Halloween Linkdrop

I post a lot of links on my blog. I also save a lot of links with the intention of posting them and commenting on the stories in more depth. Sometimes I just don't get around to it though, life being what it is. So what I'm going to do is post a list of some of the links I've had stored away so that other seekers of the strange can enjoy them if they haven't seen them already.

What if E.T. thinks we're evil?
The aliens have landed: Amazing footage shows 'little green men walking about after UFO touchdown'... but why does it always happen in Siberia?
Fantastic Flying Folk!
"Creature" filmed in Brazilian rainforest
The real-life Blob: Is mysterious translucent jelly found in Cumbrian Fells from outer space?
Sally Morgan challenged to prove her psychic powers on Halloween

Hopefully you enjoy these stories I've been collecting for a few weeks. I'm really interested to see if anything comes from the Sally Morgan test. Happy Halloween!

Thailand shows that it is not impossible for the supernatural and the modern world to coexist.

Thais Look to the Supernatural

The Western world typically treats things like astrology and horoscopes as entertainment only.  In Thailand, coups have been initiated because of the advice of a fortune teller.  Some might argue that this is superstition overriding common sense and reason.  The Thais might say that it works for them.

How To View Your Aura

Following up on my last post, I'm going to give a very simple method for viewing your own aura (or part of it) with the naked eye.  This will also work for viewing the auras of others.

You will be viewing the aura around your hand and fingers.  In order to make this easier you should get a uniform background to hold your hand in front of.  This makes it easier to make out the aura as objects and textures in the background won't be distracting you.  For simplicity, you could just put a piece of white or black paper on the table and then hold your hand over it when viewing until you get the hang of it.

Now for the good stuff.  Hold your hand (either one works) out in front of the background (if you choose to use a background; it's not absolutely necessary).  Hold your hand there with open fingers (with either the palm facing you or the palm facing away).  Look between your fingers, like you're looking at their outline.  Don't focus your eyes on the background or your hand will go out of focus.  You want to look out from the edge without letting your eyes focus on the background.  It may sound kind of tricky but it's really not.  Moving your hand slowly while you look can make the aura even more obvious.

Your aura won't be as spectacular as fireworks or searchlights.  It can better be described as a haze or a smoke that clings to your skin.  You'll know it when you see it.  It should be noted that you need to make sure that you don't confuse an afterimage for your aura.  Afterimages can result from staring at something for too long and appear as the complimentary-colored outline of what you're looking at.  If the "aura" remains on the background even after you've taken your hand away then it is an afterimage.

You can use this same technique to look at the auras of other people, animals, and even inanimate objects.  Of course, you'll probably need to adjust the distance between you and the subject in order to view their whole aura.  Don't be afraid to experiment with this.  If you're having trouble, sometimes it helps to take a few deep breaths and make sure you're relaxed before you begin.  You may also need to adjust the lighting; very bright light may wash out the aura.  If your eyes are tired or strained then you should rest them and try again later.  Again, be careful not to confuse an afterimage for an aura.  Also, be aware that many people find it impolite to stare, so be careful with that.

A device for viewing the aura?

For those of you that aren't familiar with the concept, the aura is the proposed etheric energy field that surrounds the human body (as well as animals and inanimate objects).  While there are methods for training yourself to view the aura with the naked eye (or at least using the faculty of vision to interpret the sensing of the aura), there exist technological methods that claim to be able to show you your aura or the aura of others.

You may be familiar with aura photographs that are sometimes sold at psychic fairs.  My understanding is that these machines actually determine your skin's electrical conductivity through the apparatus you place your hand(s) on, and then this data is converted into colors which are them superimposed on your photograph.  While this may give some information about your energy field, I don't feel that it shows your true aura.  It is instead an interpretation of what your aura may look like based on a physical property that may or may not have anything to do with your etheric energy field.

