Seven Facts

Hypertable of Contents

• Apparitions
• OOBEs and NDEs
• Reincarnation
• HSP
• Psychometry
• Poltergeists
• de Broglie Phenomena

Tyrrell first shows us that apparitions are constructed by the collective unconscious of the recipients, because no physical change in the environment occurs. Yet, we cannot call them hallucinations. There is no such thing as a collective hallucination. Any experience which is shared by a number of people must be considered reality, although this is not our ordinary physical reality. The study of NDEs casts further light on this subject, and shows us that there is such a thing as apparitional reality, and it can engage the mental equivalents of all five senses. Furthermore, the "heavens and hells" experienced in NDEs are enduring realities, since comparison of NDEs show that some of them go to the same place. So, my view is that there is an apparitional reality as well as a physical reality. In some cultures, the two are combined.

We may experience apparitions and not realize it, so realistic are some apparitions. Sometimes an apparition is "found out" only when the recipient discovers that the person seen is dead. An apparition can include live people and inanimate objects, one more reason for putting it in the general category of "mental constructs of the recipient."

Apparitions vary in the "fullness" of their reality. They may be seen but not felt, or vice versa. Apparitions seldom frighten the recipient because it is usually a friend or relative that is seen, looking and acting just as if really present. Collective apparitions are seen by several people in the correct perspective for each percipient (Tyrrell, 1969, p. 76).

Unconscious levels of all the Minds present must create collective apparitions. Do they also create normal perception of reality? (Tyrrell, 1969, p. 121). This is an astounding idea, if true, the most important discovery ever made about psychology, one totally unknown to psychologists, the most "extraordinarily stupid" academics of all.

A brief mention of secondary effects: Sometimes physical effects do accompany apparitions, but this only happens when an Out-Of-Body person visits the percipient, tries to make himself visible (producing the apparition), and also tries to effect some physical change in the environs. Apparently, they are sometimes successful.

Most crisis apparitions contain veridical information. By that I mean detailed, unknown, (usually quite trivial) information conveyed by the sender to the recipient, which can be checked. The most usual information conveyed in crisis apparitions is simply the sender's own body-image (including clothing) at the moment of the crisis (usually the death of the sender), accompanied by reassurance of the recipient. The rest is unconsciously made up by the recipient.

Crisis apparitions sometimes happen up to 12 hours before or after the actual crisis event. Thus, apparition studies provide us with reproducible evidence for time-displacement (precognition, postcognition) of apparitional signals. Crisis apparitions are rare and spontaneous events, seldom time displaced by more than 12 hours. Thus, this evidence provides no support for fortune-tellers. If we assume that each apparition is triggered by a single message, then such messages are complex entities, conveying everything on the sender's Mind, or at least a complex thought or intent, including the sender's self-body-image, not single bits of information. This agrees with other kinds of Psi.

The power to create or observe apparitional reality is one of the two conscious powers of mind, which spring to life automatically when one goes Out-Of-Body, in an OOBE or NDE, or at death. HSP is the other one. In an NDE, it is by HSP that we see our own body and other physical reality, but the rest is apparitional.

OOBEs and NDEs

Perhaps the most spectacular single NDE was that of George Rodonaia. See http://www.near-death.com/rodonaia.html. Dr. George Rodonaia holds an M.D. and a Ph.D. in neuropathology and was an atheist and materialist. Pronounced dead immediately after being hit by a car in 1976, he was placed in the morgue, where he stayed for three days, while his mind was undergoing the most amazing experiences. He came back to his body only when the pathologist began to make an incision on his abdomen, starting an autopsy. At that point, his eyes fluttered open. He spent 7 months on a respirator, but he survived, and he remembered the details of his NDE. See above web site. The experience totally changed him. He got a degree in theology and became a minister.

