The Mysteries Of Time Raise Intriguing Questions

By Peter McCue

Dr McCue has a longstanding interest in spontaneous paranormal phenomena. He is a member of the Society for Psychical Research and the Scottish Society for Psychical Research, and he has written various articles on the paranormal.

To me, some of the most interesting spontaneous cases in the field of psychical research are those involving oddities of time. There are reports of apparent precognition, where people seem to have glimpsed the future, and of so-called retrocognition (or ‘timeslips’), where people have had visions related to the past. And then there are cases involving ‘missing time’, e.g. where witnesses of UFO events have been unable to account for significant chunks of time.

Of course, not all disruptions of memory are paranormal. After hypnosis, for instance, a subject might underestimate the duration of the session, or, less commonly, remember little or nothing of what happened (a phenomenon known as post-hypnotic amnesia). And some drugs can affect the sense of the passage of time. To someone under the influence of cannabis, for example, a period of five minutes might seem more like a quarter of an hour.

But let’s return to cases suggestive of the paranormal.

I used to work as a clinical psychologist, and one of my patients told me about a dream in which she and her daughter were in a hall, with two small doors that led into another hallway. A tall man with blonde hair came from behind them and lifted her daughter up in his arms and tried to get through the doors. The mother tried to open the doors, but they didn’t respond normally – they seemed to slide open. She managed to fight the man off, and she watched as he ran away. The woman told her family about the dream the next evening. Later that week, a very tall man with blonde hair tried to put a hand up her daughter’s skirt. At the time, the daughter was in a lift with her cousin. They pushed the man and tried to hit him, and he ran off.

Clearly, some features of the dream matched the subsequent event. Was this simply a coincidence, or was the dream precognitive?

Another informant, Bill Paterson, had an interesting experience in the Scottish Highlands in the 1950s. Nearly five at the time, he was travelling with members of his family to the Black Isle. They were on the old A9 and had just passed Slochd Summit when Bill’s elder brother noticed an unusual locomotive, which Bill then saw as well. The engine was old-fashioned, like one from a Western film. It was coming up a gradient, belching smoke from the stack, and exuding white smoke (steam?) from the sides. They asked their father to stop the car, so they could see it, and he pulled up just past a bridge that crossed the railway line. Bill notes that, ‘We ran back to the bridge and looked over [but] there was nothing!’ (i.e. no locomotive or smoke). That was odd, because Bill thinks that they could probably see for a mile up and down the track.

Did such a train engine once make journeys through that part of Scotland, and was the vision a glimpse into that past time? Even if the answer is ‘No’, the incident remains puzzling, since at least two members of the family saw the old-fashioned locomotive.

One night in the 1990s, James Montgomery and his friend Jane (not their real names) set out from the latter’s house in Glasgow to buy some take-away food. On their way, they noticed a light that moved in the sky. They should have arrived back at Jane’s house within about 25 minutes, but they were away for over an hour. When they got in, the food was no longer hot. They are unable to account for the ‘missing time’.

Another informant, Susan (not her real name), had a similar experience one night in Glasgow about 40 years ago. She and a friend were heading home. They were both about 13. The girls got off a bus around 10.45 p.m. and saw a light in the sky, which seemed to be stationary. Then, as they were walking down a lane, the source of the light performed a series of movements, each of which alternated with a stationary phase. Susan was able to make out a structure with a circular base and a protuberance on top (a classic flying saucer shape?). There were two flashing red lights on the underside of the UFO, and also a circle of white lights, which may have been shimmering. At one point, the two girls huddled together with another pedestrian in mutual fear. The area they were in was then strongly illuminated from above. Susan assumed that the UFO was now directly above them. After what seemed seconds or minutes, things went dark again. When she looked up, Susan noticed that the UFO was still fairly near, although not directly overhead. It performed one or two further movements and shortly after shot up into the night sky and disappeared.

In total, the UFO encounter seemed to last only a matter of minutes, and Susan would have expected to be home by about 10.55 p.m. But she arrived around 11.45 p.m., to be greeted by an angry father!

In her book Time Storms (London: Piatkus, 2001), Jenny Randles relates cases in which people have encountered strange clouds or mists that produce unusual effects, such as experiences of ‘missing time’. One such case, from 1977, involved a group of Chilean army recruits who were camping at 12,000 feet, under the charge of a Corporal Armando Valdes. The corporal went forward to investigate a fuzzy purple glow that was seen a few hundred yards away. He was soon swallowed up in the darkness of the night. Some 15 minutes later, around 4.30 a.m., Valdes returned - but from the opposite direction. He looked as if he were in a trance, and he was heard to say, ‘You do not know who we are or where we are from.’ After reaching the encampment, he collapsed and seemed to be unconscious.

