#79 The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons with Sharon Hatfield

Sharon Hatfield, author of Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons.

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Fahrusha was pleased to welcome Sharon Hatfield, author of Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. We covered the history of Jonathan Koons as regards his career as a famous American Spiritualist during the middle of the Nineteenth Century. Fahrusha was pleased to note that the author did not decide on the veracity of Mr. Koons’ claims of physical mediumship. It is difficult enough to vet the claims of those with whom one is contemporaneous, no less the claims of those who are long gone. No one is currently alive who ever met Jonathan Koons so there are no witnesses. There does exist ample critique of this man’s seances in publications of the day, and they are both positive and negative. In addition Mr. Koons, himself, was a prolific, if opaque, writer on matters spiritual.

Jonathan Koons did not charge money to attend the seances, but did sometimes charge board to those who lodged with his family, so his motives were not influenced by personal enrichment. His entire family participated in this endeavor and he had eleven natural children and one adopted daughter, although not all lived to adulthood. One son, Nahum, was often the centerpiece of these gatherings and was considered quite gifted. Magnetic anomalies in the ground on the ridge where the seances took place just outside Athens, Ohio are believed by some to be the cause of the unusual effects produced in the Spirit Room. Others point to poltergeist activity due to the raging hormones of so many pubescent children.

We also discussed other notables of the day, including D. D. Home, the Fox Sisters, and somewhat surprisingly, John Chapman colloquially known as “Johnny Appleseed”. He was a staple character in American history texts in public schools across the US, famed for planting apple trees where ever he wandered, but few know him as the Swedenborgian spiritualist he actually was. Currently physical mediumship is looked down upon in many but not all spiritualist circles in the US, though it receives better treatment in the UK.

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Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons by Sharon Hatfield published by Swallow Press.

 

 

#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)

#63 Dr. Julie Beischel Medium Research

 

Dr. Julie Beischel of the Windbridge Research Center in Arizona

 

Click HERE to listen.

Fahrusha and Kate Valentine were happy to welcome Dr. Julie Beischel to “Shattered Reality Podcast”. She received her doctorate in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona in 2003.  She is the co-founder and Director of Research at the Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential and is at the forefront of modern studies into mediumship. Currently, part of the Institute has spun off into the Windbridge Research Center, whose mission is to ease suffering around dying, death, and what comes next, by performing rigorous scientific research and sharing the results and other customized content with practitioners, clinicians, scientists, and the general public.

Survival of consciousness is the key element in understanding mediumship. In this model the brain is seen to be akin to a radio receiver and not the seat of consciousness. The mind or the consciousness is thought to be non-local and exists beyond the death of the body. Mediums are psychics that concentrate on obtaining information about the deceased. American mediums are 90% female. In Dr. Beischel’s research, the mediums that were tested are blinded to any knowledge of the deceased person or the sitter beyond the first name of the deceased. The results of the experiments were all statistically significant in favor of the validity of mediumship. In parapsychology there is a classic debate regarding where the mediumistic information might be coming from. Does it come from so-called “super-psi” (the pool of information available through psychic functioning), or from a deceased person’s after death consciousness? Because I (Fahrusha) do not like binary choices, I also posited that some information might come from non-human disembodied entities, not constricted by space and time.  We discussed the relationship of auto-immune diseases to being a medium or a psychic, versus the relationship of childhood abuse or trauma to disease in general.

Beischel has written several very accessible e-books including From the Mouths of Mediums Vol.1 Experiencing Communication, Meaningful Messages: Making the Most of Your Mediumship Reading, and Among Mediums: A Scientist’s Quest for Answers.

Note: Tom Butler was our guest who spoke about EVP (Electronic Voice Production) in conjunction with messages from the deceased.

 

#47 Surviving Death with Leslie Kean

Leslie Kean, author of Surviving Death

To listen Click HERE.

Kate Valentine and Fahrusha are proud to welcome Leslie Kean, author of both Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence For An Afterlife and UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record , to Shattered Reality Podcast. We have  a very lively discussion about the implications of a number of phenomena which suggest survival of individual consciousness after death.

Kean’s new book surveys parapsychological studies of a variety of classes of evidential experiences and introduces the reader to Kean’s own personal search for answers to the puzzle of whether consciousness survives death. There are chapters within the book authored by a variety of credible researchers who are tops in their fields. Topics include the past life experiences of young children, near death experiences (NDEs), end of life experiences, and experiences with mediums of various sorts.

If you have had an experience which suggests life after death such as communication from a recently deceased loved one or perhaps you yourself have had an NDE, and you would like to share that experience on the show, please use the contact form below:

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