Jock Brocas is a spiritual author and teacher with books published internationally. Jock is also the president of the charity organization assmpi and works tirelessly to he others develop spiritually and live a more rewarding life. Join Jock Brocas on a spiritual journey.
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Observations of a Parapsychologist/Psychic Entertainer By Loyd Auerbach
I’ve worked with some genuine psychics and mediums of extremely high caliber and psychic functioning, in investigations, under laboratory conditions, and in situations where they applied their talents.
Several years ago (2005), I wrote and presented a paper to a Parapsychology Foundation conference on mediumship in Charlottesville, VA, on what I’ve learned about psychics and the commonalities of the very best from working with some of the best over the years. I’ve since presented the topic at several parapsychological conferences, and had lots of feedback from colleagues that they, too, came to similar conclusions (but hadn’t really made a list).
In this article, I pass along what I’ve learned about the commonalities of the best psychics – and when I say “best,” yes I do to some extent mean the most accurate (really, the ones who are accurate most of the time). But what’s below is really about the more personal commonalities of the psychics and mediums who often seem impressive to people, and who work best with researchers and investigators.
How Psychic Is A Self-Proclaimed Psychic
It is not my intention to discuss in this article how to judge “how psychic” is a self-professed psychic, psychic medium, or medium. That requires a separate piece of its own. To my mind, choosing a psychic practitioner to work with can be summed up in two points: (a) how useful is the information provided by the practitioner and (a) how useful is the practitioner.
As to the first, one can only judge the usefulness of information within the context of the situation itself. I have observed a number of psychic practitioners provide information irrelevant to the situation. For example, in working with them in investigations of reported apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists, one should look at more than the verifiability of the information and consider how the information explains, supports, or melds with the experiences of the witnesses and information gathered in researching the case. Much of the usefulness of a psychic practitioner’s information in the resolution of cases rests with how that information is received and accepted by the clients (and perhaps the discarnate entity).
Psychic Practitioners and Ego
The usefulness of psychic practitioners is often related to how ego-involved the psychic is and his or her interpersonal skills. A psychic should not be the main focus of the investigation process or reading, as that should remain the experiences of the clients. Certainly while the focus in an experiment is on the subject, it’s the experiment itself that needs to be the focus.
Look At Me I’m a Great Medium
Many psychics and mediums seem to have a need to be the center of attention, but if they are good at communicating and working with people, they can still be good team players. It is those having a need to be “right” who can be real problems to deal with, especially when their perceptions are contradictory to the experiences of the witnesses and to other data collected, or to the results of an experiment.
Psychic Integrity
The best practitioners are those who understand that their psychic perceptions may sometimes be incomplete, influenced by their biases or personal problems, symbolic, or even from a different source than the current situation. Furthermore, they are willing to take each perception and examine it for both validity and relevance. The practitioner recognizes that others on the investigative or research team and perhaps even witnesses in a case investigation, or the client in a reading, may need clarification or may need to fit the practitioner’s perceptions into other parts of the case or even disqualify them for lack of validity or relevance. The Psychic or Medium does not become defensive if told that a particular perception is incorrect, misinterpreted, or misguided.
They realize that they may not be psychic in all situations. For example, many mediums who spend their time communicating with spirits are good when it comes to apparition (ghost) cases, but lousy – even totally “blind” – when it comes to reading living people. Many psychics who can read people or objects can’t pick up anything in apparition cases.
Consider The Science
They are willing to consider various non-paranormal and non-spiritual explanations for events in a case or experience and to consider fraud. They will follow suggestions from the field researchers, especially where focusing their perceptions to gain more or different information is concerned. They will participate with the investigators in trying to understand the initial and subsequent factors that led the clients to believe their building is haunted or to an individual believing he/she had an intense psychic experience. They are willing to discuss and consider their perceptions in light of the observations of the other investigators. They are willing to let go of ownership of their perceptions in discussion with the investigators and witnesses.
They are willing to learn the perspective of the researcher and field investigator, even to the point of understanding good investigative and experimental procedures. They may have their own personal spiritual or religious beliefs, but they do not force them into the cases or on others.
They consider the clients’ needs above their own.
They have a sense of humor, especially with regards to how seriously they take themselves.
Most of all, they have a real curiosity about their own abilities, what their limits might be, how they do in different situations and conditions, and how psi might actually work. I will note that those working as mediums seem to express much more curiosity about understanding what’s going on and the scientific studies of their abilities (and the possibility of life after death/Survival of Consciousness) than those who work as psychics (with no mediumship practice). On speculating about this, I believe it may be a result of mediums being focused on communication with living and deceased people – and the communication process -- while psychics are often more concerned with the information rather than the people.
Psychics and Mediums Must Work In Harmony With The Investigators
The best psychics and mediums seem to work with the investigators and the clients to set expectations of success at a reasonable level. While they are able to cite past successes, they are aware of their own limitations and are honest about them.
The best seem to display many additional qualities beyond their psychic talents. They have excellent interpersonal skills, and because of that are confident without being egotistical. It has been said that psychics often have great egos. This can be a plus if the practitioner understands the place of a big ego and is able to both freely admit this and most importantly to be humorous about it.
You Need a Good Sense Of Humor
The best psychics and mediums generally display a good sense of humor, especially about themselves. They do take their work seriously, but because of their maturity, they see the lighter side of life as extremely important. They actually enjoy watching (good) psychic entertainers and magicians, unlike many who don’t fit the criteria of this article who voice objections to “making fun of” the paranormal.
Personally, I’ve always said I take my subject seriously – but not myself. And I can have fun with it all. That sums up the attitude of the best psychics and mediums.
One special note: There are some very famous psychics out there who don’t fit these commonalities. They’ve often bullied their way to the top, or used any bit of mystery and/or fame and/or publicity to get there and frankly, what I end up observing about their psychic abilities (in my role as a parapsychologist) is extremely unimpressive. But even if they were incredibly psychic, I still wouldn’t recommend people to them because as people, they leave much to be desired. One of them (who has since died) was downright mean to people even in her TV appearances!
To sum up, here’s a list of the qualities I’ve found. I encourage all mentalists/psychic entertainers to incorporate these into your performing persona, naturally adapted to your own personality.
The best psychic practitioners
• Are confident without being egotistical (but still have a healthy ego)
• Display good “people skills” (with the living and the dead)
• Don’t set expectations too high, and know their own limitations and biases
• Are still willing to learn (i.e. from a parapsychologist/field researcher)
• Are curious about their own abilities, how they work, and what their limits are.
• Do not force their beliefs on others, even as they stand by their own beliefs.
• Put the clients first.
• Don’t claim to be right all (or even any particular unverifiable percentage) of the time.
• Display a good sense of humor, especially when it comes to themselves.
In other words, good psychic practitioners have good people skills above all else!
