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Tuesday Grab-Bag: Bat Creek Update, Tsoukalos Tweets, and Reincarnation Evidence

2/11/2014

31 Comments

 
First, for those of you who did not see the update I made to my earlier blog post about the Bat Creek Stone, I want to make sure everyone is aware of what I learned yesterday from the curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society, Brad Lepper. After reading Scott Wolter’s recent claim that the Smithsonian had turned over ownership of the Bat Creek Stone to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, Lepper contacted Dr. Bruce D. Smith, the Smithsonian’s curator of North American archaeology, who confirmed that the Bat Creek Stone remains the property of the Smithsonian Institution and was not returned to the Cherokee. Instead, it is on loan to the Cherokee for a temporary exhibit. Therefore, debate about how to best exploit the stone or whether to bury it is moot since it does not belong to the Cherokee and cannot be altered or destroyed without Smithsonian permission.

This is very good news because the Bat Creek Stone is an important artifact in the history of nineteenth century archaeological fraud and deserves to be protected.

Now on to two other topics.

Giorgio Tsoukalos dropped a few pearls of wisdom during his live tweeting of last Friday’s Ancient Aliens (Feb. 7). First, we learned that he is a good company shill for Prometheus Entertainment and repeatedly asked his followers to goose the ratings for Prometheus’ Curse of Oak Island, promising to live tweet the finale (which he did) so the show could earn a second season. Kathleen McGowan, the widow of Philip Coppens who believes she is the descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, chimed in on Twitter and also shilled for Oak Island, as she had been doing consistently since January.

I’d be very interested to know why a “guest” on Ancient Aliens—none of the pundits are officially cast members—would devote so much of her Twitter feed to promoting another program on which she does not appear. Could it be because McGowan appears on multiple Prometheus programs? Is there something more than just corporate good will?

Tsoukalos also praised Brien Foerster for “doing great work” with his DNA research into elongated skulls, in apparent violation of Peruvian antiquities export laws. Tsoukalos seems to be OK with smuggling human remains to have them used by a Nephilim-Bigfoot believer as proof of a weird creationist agenda. He also called on creationists and proponents of evolutionary science to “meet in the middle” in the wake of the Ham-Nye debate. I’m not quite sure what that means. Presumably it refers to aliens, but it could equally well refer to the Catholic idea of directed evolution, which would undercut the ancient astronaut theory.

I’d also like to play up a difference between Tsoukalos and Jason Martell. Martell’s Ancient School promises to teach subscribers “when the ancient aliens will return,” but Tsoukalos contradicts Martell’s cash grab, tweeting “Who said they ever left? I think we’ve been monitored since the dawn of time.” So does that mean that Jason Martell is wrong? Or is Tsoukalos wrong? Or is it possible to hold two contradictory ancient alien ideas simultaneously? I’m not paying $17 a month to find out.

Finally, I want to talk a little bit about something that’s been bothering me since I read the Atlantic’s piece on the paranormal research laboratory at the University of Virginia yesterday. If you ever wondered what Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave would sound like, I imagine UV’s Division of Perceptual Studies would be the people to ask.

What bothered me was an anecdote provided by psychiatry professor Jim Tucker in which he discusses a “compelling” case for reincarnation. This is the story of James Leininger, a Louisiana boy whose parents reported that he began having strange dreams in the year 2000, at the age of 2. Tucker believes this is evidence that Leininger is the reincarnation of a World War II fighter pilot. The story apparently was very big around 2004 or 2005, when it was featured on network television, and then again in 2009 when the Leininger family released a book on the story.
At around age 2, James experienced terrible nightmares, almost nightly, of violent plane crashes. During the day, he relayed extremely vivid memories of this supposed Air Force career. He recalled the name of a real aircraft carrier stationed in the Pacific during World War II (“Natoma”). He claimed to have a friend on the boat named Jack Larsen. He had memory of being shot down by the Japanese and dying near Iwo Jima.

The USS Natoma Bay lost only one pilot at Iwo Jima, a man named James Huston, and he died in a crash that matched Leininger’s description almost exactly: “Hit in the engine, exploding into fire, crashing into the water and quickly sinking,” Tucker said. “And when that happened, the pilot of the plane next to his was Jack Larsen.”

