My initiation into the world of psychic phenomena occurred in graduate school, during an impromptu séance with two friends in my home. I’d never dabbled in anything psychic before. In fact, I’d never given psychic phenomena much thought.1 And in those days I fancied myself to be a hard-nosed materialist, although (I have to admit) I hadn’t thought that through very carefully either. Materialism—in fact, reductionistic materialism—was merely one of several intellectual conceits I was cultivating at the time. At any rate, in my arrogant ignorance I believed that psychic phenomena made no sense and shouldn’t occur. But it was a typically slow day in Northampton, Massachusetts; my friends and I had seen the only movie in town; and so my friends suggested trying a game they called “table up.” What they meant was: let’s have a séance. They said they’d played this game a few times before, and they assured me that when it worked it was loads of fun. Now I won’t mince words. What happened that afternoon scared the hell out of me. For three hours I observed my own table tilt up and down, without visible assistance.
That was enough to rattle my complacency. But it wasn’t all that happened. By means of a cumbersome code adopted by my friends,2 the table spelled out messages, ostensibly from three communicating entities. But only the last of those communicators provided any verifiable information. That entity said his name was Horace T. Jecum (our awkward code may have garbled the spelling), and he claimed to have built my slightly spooky eighteenth-century house. Unlike the assertions made by the previous two communicators (especially the one claiming to be the River Styx), this assertion seemed easy enough to confirm. I simply needed to locate the appropriate records at City Hall. Unfortunately, my house was so old that it antedated city records. So I never learned who built the house, much less whether the person’s name was anything like that of Horace T. Jecum. I also recall trying unsuccessfully to discover whether someone with a name like Horace T. Jecum had lived in or near the area. But I’m certain that my additional inquiries (such as they were) were no more than perfunctory. I made no intensive effort to pursue the matter further and seriously challenge my philosophical complacency. I ended my inquiry at that point.
But despite my resistance and lingering skepticism, I was convinced that the observed table movements were genuine. And that conviction hasn’t wavered. However, I also know there’s no way to describe the occasion so as to allay all skeptical concerns. I can only note the following. First, the phenomena occurred in daylight, with ample opportunity to examine them closely as they occurred. Second, I was strongly motivated to discover that the table movements resulted from a hoax. I would have been much more comfortable believing my friends were having some fun at my expense. Third, the phenomena occurred in my home and with my table. The table wasn’t somebody’s prop, and my friends had no opportunity to plant and conceal an apparatus capable of producing the phenomena. Also, I’m convinced for several other reasons that my friends weren’t pulling a trick on me. I knew them well, and I knew that practical jokes weren’t their style. I’m certain that only our fingers touched the top of the table and that they rested lightly on the table’s surface. Moreover, if one of my friends left the table to go to another room, the table continued its movements, and it moved in directions opposed to whatever pressure the remaining two sitters applied to the tabletop. The table rose under our fingers, all fingers were visible atop the table, and I could see clearly that the table made no contact with our legs or knees. In fact, sometimes we rose and stood next to the table, keeping our fingers in contact with the tabletop, and still the table moved up and down under our fingers. I should also add (and I suppose this is important) that we weren’t stoned.
My introduction to “table up” turned out to be a pivotal experience in my life, although I had enough sense to put it aside until I completed my Ph.D., landed a teaching job, did some respectable mainstream philosophy, and earned tenure. (I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.) I made no effort for at least seven years to think about the event or to learn any more about parapsychology. I remained an ignoramus about psychic stuff, and I really put my impressive experience “out of mind.” So I had no idea how closely my experience resembled what many had reported and documented carefully during the previous century. And I was unaware how clearly it illustrated classic problems concerning evidence for postmortem survival.
I’ve since tried to reconstruct why this incident frightened me, and I don’t believe it’s because the phenomena seemed, at least on the surface, to indicate postmortem influence. Rather, I think it’s because I realized, however dimly, that one or more of us seated around the table might have caused the table to move, but not by any normal means. Why, exactly, that should be so scary is itself a complex story, and I’ve dealt with it elsewhere (see, e.g., Braude, 1987, 1997). What matters here is the curious link between one of the ostensible communicators and one of my two friends. That friend was another philosophy graduate student (the other was his wife), and one of his interests was classical mythology. Although I knew vaguely that the River Styx figured somehow or other in Greek mythology, that was all I knew. But the mythical river, I now realize, was probably far more familiar to my friend, and quite possibly something that would have been particularly meaningful to him in the context of a seance. I now know that the River Styx was a kind of moat of the underworld. It prevented the living from entering and the dead from leaving, and Charon would ferry souls across the river into Hades. I lost touch with my friend many years ago, and I have no idea where he is now. So I can’t confirm whether he drew any connections at the time between this classical conception of the River Styx and the activity of communicating with the dead. But this is just the sort of connection that I now find very interesting, and for which we need to be alert when evaluating evidence suggesting survival.
