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The Telepathy Tapes: Overturning the materialist paradigm, or the re-emergence of an old controversy?

In the final few months of 2024, I kept seeing mention on social media of a podcast titled The Telepathy Tapes, and I wasn’t the only one – as word of mouth about the ten-episode series grew, it soared to the top of the podcast charts, displacing even Joe Rogan from #1. Once I learned that the series had to do with actual scientific investigation of telepathy, and featured interviews with the likes of Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin (whose research we have featured many times here on the Grail), I had to check it out.

The Telepathy Tapes is the creation of journalist Ky Dickens, and takes listeners with her on her own journey of discovery as she investigates claims that many non-verbal autistic children (also known as ‘non-speakers’) can read the minds of their family/carers. It begins with the work of psychiatrist Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, who has been investigating the topic for more than a decade (we covered Diane Hennacy Powell’s research here at the Grail way back in 2014, as well as posting about a crowd-funding effort for her work).

Dickens states that her own journey into this topic began four years ago, when she heard Diane Hennacy Powell on a podcast discussing her research. Hennacy Powell’s experiments involve showing the carer or family member of the non-verbal autistic person (usually a child) a randomly selected number, symbol or image, and then asking them to read that person’s mind and indicate or spell the number/symbol/image using their primary communication method: a spelling board of letters/numbers that they point at.

When Powell told the interviewer that the ‘hit rate’ in her telepathy experiments was not just statistically significant, but was in fact above 95%, Dickens was shocked. “I’m a science nerd, and that part of my brain just could not compute what I was hearing,” she recalls. “However I’m also a documentary film maker, and that part of me was totally fascinated, so I had to call her up.” Dickens says that on that call she was impressed by Hennacy Powell and the earnestness of the families involved, and “understood for the first time, that – if what the families were saying was true – there was a possibility that this research could completely shift our paradigm: how humanity sees itself and consciousness, and I knew I had to document all this research immediately.”

Before we continue, here’s the trailer to give a feel for the series:

The First Test: Mia

Dickens begins this research with Mia, a non-verbal girl from Mexico, at first via a recorded Zoom call, and then – after being suitably impressed by that initial test – flying Mia and her family up to America to test her in a controlled environment. Dickens establishes the podcast’s skeptical credentials immediately. She rents a house that neither the family nor Diane Hennacy Powell have been in before…

…to set up tests ourselves…at this point I trust Diane deeply, and I trust she really is concerned with upholding the scientific method, but I just want to be in charge of buying all the cues, all the props, the blindfold, booking all the crew…just so that it was bulletproof. I understand the high degree of skepticism that of course will surround this, and all the tests and all this information, and I needed to make sure that I handled one test without Diane or the family bringing or providing anything.

She runs through all the items she bought to ensure the tests were airtight, and how she has removed furniture and covered up reflective surfaces like TVs and mirrors. She also notes that she intentionally brought in a cinematographer friend who is a “huge skeptic…he doesn’t really believe in anything out of the norm.” She sets up multiple video angles, provides the iPad that is used, uses a partition to shield information and supplies the blindfold that Mia will wear. “I’m putting all this in here just to make sure people understand that the crew and myself went through great pains to make sure that there could be no cheating,” Dickens tells listeners.

Dickens and Hennacy Powell then test Mia to see if she can read her mother’s mind: her mother is shown a random 3-digit number between 100 and 999, and then the blindfold and partition isolating her are removed, and she types the number on her spelling board. She does this accurately, over and over again, astonishing everyone observing. As Dickens remarks, “We continue to do well over 20 tests with Mia and her mother, and she was correct. Every. Single. Time.” They then follow up with tests that have Mia sorting coloured popsicle sticks into their relevant piles while wearing a blindfold.

Dickens notes at this point that Michael, her skeptical cinematographer friend, looks shocked. She talks to him, and he explains his astonishment: “I’m looking at everything…I’m watching everything, and for me – my perspective – it’s real.” Mia then does even more – she is able to correctly tell them the page number of a book they are looking at, or even a word they are pointing on the page, while not being able to see it herself.

Because it’s an audio podcast, this all sounds amazing, and extremely convincing – any other possibilities for information transfer seem to have been ruled out with the controlled setting. But video of the experiment suggests this is unfortunately not the case, as I’ll discuss soon.

