International Society for Paranormal Research

The Weirdness of Quantum Immortality

The Existential Crisis Survival Guide — From https://www.mytransformations.com/post/the-existential-crisis-survival-guide

I was reading Robert Lanza’s new book, The Grand Biocentric Design recently, focusing especially on his discussion of the Quantum Suicide paradox and Everett’s multiverse. Briefly, here is the thought experiment summarized:

”A man sits down before a gun, which is pointed at his head. This is no ordinary gun; it is rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Each time the trigger is pulled, the spin of the quantum particle — or quark — is measured. Depending on the measurement, the gun will either fire, or it won’t. If the quantum particle is measured as spinning in a clockwise motion, the gun will fire. If the quark is spinning counterclockwise, the gun won’t go off. There’ll only be a click.

Nervously, the man takes a breath and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks. He pulls the trigger again. Click. And again: click. The man will continue to pull the trigger again and again with the same result: The gun won’t fire. Although it’s functioning properly and loaded with bullets, no matter how many times he pulls the trigger, the gun will never fire. He’ll continue this process for eternity, becoming immortal.

Go back in time to the beginning of the experiment. The man pulls the trigger for the very first time, and the quark is now measured as spinning clockwise. The gun fires. The man is dead.

But, wait. The man already pulled the trigger the first time — and an infinite amount of times following that — and we already know the gun didn’t fire. How can the man be dead? The man is unaware, but he’s both alive and dead. Each time he pulls the trigger, the universe is split in two. It will continue to split, again and again, each time the trigger is pulled [source: Tegmark].

This thought experiment is called quantum suicide. It was first posed by then-Princeton University theorist Max Tegmark in 1997 (now on faculty at MIT). A thought experiment is an experiment that takes place only in the mind.” https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/science-questions/quantum-suicide.htm

What this means is that your awareness, your conscious experience, can never not exist. You will always be aware of yourself in some iteration of the world–or, as Lanza states, “The enigmatic issue of death should therefore be understood within the thesis that wave function, relative to an observer and representing his experiences of the world that he lives in, can never cease to exist, and that from an observer’s first-person perspective, there is no death. The observer is always aware of something.” (126) You cannot be aware of yourself as not existing, and since conscious awareness, according to Lanza, is what creates our reality and our worlds in the first place, nonexistence is simply impossible. This, of course, is a very superficial and brief summary of Lanza’s Biocentrism thesis about life creating reality (not the other way around), but the idea that conscious awareness will always play itself out in one form or another is certainly not new or original to Lanza. Whichever theory one chooses to explain the persistence of human consciousness, it remains true that the evidence for our ‘eternity’ is overwhelming. It occurs to me that in the absence of objective time (and this is not a radical idea, but well supported by contemporary physics), all you experience is a continual “now” that appears to change. You can be aware what you believe to be your final moments, but you cannot experience the absence of experience. There is always a conscious observer even in the absence of a supporting, physical system.

What happens, then, when we “lose consciousness”? We never experience the loss; we can’t be aware of no awareness. I remember waking up from my many surgeries. There was no gap in my experience of myself–one moment I was going under and the next, I was coming to in the recovery room. I imagine that death is like that. You are aware of taking your last breath, and then aware of taking your first. The Many Worlds theory creates some fantastic and mind-boggling possibilities here–you could return to a previous state of consciousness in your same body with similar circumstances, or you could wake up as somebody else, but have no idea that you are not simply who you always were. In other words, all consciousness is one and shared; you will experience yourself in a similar way in a variety of bodies, in various circumstances, and at diverse ages. This is where Lanza comes close to the theory of reincarnation, which Biocentrism would explain quite well.

I have had many personal experiences that involve memories of other lives and even an awareness that my lifeline had ‘split’ into another version of myself. In one of my many near death experiences, I remember ‘coming back’ with a sense that I had died after my body shut down due to anaphylaxis (an extreme allergic reaction). Even though my circumstances appeared similar, I noticed slight details that were “off” from my previous sense of myself and my world; I started to wonder if had indeed died in that other world and was now experiencing another reality where my awareness was reinstated in another scenario where I had survived. In fact, every time I woke up from a surgery, an accident, or a near death experience, I had an uncanny feeling that I was starting over, rebooting my awareness in another lifeline. Of course, at the time, I did not have the vocabulary or the theory to understand what that eerie feeling of having died and returned was about, how it could have possibly happened. Biocentrism and the Many Worlds theories make sense of it. Lanza weaves the two theories together to overcome the many objections; namely, that quantum processes do not apply at the macro level of, say, human consciousness. It’s his argument that human consciousness creates the entire scope of reality to begin with, so there is no logical contradiction.

What are the emotional and spiritual implications of never ending awareness? For many, that sounds like a kind of existential torture. We have, however, the gift of forgetting. It’s quite clear to me that to remember everything that we are, to be aware of our multiple iterations or reincarnated selves, would be hellish. Our brains function as reducing valves for consciousness, so that we can focus on a particular set of circumstances and a unique identity. We are limited in our perspective and scope; the mistake mainstream science makes is to assume that our current limitations represent the whole of reality.

