BOOK REVIEWS

Essay Review: Journeys to the Borderlands— Skeptics, Deniers, and Nonlocality

By Stephan A. Schwartz

Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—and Couldn’t by Steve Volk. New York: Harper Collins, 2011. Pp. 321. $25.99 (hardcover). ISBN-978-0-06-185771-3.

Steve Volk’s book Fringe-ology falls into a small genre of work that might be described as picaresque skeptic nonfiction.T he hallmark of these works is the skeptic’s saga, his passage through a strange and anomalous world of exotic characters, uncertain claims, spurious assertions, and the siren call of an experience that may change your life forever. These books must not be mistaken for the denierist literature of fundamentalist materialists like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, or the late Christopher Hitchens—who may now have changed his views. Those are essentially materialist polemics in which conclusions support premises with almost no data in between, and what is admitted is only that which confirms the paradigm. The point of the denierist is not to change. One of the hallmarks of deniers is their sense of righteousness about their commitment to the existing paradigm. Deniers, a self-defined group, many of whom give their careers over to it, and Denierism itself, constitute the Night’s Watch. They will die in place defending a paradigm under assault from data the paradigm can no longer subsume. Right now in the USA we have three big denier movements— anti-climate change, anti-evolution, and anti-nonlocal consciousness. Each has proven itself a detriment to the science it purports to serve, and a philosophical position that is failing. I predict denier books will have long- term meaning only to historians and philosophers of science, because they represent quintessential Kuhnian crisis behavior in print. Denier literature in all three areas—evolution, climate change, and nonlocal consciousness—however passionately argued, and elegantly worded, has begun to seem antiquated and out of touch. Consciousness denier arguments, particularly, have not changed in decades. That’s because nothing outside of the denier paradigm can be added, and yet so much of the leading edge research in each of these three areas is now, in Kuhnian terms, anomalous. Here is pure denier-speak concerning nonlocal consciousness from physicist Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University, who makes the materialist point very explicitly. Speaking of a recent ESP presentiment study conducted by Cornell University psychology professor Daryl Bem, he 168 The Journal of Parapsychology said, “If any of [Bem’s] claims were true, then all of the bases underlying contemporary science would be toppled, and we would have to rethink everything about the nature of the universe” (Hofstadter, 2011). How is one to reconcile Hofstadter’s words with the published sentiments of some of the greatest figures in his own field, many Nobel laureates, whose thinking contradicts his own? And why doesn’t he seem to be aware of them? Is this a kind of studied willful ignorance? Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics, the area most of interest in consciousness research, noted in an interview published in The Observer of 25 January 1931: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness” (Planck, 1931). For Wolfgang Pauli, it was very straightforward, “It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be ‘psychic’ nor ‘physical’ but somehow both and somehow neither” (Pais & Pauli, 2000). Physicist Henry Margenau puts it this way, “Strangely, it does not seem possible to find the scientific laws or principles violated by the existence of [psi phenomena]. We can find contradictions between [their occurrence] and our culturally accepted view of reality, but not—as many of us have believed—between [their occurrence] and the scientific laws that have been so laboriously developed” (Margenau, 1987). Nor do deniers register the thinking of people such as Arizona State astrophysicist Paul Davies, “It is no longer a secret that inherited notions of matter and the material world have not been able to sustain the revolutionary developments of twentieth-century physics and biology” (Davies & Gregersen, 2010). Davies proposes information as the foundation of reality, a view with which I am in agreement. I think that is what parapsychological data have been telling us for decades. Seth Lloyd, a computer scientist at MIT, has been developing this model, “by treating quantum events as ‘quantum bits,’ or qubits, as the way whereby the universe ‘registers itself.’” The Daily Galaxy, a science blog, describes it very well:

Lloyd proposes that information is a quantifiable physical value, as much as mass or motion—that any physical system—a river, you, the universe—is a quantum mechan- ical computer. Lloyd has calculated that “a computer made up of all the energy in the entire known universe (that is, within the visible ‘horizon’ of forty-two billion light years) can store about 10^92 bits of information and can perform 10^105 computations/second.” The universe itself is a quantum computer, Lloyd says, and it has made a mind-boggling 10^122 computations since the Big Bang (for that part of the universe within the “horizon”). (Daily Galaxy, 2012) Book Reviews 169

And physics is just one discipline where denier thinking seems archaic. One might also consider this from biologist Michael Garfield: “Life is a molecular process; molecular processes operate according to the quantum playbook; therefore, life is a quantum process” (Garfield, 2012). I could go on for pages citing research I think supports nonlocality of consciousness in disciplines other than parapsychology, and that, in itself, seems to me notable. Papers cite mostly research in their own field. That means a new paradigm is emerging in multiple disciplines, each with enough research to create a literature for citation, with few references outside its bounds. But let me return to Bem, whose work was the reason for Hofstadter’s outburst. The attacks on Bem, his presentiment research, and his response to the criticism of it, an exchange going on as I write this, perfectly encapsulates another point about the denier movement which Volk, to his credit, remarks on: the inferiority of the denier criticisms when compared to the work they are criticizing. Volk in his second chapter—written before the Bem attacks were launched or he might have used Bem—speaks at length about the Gauquelin-astrology-CSICOP mess, about which I will say more below. To give what Volk is trying to do additional context, and to show that Gauquelin is not a singleton, let’s look a bit closer at the Bem controversy and how the deniers treated it. Then it will be easy to see that the two cases represent the same kind of denier behavior, and the same inferior quality of the criticism compared to the work it criticizes. In what must surely be a contender for the worst gaffe in science criticism in recent publication, University of Amsterdam mathematical psychologist Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, and his team, attacked Bem just as the Gauquelins were attacked, through his statistical analysis. In the Bem case, the critique was based on Bayesian analysis techniques, and the Wagenmakers team particularly relied on the research of University of California Irvine Department of Statistics mathematician, and acknowledged Bayesian authority, Wesley Johnson (Wagenmakers,Wetzels, Borsboom, & van der Maas, 2012). The Wagenmakers et al. paper elicited a published commentary from Bem, with Johnson as coauthor, along with Jessica Utts, also in the UC Irvine department. The crux of the Bem, Johnson, Utts response: the denier arguments were based on an inaccurate and inappropriate interpretation of Johnson’s work (Bem, Utts, & Johnson, 2011). Oops! What makes this even more bizarre is that Utts was the center of an earlier denier crash and burn. She was the person chosen by the American Research Institutes (AIR), along with denier Ray Hyman, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, to assess the remote viewing research funded by the government. The U.S. Congress had tasked AIR to make this assessment, which resulted in the famous AIR report in 1995. In it, leading denier Hyman was forced to concede: 170 The Journal of Parapsychology

