Michael Prescott's Blog

The premature burial

Vitor Moura, a psychical researcher who sometimes contributes to the comment threads on this blog, recently asked me about a case he'd heard of that allegedly took place in Italy back in 1950. Here is how the case was presented in one of Vitor's sources:

Doctor Giuseppi Stoppolini was the professor of psychology at University of Camerino in Italy. He was a favorite with the student body because he also taught classes on the occult. In early September 1950, they were discussing mediums. The professor introduced local medium Maria Bocca. She slipped into a trance in front of fascinated students and began passing along information that seemed to be from deceased relatives of the student body. Suddenly, Maria became frantic. Another who was nearly hysterical replaced her voice. The drop-in communicator announced, "I was born Rosa Manichelli. When I died, I was Rosa Spandoni, but my husband has died since then, too. We are both in the cemetery at Castel-Raimondo a few miles from Camerino. I am asking only that you help others, because the same thing can happen to them. Two days after the death certificate was signed, I was taken to the cemetery in a deep coma and buried alive!" Maria collapsed and the communicator was gone. Understandably, the students were in awe.

On September 13, 1950, the students accompanied by the professor, the medium, a photographer, two workmen, a pathologist from the Camerino Board of Health and two government officials gathered around the grave of poor Rosa Spandoni for the exhumation. If what Maria had told everyone were true, it would offer fantastic proof of the survival phenomenon. When the lid was removed, they were met with a gruesome sight. The skeleton inside was leaning to the left instead of flat on its back. The left arm was bent up and fingers jammed into the mouth and throat cavity. The knees were bent as if to open the lid and there were tale tell scratch marks on the inside of the coffin lid. She had been buried alive. The pathologist issued a public statement about the incident, expressing amazement as to how Maria Bocca had obtained the information.

As you can see, the case - if it could be verified - would be a very interesting one. Vitor contacted someone in Camerino, who gave this reply:

Dear Vitor,

it's not so easy to answer you about professor Stoppoloni and the case you wrote us…

Here in Camerino some people is ready to swear that all it's true: but they are not direct witness.

My personal opinion, as a curios [sic] and a skeptic, is that the story you re[a]d was written by his fellows, without any rational analysis. Yes, Stoppoloni really existed, he was a teacher here in our University, he was interested in paranormal, but it's not true that there was a study course about occult and Stoppoloni wasn't professor in psychology but in veterinary! About the story of Rosa Manichelli: it reminds me some Edgar Allan Poe's tales…

I'm ready to answer all your other questions, if I can…

Sincerely

Alessandro Blasetti

There is little information available on the Internet, but Vitor did find out that the case was covered in an old issue of Fate magazine. He asked me to purchase the back issue from a dealer offering it on Amazon. I did, and below I reproduce the entire contents of the article. (Normally I would not post the full article out of respect for copyright issues, but in this case I doubt anyone is going to care about a magazine article from 55 years ago.)

As you will see, the Fate article differs in certain respects from the version of the story that has circulated on the Web.

-----

"The Return of Rosa Menichelli"

By Edmond P. Gibson

Fate magazine, January 1954 ( issue # 46; vol.7, no. 1)

During the late summer of 1950 a small group of psychical researchers in Camerino, inspired by the interest of Dr. Giuseppe Stoppoloni, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Camerino, a physician and a psychologist of some note, conducted an experimental séance with the Italian psychic, Mario Bocca. At this séance an entity in a somewhat confused state endeavored to communicate. With some difficulty the personality managed to register the following facts:

• Her name was Rosa Menichelli.

• She had been born and had lived in the nearby town of Castel-Raimondo.

• She had died in the town of Camerino and was buried in the Camerino cemetery.

• She had been buried alive and she begged that her remains be exhumed and the truth of her horrible ordeal and death be made known.

Camerino is an ancient town of about 4,500 inhabitants located about 40 miles southwest of Ancona, in the Central Appenine mountains near the east coast of Italy. The town is situated on a plateau, partially encircled by mountains, not far from the north branch of the Fiastrone river. Camerino boasts an ancient bishopric established in the third century A.D., a cathedral built upon the foundations of a temple of Jupiter, a university of European renown and a history that goes back several centuries before Christ. Camerino was one of the provincial towns that went to Rome's aid in the wars with the Etruscans. Camerino cannot be called modern in any sense -- the nearest railroad station is at Castel-Raimondo, six miles away.

Professor Stoppoloni was impressed by the statements made by the communicator and applied for a permit from the local authorities to have the body of Rosa Menichelli Spadoni (her married name) exhumed.

Permission was readily granted the professor by the local authorities, mainly because the time for the use of a cemetery grave in Italy is limited by law and the time limit on the grave occupied by the body of Mrs. Rosa Menichelli Spadoni had expired. After the expiration date on the grave the body is removed at the convenience of the custodian of the cemetery and usually placed in a common burial pit. Professor Stoppoloni examined the local burial records carefully and found that Mrs. Spadoni had died at the Civil Hospital of Camerino on September 4, 1939, at the age of 38 years. The cause of death was given as puerpureal infection and subsequent heart involvement. The body was interred on September 6, 1939, in grave 10, Line No. 47.

