Michael Prescott's Blog

Who ya gonna call?

Don't let this happen to you. 

Best comment on the linked article:

This is why ghost hunting should be left to the "professionals." 

Bored, baby

Lately I find myself bored with all things paranormal. Hence the posts about Mel Gibson, bad TV, and other trivia.

I've discovered that there are only so many accounts of NDEs and mediums I can read before they all start to sound the same. To break the monotony, I tried reading up on evidence that I had always dismissed as relatively weak, such as "between-life" experiences recounted in hypnotic regression. But I found that this evidence still struck me as weak, and therefore boring.

No doubt the mood will pass, but for the moment I'm not very motivated to rehash the same-old same old, and I'm not seeing any new thing under the sun.

One thing that does interest me is the AWARE study. As I've read more about this, I've become impressed by the scope and seriousness of the project. Though the natural tendency is to hedge one's bets (and I've done so in the past), I now think it is more intellectually honest to acknowledge that a study of this magnitude really should yield at least some definite "hits," if out-of-body perceptions during NDEs are truly paranormal. If no hits at all are obtained, it will be hard to defend the proposition that anything is really "leaving the body."

Of course, the other evidence for postmortem survival - primarily mediumship and children's spontaneous past-life memories - will remain. But if AWARE comes up empty on the crucial issue of veridical perception, the evidential value of NDEs will be severely diminished. I know there are many evidential NDE cases that predate AWARE, but most of them are open to critical carping of one type or another. If the best and most comprehensive study fails to replicate the earlier results, the criticisms of earlier, less well-documented cases will be exceedingly difficult to rebut.

But there's no reason to expect a negative result. Given the decent number of carefully investigated NDEs and the much larger number of anecdotal cases, there's every reason to anticipate a positive outcome, with highly consequential implications for the field of psi research in general and afterlife study in particular.

And that won't be boring at all.

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By the way, the image above, which is called "Bored Baby," is something I nicked from another website some time ago, because I thought it was funny. I'm no longer 100% sure where I got it, but I think it was the conservative political site Hot Air.

The wheat and the chaff

When you read a lot of material about the paranormal, you encounter all kinds of claims. Sometimes it becomes difficult to separate the strong cases from the weaker ones. It can even be confusing and discouraging, as the weaker cases start to overwhelm the stronger ones in your mind.

A possible approach to this problem is to ask yourself, "If this were the only evidence I had for a particular claim, would I believe it?" In this way, you can separate lines of investigation that otherwise might run together in your thoughts.

Admittedly, this method is somewhat subjective, since it depends on what you personally would accept as adequate evidence for any given claim. But at least it provides you with a method, however rough, for discriminating among the various strands of evidence that present themselves to you.

Here are some examples of my personal evaluations of different kinds of claims.

If the reports of people taking hallucinogenic drugs like DMT were the only evidence for the existence of other planes of reality, would I believe in those other planes? I would not. I would assume that the elaborate scenarios visualized by users of psychedelic drugs are woven out of the material of the unconscious mind.

If Robert Monroe's reports of his out-of-body experiences were the only evidence for such experiences, would I believe in OBEs? I would not. As I've written elsewhere, Monroe's accounts are frequently so bizarre that they sound more like dreams or hallucinations than real experiences.

If past-life hypnotic regression were the only evidence for reincarnation, would I believe in reincarnation? I would not. Hypnosis is not necessarily reliable as a method of obtaining factual information. Hypnotized subjects may confabulate to please the hypnotist, and may draw on long-buried memories of books and movies from years ago in order to fill out their narratives with convincing details. D. Scott Rogo's excellent book The Search for Yesterday offers a detailed examination of past-life memories obtained through hypnosis, and provides serious grounds for doubting their validity in at least some instances.

If the investigations of Ian Stevenson, and like-minded researchers such as Jim Tucker and Carol Bowman, were the only evidence for reincarnation, would I believe in reincarnation? Possibly, yes. At the very least, these studies strongly indicate that something paranormal -- something that cannot be explained by any "normal" means -- is going on. Whether it is reincarnation or some form of spirit obsession/possession or some other phenomenon, I don't know. But a lot of this evidence seems very good to me.

If the only evidence for psychokinesis were the reported phenomena of Uri Geller, would I believe in PK? Probably not. Too many questions have been raised about some of Geller's more bizarre claims -- for instance, being in telepathic contact with extraterrestrials. Plus, there is Geller's undeniable gift for showmanship, which at the very least blurs the line between genuine phenomena and stage magic.

If the only evidence for psychokinesis were the reported phenomena of Eusapia Palladino, would I believe in PK? Probably, yes. Though Palladino was unquestionably capable of cheating, she also seems to have produced genuine phenomena in circumstances that preclude fraud. The 1908 Naples sittings are the prime example. I think it is highly unlikely that a team of very experienced investigators, who among them had debunked more than 100 physical mediums, and who observed Palladino in adequate light, taking strenuous precautions, would be completely fooled over a long series of sittings.

If the only evidence for apparitions consisted of the so-called "crisis apparition" cases collected by the Society for Psychical Research in the late 19th century, would I believe in apparitions? Yes, I would. The sheer quantity of cases accumulated by Edmund Gurney and FWH Myers, and the high quality of the better-documented ones, convinces me that crisis apparitions are a real phenomenon.