The 17th century was a time of significant development for the maritime industry, particularly in the United Kingdom. Golden opportunities abounded. Shipbuilders began to modernize merchant vessels to meet importing and exporting demands. New faces arrived on Alnmouth’s windswept coastal shores of Northern England on a daily basis, turning the once-quiet village into a bustling enterprise. Local inns were forever packed to the rafters and weary sailors often found themselves sleeping rough, choosing the streets instead of the cramped, rat-infested conditions of their own ships. As councilors became aware that the lack of provision and comfortable beds could tarnish the town’s reputation, the idea of a coaching room became the perfect solution to the sailor-strewn street. Construction of the 32-room Schooner Hotel was soon underway. It was named after the most common ship that docked at the harbor in those days.
Visitors say the tranquility of the village and its beautiful coastline fills their hearts with peace but the storms cast a feeling of dread. Waves have been described as salivating beasts, devouring everything in their path. When dark, dreary weather closes in, people seek warmth and refuge in cozy, quaint ale houses with roaring, comforting log fires. As rain batters the tavern windows and wind howls through the chimney breasts, people begin to swap chilling stories of the Schooner Hotel which is said to be occupied by 60 ghosts...
From prosperous times to drunken nightmares
The Schooner Hotel became a prosperous venture that provided many jobs for the locals. In contrast, many inconveniences and anxieties also arose from its existence. Controlling drunken sailors became a tall order. Disorder became commonplace and violence regularly spilled out into the once quiet streets. Fist fights became part of the fixtures and fittings, as did a mounting death toll.
One summer night in the 18th century, a group of rowdy and heavily intoxicated young sailors began to squabble. After a while, a fight started and the carnage poured out onto the dark street. The violent men grappled, kicked, punched, and gouged at each other like wild animals. Suddenly, a tall, broad, and wraith-like figure emerged from the sea mist that surrounded the town. Pulling back his trench coat, he withdrew two pistols and shot two of the sailors in the face, killing them instantly. The other rogues looked on in horror as the mysterious figure, his face unrecognizable in the dimly lit street, walked towards the two lifeless bodies.
The demonic figure grasped the collars of the blood-soaked corpses and dragged them into the darkness. After an extensive search by locals and the police, the sailors were never found. While the terrifying being was never seen again, in recent years, there have been reported sightings of a tall, broad, skulking, faceless figure in the hotel. He slowly thuds and creeps along the corridors, dragging what appears to be two bloody carcasses behind him. Was this monstrous character once a guest at the Schooner with a thirst for violence and death?
Ghostly reminders of a disastrous love affair
The young ladies of Alnmouth often watched the sailors working in the harbor. Their smart uniforms and robust physiques were appealing. Everything about a sailor conveyed masculinity, adventure, bravery, and hard work, traits that were often difficult to find among the local men. However, relationships between sailors and the local ladies would begin and end as quickly as they had started, leaving many a broken heart in the process.
One infamous, heartbreaking story involves a young girl and a French sailor. He had docked for several days while awaiting cargo. The duo enjoyed many coastal walks. They would walk hand in hand and ever so slowly, love began to blossom. The young lady was besotted. The handsome sailor has stolen her heart.
On his last night before sailing, he surprised the girl with a suite he had arranged in the Schooner Hotel. After a wonderful meal and a romantic night, the girl awoke to find the sailor gone. Frantically, she darted to the harbor, but his ship had set sail. She had given her heart to him and he had promised her the world. Without a word, he had vanished like a thief in the night. Gone forever.
Devastated and heartbroken, she made her way back to the suite and ended her life. Her lifeless body was found the next morning by cleaning maids, hanging from the rafters. Knowledge of the exact room where this inconsolable girl committed suicide has been lost in the mists of time but the spirit of a pale and weeping young lady is regularly reported. She glides through the corridors in the dead of night wearing an expression of devastation.
The horrifying family massacre in Room 28
One dark December evening, a young family of four arrived at the Schooner Hotel. Their carriage and horse were taken to the stables, and they were escorted to their room. At around midnight, the hotel’s bustling nightlife began to fade. Last orders had come to an end and candles were slowly extinguished. The drunken jeering of sailors and the clanking of tankards faded with the light. The bolting of rooms could be heard echoing throughout the corridors as guests settled. The landlord carried out his final checks and made his way to his quarters, completely unaware of the catastrophe that awaited him at first light.
At around 6 am, the landlord was abruptly awoken by the shrill cries of the morning maid. He clambered to his feet, shuffled into his nightgown, and darted down the corridor to investigate. The pitiful cries took him to the top floor where the young family slept. Noticing that the bedroom door was slightly ajar, he cautiously walked inside and witnessed something that would haunt him until his dying day.
The maid lay shivering on the floor in a fetal position, crying hysterically. The large tankard of milk that had been requested for delivery by the family the previous evening, was strewn across the floor. As he looked up, he saw the mutilated bodies of the family. They lay lifeless on their beds, their hands clasped together at their waists, as though purposely placed in that position. Their faces were unrecognizable. Beaten and bloody. Lacerations covered their naked bodies and vital organs lay at their sides. The bed sheets were soaked with blood. Not an inch of material or the floor was spared from the bloodied mess. The odd finger and limb could be seen on bedside tables and piles of guts and gore sat like small mole mounds around the room.
The bar lord lost consciousness at the horrific sight. Once composed, he immediately alerted the police. Sadly, the culprit of this heinous crime was never found. It was suggested that a local merchant may have been responsible. Some months earlier, the merchant agreed to a business deal with the father of the family that had left him in financial ruin. The merchant regularly made threats of revenge but never threats of such violence. Due to a lack of evidence, the merchant was released without charge. Unfortunately, the killer, whoever it may have been, remained free to roam the streets of Alnmouth for the rest of his days.
What lurks within Rooms 16 and 17?
Several spirits are said to move between rooms 16 and 17. Many guests have reported being abruptly woken in the night by an overpowering smell of burning. Dark shadows with elongated fingers are said to manifest at the end of the bed and the terrifying sight is often accompanied by paralysis and a feeling of dread. After what seems like several minutes, the figures vanish. The experience is so horrifying that many guests vacate the hotel immediately after. In addition to this, unnerving pounding noises are heard on the corridor walls outside. The spirit of a boy is said to be responsible, and he has been seen running down the corridor before vanishing into thin air. An eerie silence permanently permeates these rooms, accompanied by regular drops in temperature.
Recently, a hidden door was discovered connecting the two rooms. The door is covered by wallpaper and a thin layer of plaster. A clear outline of the door can be seen but the biggest mystery is what lies behind it. Staff are unsure of the reasons behind the closure and concealment of the room and it has never been opened for centuries. Could this hidden room hold the answer to the hauntings?
