#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)

#72 George P. Hansen the Trickster

George P. Hansen, author of The Trickster and the Paranormal.

Click HERE to listen.

Fahrusha and Kate Valentine were pleased to welcome illustrious author and paranormal investigator George P. Hansen to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. There was so much to speak about that it was difficult to fit it into an hour and fifteen minutes. Hansen looks at the paranormal from the view of anthropology and skepticism but never debunking. He views many of the phenomena of the paranormal as being affected and sometimes caused by the Trickster. He gives two compatible definitions of who or what the Trickster is, the first of which concerns the folk traditions of many, if not all, indigenous cultures around the world. Some of the famous folk tricksters are Loki of Norse mythology, the Coyote of the American Southwest, Iktomi (spider) of the Lakota and Ananzi (spider) of the Caribbean and Africa. These Tricksters are shapeshifters so they can appear in different guises. In his words “The trickster archetype is not designated by immediately observable physical features.  Rather it is a more abstract constellation of characteristics that is usually personified (i.e., identified with a person or animal).”  His second definition is a bit more ephemeral to explain. It includes many aspects of psi including boundary crossing, irrationality, fakery, change and instability and it is, by its very nature, non-binary.

We tackle many subjects, especially including UFOs. For instance these objects are often seen to be shapeshifting, and some might be interstellar or not, and of course they may have more than one origin and they often appear at times of great change. The purported occupants may lie to humans or their communication may seem absurd or be misunderstood. They often appear to people when those people are in altered states of consciousness, as in the liminal state.

 

Book cover, The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen.