Julie Beischel, PhD, is the co-founder and Director of Research at The Windbridge Institute. She graduated magna cum laude and with honors with a BS in Environmental Sciences from Northern Arizona University and received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona. She served as Co-Director of the VERITAS Research Program with Dr. Gary Schwartz, investigating the alleged ability of mediums to 'talk to the dead', before moving the research of prospective research mediums to Windbridge in January of 2008. Her research interests center on the survival of consciousness hypothesis and include proof-focused studies on mediums' communication with discarnates and process-focused studies on mediums' experiences of that communication.

Q: Thanks for talking to The Daily Grail, Julie. To start off, can I ask how you ended up in this 'heretical' area of research that is certainly not known for its career-building potential? And can you tell us a little bit more about the Windbridge Institute and why it was formed?

Julie: Thanks for having me. Yes, I did commit a pretty severe case of professional suicide when I embraced this field of study. My PhD is in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology so my future was bright! But when I was in graduate school, my mom passed away and I started to wonder what science had to say about life after death. Through some strange coincidences, after I graduated I was able to take a position as the William James Post-doctoral Fellow in Mediumship and Survival Research and serve as Co-Director of the VERITAS Research Program with Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona. When the funding for that position ended and the VERITAS Program closed, my husband Mark Boccuzzi and I formed the Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential in January 2008 in order to continue performing this important research into the survival of consciousness. At Windbridge, the primary methods for carrying out this research include: (1) investigating technologies that may be useful in enhancing interaction and communication with deceased individuals, (2) addressing reports of haunting and apparition phenomena using both field and laboratory methods, and (3) studying mediums (individuals who experience regular communication with the deceased) and the information they report as well as their experiences during the communication. Windbridge also screens, trains, and certifies the mediums who participate in research using a multi-step process that takes each medium several months to complete. ... Read More »

Mitch Horowitz is a writer and publisher of many years' experience, with a lifelong interest in man’s search for meaning. As the editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin in New York, Mitch has published some of today’s leading titles in world religion, esoterica, and the metaphysical. He has now authored his own book, Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, (Amazon US and UK) "an engaging, long-overdue portrait of one nation, under many gods, whose revolutionary influence is still being felt in every corner of the globe." This short Q&A discusses a number of the topics covered in Occult America, including Ouija, the occult symbolism on the dollar bill, and the influence of occult and New Age thinking on some of the biggest personalities in US history. You can find more on Mitch and his work at mitchhorowitz.com.

Q: Occult America traces the ways in which occult and magical movements shaped our nation—politically, intellectually, religiously, culturally, and even commercially. Why did the U.S. prove to be such fertile ground for occult movements? What are some primary examples of how the occult influenced American identity and vice versa?

Mitch: Alternative religious movements were entwined with America from its earliest days. In the mid-1600s, just as Europe was experiencing a backlash against occult and esoteric spiritual movements, the American colonies were developing a reputation for religious liberalism. When the town of Philadelphia was a cluster of only a few hundred houses, it hosted faiths ranging from Quakerism to the Mennonites to mystical offshoots of the Lutheran church. The year 1694 marked a turning point for the colonies (and, in many ways, the modern spiritual world) through what initially appeared a very modest event: At that time the first intentional mystical community reached North America when the esoteric scholar Johannes Kelpius led a small sect out of Central Germany to the Wissahickon Creek near Philadelphia. His magical brotherhood practiced its own forms of astrology, alchemy, numerology, Kabala, and esoteric Christianity. News of their “Tabernacle in the Forest” spread back to the Old World and served as a magnet for other occult and esoteric movements. By the early 1700s, admirers of Kelpius formed a new and larger commune at Ephrata, Pennsylvania. In 1776, the Shakers – who were once considered a very mysterious sect – broke ground on a settlement outside Albany, New York. That same year the nation’s first “spirit channeler,” a 24-year-old woman who called herself the Publick Universal Friend, began to preach across New England. Beginning in the early 1800s, a region of Central New York called the “Burned-Over District” became suffused with Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and various occult experiments. These movements helped solidify early America’s role as a safe harbor for religious innovation and eventually made the nation into a launching pad for the revolutions in alternative spirituality that swept the globe in the twentieth century. ... Read More »