Schooner Hotel Spookiness abounds in Rooms 28, 29 and 30
Guests often experience unbearable dizziness and sickness in rooms 28, 29, and 30. Strangely, when the affected guests leave these rooms, they feel well again. Unnerving and guttural whispers are heard in the early hours of the morning and loud rapping sounds can be heard on the walls and ceilings. Sounds of slamming doors are also heard despite all doors being locked and bolted. Childish laughter has been heard from inside the bathroom which ceases immediately when guests try to investigate. Finally, the ghostly figure of a young cavalier and maid have been seen walking hand in hand across room 29. They are said to stop and stare at each other adoringly before disappearing through the wall into room 28. Reports of the smitten duo are common but no malice is ever experienced.
Personal experience
The information in this article resonates with me deeply due to my own experience of the Schooner. Ten years ago, I naively booked a room, thinking all the tales were false. Late at night, I braved a walk around the lonely and dimly lit corridors. I was the only guest. The only other person present was the duty manager sleeping a few corridors away.
After an hour of searching and seeing nothing, I decided to head back to my room. Suddenly, a bright light began to materialize directly in front of me. At first, it was about the size of a small coin, and it slowly grew, twisting and shifting into a distorted spiral. It grew to around 20cm in height and about 10cm in width. I watched in horror as this curious light suddenly shot past my right side, spinning and turning as it moved. The bizarre light stopped momentarily and then slowly drifted toward the wall before sinking into the wallpaper and vanishing.
I stood for what seemed like an eternity while my brain tried to make sense of what I saw. Eventually, I began the short journey back to my room. Every few seconds, I glanced over my shoulder wondering if the mysterious light would reappear. It didn’t. I spent the rest of the night unable to sleep, eager for morning to arrive. Think you could brave a night at the Schooner Hotel? Take a trip if you dare...
With Halloween just around the corner, ghosts and ghouls are getting ready for their annual airing. Yet, York is a city well-acquainted with the paranormal, and hauntings are not confined to a solitary night. This city's cellars are particularly partial to paranormal phenomena, with dank, dark spaces lending themselves to the imagination. Any sound, smell, or visual experience is not immune to supernatural spin, and by adding the merest hint of a rumor, preferably of some tragic demise, and those creaking pipes are suddenly the agonizing cries of the dearly departed.
Harry Martindale’s famous account of a ghostly procession of Roman soldiers passing through the cellar of the Treasurer’s House is a particular favorite of mine although not all of York’s spirits are content to dwell underground.
One such spirit who supposedly makes his presence felt is that of the infamous highwayman Dick Turpin. While his stay in York was cut short by the Tyburn, it didn’t stop the residents from claiming him as their own. And Mr Turpin happens to be a neighbor of mine; he resides in the graveyard at the end of my street. Visitors come to photograph his final resting place, while sightseeing buses include him in their whirlwind tour of the city. He also makes a guest appearance in my Porter Biggleswade series as a lonely pipe-player who haunts the graveyard. Well, it seems fitting, considering.
Dick Turpin’s Grave, York - Amy Flint (Amy Investigates)
Richard Turpin was born in 1705, in Hempstead, Essex, and trained to be a butcher like his father. These skills proved useful when he joined a deer poaching gang in his early twenties, and thus embarked on a life of crime. Burglary and murder were soon added to his CV, and he was forced to flee to Yorkshire after killing his accomplice during a botched robbery.
By 1737, he had adopted the alias John Palmer and was posing as a horse trader. An unfortunate incident with a gun and another man’s game cock resulted in a stay at the House of Correction at Beverley. Already suspected of theft and trade in stolen horses (which was a capital offence) Turpin was transferred to the prison in York. It is here he wrote to his brother-in-law for help, something he was later to regret. A former tutor recognised Turpin’s handwriting and exposed him. Turpin was found guilty of horse theft and condemned to death. He was thirty-four.
On 7th April 1739, Turpin was taken through York in an open cart. Crowds observed his macabre progress to the Knavesmire, where the gallows was waiting. Turpin was left hanging until late afternoon when he was cut down and taken to the Blue Boar in Castlegate. His burial in the graveyard of St George’s Church, Fishergate was briefly interrupted by body-snatchers who sold his remains for illegal medical dissection. Fortunately, the crime was discovered, and Turpin was reinterred.
While there is some doubt regarding the authenticity of the grave, belief in Turpin’s ghost is real enough. He is said to haunt a lonely stretch of river path in the former slum area of St George’s field. Once home to those living on the fringes of society, this quiet spot raises expectation of a ghostly encounter. If setting is key, it certainly suits Turpin, who veils himself among the trees, waiting for unsuspecting victims to fleece. Stagecoaches once kept him busy, but now he is reduced to challenging dog walkers, cyclists, and children on scooters, although I don’t fancy his chances with the latter. The area is also prone to flooding, which must be something of an inconvenience.
Lonely stretch of river rumoured to be haunted by Dick Turpin - Amy Flint (Amy Investigates)
Whilst it seems fitting that Turpin haunts this spot (an area once inhabited by criminals and the like – presumably, he feels at home), there is no record of him ever having been to St George’s Field. He was a prisoner during his stay in York, brought to the city in chains. While he may have received visitors during his incarceration, he certainly wasn’t at liberty to make house calls. Hence, it would seem more plausible for him to haunt York Castle where he was held, the Tyburn on the Knavesmire or even the graveyard he is asserted to be buried in. A ghostly procession would even be appropriate, materializing on the date he was taken from the prison to the gallows, a stone tape of the grim event imprinted on the fabric of the city.
I decided to track Dick Turpin’s final journey for Amy Investigates one Sunday afternoon. Time shy, I was obliged to do it during Storm Ciara, which certainly made for a dramatic experience. I was blown along his route from outside the former prison towards Castlegate. The streets of York are often bustling, so it was easy to imagine crowds lining the road as Turpin was taken over Ouse Bridge, along Ousegate, and up the incline to Micklegate Bar. Passing through the city’s wall, he progressed along Blossom Street towards The Mount. The Tyburn, which was pulled down in 1812, was waiting for him on the Knavesmire opposite Pulleyn Drive. A paved area and a plaque now mark the spot.
The weather being inclement, I wasn’t surprised to find myself quite alone. Yet, as I stepped onto the paved area the wind suddenly dropped and the sun came out. I took a picture to capture this most extraordinary moment. A great calm descended, as if the tortured spirits of those condemned were taking a breath and in doing so allowed me to collect mine. The moment was extraordinary, and one I’ll never forget. I lingered briefly before retracing my steps back to where Turpin’s body was laid out at the Blue Boar. The rain had started afresh along with the wind.
The site of York’s Tyburn where Dick Turpin was executed - Amy Flint (Amy Investigates)
I continued down to the river in the hope of catching a glimpse of Turpin, but it was not to be. Perhaps he is a fair-weather spirit who favors sunny days rather than stormy, or maybe he doesn’t haunt the city after all. Either way Turpin was little more than a thug and a murderer, a far cry from the handsome, amiable rogue legend has created. Gladys Jones sums him up well in Shadows in the Mist. ‘He was a rotten musician and a second-rate horse thief; people were strung up for less. He should have stayed in Essex.’
