The Scottish Society for Psychical Research

Investigating the Paranormal in Scotland

Scottish Charity No SCO20421 Established 1987

We are pleased to announce that our third paper has been published in the January edition of the JSPR.

The authors have, over the past five years, set out to statistically test the sceptical hypothesis that “All mediums’ statements are so general that they could apply to anyone”

In paper 1, a series of experiments was carried out using 440 participants and 10 mediums. The reduced data showed that the odds against chance that the sceptical hypothesis was correct were millions to one. This experimentation was carried out in a face-to-face manner, which meant that the mediums could see the audiences. Quite correctly, a sceptical view would be that the mediums gathered “clues” from body language and verbal response as they gave the readings. Also, that the audience knew who the recipients were, and may not subsequently fill out the data sheets with any real interest.

Paper 2 describes a strict protocol that would eliminate body language and verbal responses from future experimentation. A randomised seat numbering system is also described which also means that the experimenter who actually numbers the seats cannot possibly know who will sit on any particular seat. Along with this, the experimenter who reduces the initial data does not know which seat numbers have been pre-selected or therefore who are the intended recipients that sat on these seats.

Papers 1 and 2 are published in the JSPR April 2001 and July 2001 and can be found on the SPR web site (www.spr.ac.uk) in the online library

Paper 3 describes the results achieved when the strict protocol is applied to a carefully designed set of experiments. The set of experiments is also designed to isolate factors, such as “Will a person accept more statements if they think or know that they are actually the recipient?” “ Will a person accept fewer statements as relevant in their life if they think or know that they are not the intended recipient?” All statements are singular and the response tick is either yes or no.

This third paper covers 13 different experimental sessions carried out throughout the U K, with participants always gathered by a third party. The average number of participants at a session was proximately 25. Usually six experiments were carried out at each session. The authors identified 15 categories of participant. Let the capital letter be the reality, and the lower case letter be the belief e.g. Recipient is R; Non recipient N. A recipient who believes that he/she is the recipient and who is actually the recipient would be designated by the symbols Rr An actual recipient who believes that they are not the recipient is Rn A recipient who does not know whether or not they are a recipient would be Rq

There is also a category P, which is used in the experimental sessions where no actual medium has been used (although the audience think that there is a medium). This allows responses to be analysed where no psychic factor from a medium is at work.

Using statistical analysis the authors were able to evaluate the responses of every category and examine the effects, if any, of psychological factors.

As this is a brief overview, I will just say that even in triple (arguably quadruple) blind conditions the intended recipients’ acceptance levels continued to be higher than non- recipients, the odds against chance being a million to one. We maintain that we have a repeatable experiment, providing the protocol is adhered to and GOOD mediums are used.

Note: Our results incorporate all of the mediums who were used; if we had only given the results from the “superstars” the odds against chance would have been even greater. No amendments were made to any data sheets after the experimental sessions ended, even if someone “remembered” something as being correct after they had given a NO response – it remained as a NO.

The idea of ghosts is prevalent across cultures and millennia. A ghost is assumed to be the disembodied soul or spirit or life force of a dead person, which can appear to the living in partial or full bodily likeness, though it is described traditionally as a pale shadowy apparition. Ghosts can also manifest as small orbs or rods or dark shapes, as well as being perceived through our other senses. Invisible hands might touch us or move objects, discarnate footsteps or voices might be heard, we might experience an unexpected chill, or we might smell an unexpected aroma that is linked to the deceased.

Many ghosts are thought to appear intentionally to interact with us. It may be that the deceased has become an earthbound spirit, perhaps someone who died unexpectedly with ‘unfinished business' or with strong feelings about those still alive (e.g. love, fear, anger or remorse), or the ghost may not realise that he or she has deceased. Some people claim to be able to see ghosts that others cannot and even converse with them, so it may be that certain psychic or mediumistic ability facilitates ghostly experiences.

Other ghosts seem to be non-reactive, apparently ignoring us - or their changed environment - for example, passing through the living to ascend stairs that are no longer there.

The word ‘ghost' implies that the spirit or soul is separable from the body and that it survives the death of the body, but some types of ghost may have non-spirit explanations:

• Noisy or mischievous ghosts (poltergeists) are increasingly associated with the unconscious mind of the living, especially adolescents
• Infra-sound and electro-magnetic fields have been shown to trigger apparitional experiences
• More fanciful explanations involve time slips, including precognitive experiences, or residual energies of past events being ‘replayed'

• ‘Doppelgangers' (doubles) or ghosts of the living have also been seen, often at a time of crisis or as a warning of death
• The Toronto 'Philip' Experiment suggests that some ghosts may be the product of group extended concentration
• Clothes, transport, surroundings and animals can all manifest, with or without a ghostly figure.

To avoid confusion, some people prefer to restrict the term ‘ghost' to humans and to use the broader term ‘apparition' to refer to other objects and animals and elemental or nature spirits that appear.

Do ghosts exist? Yes. What exactly are they? That, I'm not so sure…

The prestigious Myers Memorial Medal for outstanding contributions to psychical research was this year , on the 9th October, awarded by the SPR in London to our own founding President Archie E Roy.

The Medal commemorates the work of Frederic W.H.Myers, one of the founding fathers of the SPR, whose classic work “Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death,” first published in 1903, holds its place in the literature to this day.

This medal is not awarded on a yearly basis but only when a suitable candidate has been identified. Other recipients of this medal have been Professor Ian Stevenson, Professor Donald West, Dr John Beloff and Dr Alan Gauld.

