Horse whisperers - do you believe?

[Irish gal]

There's overwhelming evidence that it's real, but like any walk of life, there will always be charlatans trying to cash in, the trick is to avoid them. And whatever about Derren Brown, if psychics are just reading people I wonder why they are routinely used by the police around the world. Locally to me we had one solve a missing persons case.

A youngster who owed drug money went missing, his family was distraught. After a year a psychic said he was in a lake in Clare connected to Bridget. He was later found in Lough Bridget. Here's an excerpt from the paper about it:

"A British psychic, Denis McKenzie, travelled to Limerick three weeks ago having offered to help in the search.

Mary Kelly (mother) said at the time he became very agitated when he travelled to east Clare carrying personal belongings of her missing son. She said Mr McKenzie told the family his body had been deposited in a lake in Co Clare. Mr McKenzie had turned up some astonishing information following the disappearance in Soham in Britain of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

The teenager’s uncle, Turlough McNamara, said “at least now his mother Mary can face Christmas knowing that she can give her beloved son Richard a Christian burial and be able to grieve and visit his grave”.

What I find astounding is that people don't believe in it despite all the evidence, like the case above, to the contrary. And talking to horses is only another side of the same gift. Apparently we all have these latent abilities, they are just highly developed in some of us. Imagine if we actively tried to develop these abilities, we could be living in quite a different world.

 

[RaposadeGengibre]

We had a mare in the uni who hated everyone especially wearing just a tiny bit of white (cant blame her as students have been poking her all over). As the year ended, she had to be moved to the country for the summer. Nobody could approach her safely in the stable by then without cornering her with a fork and that day even that hadnt worked. Somehow proff. assistant, an amazing, kind woman to us, students, she walked that mare out of the stable, through the building (where she was poked and prodded), wearing big white shawl (she was called out of her flat) and said mare followed her like a puppy in only head collar!

I have noticed that when I am upset - not "oops, I broke my beloved cup" but level of unexpected death in the family, the animals, even not very familiar or seriously unhandled, behave differently. And in the same time mind somehow clocking "oh... there is something disturbing that horse there..." The horse, who before wouldnt let me touch her belly before, allows me remove a huge tick between her quite inflamed teats while standing free in the field...

IMHO of course, I would say that small amount of people with certain level of sensitivity (well above average) can get "readings" off an animal, health issues, behavioral problems etc. (not sure about flower remedies though) as feelings but mainly its a load of mooo pooo.

 

[catembi]

Haven't read all the replies as I'm meant to be working on my doctorate instead of messing about on here (!), but I've had some truly incredible experiences using an AC. I started doing some work ghost writing her biography, including several chapters on the late Catembi & my current horses. If anyone is interested, PM me & I'll send you what I've done.

It won't be straight away tho as I'm going to log out of this site for a bit & do what I ought to be doing...honest...!

T x

 

[ponies4ever]

A friend on the yard had one out a couple days ago for her horse and I was very surprised as she said that she knew the horse had a second rider (me) and that they were lopsided to the right (normal rider is lopsided to the left) and that he really enjoys jumping despite the fact she hadn't been told he had been jumped as he is mainly dressage! I was very intruiged to say the least...

 

[ycbm]

There's overwhelming evidence that it's real,

There isn't one shred of repeatable, scientifically explored evidence, sorry.

These kind of abilities have been extensively researched under scientific conditions and they cannot by found.

Coincidences happen which people take as proof, forgetting the thousands other times there was no coincidence.

 

[TelH]

There isn't one shred of repeatable, scientifically explored evidence, sorry.

These kind of abilities have been extensively researched under scientific conditions and they cannot by found.

Coincidences happen which people take as proof, forgetting the thousands other times there was no coincidence.

This ^^^

The mind is an incredibly powerful thing, your own mind can sometimes convince you that all kinds of nonsensical things are true. The whole psychic thing is actually rather disturbing because of the way people can and do use it to exploit others, often when they are at their most vulnerable.

 

[doodle]

I have had experience with 2. First one came to see my horse, said aome stuff she couldn't know, described his best friend with no way of seeing him. Described some not true stuff but I was convinced there was something real.
Second time was a clutching at straws thing with my horse who would not accept backing. It was a distance thing. She knew we were having issues backing. Said nothing remotely correct. Said ahe saw him standing proudly with a rider on back and a fluttering rosette. Horse was eventually pts and never did accept a rider on his back.

