Let’s get physical… or did we?

Black boxLast night, I either witnessed a remarkable display of physical mediumship by David Thompson, a Brit who now resides in Australia and who claims to produce full-form materialisations (the black box replaces his image, at his request), or a blatant deception that is succeeding in fooling many otherwise sensible people. So which was it?

The only way to make up one’s mind in such a situation – in which the 40-plus people attending this séance at Jenny’s Sanctuary in Oxfordshire were literally in the dark – is to examine both scenarios and ask which, logically, makes the most sense. That’s what I’m about to do, in the hope that the views of visitors to this Blog may also contribute some useful insights.

Many of us arrived at 6pm in order to meet the strict 6:30pm deadline, expecting a prompt 7pm start. But Thompson, a stocky, personable and confident 45-year-old, whose Cockney origins are now vocally mixed with an Australian twang, took a very long time to explain proceedings to newcomers, as well as the reasons for the state of high security (more about that later).

He also regaled us with some of the outstanding evidence that has been produced through his mediumship at the Circle of the Silver Cord before dealing with some of the questions and criticisms that have been raised about his mediumship.

It must have been around 7:30pm before his lecture ended and his partner Christine Morgan, also a medium and the circle leader for the evening, began her extended explanation of why things would be done in a certain way. At long last, it was time for the séance to begin.

Jenny's Sanctuary

I’m going to write two reports: the first from the viewpoint of someone who believes he has been privileged to witness the exceedingly rare phenomenon of materialisation; the second from a sceptical perspective. You can be the judge of which one comes closest to capturing the truth.

What a believer saw
The séance began with Thompson selecting two “checkers” to help make sure his cardigan was securely fastened with plastic cable ties and that the straps that secured his arms and legs to the armchair were tight and also secured by cable ties. That done, Christine Morgan produced a flimsy scarf that was used as a gag – the middle placed between Thompson’s teeth and the ends knotted at the back of his neck.

The chair was inside a curtained cabinet with a long piece of board on the floor in front, covering the carpet. The front curtain was pulled and lightbulbs removed from their sockets, then black tape placed around the door to ensure not a glimmer of light could penetrate the darkness. Those precautions in place, a Circle of the Silver Cord member, guided by Christine, started playing recorded music and everyone sang along for about 10 minutes while we waited for the first manifestations.

When the physical phenomena started, it was immediately impressive. We heard distinct footsteps and then a very loud voice addressed us from the centre of the room. It was William Charles Cadwell, Thompson’s main spirit control, speaking very distinctly.

Not only did the materialised spirit walk around the room, speaking to various individuals, but he also placed his hand firmly on some individual’s heads, having first sought their permission to do so. They felt “a large hand” and Cadwell said they should check out the medium’s hands at the end of the séance and they would see that they were small for a man.

I was one of those he approached, observing that I was of “an inquisitive nature”. I can confirm that his hand, which was placed on my head very precisely in the pitch-black room, felt large and solid. He then said that he would demonstrate he was fully materialised by touching my feet, at which point I felt the spirit’s feet placed firmly on mine.

“What does that tell you?” he asked. “That you have one hand and two feet,” I replied, to the amusement of some of those present. He then made it clear that he had materialised more than one hand, placing one each side of my face. They felt warm and human.

William Charles Cadwell spent a considerable time answering sitters’ questions of a spiritual nature in language that was flowery and rather old-fashioned.

The next spirit to materialise was Timmy, a mischievous boy who put on a very impressive aerobatic display with a trumpet (a long conical megaphone, used in séances to amplify spirit voices) whose luminous marking created a “light show” as it flew around the room, coming astonishingly close to our faces and even nudging us.

The Circle of the Silver Cord’s “regulars” then appeared. Quentin Crisp, the writer and homosexual rights campaigner, was as flamboyant as ever; May, a black woman from America’s deep south who called female sitters “Missie” and raised our spirits with her shrill laugh; and Louis Armstrong, the jazz trumpeter proved he is still in good voice despite having been dead for 30 years.