If the only evidence for mediumship consisted of the sittings of Edgar Cayce, would I believe in mediumship? No, I wouldn't. Most of Cayce's channeled information consisted of nostrums intended to cure various ailments. No systematic effort was made to determine if the cures were successful, and most of the remedies seem dubious at best. Cayce's predictions have sometimes proved incorrect, and his reconstructions of the past are also open to serious challenge by archaeologists and historians.

If the only evidence for mediumship consisted of the performances of contemporary TV mediums like John Edward and George Anderson, would I believe in mediumship? Probably not. Although watching John Edward on TV got me interested in mediumship in the first place, I could never rule out the possibility -- however unlikely -- that he was faking it in some incredibly clever way. After all, he controlled the venue, and most of his appearances were edited. While I think Edward is probably for real, I base this opinion on my knowledge of other mediums rather than Edward alone.

If the only evidence for mediumship consisted of the investigations of Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborne Leonard, would I believe in mediumship? Yes, I would. Both of those ladies were extensively examined by highly capable researchers over a period of 20 years. They remain the most thoroughly tested in mediums in history, and I cannot see any remotely plausible non-paranormal explanation for their accomplishments.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, obviously. But perhaps it gives some idea of how I would try to distinguish between relatively strong and relatively weak evidence. Once having accepted the stronger evidence, I probably do have a tendency to be more accepting of some of the weaker cases as well. For instance, since I think PK is possible, I'm more inclined to think Uri Geller can actually do it. But Geller's evidence on its own would not convince me.  

It's probably natural to become less skeptical about certain areas of evidence when you have overcome your initial skepticism in related areas. But I do think it's useful to occasionally review all the evidence as dispassionately as possible, and to separate the wheat from the chaff.

　

Ghost car?

Here's a fun piece of video from truTV. A police video camera captures the pursuit of a dangerously speeding car - which then apparently drives straight through a chain link fence, leaving the fence undamaged and the cops baffled.

At first I couldn't figure out how this happened. But when I Googled "Garden City" + "ghost car," a helpful discussion on the JREF forum cleared it up.

First, watch the video and see if you can guess the answer. I'll wait right here.

.... (hums, taps his feet, checks his watch) ...

Okay, so how was it done?

There's actually only a short section of fence. The speeding car has already passed the fence when the camera swings back to it. The taillights are visible from behind the fence, but because they are bright and the fence is dark, they give the momentary impression of being in front. 

Thus it looks as if the car is miraculously passing through the fence, when in reality it zipped around the obstacle before the camera reacquired the car.

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HT: Ace of Spades.

Book review: The Goblin Universe

In comments, Tony M recommended Ted Holiday's The Goblin Universe to me as an interesting read. And I did enjoy the book, though I think I appreciated it more on the level of entertainment than actual evidence. As Colin Wilson admits in the introduction, the book would not convince anyone who has a skeptical cast of mind; the data presented are almost entirely anecdotal and can easily be written off as hoaxes or the delusions of gullible eyewitnesses.

The problem [writes Wilson] is that the reader needs to start out with a certain sympathy for these ideas. The Goblin Universe would never convert a single sceptic; in fact, it would probably make him more certain than ever that 'the occult' is a farrago of self-deception and muddled thinking. [pp. 28,29]

Nevertheless, the book does raise provocative and intriguing questions about the nature of reality. Wilson himself was so impressed with The Goblin Universe that he prevailed on the author's family to have it published posthumously, after Ted Holiday himself had chosen to leave it unpublished. Holiday may have been dissatisfied with the book because its conclusions are rather tentative; he sketches out a hypothesis that is at once elaborate and incomplete. Whether there is any merit to this hypothesis remains to be seen.

Before we get to that, let's look at the main subject matter of the book. Though The Goblin Universe covers a wide variety of phenomena, the author's principal concern is with what he calls "the phantom menagerie," the collection of beasties that have always been part of folklore and tabloid newspaper reports. Naturally, Bigfoot and Sasquatch and the yeti are here, as are mysterious big cats that come and go in the night, and the fairy folk, but Holiday's main interest is lake monsters, the most famous of which is the creature said to be inhabiting Loch Ness.

I learned a lot about this marginal area of zoological exploration in Holiday's book. For one thing, Loch Ness is by no means unique. Similar legends surround other lakes in Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere. Moreover, I always pictured the Loch Ness monster as resembling a plesiosaur, a huge marine reptile* from the dinosaur age. But on the basis of the reports collected by Holiday, Nessie takes on a less attractive aspect. It is said to resemble a giant worm or slug with a horselike face. In some cases, it is reported to have multiple legs, like a centipede. Holiday speculates that the creature might have its origins as a prehistoric worm that channeled through the sedimentary deposits at the bottom of the lake, surfacing only infrequently.

He does not, however, believe that the present-day Loch Ness monster is an actual organic being. Instead, he regards it as something more akin to a "thought form," an image or idea that temporarily materializes or manifests itself in such a way as to be perceived by especially sensitive observers under just the right conditions. There is, in short, something otherworldly about the Loch Ness monster and, Holiday believes, something evil. He was so convinced of this fact that he engaged a professional exorcist to perform an exorcism of the loch. The aftereffects of this ritual, as described by Holiday, were extremely bizarre and involved the brief appearance of a "man in black," the archetypal figure often cited by ufologists. Indeed, Holiday believes there is a connection between UFOs and the phantom menagerie; UFOs, he thinks, are thought forms too.