Are there a ghosts in the house going ‘Whooooooeeeeeeee’ in your home? Can you hear a ‘pitter and patter’ and a ‘clatter and clang’ when you’re trying to sleep at night? Don’t move out just yet: you may want to consider the fact that it’s something else making all the noise! While these are the sounds that are most associated with ghosts in the house, here’s the thing: they could also mean your HVAC system is the ghost in your house!
Old houses usually have draft currents that can really give you the chills and break out the goosebumps. Add to this the constant settling noises that an old house usually. So what happens when your HVAC system is also old and adds to the litany? You’ve got a primetime ghost story, that’s what!
Let’s see how your HVAC System can be your ghost.
Air Flow Causes The Noise Of Ghosts In The House
Ghosts In The House
When the compressor of your air conditioning system is at fault, you might find the air conditioner making some wheezy noises. Also, a compressor which isn’t working at full efficiency may lead to inconsistent temperatures throughout the house, which helps create a paranormal effect with pockets of hot and cold air.
When it comes to air flow, you may also find some doors slamming easily while another room is quite drafty. This tends to happen when the indoor air pressure is varying, which is also another effect of having an HVAC system that doesn’t work efficiently! Big houses are more susceptible to this paranormal effect. To get rid of it, all you need to do is fix your air conditioner stat!
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
There have been quite a few stories out there of people who have been seeing ghosts and other supernatural activity in their homes, only to be informed that these are the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning. Carbon monoxide poisoning normally happens when fossil fuels are burned for heat in furnaces and release the gas, but this gas has nowhere to escape: your chimney may be blocked and all windows closed to keep the cold out.
When this happens, there is a build-up of carbon monoxide in the house, which can lead to all impressions of supernatural activity: hallucinations of ghost-like figures moving around the house, people calling out but there’s no one there, noises when there should be none, extreme lethargy and high probability of accidents in the house which can easily be attributed to ghosts, such as falling down flights of stairs!
Effects of carbon monoxide poisoning are not only hallucinations, but also headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, chest pains, severe paralysis and eventually death. This is why you need to have CO monitors around your house to tell you if CO levels are high. If they are, you need to fix your HVAC system.
Sorting out your HVAC system so that such gases can be released outside the house will do marvels to get rid of all your ghostly problems. You can do this by calling in an HVAC system technician to help you change your furnace air filter, open up any blocked ducts and vents around the house and clean up any outside debris on your outdoor HVAC unit.
Blocked Condensate Pipe
When something goes ‘drip drip’ all the time, you may think there’s a ghost in the house! Air conditioners shouldn’t leak water in the house but when they do, the sound the water makes as it hits the floors is quite, quite eerie – especially in the middle of the night. Every creak and groan in the night added to the constant dripping noise is enough to have anyone thinking someone’s being killed by a ghost and their blood’s dripping all over the house!
Ghosts in the house
In ninety percent of most paranormal situations, it’s the HVAC at fault. An old HVAC system has its fair share of issues – so if yours is acting up, don’t call in the paranormal guys to help you make head or tail of your ghostly observances. Call an HVAC technician instead to fix your HVAC system and see if all the supernatural activity around your house comes to a halt.
If not, you’re living in a haunted house. Move out before the resident ghost decides to take your life!
The following passages have been transcribed from the second half of Professor Robert Temple’s interview with Heather Ensworth PhD about his revolutionary book A New Science of Heaven. Everyone else, seatbelts on and prepare to spark your imagination like never before. This is plasma physics part 2.
Will the plasma clouds intervene to save us?
Robert: We are always in such a mess and are a genocidal species, a psychopathic species because we spend all our time killing each other, pointlessly, frankly. We are obsessed with greed and silly things like fame…and all these people who are super rich become obsessed with making more money. If you’ve got a few hundred million dollars, why continue to earn money? It’s a mess.
The reason why the clouds obviously don’t intervene to save us from these catastrophes which we continually inflict upon ourselves, like the first world war, is because we are an experiment. If you interfere with an experiment, it ceases to be an experiment. If the day comes that they interfere, then it ceases to be an experiment. If things get to the absolute total crisis point, I guess they would have to intervene because there would be no point in having an experiment anymore if billions of people died and everything was really coming to an end. I presume they would intervene at that stage.
If you were able to return to earth again, would you do it?
Robert: Don’t forget that if billions of people die, it doesn’t mean they cease to exist. You are still left with billions of bio plasma beings. What are you going to do with them? Where do they go? That brings us to the whole question of the other world – there is another world we go to when we leave our ‘smart overcoats’. And we stay there until we return. Not everybody has to return – you can graduate. But there are some people who, having graduated, choose not to go up to the more blissful regions and instead choose to keep working to help get the planet sorted. As an individual bio plasma being, you can do that because you are not one of the clouds.
If you come back, you go through all the aggro that we have here, where everybody tries to stop you from doing everything. Try to do anything good on this planet and somebody is bound to complain. We are using this difficult world to grow and there are those of us who want to become better and better people but can only do it here. In the plasma physics world, you can’t do that because you are static there.
An alternate view of the afterlife and ‘fallen’ people
Robert: When people leave this world, it’s like they have a barcode which is a read out of who they are and how good they are. It’s like a frequency. The higher frequencies are better people and you go straight to your level that matches that frequency. Automatically. So, nobody is judged before a tribunal and all that kind of thing. How could they handle billions of people otherwise? It must be supervised by the cloud, somehow. So, they have this system, which to a large extent, is automated…
Heather: To be on your own path of growth and evolution, you have to come back into this density in order to work through more of your process.
Robert: Yes, and it’s dangerous because you could slip. I’m sure that there are pretty highly evolved entities that have fallen, hence the fallen angel motif.
Heather: And the gnostic gospels, too.
Robert: A typical example of one known to everyone, in my opinion, is Napoleon. He was a brilliant person, a highly evolved entity, who fell. He tried conquering Europe, and guess what? 16 million people died because of his vanity. That’s what I call a fallen person…they keep popping up everywhere…megalomaniacs.
So, you can be doing very well and come back here and do even better and suddenly be tempted by fleshly things. You can suddenly decide that I am so clever that I want to become a billionaire. I am going to do it and I don’t care who gets hurt. Well, then you go down, down, down.
Why has science become so fragmented and held back?
Heather: It’s an extraordinary way to think about how information can be transferred throughout the universe through these webs of plasma.