Let me lay my cards on the table. For much of the survival evidence, it’s not clear what to say. It’s not clear to what extent it can be explained away in terms of normal or abnormal processes, or even in terms of paranormal processes among the living. And some of the evidence scarcely makes sense even if we accept postmortem survival. These are matters I’ll examine at length in the course of the book. But overall, I’d say that the evidence most strongly supports the view that some aspects of our personality and personal consciousness, some significant chunk of our distinctive psychology, can survive the death of our bodies, at least for a time.
I’ve written this book to document why it’s so difficult to reach that conclusion, and why it’s especially difficult to rule out counter-explanations in terms of psychic or at least highly unusual capacities of the living. What we need to examine, and what I believe others have considered only very superficially, is why we’re ever entitled to rule out such things as my friend unconsciously (and perhaps psychically) simulating evidence for survival, perhaps by drawing on associations that were particularly meaningful to him.
I’ve found writing this book to be both a luxury and a duty. It’s a duty because this research is the next obvious step in an intellectual odyssey that began more than twenty-five years ago, when I became tenured and took my first serious look at the evidence in parapsychology. As I noted once before (and far more truculently—Braude, 1997), I realized that I needed to examine that evidence carefully, or else my avowed philosophical commitment to the truth was a sham. That was three books and many articles ago, and I’m at last able to deal with issues for which (I hope) those earlier works have prepared me.
But why is writing this book also a luxury? The older I become, and the older my friends and acquaintances become, the more people try to reassure me about the benefits of aging. Of course, I’d like to believe them, and I’m still hoping to find that I’ve grown wiser with age. In the meantime, though, I suppose I’m just lingering here in the vestibule of enlightenment. Nevertheless, I’m able to take comfort in a more modest privilege, one that comes with my job, and also with my grudging membership in the ranks of the chronologically challenged. I find I can spend many hours wondering about death and the possibility of postmortem existence without appearing to suffer from a morbid preoccupation.
Actually, I’ve wanted to tackle this particular topic for some time. But I knew I had to deal first with some substantial preliminaries, and I felt that writing the book any sooner would have been presumptuous and premature. First, I needed to acquaint myself thoroughly with both the experimental and nonexperimental evidence for psychic capacities of the living. Only then would I be able to evaluate properly the hypothesis that apparent evidence for survival is actually evidence for psychic functioning among the living. Moreover, for reasons noted in chapter 1, I’ve found most of the literature on personal survival either conceptually naive or empirically myopic. I knew I couldn’t conscientiously write a book on survival without a comprehensive grounding in the literature on dissociation. Similarly, I knew I needed to survey the scattered, diverse, and frustratingly incomplete studies of savants, prodigies, and exceptional human abilities.
In the following chapters we’ll study several different types of evidence for survival. But most of the cases I discuss fall into two classes. The first is mediumship (or channeling), in which individuals apparently act as intermediaries between this world and a world of discarnate or surviving entities. The second is reincarnation and possession, in which a person seems to be (or seems to reimbody, or be overtaken by) a formerly living person. These two sets of cases, likewise, assume different forms, some of which raise interesting and distinctive clusters of issues. I’ll also examine out-of-body and near-death experiences, ostensible hauntings, and transplant cases, some of which are perhaps more important than others, but all of which are fascinating. As we proceed, it should be clear why I focus primarily on mediumship and reincarnation /possession. But in a nutshell it’s because the best of these cases are especially impressive and particularly difficult to explain away.
The outline of the book is as follows. Chapter 1 sets the stage conceptually for the rest of the book. In addition to making several crucial distinctions, it situates this work within the larger literature on postmortem survival. Although (like many other authors) I survey some of the best evidence suggesting survival, my primary goal is to remedy what I see as serious and pervasive shortcomings in previous works on the subject. So in this introductory chapter I explain what those shortcomings are, clarify some of my working presuppositions, and thereby indicate the novel perspective of this book.