 

[jojo5]

Is Peanut still around on here? Have pm'ed you if so.

 

[fburton]

There's overwhelming evidence that it's real, but like any walk of life, there will always be charlatans trying to cash in, the trick is to avoid them. And whatever about Derren Brown, if psychics are just reading people I wonder why they are routinely used by the police around the world. Locally to me we had one solve a missing persons case.

A youngster who owed drug money went missing, his family was distraught. After a year a psychic said he was in a lake in Clare connected to Bridget. He was later found in Lough Bridget. Here's an excerpt from the paper about it:

"A British psychic, Denis McKenzie, travelled to Limerick three weeks ago having offered to help in the search.

Mary Kelly (mother) said at the time he became very agitated when he travelled to east Clare carrying personal belongings of her missing son. She said Mr McKenzie told the family his body had been deposited in a lake in Co Clare. Mr McKenzie had turned up some astonishing information following the disappearance in Soham in Britain of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

The teenager’s uncle, Turlough McNamara, said “at least now his mother Mary can face Christmas knowing that she can give her beloved son Richard a Christian burial and be able to grieve and visit his grave”.

What I find astounding is that people don't believe in it despite all the evidence, like the case above, to the contrary. And talking to horses is only another side of the same gift. Apparently we all have these latent abilities, they are just highly developed in some of us. Imagine if we actively tried to develop these abilities, we could be living in quite a different world.

I tried to find more information about this case. Google gave me this:

http://www.tonyyouens.com/Commentary120306.htm (scroll down to 22nd April 2006 More Detective Work?)

The author states: "The police, quite rightly, have not acted on this and are relying on more fact based detective work e.g. asking a number of local men to voluntarily submit to DNA testing."

So I am left wondering exactly to what extent Denis McKenzie materially helped the investigation.

Do you have any more info?

 

[Irish gal]

There isn't one shred of repeatable, scientifically explored evidence, sorry.

These kind of abilities have been extensively researched under scientific conditions and they cannot by found.

Coincidences happen which people take as proof, forgetting the thousands other times there was no coincidence.

I'm afraid that is just not correct. There is now a body of work, undertaken by very eminent scientists, which demonstrates the reality of psychic phenomena.

The late Dr Ian Stevenson, Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, spent 30 years investigating the stories of children who spontaneously recalled past lives. By cross checking their stories against the hospital records and autopsy reports of the people they claimed to be in a past life, he was able to verify their stories - in thousands of cases.

Perhaps his most striking research regards children with birthmarks that correlated exactly with wounds or scars on the bodies of the deceased people they had claimed to be. His work contains photos of his subjects birthmarks against photos of identical marks on the deceased and makes for very striking reading.

For an overview of his work see The Journal Of Scientific Exploration here:
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/267/2015/11/REI36Tucker-1.pdf

Ranked in the top 150 universities in the world, the University of Virginia, recently opened a Paranormal Activity Lab, to research all sorts of psychic phenomena - inspired by the pioneering work of Stevenson.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...ity-lab-at-the-university-of-virginia/283584/

And here's the research of Princeton academics Dr Robert G Jahn and Dr Brenda J Dunne who spent over a decade recording the effects of thought on the running of machines. They have demonstrated that people can interfere with a machine simply by focusing on it, through the use of extra sensory perception.
https://www.princeton.edu/~pear/pdfs/1995-consciousness-anomalous-physical-phenomena.pdf

Those are just a few examples of scientifically verifiable evidence for psychic phenomena, but there many more for anyone curious enough to look into it.

 

[Irish gal]

I tried to find more information about this case. Google gave me this:

http://www.tonyyouens.com/Commentary120306.htm (scroll down to 22nd April 2006 More Detective Work?)

The author states: "The police, quite rightly, have not acted on this and are relying on more fact based detective work e.g. asking a number of local men to voluntarily submit to DNA testing."

So I am left wondering exactly to what extent Denis McKenzie materially helped the investigation.

Do you have any more info?

No problem, I was on the iPad yesterday and still haven't figured out how to copy links so used a segment from the story instead.

I'll give you a bit of the background of this as I know it well, knowing and having spoken to this poor youngster's mother. An important thing to bear in mind is that in missing persons' cases searches can only continue for a set length of time. It costs a fortune to have a continued Garda search, so naturally that cannot go on indefinitely. What I'm saying is that when the British psychic came here, travelled the locality and got 'information' about Happy Kelly's whereabouts, the family then had to pressurise the police to search those areas and that didn't happen over night, with the result that it was actually a fisherman who found the body, although the information given by McKenzie was correct.