I want to state that we agree on many [other] points. We both agree that the experiments [being assessed] were free of the methodological weaknesses that plagued the early . . . research. We also agree that the . . . experiments appear to be free of the more obvious and better known flaws that can invalidate the results of parapsychological investigations. We agree that the effect sizes reported . . . are too large and consistent to be dismissed as statistical flukes. (Hyman, 1995)

If I were a denier and had decided Bem was wrong and I should take him on in a very public way, I would begin by doing a little “oppo” research, so I had some sense about what I was getting into. I’d go out and find three or four disinterested experts in my line of attack and have them try to tear my critique apart. Before I stepped out on the public stage I would make sure I knew what I was talking about. Bem is not, after all, an overheated graduate student with a crazy idea, but a research psychologist with a national reputation built on decades of excellence that is clearly reflected in his published work. It would give me pause that his paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal historically notably unfriendly to his paper’s topic. You might do something similar. But that is not what the deniers in the Bem controversy did. I mention this because it seems odd to me, and it seemed so to Volk as well, and that is one of the best things I liked about his book. Throughout his work the reader can see him weigh ethical lapses, and general mediocrity in both the researcher and skeptic communities. He clearly has little use for what sociologist Trevor Pinch calls “scientific vigilantes.” How Volk deals with the authenticity of skepticism and denierism is part of what drives Fringe-ology. What distinguishes skeptics from deniers is the former’s willing- ness to evolve, and the latter’s intransigence. It is this human element of growth that makes books like Volk’s interesting, and there is a long and honorable trail of them centered on the change in science and the transformation of the author’s own thinking as he confronts evidence. Books such as this one are expressions of the cultural zeitgeist at a given point in time. For a book like this to get into print, a whole chain of affirmative decisions assessing the marketability of such a project had to have been made. It is a kind of polling process. Although science is about peer-reviewed papers and not books, it is books like Fringe-ology that can exert cultural influence. Think what James Gleick’s Chaos did to bring a once obscure and recondite area of mathematics, Chaos Theory, into public awareness (Gleick, 1995). These works represent way stations in a transforming worldview, so placing Volk’s book in its historical context seems to me important. Here are a few other examples in this genre, deliberately quite different, as well as something about their effect on science’s culture and paradigm. Book Reviews 171

Alexandra David-Neel. David-Neel’s (1927) book My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City is an early and wonderfully romantic example of such a transformation. The events of extraordinary human functioning David-Neel witnessed not only changed her from a rationalist Europeanist to something between a cultural anthropologist and a mystic. She gave us some of our first accounts of preindustrial cultures that emphasized psychophysical control, untouched by the West. She was derided at the time for, among other things, her field observations of monks sitting in meditation outdoors in the Himalayan winter covered with wet strips of fabric that they somehow dried by generating heat. Decades later, Harvard physician Herbert Benson, with an assist from the Dalai Lama, who got the cooperation of the monks, did a study of g Tum-mo yoga, the discipline Neel had observed a century earlier, and published a paper in Nature that confirmed her observations (Benson, 1982). The high adventure of her transformation from a logical young French woman to a researcher of extraordinary human experience influenced an entire generation of scholars to look to the East when thinking about extraordinary human functioning. Carlos Castaneda. One of the most public and perhaps the most impactful skeptic transformation stories is that of Carlos Castaneda. Let me quote myself from a paper written at the time:

In 1963–64, Castaneda, then a graduate student in UCLA’s Anthropology Department pursuing a traditional program, was having trouble (D. Price-Williams, personal communication, February 7, 2000); it culminated with his dropping out of his program. While away from his studies he pursued a contact with a Yaqui shaman he called, Don Juan Matus. In 1967, Castaneda sent to the University of California Press in Berkeley a manuscript which he represented as his experiences with Don Juan. The Teachings of Don Juan would become the first in a series that he would add to until his death (Castaneda, 1968). Highly controversial from the beginning, Teachings was still deemed academically respectable enough for the University Press to publish it and that, in turn, was enough to get Castaneda re-admitted to the UCLA department (Price-Williams, 2000). No one anticipated that the book would become a huge commercial success, and begin a controversy in anthropology that would transform not only him, but his discipline. While still doing his UCLA program, on the strength of his first book, Castaneda was picked up by one of the most prestigious publishers in New York, Simon and Schuster which, in 1971, published his second book, 172 The Journal of Parapsychology

A Separate Reality (Castaneda, 1971). He was by then— with the exception of Margaret Mead—arguably the only anthropologist in America whose name was known to the general public. Fame, wealth, and an eccentric and very deliberate commitment to remain physically anonymous— no pictures, no interviews—put him on a different plane than his colleagues. However, within anthropology, his celebrity, considering his junior status, as well as the premise of his work, made other anthropologists’ teeth grind. Within a year Castaneda had completed a third manu- script, which he submitted to his UCLA department as his doctoral dissertation. Although unorthodox in form and content, like the earlier books it was a memoir narrative, it was accepted. In 1972, Simon and Schuster published a version of the dissertation as The Journey to Ixtlan (Castaneda, 1972). Like its predecessors, it too became an international best seller which further enflamed the passionate feelings Castaneda now excited every time anthropologists got together and discussed their field. The argument was fueled without question by envy and its cousin disdain: “In 1973 Castaneda received a Ph.D. in anthropology for interviewing a mystical old Mexican…” was the way one critic began (De Mille, 1980). But the conflict went far beyond academic sociology. Castaneda challenged a fundamental consensus in anthropology: how anthropology should study indigenous cultures. His narratives of his interactions with the Yaqui shaman argued that one could not understand the shamanic world view without becoming a shaman. No informant could ever convey this, because so much of it was experiential, and nonlocal. More fundamentally yet, all the Castaneda writings proposed the idea that non-technological peoples were not primitive, and were as capable of insight as their technological counterparts; albeit in different areas of human functioning. Deeper yet, his writings espoused a worldview that anthropology had not seriously considered: that an aspect of human consciousness genuinely exists that is independent of time and space, and it is susceptible to varying degrees of volitional control. This came with a corollary: there is an interconnection between all life forms from the most primitive to the most complex which must be understood if the universal impulse humans feel towards the spiritual component of their lives is to properly mature. What had been categorized in anthropology Book Reviews 173

as “magical thinking” was suddenly proposed as a valid perspective that the discipline must master to fulfill its self- defined task of understanding human beings and their cultures. (Schwartz, 2012)

Today Castaneda’s insight is a recognized standard. Michael Crichton. Crichton’s (1988) book Travels is a third example that comes to mind. Crichton trained as a physician, although he never practiced after obtaining his M.D. He was notably brilliant and successful at everything he turned his mind to—including becoming a remarkably gifted remote viewer, who, once he learned the protocol, used his skills in aid of his futurist novels. Travels recounts his initial medically trained skepticism, the stops along his way, the experiences he had, and how he came to accept and to seek to understand the nonlocal aspect of consciousness. It was because of this that Michael and I came to be friends, and that he became a remote viewer in a series of my experiments at the Mobius lab. Here are data from his session as a viewer in the Seaview study, a survey to locate previously unknown shipwrecks on or below the sea floor along the Grand Bahamas Banks (Schwartz & De Mattei, 1988, 1989). Figures 1A and 1B below show the 19th century wreck site of the American brig Leander, which was located using remote viewing data provided by Michael Crichton and others. The image on the left is the site as originally seen. The image on the right is what emerged after several feet of sand and grasses had been removed. The site represents a rare example on the Bahamas Banks of a shipwreck that is still intact, probably because the ship sank while riding at anchor. During his remote viewing session, after making his accurate location, Crichton described ship’s timbers that would be found beneath the sand stacked like “railroad ties.”

