PAST LECTURES (2010-present)
Please note that all lectures were held in the Boyd Orr Building at Glasgow University and started at 7.30pm, unless otherwise stated.
Click here for 2000-2004 lectures
Click here for 2005-2009 lectures
Thursday 2 February 2012
Healing Our People & Earth; HOPE for 2012 and beyond.
Dr Jude Currivan
The last lecture given by Jude to the SSPR was entitled "Walking between Two Worlds." This was extremely well received and by popular request she returns to us for the third time. As a cosmologist, healer and mystic Dr Jude Currivan has journeyed to nearly 70 countries around the world and throughout her life has had numerous psychic occurrences and guidance. This evening she shares some of her amazing experiences that have informed her understanding of the energetic connections between people and places. She will reveal how from individuals to nations, past traumas are still embodied in our fear-based behaviors. And crucially how we now have the opportunity to heal and release them and undertake a global Shift of consciousness that is prophesied for 2012 and beyond. Jude Currivan PhD is a healer, cosmologist and internationally acclaimed author of The 8th Chakra, The 13th Step and CosMos, co-authored with Ervin Laszlo PhD. Her books are now available in 12 languages and over 25 countries. She has experienced multidimensional realities and guidance from early childhood, has a Masters Degree in quantum physics and cosmology and a PhD in archaeology researching ancient cosmologies. After many years as a high-powered international business-woman, her worldwide work now combines leading edge science, frontier research into consciousness and ancient and emerging spiritual wisdom to raise consciousness and empower others. She was presented with the 2010 CIRCLE award for Business and Science by Won Buddhism International and sponsored by the United Nations; cited for her ‘outstanding contribution towards planetary healing and expanding new forms of consciousness.’
Thursday the 5th of January
SSPR Annual General Meeting
The Society held its AGM on this evening. There was a Presidential Address and other reports from Office Bearers. Members of the Public were welcome to attend, but please note - were not allowed to vote! At the close of the AGM, the Case Coordinator Innes Smith, gave a summary of the Cases of the Society from January 2011 to 2012.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 1st Dec 2011
The Contagious Power of Thinking
Dr David Hamilton
David Hamilton returns to the SSPR for the forth time, this time speaking about his latest book, 'The Contagious Power of Thinking'. After completing his PhD, David worked for 4 years in the pharmaceutical industry developing drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer. During this time he also served as an athletics coach and manager of one of the UK’s largest athletics clubs, leading them to three successive UK finals. Upon leaving the pharmaceutical industry, David co-founded the international relief charity Spirit Aid Foundation and served as a director for 2 years. Now a bestselling author of 5 books published by Hay House, he offers talks and workshops that fuse science, the mind, and spiritual wisdom. David writes a regular blog for the Huffington Post.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 3rd Nov 2011
Do Miracles Happen?
Trish Robertson
Trish Robertson is a Past President of the SSPR, lectures as part of Glasgow University's DACE programme (teaching psychical research) and has long been involved in testing the abilities of mediums and psychics (often with Prof Archie Roy and PRISM). Her latest research, ongoing since 2007, has been researching claims of paranormal healing. This talk will include some of the cases involved in this study, along with interesting and sometimes 'mind boggling' work that has been documented by other researchers.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Event at Woodside Halls
Thursday the 27th of October 2011
Past Life Regression – Fact or Fantasy?
Jennifer Treanor
The SSPR’s Case Coordinator is putting himself under the hypnotic spell of Jennifer Treanor from Soul Essence Scotland, to see if there really is such a thing as past life… And if there is, Innes hopes his past life owes him some money.
Jennifer Treanor began her professional life firmly within Western Medicine as a Nurse. However, a spiritual experience awakened her to other paths to healing and she now counsels people using hypnosis and regression therapy. Her presentation will cover her practice, with a contribution from the SSPR’s Innes Smith – who will talk about his own experience of regression therapy. This will be an interesting & entertaining presentation on a controversial subject!
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 6th October 2011
Active Aura Photography - talk and demonstration
Joan Frances Boyle
Joan Frances has been mediumistic all her life. In 1987 she decided to work in the public eye, this involved Spiritualist Healing and Spirit Communication. Since then she has continued on a path of Professional Development. Amongst Joan Frances’s achievements are; qualifying as an approved Usui and Karuna Reiki Master Teacher, Clinical Hypnotherapist, (incorporating all 60 aspects of Hypnosis). Although Joan Frances has many strings to her bow she is widely known for her expertise in Aura and Chakra Interpretations. She wanted to make this colourful and fascinating world more available to others and so created a 3 stage teaching system called Reading Auras Intuitively, Chakra Discovery, and Healing Intuitively known as Hi Therapy thus helping others reach their potential. The Aura Video Station is an integral part of Joan Frances’s world and she conducts both private and public demonstrations at home and abroad.
