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We've Moved!

 Like a butterfly, the Public Parapsychology Blog has transformed into a community website and flown away. Please join us at:

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Online study on Morphic Resonance focusing on Chinese characters

Dr David Vernon from Canterbury Christ Church University, in collaboration with Dr Glenn Hitchman and Prof Chris Roe from Northampton University, are conducting research into aspects of morphogentic learning using Chinese characters.

David explained: “This is a fascinating area of research. Here we are focusing on Chinese as the characters have a particular spatial configuration that makes it easy to examine the visual nature of the language”. 

The study takes just 10-15 minutes to complete and to take part all you need is to be a native English speaker and not able to speak or write in any dialect of Chinese. To find out more and take part, visit the study’s webpage.

Review of The Premonition Code

For this blog post, Public Parapsychology invited guest writer/blogger Lori Scoby to give us a lay person's impression of this new book aimed at the public.

The Premonition Code pairs a seasoned scientist, Dr. Julia Mossbridge, with a practicing layperson, Theresa Cheung, to tackle the subject of precognition. This combination creates a conversational tone and scientific explanations that are (mostly) understandable to the average layperson with only a smattering of academic knowledge. The heart of the book is a simple methodology to practice and develop precognition skills using controlled precognition training.

The first section of the book primarily concerns itself with the science around precognition, predominantly in relation to the scientific understanding of time. I was able to follow the information with a single reading, but I would want to revisit this information and ponder some of the more abstract and unfamiliar concepts to feel I really understood them. Still, I was able to get what I needed to know to move forward, and that is the stated goal of the authors. There is also an appendix of recommended reading material for further study and copious endnotes.

The second section of the book lays out their method to become what they call a Postive Precog. The authors spend a good deal of time focusing on what it means to be a Postive Precog in order to avoid negative experiences as much as possible. If anything, they belabored the point that delving into precognition can be destabilizing for a person and that precautions should be taken. Clearly, they have seen their share of people who have had negative experiences, which should give pause to anyone looking to undertake their training.

I did try out a few controlled precog practice sessions on their website. Their method was well explained in the book and integrated easily with the online technology (although the website could be a little more intuitive to navigate on a mobile device). The authors are very clear that, while the method is simple, achieving accuracy takes work and time. I'd say that is true based on my own experience. I was able to already learn from my practice sessions by utilizing the suggestions in the book.

The last section is a FAQ with Dr. Mossbridge to further understanding, followed by the authors' vision for their online community. It provides a nice, tidy ending to sandwich the actual training method.

Overall, The Premonition Code is a useful book for someone interested in precognition, either for general knowledge or to develop their own skills. It takes a balanced, measured approach that is especially suited for a skeptically-minded student or someone who is so gung ho that they might overlook the precautions one should take when undertaking this activity.

Lori Scoby

Improving Public Access to Research in Parapsychology

Over the weekend I was tasked with researching material for a literature review on the perceptual-personality variables associated with poltergeist/RSPK focal agents - a task for which which I restricted myself to material that had undergone some form of peer review, and where either psychometric measures were employed or where the researchers had consulted with a clinician. I learned a lot from this exercise, most of which I will save the for article itself, but my greatest surprise was how much I had to rely on resources from the Proceedings of Papers presented at the annual conventions of the Parapsychological Association, or its more polished cousin - Research in Parapsychology in order to complete my task.

As the Executive Director of the Parapsychological Association spearheading an archive project in honor its 60th year, I have amassed nearly a complete collection of these resources over the last year thanks to donations from our members, and since roughly April of this year, I have been campaigning on Crowdrise for the funding needed to get them digitized and released to the public in the form of some sort of searchable database. At this point, we've only met about 1/3 of our funding goal. Another 5K or so will make this dream a reality.

So for now, this amazing resource sits in an office that only I have access to, and you betcha that I made good use of it for my lit review! In the end, roughly 1/3 of the resources that I examined came from papers in this archive - works that were peer-reviewed by members of the PA, but were never submitted for further publication. That may seem like a high proportion, but I was looking for a very particular thing.