It is not documented in these pieces the information that he gave about a name, as the reports are principally about the body's discovery so that would be extraneous info. His mother told me that McKenzie said the place they would find Happy was called Bridie, Breedge or something like that and it turned out to be Lough Bridget - the names he mentioned are variations on Bridget.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irelan...tified-as-missing-teen-happy-kelly-49911.html

http://www.irishexaminer.com/irelan...nk&utm_medium=click&utm_campaign=nextandprev#!

 

[ycbm]

I'm afraid that is just not correct. There is now a body of work, undertaken by very eminent scientists, which demonstrates the reality of psychic phenomena.

Where?

Point me to the peer reviewed research published in mainstream scientific media, please, I'd be very interested to read it.

Your last pointer, to a Princeton article, starts

'a wave mechanical approach to modeling consciousness/environment interactions, based on a metaphorical application of quantum concepts and formalisms has proven useful in predicting the empirical findings'

It makes no more sense as it goes on either, just using increasingly dense amounts of scientific gobbledygook to hide the fact that it's presenting miniscule measurements as proof of humans being able to affect machines which they are nowhere near.

Isn't it interesting, too that people who report previous lives never seem to report a totally boring one or one which can't be verified at all?

None of the three things you pointed to provide any scientifically verifiable evidence for psychic phenomena, Irish Gal. Until there is some, I will remain a fascinated sceptic.


PS have you read the book or seen the film 'Men who stare at goats', about the US army paranormal unit?

 

[paddy555]

What I find astounding is that people don't believe in it despite all the evidence, like the case above, to the contrary. And talking to horses is only another side of the same gift. Apparently we all have these latent abilities, they are just highly developed in some of us. Imagine if we actively tried to develop these abilities, we could be living in quite a different world.

dowsing is a very good example of this.

 

[Zero00000]

Who cares if there is scientific evidence or not, if there is someone standing in front of you, telling you things about yourself that are true and they had no way of knowing, What scientific evidence do you need?

I've listened to quite a few readings, including horses and humans,
Some people have a real gift, and others not so.
It's a comfort to some and others think it's nonsense, as with most things in life.

Let people enjoy it and turn a blind eye if you don't 😊

 

[ycbm]

dowsing is a very good example of this.

I don't think it's paranormal though. I can dowse water, so can my neice. I think what happens in dowsing is that some people can sense where water lies underground (and given that we came from water and are mostly water and are totally dependant on water this is perhaps not surprising) and we subconsciously subtly move the dowsing rod(s). I think it's a case of a very fine tuning of a biological necessity. It's a world away from believing you can talk over the phone for a horse you've never met, or even one you have met.

 

[Blurr]

PS have you read the book or seen the film 'Men who stare at goats', about the US army paranormal unit?

Haha! That movie was in my mind as well as I was reading this thread. Perhaps we have a psychic link? Couldn't be coincidence, I'm sure.

 

[ycbm]

Haha! That movie was in my mind as well as I was reading this thread. Perhaps we have a psychic link? Couldn't be coincidence, I'm sure.

Definite psychic link

The book is even more bizarre, and it's all fact, where the film is slightly made up at the end, but great fun !

 

[fburton]

I don't think it's paranormal though. I can dowse water, so can my neice. I think what happens in dowsing is that some people can sense where water lies underground (and given that we came from water and are mostly water and are totally dependant on water this is perhaps not surprising) and we subconsciously subtly move the dowsing rod(s). I think it's a case of a very fine tuning of a biological necessity. It's a world away from believing you can talk over the phone for a horse you've never met, or even one you have met.

There's a segment about dowsing (film clip) in the Royal Institution talk I linked to previously.

 

[fburton]

Who cares if there is scientific evidence or not, if there is someone standing in front of you, telling you things about yourself that are true and they had no way of knowing, What scientific evidence do you need?

It is possible for someone to tell you things that are true and which they had no way of knowing. What would be really impressive and convincing is if they could do it without also saying things which weren't true!