Archie Roy has given classes on Psychical Research to extra mural students at Glasgow University for the best part of 30 years and continues to do so. During this time he has engendered an intellectual interest in all who attended these classes. More or less as a result of the interest shown, he founded the SSPR in 1987 in order that people would be able to meet and discuss these events further.

With Archie as founding President the society has flourished and attracts many knowledgeable speakers to its programme of lectures and enjoys a lively audience of 80 or more at every monthly lecture in Glasgow University.

He was President of the SPR from 1993 to 1995 and has been a Vice –President ever since. Some years ago he also helped to found PRISM (Psychical Research Involving Selected Mediums) which encourages, guides and funds research work with mediums. He has worked with Tricia Robertson on such research work, with two papers already published by the SPR and a third due for publication in January 2004. In addition to such planned research work Archie has, over the past thirty years, investigated innumerable spontaneous cases of allegedly haunted places and haunted people.

Archie is an Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University and someone who is still producing text books on this subject while continuing his research in celestial mechanics with Dr Bonnie Steves at Glasgow Caledonian University, where he is a visiting professor.

Coupled with this are his writing skills as a novelist, an author of five works of fiction. He has also published two well-received books on the paranormal, “A Sense of Something Strange” and “Archives of the Mind.” He has also finished a first draft of his third, entitled “The Eager Dead”

As someone with such a record who is still engaged in experimental and theoretical psychical research, he is truly a very worthy recipient of the Myers Memorial Medal and all of us in the SSPR applaud this well deserved honour which has been conferred on him.

Armchair psychical researchers suffer from the same problems as armchair detectives: they may read a lot and say a lot but at the end of the day who cares, for they have no personal experience of anything at all!

It has always been of prime importance to the Society that as high a percentage of its members as possible gain active experience about all things psychical. Some might wish to further their insight into dowsing by going out with others into the field (literally!) and practising and expanding their skills. Other members might wish to further their knowledge of psychic events which crop up almost at random and which the Society calls “spontaneous cases”. There never seems to be enough of these cases notified to us to satisfy the thirst for knowledge that our members have but when they are brought to our notice there are always teams ready to go out and meet with members of the public in their own homes to discuss whatever activity is claimed to have taken place.

Such teams are drawn upon in rotation from a sub-group of the Society called the “Investigators’ Group”. Quite apart from attending the excellent public lectures throughout the year, those members also meet separately both to talk amongst themselves on topics of common interest and to hear lectures and feed-back reports from others more knowledgeable than themselves. Cross-pollination of ideas is the lifeblood of the Society and when a team-leader takes his team out to some spontaneous case it is hoped that the ideas and training that the Society has given those persons stands them in good stead for the strange things that they may hear or encounter on their visit.

Nobody can fully prepare a fellow being for a dramatic brush with the paranormal but the Society does what it can both to expose willing members to meeting the paranormal and to understanding it as best any of us can when we are “on site”. To that end the Investigators’ Group also lays on, at intervals throughout the year, overnight vigils in places where recent acts of paranormality have been reported. Sometimes we catch things on camera or tape recorder and sometimes all we catch is a cold but no matter what, there is always a sense of comradeship and camaraderie and a sense of being with people who have like minds and a single goal to achieve …to further understand the psychic world by taking an active part in real research.

It is often claimed by those ignorant of the history of mediumship that mediumistic communications are all trite and banal, along the lines of "Your mother is very glad you have just redecorated her bedroom; it badly needed doing." Many thousands of messages are indeed like that but to a person who has lost by death a much-loved mother and who, for the first time, has entered a spiritualist church and had this message from a medium who could not possibly have known that the person had indeed recently redecorated the bedroom in which her mother died, such a message is far from being trite and banal.

But in addition to such meaningful messages there are others that greatly deepen the mystery of mediumship making us stand in awe before this gift , attempting to understand its relevance to the question of human personality and its survival of bodily death. A wonderful example of this, lasting a full quarter of a century, was the mediumship of Pearl Curran, through whom the entity, Patience Worth, manifested. Hardly anyone nowadays has heard of Patience Worth except those who have a reasonably wide acquaintance with psychic matters. And yet her identity was, and still remains one of the most intriguing mysteries in the history of psychical research. On another level she produced one of the greatest literary puzzles of the twentieth century, the solution of which would cast light on the age-old problem of the source of human inspiration.

She appeared in the following manner.

In l913, in St Louis, Missouri, some ladies amused themselves by taking part in sessions with a ouija board. One of them was Mrs John H Curran. At first, as often is the case, nothing much was spelled out by the board and no doubt the ladies were getting a bit bored but on July 8th, the board, seemingly more energetic than usual, spelled out the following message:

"Many moons ago I lived. Again I come - Patience Worth my name. Wait, I would speak with thee. If thou shalt live, then so shall I . I make my bread at thy hearth. Good friends, let us be merrie. The time for work is past. Let the tabby drowse and blink her wisdom to the firedog."

From then on the messages from Patience came fast and furious. It became clear that the medium in the group of ladies was Pearl Curran and she graduated to the production of automatic writing so that Patience ' spoke' through Mrs Curran's hand. Among Patience's output, over three million words, were novels, plays, poems, prayers, proverbs and her conversations with those who came to talk with her. Many of the novels and poems were published. The poems were superb ,not only for their beauty but also for their thought-provoking quality. The novels, historical in character, showed a deep knowledge of the periods they were placed in, a knowledge such that months, perhaps years of sustained research should have been required before the 'author' could write them. And yet Mrs Curran, whose education had been little more than average, had not done any of the necessary research. All who studied her, including Dr Walter Franklin Prince, had to conclude that Mrs Curran was simply incapable of this literary output on a conscious level. But even if it was from her subconscious, where did she get all the historical data?