In Darklore Volume 3 (Amazon US and UK) there's a fascinating article on the crossover between the infamous 'Philadelpha Experiment' and some of the greatest sci-fi authors of the 20th century, by our good friend The Emperor (from the Cabinet of Wonders website and blog). In that article, Emps mentions a modern group of sci-fi writers - which includes names like Larry Niven, Greg Bear, Ben Bova, David Brin - that goes under the name 'SIGMA', and which "provides a significant pool of talent for volunteer pro bono consultation with the Federal government and other organizations which need the imagination that only speculative writers can provide."

What's interesting is that the founder of SIGMA, Arlan Andrews, is a long-time TDG reader and has communicated with me personally for many years now. So I thought it would be interesting to chat with Arlan about the group and some of the issues which go along with working closely with government groups.

(Synchronistically, as I was posting this I noticed that the Washington Post has posted a story on SIGMA.)

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TDG: Arlan, can you give us a bit of background to your history with sci-fi, and how SIGMA came to be founded?

Arlan: I began reading SF (preferred term) with Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet in 1950, and have been a fan ever since. My first sold writings appeared in the esoteric fields covered by TDG: Fate Magazine (1972), Ufology, Psychic Dimensions, and others, including tabloids.

I sold my first SF, a poem, "Rime of the Ancient Engineer" to Asimov's Magazine in 1979, and over the next 25 years published about 50 short stories and poems in a range of magazines, including Analog, Amazing Stories, Omni, Pulphouse, Science Fiction Age, Science Fiction Review, and others, plus anthologies How to Save the World, Amazing Stories Two and Nanodreams. I was a co-founder, playwright and occasional toastmaster for Inconjunction, the Indianapolis SF convention, for its first 20 years. I attended fifteen Worldcons and have been on dozens of panels at those and other cons.

In 1992 I was selected as a White House Fellow for the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), serving as a staffer in the Engineering Directorate there. In that capacity, I often attended meetings where technology forecasting was the subject, and I was completely appalled at the lack of imagination demonstrated by government bureaucrats and invited industry representatives. I commented to a fellow attendee that I had seen much better futurism at any given science fiction convention than in all the futurism meetings in Washington, D.C. That evening, I wrote down that quote for future reference.

The final two steps in my disgust with the government came over two issues:

In one particular meeting, a forward-looking minor player suggested that MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) and nanotechnology would become very important in the time frame of the early 21st Century. The meeting's host laughed at him, and said they would be sure to create a footnote about his little robots. At the second meeting, this one in the Roosevelt Room of the White House itself, when President George H. W. Bush's science advisor suggested that virtual reality would play an important role in future computers, this same sarcastic bureaucrat laughed again an told him that his video games would never amount to anything.

That night I went back to the apartment and wrote a manifesto that began, "The future is too important to be left to futurists!" I further stated that since SF writers had been exploring the future, we owed it to humanity to report on what we had discovered there. I came up with the name SIGMA (not an acronym) to indicate that we writers would provide a summation of our visions for the good of civilization. We would offer these visions without cost to the U.S. government, which was in dire need of forecasting ability outside the hidebound Establishment.

Mention the word 'Roswell' to most people, and one thing will automatically pop into their head: 'Crashed UFO'. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force says the "flying disc" recovered in July 1947 was actually the wreckage of a high-altitude balloon used in a top secret government experiment called Project Mogul, built to detect Soviet nuclear weapon tests. But new findings by researcher Nick Redfern suggest that neither of these explanations hold the real answer to the Roswell mystery. Instead, he believes that something very sinister, and very human, is at the heart of the case.

Redfern first presented his highly controversial theory in 2005, in his book Body Snatchers in the Desert. In short, over the course of a number of years he was informed by several sources that the 'Roswell Incident' was actually one of seven or eight ill-fated experiments on human subjects who were used in a range of secret, balloon-based flights. What's more, the humans involved were not volunteers - rather, they were Japanese prisoners-of-war and/or handicapped people secretly removed from asylums and mental hospitals.