How many other important research questions might to fit this profile? How many future students of consciousness research will be discouraged by their lack of access to the specialized libraries that currently hold this sort of collection when they try to ask similar questions?

A donation of $10 will digitize 100 pages of this archive, $25 will get you something fun in the mail, $60 and you'll get a thumb drive of archival material, $100 will make you a sponsor of the project. Help us get this research in front of everyone who needs it - whether they know it or not - once and for all.

Donate at Crowdrise today!

Public Parapsychology Talk (Cols, OH): Environmental Sensitivity & Paranormal Experiences

Public Parapsychology Talk: 

Environmental Sensitivity & Paranormal Experiences

Brandon Masullo

Upstairs Arts Space

4601 N. High St. Suite 200

Columbus, Ohio 43214

May 15, 2017 - 7pm

Do you have long-standing allergies, chronic pain and fatigue, migraines, or sensitivity to lights, sounds, and smells? Do you have more paranormal and apparitional experiences than average?  Environmental Sensitivity – being affected by the surrounding environment to a higher degree than the normal population –  may be a factor in such experiences.  Several parapsychological studies in the past 10 years have provided significant correlations between environmental sensitivity and paranormal experiences.

Brandon Massullo, a clinical therapist and parapsychologist residing in Medina, Ohio will discuss these studies in this Public Parapsychology talk at the Upstairs Arts Space in Columbus, Ohio on May 15th at 7pm. Massullo has been fascinated by paranormal phenomena for over 20 years and has been a participant and featured speaker in numerous paranormal forums and events. He studied psychology and parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and his research has been cited in parapsychological journals, articles, and mainstream books.

Admission to this talk is free. Donations to offset meeting expenses will be gratefully accepted.

The Upstairs Arts Space is located in Beechwold at the corner of Sheffield and High (next to Beechwold Hardware). Look for the stairs behind the stone facade (sorry, no elevator).

RSVP at Facebook

Public Parapsychology Talk (Columbus,Ohio): Neuroscientific Perspectives on Apparitions, OBEs & Self-healing

Feeling the presence of a non-physical entity, experiencing being outside of one’s own body and alleviating the sensation of pain without medicine – these experiences sound like science fiction movie themes . However, recent neuroscience research has explored how these occurrences happen by ordinary means while investigating the underlying brain mechanisms that induce them. On Monday April 10th (7pm) at the Upstairs Arts Space in Columbus, Ohio,  Pavo Orepić of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience (LNCO) of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland will present what his lab has discovered about what happens in one's brain while experiencing these “supernatural” sensations and how can they be induced by external sensory manipulation.

Pavo Orepić is a neuroscience PhD student at EPFL in Switzerland. He is currently involved in several projects at the Center for Neuromodulation, located at the Department of Neurosurgery at The Ohio State University (OSU). Having graduated in computer science at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany, his job is developing virtual reality technologies that are being used as tools for prominent neuroscience research.

Admission is free. Donations to offset meeting expenses will be gratefully accepted. RSVP at Facebook.  More info at parapsych.org.

Announcing the Columbus Ohio Psychic Experiences Group

We are forming a central Ohio group dedicated to the discussion of psi and consciousness through the sharing of personal experiences.  The Columbus Ohio Psychic Experiences Group (or CO-PEG for short) is based on a model developed at the Rhine Research Center, with other similar groups meeting monthly in North Carolina and New York.

Monthly meetings follow a simple policy of honesty, privacy, and sharing without judgment. Shared experiences may touch on topics such as telepathy, healing, precognition, extended senses, psychokinesis, remote viewing, dreams, haunting, reincarnation, near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, and other exceptional experiences. 

As personal stories flow, ideas and inspiration begin to flow for developing our extended senses, and for finding creative ways to be of greater service in the larger community.  