There is perhaps one telling moment at the end of Episode 1 though:

We decided to start pushing the envelope, and we tried to see if Mia could do telepathy tests with her father. We tried random number generators, random picture generators…and she could absolutely not tell us what her dad was looking at.

Then, weirdly…Dickens just moves on with no further discussion: she doesn’t ponder the reason for this complete failure, or question the entire experimental set-up. There is no more mention of this at all. Again, I’ll explain a possible reason for this failure soon.

Diving Down the Rabbit Hole

As the series then unfurls after episode 1, we meet a series of non-speaking individuals who appear to be telepathic. In episode 2 we meet Akhil, a college student with non-verbal autism; in episode 3 we are introduced to Houston, another nonverbal individual with apparent psychic skills; and in episode 4 it is John Paul, who is friends with Houston. Episode 5 then gives a voice to teachers/carers who have noticed and reported telepathy in the autistic children in their care, along with a discussion of possible two-way telepathy, while in episode 6 we hear from well-known scientists that have been investigating psi for years, such as Rupert Sheldrake, Dean Radin, and Marjorie Woolacott, about the research, evidence and theories behind it.

Episode 7 then builds on the information from these scientists in exploring theories beyond materialism, and how these children might offer a window into a world of not just telepathy, but far more. During the series, right from the first episode, Dickens has hinted that mind-reading is just the tip of the iceberg – that non-speakers are not just telepathic, but have a wide range of psychic skills, and from this point that narrative is expanded upon more and more. For instance, as the series progresses we learn that many of these children apparently have a ‘gathering place’ where they go within their own minds to meet each other, which a number of them call ‘The Hill’.

So much so that by episode 9 we find ourselves way down the rabbit hole (as an indicator, its title is “Telepathy Across Dimensions, Death, and Beyond”). If you’ve binged the series, as I did, it feels a bit like you’re speed-running New Age belief. The skeptical cinematographer discussed earlier at one point asks Dickens if he now has to believe in God after what he has seen. In episode 1 we’re all being meticulously skeptical, and then just a few short hours later we’re casually discussing prophetic messages, spiritual gathering points and contact from the afterlife. You wonder how you ended up there, virtually convinced of these things all of a sudden.

One of the reasons is the topic: it’s both fascinating, as well as highly emotive (and in one particular instance, tragic). Another of the reasons is that the series is well-made: Dickens’ first-person narration is compelling (though I certainly also noticed that she would often ’emotionally load’ her descriptors of the participants to help sway you emotionally), and she keeps you interested in continuing by regularly teasing new, fantastic findings or ideas that will be discussed later in the episode or series.

And it’s interesting, as the series goes on, to notice the way that Dickens slowly begins rolling out defense systems for her research and conclusions. She begins each episode with these words: “For decades a very specific group of people have been claiming telepathy is happening in their homes and in their classrooms – and nobody has believed them, nobody has listened to them. But on this podcast, we do.” At the end of episode 1 she closes by saying “without knowing it, I was walking straight into a decades-long battle over truth and perception, ableism and greed, skepticism and gatekeeping. And in the centre of it all, are parents, who are working so hard, every day, invisible, against all odds, and they know exactly what is happening under their own roofs.”

This theme echoes throughout the series, with an intimation of “how dare anyone question that these children are not only communicating, but are telepathic.” If you’re a skeptic, or doubting the communication (even though she herself is skeptical in episode 1), then you’re being ableist, or worse, depriving these children of their voice – and the parents of their children – just after they have finally started communicating with the world. But there is a reason that we should all be skeptical – for both the sake of scientific evidence, and the children.

Understanding ‘Facilitated Communication’ and the Ideomotor Effect

In listening to the series, I think it is really important to have an understanding of both what is known as the ideomotor effect, as well as the controversy over ‘facilitated communication’. While Dickens does cover this controversy during the series in episode 8, she perhaps does so a little one-sidedly and does not give enough context (and at times, enough information about how her own subjects are communicating, as we’ll see) for listeners without an understanding of it to really grasp the issues that need to be addressed in researching these claims of telepathy.