At dawn, it was noticed that Valdes had several days’ growth of beard, although he had shaved some hours earlier. His watch had stopped at around 4.30 a.m., but the date display indicated 30th April, five days on from the actual date! He regained consciousness around 7.00 a.m., but he seemed to be in a state of shock, with considerable memory loss, and lack of proper physical co-ordination. Interviewed by a journalist several years later, Valdes indicated that he still had no recall of the 15 minutes in question.

Of course, cases of the type cited above invite speculations about the nature of time. Regarding the Valdes case, Jenny Randles alludes to the interesting possibility that the corporal lived through five days in under 15 minutes! If so, another way of looking at it would be to say that his metabolism and watch ran, on average, about 481 times faster than normal during those 15 or so minutes. But if we assume that Valdes’ watch displayed the correct date prior to this strange episode, and if we deem that the cause of his disorientation and amnesia was some sort of impersonal electromagnetic event, is it not remarkable that the extra ageing he experienced worked out so neatly at five days? (It wasn’t, for example, 4.73 or 5.29 days!) In other words, assuming that the case has been reported accurately, we should perhaps consider the possibility that some form of intelligence was involved in producing the phenomenon.

A possible explanation of the ‘missing time’ element in the case of Susan (see above) is that she and her friend and the other pedestrian were huddled together for far longer than they thought – energy emissions from the UFO may have induced a state of stupor or paralysis and interfered with the creation of memory traces. But that still leaves a question: what was the UFO? Precognition and retrocognition also raise intriguing theoretical questions. If one can see into the future, does it already exist? If so, is our sense of free will illusory? And if the future already exists, does that also hold true for the past, thereby permitting instances of retrocognition? Or could it be that retrocognitive experiences are reconstructions, perhaps based on some sort of global psychic memory, rather than direct glimpses of the past?

If we knew enough about the present, it would be possible to predict the future. Possibly, then, precognitive dreams are predictions based on current information, some of which is gleaned, unconsciously, through telepathy or clairvoyance? If so, precognition would not be inconsistent with free will.

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?

Sitters Witness Spirit Fingers During Seance

By LEWIS SUTTON

The Cober Hill Conference Centre has over recent years been the venue for several seminars on physical phenomena. The Centre, sited just north of Scarborough, overlooks beautiful Yorkshire countryside with the North Sea visible just a short distance away. This seminar, the second to be organised by Alf and June Winchester, featured seances with mediums Stewart Alexander and David Thompson plus lectures, demonstrations of psychic art, psychic surgery together with daily meditations and healing sessions.

The first seance of the seminar was with medium Stewart Alexander and lasted for nearly two hours - but time passed quickly with all the action that took place. Soon two trumpets were flying around up to about 8ft (2.4m) from the medium who was located behind a curtain in a corner of the room. This type of phenomena does not provide direct evidence of Survival, but does show just how flexible and adaptable ectoplasm is. And I don’t know how anyone other than our Spirit friends could so accurately propel trumpets rapidly around the room in the dark without hitting anything!

On previous occasions when Stewart’s seances have been held in rooms with high ceilings, I have witnessed trumpets flying around way above our heads from nearly one end of the room to the other. This seance was held in a room with a normal height ceiling and it looked to me from where I was sitting that the trumpets just about went over the heads of those sitting in the front row.

Although we were sitting in the dark, we could follow the movement of the trumpets by the clearly visible luminous bands around them. Later on our only other visible evidence came when, what we were told was a partly materialised form, produced light and moved around the room. This light was strong enough for close-by sitters to distinguish the materialised fingers holding it. The light varied in intensity, starting with a dull sphere or circle of maybe 50mm across, down to a much smaller size but of higher intensity.

The partly materialised form, called Freda, (a regular communicator) spoke to us via independent direct voice and told us she was using an ectoplasmic voice box. Apparently this was much more difficult than her usual method of speaking through Stewart whilst in trance. We could hear her voice moving across the room as she spoke and held the psychic light. It is interesting to note that Stewart is now often conscious for short periods and speaks whilst phenomena is occurring.

A regular feature of Stewart’s seances is the demonstration of passing matter through matter. This entails a person being selected to hold one of Stewart’s hands whilst he is in a trance state, with his main control Walter Stinson speaking through him. On this occasion three times the plastic straps were momentarily dematerialised (or a section dematerialised?) to allow one of his arms to become free. Each time after the witness had touched the strap hanging on the chair arm, Stewart’s arm appeared to pass through the strap again to secure his arm to the chair.

The first two times the witness felt the strap come free and was able to retain it in her hand to keep. Each time the spirit control obtained another strap, the first time from a spare within the room and the second time, allegedly apported from outside of the seance room. Each time we could hear the new strap being tightened up around the arm due to the distinctive clicking sound made as the plastic cable tie was applied. The third time the strap was left securing the medium’s arm as at the beginning of the sequence.