There is still a dizzying effect from contemplating the truth of immortality, if by that term you mean continuing conscious awareness. You are always you, in whatever form you may experience yourself. There is no “sweet release”, no oblivion, no end point. There may be a Heaven, but it will be just another world that maybe you will be lucky enough, evolved enough, or conscious enough to experience as your current reality. I don’t know how I feel about this information, but I know that it makes sense of my personal experiences and squares with my intuition about my life. The issue that I have with this never-ending parade of lives and experiences is that sometimes, I just want an end point, a sense that I’ve “arrived” instead of continuous departures towards new (or perhaps the same?) adventures.

How does this knowledge change one’s perspective on the day-to-day reality of existence? Oddly enough, the challenges of living remain the same for me. Knowing that I will always be aware of myself doesn’t alter the fact that life here, right now, is often confusing and difficult. I don’t see quantum immortality or any other kind of immortality as a solution to the challenges and the pain that life continuously throws our way. The fact that said challenges never end is rather overwhelming. I suppose that one outcome could be to see even the most dire of circumstances as simply another scenario in a series of infinite possibilities; perhaps that could take the sting out of the feeling that your one and only world is doomed. Perhaps we are only aware of one set of circumstances because the challenge lies there. We all, individually and collectively, have to learn to care for each other and our planet. Put simply, if we fail this test, we are provided endless opportunities to get it right. But “get it right”, we must. We have created a scenario where our very planet is unable to sustain us. And although the idea that we can perhaps escape this reality seems attractive, I imagine dying and waking up to the same, damn problems that we still haven’t solved.

Until we learn our cosmic lessons, it seems, we are going to live out Groundhog Day for a long, long, time.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Haunted Lands in Southern California: The Santa Susana Mountains

I live in the heart of the old Santa Susana Pass area, just to the south on a one-lane road to nowhere. Never, in all my life, have I lived anywhere that so richly deserves the label “haunted”. I have a great deal to say about what that means, but there is no way to understand this particular haunting without some background. History first.

The Santa Susana Mountains were once home to several Native American tribes, including Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians, the Kizh Nation and Barbareño, Ineseño, and Ventureño Chumash. Traces of their footpaths still run through this area, and there are protected pictographs in caves near Burro Flats, a site that no unauthorized person is allowed to view. Their location is a secret; they are somewhere near the old Santa Susana Field Laboratory, site of the worst nuclear disaster in United States history (1959).

Pictographs at the Burro Flats Painted Cave.png — Figures Celebrating the Solstice

The first Europeans to use the pass were members of the Spanish Portolà expedition (1769–1770), the first European land entry and exploration of the present-day state of California. The expedition traversed the pass on January 15, 1770, heading east to a campground that later became part of Mission San Fernando Rey de España.^[6] After secularization of the mission in 1834, San Fernando Valley rancheros used the trail. A rough wagon road evolved. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Santa_Susana_Stage_Road)

A map of Gaspar de Portolá's route from San Diego to San Luis Obispo in 1769, projected on a modern map. | DPLA

From 1871 to the turn of the century, the stagecoaches followed a terrifying canyon road up from what is today Chatsworth Park all the way to Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley. You can still walk what was once the old stagecoach road and appreciate the sheer panic that travelers must have felt wrangling horses and coaches up and down the treacherous terrain. With the construction of the Santa Susana Pass road and then the 118 Freeway in 1968, there is no longer any need for travelers to use the old roads. Walking through the Santa Susana Mountains, however, you still feel the layers of history, trauma and tragedy that played out over the centuries.

Old Santa Susana Stage Rd Trail - Mountain Biking in Southern CA

The area that includes Topanga Canyon to the east, the 118 to the north, Bell Canyon to the south, and Madera Road in Simi to the west, radiates a peculiar energy–especially Box Canyon, a road and canyon named after the colloquial term for a coffin. I could write multiple posts on that area alone, but for the sake of this introduction to the most haunted land in Southern California, I will simply list some of the more bizarre and tragic aspects of its history:

Charles Manson and his ‘family’ occupied Spahn Ranch, a tract of land just off the current Santa Susana Pass Road, for much of 1968 and 1969. It is here that he conceived of his “Helter Skelter” conspiracy theory and plan. Just off the side of Santa Susana Pass Road is the “Manson family cave”, where he took an infamous photo with his cursed ‘family’. I have explored that area and find it utterly unnerving. There is a tree next to the cave that is rumored to have served as a ‘hanging tree’ in the Old West days; in any case, the energy is dark and threatening. Several paranormal investigators have caught frightening electronic voices on digital recorders in that area.

Hiking Spahn Ranch and the Manson Family Cave | The Outdoor Types

The nuclear meltdowns at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory: This is one of the biggest, buried stories in United States history. Read this from Wikipedia:

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory is a complex of industrial research and development facilities located on a 2,668-acre (1,080 ha)^[1] portion of the Southern California Simi Hills in Simi Valley, California. It was used mainly for the development and testing of liquid-propellant rocket engines for the United States space program from 1949 to 2006,^[1] nuclear reactors from 1953 to 1980 and the operation of a U.S. government-sponsored liquid metals research center from 1966 to 1998.^[2] The site is located approximately 7 miles (11 km) northwest from the community of Canoga Park and approximately 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Sage Ranch Park is adjacent on part of the northern boundary and the community of Bell Canyon along the entire southern boundary.^[3]

Throughout the years, about ten low-power nuclear reactors operated at SSFL, in addition to several “critical facilities” that helped develop nuclear science and applications. At least four of the ten nuclear reactors had accidents during their operation. The reactors located on the grounds of SSFL were considered experimental, and therefore had no containment structures.