Since the 2005 publication of Body Snatchers, Nick has come across a number of new (and older) leads which support this shocking theory, which he's just published in an article in the Daily Grail's Fortean anthology series Darklore (Volume 3), titled "Body Snatchers: Before and Beyond". I spoke to Nick about the new research and discoveries, and the Roswell topic in general, earlier this week. Rather than edit the discussion down, here's the full transcript (after the obligatory Darklore links):

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Purchasing information for Darklore Volume 3:

• Amazon US Limited Edition Hardcover
• Amazon US Paperback
• Amazon UK Limited Edition Hardcover
• Amazon UK Paperback

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TDG: Thanks for talking with us Nick. It's been almost 4 years since the publication of Body Snatchers. What's been the reaction to the book in that time, and how does the information in this new Darklore article - based on new revelations, and a review of previous research - affect your original conclusions?

Recently, I was lucky enough to chat with theoretical physicist Professor Michio Kaku. Professor Kaku is one of a rare breed; working at the cutting edge of complex maths and physics, but also able to talk about his research topics with a layperson, in their language. He specialises in string field theory, but is also an eloquent populariser of science, having appeared on nearly every major television network in the United States and hosted a number of documentaries. He also has written numerous popular books on cutting edge science and future thought, the latest being Physics of the Impossible (Amazon US and UK).

Our discussion covered everything from the UFO phenomenon, to whether consciousness defines reality, and also touched on some of the more controversial science stories about today (most notably, the LHC and Active SETI). Professor Kaku was quick to assure me that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will definitely not destroy the world, instead listing some of the benefits that science could reap from the project - not least, a refining of the current understanding of particle physics. He didn't shy away from the fact that in its current form "the Standard Model...is supremely ugly... It's like gluing together an aardvark, whale, and platypus and declaring it to be nature's supreme evolutionary creation."

We also touched on the 'mainstream' view that human consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon of the brain - which in many respects, does not match up with the supreme importance that some branches of quantum physics accord consciousness. Professor Kaku agreed that "consciousness is one of the great problems facing science," and stated plainly that despite the mainstream view, "most scientists cannot even define it, let alone explain it." To illustrate how consciousness is important to quantum physics, he discussed the well-known "Schrodinger's Cat" paradox, and then explored various theories which might explain it. One of those was put forward by Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner - he assumed that consiousness is the key factor in creating reality. Furthermore, extrapolating Wigner's theory means that, as Professor Kaku put it, "eventually, we need an infinite chain of observers, each watching the other... Wigner implied that this chain was a cosmic consciousness or even God."

One of the main reasons I was interested in talking to Professor Kaku was his openness to some of the more 'heretical' areas of science. One of those topics is the scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon, something which he has gone on the public record as supporting. Professor Kaku said that generally UFOs were subject to the "giggle factor" with scientists, because most assume that the distance between possible civilisations is far too great. But he thinks differently.

"Once you imagine a civilization a million years more advanced (which is a blink of an eye compared to the 13.7 billion year age of the universe) then new laws of physics and technologies open up," Dr Kaku told me. "For such a civilization (a Type III civilization, according to the Kardashev scale), travel between stars might not be such a problem."

He also pondered on how we might struggle to relate to such technically advanced alien civilisations - or more correctly, how they might fail to recognise our 'sophistication'. "Imagine walking down a country road, and meeting an ant hill. Do we go down to the ants and say, 'I bring you trinkets. I bring you beads. I give you nuclear energy and biotechnology. Take me to your leader?' Or we have the urge to step on a few of them??"

Given the likely differences between us and alien civilisations, the next obvious question to me was to ask whether Professor Kaku thought SETI was worth the time and effort. His reply? "Yes, because it's all we have today. So by default, we should fund it, but not expect too much."

He wasn't as charitable, however, about the idea of Active SETI (beaming messages out to space, rather than listening). "I think it's an awful idea to advertise our existence in space, without understanding the motives and intentions of possible alien civilizations," he said, comparing us to the inhabitants of the New World encountering "Cortez and his band of cut-throats". Instead of David vs. Goliath, Professor Kaku suggests it would be more akin to "a fruit fly versus Goliath".