Figures 1A and 1B. The picture on the left shows the original view of the site, while the one on the right shows the timbers as Crichton’s remote viewing described them. 174 The Journal of Parapsychology

Damien Broderick. Damien Broderick’s (2007) book Outside the Gates of Science: Why It’s Time for the Paranormal to Come in From the Cold is the final book I’ll mention. Broderick is a well-known Australian writer, living in the US. Like Crichton, much of his work lies in novels about the future. He holds a PhD in literary studies based on a dissertation relating to the comparative semiotics of scientific, literary, and science fictional textuality. More than any of the other picaresque skeptics, the actual science of the nonlocal has engaged his interest and, almost uniquely he tracks down in great detail the evidence for and against the stories he recounts. Steve Volk’s Fringe-ology falls somewhere between Crichton and Broderick, sharing qualities of each. We don’t yet have the historical perspective we do with David-Neel and Castaneda, but I suspect in the future both Broderick and Volk will be seen as authors who covered a leading edge that became a new paradigm. Skeptic books, precisely because the good ones are expressed in a clear author’s voice, give the reader an immediacy that an arm’s length academic narrative rarely does. Volk is good at this. He has the clear-eyed skepticism of a city reporter with decades of experience writing about urban life for the daily and monthly press—particularly crime, cops, courts, and politics. All fields where mendacity and duplicity abound. He makes the point throughout the book that he is trying to view everything as a reporter. It is clear he feels safe on that ground, because it is the one he knows, and I think he made a good decision in stating who he is, not once but repeatedly. He traces his own interest, both his skepticism and his curiosity, to a ghost story out of his youth and home. It is one of the first of many good stories threading through Fringe-ology’s narrative like warm currants in a scone. Volk has an excellent reporter’s eye for the humanizing detail that brings a story to life. He has dug out little human details many readers will not know. I do wish, though, he had gone just a bit deeper on the data side, and checked his facts just a little closer. Early in the book he recounts the CSICOP-Gauquelin-astrology-starbaby controversy to describe his negative assessment of professional deniers. The problem is that he is not correct in some of its facts, and the chronology is confused and, most importantly, Volk does not seem to really get the true perfidy of CSICOP (Schwartz, 2010). Here is how it all began: In 1975 astronomer Dennis Rawlins, already famous for debunking the claims of polar explorers Richard Byrd and Robert Peary and demonstrating that Roald Amundsen was the first man to reach either pole, decided to join a team headed by philosopher Paul Kurtz (the founder of CSICOP) to launch a frontal attack against presumptive “planetary influences” on human behavior reported by the French investigators psychologist Michel and his wife (at the time) and research partner Francoise Gauquelin. What makes the attack interesting in the skeptic-denier context Volk is discussing, was that the Gauquelins Book Reviews 175 were skeptics. They had their own reservations about astrology; indeed, they would go on to dismiss, on the basis of their research data, many claims of Western astrology. Michel Gauquelin would later write a book debunking traditional Western astrology’s planetary effects that was published by Prometheus Books, which was founded by Kurtz (Gauquelin, 1979). Gauquelin earlier had written an article critical of astrology for The Humanist, a magazine edited by Kurtz (Gauquelin, 1978). Even so, exactly because they were rigorous scientists, the Gauquelins reported identifying small but statistically significant relationships between some planetary positions at the time of birth, most notably the position of Mars in a natal chart, and later athletic prowess (Gauquelin, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1978). It was not a huge effect but to many CSICOP members, it was intolerable, and thus began a very nasty science denier gutter fight that clearly illustrates the difference between a skeptic and a denier. New Zealand psychologist Richard Kammann, who would be one of three members to resign from CSICOP as a result of these events, would write in an exegetic essay on the Gauquelin affair:

When the whole record is examined over five years, there is almost no instance in which merit wins out over self- serving bias … The bottom line is that an apology is owed the Gauquelins for the mistreatment of their data, and the aspersions cast on their authenticity. (Kammann, 1982)

But my main criticism of Volk’s account, and this is true elsewhere in the book as well, is that if he had gone just a bit deeper the value of critical elements in the story would have changed. He would have discovered the excellent work of German researcher Suitbert Ertel who, decades after the CSICOP knife fight, went through the data and confirmed for the fourth time, finally and forever, that the Gauquelins’ claims are correct—if odd (Ertel, 1998, 1999). In the context in which Volk presents his account of these events, knowing this would place the story in a very different light for the reader. Volk’s chapter seven, “The Open Mind,” illustrates another variant of this. The narrative arc of the chapter is a deft profile of University of Pennsylvania radiologist Andrew Newberg, whose work in a new discipline, neurotheology (studies of the relationship of brain function and spiritual experience), is capturing increasing attention in neuroscience. It is a great profile. When he gets to talking about the research literature, however, Volk gets a little wobbly. He says, “The amount of scientific research into the neurological effects of prayer and meditation is still small, but it is growing quickly” (p. 196). First, therapeutic intention/prayer research and meditation studies are two different vectors of research, albeit with some tangency. And since 2006, as a search in any index will show, papers in 176 The Journal of Parapsychology the peer-reviewed literature abound. To be an insightful skeptic, precision helps. Broderick, for instance, is much more attentive to detail than Volk. Fringe-ology and Broderick’s Gates of Science also share what some might see as a fault. They lump together things we now know ought not to be grouped in that way. UFOlogy, serious or absurd, has little to say to nonlocal consciousness research. But they are often lumped together, along with Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster, as staples of reality TV and pop science. Some critics might say the author of a serious skeptic book should know better. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, and I don’t think that criticism is justified.Fringe-ology , even more than Gates of Science, is a saga. As Volk bounced down the pool table, directed by the force of his intention, these are the balls he bumped into along the way, each contact altering his view of the world. Taken that way Fringe-ology is a wonderful trip. Of the most interesting chapters, his third one, “Out of Our Heads? Off With Their Heads,” has particularly stayed with me. The narrative arch is built around anesthesiologist Stuart Hammeroff at the University of Arizona Medical Center, microtubules, Hammeroff’s friendship with Roger Penrose at Oxford, and how Volk learned about all this, in the course of which he encountered several other models of consciousness. One gets the sense it was an exhilarating if bumpy trip. My first takeaway from Volk’sFringe-ology is this: It was an interesting read that left me with a kind of wry recognition that our research is so much more subtle, deep, and persuasive than books like Fringe-ology represent. Nonlocal consciousness science is so much more now than just parapsychology, and the old ESP protocols. Second is a realization that these books tell us where the zeitgeist is about these matters—where our culture stands. Volk and the culture seem to be standing in midstream heading across.

