The duke of URL

Here's a cost-free way to contribute to cutting-edge research into mediumship. Use this URL as your portal to Amazon.com :

http://www.amazon.com/?tag=windbridge-20

If you bookmark this URL for Amazon (replacing any Amazon bookmark you may already have), and use it whenever you start shopping there, a percentage of your purchases will be directed to the Windbridge Institute in Arizona—one of the very few scientific facilities that take a serious interest in after-death communication.

It doesn't cost you anything, and the more people who do it, the more funds will be generated for the institute. (Click here and scroll about halfway down the linked page for examples of studies already carried out by Windbridge.)

Comments

[James Oeming]

Thanks for this, Michael. From what I've seen, the Windbridge Institute is one of the strongest psi-related scientific research outfits around. I'm an Amazon junkie (Kindle books and MP3s), so they will certainly get $$$ from me.

Thank you for the great service you provide with your blog.

[Michael Prescott]

Thanks, James.

BTW, I should have mentioned that information on the purchasers is not sent to Windbridge, so they'll never know who bought what.

Yes, that means I can continue to expand my collection of sexy sasquatch novels, with no fear that my sick obsession will ever be discovered.

http://goo.gl/Dh3ZKY

[Roger Knights]

Here's a link to an Amazon search-results page for sex + bigfoot. Incredible--I'm a Bigfoot fan with lots of Bigfoot books but I hadn't heard of this niche at all.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sex+bigfoot

[James Oeming]

Michael:

Those novels are "out there"! I skimmed some samples Amazon offered. I saw some also about sex with centaurs :) Conventional romance novels just ain't cuttin' it no more! The bar has been raised!

Straying further off topic, Julia Mossbridge had a Facebook link to an iPhone video game that presents as an ordinary video game, but is influenced by the player's mind-matter effect on an underlying random number generator. At the end of a session, the degree of psychokinetic effect on the RNG is shown on the screen.

Alas, I use an Android phone, so I can't try it out just now.

http://www.biocentricgame.com/

(Apologies if this is too far from the subject of this thread. Wasn't sure where to post it.)

[James Oeming]

...actually, I should have written that the iPhone game shows the deviation from chance of the output of the RNG, which is arguably influenced by the intention of the video game player.

[Michael Prescott]

Centaurs? That's nothin'. Check out the "dinosaur erotica" subgenre:

http://goo.gl/WEmMrc

If "Taken by the T-Rex" isn't your thing, you might find yourself aroused by "Ravished by the Triceratops" or "In the Velociraptor's" Nest."

Personally I'm waiting for "Drilled by Dreadnoughtus." Size matters!

I don't think these "books" sell many copies, but they do generate some funny reviews.

[Ben Steigmann]

I have a proposition for you guys - I am busy with other things, and will be unable to really engage this until next year, but how about Michael Prescott (or others here) make a complete, sourced refutation of the wikipedia article on Leonora Piper? I have the sources that would enable one to do this, but do not at present have the time to really dig deep in - someone doing this over the course of the next few months would be really useful - maybe I could then dig deep in, but using the foundation that others have helped to build. A source that people may want to consult is William James: Essays in Psychical Research - I looked at relevant commentary in google books. Other sources for the background are as follows:

- Gauld - "Mediumship and Survival" - this is a great book on the subject: http://www.esalen.org/ctr-archive/mediumship.html

- Hyslop (1905). Science and a Future Life: https://archive.org/stream/scienceandfutur00hysl#page/n5/mode/2up

Hyslop also wrote a few articles that might help elucidate the subject:

e.g., this on Sidgwick's views on Piper: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849499;view=1up;seq=8

see also "Bosh" Proves to be Sense: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849465;view=1up;seq=631

here is an article of his on the Hodgson control: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849457;view=1up;seq=15

also, this is a key source on Piper:
The Cosmic Relations and Immortality Vol. I: https://archive.org/stream/cosmicrelationsi01holtiala#page/n9/mode/2up, Vol. II: https://archive.org/stream/cosmicrelationsi02holtiala

here is another important book on Piper: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011208711

while the above books on Piper above make the case, others have specifically rebutted criticisms. See W.F. Prince - The Enchanted Boundary: Being a Survey of Negative Reactions to Claims of Psychic Phenomena, 1820-1930.: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015073174594;view=1up;seq=9

Gauld (1968). Critics of Mrs. Piper: https://ia601200.us.archive.org/13/items/NotesonSpiritualismandPsychicalResearch/CriticsOfMrs.Piper.pdf

Hyslop (1903). Reply to Mr. Podmore's Criticism: http://books.google.com/books?id=1krOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=editions:LCCN09022954&lr=&output=html

from Hyslop, an important critical review of Podmore's "Newer Spiritualism": http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849143;view=1up;seq=11

Hyslop (1910). President G. Stanley Hall's and Dr. Amy E. Tanner's Studies in Spiritism: http://books.google.com/books?id=RHgXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&lr=&output=html

Hyslop (1912). Review of "Evidence for the Supernatural" by Ivor Lloyd Tuckett.: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849143;view=1up;seq=581

Hyslop (1919). Review of "Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge" by Charles Mercier, "Reflections on "Raymond"" by Walter Cook, and "The Question: "If a Man Die, Shall he Live Again?"" by Edward Clodd: http://books.google.com/books?lr=&output=html&id=knkYAQAAIAAJ&jtp=318

Hyslop (1920). Review of "The Quest for Dean Bridgman Connor" by Anthony Philpot: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849465;view=2up;seq=64;skin=mobile

Hyslop (1921). Review of "Psychic Tendencies of Today" by Anthony Martin: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849457;view=2up;seq=490;skin=mobile

Dale (1954). Review of "Sixty Years of Psychical Research: Houdini and I among the Spiritualists" by Joseph Rinn (discusses the unreliability of Rinn): https://ia701200.us.archive.org/13/items/NotesonSpiritualismandPsychicalResearch/LA%20Dale%20Reviews%20Rinn%20JASPR%20XLV%201951%28April%29015.pdf

[James Oeming]

To Prescott's minions:

Here's another Windbridge Institute donation link.