At the insistence of Professor Stoppoloni and, finally, with the cooperation of local authorities the grave was opened on September 13, 1950, in the presence of the professor, Dr. Matteo Marcello, of the Camerino Board of Health, Dr. Alfredo Pesche, various officials representing the Italian Republic, the grave diggers and the photographer, S. Manfrini, all from the town of Camerino.

The coffin was found to be badly worm-eaten and decomposed. All eyes were on it when the diggers removed the broken lid. The skeleton lay on its back, with the skull turned to its left. The left arm was flexed with the wrist bones directed toward the mouth, the finger bones and some of the bones of the hand were in the mouth and throat cavity and bore evidence of having been bitten. The fingers were clenched, as if in a frenzy, between the upper and lower jaws. The ends of the ring finger and the middle finger extended into the throat. On the ring finger was a wedding ring, rather badly corroded. The hair was disarranged and looked as if it might have been seized and torn by the dying woman in her desperate attempt to gain freedom. The knees were bent as if in an attempt to force the coffin lid.

The discovery of this burial of a living person confirmed every detail of the communication from Rosa Menichelli Spadoni made at the séance and it profoundly shocked all the witnesses of the exhumation. Mrs. Spadoni had left a husband and four children.

The evidence of the grave confirmed the séance statement.

She had not died in the Camerino Hospital. Probably she had been in a coma or state of catalepsy when certified as dead and had survived for two days in that state, to awaken in her coffin -- sealed from the outside world.

Professor Stoppoloni inaugurated a campaign in Italy to enforce more careful examination of the dead before burial. In Italy embalming is not generally practiced in the small towns and villages. The Professor states that the accidental burial of living persons through carelessness still occurs in Italy and in other portions of Europe. He quotes recent statistics, based upon exhumations in France, which would indicate that one out of every 500 persons in France is buried alive. In England, even at the end of the 19th century, he estimates that 2700 persons per year were buried alive. In some old cemeteries in the rural sections of the United States which were moved and examined the figure runs as high as one out of 50 burials. Professor Stoppoloni quotes these figures from the burial compilations of the French Statistician Hiet; his records are filed with the Counselor-General of Senna.

Professor Stoppoloni's campaign brought immediate support from many newspapers in Italy. Some of them reported the story of Rosa Menichelli and the exhumation, together with the spiritualistic prelude which initiated the inquiry. Other journals reported the exhumation and its findings without mentioning the séance which brought about the inquiry.

Following the exhumation another séance was held on September 16, 1950, and the communicating personality of Rosa Menichelli Spadoni again asserted itself through the mediumship of Mario Bocca. Rosa thanked the circle of investigators for what had been done and for what was being done toward the prevention of future tragedies such as hers. She requested that they continue, redoubling their efforts to this end.

The communicator appeared confused when first questioned about her family. She said, "I don't remember anything. I don't know if I was married." Then her memory seemed to clear and she said, "Now I remember very well. My husband has remarried. My daughter is now engaged to be married. I wish happiness to them all!"

Professor Stoppoloni's campaign to prevent burial of the living appears to be gaining ground in Italy. Rosa Menichelli's communication has caused a change in burial practices that may save many lives, prematurely snuffed out in the past in the horrors of the grave.

[Sidebar with portrait photo:] Dr. Giuseppe Stoppoloni

Dr. Stoppoloni is Professor of Anatomy at the University of Camerino, Italy, a physician and a psychologist of considerable repute. He has long been interested in psychical research and personally has investigated many unusual cases, of which that of Rosa Menichelli is typical. He is a member or officer of numerous scientific societies and institutions in Italy and has received many honorary titles and awards.

[Pages 28-31; emphases in original]

-----

Now, how reliable is this article? That's hard to say. Fate magazine is hardly a peer-reviewed journal; it's a mix of serious articles and sensationalism. The author of this piece, Edmond P. Gibson, contributed two other articles in the same issue, on unrelated topics ("Haunted House in Tokyo" and "Case of the Ancient Greek Ghost"), so he appears to have been a journeyman writer rather than an original investigator. From the way the article is written, it would seem that Stoppoloni served as Gibson's source, but this is never explicitly stated, and it's possible that Gibson merely relied on newspaper reports.

Note that the objections lodged by Mr. Blasetti are countered, to some extent, by the Fate story. Gibson's article never claims that Stoppoloni taught a course in psychic phenomena or that the séance was held in a classroom. Thus the objection that Stoppolini could not have held a séance as part of a class seems irrelevant. Gibson describes Stoppolini as a professor of anatomy who was also "a psychologist of considerable repute"; Mr. Blasetti says that Stoppolini "wasn't a professor in psychology but in veterinary." I'm not sure if there's a contradiction here - "anatomy" and "veterinary" could refer to the same subject matter, and Stoppolini could have been a psychologist without serving as a professor of psychology.