Robert: The cosmic web is now recognised by astronomers because they can see it. It looks like a spider’s web. In my book, I show it side by side with a human brain because it looks the same. Basically, it’s an intelligent universe. The whole universe is conscious. Our sun and stars are entirely made of plasma and I believe they are all alive. They are connected by these filaments, which is where the electric universe theory comes in. But that’s requires a separate conversation…The vast clouds that you now see with the new telescopes are huge plasma clouds and they are giving birth within them to stars. These stars are nodes of a vast superconducting electric grid which we call the cosmic web.
Observational astronomers tend not to know anything about plasma because they don’t know what plasma really is or how it works. Science is too fragmented. Nobody knows what the guy in the next lab down the corridor is doing. Science is being held back because people trying to do the science in an open manner don’t have any access to the secret stuff…Much too much is being kept secret which shouldn’t be kept secret and the people who are keeping it secret are cutting their own throats because if they put more out into the public domain, they would get more feedback which would be useful for their secret stuff.
We have a capacity to directly influence our evolution
Heather: If nothing ever dies, if everything is held in this sea of consciousness in the plasma field, we can affect the evolution of consciousness of the planet. Rupert Sheldrake’s understanding of morphogenic fields by our own resonance...that what we draw to the earth by our own energy field...if we are coming more from the heart and moving into a higher level of consciousness, we are activating that energy on the planet.
Robert: I agree completely. Rupert, by the way, is a great friend of mine…he is a great force for the good...
Heather: If you follow that understanding, then we have a capacity to directly influence what’s happening with our evolution here on the planet. My sense from the astrological perspective is that we’re at a critical choice point here...these energies we are seeing around the globe, is the backlash to an increasing shift that we are capable of in terms of moving into a new state of evolution with our human consciousness…But it feels like, as you said, there is a larger struggle between good and evil, not just on the planet in terms of our earthly experiment but across the cosmos, which is extraordinary to think about.
The Anubis Cell and Sirius mystery
Robert: Absolutely – I agree with everything you said…I want to address an earlier question about communication across space. In the revised edition of The Sirius Mystery, which came out in 1998, which I expanded by 50%...I talked about the connection between the Sirius system and solar system and at the time, I didn’t know about all this plasma stuff. I can now see what I suggested has a sound, physical basis.
I suggested that Sirius and the solar system were connected in a cell of some kind. I called it the Anubis Cell because Sirius is the dog star and Anubis was the dog god. I now can see that from the galactic perspective, such a cell would be a dusty complex plasma cell with its own sheath and that within such a cell, a long range order takes place, and that you could have instantaneous communication between the star systems because they are in the same cell.
…Information could in principle, be instantaneously transmitted anywhere in the universe because the universe itself, although limitless, I’m sure…is also a dusty complex plasma.
We’ve got extraterrestrial life between us and the moon
Robert: Most of the attention has been given to L5 (Lagrange libration point) – which I think is the one called Metatron. But the thing is, what is the other one up to (L4 Lagrange libration point)? Is one the left brain, is one the right brain? Is one male, is one female? Are they married? Anything is possible. We don’t know. And I do believe there have been attempts from L5 to communicate with us. Some of that was in my book but was removed. But that’s another long story.
…All of our concepts of communicating with extraterrestrial life are inadequate. We are looking for little green men out there somewhere. We’ve got extraterrestrial life between us and the moon. We don’t need to look beyond that. We should be learning about the clouds…The fact is that don’t even know enough about our own planet, frankly, and we don’t know what the core of our earth is made of. It’s all speculation...
I have a chapter in my book called The Cold Sun in which I point out that our conventional notions of the sun are nonsense. Because, if it really had a fusion reaction going on in the centre, the sun would get hotter the closer you get to it. But the opposite is true. It gets colder…
There is no hydrogen bomb going off in the centre of the sun. That’s complete madness. This was an idea that was attested by the wonderful Sir Arthur Eddington in the 1920s and he did his best because it made sense then. But it no longer does. People have got to shake that off…Everybody admits that there’s something wrong but they won’t admit that they are wrong.
Discerning the truth instead of defending certain paradigms
Heather: We get so locked into our paradigms that we don’t want to... You are an independent researcher trying to discern what’s true rather than getting caught up in defending a certain paradigm which is unfortunately so much of what happens in academia…We have been speculating about these other intelligent beings in the universe and basically what you are saying is that they are all around us.
Robert: Yes, yes, absolutely. There are life forms of plasma that are invisible to us and we don’t suspect are there. Some people call them angels. It’s all happening and we are blind to most of it. Life is everywhere. And everything is life. The universe is life. It’s conscious life. It’s a life that feels…thinks…a life that imagines. And I think that imagining is the source of everything.
The clouds know the entire history of this planet
Heather: Would you say then, that the clouds not only are intelligent and have this phenomenal memory bank, but are conscious?
Robert: Oh yes, definitely! They will be conscious at least in an AI manner…they would be super intelligent… so intelligent than they would know more than probably all the people on earth put together if they combined all of their intelligence...They know who everybody is. They would be watching this, for instance, because they monitor everything and have the capacity to do that easily. They would have fantastic filtering and sorting systems – way beyond the key word thing that spy agencies use...
The systems of sorting out what is really interesting and needs attention will be perfected by the Kordylewski clouds because they are probably billions of years old. They know the entire history of this planet, they know the details of every animal – not just the people - and probably every plant and the entire geology of the planet. They would have witnessed its formation…they know the whole story of the earth and the earth is what they are monitoring.
End of Interview Transcript, Pt 2
Heavenly Highlights
The following passages from A New Science of Heaven include references to ancient religious texts.
“Now at last, science has caught up with mysticism and modern physicists are seriously suggesting that intelligent plasmas can exist after all.” ~Professor Robert Temple
Correcting inaccurate global climate models
Crucial new findings about ‘new particle formation’ are not taken into account in global climate models and existing climate models ‘underestimate both the magnitude of tropical atmospheric NRF (new particle formation) and the subsequent growth of new particles to CCN (cloud condensation nuclei) sizes.’
Important phenomenon related to the discovery of this new particle formation in the atmosphere has been missed because it is so difficult to detect by existing technology. As a result, NASA has set up a programme to try to obtain more detailed information about these new particles so that we can know how they affect both our climate models and our climate itself.
Is the ‘War in Heaven’ between good and bad plasmas?
The early third century AD ‘Nag Hammadi’ Christian Gnostic Apocryphon of John text insists that it was ‘not Noah alone’ but ‘also other men’ who went into a place and sheltered themselves within a ‘luminous cloud’. It also speaks of angels as ‘lights’ and that both good and bad entities reside in the ‘luminous clouds’.
If the Devil himself lives in a fiery plasma cloud, it is possible for both powers of Good and Evil to dwell in, or consist of, plasma clouds.
Key events in the New Testament such as the Transfiguration, where Jesus appeared radiant in glory and the Pentecost, also seem suggestive of plasmas.
