Extraordinary Evidence | ESP Is Real

Episode 3: Mushroom X

The Age of Aquarius intermingles uneasily with the Parapsychology Revolution. The two cultural currents, like many in the Western world, both interweave and repel. 

This symbiosis and friction appears within the relationship of J.B. Rhine and the young scientist who seems his natural protégé: Charles Honorton. But J.B. and the researcher clash, resulting in Honorton departing the Rhine lab to pioneer an extraordinary series of trials testing for telepathy. They are called the ganzfeld experiments.  

Honorton’s findings prove so remarkable that, for a time, he even bridges the seeker-skeptic divide. The new comity is short-lived. Struggling with lifelong health issues, Honorton dies at 46, leaving the parapsychology field rudderless and easy prey for media skeptics.

In other facets of psi research, dreams, psychedelia, magick mushrooms, and the Grateful Dead come together. 

This signal has been transmitted by SpectreVision Radio

Written and Narrated by Mitch Horowitz

Produced by Jim Perry and Jon McEdward

Original Music & Sound Design by Dean Hurley

Cover Artwork by Jake in Colour

Selected References

Extrasensory Perception, Vols. 1 & 2, edited by Edwin C. May and Sonali Bhatt Marwaha (Praeger, 2015)

The Enchanted Voyager: The Life of J.B. Rhine by Denis Brian (Prentice-Hall, 1982)

Daydream Believer: Exploring the Ultimate Power of Your Mind by Mitch Horowitz (G&D Media, 2022)

“Federal Grant Supports ESP Dream Research at Maimonides” by Gordon T. Thompson, New York Times, November 25, 1973

“What Is the Link Between Hallucinations, Dreams, and Hypnagogic-Hypnopompic Experiences?” by Flavie Waters, et al., Schizophrenia Bulletin, 2016 Sept, 42(5)

“Neuro-hypnotism: prospects for hypnosis and neuroscience” by John F. Kihlstrom, Cortex, vol. 49, 2, 2013

“Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer” by Daryl J. Bem and Charles Honorton, Psychological Bulletin, 1994, Vol. 115, №.1 

“Chapter 4: Experimental Research on Extrasensory Perception,” An Introduction to Parapsychology, fifth edition by Irwin and Watt (McFarland, 2007): “In an assessment of the literature by Honorton (1978), 23 of 42 experiments conducted in ten different laboratories had yielded significant ESP performance under ganzfeld conditions; this success rate of 55% was far beyond that expected by chance.”

“A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy” by Ray Hyman and Charles Honorton, Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 50, December 1986

“Replication and Meta-Analysis in Parapsychology” by Jessica Utts, Statistical Science, Vol. 6, №. 4, 1991

Archive Clips

One Step Beyond: The Sacred Mushroom (January 24th, 1961)

The Case of ESP

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Episode 2: Institute for Experimental Religion

As the twentieth century dawns, parapsychology is divided between ghost

hunters—like Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle—and psi

seekers—like a young Sigmund Freud, who takes deeper interest in ESP and

telepathy than is commonly understood.

Early parapsychologists made strides with the British and American branches of

the Society for Psychical Research. William James and colleagues probe mysteries,

expose fakes, and generate controversies. But they function largely on mediums’

own turf: lace-curtain settings of Victorian séance parlors.

Enter two young, driven, and deeply ethical clinicians: J.B. and Louisa Rhine. “It

would be unpardonable,” J.B. announces in 1926, “for the scientific world today to

overlook evidences of the supernormal in our world,”

Wooed to Duke University, the Rhines in the late 1920s inaugurate the Institute for

Experimental Religion, later called the Parapsychology Laboratory. The lab

formally introduces psi research into academia. The Rhines’ efforts—involving

“guess” hits on Zener cards—prove simple, rigorous, and extraordinary. They

make extrasensory perception or ESP a household term. Stats and studies from the

Parapsychology Lab, including evidence for psychokinesis, withstand decades of

withering scrutiny.

This signal has been transmitted by SpectreVision Radio

Written and Narrated by Mitch Horowitz

Produced by Jim Perry and Jon McEdward

Original Music & Sound Design by Dean Hurley

Cover Artwork by Jake in Colour

Selected References

The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones, Vol. 3 (Basic Books, 1957)

The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution Of Human Nature

by Michael Murphy (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1992)

The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol.