OOBEs and NDEs belong together. People can go Out-Of-Body spontaneously, during anesthesia or during flying dreams. Some people practice "lucid dreaming" to induce an OOBE. Lucid dreaming is knowing that one is dreaming while in the dream. Once self-aware in the dream, the dream can be changed. And from that state, some people find it easy to slip into an Out-Of-Body state. The OOBer may first float up to the ceiling. He can then turn over and see his body asleep below. Physical objects are seen much as they normally appear. OOBErs have difficulty recognizing or remembering signs, such as numbers or words, just as in a dream state. This skill must reside in the brain. So words or numbers do not make a good research target for investigating OOBEs. Use a red shoe or similar small object.

In the OOB state, one can fly any place just by wishing it. Flying dreams sometimes become OOBEs.

A Near Death Experience begins much like an OOBE. Upon being pronounced dead, the subject may roam around in the "earth plane" for a time. Eventually, the Nearly Dead go through a void, tunnel, hole, vortex, climb some stairs or take a boat ride to a white light, experience a total recall of one's life, and meet dead relatives and friends. At some point the Nearly Dead are told they must go back, otherwise, they become the Completely Dead. They seldom want to go back.

An NDE may last seconds, minutes, hours, or even days, if we are to believe the account of the soldier Er in Book X of Plato's Republic. Dannion Brinckley (see bibliography) was dead for 28 minutes, had been pronounced dead, covered with a sheet, put on a gurney and wheeled out to the elevator to be taken to the morgue, before forced to return to his body, which was agony. He was paralyzed and burning as if on fire (he had been struck by lightning), but was able to blow on the sheet, and the motion of the sheet caught someone's attention. A "dead" Vietnam soldier roamed around Out-Of-Body all day, and only re-entered his body as the embalmer made his cut in the femoral artery to drain the body's blood (Moody, 1975). He still has the scar to show it, which Moody examined.

This is what we call a "veridical" detail, the kind of fact which would rule out "brain hallucinations." Sabom presents the case of a retired air force pilot who had suffered a cardiac arrest 5 years earlier. The man described the defibrillator. He said it had a meter on the face which was square and had two needles, one fixed, and one moving. The moving needle came up rather slowly. His description of a 1973 defibrillator is perfect. Later defibrillators are different, so he could not have gotten the information by going into an ER and studying one in 1978. Or consider the detailed description of the equipment and personnel in the NDE of an elderly woman blind since childhood. This case was recorded by Fred Schoonmaker, a cardiologist in Denver, Colorado, who claims to have three such cases among his former patients, including one congenitally blind person. He described these cases in detail to Kenneth Ring (Blackmore, 1993, p. 133). It is such veridical details that must be tracked down and checked. It is the veridical detail which cannot be explained away by the debunkers.

Professor Blackmore challenges all verifications of veridical details. She rejects the Sabom case for lack of details. For instance, do we have any proof that a defribillator was used on him? She throws out Schoonmaker's work simply because he never published it; he only conveyed it by phone to a well known NDE researcher, Kenneth Ring. There are a number of NDE cases with veridical details. Most of the best ones are published by Professor Blackmore. For instance, there is the "shoe on the roof case," reported by a social worker named Kimberly Clark. A woman named Maria was brought into a hospital in Seattle after she had a severe heart attack and then suffered cardiac arrest. She later told Clark that she had been Out-Of-Body and noticed a tennis shoe on the third floor ledge at the north end of the building. It was a tennis shoe with a worn patch by the little toe and the lace stuck under the heel. Kimberly Clark looked out of various patient's windows until she found the shoe and retrieved it. It was exactly as Maria described. (Blackmore, 1993, p. 128).

Yet Blackmore rejects the shoe story, because she was unable to get any further information. Well, what more does she need to know? How likely is something like this to happen by chance? Or does she simply think both Kimberly and Maria are liars? I don't believe Blackmore is willing to accept any such case, no matter how good, because she has an alternative theory to explain NDEs and OOBEs. Blackmore has a theory of reality and self which is bizarre in the extreme, yet common among psychologists. She thinks nothing is real but brain models (analogous to computer simulations), including one brain model which calls itself Professor Susan Blackmore. The world does not exist. You and I do not exist. None of the things discovered by science exist.

