Stewart Alexander Winds Down Public Sittings

After nearly twenty years of public work, well known physical medium Stewart Alexander is winding down the number of his public demonstrations.

Stewart told me:

“The only public physical seances  I intend to give in the future will be our Cober Hill Seminars held twice each year - I would not give them up!

“I shall also be continuing with our Thursday evening Guest Circles - held in our Home Circle room. My seances at Alf and June Winchester’s, which are held in their seance room about 4 times each year, will also carry on.

“And finally, if required I shall continue to give the Xmas Tree seance at the York Church.  This is generally for about 40 people and the Church are very close friends of mine.  This is the only exception regarding large meetings.

“So - following the York Xmas Tree seance this year (and subsequent years if required) I shall no longer be giving large public seances apart from our Cober Seminars.”

More to follow…

Zammit Claims Alan Crossley Return. But Where Is The Evidence?

Modern day physical mediumship is at something of a crossroads. From the halcyon days of Helen Duncan and Alex Harris where evidence was the ‘golden fruit’ of the Spiritualist tree, the intervening years have brought something of a famine to the soil of modern, public, physical mediumship. Many explanations for this have been offered and discussed through the psychic press and public chat forums over the years.

It is not my intention in this article to offer my own views on the mechanics of why this has happened. Suffice it to say that unless the standard of evidence is improved in public seances the future of physical mediumship is under threat of extinction.

Victor Zammit has long been one of physical mediumship’s most vociferous supporters. For several years now he has championed the Australian based medium, David Thompson. Through his weekly Afterlife Report, Zammit updates his readers on the latest seances given by Thompson; seances which regularly witness the alleged communications from personalities such as Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill. While I applaud Victor’s passion and wholehearted support of physical mediumship, I question his investigative methodology and his stated qualifications as an unbiased judge of physical mediumship.

On his website Victor describes himself as “a full time writer and researcher on empirical evidence for the afterlife.” This is rather an ambiguous description since ‘empirical’ can mean ‘relying on experience or observation alone often without due regard for system and theory’. A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses. And since most, if not all, of David Thompson’s phenomena is produced in the dark then the primary sense Victor is relying upon during these seances is his hearing. Hardly scientific, is it? Moreover, in the cases of Houdini, Churchill and Doyle the voices sound nothing like they did on earth and do not provide any audible evidence whatsoever in order to substantiate their validity.

So, upon what exact evidence is Victor basing his assumptions upon? A voice in the dark claiming to be Harry Houdini or Conan Doyle? As ‘evidence’, this is totally unscientific and can only be dismissed as ridiculous.

As a lawyer, Victor claims he is “an expert in the admissibility of evidence” and I also has “qualifications in scientific method”. Then Victor should know that only relevant evidence is admissible. Admissible evidence, in a court of law, is any testimonial, documentary, or tangible evidence that may be introduced to a judge or jury in order to establish or to bolster a point put forth by a party to the proceeding. In order for evidence to be admissible, it must be relevant, without being prejudicial, and it must have some indicia of reliability. It must also tend to prove or disprove some fact that is at issue in the proceeding.

Non of the recordings of alleged deceased personalities ‘prove or disprove’ anything.

As to Victor’s reference to the scientific method, let us look firstly at what the scientific method is:

The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavour to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world. It has 4 steps:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena. 2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. 3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations. 4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

Victor Zammit has not produced any evidence whatsoever by means of the full scientific method.

Now let me focus upon a recent claim of Victor’s that the well known Spiritualist Alan Crossley communicated through the mediumship of David Thompson. I was fortunate to be a close friend of Alan’s. I was a member of his home circle and he was the Features Editor of Psychic World while I was editor. I knew him intimately.  In the April 4th Afterlife Report Victor states:

Last Sunday night we had a most fantastic materialization session with medium David Thompson. The Circle of the Silver Cord has been working quietly to build the energy and it was one of the very best we’ve ever had. Three brilliant British mediums, Gordon Higginson, and for a very short time Helen Duncan, and one dedicated investigator of physical mediumship Allan Crossley materialized to pass information on to us.

A link is given to a short recording of ‘Allan’: Alan Crossley (Page opens in new window so please disable any pop up blockers.)

Once you have listened to this recording, watch the following video of Alan and compare the two voices:

Upon comparing the two voices it will be clear to the objective observer that there is not the slightest similarity between them. They do not sound alike in any way. The intonation, tone, accent, rhythm, stress and pitch contour of the two voices are completely different. Another important consideration is that at one point in the seance recording ‘Alan’ addresses Victor by his surname only - something Alan never did when talking to people. This is completely out of character.

The argument could be given that it is not always possible for the voice of the communicator to exactly match the voice as it was on earth. This may indeed be the case, and this is why in such instances it is extremely important that the evidence provided by ‘non matching’ voices is credible and verifiable.