And here is where his hypothesis comes in. He points us to the work of Harold Burr, former professor of anatomy at the Yale School of Medicine. For decades Burr investigated what he called "L-fields," short for "life-fields," which he saw as electrodynamic fields that organize all living systems. These fields, measured in millivolts, supposedly determine the structure and health of any living thing.

As Holiday summarizes,

L-fields, in fact, compel atoms and molecules to form appropriate shapes, and to keep the these shapes as individual cells die and need replacing. Instead of trial and error, Burr and his colleagues found perfect order. Every atom carries an electrical charge and is acted on by the field of the organism. A modification takes place between the field and the organism and vice versa, which has the authority of unfailing natural law. [p. 206]

Holiday carries Burr's work considerably further by speculating that the mind itself can directly affect L-fields. If this is so, and if L-fields are responsible for bringing together the constituents of living beings and organizing them into a coherent system, then the mind -- or perhaps we should say Mind -- operating through health fields, can create physical things.

Holiday writes:

But the essential point is that something nonmaterial -- a thought in the mind of the operator or the dying reactions of a small experimental animal -- [is] translated into measurable physical effects by no known means.

Perhaps we are now looking somewhat dimly at the real mechanism of evolution. To talk of the hit-or-this stupidity of chance mutations is as ludicrous as talking about a Creator making animals of clay. A far more subtle and effective method of modifying animals exists and it can be shown to exist -- the effect of mind on matter....

We now see that plants and animals are under electronic control. And this control appears to be subject to further control from a timeless, nonmaterial agency loosely specified as mind, will, soul or spirit. This is not a matter of faith, but of scientific experiment. Evolution by selection does occur; but the selection is rational and intelligent. Far more subtle than any human intelligence, it is therefore extremely difficult to comprehend. Yet it has many attributes humans recognise in themselves. It enjoys the grotesque and even the horrifying. It is both spendthrift and immensely economical. It labors to perfect the seemingly impossible just for fun. Above all, it has an awareness of beauty in form and structure that dazzles the mind. If we try to probe a little deeper into the mystery of being, we find ourselves in the Goblin Universe along with Alice having tea with mad hares in top hats. [pp. 209-212]

In brief, then, the phantom menagerie, in Holiday's view, consists of entities that materialize and dematerialize out of physical constituents organized by L-fields, such fields in turn being directed by some mind or other. It is left unclear whether the mind in question is that of the observer, or God, or discarnate beings of a lower or higher nature, or some other source.

Now what are we to make of all this? Well, never having heard of L-fields before, I did little Googling. All I was able to determine is that the theory has been largely, if not completely, ignored by the scientific community. It has, however, embraced by some people interested in alternative medicine, such as homeopathy. There are even some dubious machines on the market that are said to improve your health by correcting defects in your L- field.

I'm not sure why Burr's work has been so completely neglected. He did, after all, have impressive credentials as a mainstream academic. I can think of two possible reasons. One is that his work verges on vitalism, an idea that is anathema to modern-day biologists. The other is that any phenomenon measurable only in millivolts is open to the objection of experimental error. Maybe the extremely feeble energies Burr measured in his experiments were an artifact of the measuring devices themselves and not part of the living systems he was scrutinizing.

If we assume, for argument's sake, that there really are such things as L-fields and that the mind can affect them, then perhaps we do have a reasonably satisfying, albeit sketchy, explanation for a variety of otherwise baffling phenomena. The idea of L-fields seems to tie in, to a certain extent, with the work of Rupert Sheldrake and his morphic fields. It may well be that some sort of energy field -- whether electromagnetic or otherwise -- lies at the heart of the phenomenon of life and perhaps even at the heart of the physical universe itself. And if the mind can be shown to influence such fields, we would have an answer to the most commonplace objection to dualism -- namely, that an immaterial mind cannot interact with or affect a material reality.

The Goblin Universe

raises these questions in a consistently entertaining and even droll way. Not all of the evidence Holiday presents is equally credible, but I suppose that's the nature of this kind of material, which is inherently ambiguous and subjective. The book is certainly worth reading, as is Colin Wilson's extensive introduction, which runs more than 40 pages. At the end, you may find yourself less certain than ever about the line of demarcation between the objective and the subjective, and unlikely ever to go boating on Loch Ness.

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*Originally I wrote "a large marine mammal." An astute reader pointed out that plesiosaurs were not mammals. I knew this (I have a longstanding interest in dinosaurs and their seagoing relatives), but apparently I experienced a mental glitch. Anyway, I corrected the text on March 17.  

Better late than never

Last year Stephen Braude sent me a link to a YouTube video in which he is interviewed about his paranormal investigations and writings. Unfortunately, because I was about to take a trip at the time, I never looked at the video and forgot about it until now.

Today I rediscovered the email and watched the interview, which is really quite interesting. I found Braude's discussion of a table-tipping event particularly enjoyable.

The video runs about fifteen minutes and can be viewed here.

Serioser and serioser

Recently I received an email from Robert M. Rubel concerning Ted Serios, the Chicago bellhop who purportedly could create photos with his mind -- "thoughtographs," as they were dubbed. Mr. Rubel wrote:

I can be numbered among those who have seen Ted's misdirection in action. I was with the Chicago Sun-Times at the time (end of May, 1967). I would be delighted to share my experience with you.