Also note that most of the Internet versions of this story give the medium's name as Maria Bocca, but according to Gibson, the medium was Mario Bocca. Furthermore, according to Gibson the dead woman's maiden name was Menichelli, and her married name was Spadoni - in contrast to the Internet version quoted above, which gives the names as Manichelli and Spandoni. The Internet account also gives Stoppoloni's first name as Guiseppi, rather than Guiseppe, and his last name as Stoppolini; and it says Rosa was buried at Castel-Raimondo, while Gibson says she was buried in Camerino. The Internet version also presents the initial séance rather differently, and has Rosa (characterized as a "drop-in communicator") giving more information, including her married name and the duration of her coma.

Incidentally, some other Internet versions claim that furor over people being buried alive led to the downfall of the Italian government, a doubtful assertion. Nothing in Gibson's story suggests this outcome.

The bottom line is that the case is intriguing but so far lacks verification. Certainly, if it could be confirmed, it would be one of the more persuasive cases on record, and certainly among the most dramatic. But almost sixty years after the fact, it may not be possible to obtain any further details. And I have to wonder why Stoppoloni wouldn't have written up the case for The Journal of Psychical Research or another peer-reviewed publication. Surely, if the case were genuine, he would have seen its importance.

So the matter remains unresolved. But at the very least, it does make a good ghost story, don't you think?

Those darn Gnostics

Many spiritual seekers today seem to have a soft spot in their hearts for Gnosticism, an ancient religious movement that, until recently, had mostly died out. In part, I think, their affection for the Gnostics is based on the fact that traditional Christianity strongly opposed the Gnostic movement, branding it a heresy. Anything opposed by the hidebound, patriarchal church must be pretty cool - or so the thinking goes.

There's also the appeal of subscribing to a body of "secret," "hidden" wisdom that is revealed only to a few select adepts. People have always enjoyed being in on a secret that is withheld from the rest of mankind. The huge sales figures of Dan Brown's mediocre thriller The Da Vinci Code are best explained by this phenomenon; people thought they were getting inside information. 

The trouble is, when you really look at Gnosticism, it isn't all that appealing. In fact, it's rather disagreeable, at least to me. 

Consider this brief summary presented by N.T. Wright in his recent book Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, about the newly discovered "Gospel of Judas." To set the Judas Gospel in context, Wright presents the essentials of Gnostic Christian thought. (It is true that Wright is no fan of the Gnostics, but as best I can tell, his summary is accurate; it dovetails with what I know of the movement from my own reading, notably Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Paul.)

Wright tells us:

The most striking feature of Gnosticism, marking it out against the main line of Jewish and early Christian thought, is a deep and dark dualism. The present world of space, time and matter is an inexorably bad place, not only a place where wickedness flourishes unchecked but a place which, had it not been for an evil god going ahead and creating it, would not have existed at all....

The world as we know it was made by a bad, stupid and perhaps capricious god. There is another divine being, a pure, wise and true divinity who is quite different from this creator god.... For Gnosticism, the god who made the world, along with various other intermediate beings who may have had a hand in the project at some stage, is at the least misguided or foolish, and at worst downright malevolent.

The main aim of any right-thinking human being, therefore, will be to escape the wicked world, and the outward [form of] human existence, altogether....

The way to this "salvation" is precisely through knowledge, gnosis.... [T]his special gnosis is arrived at through attaining knowledge about the true god, about the origin of the wicked world, and not least about one's own true identity.  And this "knowledge" can come only if someone "reveals" it.  [pp. 31-33]

Gnosticism, in brief, is a worldview that disparages all things material, including the human body, and seeks to lose itself in the revelations of specially appointed teachers, whose insights are to be withheld from the common herd. It is essentially an elitist philosophy, setting off the select few (called "pneumatics" in the Gnostic literature) from the mass of mankind, who are merely "sarkic," i.e., fleshly. (The "psychics," meaning people with some limited spiritual insight, occupy a middle tier in the hierarchy.)

Add to this the fact that Gnosticism offers a remarkably convoluted, rococo mythological scheme (or series of schemes), presented in coded language that is all but impenetrable to outsiders, and you have all the makings of a strange cultlike movement that proved to be a cultural dead end.

It is true that some modern thinkers, like Jung, have found deep psychological insights embedded in Gnostic writings. Possibly, if interpreted in this way, the Gnostics' teachings can have value. But when taken as a metaphysical (not psychological) system, Gnosticism strikes me as both mean-spirited and intellectually barren.

Yet nowadays it is making a comeback. Are its enthusiasts missing something ... or am I? 

For want of an orange the navy was lost

Because of my newfound interest in Vitamin C, I've been doing some reading on the subject. One very interesting book is available online for free. It's Irwin Stone's 1972 book The Healing Factor:Vitamin C Against Disease, and it can be read here.

(Please note that some of the "next page" links within the document don't work, but the Table of Contents provides working links to all chapters.)

One particularly interesting detail is the reluctance of the British Navy to enforce a diet that would save their sailors from scurvy. Stone recounts:

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the stage had been prepared for advances in the prevention and treatment of scurvy.  Admiral Sir Richard Hawkins, in 1593, protected the crew of the Dainty with oranges and lemons; among others, Commodore Lancaster, in voyages for the East India Company, had shown by 1600 that scurvy was an easily preventable disease.  It remained, however, for James Lind to prove this.  James Lind, surgeon's mate on H.M.S. Salisbury, was ... a keen observer and eventually became known as "the father of nautical medicine."  He conducted the first properly controlled clinical therapeutic trial on record.