The site ceased research and development operations in 2006. The years of rocket testing, nuclear reactor testing, and liquid metal research have left the site “significantly contaminated”. Environmental cleanup is ongoing.

The public who live near the site have over the years strongly urged a thorough cleanup of the site, citing cases of long term illnesses, including cancer cases at rates they claim are higher than normal. On 30 March 2018, a 7-year-old girl living in Simi Valley died of neuroblastoma, prompting public urging to thoroughly clean up the site; despite the fact that there is insufficient evidence to identify an explicit link between cancer rates and radioactive contamination in the area.^[^4]

Did you not know about this? Most people do not. The radioactive gas from the partial meltdown of the Sodium Reactor covered a huge area of Simi Valley, the west San Fernando Valley, Bell Canyon, West Hills, and surrounding areas. Cancer rates, especially thyroid and blood cancers known to be related to exposure to nuclear contamination, are several times what would be expected in a ‘normal’ population. In my own extended family, there are multiple cases of blood and thyroid cancers that, we all suspect, have much to do with living near the SSFL for decades.

Families affected by cancer want state officials to lead cleanup of Santa Susana

3. Multiple cults flourished in this area in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The “Fountain of the World” was founded in 1951 in Box Canyon, and the site remains today. In 1958, two ex-acolytes of the cult bombed the buildings. killing eight people. The old sign is still there, fallen on one side, a reminder of the blast. The cult lingered until the 1980’s, and is now just a tragic memory. For more on this, see: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/box-canyon

Stop Three: Krishna Venta and the Fountain of the World 1958 — Lee Souleles Author of Avalon

4. Standard Airlines C-46 crashed into the Santa Susana Mountains (5 minutes walking from my house) in 1949. 35 people died in the crash. Among the survivors was Caren Marsh Doll, an actress who was interviewed afterwards.

There is more, much more, that I could write about about this area’s peculiar history. This is simply a brief introduction to an area that is a very odd and unsettling place to call home. Today, these mountains contain Chatsworth Park (North and South), the Santa Susana Pass State Historical Park, and a few, scattered neighborhoods that sprung up around canyon roads and passes. Of particular note is the Santa Susana Knolls area of Simi Valley, site of the old train station, and perilously near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (see above). I live on one of those streets that cuts into the mountains, a street that becomes a dirt road that is nearly impassible for those without big trucks with 4WD. When fire season comes along, there is only one escape route for us, and if that is blocked, we are in big trouble.

My street houses eclectic characters and houses. There are mobile homes in various states of disrepair, and enormous mansions that periodically hit the market for millions of dollars. There are abandoned homes, and new homes that spring up like mushrooms whenever the landowner is flush with cash. These days, that is one person who owns a contracting company, of course. There are misanthropes who want nothing to do with any of us, and there are social butterflies who walk their dogs in search of company–but mostly, people moved here to be alone. In the area by the plane crash, people live off the grid. You do not want to trespass, trust me–there are large dogs and plenty of guns to keep the curious at bay. Even now, years after we moved there, beat up trucks will slow down and eye me suspiciously, requiring me to explain why I am walking back there. The Moorpark sheriff’s vehicle makes frequent visits to clear out suspicious characters engaging in suspicious activities. There is always some kind of construction happening in the land around the plane crash site, almost all of it illegal and unpermitted. A giant yurt and campground was closed down, a housing development was halted, a drug ring was busted, and the list goes on.

The constant legal wrangling and the tension among the neighbors seem to mirror the area’s troubled past. Walking around the dirt streets, you always feel watched; both by the current inhabitants who don’t want you there, and by something else. The Native American energy up in the hills is so palpable that you find yourself constantly scanning the boulders and ravines to see who is keeping tabs on you. The plane crash site feels desolate, mysterious, and tragic. There are still some pieces of the place embedded in the dirt.

I have spent countless hours wandering those hills, and I never feel alone. Someone or something unseen is following me everywhere I go. Sometimes, this spiritual energy feels curious or watchful, but other times there is a distinct threat that permeates the environment, and expels me from my wanderings. Anyone who is even remotely sensitive to their environment feels the heaviness, the mysterious sense of having invaded someone else’s land, and the knowledge that you are an outsider. It is this ‘outsider’ feeling that makes it a challenge to live there. There is no community for someone like me, no welcoming band of happy neighbors; we respect each other’s privacy and keep our distance. There is also no natural connection to the place–I am not native to the area, not a long-time resident, and not someone who was invited in. In other words, I am another invader in a long line of invaders.

Of course, one could probably say the same about most of the United States. We occupied this land illegally, and our claim to it is based on violence and oppression. But there are places that are scarred more than others, places that have experienced multiple tragedies on a large scale. Those tragedies leave a deep wound that permeates the land and creates residual energies that never fade, never die. That is the perfect recipe for a haunting.

Paranormal investigators often think that they would love to live in a haunted house, or on the site of some horrific battle. What you discover when you actually occupy either a haunted house or haunted land is simply this: it’s exhausting, draining. Your mental, emotional, and spiritual energy is siphoned off in the very act of wandering through the hills and valleys, the dirt roads and the ruins of old settlements. The Santa Susana Mountains are both beautiful and harsh; mysterious and ominous. You don’t need to be “sensitive” to feel the oppressive and weird vibes emanating from the secret places in the hills that you avoid yet feel continuously drawn towards.