So, let us examine the actual evidence that ‘Alan’ proffers as to his authenticity. Well, in the short clip we have heard ‘Alan’ provides no corroborative evidence whatsoever! Moreover, Victor Zammit or any of the other circle members present did not know Alan and are therefore unqualified to state (as Victor does) that it is Alan Crossley.

To recap: Victor Zammit claims that the voice heard in the seance recording is that of the deceased Spiritualist, Alan Crossley. The communicator does not sound like Alan Crossley, nor does the communicator provide one iota of evidence to support his contention. Yet Victor Zammit is quite happy to offer up this seance recording as ‘evidence’ of life after death! Remember, this is the man who states he is a “researcher on empirical evidence for the afterlife” and has “qualifications in scientific method”! There is nothing scientific about the ‘evidence’ Victor offers in support of his contention that the communicator is Alan Crossley for the simple reason that there is NO supporting evidence offered whatsoever! Remember, this is the man who claims to be “an expert in the admissibility of evidence”. Hmmm….

At the beginning of this article I stated that unless the standard of evidence provided in seances was improved physical mediumship was under threat. By providing the above example of contemporary ‘evidence’, I hope the reader now understands what I mean and can appreciate the situation. To put this bluntly, Victor Zammit - despite his good intentions -  is making a complete mockery of physical mediumship. We are expected to believe that voices recorded in the dark are of deceased people merely because Victor Zammit says they are. He provides no scientific research or scientific evidence in support of these claims.

I will now make the following request of Victor in order to give him the chance to substantiate his claims and provide actual evidence to support his contention that the voice in the seance recording is Alan Crossley.
One Thousand Pounds Challenge To Victor Zammit!

I request Victor Zammit to ask the personality claiming to be Alan Crossley 5 questions which I will provide. These questions will be posted on this website before the seance. I will then record a YouTube video detailing the answers to these questions but will not disclose its web address until Victor has uploaded a YouTube video which provide the answers. At a prearranged time, we will email each other the web address of each video - both of which will be posted immediately on this site at a given time.

Will Victor accede to this request? Maybe. More importantly, however, will the alleged spirit of Alan Crossley provide the correct answers to the questions? I do not think so. In fact, I will give one thousand English pounds to the charity of Victor’s choice if this alleged communicator gives just three correct answers out of the five.

It is now time for Victor Zammit to demonstrate to the world that there is substance behind his rhetoric. He makes outstanding claims for David Thompson’s mediumship. Well, let us see if he can provide some credible evidence - for without evidence his words are but sails without wind….

Stay tuned, I’ll keep you posted on Victor’s response.

Update: Victor Zammit has responded.

Charles Tart - A Man Of Many Passions

By SIMON FORSYTH

Professor Charles Tart is a man of many passions. From starting with amateur radio while a teenager to the Japanese martial art of Aikido (in which he holds a black belt), his interests are varied and diverse. Along with his enthusiasm for anything which stimulates his intellectual interest is a robust determination to acquire knowledge and understanding of his subject. And perhaps nothing quite inflames his cerebral curiosity more than the question of survival after death. It is a subject he has been closely involved with for more than 30 years.

He has been a consultant on government funded parapsychological research at the Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International) and he was the first holder of the Bigelow Chair of Consciousness Studies at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. As well as being a laboratory researcher, Dr Tart has written various books including Learning to Use Extrasensory Perception and Psi: Scientific Studies of the Psychic Realm. His book, Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality examines the relationship between psychic abilities and our spiritual nature. It was the March 1998 best metaphysical book selection of Amazon.com, the world’s largest on-line book retailer.

Clearly, Dr Charles Tart is a scientist firmly aligned to the Spiritualist belief in the reality of the spirit. And he has strong views on society’s lack of support for the Survival issue:

“Frankly, I think that it is insane that society does not give widespread support to the question of survival after death. I think for practically everybody it would make an enormous difference right now in how they live their lives. If scientists had extensively investigated the possibility of life after death armed with the same kind of financial budgets as mainstream fields of research, just think what could be achieved. If they found at least sufficient evidence to declare Survival a probability then people would undoubtedly live their lives differently if they believed that death was not the end but was simply the start of a new life and that there would be consequences for their actions on earth. I find it crazy that society doesn’t look at this issue. After all, death is a destination that we are all travelling towards. Yet so little interest is being shown towards it.

“I was at a meeting recently regarding the question of survival after death and there was about 14 of us and probably 10 of those were amongst the 10-15 most knowledgeable people about research into Survival on the planet. And that is ridiculous because most of us were theoreticians. We have almost no time to do any actual research into it. We are just able to give some part-time attention to whatever evidence has been collected in the past. Yet we are the experts! Now that’s just plain ridiculous.”