And it must be said, this is a very sensitive, difficult and emotive topic: at stake is whether communication that is claimed to be coming from non-verbal children is genuine. In short, to dispute it is to take that communicating child away from their parents, who believe they have finally discovered a way to know their non-verbal child’s inner thoughts. Everyone discussing and debating this topic needs to keep that in mind as they do so.

But to properly discuss the topic people do need to understand some of the science. Firstly, the ideomotor effect: we now know that people can make small muscle movements unconsciously in reaction to information and stimuli. In response to seeing a source of pain, we might tense up or move slightly away; in response to a question, our muscles might betray hints to the answer. For example, stage magicians and mentalists take advantage of the ideomotor effect in using a technique known as ‘muscle reading’: some have a stock trick of getting an audience member to hide something in the performance hall, which they then go about locating simply by holding the wrist of the person who hid the item, in order to detect their unconscious muscle movements that betray the correct location. Some magicians have even been successful in city-wide versions of this find-and-seek game. I intentionally mention these examples because it’s important to understand that communication that at first glance seems magical and totally unexplainable to most of us can sometimes be explained through the ideomotor effect.

The ideomotor effect is also suggested as the most likely source of information that ‘comes through’ when using an ouija board: the person using the ouija planchette may not be consciously aware of spelling out certain words, but their subconscious, along with muscle movements beneath the level of their awareness, may be doing so.

It is only a short step then from the ouija board to what is known as ‘facilitated communication’ (but the stakes go from ‘parlour trick’, to having very serious ramifications). In facilitated communication, a carer or family member gives supportive touch to the non-verbal person (often by holding the arm or wrist) as they point at or tap letters and numbers on a board or computer device.

This technique became popular during the 1990s, until a controversy erupted and a scientist stepped in to try and find what the truth behind it was. As explained in this article (well worth reading in full for more detailed information on facilitated communication and The Telepathy Tapes):

One of the American facilitators who used the practice in decades past was Janyce Boynton, who was trained to use it in 1992. I interviewed her over email for my piece on spelling that I did back in October, but the best recollection of her experience comes from a journal article that she published in 2012.

In that article, she documented her facilitating with a student named Betsy Wheaton, whose story was later captured in the Frontline documentary Prisoners of Silence. “I passionately believed that, as a facilitator, I could help one of my students break free from her autistic, nonverbal existence,” she explained in the article.

She began to notice that Wheaton was acting out more than normal and even getting violent. She was horrified when Wheaton confirmed her fears by typing out accusations towards her family. She said they were sexually abusing her. The accusations also horrified the local community. Wheaton was taken away from her family by the local authorities.

But her family was puzzled by the accusations that she had typed out. They hired a specialist named Dr. Howard Shane of Boston Children’s Hospital to try to debunk the messages Betsy had been writing. He devised what’s called a “double-blind” exam to test the authenticity of the messages.

Wheaton and her facilitator would be shown a series of objects. When they were shown different objects, we could see if Betsy, with the aid of her facilitator, would type out the picture she saw or the one her facilitator saw.

When Boynton participated in the test, she realized she couldn’t get the answers right when she didn’t see the object that the evaluator showed only to Wheaton. Her faith in the entire process was shattered.

Boynton, for her part (as she explained herself in her journal article), initially rejected the evidence, and tried to explain away the negative results, before finally coming to accept that she was in fact the source of the information that she thought was coming from Wheaton, and becoming a staunch critic of facilitated communication:

I felt such devastation, panic, pain, loneliness—a myriad of emotions difficult to put into words. The whole [Facilitated Communication] thing unraveled for me that day, and I did not have an explanation for any of it. Almost immediately, I started rationalizing away the truth. Though it was not true, I went away from the testing telling myself that the situation had been hostile, the evaluator had been hostile, everyone had turned against me. Incredibly, I even tried facilitating with the child in the week or two after the testing, resulting in more outrageous and false allegations. The parents, understandably, asked that I no longer work with the child. I felt tremendous loss.

Shane’s test was then used in dozens of studies, in which facilitators and clients failed to produce accurate information.

With that in mind, let’s return to The Telepathy Tapes.

The Tale of the (Video) Tapes

Firstly, I want to be clear: I am not saying that facilitated communication is clearly the explanation for everything in The Telepathy Tapes – as I’ll note below, there are instances where I have concerns about this, and also other instances where I still am intrigued. Also: even if the explanation for at least some of these results is through the touch of parents, I am not accusing them of fraud – it would likely be unconscious influence via the ideomotor effect. What I am saying, is that the tests that have currently been performed – at least those I have seen – are not enough to overturn science.