The full interview transcript is after the fold, click 'Read More' to view it. Also, there is plenty of wonderful reading on Professor Kaku's personal website, for those who want to explore these topics further. ... Read More »

As mentioned recently, Daily Grail Publishing has just released a reprint of Jacques Vallee's UFO classic, Messengers of Deception (Amazon US and Amazon UK). Last week I had a quick chat with Jacques about the book, and the controversy it created in ufology. It was intentionally short - I could talk to Jacques for a couple of days on all manner of topics, but in this case I just wanted to address the elements of his work which have made him, as he describes it, "a heretic among heretics" - namely, his concern about uncritical acceptance of the UFO phenomenon, and also the 'psychic' manifestations found in UFO reports which suggest that they may not be "nuts and bolts" craft.

Jacques' answers are succinct and incisive - here's a few pull-outs:

"Many erstwhile ufologists don’t want the deceptive reports exposed, just as the Catholic Church long denied instances of abuse in its ranks."

"People linked to the intelligence community of the major countries have been closely involved in studying UFO cases since World War Two. That interest is legitimate, whether it is purely personal (as most of them claim) or related to their official duties. The same is true in parapsychology."

"[T]he phenomenon comes in an environment of manifestations that include heightened awareness of synchronicities, paranormal sounds and lights and occasionally absurd coincidences similar to those described in the poltergeist literature."

"By denying the reality of the reports, brushing aside the witnesses...and treating them like fools or crooks, the academic skeptics are actually teaching the public that science is impotent at studying the phenomenon."

The full interview is below.

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TDG: Jacques, thanks for talking with us here at The Daily Grail. Let's get straight to the new release: the original publication of Messengers of Deception in 1979 marked quite a turning point in your standing with the ufology community. Your warning that we should be more careful about embracing the phenomenon, and that its underlying qualities could well be negative and deceitful in nature rather than benevolent, was rejected by many (and still seems to cause angst to this day). I'm keen to know what acted as the catalyst for the writing of Messengers of Deception, and if you have thoughts on why so many in the UFO research community paint it as a betrayal of sorts?

Jacques Vallee: The evidence for an “undercurrent” of deceit behind some alleged UFO cases only becomes visible when you spend time in the field interviewing witnesses and tracking down the evidence. It became annoying to me because it represented a waste of time and a distraction from studying genuine observations. Researchers who collect reports only through books or media accounts would not necessarily encounter this level of the phenomenon and would understandably resist the suggestion that the belief in extraterrestrial intervention is being manipulated to serve political or cultist goals.

Even people who are fully aware of this negative aspect don’t want to bring it up into the open because they think it will call disrepute to the subject. Many erstwhile ufologists don’t want the deceptive reports exposed, just as the Catholic Church long denied instances of abuse in its ranks. Whistle-blowing is never welcome. My own position has always been that, on the contrary, the best way to gain the respect of the intellectual community is to expose hoaxes, sloppy research and manipulation whenever we encounter them. ... Read More »

There can't be too many dull moments in Nick Redfern's life. Well-known as a researcher in both ufology and cryptozoology, Nick manages to continue writing and releasing new books in amongst his field investigations and research trips into some of the stranger things that happen (or don't!) on this planet. Not to mention his regular contributions to the UFO Mystic blog. (He's also contributed a piece to Darklore Volume 2, coming soon).

Nick's latest book, There's Something in the Woods (Amazon US and UK), was released last week, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a chat with him about the book and his other investigations. Nick's never short of an opinion either, so I also asked him for his thoughts on the state of play in both ufology and cryptozoology. Some great discussion in this interview, so take the time to read it through.

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TDG: Can you tell us a bit about the new book Nick? Sounds like it's a continuation of your cryptozoological explorations as set out in Three Men Seeking Monsters and Memoirs of a Monster Hunter.