According to the Atlantic and paranormal researchers, it took Leininger’s father Bruce “three or four” years to confirm his son’s impressions by diligently searching records until he discovered that a pilot named James Huston had been shot down.

The story is a key piece of evidence in Tucker’s new book, Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives (2013), and Tucker investigated the case personally.

“It seems absolutely impossible that he could have somehow gained this information as a 2-year-old through some sort of normal means,” Tucker said in an NPR interview, and the Atlantic confirmed that a “Google search” failed to find any references to James Huston published before Leininger’s statements. Therefore, the reporter, Jake Flanagin, suggests that this constitutes good evidence in favor of reincarnation.

Flanagin should have exercised a bit more skepticism. It took me less than two minutes to undermine key aspects of the Leininger story, notably the “impossibility” of finding the information by “normal” means.

The details the child supposedly knew about World War II aircraft emerged only after he and his family had visited an aviation museum, the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, where the child became “obsessed” with the World War II exhibit. Tucker found evidence that Leininger’s father began doing web searchers for “Natoma” when his son was 28 months old, but he believed this to be evidence that the elder Leininger had begun researching his son’s claims, dismissing the idea that “this Christian couple in Louisiana [would be] faking a case of past life memories despite potential derision by friends and neighbors…” This despite the fact that the Leiningers used their sons claims as a springboard for media appearances, including on network television, as well as an eventual book deal. Tucker provided a blurb for the 2009 book. This is not necessarily evidence of ulterior motives, but it does weigh against the claim that it was impossible that they could or would fake it.

Tucker also declined to identify the child’s claim that “James” or “me” was piloting the plane as evidence that the child was projecting himself into a fantasy, despite the fact that the child’s name was in fact James. Instead, the elder Leininger and Tucker searched for someone named James who would match the story, creating a confirmation bias. Thus Tucker interpreted the child’s claim at age three that he was “the third James” as evidence that he knew that James Huston’s father had also been named James, despite the fact that the child did not know the surname of these men named James.

But here’s the thing I found that Tucker did not: The story of Jack Larsen, supposedly so obscure that neither the elder Leininger nor Tucker was able to learn of him without extensive archival research and the assistance of a veterans’ group, was not so obscure. Larsen had told his story in Kay B. Hall’s anthology World War II (University of Arkansas, 1995), which collected the oral histories of World War II veterans. Would it surprise you to learn that nearly all of the details attributed to the statements of the young James Leininger could be found in Jack Larsen’s oral history, in somewhat jumbled form, or that differences between the accounts seem to reflect attempts to fill in gaps in the narrative with generalized World War II material that was later found to be incorrect?

  • In the 1995 interview, Larsen said that during a training mission “I lost an engine once and had to ditch.” The child allegedly claimed that “his” plane had been “hit in the engine” and crashed.
  • In the 1995 interview, Larsen describes his service on the Natoma Bay, with the accompanying text naming and describing the ship with details of its size and configuration that reflect the child’s apparent knowledge of the ship and its function. The text states that the ship was hit by a Japanese kamikaze pilot, which sounds very much like the fiery crash that the child actually described, in which the “little man” did not “get out” of the plane. Later, the “little man” would be identified with James.
  • Even the child’s claim that he flew a “Corsair” could easily be attributed to an amateur’s mistake in confusing Larsen’s statement that he flew the F4F Wildcat for the F4U Wildcat, the Corsair, since both planes had similar numbers and were both named Wildcats. The Larsen interview had identified the F4F as a “Wildcat” in 1995.

The order of events in Larsen’s interview, however, does not reflect the child’s claims. Larsen’s lost engine occurred in Michigan, before being sent to the Pacific. Larsen never mentioned losing anyone during the many Pacific missions he described. However, all of the raw materials were there to create a superficially convincing narrative that could not easily be checked.

Obviously, I can’t prove that anyone intentionally or unconsciously faked the claims, but nearly everything revolves around James Leininger’s father’s self-reporting. Let’s, for the sake of argument, presume someone tried to fake the story. Not particularly careful at first and looking for attention, let’s say someone takes out Hall’s 1995 book and selects a random oral history. The Leininger family lived in the San Francisco area when their son was born in 1998, before moving to Texas in 2000 and then to Lafayette, Louisiana not long after. (The exact timeline varies by source.) A copy of Hall’s World War II anthology was in the holdings of Stanford University near San Francisco. Copies could also be found at major libraries in Texarkana and Houston, Texas and in New Orleans, Louisiana, according to WorldCat. Copies may have been available elsewhere as well.