There is only the world of the brain model. And she has an ingenious theory to explain the feelings of well-being (endorphins in the temporal lobe), the black tunnel and growing light (hypoxia) and even a way of explaining the Out Of Body experience. Her book, Dying To Live is well-worth reading, by believers and skeptics alike. The main thing wrong with her theory is that she explains too much. According to her theory, everyone who has a cardiac arrest and nearly dies should have a NDE, but only a small percentage do. Furthermore, all those having NDEs should be transported to the light by a black and featureless tunnel, but that isn't true either. Some climb stairs, some are wafted away by angels, some get in a boat and cross a river, some walk up a corridor richly paved and paneled, and some just fall through a void to a distant point of light. There is another difficulty with her theory. It is self-contradictory! If reality doesn't exist, then neither do neurons, or endorphins or temporal lobes of brains. All that exist are brain models, and the only one of those Blackmore can be sure exists is the one arbitrarily labeled "Susan Blackmore." She has fallen into the classic trap of solipsism.

What is a person who calls herself a scientist who will never accept any data contrary to her own theories, no matter how good it is, data that everyone else accepts as valid? We call such a person "extraordinarily stupid" in Galileo's sense, a "High Priestess" of reduction, not a scientist at all.

There is a second way of checking the validity of NDEs. Some of them come back with prophecies about the future. For instance, Dannion Brinkley, in a book called Saved By The Light, describes 13 visions of the future shown to him in 1975. He was shown an enormous increase in the national debt, the election of Ronald Reagan, the destruction of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Desert Storm war in 1990. He was shown many more images which I shall not relate, and told that it was up to us whether these things came true or not.

Both OOBEs and NDEs involve the two kinds of conscious perception which come into action automatically when the Mind goes OOB. One of these is HSP and the other is the apparitional sense. HSP allows the percipient to see physical reality. It is not the same as normal vision, however, because the percipient can see in perfect darkness, see auras and other Mindstuff structures, focus on successive internal layers of both physical and Mindstuff structures, and can see in a 360 degree arc. An OOBEr may be aware of having an astral body, or he may not. If he is, it may be a duplicate of his physical body, complete with pajamas or whatever, in which case he is creating an apparitional self-image, one which might be visible to others. It he sees himself as a glowing blob, he is using his HSP to see himself "as he really is" to a physicist. It would be wonderful if we had a number of people as good at HSP as Karagulla's Diane. In that case, we could have "Diane" observe various people going out of body. It would be interesting to see if all of the mind goes OOB, or just a specific part of it, or none of it! In the third case, my theories would have to go back to the drawing board.

The apparitional sense in passive mode receives the collective apparitional creations of the sentient beings present. These can have all the attributes known to our five physical senses. In the active mode, one can create such apparitional realities, as Lady Alexandra David-Neel did during her travels in Tibet. See Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

The later stages of either an OOBE or NDE use apparitional perception. An HSP sensitive may perceive a disembodied person as a glowing blob about a yard across. An apparitional sensitive will see a disembodied person as that person's body-image, younger or older than in life, lacking any handicaps, but automatically recognized.

Apparitional reality is a collective vision or hallucination created by all the sentient beings present. The passageway to death varies because it is an apparitional reality. Its character depends on those waiting on the other side, and perhaps on ones own unconscious expectations. If no one is waiting, and the percipient expects oblivion, the crossing may be a fall through a void towards a distant light. The apparitional sounds which accompany the experience also vary for the same reason, from an irritating buzz, to gongs, to beautiful ethereal music.

Why don't in-the-body individuals at the death scene also see the tunnel, the light, the dead friends and relatives? They sometimes do, if present at the transition, as in the movie "Ghost." Unfortunately, people today die anonymously and alone, in a highly drugged or comatose state, in hospitals, with no friends or relatives present. That is too bad, because death is usually a wonderful experience, which the living can sometimes share.