Patience's poems of love and friendship reveal her rich character; they display her warm, loving, mature spirit. There is a sublime quality about her poetry, its simple yet strange language, its evident sincerity and concern for humanity.

Who was Patience Worth? Why was Mrs Curran the choice of host? In his book, The Case of Patience Worth, Dr Prince describes his years of study of this strange case and ends by saying: "Either our concept of what we call the subconscious must be radically altered, so as to include potencies of which we hitherto have had no knowledge, or else some cause operating through but not originating in the subconscious of Mrs Curran must be acknowledged."

Is there room for a ‘sceptic’ in a group that investigates the paranormal? Depending on what you believe, you might say ‘absolutely not’ or ‘only sceptics should investigate the paranormal.’

The Paranormal can be a divisive subject. At opposing ends of a spectrum of belief are two extremes: the believers & the disbelievers. Both hold firm to their opposing positions. One side knows that the paranormal is real – maybe they’ve experienced it once, or lots of times. Or they live it every day. They’re convinced.
The other side knows that the paranormal is hokum. They know the laws of physics are inflexible and our perception & memory are flawed. They’re convinced.
What both sides do have in common is their attitude to each other; why the other side can’t see the obvious – and realise that they’re wrong?
It’s almost as if believers & disbelievers live in different worlds.

I would describe myself as a sceptic. It’s certainly a word used to describe me by my fellow investigators. But I don’t think that the ‘disbelievers’ would describe me as a sceptic. This is because I believe the paranormal can happen. Most spokespersons of the sceptical viewpoint, don’t believe that the paranormal exists. Whether this position grew out of being unimpressed with the evidence, or disbelievers have never properly studied the evidence – most modern sceptics take the standpoint that since the paranormal doesn’t exist, the evidence must always be flawed or insignificant.

It is true that there are many problems with studying the paranormal. Historically, people claiming to have psychic abilities have often been exposed as frauds. When psychical research moved into the laboratory, experimental procedures were often lax & inadequate. In spontaneous cases (such as hauntings or poltergeist cases), despite the sometimes impressive number of witness accounts, actual hard evidence has been hard to obtain. To put it bluntly, there has often been a problem with the paranormal – and there still is.

So why do I believe that the paranormal can & does happen? In a nutshell, there is a small kernel of experimental evidence that is empirically sound. The modern sceptics choose to ignore it because they cannot explain it – and they claim that it is not significant enough. So how does the ‘believer’ respond? The real challenge for the believer is not to prove that the paranormal exists, but to understand more about how it works. All advances in science come through understanding an underlying process and making predictions (and working technology) based on such an understanding. However, how Psi works is still a mystery. There are currently speculative murmurings about information theory, holographic universes and non-locality. But this is still all just speculation. We still do not know how anything paranormal ‘works’.

But what about life outside the lab? This is what I think is the real challenge to the disbeliever – to the modern sceptic: spontaneous paranormal phenomena.
Experiencing paranormal phenomena is a universal human experience. It may vary throughout history & be tailored to differing cultural expectations, but there is an underlying constant of human experience that deserves to be taken seriously – and seriously studied. Whilst psychosocial theories may explain much; they do not explain everything. And there is a big difference between explaining – and explaining away.
Ignoring the paranormal won’t make it go away. People will continue to experience the paranormal. There are still problems with the paranormal, but real science never shies away from a challenge.

If you are a sceptic – an old fashioned sceptic with an open mind – then there is room for you in the SSPR.

Historical psychical research covers many topics but it is a fact that the careful and prolonged studies by psychical researchers, sometimes over decades, of mediums such as Mrs Piper, Mrs Leonard, Mrs Willett, Mrs Garrett and Miss Cummins have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt to anyone of open mind that these psychics again and again could acquire knowledge in a paranormal manner. The majority of the psychical researchers who participated in such studies or who came later into psychical research and studied carefully the detailed, thoughtful, numerous and varied case reports in the literature, concluded that unless one accepted a variation of super-telepathy and clairvoyance, the possibility that some human beings survive death, retaining their essential personalities, memory, characteristics, skills, and concern for those they have left behind, had to be taken very seriously indeed.

There can really be no doubt that there has been collected, over more than a century, a wealth of hard evidence demanding attention by any person, be s/he philosopher, physiologist, psychologist, physicist or indeed anyone seriously interested in human personality, showing that the nineteenth century model of the human being as a biological machine with the mind simply the brain in action is embarrassingly and grossly inadequate. That model cannot encompass and explain the evidence gathered by psychical researchers and supporting the view that the mind is not simply the brain in action, that some form of dualism or interaction of mind and brain is necessary, that part of the human personality can under certain conditions transcend space and time and that the question whether a human being in some way survives the death of the body is one eminently worthy of the attention of any modern, educated person. It is not a question of faith; it follows from a careful consideration of the abundant evidence for the existence of paranormal events.

There is obviously a place for the open-minded and well -informed sceptic. In all sciences she is a necessary and helpful presence, refereeing and commenting on papers, suggesting ways in which the authors' experimental methods could be tightened up to remove dubiety, suggesting more helpful modes of presentation, and so on. She plays a positive and co-operative part and we neglect what she says at our peril since invariably s/he has intelligence and a satisfactory track record in the subject.

Consider the case of Eusapia Paladino, the physical medium. After the four years of careful experiments and studies at the Sorbonne by scientists including the Curies, Professor Henri Bergson, the professor of psychology Jules Courtier, Professor Charles Richet, Jacques-Arsene d'Arsonval, director of the Laboratory of Biological Physics, and many others, most of them professed that after the strict conditions and controls they had had, they could no longer doubt that a wide variety of genuine physical paranormal phenomena had been witnessed and recorded on many occasions in the presence of Eusapia.