I’m tired even writing about it. If you want to visit one of the most haunted areas in California, start by parking your car in Chatsworth Park North. Walk past the circular jogging path and head into the hills. Keep going. Around sunset, pick a boulder and sit there. Observe. Meditate. Listen. The ghosts will find you.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

The Search for Yourself

A very personal post, but worth sharing for those who feel that pursuing what you want is selfish or morally questionable. It’s time to be who you are, finally. If the last year and 1/2 taught us anything, it’s that time is short, and we must not waste the precious time we have left.

The Soul Bank: Stories, Research, Essays, (B)Logs

Nothing is more difficult for me than accepting what I want. Do I have a destination on this journey? I don’t know; but I keep moving towards something that seems both elusive and thrillingly possible.

Women are typically raised to fulfill the needs of others: husbands, partners, children, supervisors, students, extended family, pets, and anyone else who we can help, save, or serve. I would love to say that this is some antiquated notion that no longer applies, but I see this in myself, my students, my family, and my friends. We exist for so long to make someone else’s existence easier. In the process, we forget who we are and we can’t name what we want. If we do, if we can, we feel searing guilt around placing ourselves “first”, not thinking that those around us are doing that very thing, unworried that they are not serving us or…

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Zombie Boy: Giving Ghost Hunters What They Want?

In Season 5, Episode 2 of “Kindred Spirits”, investigators Amy Bruni and Adam Berry suspect that “zombie boy”–a supposed ghost that was ramping up activity and scaring investigators at a Massachusetts estate–is a creation of the very people who so fervently believe in him. Much like “Phillip”, the invented ghost from a series of seances in the 1970’s, “zombie boy” had started to appear to investigators and even possess one of them. The photos provided as evidence of his existence were unconvincing to Amy Bruni, and after a few frustrating attempts to figure out his identity, it is she who starts to wonder if “zombie boy” might be an “egregore”:

“Egregore is an occult concept representing a distinct non-physical entity that arises from a collective group of people. Historically, the concept referred to angelic beings, or watchers, and the specific rituals and practices associated with them, namely within Enochian traditions”

In contemporary, paranormal circles an ‘egregore’ has come to mean any entity that manifests as a result of the collective efforts to conjure or investigate it. Amy and Adam decide to test their theory by providing ‘zombie boy’ with a back story. They create a family tree and a Civil War tragedy, and lo and behold! The EVP sessions yield back exactly the names of zombie boy’s parents, and Chip Coffey picks up on his story remotely during the investigation into another area of the property.

Zombie boy is a multi-layered entity created first by paranormal investigators who believed in his existence based on others’ evidence, and rounded out by Amy and Adam who suspected that he was not an independent being, after all. Then, zombie boy comes to life and answers questions about his invented upbringing correctly, and a psychic hundreds of miles away picks up on the details of his fabricated story.

Amy, quite appropriately, expresses shock and awe, and wonders what this means for paranormal investigations and for our lives as humans on this planet. How much of what we experience is created by us? Are the ghosts we seek simply aspects of our collective consciousness responding to our desires, our needs, our assumptions, and our emotions? Are we, during paranormal investigations, simply hearing what we expect to hear? Is the Other us?

I have always objected to the idea that we create our own reality, because it seems to suggest that individuals are responsible in some way for grim realities such as cancer, poverty, domestic violence, genocide, and disastrous cultural and political situations that are beyond anyone’s control. We don’t ‘create’ those realities, but I suppose we are responsible for our reactions to them. However, if your child is murdered in a bloody and pointless war, HOW are you supposed to react? How do you create your own reality when reality itself is so overwhelming, violent, unjust and cruel? I don’t have answers for such enormous questions. Here is what I don’t understand: if we can create a being out of thin air and give him a story that he lives out according to our will, then why can’t we escape illness, poverty, and death? Perhaps because a will far greater than our own has created us and our back stories.

I suspect that we all possess powers far greater than we are aware of. At the heart of this conundrum is the concept of Self and Other. We assume, as investigators, that we are seeking the mysterious Other. And yet so often, we receive responses that seem tailored to our expectations, suggesting that something or someone is reading us and responding appropriately. I remember one investigation in particular where there was an absolute and clear dividing line between the spirit in the house and me. As soon as I crossed the threshold of that house, I knew that something completely dark and utterly draining was attempting to overtake my will and drive me to despair. That entire night was a battle between my sense of self and agency and the thing that wanted to destroy my light. I was sick for days afterwards, and all of my equipment either malfunctioned or broke, leaving me with no trace, no evidence, of what I had experienced.

Yet on other occasions, the voice on the recorder is simply repeating something I had said earlier, in a bizarre act of mimicry. Other times, the voices are nonsensical for the location and the history of the site, such as the little girl singing a strange, tuneless song in a mental hospital. Her odd voice followed me to Linda Vista and other locations, and it took me awhile to realize that this was no child’s voice. In fact, identifying the spirit in the box or recorder is nearly impossible, even if they provide you with excellent clues. There are liars, tricksters, and delinquents that frequent the inter dimensional spaces that we love to explore, and I wonder if we truly know when an entity is playing games with us, perhaps due to boredom or malice. And then, of course, there is the unsettling idea that we might have created them all for our own entertainment or other purposes, of which we are not entirely aware.