I told him that I would like to hear his story, and he kindly provided me with the following account:

I met with Ted and his alter ego/manager in a crumby flea bag hotel on Chicago's near north. I and reporter Gabe Favoino  were assigned to track down Serios and do a story on him. I was unofficially the paper's debunker of things metaphysical. Serios insisted that we meet after 2 A.M. and that we bring a bottle of hooch. I must say that both us hard-bitten newsmen were totally taken in by his performance. Later, over a coffee, we discussed what we had seen. I insisted that it had to be a hoax even though I really believed he was the real thing. But then, I had seen many convincing stunts in the past. I told Gabe that I had to disbelieve if I was going to figure our how he had gotten the pictures on the film. I was convinced it was sleight of hand of one form or another. Gabe remained a believer.  Eventually I was able to duplicate the feat to the amazement of those who witnessed me going into a semi-trance. I used my girlfriend's camera and her fresh film. Viola! A picture was on the film.

The paper's lawyers refused to allow us to expose him for fear of law suits. And there it rested. Your mention of the more convincing of his demonstrations does not change my mind. When an illusionist knows something that you do not know, he can build a scenario that has no relationship to the actual facts. That's how they get us to buy their fancy cars and pay to send their kids to college.

There is lots more to the story including how he discovered his amazing talent... but we'll leave that for another time.

In reply, I pointed out that Mr. Rubel evidently had not caught Serios in the act, but had worked out a way that Serios could have faked the photos. Mr. Rubel replied:

There were tale-tell signs that my analysis of his legerdemain was on target. He had not, at that time, started using the glass marble to distort his pictures. That evidently came later to make the illusion more effective. I have, obviously, not told you the full story which, as I said, will remain for another time. We requested another demo which he and his partner refused to grant. You are correct. I did not "catch" him in the act. There are certain indications that occur in most of these scams that reveal the truth. Jane Roberts, who channeled for "Seth" was a textbook example of the signs that shout FRAUD. I wish I could go over with you all the signs that Ted revealed. The last I had heard from him was that he was in England and that someone there had written a book about him. At the time of my contact with him, he was under contract to Borg Warner. They were studying him to see if he actually was the first person to physically demonstrate extra sensory perception.

I obtained Mr. Rubel's permission to pass along his comments. Since I put up a post about Serios back in 2006, and reposted it in 2009, I think it's worthwhile to get another perspective. As I said in my earlier post, it seems to me that some of Serios' feats, if reported accurately, cannot be explained by sleight of hand, since there were times when he was not holding the camera, and in some cases the camera was nowhere near him at all. But I wasn't there, and I can only rely on eyewitness reports. Serios is dead now -- according to Wikipedia, he died on December 30, 2006 -- so he won't be available for any more testing.

I would take gentle exception to two of Mr. Rubel's points. First, I think it is most unlikely that Jane Roberts was a conscious fraud. It's possible that she and her husband were deluded, and that her "channeled" communications came from her unconscious, but the idea that she was deliberately faking the whole thing seems implausible to me. Second, regardless of the reality of Serios' abilities, he would not have been the first person to demonstrate ESP under controlled conditions. Many people have demonstrated ESP abilities in laboratory tests.

Even the noted skeptic Richard Wiseman said recently, "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but [this] begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do." Wiseman later clarified: "It is a slight misquote, because I was using the term in the more general sense of ESP - that is, I was not talking about remote viewing per se, but rather Ganzfeld, etc as well. I think that they do meet the usual standards for a normal claim, but are not convincing enough for an extraordinary claim."

So even one of the world's most high-profile skeptics concedes that by the usual criteria of scientific proof, ESP is a reality. This tells us nothing about Ted Serios, of course, but it does call into question the idea that fraud lies behind all paranormal phenomena.

Zulu time

Vitor, in comments, asked me to transcribe Lyall Watson's account of a Philippine case that Watson personally witnessed.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

The case is presented on pages 152 -160 of Watson's 1987 book Beyond Supernature, under the heading of "Possession." Here it is:

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Long before either Spanish or American colonisation, the islands of the [Philippine] archipelago were a patchwork of well over a hundred distinct linguistic, cultural and racial groups -- many of which still survive.

Cagayan Valley in north-eastern Luzon is home to one such community -- an Igorot or mountain people who are marked by Christianity and post-war developments, but nevertheless leave all the most important decisions of their lives to solemn rituals that involve animal sacrifice and lead to consultation with the spirits. Communion is accomplished by aniteras or female shamans who are now rare, but carry on like gently beating hearts in dying tribal life. It was to meet one such woman that I made the long journey from Bayombong up into the forests of the Cordillera. I spent several bewitching weeks living in the old lady's compound, watching the daily work of weaving and basket making, taking part in the evening rituals of healing and spirit worship. It was an altogether magical time, but one I remember best for my involvement in what I can only think of as a kind of exorcism.

A child was brought to the aniteras suffering from a complaint like none I have ever seen. He was said to be ten years old, and from the right side he looked about that age; but from the left, he had the appearance of an aged and diseased dwarf. From the front, you could see a line running down the centre of his body ...

[T]he effect was truly horrible. The hair on the right side of his head was dark and glossy, while that on the left was dank and lifeless. One eye was clear and bright, the other squint and rheumy. Half his teeth were widely spaced and drawn out into fangs by the retreat of bloody gums, and the skin on that side of his face and down his left arm was covered in running sores. He walked slowly and with obvious pain, hunched with every other step over a left leg shortened several inches by a clawed foot. And when he spoke, which he did rarely, it was out of the twisted left side of his mouth in a snarl and in a language which nobody there understood. Nobody except me. I was astounded to hear, in amongst the deep-throated growl, a few phrases in clear and ringing Zulu -- the one African language that I was able to speak when I was his age. The words were odd ones and inappropriate to that situation, but they left me feeling very vulnerable, as though I had just had my pocket picked.

