Michael Prescott's Blog

21 Days

In comments, Småfornå referred me to an online book, downloadable in PDF format, called 21 Days. Written by Piero Calvi-Parisetti, a medical doctor, it presents a case for life after death in a clear, readable, and well-researched series of chapters, with each chapter covering another day in an ongoing discussion between the author and an open-minded skeptic.

I liked the book quite a lot. It's an excellent contribution to the field of afterlife studies, and may well be the best general introduction to the subject I've seen. Calvi-Parisetti covers most of the major lines of investigation into postmortem survival. He starts with evidence for psi, presenting the case for telepathy, remote viewing, micro-PK, precognition, and distant healing, then moves on to NDEs, OBEs, mediumship (mental and physical), reincarnation, EVP and ITC, deathbed visions, and poltergeists. The only obvious omissions that occurred to me are apparitions and hauntings.

I particularly admire the author's cautious and reasonable tone. He admits that much of what he has to say is "unbelievable," and makes allowances for the reader's doubts. He carefully distinguishes between strong and weak evidence. For instance, in discussing EVP, he notes that the great majority of "voice phenomena" that crop up in a Google search consist of dubious and probably worthless recordings - random noise misinterpreted as fragments of speech by over-enthusiastic amateur researchers. But then he discusses the work of professionals in the field, which cannot be so easily dismissed.

Among the book's many strengths is its analysis of two cross-correspondence cases, which are laid out in sufficient detail to convey the impressive quality of this often overlooked evidence. Another plus is that the author's international background as a Red Cross administrator has exposed him to research that is not often aired in the USA. 

Naturally, when so many subjects are addressed, there will be room for disagreement. Although Calvi-Parisetti acknowledges that he has mixed feelings about materialization mediumship, and still considers it a somewhat "borderline" subject, he does devote a chapter to it. To my way of thinking, his defense of the medium Eva C is not entirely convincing; I continue to think some kind of fraud was probably going on, for reasons I've indicated elsewhere. The author's other major example of materialization mediumship is David Thompson; longtime readers of this blog know I've had many doubts about his séances, especially pertaining to the method of restraint used to secure him to his chair.

At times I felt insufficient attention was paid to possible skeptical objections. For instance, in Calvi-Parisetti's brief examination of Florence Cook's mediumship, he does not mention the fact that Cook was unquestionably caught cheating later in her career. (In one of her séances, the "materialized spirit" was seized by a sitter and turned out to be Florence in disguise.) In a long discussion of the Scole phenomena, he does not include the bizarre end of the experiments - which were abruptly concluded after the"spirit communicators" claimed their transmitting station had come under attack by hostile forces! Rather suspiciously, the termination of the work occurred just as researchers were planning to introduce infrared cameras into the séance room.

Finally, I would not be as dismissive of macro-PK as the author is. I think the evidence for metal-bending, especially in the PK parties hosted by Jack Houck, is very strong.

These quibbles do little to detract from Calvi-Parisetti's book. Clearly it is a labor of love by a serious, sensible, and knowledgeable professional, and I think it will prove quite convincing to open-minded newcomers.

Plus, it's free! Download yours today.

Fish out of water

Still working my way through Matt Chait's fascinating blog Beyond Evolution, I came across his post on "Self Vs. Sense of Self." Here he very cogently explains something that I tried to address, rather ineptly, in an earlier post of my own.

Some key excerpts:

The self is not part of any belief system and it is not a hallucination. If there were such a belief system the self would not be the belief system but the one who is experiencing the belief system, the one who is having the hallucination. The self does not require any belief system. It does not require any mythology. It does not require any religious stories, either biblical or otherwise. It does not require a sales pitch. It is not something that is 'understood' only by a small cadre of elite 'professionals' who tell you, when you complain that it doesn't make any sense, that you cannot understand it because you are insufficiently educated or insufficiently intelligent. It is not a concept that you have to learn to understand. It is not a belief that you have to learn to accept. It is an EXPERIENCE, and once you have had that experience the way you view yourself and your life is instantly transformed.

It is like trying to explain to a fish what water is. The fish has no framework for understanding water because she has never experienced 'no water'. Water is the milieu of every moment of her experience. To her mind, water is a myth. But lift that fish out of water for a few seconds and when she goes back in her understanding of water is transformed. Now she understands water and she needs no reminders to be grateful for it. A person doesn't realize there is a self because he is so constantly attaching his self to his thoughts, perceptions and memories that he comes to believe that he is the content rather than the context of his experience.