Also, I want to say that Dickens is absolutely right to say that we should be careful of ableism, and in rushing to dismiss this all as impossible or easily explainable, there is a real chance that we could be silencing real voices. Autism, disability, and communication issues exist on a spectrum, and it could be that some participants’ abilities might be explained by facilitated communication while others could be actual communication (and even actual psychic ability). There are cases where children who used facilitation communication have gone on to type independently, and prove that it was indeed them communicating. But equally – as the facilitated communication controversy should teach us – we should be motivated to do proper, rigorous scientific testing of these claims, not least to be careful of mispresentation of what these individuals’ inner thoughts really are. They are vulnerable to people on both sides of the argument in different ways.

But in listening to the audio series, I did begin to have some concerns about the communication. For example, at one point, in episode 5, a carer starts suggesting ‘two-way telepathy’ was occurring, and describes it this way: “He was typing, and I started hearing what he was typing before he would type it…he was typing it, and I was hearing it before I saw it on the screen…’I’m getting a thought, you’re typing the thought, but the thought’s not mine, so how is this happening?'” If the communication was facilitated, then that would actually provide a very good explanation for ‘how it is happening’.

So I felt I needed to view the video of the tests, rather than just trust the audio. Some of the research videos are available on the official Telepathy Tapes website, but sit behind a $10 ‘lifetime membership’ paywall. The reason given for this is that the…

…tests involved minors. Controlling access ensures that their images and stories aren’t freely disseminated across the internet, protecting their privacy and dignity. A membership system allows us to maintain a record of who is viewing the tests, providing an additional layer of security.

Given that most of their faces are visible in the publicly available trailer that I embedded in the introduction, and their stories are comprehensively told in the podcast series, this seemed a bit of an odd explanation – but I was still happy to pay the relatively low $10 membership fee to view the test videos, in order to support the research being done.

The website also notes, regarding the tests: “These early tests validated the need for deeper exploration and provided the inspiration to take this project to the next level. One of the primary goals of the feature documentary is to film rigorous telepathy tests featuring independent-typers.” It’s a shame the podcast dives further into belief than this, and doesn’t instead say “more rigorous testing is needed”, because after viewing the videos, I feel the statement on the website is a better summation of where people should be at, at this stage.

Below are some thoughts on what I saw (with images where I felt appropriate – I have cropped them to not include faces, to honour the privacy note on the paywall):

Mia

The first and most important note to make about Mia’s videos are that Mia’s mother is always touching Mia as she is providing answers or doing tasks – but for some reason, this is not explicitly mentioned in the podcast. Sometimes she puts her forefinger on Mia’s forehead, sometimes her whole hand is across and gripping her forehead, and at other times she holds Mia’s jaw. But listening to the podcast, it’s easy to assume that Mia is just wandering over, independently picking up the spelling board and miraculously typing the answer. For instance, the very first test is described in this way:

Mia, who’s far away on the other side of the room – but we can see her – is clearly not seeing the number that is sent. And now Mia is walking from the far corner of the room, where we’ve had eyes on her, to her mother, so she can begin to type what number was just sent. Mia has a huge smile on her face, it looks like she’s loving this moment, and she types in the correct number.

In the popsicle stick test, her mother has her hand across her eyes/forehead area the entire time, so it is difficult to know whether she is manipulating Mia toward the right pile through pressure, or whether her hand is just following where Mia’s head goes (your particular belief/skepticism would likely provide a subjective answer to you). Regardless, it makes this test worthless scientifically – mentalists have used a lot less touch to achieve much more impressive results (again – perhaps Mia is showing real psychic ability in this test, but we can’t use the test as evidence with this amount of touch taking place).

Telepathy Tapes ‘popsicle test’ with Mia

In the book test where she spells out ‘Pirata’: again, Mia’s mother is touching Mia’s face during the test, with her thumb on her jaw near the ear, and fingers beneath her chin. Her thumb and fingers can be seen to flex as Mia’s pointing finger moves to the correct letters spelling out the word, so there is a very real concern here again that she is facilitating the communication in some way.

