From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

See also

• 
  gilgul, ibbur
  
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  Hinduism, Hindu philosophy, Atman (Hinduism), karma, tantra, yoga
  
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  Buddhism, Anatta, Vajrayana, Mahayana, Theravada, Rebirth (Buddhist), Tulku
  
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  Edgar Cayce -- Carol Bowman
  
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  Afterlife -- Bible and Reincarnation -- Death -- Life
  
• 
  False memory
  
• 
  Metempsychosis
  
• 
  Esoteric Christianity
  

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References

• 
  Ian Stevenson, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects ISBN 0275952835
  
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  Paul Edwards, Reincarnation: A Critical Examination ISBN 1573929212
  
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  Many Mansions: The Edgar Cayce Story on Reincarnation by Gina Cerminara
  
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  Joseph Head and S.L. Cranston, editors, Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery ISBN 0-517-56101-8
  
• 
  Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Erin L. Prophet, Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity ISBN 0922729271
  

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External Links

• 
  Gate of Reincarnations - classics
  
• 
  Shaar ha Gilgulim of ARI
  
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  Articles on reincarnation
  
• 
  Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Death and Immortality
  
• 
  Children's Past Lives
  
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  Reincarnation In Buddhism
  
• 
  Reincarnation: Pros and Cons
  
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  Theosophy on reincarnation
  
• 
  A CSICOP review of Reincarnation: A Critical Examination
  
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  Reincarnation, from the skeptic's dictionary
  
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  Rudolf Steiner, How Karma Works
  
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  "About Reincarnation," discusses traditional Hindu teachings, empiric evidence, and skeptical objections.
  
• 
  In Another Life, documentary project including streaming video interviews and articles.
  
• 
  Rebirth, the Master Key
  
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  The Cycle of Life
  
• 
  Bhagavad-gita online Includes Lord Krishna's classic teachings about reincarnation (especially in chapters 2, 8, and 15.)
  
• 
  Dr. Morris Netherton's Past Lives Therapy
  
• 
  Vijay Kumar God Creation Reincarnation
  

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation"

History of parapsychology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Anecdotal reports of psychic phenomena have appeared in every culture since the dawn of history up to the present day. Historically the existence of such phenomena was commonly accepted even among the learned, and so many of the forerunners of modern science expressed interest in such phenomena.

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The dawn of science

With the scientific revolution, and led by the British Royal Society, a distinction came to be made between "natural philosophers" (later to be termed scientists in 1834) and other philosophers. Many of the natural philosophers, including Newton, were adherents of Renaissance magic (alchemy and the like).

The period known as the Enlightenment followed the Scientific Revolution, with its apex in the 18th century, and featured the ideas that life should be lead by reason as opposed to dogma or tradition, and the universe as a mechanistic, deterministic system that could eventually be known accurately and fully through observation, calculation, and reason. As such, the existence or activity of deities or supernatural agents was discounted, and so the beginnings of antagonism towards the existence of psychic phenomena along with all forms of magical thinking.

Franz Anton Mesmer (b 1734 - d 1815), a Viennese physician, wanted to be considered a man of the Enlightenment. At the time, electricity and magnetism were thought of as invisible "fluids". Mesmer believed that he had discovered another type of natural fluid which he called animal magnetism, which he claimed to harness to heal various ailments without resorting to the supernatural. He developed a technique, today called mesmerism, for inducing an altered state of mind which today most people equate with hypnosis. Of import here is that it was discovered that some individuals exhibited "higher phenomena" such as apparent clairvoyance while in the mesmerized, "somnambulistic" state, much like the latter day psychic Edgar Cayce.

The mesmeric movement never gained scientific acceptance, and in 1784 commissions of the French Royal Society of Medicine and the French Academy of Sciences made investigations and issued negative reports. One researcher eventually associated with mesmerism, Baron Carl Reichenbach, who is known for his discovery of paraffin fuels, developed a vitalist theory of the Odic force to explain parapsychological phenomena. Though elements of the mesmeric movement remained well into the 19th century, by the 1850s the movement had pretty much died out. However, due partly to shifting religious attitudes, the feats of the mesmeric somnabules were soon to be repeated, without resorting to mesmerism, by the mediums of the newly emerging Spiritualist movement who claimed contact with the spirits of the dead. By the mid-1850s, mediums and "home-circles" were to be found throughout Europe and in every stratum of society.

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Scientific investigation of psychic phenomena

The idea for a learned, scientific society to study psychic phenomena seems to have originated with the spiritualist E. Dawson Rogers, who hoped to gain a new kind of respectability for spiritualism. The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882, and by 1887 eight members of the British Royal Society served on its council. Soon after its founding many spiritualists left the SPR due to differing priorities and skeptical attitudes within the SPR to some prominent mediums. However the SPR continued work on its research program, publishing its finding periodically in its Proceedings. Similar societies were soon set up in most other countries in Europe as well as the American SPR in the United States. Of these, the British SPR remained the most respected, conservative, and skeptical of these societies.

While most of the early SPR research had an anecdotal flavor, where experiments involved testing the abilities of specific mediums and other "gifted individuals" with claimed psychic abilities, there were some probabilistic experiments involving card guessing and dice throwing. But it was not until the development of statistical tools by R. A. Fisher and others about the 1920s that modern experimental parapsychology came into its own, with the efforts of J. B. Rhine and his colleagues. It was during this time that the term 'parapsychology' largely replaced the term 'psychic research'.