Finally, we must discuss the connection between NDEs and physical processes or chemicals. I refer to Ketamine, an animal tranquilizer, which will induce an NDE in humans, and electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe, which will also induce NDEs. Doesn't this show the NDE is really an illusion? No, it merely shows that physical events can precipate an NDE. Why should that surprise us?

As Morse himself points out in Closer to the Light, there is ample evidence that something really does leave the body, since NDErs (as well as OOBErs) can obtain information which they could not acquire even if their physical senses were working normally. This may include a view of who is out in the waiting room and what they are doing or saying, who hurries in to help with a "code," even if they are people never before seen by the patient, as well as events going on miles away, back home.

Thus, Morse's conclusion (and Penfield's) is that NDEs are not hallucinations produced by stimulating the temporal lobe. If the temporal lobe is the "seat of the Mind," or the point of attachment, events in the temporal lobe can trigger an NDE. This explains why people sometimes have an NDE when they merely think they are going to die, as in Albert Heim's study. Albert Heim was a 19th Century Swiss alpinist who had experienced what we now call an NDE while falling. The experience intrigued him, so he asked other climbers if they had ever experienced such a thing. Many of them had, though in fact they were not dying, merely falling (Sutherland, 1992, p. 2). If believing one is about to die can trigger an NDE, it may do so via the temporal lobe.

Reincarnation

Normal channels of communication are best ruled out by the study of Imad Elawar, since Stevenson found out about him before the family had tried to make any verifications, and before his past life memories had begun to fade. Imad was five in 1964, when Stevenson made his investigation, and Imad had been talking about his past life since age two. Stevenson made copious notes before he and the family visited Imad's former family, where Imad made spontaneous recognitions of people and pictures, also recorded by Stevenson. Imad Elawar's family were Druse, a sect of Islam which believe in reincarnation. Imad Elawar, a five year old child, could remember more than seventy details about a quite obscure man, living in another mountain village with little direct traffic to Imad's village, a man who had died nine years before Imad's birth. Both Imad's village and Ibrahim's village have good direct connections to Beirut, but are connected to one another only by a narrow, winding forty mile mountain road.

It is impossible for a two year old child to find out anything on his own about an obscure individual in a distant village who died nine years before his own birth. Could he be coached? Not by Imad's family. The Druse believe that one incarnation follows immediately after another, without time in between, and Imad's family were also under the mistaken belief that he was claiming to be Said Bouhamzy.

I have never read about a spontaneous past-life recall in which the former personality was well-known, much less famous, contrary to the lies of the Psi-cops. Certainly there was nothing about Ibrahim's life or death on the radio or in the newspapers. If there had been any news, it was "news" nine years before Imad's birth.

The only contact Imad had with a person from Ibrahim's village turns out to be a strong point of confirmation. When Imad was about two, he was out on the street with his grandmother when Salim el Aschkar of Ibrahim's village came along. Imad ran up to him and threw his arms around Salim. "Do you know me?" asked Salim. "Yes, you were my neighbor." Salim had lived close to Ibrahim Bouhamzy's place, but had since moved away.

Imad had never mentioned the first name of the previous personality (Ibrahim), only the last name (Bouhamzy) as well as a member of the family named Said. So, Imad's family mistakenly thought he was claiming to be Said Bouhamzy. If they were coaching, they were coaching for the wrong person.

As a general comment about all twenty investigations, coaching does not explain the identity of personality and character traits, much less the persistence of physical traits from one life to the next.

Past life memories of the present personality often cause problems in the village, or were unsavory and nothing to brag about. Wijeratne recalled being an executed murderer in the same village, named Ratran Hami. Jasbir refused to eat the cooking of his mother because she was not of the Brahmin caste, and may have starved if a neighbor Brahmin woman had not cooked for him. Ravi Shankar had been murdered in his former lifetime as Munna, (by having his throat slit) and named his murderers, who still lived in the village. There was even a trial, but the court decided past life memories were not legally admissible evidence.