The second, and perhaps the most popular, "aura-viewing" technology is Kirlian photography.  An object (usually living) is placed on an electrically charged plate in complete darkness and then a snapshot is taken.  What shows up on the photograph appears to be similar to the concept of the aura; it is light surrounding the physical form and even extending to complete an incomplete physical form.  However, what is captured in a Kirlian photograph is believed to be the coronal discharge of whatever is being photographed.  While interesting, I don't think that these can be said to be true aura images any more than "aura photographs" can.

The third technological method that I'm aware of (and apparently the oldest) is a Kilner Screen.  I had not heard of this device until a few days ago and I have to say that I'm rather excited about it as it seems to be the simplest and most low-tech of all the devices said to be capable of viewing the aura.  It also seems to be the only one capable of viewing what I consider to be the "true aura," (the etheric energy emanating from the body) rather than some spark brought about by electrical charge or some colored photo made by a computer from skin readings.

What is a Kilner Screen then?  It consists of two pieces of glass with a particular dye encapsulated in the middle.  One looks through this screen in order to train the eye to see the aura.  After training, the screen is no longer necessary.  The only drawbacks of this device seem to be the rarity and hazard of the dyes used in making the screens.

I have been able to see auras (when I want to) for a few years now and I don't find it to be particularly interesting.  Some people do though, so for those that are having trouble acquiring the skill with naked-eye methods there is the option of making or procuring a Kilner Screen (or a similar device that doesn't use the nasty chemicals).  To this end, I provide the links below.

The Wikipedia article on Walter Kilner, the inventor of the screens.
A much more in-depth look at Kilner's methods and the aura itself.  (I agree with most of the observations made about the aura as they largely coincide with my own observations.)

The Plethora of Kinetic Abilities

If you hang around in psionics-oriented forums and communities for very long you will eventually see such fancy terms as "pyrokinesis" or "electrokinesis" or even "geokinesis."  I can understand the desire to want to differentiate between things that you may be affecting with terms specific to the substance.  However, I think that there comes a certain point when it becomes cumbersome and unnecessary.  All of this is why I prefer the umbrella term of psychokinesis.

Thinking about it logically for a second, all of these abilities consist of you using your mind to control or move something.  This would qualify them all as psychokinesis.  I just don't see the reasoning behind giving a fancy name to every particular way you could possibly use psychokinesis.  In my opinion, if you can move one thing with psychokinesis you should have the same ability to move another substance unless there's some kind of psychological block in place.

Words like "pyrokinesis" are convenient for telling people that you're working on  manipulating fire through psychokinesis.  Terms like "atmokinesis" or "aerokinesis" seem to overlap, as I imagine there would be a lot of air manipulation going on if you were manipulating the atmosphere.  Because of this, I just think that sometimes it's superfluous to use these terms.  I have nothing against people that use these terms, but they probably shouldn't be surprised when others have to ask "What is that?" and the practitioner has to explain it anyway, perhaps defeating the purpose of the specialized term.

In summary, I don't really care much for it.  I prefer to just use the umbrella term of psychokinesis.  I recognize that these designations must be useful to someone though, so to each their own.  I sometimes substitute "telekinesis" for "psychokinesis" when around people that don't know what psychokinesis means.

How to Stop a Psychic Vampire Attack

The best way to stop an attack is to prevent one in the first place.  How do you do that?  Make yourself a hard target.  If you make yourself harder to attack then the vampire will most likely move on to easier prey.  The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to have a solid shield in place.

A shield is an energy construct or thoughtform used to keep your energy in and unwanted things out.  To make a shield around yourself, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to relax.  Visualize a sphere of bright white light around yourself.  This light is impermeable and solid and nothing negative can enter your personal space.  Take a few moments to concentrate on this sphere and make it strong.  If it helps, you can visualize pulling bright white light from above and using it to form or charge the shield around you.  Actually feel the shield forming around you as you visualize it taking shape.  Feel the shield exerting a light pressure or static charge on your skin.  Know that it is there and feel the protection that it provides.