There is no way to answer the original question: are we, or are we not, creating the paranormal phenomena that we seek out? It’s not an either/or question, I suspect. I am wary of data that is too obvious, too easy, too easily responsive to our wishes and will. The best evidence is that which surprises you, shocks you, or seems utterly bizarre or incoherent at first. When you receive a message that you sincerely do not expect or even want, you might be on the right track. When your life feels different after an investigation, when you’re amazed and struggling to fit new knowledge into your existing paradigm, you’re probably heading in the right direction.

And what is the ‘right direction’? Simply where you find yourself struggling to incorporate new and perhaps contradictory information that forces personal growth and spiritual transformation. In that sense, the reality of the spirit you contacted might be less important than the new path it opened up for you. Maybe that is what the spirit world knows about us that we still don’t know about ourselves.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

The Spirit World — Living Streams Church

Time and the Paranormal

Albert Einstein quote: Time does not exist - we invented it

I have long thought that if we understood time, or how consciousness creates the concept of temporal flow, we would understand religion and all things we currently call paranormal.

I was attending my first, post-Covid church service outdoors at Saint Hugh’s Episcopal Church when I realized that the liturgical calendar (we are currently in the second Sunday of Easter) and the death and Resurrection of Jesus are atemporal events. In other words, Christians cycle around a calendar of Biblical happenings that repeat forever. Conventional wisdom says that the Resurrection is an event that happened in the past, and we are forever paying homage to a particular week that occurred a very long time ago. A somewhat blasphemous thought keeps hammering away at me, however, regarding these Biblical stories: they may have happened as events at some point, but their importance is about the fact that they are continually happening. The death and resurrection of Jesus represent sin and salvation, eternal realities that are always happening, continuously occurring, and the idea is for us to alter our consciousness to experience those events for ourselves. The timing of such Christian celebrations is a mere detail of convenience–as is whether or not there was an original event–for what matters is that we are reminded of the moral and existential lessons of a Savior. The Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, are all concurrent and ever existing, always real, perpetually unfolding. Human beings are the time creators, placing everything into order and organizing our experience so that it appears that time is flowing from somewhere, to somewhere. But there is nowhere to go.

QuoteHD.com - Image Quotes for Pinterest and your Facebook Status | Einstein quotes, Illusion quotes, Albert einstein quotes

Events cannot be perceived as concurrent, or there would be no way to organize our lives or create the illusion of progress. In reality, however, everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen already exists. We simply cannot access events that fall outside of our perspective; we are limited by our awareness. This helps to explain precognition, clairvoyance, ESP, and other phenomena that involve a wider perspective on reality, outside of our normal awareness and time-locked perceptions. In moments of intention, crisis, or suspension of ordinary consciousness, we are able to widen the temporal net and perceive what is about to occur. A small example of this happened to me just this week. I changed lanes while driving on the freeway moments before the driver in front of me slammed on his brakes, nearly causing multiple accidents. Right before I moved to the lane to my left, I ‘saw’ the driver in front of me hit his brakes, and I knew that I had to get out of his way. It was as if the act of slamming the brakes had already occurred and was about to play itself out again.

This brings me to Colin Wilson, whose tome Supernatural is one of my all-time favorites. He writes this in his chapter “The Mystery of Time”:

“What is being suggested is that time is an invention of the left brain. Time, as such, does not exist in nature. Nature knows only what Whitehead calls ‘process’–things happening. What human beings call time is a psychological concept; moreover, is is a left-brain concept.” (432)

I believe that this ‘two brain’ hypothesis has been debunked, but Wilson still writes convincingly regarding time as nonexistent in the natural world, and human beings as bizarre, time-creating creatures who occasionally transcend their (our) clock-bound existence in order to perceive reality as a whole, as a series of unending cycles. It is my personal belief based upon far too much reading on the subject, that ghosts, poltergeists, hauntings, and supernatural powers are all atemporal–slips and glitches in our time constructions that allow us a wider vision of a world where everything is happening at once, and we can–under the right circumstances–perceive the multiple layers of consciousness that permeate the dimensions of our unrecognized and often unseen experiences.

There is, of course, far too much to say on this topic for a Monday night in 2021, where we still occupy pandemic time; days and nights piled on top of one another, in a place where all movement, all momentum, have ceased. It is from that perspective that I say goodnight, and I will see you tomorrow . . . or yesterday.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Creating Your Ghosts . . . and Your Hell

'Kindred Spirits' Paranormal Investigators Face Frightening New Challenges in Season Five | Kindred Spirits | Travel Channel — KINDRED SPIRITS: Chip Coffey, Adam Berry, Amy Bruni

The Holzer Files | Travel Channel — THE HOLZER FILES: Shane Pittman, Dave Schrader, Cindy Kaza

The Philip Experiment | Paranormal witness, Paranormal, The ancient one — The Philip Experiment

There is this nagging question that I have asked myself for years. Do we create–at least in part–the paranormal phenomena that we later claim plagues us? Or that intrigues us? What, exactly, is the relationship of what is “out there” as objective, disembodied intelligence and “in here”, a product of our own consciousness? Is there, perhaps, no such binary opposition, and instead, a sort of continuum along an imaginary line of interrelationship with the unseen?