The War in Heaven could therefore be a war between good and bad plasmas, and the extent to which they can recruit humans on their respective sides is assumed to have a bearing on how long the world will last before it reaches its ultimate climax when the final reckoning occurs. At that time, the ‘elect’ amongst humanity who have remained good despite all temptations, will rise up to the Kingdom of Light, and the Powers of Darkness will be annihilated.
Nikola Tesla saw tongues of living flame
Nikola Tesla wrote in his autobiography that:
In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action…I was about 12 years old when I first succeeded in banishing an image from my vision by wilful effort but I never had control over the flashes of light to which I have referred. They were, perhaps, my strangest experience and explicable...In some instances, I have seen all the air around me filled with tongues of living flame...These luminous phenomena still manifest themselves from time to time, as when a new idea opening up possibilities strikes me...
Professor Temple interprets Tesla’s descriptions as appearing to be the visualisation and perception of his own plasma body. ‘Tongues of living flame’ surround us because that is what plasma is like – not heat producing flames but rather a ‘living flame’ with pulsations or waves within the flame.
The ‘Death Flash’ and ‘Life Flash’
It has been said that at the moment of death, a flash of light is emitted from the body and it applies to all organisms, not just people.
A light flash is also seen at conception, when a human egg is fertilized by a sperm, and has been captured on film. The flashes are caused by a wave of calcium ions going through the cell and calcium ion flow is a form of plasma, just as we have seen in the death waves.
Death flashes have not yet been captured on film but in 1987, Polish biophoton researcher, the late Professor Janusz Slawinski (1936-2016) published a summary of the many of the occurrences of the ‘death flash’, technically known as the ‘necrotic photon emission’. He concludes that the electromagnetic field produced by necrotic radiation, containing energy, internal structure and information, may permit the continuation of consciousness beyond the death of the body.
Bio plasma bodies do not ‘wear out’ but whether they have non-physical ways of undergoing any kind of disintegration, is not yet known. But it is likely that it would take the form of an impairment or degrading rather than a total catastrophic collapse.
Writes Temple:
‘This is clearly very important information. Considering how terrified most people are of dying, you would think that this information would be more widely circulated, if only to assuage people’s anxieties. But strangely, few people have heard about it. This is puzzling to me. I think it must be because we live in a world today where intellectuals, mainstream social opinion-formers and mass media all subscribe to a rigidly materialistic view of life and are intolerant of anyone who challenges this arid position in even the slightest way. It is time that humans were given a proper briefing on this ‘material world of spirit.’
My dearly departed father assured me in a dream that ‘there is no death’
Professor Temple’s reference to the ‘material world of spirit’ aligns with two profound dreams I experienced in the mid 1990s - fitting memories to share as I conclude this article.
I clearly recall standing in a peaceful space, surrounded by a gentle mist and feeling embraced by a comforting, loving energy. My father, Karl Summer, emerged from the mist and stood in front of me. He was as tall and strong as I remembered him to be, and looked as happy to see me as I did him. As I basked in a profound wave of sweet relief and comfort that permeated the deepest levels of my soul, my father extended his hand to me. Expecting to feel nothing but thin air, I reached out to hold it. Instead, I physically felt his hand and looked at him in blissful awe. ‘You’re not dead, are you dad.’ I said. He smiled and replied: ‘There is no death, Linda.’
A few nights later, my father appeared in my dream world once again. This time, he was in a mischievous, happy mood and the setting included an arc of coffins with open lids. Then he started jumping in and out of the coffins like a cheeky, athletic teenager. ‘See?’ he said. ‘There is no death.’ I couldn’t help but laugh along with him and embrace the notion that death really was an illusion and that coffins were mere ‘props’ used in our earthly life to farewell our loved ones in their ‘smart overcoats’. In hindsight, my father’s comedic ‘coffin dance’ was also his way of helping me heal from the deep trauma and grief that accompanied the viewing of his body laying dead in a coffin. I had to physically see my father to help me believe he was really dead and I am sorry I had to put my mother through an experience she wanted to avoid. My father’s death on Boxing Day, 1980, came as an momentous shock to all who knew and loved him. He was only 54 years old. But he left us with a precious cache of joyful, at times hilarious and eye-opening memories to carry in our hearts.
My wish for anyone grieving the loss of someone they love with all their heart, is to know that death is not the final curtain call. Far from it.
I discovered that I have an odd psychic ability entirely by accident.
Years ago I had a very old and sick calico cat. My wife and I were monitoring her closely and I noticed that she was increasingly withdrawn. One morning I noticed that she could no longer tolerate petting and seemed to be in a great deal of pain. A gentle physical examination revealed that her abdomen was full of gas pressing against the skin, and it was off to an emergency vet.
An x-ray revealed that her entire intestines were blocked, and the hospital wanted to operate. Given her already poor physical condition and age, we declined, a decision, which our regular vet absolutely supported. She would very likely either die in surgery or shortly thereafter. So while she was still under anesthesia, we opted to put her down.
My wife was at work, and I took her home and dug a grave. But I felt an unease that I could not explain and as a result, I could not bury her. I held her in my arms and walked around the yard, hoping to find closure, but it didn't help ease this strange feeling.
Finally, I sat on our front porch and really focused on her and felt her presence within the body and that’s when I finally knew what to do and when I acted, it all happened in an instant. I mentally told her that it was time to leave her body and at that moment, I felt something whoosh away. The body felt empty; I didn’t realize that this was the problem until it happened.
The unease lifted as I realized that the whoosh was the kitty’s soul. Our cat, who had died while still under anesthesia, didn’t know that her body was dead and hadn’t left it yet. Now that she was gone, burying the body was no longer an issue. I'm confident she would have eventually figured out that she had to leave, but this was undoubtedly a better outcome.
This experience triggered something in me that had long laid dormant. While I was familiar with New Age stuff and the ordinary pantheon of psychic abilities, this was something I was unfamiliar with. When people I knew, or one of my many cats passed on, I had no trouble connecting to them on the other side. That world was somehow familiar to me. I started researching this more deeply, and it turned out that there was a name for it: Psychopomp.
What Is A Psychopomp?
A Psychopomp is a guide between worlds and generally someone who helps with inevitable transitions. It’s the job of the Grim Reaper in popular culture and in the Bible, this is a task of Angels. In indigenous cultures it’s the job of the Shaman. While many of these are magical beings, the psychopomp can also be a person. A guide between worlds and generally someone who helps with inevitable transitions.
There have been TV shows about this role using supernatural beings. Dead Like Me and Touched By An Angel to name two of them. They show up when a person is either about to die, or has to undergo a life altering change.
The Makeup Of A Psychopomp Individual
One of the defining traits of a psychopomp is being non-judgmental, almost to an extreme. To a psychopomp, a person is their soul, not the body, so body types and skin colors don’t carry a lot of meaning to them. Likewise, to a psychopomp, the many different personalities that people have are just roles that they are playing in this life. For them, it’s not so much about your outward facing personality, but who you are as a person. People are viewed holistically and psychopomps understand that our physical existence is messy and complicated. People can have both positive and negative traits without being defined by one or the other; it’s not absolute.