We turn now to a different kind of experiment; one which was hoped would provide evidence supporting more clearly one of the hypotheses put forward to account for the phenomena. It was called the proxy sitting. The sitter is in the medium's presence in place of or on behalf of another person about whom the sitter knows nothing. If paranormally-acquired data is subsequently discovered to be veridical, the medium, in the super-ESP theory, cannot have got it by telepathy from the sitter's mind. The proxy sitter knows nothing of relevance about the relations or lives of the two people involved - the deceased and the distant, unknown living person. If telepathy or clairvoyance is involved rather than survival, it is argued that the proxy sitting circumstances must surely make the super-ESP theory run very hard to keep up in plausibility with the relatively simpler survival theory. It may be thought that the very nature of a proxy sitting would make it impossible to set up. Nevertheless, the fact that the absent sitter is unknown to the proxy sitter does not seem to be an insuperable problem. The absent sitter, often a person in great grief because of the loss of a loved one, may directly get in touch with a well-known psychical researcher and ask him or her to try to obtain information from a medium trusted by the researcher as honest and gifted. Two people managed over the years of Mrs Leonard's mediumship to actualise a large number of proxy sittings. One was Nea Walker, secretary to Sir Oliver Lodge. A well-educated woman of great intelligence, the daughter of Professor Hugh Walker of Lampeter, she wrote two books about her experiences. Her sister Damaris had psychic ability and through her, Mrs Leonard and other mediums, a group of communicators claiming to be dead friends of the Walker sisters manifested. Ostensibly they helped in proxy sittings, finding and aiding the person on the other side desired by the absent sitter. The other major investigator was the Rev. Charles Drayton Thomas, a careful researcher who published a number of important papers in the PSPR 41,139-185 on the proxy sittings in which he participated.

Proxy sittings certainly give food for thought and although much historical work has been done on them, they may prove to be a way forward in future research.

Definition of paranormal: beyond the scope of normal objective investigation or explanation (The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, 1996). Another definition is: events that cannot be explained by natural law or knowledge, often alleged to have been acquired by other than the usual sensory abilities (adapted from the Britannica Encyclopedia, 2003). Alternatively, phenomena existing outside the limits of the consensual trance through which humans perceive the world (E. W. Kellogg III, Ph.D., from The Association for the Study of Dreams website). It’s an odd word in etymology, half Greek (para = beyond) and half Latin (normal = conforming to a standard; regular, usual typical); an adjective (circa 1920) on its way to becoming a noun, replacing 'paranormality'. As a word it is already crossing boundaries, confusing attempts to nail it down. Paranormal is preferred over supernatural, which has mystical connotations, though ‘anomalous’ is also gaining favour amongst parapsychologists Paranormal Study: the discipline concerned with investigating such phenomena is called parapsychology. Some people use the term ‘psychical research’. What are the differences?

Parapsychology: Very formal academic study; Lab-based; Quantitative research

Psychical Research: Less formal investigation; Field-based; More qualitative research

Scientific study of the paranormal is of relatively recent origin, but belief in the reality of such phenomena has been widespread throughout history, across all cultures, and at all educational and socio-economic levels. Before she rise of modern science, the causation of all complex physical phenomena was very poorly understood, and was attributed to non-material agencies (ghosts, sorcerers demons, mythological beings) rather than a causal, scientific explanation. The existence of paranormal phenomena continues to be a subject of fierce dispute, despite the existence of societies, such as the Society for Psychical Research, for over a century, made up of eminent scientists and laymen. Paranormal phenomena can be grouped loosely into two categories:

1. cognitive, and in the area of clairvoyance, telepathy, or precognition, where one person is believed to have acquired knowledge of arts, of other people’s thoughts, or of future events, without the use of the ordinary scenery channels - hence the term ‘extrasensory perception.’
2. physical in character: the fall of dice or the dealing of cards is thought to be influenced by a person’s “willing” them to fall in a certain way; or objects ace moved, often in a violent fashion, allegedly by poltergeists. The term psychokinesis is often used in this connection. The paranormal can also appear as religious phenomena, e.g. hearing voices or seeing visions, which have no natural origin, or being in some peculiar mystical state. To define is to limit, and no single definition will cover every aspect of the paranormal, so to compensate, I have provided a mind map of the boundaries of my view of the paranormal. The paranormal phenomena that get most attention from the SSPR are those that seem to relate most directly to the human condition. The phenomenon that most interests me is physical mediumship, now sadly elusive.

To mention the acronym ‘UFO’ these days - conjures up not just ‘flying saucers’ or ‘little green men’ but also government conspiracies, cover-ups and official denial. The modern UFO phenomenon is now not just about alien life or alternate realities, but the presumption that we are not being told the full facts.
Some people somewhere know more than we do.

Why the change of focus from ‘what UFOs might be’ to ‘what our governments might know?’

The remarkable ubiquity of internet access and the ease & affordability of disseminating information has led to an explosion of ‘conspiracy theorizing’. What in the past might have been published as a cheap pamphlet sold in an alternative bookstore, is now uploaded to the internet. The internet has enabled such ‘alternative histories’ to gather a global audience instantly.
This is coupled with a general suspicion of our governments & official institutions. Scandals such as Thalidomide, Watergate, The Ford Pinto Lawsuit & ‘The Iraq War’ have all contributed to our questioning of official events – and the feeling that we’re being kept in the dark (whilst a closeted minority benefits).

