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By Root 1238 0

Then, if you ever have an astral projection experience, float to the book and read the title. When your body reawakens and you correctly announce what you have read, you will have provided some evidence for the physical reality of astral projection. But, of course, there must be no other way for you to know the title of the book, such as sneaking a peek when no one else is around, or being told by your friend or by someone your friend tells. To avoid the latter possibility, the experiment should be done “double blind”; that is, someone quite unknown to you who is entirely unaware of your existence must select and place the book and judge whether your answer is correct. To the best of my knowledge no demonstration of astral projection has ever been reported under such controlled circumstances with skeptics in attendance. I conclude that while astral projection is not excluded, there is little reason to believe in it. On the other hand, there is some evidence accumulated by Ian Stevenson, a University of Virginia psychiatrist, that young children in India and the Near East report in great detail a previous life in a moderately distant locale which they have never visited, while further inquiry demonstrates that a recently deceased person fits the child’s description very well. But this is not an experiment performed under controlled conditions, and it is at least possible that the child has overheard or been given information about which the investigator is unaware. Stevenson’s work is probably the most interesting of all contemporary research on “extrasensory perception.”

SPIRIT RAPPING

IN UPSTATE NEW YORK in 1848 there lived two little girls, Margaret and Kate Fox, about whom marvelous stories were told. In their presence could be heard mysterious rapping noises, later understood to be coded messages from the spirit world: Ask the spirits anything—one rap signifies no, three raps signify yes. The Fox sisters became a sensation, embarked on nationwide tours organized by their elder sister, and became the focus of rapt attention from European intellectuals and literati such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The “manifestations” brought about by the Fox sisters are the origins of modern spiritualism, the belief that by some special effort of will a few gifted people are able to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Keene’s associates owe a substantial debt to the Fox sisters.

Forty years after the first “manifestations,” provoked by an uneasy conscience, Margaret Fox produced a signed confession. The raps were made—in a standing position with no apparent effort or movement—by cracking the toe and ankle joints, very much like cracking knuckles. “And that is the way we began. First, as a mere trick to frighten mother, and then, when so many people came to see us children, we were ourselves frightened, and for self-preservation forced to keep it up. No one suspected us of any trick because we were such young children. We were led on by my sister purposely and by mother unintentionally.” The eldest sister, who organized their tours, seems to have been fully conscious of the fraud. Her motive was money.

The most instructive aspect of the Fox case is not that so many people were bamboozled; but rather that after the hoax was confessed, after Margaret Fox made a public demonstration, on the stage of a New York theater, of her “preternatural big toe,” many who had been taken in still refused to acknowledge the fraud. They pretended that Margaret had been coerced into the confession by some rationalist Inquisition. People are rarely grateful for a demonstration of their credulity.

THE CARDIFF GIANT

IN 1869 THE FIGURE of a larger-than-life stone man was unearthed by a farmer “while digging a well” near the village of Cardiff in western New York. Clergymen and scientists alike asserted that it was a fossilized human being from ages past, perhaps a confirmation of the Biblical account: “There were giants in those days.” Many commented on the detail of the figure, seemingly far finer than a mere artisan could have carved from stone.