Thursday 1st Sept 2011
What Really Happens in Modern Witchcraft and does it Work?
Dr Melvyn Willin
Melvyn Willin was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire and educated at Francis Bacon Grammar School. He took degrees at several British universities including doctorates in paramusicology at Sheffield (Bob Morris was his external supervisor) and history at Bristol. He has devoted a large amount of his life to the study and lecturing of psychical research. He is the Honorary Archive Officer to the Society for Psychical Research and was for many years the Events Officer and Editor of the Ghost Club Magazine. He frequently speaks at conferences and publishes articles in academic journals. Some years ago he became interested in witchcraft and wicca and having been accepted into a practicing coven he was duly initiated as a first, second and finally third degree witch in the Alexandrian/ Gardnerian tradition. For the last few years he has become involved in numerous projects that culminated in the publication of several books (including Music, Witchcraft and the Paranormal). He also produced a triple CD collection of auditory anomalies in conjunction with the Frieburg Institute in Germany. He is currently studying NDEs from the perspective of music as part of a Perrott-Warrick scholarship.
Audio File Available
Extracurricular Event
Thursday 2nd June 2011
An Evening of Mediumship
Lecture Theatre 2, Boyd Orr Building, Glasgow Uni,
7.30 pm start
Special Fundraising Event. Tickets �10
Mediums are: Stephen Burns, Maureen Donnelly & Jacqui McLeish
There has been a strong relationship between psychical research and spiritualist mediums since the origins of both modern movements in the Victorian era. So called 'mental mediumship' [i.e. allegedly receiving information through paranormal means, without going into trance, or producing physical seance type phenomena] is now commonly seen on television, and is either derided as exploitative entertainment, or lauded as providing comfort to the bereaved and proof of an afterlife! So whether your interest is to scrutinise the mediums or hope for a message, the SSPR invites you to support our public demonstration of mediumship. We have three mediums with good reputations, so whether it's your first time, or your hundredth, our evening promises to be a thought provoking event!
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 5th May 2011
The South Shields Poltergeist
Hamilton Lecture
Darren Ritson and Mike Hallowell
Meticulously documented. The South Shields Poltergeist is a truly terrifying account which details the speakers' struggle with an invisible, malicious entity that threatened and intimidated anyone who stood up to it. Their encounter may well go down in the annals of psychical research as one of the most chilling true-life encounters of its kind. A man had his torso slashed severely. Knives, coins and other objects were thrown around, Telephone calls and txt messages were received from numbers that were supposed to be disconnected. Children's toys actually spoke to the investigators. Mike is a paranormal investigator with forty years of research in the field, (commonly called 'The Wizard of the Weird' by his friends). Darren is an author and Civil Servant who lives in North Tyneside. He has had an interest in the paranormal for most of his life due to some strange experiences he had as a child. He founded the North East Ghost Research Team in May 2003 and to date has penned fifteen books - ten of which have now been released - on ghosts and the paranormal. He has been a member of the SPR since May 2007 and hopes to maybe make a small difference in the field of psychical research.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 7th April 2011
Psychic Detection - Solving Crimes With Psi
Roy Stemman
Roy has a lifetime of experience investigating many aspects of the paranormal. He is the director of Karma Publishing, which among other things hosts the online magazine 'The Paranormal Review.' Law enforcement agencies are understandably wary about making use of psychics or mediums to solve crimes: to do so undermines their own credibility. Yet there are many cases on record in which assistance by individuals with paranormal powers has made a significant contribution to apprehending offenders. Author Roy Stemman, who has been investigating and writing about the paranormal for more than 40 years, discusses the role of psychic detection in crime busting, highlighting some of the successes and failures. In particular, he focuses on the work of American intuitive Sonja Grace whose psychic guidance has led to finding – alive – five youngsters who had gone missing from home, as well as directing searchers to the body of a teenage boy, a month after his disappearance.
Thursday 3rd March 2011
The Shaman Within - reviving rites and rituals for the 21st Century and beyond
Barbara Meiklejohn
Recognised as the UK’s hardest working Shamanic Seer and High-Priestess, Barbara has been working with Spirit since the age of 12. Having been brought up in the Celtic, Pagan, Wiccan and Druidic traditions, Barbara combines this work extensively with the Native American traditions as well as that of many other indigenous cultures bringing together ancestral wisdoms which she has coined as ‘Shamanic Seership’. She worked at the Arthur Findlay College for 5 years and at the College of Parapsychology in Edinburgh for 3 years and now at The College of Psychic Studies, South Kensington with others in the offing. Barbara has overcome many challenges in her life, not least of which her dyslexia to put her 40 years of oral learning and experience to paper with her first book The Heart of All Knowing, published in 2007 by O Books. This talk draws on all her 40 years experience, covering such ‘hot topics’ as seership, past lives, original wounding, vision questing, healing rites to name a few, not just to explain what they mean to us as souls in human bodies but why they are so important now and the role that they play in healing our emotional, physical and spiritual selves, bringing about wellbeing at a time of increasing dis-ease and dis-connection among all human beings regardless of their metaphysical persuasions.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 3rd February 2011
Knock knock! Who's there? - an evaluation of unexplained rapping sounds.