Depending on your point of view – the ‘conspiracy theory’ is either a dismissive term for the actual truth or the unfounded imaginings of the paranoid. It also greatly depends on what conspiracy theory you are considering. For example, in regard to the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963, 75% of Americans believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. In other words: a conspiracy. The official historical account that Oswald acted alone is therefore largely dismissed as inadequate.

It’s one thing to disbelieve in the official version of the truth and another thing to believe in an alternative. Much like JFK conspiracy theories, UFO conspiracy theories have multiplied in number & complexity to become a mind-boggling banquet. To continue with the culinary metaphor, what you choose to believe seems to be a matter of personal taste. Every version of the truth seems to have a witness or multiple witnesses. It depends whether you want to believe that ‘the US Government has underground bases stuffed with captured alien technology’; or you’d prefer to believe that ‘aliens abduct humans for experimentation with the tacit approval of the US Government’. Even the most convinced UFO conspiracy theorist can find a theory a little too hard to swallow. And for many conspiracy theorists, this fact alone points to government intervention – so called disinformation campaigns run by shadowy intelligence agencies – designed to ‘spoil the well’.

If all this is making you queasy, I don’t blame you. The mind-boggling banquet of UFO conspiracy theories is enough to put any serious enquirer off. This is why I’m not going to talk about any alleged government cover up. Instead, I’ll give you an example of an academic cover up.

There have always been accounts of strange thing seen in the sky – but it took Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting of ‘Flying Saucers’ to ignite public interest in the subject - in America & the rest of the World. It was in response to this public interest, that the United States Air Force embarked upon their two-decade investigation into UFOs. In 1947 Project Sign began to study the phenomenon, to be replaced by the aptly named Project Grudge, before finally being replaced by Project Blue Book in 1952.

Project Blue Book collected reports of Unidentified Flying Objects – and its effectiveness and impartiality were debated from its inception. Its effectiveness because there was rarely - if any – investigation. And impartiality because of the explanations offered. The scientific advisor to Project Blue Book was the Professor of Astronomy at Northwestern University, J. Allen Hynek. It was his job to provide alternative explanations for UFOs – in effect to turn unidentified into identified. For example: explaining a sighting of a light in a sky as a mistaken sighting of Venus. However, it was a remark from Prof. Hynek in 1966 that multiple UFO sightings in Michigan were probably ‘swamp gas’ that the American public and national press reacted with outrage & derision. The official explanation simply wasn’t good enough. Due to the public furore, the U.S Congress demanded an impartial scientific committee should review the evidence gathered so far by Project Blue Book.

The official name of the report was ‘Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects’, but it is now known as ‘The Condon Report’ after the director, the eminent Physicist Edward Condon.
The Report took two years to complete, and Condon’s conclusion was ‘Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years’.
And that ‘further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby’.

The March 1968 issue of Nature was pleased with the conclusion, and quipped ‘the research was like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but not that the nuts will take any notice’.

However, the Condon Committee was exposed as biased from the start. Robert Low, a University of Colorado research fellow who wanted the University to take on the research contract, wrote a memo to the sceptical head of Department in August 1966:

“Our study would be conducted almost entirely by non-believers who, though they couldn't possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of thick evidence that there is no reality to the observations.
The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of non-believers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer”.

This leaked memo exposed the University of Colorado to the accusation of an establishment whitewash. Even the Project Blue Book scientific advisor, the man who talked of ‘swamp gas’, J Allen Hynek became disillusioned with the unscientific nature of the report. He pointed out that despite Condon’s denial of a mystery: that 25% of the cases sited in the report did not fit a natural explanation.

Condon didn’t see a mystery because he didn’t want to see one. Professor Hynek, for years Project Blue Book’s official debunker – was to become Ufology’s new champion. It was J. Allen Hynek that categorized UFO sightings into the now famous three classes. He can be seen in the final scene of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’; the Director’s tribute to Hynek.

In his 1972 book, ‘The UFO Experience’ Prof. Hynek sites a rather remarkable scenario: In the Summer of 1968, in Victoria, British Columbia, a reception is being held for a distinguished crowd; hundreds of Astronomers. Undoubtedly the chatter would be a mix of pleasantries, scientific debate & professional gossip. No doubt talking about the Space Race, or Saturn’s Rings, or how nice the vodka martinis were. Then word spread that someone had spotted a UFO – a UFO right outside the building. What an opportunity! Imagine a UFO witnessed by 200 professional Astronomers… except not one of them ventured out to investigate. They stood. They giggled. They looked at their shoes. Not one of them was willing to venture forth first and risk professional ridicule. So nobody moved. And Ufology lost its potentially most evidential mass sighting of a UFO.

This story illustrates perhaps the greatest cover up & denial: our own unwillingness to acknowledge or share our experience for fear of ridicule. There is no need for institutional censorship when witnesses keep their mouths shut in the first place. The situation will not change until there is a cultural shift in the popular media. If people are taken seriously who report such things, then more people will come forward.

Until then, anonymous reporting or discreet interviews with professionals can make a difference. Astronomers & pilots – the very people debunkers say never report UFO sightings – when given the opportunity, will tell their story.
The ‘National Aviation Reporting Centre on Anomalous Phenomena’ has gathered 3,500 reports from military & commercial pilots.
J Allen Hynek himself conducted a poll of his Astronomer colleagues: 11% had seen something they could not explain, but had not reported it for fear of ridicule or for fear of damaging their careers. The real myth is that pilots & astronomers never see UFOs – what is true, is that they very rarely admit to it in public.

