Shattered Reality!

A paranormal podcast with your hosts Kate Valentine and Fahrusha

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#94 Sociological Research on Remarkable Experiences with Dr. Jim McClenon

Dr. James McClenon, sociologist and author of The Entity Letters, A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery

To listen Click HERE

Fahrusha was happy to welcome Dr. James McClenon to Shattered Reality Podcast for the second time to discuss the different way that a sociologist researches paranormal and anomalous experiences. He was the guest on an earlier show in which he discusses his excellent book The Entity Letters, A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery.

We covered a variety of topics from healing to shamanism to UFOs to out of body experiences and extrasensory perception but with a focus on the near death experience (NDE), all from the perspective of sociology. McClenon worked by collecting the extraordinary experiences of individuals by distributing questionaires. He had his students distribute questionaires as well. At first most of the answers came from a rural area in North Carolina where he taught. Later he distributed questionaires from a teaching cruise ship that sailed around the world making stops at a variety of locations. The conclusions he came to were from a different point of view than those of parapsychologists, philosophers or physicists. It was very refreshing to look at these subjects from a differing perspective. Most surprising, perhaps, is his assertion that in other cultures individuals don’t necessarily remember their near death experiences as paradigm changing events that were hyper-real. As a person who has had transcendent experiences but not an NDE, I (Fahrusha) cannot judge this, but it seems counter to other research.

Much of the material we covered on this episode can be found in Dr. McClenon’s book Wondrous Healing.

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Wondrous Healing by Dr. James McClenon

Several listeners have expressed interest in participating in our “Listeners’ Corner”. If you would like to relate your paranormal or anomalous experience on “Shattered Reality Podcast”, please email me at fahrusha@fahrusha.com. You can write down your experience and we can read it for you on the show, or you can come on the show and speak it yourself. We also encourage comments.

 


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#74 Dr. James McClenon and SORRAT

 

Dr. James McClenon, sociologist and author of The Entity Letters, A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery.

To listen click HERE.

Kate Valentine and Fahrusha welcomed Dr. James McClenon to Shattered Reality Podcast.  He has written a book called The Entity Letters, A Sociologist on the Trail of a Supernatural Mystery. It is the story of a group of individuals, the SORRAT sitter group (Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis) who engaged in 50 years telekinetic experimentation. The witnessed effects included table tipping and levitation, poltergeist phenomena, earthquake effects and rapping. Most amazingly then entities purportedly communicated with the members of the SORRAT group by mail! Interestingly just about everyone who actually sat in with the SORRAT group over the course of time came to accept the phenomena as real, whereas everyone who did not experience the phenomena in person, tended to believe that it was impossible and therefore, falsified.
Dr. James McClenon faithfully documents his experiences with the group from the viewpoint of a sociologist. He was unable to discover any plausible method by which all of the phenomena could have been falsified. Though any individual phenomenon could have been rigged, all of the phenomena together would have taken enormous skill and the co-operation of a number of individuals over there course of many years to falsify. He did not find any collusion between the participants, nor any sustained motivation to collude. Some of the phenomena happened at various locations, specifically occasions of the “rapping” which even occurred at McClenon’s home.

Shattered Reality Podcast invites listeners to send in their paranormal experiences which relate to the incidents surrounding the events of September 11, 2001. We will attempt to deal with this in a very respectful and tasteful manner. It is possible for listeners to relate their experiences directly on the show or to submit a written account to be read on the show. All accounts and questions should be emailed to fahrusha@fahrusha.com.

 

Schematic drawing of Dr. Edward Cox’s Mini-Lab (courtesy of George P. Hansen)