The aniteras decided that the child was possessed by busao, an evil spirit -- which, in the circumstances, seemed like the only reasonable diagnosis. And for three days she worked her wiles on the child, plying him with herbal potions, saturating him with ceremony and invocation. All to no avail. On the fourth night, however, she was otherwise occupied and the boy/dwarf was sitting on the ground next to a fire encircled by a group of elders, frightening me from time to time with occasional obscene twitches. The people and I were talking in reluctant Tagalog, which is no more their language than it is mine, just passing the time. Nobody was concentrating on the figure at the fire, he was not subject of conversation and he was looking away from me into the flames. Then slowly, one by one, our cases focused on him, the talk stopped, the air became almost heavy with condensed attention; and suddenly, as if by prearrangement, the old lady was there with us, standing tall on the edge of the circle. She hurled something into the fire, which flared up in a green blaze and she shouted very loud, very angry, a long quick string of words hurled directly at the afflicted boy.

There was a moment of silence, complete silence, then a terrible scream as the child threw himself down on the ground and began to thrash around violently. Again she shouted, and once more he screamed -- a searing combination of pain and anger. It was a duel in sound, a pitched battle that raged and grew into a frenzy, and then stopped as suddenly as it had begun as the child hurled himself face down to the earth and lay still with one arm and shoulder in the glowing coals. For a long, awful moment nobody moved, and then the old woman stepped forward, gently lifted the body up and carried it away to her hut. And it was as though she took with it a great weight from our shoulders -- a burden that we were not conscious of carrying, but that had been with us ever since the weird child had arrived.

The next morning, the boy was up early with the rest of the women, helping carry water. He looked straight at me for the first time and his eyes, both eyes, were clear. By that evening he was talking normally, in his own tongue, and walking with only the suggestion of a limp. And by the end of the week, his skin and teeth and hair, his whole appearance, were those of any other healthy, unmarked, active and attractive Filipino child.

I make no apologies for telling this story in such detail and without corroboration. I am not offering it in evidence, but as a starting point for a line of argument. Three things about it are of interest to me. The first is the laterality of the affliction -- which, however it was caused, suggests at least a biological vector, involving just half of the brain. The second is the nature of the cure -- which was both rapid and dramatic, suggesting the sort of catharsis that has mental rather than physical origins. And the third is the use of an unfamiliar language -- in the presence of perhaps the only person out of fifty million in the Philippines who could have understood.

I am not claiming that the child was possessed. I discovered later that his problems had begun three years before when his mother was run over by a truck -- killed and hideously disfigured as he was walking down the road with her -- holding her right hand. There are, however, strong resemblances between this incident and several other accounts in the literature of what has been identified as demonic possession -- most notably the case of fourteen-year-old Karen Kingston, who was cured of a similar affliction in North Carolina in 1974 by a group including three clergymen, a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a general practitioner.

[He cites the 1977 book The Devil and Karen Kingston, by Robert Pelton, and describes the exorcism, which cured the girl of major psychiatric problems. Then he continues:]

But to me the crucial aspect of both cases, is that events were clearly culturally determined. They followed the scenario appropriate to the circumstances, drawing on beliefs and expectations relevant to those involved. The cures remain mysterious, amenable one day perhaps to the liberal tenets of the fledgling science of psychosomatic medicine, but the process was essentially traditional and social. Which is why I believe it succeeded. I suggest that the clergyman who acted as Karen's exorcist, also played the devil's role -- just as I somehow contributed a few words of Zulu to the Philippine performance. Neither of us was conscious of doing so, but I am convinced that at some saman level [sama is Watson's term for the interconnectedness of minds] we were involved. We added social weight to an individual dilemma and helped move it to communal resolution....

Let me return, however, for the next step in the argument, to those Zulu phrases. Parapsychology has a name for the ability to use a language of which a person has no ordinary knowledge. It is called xenoglossy or "foreign tongue" and comes in two forms. "Recitative" xenoglossy is the utterance of fragments of a strange language, as one might parrot Latin phrases without having any idea of their syntax for actual meaning. And [there is] "responsive" xenoglossy, which is something far more intelligent, involving an ability to converse in the unknown language....

The Filipino child was not speaking Zulu, he was practicing recitative xenoglossy. There are many similar examples in the literature on spiritism -- of mediums reciting the Lord's prayer in Greek or throwing in the odd word that turns out on later analysis to be Egyptian or even Hawaiian. Some of these borrowings can be traced to a phenomenon known as cryptomnesia or "hidden memory", in which we dredge up information from unconscious areas without being aware of doing so...

[But] I cannot imagine any set of circumstances which could have brought a ten-year-old boy in the Cagayan Valley into contact with Zulu at any stage of his life. Nor am I disposed to assume that he was possessed by the discarnate spirit of a Zulu witch doctor. It seems altogether more reasonable to assume that somehow, the mechanism is still far from clear, he was able to recite phrases that were familiar to me, borrowing them from my mind...