The crucial experiment Lind performed in 1747 at sea on the Salisbury, was to take twelve seamen  suffering from the same degree of scurvy and divide them into six groups of two each.  In addition to their regular diet, he gave each group a different, commonly used treatment for scurvy and observed its action.  One group received a quart of cider daily, the second group received twenty-five drops of dilute sulfuric acid three times a day,  the third group was given two spoonfuls of vinegar three times a day, the fourth team drank half a pint of seawater three times a day, the fifth received a concoction of garlic, mustard seed, horseradish, gum myrrh, and balsam of Peru.  The last group received two oranges and one lemon daily for six days.  These last two men improved with such astonishing rapidity that they were used as nurses to care for the others.  There was slight improvement in the cider group but no benefit was observed in the others.  Here was clear-cut, easily understandable evidence of the value of citrus fruit in the cure of scurvy....

What was clear to Lind, and is commonplace to us, was not so readily accepted by the naval bureaucracy of his day.  It took over forty years for the British Admiralty to adopt Lind's simple prophylactic daily dose of one ounce of lemon juice per man.  The official order cam through in 1795, just a year after Lind's death.  It has been estimated that this 42-year delay cost the Royal Navy 100,000 casualties to scurvy.

This simple regimen wiped out scurvy in the naval forces of England, and it became their secret weapon for maintaining their mastery of the seas.  There is no doubt that this simple ration of lemon juice was of far greater importance to the Royal Navy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than all the improvements in speed, firepower, armor, and seaworthiness.  Naval officers of the time asserted that it was equivalent to doubling the fighting force of the navy....  

One would imagine that Lind's clear-cut clinical demonstration and the experiences of the Royal Navy in wiping out the disease would have pointed the way toward banishing this disease completely.  However, it takes much more than logic and clear-cut demonstrations to overcome the inertia and dogma of established thought.  The forty-two years that it took the British Admiralty to adopt Lind's recommendations may seem unduly long, even for a stolid bureaucracy, but this may be a speed record compared with other agencies.  The British Board of Trade took 112 years -- until 1865 -- before similar precautions were adopted for the British merchant marine.  There are records of seamen on the merchant vessels succumbing to scurvy even while delivering lemons to the ships of the Royal Navy.  Over 30,000 cases of scurvy were reported in the American Civil War and it took the U.S. Army until 1895 to adopt antiscorbutic rations.

[Chapters 5 and 6, bold emphasis added.]

Somehow this story put me in mind of some Gilbert & Sullivan lyrics:

Now, landsmen all, whoever you may be
If you want to rise to the top of the tree
If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool
Be careful to be guided by this golden rule
Stick close to your desks and never go to sea
And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navy

Just another stupid thing to worry about

I know very little about the physics of the Large Hadron Collider, but I've been aware of the debate over whether the LHC could create a black hole that would swallow the Earth. A new physics paper suggests that this possibility, while remote, may not be as totally implausible as originally predicted.

According to the Physics arXiv blog,

In 2002, Roberto Casadio at the Universita di Bologna in Italy and a few pals reassured the world that [the doomsday scenario] was not possible because the black holes would decay before they got the chance to do any damage.

Now they’re not so sure.  The question is not simply how quickly a mini-black hole decays but whether this decay always outpaces any growth.

Casadio have reworked the figures and now say that:  ” the growth of black holes to catastrophic size does not seem possible.” ...

What’s more, the new calculations throw up a tricky new prediction. In the past, it had always been assumed that black holes would decay in the blink of an eye.

Not any more. Casadio and co say:  “the expected decay times are much longer (and possibly >1 sec) than is typically predicted by other models”

Whoa, let’s have that again: these mini black holes will be hanging around for seconds, possibly minutes?

Most of the commenters on the physics blog dismiss these new concerns as the baseless speculation of alarmists, and their reasoning may well be valid. But reading this comment, you have to wonder if scientific zeal is not outrunning prudence:

Answers to big questions require big investments and lots of risk. Yes, there are unintended consequences, just like those created when Columbus sailed off to discover a new route to India. We got positives and negatives that could NEVER have been conceived of before the voyage. IF…and its a hugely unlikely IF…the LHC does destroy the earth, who is going to be around to say “I told you so.”

Hmm. Unintended consequences ... lots of risk ... no one will be around to say, "I told you so."

Very reassuring.

Netflix reviews (in rhyme)

King Rat is not as good as the book
but still definitely worth a look.
George Segal plays his part astutely.
He looks much different in Just Shoot Me.

The Dark Knight,
though overrated,
is pretty tight.
I didn't hate it.

Wanted is bad and really cruel and sick.
Angelina looks weirdly bulimic.

300 is a zero.
I prefer realistic heroes.
The Spartans' stand was bold enough
without that dumb comic-book stuff.
Note to those who disagree:
No elephants fought at Thermopylae.
If a stirring account is what you desire,
Read Stephen Pressfield's Gates of Fire.

The House Bunny
isn't funny.