When analysing the reasons for the paucity of enthusiasm, Dr Tart has thought-provoking views:

“Well, there’s two levels here. One is that organised religion doesn’t want people to think about testing beliefs about the spirit and soul. It wants people to blindly believe a particular doctrine. It’s funny in a way. You’d think that the religious leaders would be very interested in science providing some evidence for belief in a soul. However, once you get into psychical research you are adopting an attitude that all beliefs are open to test. And most religions do not want their beliefs to be open to testing because evidence may be forthcoming which opposes a certain creed. That is why they don’t want people to question and test their doctrines.

“Secondly, from a psychological perspective there is a deeper level of resistance to psychical research that comes from the fear of the phenomena. And fear is mostly unconscious in this regard. For example I was once giving a lecture at the American Society for Psychical Research in the 1970’s. Afterwards they had a little reception in my honour and there were a lot of parapsychologists there and I decided to take advantage of the situation. As the guest of honour I was allowed a certain latitude in directing the discussion. Now, in those days I had a certain ambivalence about testing psychic phenomena. I liked experiments to work, but was not sure I wanted them to work too well - I had a certain fear of them. Now, I just thought it was me. I was young, hadn’t found my place in life yet etc. So I thought that all these older and wiser heads around me would be able to give me some good advice about my fears.

“But you know what? I just couldn’t get a discussion going about the fear of psychic phenomena. People would ignore what I said or intellectualise the idea and go off on some abstract philosophical discussion. And so finally, I really exploited my position of guest of honour and said: ‘Look, I want us to do a little mental experiment. I want you all to imagine that I have brought with me a new drug that has been created. We’ll call it Telepathine. It’s a drug that when taken, will enable you to read the thoughts and experience the feelings of everybody within a hundred yards of you. Once you have taken this drug, you will have this ability permanently.

“Now, in this mental experiment of mine, I was offering these people the chance to posses an extraordinary psychic ability. These very same people had worked enormously hard to have careers in parapsychology at great personal cost. Yet, not one of these people wanted to take the imaginary drug. They didn’t even want to address the scenario. They either ignored it or started all this philosophical talk again. Finally, I got so frustrated I shouted ‘Who wants this?!’ Still nobody wanted it. So, this made me realise that it wasn’t my youth or insecurity that made me have ambivalent feelings. These same feelings must be pretty widespread and taboo. They mustn’t be discussed. I have since done a little research on people’s fears of psychic abilities and if you really push people into this idea of having a lot of telepathic ability, they get scared.

“And you know why they get scared? Suppose your ability enables you to find out that your neighbour is contemplating suicide. Aren’t you responsible for their well-being now? Suppose you find out what your lover really thinks of you and it’s not very flattering? It sensitises me to the fact that a lot of our polite social interaction is based on an attitude of: ‘If you’ll accept my image of myself that I like to project, then I’ll accept your image of yourself that you want to project. I want to be known, but on my own terms and not too deeply.’ So, I think that there are a lot of deep-level fears like that underneath the supposedly rational arguments.”

Academic research into psychic ability and life after death has always been a woefully under-funded area of scientific investigation. It is a problem that certainly arouses Dr Tart’s chagrin:

“Really, the under-funding of psychical research is ridiculous. Back in the 70’s I did a survey of all the parapsychologists in the USA and Canada who could be remotely regarded as heading a psychical research laboratory. I counted about 13 people, which is such a disappointingly small number. I found that the amount of financial support for their research amounted to around $500,000 a year. That ranged from zero for individual labs up to around $100,000 for the really lucky ones. By scientific industrial standards of the time, $500,000 was enough to support 1 or 2 scientists and their associated support costs. It’s like saying, ‘Let’s try and cure cancer. We’ll hire one guy to work on it part time’. That is how psychical research compares to mainstream research!”

Will this situation improve?

“Not for rational reasons. The situation gets improved every once in a while when some wealthy individual gives some financial support to the field for a while. Right now, the field is probably in worse financial shape than it’s been in the last 20 or 30 years.”

Despite the lack of professional research into the subject, there are many amateurs around the world who devote many hours to the cause of Survival study in various fields. The Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is one of them. This is the alleged appearance of spirit voices recorded on cassette tape while a radio is tuned between stations. While Dr Tart has the utmost respect for EVP researchers, he voiced his concern regarding this field of research.

“Frankly, I’d like it to believe that EVP is a promising area of study because I’m a very technical kind of person myself. However, I have to say that in the few occasions in which I have dipped into that literature, I have found it to be very poor quality research. For example, I used to be a radio engineer so I have a lot of practical experience with radio.

“These people basically tune a radio between stations and listen to the static until they think they hear something. As a psychologist, I can tell you that if you listen to white noise and static for a long period of time you are going to hear all sorts of things because you’re hallucinating. That is what static does to the brain.