NR: Yeah, you’re right: basically, my new book, There’s Something in the Woods, is a continuation from Three Men and Memoirs. In early 2006, my wife and I moved back to the UK for a while; and so the book is a story of my monster-hunting activities across two countries, from around April 2006 to the early part of this year, 2008. And like Three Men and Memoirs, it’s very much a road-trip style book, which is the way I like to do my crypto-investigations: in the field, and first-hand, as I feel that’s the only way to really get the answers to mysteries like this. As far as Britain is concerned, the book covers such areas as werewolves – in fact, there’s a huge amount of new material in the book on that subject – Bigfoot in Britain, which is a highly controversial, but nevertheless fascinating topic; big-cats on the loose in the British countryside; and phantom black-dogs. And in the US, the book details my investigations of a very weird – and occult-linked - werewolf encounter; classic Goat-Man-type sightings; Sasquatch; a few UFO-related incidents, including a little-known alleged UFO crash-retrieval from a Texas forest in the 1960s; a Man in Black case that has distinct paranormal, and even crypto overtones to it; and much more.

TDG: You've done plenty of field trips as part of your research. Does your interest lie in finding unknown 'flesh and blood' animals, or do you lean more towards the high strangeness cryptids that seem to be more paranormal in nature?

NR: That’s a damned good question! I think it’s fair to say that as time has gone on, my views on what some of these cryptids are have drastically changed. Like a lot of people, I got interested in all this when I was a kid: my parents took me to Loch Ness when I was 5, and I was hooked even then. And back then, for me, Bigfoot was a giant ape, and Nessie was a plesiosaur. It was all just black-and-white. But, today – and for a long time now – my views are very different. ... Read More »

The New York Times calls Jim Steinmeyer the "celebrated invisible man—inventor, designer and creative brain behind many of the great stage magicians of the last quarter-century." Recognized for his extensive, innovative creations in magic, a recent profile concluded that Jim was "the best living originator of stage illusions," noting his many creations as the "defining illusions in contemporary magic." Jim Steinmeyer has worked with virtually every leading magician around the world, produced magic on television, and written extensively on his illusions as well as his research into the history of magic. His book Hiding the Elephant (Amazon US and UK) is considered a classic in this area.

Jim has also recently written a biography of Charles Fort, "the mad genius of the Bronx" who has influenced generations of 'Forteans' and seekers of the strange: Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural (Amazon US and UK). Jim was kind enough to take some time to chat with the Daily Grail about Charles Fort, magic, and other related topics.

TDG: Hi Jim, thanks for chatting with The Daily Grail, it’s a real honour. Right off the bat: you’re renowned for your historical and technical knowledge of the craft of magic. I'm very interested in how you came to be interested in the life and work of Charles Fort, which seems rather unconnected to the world you normally work in.

JS: It is unconnected. Like a lot of people, I read Fort when I was in college, and over the years I was attracted to elements of his story. It's a good story, I think, a significant story about a troubled person who channeled that energy into this new approach to books and the supernatural. His writing style is unique and memorable. Over the years, I read anything I could find about him. When I mentioned the project to my agent, Jim Fitzgerald, he instantly knew who Fort was; Fitzgerald had worked with John Keel, the author of The Mothman Prophecies years before.

In late January, Robert Schoch - formerly known for his geological investigations into the age of the Great Sphinx, the underwater Yonaguni 'monument', and the alleged Bosnian Pyramids - released a book on a completely different tack to his previous work: parapsychology. As editor of an anthology titled The Parapsychology Revolution (Amazon US, or preorder from Amazon UK), he assembled some of the most fascinating scientific essays on psi phenomena into one handy book. I spoke to Robert last week about the new book, and the reasons for his move into (yet another) controversial topic:

TDG: Thanks for talking with us Robert. Firstly, can I ask: what inspired the change from books about ancient pyramid cultures, to this new book about parapsychology?

RS: I view my interest in parapsychology as a logical extension of my work on ancient cultures, and furthermore I personally have a long history of interest in the paranormal. Let me elaborate.

Deborah Blum won a Pulitzer prize in 1992 for writing about ethical issues in primate research and has been exploring the intersection – or some would say, collision - of science and culture ever since.

A professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she has written four books, all of which ask questions about the way science tries to define what it means to be human. They include The Monkey Wars (1994), based on her award-winning series; Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences between Men and Women (1997), Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection (2002) and Ghost Hunters: William James and Scientific Search for Life after Death(2006).

TDG: Thanks for your time Deborah - Ghost Hunters (Amazon US and UK) certainly is an eye-opening read on the early history of scientific research into the afterlife. To begin with, I'm interested to know why you concentrated on the 'William James era' of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Were you lead into the topic accidentally when originally researching James, or is there something about this period of psychical research which made it stand out to you as a writer?

DB: First by accident, then by plan. I was researching the history of psychology for an earlier book (on the science of affection) and I stumbled across some references to William James losing his mind and getting caught up in spiritualism. Other psychologists were just furious with him, angry enough, that I began to wonder why.

As it turned out, they were angry because he was such a leader in the field, they were afraid he would lead the field astray. And was what led me to concentrate on the Victorian period. Because it turned out to be the one time when some of the best scientists in the world - James, Charles Richet and John Strutt (both Nobel Prize winners), Oliver Lodge, a pioneer in wireless communication - were willing to risk their careers to explore supernatural science.

They were so smart, such good researchers, I wanted to know what they found.

TDG: In regards to your statement that they were "willing to risk their careers": In the 125 years since the SPR was inaugurated, not too much has changed. You mention yourself that you were warned not to write this book, and scientists such as Dr Dean Radin and Dr Gary Schwartz are regularly castigated by 'skeptics' such as James Randi as being deluded (or worse, deceiving). In Ghost Hunters, you make note of Henry Sidgwick's speech at the first SPR meeting, at which he described orthodox science's resistance and aggression towards psychical research as "a scandal to the enlightened age in which we live." Do you believe Sidgwick was right, and that the 'scandal' continues to this day? Or is it correct for conventional science to maintain and defend its borders against incursions from outside the current paradigm - after all, there are a lot of strange and completely bogus ideas out there?

DB: Here's the blessing and curse of mainstream science. It's the most powerful investigative tool ever invented. It has succeeded by following a very strict set of rules for "proof" of a phenomenon. That phenomenon, for instance, must be predictable, testable, replicable, confirmable. An example of this is the freezing temperature of water (phase change from liquid to solid at 32 degrees fahrenheit.) I can predict this and I (and you and the entire population of the world) can repeat and confirm it ad infinitum.

So far, paranormal phenomena don't follow those rules. They're not predictable in any consistent sense, and rarely perfectly replicable. So - and this William James complained about bitterly - mainstream science has responded by declaring them nonsense and the scientists who pursue them as pseudo-scientists. The problem with that is that our scientific rules may prevent us from trying new approaches, considering alternative ways to measure reality - in other words, box us into a very limited world.

Bottom line, science plays it safe and ruthlessly defends its limits. Totally human and - here's the scandalous part - punishes those who try to make the universe a little more open.

TDG: Addressing a couple of details in your answer - firstly, the 'predictable' and 'replicable' part is an often used reply by skeptics of paranormal phenomenon, but really doesn't make sense on two counts to me. There are many phenomena that don't obey this qualification for scientific credibility (eg. earthquakes, meteorite impacts), and once we add intelligence into the equation (ie. if there is a communicating 'intelligence' from the 'other side') then we not only run into problems with these criteria on a base level, but further, we have to allow for the possibility of deception on the part of this communicating intelligence. So I find this reply (on the part of scientific authorities, not yourself) as somewhat disingenous when it comes to addressing whether paranormal phenomena are worthy of investigation. Your thoughts?

DB: It's true that not all natural phenomena fit into that box. The Victorian psychical researchers often made that point regarding lightning and comets. But the fact is that even such erratic "events" fit into theories that have other replicable results to back them up. For instance, we can partially explain the orbits of comets by gravity and the plate tectonics theory that underlies earthquake activity is verifiable on all kinds of levels (even though the originally developer of that theory was treated brutally by his peers).