Allow me to back up. I am returning to the world after more episodes of “Kindred Spirits”, “The Holzer Files”, and the “Dead Files” than I care to confess to. I find all of these shows fascinating for what they reveal about human psychology and our need for answers. The vast majority of the time, shows that center on the paranormal are looking for a resolution that involves the restoration of order to a household or historic site. If no restoration of normality is possible, then explanations are offered that, once again, allow us to exert some control over circumstances that threaten our sense of equilibrium or our emotional state. This is far easier to accomplish if the activity is separate from us; if we are living with something that we had no hand in creating. The Other can be discovered, explained, and neutralized. In the case of the “Dead Files”, the Other often appears irrational and beyond our capacity to manage; in that case, the only option is physical removal from the haunted place.

In all of the above scenarios, we are the experiencers and the Other is the instigator, the bully, the foreign element; the thing we need to ‘learn to live with’, or run from. In a few cases, however, there is the recognition that we play a part in our haunting. There are episodes of “Kindred Spirits” and the “Dead Files” where it’s clear that the home or business owner–or the occupants of a haunted site–might have allowed the presence, the specter, to exist in the first place. In those cases, the lines a blurred between Self and Other, to the extent that the Other only exists because we create the space for it via our unconscious drives, motivations, desires, and traumas. We all know that a certain percentage of poltergeist cases are believed to be potentiated or originated from the unconscious energies of a ‘focus’–typically, but not always, a teenager in the throws of monumental changes.

The famous case of “Philip”, the ghost that was created beforehand and then manifested during a series of seances in the 1970s, exemplifies the power of human intention;

Many researchers of the paranormal suspect that some ghostly manifestations and poltergeist phenomena (objects flying through the air, unexplained footsteps and door slammings) are products of the human mind. To test that idea, a fascinating experiment was conducted in the early 1970s by the Toronto Society for Psychical Research (TSPR) to see if they could create a ghost. The idea was to assemble a group of people who would make up a completely fictional character and then, through séances, see if they could contact him and receive messages and other physical phenomena – perhaps even an apparition. https://www.liveabout.com/how-to-create-a-ghost-2594058

And yes, as it turns out, Philip had some impressive abilities. He levitated the table, dimmed and brightened lights on command, and performed many other feats. He could not, however, provide additional information on his life and afterlife that was not already created beforehand by the investigators. His physical prowess was, however, impressive. This case was often used to debunk seances, but that misses the point entirely:

What are we to make of these incredible experiments? While some would conclude that they prove that ghosts don’t exist, that such things are in our minds only, others say that our unconscious could be responsible for this kind of the phenomena some of the time. They do not (in fact, cannot) prove that there are no ghosts.

Another point of view is that even though Philip was completely fictional, the Owen group really did contact the spirit world. A playful (or perhaps demonic, some would argue) spirit took the opportunity of these séances to “act” as Philip and produce the extraordinary psychokinetic phenomena recorded.

In any case, the experiments proved that paranormal phenomena are quite real. And like most such investigations, they leave us with more questions than answers about the world in which we live. The only certain conclusion is that there is much to our existence that is still unexplained.

If we can create a “Philip”, then what else are we capable of manifesting? I do believe in the objective existence of a spirit world or realm; I also know that how we contact that world depends on us making contact via our non-material nature. We are, as we often forget, ghosts encased in flesh. We are also potent creators of our reality and the reality that surrounds us, to a degree that astonishes me. Our repressed emotions and the effect of trauma in our collective psyches can explode in a home, for example, darkening the corners, creating a conscious entity that haunts us, or causing objects to disappear or go flying across a room. In the end, these manifestations are often a fragment of our own, agonized consciousness. Not always. But more often that most of the paranormal shows are willing to admit.

I know people who haunt the place they were raped, assaulted, or attacked. Those people are alive; they have split off a part of their psyche and created their own ghost. If you think about it, don’t you suspect that you still occupy another space somewhere? Perhaps the place where you were happiest; or perhaps the corner of the universe where overwhelming emotion dissociated you from yourself. Those aspects of ourselves that have ‘spit off’ from our body might be in close contact with other entities created by similar trauma or desire. What is a ghost but the surviving fragment of an intense emotion?

Amy and Adam in a few episodes of “Kindred Spirits” gently inform the homeowners that perhaps they have unwittingly manifested their own rage or depression as a haunting presence in their house. This requires a certain level of recognition and willingness to let go of the past and one’s own repressed drives. Not everyone is willing to let go; you can see it in the homeowner’s eyes. This is my anger, my revenge, my ambition: I am not releasing it. In “The Holzer Files”, the resurrection of old, unresolved cases often reveals how the homeowner or site manager is not only unwilling to admit how he or she has “co-created” the activity that they claim they wish to “release”, but is actively interested in holding on to the presences in the house. There is occasionally a coldness in their eyes during the “reveal”, which tells me that they have built a wall around themselves and their spirits. And, finally, in the “Dead Files”, there are clients who seem invested in the haunting to the point of possession by “something” in the house or site. This possession is often about a codependent relationship between the entity and the repressed darkness in their soul.