Dacid FontanaThe biggest surprise for me was the spirit return of Prof David Fontana (right), who spoke with Ray Lister (who has considerable experience of physical phenomena) who was sitting on my right. Suddenly, the materialised spirit said words to the effect, “Goodness, is that Roy Stemman?”. I assured him it was. “How is your book coming along?” he enquired. I told him it was finished and he informed me that he had helped me with it. I said I was not aware of his help but was grateful for it. And with that he was gone.

Two sitters received brief personal messages and then the proceedings came to an end with a loud bang, which Christine informed us was caused by the medium’s chair. A beautiful song was played while Thompson came out of trance and then, when light was gradually allowed into the room and lightbulbs put back in place, Thompson was seen to be still in the armchair, which was no longer in the cabinet but on the board outside the curtained recess. His arms and legs were still securely tied and the cable ties were also in place. But incredibly his cardigan, also still securely fastened, was now back to front!

It was a wonderful display of physical phenomena, conducted under the strictest of conditions, reuniting us with those eager to demonstrate that death is not the end, while this talented medium remained firmly tied up.

What a sceptic saw
Everything about the David Thompson séance lent itself to the interpretation that what we saw was a carefully stage-managed and orchestrated performance which, when analysed, provided no evidence that what was taking place was paranormal, let alone proof of spirit return.

The medium controlled everything. He knew who would be attending because we were required to provide our details in advance and bring with us photo ID to prove we were who we said we were.

Before being allowed into the séance room we had to remove our shoes, watches and jewellery and empty our pockets. Nothing metallic was allowed into the séance room, so belts had to be taken off too. People wearing rings that were too tight to be taken off had to cover them with black tape. It was explained that anything that might produce a source of light would be a great danger to the medium’s health as it could cause the ectoplasm to return to his body rapidly, with fatal consequences.

We were each then subjected to a pat-down search before entering the séance room, where Thompson then ran a metal detector over each of us before directing us to the seat he wanted us to occupy. Where he placed us, it was explained, depended on “balancing the energies” but it also meant, of course, that he knew where each of us was.

Because so many attended, the seats were assembled in two rows along two of the room’s walls and a single row along a third, which was where I was sitting.

The phenomena that were alleged to be occurring would also have been remarkable if there had been a red light to allow us to see at least some of the phenomena taking place. Instead, we were in total darkness the whole time. It has been reported that Thompson does produce phenomena in a red light, but his guides chose not to use it for this séance!

A red light would also have confirmed that Thompson did not have a way of getting out of the restraints, impersonating the spirits who were supposed to be walking among us, before pulling the cardigan over his head and then putting it back on, the wrong way round, and then slipping back into the straps.

He and his supporters will argue that what I am suggesting is impossible, but a competent stage illusionist can easily accomplishes such trickery, as Thompson should know since Harry Houdini is said to be one of his regular séance visitors.

Though Thompson and Morgan had spoken of full-form materialisations, we never saw any such thing.  When a voice announced the arrival of a new communicator we all had to join hands. This was to ensure we didn’t accidentally touch the materialised spirit, which could cause the ectoplasm to recoil and damage the medium. But, the spirits could apparently touch us with immunity. It was simply a way to ensure no one reached out with their hands and felt more than they should have done.

These spirits were invisible to our eyes but they felt like a normal human being, which they clearly were. When “William Charles Cadwell” proved his physical presence to me he had done so with a hand on my head and then stepping on my feet. Not only did he have the weight of a normal person but he was also, clearly, wearing trainers. I could feel the hardness of their ridged soles (Thompson was wearing trainers) on my toes. I, of course, was wearing only socks on my feet as shoes were not allowed in the séance room.

I was also surprised that David Fontana recognised me. I had met him only once and, though we had briefly corresponded, he showed no signs of recognising me when we attended subsequent meetings of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). During the séance he asked me how my book was coming along and volunteered that he had helped me with it. If he had helped me with it, as claimed, why was he unaware that it was finished? I wrote recently about sending the manuscript to my publisher.

I was astonished that Fontana, a former president of the SPR who knew the importance of providing good survival evidence, offered none, apart from giving me a word that he said could be used as a cross-correspondence in the future, presumably to confirm it is he who is communicating.