While both mediums and psychopomps traverse between worlds, their intent is different. Mediums are there to facilitate communication between a living person and one who has passed. There may be revelations or a sense of closure during this communication, but this is not the primary goal. Psychopomps, on the other hand, are focused completely on enacting change and the successful completion of a transition. It’s their primary goal.
The Psychopomp Guide
A psychopomp is a temporary guide. They have a specific task to complete and once it’s done, they move on.
In western society, a living psychopomp is important for people who are dying because so many people fear death. The fact that a living person walks between worlds means that there are other worlds and that death is not the end.
Like any good psychopomp, I have a lot to share about the transition to death. The most important thing is that while you lose your body and the life you had, you take your personality with you, sort of.
You keep the deeper lessons of life and lose the small stuff. Were you once a legend in World of Warcraft? You keep some of the discipline you learned and some of the gaming skill and any warmth, friendship and kindness you learned along the way. The details of the game though, are lost.
You remember the people you loved, but from transition it is different. They can only feel your presence if they are sensitive to it and if their minds are quiet. You will see the temporary nature of their lives and when they die you’ll have to move on from the person they were. You don’t forget the lessons of love. You forget your pain, but not the lessons you learned from it, both helpful and unhelpful.
If you died horribly in battle, you never fully forget the trauma. You will have to transcend it. You could probably be able to imagine that kind of trauma very vividly and understand that it could be the consequence of soldiering. You might learn that just following orders can turn out really badly for you.
You learn most of your important lessons in life, not in transition. If you were a bad person in life, you won’t come back as a good one. You might come back though with a better opportunity to become good. The choice is always yours.
There are things that you came into this life to learn, and if you wasted your chances and didn’t learn your particular lessons, you’ll get another chance. Reincarnation is a well documented scientific fact backed by quite a bit of research, which I’ll address in a future article and there is no timeline and no way to compare progress.
In general, you’re supposed to learn how to manage your physical existence properly and manage a balance for creating your best life. This is absolutely not possible within a single lifetime.
To accomplish this you have to navigate being disciplined with your body, creating the conditions for maintaining a healthy one. You need to balance your responsibilities and take care of your relationships, learning how to give and receive in a way that keeps your important relationships strong and successful. Finally, as you juggle these two immensely vital aspects of your life, it is imperative to cultivate a deeply fulfilling and gratifying career that offers sufficient stability and security, freeing you from worries about it. They are all connected.
Illusion and Reality
Our physical reality is designed to test you with its illusion of separateness. Newbies in physical form lack the focus and energy to create the best conditions for themselves and often end up in dire circumstances. They are very difficult to help because they are failing in too many areas. They tend to fall prey to abusers and have trouble escaping poverty and are more vulnerable to disease.
We have to deal with our anger and traumas for several lifetimes, often creating more of it along the way until we progress far enough to not only overcome our old stuff, but prevent new anger and generational traumas from ruining our lives and the lives of those around us.
To make it easier, people seem to advance through lives in groups, often taking different roles, so someone that was a father in one life might be that person’s wife in another.
And through trauma, happiness, sadness, regret, terror and many other emotions, we gradually get an understanding of our physical existence and the discipline needed to master it. We spend more time on introspection and work on our empathy and boundaries. We learn to see the world not in black and white, but in shades of gray. We get less emotional over both our failures and successes and we learn to pay attention to holistic problems, both personal and beyond. We recognize the need to do our small bit for society not for any personal gain, but because it has to be done. We sink or swim together.
We can make changes to the life we have, but it only moves as fast as our ability to change, and that is ordinarily quite slow. There is a difference for example, between believing you deserve to be rich and making the necessary changes to your life.
The Hook Handed Killer, like most urban legends, has many different variations. Legends, by nature, morph as stories are shared and retold. Sometimes the stories change to embrace the current time period, while other changes are part of the teller’s creative license. Each retelling morphs the story to fit the values and issues of the time period they are in. The Hook Handed Killer has become more gruesome over the years, which coincides with American tolerance for gore and fascination with more horrific stories.
The Hookman Story
Donald and Sarah went to the movies. Then they went for a ride in Donald's car. They parked up on a hill at the edge of town. From there, they could see the lights up and down the valley. Donald turned on the radio and found some music. But an announcer broke in with a news bulletin. A murderer has escaped from the state prison. He is armed with a knife and is headed south on foot. His left hand is missing. In its place, he wore a hook.
"Let's roll up the windows and lock the doors," said Sarah. "That's a good idea," said Donald. "That prison isn't too far away," said Sarah, "Maybe we really should go home." "But it's only ten o'clock," said Donald. "I don't care what time it is," she said, "I want to go home."
“Look, Sarah," said Donald, "he's not going to climb all the way up here. Why would he do that? Even if he did, all the doors are locked. How could he get in?" "Donald, he could take that hook and break through a window and open a door," she said. "I'm scared and I want to go home."
Donald was annoyed. "Girls always are afraid of something," he said. As he started the car, Sarah thought she heard someone, or something, scratching at her door. "Do you hear that?" she asked as they roared away. "Sounded like somebody's trying to get in." "Oh, sure," said Donald. Soon they got to her house. "Would you like to come in and have some cocoa?" she asked. "No," he said. "I've got to go home."
He went around to the other side of the car to let her out. Hanging on the door handle was a hook.
History
From what I can tell, this story first started circulating in the early 1950s. The 1950s were a whole new era for Americans. The country was undergoing huge changes after WWII. Men had returned from serving in the military and resumed their careers. Woman returned to their roles in the home after being called to work during the war. People began moving outside of large cities and what we now know as the suburbs began to grow. With new neighborhoods being constructed and factories being able to produce goods faster, these changes lead to a boom in consumerism as well. Being able to buy premade items, such as clothes, allowed people more free time than ever before.
Teenagers were allowed to be kids for longer and many were able to continue their education through high school. Without the stress of leaving school to work there was more time for socializing with other teens. However, teenagers in any decade are, well, teenagers. We all know how it goes, boy meets girl, boy takes girl to movies, then boy drives girl to a quiet spot off the beaten path for a little kissing. However, the girl gets scared by the news of the escape prisoner, so the boy, irritated that his plans have been ruined, brings the girl home. They were relieved to discover that they barely made it out of Lover's Lane alive.
