2004 DPE Reports

February 2004 DPE Report
By The Revs. Tom and Lisa Butler, NST

Belief in God. A National telephone poll of 900 registered voters made by Opinion Dynamics Corporation shows that 92 percent of the people surveyed believed in God, 85 percent in Heaven and 82 percent in Miracles. Belief in the Devil had increased from 63 percent in 1997 to 71 in 2003.

Most of those polled (69 percent) said that religion played too small a role in people’s lives and 37 percent said they attended church or other places of worship at least once a week. Results from other questions showed that 34 percent believed in ghosts and 25 percent in reincarnation.

From: More Believe in God Than Heaven, by Dana Blanton, Fox News Channel www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,99945,00.html

Evidence of “Mind Sight.” Neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick, President of the British Branch of IANDS, reported that his team plans to prove once and for all the existence of Out of Body Experiences (OBE). He is asking 25 hospitals to place pictures and objects around their cardiac units. People claiming an OBE during emergency care would be asked if they had noticed any of the objects. “If they do notice them when the brain is not functioning then it makes the case for the mind being separate from the brain,” he said. According to Fenwick, there is ample anecdotal evidence of out of body experiences, but scant experimental data.

From: www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60372,00.html

Life After Death. A new study from the Barna Research Group showed that 8 out of 10 Americans believe in an afterlife of some sort. The statement, “Every person has a soul that will live forever, either in God’s presence or absence,” was agreed to by a majority of those surveyed. Even though most of those polled believed in the existence of the soul and that we continue to live after death, many of these same people were not clear about their own ultimate destination.

The Barna survey found that new perceptions were entering into the traditional beliefs of life after death, with for instance, a growing number of people believing in reincarnation. One-third of Americans felt that it was possible to communicate with those who were dead. It was also noted that nearly half of young adults accept the concept of communication with the dead, while the percentage who believe in such communication is considerably less amongst older adults.

The Barna Research Group, Ltd. is an independent marketing research company located in southern California. Since 1984, it has been studying cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. If you would like to receive a bi-weekly update on the latest research findings from the Barna Research Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna Research web site (www.barna.org) by providing your e-mail address in the section of the home page that offers The Barna Update.

Comment: Remembering that Senior executives determine what will and will not be funded in research, the statistics indicating that younger people are more apt to believe in communication with the so called dead than are senior citizens foretells an important change in the dynamics of research concerning the Survival Hypothesis. The statistics also tell us that the younger generation should be better represented in Spiritualist churches.

Sound of organ pipes may cause strange feelings. Controlled experiments in the UK found that when infrasound was pumped into a concert hall the audience experienced strange feelings. These feelings included shivers down the spine, coldness, anxiety and even an extreme sense of sorrow.

Scientists involved in this latest study feel that hauntings and the feeling that something or someone else unseen is in a room or building, may also be explained by the presence of infrasound.

Infrasound lies in the range of 10-20 HZ and can be emitted by the long pipes of cathedral organs. Some buildings can even amplify low frequency sound. Also, elephants and whales use it for communication.

From: Organ music ‘instils religious feelings,’ by Jonathan Amos BBC News Monday, 8 September, 2003

Stonehenge Carvings. Laser scanning has revealed ancient carvings on the pillars of Stonehenge that are invisible to the naked eye. The archaeologists, from the Wessex Archaeology and Archaeoptics companies, believe a full survey could provide compelling evidence that Stonehenge was a memorial for the dead, at least at the time the carvings were made.

From: Lasers reveal invisible Stonehenge carvings, NewScientist.com news service www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994288

Psychic Detectives. Court TV plans to air another in their “Psychic Detectives” series early in 2004. Psychic, Pat Gagliardo, will be featured. Pat’s life changed when she took up meditation and began having visions. She contacted authorities after seeing a missing man in one of her visions. She saw him slumped over in a car in water. Her descriptions of landmarks led investigators to a place in the Thames River where his body was found and this gained her national attention.

From: Norwich Bulletin TV episode to feature exploits of Norwich psychic, http://www.norwichbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

Hamilton Séances. Walter Meyer zu Erpen has spent many years studying photographs from the Winnipeg Circle séances. These séances took place in the home of Dr. T. G. Hamilton starting in 1918. The Hamilton collection is the best of its kind in Canada and Meyer zu Erpen’s lecture on the subject drew a packed house at the University of Manitoba this past fall. An article by John Gleeson in the Winnipeg Sun states, “Sherlock Holmes creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, attended one of the Hamilton séances in 1923. In a bizarre twist, Doyle died a few years later and then ‘appeared’ during séances in the Hamilton home in 1932.”

From: Ectoplasm Capital of the World, by John Gleeson, Winnipeg Sun. The picture, Conan Doyle's Return, is an enlargement from the Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton collection of physical medium, Mary Marshall as shown at:  www.photographymuseum.com/doylefalg.html.

Our Actions can change Lives

Dear Abby,

I was eight years old and it was the last day of school. I was living in a less-than-caring foster home and worried about the 50 cents I owed my school for several lost books. Unless I paid for the books, I would not get my fourth-grade report card.

When I heard the news, I left school crying and running and didn’t see the tall man until I ran straight into his legs. He asked me what was the matter, and I told him. He took out two quarters, and in a kind voice said, “Things will be all right now.” I paid the school, got my report card, and shortly thereafter, my mother was able to take me back to live with her. The year was 1942 and that 50 cents was a lot of money.

Abby, to this day, every act of generosity I perform—every dime I give to a cause—is in honor of that man. I don’t remember his face. I only recall his brown shoes, which I saw first when I ran into him. His kindness to a crying child made all the difference in my life.

Marilyn Irlbacher, Nashua N.H

From “The Washington Post” Dear Abby Universal Press Syndicate, Los Angeles Calif. (Our thanks goes to D.S. for sending us this Dear Abby letter.)

Please send information about phenomena in your church, life or community to Tom and Lisa Butler, PO Box 13111