Only two of the sitters received personal messages from “materialised” spirits but they were hardly packed with evidence. After the séance, I spoke with one of them, whose name (Tony) had been called in a weak voice by a communicator. It claimed to be his partner, though it was Tony who volunteered the name George, to encourage the voice to speak. The communicator mentioned the number 28 and Tony asked if he meant the number of years they had been together, receiving an affirmative response. In fact, they had been together 21 years. George also mentioned Sandy, and this, I learned, was the name of a dog about which George always showed concern. [I discuss this message, and an interesting discovery, in my reply to Thomas in the Comments at the end of this Blog.]

The other communicator was a father looking for his daughter, who answered very cheerily and exchanged pleasantries, but nothing strikingly evidential appeared to be said.

In other words, everything we heard and witnessed could have been produced by the medium, once he had got free from the straps.

Conclusion

So, two different accounts, written from different perspectives, of the same event. Where do I stand? Apart from feeling still slightly in the dark about the methods David Thompson uses, I feel much more drawn to the sceptical viewpoint than a believer’s.

I say that despite knowing that others, whose views I respect and who have had plenty of experience of physical mediumship, are very firm believers in the authenticity of Thompson’s mediumship.

Rather than argue about its genuineness or otherwise, let me make some more general observations and pose some logical questions.

Those of us who believe that physical mediumship, such as full form materialisation and direct voice, is possible and has been demonstrated in the past, fully understand the need for precautions that protect the well-being of the medium. I have no qualms about that. But the end result is what counts, and that should be the production of evidence that goes beyond, or at least matches, what can be obtained through other forms of mediumship, such as clairvoyance and trance.

What is the point of us all being searched and passing through the levels of security one normally experiences only at airports, just to hear in a darkened room the philosophical meanderings of someone who claims to be a 19th century philosopher?

Quentin CrispWhat is the point of going to all the trouble of manifesting ectoplasm, just so that a Louis Armstrongpoor imitation of Quentin Crisp can carry on cheerful banter with sitters, and Louis Armstrong can once again rasp away in something approaching his inimitable voice?

Why, if enough ectoplasm is being produced to allow these long-dead celebrities to perform for us again, is it not being used more effectively to reunite loved ones and provide real evidence that the phenomena is real? The grieving sitters who travel long distances to attend Thompson’s séances do so not for cheap entertainment but hopefully to receive convincing proof of life after death – and that’s not what most of them are getting.

I paid good money to see and hear Quentin Crisp’s one-man show in London many years ago. Listening to his second-rate performance in the dark was not an experience I would want to repeat.

And why, oh why, does Thompson and his team not do more to remove the doubts that inevitably exist about his mediumship? If he really is entranced and sits the whole time in the armchair, why not allow two independent individuals to sit either side of him and place a hand on his arm? That way, there would be no need for cable ties and all the other paraphernalia of a good escapologist. At the very least, place luminous bands at various points on his body to indicate the presence of his entranced and lifeless body.

I know that the answer to such questions is that such measures would prevent the phenomena from occurring in some way. But, without them, such doubtful performances are likely to bring physical mediumship and Spiritualism in general into disrepute.  Which raises another question: why are the major Spiritualist organisations not either investigating Thompson’s mediumship or expressing a view on the conditions under which his seances are held?

Their silence is tantamount to endorsing them.

Clearly, I find myself more in the sceptical camp than the believers. But I would love to be proved wrong.

On a more positive note, Christine Morgan told us that the Circle of the Silver Cord is moving towards the production of phenomena in light conditions. If that is achieved, then most of the doubts expressed above would melt away. Until then, I question the wisdom of allowing these public “displays” in darkened rooms that provide very little in the way of evidence that they really are what they purport to be.

Tonight, at the same venue, David Thompson and Christine Morgan are giving a double demonstration of mental mediumship. My guess is that it will provide much more in the way of evidence than last night’s blacked-out proceedings, and for just £5, compared with £45 per person for the physical séance.

And that underlines the absurdity of public physical séances that fail to deliver the goods. If you can shed further light on what I witnessed – or rather, what I didn’t witness, let me know. One last observation: I’ve just come across an account of a séance Thompson gave in America in 2007 which shows that all the elements – total darkness, actions of the “materialisations”, were the same then as they were last night. It’s like a scripted play with the same actions but with some of the dialogue changed to suit the participants.

