is known to be variable; we all behave differently from each other and patterns occurring in our behavior can often be difficult to spot for that reason. To get around this, psychologists often employ a method known as meta-analysis when evaluating their experiments on behavior. For simplicity, we might look at meta-analysis as being a method of statistically combining the results of many behavioral studies grouped together in order to look for an overall pattern across all their results, rather than looking at each study result individually. Psychic phenomena turns out to be no exception when it comes to variability in behavior, and so parapsychologists also often make use of meta-analysis when evaluating the data they have collected over the years.

To examine the overall pattern of performance on the floor plan and checklist tests by the psychics/mediums and the skeptics, Dr. Michaeleen Maher (1999), who had once been a student of Dr. Schmeidler, conducted a meta-analysis on five field studies of reputed hauntings conducted from 1975 to 1997 that utilized Schmeidler's method. The results of Dr. Maher's meta-analysis indicated that, across the five studies, the floor plan and checklist responses of the psychics/mediums tended to match those of the witnesses to a statistically significant degree, suggesting that they were generally successful in locating the haunt areas where witnesses had previously seen a ghost, as well as accurately describing the ghost they saw. In contrast, the floor plan responses of the skeptics did not significantly match those of the witnesses, suggesting that they were generally unsuccessful in locating the haunt areas. However, there was a slight tendency for skeptics' responses on the checklist test to show some correspondence with the witnesses' responses, offering a weak hint that the description of the ghost may have been at least partially derived from imaginative, folklore, and superstitious stereotypes. In sum, the overall results suggest that the psychics and mediums may have been responding to something at the haunt sites within the location, whether ghost or otherwise.

Finally, some researchers have attempted quasi-experiments with apparitions during field studies in order to possibly learn more about their physical composition. One example comes from a field investigation by Drs. Dean Radin and William Roll (1994) of haunt reports coming from the owners and patrons of a popular Kentucky music hall. During their investigation, a psychic had sensed a rather strong ghost in the basement of the music hall. Upon following her down to the basement, Radin and Roll were able to place a Geiger counter (which measures radiation levels) both "inside" and "outside" the supposed ghost after the psychic was able to corner it in one area of the room. On two occasions, when placed inside the ghost, the Geiger counter sounded an alarm, detecting the presence of radiation. On two other occasions, when taken out of the ghost as a control comparison, the Geiger counter remained silent. Then, before Radin and Roll could do the test again, a photographer snapped a photo of the room, which (according to the psychic) the ghost had not liked and caused it to disappear into the wall. This intriguing quasi-experiment offers the hint that some ghosts may be radioactive.

Bryan Williams, University of New Mexico

Annalisa Ventola, CERCAP, Lund University

Mike Wilson, Psi Society

References

Maher, M. C. (1999). Riding the waves in search of the particles: A modern study of ghosts and apparitions. Journal of Parapsychology, 63, 47 – 80.

Myers, F. W. H. (1903). Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (2 Vols.). London: Longmans, Green, & Company. (Reprinted as a condensed volume in 2001 by Hampton Roads Publishing Company.)

Radin, D. I., & Roll, W. G. (1994). A radioactive ghost in a music hall. Proceedings of Presented Papers: The Parapsychological Association 37th Annual Convention (pp. 337 – 346). Durham, NC: Parapsychological Association, Inc.

Schmeidler, G. R. (1966). Quantitative investigation of a "haunted house." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 60, 137 – 149.

Charley Tart Speaks at the AZIRE Virtual College Fair

2009-11-16T21:15:00.003-05:00

Charlie Tart will be talking about the courses/programs available at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto where Charlie is a faculty member. The ITP is an accredited graduate school that gives psychology degrees, including the doctorate, on such topics as consciousness, spirituality and parapsychology.

The talk is online at www.wiziq.com and is the first session in The AZIRE Virtual College Fair. The 60 minute talk and Q&A will take begin at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday November 18th, 2009. You need an invitation to join the session. To get that email me at the above email address or at nancy@theazire.org and she'll send you an invite.

If you can't join in real-time, write Nancy and she'll send you the link to the video of the session, which should be available about 24 hours after the session takes place.

Review of Tymn: The Articulate Dead

2009-11-13T14:17:00.005-05:00

Ever since the early days of psychical research, investigators interested in the possibility of life after death have studied mediums, extraordinary individuals who claim the ability to communicate with Spirits. The study of mediumship has also been historically important in psychology for its influence on the development of concepts such as the subconscious, dissociation and anomalous identity experiences (Cardeña, in press). However, in the 20^th century interest in mediumship declined somewhat as researchers turned their attentions to other areas. Nevertheless, in recent years there has been a conspicuous resurgence of interest within the parapsychological community with notable publications by David Fontana (2004, 2009) and ongoing research from Tricia Robertson and Archie Roy in the UK and from the Windbridge Institute in the USA led by Julie Beischel (to name just a few). The publication of The Articulate Dead by Michael E. Tymn is a further indication of this revival.

A resident of Kailua, Hawaii, Michael E. Tymn is vice-president of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, a free-lance journalist specialising in paranormal subjects and a regular contributor to the UK Spiritualist newspaper Psychic News.

In The Articulate Dead, he takes a look back through the annals of psychical research and revisits some of the most remarkable cases of mediumship from the glory days of Spiritualism in the period from1850 to 1940. Beginning with a preface written by Donald Morse the book is divided into four parts. The first covers the work of some of the earliest psychical researchers such as Sir William Crookes, Sir William Barrett and F.W.H. Myers and covers the spread of Spiritualism from America into Europe. It outlines the development of Spiritism in

France

and discusses the work of Victor Hugo and Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail. It even includes samples of messages from The Spirits’ book published under the name of Allan Kardec in 1857 and from Stainton Moses’ Spirit Teachings published in 1883. The second and third sections of the book move on to examine the work of prominent mediums Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard and the fourth discusses some other intriguing cases of otherworldly communication including the Poetaster spirit Patience Worth and the delightful band of monks who gave archaeological assistance to the Glastonbury Abbey excavations via the pen of Frederick Bligh Bond. Next, there is a short Epilogue in which Mr Tymn regrets the fact that they don’t make mediums like they used to and places the blame on lack of patience, moral climate and possibly electrical interference. (O tempora! O mores!) Finally, the book wraps up with a useful glossary and a psychical research timeline starting from 31 March 1848 with the onset of the Hydesville rappings and ending in 1940 with the death of Sir Oliver Lodge.

The author is clear from the outset that his purpose in resurrecting these old cases is to provide evidence of a spirit world and with this aim he deliberately avoids controversial cases. As a result he steers away from the escapades of the bold Eusapia Palladino and the controversies of the Mina "Margery" Crandon mediumship. However, I have to confess that I miss them. As the “Margery” case split the American Society for Psychical Research and helped contribute to the career misfortunes of Frederick Bligh Bond, I think it (and other contentious cases) were relevant to some of the stories told. As Oscar Wilde once said “Truth is rarely pure and never simple”! The book is nearly divided up in such as way that each chapter can be read and understood by itself, however this leads to quite a bit of repetition and links between the various chapters are not always made. For example, it might be interesting for the reader to know that the Hester Dowden (Mrs Travers Smith) who appears in a ouija board session in chapter 5 with Sir William Barrett also had a hand in the automatic writing experiments of Frederick Bligh Bond in chapter 19 and that her colleague “Miss C.” (of “Pearl Tie Pin Case” fame) was none other than the Irish automatist, Geraldine Cummins, who ended up suing him.

Mrs. Travers Smith also appears in the book’s last chapter, “Disaster Survivors Communicate”. This gives an account of a famous Dublin séance which began at 8.30 May 7, 1915 when contact was apparently made with the spirit of art aficionado Sir Hugh Lane. Mrs. Travers Smith was sitting at a ouija board with playwright Lennox Robinson (both blindfolded) along with the Rev. Savell Hicks who was taking notes when unexpectedly the board spelled out, “Pray for Hugh Lane” and then the ominous message “I am Hugh Lane, all is dark.” (Travers Smith, 1919: p 33-34)

The story continues in The Articulate Dead:

“After several minutes, Hicks told Travers Smith and Robinson that it was Sir Hugh Lane coming through and that he had communicated that he was aboard the Lusitania and had drowned. On her way home that evening, Travers Smith had heard about the sinking of the passenger ship by a German torpedo, but she had not yet read the details, nor did she or the others know that Sir Hugh Lane was a passenger on the ship sailing from New York to England. In her 1919 book, Voices from the Void, Travers Smith states that she knew Lane and had heard that he had gone to New York, but it never occurred to her when she heard of the sinking that he was on board.” (Tymn, 2008: p.224)

Mrs Travers Smith may not then have suspected that Hugh Lane was on board the Luisitana, however fears about his safety had first reached

Ireland

around midday on May 5^th. His Aunt, Lady August Gregory, Patron of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, heard a rumour from the postman that the Lusitania had been lost, then a telegram arrived from a New York lawyer to confirm this and inquiring after Hugh Lane’s safety. Lady Gregory was entertaining guests at the time, including playwright George Bernard Shaw, but worried for her nephew she quickly enclosed the telegram in a letter to another Abbey Theatre Director, W.B. Yeats, and began to make further inquiries (Gregory, 1921 p 215-216) By the time Mrs Travers Smith sat down at the Ouija board in Dublin, concerns about Hugh Lane’s safety had been circulating in Ireland for more than two days, particularly in the theatrical circles of which her séance partner Lennox Robinson (former Manager of the Abbey theatre) and her house guest, Geraldine Cummins (recently produced Abbey playwright) were very much a part. As evidence for a spirit world, this case is much less impressive than would appear at first glance. From the point of view of historical accuracy, a sharp-eyed reader will spot other irregularities, as well as some printers’ errors which will hopefully be ironed out in a second edition. Nevertheless, if you are a Spiritualist you will like this book, if you have friends who are Spiritualists they would probably like to receive it as a present, and for hard-core historians and researchers, Alan Gauld’s excellent book Mediumship and Survival can still be tracked down on Ebay and Amazon Marketplace.

Wendy Cousins

Wendy E.Cousins is an Irish University lecturer/psychologist and an Associate of The Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP), Lund University.

References:

Cardeña, E. (in press). Anomalous identity experiences: Mediumship, spirit possession, and dissociative identity disorder (DID, MPD). In Carlos S. Alvarado, Lisette Coly & Nancy L. Zingrone (Eds.) The Study of Mediumship: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York: Parapsychology Foundation.

Fontana D. (2004) Is There an Afterlife: A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence ? O Books:

Fontana D. (2009) Life Beyond Death: What Should We Expect? Watkins Publishing: London.

Gauld, A. (1982) Mediumship and Survival: A Century of Investigations. Heinemann: London: UK

Gregory, A. (1921) Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement. John Murray: London

Travers Smith, H. (1919) Voices from the Void. E. P. Dutton: London.