-----

Watson goes on to give examples of "the sudden acquisition of linguistic, musical and artistic skills" by apparently paranormal means, such as the well-known case of Sharada, reported by Ian Stevenson (and described here by Scott Rogo), and the case of Rosemary Brown, who wrote classical music compositions by apparently channeling deceased composers. His overall point is that "the actual limits of the senses... can be surprisingly elastic."

Personally, I have no particular problem with the idea that the Igorot boy (and probably Karen Kingston, too) was actually possessed -- not necessarily by a "demon," but perhaps by a low-level, earthbound spirit. Indeed, the possessing entity in the Kingston case reportedly gave its name as "Williams," which sounds decidedly human. I also find it likely that a possessing entity could possess the kind of freewheeling ESP that could indeed grab random thoughts from the minds of bystanders, including snatches of Zulu.

In any event, the Philippine case is not particularly strong as a case of xenoglossy, since only a few random words were spoken, and it is possible that Watson simply misheard some scattered gibberish. What is strong about the Philippine case, if we are willing to take Watson's word for what happened, is the remarkable effectiveness of the shaman's cure, which healed the boy both mentally and physically almost overnight.

As Watson himself notes, there is no corroboration of his story and therefore, strictly speaking, it cannot be counted as evidence. But I find him to be an intelligent, sensitive, and honest observer, so I'm prepared to take him at his word.

Nature and supernature

A while ago I picked up a copy of Lyall Watson's 1987 book Beyond Supernature: A New Natural History of the Supernatural. It sat on my shelf for a long time before I got around to it. Now I'm finding it fascinating.

Watson, who died in 2008, has been described as  "a South African botanist, zoologist, biologist, anthropologist, ethologist, and author." He combined his interest in exotic cultures and native traditions with an open-minded, hands-on approach to investigating the paranormal. His book is a serious overview of parapsychology, enlivened by accounts of his personal encounters with anomalous events, including a destructive poltergeist in Indonesia.

He took the view that while laboratory research is all well and good, it may be too sterile to capture the more exciting incidences of psi that occur spontaneously in everyday life. Card-guessing games and their equivalents generate little emotional response, yet intense emotions often go hand in hand with the most dramatic psi manifestations (crisis apparitions, for instance). Indeed, many indigenous cultures practice frenetic rituals precisely to bring about a state of emotional excitement more conducive to psi. Meanwhile, Westerners who study the subject in the anodyne, antiseptic confines of a laboratory wonder why their results are not more "robust."

Though unconvinced of life after death (he attributed poltergeist activity to unconscious psychokinesis), Watson was personally persuaded of the reality of many psi phenomena, having witnessed a large number of them.

In the concluding chapter he sums up his point of view with the casual eloquence that made his earlier book Supernature a major bestseller:

-----

Something strange is going on.

We live in a world whose realities are defined by science, which tells us how things work. And yet there are some things which don't seem to work that way at all. Our science tells us that these things are impossible and don't exist, yet they stubbornly refuse to go away. There are relatively few of them and they are often elusive and hard to control, but they are there for anyone to see. They exist. And by their very existence, no matter how tenuous this might be, they present a problem.

Some students of the unusual feel that the fact of this existence turns science on its head. Some scientists seem to agree. They find the whole possibility so alarming that, rather than have science submit to such indignity, they choose to turn themselves upside down instead. The gesture is heroic, but the posture is ridiculous.

Consider just one example. A dowser, who claims to be able to find underground water and buried minerals with the aid of a pendulum, is tested in Wales. He walks across a valley floor and hammers in a line of stakes to show where he believes a stream to be, giving an estimate of its depth and flow. He is being filmed by a television team for a programme on the paranormal. The interviewer objects that such claims are hard to check and asks for a diagnosis that can be verified. The dowser holds his pendulum over the man to assess his state of health and makes the surprising claim that the interviewer seems to be healthy enough, except for a piece of metal in his thigh. Everyone is very impressed. The diagnosis is unusual, but it just happens to be true. The interviewer once had an operation that required the reinforcement of his femur with a metal brace. It's not something that he talks about, and the scientist assessing this demonstration concedes that it would have been difficult for the dowser to have discovered the fact about the embedded metal beforehand, without having a very efficient spy network. He notes that there was no defect in the interviewer's limb movement caused by the metal insertion.

So what happens? Is there a serious discussion about the possibility of dowsing having any scientific validity? Does he begin to wonder about organic metal-detection? No. Faced with the paradox, this distinguished physicist stands on his head. "I regard this," he says, "as a coincidence." And closes the subject.

It is, of course, a scientist's duty to consider all the angles. Given the extraordinary nature of the dowser's claim, he has every right -- as long as all other things are equal -- to favour explanations consonant with the orthodox scientific view of how things work. All things, however, are not equal here. Coincidence remains one possible explanation of what happened, but its probability is very low. And there is a point where "normal" explanations become more implausible and more far-fetched than a frank acceptance of the facts.

The fact is that unusual things do sometimes happen. I have seen them happening often enough now to be certain of that. And, as a scientist myself, I admit that they present us with a problem. But it is not insoluble and it does not require any desperate mental gymnastics. I see it, in truth, as more of a paradox than a problem. An apparent contradiction produced by poor definition rather than faulty procedure.

Science decides what is possible by reference to its definition of reality. Anything which fits the definition is acceptable. Anything which doesn't fit is impossible and must be rejected. And the problem is that the facts of dowsing or poltergeist phenomena stand in direct contradiction to the current definition. So the issue is reduced to a choice between rival facts. The normal versus the paranormal. And, of course, the normal wins -- even if it does have to stand on its head to do so.