3:10 to Yuma (2007 edition)
doesn't equal the '57 rendition.
Peter Fonda's gutshot
and quickly heals? 
Sorry, that's not
remotely real.
Check out the original oater.
Glenn Ford's never been better.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah:
Giant Monsters All Out Attack
has its moments but sadly
the plot goes badly
and madly
off-track.
What is it with these Godzilla movies?
Why do they always turn out so goofy?
We're told Godzilla trashed Tokyo before
way back in 1954.
No one doubts it; folks remember
when their city was reduced to embers.
So how come the military insists
the big green guy is "just a myth"?
Don't they recall their own history?
Things like this pose a mystery.

No Country for Old Men
is kind of weird and kind of Zen.
I liked the Coen brothers more
when they weren't angling for awards.

Comments are down

Comments don't seem to be working at the moment. Another TypePad glitch.

Here's a comment I would have posted on the last thread:

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Why didn't you try energy work?

Because I don't know anything about it.

It's been 49 hours, and my cough has not returned. Today I had a mild upset stomach so I cut back on the megadoses.

I plan to take at least 1000 mg of C daily as a nutrient. Since the Ester-C 1000-mg tablets really are big enough to choke a horse, I'm going to experiment with chewable tablets from another manufacture. These combine ascorbate and ascorbic acid. I don't know if they'll be as effective as ascorbate alone.

For what it's worth

What follows is purely anecdotal evidence. In fact, it's pretty much the definition of anecdotal evidence. If you look up "anecdotal evidence" in the dictionary, you will find a link to this post.

Still, it's interesting and, as newspapers used to say in the days when they printed stories they couldn't verify, "important if true."

Since Tuesday I've had a sinus infection. On Thursday, having realized it wasn't just an allergy or a cold, I went to a doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics, which I am faithfully taking. The antibiotics cleared up most of the symptoms within a couple of days. But one symptom persisted and in fact got worse - a continuous heavy cough.

I had a sinus infection last year, and the same thing happened. The cough persisted long after the other symptoms, and even after I had completed my course of antibiotics. In that case I had to go back to the doctor for a second, stronger course.

This time the cough was especially bad. I could hardly sleep at all. On Saturday night I was awake until the wee hours of the morning (Sunday morning). I finally got about two hours of sleep.

During my period of insomnia I went online and searched for "cough" + "remedy." Various herbal teas and other concoctions were offered. I'd tried some of these last time with no effect.

One idea I hadn't tried involved Vitamin C. The suggestion was to take a very large dose of C in ascorbate form. Ascorbate is said to be more efficiently absorbed by the body than the more common ascorbic acid.

I was skeptical. Isn't megavitamin therapy a crock?

On Sunday morning I dragged myself to the local drugstore and bought some food and other essentials, but I did not buy any Vitamin C. I thought it would be a waste of money.

But when the cough persisted into the afternoon, I got desperate. Feeling foolish, I returned to the drugstore and hunted among the Vitamin C products until I found one that contained C in ascorbate form. The brand is Ester-C. I bought the 1000-mg variety. (The RDA for Vitamin C is only 60 mg.)

Still coughing when I got home, I immediately took three of the Ester-C pills. That's 3000 mg of C. This was at 3:30. Within five minutes my cough stopped. (I kept a journal to ensure accuracy of recollection.)

An hour later, at 4:30, I started to cough again. I took an additional 2000 mg of C. This brought the total dosage of C to 5000 mg. The cough stopped.

Moreover, I felt a rush of energy. I decided to go for a "short walk." The short walk turned out to last almost two hours, during which time I hiked up and down the twisting, hilly streets in my neighborhood. I had not had this much energy since coming down with sinusitis. (I'm not even sure I had this much energy when I was healthy.)

At 6:30, back from my walk, I was starting to cough again. I took 2000 mg of C. The cough stopped and remained quiet for nearly four hours.

At 10:15 it started to make a comeback. I took 2000 mg of C, and another 1000 mg at 10:30 because I wasn't sure the first dose was enough. After that, the cough was quiet.

But now the acid test was approaching: bedtime. This is when the cough was always at its worst. Would I start coughing as soon as I lay down?

Rather nervously I reclined on the couch at 11 PM. After a short time - still cough-free - I fell asleep. I woke up at 12:30 PM today, having slept for more than thirteen hours. And I still wasn't coughing.

Could this be a coincidence? I think it's unlikely. The cough disappeared almost immediately after I took the first megadose, and each time it started to return, another megadose suppressed it.

How about the placebo effect? I can't rule this out. Although consciously I was skeptical, subconsciously I may have expected the treatment to work. On the other hand, I had tried various other remedies for the cough, and none of them had any effect. Why would the outcome be different in this case?

I think the most likely explanation is that the Vitamin C really did knock out the cough. I can't prove it, but I'm passing along the information for what it may be worth.

Incidentally, I should point out that the 1000-mg Ester-C pills are very large, and some people may have trouble swallowing them. Ester-C is available in 500-mg form as well, and those pills are smaller and easier to swallow.

The SuperConscious

Looking through some notes from last May, I came across this material, which I don't recall having posted. It is probably inspired to some extent by Arthur J. Ellison's book Science and the Paranormal, but I don't think it is exactly the same as Ellison's view.