Apparitional Experiences Primer: Characteristics of Apparitions

2009-11-08T12:25:00.005-05:00

3. Characteristics of Apparitions

In looking at the various types of apparitions in the previous section, we also got a brief look at some of their characteristics. In this section, we provide a fuller summary of their characteristics, based on previous findings in parapsychology and psychical research (Irwin, 1994, Sect. 8; Roll, 1982, Sect. 2; Tyrrell, 1953/1961, Apparitions, Ch. 2).

The first characteristic naturally deals with physical appearance. Unlike the misty and translucent ghost of classic folklore, many apparitions are described by witnesses as being solid looking and life-like. For example in the "Morton Ghost" case, in which the Despard family repeatedly saw the figure of a spectral widow over the course of several years, Rosina Despard had stated that the figure "...was so solid and life-like that it was often mistaken for a real person" (Morton, 1892, p. 321).³ In a similar fashion, we saw in the crisis case (Section 2) that the woman and her daughter initially took the apparition to be the woman's real father. In the bystander case, the doctor described the image of his late father-in-law as being opaque and life-like.

While appearing solid, some apparitions can apparently exhibit physical or non-physical features. For instance, some appear to cast shadows and reflections. One curious example of an apparition casting a reflection is seen in one woman's personal account of a crisis case, which Feather and Schmicker (2005) present in their book The Gift:

"My mother lived in California and I lived in Wichita, Kansas. At 9:40 A.M. on February 17, I was sitting in my bedroom at my dressing room table, brushing my hair in front of the mirror. Suddenly the room was illuminated with the strangest light, one I can't fully describe. I then felt a rustle of wind across my shoulders, and a faint sound like the brushing of birds' wings. Then I looked in the mirror.

"My mother was standing behind my chair ... She just stood and smiled at me for a full thirty seconds. I finally said, 'Mom!' and rushed for her, but she disappeared, light and all. I was so upset by this that I shook for an hour. When my husband came home for lunch, I told him about it and got myself ready for a phone call that mother was dead ... Sure enough, about one P.M. that same day, the call came that my mother was gone ..." (pp. 261 – 262).

In other cases, apparitions have been seen to appear or disappear in enclosed rooms, and pass through doors and walls (Stevenson, 1982, p. 353; Tyrrell, 1953/1961, pp. 56 – 58). Attempts to touch an apparition have either resulted in the figure apparently eluding the hand to where it is unable to be touched, or the hands or arms simply passing through the figure. An example in which the apparition eludes the witness' hand can be found in the Morton Ghost case, in which Rosina Despard describes her attempts to touch the spectral widow. She noted that, "It was not that there was nothing there to touch, but that she always seemed to be beyond me, and if followed into a corner, simply disappeared" (p. 315). This latter statement may be valuable, in that it offers the hint that any non-physical features of an apparition may perhaps relate to distortions in perception on the part of the witness. If this is so, then it may suggest that, despite looking physical, apparitions may be mental forms, as well. That is, how the witness perceives the apparition may be partly determined by his or her own mental state at the time.

Although they traditionally represent deceased persons, we see in some cases that apparitions can also sometimes represent people who are still living. An example comes from an account given in a study of cases by Dr. Louisa Rhine (1957):

A little old lady came around every Thursday morning selling eggs from door to door and she always stopped at my house. This Thursday I had to go to town and as I was coming up the little road leading to my house I saw the egg lady standing on the porch. I noted that she was wearing a new pink dress and a sort of little bonnet to match. Just as I spied her, she turned to step off the porch and called to her to wait and then she just disappeared.

She never came out my gate, she didn't go anywhere, she just wasn't there. I was not more than 50 feet away when I first saw her and there were no bushes or plants to obstruct my vision. Later in the afternoon a knock sounded on my door and when I responded there stood the little egg lady dressed in pink and with her basket on her arm. I told her I was sorry I was not at home when she called about an hour earlier. She looked very surprised but smiled as she answered, "But this is the first time I have been here today. An hour ago I was just leaving the ranch. I was thinking about you and wondering if you wanted some eggs" (p. 22).

In addition, apparitions of the living may sometimes occur in crisis cases, when the person whose apparition is seen is ill or in an accident, but not faced with the threat of death. We shall also see in the next blog post that there have been a few rare cases in which living people have attempted to intentionally make themselves appear as an apparition to people they know.

Some apparitions may seem to exhibit behavior that suggests that they have some degree of awareness of their surroundings (Tyrrell, 1953/1961, pp. 60 – 66). Dr. Harvey Irwin (1994) offers the illustrative example that if a witness "... moves around the room the apparition's head may be said to have turned to follow these movements" (p. 58). Another interesting example comes from an account by Rosina Despard of an encounter with the spectral widow:

[The widow] crossed the drawing room, and took up her usual position behind the couch in the bow window. My father came in soon after, and I told him she was there. He could not see the figure, but went to where I showed him she was. She then swiftly went round behind him, across the room, out the door, and along the hall, disappearing as usual near the garden door, we both following her (Morton, 1892, p. 317, emphasis added).

This account suggests that, rather than simply passing through him, the spectral widow had moved to intentionally avoid Rosina's father as she exited the room. Rosina additionally noted that the widow would always move to avoid the light, leaving the witnesses unable to tell if she cast a shadow (p. 321). Apparent displays of awareness such as these tie into the issue of whether or not some apparitions are intelligent, an issue we shall discuss a bit more in Section 7.

Although the majority of apparitions have been witnessed by one person, there have been a small number of cases in which an apparition was collectively perceived by more than one witness. As we saw in the crisis and post-mortem cases (Section 2), two individuals may perceive the same apparition at one time. On the other hand, one witness may see the apparition, while another may not; this was apparently the case in the account by Rosina Despard involving her and her father, above.

Some apparitions of the dead tend to be seen in the geographical location where they once lived or worked (as in haunting cases), or around people who knew them in life (as in bystander-type cases). In addition to the Gordy case (Section 2), another example comes from Dianne Arcangel (2005, pp. 18 – 20), who relates a personal account of the experiences that workers at her family's dry cleaning business have had with the ghost of a man named Dyer. Employed with the business for about 30 years, Dyer worked diligently at his spotting board from morning till night, until his sudden death from a heart attack. Not long after, a female co-worker walked in and saw Dyer working behind his spotting board. She smiled and waved at him, and he waved back. The woman turned to put her things down, and when she turned back to him, Dyer was gone. Several other workers who were employed there later on reported similar incidents, and tenants of the apartment that was later built above the business by Arcangel's husband also reported seeing the spectral figure of a man resembling Dyer. Her husband noticed that one particular area of the apartment, located directly over the area of Dyer's spotting board, was constantly cold, even in the summer months. Arcangel says that neither her husband, the later workers, nor the tenants had ever known about Dyer prior to the experiences.

A comparison of four separate survey studies, shown in Table 1, suggests that more (non-haunting) apparitions tend to be of people with close family relation to the witnesses, rather than strangers.⁴

Table 1. Relationship Between the Apparition and the Witness in Apparition Cases (% Cases)

Values not cited are marked with a dash (-). All values are rounded to the nearest one percent.

In a later survey study, Dr. Haraldsson (1994) stated that nearly half of the figures seen in the 357 apparition cases he gathered were of a relative of the witness. In contrast, 29% of those cases involved the witness seeing the figure of a person unfamiliar to them. Similarly, in reviewing studies that compared apparitions of the dead with those of the living, Dr. Ian Stevenson (1982) had noted that: "No fewer than 78% of apparitions of the dead were perceived by a [witness] to whom the [deceased person] had had strong emotional ties, such as a husband, wife, or fiancé; and among apparitions of the living the percentage of such appearances rose even higher, to 92%" (p. 351).

There is some indication that the farther one gets from a person's time of death, the less frequently that person's apparition appears. In other words, sightings of the apparition of a deceased person tend to decline in frequency with increased time from the person's moment of death. Evidence for this initially surfaced in the late 1880s, when two prominent psychical researchers, Edmund Gurney and Frederic Myers (1888-89), had conducted a survey of early apparition cases they had gathered and published in a two-volume case anthology of psychic experiences entitled Phantasms of the Living (Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886). They observed from these 211 cases that "... the recognised apparitions decrease rapidly in the few days after death, then more slowly; and after about a year's time they become so sporadic that we can no longer include them in a steadily descending line" (Gurney & Myers, 1888-89, p. 427). A similar decline in apparitional sightings was observed by Rosina Despard in the Morton Ghost case. She noted that from 1882 to 1884 she saw the spectral widow "... about half a dozen times" (Morton, 1892, p. 314), and it was also seen by several other members of her family during that time period. It was reportedly seen frequently throughout the year of 1885 (p. 318). By 1887, Rosina noted that "... we have few records; the appearances were less frequent" (p. 321). She added that from 1887 to 1889, the spectral widow was rarely seen, and then: "From 1889 to the present, so far as I know, the figure has not been seen at all" (p. 321).

The appearance of an apparition can sometimes be accompanied by certain kinds of subjective effects, such as feeling sensations of cold, wind, or touch. In the survey of apparition cases described in his classic book Apparitions, psychical researcher G. N. M. Tyrrell (1953/1961) observed that the experience of cold breezes and similar cooling sensations was fairly frequent across witness accounts. For instance, some witnesses gave the following statements: "I ... felt myself grow perfectly cold"; "A cold, shivering feeling came over me"; "The apparition 'laid a cold hand on his cheek'"; "As if a cool wind was blowing about me" (p. 73). Rosina Despard stated that similar cold sensations were sometimes felt in proximity to the spectral widow of the Morton Ghost case (Morton, 1892, p. 325).⁵

One final characteristic of apparitions is that, aside from being visual, some can be purely auditory, seeming to manifest as sounds reflective of human activity. An example of an auditory apparitional experience can be found in an investigation by Dr. William Roll (1991) of the alleged haunting phenomena witnessed by the tour staff and crew of the Queen Mary cruise ship, now permanently docked in Long Beach, CA. According to accounts by the staff and crew, sounds of loud metal impacts, voices, and rushing water are sometimes heard coming from the lower forward compartments near the ship's bow. However, when the compartments are checked, no one is found to be in the area, nor is there any sign of damage or a leak. To see if these sounds might represent an objective event rather than being purely subjective, Roll attempted to record them by leaving a voice-activated tape recorder overnight in the bow. When retrieved in the morning and played back, it was discovered that "... the tape recorder picked up a strange sequence of noises. You could hear heavy blows of metal, sounds of rushing water and voices, one of which, low pitched and gravelly, was almost intelligible" (p. 58). The recorded sounds were found to be strikingly similar to a description given by the ship's chief engineer, who heard the sounds on several occasions when he was in the bow area with no one else around. In addition, the nature of the sounds seemed consistent with a tragic event occurring early in the Queen Mary's sailing history, when it had been a military transport during World War II. During an evasion maneuver off the coast of Scotland in October of 1942, the bow of Queen Mary had accidentally collided with the British battle cruiser Curaçoa, tearing the smaller cruiser in half and resulting in the deaths of over 300 British sailors.⁶

Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson (1994) offers another example of an auditory apparition in his second survey of cases, which again seems to reflect the activity of a person:

Shortly after our father died, I came to his house with my brother. We knew that there was nobody in the house, and then we heard the old man at his desk. He was walking around, opened the door, and closed it again. Both of us stopped and listened when we entered, and then I remarked: "I guess there is no doubt who is up there." "No, there is no doubt about it," my brother replied. Both of us went upstairs; no one was there. We had heard this so clearly. He was 85 years old when he died, and he walked slowly, you know, had the typical old man's way of walking (p. 3).