Of the various personal communications from loved ones who had passed on, perhaps the most significant was that received by Mary Armour. Firstly, Freda spoke to her giving family evidence and also told her to look in a book to find references to a bird and water. The shelf, book position on the shelf, the page number and the paragraph were given.

I spoke to Mary on her return home and she confirmed the information. The only mistake being that the book was the second from the right, not second from the left. We think the mistake was due to the Spirit form standing in front of Mary rather than from the view point that Mary had on returning home. In other words, her left side was Mary’s right side.

After Freda spoke to Mary, she was overjoyed to hear her father speak to her and to kiss her hand before departing. He also gave her personal family evidence which Mary later verified on checking with family members.

During the seance several others received touches to their heads or had their hands shaken, clasped or touched by Spirit forms. Malcolm Lewis, in particular, had his hand shaken by the materialised hand of Walter Stinson as Walter spoke to him. Malcolm reported that this hand was much larger than the medium’s. Walter also took Malcolm and his wife Anne-Marie’s hands, clasped them together with his hand and held them up high as he conversed with them. Malcolm said he was amazed at the size of Walter’s hand.

Malcolm, a senior university lecturer, described to me afterwards how Walter’s voice descended from 6ft up in the air to floor level as the power rapidly declined at the end of the communication. This account tallies with the many reports over the years of materialised forms sinking into the floor as the ectoplasm returns to the medium.
David Thompson provided the physical mediumship for the second seance at the seminar. As with Stewart, David was tied into a chair with plastic cable ties. However, David was also gagged as all of the verbal communications in his seances are by independent direct voice and not via the medium’s mouth and vocal cords.

First to communicate was a gentleman with a refined voice and introduced himself as William Charles Cadwell. He said he died in 1897. Next a child control named Timothy Booth spoke in a light hearted cheeky manner to put everyone at ease. Timothy and William claim to have known one another whilst on the earth plane.

Like Stewart’s seance, we soon had trumpets whizzing around the room playing intricate patterns without hitting anything. The velocity and distance from the cabinet were again similar and lasted just for a short while, just to prove what is possible.

After the trumpet phenomena Wendy McDougal from Saltcoats in Ayrshire was asked to sit next to the cabinet and soon received direct voice communication from her grandfather. He kissed her head, touched her hair and made a comment about it being sticky! Wendy explained that she had put hair gel on it - a product that no doubt didn’t exist during his days on earth.

Hans, a gentleman from Switzerland, received a communication in the German language from his grandfather. However, the grandfather had difficulty communicating and disappointingly spoke only a few sentences to Hans.

After this came a tune played on a mouth organ by regular communicator Timothy Booth who portrayed himself as a young boy. The mouth organ had been left on a small table a few feet from the cabinet housing the medium. The mouth organ was played quite well but I didn’t recognise the tune.

Next came three well known gentlemen - Quentin Crisp, Peter Cook and lastly Dudley Moore. Quentin and Peter were rather ribald in their humour and comments, which they said was proof that we don’t change into angels when we pass on! The problem with well known personalities communicating is that unless there is someone present who knows them personally, then you just have to take it on face value they are who they say they are. However, their remarks and behaviour were very much in keeping with how I remember them as public figures. I could not possibly quote many of their remarks here!

After this, and in total contrast, came regular communicator known as Honest Jack with what I took to be a cockney accent. He answered a few questions and gave good evidence to two members of a circle whose leader had recently passed to Spirit. This was Beatrice Jackson who had originally planned to be physically at the seminar - not visiting from the other side! When called Beatrice she quickly let it be known that she was called Beatie. Chris, one of her circle members, confirmed that she did not like being called Beatrice by her friends.

Perhaps the most remarkable event of the seance was at the end when a North American Indian apparently materialised and picked up a native traditional rattle that had been left on a small table. It then sounded as if he was dancing around in a circle as he sang and shook the rattle.

The Indian, known as White Soaring Bird, must have been heavy as we could feel the floor shaking and hear his feet pounding the floor. He finished by speaking in his native tongue and saying a few words in English. Afterwards Alf Winchester, who weighs over 13 stone, could not replicate the vibrations we felt through the floor as the Indian danced.

The final physical phenomena after this dramatic materialisation was to find that the medium and his chair had been moved out of the cabinet. David was still bound and gagged and sitting in the centre of the circle when the lights were put back on.

The whole idea of holding physical phenomena seminars is to encourage Spiritualists to form their own home circles in order to develop more physical mediums, as this form of mediumship is very rare these days. So as well as the demonstrations of physical mediumship in the seances, the seminar contained supporting activities that included lectures and a forum.