Chapters 2 and 3 consider issues in connection with mediumship. Chapter 2 introduces the reader to the general features of mediumship and then examines a particular type of case called “drop-in” mediumship, in which deceased communicators appear uninvited and usually unwanted. At their best, these cases pose interesting explanatory challenges and seem to make sense psychologically only from the communicator’s point of view. Chapter 3 surveys the spectacular mediumistic careers of Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Leonard. Because both women were remarkably successful, for long periods, in providing evidence suggesting postmortem survival, these cases seem particularly difficult to explain away along non-survivalist lines. This chapter examines the relevant theoretical issues in detail. It turns out (probably not surprisingly) that those issues are more complex than most have appreciated. I conclude this chapter with remarks on a collection of mediumistic communications called the “cross correspondences.”
Chapter 4 considers another complex set of issues, this time in connection with a case of apparent reincarnation. Many believe that ostensible xenoglossy (speaking an unlearned language) provides unusually compelling evidence for survival. That view may be correct, at least in principle. But once again it turns out that most who adopt it are guilty of several confusions and a failure to consider relevant issues and bodies of evidence (concerning, for example, the nature and limits of human abilities, and also second-language acquisition). Moreover, the case in question raises another important set of issues, about the role of psychopathology in cases suggesting survival. In fact, previous studies of the case exemplify one of my recurring complaints throughout the book: how most writing on survival is inexcusably superficial psychologically.
Chapter 5 considers one of the most puzzling and interesting cases in the history of psychical research, the case of Patience Worth. On the surface it looks like a case of mediumship, but it provides no verifiable evidence for anyone’s former existence. What makes it remarkable is the mind-bogglingly creative, and apparently unprecedented, literary, linguistic, and improvisational fluency demonstrated by the medium. So this case is important for what it suggests about latent human creative capacities, an issue I pursue also in connection with several somewhat less impressive cases.
Chapters 6 and 7 survey specific bodies of evidence and consider whether they can be explained away along even exotic non-survivalist lines. Chapter 6 considers several interesting and impressive reincarnation and possession cases, and chapter 7 examines haunting cases and also recent cases emerging from heart-lung transplantation. These various bodies of evidence are not all equally compelling, but the reincarnation and possession cases seem especially difficult to explain away, and for reasons I discuss, we should perhaps interpret the transplant cases as a subset of possession cases.
Chapter 8 considers two related bodies of evidence, out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences, which many incorrectly take to be strongly suggestive of survival. So this chapter inspects a smattering of cases and looks closely and critically at the reasoning and questionable assumptions underlying that point of view.
Chapter 9 sums things up and offers my admittedly tentative assessment of the evidence for survival. It looks first at what would constitute ideal cases suggesting survival, to remind us how evidence could, in principle, point compellingly to survival, even in the face of ingrained philosophical prejudices to the contrary. Then it considers how survivalists might account for physiological data that many find incompatible with a belief in survival. Finally, after deflecting some remaining skeptical concerns, and after brief remarks about the “stuff” that might survive, I offer my reasons for concluding that the evidence, when viewed as a whole, provides more reason for believing in some form of personal postmortem survival than for believing in any alternative view.
Of course, it’s philosophically momentous to conclude that there’s satisfactory evidence for some sort of postmortem survival. That inference, if sound, poses clear-cut challenges to much of received science and to a common (if not the prevailing) materialist worldview. But apart from a few provocative suggestions here and there, I’ll make no effort to meet those challenges in this work. Tracing the ontological implications of survival cases is another, and quite different, project. And it’s a task that shouldn’t be undertaken until we work through the issues addressed in this book and determine whether the ontological project is anything more than a philosophical exercise. My aim, here, is to examine carefully the best types of evidence for survival, and to see how successfully they resist explanation in terms of unusual (and possibly paranormal) capacities of the living. Others have attempted to engage this side of the debate over survival, but for reasons I explore in the following chapters, those efforts have been unsatisfactory. As I hope this book makes clear, the issues are more far-reaching, complex, and subtle, and I believe more interesting, than most commentators have realized.
In fact, that’s one big reason why I’m not offering a comprehensive survey of the evidence for survival. Others have done that nicely, and I’ll provide references throughout this book to bodies of material I can’t take time to discuss. I prefer to focus on some big, unjustifiably ignored issues, and to do that I’m forced to pick and choose from a very large body of cases. In fact, I’ve had to omit discussion of certain kinds of evidence which some may consider important. These include, for example, so-called electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and combination-lock tests. The former concern ostensible manifestations of survival heard in electronic noise, and frankly, I regard these as little more than a type of Rorschach test. The latter, which to my knowledge have yet to succeed, concern efforts to obtain the keys to locks which only the deceased supposedly know. At any rate, I apologize to those readers who’d like to see more or different cases discussed. But for this project I felt something else was needed: namely, to present at least some important cases in relevant detail and demonstrate the sorts of considerations that can then be applied to additional cases.
