2005 DPE Reports

April 2005 Department of Phenomenal Evidence Report
By The Revs. Tom and Lisa Butler, NST

Death is an Illusion: During an interview for the BBC documentary, The Day I Died, Pam Reynolds says she knows that “Death is an illusion.” Pam had a near-death experience in 1991 after doctors found an aneurysm lodged at the base of her brain. The NDE happened when doctors at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix performed a radical surgical procedure in which her heart was stopped and her brain was shut down.

Her doctors were mystified, after her recovery, when she accurately described her surgery: “the saw used to carve up her head, the box of saw bits held in reserve, the urgent conversations between doctors and nurses. Yet such recollections were impossible not only because her eyes were taped shut, her face shrouded and her ears plugged, but because her brain had ceased functioning.”

From: High on Death by Mark Stuertz dallasobserver.com

Does the Brain work like a Television Receiver: We have reported about the work of Dr. Pim van Lommel in past DPE Reports. Dr. van Lommel has carried out research and surveys of patients who have had near-death experiences. He has documented NDE when there has been no apparent brain function. He has suggested in papers in the highly respected international journal of medical science and practice, The Lancet, that consciousness does not arise from the brain but that the brain acts similarly to a television receiver, processing the consciousness which comes from beyond the brain.

From: “Letters” and a letter from Sandra Dashwood in the Paranormal Review, Issue 32.

Communication from Montague Keen: In the October 2004 DPE report we told you about the transition of long time researcher for the Society for Psychical Research, Montague Keen. At a tribute held for him in June in England, his wife, Veronica, presented an audio tape recorded at a David Thomson séance. On it was “direct voice” communication from Monty. Other members of the audience also reported receiving messages from Monty in séances and Dr. Gary Schwartz showed a photograph of a “drop-in” sculpture, bearing some resemblance to Monty, produced by a medium with no prior knowledge of him. Julie Beischel said that a medium in their research project described an error on Monty’s death certificate which Veronica had later verified; she had not noticed it before.

From: “Mediumship, Survival and Psychical Research: A Tribute to Montague Keen,” by Nicola J. Holt, Paranormal Rebiew, October 2004 Issue 32

Communication with the Spirit World: From the International Survivalist Society comes this: “International polls agree, it’s not uncommon to be in touch with the spirit world. One UK study found more than one in three people felt that someone who had died had communicated with them—often more than once. Another American study says that, of widowed spouses, about sixty-six per cent have experienced signs of their loved one’s presence.”    From: www.survivalafterdeath.org/news.htm

Psychics Solve Cases: The Nordisk Film TV Denmark has created a hit in its series, Sensing Murder. The TV show has been licensed to Broadcasters in over seven countries and has been optioned to producers in over ten other countries making it an export success. Sensing Murder is a forty minute entertainment format that follows clairvoyants as they investigate unsolved murder cases together with the police. It has been reported that an unsolved murder case was finally closed through the clairvoyants working on the show in Romania. When the show debuted on Australian TV, viewers were amazed that the psychics, working independently, got twenty-five direct hits even though they knew nothing about the case, stunning orthodox science and even the hardened skeptics. They identified that the victim was female and that her name was Sarah. They reported that her body was still missing and that she had been dead for around thirteen years (it had been fifteen years). They told investigators that she had been coming home from tennis and was attacked by a group of people getting into her little red car. They correctly identified the location of the abduction and even the specific place that the murder took place.

Rebecca Gibney, host of the new crime series said, “…the stuff they came up with (on the show) was just mind-boggling. There were details that were never made public.” The show has been a big success with audiences and we can only hope that the United States will finally have it on as well.

Sixth Sense: A completely blind British man has been shown to possess an apparent sixth sense which lets him recognize emotions on people’s faces. The man has suffered two strokes which damaged the areas of the brain that process visual signals, leaving him blind. However, his eyes and optic nerves are intact, and brain scans showed that he appeared to somehow use a part of the brain not usually used for sight to process visual signals linked to some emotions.

When researchers from the University of Wales showed the man images of shapes such as circles and squares, he could only guess what they were, and had a similar lack of success determining the gender of emotionless male and female faces. But when presented with angry or happy human faces, his accuracy improved to 59%, significantly better than what would be expected by random chance, with similar results for distinguishing between sad and happy or fearful and happy faces.

The findings, published in the journal, Nature Neuroscience, suggested the man was able to process information gathered by his eyes in a different part of the brain from the visual center.

From: www.survivalafterdeath.org/news.htm

Yoga and Psychic Ability: the Parapsychological Association has made a grant from the Gertrude Schmeidler endowment to support the research of Suneetha Kandi, Ph.D., from the Institute for Human Science and Service, Visakhapatnam, India. She will explore the effectiveness of various yoga practices in developing psychic abilities. Few studies have been conducted on yoga in parapsychology. Subjects will be given training in four different yoga techniques. Data will be collected in forced-choice and free-response ESP tests and personality tests will be used for broader perspective.

From: Parapsychological Association website at www.parapsych.org/pare_grant_2004.html

Doubt Cast on Theory that Magnetic Fields Spark Religious Feelings: Studies showing that magnetic stimulation of the brain induces spiritual experiences are being questioned by researchers who cannot reproduce key results. We have reported in the past that in a study by Michael Persinger 80% of participants who wore helmets that targeted their temporal lobes with weak magnetic fields, of roughly the same strength as those generated by a computer monitor, felt an unexplained presence in the room. Persinger suggested that magnetism causes bursts of electrical activity in the temporal lobes of the brain, and he linked this to the spiritual experiences.

Now a group of Swedish researchers have repeated his work, with one crucial difference. They ensured that neither the participants nor the experimenters interacting with them had any idea who was being exposed to the magnetic fields, a “double-blind” protocol. In contrast to the results from Persinger and others, the team found that the magnetism had no discernable effects.