Perhaps not being too careful about it, the individual fails to check whose information is being appropriated or whether the people are still alive. Taking notes, the individual creates a story that he or she talks about with the child, providing details that the child repeats, sometimes in distorted form or out of context. This might have occurred for any number of reasons, and any number of people could have been responsible. This is of course merely a hypothetical.

Heck, it might have been entirely innocent and due only to reinforcement and feedback… Let’s say the kid goes to the museum, becomes obsessed with World War II airplanes, and someone involved with the child goes to the library and reads Hall’s World War II to help indulge the child’s interest by sharing what veterans had to say about flying in the planes. For whatever reason, someone fixates on Larsen’s story, and tells the child about it, feeding back into the child’s dreams and fantasies.

After the child starts to get attention for this story, Bruce Leininger continues to do research about the era and the Natoma Bay in order to gather new information. Because he is talking about this research, the child picks up on what his father is talking about and incorporates it into his developing story. Mistakes and errors, such as confusing the F4F and the F4U go unnoticed due to a lack of expertise. As the research progresses, other significant errors and problems with the story emerge, notably the fact that Jack Larsen isn’t dead, requiring a change of interpretation to allow what is now a strong belief in reincarnation to continue.

Perhaps significantly, the Leininger family originally put forward the idea that their son was remembering the life of Jack Larsen, until in 2002 the elder Leininger learned Larsen was still alive. It was after this point that the child’s alleged statement that Iwo Jima was the place “where” his plane had been shot down was replaced with the claim he said it was “when” he had been shot down. Around this time the person shot down becomes “James” rather than Jack Larsen, and the story is retroactively reconfigured. What had previously been interpreted as James (“me”) dreaming about the life of Jack Larsen now became James (“me”) dreaming about “James” remembering Jack Larsen. The story holds together only because, by coincidence, the person who did get shot down was named James—one of the most common names of the era. The child never utters the dead man’s last name, despite knowing Larsen’s, until after Bruce Leininger was able to find someone whose name fit the developing (and changing) story.

I of course can’t say that’s how it happened, and the discovery of the 1995 oral history doesn’t categorically exclude reincarnation. It’s possible that no one involved knew anything of the 1995 book, but the coincidence of details strikes me as suspicious. The very fact that this material existed before the child began his alleged past life dreams, and included nearly all of the facts found in those dreams in jumbled form, calls into question the value of the Leininger case for past life studies, at least until the researchers involved with the story run down all possible sources where the Leininger family could have obtained their information. The situation is made worse by the fact that most of the accounts rely on us assuming the honesty and accuracy of the Leiningers’ self-reporting of James’s statements, which of course is impossible to prove.

This is one of the troubles I have with all fringe studies—there is a lack of deep literature review and a failure to investigate the possibility of contamination, hoaxing, or fraud. Tucker, for example, did enormous research tracking down World War II records to “prove” the reincarnation, but did not look to see what material could potentially have been accessible prior to the family publicizing the “reincarnation.” I obviously can’t accuse the Leiningers of hoaxing the story, but to say this is impossible because they are Christians is to wilfully blind oneself unnecessarily. What is more likely, that a child is the reincarnation of a World War II pilot, or that someone close to the child read Jack Larsen’s oral history? Or, perhaps even more likely, that the story was continuously created and recreated through the mutual interaction of the child, his parents, internet searches, and books?

31 Comments
Titus pullo
2/11/2014 04:39:10 am

Nice job Jason. These stories have less legs when one does some analysis. I never much trusted psch types, I had one in college that talked about esp all the time. I suggested he talk to some of my physics profs about how the esp would be transmitted, I got a c in his course.

Tj is a hero if mine, and he would be turning in his grave....

Reply
Only Me
2/11/2014 04:56:36 am

The Leininger story sounds all-too creepily like the stories of children being allowed to recall "repressed memories", due to psychiatric intervention. It's shameful that some would take advantage of impressionable minds for their own means.

As for Tsoukalos and Martell, hey, even established religions have been known for their schisms over interpretation of doctrine. Maybe it's the AAT's turn.

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Martin R
2/11/2014 09:53:36 am

Which character would be the AA's Martin Luther?