Once you have your shield formed and strengthened then you have basic protection in place.  Throughout the day take a moment to think about how strong your shield is, reinforcing it.  Feel it there and pump it full of intention and energy.  After you've had some practice at this you will have to stop to reinforce your shield less and less.  In the beginning it may be strenuous to maintain the shield, but this is like any other skill and it will become easier with practice.  This technique doesn't just work with psychic vampires but with most forms of psychic attack.

As you gain experience with shielding you may wish to add embellishments such as thorns (as a means to strike back), a mirrored finish (to reflect back negativity), or elemental effects (such as fire to burn away negative energy).  A little experimentation can go a long way and you will get back what you put into your shielding efforts.  Some people find visualization to be difficult, but if you combine this with the tactile approach of actually feeling the shield around you it will work wonders.

This will give you basic protection from psychic vampires and other forms of psychic attack.  It will provide a deterrent, much like a security system acts as a deterrent to thieves; it may not keep them out entirely (if they are really determined they will eventually find a way in) but it makes you a less desirable target and the thief (or vampire) is more likely to pass you over in favor of an easier score.  This technique is also a good place to start practicing visualization and energy work.

How to Identify a Psychic Vampire Attack

There are two kinds of psychic vampire attack:  one-time attack and repeated attack.  One-time attacks are most often targets of opportunity and will not recur (at least not from the same vampire).  Repeated attack is perpetrated by someone that comes in contact with the victim a lot, providing lots of opportunity for attack.

The symptoms of a one-time attack may not be apparent enough for you to notice as it's happening, or at all.  By the time the symptoms manifest the vampire may be long gone.  The exception to this lack of identification would be someone displaying very obvious behavior (not likely), or in the case of those that are paranormally sensitive, they might be able to feel the "breach" of their energy field by the outside influence of the vampire.  A repeated attack over a longer span of time is perhaps easier to detect as eventually the symptoms will catch up to the victim and compound until they are no longer something that can be easily ignored.

What are the symptoms then?  Most commonly the symptoms are fatigue and headache.  The kind of fatigue you get after a long day, and the headache you get from stress or working too hard.  By themselves these aren't that sinister and aren't that uncommon.  Most of the time there are mundane explanations and there's no need to jump to the conclusion that you are the victim of a psychic vampire.  Sometimes though, the symptoms will not be proportional to the amount of strain/stress you have experienced during the day.  You'll have to use your own judgment with these.  Some of the more severe symptoms are fever, dizziness, and nausea.  These are typically indicative of a severe attack, or prolonged depletion of your own energy due to being attacked on multiple occasions.

Of course, you should make sure that there is nothing medically wrong with you before jumping to the psychic vampire conclusion.  A lot of mundane things can cause these sorts of symptoms and most people won't even notice them, even if they are being attacked by a psychic vampire.  I provide this information as a way of showing the potential physical symptoms that can manifest from an attack on your vital energy.  There are more subtle symptoms that can manifest but these aren't always noticeable to everyone.  These might include strange dreams, holes in your energy field, or a sickly or damaged looking aura.  All of these things would be either imperceptible or mostly written off by those not involved in an occult lifestyle, I think.

In my next post I'll finally get to some techniques you can use to stop this kind of attack.

Psychic Vampires

It may come as a shock to many that vampires walk among us.  Not the caped and fanged creatures of popular fiction or the bloated corpses of legend but people that are, more or less, like everyone else.  Some of these individuals do partake of blood like their mythological counterparts but for this post I'm going to focus on the vampires that are perhaps less well known (and perhaps less swooned over):  psychic vampires.

The term "psychic vampire" has come to mean more than one thing.  There is the purely psychological definition of a psychic vampire as someone that is emotionally draining, constantly demanding your attention, and constantly fishing for gifts and compliments.  These vampires are perhaps as bad as the bloodsuckers of myth as they can end up taking everything from you if you let them.  These are not the vampires I'll be discussing and some prefer to use the term "psychological vampire" as they find it more accurate and it effectively differentiates these people from those that are commonly called "psychic vampires" in occult circles.  (That is largely a matter of preference though, as some view psychic and psychological vampires as the same vile creature, always to be avoided.)