4th Mondays, 7-9pm

Upstairs Arts Space

4601 N. High St. Suite 200 (Beechwold Building)

RSVP online at Facebook

Take part in an online psychic research study

As part of an on-going research project, part-funded by the Society for Psychical Research, Dr David Vernon of the Canterbury Christ Church University is interested in exploring the nature of extra sensory perception, or ESP. This is a fascinating and contentious subject with some people reporting experiences while others argue that such things are impossible. However, as a scientist Dr. Vernon's job is to remain open minded yet critical – and examine the data.

With this in mind he has put together an on-line study that takes about 15 minutes that will help
him to examine a particular aspect of ESP. Take part by visiting: https://cccusocialsciences.az1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_1EKCfAPdkV3aVSZ

A Totally Free Parapsychology MOOC

If you've already encountered websites like Coursera, edX, and Academic Earth, then I probably don't have to tell you that massively open online courses (MOOC's for short) are hot stuff right now.  Being a bit of a Coursera junkie myself, I have completed courses offered by top universities on everything from science writing to music production and finance - all for free and all in the privacy of my own home.  So imagine my excitement to learn that some seriously hard-working professionals have banded together on the Wiziq.com platform to offer the world a totally free Parapsychology MOOC in 2015. 

The course starts this Monday, January 5th, and during its roughly 6 week run, MOOC participants will be treated to 22 content lectures from researchers, scientists, educators, graduate students and experiencers from the field of parapsychology. Enrollment is quickly approaching 600 students with wide international representation, so joining the course will provide lots of opportunities for cultural exchange.  And if the online course structure is not your thing, keep an eye on the Parapsychology Online YouTube channel, as the lectures from Wiziq.com will be appearing there after a couple of days.

More course details are available at the Parapsychology Online Wordpress site, or you can head straight to Wiziq and sign up for the course right now.

I'll see you there.

Free Downloads of Articles on Psychical Research in the History of Science and Medicine

A special section on psychical research, guest-edited by Andreas Sommer for the journal Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, is available for free download until the 7th of December 2014. Visit the Forbidden Histories Blog for links to the downloads.

Open Sciences Website

A relatively new website has recently come to my attention: www.opensciences.org

OpenSciences.org is "a portal for open-minded scientific investigations that go beyond the dogmas that dominate so much of science today. The main areas covered include consciousness studies, alternative energy sources, integrative medicine and healing, post-materialist approaches to science and new aspects of cosmology, physics, chemistry and biology. The website includes selected videos, books, publications, journals, and links to the websites of open-minded scientific researchers and organisations."

It's a well-organized and informative site, and I'm not just saying that because they link to Public Parapsychology as one of their Top Blogs from Scientists and Scholars.  I could lose an entire weekend exploring all of the rich links contained there.

Kudos to editor/developer Sebastian Penraeth  and the founders of the Campaign for Open Science  - Mario Beauregard, Gary Schwartz, Lisa Miller, Larry Dossey, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Marilyn Schlitz, Rupert Sheldrake and Charles Tart -  for this important initiative.

Videos from Ex TEDxWestHollywood

Perhaps you remember last April 2013 when TED pulled the plug on the TEDxHollywood event "Brother, Can You Spare A Paradigm" featuring Russell Targ, Larry Dossey, and many others?

The event organizers decided to continue the event, even without TED's backing, and the resulting videos are available at YouTube.

This is old news, but certainly worth revisiting.  See the 4 minute sizzle reel below:

Online Parapsychology Conference

On November 1st and 2nd, academics, scientists and professors from the Instituto de Psicología Paranormal in Argentina, the University of São Paulo in Brazil, the University of Northampton in England, the University of Strasbourg in France, the Institut für Grenzegebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene in Germany, the University of Padova in Italy, and the University of West Georgia in the United States, among other locations, will be gathering for online conference on the interface between parapsychology and psychology.

Registration ranges from $30 to $50 and scholarships are available.

Visit the Parapsychology Online website for more information.