References

Bem, D., Utts, J., & Johnson, W. (2011). Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 716–719. Benson H. (1982). Body temperature changes during the practice of g Tum-mo yoga. Nature, 295, 234–236. Broderick, D. (2007). Outside the gates of science: Why it’s time for the paranormal to come in from the cold. New York, Thunder’s Mouth Press. Castaneda, C. (1968). The Teachings of Don Juan; A Yaqui way of knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Castaneda, C. (1971). A separate reality: Further conversations with Don Juan. New York: Simon & Schuster. Castaneda, C. (1972). Journey to Ixtlan: The lessons of Don Juan. New York: Simon & Schuster. Crichton, M. (1988). Travels. New York: Harper & Row. Book Reviews 177

David-Neel, A. (1927). My journey to Lhasa: The classic story of the only Western woman who succeeded in entering the forbidden city. New York: Harper Brothers. Davies, P., & Gregersen, N. H. (Eds). (2010). Nature of reality: From physics to metaphysics. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. De Mille, R. (1980). The Don Juan papers. Santa Barbara, CA: Ross-Erikson. Ertel, S. (1998/1999). Is there no Mars effect? The CFEPP’s verdict scrutinized with the assistance of six independent researchers. Correlation, 17, 4–23. Game of throne’s night’s watch. Retrieved from http://gameofthrones. wikia.com/wiki/Night%27s_Watch Garfield, M. (2009). The spooky world of quantum biology. Retrieved from http://www.realitysandwich.com/spooky_world_quantum_ biology Gauquelin, M., & Gauquelin, F. (1970–1972). Birth and planetary data gathered since 1949 (Vols. 1–2). Paris: Laboratoire d’etude des Relations entre Rythmes Cosmiques et Psychophysiologiques. Gauquelin, M. (1973). The cosmic clocks. New York: Paladin. Gauquelin, M. (1975). Spheres of influence.Psychology Today, 7, 22–27. Gauquelin, M. (1978). The influence of planets on human beings: Fact versus fiction.The Humanist, 36, 29–30. Gauquelin, M. (1979). Dreams and illusions of astrology. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. Gleick, J. (1987). Chaos: Making a new science. New York: Viking Penquin. Hofstadter, D. (2011, January 6). A cutoff for craziness. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/01/06/the-esp-study- when-science-goes-psychic/a-cutoff-for-craziness Hyman, R. (1995). Evaluation of program on “anomalous mental phen- omena.” In M. D. Mumford, A. M. Rose, & D. A. Goslin (Eds.), An evaluation of remote viewing: Research and applications (pp. 62–96). Washington, DC: The American Institutes for Research (AIR). Retrieved from www.lfr.org/LFR/csl/library/AirReport.pdf Kammann, R. (1982). The true disbelievers: Mars effect drives skeptics to irrationality. Zetetic Scholar, 10, 50–65. Retrieved from http:// www.discord.org/~lippard/kammann.html Accessed: 12 March 2012. Margenau, H. (1987). Quoted in L. LeShan, The science of the paranormal (p. 118). Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press. Pais, A., & Pauli, W. E. (2000). The genius of science. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Planck, M. (1931, January 25). [Interview] The Observer. Quantum computers will solve problems (2012). Retrieved from http:// www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/03/-hacking-the-cosmos- quantum-computers-will-solve-problems-that-would-take-todays- computers-longer-th.html 178 The Journal of Parapsychology

Schwartz, S. (2000). Boulders in the stream: The lineage and founding of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness. Retrieved from www.sacaaa.org/ history.asp Schwartz, S. A., & De Mattei, R. (1989). The discovery of an American brig: Fieldwork involving applied archaeological remote viewing. In L. A. Henkel and R. E. Berger (Eds.) Research in parapsychology 1988 (pp. 73–78). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow. Schwartz, S. (2010). The antique road show: How denier movements critique evolution, climate change, and nonlocal consciousness. In S. Krippner & H. Friedman (Eds.), Debating psychic experience: Human potential or human illusion? (pp. 179–194). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Wagenmakers, E. J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., & van der Maas, H. (2011). Why psychologists must change the way they analyze their data: The case of psi. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 426– 432. doi:10.1037/a0022790

Senior Samueli Fellow Samueli Institute P.O. Box 905 Langley, Washington 98260 USA [email protected]

Paranormality: Why We See What Isn’t There by Richard Wiseman. London: Macmillan, 2011. Pp. 340. $20.87 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-230-75298-6.