Bryan Williams, University of New Mexico

Annalisa Ventola, CERCAP, Lund University

Mike Wilson, Psi Society

Notes

3.) The "Morton Ghost" case, documented by 19-year-old medical student Rosina Despard, is a classic in psychical research in that offers another good example of a haunting apparition. We previously alluded to this case in our second primer (Williams, Ventola, & Wilson, 2008), and refer the reader to that primer for a brief and convenient summary.

4.) Aside from the data of Persinger (1974) and Haraldsson (1988-1989), the results shown in Table 1 were calculated from data presented in Appendix Table 2 of Osis and Haraldsson (1977, p. 218), and the Appendix of Arcangel (2005, p. 284, 291). Cases in which the apparition was of a spiritual, historic, or unidentifiable figure are excluded.

5.) For additional discussion of cold sensations in relation to apparitions and haunt phenomena, see our second primer.

6.) In the late 1980s, Unsolved Mysteries had aired a segment on the alleged haunting of the Queen Mary and the investigation of it by Roll and British psychical researcher Tony Cornell. A two-part streaming video clip of this segment can be found on YouTube – Part 1 and Part 2. A sample of Roll's recording of the unusual sounds in the bow area can be heard in Part 2.

References

Arcangel, D. (2005). Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company.

Feather, S. R., & Schmicker, M. (2005). The Gift: ESP, the Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Gurney, E., & Myers, F. W. H. (1888-89). On apparitions occurring soon after death. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 5, 403 – 485.

Gurney, E., Myers, F. W. H., & Podmore, F. (1886). Phantasms of the Living (2 vols.). London: Trübner.

Haraldsson, E. (1988-1989). Survey of claimed encounters with the dead. Omega: Journal of Death & Dying, 19, 103 – 113.

Haraldsson, E. (1994). Apparitions of the dead: Analysis of a new collection of 357 reports. In E. W. Cook & D. L. Delanoy (Eds.) Research in Parapsychology 1991 (pp. 1 – 6). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

Irwin, H. J. (1994). The phenomenology of parapsychological experiences. In S. Krippner (Ed.) Advances in Parapsychological Research 7 (pp. 10 – 76). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

Morton, R. C. (1892). Record of a haunted house. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 8, 311 – 332.

Osis, K., & Haraldsson, E. (1977). At the Hour of Death. New York: Avon Books.

Persinger, M. A. (1974). The Paranormal (2 vols.). New York: M.S.S. Information Corporation.

Rhine, L. E. (1957). Hallucinatory psi experiences II. The initiative of the percipient in hallucinations of the living, the dying, and the dead. Journal of Parapsychology, 21, 13 – 46.

Roll, W. G. (1982). The changing perspective on life after death. In S. Krippner (Ed.) Advances in Parapsychological Research 3 (pp. 147 – 291). New York: Plenum Press.

Roll, W. G. (1991, May). Journey to the Grey Ghost. Fate, pp. 55 – 61.

Stevenson, I. (1982). The contribution of apparitions to the evidence for survival. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 76, 341 – 358.

Tyrrell, G. N. M. (1953/1961). Science and Psychical Phenomena/Apparitions. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books.

Anomalous Experiences Primer: Types of Apparitions

2009-11-03T20:18:00.005-05:00

Apparitional Experiences: A Primer on Parapsychological Research and Perspectives

Part 2. Types of Apparitions

Although the two terms are often used synonymously, it is useful to initially define what we mean by “apparition.” The term apparition, from the Latin word apparere (meaning “to show oneself”), may be formally defined as:

An experience, usually visual but sometimes in other sense-modalities, in which there appears to be present a person or animal (deceased or living) ... who/which is in fact out of the sensory range of the [witness]” (Thalbourne, 2003).

In other words, it is the experience of the presence of a person or animal – living or dead – that is not actually there, which seems to occur primarily through sight, but at times can seem to occur through the other senses (sound, smell, taste, and touch). This term is a bit broader than the more popular term ghost (from the German word geist for “mind” or “spirit”), which refers to the apparition of a deceased person, usually in connection with a haunting. Although we will use both terms throughout this primer, we shall primarily use the term apparition, given its broader meaning.

There are actually several known types of apparitions that have been documented by psychical researchers and parapsychologists since the late 19th century.¹ They include: crisis apparitions, post-mortem apparitions, deathbed visions, haunting apparitions, and apparitions of the bystander-type. In addition to describing each one below, we provide an illustrative case example of each to help the reader better grasp what each entails.

Crisis: As implied by its name, a crisis apparition appears to a witness at a time when the person whose apparition is seen is experiencing a state of crisis, whether it is an accident, an illness, or even the threat of death. A good example of a crisis apparition case is given by Dr. Sally Rhine Feather and author Michael Schmicker (2005) in their book The Gift:

A woman and her fifteen-year-old daughter had recently moved to California from their previous home in Washington D.C., where they had left the woman’s father very ill. One day not long after moving, they entered the dining room, and to the woman’s great surprise, there stood her father. “Why Dad, when did you get here?” she exclaimed.

At that point, her daughter turned around to look, and she, too, saw the figure of her grandfather, his hand upraised in a gesture of greeting or perhaps blessing, but he slowly faded away, and they both suddenly realized that he was not really in California in their house. Shortly afterward, they received the news that he had died (p. 254).

In addition to representing a crisis apparition, this case has three other interesting aspects to it. First, it is case where the apparition was collectively perceived, meaning that it was witnessed by more than one person. Second, the apparition was apparently so real looking to the woman that she actually mistook it for her real father at first. This goes against the folklore-based view that apparitions are often only misty, translucent outlines. Third, the apparition of the man seemed to acknowledge the presence of his daughter and granddaughter, suggesting that it had some degree of intelligent awareness. We shall discuss these aspects a bit more in future installments of this primer.

Post-mortem: As implied by its name, a post-mortem apparition appears after a person’s death, anywhere from several hours to several years after. As an example, we briefly recount a case documented by survival researcher Dianne Arcangel (2005, pp. 70 – 72):

About four months after her son Tommy had been tragically murdered, a woman was out walking Tommy’s dog in the daytime and they were passing by the parking lot where Tommy had kept his Jeep when the dog began barking and pulling on the leash. Looking up, the woman saw a young man standing in a blue outfit about 30 feet away, although she could not see him clearly because she was not wearing her glasses. When finally put them on, she recognized Tommy standing there on the sidewalk and smiling at her, wearing a blue outfit he had bought but never got to wear before he died. She immediately called out to him, and she and the dog began running toward him. But then, the image of Tommy seemed to slowly turn around and glide away, his feet being about an inch off the pavement. Despite how fast they ran, the woman and the dog could not catch up to him, even after pursuing him for three blocks. Then, the woman’s sight of her son was abruptly obstructed by some passing schoolgirls, and when she looked up again, the figure of Tommy was gone.

This case has two other interesting aspects to it. Similar to the crisis case, the apparition in this case was apparently witnessed not only by the woman, but also by the dog. It also seemed to suggest an optical effect, as the woman needed her glasses to see the apparition clearly.

Deathbed Vision: Near the moment of death, some terminally ill and dying patients have described seeing images of people and places that seem to relate to an afterlife existence, images known as deathbed visions. Reports of such visions have been recorded since the 19th century (Rogo, 1978), and are still occasionally reported today among healthcare and hospice workers (e.g., Arcangel, 2005, pp. 110, 116 – 120).

Among the images described by patients are apparitions of deceased friends and relatives. In the 1970s, Drs. Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson (1977) had surveyed and interviewed 877 medical doctors and nurses in India and the United States, whose patients had reported seeing deathbed apparitions. In one of the 418 cases they documented, a nurse recounts the deathbed vision related to her by an intelligent 76-year-old female patient who had suffered a heart attack:

[The patient’s] consciousness was very, very clear – no sedation, no hallucinogenic history. She was cheerful and confident that she would recover and return to her daughter who badly needed her at home. Suddenly she stretched out her arms and, smiling, called out to me. “Can’t you see Charlie [her dead husband] there with outstretched arms? I’m wondering why I haven’t ‘gone home’ before.” Describing the vision she said, “What a beautiful place with all the flowers and music. Don’t you hear it? Oh, girls, don’t you see Charlie?” She said he was waiting for her. I feel she definitely saw her husband (pp. 80 – 81).

During her experience, the woman had a feeling of peace and serenity reportedly come over her. She remained oriented to her surroundings, and was able to talk with the nurse and the family at her bedside during the vision.

This case has two aspects to it that are consistent with other cases of deathbed visions. First, as indicated in the narrative, the woman was not medicated or sedated at the time of her vision, indicating that it was not a drug-induced hallucination. Similarly, most of the patients in other cases were not found to be medicated, sedated, running a high fever, or in a delirium at the time of their vision (Osis, 1975; Osis & Haraldsson, 1977, pp. 70 – 73), arguing against a medical-related hallucination as the cause for their vision. Second, the apparition seen by the woman was that of a close relative (her husband). Similarly, a majority of the patients (90%) in other cases had seen close relatives (Osis & Haraldsson, 1977, p. 64). We’ll return to this second finding in the next installment.

Many patients regard the deathbed apparitions they see as “take-away” figures, meaning that the apparition seemed to appear for the purpose of greeting, inviting, or leading the patient to the afterlife. This apparent purpose of the apparition was noted in nearly two-thirds (65%) of the cases documented by Osis and Haraldsson (1977, pp. 65 – 67). Reflecting on her experience as a hospice chaplain, Dianne Arcangel (2005) openly states: “I have never sat with a dying patient who was not in the accompaniment of an apparition as their time grew near. No one ever dies alone” (p. 120, her italics).

