Sixth Sense Saved more than Wildlife: Many of you are already aware of the amazing lack of animal deaths during the devastating Asian Tsunami disaster that killed over 150,000 people. Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions that they possess a sixth sense for disasters. The waves washed floodwaters almost two miles inland at Yala National Park, Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife reserve and home to hundreds of wild elephants and several leopards. “No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit,” HD Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka's Wildlife Department reported.

Also of interest is the fact that there was massive devastation in the Nicobar Islands. The inhabitants in these islands consist of tribal and non-tribal mainstream populations. Thousands of people are dead and the coastal areas just evaporated. The rescue teams observed some strange things as they reached these remote tribal areas for rescue and relief. While there was massive, unbelievable devastation, the primitive tribes were relatively unaffected though most of them lived close by the ocean. A report in the India Daily said that “According to some of the tribal leaders, earth communicates to them. And this time they could see it coming in their remote viewing periscopes.” The report went on to say, “It seems, if this correlation is anything close to correct, we may be gaining in so called “modern technologies” but we are losing in higher grounds of technical expertise, which may encompass spiritual science and paranormal technologies.

Tsunami’s Dead Haunt the Living: Traditional beliefs and spooky gossip fuel ghost stories along the Asian coastlines where thousands of people died. In Thailand many taxi cab drivers will not go near the beach when it is dark. The people of Thailand consider ghosts an unpleasant reminder of death and also feel that they can lead to bad luck. In Indonesia a student says he saw a shadowy human shape enter a house but found the door locked and no one around. In Sri Lanka villagers say they hear cries for help from the ocean. There have been several requiem Masses to pray for the repose of victims in Sri Lanka even though Catholicism doesn’t believe the souls of dead people walk the Earth. From: “Voices of the dead haunt tragedy’s survivors,” by Rungrawee C. Pinyorat Associated Press.

NBC TV Show, Medium, is a Hit: In January, NBC renewed Medium for twenty-two episodes and also ordered three new episodes for the current season, guaranteeing originals through May. Medium has received praise from television critics across the country and has also received other-worldly numbers with 15.7 million viewers. The Phoenix woman who inspired the TV drama, Medium, can indeed speak with the dead according to tests performed on her at the University of Arizona. The abilities of Allison Dubois, who says that she sees dead people and receives information from them, are the basis for the show which stars actress Patricia Arquette. Dubois has used her mediumship to help police solve crimes, the main plot of Medium, along with her life as wife and mother of three children. But what few may realize is Dubois has been subjected to three years of research at the University of Arizona scientifically designed to determine if she is an authentic “medium” or a fraud.

“There is no question this is not fraud, some people really can do this and Allison is one of them,” says psychology professor Gary E. Schwartz, who directs the University of Arizona’s Human Energy Systems Laboratory where the experiments with Dubois and other well-known mediums, including John Edward, have been conducted. “As a scientist, I approach all this as an agnostic—I don’t believe it; I don’t disbelieve it. After testing her under conditions that ruled out the possibility of fraud, I came to the conclusion she’s the real deal”

From: The Arizona Daily Star, 17 Jan 2005

Survival is in the Details: In an article by Gary Schwartz and Julie Beischel on the International Survivalist Society website, the authors say that the experiments at the University of Arizona using single and double blind protocols while researching mediums, rule out conventional explanations such as fraud, cold reading, sitter-rater bias, and experimenter error, however they admit that the experiments do not distinguish between alternative paranormal explanations for the results such as telepathy, super-psi and/or survival of consciousness after death.

In their article, “Survival is in the Details: Emerging Evidence for Discarnate Intention from Mediumship Research,” the authors state that “Careful analysis of the transcripts from these experiments reveals unanticipated and uncontrolled—yet replicated—anomalous events implying discarnate intention that virtually rule out both telepathy and super-psi as plausible explanations of the totality of the findings.” Four major classes of these apparent discarnate intention events that have emerged in their research are:

1. Drop-Ins – Evidential information regarding unanticipated, uninvited, and sometimes unknown individuals that appear in specific readings;

2. Interruptions – Evidential information that interrupts experimenter-initiated questions (implying intentional direction and effort from the purported deceased communicant);

3. Cross-Correspondence – Evidential information that fits across readings as well as within readings; and,

4. Selective Withholding of Information – Evidential information that appears to be intentionally withheld across and within readings.”

White Noise, the Movie: The amount of attention that this supernatural thriller brought to Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) was amazing. The film, which debuted on January 7, has a story line centered on using EVP to communicate with the so called dead. The unfortunate part of the movie is its depiction of the darkest possible side of Spirit Communication; a side that we personally believe only thrives in Hollywood. Nonetheless, the film got people talking about EVP and we were overwhelmed with correspondence. On opening day, the Association TransCommunication website (atransc.org) received over 88,000 hits. During the month of January the site received over 600,000 visitors. Financially the movie was also a hit even after receiving horrible reviews. One critic said that he felt the success of the film was not with the actors, director or producers, but more with the public’s curiosity about the possibility of communicating with the Other Side and Universal studios using the idea of doing this through EVP in their marketing campaign.

In late January, we worked with the Universal DVD department who took us to two different “haunted” sites to film us recording for EVP. Even with a bunch of excited and curious executives tagging along, our Spirit Team managed to help bring in a few good EVP for the film crew. When the DVD is released, it will contain bonus footage from these EVP field trips along with footage and interviews from the AA-EVP June, 2004 conference.