Super-Psi & some notes from Braude's Immortal Remains

The strongest argument against all of these non-survival explanations for apparitions of the dead—including the super-psi hypothesis—is the existence of apparitions where the person doing the appearing retained a first-person memory of doing so.

One other interesting aspect of this case is that, when Mandy was six, she asked her mother, “Do you remember the night I died? There was a bright star shining in the sky.” When her mother thought back, she realized that she had in fact noticed a star out over the garden, unusually bright and low, and had mentioned it to someone else at the time. Mandy continued, “That was my star. It was my way of telling you that I would be back.”

Ian Stevenson investigated a case in which a Burmese woman, Daw Kyin Htein, experienced an apparition of a family friend a few months after his death in a plane crash. The apparition happened one night as she was returning from a trip to the outhouse. When she saw her deceased friend, she invited him to reincarnate into her family. Then she went to sleep and had a dream of him as well, one in which his mother and sister (both still living) asked him to go with them but he declined. The mother of the deceased also apparently had a dream—it’s not clear if it was on the same night—in which her son said he was going to live with U Ba Hein, Daw Kyin Htein’s husband.

Soon after this, Daw Kyin Htein conceived a son, Maung Yin Maung, who had memories of being her deceased friend. Furthermore, at the age of 12, he reported to Stevenson that he remembered being near Daw Kyin Htein’s home after his death. He saw someone he thought was her coming out of an outhouse. He remembered “showing himself” to this person as an apparition, and he remembered her inviting him to become her child. He also remembered communicating with his former personality’s mother and sister. They asked him to be reborn with them, but he said he was going to be reborn into Daw Kyin Htein’s family instead.

-- Rawlette, Sharon. Beyond Death: The Best Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness

We had touched on intermission memories, but I don't think we zeroed-in on the cases where a child recalls not only their past life but appearing either as an apparition or in a dream to the living and having this confirmed.

I do think that technically the Super-Psi advocate could claim the past-life memories are psychically implanted, the apparition is made out of ectoplasm manifested via PK, and then a false memory of being the apparition is implanted into the child's mind.

And of course all this planning is supposedly done through the subconscious, which can perform these kind of X-men like (if not godlike) abilities unavailable to the conscious mind...but I think with every other criticism in this thread about the Super Psi Hypothesis this seems quite implausible, especially considering the evolutionary explanation* would stretch plausibility in itself.

*I'm referring to the argument made in prior posts that if Super Psi is true - and thus there is no afterlife - the default explanation is that somehow Psi arises via evolution but is not available to prevent death. [Instead it] can only fool us into thinking there's an afterlife. Chris Carter is the first person I recall to make this criticism of Super Psi though I wouldn't be surprised to find someone making the same argument earlier.

Couple more interesting points from Rawlette's book:

The deceased will sometimes correct a false belief held by the sitter. In a case reported by Gary Schwartz, medium Laurie Campbell correctly spelled the name of a relative of the sitter, but the sitter thought it was an error until he looked into it.

So here if the medium was using telepathy one would expect them to use the same erroneous spelling that the sitter expected.

This has some parallels with the discussion on the conversations with the dead Maroczy.

Another case she mentions is drawn from The debatable land between this world and the next,by Robert Dale Owen.

A woman - whom he refers to as Miss V - stays the night in her aunt's house, specifically in a particular room with a reputation for being haunted. Miss V, having locked the door for the night, is approached by an apparition that tries to talk to her, but the ghost vanishes quickly without being able to articulate anything.

Miss V later ends up at a seance where a "Sarah Clarke" comes through telling Miss V that she used to be the aunt's housekeeper and was wracked with guilt over stealing a few items over the years including a silver sugar bowl.

Miss V later confirms with her aunt that the housekeeper was named Sarah Clarke, and that a sugar bowl had gone missing. However the aunt considers the matter more than past, and says of course Sarah is forgiven.

From then on the apparition never appeared to anyone again.

Now, accepting this case as we have for all others in this thread, it is difficult to see how Super Psi makes the apparition appear [for] some time and then ends it just when the forgiveness for theft is vocalized. One could spin a story about such a chain of coincidences, or deny the case altogether, but if the facts are as stated it would seem Super Psi takes yet another hit.