We can create our own “Philip” on purpose, it seems, or we can create unknowingly the most vile of demons through our fascination with our own dark side. To understand anything mysterious, we have to discard the binary oppositions–the “either/or” mentality that seeks to divorce us from our perceptions of reality. Sometimes, we are the ghost and the ghost is us.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Keith Linder’s Poltergeist: The Ongoing Saga of the Sadistic Spirits

Follow this link for more information on the Bothell Hell House case: https://demonsinseattle.com/

Bio
Keith Linder is an IT professional – holding over four certifications in Information Technology and Project Management. Hobbies are fishing, sports, football, basketball, the outdoors, movies, sci/fi, proud geek of just about anything dealing with technology. In 2012 my girlfriend and I moved into a house, right outside of Seattle. The phenomena we witnessed while there would change our lives forever. I’m now living between two realities now.

https://demonsinseattle.com/about-us/

Keith Linder, Bestselling Author

The Bothell Hell House – Poltergeist of Washington State
Attachments – Poltergeist of Washington State Part Two
Poltergeist – The Night Side of Physics.

There is something about the Keith Linder case (also known as the “Bothell Hell House” and “Demons in Seattle”) that really disturbs me. It’s so well documented that you can find extensive explanations of every aspect of the activity online. There are documentaries, interviews, podcasts, web pages, social media sites, three books on Amazon, and a YouTube channel dedicated to everything that happened during and after Keith’s case. In fact, there is so much data, analysis, and information that one can quickly become overwhelmed.

The activity itself is overwhelming, ranging from your typical haunting–EVP, EMF anomalies, shadow people, voices, and apparitions–to the utterly bizarre: actual heartbeats in the mattress, succubi that won’t let the victim sleep, demonic graffiti, burning Bibles, and extreme poltergeist activity that regularly knocked over heavy furniture and rearranged chairs, ‘disappeared’ cameras, crosses, and household objects, and even, at one point, moving a chair upstairs and on top of Keith’s desk. Most upsetting, it appears that one of the tenants of the house committed suicide as a direct result of the personal chaos she experienced while living in the Bothell house.

Keith has listed, categorized, studied, written about, and examined all of the above–and much more that I did not mention–with such meticulous attention to detail that there is nothing I can add by way of my role as a paranormal investigator. I was not there, and I cannot, post-mortem, offer any new explanations that Keith has not already considered. In fact, every time something occurs to me and I ask him if he has considered X, he answers that not only has he considered X, but Y and Z, as well. My point: I cannot and will not attempt a new angle or spend time attempting to convince a reader of the reality of what Keith said he experienced. You either believe him, or you do not. If you believe him, then you can only wonder at how he manages his life and survives psychologically and spiritually. If you do not, then he is one impressive opportunist who has invested all his time and energy into creating and maintaining a seriously complex hoax. I don’t see any motivation for such trickery, and it’s clear in his first book that the damage these forces have inflicted cost him a significant amount of money in repairs and replacements of missing (and often expensive) items, in addition to the time and labor of fixing what was broken and repainting damaged and defaced walls. His irritation is palpable.

I have pondered my course of action here for a long time. I read Keith’s first two books and am starting the third. I watched all the videos, the documentary, and reviewed the supporting data. I am disturbed and confused by it all. I rarely suffer from writer’s block, but I have felt paralyzed with this case, not knowing what to make of it nor how to write about it; and yet, it feels like I need to say something beyond “I believe it” or “I don’t believe it”. Let me start here.

Keith’s activity feels utterly chaotic, without a cohesive narrative. There are Native American elements (the upside-down man painted in his office), EVP with Irish accents harking back to Irish settlements in the Bothell area, apparitions of a woman who lived in the house and died tragically by suicide, evidence of demonic activity and oppression, in addition to classic poltergeist activity (which, I should say, strikes Keith as belonging to the category of the demonic). The activity was both intelligent and residual. If ever there was a potpourri of paranormal phenomena, this is it. And that is a hallmark of the demonic–the deliberate creation of confusion, the delight in creating chaos, the impossibility of stitching together a story that explains why all this is happening. There is no particular reason that Keith’s house should have been the locus of such bizarre and threatening phenomena, and that fact alone is disconcerting. Keith’s very dedication to arriving at the truth and researching the possible causes of his experiences was used against him, as if he were suffering punishment for attempting to document his ongoing torture.

This strikes at the heart of two issues that consume me: how much can we know about non-material or immaterial phenomena, and how does our consciousness interact with spirits of the dead, or with nonhuman entities that we do not understand at all? Do we feed these entities with our own curiosity, empower them with our attempts at communication? Should we tread very carefully when seeking knowledge about phenomena that uses our psychology and manipulates our emotions? I wonder if ignorance is bliss. And yet, that attitude is the exact opposite of my personality and negates my most basic drive: to figure it out. It is interesting, however, that the more I attempt to “figure something out”, the less I feel that I actually understand. There may be no answer here, or no answer that the Universe is willing to share.

That doesn’t stop Keith from trying, nor does it keep Kirsten away from haunted hospitals and endless reading on the topic of all things bizarre and unexplained.

As of today’s writing, Keith shared with me a couple of bizarre text messages from “Christine”, a friend of his who did NOT send these messages, even though they came from her phone (see below). This is yet another random occurrence without any particular context, reason, or purpose other than to confuse, disorient, and call attention to itself. We do not know who sent these messages, since it was not Christine and no one else had access to her phone. Keith notes that “13” is the number that results when you add up the numbers in his address, although that could be a coincidence.