The reason people are attracted to meditation, yoga and spiritual practices is not, as those great philosophers, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, would have it, because they want to avoid reality, it's because they are tired of avoiding themselves. Meditation, chanting, yoga, tai chi, fasting, prayer, all of the varied spiritual practices are designed to provide that 'no water' experience; to give you an experience of yourself separate from the things you are thinking, wondering and worrying about. Can you separate your self from the things you are thinking about, the thoughts from the thinker? What happens when, even for a moment, you stop thinking, stop dreaming, stop focusing on the outside world of things or the inside world of thoughts and feelings? Then you have an experience of the self instead of an experience of whatever it is that the self is focusing on.

What you discover when you realize that you are not the things that you are thinking about, not your body or even your relationships, is that you are not a thing, at all. You are not even molecules and atoms. You are not even muons or neutrinos. You are spirit, not matter. And, as spirit, you have not changed. Your body has changed. There is probably not one cell in your body that has not died and been replaced by a new one since your birth. Your thoughts have changed. The things that you desire and that are important to you have changed, but you, the context of all that experience has not changed. You are exactly the same as you always were and always will be. And there is nothing in you that can change because you are not a thing.

Read the whole thing.

Spaced out

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell has long been involved in the investigation of paranormal phenomena. Unfortunately, claims like this don't exactly buttress his credibility.

If there's any truth to Mitchell's assertions, he should be able to back them up with specifics. As it stands, his statements (assuming they have been reported accurately) sound like off-the-wall conspiracy-theory ramblings. Note that at one point he says he has "sources" at NASA who've had contact with aliens, but at another point he implies that he himself was "briefed" on the issue. So which is it? Is he relying on anonymous back-channel sources or on official NASA briefings? There's a big difference.

The article also notes that Mitchell has endorsed the very questionable and much debunked Roswell case. From everything I know about Roswell, there's no there there.

And if there is a vast decades-long government conspiracy aimed at stifling this information, how can Mitchell casually break the story in a radio interview, apparently without fear of repercussions?

Stuff like this does nothing but make all psi researchers look bad.

Earth to Edgar: phone home!

My name is URL

Ginny from comments pointed me to this useful site, which offers an eclectic collection of paranormal writings and videos. Arthur Findlay's On the Edge of the Etheric is one of the books available for free download. Also of interest is a video clip of the shenangigans at Camp Chesterfield, where phony "materialized spirits" were exposed by infrared photography.

Ben from comments recommends the blog Beyond Evolution by Matt Chait. I've read only the latest two entries (both of which are quite long), and so far I'm very impressed with the clarity and cogency of Chait's arguments. His epic dissertation on "Evolution" is well worth a look.

Rising up

Here is a vivid mystical experience recounted by R.H. Ward, and quoted by Robert Crookall in his book The Interpretation of Cosmic and Mystical Experiences.

Last night, as I was walking home, I had one of those strange experiences of 'rising up within oneself', of 'coming inwardly alive'... A minute after I had left the station I was attacked, though not severely, by indigestion... I thought to myself, though I suppose not in so many words, 'I could separate myself from this pain; it belongs to my body... There is no need for the self to feel it.' Even as I thought this, the pain disappeared ... and the sensation of 'rising up within' began. (I have the impression that movement encouraged this sensation)... First there is the indescribable sensation in the spine, as of something mounting up... This was accompanied by an extraordinary feeling of bodily-lightness, of well-being, and effortlessness, as if one's limbs had no weight and one's flesh had been suddenly transmuted into some rarer substance. But it was also, somehow, a feeling of living more in the upper part of one's body than in the lower, a certain peculiar awareness of one's head... Everything was becoming 'more', everything was going up on to another level... I found that I could think-and-feel-in a new way... This, I realized, was the real meaning of 'being at peace with the world'... But if I allowed any suggestion of dislike, distrust, fear or contempt to approach, it had to be deliberately put away, or the 'rising up' began to be a 'falling down'. But once these kinds of thoughts-and-feelings had been put away, then the 'rising up' was continued...