So past life memories bring nothing but trouble. The children were told to keep quiet about their past life memories, and even beaten, though all of Stevenson's twenty children come from cultures where belief in reincarnation is universal. When reincarnation was back into the same family, or into the same small village, the identity of personality was always noticed by family and neighbors. Even if one had a book listing every fact about the former person, there is no way personality could be the same. Complex interactive skills rule out cryptomnesia, itself an obscure and rare phenomenon. Stevenson has studied cryptomnesia, a favorite theory of the debunkers, and knows it is like a recording of a forgotten incident. It always plays back the same.

Only the combination of ESP plus personation has some hope of providing an alternative to reincarnation. ESP plus personation can be produced by mediums, at least in trance states. These children are not in a trance state. Nothing but reincarnation can account for the physical marks related to the previous lifetime, which I call "karma marks." William George, Jr. had several. William George, Sr. had injured his right ankle severely as a youth, and walked with a slight limp. So did William George, Jr. The dying William George, Sr. had told his daughter-in-law that he would be reborn to her, and she would recognize him by two prominent moles. William George, Jr. had the moles, in the same locations, about half size.

Charles Porter had been killed in a spear fight in his former lifetime, and had a birthmark in the shape of a spear wound on his right flank. Stevenson observed the birthmarks of both Charles Porter and William George.

Karma marks not only rule out all alternatives to reincarnation for these cases; they also imply that the Mind forms the body, rather than vice versa. Young children who spontaneously recall former lifetimes may be rare, although I have encountered two by accident. What is rare is for Psi investigators to hear about such children, especially when the child is still young and still able to recall the past life. These memories usually fade between ages seven and twelve.

Hypnotic regression is the other route to reincarnation evidence. One of the most famous books about past life regression is The Search for Bridey Murphy, by Morey Bernstein, published in 1957. This book became an international best seller. Debunkers attributed it all to cryptomnesia, on the grounds that a Bridget Kathleen Murphy lived on the same block when the present personality was a small child. The families were not acquainted, and there is no evidence they ever met.

Cryptomnesia cannot account for the veridical details (names of merchants, streets, buildings) that Bridey knew about mid 19th century Cork because these had never been published and were unknown even to scholars until after the publication of The Search for Bridey Murphy. After that book became an international bestseller, old diaries and letters were turned up to verify those details. So be sure to look up the second or later edition of this book.

Nor can cryptomnesia account for the interactive abilities of Bridey Murphy. Bridey could dance Irish Jigs and speak in the lilt and slang of mid-19th Century Irish county Cork, and much of this slang and many of these jigs had never been published and had been forgotten, like much of the ephemeral popular culture of any age.

Stevenson has published many studies of "responsive xenoglossy," which refers to the ability of a hypnotically regressed individual to carry on a conversation in a language unknown to the present personality. My friend and mentor, Bill Coates, collaborated with Stevenson in the investigation of a woman who spoke Old Norse under hypnosis. Bill (now deceased) was one of the few linguists who specialized in dead European languages.

So it appears that all we need are more reincarnation studies of the same kind, to guarantee reproducibility, and we need to allow time to see if any new alternative explanations are proposed. Over the past thirty years, these two conditions have been met for reincarnation studies.

By all the rules of scientific method, reincarnation is a well-established scientific fact. If you don't believe it, go do your own studies of the phenomenon. That is what scientific method requires of skeptics.

HSP

The pioneer of these studies was Shafica Karagulla, whose poorly titled book, Breakthrough to Creativity is one of the great classics of Psychical Research. An unknown classic! Although her work was definitely Psychical Research by my definition, she published in medical journals, not in PR journals, and the editors of PR and Parapsychology journals usually know nothing of her work (Karagulla, 1967). Shafica Karagulla was a noted neuroscientist about thirty years ago, and a practicing MD.

Karagulla often worked with "Diane," who was a successful businesswoman, who kept her powers a secret. First Diane examined a patient by her methods, then Karagulla did the standard analysis of an MD, and they compared notes. Karagulla found Diane to be at least her equal at medical diagnosis. Diane once spotted an obstructed bowel, which Karagulla's own examination had missed. The patient was hastily called back, X-rayed, and operated on, saving his life. HSP is a mode of perception, like ordinary vision. Those who can do it, can always do it. It is not an unpredictable, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon like experiencing apparitions or poltergeists.