There are spirits who act out with the sole intention of calling attention to themselves in order to remind the target that they have not forgotten about him and are still on the lookout. I have to assume that the more attention they receive for such antics, the more they will bother, torment, or annoy the victim. Could Keith just say no to these mysterious forces? Of course; would that end all the abuse?

I believe that we are co-creators of our reality–we have a certain amount of free will to adjust or modify our path, but there is something else, vastly larger than human consciousness, that has set forth for us certain parameters, limitations, and patterns that are difficult to break. If you are born into poverty in a social system that does not allow for upward mobility and does not provide economic opportunities, then your free will is limited by your socio-economic circumstances. If you receive a terminal diagnosis, you can respond and react to that in a variety of ways, but you can’t will cancer to disappear. Keith could ‘just say no’ and refuse to engage with the entities that he might have unwittingly encouraged; but perhaps this ongoing activity is something fate threw his way, or God, if you will, as part of the unalterable circumstances of his life; in other words, this is his test, and there is little he can do about that.

I know from personal experience that ignoring bizarre phenomena in your home does not stop it from happening. I know that you can pretend you don’t see the shadow person, don’t feel the hand on your arm, don’t hear your name called out in the middle of the night, or refuse to acknowledge the palpable sense of evil in a downstairs room where you no longer feel welcome. None of that stops it. If something–whatever you wish to call it–decides that it wishes to communicate with you, it will continue to find ways to do so. It might even send you a nonsensical text from another dimension, asking you to meet it in Room 13.

Much more to come on this . . . .

Yours in paranormality,

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD

Membership in the ISPR

Welcome, friends, to the International Society for Paranormal Research. If you are interested in becoming a member, please read below:

MEMBER GUIDELINES:

Criteria for membership in the ISPR:

A body of investigative work in the field of the paranormal or of anomalous experiences and/or phenomena;
A willingness to publicize your work for professional review and to contribute to the ongoing work of the ISPR;
Demonstrated integrity and adherence to the highest values of transparency, honesty, and open communication with those working in the field and the interested public.

As a Member:

You will be part of a ISPR’s growth as a society and will contribute to future endeavors such as investigations, conferences, and professional reviews of contributor’s work; you will have priority for publication of your work and findings in the field; you will be a part of Founder’s and Members’ meetings to discuss and determine policies for review of specific cases presented and/or under investigation; and you will have an open invitation to participate in investigations with other members of the Society.

In order to remain in good standing in the ISPR, you must adhere to the member qualifications at all times. As the Founder, I can call for removal of any member who violates the guidelines. Removal from the group may be initiated due to extended inactivity of a member, knowingly engaging in fraud, collusion, deception or falsification of results, or due to lack of communication and/or cooperation with the members of the ISPR.

I would personally like to extend an invitation to all interested readers to join us on this (ad)venture. If you have something to contribute, please consider contacting me with your bio and a sample of your work (this can be data from investigations or any summaries, analyses, or discussions of said data).

The ISPR is an open organization dedicated to investigating and presenting evidence for all aspects of the “paranormal”, including, but not limited to: all manifestations of human consciousness in post-material form; alleged hauntings of homes and sites; poltergeist activity; the work of mediums, psychics, clairvoyants and empaths; anomalous experiences that include UFO activity or any other unusual or unprecedented event, sighting, or manifestation. We are:

Open to all amateur and professional investigators who wish to contribute their data and conclusions for review;
A forum for investigators and researchers to share their research and data, but also a site for meaningful conversations among investigators regarding methodology, personal experiences, concerns, and questions;
International in scope, since we are all interconnected more now than ever, and paranormal phenomena is not restricted to one, particular country;
Non profit, with no financial or professional interests that would interfere with our primary mission;
Not a ‘team’ of investigators, but may announce investigations and/or invite participants.

I hope you are all as excited as I am!

Sincerely,

Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD; Founder, ISPR

Regarding the Paranormal

Are you a professor of Psychology with a specialty in parapsychology or consciousness research willing to share your work with the readers of the ISPR? Are you a paranormal investigator who wants a more solid grounding in theory and research? Are you a medium, a clairvoyant, a Near Death experiencer, or someone who is struggling to comprehend non-material realities? I intend for the ISPR to be both a source of information and support for all those who are looking for a deeper and wider truth in a strange, strange, world . . .

The Soul Bank: Stories, Research, Essays, (B)Logs

The issue cannot be avoided. Are paranormal investigators qualified to make statements on the afterlife and all things immaterial? What degrees or experience do we have that allow us to analyze “data” with any measure of professionalism? Are there no experts in the paranormal, as fellow member Keith Linder (MUCH more about him coming) affirms in his books? Why do I think that I have anything to contribute to this field of inquiry?

There are no stand-alone degrees in Paranormal Studies. The University of Virginia offers a degree in the Division of Perceptual Studies (https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/history-of-dops/) through the School of Medicine; you can take courses at the University of Arizona through the Department of Psychology, where the preeminent researcher of consciousness, Gary Schwartz, carries out his research into survival of consciousness (https://psychology.arizona.edu/users/gary-schwartz); and The University of Edinburgh offers programs and courses through the Koestler Parapsychology Unit…

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