2004 DPE Reports

November 2004 Department of Phenomenal Evidence Report
By The Revs. Tom and Lisa Butler, NST

Still Working. We have had several reports regarding contact from The Reverend Barbara Thurman. The Reverend Catherine Snell had called Barbara just days before her transition, asking her for advice on a spoon bending class that Catherine was to teach. She was sitting with another Spiritualist at Temple Heights Spiritualist Camp the morning Barbara made her transition. A cool breeze moved between them and they both knew that it was Barbara. In California, Barbara had just made her transition. Two days later, Catherine was teaching the spoon bending class that she had been worried about. To her amazement she spoke about spoon bending for forty-five minutes, describing how it related to this and helped with that. She felt certain that Barbara was helping her through Inspirational Speaking.

The Reverend Barbara Thurman (sitting) with American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena Founder, Sarah Estep.
Photograph of Barbara and Sarah by Becky Estep

Catherine was very pleased with her presentation but next she had to bend a spoon along with her class! She was relieved when her first spoon did bend and related that, “It was not a fantastic bend but it did bend.” She picked up her next spoon and knew within her that Barbara was up at the front of the class with her. She was electrified as she watched the spoon make two loops, a Barbara Thurman trademark.

Marie McDermott lived near Barbara and often drove her to church when she was too sick to drive. Marie also helped set up the chairs for the service. Marie related to us how Barbara talked on those drives about her student’s abilities and how best to bring those abilities out. Marie was with Barbara the day before she crossed over.

The next morning, Marie dreamed about Barbara. She woke up to find a glowing Barbara beside her bed, healthy, looking fifteen years younger and smiling. In typical Barbara fashion, she told Marie, “It’s time to stop resting on your laurels and finish the Morris Pratt course.” Marie called Barbara’s house but knew that she would hear that Barbara was finally out of her body.

We also have been lucky enough to receive communication from Barbara. On July 4, we went to our experiment room and placed a note and a picture of Barbara on the counter. The note explained that we would conduct experiments at 6 pm each night, trying to reach her. That first night we were just going to meditate and try to tune in to her and let her know what we were doing, but half way through the mediation, Lisa felt the need to get the recorder and record. We did not receive a message from Barbara on that recording, but after calling on her we recorded a man’s voice saying, “Barbara Thurman happy … is busy.” The next two nights, we did not receive anything we could say was pertinent to Barbara Thurman. In the Wednesday night session, we were trying to find out how long Barbara would be busy. You can hear Lisa say, “We recorded a man saying, ‘Barbara Thurman happy…is busy.’” Immediately after this, a voice that we recognized as Barbara, only younger, said, “I’m right here,” in that definite kind of voice that she has.

Barbara is doing what she said she would and we are sure that she will continue to help many here in the physical from her new perspective on the other side of life.

Mind over Matter. Loyd Auerbach wrote about his experiences with Martin Caidin in his book, Mind Over Matter (Kensington 1996). Caidin was able to move things with his mind. Loyd writes that, “It became clear that people could learn to do PK as long as they believed it possible …. The limits we put on our own physical performance are seemingly only one part physical and one part mental. With some appropriate intent and the ability to at least temporarily ignore or shrug off the limitations others place on us, what is impossible becomes quite possible.” From Fate June 2004, “The Psychokinetic Zone.”

Life after Death. NBC 10 in Washington State did a piece on the work of Dr. Melvin Morse, M.D. Morse is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington and a neuroscientist who studies the near death experiences of children. You may remember Morse as the author of Closer to the Light and Into the Light.

Morse used to believe that people who were interested in near death experiences just wanted to be on television talk shows but then he resuscitated a 7 year-old girl who had been underwater for nineteen minutes and was clinically dead. First she described her own resuscitation from a birds eye view. Then she drew a picture of her unborn brother with a big red heart and told Morse that she had to come back to her body to help her mother with her unborn brother. The baby boy had heart disease when he was born.

Morse now believes that people who have a near death experience are actually stepping into another realm of existence. “One child told me it was a light who told her who she was and where she was to go … I want to interact with that light that tells us who we are and where we are to go while we’re still alive. That to me is a challenge of the near-death experience.” From: www.nbc10.com/news/3253894/detail.html

Tate Memorial Lecture. Henry Burton Tate willed money to the British Society for Psychical Research ‘for the pursuance of such activities as may lead to the establishment of the theory of survival after death.’ Tate stipulated that the Society hold two public lectures each year, to be named the Gwen Tate Memorial Lectures and that these lectures be on ‘the continuing existence of consciousness.’

The Society was fortunate to have Dr. Anabela Cardoso present the evidence for survival offered through Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC). ITC is the term used for a wide range of communications coming from discarnate people that are received through electronic media such as audio and video recorders, radios, telephones and computers. Dr. Cardoso outlined the history of ITC and summarized some of the work of recent and current researchers. She went on to explain the various methods used for receiving ITC communications, in particular Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and Direct Radio Voice (DRV). Dr. Cardoso then played many samples of her DRV communications.

From: Psychic World, July 2004, “Dr. Anabela Cardoso Delivers the Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture at the Society for Psychical Research on London on May 20^th 2004” by David Fontana

Mapping empathy in the brain. A team of scientists led by Dr. Tania Singer of University College of London has conducted fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) brain mapping experiments to determine the psychological character of empathy. Couples thought to be close friends were used in the experiment with the female connected to the fMRI and the male subjected to electrical shock applied to a hand. While the one receiving the shock expressed the pain in the expected regions of the brain associated with pain as well as that associated with an emotional component of the pain (the “pain matrix”) the partner connected to the fMRI responded to the pain in only the emotional areas of the brain. According to Dr. Singer, [this] “ …suggest that the neural substrate for empathetic experiences does not involve the entire “pain matrix.” We conclude that only that part of the pain network associated with its affective qualities, but not its sensory qualities, mediates empathy.”

As Michael Colmer pointed out in the July 2004 Psychic World, this research may have important implications for mediumship. For mediums who feel the message as a physical condition, this research argues that the medium will respond in the regions of the brain associated with empathy but not the regions associated with the physical experience of pain. Similarly, a spiritual healer will often sense the condition of a sitter as a corresponding discomfort. This research argues that that experience is restricted to an empathetic response.