I found myself looking at a certain house... It is rather an ugly little suburban villa; but now it appeared to be another house. I realised that could one always live on the different psychological level on which I was living at this moment, then the whole world would be changed; it would be another world in which there could be nothing which we habitually call ugly or evil, and nothing which we habitually call beautiful or good either; since the truth of things is beyond these contradictions, and somehow takes them up into itself... Time had very little significance... My knowledge of this reality which lies beyond where we normally are was undeniable and irrefutable. It flashed upon me... Of course there is God... God was here; He was in everything that I had looked at and in me who looked... I was in God's presence... I stood, filled to the brim with this wonderful realisation, that whatever we may have to endure of pain, sickness, grief and man's inhumanity to man, there is still something perfect within all created things, that ultimately they live by it, and that nothing else matters... [The Interpretation of Cosmic and Mystical Experiences by Robert Crookall, pages 34-36]

This quotation is taken from Ward's book A Drug-taker's Notes (1957). I haven't read this book, but as this excerpt makes apparent, Ward experimented with LSD (evidently on six occasions). Because of this, I at first speculated that the above experience was brought about by LSD he had earlier ingested, perhaps as a sort of psychedelic flashback.

It turns out, however, that the experience recounted above was not Ward's own, but instead was told to him by someone else, and this other person was not an LSD user. (See this Google books result; footnote on p. 49.) Ward himself used this account as evidence that LSD experiences do not create the same transcendent feelings of union with God that mystical experiences can produce.

Revenge of the nerds

There's no deep philosophical significance to this post, but in a small way, it may illuminate the herd mentality, or what might better be described as the hive mind, which is so prevalent on the Internet.

I was looking at Rotten Tomatoes' roundup of reviews for the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight. One critic, Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, gave the film a somewhat negative - though not entirely negative - review. He found the plot muddled and the tone suffocatingly dark. On the other hand, he praised Heath Ledger's performance.

What alternately amused and appalled me was the reaction of the Batman fanboys who flooded the site with hysterically angry comments. You would think poor old Joe had just declared a ban on acne cream. Hell, it would seem, hath no fury like a fanboy scorned.

Of course, vigorous debate on the Net is nothing new, but this "debate" immediately descended into bigoted personal attacks and escalated to a rather detailed death threat. Along the way the reader is treated to astonishing examples of illiteracy, ignorance, and sheer stupidity.

A few choice pickings from this cornucopia of choler:

joseph, now don't be a homo.

you Flipping MELON!!! Did you watch the mvoie with a dildo STUCK up your *** or soemthign!!??

I guess you couldn't find a way to use your enormous vocabulary (maniacal? nihilism? recurrent? I bet you actually think you sound smart) in a prodcutive way, you trash the film.

This guy just likes to use big words, plain and simple.

Assclown...

what an old queen! Note to Chris Nolan - add nipples to the bat costume and ramp up the gay quotient next time so Joe Morgenstern gives the sequel to TDK a good review!

well it looks like everyone agrees you're Captian Dushbag! I knew the WSJ was having problems but never knew why, if they are willing to hire idiots like u they deserve go insolvent!

grow some balls you girl

YOU ARE A MORON AND A ******. Burn in Hell.

you sir are a ball bag. may you die slowly from testicular cancer

If you go to the website they give you the opportunity to e-mail him. We all need to flood the hell out of his in-box letting him know what an idiot he is for not liking the movie...

Joker should blow up the Wall Street Journal and kill all its faggy pompous windbags.

You ****ing fail. Go die.

you're a douche

What a homo! Go watch Hairspray again.

I understand his face is more creepier than the joker but still he shouldnt hate it because of that...

I just got out of high school a month and three quarters ago and i know more about plot and character than you do in your life time. My opinion of your review is that you are a MORON

Oh c'mon! Phagot! Well, all I can say is that my exploration by looking at your face is that you need a extreme make over. Starting with your hair, try wearing wigs when having your picture taken, Ok! and can you trim your nose hair, you're a skunk!. I can't believe you're writing for Wall Street or may be all you do is write the pages! Phagot!

Your an Idiot...

Joe you are a pathetic excuse for a critic. The fact that you are even regarded as a "Top Critic" makes your title even more disbelievable. Your review offers no insight into one of the best superhero films ever and compounds the fact that you are just a pessimistic critic. Most likely your review was motivated by your jealousy of the realization that you never cut it as an actor so, you decided to strip genuine performances of their deserved credit. I would also like to add you don't recieve very much attention as an individual, which is probably why your one of the few *******s that gave this film a bad review. This compounds the fact you are an outcast in the mainstream of society and will remain so until you can formulate a decent review. I doubt my comment will help you realize how detrimental words can be because this is how you make your living. Until you come to that moment of truth in your incompetent life just keep on being an outcast, which you seem to have grown familiar to being considered.

this homophobic review could only come from a deeply-closetted pederast

drop dead old bastard.