As well as the Comments below, visitors with a particular interest in this subject may also care to see the comments that have been made on the SpiritofPN website, following a brief account of my Blog by its editor, Sue Farrow.

Psychic links in Caylee murder case

Caylee AnthonyCasey Anthony walked free today after spending three years in an Orlando, Florida, jail having been acquitted of the murder of her two-year-old daughter Caylee Marie Anthony, as well as aggravated child abuse and aggravated manslaughter.

Although she escaped the death penalty, Casey was found guilty of four misdemeanour counts of providing false information to a law enforcement officer, for which she received a one-year jail sentence and a fine for each count. With credit for time served and good behaviour, Casey – who has been described by some as “America’s most hated woman” – was released in the early hours this morning, under very tight security.

Psychics, inevitably, claimed to know the whereabouts of Caylee soon after her disappearance was reported by her grandmother, Cindy Anthony, on 18 July, 2008 – a month after she had last been seen.

Ginette LucasIn fact, the help of a Virginia psychic, Ginette Matacia Lucas (left), who uses remote dowsing to locate missing people, was apparently enlisted by the defence team to search for the child and appears to have been accurate enough to take them to within 50 yards of where Caylee’s remains were eventually discovered,

According to Ginette, the grandmother sent her a teddy bear that belonged to Caylee, which she placed together with a pendulum beside her bed. She then dreamed about the location of the child’s body and phoned in the early hours of the morning to convey this information to those hired by the family to assist with the investigation.

Dominic CaseyGinette then says she spoke with Dominic Casey (right), the family’s private investigator, on his cell phone while he searched the area she had indicated. This search was filmed by Jim Hoover, a private investigator who had volunteered his help. Dominic Casey had called Hoover on 14 November, 2008, telling him that Caylee was dead and he knew where her remains were. He did not say how he knew.

All of which indicates that Ginette Lucas came close to leading the private detectives to Caylee’s remains. In a high profile and very complex case that will be very familiar to American readers of this Blog, the psychic’s involvement may not be as clear-cut as it seems. Speculation has even suggested that Dominic Casey was not speaking to Ginette when he was searching (see Fox video below), but possibly to the person who either murdered her or disposed of her remains.

Hoover said that Dominic Casey never said who he was speaking with on his mobile phone the 15th and 16th when they searched. He has also testified that there was a close bond between the fellow private detective and Caylee’s grandmother. There is also the question why, if the remains were where the psychic indicated, they were not found by the searching investigators, but were discovered in the area a few weeks later.

In an interview with Nancy Grace, CNN Justice presenter, Ginette has publicly testified to her role in the case. It can be heard here.  Gale St John, another psychic who worked with the Anthony family, led a team of psychics who drove ‘blindly’ around Orlando looking for the missing child and was subpoenaed to give evidence in court. She also claims to have come close to Caylee’s remains.

It’s a puzzling case, in which Caylee’s mother’s defence indicated that the child may have died in her grandparents’ pool and implicating her father (the girl’s gransdather), George Anthony, in disposing of the body. While the jury found there was not enough evidence to charge either Casey, the American public are clearly angry with the verdict.

I suspect it’s a case we’ll be hearing a lot more about in the future, though whether that sheds any more light on the involvement of psychics remains to be seen.

Psychic helps professor find father

Prof Sorpong PeouFor decades, Prof Sorpong Peou believed his father to be dead – executed by the Khmer Rouge. But a vivid dream and the insistence of a psychic have led the family to an emotional reunion in their home country, Cambodia. Peou, who is Chairman of the Politics Department at Winnipeg University, Manitoba, Canada, told his story to Winnipeg Free Press on Monday, followed by an interview on Thursday with Canada’s CTV morning news programme.

Sorpong Peou was just 17 and the eldest of seven children in 1975 when he saw his father, Nam, a government official, being thrown into a blue truck with others and driven away. At that time, the Americans had withdrawn, the Cambodian government had fallen and the Khmer Rouge had begun the systematic murder of its most educated citizens – two million in total – over a three-year period.