Haunting: As many paranormal enthusiasts are probably all too aware, most of the apparitions seen at allegedly haunted sites do not take the form of the classic ghost of folklore, instead appearing as shadowy forms, floating lights, and hazy mist-like clouds. It seems that, in most cases, these kinds of apparitions are more likely to have a geophysical and/or psychological explanation (for reviews, see Persinger, 1974, Pt. II; Persinger & Koren, 2001; Roll & Persinger, 2001), and are less likely to be indicators of survival. However, there have been a few rare cases in which apparently well-defined apparitions of deceased human individuals have been repeatedly seen over time in the places where they once lived or worked. One such case is the “Gordy” case, initially investigated in the late 1980s by Dr. William Roll (in Roll & Persinger, 2001, p. 160), which we briefly summarize here:

Soon after moving to a new home with her family, a little girl named Heidi Wyrick had met a man in her neighborhood named “Con,” who invited her to play on a swing. When Heidi asked for permission to do so, her mother asked about Con and Heidi described him as “having blood all over.” Concerned that Con may be a kidnapper or a child molester, Heidi’s parents had the neighborhood searched for the man, but were unable to find him. A short time later, Heidi began speaking of regularly meeting with another man in the neighborhood named “Mr. Gordy” to play on the swing, and her parents figure that Con and Mr. Gordy are the girl’s imaginary playmates. Eventually they discover that an elderly gentleman named James Gordy, as well as a man named “Lon,” had actually lived in the neighborhood many years back, and that Lon had lost his hand in a machinery accident. The descriptions that Heidi gave of the two men were later found to closely match photographs of them (she was also able to correctly pick them out of a random collection of old photos), and Roll could find no normal way in which Heidi could have learned about them prior to her family’s discovery of their identities.²

The Gordy case seems to contain a possible parapsychological component, in that it suggests that Heidi was able to somehow psychically perceive the apparitions of people who had once lived in her local surroundings. How might we come to better understand this? We’ll briefly look at some possible theories in a later installment of this primer.

Bystander-Type: It turns out that apparitions may not only be associated with a haunted location; in rare cases, they may be associated with a person. Rather than being seen in the place where they once lived or worked, some apparitions have been witnessed in close proximity to people who once knew them in life. Dr. Louisa Rhine (1957) had coined the term bystander-type case to label these kinds of cases, noting that, “...these cases are suggestive of the haunting cases, the main difference, however, being that in these the link is a person rather than a geographical location” (p. 39).

An example of an apparition of the bystander-type comes from a study by the late Dr. Ian Stevenson (1995), in which he had interviewed a medical doctor who had once witnessed such apparition while keeping vigil at the bedside of his mother-in-law, who was very ill, in a coma, and near death. According to the doctor:

I was standing by her bed and no one else was in the room. She had an agonal inspiration, and at that moment I had a very clear picture of G. C. [her late husband] standing across from me with his arms outstretched, and he said, “Flora, I’ve been waiting for you.”

I did not really have to look to see that my mother-in-law had died, but the physician in me pushed me to verify that (p. 362).

The doctor stated that the figure he saw of his late father-in-law was “...quite opaque, as he would have seen him in life” (p. 362). He was only able to see the figure from the waist up, but believed that the surrounding furniture had blocked his vision of the rest. Prior to his encounter, the doctor believed that he had only been able to see his father-in-law only once or twice while his father-in-law was still alive, but he was familiar with his father-in-law’s appearance from family photos. However, he had not expected to see his father-in-law at the time of his mother-in-law’s passing, stating that, “I was surprised but comforted by what I saw” (p. 363).

In this case, the doctor was able to see the apparition of a man in close proximity to the man’s dying wife, and thus the doctor was acting as a third person “bystander” witness (hence the term). One might notice that this case seems similar to a deathbed vision, but we should point out that it cannot be classified as one in the strictest sense because the mother-in-law was comatose and did not herself perceive the apparition of her deceased husband.

The case has three other interesting aspects to it. First, as in the crisis case, the apparition that the doctor saw appeared solid. Second, as in the deathbed case, the apparition he saw was of a relative in his family. Third, the doctor reportedly heard the apparition speak, suggesting it had some degree of intelligence. We’ll look more at these aspects in future installments.

Bryan Williams, University of New Mexico
Annalisa Ventola, CERCAP, Lund University
Mike Wilson, Psi Society

Notes

1.) For some readers unfamiliar with the history of parapsychology, the distinction between “psychical research” and “parapsychology” may be a bit unclear. Parapsychology actually owes its roots to psychical research, which began in 1882 when a group of scholars associated with Cambridge University in England had formed the Society for Psychical Research, which was devoted to the serious study of various psychic phenomena, including telepathy, clairvoyance, psychometry, mediumship, and hauntings. Parapsychology arrived on the scene in the 1930s when Dr. J. B. Rhine and his colleagues had formed the Duke University Parapsychology Laboratory in order to study psychic phenomena via controlled experimental work. A few recent books offering some accessible overviews of the history of parapsychology and psychical research for the interested reader are those by Dr. John Beloff (1993), Deborah Blum (2006), and Stacy Horn (2009). In addition, a useful list of additional print and Internet sources has recently been compiled by Dr. Carlos Alvarado (2009).

2.) In the early 1990s, the popular television show Unsolved Mysteries had aired a segment that profiled this case and Roll’s investigation of it. A two-part streaming video clip of this segment can be found on YouTube – Part 1 and Part 2.

References

Arcangel, D. (2005). Afterlife Encounters: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Experiences. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing Company.

Feather, S. R., & Schmicker, M. (2005). The Gift: ESP, the Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Osis, K. (1975, Summer). What did the dying see? Theta, No. 45, 1 – 3.

Osis, K., & Haraldsson, E. (1977). At the Hour of Death. New York: Avon Books.

Persinger, M. A. (1974). The Paranormal (2 vols.). New York: M.S.S. Information Corporation.

Persinger, M. A., & Koren, S. A. (2001). Predicting the characteristics of haunt phenomena from geomagnetic factors and brain sensitivity: Evidence from field and experimental studies. In J. Houran & R. Lange (Eds.) Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 179 – 194). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

Rhine, L. E. (1957). Hallucinatory psi experiences II. The initiative of the percipient in hallucinations of the living, the dying, and the dead. Journal of Parapsychology, 21, 13 – 46.

Rogo, D. S. (1978, January-February). Research on deathbed experiences: Some contemporary and historical perspectives. Parapsychology Review, 9, 20 – 27.

Roll, W. G., & Persinger, M. A. (2001). Investigations of poltergeists and haunts: A review and interpretation. In J. Houran & R. Lange (Eds.) Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 123 – 163). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Anomalous Experiences Primer: Introduction

2009-10-31T11:18:00.002-04:00

Apparitional Experiences: A Primer on Parapsychological Research and Perspectives

We wish to dedicate this primer to the memory of Dr. Gertrude R. Schmeidler (1912 – 2009), one of the leading female parapsychologists in the field, who, in 1966, had devised an ingenious method of applying the statistical techniques of laboratory tests to the field study of ghosts, apparitions, and hauntings.

Introduction

Stories about ghosts and apparitions of the dead have long been the basis for much myth, fantasy, and folklore in human culture. But is there really something to them beyond pure imagination and superstition? According to a Gallup survey conducted in June of 2005, just under one-third of the 1,002 adult Americans surveyed (32%) had answered affirmatively to the question, “Do you believe that ghosts/spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations?” (Lyons, 2005). A poll of 808 Americans by CBS News in October of 2005 indicated that just over one-fifth (22%) have seen or felt the presence of a ghost (Alfano, 2005). Slightly higher figures were indicated in a poll of 721 British adults in February of 1998: 40% believed in ghosts, while 37% had seen or felt one (MORI, 1998). In addition, reports of ghosts and apparitions have appeared across many cultures over the course of time (Editors of Time-Life Books, 1988), suggesting that apparitional beliefs and experiences are a persistent and widespread phenomenon.

Experiences that people have had with apparitions are of interest to parapsychologists for three main reasons. First, the process of witnessing an apparition may perhaps involve the use of extrasensory perception, or ESP. If that is so, then this may provide us with a possible reason as to why some people (particularly psychics and mediums) are reportedly able to see or otherwise “sense” apparitions, while others are not. Second, some of the physical phenomena that can be associated with apparitions, such as odd sounds and occasional object movements, may perhaps involve the use of psychokinesis (PK), or “mind over matter.” It could perhaps be the case that the apparition seen was somehow formed through a PK-related process as well. Third, apparitions clearly seem relevant to the issue of possible life after death, and interest in this issue tends to be one thing that parapsychologists have in common with the diverse community of paranormal enthusiasts who have a broader interest of investigating ghosts and apparitions in relation to alleged hauntings. It turns out, however, that there may be more to ghosts and apparitions than just haunts.

This Halloween day, we are launching a third installment of our basic primer series – yet another “crash course,” if you will – for paranormal enthusiasts and the general public for the prime reason that there has been much misunderstanding within the paranormal enthusiast community regarding what has been learned in the past about ghosts and apparitions, particularly by parapsychologists. To help guide enthusiasts with their own background knowledge for field investigations, we will be providing a basic, accessible overview of the current parapsychological research and perspectives over the next week. We hope that this primer will help to bridge the gap between parapsychologists and paranormal enthusiasts when it comes to the study of ghosts and their relevance to the issue of survival after death.

Bryan Williams, University of New Mexico
Annalisa Ventola, CERCAP
Mike Wilson, Psi Society

References

Alfano, S. (2005, October 30). Poll: Majority believe in ghosts. CBS News on-line report. Available over the Internet at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/29/opinion/polls/main994766.shtml. Accessed October 8, 2009.

Editors of Time-Life Books. (1988). Phantom Encounters (Volume in the series “Mysteries of the Unknown”). Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books.

Lyons, L. (2005, July 12). One-third of Americans believe dearly may not have departed. Gallup Survey on-line report. Available over the Internet at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/17275/OneThird-Americans-Believe-Dearly-May-Departed.aspx. Accessed October 5, 2009.

MORI. (1998). Paranormal survey [Conducted for the Sun newspaper]. Available over the Internet at: http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=2082. Accessed October 8, 2009.

Michael Jawer to Give PF Lecture

2009-10-23T13:41:00.001-04:00

Author Michael Jawer giving a
PF Perspectives Lecture at the Open Center in Manhattan
on Thursday, October 29th, 2009!

From 7:00pm to 9:00pm on Thursday, October 29th (doors open at 6:45 p.m.), Michael Jawer will present a lecture centering on his new book, written with colleague, Mark Micozzi and titled “The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion: How Feelings Link the Brain, the Body, and the Sixth Sense.” The lecture will be held at the New York Open Center at 22 East 30th Street in Manhattan. Seating is limited so call 212-628-1550 to reserve (there's a $5.00 donation at the door.)

Contemporary science holds that the brain rules the body and generates all our feelings and perceptions. Authors Michael Jawer and Dr. Marc Micozzi disagree. They contend that it is our feelings that underlie our conscious selves.

The development of one’s feelings lies at the core of our individual personalities. Throughout our lives, emotion plays a lead role in susceptibility to stress, immune function, and wellness or illness. And, most startlingly, emotion turns out to be critical to understanding anomalous perceptions.