 

[Ddraig_wen]

I'm on the fence with this. A friend who has a tendency to know things he shouldn't managed to completely describe my landlord's long deceased stallion. I was riding their stallion and I had taken the double bits off of J's old show bridle to use on the friends horse. Sat in his kitchen later that night he suddenly asks me if I've bought a black horse. No I replied. Really? I can see a black up at your place, he's slightly lame in front and has a small white sock at the back. He's getting on a bit.. I still told him nope not mine and asked my landlord the next day if anyone had been there with that description of horse. He got a photo out of his old dales pony. I didn't even know what colour he was myself or that he's been unlevel in front at one point so I know he didn't get the info from me.
Another time sat at same friend's table he stops mid bite of a sandwich to tell me my colts have gotten out of the stables and into the tack room. A couple of hours later while I was still I got a phonecall and they were both in the tackroom somehow.
Weird one this year was waking up in the middle of the night absolutely convinced that the mare was going to have a palomino colt with 4 whites and knowing what his name would be. (This was me not the friend) Mare foaled while I was at work and I got a call, she's had a pally filly they said. So i asked them to check again. Nope she'd had a colt. Probably just a coincidence but there was only a 1/6 chance that she would have a pally with the genetic combination from her and the stallion.

 

[Irish gal]

Where?

Point me to the peer reviewed research published in mainstream scientific media, please, I'd be very interested to read it.

Your last pointer, to a Princeton article, starts

'a wave mechanical approach to modeling consciousness/environment interactions, based on a metaphorical application of quantum concepts and formalisms has proven useful in predicting the empirical findings'

It makes no more sense as it goes on either, just using increasingly dense amounts of scientific gobbledygook to hide the fact that it's presenting miniscule measurements as proof of humans being able to affect machines which they are nowhere near.

Isn't it interesting, too that people who report previous lives never seem to report a totally boring one or one which can't be verified at all?

None of the three things you pointed to provide any scientifically verifiable evidence for psychic phenomena, Irish Gal. Until there is some, I will remain a fascinated sceptic.


PS have you read the book or seen the film 'Men who stare at goats', about the US army paranormal unit?

The first article I included on Ian Stevenson's work is from a peer reviewed journal Ybcm, it's from the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

And for something a little more well known how about The Lancet.

For those who are capable of assimilating new information and whose minds are not closed, Ian Stevenson's research on reincarnation was featured in the journal in a piece entitled The Past Lives of Twins in 1999.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)74353-1/fulltext

In 1975, The Journal of the American Medical Association, wrote of Dr Stevenson: “In regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds. … He has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored.”

And people do report boring lives, that's something you'll discover if you bother to read the research.

I'm delighted for you to remain a fascinated sceptic - what you chose to believe or not believe is your own business. I am posting here for the benefit of those whose mind's are open, curious and interested in new perspectives on the world around them.

And for those people here's some of Stevenson's most startling research on birthmarks in children corresponding to wounds on the deceased they claimed to be. It contains photos comparing the two.
http://www.near-death.com/reincarnation/research/ian-stevenson.html#a03

Its funny really how someone can demand all sorts of scientific evidence and when then presented with a scientific paper from Princeton, dismiss it as 'scientific gobbledygook'.

 

[paddy555]

I don't think it's paranormal though. I can dowse water, so can my neice. I think what happens in dowsing is that some people can sense where water lies underground (and given that we came from water and are mostly water and are totally dependant on water this is perhaps not surprising) and we subconsciously subtly move the dowsing rod(s). I think it's a case of a very fine tuning of a biological necessity. It's a world away from believing you can talk over the phone for a horse you've never met, or even one you have met.

but one is not always dowsing for water. You could be dowsing to follow a water pipe which is a man made thing or to follow drains etc.
Those pipes and drains are not biological necessities. There is some ability in the dowser to find these, some communication, some fine tuning in their ability.

If people have the ability to find man made drains underground I don't see it is beyond belief that some can communicate with the horses they are with. Water dowsing is very finely tuned, the more you do the more it leaps out at you. If you have the ability to communicate with animals and do it all the time I cannot see any difference.

I am not disputing there are many charlatans who have latched onto the bandwagon, but there are some genuine ones. Julie Dicker used to tell me she would walk across a yard of horses (whether she was working or not) and the horses would be calling out to her (silently) I did actually believe her as I had seen too many things she had done that were accurate but didn't really have an explanation.
\Whisperers (or whatever we want to call them) also have the ability to pick up pain by their own feel rather than watching the horse's reaction. That is not difficult, think if you are massaging a horse and come to a painful area. The pain goes straight up your arm and you have to shake it away. That all adds to the picture they build up. Julie used to dowse horses as well to locate pain.