Dr Barrie Colvin
Barrie G. Colvin B.Sc., Ph.D. Barrie has been actively involved with investigative and experimental psychical research for 45 years. Core interests and experiences relate to hauntings, the physical phenomena of Spiritualism and various field investigations. Specific projects have included direct-voice mediumship of Leslie Flint, materialization s�(c)ances of Gordon Higginson, the missing person case of Alison Chadwick, infra-red occultation experiments with Matthew Manning, the Andover poltergeist case and many others. Recent activity has involved the acoustic analysis of unexplained rapping sounds. These sounds have included both poltergeist-related raps and experimental rapping sounds within a sitter-group environment. Barrie Colvin is a Council member of the SPR and regards himself as an open-minded sceptic.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 6th January 2011
The SSPR Annual General Meeting
Chaired by the President
The business of the society was discussed, complete with the following presentations: Secretary’s Report; Treasurer’s Report & President’s Address. The AGM concluded with the Case Co-ordinator reviewing the spontaneous paranormal cases of the previous year. Visitors are welcome – but please note – are unable to vote.
Thursday 2nd Dec 2010
‘What does the Team Think?’ – Cancelled due to Weather Conditions
Archie Lawrie, Nita Saunders & Brian Allan
Due to adverse weather conditions, none of the speakers were available to attend. Instead, a video presentation was held – with a general discussion afterwards. It is hoped to reschedule this event.
Thursday 4th Nov 2010
FWH Myers in Life & Death
Dr Trevor Hamilton
FWH Myers was one of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882. A Greek Scholar & Poet, his work with the Society culminated in the classic 'Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death' published after his death. In this work he mused on subjects such as automatic writing, sleep, trance states, genius & hypnosis: subjects still crucial to our understanding of personality; and aspects of ourselves that Myers knew raised the most essential & challenging questions of his - and our - time. Trevor Hamilton is a historian with degrees from Oxford, London and Sussex Universities. He retired from his post in higher education at the end of 2006 to write full-time on the history of psychical research. He published in 2009 the first full-length biography of FWH Myers and is now working on a book examining the cross-correspondences, which many researchers have seen as the most convincing evidence of post mortem survival yet produced.
Thursday 28th Oct 2010
Evening of Mediumship
Held at Grosvenor Hotel, Great Western Road, Glasgow
A Public Demonstration of Mediumship with Geoff Hayward, Keith Behan & Helen Cuthill
The ever-popular public demonstration of mediumship was held outwith our usual Glasgow University setting – and was a well-attended fund raising event for the SSPR. Most arrived believing in mediumship, a few arrived vehemently disbelieving in mediumship: did anyone change their point of view?
Thursday 7th Oct 2010
The Ghost in the Machine
Dr Caroline Watt
This lecture examines the very interesting results of an internet survey of ghostly experiences. A founder member of the Koestler Parapsychology Unit, Dr Caroline Watt has taught and researched parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh for almost 25 years. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed academic papers, served as president of the Parapsychological Association, and has presented her research at conferences both within the UK and abroad. She has often presented her work to the wider public through the broadcast and print media. Dr Watt has recently co-authored the 5th edition of An Introduction to Parapsychology. This is the text most frequently adopted by those presenting academic courses on parapsychology and anomalistic psychology.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 2nd Sept 2010
From Orbs to Light Beings From Beyond
John Pickering and Katie Hall
Beyond Photography by Katie Hall & John Pickering was the first book in the world to photographically document one couples personal encounters with orbs and other paranormal light phenomenon. Although neither Katie nor John were aware of it at the time, they had photographed some of the most astounding images ever taken of this phenomenon, many of which they will be sharing with us. John has this to say about their forth-coming presentation: "We had no preconceptions about this phenomenon, but since the publication of our book, a whole new world of "orbology" has mushroomed into being. Orbs have caught the imagination of people all over the world and thousands are now photographing these strange circles of light. Whatever we may think about them, orbs are an undeniable phenomenon! Essentially all experience of Reality is subjectively perceived and interpreted and this is particularly so in the case of paranormal phenomena. But if orbs really are paranormal, how is it possible to photograph them? What is the truth about orbs and other extraordinary light phenomenon now being photographed by all kinds of people with all kinds of cameras? Today there are all sorts of beliefs about orbs and in our presentation we shall be examining key questions concerning orbs, looking deeper into the nature of the phenomenon and giving a personal perspective as to what orbs, as part of an interconnected range of phenomena, mean to us as individuals."