Richard Wiseman is well known (at least in the UK) as a psychologist, magician, and nowadays Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology. Wiseman’s latest book, Paranormality, happens to differ from all my other books in two ways: first because on its spine is printed the word “Professor,” and second because on its back cover is a quote by the biologist Richard Dawkins, a former Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. The book’s subtitle, Why We See What Isn’t There, clearly indicates Wiseman’s stance and the equally skeptical Dawkins thinks that the book “... blows away the psychic fog and lets in the clear light of reason.” Paranormality is a highly selective popular scientific treatment of psychological and parapsychological research as seen from a skeptic’s perspective. According to Wiseman (2011b) this was not what the major American publishers wanted (although one wonders whether Prometheus Books in New York was contacted since they would likely love to publish it). Wiseman thus decided to produce it as an e-book and let his British publisher ship hard copies to America. Furthermore, he has actively promoted the book with popular articles that derive from the book (e.g., Wiseman, 2011a, 2012), and I daresay it sells well, because Wiseman is a good writer. His latest and several of his previous books also reveal that he Book Reviews 179 possesses a sense of humour. Getting the facts straight is, however, more important than writing style, and those well read in the parapsychology literature are unfortunately bound to get more than a bit annoyed more than once. Initially Wiseman tells us that he became interested in magic when just 8 years old and that he, like most magicians, was deeply skeptical about the existence of genuine paranormal phenomena. The latter is an oft-repeated claim by skeptics, and what they (including Wiseman) fail to mention is that the results of surveys with magicians around 1980 did in fact reveal that the majority of them believed ESP exists. Although the results of more recent surveys, including Wiseman’s (2008) own (still unpublished?), indicate that magicians as a group have become more skeptical with time (see Truzzi, 1997). However, about 1 in 4 of the magicians that participated in Wiseman’s survey thought that they had had a paranormal experience, and several of them while trying to fool others with their tricks! Magicians have also now and then been involved in parapsychological research, and some have endorsed paranormal phenomena (e.g., see Hansen, 1990). Wiseman does not mention any of this. In his first chapter, Wiseman gives a short account of his, Smith’s, and Milton’s (1998) experiment with the dog Jaytee, who according to witnesses reliably signaled his owner’s homecoming by going to and staying at the window. Wiseman manages to discuss the experiment, which consisted of a total of four trials, without mentioning Rupert Sheldrake’s extensive research with “dogs that know when their owners are coming home” (Sheldrake’s book is, however, mentioned in the chapter’s notes). Furthermore, despite Wiseman’s having acknowledged that “... the pattern- ing in my studies is the same as the patterning in Rupert’s studies. That’s not up for grabs. That’s fine. It’s how it’s interpreted” (Tsakiris, 2007), the reader is left with the impression that “psychic pets” have been debunked— a proper explanation of the heated controversy would have been more appropriate. Furthermore, it is hardly appropriate to draw conclusions based on the results of just four trials. In the following chapter, Wiseman describes the skeptics’ figurehead, the magician James Randi, as “the most notable investigator” (p. 16) of mediums and psychics, and not a word is dedicated to the more scientific research with mediums by, for example, Gary Schwartz and Julie Beischel. Instead, Hendrik Boerenkamp’s (1988) research from the 1980s and Sybo Schouten’s (1994) review of quantitatively evaluated studies with mediums and psychics are mentioned in passing, perhaps because their conclusions are more in line with so-called skeptics’ beliefs. The reader also gets an account of the medium Patricia Prutt’s attempt to win Randi’s million dollar prize, and various techniques that mediums and psychics are assumed or believed to utilize are described. If they are indeed used to the extent that skeptics believe, the techniques do not appear to work particularly well since the results of a survey in the UK (Roe, 1998), which 180 The Journal of Parapsychology

Wiseman cites, revealed that only around 1 of 6 people believed that they had received an accurate reading from a psychic. Needless to say, Wiseman’s claim that “For a century researchers have tested the claims of mediums and psychics and found them wanting” (p. 22) comes across as embarrassingly erroneous for those familiar with the relevant literature. Interested readers are recommended to consult Rodger Andersson’s (2006) Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules for references. In the third chapter, Wiseman relates how researchers have attemp- ted to weigh and photograph the soul. This is followed by an account of the well-known “tennis shoe case,” which concerns a woman, Maria, who claimed that during a near-death experience she saw a tennis shoe on a roof, and the shoe was indeed there. The case was later investigated by three skeptics (Hayden, Mulligan, & Beyerstein, 1996), who attempted to show that Maria learned about the shoe in other ways, and without hesitation Wiseman accepts their version. He then leaves near-death experiences and turns to out-of-body experiences, which the reader learns are due to our being fooled by our brains. In passing, Wiseman also concludes, based on the results of only one study (i.e., Blackmore & Chamberlain, 1993), that the evidence indi- cates twin telepathy is not due to ESP; I daresay that Guy Lyon Playfair (2002/2012), who has reviewed all the research, would beg to differ. Wiseman also relates that oft-repeated fairy tale about Blackmore’s inability to get positive results during, in his version, 25 years of research (but see Berger, 1989). Later the spotlight is moved to James Allan Hydrick and his ina- bility to turn the pages of a telephone book psychokinetically when it was surrounded by styrofoam chips. As one now expects, Wiseman describes several techniques used by magicians and fake psychics, and gives an interesting account of how S. John Davey in 1890 pretended to be a medium in order to assess the reliability of eyewitness accounts of séances. The focus is then moved to spiritualism and the Fox sisters, who gave rise to many urban legends that are often uncritically accepted. Wiseman’s account is not worse than others. He quotes from Margaret Fox’s questionable confession and seems to accept it as genuine. The ages mentioned in the confession do not, however, match what the sisters’ mother said at the time of the incidents (see Lewis, 1848/2005). Regardless, Wiseman moves on to table tipping and Michael Faraday’s well-known experiments, then to ideomotor actions and Ouija boards. Likely less known to parapsychologists is the research by Dan Wegner on the “rebound effect” (e.g., Wegner & Schneider, 2003), “... wherein trying not to think about something causes people to dwell on the forbidden topic” (p. 162) and trying to stop pendulums from moving actually increases their swinging. Wiseman also dedicates some pages to Gef the talking mongoose and the controversial Harry Price, before moving on to ghosts and his and his colleagues’ investigation of the purportedly haunted Hampton Court Book Reviews 181

Palace (Wiseman et al., 2002, 2003). Sleep-paralysis is also described, and Wiseman notes the similarity between accounts of experiences while in the hypnagogic state and some of the phenomena that are interpreted as being due to ghosts, for example, hearing footsteps. Given this and how unpleasant sleep-paralysis can be, every parapsychologist should be familiar with the phenomenon. Wiseman does not deal with poltergeists (I imagine that would not end well); instead he reviews the evidence of ghost experiences’ association with electromagnetic fields and infrasound. He also briefly describes the controversy over Pehr Granqvist and his colleagues’ failed attempt to rep- licate Michael Persinger and his colleagues’ experiments (Granqvist et al. 2004). The former found that the level of “spiritual experiences” in both experimental and control groups matched the level that Persinger saw in his control groups (Khamsi, 2004), and based on their findings, claimed that suggestion caused the experiences, whereas the latter believe that two sham fields were in fact administered due to technical problems (Persinger & Koren, 2004; Larsson et al. 2005). It is interesting to note that if Granqvist and his colleagues’ results were not due to technical problems, then their results suggest that both self-styled skeptics Susan Blackmore and Michael Shermer are prone to have spiritual experiences due to suggestion alone, given their experiences in Persinger’s lab. Eventually Wiseman highlights how entertainers fake mind- reading and deals with the power of persuasion, and lucid dreams in passing. Clever Hans, Wilhelm von Osten’s amazing horse, also makes an appearance. A sentence from this section can serve to illustrate Wiseman’s sense of humour; he writes that “Both von Osten and Clever Hans were prone to rage, and Pfungst received several bites during the investigation, the majority of which came from the horse” (p. 245). Wiseman claims that the use of blind methods in science is due to the experiments with the horse in the early 1900s, which is not true (see Kaptchuk, 1998). Wolfgang Bringmann and Johannes Abresch (1997) also note that although

Pfungst was admittedly the only person who ever observed the microsignal interactions between Hans and von Osten, his findings and explanations … were fully accepted by the public and experts. Even today the story of Clever Hans is regarded as a classic example of outstanding psychological research. (p. 79)