I often think of scientific theories as strings of beads. You verify (replicate, confirm) one bead or more and the power of that allows you to string the other options on that line of thought. In that sense, I don't see the argument as disingenous particularly, but I do see it as wilfully blind and occasionally arrogant. And we both know that mainstream science can be both of those things. And that refusal to accept ideas out of the mainstream has repeatedly held back the progress of science - again the example of plate tectonics. That's my real argument. I think the very rigidity of science has made it an incredibly powerful investigative tool into nature - we reap the benefits of that daily. But that same exclusivity has made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do major investigations of some very important questions.

TDG: Do you think we are talking about 'science' defending its limits here, or is it really a 'cult of materialism' that is doing the defending? When (Laurentian University researcher) Michael Persinger came out with his research on temporal lobe stimulation inducing mystical experiences, we suddenly had Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore enthusiastically reporting on their experience with the 'God Helmet' - this before any external replications of Persinger's work had taken place, or any orthodox acceptance of his theories - is there any difference here to William James and Oliver Lodge reporting back enthusiastically on their experiences with Mrs Piper? In Ghost Hunters, you describe how late 19th century science literally demanded that religion relinquish its territory to the 'new orthodoxy' - has physicalist science itself reached the stage of being a proto-Fundamentalist religion?

DB: That's a fascinating question and, yes, I think that belief systems always play into these issues. It was certainly true in the days of William James and his colleagues, and many of the ideas being discussed by Dawkins and Dennett - the whole concepts of atheism and agnosticism - gained power during that time period. Look at T.H. Huxley, for instance. I think that's fairly normal and human - we're all driven by the power of our beliefs. What I dislike is the judgmental quality that results - Dawkins suggesting, for instance, that true atheists are "brights" as opposed to the "dim" spiritual believers.

My own take is that it's incredible hubris for any of us - whatever belief system we follow - to think we've answered every question that circles in this rather incredibly complicated and beautiful universe. Which is one of the reasons I allowed my book to be about possibilities.

TDG: Giving some time to the skeptical arguments - many of the scientists involved had suffered personal tragedies (Gurney lost his 3 younger sisters in a drowning, Myers his true love to suicide, James his baby son to illness). Could these circumstances be an argument against their objectivity - that is, do you think these experiences may have made them too gullible, basically 'wanting to believe'?

DB: Again, Greg, that's an excellent question. And, yes, I think you have to consider that aspect. I know, for instance, that Richard Hodgson worried about that "will to believe" in Fred Myers, that James' critics raised the same question for him. It's a little more of an issue with Myers, less so with James who remained rigorously skeptical. But as a whole - when you look at the researchers as a group - they check and balance each other. Sidgwick's caution against Myers' passion, and so you end up with a very smart, very focused and very fair-minded group.

Which is why I think their work endures so well.

TDG: During your in-depth research into Hodgson's investigation of Mrs Piper, I'm sure your skeptical side would have been looking for possible explanations for how she was achieving such spectacular results. Many skeptics (and also the NY Times review of Ghost Hunters) point to Martin Gardner's paper on 'cold reading' techniques used by Mrs Piper, fishing for information from participants during readings, as having debunked her mediumship ("How Mrs. Piper Bamboozled William James"). Personally, I can't see how many of the results achieved by Leonora Piper can be explained this way (or even by 'hot reading', considering Hodgson's efforts at keeping Mrs Piper isolated prior to the readings), and it also seems to avoid many of the stunning results achieved during Hodgson's long investigation, which was the most authoritative and skeptical. However, I would love to hear your opinion, considering the comprehensive research and reading you did on the long period under which Mrs Piper was investigated by the SPR

DB: Yes, I read Gardner's paper and, frankly, he wasn't as scathing as some of the psychologists working in Leonora Piper's time. There's more valid criticisms of her in the work of Stanley Hall and especially Joseph Jastrow. And frankly, if you read the reports from the ASPR and SPR, they discuss all of her flaws and weaknesses, the often fictional nature of her "spirit guides", the tendency on some days to go on fishing expeditions for information.