Telepathy Tapes – Mia’s mother holding her jaw

(After watching the videos, it’s even more egregious that in the audio podcast we hear Powell, during the Zoom session, at one point remark in astonishment: “I noticed it looks like she’s not even looking at the board, is that true, that she often times is just pointing like this without even looking? I wonder how she does that?” Once we know that the mother is touching her, then this ‘amazing’ note becomes a lot more explainable.)

Given that Mia also failed in episode 1 when it was her father that had the information, I think there’s real grounds for skepticism in her case. It should be noted, however, that there is one video on the website in which both the mother and Mia are blindfolded, which she appears to get correct. This type of test is far more evidential, and ideally all the tests would have been conducted in this way (perhaps future tests will be).

Houston

In the ‘Uno 1’ video, while Houston does move and point independently, with no guiding touch from family or carer, it is also noticeable that the facilitator is holding the board he is pointing at, and at least sometimes is moving it in such a way that it is placed so the required number or symbol is in a central position to being chosen (again, not necessarily fraudulently, likely subconsciously) – see images below of where the board sits height-wise respectively for 9 (bottom row), 2 (middle row), and ‘+’ (top row), using his chin or shirt neck-line as a reference point for each. This does not necessarily negate the possibility that Houston is choosing the number himself, but it does throw some serious doubt over it.

Telepathy Tapes – Houston Uno card test

In a separate video, we again see where the board is placed in different horizontal spaces that center the numbers 4 and 1 (note: the cameraman does move to the right between these picks, making it more difficult to align things – the best indicator is probably to see where the hand holding the board moves to in comparison to Houston’s right shoulder).

Telepathy Tapes – Houston Uno test

Hailey

In the test of Hailey by Christina from the 2014 research of Diane Hennacy Powell, Christina is seen holding the board, and as with Houston we can see the board is moved by them to put the correct letter towards the centre of focus (see images below, using the top right corner of the paper on the table as a reference point both horizontally and vertically). Also, sometimes there seems to be what could be a ‘prompting’ movement, ie. if the pointer is in the wrong spot there’s a quick movement of the board that could possibly help prompt the location of the correct letter.

To be fair though, there appears to be some clearer independent movement toward the letter ‘I’, with the board not moving horizontally (although it does appear to move closer or lower). However, there’s also the issue of – depending on the level of the child – whether helping find the first two letters (e.g. “SW”) then prompts the likely full word to them (“SWIM”) and they can find the final letters themselves. This problem would be exacerbated if they have used the same deck of words/images repeatedly (e.g. a deck used for learning words, with each card being specific to a letter), where for example being ‘helped’ to the first letter ‘Y’ leads them immediately to know the full word ‘Yellow’ as that is the only word in the deck for ‘Y’.

My point here with these explanations is not to say “it was definitely done like this”, but rather to point out that this cannot qualify as a rigorous scientific tests when there are multiple openings for more mundane explanations. This testing could be more secure by having the board stationary, or the holder being completely blind to the position of the board/pointer, as well as using a random word generator rather than a pack of cards.

Telepathy Tapes – 2014 test with Hailey

Akhil

The videos of Akhil on the website are, in my opinion, the most impressive, as he types the letters out by himself without anyone touching either him or the device, and even vocalises letters to some extent at one point rather than typing when asked to freeform his thoughts. Certainly, his videos are the ones that most intrigued me. I did sometimes wonder about reflections, from both a laptop screen and cameras surrounding him, but that definitely could not be the explanation in every experiment shown.

What concerned me most about Akhil’s experiments (there are quite a few on the website) is that his mother sways in different directions as he types, as well as moving her hands around and into a number of different positions, providing the chance to guide and signal Akhil to hit the correct letter (not necessarily consciously). As Akhil spells ‘crocodile’ her hand flips back and forth repeatedly, corresponding to the position of those letters on the keyboard (it is quite an obvious word for this, if you look at your keyboard), as well sometimes opening her hand and then pulling it closed again.

Telepathy Tapes – Akhil spelling ‘crocodile’

In another test, her movements are even more extravagant as he types.