“From my background as an radio engineer, I can tell you that radio waves are capable of being broadcast on every single frequency known to man. There’s millions of transmitters all over the planet, most of them usually only carry a short range but can sometimes carry much further. How can we know where these ‘voices’ are coming from? If anybody wants to claim that the voices they have recorded via their radios are from a discarnate source, they have got to show me that their receiver is inside a specially constructed enclosure that prevents any radio waves from getting through.

“It is pretty straight forward to construct a series of concentric metal boxes that would prevent the penetration of outside radio waves. But EVP researchers don’t do that. They listen to their radios in ordinary rooms. So, my contention is that every once in a while some stray radio signal is going to be picked up that sounds like a voice. So, I really have to be honest and say that I’m disappointed in this field.

“Now, as a psychologist I can understand why they don’t use a box which prevents radio waves from getting through. People are generally not rational about the evidence for Survival. The last time I gave a talk on the evidence for Survival I told people I was speaking as a scientist and of course scientists are supposed to be objective and I would try and be objective but I don’t think that anybody who is going to die can be completely objective about the question of Survival!

“Now, I don’t condemn EVP phenomena completely. I’m sure that researchers get something related to Survival once in a while for psychological reasons. Psychic phenomena do happen once in a while and they are more likely to happen if you have a belief system that makes it ok for them to have it. But I wish the evidence were better. But I have never seen enough to encourage me to even look at it thoroughly.”

Despite his reservations of EVP, Dr Tart remains upbeat about psychical research and what it has achieved during its long history:

“Yes, of course more could have been achieved if more money was available. But I have to say that in spite of woefully inadequate funding for research and tremendous obstacles thrown in the way - not to mention the phenomena themselves being inherently difficult to ‘pin down’ so to speak - the fact that we have collected around 1500 excellently executed experiments over the past 100 years that have demonstrated some aspect of ESP and psychokinesis I think is amazing.”

Professor Tart is particularly impressed by his researches into out-of-body experiences. But he is quick to differentiate them from what is known as remote viewing. Remote viewing experiments were pioneered at the Stanford Research Institute by Russell Targ. It is the alleged psychic ability to perceive places, persons and actions that are not within the range of the senses.

“I get incensed sometimes when people talk about out-of-body experiences and remote viewing experiences as if they were the same thing. They are not at all. In a remote viewing experiment the person is in their ordinary waking state. They are making drawings, talking and describing what’s going on. Ingo Swann, known as the father of remote viewing, even smoked a cigar while he was doing it! But in an OBE people feel totally separate from their physical body, so the two are drastically different.”

The professor went on to recount a highly convincing out-of-body experience of a young woman who was one of his research subjects. What makes this particular out-of-body experience remarkable is that she was apparently able to leave her physical body and read a 5-digit number, which was at a significant distance, and correctly give it to him upon return.

“During a conversation with a friend a couple of years ago, this lady - I’ll call her Miss Z - reported that she had spontaneous out-of-body experiences approximately two to four times a week and that she would be interested in being studied in the laboratory. As this afforded an unusual opportunity for research, I decided to study her for four nights in a sleep laboratory in order to determine what, if any, out-of-body experiences occurred. The sleep laboratory consisted of two rooms, each lined with acoustic tile for sound attenuation.

“An intercom system allowed hearing anything the subject said. I monitored the recording equipment throughout the night while the subject slept and kept notes of anything she said or did. Occasionally I dozed during the night, beside the equipment, so possible instances of sleep talking might have been missed. The subject slept on a comfortable bed just below the observation window. Each laboratory night, after Miss Z was lying in bed, the physiological recordings were running satisfactorily, and she was ready to go to sleep, I went into my office down the hall. Once there, I opened a table of numbers at random, threw a coin onto the table as a means of random entry into the page, and copied off the first five digits immediately above where the coin landed.

“These were copied with a black marking pen, in figures approximately two inches high, onto a small piece of paper. Thus they were quite discrete visually. This five-digit random number constituted the ‘psychic’ target for the evening. I then slipped it into an opaque folder, entered Miss Z’s room, and slipped the piece of paper onto the shelf without at any time exposing it to the subject. This now provided a target which would be clearly visible to anyone whose eyes were located approximately six and a half feet off the floor or higher, but was otherwise not visible to Miss Z. She was instructed to sleep well, to try and have an out-of-body experience, and if she did so to try to wake up immediately afterwards and tell me about it, so I could note on the polygraph records when it had occurred. She was also told that if she floated high enough to read the five-digit number she should memorise it and wake up immediately afterwards to tell me what it was. My conversation with her after I had prepared the target was, of course, minimal and could not have given her any clue as to the target number.