I define the "Mind" as "the non-physical component of a living creature, as seen by HSP." Diane describes the human Mind as a glowing structure with nine major vortices and numerous smaller ones, each having a characteristic number of sub-cones, and a characteristic place in the body.

Five vortices are on the spine, one at the tailbone, one at L5 on the lumbar, one each at the levels of navel, heart and throat. The sixth chakra is at the eyebrows, the seventh at the crown of the head, and the eighth at the back of the head. A smaller ninth chakra is at the pancreas.

It was the Yogis who labeled these things "chakras," meaning "wheels," revealing an ancient science. The chakras are connected by a web of light beams, or at least that is how they appear to HSP. The Yogis call these lines "nadi," while they are known as "meridians" in Chinese acupuncture. There is considerable evidence that these meridians really exist. It has long been known that analgesic acupuncture increases the endorphins in the brain. Now it has been learned that acupuncture on a meridian connected to a particular organ will "light up" that part of the brain responsible for that organ. For instance, the meridian for the eyes surfaces alongside the outside of the foot. Stimulating these "eye" points will "light up" the same parts of the brain used for seeing, on an fMRI scan. (Discovery Magazine,, September 1998, p. 61). Outside the boundaries of the body, there is the multi-hued aura. This structure of chakras, nadi and aura is what I call "Mind." Since the Mind is a stable object, always visible when looked at by people with HSP, it must be made of some kind of "stuff." I call it "Mindstuff." With HSP, Diane can see internal organs, as we saw in the obstructed bowel case. But she usually found it more informative to observe the internal workings of the chakras. Serious pathology is associated with breaks in these structures. Minor pathology produces a jerky rhythm in the chakras. I suspect that chiropractors fine-tune the rhythm of the five chakras on the spine, and the manipulation of the vertebrae so they move freely serves to focus the aura on each chakra in turn. The real healing is done unconsciously by the aura of the chiropractor's hands. I have found that headaches can be healed by putting one palm on the bridge of the nose, covering the forehead, and with the other hand at the base of the head, gently applying pressure and massage. These are both locations of chakras.

Where the nadi enter or leave the surface of the physical body, there we find the acupuncture points. The physical needles focus the aura to restore the flow of energy in that nadi to its normal flow and rhythm. Thus, it requires "healing hands" to be a chiropractor or acupuncturist. Merely knowing the physical part is insufficient.

People who can do HSP in-the-body are rare. Everyone automatically has HSP Out-Of-Body. Fortunately, "Diane" is not unique, because scientific method requires reproducibility.

In Barbara Ann Brennan (see bibliography), we have a contemporary with HSP (she doesn't call it that), who even teaches others how to activate their own HSP, at her East Hampton, Long Island School for Healing. Indeed, Brennan has gone one step further than "Diane." Not content merely to observe pathological energy patterns, Brennan is willing to use her aura to change those energy patterns back to a healthy pattern and thus heal the patient.

Like "Diane," Brennan is unwilling to be a guinea pig in some scientist's experiments. One can easily see why. In the 19th Century, D.D. Home demonstrated levitation, not only before the crowned heads of Europe, but also before the scientists of the time. Uri Geller has demonstrated an ability to change the physical properties of objects before the scientists of the 1960s. Neither Home nor Geller changed the minds of any of the scientists, and only earned the ridicule of the Extreme Sceptic. No one is so blind, as those who do not wish to see. A psychic is foolish to submit to people claiming to be scientists, who are unable or unwilling to learn anything from such study, which means they are not really scientists, just phuds (Ph.D.s).

That the "Mind is a natural object" is a matter of fact, by HSP observation. A natural object is part of nature, like a tree or a galaxy. The Mind is not made of the ordinary matter known to physicists. Because of the pioneering work of Vera Rubin, astronomers now know that most of the mass of the universe is also some kind of transparent non-ordinary matter (Morris, 1993, p. 2).