XVIII (1920-1922) edited by James Strachey, Anna Freud, Alix Strachey and Alan

Tyson

Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other

Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory by Stacy Horn

(Ecco, 2009)

Something Hidden by Louisa E. Rhine (McFarland, 1983)

J.B. Rhine: Letters 1923-1939: ESP and the Foundations of Parapsychology

by J.B. Rhine edited by Barbara Ensrud and Sally Rhine Feather (McFarland,

2021)

“Chapter 6: Psychokinesis,” An Introduction to Parapsychology, fifth edition, by

Harvey J. Irwin and Caroline A. Watt (McFarland, 2007)

Extra-Sensory Perception by J.B. Rhine (1934, Boston Society for Psychic

Research)

Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years by J.G. Pratt, J.B. Rhine, Burke M.

Smith, Charles E. Stuart, and Joseph A. Greenwood (Henry Holt, 1940)

“Telepathy: Origins of Randomization in Experimental Design” by Ian

Hacking, Isis, Sept 1988, Vol. 79, №3

“J. B. Rhine’s Extra-Sensory Perception and Its Background in Psychical

Research” by Michael McVaugh and Seymour H. Mauskopf, Isis, June 1976, Vol.

67, №2

J.B. Rhine: On the Frontiers of Science edited by K. Ramakrishna Rao

(McFarland, 1982)

“Who Was J.B. Rhine?” by Rick Berger, Ph.D., February 14, 2020, at

parapsych.org, website of the Parapsychological Association

ESP and Parapsychology: A Critical Reevaluation by C.E.M. Hansel (Prometheus

Books, 1980)

“Rhetoric over substance: the impoverished state of skepticism” by Charles

Honorton, Journal of Parapsychology, June 1993

The Enchanted Voyager: The Life of J.B. Rhine by Denis Brian (Prentice-Hall,

1982)

Daydream Believer: Exploring the Ultimate Power of Your Mind by Mitch

Horowitz (G&D Media, 2022)

Archive Clips

Fairytale (1997)

Ghostbusters (1984)

Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (TV Series)

Charles Tart on The Case of ESP

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Episode 1: Moonrise

For millennia, humanity has pursued higher knowing. In antiquity, soldiers and statesmen turned to oracles such as the prophetess at Delphi and pictogrammatic language of the I-Ching. 

Seen from a certain perspective, nearly all religion predates science as the wish to know first causes. In that vein, nineteenth-century séances treat gawkers to floating pianos, viscous “ectoplasm” spilling from the orifices of (mostly female) mediums, and ghostly figures materializing. Even Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln host table-rappings in the White House. Is any of it real? 

One moonlit night at Cambridge University in 1870 a handful of scientists determine to find out. Their efforts become the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), which attracts Victorian luminaries such as William James, Sigmund Freud, and Arthur Balfour, Britain’s prime minister. 

Some of the finest scientists and philosophers of the era begin probing the verity of the supernatural.

This signal has been transmitted by SpectreVision Radio

Written and Narrated by Mitch Horowitz

Produced by Jim Perry and Jon McEdward

Original Music & Sound Design by Dean Hurley

Cover Artwork by Jake in Colour

Selected References

The Elusive Science: Origins of Experimental Psychical Research by Seymour H. Mauskopf and Michael R. McVaugh (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) 

TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis (Harmony, 1998) 

The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry by Henri F. Ellenberger (Basic Books, 1970)

From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychoanalytic Healing by Adam Crabtree (Yale University Press, 1993)

Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena, vols. 1–4, edited by Eric J. Dingwall (J. & A. Churchill/ Barnes & Noble, 1968)

Modern Occultism: History, Theory, and Practice by Mitch Horowitz (G&D Media, 2023)

Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation by Mitch Horowitz (Bantam, 2009)

Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in 19th Century America by Ann Braude (Beacon, 1989)

Phantasms of the Living by Edmund Gurney, F.W.H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, 2 vols. (1886)

“Charles Richet” by C.S. Alvarado, Psi Encyclopedia, London: The Society for Psychical Research, 2015

Archive Clips

JB Rhine | 70 years at The Rhine

Carrie Chapman Catt on Suffragism

Russel Targ on The Case of ESP

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Coming This Fall - Extraordinary Evidence | ESP Is Real is a limited series on the history, struggles, and proofs of parapsychology and the science of studying the supernatural. Mitch Horowitz—today’s leading independent scholar of the occult—uses revealing, stringently documented historical and scientific data, interviews, and archival recordings to explore the dramatic rise, attacks on, and revolutionary findings of parapsychology in areas from ESP and precognition to after-death survival and reincarnation.

Original Score by Dean Hurley, Produced by Jim Perry & Jon Mcedward for SpectreVision Radio

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