The first of these events was a talk on Scottish mediums by Mary Armour with accounts of the many physical mediums that her homeland has produced over the last 150 years or so. Many present were amazed at the sheer number of mediums that Scotland has produced. Mary, of course, ended with the most famous of them all - Helen Duncan.

David Thompson gave a talk and demonstration of psychic surgery whilst in the trance state. One of the ladies who volunteered for the demonstration has been reported as walking better and with less pain several days later. I’m told she no longer uses a walking stick. David’s talk included details of how he became involved with Spiritualism and of his very interesting meeting with a Hindu master.

Malcolm Lewis’s illustrated his talk with computerised slides and titled his contribution ‘Mundane to Miraculous’. Malcolm covered the various theories and classification of types of phenomena and made the observation that physical phenomena had often been most abundant where mediums resided near large areas of water. He pointed out that the halcyon days of American mediumship occurred near the Great Lakes in the north of the USA.

Denzil Fairbairn gave us a talk on his late uncle, Jack Webber. He was able to fill us in on much detail that hasn’t appeared in print anywhere regarding his uncle’s wonderful mediumship. He showed several photos that were omitted from Harry Edward’s famous book The Mediumship of Jack Webber, published by The Harry Edwards Spiritual Healing Trust.

An excellent demonstration of psychic art was provided by John Brett with Bryan Gibson providing most of the mediumistic communication relevant to the drawings (John also provided information). They worked well together as a team with the mental mediumship tying in well with the drawings and good evidence was provided with every contact. Although this demonstration did not come under the banner of physical mediumship it did provide balance to the seminar and was no doubt greatly welcomed by all attendees.

I’m sure this seminar will have played its part in helping to encourage more Spiritualists to sit and try to develop physical mediumship. In this scientific age we need hard evidence from both mental and physical mediumship to demonstrate that there is no death.

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

Investigation Supports Idea That Researcher Has Communicated With Wife

By Michael E. Tymn

Deceased researcher Montague Keen teams up with Arizona scientist Gary Schwartz to contact Keen’s wife Veronica.

ON JANUARY 15, 2004, at the age of 79, Montague ‘Monty’ Keen, one of Britain’s most prominent psychical researchers, collapsed and died while participating in a public debate on telepathy at the Royal Society of Arts in London.

A few weeks later, Veronica Keen, Monty’s wife, contacted Dr. Gary Schwartz at his University of Arizona research laboratory and informed him that she had received messages from her husband through several mediums requesting that Schwartz conduct some research with him. While still in the flesh, Keen had met and befriended Schwartz.

Schwartz and Dr. Julie Beischel, his research associate, then designed a two phase, multi-medium experiment with four research mediums participating, one of which was Allison DuBois on whose career as a psychic legal investigator the new NBC series ‘Medium’ is based.

With Veronica Keen in Britain and ’sitting’ by her telephone, DuBois did the reading in Arizona, ‘blind’ as to whom she was sitting for and apparently unaware of Monty Keen or the manner of his death.

The information relayed to Schwartz by DuBois strongly suggested that Keen was communicating. For example, DuBois said:

” … he’s showing a man falling at the podium. Like [snaps her fingers]. Like [snaps her fingers again] and falls, and he goes down at the podium.”

Although Keen was not actually standing at the podium when he collapsed, he was near it and facing it.

DuBois also said he was referencing a dedication to him that he didn’t expect or some sort of public acknowledgement that was a surprise to him, apparently a reference to the tribute to him that was then scheduled for June 27, 2004 at the same Royal Society of Arts hall in London. The image of Laurie Campbell, another research medium at Schwartz’s laboratory, also came to DuBois. Before his death, Keen had visited Schwartz’s lab, had met Campbell, and had observed a public demonstration by her. Sometime after this session, Campbell reported to Schwartz that she was getting messages from Keen on a regular basis

“He’s showing the ‘white crow’ as being important,” DuBois further said.

This was no doubt a reference to the famous quote by Harvard professor William James relative to mediums that “If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to prove that no crows are; it is enough to prove one single crow to be white.” It should be kept in mind that DuBois had no idea that she was receiving information from a psychical researcher. In fact, when Schwartz questioned her she did not know the meaning of ‘white crow’ in the context of psychical research.

There were a number of other veridical facts relayed by DuBois, some of them outside the bounds of telepathy, i.e., facts unknown to either Schwartz or Veronica Keen.

“The pattern of findings provides compelling support for the conclusion that the medium was receiving information related to the designated deceased, particularly in the life questions condition,” Schwartz summarized in his report.

In the ‘non-life’ questions, those not subject to verification, Schwartz asked Keen what he had learned about the afterlife.

“Um… The thing that stood out for him, and that made him so happy is how he could still be here so much after his passing,” DuBois related. “And how he would feel energy-wise like he did when he was younger instead of with issues he had accumulated as he got older, um, were stripped away…”