Theresa Cheung - The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World - The Ultimate A–Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal

In 1929 the Smiths moved out and the Reverend Lionel Algeron Foyster and his wife, Marianne, moved in. The poltergeistactivity increased, and Price returned to continue his investigations. He found the phenomena to be much more violent than before, terrifying Marianne and their three-year-old daughter in particular. In 1935 the Foysters moved out, and in 1937 Price leased the property himself for a year. During his stay he witnessed many paranormal incidents and compiled a book of procedures using camera equipment and other methods of documenting spirit activity. He enrolled 40 assistants to help him.

Many of his assistants were mediums, and they produced some fabulous theories, suggesting that the monk and nun were strangled and buried in the garden and that they longed for mass and a proper burial. Other assistants began the project with great enthusiasm but dropped out after getting no results.

Price left the rectory in 1938, convinced that paranormal activity was taking place and that there was a medieval monastery on the site, even though it had already been proved that the only building ever to have existed on that site was a twelfth-century church, not a monastery. His book publishing his findings was well received for its meticulous psychical research but also criticized for being sensational. After Price’s death in 1948 his allegations were reexamined by psychical researchers Trevor Hall, Kathleen Goldney and Eric Dingwell. Charles Sutton, a Daily Mail reporter, suspected Price of faking phenomena. During a visit to the rectory with Price he had been hit on the head by a pebble - and subsequently found Price’s pockets to be full of pebbles.

Perhaps the most damming condemnation, however, came from a previous inhabitant of the rectory, Mrs Smith, who in 1949 signed a statement saying that nothing unusual had happened in the house until Price arrived. The Smiths suspected him of being the perpetrator.

Hall, Dingwell and Goldney, in their book The Haunting of Borley Rectory, concluded that nothing out of the ordinary had happened there during Price’s stay and that everything could be explained rationally. They accused Price of concocting hocus-pocus to serve his own need for publicity. They suggested that Borley Rectory lent itself well to the influence of suggestion, since ‘In every ordinary house sounds are heard and trivial incidents occur which are unexplained or treated as of no importance. But once the suggestion of the abnormal is put forward - and tentatively accepted - then these incidents become imbued with sinister significance: in fact they become part of the haunt.’

Borley Rectory is an old, gloomy-looking building, and a psychological explanation is plausible. However, it may not explain everything, and the possibility that something paranormal did occur or that certain individuals who lived there, including Price himself, were sympathetic and sensitive enough to become a focus of psychic attackcannot be dismissed totally.

A psychical research organization that was well regarded in its day, publishing a series of books and pamphlets between 1925 and 1941.

The society was created as a result of internal strife within the American Society for Psychical Research. When spiritualistFrederick Edwards became president in 1923 and introduced more popularist policies, Walter Franklin Prince, the ASPR’s well-respected research officer, left to start a rival society in Boston with an academic focus. The Boston Society was officially set up in 1925 ‘in order to conduct psychic research according to strictly scientific principles.’

Prince was the backbone of the society, and it faded away after his death in 1934. During its brief existence the society did not actively seek members and always favoured quality over quantity in research and publication. Among its most important bulletins was a report in the 1920s on ESPexperiments conducted at Harvard University, and a paper entitled ‘Toward a Method of Evaluating Mediumistic Material’, published in 1936. The society also published a number of groundbreaking books on mediumship, including Beyond Normal Cognition by John Thomas (1937). The Boston Society also published J B Rhine’s work Extra Sensory Perception (1934), which described laboratory experiments carried out at Duke University.

An ancient practice that can be traced all the way back to the Druidic tree worship, botanomancy is a method of divinationby burning branches of trees, typically vervain and briar, upon which questions have been carved. The fire and smoke indicate the course of future action to be pursued.

Although it’s possible that psychicpower is a bridge that connects your brain to a higher mind or spiritual force, some experts believe that psychic ability should be treated as another aspect of brain function. They regard psias an additional sense that is somehow located in our brains, and believe that understanding psi can help explain how we perceive and process information.

One of the most amazing discoveries in medicine was made by Roger Sperry in the 1960s, when he revealed that the right hemisphere of the brain, responsible for intuitionand creativity, makes an equally valuable contribution as the left hemisphere of the brain, responsible for reason and logic and previously thought to reign supreme. Opinions differ on what part of the brain psi function exists in, but many believe that the ability to connect to intuitive information is housed in the right side of the brain and that for optimal brain function both the right and left sides of the brain need to work together.

Some scientists suggest as well that brain waves need to work together. Brain waves are electrical impulses our brains constantly release, and they are measured in hertz, or cycles per second. There are four major stages of brain-wave activity, beginning with beta, the shortest and fastest waves, and moving through to delta, the strongest and slowest.

When the brain is emitting beta waves, the individual is active, awake and conscious, with his or her eyes open. Alpha brain waves operate just below waking consciousness, a state that is attained in meditationand relaxation. The average person can maintain awareness in this state. Typically, eyes are closed and the body is relaxed, but alpha waves are also produced during daydreaming with eyes open. The alpha state is not essential to achieve success in psi testing results, but studies show that it is conducive to psi. Theta brain waves are achieved during deep relaxation. The average person cannot maintain awareness in this state, but some meditators claim that they can. The final state, delta, is one of sleep or unconsciousness.

Some scientists maintain that the blending of all four brain waves creates a brand-new brain wave. Some followers of Eastern philosophy propose that the awakened mind, which occurs when a person is more aware of their spiritual existence, is a state that combines all four brain waves at once.

The first and last thing you do in life is to breathe. Breathing is the essence of life. And so it is not surprising that breathing and breath are often identified with the soul. In Roman times a close relative would inhale the last breath of someone who was dying, because it was thought that the soul had to enter into another body or it would be lost. In Hinduism the breath or life energy is seen as the force that controls the mind; healthy breathing is healthy thinking and healthy being, which is why yogaalways teaches breathing exercises.