Based on differences in how each of us literally feels — our innate sensitivity — the more physical disturbances we are likely to have: from ailments such as allergies, migraines, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, phantom pain, and post-traumatic stress to anomalous perceptions such as apparitions and involuntary out-of-body experience. Citing the latest research on immunity, sensation, stress, cognition, and emotional expression, Jawer and Micozzi’s new book demonstrates that the way we process our feelings provides a key to who is most likely to experience these phenomena and why. Emotion is the portal into a world of extraordinary perception — and a slew of studies offer a scientific foundation for telepathic dreams, poltergeist disturbances, and more.

The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion challenges science’s prevailing belief that the brain must necessarily rule the body. Far from being a mere by-product of neurochemistry, emotion is the vehicle by which we can understand ourselves and our interactions with the world around us, as well as our most intriguing — and perennially baffling — experiences.

Michael Jawer is an independent researcher who has been examining mind-body differences among individuals for the past 10 years. His original survey investigation, published by the Society for Psychical Research in the UK, uncovered linkages between environmental sensitivities, a variety of personality factors, and apparitional experience. His papers have also appeared in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Seminars in Integrative Medicine, and Science & Consciousness Review. Jawer’s interest in emotion and extraordinary sensitivities was kindled by his investigation of indoor air quality/sick building issues in the 1990s. Jawer was awarded the 2005 D. Scott Rogo Award for Parapsychological Literature. That award partially funded the writing of the book.

Marc S. Micozzi, MD, PhD, is adjunct professor of physiology and biophysics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine. He edited the first US alternative medicine textbook, Fundamentals of Complementary & Alternative Medicine, now in its fourth edition. He has consistently been committed to helping to raise the standards for research, investigation, and practice in the growing field of complementary and alternative medicine. Dr. Micozzi has been a frequent speaker on these topics nationally and internationally, and has organized and chaired conferences with the likes of former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Dr. Dean Ornish.

Their book, The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion (with a Foreword by Larry Dossey, MD) is published by Park Street Press. It is noted in the current issue of Psychology Today and has been chosen for the Book-of-the-Month Club’s “One Spirit” catalog. The book’s website is http://www.emotiongateway.com.

History of Parapsychology PDF Guide

2009-10-09T12:41:00.003-04:00

One of the best ways to learn about parapsychology is to study its historical development. History can help you to understand the origin of ideas, theories, methodology, controversies, terms, and other things you may be interested in from the context of the times in which the developments took place, and considering both actual parapsychological work and the social aspects that influenced the field. The latter includes beliefs prevalent at the time, competition with other disciplines, patterns of intellectual influence, and the dynamics of professionalization, among other topics. From the point of view of doing parapsychology, the past literature can provide us resources to avoid past methodological mistakes, generate hypotheses for research, and evaluate controversies. Furthermore, a historical perspective can do much to provide us with the human aspect of parapsychology, aspects such as information about the lives of mediums, psychics, researchers, and theoreticians.

In the downloadable pdf below titled Learning the History of Parapsychology, Dr. Carlos S. Alvarado presents some bibliographical suggestions and links to information sources that will assist interested readers in becoming familiar with the history and past literature of parapsychology.

Download: Learning the History of Parapsychology by Carlos S. Alvarado

Review of Targ: Memoirs of a Blind Biker

2009-09-20T12:41:00.006-04:00

Reviewed by Hannah Jenkins, PhD

A generation of parapsychologists are starting to retire. Fortunately for us, instead of working on their golf swing, some of them are jotting down memories. Do You See What I See?: Memoirs of a Blind Biker, another recent personal account of a life involved with psi research, is by Russell Targ, the physicist legend of remote viewing, co-author (with Harold Putoff) of the influential Mind Reach and, we discover, an avid motorcyclist despite being legally blind.

The book starts with a description of a quintessential post-war, European-influenced Chicago/New York childhood. It then goes on to tell us about his studies, early career, marriage, fatherhood, move to California, divorce, motorcycle riding and other loves. There's much to keep us interested on both personal and professional fronts: Bobby Fisher (the eccentric chess player) was his brother-in-law, and at work during breaks at NASA conferences he had quiet talks about ESP with the likes of Werner von Braun, Edgar Mitchell and Arthur C. Clarke. But Targ is no mere name dropper. The stories are informed by his thoughtful philosophical approach to life, namely, that ‘yes, things happen, but we give them all the meaning they have for us.’ All the major milestones of a life, the negatives and positives, are presented with great candor in very readable, engaging prose.

There is also an absorbing account of the ups and downs of his professional life as both an engineer for Lockheed and scientist specializing in ESP. His professional life was a delicate balance between mainstream and psi research. Many of those involved in the latter will identify with the problems he manages to overcome: he was successful at both. It's an edifying story, especially when you consider he had serious health issues to contend with for most of his life. Remarkably there’s never a hint of self pity in the writing, even when he relates the tragic death of his daughter Elizabeth Targ.

He's apparently undaunted by life challenges that would throw many off course. And though his tone does sometimes have a suggestion of 'look what I did!' he's reflective enough to acknowledge this and aware that his upbringing as an only child and early illnesses have had a profound, and mostly positive, impact on his confident and resilient approach to life.

For those engaged with psi research, the book becomes especially interesting when he expands on his contributions to ESP experiments. Russell Targ was involved in some of the seminal moments of psi research over the last four decades and was close to many other psi researchers who have also profoundly influenced the field. One of them is Charles T. Tart who wrote the forward to The Blind Biker. He describes Russell Targ's contribution to psi research as the ‘battery development pioneer’ and lauds him for bringing elusive real life psi into a more moderate, but reliable, scientifically useful form.

Although there is much that is already on the public record, it is fascinating to get the personal inside story of the developments which have informed current psi research. Some have attained legendary status, for instance the activities of the Delphi Group. But did you know that the documentary describing the silver commodities stock prediction experiments has disappeared from the archives of the production company who made it? Or that the group once received a $320,000 contract with Atari to design and build an ESP video game? And he outlines the development of remote viewing. I won't repeat the details here as it's worth reading from his perspective, especially the theories about Pat Price. The stories reveal an innovative approach to the development of practical applications for psi and one wonders if we need to up the stakes of current research to match the efforts of researchers from his era.

I highly recommend Do You See What I See?: Memoirs of a Blind Biker as an inspiring story which will be of interest to those outside psi research as much as those in it.

Hannah Jenkins, PhD

Parapsychological Association to Host Logo Competition

2009-09-15T15:48:00.002-04:00

The principal international scientific organization studying the nature of consciousness, the Parapsychological Association (PA), is holding a logo competition in anticipation of the relaunch of its website, www.parapsych.org. An affiliate of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the PA is engaged in the study of psi (or ‘psychic’) experiences, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and precognition.

The competition, which is open to the public, encourages amateurs, artists and graphic designers to draw on the 52 year history of this well-established organization to create a logo that will serve the PA’s website as well as its printed materials. The winner of the logo competition will receive a prize of $100.

The deadline for submissions is October 5, 2009. Contest rules can be found at Logo Competition Rules Contact the business manager at business@parapsych.org with inquiries.

About the Parapsychological Association:

The Parapsychological Association is the international professional organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of 'psi'’ (or 'psychic') experiences. Their primary objective is to achieve a scientific understanding of these experiences. The PA was first established in 1957, and has been an affiliated organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 1969. There are approximately 300 PA members around the world.

The PA provides an international forum for scholarly exchange through annual conferences, generally held in North America or in Europe, and through publication of the proceedings from these conferences. The PA is a non-adjudicating organization and endorses no ideologies or beliefs other than the value of rigorous scientific and scholarly inquiry. It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.

Parapsychology Research Center to Open in Second Life

2009-09-14T23:16:00.003-04:00

A new parapsychological research center is soon to open in a popular virtual arena called Second Life. The Alvarado Zingrone Institute for Research and Education (The AZIRE) was founded to provide resources for researchers, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, therapists and counselors, and teachers and students interested in seemingly psychic phenomena. A project of Alvarado Consulting, The AZIRE is located in Charlottesville, Virginia and in the online virtual world, Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com).

Dr. Carlos S. Alvarado and Dr. Nancy L. Zingrone, the folks behind The AZIRE, have enjoyed careers in parapsychology since the late 1970s. Focusing mainly on the psychology of experience — especially on the out-of-body experience — they have been lucky enough to have worked at some of the premiere institutions in the field, such as the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, the Koestler Parapsychology Unit in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, the Parapsychology Foundation in New York City and Greenport, New York, and at the Division of Perceptual Studies in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, where they now hold part-time grant-based research faculty appointments.

The AZIRE website — http://www.theazire.org — includes links to blogs on various aspects of their field of study including parapsychology as a profession, parapsychology’s contribution to science, and biographies in parapsychology, as well as links to personal blogs such as those written by Dr. Charles Tart and Dr. Dean Radin. The AZIRE website also includes links to many universities, institutes, and organizations all over the world as well as to those few opportunities for accredited and/or high quality online learning in parapsychology. Links are also provided to web-based freely available articles by Alvarado and Zingrone and to recommended books in the field.

In addition to developing online courses, a “Virtual College Fair” is in the planning stages. So far Dr. Charles Tart, Dr. Caroline Watt of the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Ian Hume of Coventry University have committed to being interviewed about the online programs and courses their institutions offer. To be notified when the interviews are scheduled, email nancy@theazire.org.

The AZIRE has committed to Second Life as a particularly vibrant media for education. To exploit that potential, The AZIRE Learning Center presents similar resources to those provided by The AZIRE website but using some of the interactive media available inworld such as continuously running slideshows, “notecards,” a YouTube viewer and click-throughs to buy books and download articles. Still in development in Second Life are The AZIRE Library that will include an expanded selection of articles and books to download or buy, and The AZIRE Classroom Building, a cosy space where discussions and classes will be hosted.

If you’re experienced in Second Life, Alvarado and Zingrone want to remind you that The AZIRE’s first open house is on Sunday, September 20^th, 2009 from 2:00 to 4:00 pm PST. Once inworld, IM Maggie Larimore (Zingrone’s Second Life alter ego) and she will send you the landmark. For those who’d like to give Second Life a try, once inworld IM Maggie Larimore and/or Rodolfo Mirabella (Alvarado’s SL alter ego) for a warm welcome!

2009 PA Convention in Seattle

2009-07-03T13:27:00.003-04:00

The 52nd Annual Parapsychological Association Convention
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Thursday Aug 6, 2009 - Sunday Aug 9, 2009

Register Now!

The Annual PA Convention is an international gathering of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of psi (or 'psychic') experiences, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and precognition. The convention features three days of papers and posters presenting the latest academic research taking place in laboratories and research centers around the world. PA conventions are open to the public, and provide ample opportunities for attendees to discuss and exchange ideas.

Donald Hoffman, Professor of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, will be the banquet speaker on Saturday night. Professor Hoffman's areas of expertise include Consciousness, Visual Perception, and the Mind-Body Problem. He is the author of the book Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See. His talk entitled "Consciousness and the interface theory of perception" will present a non-materialist solution to the mind-body problem.