“On reporting to the laboratory on the fourth night, Miss Z seemed to be determined to have the right kind of out-of-body experience. Although I had indicated complete satisfaction with her performance so far, she was angry at herself because she had not been able to float up and read the target number. Anyway, the night was uneventful for the most part - there were several dream periods in the first two-thirds of the night, as would be expected for any normal subject. Then at 6.04 am. Miss Z awoke and called out that the target number was 25132. This was absolutely correct, with the digits in the correct order.

“Now, that is a definite indication that something extraordinary had indeed happened. But what is needed is more thorough investigation and research. We are really only touching the tip of the ice-berg with experiments such as this.”

If only the vast structure of modern science had more of Charles Tart’s passion for this ‘ice-berg’. Instead, like a gargantuan vessel steaming across the great sea of discovery, it fears and avoids confronting it.

Yet that didn’t do the Titanic much good, did it?

Miraculous visions of the clairvoyant without sight

By Simon Forsyth

Sharon Neill has that rare gift of being able to ’see’ what other people cannot. Yet the 36-year-old clairvoyant from Glengormley has been blind from birth. A professional counsellor, she is reaching super-star status in her native Ireland. Here she tells Simon Forsyth her remarkable story.

The sighted may regard blindness as being a handicap. That is, until they meet Sharon Neill. She spent six weeks in an incubator after a premature birth destroyed her eyesight and because her mother had other children and needed to work, Sharon was brought up by doting grandparents and aunts at Sydenham, Belfast.

Today as a leading clairvoyant she’s in demand all over the United Kingdom and Ireland. She is the UK’s only blind clairvoyant and has just finished an English tour. The famous consult her for readings. “I’ve done readings for Melinda Messenger, Van Morrison, Janet Ellis - I did a reading for her on UK Living just before Christmas”, she says. In fact, her work gives hope and comfort to many people.

And she says that the ‘gift’ is in all of us. “I cannot explain it. I don’t think anyone could,” she says. “It’s beyond explanation. I believe everyone has guides or helpers working with them even if they are not aware of it. I know that some people can see them; some people can connect with them the way I do.”

Sharon was just five-years-old when sometimes in the middle of the night she would be awakened by people ‘talking’ to her. Their messages were unintelligible as the words were too adult for her to understand. She admits these midnight ‘visitors’ used to give her nightmares. But as she grew older she realised that they were only deceased people “trying to connect with me”.

“I was quite young when I accepted them totally”, says Sharon. And these people are with her still. She consults them whenever she needs them. There are eight of them, of different ages, who remain on “another level to us” and it is through them that she helps others.

One, she says, is a doctor of 45 who was killed in a road accident while going to see a patient in Bristol. One is just 20.

“I have a group of people who work with me - I don’t like to use the term ‘guides’. I prefer to call them my team. There are 8 of them and they all have different functions. Some of them work with me only when I am on stage, helping me to receive the communications as clearly as possible. They make sure that only one person is communicating at a time.

“Other members of my team used to be doctors while on earth. Their job involves making sure that my energy levels are correct when I am demonstrating and that I don’t become too drained.”

One such member of her team is called Jim. Sharon related an astonishing example of just how close the Spirit people are to us when she described how he saved her life when she was suffering from appendicitis.

“I had no idea I had it,” she admitted. “It had almost burst, although I didn’t have any outstanding pain with it, which I thought you would have to have. Jim kept saying to me ‘Go to the surgery, go to the surgery!’ This was on a Monday morning. My health centre was so busy you would never have gotten an appointment on a Monday morning unless you had made it well in advance. But Jim assured me that I would get a cancellation. So I phoned up the surgery and they told me there had been a cancellation. When I visited the doctor he diagnosed possible appendicitis and sent me to the hospital. They examined me and that night I was operated upon.

“I would definitely not have visited the doctor if it hadn’t been for Jim. When I was in the hospital after surgery they put me on a drip. I felt a tingling sensation coming from the area of my arm which was attached to the drip. I didn’t say anything to the nurses because I thought they had enough to do as it was. Again Jim came through to me and said ‘Get a doctor to take out your drip.’ So I wondered how on earth I was going to explain to them why I wanted a doctor. I could hardly tell them the truth, could I? I would have been sent to the mental ward!

“Jim said, ‘I don’t care - it needs to be done now.’ I asked him why, but he just told me to ask a nurse to get a doctor to have a look at it. So I called a nurse over and said the drip felt weird. That’s all I could think of to say! The nurse said that it looked ok to her, but I insisted on a doctor being called.

“When the doctor came and looked at the drip he asked the nurse why the drip hadn’t been removed. The nurse said again that it looked all right to her and the doctor replied that she should go and re-train. It turned out that the vein that was taking in the fluid had collapsed and the fluid was going into the tissue. If I hadn’t had it removed it could have caused septicemia.”