Wiseman also deals with purportedly precognitive dreams, which he quickly dismisses as being due to coincidences. One of his popular articles on this (Wiseman, 2011a) provoked a response from Robert McLuhan (2011), the author of Randi’s Prize. Wiseman uses John Barker’s (1967) study of premonitions of the Aberfan disaster as an example, and as David Luke (2011, pp. 188–189; see also Holt et al. 2012, pp. 21–26) has 182 The Journal of Parapsychology noted, Wiseman’s suggested calculations (pp. 287–288) are more than a bit questionable. It is noteworthy, although at this point not surprising, that no mention is made of the Maimonides Dream ESP Studies, nor are the ganz- feld and the remote viewing research ever mentioned, and one may wonder if this is because Wiseman has, according to the skeptic Kylie Sturgess (2009), admitted that the evidence from these two latter lines of research “... do meet the usual standards for a normal claim, but are not convincing enough for an extraordinary claim,” and may thus have been regarded as unsuitable topics for this particular book. What is convincing enough for an extraordinary claim then? Richard Dawkins (2005) has written:

All of us would set the bar very high for, say, a claimed demonstration that two men, sealed in separate soundproof rooms, can reliably transmit information to each other telepathically. We should demand multiple replications under ultrarigorous, double-blind controlled conditions, with a battery of professional illusionists as skeptical scrutineers and with a statistical p value less than one in a billion. (p. 977)

In summary, regarded as a popular scientific treatment of parapsychology, the book comes across as the result of either selective reading of the relevant literature or as a result of selective memory. That said, nobody expects full coverage of this literature in a book of the length Wiseman has written (and the text is not single-spaced), but the many omissions of research not in line with the skeptics’ favorite hypotheses are hard to defend. The reference list on its own will reveal several omissions for those well read in the parapsychology literature; in particular, one wonders why so few parapsychological experiments are cited. In passing, it can also be noted that the book has no index, which would have been useful due to the fact that most topics are covered on only a few pages. Regarded as entertainment or as material for a case study of how skeptics treat and neglect research, it is, however, excellent. As a guide for individuals willing to act as fraudulent psychics, it is also of use. Wiseman is not a bad writer, highlights the same issues as most skeptics, and does bring out some interesting psychological studies. Furthermore, the book is filled with all manner of exercises (e.g., “How to leave your body”), links to additional material (e.g., interviews), and an instant superhero kit for those who feel that they need to try to impress their friends.

References

Andersson, R. I. (2006). Psychics, sensitives and somnambules. A biographical dictionary with bibliographies. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Book Reviews 183

Barker, J. C. (1967). Premonitions of the Aberfan disaster. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 44, 169–181. Berger, R. E. (1989). A critical examination of the Blackmore psi experiments. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 83, 123–144. Blackmore, S., & Chamberlain, F. (1993). ESP and thought concordance in twins: A method of comparison. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 59, 89–96. Boerenkamp, H. (1988). A study of paranormal impressions of psychics. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Bringmann, W. G., & Abresch, J. (1997). Clever Hans: Fact or fiction? In W. G. Bringmann, H. E. Luck, R. Miller, & C. E. Early (Eds.), A pictorial history of psychology (pp. 77–82). Chicago: Quintessence. Dawkins, R. (2005). Afterword. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 975–979). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Granqvist, P., Fredrikson, M., Unge, P., Hagenfeldt, A., Valind, S., Larhammar, D., & Larsson, M. (2005). Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields.Neuroscience Letters, 379, 1–6. Hansen, G. P. (1990). Magicians who endorsed psychic phenomena. The Linking Ring, 70(8), 52–54. Hayden, E., Mulligan, S., & Beyerstein, B. L. (1996). Maria’s NDE: Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Skeptical Inquirer, 20(4), 27–33. Holt, N. J., Simmonds-Moore, C., Luke, D., & French, C. C. (2012). Anomalistic psychology. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Khamsi, R. (2004). Electrical brainstorms busted as source of ghosts. Retrieved from http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041206/full/ news041206-10.html Kaptchuk, T. J. (1998). Intentional ignorance: A history of blind assessment and placebo controls in medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 72, 389–433. Larsson, M., Larhammar, D., Fredrikson, M., & Granqvist, P. (2005). Reply to M. A. Persinger and S. A. Koren’s response to Granqvist et al.: Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak magnetic fields.Neuroscience Letters, 380, 348–350. Lewis, E. E. (2005). A report of the mysterious noises, heard in the house of Mr. John D. Fox, in Hydesville, Arcadia, Wayne County. Psypioneer, 1(12), 1–34. Luke, D. (2011). 2011 Presidential Address: Experiential reclamation and first person parapsychology.Journal of Parapsychology, 75, 185–200. McLuhan, R. (2011). Precognitive dreaming should not be dismissed as coincidence. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/2011/mar/01/precognitive-dreaming-dismissed- science 184 The Journal of Parapsychology

Persinger, M. A., & Koren, S. A. (2005). A response to Granqvist et al.: Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by sug- gestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak magnetic fields.Neuroscience Letters, 379, 346–347. Playfair, G. L. (2012). Twin telepathy (3rd Ed.). Guildford: White Crow Books. Roe, C. A. (1998a). Belief in the paranormal and attendance at psychic readings. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 90, 25– 51. Schouten, S. (1994). An overview of quantitatively evaluated studies with mediums and psychics. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 88, 221–254. Sturgess, K. (2009). Dr Richard Wiseman on remote viewing in the daily mail– clarification. Retrieved from http://podblack.com/2009/09/dr- richard-wiseman-on-remote-viewing-in-the-daily-mail-clarification/ Truzzi, M. (1997). Reflections on the sociology and social psychology of conjurors and their relations with psychical research. In S. Krippner (Ed.), Advances in parapsychological research 8 (pp. 221– 271). Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Tsakiris, A. (2007, April 17). Dr. Richard Wiseman on Rupert Sheldrake’s Dogs That Know. Retrieved from http://www.skeptiko.com/11-dr- richard-wiseman-on-rupert-sheldrakes-dogsthatknow/ Wegner, D. M., & Schneider, D. J. (2003). The white bear story. Psychological Inquiry, 14, 326–329. Wiseman, R. (2008). Magicians and the paranormal: A survey. Retrieved from http://www.richardwiseman.com/magicsurvey Wiseman, R. (2011a). Can dreams predict the future? Retrieved from http:// www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/22/future-paranormality- richard-wiseman Wiseman, R. (2011b). The haunted brain. Skeptical Inquirer, 35(5), 46–50. Wiseman, R. (2012). Wired for the weird. Scientific American Mind, 22, 52– 57. Wiseman, R., Smith, M. & Milton, J. (1998). Can animals detect when their owners are returning home? An experimental test of the “psychic pet” phenomenon. British Journal of Psychology, 89, 453–462. Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Greening, E., Stevens, P., & O’Keeffe, C. (2002). An investigation into the alleged haunting of Hampton Court Palace: Psychological variables and magnetic fields. Journal of Parapsychology, 66, 387–408. Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Stevens, P., Greening, E., & O’Keeffe, C. (2003). An investigation into alleged “hauntings.” British Journal of Psychology, 94, 195–211.