My case selection was guided by my primary objective in this book: to determine whether there’s any reason for preferring a survivalist explanation of the evidence over explanations positing exotic (including paranormal) activities among the living. That guiding objective has also influenced my decision to present many of my cases in what some might consider excessive detail. For example, I know that some readers would prefer a more cursory survey of a larger number of cases. But once we decide (as I think we must) that there are plenty of good cases to consider—cases that can’t easily be explained away in terms of what I call The Usual Suspects (see chapter 1), it becomes increasingly important to focus on minutiae. We need to examine good cases very carefully to decide whether the survival hypothesis succeeds where its rivals fail. Moreover, I know that some readers would simply prefer less detail and maybe also fewer cases. But you can’t please everybody. So my advice to readers is this: If you feel overwhelmed by the case details, I suggest you skip or skim over them. You might later agree with me that the details really do matter and that the issues I address about them are crucial.
A few words about terminology before diving headlong into our inquiry. In speaking about psychic abilities or psychic functioning (not necessarily the same thing; see Braude, 2002), I’ll frequently use the now-familiar term “psi” as a replacement for the adjective “psychic.” I’ll also follow standard practice in using it sometimes as a noun, in which case “psi” is roughly synonymous with the phrases “psychic phenomena,” “psychic functioning,” and “psychic abilities.” I’m not sure the term “psi” offers any theoretical benefits (see Braude, 2002, for a discussion of that issue), but it definitely saves a few syllables.
I’ll also use the familiar abbreviation “PK” for “psychokinesis” (roughly, “mind over matter”—see Braude, 1997, for a more thorough analysis). And I’ll rely on the traditional distinction between two forms of ESP: telepathy and clairvoyance. To oversimplify considerably, “telepathy” picks out the direct causal influence of one mind on another, whereas “clairvoyance” picks out the direct influence of a remote physical state of affairs on a mind. So an example of telepathy would be one person’s thought about fire directly causing another person to think about fire. An example of clairvoyance would be a house on fire causing a sensorily remote individual to think about fire (see Braude, 2002, for a detailed discussion of these concepts).
Finally, many people have aided me as I’ve worked through the issues in this book. For helpful comments on earlier versions of various chapters, I’d like to thank Carlos Alvarado, Mary Rose Barrington, Richard Broughton, Frank Dilley, James Hall, Peter Mulacz, John Palmer, Joyanna Silberg, Donald West, and my colleague Steven Yalowitz. Thanks, too, to Robert Almeder, for many long and stimulating discussions of the issues, to Richard Gale for invaluable suggestions on both style and content, and to Joanne D. S. McMahon and Carolyn Steinberg for their help in obtaining some of my research materials. I’m especially grateful to Lisa Roulston, whose resourcefulness and ingenuity were put to good use as my research assistant, and most of all to Alan Gauld, from whose insightful criticisms, suggestions, and breathtaking command of the literature I’ve learned more than I know how to express. I’m also indebted to the Bial Foundation in Porto, Portugal, whose generous research grant provided me with free time to work on this project.
Parts of this book have appeared, in one form or another, in previous publications. Material from Braude, 1996 is scattered through chapter 1; some of the material in chapter 2 appeared in Braude, 2001b; an ancestor of parts of chapter 4 is my paper Braude, 1993; much of chapter 5 appeared as Braude, 2000; and a version of chapter 8 was published as Braude, 2001a. My thanks to the editors of these various books and journals for the permission to use that material here.
Researching and writing this book has taken nearly a decade, and I’m afraid I may have neglected to thank people who’ve helped me along the way. If so, I apologize; perhaps those folks can take comfort in the thought of retribution, certainly in this life, possibly in the next.
In fact, while pursuing my undergraduate studies in London, I lived very near the Society for Psychical Research in Kensington, and I would pass its headquarters at I Adam & Eve Mews (yes, that’s right) every day on the way to the Underground. But I didn’t even know the SPR was there. I’m not even sure I knew the society existed. Of course, in the clarity of hindsight, I now regard this as just one of many life opportunities missed.
My friends suggested having the table tilt once for “A,” twice for “B,” and so on. No wonder we had only three communicators in three hours. Had we known more about the history of table tilting, we could have adopted the more customary spiritualist procedure of asking “yes/no” questions and having the table tilt (say) once for “yes” and twice for “no.”