Such contortions ought to make us suspicious of the premises that made them necessary. There has to be a flaw somewhere in the argument. And there is. What is being ignored is the point that our definition of reality is a theory, not fact. We don't know exactly how things work. All we have is a reasonably good hypothesis. And it never was a matter of choosing between rival sets of facts. The debate concerns a set of discordant facts and their relationship to a theory of how things happen. All that is at stake is the validity of a working hypothesis. And all that is necessary to reconcile the new facts with the old theory, is an admission that the theory might be incomplete. There is no need for anyone to stand on their heads. There is no assault on the laws of nature or the principles of science, and no need for protectors of the faith or charges of heresy.

What we need is a slightly broader definition of reality. One which includes the possibility of certain things happening when humans are involved. A definition that is not so exclusive; one less inclined to dismiss certain things as impossible, and better able to deal with what actually happens in terms of probability rather than outright and unreasonable denial.

I don't have such a definition to offer. I think it is probably still too soon to frame one that will work. What we need are more facts on which to base our discussion. And that is what I have been trying to provide. [Beyond Supernature, pp. 264-266]

Seeing the past

More than three years ago, after blogging about Stephan A. Schwartz's book The Secret Vaults of Time, I bought his follow-up work The Alexandria Project, which deals with the use of psychics to guide archaeological digs in Alexandria. Reading the book should have come easily to me, since I am interested not only in psychic phenomena but also in ancient Alexandria -- in some ways the most intellectually exciting city of the ancient world. Yet for some reason I did not get to the book until recently. It was worth the wait.

Originally published in 1983 and reissued in 2001, The Alexandria Project recounts two archaeological expeditions in 1979 that made use of information supplied by various psychics, including two psychics -- Hella Hammid and George McMullen -- who accompanied the author on his first trip. The author's intention was to show that psychic talents can supplement information provided by more conventional by more conventional sources, making archeology more efficient. Both before and after 1979, Schwartz conducted other such experiments, often with notable success.

The most dramatic part of the book recounts marine archaeological probes conducted in Alexandria's harbor, in which divers -- following instructions from the psychics -- found many sunken ruins, including what were evidently the Timonium (a building erected by Mark Antony) and the palace of Cleopatra. An ancient seawall and what may be the ruins of the legendary lighthouse of Pharos were also discovered.

Schwartz himself admits that the existence of ancient ruins on the harbor floor came as a surprise to nobody. It was well understood that Alexandria's shoreline had receded over the centuries, and that structures which had stood along the coast in ancient times were now underwater, having collapsed on account of beach erosion and frequent earthquakes. His point, though, is that finding these structures in the large harbor would ordinarily require far more time and effort than his team expended. He writes:

There was no question that any group of divers, swimming careful search patterns, would have found what we found. The Eastern Harbor is unlike Marea [another Alexandrian site], in that there are general locations of certain ancient structures in [the works of the Roman writer] Strabo and other sources; and the water is shallow ... Here, the issue would not primarily focus on only the psychic -- unless a specific object predicted was found, and that would require another probe -- but rather, on the role psychic data could play in making archeology more efficient and less costly. Other diving teams could have found what we found, but not as quickly or as easily. It would have been extremely difficult to make several of these finds with just the sonar to guide us, and careful search patterns would have taken weeks. But with historical sources, and the psychics, we were able to make a reasonable first approximation of what could be seen on the harbor floor in just a few days. [pp. 231-232]

Unfortunately the poor visibility of the polluted harbor waters impeded the divers' work, and many interesting sites had to be left unexplored. Subsequent marine archaeological work carried out by a French-Egyptian team in the 1990s has, according to Schwartz, confirmed "both the generalities and specifics" of the psychics' predictions. Schwartz comments only briefly on these developments in an epilogue to the new edition, referring to reader to his Web site for details. Though the site contains much material of interest, I could not find a discussion of the more recent work in the harbor. At Jeff Rense's site, however, I found an article by Beverly C. Jaegers, which recounts Schwartz's work and then reports: 

Almost as an anticlimax, the Oceanex, bearing Franck Goddio, world-famed submarine explorer, his diving and filming teams along with a sophisticated array of nuclear magnetic resonance magnetometers and computers (along with a much improved sonar array) arrived in that same harbour in 1996, and began a thorough survey.

Apparently totally unaware of the earlier pinpointing of sites by remote views and divers, Goddio was nevertheless able to rediscover the Timonium ruins, the limestone-paved area, sphinxes, statues and sites they felt were the palaces and Isis temple. This confirmed the accuracy of the Mobius probe.

Some archaeological work was also undertaken by Schwartz's team on dry land, with generally positive results. In one case, an attempt was made to open the wall of a crypt, after both of the on-site psychics reported sensing a subterranean complex. Interestingly, both psychics advised against digging at the particular spot chosen (out of necessity) by Schwartz, saying that behind the wall the excavators would find not only an impenetrable mass of debris but also a second wall. A veteran Egyptian archaeologist scoffed at the idea of a second wall, but such a wall was in fact discovered. As predicted, the dig proved unfeasible, stopped by the debris, the second wall, and bureaucratic complications.