And have you even read any of the comics???

go eat a donkeys ****

You're an idiot who should drink acid and die.

you, joe morgenster, are the stupidest scourge of humanity.

You know, some people have been so enraged by your little opinion piece that they want you to kill yourself. Please DON'T!!! You know why, because I am going to have so much fun killing you myself! I promise, it WON'T be painless. I am going to carve a smile in your face. And then I am going to carve you stomach. And you know why? Because i just want my phone call. You're my b**** now! I am going to track you down through your IP address and then I am going to f****** kill you!!!

Did your boyfriend dislike the Dark Knight as well?

Top Critic........more like top homo!

All but lost in this barrage of invective - 190 comments in all - are a handful of intelligent offerings:

It's really pathetic that some of you morons can't find a more creative way to express yourselves without resorting to homophobia. How old are you anyway? Six? Seven years old? You're embarassing yourselves.

The film is great, this review is ridiculous, and all the homophobic bigotry in the commentary here is idiotic. What, are you twelve?

I suppose I'll see in a few hours whether he was right about anything about the movie, but the comments here show one phrase of his was spot on: "the ritual ravings of fanboys". Each of the few reviewers who dared to say anything negative have been savaged on these boards with typically juvenile, and sometimes sexist, remarks. This even though each of them had positive things to say, but had enough negative to tip them over into the "rotten" category according to RT.

As I said above, if there's any significance to this post, it's that groupthink often brings out the worst in people. This is probably never more true than when the people in question can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, while striving to impress their peers with ever-more-offensive insults and putdowns.

The ego, unleashed in a faceless crowd, is an ugly thing - uglier even than the Joker's scarred mouth and smeared lipstick smile. 

Prometheus bound (and gagged)

In his book Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic?, Jonathan Margolis notes in passing that the major publisher of skeptical books in the United States is Prometheus Books, founded by Paul Kurtz. He adds that "these days" (he was writing in 1998) "Prometheus sheds a diffuse light from its New York state headquarters ... Although it still claims a strictly rationalist ethic, rationalism has come to include libertarianism and, from there on, pretty much anything goes ... One book on Prometheus' list is a British academic text on child abuse: Children's Sexual Encounters with Adults, republished in the States ... The book consists of hundreds of pages of detailed case histories of adults having sex with children. Other Prometheus titles have surely still less claim to academic status: Cannibalism: From Sacrifice to Survival, The Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile, Whips and Kisses: Parting the Leather Curtain, The Breathless Orgasm: A Lovemap Biography of Asphyxiophilia, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz ..."

Since skeptics often accuse us woo-woo types of reading a lot of worthless and sensationalistic junk, I was interested to see if Prometheus's catalogue had changed its tone in the last ten years. Evidently it has not. Sure, there are serious academic titles available, but there is also a lot of stuff that seems pretty flaky when coming from a publisher whose motto is "Lighting the way to reason since 1969."

For one thing, the above-mentioned Whips and Kisses is still on their list, as are Cannibalism: From Sacrifice to Survival, Children's Sexual Encounters with Adults, and The Breathless Orgasm (a study of the dangerous practice of intensifying orgasm through strangulation). Sadly, I was unable to find Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz or The Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile. (A zoophile is someone who has sex with animals - presumably horses in this case. For further info, consult this useful online guide, with its various "Howto" sections, like "Howto: Dolphins" and "Howto: Garden Goats.")  

A quick search through Prometheus's current offerings yielded some new titles of interest. Some are rather scholarly, in their own way. There's Transvestites: The Erotic Drive to Cross-Dress, which, while first published in 1910, "still is the most comprehensive treatise on the subject of transvestism, illustrating that while styles have changed, the enthusiasm of devotees has not."

The Handbook of Forensic Sexology discusses "sodomy, pedophilia, incest, sexual abuse, rape, exhibitionism, prostitution, and sexual harassment." Crossing Sexual Boundaries covers "cross-dressers, transvestites, transsexuals, and intersexuals" (?), while Gender Blending tells us that "from cross-dressing to altering one's sex by undergoing hormone therapy and radical surgery, 'gender blending' has reached new levels of popularity."