Understandably, Sharon has a very close relationship with her ‘team’. Their bond helps her through the highs and lows of being a modern medium. I asked her what she found difficult about her work. She had strong views:

“For me, it’s not being able to give everyone a message from their loved ones when I am demonstrating. It’s impossible when you have an audience of a few hundred people. It still upsets me even though I’ve been doing larger demonstrations since August 2003. I always make time at the end of the demonstration to talk to members of the audience. They are the people who are giving me the support to enable me to do the shows, so I always make time for them.

“Also, I think poorly developed and fraudulent mediums makes it harder for genuine mediums to be accepted. People are suspicious, and that’s understandable.

“But I have enjoyed a lot of support from the public who have seen me demonstrate. They know that I’m the only blind psychic in the whole of the UK. So I can’t be accused of having plants in the audience signaling to me or anything because I can’t see who I’m talking to!

“I’m determined to carry out my work to the best of my ability and help as many people as I can. People ask me what it’s like to be a celebrity medium and I say it doesn’t bother me. Celebrity isn’t really important to me - my work is. If that means that my work makes me well known then so be it. I want to be able to reach as many people as possible. A lot of people who want readings are on a low income but they can’t afford the prices some mediums charge - sometimes nearly a hundred pounds an hour.

“There are also these psychic lines which I certainly wouldn’t get involved with. I’ve been asked to promote a couple of these but have refused because I know that in many circumstances the mediums are trained to keep customers on the phone for as long as possible.

“I have actually phoned up a couple of these lines myself to see what happened. I’ve had people put the phone down on me after I had given them my name because they knew who I was. What does that tell you? In my view, there should be stricter guidelines as to who is allowed to do this sort of thing. At the moment, anyone can set themselves up as a medium and promote a psychic phone service. How are the public to know what sort of training these people have had?

“I also think mediums should also go on a counselling course because you do get people coming to you who are suffering severe bereavement. You can also get people who are suicidal and even schizophrenic. These are people who you have got to deal with very carefully and a lot of mediums just don’t know how to deal with them. That’s why I think all mediums should go on at least a basic counselling course before they work with the public. I studied counselling at university so I hope I am able to deal with vulnerable people in a skilled and sensitive way.”

Sharon’s talents have also brought her requests to help the police. She has been asked to help in difficult cases where orthodox methods of detection have drawn a blank. While always willing to help, she is careful to avoid publicity.

“I don’t want any public recognition for such work” she says. “I do it purely to help, not to make a name for myself. While not giving specific details, Sharon described her involvement in a case she has been involved with recently.

“It was a little boy who lived just outside Belfast. He had been involved in an accident and had been washed out to sea. I was on tour at the time and got a phone call from the search co-ordinator. I went to the boy’s house and met his family. I showed them on a map where he would be found. Of course, being blind I can’t see anything but my team on the other side will tell we where to point to. I had help from a local fisherman who had already passed over.

“I told them that the divers wouldn’t find the boy, and that the sea would deliver him up. I described to the family that he would be found beside a drain or sewage pipe. A week later he was found beside a drain pipe.”

While such work can be very sad at times, Sharon points to the rewarding aspects.

“The boy’s family were able to give him a proper burial. Hopefully, the information I gave them will help them realise that he is still around in a different place and give them comfort.

“I’m dedicated to this work I do, it’s so rewarding for me but I never would have believed it would get as big as this. I knew nothing about mediums in my childhood. When I was younger I never for a minute imagined I’d be doing stage shows or be on television. It’s a career to me and I love it.

“This is my spiritual fulfilment. I want no other job but this one.”

Sharon Neill’s website can be found at: www.sharonneill.com

Links

This is will be the links page.

Jenny’s Sanctuary - One To One Readings

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MoD Studied Paranormal In War On Terror

SECRET documents have revealed the MoD have been studying the paranormal and other unexplained scientific phenomenon for use in the war against terror.

The newly released files show that just after 9/11, the Ministry of Defence conducted a research project into psychics - with the possibility they could be used to locate terrorist cells.

Last night saw the UK debut of the eagerly anticipated US TV show Fringe, which takes its name from fringe science, an umbrella term for such bizarre notions as ghosts, UFOs, psychics and invisibility.

The series, from JJ Abrams, the creator of Lost, centres on FBI agent Olivia Dunham and uses paranormal plots following in the X-Files tradition.

Coincidentally, as the show takes off, the truth of just how seriously our Government have taken fringe science is slowly emerging.

As Abrams has said: “Though you could say it’s science fiction, the weird thing about Fringe is that a lot of the stuff is at least in the realm of possibility.

“When Star Trek came out and they had their communicators, that was a cool dream. Now, in our pockets, we all have communicators. We read a week ago that invisibility is coming. There’s stuff you wouldn’t think in a million years is possible, and it’s happening every day.”

That’s also the official approach according to Nick Pope, who once ran the MoD’s UFO project.

He said: “Everything that you think is Sci-Fi, someone in government or in the private sector is trying to get it to work.”