I was trying to come up with a "theory of everything" as far as psi is concerned, something that would cover NDEs, OBEs, mediumship, mysticism, flashes of insight, possession and obsession, apparitions, hauntings, and poltergeists in the simplest possible way.  

Here's a somewhat modified and extended version of what I wrote in my notebook:

----

The unconscious may in fact be the key to it all. The physical brain restricts our access to the unconscious, allowing us to experience it only in small, manageable doses. But when the brain's limitations are transcended, we have access to the unconscious as a whole, or at least a much larger part of it - a vast field of information, awareness, and experience.

How are the brain's limits transcended? In a near-death experience, the brain is inactive. In actual death, the brain is nonfunctional. In certain kinds of drug trips, the brain is temporarily impaired. In mystical states, OBEs, and other trance or trancelike conditions, the brain is bypassed in some (still largely unknown) way. Some people can enter a trance or near-trance at will, shuttling almost effortlessly between direct participation in their conscious and the unconscious minds (or possibly between conscious and unconscious worlds, if the distinction between subjective mind and objective world breaks down at a deep level). Young children seem to be better at this kind of shuttling than most grown-ups.

In any extracerebral state of awareness, we potentially have access to:

• all the experiences of our life and their meaning (the NDE life review);

• the mental states of others, both living (ESP) and nonliving (mediumship);

• the mental environments we create (heavenly or hellish afterlife states);

• historical and linguistic details normally unknown to us (Patience Worth);

• scientific and artistic inspirations (Mozart, Einstein, etc.);

• memories of past lives (hypnotic regression, spontaneous past-life memories of children);

• an overwhelming sense of unity with the whole of creation, and the certainty that everything makes sense and all is well (Unity Consciousness or "cosmic consciousness").  

I've been calling it the unconscious, but that's a misnomer. This vast sea of the "unconscious" is really more like a SuperConscious. It is unconscious only in the sense that we are not usually aware of it, because of our restricted input. From a wider perspective, it is the "unconscious" that is truly conscious, more conscious than our limited brains normally allow us to be.

The SuperConscious is all around us. We just can't see it, most of the time. To use an old analogy, it's like lightwaves in the infrared or ultraviolet range. It's there, but our mental "eyes" are not tuned to the right frequency. (This is only an analogy; I'm not saying that the SuperConscious exists on the electromagnetic spectrum.)

The SuperConscious is ontologically real. It informs and organizes the physical world (and may, at a deep level, be indistinguishable from it, just as the knower may be inseparable from the known). On those occasions when we do get in touch with the SuperConscious, we have a sense of "waking up" to a higher reality - in fact, to the only reality.

----

Looking this over, I see that I did not address possession, obsession, poltergeists, and hauntings, as I'd hoped. Conceivably the situation in such cases may be the reverse of what happens when an incarnate person transcends his brain-dictated limitations and perceives a wider consciousness. Maybe poltergeists and apparitions are discarnate persons whose consciousness remains limited to the perception of this world, even though the physical brain is no longer operating. Being able to function only (or principally) in this world, they inevitably intrude on it, causing various "physical phenomena." The same may possibly apply in cases of possession or obsession. The possessing or obsessing spirit may be able to function only through a physical body because it remains limited to earthbound perceptions.

I'm not sure what to say about PK, either micro or macro. Possibly a person who accesses the SuperConscious can, in some cases, obtain the information necessary to control physical objects by mental effort. This information would be nonverbal and untranslatable into any terms the brain could handle, so it would never be known to the PK practitioner in conscious (i.e., everyday) life. Something similar might apply to some cases of spiritual healing.

Anyway, I think the idea is promising, but clearly it is undeveloped, and no doubt many objections can be lodged against it. In particular, the relationship between mind and external reality is very vague. Arthur Ellison rejected the whole idea of an objective world, arguing the case for pure phillosophical idealism. I'm not prepared to go there, but I don't know what the truth is.

Incidentally, as Ellison pointed out, connecting the unconscious with the SuperConscious would help explain the frequent instances in which material from a psychic or medium's unconscious mind gets mixed in with material from other sources.

Blast from the past: Sleight of mind

I haven't blogged much lately because first I was traveling and then I came down with a sinus infection. (The two things are probably not unconnected.) While I recover, I'm reposting this essay (slightly shortened) from October 9, 2006.

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I just purchased a book called The Table Rappers: The Victorians and the Occult, by Ronald Pearsall. It's a fairly skeptical -- though not entirely skeptical -- examination of Victorian séances, and I'm sure it will contain some interesting information. But the very first thing I did, after opening up the box from Amazon.com, was to look up Eusapia Palladino in the index. What I found did not fill me with confidence.

Palladino, as regular readers of this blog know, was an Italian medium known for her ability to levitate tables, produce mysterious winds of no apparent origin, and make musical instruments play by themselves, among other things. She remains highly controversial to this day. Anyone who has studied the various investigations of Palladino knows that ,while skeptical explanations can suffice for some of the phenomena she produced, they are inadequate to cover the totality.

Pearsall, however, clearly wants us to believe that Palladino has been utterly discredited. Here is his entire treatment of a series of sittings conducted in Naples in 1908.