This was the notorious time, depicted in he movie The Killing Fields, which came to an end with the Vietnamese invasion in 1978. Nam Peou was one of the victims. He was thrown into a ditch and bodies piled on top of him, but miraculously he escaped. He was later recaptured and tortured, escaping once more into the jungle on the Thai-Cambodia border.

Nam Peou assumed the same fate had befallen his wife and children, and for the next 36 years they each assumed that the other was dead. Nam recovered from his ordeal, remarried and had six more children. Sorpong, his mother and six siblings, made it to a refugee camp in Thailand and travelled to Canada in 1982, settling in Ottawa and becoming Canadian citizens.

Sorpong Peou’s academic achievements began at Toronto’s York University with a PhD thesis on international security (now his speciality) and UN peacekeeping, with a focus on Cambodia. He later taught in Singapore and Tokyo before returning to Canada and Winnipeg University.

The story of the reunion begins with a dream that Sorpong had in January 2010, while in Tokyo, in which he walked and chatted with his father. In that dream, his father told him he was still alive. It made a great impression, but he felt it was simply an indication of how much he missed his father.

But then his brother visited an Ottawa psychic to get advice on a business matter. During the course of that consultation, the psychic asked, “Where is your father? Do you see your father?” The brother, who was just five years old when his father was taken away, explained that he had been killed. “No, no, no,” the psychic responded. “Something’s telling me now that your father is still alive.”

Sorpong describes himself as a spiritual man, but he had no belief in psychics. A sister was equally sceptical and decided to consult the psychic without revealing the family connection. She was also told her father was alive. So Sorpong’s mother also consulted the psychic and heard the same story.

The family decided to pay for another brother to travel to Cambodia in search of Nam. The first visit failed to yield a result, but the psychic said he should return. When he did so, with hundreds of posters of Nam Peou as he looked 40 years ago, he began scouring countless Thai border villages and former refugee sites. At one he was directed to an elderly man who, when he looked at a poster, remarked to the younger Peou that he had looked like the man in the picture when he was younger. But his family had died in the killing fields.

The man, aged 85, refused to believe that the Canadian he was talking to could be one of his sons. There was reason for doubt on the son’s part as well. This elderly man had a mole on his face and perfect fingernails. His father, however, had no facial mole and a life-long split nail on one thumb.

Slowly, however, recognition was established. The mole on Nam’s face had developed since the family’s separation, during a near-fatal illness.  And, yes, he had a split nail on one of his thumbs, but the Khmer Rouge had tortured him by pulling all of his fingernails out, one by one. When they grew back, the thumbnail was no longer split.

Years of deprivation and torture had shattered the man’s memory but gradually he was able to recall events relating to his former family and “mutual doubt turned to mutual disbelief”. In long telephone conversations with his first wife and other family members in Canada he was able to relate things that only Nam Peou could know about them.

Sorpong’s mother has now moved back from Ottawa to Cambodia to be with her husband and his new family, along with one of Soprong’s brothers who owns a thriving seafood business in Phnom Penh and cares for them all.

Last month, Professor Sorpong Peou also went to Phnom Penh and once more embraced his father – “a truly gentle man who would not kill a fly, a devout Buddhist” – after a 36-year separation: a reunion that almost certainly would not have happened without a dream and the determined advice of a Canadian psychic.

The full story can be found here, and this is the link to CTV’s website which has a video of their interview with the professor.

Sea serpents and synchronicity

Sea serpentUPDATED WITH VIDEO (21 July) If a poll were conducted into the public’s beliefs in a range of phenomena or fables, including ghosts and sea monsters, my guess is that apparitions would get a far higher rating than the Loch Ness Monster or other maritime mysteries.

In a satisfying piece of synchronicity, it was encouraging to learn that last night, while I was dealing with the fall-out from Prof Brian Cox’s insistence that ghosts do not exist and people who believe in them are mistaken, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) was holding a meeting at which the existence of sea monsters was not only discussed but actually supported by at least one of the speakers.