The "Rhine revolution" had three aims: First to provide parapsychology with a systematic, progressive program of sound experimentation, progressive in the sense of trying to characterize the conditions and extent of psi phenomena rather than merely trying to prove their existence; Second, to gain academic status and scientific recognition. Rhine helped form the first long-term university laboratory devoted to parapsychology in the Duke University Laboratory, later to become the independent Rhine Research Center; And third, to show that psychic ability was not restricted to a few gifted individuals, but was widespread, and perhaps latent in everyone. While not wholly successful in any of these aims, Rhine did much to move the field in these directions. By the end of his era, now the modern era, we find that much if not most experimental psychology today is geared toward "ordinary people" as subjects rather than mediums or "gifted psychics". Rhine also helped found the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937, which remains one of the most respected journals in the field today, and the Parapsychological Association in 1957, the foremost professional body of parapsychologists today, that was accepted into the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1969. Rhine also popularized the term "extra-sensory perception" (ESP).

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Government investigations into parapsychology

There have been a number of investigations into parapsychology performed by agencies of various governments. One of the more famous of these is Project Star Gate, a project undertaken in the 1970s and 1980s with the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate remote viewing. Another famous set of remote viewing experiments were the SRI (Stanford Research Institute) experiments done by the SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) for the Department of Defense in the 1990s.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_parapsychology"

Poltergeist

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For the film series, see Poltergeist movie series. For the TV series, see: Poltergeist: The Legacy

A poltergeist (German for rumbling ghost) is widely believed to be an invisible ghost that interacts with others by moving and influencing inanimate objects. Stories featuring poltergeists typically focus heavily on raps, thumps, knocks, footsteps, and bed-shaking, all without a discernable point of origin. Many stories detail objects being thrown about the room, furniture being moved, and even people being levitated. A few poltergeists have even been known to speak (The Bell Witch, 1817; Gef the Talking Mongoose, 1931). Most classic poltergeist stories originate in England, though the word itself is German.

Poltergeist phenomena is a focus of study within parapsychology (a discipline which does not have wide acceptance within the mainstream scientific community). Parapsychologists define poltergeist activity as a type of uncontrolled psychokinesis. Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis (RSPK) is a phrase suggested by parapsychologist William G. Roll to denote poltergeist phenomena.

Poltergeist activity tends to occur around a single person called an agent or a focus (typically a prepubescent female). Almost seventy years of research by the Rhine Research Center (Raleigh-Durham, NC USA) has led to the hypothesis among parapsychologists that the "poltergeist effect" is a form of psychokinesis generated by a living human mind (that of the agent). According to researchers at the Rhine Center, the "poltergeist effect" is the outward manifestation of psychological trauma. Skeptics believe that the phenomena are hoaxes perpetrated by the agent. Indeed, many poltergeist agents have been caught by investigators in the act of throwing objects. A few of them later confessed to faking. However, parapsychologists investigating poltergeists think that most occurrences are real, and the agents cheat only when they are subsequently caught cheating. The longevity and consistency between poltergeist stories (the earliest one details the raining of stones and bed shaking in ancient Egypt) has left the matter open for debate within the parapsychology community.

Another version of the poltergeist is the "wrath version." When a person dies in a powerful rage at the time of death, that person is believed by some to come back to fulfill that vengeance. In some cases, the vengeance is too strong to let go or forgive, and the metaphysical ghost becomes a poltergeist, in which the newly formed ghost can affect solid objects, and in some cases are deadly. According to yet another opinion, ghosts and poltergeists are "recordings." When there is a powerful emotion, sometimes at death and sometimes not, a recording is believed to be embedded into the fabric of time, and this recording will continue to play over and over again until the energy embedded disperses.

Some people theorize that poltergeists are caused by the Hutchison effect.

William Roll and Harry Price are perhaps two of the most famous poltergeist investigators in the annals of parapsychology. Harry Price investigated Borley Rectory which is widely regarded as "the most haunted house in England."

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Famous alleged poltergeist infestations

Although poltergeist stories date back to the first century, most evidence to support the existence of poltergeists is anecdotal. Indeed, many of the stories below have several versions and/or inconsistencies.

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  The Bell Witch (1817)
  
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  The Haunting of The Fox sisters (1848) - arguably one of the most famous, as it started the Spiritualism movement.
  
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  The Borley Rectory phenomena (1929)
  
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  The Rosenheim (Bavaria) Poltergeist (1967) ( http://www.ufopsi.com/psidc/rosenheim_poltergeist.html )
  
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  The Enfield Poltergeist (1977)
  

See also: Stigmatized property. also known as Daniel Holcom

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Poltergeists in fiction

Both the name and concept of the poltergeist became famous to modern audiences by the Poltergeist movies and the subsequent TV series Poltergeist: The Legacy. The first Poltergeist movie actually gave an excellent depiction (during the first half of the film) of a "typical" poltergeist infestation, right down to the depiction of the focus as a prepubescent girl.

There is a poltergeist named Peeves in the Harry Potter books. Peeves, however, does not conform to the classic definition of a poltergeist. The fact that he manifests visually would seem to indicate that he is something similar to a ghost, though J. K. Rowling has stated that a poltergeist is not the ghost of any person who has ever lived. Perhaps she intended Peeves to be more of a literal translation of the word poltergeist, as Peeves is quite noisy and mischievous. However, it is also possible that Harry and other students can perceive Peeves because they are Wizards, and that he would be still invisible to Muggles.

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External links

• 
  Rhine Research Center
  
• 
  International Journal of Parapsychology
  
• 
  Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research
  
• 
  Skeptic's Dictionary
  
• 
  Ufopsi
  

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poltergeist"