Telepathy Tapes – Akhil’s mother’s movements

On the flipside, I think it would certainly be difficult to type words like ‘crocodile’ on a keyboard purely from observing or subliminally ‘feeling’ body movements in Akhil’s case, as his typing method would make it difficult to be precise with that signalling – even with other cues helping (such as, for example, if there were exhalations of breath when above the right letter). But having the mother move in this way beside him is certainly grounds for skepticism about the results, and needs a more rigorous test.

The good news is that as Akhil appears to be independent with his typing, it offers an opportunity to test with his mother properly isolated.

Summing Up

Overall, The Telepathy Tapes is a compelling podcast experience. It hits all the right notes to introduce someone to the topic, and then as it unfolds I’m sure it will convince many people that this phenomenon is real. It presents jaw-dropping experimental results despite what appear to be strict controls, and then goes on to explore how these results could over-turn the current materialist ‘paradigm’. In support, it discusses the lack of recognition of other accumulated evidence for psi phenomena, and has experts like Dean Radin talking about how perhaps consciousness is the foundation of all reality, instead of just an epiphenomenon of biology.

The trouble with it is that (a) I think the podcast’s presentation of the experimental set-up oversells how strict the controls really were, and thus the results are not as impressive as they seem, and (b) a lot of Ky Dickens’ narrative is quite one-sided, and biased towards facilitated communication methods as truly providing a window into the minds of these children. As mentioned, this is an emotive subject, with vulnerable individuals who have had it extremly tough in life (both non-speakers and their parents), and you can’t help but root for them, and I’m sure this was the case with Dickens as well.

At one point in episode 1, she states “I just couldn’t believe that parents of non-speaking kids who don’t know each other, from all over the world, are in on a mass conspiracy theory to trick the world into believing in telepathy – that’s just impossible.” But it doesn’t need to be a mass conspiracy: if the basis for all or most of this is actually facilitated communication that is coming subliminally from the facilitator, then a natural consequence will be a lot of parents and carers being surprised that their non-speaker seems to know their inner, private thoughts – because the communication is coming from their own minds. In the end, your own biases or desires will likely decide how you interpret this anomaly.

But you feel bad to be skeptical, because you really want this to be true – not just that something magical like psi is taking place, but most of all that these people who have been trapped in their bodies are now truly communicating freely – because disproving it could destroy families’ hopes. And as mentioned earlier, Dickens uses that cudgel as a bit of a defense system throughout the series, letting you know how awful it is that people have doubted these communicators. Certainly, we need to be careful of being ableist, of writing off possible abilities purely because of the non-verbal state of these individuals – I for one would love nothing more than (a) these children to truly have found a way to communicate their thoughts, and (b) that psi can be proven through this, that would be two massive wins! But for this phenonemon to truly be taken seriously, the experiments have to be much better than they are in this podcast.

On this point, even Diane Hennacy Powell recognizes that more stringent tests are needed, writing recently that “the conditions [of the tests in The Telepathy Tapes] were clearly not optimal for proving telepathy and we cannot definitively say that there was no cueing without more tests and a detailed analysis”.

As I’ve hopefully pointed out clearly, there is the very real possibility in these cases, or at least the ones I’ve viewed video of, that the ‘mind-reading’ is simply the facilitator/carer/family member cueing and guiding the non-speaker to the required letters, numbers and symbols. That’s not to say that I wasn’t at many points impressed by the results – there are numerous ‘wow’ moments, even when you’re being fully skeptical – and so I am fully supportive and encouraging of more tests being done with non-verbal subjects. However, future experiments must isolate or blind the facilitator (as Dr Shane did in the facilitated communication controversy), to remove the chance that they are influencing or guiding the non-speaker. And beyond just the ideomotor effect, while I’m reticent to suggest any deliberate fraud in any of these cases, in terms of making it truly rigorous the experiments really need to be set up to rule this out as well.

Happily, there appear to be avenues for doing so. While there are always going to be difficulties in rigorous testing of non-speakers with autism, such as those involved with isolating their carer, a few of the preliminary tests suggest ways forward. Akhil certainly seems like a subject that could be tested with some isolation, and one of Mia’s tests appeared to have been double-blind, with her mother blindfolded at the same time as she was.

