Psience News - 29 March-4 April 2020
This is a listing of news items about parapsychology, psi, the paranormal and related subjects, posted to the Psience Quest Forums. We hope that news about parapsychology is adequately covered here, but news about other topics will represent only a selection.
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Upcoming events are also listed in the Calendar section.
For news during other periods, see the Psience News Index.
Extended consciousness phenomena
Books and book reviews
- A video review by Andreas Sommer of The Myth of Disenchantment by Jason A. Josephson-Storm has appeared on the Forbidden Histories YouTube channel (Discuss)
Periodicals, published papers and preprints
- Volume 23 number 1 - the Spring 2020 edition - of the Skeptical Intelligencer has been circulated and can temporarily be downloaded here (Discuss)
- Dr. Jack Hunter has put out a call for papers for a Special Issue of Time and Mind: Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture edited by himself and Dr. Tina Paphitis. Papers for the special issue should "explore the impact and use of folklore in landscape interactions, and how these engagements help, hinder or have the potential to contribute to broader debates and policies surrounding environmental sustainability and social activism in the past and present" (Discuss)
Psi Encyclopedia
New entries in the Society for Psychical Research's Psi Encyclopedia
Articles and blog posts
- An article by Mitch Horowitz Reclaiming the Damned has appeared on Medium (Discuss)
- Another two entries have appeared in the series about historical claims of sightings of faeries and similar beings at The Big Study:
- An article A 19th Century Monster That Is Still With Us has appeared on Mysterious Universe, speculating that a Ranton Abbey tulpa is the same as the “Man-Monkey” creature haunting a nearby Shropshire Union Canal bridge (Discuss)
- The Preserving the Historical Collections of Parapsychology (PHCP) site has a new page for the SPR (Discuss)
- The story of Marjorie Johnson (1911-2011) as told by Simon Young in the newsletter of The Fairy Investigation Society (no. 7, 2018) has been published (with permission) by Neil Rushton on the deadbutdreaming blog under the title ‘Marjorie Johnson, Shaman of Suburbia’ by Simon Young (Discuss)
- A post How Much Of The Enfield Case Was Faked? by Jason Engwer has appeared on Triablogue (Discuss)
- Tom Ruffles has published a post The American Society for Psychical Research: Action Required which calls for new signatories to the stalled-at-the-halfway-point petition to have the New York Charities Bureau save the ASPR from being run into the ground by its Board, Executive Director, and President (Discuss)
- An article by Roger Nelson entitled "Global Consciousness and the Coronavirus Crisis" has appeared on the IONS blog (Discuss)
- A couple of articles by Dr. Jack Hunter expanding on themes in his book Greening the Paranormal have been published in a couple of locations:
- A post How Much Of The Enfield Case Was Faked? by Jason Engwer has appeared at Triablogue (Discuss)
- A new online Zener card testing platform has been announced by Sarah Chumacero of Living Life in Full Spectrum (Discuss)
Videos
- A video presentation by George Meek from 1984 entitled "Hearing the Inaudible and Seeing the Invisible" has been published on YouTube by the Metascience Foundation channel (Discuss)
Interviews
- New interviews by Jeffrey Mishlove on New Thinking Allowed:
- With Lyn Buchanan: "An Open-Ended Conversation with Lyn Buchanan" (Discuss)
- With Jason Reza Jorjani:
- With Thomas Brophy: "Integral Education with Thomas Brophy" (Discuss)
- With Norman Shealy: "Energy Medicine with Norman Shealy"(Discuss)
- With Peter B. Todd: "Holism and Unity as an Imperative for Survival with Peter B. Todd" (Discuss)
- With James Tunney: "The Mystical Path with James Tunney" (Discuss)
- An interview with John Fraser has been published on the Occam's Razor podcast (Discuss)
- An interview with Andy Chaplin entitled "How I became a Psychic Medium: Andy Chaplin Interview" has been published by Spooky Isles to their YouTube channel (Discuss)
- Spooky Isles have also published to their YouTube channel a couple of cryptozoological interviews from 2014:
Cryptozoology and ufology
Articles and blog posts
- An article ‘The research is really only just starting,’ UAlbany prof says of UFOs has appeared in The Altamont Enterprise (Discuss)
- A post Megaplatanos: The Greek Roswell has appeared on the Ghost Theory blog (Discuss)
- A post TTTSA - the 31 March 2020 report to the SEC has been published by Keith Basterfield to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - scientific research blog. The main document in the To The Stars Academy SEC filing can be found here (Discuss)
- An article 30 years later, we still don't know what really happened during the Belgian UFO wave by Jeva Lange has appeared at The Week (Discuss)
- An article NARA Tentatively Confirms 200-Page FBI File on NICAP Organizer by Jack Brewer has appeared on The UFO Trail blog (Discuss)
- A post Fortean Feature: The 'Big Grey Man' on Ben MacDhui has appeared on the Phantoms and Monsters blog (Discuss)
- A post When Bigfoot Gets Artistic – Or Doesn’t by Nick Redfern has appeared on Mysterious Universe (Discuss)
- An article Bigfoot / Cryptids: The Flesh & Blood vs. Supernatural Paradox has been published to the Phantoms and Monsters blog (Discuss)
Shows, documentaries, and movies
- The documentary series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch debuted on 31 March 2020 (Discuss)
- Jason Colavito's scathing review of episode one of this series was published to his blog (Discuss)
- The History Channel livestreamed from the ranch for twelve hours on 30 March, and the stream is available for replay on YouTube (Discuss)
- A video of the first ever interview of the ranch's new owner, Brandon Fugal, was made available on YouTube on 15 March (Discuss)
- Robert Sheaffer's (equally scathing) review of the first episode, Microwaves, Dead Cows and Light Pillars - "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch.", has appeared on the Bad UFOs blog.
Interviews
- An interview with David J. Halperin entitled "How to See a UFO with David J. Halperin" has been published by IndyWeek (Discuss)
Spirituality
Videos
- A video of a 1998 talk "The Healing Pump" by Chip Brown has been published by the YouTube channel of the Parapsychology Foundation (Discuss)
Upcoming events
From this and previous pages of Psience News. For further details, see the Calendar section.
- 15 January - 31 March 2020: Online
- Nancy Zingrone's and Carlos Alvarado's free course, "Parapsychology Research & Education: Psychology and Parapsychology" (ParaMOOC2020) (Discuss; Calendar Entry)
- 6 April - 19 June 2020: Online
- An eleven-week course entitled "Introduction to Parapsychology" organised by the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at Edinburgh University (Discuss; Calendar Entry)
- 25 April 2020: Online (NEW)
- A webinar entitled "Psi in the Natural World" presented by Dr. Cal Cooper and organised by the Forever Family Foundation (Discuss; Calendar Entry)
- 10 - 12 July 2020: Chester, Connecticut, USA (NEW)
- The "Love Knows No Death Summer Grief Transformation Retreat 2020" organised by the Forever Family Foundation (Discuss; Calendar Entry)
- 28 October - 2 November 2020: Rice University, Houston, Texas
- A conference entitled "Opening The Archives Of The Impossible", to mark the launch of a research facility including the archives of Jacques Vallee, Whitley Strieber, Ed May, Richard Haines and Larry Bryant (Discuss; Calendar Entry)