Before the sceptics take to their keyboards and bombard me with comments about the difference between ghosts and sea monsters (apart from the fact that, as sceptics, they probably don’t entertain the possibility of either), I want to point out that in the quotes that follow, the statements made could equally apply to attitudes towards ghostly sightings.

Science writer and University of Portsmouth palaeontologist Dr Darren Naish, one of the speakers at “Cryptozoology: science or pseudoscience?”, a public event held at London Zoo on 12 July, 2011, said prior to the meeting:

“The huge number of ‘sea monster’ sightings now on record can’t all be explained away as mistakes, sightings of known animals or hoaxes. At least some of the better ones, some of them made by trained naturalists and such, probably are descriptions of encounters with real, unknown animals. And because new, large marine animals continue to be discovered – various new whale and shark species have been named in recent years – the idea that such a species might await discovery is, at the very least, plausible.”

The talks were chaired by Henry Gee, a senior editor at Nature, and the event was organised by another of the speakers, Charles Paxton from University of St Andrews, who provided this interesting observation: “The plural of ‘anecdote’ can be ‘data’. Cryptozoological reports can be analysed in a rigorous, statistical manner if the conclusions are restrained.”

Darren NaishCautiously, Naish (left) explains on Tetrapod Zoology that one of the subjects to be addressed at the meeting is “whether cryptozoology – whatever the term might mean – should be considered a valid branch of zoological science” though he adds that it should not be taken as evidence that the subject “has finally ‘come in from the cold’ nor that the doors are wide open for the acceptance by ‘mainstream science’ of cryptozoologists and cryptozoological investigations. Nevertheless, this is an important step and it demonstrates that the investigation of mystery animal reports remains a topic of interest to trained scientists, or some trained scientists, at least.”

He also makes a comment that certainly applies to those, like Brian Cox, who dismiss the existence of other phenomena, such as ghost sightings:

“What I object to in particular is the knee-jerk reaction that any interest in cryptozoology makes you a crank or a naïve believer in the impossible. Not only are some targets of cryptozoology entirely ‘believable’ (example: new marine sharks and cetaceans*), the assumption that people interested in cryptozoology necessarily ‘believe’ in the existence of the supposed targets of cryptozoology is erroneous. Clearly, you can investigate mystery animal reports because you’re interested in what they might tell you about the evolution and transmission of folklore, the reliability and abilities of eyewitnesses, and so on. Furthermore, I always thought that the scientific evaluation of claims of any kind was meant to be a good thing (see comments in Woodley et al. (2008)). Basically, there’s definitely science to do here, whether you advocate the possible existence of the respective supposed animal species or not.”

Anyone who dismisses the possibility that sea monsters exist needs to provide an explanation for a sighting reported by two experienced British naturalists, Michael J. Nicholl and E.G.B. Meade-Waldo, Fellows of the Zoological Society of London and best known for their ornithological work, at the beginning of the 20th century. Matthew A. Bille tells the story of their encounter at Strangemag.com: The men reported seeing “a creature of most extraordinary form and proportions” during a research cruise aboard the yacht Valhalla, 15 miles east of the mouth of Brazil’s Parahiba River.

Cadborosaurus coverThey first spotted a large dorsal fin which they did not recognise as belonging to any known fish. Meade-Waldo turned his binoculars on the object and immediately a long neck, about the thickness of a slim man’s body, rose from the water to a height of seven or eight feet.

The sighting, which lasted several minutes and took place in perfect conditions, was reported in the ZSL’s Proceedings (1906) and in the book Three Voyages of a Naturalist. Writer Rupert T. Gould also gave it extensive coverage in his book The Case for the Sea-Serpent (1930).

The illustration I have used at the top of this Blog, incidentally, is not an eye-witness drawing but an imaginative depiction by James Huckaby. However, it does show a resemblance to another sighting of a sea serpent that has been reported in the waters of British Columbia, Canada. Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge and head of its Polar Ocean Physics Group – as well as being a member of the Society for Psychical Research – tipped me off about this particular monster. He tells me:

“A physical oceanographic colleague in Canada, Paul LeBlond, wrote an excellent book [see cover, above left] on the sea serpent which frequents BC waters: the ‘Cadborosaurus’ (because it was seen in Cadboro Bay). There is even (almost) physical evidence in that a young serpent was sicked up by a whale that was killed at the local whaling station in 1937. Unfortunately, although it was photographed, the body was not kept.”