I will end with a personal account of speaking with two military pilots. I met them socially and chose my moment (after a few drinks) to ask my question, “Have you ever seen anything in the sky you couldn’t explain?” Despite the groans and guffaws of the rest of the gathering, the pilots courteously responded: one of them had once, the other had twice.

Had I struck it lucky and managed to speak to two rare witnesses? Or are UFO sightings in the military not so rare at all?
It all rather depends on what you believe.

“Don’t confuse me with facts. My mind is made up.” - Sam Goldwyn.

Any one of open mind who has made himself or herself thoroughly familiar with the investigations carried out by psychical researchers during the past hundred years and more has to accept that there is a wealth of evidence (of court of law strength) that paranormal phenomena of various kinds have occurred and still occur. They demand study and a satisfactory theory or theories to account for them.

The ultra-sceptic, however, usually without more than a tiny fraction, if that, of the impressive research track records of a multitude of capable psychical researchers, arrogantly gives the impression, preferably before the media, that s/he knows what phenomena are possible in nature and what are not and that reports of any ostensible paranormal phenomena seemingly contradictory to established scientific laws must therefore be attributed to fraud, gullibility, wishful thinking and an inability to ascertain the truth even after many years of study by psychical researchers. The further fantasy of some sceptics - one totally against the time-tested scientific method of first ascertaining the facts before attempting to produce a theory to account for them - that uncomfortable facts can be ignored until a theory is found for them, may also be dismissed. To be blindingly obvious, in scientific research, new facts requiring an explanation present themselves before any possible explanation.

But all this is nothing new in psychical research in particular or science in general. The French Academy of Sciences scathingly dismissed the fact that rocks could fall from the skies (meteors) because there was no theory how large rocks could be lifted up into the skies. Early experimental data on radioactivity were likewise scorned. The list is endless.

In the light of evidence for the paranormal collected and studied by psychical researchers over the past century, perhaps we may be forgiven for suggesting that the fundamental sceptic’s opinion is long past its sell-by date and is on a par with that of the believer in a Flat Earth or Hollow Earth theory in a world of artificial satellites whizzing round our planet.

But to anyone of open mind, perhaps new to the subject of psychical research and understandably wanting reliable information, there is a formidable and doubtless confusing jungle of books, good, bad and indifferent, devoted to the paranormal, together with countless articles and papers, long, short, non-technical and in a fraction of cases even oblivious to reasoned argument or heavy with jargon and seasoned with definitive statistical pronouncements, that have appeared in a variety of magazines and journals. They have been doing so for well over a century.

Many years ago my colleague Montague Keen and I put together a list of over twenty cases which we used to challenge any fundamentalist sceptic who denied that any cases existed supporting the opinion that paranormal phenomena occurred. Among the list were:

1. The Watseka Wonder, 1887. Stevens, E.W. 1887 The Watseka Wonder, Chicago; Religio-philosophical Publishing House, and Hodgson R., Religio-Philosophical Journal Dec. 20th, 1890, investigated by Dr. Hodgson.
2. Uttara Huddar and Sharada. Stevenson I. and Pasricha S, 1980. A preliminary report on an unusual case of the reincarnation type with Xenoglossy. JASPR 74, 331-348; and Akolkar V.V. Search for Sharada: Report of a case and its investigation. JASPR 86,209-247.
3. Sumitra and Shiva Tripathi. Stevenson I. and Pasricha S, and McLean-Rice, N 1989. A Case of the Possession Type in India with evidence of Paranormal Knowledge. Journal of Scientific Exploration 3, 81-101.
4. Jasbir Lal Jat. Stevenson, I, 1974. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (2nd edition) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
5. The Thompson/Gifford case. Hyslop, J.H. 1909. A Case of Veridical Hallucinations, PASPR 3, 1-469.
6. Past-life regression. Tarazi, L. 1990. An Unusual Case of Hypnotic Regression with some Unexplained Contents. JASPR, 84, 309-344.
7. Cross-correspondence communications. Jean (Countess of Balfour) 1958-60 The Palm Sunday Case: New Light On an Old Love Story. PSPR, 52, 79-267.
8. "Bim's" book-test. Lady Glenconnor. 1921. The Earthen Vessel, London, John Lane.
9. The Harry Stockbridge communicator. Gauld, A. 1966-72. A Series of Drop-in Communicators. PSPR 55, 273-340.
10. The Bobby Newlove case. Thomas, C. D. 1935. A proxy case extending over Eleven Sittings with Mrs. Osborne Leonard. PSPR 43, 439-519.
11. The Runki missing leg case. Haraldsson E. and Stevenson, I, 1975. A Communicator of the Drop-in Type in Iceland: the case of Runolfur Runolfsson. JASPR 69. 33-59.
12. The Beidermann drop-in case. Gauld, A. 1966-72. A Series of Drop- in Communicators. PSPR 55, 273-340.
13. The death of Gudmundur Magnusson. Haraldsson E. and Stevenson, I, 1975. A Communicator of the Drop-in Type in Iceland: the case of Gudni Magnusson, JASPR 69, 245-261.
14. Identification of deceased officer. Lodge, O. 1916. Raymond, or Life and Death. London. Methuen & Co. Ltd.
15. Mediumistic evidence of the Vandy death. Gay, K. 1957. The Case of Edgar Vandy, JSPR 39, 1-64; Mackenzie, A. 1971. An Edgar Vandy Proxy Sitting. JSPR 46, 166-173; Keen, M. 2002. The case of Edgar Vandy: Defending the Evidence, JSPR 64.3 247-259; Letters, 2003, JSPR 67.3. 221-224.
16. Mrs Leonora Piper and the George "Pelham" communicator. Hodgson, R. 1897-8. A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance. PSPR, 13, 284-582.
17. Messages from "Mrs. Willett" to her sons. Cummins, G. 1965. Swan on a Black Sea. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
18. Ghostly aeroplane phenomena. Fuller, J.G. 1981 The Airmen Who Would Not Die, Souvenir Press, London.
19. Intelligent responses via two mediums: the Lethe case. Piddington, J.G. 1910. Three incidents from the Sittings. PSPR 24, 86-143; Lodge, O. 1911. Evidence of Classical Scholarship and of Cross-Correspondence in some New Automatic Writing. PSPR 25, 129-142.

