Real Dead Men Talking

In case you missed this past Tuesday's segment of "The Mentalist," CBS's popular new detective program, it appears that Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker) may have been converted to a belief in life after death.  In the first segment of the series, Patrick, a flamboyant private detective with special intuitive abilities, made it clear that he does not believe in psychics or  in life after death.   In Tuesday's program, Patrick was out to expose a "psychic who channels the dead" as a fraud, but he failed and clearly met his match.

One of  Patrick's colleagues, who believed that the psychic was for real, lambasted him for trying to expose the psychic as a fraud, asking him to consider that he might be wrong and wondering how his deceased wife and daughter, both killed in an auto accident, may now feel realizing that he thinks they are extinct.  Patrick's expression suggested his ego had never allowed him to consider that possibility.    At the end of the show the psychic passed on a very evidential message from Patrick's wife, one which left Patrick crying and hopefully convinced.  

So it is with the real-life "skeptics," i.e., the pseudo-skeptics, who say that stories like the one below are all bunk. They claim to be emissaries of truth, hoping to cleanse the world of religious superstition, while not really considering the possibility that they are wrong and, if they are wrong, how that makes our deceased relatives and friends feel or what a world without hope and looking only toward extinction might be like.   Many of them display a certain bravado in that respect, but it appears nothing more than bravado.

In Dark Lore, Volume II, recently released by Daily Grail Publishing, Stephen Braude, a professor of philosophy and a popular author in the field of parapsychology, discusses the "Fear of Psi"  that grips mainstream science. He points out how the pseudo skeptics resort to ad hominem arguments in their attempts to discredit valid phenomena.   As an example, he cites the case of  D. D. Home, the renowned medium of yesteryear, mentioning that books attempting to debunk Home suggest that he had an affair or that he might have been homosexual, apparently believing that by attacking his character they succeed in debunking him.   

Braude also gives examples of the "straw man" arguments used by skeptics.  They mention that some of the minor phenomena can be performed by magicians while ignoring the major phenomena which no magician has been known to duplicate.

"It's obvious that many skeptics are intelligent people, and I suggest that it is highly unlikely that these shabby criticisms of parapsychological evidence are simply the sorts of occasional and more or less random spasms of stupidity that all persons experience sometimes," Braude writes, going on to say that many skeptics are simply in a kind of conceptual panic and that in the grip of this panic their reason and integrity go by the wayside.

In another chapter of the Dark Lore anthology, popular author Michael Prescott addresses the attempts of skeptics to debunk the famous R-101 case, the subject of a recent blog entry here (See "Irrefutable Evidence of Life after Death" under the "popular" tab on the right side of this screen).  The skeptics came up with all kinds of "could haves" or "might haves."  As Prescott points out, as long as some of the facts are well in the past and cannot be verified one way or the other, the case cannot be considered airtight. Moreover, it unlikely that any single case can establish the validity of a phenomenon like mediumship.  However, the cumulative weight of hundreds, even thousands of cases certainly offers a preponderance of evidence, if not evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt."  (More about Dark Lore, Volume II, at the end of this entry)

 Seemingly typical of the Patrick Jane mindset was a comment by Michael Shermer, the editor of a skeptic's magazine, in an A & E program this past week featuring a "psychic detective" who was called in to help locate a missing child.   Shermer attempted to debunk the psychic detective by asking why, if she could really find people, she couldn't find Osama bin Laden or Jimmy Hoffa.   Of course, such a statement appeals to the know-nothings, but clearly displays a lack of understanding of the psychic process.  It's like asking why the psychic can't give you the winning lottery numbers.

This blog is dedicated to offering evidence - some of it strong, much of it clearly anecdotal - for the survival of consciousness after death.  As Sir Oliver Lodge, the renowned British physicist, said many years ago, it was not any single case or communication that convinced him of survival.  Rather it was, as suggested above, the cumulative evidence.  It is such cumulative evidence that helps us move from open-minded skepticism or blind faith to conviction and the recognition that we are not marching toward an abyss of nothingness, or total extinction.  Consider this case, as reported by Dr. Hamlin Garland, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of more than 50 books as well as a psychical researcher, keeping in mind that Garland was clearly a skeptic - although an open-minded one - when he began his investigations of mediums and psychics.  Outside of claiming that Garland, clearly a man of honor and integrity based on various biographies, made up the story or considerably embellished it, how can the pseudo-skeptic explain it?   

Shortly after the end of World War I, Hamlin Garland, was in New York City and was invited to lunch at the Bankers' Club on Wall Street by his old friend, Edwin Winter.  Knowing of Garland's interest in psychic matters, Winter brought along another guest whom he introduced as Thomas Traynor, telling Garland that Traynor had the gift of second sight.   Traynor informed Garland that ever since he could remember he could see "invisibles" and report their words to his friends and relatives.  He didn't know how it worked other than that he was some kind of "wireless receiving station."  Winter, a retired railroad company president, told Garland that he had heard from many of his deceased railroad cronies through Traynor's clairvoyance and clairaudience.   He suggested they meet at his apartment so that Garland might experience Traynor's gift.

Several days later, Garland, his wife, Augustus Thomas (Garland's friend), Traynor, and Winter met for dinner at Winter's Park Ave. apartment.  "Nothing was said of his mediumship during dinner," Garland recorded, "but an hour later as we were all sitting before the fire, with our coffee and cigars, Winter turned to Traynor and said, ‘Well, Tom, do you see any spooks in the room?'"  Traynor replied that he saw a young woman standing beside Mrs. Garland.  This startled her, Garland noted, as she disbelieved in spirits and ghosts and disliked all discussion of them.     However, Traynor continued:  "She says her name is Scales - Carrie L. Scales.  She is about thirty-five. She is tall with brown hair combed up in a roll above her brow.  She says to you, Mrs. Garland, that you were not with her when she passed out - neither was her husband."