Nemo C. Mörck Book Reviews 185

Torggatan 6A lgh 1203 282 31 Tyringe, Sweden [email protected]

Acknowledgment

I wish to express my thanks to Jason Wingate, who voluntarily proofread the review.

The Message: Kunst und Okkultismus [Art and Occultism] by Claudia Dichter, Hans Günter Golinski, Michael Krajewski, & Susanne Zander. Köln, Germany: Walther König, 2007. Pp. 192. $48.00 (hardcover). ISBN 9-783865-603425.

This book came to light on the occasion of the 2007 exhibition The Message in Köln (Cologne). It exemplifies the current interest in psi phenomena not as evidential (or not) of psi, but as a cultural and experiential phenomenon to be discussed from historical, artistic, and other perspectives (for related chapters on the link between altered states of consciousness, art, music, literature, and other cultural areas, see Cardeña & Winkelman, 2011, and for a discussion of psi and the arts see the paper by the reviewer, Iriba, and Reijman, in this issue). The Message is a beautifully illustrated book with various essays on the link between ostensible psi phenomena, especially related to mediumship, and the arts. As the editors make clear, not only have a number of visual art objects been produced under the inspiration of other putative entities or psi experiences (the book contains many representative photos, drawings, and paintings of varying artistic quality), but the mediumship séances themselves, whether fraudulent or not, can be analyzed as performances, as Shaker and other religious traditions have been(Bennett, 2005). This is reminiscent of the performance aspect of shamanism, which may involve sleight of hand and other techniques that from a certain viewpoint could be considered deceitful, although they may also bring about desired changes, such as making the patient feel better (Cardeña & Beard, 1996). A brief foreword by Hans Günter Golinski and Sepp Hiekisch- Picard introduces the exhibit and places it within the larger Art Brut (“raw” or “outsider” art produced by mediums, visionaries, people incarcerated or with mental disorders, and other “nonprofessionals”), a term coined by Jean Dubuffet. The foreword contains an erroneous translation (not the only one in the book) in which the original meaning of a phrase is reversed: “with[out] a divine afflatus no one becomes a great man” (p. 162). The next chapter, by Claudia Dichter, Michael Krajewski, and Susanne Zander, provides a good discussion on “The Medium as Artist” and how mediumship and occultism spurred a number of progressive movements, including 186 The Journal of Parapsychology greater equality for women and humane treatment for those considered insane (see also Owen, 1990), as well as artistic movements such as surrealism (Choucha, 1992) and other 20th century art movements (Waldo-Schwartz, 1977). Later in the 20th century occultism in general would get a very bad rap because of its connection with Nazism. The authors of the chapter state that the first mediumistic production of art was by the important French playwright and author of the script for Tosca, Victorien Sardou, in 1858, to be followed closely by the spirit drawings and text from none other than Victor Hugo, created during his exile in Guernsey (Anonymous, 1906). The following chapter, by Barbara Safarova, provides a brief description of the spiritualist productions found in the abcd collection of Art Brut (see www.abcd-artbrut.net/). Peter Gorsen considers “The Entrance of Mediumism into the History of Art.” His is the longest of the contemporary articles in the book, analyzing the relationship between psychoanalysis, parapsychological research, and mediumistic art, including how Breton’s ideas on automatic productions shifted from purely psychological considerations to the proposal of a sacred realm. Although the author knows the relevant literature, unfortunately the article is neither well written nor organized. Next is a reprinting of the 1933 essay Le Message Automatique, by the foremost intellectual of surrealism, André Breton. His landmark treatise on automatisms, which includes references to psychology and parapsychology authors (e.g., Théodore Flournoy, William James, and F. W. H. Myers), was probably the first published survey of automatic art. Completely dismissive of the theory of discarnate influences, he proposed instead that automatisms, by liberating the person from inhibitory processes, provide a greater integration and expression of nonrational, spontaneous, subliminal (in the sense of Myers of “nonconscious”) impulses. He characterizes “inspired” (as opposed to “calculated”) literature into “mechanical,” “semimechanical,” and “intuitive,” depending on the degree of awareness and control by the writer, and in passages reminiscent of both Rimbaud and Carlos Castaneda calls for a diseducation of the senses so that we can discover that the subjective properties of the real and the imaginary “are demonstrably interchangeable” (p. 55). He also speaks of an amodal form of perception, which shows his anticipation of theories on the phenomenon of synesthesia and cross-modal perception (Marks, 2000). The last essay, by Andreas Fischer, discusses the physician and researcher on hypnosis and parapsychology Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, who used photography to study mediums in an, at times, erotically charged context (there were rumors of an affair between Schrenck-Notzing and one of the mediums he hosted at his home). Sexuality, including the moans and emissions observed in some séances, has been related to some ostensible psi phenomena (McBeath, 1985). The book has many small drawings throughout and, in the middle, color illustrations by well-known (e.g., Sardou, Victor Hugo, the Book Reviews 187

“thoughtographer” Ted Serios, the psychic “Hélène Smith,” and the at- times-conventional artist Hilma af Klint) and more obscure artists, some with psychological problems, most of them not. There is a wide variety of styles and quality in the art included, such as the symmetric and beautiful obsessions of Agustin Lesage, reminiscent of perhaps the most famous Brut artist, Adolf Wölfli, the art nouveau-like circumvolutions and biological motifs of Helen Butler Wells, and the haunting installations of thousands of pages by Vanda Vieira-Schmidt. As to the entities being channeled, they included extraterrestrials, great artists such as Dürer, and my favorite, “Robert, the armadillo.” The Message is a fascinating contribution to the study of mediumship, automatism, and art, although it has minor flaws, including an irregular translation organization (the English translation is at the very end except for the Breton chapter), some translation errors, and other slips such as including references to images that are nowhere to be found in the book.