Eusapia was up against a new generation of researchers; Myers and Sidgwick were dead, and were replaced by W. W. Baggally and Everard Feilding. Baggally had been investigating physical phenomena for thirty-five years, and had found nothing but fraud. Feilding had been investigating for ten years, but he too had drawn a blank. Eusapia did not encourage them to change their minds. In 1910 she admitted to an American reporter that she had cheated, claiming that sitters had 'willed' her do so. [Pages 223-224]

I do not see any way this passage can be interpreted other than as follows: Baggally and Feilding, who held the conviction that physical mediums were all frauds, investigated Palladino and did not change their minds.

Admittedly, Pearsall doesn't phrase it quite that baldly. But I think this is the implication that any reader would take from passage.

And it is totally, provably false.

Feilding and Baggally did go into the séances with Palladino expecting to find clear evidence of fraud. What they found instead, to their surprise and considerable consternation, was evidence that the phenomena were genuine. By the conclusion of the sittings, both men -- as well as a third investigator, Hereward Carrrington, whom Pearsall doesn't mention -- were entirely convinced that Palladino had genuine paranormal abilities. They believed, after intensive study under rigorous conditions, that she actually could levitate tables and other objects, produce air currents in a sealed room, cause musical instruments to play even at a considerable distance, and effect the materialization of spirit hands and other forms.

There is no doubt whatsoever of the conclusions they came to. Feilding and his colleagues wrote a book on the subject titled Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, which includes extensive extracts from their notes taken after each séance. These notes track their gradual change of mind from skepticism to reluctant belief. They maintained this belief long after the study was complete. (Lengthy extracts of these notes can be read in Stephen E. Braude's The Limits of Influence. Palladino is briefly but even-handedly treated in Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters.)

Now, the three investigators may have been mistaken in their observations and conclusions. Personally I do not see any way that Palladino could have fooled all three of them, given their extensive experience and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to fraud that they imposed on the séances. But I could be wrong. Perhaps Palladino was such a master illusionist that she could deceive even the most wary observers under the most difficult conditions.

But that is not the issue. The issue is that these three investigators were convinced that Palladino was genuine, and went on the record to say so. Yet Pearsall would clearly have us believe otherwise. He knows the subject too well to be ignorant of the truth. The conclusion is inescapable: he is deliberately misleading the reader in this passage.

Notice that he does not actually say that Feilding and Baggally didn't change their minds. What he says is, "Eusapia did not encourage them to change their minds." This is a safely ambiguous way of putting it. Taken literally, it may be true. There is no particular reason to think that Palladino actively tried to convince the researchers that she was genuine. She seems to have been indifferent to other peoples' opinions. But of course the implication of the statement is that Eusapia's phenomena, as observed by the researchers, did not encourage them to change their minds. And this is simply false.

Also notice the very next statement: "In 1910 she admitted to an American reporter that she had cheated..." Undoubtedly this is true. Palladino confessed to cheating on many occasions throughout her long career. She was amusingly outspoken about it, insisting that she would cheat whenever she thought she could get away with it. Every researcher who ever looked into her was aware of this strange tendency on her part and reported it. It was not breaking news in 1910, at least not to the investigators who had followed her career for decades. And her statement in 1910 had nothing to do with the specific sittings organized by Feilding and Baggally, in which stringent precautions against cheating were imposed.

Pearsall undoubtedly knows this, too. But he also knows that 99% of the people who read his book will be unaware of the details and will assume that the 1910 interview was a) a revelation to all the researchers who had come before and b) a direct disavowal of any paranormal phenomena at the Feilding-Baggally séances. This is obviously how Pearsall intends the passage to be understood.

Summing up just one paragraph later, Pearsall writes of Palladino, "The furore that was generated about her can be attributed to wish-fulfillment." Actually it can be attributed to wish fulfillment only if we ignore the actual reports of the researchers who investigated her - something that Pearsall is only too anxious for us to do.

Unfortunately I've encountered this sort of thing before. Some skeptics are masterful at creating the suggestion that a given medium or a certain paranormal case has been decisively debunked, without actually saying so. They string facts and sentences together and use ambiguous phrasing in order to deceive the reader. It's a lot like the magician's technique of sleight-of-hand, only done with words, not with coins or handkerchiefs or bunny rabbits.

The difference is that the magician lets us know it's just a trick.

Palladino, as regular readers of this blog know, was an Italian medium known for her ability to levitate tables, produce mysterious winds of no apparent origin, and make musical instruments play by themselves, among other things. She remains highly controversial to this day. Anyone who has studied the various investigations of Palladino knows that ,while skeptical explanations can suffice for some of the phenomena she produced, they are inadequate to cover the totality.

Pearsall, however, clearly wants us to believe that Palladino has been utterly discredited. Here is his entire treatment of a series of sittings conducted in Naples in 1908.

Eusapia was up against a new generation of researchers; Myers and Sidgwick were dead, and were replaced by W. W. Baggally and Everard Feilding. Baggally had been investigating physical phenomena for thirty-five years, and had found nothing but fraud. Feilding had been investigating for ten years, but he too had drawn a blank. Eusapia did not encourage them to change their minds. In 1910 she admitted to an American reporter that she had cheated, claiming that sitters had 'willed' her do so. [Pages 223-224]

I do not see any way this passage can be interpreted other than as follows: Baggally and Feilding, who held the conviction that physical mediums were all frauds, investigated Palladino and did not change their minds.