The second version, sometimes titled “Don’t look Back” is darker but similar in many ways. It’s not clear when this story morphed into a more sinister version, but it looks like somewhere around the early 1990s. In the newer version, the boy and girl are in a similar secluded spot when they hear noise outside the car. The boy gets out of the car to investigate the noise (Have scary movies taught us nothing?) The girl stays in the car and locks the doors. After what seems like a long time, the boy doesn’t come back, but she hears scraping on the roof of the car. Even more afraid, she hides in the car with all the doors locked and waits. Eventually the police show up. It turns out the scraping noise was the boy’s feet dragging on the roof of the car. He was hung from a tree, and in some versions gutted. The police tell her that there was an escaped prisoner in the area.
Why A Hook?
I know you’re asking yourself why a hook hand? Well hooks are scary. Hooks are usually sharp and can be used as a weapon. Hooks have been used in legends and scary movies for a long time. One of the most common characters with a hook hand are pirates. While pirates are currently portrayed as dramatic and fun (aka Jack Sparrow) real pirates are terrifying. The real pirates of the Caribbean were dangerous murderers who raided port cities and towns. They robbed, raped, and pillaged these villages, leaving a wake of destruction in their paths. They were not fun loving and charismatic villains trying to get their ship back and look for rum. (Why is all the rum gone?)
Morality Clause
Humans have been telling stories before there was a written language. The art of storytelling was developed to share information, entertain, but also to provide a lesson and education for the next generation. We can show that almost every society in history had a method of story sharing. While urban legends are not Aesop's fables most have a lesson or warning as part of the underlying theme.
Both versions of The Hook are told as a tale of caution for teens. A nice girl goes to a secluded place with a boy where there is potential for sex or sex acts to take place. Sexual exploration is common among teens, but society expects girls to be chaste and resist all advances.
The Hook and similar stories were meant to be shared as a warning about premarital sex and the potential dangers of being alone with a boy. While the standards changed slightly between 1950 and 1990 there was still a stigma around premarital sex, especially among teen girls.
I know you’re asking why not just teach kids about sex instead of creating a fantastic story? The short answer is even today sex is a taboo topic. Repeating stories is a way to help manage fears about difficult issues. While it may not seem like it on the surface this story communicates fears about relationships, sex, date rape, and many other scary topics associated with being a teenager.
Overall, this is a pretty scary story that has been adapted to fit with the times. Now the girl will have a cell phone, but the phone will be dead or without signal. What is scarier to a teen than being without their phone?
Hooks and escaped convicts will always be scary. Prisoners have already shown that they don’t have regard for the law and if they have escaped, they don’t want any witnesses pointing the authorities in their direction. So moral of the story, don’t go to some dark place to have premarital sex when there is an escaped, hook handed murder on the loose. It will end poorly. You have been warned.
I’ve never been happy with the word “pseudoscience.” Skeptics throw around this word much like monkeys in cages throw their poo; they just want it to stick and smell bad. But the closer you look at it, the more vague it becomes and nearly impossible to apply to most real world situations.
Merriam Webster dictionary defines pseudoscience simply and in a vague, unhelpful manner:
A system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific
Wikipedia has a somewhat more lengthy explanation:
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.[Note 1] Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited.[4]
This seems reasonable, except I’ve never actually seen this. What’s described here is so far off the deep end that it would be almost universally uncontroversial. Kind of like the flat earth theory. It would be more of a joke than anything else. There’s no need to describe it as pseudoscience because aside from a small handful of weird people, no one takes it seriously enough for it to matter.
For most topics that get the pseudoscience tag slapped on them, this definition wouldn’t apply. Once you start looking more closely, what you see is usually just science embroiled in controversy.
For this word to be more relevant, the definition needs to be drastically narrowed.
My own definition looks something like this:
Pseudoscience is a deliberate attempt at misinformation through the use of falsified scientific studies to lead people to a particular, false conclusion.
I chose this definition because it is unambiguous and clearly states what pseudoscience is and what it isn’t. Any other definition creeps into gray areas where it can end up being applied arbitrarily. Here’s the problem:
While Flat Earthers arguably fit the pseudoscience definition, how about cold fusion? Is this also pseudoscience? Are you sure? Because the U.S. Department of Energy gave a $10 million dollar grant for that research in February of 2023.
How about Astrology? Surely that’s pseudoscience. Right? Didn’t a large study by Shawn Carlson published in the journal Nature in 1985 demonstrate that astrology is bunk? Actually, no. In a 2009 paper, Ken McRitchie outlined the problems with the study, and demonstrated that those errors, when corrected, supported Astrology. So a major study published in Nature shows that astrology is not pseudoscience.
The main problem with throwing around the term pseudoscience is that science is about measurement and if you can measure something, you can examine it scientifically. So if you apply the pseudoscience label to whole areas of scientific inquiry, you are missing the obvious problem that for any particular subject you can have both real science and pseudoscience.
When we’re talking about pseudoscience, we really should be talking about individual experiments, where errors in theory and erroneous conclusions can be definitively found. But even that has its own problems.
Even if an experiment has errors in theory and conclusions, what distinguishes pseudoscience from a bad experiment with a faulty conclusion? You can find terrible experiments with faulty conclusions in almost every science from physics to evolution to psychology. It happens all the time. Everything that can be measured can be measured incorrectly and every experiment has the potential to be badly flawed. But we don’t normally regard that as pseudoscience.
And then we move on to yet another problem with using the term pseudoscience. If a controversial area of science has a number of criticisms lodged against it, that is not enough to call it pseudoscience either. The existence of criticism just means that something is controversial. One first has to determine whether those criticisms are valid.
Controversies exist in science either because the available data is ambiguous, such as UAP’s or because there are deep, fundamental differences of underlying assumptions, such as is the case for parapsychology.
This opens the door to individual interpretations based on the weight people will give to various facts and opinions they encounter based on their prior beliefs. There is typically a lot of ground to cover: The original experiment, the criticism, the rebuttal, the rebuttal to the rebuttal, the commentary and analysis by third parties and the ensuing discussions.
It’s a rabbit hole that few people will go down and it takes more time and energy than most people are willing to devote. Yet this where truth lies. Anything else is just taking sides based on prior beliefs.
If you take a step back and look at who is using the pseudoscience argument the most and why, what stands out is the political nature of it. It’s more of a talking point than a scientific assessment. The accusation of pseudoscience is most often leveled by self described skeptics who are firm believers in materialism against the many sciences and practices that have evidence disputing this philosophical position. Materialism, -a belief that the universe is material-, is disproved if psychic ability is true. It’s disproved if psychic healing is true; if homeopathy works; if there’s something to astrology and if many holistic medicines work.
The term pseudoscience, when used in this context is nothing more than a dog whistle for skeptics. It doesn’t advance our understanding of anything. It’s analogous to saying “Make America Great Again.” When this phrase is used, it tells you more about the person saying it than the subject they’re addressing. In the same manner, using the word pseudoscience ends up telling you more about that person’s scientific beliefs than about the science they’re speaking of.
My suggestion is that the word be limited to clear cut demonstrations of intentional scientific deceit. Otherwise the word pseudoscience is almost useless.
