From: Daily Mail, “Is This Really Proof That Man Can See Into the Future,” May 4 2007 www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html

Paranormal is Now Normal: In the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, psychiatrists Colin Ross and Shaun Joshi report that paranormal experiences are so common in the general population that no theory of normal psychology which does not take them into account can be considered comprehensive.

From: Fate Magazine, April 2007, “60 Years of UFO Research,” by Brad Steiger

Doctors Surveyed on Religion, Spirituality and Health: Researches at the University of Chicago sent a survey to 1,820 doctors. The survey included questions about the doctor’s religious beliefs and attitudes about the positive and negative influence of religion and spirituality. With sixty-three percent responding, the study found that fifty-six percent of the doctors thought religion and spirituality had a significant influence on health. Of interest was the fact that fifty-four percent believed that, sometimes, a supernatural being intervenes in care. Eighty-five percent felt religion and spirituality were a positive influence, but only six percent thought that religion and spirituality changed medical outcomes. The study was published in the April 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. “Spirituality Influences Health, Most U.S. Doctors Say,” by Steven Reinberg, www.lovescience.om/healthday/603562.html

Majority Believe in Angels: An AP-AOL News survey conducted this year shows that regardless of socioeconomic background or religious belief, a majority of Americans, eighty-one percent, believe in angels. The number of believers grew to ninety-seven percent when it came to Caucasian Christians but fifty percent of those with no religious affiliation at all also said they believed that angels existed.

Discarnate Intention: At the last Parapsychology Foundation Conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Gary Schwartz of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Arizona spoke about his findings of what he calls, “Discarnate intention events.” The findings imply an intentional direction and effort on the part of the deceased in the proxy mediumship experiments they are conducting. In certain sittings the deceased seem to be controlling the experiment. With “Drop-in” events, evidential information comes through regarding uninvited, unanticipated and sometimes unknown individuals and the information is later verified.

From: “Mediums at Large,” by Patrick Huyghe Fate Magazine, April 2007

Fewer Teens Believe in Heaven: The number of American teenagers who are sure they believe in Heaven is declining according to a study by the Southern Baptist Convention. In addition, many teens say they are unsure what it takes to get to Heaven.

More than 1,000 teenagers were surveyed and the results were compared with a similar survey conducted in 2005. The percentage of teens in 2007 who strongly agreed that Heaven exists was sixty-nine percent, a six percentage drop from 2005. “That’s a real drop,” said Scott McConnell, a director of LifeWay Research, an arm of the Church.

Confusion about the afterlife may not be a negative thing, says Bonnie Mill-McLemore, professor of pastoral theology at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. “It might be a good thing they’re thinking about this—questions and curiosity about something so huge in the human experience,” she said. “I wouldn’t be too alarmed. There’s a lot of uncertainty about Heaven. But the declining participation in church activities, and belief in Heaven among teens, should be cause for concern among church leaders.”

From: Parapsychic Journal, #52, by Robert Egby. originally published June 10th in The Tennessean, www.tennesean.com .

Near-Death-Like Experiences: Two published authors are looking for people who have had Near-Death-Like experiences when they were not close to death. Nancy Clark, an experiencer and author, was delivering an eulogy at the time of her own experience. She is asking people who have had an encounter with the light but who were not close to death at the time, to contact her. Nancy feels that these experiences are every bit as detailed and powerfully transformative as an NDE. Email Nancy at healeygarden@msn.com  and type the words “NDLE Research Project” in the subject line.

Dr. Lolette Kuby is gathering material for a book about mystical experiences that are not connected to near-death episodes and is particularly interested in encounters with God. She says, “If you or someone you know has had such an experience and would like to share it with the world, please contact me at lokuby@sympatico.ca .

Canadian Spiritualists Website: The Survival Research Institute of Canada has re-launched their web site with a new look (www.islandnet.com/sric). The site features a few rarely-seen photographs of Canadian Spiritualists and includes twenty-two descriptions of Canadian individuals and Organizations of interest to Spiritualists

Comparing Wicca with Christianity: “In the April 2007 Journal of the Society for Psychical Research article, “Paranormal Phenomena in British Witchcraft and Wiccan Culture With Special Reference to Spellcraft,” Melvyn J. Willin questioned Wiccans concerning their practice of casting spells and Christians about their use of prayer. Spell casting is generally used for the same purpose as prayer, but with different assumptions, and certainly different practices. Here are the main comparisons we noted in the article:

To quote the article, “Witches obviously gave considerable thought to the matter of ethics before casting their spells, etc., whereas Christians’ faith in God allowed them to put their faith in God’s goodness rather than taking responsibility for their own actions. This is an important difference between the two faiths. Overall, there were similarities between the intentions of witches’ spells and Christians’ prayers. They were both aimed at providing healing, peace and comfort to the sick and their friends and families, even if the former contained a wider range of desired manifestations. Where they differed was in the intense personalization and energy used by the witches in respect to the individual spells in contrast to the Christians’ more traditional format….”