Accommodations are available both in the dormitories on the University of Washington campus and at the Watertown Hotel. Use the registration form to book dorm room accommodations, but for hotel reservations, please contact the Watertown Hotel directly. Additional details on hotel accommodations, and tentative event schedule can be found at parapsych.org.

Review of Outside the Gates of Science

2009-06-25T12:33:00.003-04:00

Damien Broderick is an Australian science-fiction author and critic with a PhD in the comparative semiotics of science and literature. A rare and chimeric blend of qualities which make him an engaging and sympathetic commentator on parapsychology- an enterprise which is viewed by establishment science somewhat in the same way that science fiction is viewed by the literary establishment- as a quirky and rather embarrassing enterprise driven by a desire for wish-fulfilment that anyone with respectable academic ambitions ought to have grown out of by the time they hit puberty. However Outside the Gates of Science: Why It's Time for the Paranormal to Come in from the Cold is not a book you’ll feel you have to read surreptitiously under the bedcovers. A fast-moving foray into the fascinating (and sometimes downright bizarre) world of parapsychological research.it’s a good introduction to the controversies of the field for the non-specialist reader.

The first section of the book is a recap of some of the most often cited evidence for ESP and PK starting with the work of Joseph Banks Rhine and his card-guessing experiments at Duke University. Broderick draws a firm line between this and previous research carried out by spiritualists and psychical researchers noting that the key distinction was one of method and perhaps more importantly, cast of mind. He argues that whereas nineteenth century psychical researchers resembled historians or geographical explorers accumulating anecdotes and taking copious notes to construct narratives Rhine’s 20^th century laboratory based approach emphasised scientific standards of rigour and repeatability. In short, there are two basic types of parapsychologist- story-tellers and bean-counters. Broderick apologises for this somewhat glib summing up of the paradigm wars but his whimsical and sometimes sardonic sense of humour adds a lot to the book’s charm although the more worthy and serious minded reader may find this off-putting. (Personally speaking, I shrieked with laughter and mentally assigned appropriately-sloganed t-shirts to every parapsychologist I’ve ever met and several more whom I haven’t). Creationist sensibilities may then be shaken with the declaration of support for Evolutionary Theory phrased as “Ancient Ignorant Guess vs. Darwin, Mendel, Crick and Watson, and the Human Genome Project” (p18-19) and then it is swiftly on to the work of the Princeton Anomalies Research Team (PEAR). Emphasis is placed on Jahn and Dunne’s avoidance of what they termed as “ ‘Gee Whiz’ experiments, flashy psychic bombshells of the Uri Geller spoon-bending variety” (p21) and statistical evidence is soberly and concisely presented before moving onto an absorbing account of Targ and Puthoff’s Remote Viewing experiments and the political intrigues of psychic spies, the Stargate Project and the hunt for Saddam Hussein. There is plenty of Gee Whiz to go round here, and the author is clearly enthralled with the topic, having discussed it in depth with key players such as Ed May and Joe McMoneagle. It would appear if ‘psi’ exists that the best evidence and applications might be found in these shadowy realms, but not all the stories can be told, at least in full, and the reader is left somewhat unsatisfied at unaccredited sources and hints at hidden knowledge while Broderick himself admits that the rules of the inner circles operate “rather like the first and second rules in the movie Fight Club (‘Do not talk about Fight Club’)” (p 88).

The shadows are swiftly dispelled with what I found to be a particularly lucid exposition of quantum theories which managed to convince me that I might actually have some notion about what they might mean. No doubt this illusion will vanish the next time I talk to a real physicist, but nevertheless this is a tribute to Broderick’s calibre as a thinker and clarity as a writer as much as a testament to my own vanity. Giving short-shrift to “ the pseudo-quantum song warbled by smiling new age irrationalists” and singling out Lynne McTaggart’s book The Field (2002) as a particularly flawed example of that genre, he tackles the issue of Quantum weirdness, noting that this “looks to some people suspiciously like psychic weirdness: instantaneous nonlocal connections, reversed-time aspects to causality. The most extraordinary aspect of this discussion, for the hardnosed lay realist, is surely that it is taking place at all." (p. 189). Pointing out the similarities between the role of an observer in both ‘psi’ and quantum experimentation he argues that this "must lie at the heart of the solution to the problem of psi phenomena; and, indeed, an understanding of psi phenomena and consciousness must provide the basis for an improved understanding of Quantum Mechanics" (p. 206).

Broderick is indeed persuaded of the reality of at least some ‘psi’ phenomena- but not all, he would rather “keep gods, demons and tricksters at bay as the hypothesis of last resort." (p 272). In what might be read as a rebuke to the novel ambitions of wannabe ‘clinical parapsychologists’, he notes that “we must not allow ourselves to forget that the most powerful paranormal phenomena ever claimed have been reported by schizophrenics and other mentally disordered people” (p 274) and the difference between reports of this sort and the claims of parapsychology research is, he asserts, “the witness of their accumulating evidence and theoretical apparatus, however incomplete, by people who are not mystics or cultists” (p 275). And there’s the rub. I don’t doubt that Broderick is indeed correct in his assertion that “if telepathy, remote viewing, precognition and psychokinesis become repeatably demonstrable, they will enter, at last the realm of regular science...” (p 310). However, given that previous chapters acknowledging the capricious nature of ‘psi effects’ it might be expected that this state of affairs might be difficult, if not impossible to achieve. Furthermore, not all those individuals who have reported miracles can be easily written off as insane and whereas notions of a deity, or an afterlife or esoteric ruminations about consciousness may remain outside the gates of science, they have found well-appointed mansions of their own in departments of theology, philosophy and even anthropology across wide swathes of academia whilst academic parapsychology is still viewed with some suspicion. Perhaps we should not assume that respectability is inextricably wedded to materialism. In 1959 novelist and scientist C.P. Snow famously warned that science and arts were becoming two cultures, more recently Brockman (1995) has promoted the notion of a “third culture” to describe scientists- in particular evolutionary biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists- who may render visible “the deeper meanings in our lives” and supersede literary artists in their ability to “shape the thoughts of their generation.” So does parapsychology really need to be science and if so, why should it want to be seen as a hard, pure science?

In the last section of Outside the Gates of Science entitled “Tomorrow’s Psi” Broderick muses on the potentials of parapsychology’s future. There may well be those that feel that the here and now of psi is puzzling and fascinating enough, but time marches on and although after all that quantum discussion and talk of retro-causation I’m not entirely sure in which direction that march will proceed, I am rather persuaded that those parapsychologists who concern themselves purely with the here-and-now run the risk of finding themselves swiftly relegated to the realms of the been-and-gone. In this final flight of fabulous speculation, Broderick, as a science fiction writer, really comes into his own with some wide-ranging thoughts about how an acknowledged reality of ‘psi’ in the workaday world might reshape human experience.

An entertaining and thought-provoking read.

Wendy E. Cousins

References

Brockman, J. (1995) The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution, Simon & Schuster:

McTaggart L. (2001) The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.

Snow, C.P. (1993) The Two Cultures, Cambridge University Press; New edition.

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Wendy E.Cousins is an Irish University lecturer/psychologist.

Conference on Health, Mental Health, and Exceptional Human Experiences

2009-06-25T12:14:00.003-04:00

A conference on Health, Mental Health and Exceptional Human Experiences will take place at Liverpool Hope University on Monday 7th September.

The objectives of the conference are as follows:

- To provide a forum for cross disciplinary discussion on the interaction between mind and body
- To provide a forum for cross disciplinary discussion on the overlap between exceptional human experiences and physical health/well being

- To provide a forum for cross disciplinary discussion on the overlap between exceptional human experiences and mental health/well being
- An opportunity for the development of greater insight and understanding of exceptional human experiences in an applied context.

The conference will be a one day event, comprising two main sessions:

One on belief mind and body [including the placebo effect/how the mind might be involved in the healing process; the effects of belief on the efficacy of drugs/healing/mental health; [Religious] faith and health/mental health; Exploring and understanding anomalous healing
effects - a review of distant healing effects; Hypnosis and (self) healing; exploring will or intention from a mainstream perspective; Altered states of consciousness, mental imagery and healing].

The second will be on mental health and exceptional human experiences [including exploring the overlaps between clinical psychology and paranormal experiences; Clinical parapsychology in practice; Exploring the differences between healthy and unhealthy exceptional human experiences; exploring ways of manipulating/controlling pathological/healthy anomalous experiences; Spiritual and paranormal emergencies; Healthy and unhealthy reactions to extreme events; Meditation and mental health].

Speakers at this event include the following: John Gruzelier, Isabel Clarke, Stefan Schmidt, Eberhard Bauer, Martina Belz, David Luke, Ian Tierney, Christine Simmonds-Moore, Carl Williams, Diane Dutton, Nicola Holt and Ginette Nachman.

Registration for the event opened on Monday 8th June - there are different rates according to your status!

A registration form may be downloaded from our website http://hopelive.hope.ac.uk/psychology/para/HealthConference.html.

Our blogsite is located at http://exceptionalhumanexperiences.blogspot.com/.

Please email Christine at simmonc@hope.ac.uk for more details about the event.

Review of The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof

2009-04-24T18:25:00.006-04:00

The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof: the Enigma of Séance Phenomena, by Dr. Rosemarie Pilkington features the story of a little known episode of physical mediumship that took place among a group of teenage boys in New York City in the 1930’s. Dr. Pilkington is a musician, writer, and educator with a PhD in psychology from Saybrook Institute. She befriended one of the members of this sitter group, Gilbert Roller, later in his life and presents his autobiographical account of the boys’ experimentation with séance phenomena, and their contact with an alleged spirit named Dr. Bindelof.

Gilbert recalled his childhood home life as “monstrous and terrible” (p. 7). Early in the story, we learn that he was the focus of an outbreak of poltergeist activity in his home. Gil’s mother was absent much of the time, and she and her husband (Gil’s stepfather) fought often. When Gil was about 12 or 13, the family heard sounds from his mother’s bedroom and found hairpins that had apparently flown from the dresser and hit the door. Wooden knobs from her shoe tree came off and were flung across the room. As the phenomena progressed, dishes would come crashing off the counters, and the words ‘GO GO’ were found crayoned in huge letters on the wall. These and other events prompted Gil’s father to call in the well known psychical researcher, Howard Carrington, to investigate.

Later, Gil joined his mother in evening séances in which minor events occurred in his presence. Eventually, he started his own sitter group along with some of his teenage friends, including the late Montague Ullman, who later became a psychiatrist and parapsychologist and founder of the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York (whose own account of the sittings can be found here). The boys were dedicated to the task of facilitating paranormal phenomena and met regularly on Saturday nights for several years. Among the phenomena they reported were table levitations, raps, direct voice phenomena, direct writing, and communications with a ‘spirit’ by the name of Dr. Bindelof, who provided healing and medical advice. On the front of the book is a portrait of Dr. Bindelof, taken under the very specific guidance of the communicator.