In the Nineties, he worked for the MoD in a department blandly named Secretariat (Air Staff), looking at strange phenomena including UFOs, crop circles and even ghost sightings on military bases.

The research continues today.

Nick said: “As with all these fringe sciences, the reason we are doing this isn’t necessarily that the MoD corporately believe in things such as anti-gravity, mind control and telepathy.

“But it is a classic example of what we call low probability, high consequence - which is basically saying it is a long shot, but if we can get just one of these fringe science things to work, the military applications would just be phenomenal.”

Freedom of Information has led to the disclosure of top secret MoD documents which show the Government have been looking seriously at fringe sciences. We can assume they didn’t want us to know about it as the documents are marked “Secret UK eyes only” - one of the highest classifications used by the MoD.

One study into the phenomenon of psychics, or remote viewing as the MoD call it, was secretly commissioned only a month after the New York terror attacks.

A questionnaire was sent to psychics, none of whom knew it was an MoD project, and it was probably disguised as an academic study. NICK said: “It raises the question of what other academic studies looking at fringe sciences are being run by the military?”

In the documents, there are hints of small breakthroughs. Testers asked psychics to identify a series of hidden images including a wine glass and a picture of Mother Teresa.

The files reveal the psychics “may have accessed some features of the target” - that is, the images. Later, it even talked about recruiting one or two of the psychics to “go after the sensitive targets”.

The next part of the study was blacked out but coming so close to 9/11 would suggest that terrorists were the “targets”.

It is well known that most police forces have used psychics for years, but the extent to which the Government and the MoD use them is unknown.

Nick said: “According to documents recently released, it transpires that defence intelligent staff have also been dabbling in other fringe science areas.

“These include exotic propulsion systems and even the possibility of using energy fields to modify people’s behaviour, hinting at the exploration of mind control.”

Nick suspects much of the research is contracted out to defence corporations run by ex-military, which means the MoD can get round the Freedom of Information Act.

Quinitiq, the recently privatised UK defence research organisation, have been doing research into invisibility and Bae Systems were looking at anti-gravity.

Nick admits that when he was first given the job of looking into unexplained phenomena, he was sceptical.

But his research into UFO sightings and access to formerly classified files soon convinced him that the phenomenon raised important defence issues, especially when the witnesses were military pilots or where UFOs were tracked on radar.

He said about 80 per cent of UFO sightings could be explained as misidentifications of something ordinary, such as aircraft lights or satellites.

And he admitted that in about 15 per cent of cases there was insufficient information to draw any firm conclusions.

But he said approximately five per cent of sightings, including some in Bonnyrigg, Midlothian, seemed to defy conventional explanation.

A new survey has shown that 88 per cent of people in the UK didn’t know their Government had fringe science projects and 77 per cent thought it was a waste of money.

But Nick said: “At first, I probably thought it was a waste of time and money as well, but these are fairly modest bits of research.

“Tome, all the scientific progress we have made has come about because we dared to dream and push the envelope of human understanding to the limit.

“If we took the view that all these things are a waste of money, we probably would never have developed the aeroplane or the rocket.

“There were always people in history saying that things were impossible but we did it anyway. Some of these things may just be things we haven’t figured out how to do yet. It seems crazy not to try.”

Fringe stars relatively unknown Australian actress Anna Torv, probably best remembered for playing a lesbian love interest in the BBC series Mistresses, and the two-hour pilot cost £5million.

The show will stick to familiar paranormal territory but, in a departure from JJ Abrams’ Alias and Lost, each episode can stand alone.

Abrams hopes people’s fascination with fringe science will get them tuning in to his latest production on Sky.

He said: “It’s definitely meant to scare the hell out of you, but it’s also meant to make you laugh.”

Fringe continues this Sunday at 9pm on Sky1 and Sky1 HD.

‘It transpires that defence intelligence staff have been dabbling in other fringe science areas’

http://www.modoracle.com/news/Government-Studied-The-Paranormal_16634.html

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/editors-choice/2008/10/06/revealed-how-the-government-studied-the-paranormal-for-use-in-war-on-terror-86908-20777467/

‘Mind and brain seem to be seperate’ says professor

PROFESSOR PETER Fenwick, one of the world’s leading researchers into near-death experiences (NDEs), has told an audience of his belief that NDEs seem to provide evidence which strongly suggests that the mind and brain are not the same.

Speaking at a lecture given at the London headquarters of The White Eagle Lodge, the professor spoke for over an hour about the phenomena which have been reported at the time of dying, prospective NDE studies and explanations for the phenomena of NDEs.

Professor Fenwick said:

“What I’d like to do is look at the whole process of dying. If near death experiences are really something about what happens at death then we must be able to get this reflected in some sense in the dying process itself. So if we start looking at the phenomena which occurs when people die we should begin to get a match with the near death experience, looking at it from different points of view.