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 6th May 2010
Instrumental transcommunication: a new channel between realities?
Prof. David Fontana
PROFESSOR DAVID Fontana is a Ph.D. in psychology, and is currently Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Cardiff University in South Wales, Great Britain, and Professor of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, also in Great Britain. Professor Fontana has studied the results of EVP research for a number of years, but it was not until he began work with Dr. Cardoso nearly three years ago that he became finally convinced of the paranormality of the phenomena. He has been present in Dr. Cardoso's studios both in Vigo and in Lyon when results have been obtained under carefully controlled conditions, and at Dr. Cardoso's invitation he now serves on the Editorial Board of the ITC Journal. He was Dr. Cardoso's co-organiser for the 2004 ITC Conference.
Prof David Fontana is also an Hon. President of the SSPR, and it's fitting that we have such a distinguished speaker present our 'Hamilton Lecture' {the SSPR's annual Keynote Lecture outwith the usual academic year - and always featuring a World Class Lecturer on an essential Paranormal Subject}.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 1st April 2010
End of Life Experiences: A Journey to Elsewhere?
Dr. Peter Fenwick
Dr Peter Fenwick is Consultant Neuropsychiatrist emeritus to the Epilepsy Unit at the Maudsley Hospital, which he ran for 20 years. His current appointments include Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry Kings College London, Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford and Honorary Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist at Broadmoor Hospital. He holds a visiting professorship in Japan, where he spends three months of the year in advanced neuropsychiatric research.
Dr Fenwick has had a longstanding interest in brain function, the relationship of the mind and the brain, and the problem of consciousness. He has an extensive research record and has published over 200 papers in medical and scientific journals on brain function and also several papers on meditation and altered states of consciousness.
He is widely regarded as the main clinical authority in the UK on the subject of 'Near Death Experiences' and is highly regarded by both medical colleagues and the media for his knowledge of this subject.
Dr Fenwick is no stranger to the SSPR and he has previously spoken to us about his specialist subject: Near Death Experiences. His lecture on the 1st of April will no doubt be another fascinating insight into this controversial subject.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 4th March 2010
Walking Between Two Worlds
Dr Jude Currivan
The last lecture given by Jude to the SSPR was entitled "You are the Cosmos." This was extremely well received and by popular request she returns to us. Dr Jude Currivan had her first experience of non-physical realms and discarnate presences when she was four years old. For over fifty years she has explored the multi-dimensional realities of the Cosmos. As a scientist as well as a mystic she seeks validation and evidence for the guidance and information she has received. And as a healer she seeks to help and empower others through the wisdom gained in her own journey of self and cosmic discovery. Tonight Dr Jude will share some of her extraordinary experiences and amazing discoveries. Biography: Dr Jude Currivan PhD is a healer, cosmologist and internationally acclaimed author of The 8th Chakra, The 13th Step and CosMos, co-authored with Ervin Laszlo PhD. Her books are now available in 12 languages and over 25 countries. She has experienced multidimensional realities and guidance from early childhood, has a Masters Degree in quantum physics and cosmology and a PhD in archaeology researching ancient cosmologies. After many years as a high-powered international business woman, her worldwide work now combines leading edge science, frontier research into consciousness and ancient and emerging spiritual wisdom to raise consciousness and empower others. Dr Jude has been named one of the five rising stars of the Mind Body Spirit movement by Kindred Spirit magazine and their readers have voted The 13th Step the best personal development book of 2007.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Saturday 27th February 2010
SSPR STUDY DAY
Held at Grosvenor Hotel, Great Western Road, Glasgow
A Day Programme of Speakers:
UFO’s - Nick Pope
Time Slips - Dr Ann Winsper
From Mesmerism to Hypnotism - Innes Smith
Highland Second Sight - Lorn Macintyre
A RARE OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR PARANORMAL EXPERTS SPEAK ON UFOs; PSYCHIC ABILITIES, TIME SLIPS & THE ORIGINS OF HYPNOTISM.
A unique day event guaranteed to be thought-provoking, fun & full of lively debate ~ all within the relaxing setting of the Grosvenor Hotel.
Thursday 4th Feb 2010
Psionic Medicine – The history, practice & recent research in this field
Dr M J Howitt
Dr Jill Howitt trained in medicine, graduating from Queens University Belfast. She became a member of the Institute of Psionic Medicine in 2003.
AUDIO FILE AVAILABLE
Thursday 7th Jan 2010
The SSPR Annual General Meeting
Chaired by The President