I think most people with their own horses who know them well and are tuned in sense in someway. When I go out of the kitchen door into the yard in a morning most days I feel nothing and all is well. Then one day I get a feeling of dread as I go out. I haven't heard anything or seen anything but I know a horse is in trouble and for some reason I have a good idea of which horse. (out of a dozen or so)
When my donkey died I knew the minute I opened the house door he was dead. He was not old, he was fine the night before and 2 fields away so I couldn't see him. There was no reason for him to die (possible heart attack) but I sensed it immediately I was outside.

I do remember one horses whisperer however who insisted the top door was closed before he started work. Unfortunately he was not a very bright whisperer as he was in the foaling box with CCTV and a captive audience inside eagerly watching every move. Charlatan certainly did apply to him!

 

[ycbm]

The first article I included on Ian Stevenson's work is from a peer reviewed journal Ybcm, it's from the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

And for something a little more well known how about The Lancet.

For those who are capable of assimilating new information and whose minds are not closed, Ian Stevenson's research on reincarnation was featured in the journal in a piece entitled The Past Lives of Twins in 1999.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)74353-1/fulltext

In 1975, The Journal of the American Medical Association, wrote of Dr Stevenson: “In regard to reincarnation he has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds. … He has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored.”

And people do report boring lives, that's something you'll discover if you bother to read the research.

I'm delighted for you to remain a fascinated sceptic - what you chose to believe or not believe is your own business. I am posting here for the benefit of those whose mind's are open, curious and interested in new perspectives on the world around them.

And for those people here's some of Stevenson's most startling research on birthmarks in children corresponding to wounds on the deceased they claimed to be. It contains photos comparing the two.
http://www.near-death.com/reincarnation/research/ian-stevenson.html#a03

Its funny really how someone can demand all sorts of scientific evidence and when then presented with a scientific paper from Princeton, dismiss it as 'scientific gobbledygook'.

Here's my problem Irish Gal. I looked up your reference about children with past lives and birth defects being injuries to the person they were in a past life. The article states

unilateral brachydactyly (shortening of the fingers on one hand only) is extremely rare

It took me ten seconds on Google to find pictures of unilateral brachydactyly, and a minute more to find the quote from a medical book.

Brachydactyly may affect one or several fingers on one hand or both hands.

On that basis, I can't take a word that article says seriously, and I find similar things in every reference that you give.

And as someone said.

It's good to have an open mind. But not so open that your brains drop out.

 

[ycbm]

Going back to the Princeton document that you have derided me for criticising, Wikipedia has the following statement about the PEAR unit at Princeton that did that research. The unit, unsurprisingly, was shut down.

The program had a strained relationship with Princeton and was considered an embarrassment to the university.[2][6][7][8] PEAR's activities have been criticized for lack of scientific rigor, poor methodology, and misuse of statistics,[9][10][11] and have been characterized as pseudoscience.[1]

I think maybe you need to do a little more background research on your references.

 

[ycbm]

Irish Gal I was stung by your repeated accusation that I am closed minded, and I have now finished my research into your references.

The article on non-identical but monozygotic (same DNA) twins was published in 1975. The things that it was unable to explain have since been fully explained by epigenetic ressearch. The clearest example is the caterpillar and the butterfly it turns into - they have the same DNA but are totally different. That's epigenetics in action.

Regarding the peer reviewed journal you quote, Rationalwiki describes it as follows:

'JSE has much less to do with science than it does with whatever pet crank theories its editors are out to promote. It's chock-full of all kinds of woo, including (but not limited to) alternative medicine, astrology, remote viewing, AIDS denial, quantum woo, UFOs, and much, much more!

The spiritualist crank Stephen E. Braude is the Editor-in-Chief for the journal. '

I'm not bothered by people believing what they want to believe and whatever helps them. But I am bothered by claims that there is scientific proof when there is none. Believe me, nobody would be more thrilled than me to see psychic phenomena proved, but as things stand, they have not been.

 

[YorksG]

ycbm, I fail to see how the experiences I have described with "seeing" the locations of peoples trauma, could possibly be tested in double blind tests in lab conditioons, however the experiences were very real for me and the survivors of the trauma.

 

[ycbm]

ycbm, I fail to see how the experiences I have described with "seeing" the locations of peoples trauma, could possibly be tested in double blind tests in lab conditioons, however the experiences were very real for me and the survivors of the trauma.

