The Power of the Paranormal. In the “Trying to find honest reporting about Spiritualist concepts” department, we have this: The New Scientist Magazine ran three special reports on psi in their March 13^th 2004 edition. Sadly two of the articles were obviously aimed at raising doubt regarding the validity of psi. “On the Edge of the Known World” was published without the author even being named. Victor Zammit noted that, “In the first two sentences of this article, I detected four egregious fundamental errors of fact and interpretation.”

One of the misleading claims that are often made by writers who have not bothered to investigate current psi research is repeated in the same article: “… skeptics and believers have been struggling for more than 100 years to show whether or not psychic power exists.” In fact, from current research to the research of our pioneers, it has been repeatedly shown under increasingly stringent scientific control that psi phenomena exists as a fact of our reality that must be acknowledged and should be developed for Humankind.

Thanks to Victor Zammit www.victorzammit.com

Spirituality in College. A study was conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at University California Los Angeles as an initial part of a project called “Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Student’s Search for Meaning and Purpose.” 3,680 students from 46 colleges and universities completed their survey. Three in four students said that they prayed, that religion was personally helpful to them, and that they discussed religion and spirituality with friends. The study found that 71% of those surveyed said that they gained strength by trusting in a higher power. Even though 76% of the students reported they were “searching for meaning and purpose in life” more than half said that their professors did not provide opportunities to discuss the meaning and purpose of life. Two-thirds of those surveyed said professors never encouraged discussions of religious or spiritual matters. Only 55% were satisfied with how their college experience had provided “opportunities for religious/spiritual reflection.”

From: http://spirituality.ucla.edu/news/2003-11-21.html

Article on Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). The March 2004 issue of FATE Magazine ran an article about Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) that we submitted. The article covered over seven pages and could not have been better presented by the editors of the magazine. The article that immediately followed was written by a man who had tried recording EVP for the first time. It ends with his saying that he had proven to himself that EVP was a reality. The increased interest in EVP shown by FATE, such as this article and the review of our book, There is No Death and There are No Dead, is greatly appreciated as we work to “get the word out” about life after physical death.

Movie on EVP. Watch for the release of a movie called White Noise, due out in November. It stars Michael Keaton who receives communication from his murdered wife through EVP. Despite the fact that White Noise is a thriller, many more people will learn about EVP through the movie. Paul Brooks, the Producer of the movie has told us that the movie will help make EVP a “household word,” while the marketing department of Universal Studio, which will distribute the movie, warned us that the first thing they did after reviewing the movie was to “Google” EVP.

The Georgia Wonder. At the age of fourteen, Lulu Hurst exhibited a mysterious force that enthralled audiences and confounded the scientific community in the early 1880s. Lulu’s power allowed her to lift three men in a chair several inches off the floor with only the palms of her hands touching the back rest. There were many other exhibitions of her power. In the “umbrella test” a volunteer would grasp an umbrella with both hands. Lulu would simply place her open palms against the middle of the staff and soon the volunteer and umbrella would begin to jerk and dart about the stage until collapsing on the floor. Her appearances around the country were often preceded by private showings to respected men of universities and medical organizations. There was much discussion over whether Lulu’s power was due to animal magnetism, psychic force, electrical power or spiritualistic manifestations. Tests proved the force was not a result of muscular exertion as she would be unfazed after a performance while her opponents, those who tried to prevent her from moving things, were completely exhaust.

From: March 2004 Fate “Lulu Hurst The Georgia Wonder” by Dorothy Hampton Pope.

ITC Conference Highlights. We recently spoke at the First International Conference on the Scientific Investigation of Survival of Physical Death with Special Reference to Instrumental Transcommunication in Vigo, Spain. The conference was sponsored by the ITC Journal, published by Dr. Anabela Cardoso and Dr. David Fontana, vice president and past president of the British Society for Psychical Research.

For us, highlights of the conference were presentations by members of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory For Biopsychocybernetics Research in Italy (http://www.biopsicocibernetica.org). For instance, Daniele Gullà described three technologies that promise to be most useful in future research. The first was forensic voice analysis techniques that permit analysis of voice formants that provides what amounts to a voice print that can be used to compare living and “dead” voice samples of the same person. Gullà also showed how the lab has determined that voice box frequencies are missing in EVP samples.

Gullà next described the forensic face recognition software that permits a more definitive identification of partially visible faces. This software may help us conclusively identify faces found in Video ITC.

Finally, Gullà showed an image made with a Raytheon thermal imaging camera which actually displays the heat in the air. You can see the air! Gullà showed one slide in which the air in an area of a haunted room appeared as a different temperature, and there was a form shaped like a person. It looked a little like a gray Dough Boy standing there. Think of it, a thermal image of a ghost! Temperature sensors are used to detect drops in temperature thought to represent strong psi activity or the presence of an etheric entity. With the thermal camera, it is possible to photograph the boundaries of such a cool area.

The president of the Laboratory has asked us to become members and offered to support research in specific cases of voice and face recognition. In turn, we have agreed to proofread the English translations of their reports—promising a rich source of research reports for this DPE monthly report and the AA-EVP NewsJournal.

The final speaker was Dr. Peter Fenwick, one of the top three authorities on near death experience in the world. He talked about, The Possible Significance of the Near Death and Approaching Death Experiences. Dr. Fenwick is currently Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, the leading psychiatric teaching hospital in Britain, and at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He described some of the research projects that have been designed to verify what cardiac arrest patients report about near-death experiences in the hospital. We thoroughly enjoyed our meeting with the Fenwicks and feel this new friendship will be an avenue for future reports on research in the United Kingdom.

We wish to thank Dr. Cardoso and Dr. Fontana for their efforts to open an international forum for the exchange and discussion of survival related research. Also note that our attendance at this conference was entirely funded out of our own pocket. If you value the work we are doing in behalf of Spiritualism, your contributions to this department will help make future efforts possible.