The definition I will be using (and perhaps the one gaining popularity) is of a person that draws the life force energies from other people in order to increase their own energies.  This is done because, for some reason, the psychic vampire has a deficiency and they cannot produce enough vital energy for themselves, or it can be done by those that simply want to take from others to fuel their own endeavors with extra energy.  Outside of the vampire community this type of vampirism is usually seen as on par with psychological vampirism, but in a more esoteric or metaphysical sense.  These vampires will most likely not crave your attention or try to inject themselves into your life, at least not consciously.  At most they may try to get you upset and then retreat.  Their goal is to siphon off your vital energy rather than your money or attentions, although there is some overlap in behavior between unrestrained psychic vampires and psychological vampires.

Most psychic vampires that behave like psychological ones are not even aware of their deficiency.  It is possible to have this issue without even knowing and all that may be necessary is informing the person of what they are doing and teaching them how to reign themselves in.  This is where the vampire community can be helpful.  Other people may have no legitimate need (origin of the need aside) and may do this simply for the rush they get or for the power boost.  The ones without need are usually seen as addicts of a sort as they continue to perform vampirism even though they do not have a need for the energies they take.  Some of these vampires take energy from others to power magical operations or their own psychic abilities.

It is good to know that most of the psychic vampires that I've come across that are aware of what they are doing know how to control themselves.  Rather than taking from a single individual they choose to feed from crowds or from the energy given off by large groups of people in clubs or at concerts in order to mitigate the effects.  Their goal, typically, is to be as non-intrusive as possible when it comes to satisfying their need.  The vampires with the legitimate need are usually the nicest and most courteous about this process that many in the occult world see as nasty and invasive.  To the vampires it is unfortunate but necessary.  As usually seems to be the case, the selfish and the greedy give a bad name to those that don't necessarily deserve it.

In a future post I hope to give some tips and techniques that may help in identifying and stopping a psychic vampire.

Parapsychology going mainstream?

Can science prove we're psychic?

I haven't found time to read the paper that this article is about, but I hope to soon enough.  Judging from the article though, I'd say that this is going to encounter the same stumbling blocks that most parapsychology studies finding positive results encounter.

It seems that already people are trying to shrug the study off because it doesn't provide a working theory.  I'm not a science historian, but it seems to me that most often we discover the phenomenon first and then work out the theory afterward.  Expecting a theory before an objective phenomenon is taken seriously seems like a very backwards way of doing things to me.

Then we have the problem of replicability.  Not everyone agrees on what counts as replicability in the first place, but for now let's focus on the people that have attempted a replication and got negative results.  Going solely by the article, it doesn't seem that they really attempted a replication as they didn't follow the exact procedure of the original experiment.  How can this be called a failure to replicate when they weren't even copying the original experiment?

Lastly, I suspect that as soon as conventional explanations for the positive results run dry then the cries of fraud will go up.  Never mind that an accusation of fraud requires evidence to prove it; it was surely a trick all along!  Some people just don't want ESP or psychic abilities to be demonstrated as a reality.  It would topple their worldview.

I have a hard time understanding the ferocious opposition to the idea of ESP and psychic abilities in the age of quantum strangeness.  There are plenty of things that we can't explain; why ignore ESP when there is evidence that it is a real phenomenon?  This is by no means the first study to show results in favor of ESP, though it could turn out to be one of the best known.  It could even be the study that makes people stand up and take notice, if it's replicated.  Call me a pessimist, but I don't think it will be that simple or easy to get this taken seriously.

Scientific Evidence for ESP

Not many people know that subjects like ESP and PK are accumulating scientific evidence in favor of their existence.  The best evidence of psychokinesis is manipulation of random event generators (such as occurred at Princeton's now defunct PEAR lab).  The best evidence for ESP seems to be in the ganzfeld and auto-ganfeld experiments, but there have been many more experimental setups for ESP.