Mrs. Garland immediately recognized the name and the facts but remained silent.  "As he went on, he began to impersonate the dead woman," Garland continued the story. He spoke as if she were using his organs of speech.  Addressing my wife directly, ‘Carrie' entered into most intimate details.  ‘For a time I resented my husband's second marriage, but I am resigned to it now,' she said."

The communicating spirit described events of which Mrs. Garland had no knowledge and which Traynor could not have read.   Mrs. Garland was deeply moved, commenting that every relationship and every description was accurate, at least those she knew of.  

Traynor then turned to Winter and told him that there was a man there who claimed to have known him since he was a boy.  "I used to see you on the platform of the station at Beloit, Wisconsin," Traynor quoted the spirit.  "You used to come down to the train with pails of berries to sell to the passengers."

 Winter agreed that he sold pails of berries to passengers at that train station when he was a boy, but didn't know what man was being referred to.   Traynor then impersonated the man.  "I was conductor on the local which ran from Chicago to Madison.  I wore a fancy vest-you'll remember that vest - and it was my habit to wait till the last car came along before swinging on. You liked to see me do it. You admired me."

Garland noted that the tone of the voice then changed.  "After you became a big man in the railway business you made me a division superintendent.  That was a mistake.  I wasn't big enough for the job."

 Winter then recalled the man and remembered promoting him after he became general manager of the Northern Railway. He remembered the fancy vest and watching him swing on to the rear car platform.  He further recalled that the man failed as a superintendent and returned to being a conductor.

 Traynor then turned to Thomas and began talking about an old friend of his, which  Thomas immediately recognized.  Several other old friends were then mentioned.  Garland noted that Traynor could turn his power off and on like twisting a key.   Thomas suggested that it was a case of mind-reading and that even though the people mentioned to the sitters were not on their minds and in the case of the train conductor had not been thought of in years, that Traynor was somehow able to dig into their subconscious memories.

 Winter brought out some papers in which he recorded the details of a previous sitting with Traynor.   Traynor told him that there was "a queer, seedy, old chap, who says that he is a kind of uncle of yours."  Winter didn't know whom he was talking about.  The man then told him that he was married to his Aunt Sarah when he (Winter) was a child and gave his name as Milton K. Smalley.

Winter faintly recalled that his Aunt Sarah was married to someone when he was a boy but had never met him and had forgotten him completely.  Winter asked what the man wanted.   "He doesn't seem to want anything - just wishes to say that he didn't appreciate your aunt," Traynor said.  "He would like to identify himself and clear his record.  He says: ‘I left your aunt and went down to Lowell just before the Civil War broke out.  I enlisted in one of the first Massachusetts regiments to go South and I was killed in the Baltimore riot along with four other men.'"

In an attempt to confirm the information, Winter wrote to the Adjutant General at the State House in Boston.  The reply came that there was no such man as Milton K. Smalley in their records.    The next time he saw Traynor, Winter told him of the search and negative results. Traynor then became silent and a fixed look came into his eyes.  He then began impersonating Smalley:  "Of course you didn't find me under that name.  I enlisted under another name altogether.  You see I'd been living with another woman since leaving your aunt, and I enlisted as Jackson Turner."

Winter checked with the Adjutant General again and confirmed that Jackson Turner was in the regiment indicated and that he had been killed in the streets of Baltimore along with three other men.  Moreover, Winter contacted his sister and confirmed his Aunt Sarah's marriage to Smalley.

If Traynor had been mind-reading, both Garland and Winter wondered how he could come upon such facts that were definitely not in Winter's subconscious mind.  While Winter vaguely recalled the marriage and may have heard the name Smalley, he clearly did not know the name Jackson Turner and the fact that Turner was killed in Baltimore.

 Not long after, Garland arranged to have Traynor visit with him and his friend Brown, who was grieving the recent death of his wife.   Sometime after they finished eating, Traynor began to impersonate Mrs. Brown.  "From his lips came words which indicated that the dying woman had twice left the body and that she had visited friends during her first flight," Garland wrote. 

"I heard your voice," the dead woman told her husband, "and returned to my body.  I heard you, but I could not answer."

Traynor then turned to Garland and spoke in the dead woman's character.  "I wanted to see you before you went home, but I was not able to do so.  I was too weak."  Garland confirmed that he was staying with Brown at the time, but had to leave to fill some lecture dates.  Also, the apparent death of Mrs. Brown and her revival a few hours later was true, as was her reported appearance at the bedside of a friend during her "first flight."

In spite of many years of psychical research and having observed much similar phenomena, Garland could not bring himself to accept the spirit hypothesis.  He preferred to see it as some kind of "perceptive sensing" which could not be understood.  Nevertheless, he concluded that the case of Tom Traynor strengthened the case for personal survival after death.

     Dark Lore, Volume II, a collection of stories about the paranormal to which I have contributed a chapter ( about pre-Raymond Moody near-death experiences), was released last week and is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.    Published by Daily Grail Publishing, this book has 15 stories on topics covering everything from mediumship and UFOs to the Crystal Skull and the Loch Ness Monster.  Check http://darklore.dailygrail.com/ for a couple of sample chapters from the book.