The two psychics also spent hours in the blistering triple-digit heat of the Egyptian desert, pinpointing a spot where digging would reveal an ancient structure. One psychic, George McMullen, embedded stakes in the ground that indicated the contours of the building's walls, which were, of course, underground and invisible to normal senses. Excavation did reveal a building at that spot, with walls that matched McMullen's layout. Moreover, prior to excavation, Hella Hammid visualized a short, broken column in the center of the building, an unusual and unexpected feature. The column turned out to be there. McMullen sensed that the column had been used in conjunction with a "fire pit" -- a claim that seemed inexplicable until a local Bedouin explained that such columns were indeed used as primitive "hot plates" for cooking.

One evening McMullen participated in an informal experiment in which he was given six potsherds and asked to arrange them in chronological order. This he did. The Polish archaeologist supervising the test said that it had taken a team of experts several years to properly arrange the shards along a timeline. McMullen accomplished it in a matter of minutes. (Of course it could be argued that the Polish architect, who knew the correct sequence, unconsciously signaled McMullen during the test. But this kind of explanation would not cover McMullen's many successes when working in the field.)

The psychics' work included notable "hits," some "misses," and a great many predictions that could be neither substantiated nor disproved. An example of the latter is George McMullen's explanation of why Alexander the Great continued fighting long after his principal enemy, the Persians, had been defeated.

I'll tell you one reason why Alexander was out all the time fighting in other countries. It was like today's sports. As long as you keep the people's interest up, they are going to come and pay the freight. But in this case it wasn't a team or a sport, but an army and -- it was fighting. So who's going to pay for this? And the soldiers have to keep winning once they get started. He wasn't really out to conquer the world. It got so that one thing led to another. When he started his campaign he wanted to do what he knew how to best, and that was to fight.

This sounds plausible to me -- more plausible than the romanticized view of Alexander as a visionary -- but of course there is no way to know if it's true, as Schwartz himself points out.

Schwartz's book is written in a straightforward style and a sensible tone; he does not come across as a credulous "believer," but instead as a serious researcher interested in testable predictions and concrete results. He strikes me as honest and reliable, though I wish he had spent less time detailing his endless run-ins with the Egyptian bureaucracy; a little of this material goes a long way.

In his epilogue to the new addition he laments the knee-jerk, know-nothing skepticism that greeted the announcement of his team's results. One archaeologist, who had never worked in Egypt, publicly dismissed the whole project as "phony visions cribbed ... from a tourist guide." But no tourist guide could have specified the alignment of an ancient building's walls under the Egyptian desert, or the locations of the underwater ruins in the harbor. Indeed, Mieczyslaw Rodziewicz, the Polish archaeologist who assisted Schwartz, and who was considered the world's foremost authority on Alexandrian archeology, said that "the discoveries [in the harbor] are of the highest importance, because they extend our plan of the ancient city." The seawall and other underwater ruins found by Schwartz's team lie considerably farther from shore than the experts had expected.

In the last chapter of the original edition, Schwartz speculates on what it all means:

I know there may be critics who will attack this work and, in some details, they will be right. We could have done it better. In later experiments we have already done so. But all science could be better, and hopefully each experiment is more sophisticated than the one that preceded it. The character innuendo, which is the most prevalent form of criticism, is really no criticism at all. And the statements that the psychic basically cannot exist, based on what we understand of the universe, and that therefore there must be some other explanation, really have reached the point where they say more about the critics than the research they are criticizing.

Criticism should always play an important role in parapsychology, as it does in the rest of science, but it is time to go beyond the dispute over whether or not the psychic exists. Those who wish to argue this are welcome to do so; but we also need to start asking new questions.

Suppose we entertain a new perspective, one which does not tie consciousness to the parameters of time and space. Suppose consciousness, of which what we call the psychic is a part, exists independent of the brain. Is this nonsense? There is, as yet, no absolute answer to the question. But there is mounting evidence in disciplines as widely separated as quantum physics and neurophysiology that suggest consciousness is not only more than the brain, it is perhaps the core around which the universe has grown....

I find myself most in agreement with the late Dr. Wilder Penfield, director of the Montreal Neurological Institute, and one of the leading neurophysiologists of this century. As the father of brain-mapping -- a technique in which portions of the brain receive direct electrical stimulation to determine their function -- he looked back on a career of mapping thousands of living brains and concluded -- albeit with reluctance -- that "it will always be quite impossible to explain the mind on the basis of neuronal action within the brain...."

Penfield saw the brain as a computer and felt that if the brain was harmed, the body or reasoning abilities of a person would be impaired. He stressed that hurting the brain does not necessarily mean hurting the mind. The mind-self might not be able to communicate or control its vehicle -- the body -- but that was not evidence that it had been injured. When one consider[s] that numerous cases have been reported of people with little or no brain tissue, who are nonetheless functional and successful -- or individuals in other cases who have died and been resuscitated, bringing back accurate observations about places and events distant from their temporary corpse -- the question of the mind/body relationship is even less clear.

Regardless of this confusion and the lack of a universally accepted theoretical model, applied research should be pursued, and it may help in the development of the needed theories. And new theories about these anomalous phenomena will lead to new instruments with which to test the theories. No one can say yet exactly what shape either instrument or theory will alternately take, but there are suggestions -- and we should be prepared to accept matter, energy, and life itself as different points on the same spectrum. This will alter science as much as Einstein's equations, and life as much as the industrial revolution. When both sides of the mind -- the intuitive and the analytical -- finally function together in concert, we may find something behind both of them that we now only dimly perceive. [pp. 265-267]