I didn't use the term double blind and I didn't claim anything could be proved scientifically. What I said was that Irish Gal is claiming that it has been proved scientifically when it hasn't.

There are a lot of things in the world that happen that we can't (yet) explain.

I'll go and look up your comment (sorry, I can't remember it right now) and see if I think there would be any way of testing your situation.

 

[ycbm]

I once had a distance reading done, it was indeed acurate, just not for the current Appy, but the one before The reader had no advantage to make and was training. I do believe that some people can tune in with some animals and/or people. I worked for many years with trauma survivors and have had an experience I have disclosed on here before, of "seeing" locations before they have been told or described to me, for example the back of a wagon, an old fashioned bathroom and I have acurately described a persons mothers kitchen work surfaces, without ever having been there or met the mother. So yes I do believe that some people can communicate with horses.

This one? I would get you to describe several hundred people's mother's work surfaces, and then work out statistically whether you were right more often than chance.

The setting of locations, I suspect, is that you always imagine scenarios (I know I do) but only the ones which are right are sticking in your memory. Again, to test it I'd ask you to describe the location of several hundred trauma events (might take a while!) and see if your response was greater than chance.

The problem is YorksG, that nothing you've done can't be done deliberately and falsely by a good stage illusionist, and they can explain exactly how. You're doing it intuitively, which probably makes you very in tune with people, and a nice person, but it doesn't make you psychic.

 

[YorksG]

This one? I would get you to describe several hundred people's mother's work surfaces, and then work out statistically whether you were right more often than chance.

The setting of locations, I suspect, is that you always imagine scenarios (I know I do) but only the ones which are right are sticking in your memory. Again, to test it I'd ask you to describe the location of several hundred trauma events (might take a while!) and see if your response was greater than chance.

The problem is YorksG, that nothing you've done can't be done deliberately and falsely by a good stage illusionist, and they can explain exactly how. You're doing it intuitively, which probably makes you very in tune with people, and a nice person, but it doesn't make you psychic.

At no point did I claim to be psychic, you have (wilfully?) missed the point. The point is communication by trauma survivors, prior to them telling me the location of the trauma. I suggest that you read about the right brain to right brain communication between mothers and infants, there is quite a quantity in work around the subject by attachment theory workers.

 

[Irish gal]

But Ybcm you haven't looked into the subjects I am raising, with all due respect. Those references are only a starting point. Dr Ian Stevenson, was a highly eminent researcher and psychiatrist, who's work is well respected. And if the piece in The Lancet has been disproved now, as you say, that doesn't take away from the main body of his work. That was only a very small part of his research, the bit on twins.

I find your posts frustrating to deal with at times as they cherry pick what I say and then discount what you cannot quibble with. For instance you just ignored all the praise for his work in the Journal of the American Medical Association - a highly respected publication, having first asked to know where it had appeared in respected journals.

He was the head of the department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, amongst other top positions that he held. This is not some crackpot individual who's work can be just dismissed. And thanks to his research that university - in the top 150 in the world - has recently launched a paranormal research lab. I gave a reference to that previously but it was also ignored.

Dr Stevenson's work is important as he was so highly respected and eminent, that it could not be discounted. So it was simply ignored by the mainstream, as has been well documented, if you wish to look. Wiki may contain references to the Journal for Scientific Exploration being pseudoscientific, but that is not how it is seen by many pioneering scientists.

There is a bigger issue going on between us here and it is the exact same issue that is also to be seen in the scientific community. Paranormal research of any kind is highly controversial as it challenges the entire mindset of science. Now quantum physics is bridging that gap, for instance with work showing that atoms are influenced depending on whether they are observed or not.

I understand that there is a massive gulf between us as I, through experience like Yorks G, have had psychic experiences so I know this stuff is real. I am posting here in the hope of hearing from others with similar experiences and broadening my knowledge.

For me what is currently happening in terms of paranormal research is exactly what previously took place when the dogma of religion was first challenged by science. For instance the persecution of Darwin for his beliefs. Only today science is the new dogma and anything that cannot be proven - cut and dried and weighed and measured - is discounted.

But that leaves spiritual and psychic experiences out in the cold. However, there are scientists who are proving the existence of these things, Ian Stevenson amongst them.

If you are genuinely interested in this area then there is a great book available in PDF on the web charting the discoveries of quantum physics and valid scientific studies into psychic phenomena. It is The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, and it is well worth a look.