If sea serpents do exist, they are not, of course, paranormal. But then it could be that some phenomena described as “paranormal” are also normal, natural events that we incorrectly label as paranormal because we do not yet recognise them for what they are.

Cadborosaurus?UPDATE: Eight days after I posted the above, Paul LeBlond appeared in a special “Alaskan Monster Hunt” edition of Discovery Channel‘s “Deadliest Catch” series. After watching a video of an unidentified creature (see below) made by fisherman Kelly Nash the stars of the show, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, go in search of the monster and, it seems, after picking up a large underwater object on their radar, come very close to catching it.



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Leading role for reborn movie extra

George RaftBefore revealing why a picture of American actor George Raft (right) adorns this blog, I must explain the lack of recent contributions. There is a very good reason for this. I’ve been working flat out on a new book and have just delivered all 90,000 words to an American publisher. The subject? Reincarnation. I’ll reveal more later in the year, when I have a clearer idea about when it will be published.

It was great bringing myself up-to-date with the latest news and case studies relating to an aspect of the paranormal that has always fascinated me. What reincarnation studies have in common with mediumship and near-death-experience research is that they are looking for evidence that consciousness, in some form, continues after the death of our bodies.

In my new book, I pay tribute to the enormous contribution of the late Ian Stevenson at the Department of Perceptual Studies, which he established at the University of Virginia in 1967. Many of the cases I quote come from his scientific papers and the books he wrote about his investigations in many countries.

Jim TuckerThe person who is now continuing that work at the University of Virginia is Jim Tucker (left), associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences and author of Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives. And he has just revealed, in a recent teleseminar from the Institiute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), details of a fascinating new American case which illustrates the complexities involved in “cases of the reincarnation type”.

Interviewed by IONS’ senior scientist Dean Radin (below right), Tucker told of a child who spoke of a life in Hollywood, of dancing on stage, becoming an actor, then an agent, having a big swimming pool, and travelling around the world on a big boat. It sounded like a fantasy, until his mother showed the boy some old Hollywood movie books to see if they stirred more memories.

Dean RadinLooking at the images, he came across one from an old George Raft movie. “Oh, that’s the movie I made with George,” he told his mother. Then, pointing to a man in the picture, added: “That was me, mom. That’s who I was.”

The person he identified was not another big movie star but an extra. It was, Tucker told Radin, quite a task to identify the man, who turned out to have been a dancer who became an actor, then an agent. He had a big house with a swimming pool and travelled around the world on the Queen Elizabeth. “We’ve got pictures of him on that boat,” Tucker added.

Not all the information was correct, and the teleseminar includes a discussion about the possible reasons for this, and the accuracy we should expect from such memories, as well as about birthmarks related to reincarnation memories. A transcript is available here. I’ll report more on this case when a detailed report is published.

Tucker reveals that although he trained at the University of Virginia and was aware of Stevenson’s work, he wasn’t fascinated by it. After training he went into private practice. However, when he remarried, his new wife was very intrigued “by reincarnation, psychics and things that I had never really given much thought to”. Because of her interest he began reading up on the subject, and found in one of Ian Stevenson’s books a reference to a new grant his Department had recevied to study the effects of near-death experiences on the lives of those who had them.

Tucker, “looking for a hobby”, called up Stevenson and assisted him for a couple of years, interviewing patients. Then Stevenson asked if he would accompany a colleague to Asia to study reincarnation cases. After that, Tucker joined the department on a half-time basis before becoming a full member in 2000.

He continues to be impressed by the cases he encounters – not only their evidential nature but also the emotional component. “It is clear,” he tells Radin, “that for many of these kids this is not a game of make-believe but very important and meaningful for them. They talk about the people they miss. Some children cry daily to be taken to someone they say is their real family.”

Readers in UK and Europe wishing to purchase a copy of Jim Tucker’s book should click on the lefthand book cover, those in the United States or elsewhere in the world should click on the righthand cover.