Admittedly, Pearsall doesn't phrase it quite that baldly. But I think this is the implication that any reader would take from passage.

And it is totally, provably false.

Feilding and Baggally did go into the séances with Palladino expecting to find clear evidence of fraud. What they found instead, to their surprise and considerable consternation, was evidence that the phenomena were genuine. By the conclusion of the sittings, both men -- as well as a third investigator, Hereward Carrrington, whom Pearsall doesn't mention -- were entirely convinced that Palladino had genuine paranormal abilities. They believed, after intensive study under rigorous conditions, that she actually could levitate tables and other objects, produce air currents in a sealed room, cause musical instruments to play even at a considerable distance, and effect the materialization of spirit hands and other forms.

There is no doubt whatsoever of the conclusions they came to. Feilding and his colleagues wrote a book on the subject titled Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, which includes extensive extracts from their notes taken after each séance. These notes track their gradual change of mind from skepticism to reluctant belief. They maintained this belief long after the study was complete. (Lengthy extracts of these notes can be read in Stephen E. Braude's The Limits of Influence. Palladino is briefly but even-handedly treated in Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters.)

Now, the three investigators may have been mistaken in their observations and conclusions. Personally I do not see any way that Palladino could have fooled all three of them, given their extensive experience and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles to fraud that they imposed on the séances. But I could be wrong. Perhaps Palladino was such a master illusionist that she could deceive even the most wary observers under the most difficult conditions.

But that is not the issue. The issue is that these three investigators were convinced that Palladino was genuine, and went on the record to say so. Yet Pearsall would clearly have us believe otherwise. He knows the subject too well to be ignorant of the truth. The conclusion is inescapable: he is deliberately misleading the reader in this passage.

Notice that he does not actually say that Feilding and Baggally didn't change their minds. What he says is, "Eusapia did not encourage them to change their minds." This is a safely ambiguous way of putting it. Taken literally, it may be true. There is no particular reason to think that Palladino actively tried to convince the researchers that she was genuine. She seems to have been indifferent to other peoples' opinions. But of course the implication of the statement is that Eusapia's phenomena, as observed by the researchers, did not encourage them to change their minds. And this is simply false.

Also notice the very next statement: "In 1910 she admitted to an American reporter that she had cheated..." Undoubtedly this is true. Palladino confessed to cheating on many occasions throughout her long career. She was amusingly outspoken about it, insisting that she would cheat whenever she thought she could get away with it. Every researcher who ever looked into her was aware of this strange tendency on her part and reported it. It was not breaking news in 1910, at least not to the investigators who had followed her career for decades. And her statement in 1910 had nothing to do with the specific sittings organized by Feilding and Baggally, in which stringent precautions against cheating were imposed.

Pearsall undoubtedly knows this, too. But he also knows that 99% of the people who read his book will be unaware of the details and will assume that the 1910 interview was a) a revelation to all the researchers who had come before and b) a direct disavowal of any paranormal phenomena at the Feilding-Baggally séances. This is obviously how Pearsall intends the passage to be understood.

Summing up just one paragraph later, Pearsall writes of Palladino, "The furore that was generated about her can be attributed to wish-fulfillment." Actually it can be attributed to wish fulfillment only if we ignore the actual reports of the researchers who investigated her - something that Pearsall is only too anxious for us to do.

Unfortunately I've encountered this sort of thing before. Some skeptics are masterful at creating the suggestion that a given medium or a certain paranormal case has been decisively debunked, without actually saying so. They string facts and sentences together and use ambiguous phrasing in order to deceive the reader. It's a lot like the magician's technique of sleight-of-hand, only done with words, not with coins or handkerchiefs or bunny rabbits.

The difference is that the magician lets us know it's just a trick.

Turning off the light

Tonight the sitcom Scrubs, which has moved to ABC for its final season, featured a long scene in which two doctors talk to a dying patient. The patient asks if they think there's anything after this life. Both doctors say yes. One says he visualizes a happy, carefree (albeit semipornographic) heaven, while the other doctor talks about the many NDE-like deathbed visions he's heard - a white light, a sense of peace.

Kind of refreshing, I thought. Here you have two young, hip characters talking earnestly (well, except for the pornographic stuff) about life after death.

Ah, but it was not to be. When the patient says he still has fears, the doctors change their tune and admit they've been lying about everything they said. Actually they're terrified of death. Everybody is, they tell the patient, and we all come up with elaborate defense mechanisms to guard against our fears. But in the end, maybe the best we can hope for is that our last thought will be a good one.

Somehow this bit of wisdom calms the patient, who dies peacefully a short time later. But I wonder how many people would really be reassured by those words.

I guess it would be too much for the show to suggest, even half seriously, that there might be something to the idea of an afterlife. It's so much easier to break into another rendition of the "stiff upper lip in the face of a meaningless and uncaring universe" routine, which has been around for more than a century but shows no sign of going away.

Oh, well. It was still a good episode, overall.