All the above cases, except 15, 18 and 19, are given in detail in my book The Archives of the Mind. Many are also given in Professor Stephen Braude’s book Immortal Remains.

For my first challenge to the sceptic, I will choose the Lethe Case (No 19 in the list above) which, apart from its intrinsic support for the reality of paranormal phenomena, is also a first step for the interested reader in coming to some appreciation of why the Cross-Correspondences are taken seriously by so many psychical researchers. The Cross-Correspondences was the name given to the enormous production of automatic scripts written by a group of psychics during the first thirty years of the 20th century and studied by eminent psychical researchers such as Gerald Balfour, Sir Oliver Lodge and J.G.Piddington. Ultimately they came to believe that these scripts were being produced by the surviving personalities of their friends Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney and Henry Sidgwick in an effort to prove conclusively that they had survived the transition we call death. The study of the scripts is notoriously difficult and anyone interested in them would do well to read the section on them in Alan Gauld's book Mediumship and Survival, followed by G.N.M.Tyrrell's account of them in his book The Personality of Man. H.F.Saltmarsh's book Evidence of Personal Survival from Cross-Correspondences and W.H.Salter's privately printed book An Introduction to the Study of Scripts, are also worth seeking out. It is unfortunate that all four of them are out of print, any remaining copies of them outside the public libraries probably only to be found in second-hand bookshops buried under mountains of the ghosted (the correct publishing term!) literary works of footballers, supermodels, pop stars and other modern day icons describing their significant, self-sacrificing and seminal contributions to the understanding and improvement of the human situation. Nevertheless they are worth searching for. But let us have a look at the Lethe case found in the Proceedings of the SPR, volumes 24 and 25.

The Lethe Case

Although not strictly part of the Cross-Correspondences, it is worth relating here for several reasons, and not merely because it is one of the classics of psychical research. Not only was it one of the reasons why Mrs Willett was recognised by the investigators as an outstanding medium, but it also exemplified the sort of case that persuaded the generally sceptical investigators to acknowledge the very tenuous basis on which any explanation other than one presuming on the active participation of a discarnate intelligence could be advanced. This particular case centred on the existence of the discarnate Frederic Myers, whose messages were being communicated, so it was claimed, in succession through two mediums thousands of miles apart. The case also represents aspects of Myers' learning and character without plunging the reader into the labyrinthine maze of so many of the cross-correspondence puzzles.

In March, 1908, George Dorr, a Vice-President of the SPR, was conducting a long series of sittings with the American medium, Mrs Piper. At that time, an entity claiming to be Frederic Myers was also communicating. Dorr decided to invite the Myers entity to say through voice or pen what the word 'Lethe' suggested to him. Mrs Piper was ignorant of the classics, but responded by producing in trance a string of references, almost all of them drawn from Ovid's Metamorphoses. When the results, which greatly impressed Dorr, were brought to the attention of Sir Oliver Lodge in London, he decided to pose the same question to Mrs Willett through whom the same personality claimed to be speaking. Lodge took the precaution of putting the question in a sealed envelope, to be opened only when the medium was satisfied that the question could be put to Myers(w) ['Myers' communicating through Mrs Willett]. The medium received the sealed envelope on September 30, 1909. When it was opened and the question in it put to Myers(w), the response contained another stream of accurate names and places, but this time all drawn from references appearing in Virgil's Aeneid. Lodge had not expected the responses to be identical, if only because it was generally accepted that the medium's mind often had a contaminating or distorting effect on the thoughts or words transmitted. He was surprised, however, at the large number of accurate references, nearly all of them drawn from a different classical source, although there was sufficient overlap with the earlier Piper communication to strengthen his belief that the same intelligence must have been responsible.

The Willett script showed clearly that her communicator was well aware of what had been transmitted by 'Myers' via Piper [Myers(p)] in the USA. Not only did he get the bemused Mrs Willett to scribble the name "Dorr" several times, but he inserted a quotation which, he said, was "nothing of the normal intelligence of my machine", i.e. Mrs Willett. The quotation referred to a "door to which I found no key, and Haggi Babba" [Ali Baba]. To ram home the allusion, there followed a reference to Open Sesame. As for references to Lethe, the name of the river which flows past the fields of Elysium and in which the newly dead, if destined to return to earth, must first wash away their earthly sins and memories by drinking its purifying waters, Myers(w) quoted directly from the Sixth Book of the Aeneid: "The will again to live. The will again to live the River of Forgetfulness". This quotation is also to be found in Myers' own essay on Virgil (Classical Essays, p.174), and was incorporated in his poem, The Passing of Youth. This could hardly be coincidental, because the first response which Myers(p) had earlier given through Piper to the same question by Dorr was "Do you refer to one of my poems?"