All of that is in the book, in addition to the psychical researchers' numerous exposes of other famous mediums of the day, from Anna Eva Fay to the Fox sisters to Henry Slade. There was, there is, enormous potential for fraud in this particular field and, of course, there are a lot of examples of that in my book.

You remember that James and his friends calculated that about five percent of what they investigated had some reality to it. Which again tells you that most of what they looked at was fraud, wishful thinking, etc. But they thought - and I think - that Leonora Piper, at her best, was firmly in that 5 percent. That she had bad days, days when she couldn't pick up anything, days when she tried to cover that up. That her spirit guides were probably creations of her own mind, struggling to cope with the bizarre information that did she pick up.

But that she did know things that she simply couldn't have known - and, yes, I found I agreed with them. A hundred years later, if you read the Piper reports with an open mind, she remains sometimes completely inexplicable.

TDG: I have found it interesting to see how the reviews of Ghost Hunters seem to depend more on the worldview of the reviewer, rather than the actual prose and story presented in the book. Has it been a shock to you - especially considering the high praise afforded to your previous books - to see the bias against open discussion of the 'survival' research of the SPR?

DB: Actually, I expected worse. When I decided to write the book, a lot of my mainstream science writing friends warned me against it, speculated that it would damage my career. That didn't change my mind but it did make me a little nervous when the book came out.

For instance, I did an interview about the book on NPR's Science Friday and the host warned me in advance that he expected the audience to be hostile. So I was sitting in an affiliate studio (in Durham, N.C. at the time) prepared for some kind of verbal lashing. What I found, though, was that some people - as you noted - were very close minded. But a surprising number, like me, found the questions really fascinating. In fact, even on the science-minded NPR show, people called in to tell their personal ghost stories.

After that, I just relaxed about it. I've spent years building up a reputation as a credible science writer - it's worth spending some of that capital on a fascinating idea.

TDG: A number of those 'skeptical' reviews of Ghost Hunters have suggested that your 'balanced position' shows that you did not read up on the techniques of fraudulent mediumship, and hence your account was overly credulous (James Randi himself made this point in his newsletter). Can you clarify as to whether you researched things like cold reading, and the other methods used by conjurors and charlatans?

DB: Yes, I knew I was going to get that reaction and, candidly, I thought I could live with it. I'm an obsessive over-researcher so I looked at cold readings, muscle readings, the wonderful fraudulent devices used by mediums, the works. But what made the story interesting, worthwhile, wasn't the fraud. Do we need another book debunking dead mediums?

The whole point of my book - the one I knew would get me in trouble with the Randis of the world - was that possibility exists, that some things remain genuinely fascinatingly explicable, and that there are still questions that deserve to be answered in the realms of the supernatural. Even if we only learn that "supernatural" is the wrong word, that the real answer is that we simply haven't found the limits of the natural world yet.

TDG: The book does a marvellous job of putting the reader 'in the head' of the SPR investigators, by outlining their emotions on certain issues, their motivations etc. Did you have to take some creative licence in writing in this manner, or were these personal facets obvious from the articles and correspondence uncovered during your research?

DB: Good question - and the short answer is all those descriptions are based on fact. I knew doing the book that I'd have to be scrupulous about the research because it's a controversial subject. Plus I tend to be pretty meticulous by nature - my sons tell me I'm a born nerd. That's not to say that my own perceptions or ideas don't color the way I work. For instance, I found the Sidgwicks quite charming - despite their very upper class ethic and despite the fact that Nora Sidgwick was so upright and humorless and often socially inept. I liked her awkwardness and her stubborness and her courage and so the picture I draw is a very positive one. It might have been less so in someone who found those qualities not so endearing.

TDG: To finish, the tough question - but you can keep your answer extremely short, no need for an explanation. In light of your experience in writing Ghost Hunters, if you (personally) had to answer the question with only a yes or a no: is there something beyond death?

DB: I don't know. But I will tell you that before I researched the book, my answer would have been No. So I'm glad I took the time and trouble - it's made the world a more interesting place for me.

GHOST HUNTERS is available from Amazon US and UK