Gilbert and Pilkington seem to agree that there was no ‘spirit’ of Dr. Bindelof. Rather, the doctor was the unconscious projection of the sitter group and that Gil was the source of major occurrences in and out of the séance room. In the next two sections of the book, Pilkington provides a brief history of physical mediumship, covering well known cases like the Fox Sisters, Daniel Douglas Home, Florence Cook, Eusapia Palladino, and Ted Serios, as well has lesser known cases such as Franek Kluski and Indridi Indridason. Throughout her narrative, Pilkington relates aspects of these cases to the Bindelof case, maintaining that these kinds of unusual events were likely paranormally produced by living beings, “although belief in outside or discarnate forces greatly helps in their production.” And if these phenomena are genuine, “our current knowledge of the mind and body, our whole concept of physical laws, is woefully limited” (p.226).

Despite my involvement in the field of parapsychology, my boggle threshold, the point at which I consider phenomena highly unlikely to be real, is admittedly pretty low. I was attracted to this field because I was impressed by laboratory studies of psi and the evidence for small-scale psi effects in environments where variables can be manipulated and performance measured. Time and time again, in laboratories around the world, well-educated and credible scientists have demonstrated that human consciousness may not be limited to space or time. I am more boggled that the work of parapsychologists doesn't receive more serious mainstream consideration than I am by the implications of their results.

However, many large scale psychokinetic effects do exceed my boggle threshold, and I find it difficult to accept the reality of such phenomena unless I can either investigate them myself or have their mechanisms explained to me. Pilkington’s narrative attempts to demonstrate to readers that these events are real, but I still remain unconvinced. However while reading The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof, I was impressed with the reality that credible and well-trained investigators have observed physical effects that seem to defy space or time, and that these observers were willing stake their reputations reporting them. Many of these investigations took place with cooperative subjects who were willing to be thoroughly examined and perform such feats under well-lit conditions. Quality investigations such as these have taken place around the world, decade after decade, yet the phenomena still remain a mystery.

After reading Pilkington's book, I am just a little bit more curious about sitter group phenomena, enough so that I might find the patience to try it myself. For those interested in forming such groups, Pilkington’s appendix, So You Want to Do It Too?, offers advice to novices.

However, for me the larger issue is understanding 'how it works', and unfortunately large scale psychokinetic (macro-PK) events have not yet been subjected to the volume of research that ESP and small scale psychokinetic (micro-PK) events have. A systematic, scientific research program into macroscopic psychokinetic phenomena would be absolutely groundbreaking. But unlike some of the phenomena described in The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof, scientific research programs don't drop out of thin air. Rather, they are supported by the research dollars of individuals and foundations with the vision and courage needed to support science on the cutting edge.

Gilbert Roller passed away on October 20, 2004 at the age of 89. Recently, his widow, Mrs. Marion Roller made a generous contribution to the Parapsychological Association (PA) in her husband's name to establish a new endowment for research. The Gilbert Roller Fund supports scientific field investigations into macroscopic psychokinetic phenomena such as those reported in sitter groups, séances, poltergeist activity, and/or theoretical approaches to help explain the nature of such large scale effects. Right now, the PA is in the midst of a matching funds drive for this endowment until Friday, May 1, 2009. Mrs. Roller is matching, dollar for dollar, donations made to this fund. So your tax-deductible contribution of $50 would not-so-mysteriously become $100 research dollars, and so on. Donations can be made online at the PA website. Your contributions would enable qualified researchers with professional knowledge of past research of this type to continue to explore large-scale psychokinetic phenomena.

Addendum: I just received the following from a representative of Mrs. Roller's estate:

Through May 1st your contribution will be matched TWO FOR ONE, that is for every $50 you donate, the fund will receive $150. If you have not yet contributed, please do so this week to help add to our knowledge and to take advantage of this generous offer.

Annalisa Ventola

www.publicparapsychology.org

Lecture Review: Science and the Afterlife

2009-04-05T20:59:00.002-04:00

Science and the Afterlife

A Review of a Lecture Presented at the San Diego Bereavement Consortium

March 20, 2009

Recently, Dr. Julie Beischel, a premier investigator in the fields of survival of consciousness and mediumship research, spoke before an audience of perhaps one hundred people in San Diego at a lecture at the Scottish Rite Event Center. Early in her presentation, Dr. Beischel requested a show of hands in the audience of those who believed that consciousness survives death, and not surprisingly, 90% raised their hands, though I was not among them. This was due to my agnosticism on the topic, despite my own first impulse to raise my arm.

“Survival after death,” reported Dr. Beischel, “has a body of data at least one hundred years old.” She described three established types of after-life research: 1). proof-focused (i.e. validity studies); 2). process-focused (phenomenology of the medium herself); and 3). applied (i.e. field work). Beischel’s approach is clearly proof-focused. She herself is well-schooled in laboratory science having earned her doctorate in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Arizona—an impressive prelude to her present career as researcher/bridge-maker to the other side.

According to Beischel, researchers agree that “the perception is real” (regarding contact with the dead), though what actually is occurring in such cases is less conclusive. Of course, irrefutable scientific proof for survival, an afterlife, and direct communication with the “discarnate,” would most certainly be a gold ticket in the annals of science research, on a par with evidential proof of alien contact, the cure and eradication of cancer, or even a treatment for male-pattern baldness that worked. Moving from perception to causation in this controversial territory is like moving from the belief in faeries to having one sing with the band at your daughter’s wedding.

Dr. Beishal reviewed her fairly rigorous eight-step process at The Windbridge Institute to screen and train competent mediums as subjects (often on the phone) for controlled experiments. Both mental mediums and “trance mediums” (who remain dissociated during their transmissions) are utilized. Training includes grief counseling to help mediums better relate to their bereaved sitters during contact sessions. Curiously, the words ‘ghost’, ‘apparition’, or ‘spirit’ are not used in this vocabulary, and Beischel admits a double-edged sword in the current pop culture fascination with mediums, spirit possession, ghost hunters, and the like, which, at once, trivializes her research as a kind of thrill-ride for hormonally-ravaged teenagers, but also raises public awareness for the much-needed funding in this universally relevant area.

I found especially interesting Beischel’s discussion of the three likely mechanisms researchers use to explain ‘anomalous information receptions’ (AIR): namely, 1) consciousness survives death. 2) a super psi effect is triggered in such cases (in which case, what’s actually occurring is psi, not survival). 3). A ‘psychic reservoir’ or universal data bank (ala the Akashic records, etc.) is tapped.

The first option feels circular to me, and not mutually exclusive of the others. Receptions occur “because consciousness survives” seems like saying “we float in the water because the ocean is wet.” There must be a second half to this explanation. Option 2--the super psi effect--seems to be the confounding factor that ambiguously follows this work to its conclusion (or stalemate) without ever being ruled out, or adequately control for. What may appear like valid contact between medium and discarnate may actually be some telepathic snatching up of the sitter’s memories (with, or without, anyone realizing it). In that case, the after-life has not been unwrapped so much as hijacked by super-psychics! Option 3, however, the ‘psychic reservoir hypothesis’, despite its Aquarian acoustic, resonates most with my own sympathies as a Jungian psychologist and tarot expert. I can easily visualize The High Priestess channeling subtle, subliminal, collective memories accessed from her deeply intuitive predisposition.

Option 3 also suggests ‘absolute knowledge’ (Jung) arising synchronistically between medium, sitter, (and possibly discarnate as well). The connection, however, is ‘acausal’ in nature, i.e. emitting no energy exchange between senders and receivers (the holy mantra of synchronicity theorists!). Like in divination procedures, a transpersonal intelligence or awareness seems simply to open up (or is recognized as having always been there) under the proper conditions. Whereas super psi posits something is happening here (albeit subtle)— an energy still is exchanged (and sought after for measurement by scientists). In any event, Dr. Beischel admitted without hesitation to the audience that the question itself remains open.

The psychology of abundance seems another relevant piece to the life-after-death puzzle. Unlimited amounts of anything—cash, phone minutes, refills, or lifetimes—make sudden ceasing to be seem so less pressured and irredeemable. Could survivability, and its implied endlessness, have such a paradoxical effect? Might surviving into the afterlife take some of the umph out of the “now or never?” Beischel reports that grief-stricken family members feel better after consulting a medium than after consulting a mental health worker. (Why am I not surprised?). Could this artifact be merely some opiate effect in the service of denial? Or could something far less predictable be going on here-- the foreshadowing of a vast paradigm shift with respect to consciousness surviving after death. As Dr. Julie Beischel noted at the end, perhaps the greatest effect of her findings for the medical community is simply that: “Death is then viewed more as a transition, than a failure.” Could this be the larger hypothesis that we are looking for?

Arthur Rosengarten, Ph.D.

http://www.moonlightcounseling.com

http://geocities.com/tarotpsych/

Dr. Art Rosengarten is a Jungian psychologist in Encinitas, California, The Director of Moonlight Counseling, the author of Tarot And Psychology: Spectrums Of Possibility (2000), and the creator of Tarot Of The Nine Paths: A Guide For The Spiritual Traveler (2009). He completed the first scientific study of tarot divination for his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute Of Integral Studies (1985) and has since researched domestic violence through the synchronisitic lens of tarot readings. Dr. Rosengarten is owner/moderator of tarotpsych: an online discussion group for tarot experimentation and community. His articles, services, books and deck can be found on his website: www.artrosengarten.com

Windbridge Institute Study

2009-03-16T09:55:00.004-04:00

The Windbridge Institute is in need of research volunteers for an online study. Participants in this study will be asked to visit a specific website and listen to a selection of different sounds (audio files). Participants will then be asked to complete an on-line survey with questions about what they heard. The study takes about an hour to complete.

More details are available at http://www.windbridge.org/study.html. Please use 'pubpara' as your participant code.

New Parapsychology Blog

2009-03-11T20:05:00.002-04:00

JJ Lumsden, parapsychologist and author of The Hidden Whisper, has recently started his own blog at parapsychologist.tumblr.com. Starting off with a few short essays and quotes, this looks like a promising blog to watch.

Matching Funds Drive for PK Research

2009-02-17T11:04:00.001-05:00

The Parapsychological Association (PA) recently received a generous donation from Mrs. Marion Roller to establish a new endowment for research. The Gilbert Roller Fund supports scientific field investigations into macroscopic psychokinetic phenomena such as those reported in sitter-groups, séances, and poltergeist activity, and/or theoretical approaches to help explain the nature of such large-scale effects.

Between now and May 1, 2009, Mrs. Roller will match, dollar for dollar, any donations made to the Gilbert Roller Fund to support this important line of research. Traditionally most of the modest support for parapsychological research has come from individuals and foundations with the vision and courage needed to support science on the cutting edge. Your contributions will enable qualified researchers with professional knowledge of past investigations of this type to continue to explore large-scale psychokinetic phenomena in the real world.