To ensure that the earthly investigators could not ascribe this to Mrs Willett's subliminal recollection of a Myers poem she might once have read, the Willett script was scattered with accurate references to the Lethe theme. In Valle Reducta (a sheltered vale) is the opening phrase of Virgil's description of the Lethe in the Aeneid, and there follow references by Myers(w) to bees and lilies, mainly in the form of Latin quotations. Less direct, but more characteristic of Myers, are his references to the Doves and the Golden Bough amid the Shadows, relating to the branch which Aeneas had to obtain before he could enter the infernal regions in order to arrive at the river Lethe.

Subsequent scripts show the Myers(w) source overflowing with allusions inspired with the Lethe theme. Among these was mention of "Darien, a peak in Darien", a clear reference to Keat's sonnet describing stout Cortez's vision of the Pacific Ocean from a peak in Darien. This phrase had been occasionally employed by the S.P.R. founders to signify cases where dying persons seemed to catch glimpses of another world. In the deluge of information showered on the bewildered Mrs Willett by the author of her automatic scripts, no effort is spared to link the Lethe theme with Myers' own works and beliefs. Thus, whereas the Lethe passage in Virgil may be taken to indicate that souls prepare themselves for re-birth once all earthly memory had been washed away, Myers(w) qualifies the phrase "will again to live" by writing "Not reincarnation: Once only does the soul descend the way that leads to incarnation".

Because Mrs Willett's own library contained a popular book on Stories from Virgil, although it contained no mention of the Lethe, on February 2nd, 1910, Lodge devised a further test for Mrs Willett's next spell of automatic writing. He wished to be certain that she could not have known or recalled some of these references for herself. There followed literary parallels linking the story of Ulysses (Odysseus) and his visit to the underworld with that of Aeneus. In the course of this the script refers to a line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale wherein appear the words "Lethe-wards had sunk".

This extended summary, taken from Monty Keen’s account of the case, may perhaps explain the vigour with which one distinguished scholar, Professor C. J. Ducasse, in his essay "What would Constitute Conclusive Evidence of Survival?" and looking only at the Piper evidence, poses the question:

'Is it the least plausible that Mrs Piper - a woman of limited education - not only herself had or had got by ESP the knowledge of the recondite details of Ovid's writings required for the allusions made by the purported Myers - some of which knowledge Dorr did not himself have; but in addition herself had and exercised the capacity which Myers had (but which even Mrs Verrall who was a lecturer in classics at Newnham College, said she herself did not have) so to combine these allusions as to make them say together tacitly about Lethe something which Myers knew, but which was other than any of the other things which, singly, those allusions referred to; and which it took Piddington [an intelligent and long-term student of the scripts] much study and thought to identify?'

If anyone actually takes the trouble to go to the relevant PSPR volumes and reads therein the developments of the Lethe case, additional important matters are brought to their attention. Firstly it is apparent that Sir Oliver Lodge and Mrs Verrall were continually and honestly striving at every stage to find normal explanations for the scripts and statements produced by Mrs Willett even to the extent of testing quite ridiculous and highly improbable ‘normal’ scenarios, and not finding any to fit. Secondly it is apparent that the communicator, whoever or whatever he is, is often indulging in a two-way ‘dialogue’ with Sir Oliver Lodge and displaying the intelligence, the classical knowledge and the characteristic idiosyncracies of the Myers Lodge and Verrall had known when he was alive. And thirdly and sadly, the Lodge and Verrall very long papers on the Lethe Case are good examples of the extremely valuable researches to be found in contemporary publications of the SPR, researches that are now totally unknown to the vast majority of modern psychical researchers and parapsychologists.

My late colleague Montague Keen rightly, I believe, looked upon the Lethe Case as a case of such evidential power of the paranormal in operation, let alone the fact that it makes it necessary to take very seriously indeed the possibility that human personality in some way survives bodily death, that it posed a severe challenge to the fundamental sceptic who denies that any paranormal phenomenon has ever been proven to occur. Monty used to challenge such sceptics to provide a convincing normal explanation for the case. No one ever took his challenge up. The case has been totally ignored by sceptics in much the same way that the devil is said to avoid holy water. It is for these reasons I have drawn attention to the fact that psychical research, because of the ignorance of most people of the strength of the evidence for the paranormal collected over the past century by psychical researchers, can truly be called the Cinderella science.

In 1917 Mrs Eleanor Sidgwick admitted that the Cross-Correspondences, which were still continuing and would do so for another 13 years, had convinced her that survival of death took place. In her cool, succinct and intelligent way she wrote of the relationship between a pair of automatists.

"We have to seek the designer. It cannot be the supraliminal (i.e. conscious) intelligence of either automatist, since ex hypothesi, neither of them is aware of the design until it is completed. Nor, for a similar reason, can it be attributed to some other living person, since, so far as can be ascertained, no other living person had any knowledge of what was going on. It is extremely difficult to suppose that the design is an elaborate plot of the subliminal (i.e. subconscious) intelligence of either or both automatists acting independently and without any knowledge on the part of the supraliminal consciousness; and the only remaining hypothesis seems to be that the designer is an external influence, not in the body". She concluded: "I must admit that the general effect of the evidence on my own mind is that there is cooperation with us by friends and former fellow-workers no longer in the body ".

The key word is 'Selection'. Who did the selection of the material given in the communications? Mrs Sidgwick's words are reminiscent of a Myers(w) statement in 1910. On June 5th, Myers(w) emphasises the importance of the evidence for Selection in Mrs Willett's script in words almost teasingly addressed to the investigator J. G. Piddington, words that may fitly conclude this account.

'Write the word Selection.
Who selects, my friend Piddington?
I address this question to Piddington.
Who selects?'

So the challenge, dear sceptic, is this. How do you account for this case in any convincing non-paranormal way?