In S & M: Studies in Dominance and Submission, "a variety of subworlds and identities are explored: the professional dominatrix; prostitution and S&M; heterosexual, gay, and lesbian S&M; the role of pain and fantasy; and organized S&M groups." A History of X is billed as the "first comprehensive and most in-depth history of cinematic pornography." Porn 101 is a "wide-ranging collection of essays by both scholars and those who work within the porn industry, from actors and actresses to directors and writers, including even top First Amendment attorneys." Essays include "A Short History of Sex Toys."

Too heavy? Lighter fare is available. The self-explanatory Seduction Lines Heard Round the World and Answers You Can Give is "especially relevant for teenagers who have to deal with sexuality for the first time." Or try Hooking Up, "an educational book about sex that is as captivating as a novel, and as fun as a slumber party ... [it] will educate, entertain, and empower you." 

How I Got Into Sex "collects fascinating autobiographies of more than forty people whose livelihoods are linked to sex. The list of contributors [includes] therapists, educators, leading researchers of sexology, a sex toy designer, housewives, sex surrogates, criminologists, clergy, transsexuals, journalists, sociologists, physicians, psychologists, lawyers, nurses, scientists, social workers, and historians." Historians?

A Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a Trash-Film King is the memoir of "David F. Friedman, the emperor of 'exploitation' films. Friedman perfected the fine art of sleaze and delightfully admits that he has hurled more garbage at the public than anyone else before or since." Tragically, Friedman's output came to an end when "hardcore porn ... pulled the rug out from under the adult-film industry and ... ended the fun."

Not your cup of tea? How about Armed Robbery Orgasm, by "imprisoned paraphiliac Ronald Keyes [who] reveals the factors that contributed to his sadomasochistic tendencies and criminal life. Taunted and beaten into a state of erotic ecstasy by his dominatrix 'Connie,' Keyes became utterly subservient to her wishes. In an act of ultimate capitulation, he accommodated Connie's need to achieve orgasm through crime."

But who needs armed robbery when one can indulge in The Joy of Self-Pleasuring? As an appropriate accompanying purchase, consider The X-Rated Videotape Guide VII - or one of the three other volumes in this "sizzling series" also offered by Prometheus. "With thousands of new releases to choose from, this is expert advice on what's hot and what's not... with the latest tantalizing information, including cast members, directors, movie titles, distributors and manufacturers ..., classification (e.g., feature, compilation, bisexual, romantic, etc.), quality, erotic impact ratings, and notes of performers' sexual features, and the on-screen passion." Sounds like a very, um, handy guide.

In the same vein, Raw Talent: The Adult Film Industry as Seen by Its Most Popular Male Star "tells the story of [Jerry] Butler's erotic voyage from average child to sex star. The epilogue added to this new edition answers the question: Where will Jerry go from here?" It's a question I know I've been asking.

Somehow Bert & Lori: The Autobiography of a Crossdresser reminds me of the legendarily bad Ed Wood movie Glen or Glenda. It's the "true story" of an "unapologetic fetishist." Want more truth? The Q Letters: True Stories of Sadomasochism "is a revealing account of the S/M scene by a man who has participated in it for more than twenty-five years [detailing], with candor and sensitivity, the emotional and sexual 'highs' experienced by both dominants and submissives."

But best of all, I think is, Dirty Talk: Diary of a Phone Sex Mistress. This one, we are told, is "a revealing look at phone sex by a 'mistress of fantasy' responsible for a lot of heavy breathing.... a fascinating, no-holds-barred insider's look at the steamy and mysterious world of phone sex fantasy and the clients who keep coming back for more. Gary Anthony joined the business because he needed work, but he also hoped to hone his acting skills on duty; on the phone, he was every man's, and a few women's, fantasy, playing everything from a dominatrix to a she-male to a wide-eyed young male lover." From Anthony's "detailed diary" come "titillating conversations featuring every possible scenario from straight sex, transsexual and gay encounters to kinky scenes, fetishes, and the downright bizarre!" 

Gosh, maybe rationalists really do have more fun!   

The will to disbelieve

I'm still reading Uri Geller: Magician or Mystic?, by Jonathan Margolis, and just finished Chapter 14. In addition to recounting Geller's early experiences in Britain, it provides a fascinating exposition on the nature of scientific skepticism, with revealing stories of how some leading scientists changed from doubt to belief - and then changed back!

Fortunately, as Marcos F pointed out in comments, the whole book is online at Uri Geller's Web site (starting here). I recommend taking a look at Chapter 14 particular.

Chapter 13, which focuses a rather penetrating gaze on James Randi, is also well worth a look.