I look forward to seeing where things go from here – but also urge that people keep the welfare of the non-verbal children at the centre of this entire topic, and their families, as the most important priority. Because if it turns out that it is not psi that is happening, but rather the information is coming from the facilitator, then there is a very good chance that nearly all of the other ‘everyday’ information that they have communicated via this method did not come from them, and are not indicative of their own thoughts, desires or needs.

Editor
  1. Greg:

    You write: “The ideomotor effect is also suggested as the most likely source of information that ‘comes through’ when using an ouija board: the person using the ouija planchette may not be consciously aware of spelling out certain words, but their subconscious, along with muscle movements beneath the level of their awareness, may be doing so.

    It is only a short step then from the ouija board to what is known as ‘facilitated communication’ (but the stakes go from ‘parlour trick’, to having very serious ramifications).”

    Have you ever witnessed anyone quite adept at using a ouija board?

    The first time I encountered such a person (persons, actually, a mother and her daughter), who preferred to use a silver dollar instead of a planchette on an antique wooden board; the mother would whisper what she “got” as the silver dollar swished around the board, swiftly) a being claiming to be my “oversoul” was contacted, and he immediately provided “inside information” unknown to the operators or the only other person in the room — information known only to me — in a humorous way to validate himself.

    This was interesting enough, but what really got my attention was the fact that when he began to address me (through the whispering of the mother at the board), I felt a sensation that was like a magnetic hemisphere, several feet in diameter, erupting from the top of my head. This lasted three days and was accompanied with precognitive dreams (validated by posting to a mailing list I belonged to at the time, during the early days of the Internet). I later learned that such an experience is called a “crown chakra expansion.” (At the time, I hadn’t known what a chakra was.)

    A series of adventures resulted from this and related experiences.

    As far as I’m concerned — it makes no difference if the “ideomotor” effect is behind such ouija board activity or not. (An oversoul resides within our allegedly unconscious mind — there’s no reason for such a being not to take advantage of such an “effect.”)

    It’s also true that I’ve known three different people who experimented with ouija boards then began to “hear” words before they were spelled out and dispensed with the boards. By voicing what they “heard,” they became what some people call “voice channelers.”

    In fact, this is how Jane Roberts began to channel Seth — she started with a ouija board, assisted by her husband. After initially getting gibberish, then persisting and getting words and phrases (this was part of research for a book she’d planned to write), she began to “hear” the answers to questions she and her husband had expressed, and dispensed with the board.

    (“Channeling” has been around for a very long time — probably thousands of years. Prior to its use, a term used in the 19th Century was “light trance mediumship.” I’ve spent a fair amount of time with mediums and those skilled at some form of trance communication, especially “autotyping” — typing in trance using a computer keyboard instead of a pencil and pad of paper as used in the older “autowriting” — over the years, but aside from every-so-often unusual experiences, I don’t claim to be much of a medium or trance communicator.)

    There are some who, having seen the movie _The Exorcist_ believe that using a ouija board will inevitably invite a demon to take over anyone so foolish to engage in such activities. Others, like you (and like me, until the above experience) who consider use of a board as a “parlor trick” or game. (Yet surely you are well aware of the use of such boards during the heyday of Spiritualism, which always included a mixture of the genuine and the fraudulent.)

    I have yet to listen to the podcasts or watch the videos you’ve reviewed, but when it comes to the experimentation in the areas I mentioned, I had no interest whatsoever in proving anything to some imaginary audience — I experienced what I experienced. (I wasn’t selling anything to anyone, either.)

    Yet in the podcasts/videos, claims are made, so it’s important to make efforts to reduce possible causes (Jane Roberts was very concerned with her Seth experience, initially, and requested assistance from a psychologist, who rigorously tested her. I’m also familiar with strenuous efforts made by William James and others to rule out fraud when investigating mediums, having quite enjoyed science writer Deborah Blum’s book on the topic.)

    Lastly, different people are different, so I can’t say that what I’ve experienced must apply to everyone — but I’ve personally experienced some form of telepathy so many times on so many occasions over so many years that I wonder why it isn’t generally accepted, period.

    Part of the problem was undoubtedly expressed by Seth in _Seth Speaks_:

    “Most of my readers are familiar with the term, ‘muscle bound.’ As a race you have grown ‘ego bound’ instead, held in a spiritual rigidity, with the intuitive portions of the self either denied or distorted beyond any recognition.”

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