The PA provides a professional "home" for scientists and scholars around the world who dare to investigate phenomena shunned by mainstream science. Donations can be made to the Gilbert Roller Fund electronically by visiting their members site, or by check mailed to the Parapsychological Association at P.O. Box 24173, Columbus, OH 43224. The PA is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and donations are tax-deductible in the USA.

A Brain Response to a Remote Stare?

2009-02-16T12:25:00.003-05:00

“I have the feeling that we’re being watched...” is a familiar saying to most of us, and in some instances, we may turn around and find someone is watching us from afar. This experience of remote staring detection, as it is sometimes called, seems to be rather common among the general population, with surveys in the United States and Europe estimating that between 68 and 94% of people have had the feeling on at least one occasion (Braud et al., 1993; Sheldrake, 2003, Ch. 8). To better exclude the possibility that the feeling is merely due to coincidence or to subtle sensory cues, at least 15 experimental psi studies have attempted to reproduce it under carefully controlled conditions since the early 1990s. With their results combined, the studies reveal a small but statistically significant overall effect (Schmidt et al., 2004), hinting that there might be something to the “feeling of being stared at.”

In these studies, the observed effect comes as a small change in the skin’s electrical activity, which is controlled by the body’s autonomic nervous system. It may be argued that if the nervous system can register a response to an unseen gaze, then perhaps the brain can register one, as well. To explore this possibility, Ian Baker at the University of Derby, and Paul Stevens at Bournemouth University, presented a remote staring study that included brain wave monitoring using the electroencephalograph (EEG) at the 51^st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association in Winchester, England. In particular, Baker and Stevens (2008) examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) produced on the EEG charts during the study to see if they might serve as brain processing correlates of remote staring.

ERPs are tiny brain wave voltage changes that often reflect the brain’s electrical activity in response to sensory stimulation (Kolb & Whishaw, 1990, p. 372). For example, when a bright light is flashed in their eyes, an ERP can appear on a person’s EEG a fraction of a second later, usually in the area around the visual cortex in the occipital lobe at the brain’s rear. In addition, an ERP can occur when we are shown a picture of someone’s face, as our brain works to determine if we recognize the face or not, as well as react to its gaze. In some sense, remote staring might be seen as a form of facial or gaze processing at a distance, wherein a person’s brain somehow detects and processes the presence the gaze of a distant face. If it can be thought of in this way, then perhaps remote staring utilizes similar (if not the same) brain processes as those used in direct facial and/or gaze processing. Baker and Stevens (2008) made an initial attempt to explore the plausibility of this using ERPs.[1]

Three remote staring experiments were reported. In each one, a participant relaxed in front of a computer screen while their EEG was monitored. During part of the experiment, a facial portrait [2] was shown on the screen to evoke an ERP on the participant’s EEG; at other times, it was left blank. In addition, a starer in a distant room watched the participant at random times on another computer screen that was connected to a video camera aimed at the participant. Because of the random timing, there were occasions in which the conditions overlapped (i.e., the participant looked at the face on the screen while being remotely watched by the starer), and other times in which they did not. The results showed indications of a remote staring effect, but it only occurred when the conditions overlapped. When the participant’s ERPs generated during the overlapping condition were compared to the ERPs produced when the participant was shown the face on the screen (but not watched from afar), they were notably similar. This began to suggest that remote staring and face/gaze processing may use the same or similar brain processes.

However, the third experiment uncovered signs of a possible artifact that potentially confounded the results. When examined further in a control test, a small difference in luminance was discovered when facial portraits were being presented on the screen, which may have either affected the generation of ERPs, or provided participants with a subtle sensory cue as to the test condition. While this potentially weakens the study findings, it may have the important purpose of uncovering a procedural issue relevant to other studies in the neuroscience literature that use a similar method of ERP generation. If a similar artifact is seen in other studies, then it may affect the interpretation of many mainstream findings and draw attention to a procedural concern that must be addressed in future ERP studies. For parapsychology, further studies that control for this artifact are needed to better determine whether or not remote staring does indeed involve brain processes utilized in direct facial/gaze processing.

Bryan Williams

Notes

[1] Incidentally, Norman Don, Bruce McDonough, and Charles Warren of the University of Illinois at Chicago conducted a series of ESP studies that found evidence to suggest that ERPs can sometimes serve as unconscious brain wave indicators of precognition (e.g., Don et al., 1998; Warren et al., 1992).

[2] This facial portrait was of the starer in the distant room (see text).

References:

Baker, I. S., & Stevens, P. (2008). An investigation into the cortical electrophysiology of remote staring detection. Proceedings of Presented Papers: The Parapsychological Association 51st Annual Convention (pp. 8 – 23). Columbus, OH: Parapsychological Association, Inc.

Braud, W., Shafer, D., & Andrews, S. (1993). Reactions to an unseen gaze (remote attention): A review, with new data on autonomic staring detection. Journal of Parapsychology, 57, 373 – 390.

Don, N. S., McDonough, B. E., & Warren, C. A. (1998). Event-related brain potential (ERP) indicators of unconscious psi: A replication using subjects unselected for psi. Journal of Parapsychology, 62, 127 – 145.

Kolb, B., & Whishaw, I. Q. (1990). Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology (3rd Ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman & Company.

Schmidt, S., Schneider, R., Utts, J., & Walach, H. (2004). Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses. British Journal of Psychology, 95, 235 – 247.

Sheldrake, R. (2003). The Sense of Being Stared At, and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind. New York: Crown Publishers.

Warren, C. A., McDonough, B. E., & Don, N. S. (1992). Event-related brain potential changes in a psi task. Journal of Parapsychology, 56, 1 – 30.

Volunteer Opportunities at the Rhine Research Center

2009-02-16T00:05:00.003-05:00

Do you have some extra time during the day or afterhours to help develop and promote the Rhine Center’s expanding research and educational programs? Here are some of the current needs—

Handling & Shipping: Help in screening incoming calls, signups for programs and membership, sales and mailings of books and products.

Friendly Greeters: Program registration, hosting and sales activities at the regular evening talks, workshops and yearly conferences.

Publicity Paragons: Preparing notices for email and website posting of programs as well as expanding the overall media contacts to better publicize Rhine Center events...

Book Buddies: Help with general library work such as logging in of new books, adding onto software program, writing selected book reviews for the newsletter, and/or developing a lending library of extra library books.

For the Record: Backup assistance to audiovisual technical staff in audio and video-recording of programs

Historians: Assistance in organizing and preserving archival materials from the Rhine Center past.

Research Acolytes: Occasional assistance to research staff on selected research projects or grant proposals.

Development Demons: Assist in fund-raising and general promotional activities of the Center.

If you are interested, please contact Sally or call 919-309-4600 during weekday hours.

Editor's note: The Rhine Research Center is located in North Carolina, however, notice that a couple of their volunteer needs (i.e. publicity, research, and development) could probably be handled long distance. Send Sally an email and see how you can lend a hand.

Science of Hauntings Conference in Edinburgh

2009-02-15T22:21:00.002-05:00

HAUNTINGS: The Science and History of Ghosts

On 4th April 2009, psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman and a host of leading experts will gather to examine the science and history of hauntings.

This unusual event will explore the results of scientific investigations into 'haunted' houses, how the brain can be fooled into seeing apparitions, whether spirit photographs offer evidence of the afterlife, and how poltergeists once panicked the nation. There will also be a unique opportunity to witness a genuine Victorian phantasmagoria, and meet the man who creates ghostly goings-on in Harry Potter movies.

The event will take place in the University of Edinburgh's Anatomy Lecture Theatre - an atmospheric, spectacular and historical venue not usually open to the public.

Talks:

Investigating haunted locations: A scientific approach (Prof Richard Wiseman: Uni of Hertfordshire)

Imaging the impossible: Investigating spirit photography (Gordon Rutter: Writer)

Things that go bump in the mind: The psychology of apparitions (Dr Caroline Watt: Univ of Edinburgh)

The haunted: A social history of ghosts (Prof Owen Davies: University of Hertfordshire)

"No more ghosts!": The regency phantasmagoria (Dr Mervyn Heard: Historian and performer)

"Dialogue with the dead": Creating ghosts for television (Stephen Volk: Writer of Ghostwatch and Afterlife)

Grappling with ghosts: The practicalities of staging ghost effects in the modern theatre (Paul Kieve: Illusionist and film consultant)

Hauntings is part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival.

Further details at: www.scienceofghosts.com

PhD Opportunity in Parapsychology at Lund University

2009-02-15T18:42:00.004-05:00

Project for Doctoral Studies in States of Consciousness and Parapsychology
Etzel Cardeña, Ph.D., Thorsen Professor

DOCTORAL PROGRAM IN PARAPSYCHOLOGY

As part of a long-term program of research in states of consciousness and parapsychology, Etzel Cardeña and his associates at Lund University, Sweden are investigating the following themes in the department of psychology:

The nature of spontaneous and induced states of consciousness of targeted groups (e.g., high and low hypnotizables, beginning and long-term meditators) through various methodological tools, including experience sampling reporting, cognitive tasks, and measure of brain activity (e.g., EEG) and other physiological responses with the goal of establishing an empirically-based, phenomenological/physiological taxonomy of states of consciousness.

The relationship between hypnotizability and performance in controlled PSI experiments. Previous studies have revealed that: highly hypnotizable individuals report a high incidence of spontaneous anomalous experiences, including reputed psi phenomena such as clairvoyance and telepathy, and there is a significant positive association between a hypnotic context and performance in controlled, standardized tests measuring psi abilities. This part of the project focuses on: a) investigating the possible interaction between a hypnotic context, hypnotizability, and performance in controlled psi experiments, and b) developing and testing a long-term training program to potentially enhance performance in psi-experiments through immediate feedback and long term skill enhancement on groups most likely to perform significantly in standardized psi tests.

If interested in apply for their graduate program, contact: Dr Etzel Cardena or download the application.

Sheldrake Lecturing on Morphic Resonance in London

2009-02-11T22:47:00.002-05:00

The Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness lecture series presents:

A New Science of Life: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake

Tuesday, 31st March, 2009

According to Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation, all self-organizing systems, including crystals, animals and societies contain an inherent memory, given by a process called morphic resonance from previous similar systems. All human beings draw upon a collective human memory, and in turn contribute to it. Even individual memory depends on morphic resonance rather than on physical memory traces stored within the brain. This radical hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits, and evolution, like human life, depends on an interplay between habit and creativity.

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and several books, including A New Science of Life (new edition, February 2008). His web site is www.sheldrake.org

October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL
(Tel: 44 (0)20 7831 1618). – email: rentals@octobergallery.co.uk
Please RSVP as space is very limited – Pay on the door or in advance by credit card
Entry £7 /£5 Concessions, Arrive 6pm for a 6:30pm Start - Wine available