Drive my car

Here is a little note I wrote to myself, a brief meditation on the relationship between consciousness and what it is conscious of. The basic ideas, of course, are in no way original with me.

-----

First, there is awareness, which may be described as a space or field. Objects appear in this field of awareness. Some objects of awareness are physical things and some are thoughts. And these objects -- both things and thoughts -- are real, but to the observer they are not as fundamental as the awareness itself. The proof is that the objects come and go, but the awareness remains.

Both thoughts and things have a certain cause-and-effect quality. One thing leads to another; one thought leads to another. Most of the time, we are not in control of our thoughts. They multiply and mutate on their own. They head off in irrelevant directions, usually down well-worn paths. We often find ourselves thinking of the same things we've thought of a hundred times - or a thousand times - before. There is little or no productive purpose to most of this ceaseless thinking. It is nothing but stray thoughts, random thoughts, conditioned thoughts (conditioned in the Pavlovian sense), coming and going in complete disregard of our actual interests and concerns. We deceive ourselves if we believe that most of our thinking is purposeful.

Awareness is sometimes compared to a movie screen, with our thoughts and perceptions analogous to the images projected on the screen. The weakness of this analogy is that it suggests that thoughts and perceptions are unreal, in the way that movie images are (in a sense) unreal. Perhaps awareness can be better likened to the windshield of a moving car. Objects appear and vanish in the windshield. The scenery constantly changes. Even the road may change -- from a dirt lane to a suburban street to a superhighway. The sky may change from clear to cloudy, or from light to dark. The terrain may change from flat to mountainous. The objects framed in the windshield are real, but they are transient. The windshield, too, is real - but it is constant.  

By their fruits ye shall know them

Here's a minor incident from Charles Drayton Thomas's Life Beyond Death (pp. 69-70). Thomas sat for many years with the English medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. He became convinced that he was in communication with his deceased father and his deceased sister, Etta. A careful investigator, he did his best to rule out alternative explanations such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and "super-ESP."

He relates this episode as evidence that discarnate communicators are aware of events on earth that are unknown to the sitters. I found the case interesting because it includes a "newspaper test."

Thomas writes:

During the autumn of 1921, our two servants, who are sisters, had their mother to stay with them. While at our house one of her friends brought her a fine pear. This was put away for safe keeping at the back of a cupboard. There it lay forgotten. It was near the end of November when, in cleaning out the cupboards, the pear was discovered in an advanced stage of decay.

Of this trifling incident neither my wife nor I knew anything. But about two weeks later, namely, at my sitting on December 9th, the following remark was made:—

"Ask Clara what has gone wrong in the cupboard; we got an idea that something had not been keeping well. We heard of it lately."

This was a puzzle to me, and my wife could throw no light upon it.

At the next sitting, December 20th, Feda said:— "They think there is something in that remark about the cupboard. Has Clara solved the mystery yet?"

I had to reply in the negative, but subsequently the above facts were ascertained after inquiry made in the kitchen.

I took the first opportunity of reporting this to my communicators. But this was not the end. During the next sitting it was worked ingeniously into a Times test, thus:—

"In tomorrow's Times, page one, column two and near the top, is a word—it is really a name but one which he is making into a word to describe the mystery of the cupboard."

This was given on January 20th, 1922, at 9.5 p.m. I sent a note of it to the Society for Psychical Research that evening. Next day I saw, at the top of column two of the Times, first page, the name Pearson. It will be noticed that the first four letters of this name form the precise word which was wanted.

In the above we see trifles used for specific ends. I wanted no information about these trivialities, but I needed evidence that my father and sister were familiar with our home. And by such allusions they convinced me more quickly than had they confined attention to important matters within my knowledge.

My father knows that a shallow criticism may object, "It is strange that one who returns from heaven should pry into cupboards, etc." He reasonably remarks that, in pursuit of his purpose, he utilises whatever may serve, not disdaining references to homely objects and unimportant events. Since his avowed object is to prove continued nearness and awareness, only those who fail to see the value of that proof will be offended by the means employed in achieving it.

Of course, it could be argued that the initial information about something "not keeping well" in the cupboard is too vague to be evidential. But when combined with the newspaper test, the communications become more convincing.

It should be emphasized that this is only one of scores of examples presented in Thomas's book. I cannot see how any skeptic could explain away the cumulative weight of this testimony, except by saying that Thomas made the whole thing up. This possibility can never be completely discounted, but to me at least, Thomas's good sense and impeccable honesty are readily apparent in his writings.