Mind Over Matter: In last year’s July Journal of Religion and Psychical Research, Donald Morse wrote about how our mind can heal us and also kill us. Morse says that as a child he believed the saying, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never harm me,” but as an adult he realized that this saying was completely false. In the editorial, Morse gives several examples of just how important our thoughts are. In one example an announcement was made at a football game that six or seven people might have suffered from food poisoning caused by drinking soda purchased at a concession stand. Over 200 fans had to be hospitalized because of nausea and vomiting, many of them had not even gone to the concession stands. The sodas were found not to be contaminated and soon afterwards everyone recovered.

In another example, a man’s cancer had progressed so far that treatment had been stopped except for administration of oxygen to help his breathing. His life expectancy was less than two weeks. He was given an injection of an experimental drug and told that it had shown amazing results in the treatment of advanced cancers. Shortly after the treatment the patient got out of bed and spread the news that he had miraculously recovered. After only a few days the metastatic tumors shrunk to one half their original sizes and in ten days the patient was nearly cancer free. The positive outcome continued for two months until the patient saw a TV report that the experimental drug that he had been given had turned out to be useless against cancer. Within weeks the patient was once again in his original terminal state.

From: “Mind Over Matter,” The Journal of Religion and Psychical Research July 2004.

Orbs: With the proliferation of digital cameras has come a proliferation of circular spots, usually white, that appear in pictures similar to what would be considered spirit lights. These inexplicable spots are called orbs. If one goes out and takes a picture with a digital camera during snow or rain the picture will be filled with lots of these orb looking features. Thus, because many pictures with orbs are not paranormal, all orb pictures have been written off as not paranormal. A report out of the UK shows that we should not be so sure that all orbs are reflections off of particulates in the air.

A team of investigators, which included sensitives as well as skeptics, were filming at an old disused school. One of the sensitives detected the presence of two young children. They report that they had seen no orbs before this and yet all the rooms were old and dusty.

Another psychic, Nita, asked the children in Spirit to play with her and to the groups amazement orbs were photographed at the exact location that she said the children were located. A skeptic, who was running a video camera, pointed at one of investigators, Penny, and asked one of the spirit children to go sit with her. He became quite excited and said, “that’s amazing; an orb has just risen slowly from the floor up to Nita’s hand and then sped off across to Penny”! The orb was then photographed and appeared to be sitting on Penny’s lap.

From: The Phantom or Fraud Project, “Orbs not Dust,” by Ross Hemsworth

Orb of Light Seems to have Intelligence. A fellow Spiritualist sent us a newspaper clipping from the Washington Times. The column was about an apparent ghost being captured on a courthouse security camera. Security personnel first saw the light while looking at a surveillance tape that was recorded earlier. But the next day, they saw it live for over an hour. After noticing the light, a security officer, Mr. Price, walked up the stairs and didn’t see anything. But downstairs where a crowd had gathered to watch, the video monitor revealed the strange light moving ahead of the officer, stopping when he stopped and starting when he started. When those watching the video saw Mr. Price walk through the light, Mr. Price said at the exact same time that he felt a chill. Officials are still trying to find a scientific explanation for the anomaly.

From: the Washing Times Aug 8 2004, “Courthouse camera captures a ‘ghost,’ Videotape spooks Kent officials.

Table Tipping Profiled in Respected Journal: The Australian Journal of Parapsychology has profiled the experiences of a group of Australian researchers who have borne witness to the noises and movements of an ordinary card table. The phenomenon defies conventional physics. The group says that the lightest of taps came first and then strange groans were heard as if the wood in the flimsy card table were contracting and expanding. They then experienced movement in fits and starts before the table graduated to wildly spinning on one leg.

The group of eight, headed by Australian paranormal researcher, Michael Williams, has started filming the table in hopes that they can capture it if they achieve total levitation. Present video footage shows the table legs lifting off of the ground and the sitters virtually being dragged along behind the table as it builds up momentum and spins around on one leg. The video camera light has also been known to falter and go out just as the movements start to occur.

The infrared video footage has also turned up strange balls of light, which appear to roll across the floor in random directions near the sitters. Williams has caught similar moving balls of light after filming in reputedly haunted homes and locations, but he is none the wiser about exactly what they are. Williams said that “Some people hypothesize they are the spirits of the dead, but all we can definitively say is they appear to be spheres of infrared energy - and they’re definitely not normal.”

From: The Cheers Magazine, Turning the tables on Parapsychology, by Rebecca Lang

www.thecheers.org/articlepage_1320__Turning_the_tables_on_parapsychology_0.html

EVP May Lead to Exhumation. In Spain, a woman who died two years earlier from liver cancer has been leaving messages on her family’s cell phone. The article translated by Scott Corrales states that the family asked a district judge to issue a court order for the exhumation of their mother. They say that Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) left on their cell phone from their mother, asks for the removal of a cross that was placed on her chest during the burial. The daughter says that when any family member records anything on her (the mother’s) cell phone, all that is heard is the mother’s voice saying, “Come, come, the cross,” when the message is played back. The judge was able to hear the recordings but felt that he could not rule on the matter and told the family to take their claim to a priest or the Higher Council on Scientific Research.

From: The Journal of Hispanic Ufolog, 521 June 2005