References

Anonymous (1906). Victor Hugo and table-rapping. T. P.’s weekly of London. Retrieved from http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf ?res=F60E1EFF345A12738DDDAA0894D0405B868CF1D3 Bennet, B. (2005). Sacred theatres: Shakers spiritualists, theatricality, and the Indian in the 1830s and 1840s. TDR: The Drama Review, 49 (3), 114–134. Cardeña, E., & Beard, J. (1996). Truthful trickery: Shamanism, acting and reality. Performance Research, 1, 31–39. Cardeña, E., & Winkelman, M. (Eds.) (2011), Altering consciousness. Multidisciplinary perspectives. Volume I. History, culture, and the human- ities. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Choucha, N. (1992). Surrealism and the occult. Shamanism, magic, alchemy, and the birth of an artistic movement. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books. Marks, L. E. (2000). Synesthesia. In E. Cardeña, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds.), Varieties of anomalous experience: Examining the scientific evidence (pp. 85–120). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. McBeath, M. K. (1985). Psi and sexuality. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 53, 65–77. Owen, A. (1990). The darkened room: Women, power, and Spiritualism in late Victorian England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Waldo-Schwartz, P. (1977). Art and the occult. London: Allen & Unwin.

Etzel Cardeña 188 The Journal of Parapsychology

Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP) Lund University P.O. Box 213 SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden [email protected]

Okkulte Stimmen. Mediale Musik [Recordings of unseen intelligences 1905– 2007] edited by Andreas Fischer and Thomas Knoefel. Berlin: Supposé, 2007. Three CDs and a booklet. $60.00. ISBN 978-3-932513-81-7.

What would a person interested in psi phenomena give for a film of one of the séances of D. D. Home, Mrs. Piper, or Mrs. Leonard, or of a demonstration by Alexis Didier. Barring the development of a functioning time machine, we will never get such treats, but the extraordinary set of CDs Okkulte Stimmen. Mediale Musik provides almost comparable sonic treasures. The recordings, spanning more than a hundred years, are divided into: trance speech (words spoken by mediums in a presumed altered state of consciousness during a séance), direct voices (speech in a séance without an apparent natural source), precognitive claims, xenoglossy (speaking in a tongue apparently never learned by the speaker), glossolalia (“speaking in tongues” or in an incomprehensible language), paranormal music (reputedly channeled from a dead composer or interpreter), raps and haunting phenomena, and electric voice phenomena. There are also not- easy-to-classify tracks such as that of the final séance in which Houdini’s wife finally gave up trying to obtain any credible evidence of his survival through mediums, and various shamanic songs. The CDs contain a short presentation of the recordings in German and English, while a more general introduction is found in the book The Message (see a review of that book in this issue). It would take too much space to review every one of the 64 soundtracks, so I highlight some of the most noteworthy ones. The first CD contains the trance speech, direct voices, and precognition (although other CDs also contain claims of precognitive information) sections. It begins with recordings from the two children involved in the famous Enfield poltergeist case.T he voices sound masculine and spooky, but the statement in the booklet by an unnamed speech specialist that a child could not maintain such imposture for hours without damage to her vocal cords lacks supporting evidence. Tragic and even spookier is the soundtrack in the sad case of Anneliese Michel, whose possession and exorcism culminated in her death (for a general discussion of this case, see Cardeña, 2007), demonstrating that some of these experiences are by no means child’s play or fraud. In the more benign form of identity alteration known as trance mediumship/channeling, it is fascinating to listen to the playful voice of the Feda control of one of the most researched and successful mediums in history, Mrs. Leonard. In contrast, I hope that medium Leslie Flint did not actually communicate with a discarnate Oscar Wilde, as this Book Reviews 189 would imply that in death Wilde gained in pomposity while misplacing his famous wit. Worth mentioning in this first CD are also the soundtrack of the hyperventilation (up to 300 breaths per minute maintained throughout long sessions) of the medium Rudi Schneider, and a recording of the Nazi- friendly medium Hanussen, who used secret information on how the SA would burn the Reichstag to “precognize” this event, yet did not foresee his own death at the hands of his political masters after his indiscretion. The second CD includes xenoglossy and glossolalia recordings, although it would be more precise to call them vocal utterances during altered states of consciousness as they include shamanic songs that may not necessarily involve the assumption of a foreign or secret language. In this context, it is a pity that the collection does not include a fragment of the exuberant poems/chants of the Mexican mushroom shaman María Sabina (Estrada, 1977). Nonetheless the CD contains some fascinating surprises such as the incantations by the infamous esoterist and “Great Beast” Aleister Crowley, and glossolalic prophecies recorded during Pentecostal services. The finalCD illustrates different phenomena. The first soundtracks are of compositions and performances presumptively directed by dead composers. They include a couple of pieces “transmitted” through Rosemary Brown, from an LP that got considerable attention some years ago. Some have argued that a “mere” housewife without much formal training could not herself compose pieces that are pleasant and stylistically coherent with those of the proposed composer, although not extraordinary. This argument, however, implies that only formal training can give rise to feats of creativity, something that even a modest perusal of the lives of eminent and largely self-taught artists (e.g., Schoenberg, Frank Lloyd Wright) shows to be false. In the case of Rosemary Brown and other channeled material (see Hastings, 1991), one could argue that some people may have an unusual chameleon-like talent to imitate various styles without necessarily creating a new one. Whether this explanation, the actual transmission of works by deceased creators, or some other one holds the day, it is clear that we need to investigate this phenomenon far more and see whether it shares commonalities with the extraordinary reproductive skills found in savantism (cf. Snyder, 2004). This CD also includes raps and haunting phenomena such as a cup suddenly and inexplicably exploding, some of them investigated by the German parapsychologist Hans Bender. The CD ends with various examples of electronic voice phenomena, one purported to be by the important French writer and politician André Malraux, and music seemingly interspersed in the midst of the noise found in recorders, telephones, and similar media. These phenomena have received media attention (e.g., various films and the acclaimed play The Weir, by Connor McPherson) but little controlled research has been devoted to it, although this may be changing. For instance, Colvin (2010) reports that raps from a number of poltergeist cases evidenced an acoustic pattern that differed from that of normal taps, and a 190 The Journal of Parapsychology recent book summarizes the research on electronic voice phenomena and includes a CD with various examples (Cardoso, 2010). Okkulte Stimmen. Mediale Musik provides a treasure trove of examples of a realm that has had, and continues to have, enormous cultural import, regardless of its evidential impact for the validity of purported parapsychological phenomena.

References

Cardeña, E. (2007). All in the family [Review of the motion picture Requiem]. Directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, with Sandra Hüller. PsycCRITIQUES—Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 52 (31), Article 18, doi: 10.1037/a0006934 Cardoso, A. (2010). Electronic voices: Contact with another dimension (with CD). Winchester, England: O Books. Colvin, B. (2010). The acoustic properties of unexplained rapping sounds. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 73, 65–93. Estrada, A. (1977). Vida de María Sabina la sabia de los hongos [Life of María Sabina, the wise woman of the mushrooms]. México City: Siglo XXI. Hastings, A. (1991). With the tongues of men and angels. A study of channeling. Fort Worth, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Snyder, A. W. (2004). Autistic genius. Nature, 428, 470–471.

Etzel Cardeña

Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP) Lund University P.O. Box 213 SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden [email protected]