It seems that no matter what the psychic ability being tested is, the effect size is usually very small.  Yet, the effect size appears to remain consistent across studies.  Meta-analysis has been put to great use in parapsychology because of the ability to compare and examine data from multiple studies.  It also allows for small effects to become apparent by putting all of the data into one study.

I could go on and on about parapsychology and the evidence of psychic abilities but I mainly wanted to write this post in order to share with you one of the best papers on the subject I've read.  It's by Jessica Utts who is a professor of statistics at UC Davis.  It's kind of long and gets a little technical, but if you're as interested in the evidence as I am then you may find it worth your time.

Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology

If you believe in telekinesis raise my hand.

Telekinesis (or psychokinesis, as I prefer to call it) is, in my opinion, the holy grail of psychic ability.  There has been a lot more scientific research into extra-sensory perception (ESP) than there has been into psychokinesis (PK).  Most "How To" books on psychic abilities don't even provide a definition of psychokinesis, let alone instructions on how to make progress toward acquiring the ability.  There has been recent work in studying micro-PK, or psychokinesis acting on microscopic (even quantum) systems such as random number generators.  While interesting, these test results are not particularly convincing.  Certainly they are not as convincing as the feats of Russian psychic Nina Kulagina (shown in the video above).  The story of Nina Kulagina is a very interesting one and PK was not her only feat.  It was the one she is most famous for, however.

Accusations of trickery aside, I find cases like Kulagina's to be very convincing and not just because objects are moving.  Physical tests were allegedly done on Kulagina throughout her stint of performing PK and they revealed some very interesting things were occurring with her body.  These things included, but were not limited to, exhaustion, shallow pulse, weight loss during her PK sessions, irregular heart beat, high blood sugar, and a disturbed endocrine system.  It's believed by some that the strain of performing PK so often contributed to her death.  At this point I would like to note that Nina Kulagina is not the only well-known telekinetic.  I mention her here because of her popularity which is perhaps rivaled by only Uri Geller (who's surrounding controversy is an entirely different subject).

Personally, out of all psychic phenomena, I find PK to be the most interesting and ostensibly the easiest to verify.  It seems to me that it should be a lot easier to determine if someone is moving something with their mind or using tricks than if they are reading someone's mind or just making some lucky guesses.  I also find it interesting because it's just damn cool.  To me it seems like telepathy or precognition are relatively benign when compared to the ability to move things around with your mind, even if they are just matchsticks and compasses.

There are many theories about how PK might be possible or how a person may perform it but as you might expect there is no published experimental evidence to support these theories.  None that I'm aware of, anyway.  Any correlations between physical phenomena and psychic activity seem to apply to ESP alone, probably because that seems to be the area of psi research that has the most data.  The only relevant correlation that I'm aware of is produced by Wilkinson and Gauld in their observation that there is a small tendency for the days of onset of poltergeist and haunting cases to coincide with days of higher-than-usual geomagnetic activity.  While incredibly interesting, it is not very enlightening as to what allows for psychokinesis to take place.

So this is the challenge with psychokinesis.  There is no accepted theory and no experimental evidence to back up any one theory.  Most, if not all, demonstrations of psychokinesis are either proven to be frauds or are accused of being frauds because of the distaste for psi in the first place.  Combine this with the lack of funding available for parapsychology research and we have a very complex (and difficult) puzzle.

I happen to believe that many cases of "poltergeist" activity actually emanate from a living human being.  The contemporary term for "poltergeist" activity is "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" or RSPK.  I think this reflects the change in thinking toward poltergeist activity.  Many cases of alleged poltergeists seem to surround particular people and abate when the psychological issues of these people are resolved or the individuals reach the end of puberty.

Personally, I'm a believer in PK.  I've had enough personal experiences to be convinced of the reality of PK.  This doesn't mean that I'm any closer to solving the riddle of how it works or how to perform it though.  If you are interested in more information about Nina Kulagina or about learning psychic abilities then please see the links below.  Take care until next time, and if you happen to discover the secret to mastering telekinesis do be sure to share it with me in a comment.

More on Nina Kulagina.
A website with many articles related to learning psychic abilities.