I'm pitching in.

http://www.afterlifescience.com/

[Ben Steigmann]

A person who wants to counter wikipedia on Piper should focus on how secondary sources omit and distort primary sources. E.g. - Charles Mericier is a source critics like to cite a lot. Alan Gauld, in The Founders of Psychical Research, p. 255, demonstrates this in the context of an overview of the conditions of the sittings with her, "Mrs. Piper stayed twice in Liverpool with Lodge, twice in Cambridge with Myers and the Sidgwicks, and twice in London in lodgings chosen by the committee. Careful precautions were taken to prevent her from obtaining information about her hosts and possible sitters. Almost all her sitters were introduced anonymously. Lodge's house contained (by chance) completely new servents, who could have known little about his concerns. He locked up the family Bible and photograph albums." - in a footnote, he states, "None the less, C. A. Mercier, Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge, London, 1917, p. 116, triumphantly demands to know if Lodge had not a family photograph album and a family Bible from which Mrs. Piper might have obtained her information." - Gauld continues the main passage: "Mrs. Piper allowed him to examine her mail and to search her baggage, though the payment which she received - 30 shillings a day -would hardly have enabled her to employ agents. Myers obtained for Mrs. Piper and her children a servant who could have known nothing of himself and his Cambridge friends; he chose sitters, he tells us 'in great measure by chance', sometimes introducing hem only after the trance had begun. Of some sittings stenographic records were kept, of the majority full contemporary notes were were taken; those made of the most successful sittings, the twenty-one held under Lodge's auspices, being in fact the fullest."

There are so many examples - basically, people should assume the original source literature is being misrepresented (sometimes grossly), unless s/he can verify the facts for him/her-self, by consulting the original source literature.

check hathitrust for the early issues of the pspr and jspr and paspr and jaspr for primary source literature: pspr: https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/pspr_map, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009676161 (this is missing volume II, which is given in the earlier link)

jspr: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010083755 (missing volume 1)

paspr: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529240

jaspr: http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008918883

[Ben Steigmann]

Here are two other important sources for the would be rebuttal writer:

Alan Gauld's aforementioned 1968 book "The Founders of Psychical Research". (Routledge & K. Paul, 1968).

Arthur Berger. Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology: A Biographical History, 1850-1987. (McFarland, 1988).

Trevor Hamilton. Immortal Longings: F.W.H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life after Death (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2009).

With that, and the above, the would-be rebuttal writer should have necessary items for serious work. I will add a couple of items to the work of that writer once the work is done for the purpose of completeness.

[Michael Prescott]

That's an impressive list of resources, Ben.

The trouble with writing such a rebuttal (other than the considerable time and effort it would involve) is that Wikipedia pages change so fast, the whole thing might be obsolete by the time it was done.

Also, it's not clear how people would even find the rebuttal. I'm sure Wiki wouldn't link to it.

The casual reader will probably be satisfied with Wiki's summary, and the serious investigator probably wouldn't go to Wiki in the first place.

[Ben Steigmann]

The answer to your question is - people interested in occult/spiritual information, but lacking knowledge of good cases, will be able to have access to good information.

[Roger Knights]

On C2C radio Sunday Night

tonight's show
1am - 5am ET
10pm - 2am PT
NDE Research
Sun 11-02
Near-death experience researcher for over 30 years, PMH Atwater's contributions to the NDE field are considered some of the best. Her findings have been verified in clinical studies, among them the prospective study conducted in Holland and published in Lancet medical journal. She'll discuss various stories from individuals who have reported to have had contact with God during their NDEs. Hosted by George Noory.

[william]

The problem with bubbles: awareness

The problem with bubbles as consciousness: particles to explain ènèrgy.

[James Oeming]

Earlier in this thread I had mentioned an iPhone video game called "Biocentric". Excerpt:

"Julia Mossbridge has a Facebook link to an iPhone video game that presents as an ordinary video game, but is influenced by the player's mind-matter effect on an underlying random number generator. At the end of a session, the degree of psychokinetic effect on the RNG is shown on the screen."

Update 11/4/14: Dr. Mossbridge has just posted that her results when playing the game "seem too good to be true" and thinks there is a bug in the statistical analysis program.

Now you know :)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/biocentric-game/id896593868

[Ben Steigmann]

Dear Michael Prescott - please keep this thread open. I intend to post more on the subject in the future. When the full spectrum of sources is used, allegedly discredited researchers and psychics can be vindicated. See for instance, the following related to Gustav Geley: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gustav_Geley&diff=636069361&oldid=636068918 (leading to this exchange: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Gustav_Geley&diff=636128155&oldid=636125535)

Geley was particularly notable for his experiments with Stefan Ossowiecki, and people are encouraged to check the original source literature on that (partially clarified above), if nothing else.