“Then I want to look at prospective NDE studies - prospective means that you don’t advertise in the papers for people who claim NDEs, you go somewhere where you know the experiences are likely to occur. and then, you find out from people who have them. You see the difference? Because although Heather said, and I know she’s right because there is work to support it, that she remembers everything that happened during her NDE, you have to test that. It may be that in the telling of the experience it all changes. It normally doesn’t, in fact, and there is some good data from France that shows it doesn’t. But you still have to check it and show that it’s true.

“Then I want to look at some explanatory frameworks that we can put it in and then ask the question ‘are brain and consciousness the same?’

“Let’s look at the dying process itself. Stage 1 is what are called nearing death experiences. These include what are called ‘take away visions’ or death bed visions. These are visions of relatives and friends who have already passed over who have come to help you through the dying process. The second one is the experience of light in other worlds that the dying person has. The dying person experiences these worlds, and then come back and tell you about it.

“There are also what are called death bed coincidences. Now, we don’t know if these are in fact coincidences or whether they are real. These are visits to friends or relatives at the time of death. In other words you may be dying, your sister may be in Australia and she then has a visit from you at the time of your death.

“So, what sort of things do the dying say? This is a patient of mine who had a slow growing tumour. His wife was able to talk to me about the time she spent with him just before he died. This is what she said:

“He was going unconscious when I looked at him. He was looking fixedly at something in front of him. A smile of recognition spread slowly over his face as if he was greeting someone. Then he relaxed peacefully and died’.

“Another example from a researcher called Erlendur Haraldsson. This is a 16 year old girl who starts the dying process and goes into a coma. Then, just before she dies she says:

“‘I can’t get up.’ She opened her eyes. I raised her up a little. She said: ‘I see him, I see him! I’m coming.’ Then she died immediately afterwards with a radiant face, exalted and elated.

“I want you to see the relationship between the patient seemingly greeting somebody and then almost immediately afterwards, dying. It seems as if we have within us the capacity, if we aren’t drugged completely, to choose the actual moment when we die. Quite often people seem to die and go with people at the time of death. Now, there isn’t very much literature on this. You could read ten papers on it, and become a world expert on it!

“What happens at the time of dying? What do witnesses actually see? This was told to me by a GP in New Zealand. He was playing golf when another player had a heart attack. As he was going to help he saw what he described as a white form which seemed to rise and separate from the body. So here is the idea that something separates from the body at the time of death.

“The approaching death experiences are telling us something about the dying process and what consciousness is.”

Speaking of his own research professor Fenwick said:

“We need now some theories about the causation of NDEs. Now, you can’t say these are transcendent experiences because the people are unconsciousness. You can’t say they are psychological because the brain isn’t working. You can look at physiological models as to what state the brain is in, and if the brain function won’t support the experience you have to argue that mind and brain are separate.

“So, let’s look at the physiological state of the brain and body at the time of reported NDEs. No detectable cardiac output, no respiratory output - they certainly weren’t breathing. Neither did they have any brain stem reflexes - in other words they was no activity whatsoever in the brain.

“The NDE experiencers say that they didn’t have the experience before the heart attack occurred. We know that it couldn’t have occurred during the recovery of consciousness because in such cases the mind is very confused and the reported experiences are very lucid and clear.

“So we are left with a real scientific problem. It looks as if what the NDE experiencers are saying is probably correct. Now, if that’s true then you have to say some very fundamental things about brain and mind. That carries a huge cost and consequence for science. So research in this area has to be done properly. But it looks as if mind and brain - if the data is correct - are separate.”

Cardiologist Pens Book About Near Death Experiences

Critically acclaimed author Dr  M.S. Rawlings, author of Beyond Death’s Door and To Hell and Back, has just released his latest publication, Where Are You Going? (paperback, 978-1-60477-853-3) through Christian self-publisher Xulon Press.

Rawlings, a leading Chattanooga-based cardiologist who himself was resuscitated following a heart attack, had originally been an agnostic and a cynic. But something happened to him that changed his life. While applying CPR on a patient who was screaming that he was in hell, the author watched as the “transforming power of Jesus Christ came upon the man.”

The experience forever changed Rawlings, who soon after began a long-term study of near-death experiences. Not long after, Rawlings became a Christian.

Throughout his studies, Rawlings has sought to answer the question of what happens to us when we die. In this, his latest publication, he recounts more of his experiences resuscitating patients, teaching resuscitation in both foreign and domestic medical schools, and the destinations resuscitated patients found themselves in after they were considered clinically dead. These fascinating, thought-provoking stories will offer revelations to those who are wondering what awaits us beyond death, and subsequently, their lives will be changed.

While I found much of Rawling’s work interesting, his claims about hell are a little too “fire and damnation” sounding for me. Anyhow, see what you think…

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