Psychometry

Of course, the owner of an object doesn't have to be dead. In the 1960s I saw a contest (broadcast over local TV in Los Angeles), run by Dr. Thelma Moss of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, which pitted a "blue sense" sensitive against a psychologist. Before the contestants came out to the stage, various items were contributed by a few strikingly different audience members. This was in the mid 60s, when men sometimes wore necklaces and other jewelry. I especially recall the readings given for a necklace of gaudy plastic beads. The psychologist said it belonged to a lower class woman with little education (wrong as usual) while the sensitive said it belonged to a man, a highly educated lawyer, which the sensitive proceeded to describe (right as usual).

Poltergeists

Poltergeists are much less common than apparitions, children who recall former lifetimes, or people who have had OOBEs. Poltergeists are so dramatic, however, that the world is much more likely to hear about it. Some member of the household unconsciously produces poltergeists, since they follow the household from place to place. German investigators believe adolescents are unconsciously responsible, since families "grow out of" poltergeists.

What do poltergeists do? Two things, and they are associated, i.e. found in the same case. One is levitation and movement of small objects such as cups and saucers (psycho-kinesis), which sail across the room and smash, and the other is teleportation, the disappearance of an object from one point in space-time and its reappearance at another point in space-time. Hans Bender has witnessed both. Dr. Bender notes that an apported object that has just appeared, i.e. come out of teleportation, floats to the ground with a falling leaf motion, as if nearly weightless. UFOs exhibit the same behavior.

If apparitions are not ghosts, and poltergeists are not ghosts, what is a ghost? And are there such things? Yes, there are, but they are fortunately rare, since a ghost is a Mind trapped between two worlds, not really part of this world or part of the next. Ghosts sometimes learn to absorb energy from the heat energy in the environment, producing a physically measurable cold spot, which moves around as the ghost moves around. This energy may be used for Psycho-Kinesis (PK).

Most "haunts" are probably just apparitions triggered by the traces left behind by former inhabitants (who may or may not be dead). However, if there are also PK effects and measurable cold spots, then it is a true ghost.

de Broglie Phenomena

One of these discoveries is dermo-optic vision. This is the ability of people to "see" colors or read print with their fingertips (Ostrander & Schroeder, 1970, p. 158 ff.). Some of the subjects were physically blind, and the others had to read by putting their arms through a blind which prevented visual observation of the target. This phenomenon became something of a fad in Russia in the 1960s.

A man named Kirlian developed a kind of photography which shows auras. Kirlian photography involves a strong static electric field in the "box" where the hands or leaves are placed, together with an Electro-Magnetic oscillation of 75,000 to 200,000 cycles per second (Ostrander & Schroeder, 1970, p. 189). What the photograph shows is almost certainly coronal arcing, the kind of thing one sees around high tension lines during a fog. But what is interesting is the pattern of coronal arcing. For instance, if a freshly plucked leaf is cut in two and placed in the "box," the outlines of the entire leaf can be seen, or at least these are the results claimed by the Kirlians and demonstrated in photographs. To duplicate these results, one must control humidity, as well as duplicating a high voltage, low amperage box (so no one is electrocuted!). The Kirlians hold several patents on this device.

For theoretical reasons, I am going to lump these Eastern discoveries together with HSP into the general category of de Broglie phenomena, which include an indefinite variety of different effects. So we still have just seven facts: reincarnation, apparitions, poltergeists, OOBEs, NDEs, blue sense, and de Broglie phenomena.

All seven studies are reproducible, and follow the rules of scientific method. Don't be fooled by the Psi-cop's impossible demands that a genuine Psi phenomenon must be one that cannot be duplicated by an illusionist. An illusionist can duplicate any discovery of physics, too. The Psi-cops are following Hume's rule, not scientific method. Those genuinely skeptical about any of the seven facts presented in this chapter have a duty to reproduce that study. Those unwilling to do so have no right to pass judgment.