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Scott David Hamilton
2/11/2014 05:11:18 am

"This is one of the troubles I have with all fringe studies—there is a lack of deep literature review and a failure to investigate the possibility of contamination, hoaxing, or fraud."

I'm sometimes more shocked by the lack of any interest in investigating at all! In my particular fields of interest, I often find references to incidents or witnesses that you'd think would be great, but the fringe researchers all but ignore them.

For example, early UFOology, for which I have nearly a complete library. The Socorro case is famous, yet that same weekend there are other alleged witnesses, one of whom claimed to have seen a similar object even closer and that it left behind better physical evidence. Other than repeating a couple lines from the newspapers, no UFO book seems to have ever followed up with this other witness (for reasons I speculate about below).

Or cryptozoology. The original sighting that established Sasquatch/Bigfoot as a giant hairy primate was made by a man named William Roe -- and no cryptozoologist ever bothered to try to find a single thing about him until a recent skeptical book pointed this fact out. Even Jon Greene, who originally recorded Roe's story, can't remember where he first heard about Roe! Knowing who Roe was would seem to be a basic part of assessing his credibility, but for nearly 60 years it didn't occur to any Bigfoot researchers. And now it's too late to find much of anything.

When it comes to UFOs, there is some unmistakable classism/sexism/racism at play in the 1950s books. Sightings by cops and pilots are presented in detail, while reports by poor people, women and minorities usually only merit a sentence or two. I guess cryptozoology avoided that trap to a certain extent, largely because it was so reliant on "native" stories for most of its material.

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Clint Knapp
2/11/2014 05:46:16 pm

That last point has always been a bother to me too. It seems most UFO researcher are completely incapable of the notion that there's nothing special about a cop or a pilot that makes them any less susceptible to making things up or seeing things that aren't there/aren't as they appear than the rest of us. Any report with the slightest police presence is instantly touted as set-in-stone and we're meant to believe their powers of observation are infallible and they're such fine and upstanding citizens that they would never lie... when th fact is that police reports often vary in detail between two officers sitting in the same car looking the same direction.

As to pilots... I'm not sure why they're expected to be so much better at observation than the rest of us. The reality of flying is that it's done almost entirely by looking at the instrumentation around you, not by any sort of use of the windows in the cockpit. Those windows are there for taxi-ing on the ground and watching the weather, and the view from the pilot's seat is almost entirely horizon, sky, and clouds.

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RLewis
2/11/2014 06:20:48 am

Sounds a lot like Susan Masino's (I think that's her name) claim. When her son was 3 or 4 a babysitter let him watch The Titanic. This was followed by several nights of nightmares. Of course, as she pushed her son for more details she discovered that he had been on the Titanic in a past life. What other explanation could there be?

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Martin A
2/11/2014 09:56:49 am

As a 4-year-old, I had nightmares after watching the monster movie Gorgo. I guess I once died in London under monsterous circumstances.

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Shane Sullivan
2/11/2014 07:01:25 am

I wonder what the kid thinks about all this. He'd turn 16 this year, plenty old enough to have an opinion on all this attentioneering.

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Matt Mc
2/11/2014 07:10:59 am

I live a few doors down from one of the two supposed locations of where the story that inspired the EXORCIST took place. I know from my own research and talking to neighbors that the boy who supposedly had the exorcism looks back on all of it as a fanciful story in his part. He only has talked to one person about his experiences on record ( a local historian named Mark Opsasnick interviewed him) and he pretty much says it was in the past and he does want to talk about it.

Here is Opsasnick article about the whole event http://www.strangemag.com/exorcistpage1.html

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Tara Jordan link
2/11/2014 07:36:32 am

Matt,
You might want to check: The Warren Omission
http://tinyurl.com/l89oekc
"The true story of how Ed and Lorraine Warren fought demonic forces in Rhode Island."

Reply
Matt Mc
2/11/2014 07:39:13 am

Thanks Tara, I am going to check that out, not that I really need another reason to dislike the Warrens.

Tara Jordan link
2/11/2014 07:47:12 am

On the issue of "haunted & demonic places",I once spend an entire day & night in Aokigahara with a bunch of fellow students.Unfortunately we missed "the paranormal" part of the program".

Matt Mc
2/11/2014 07:53:05 am

Hopefully no suicides either :)

Never been a big believer of ghosts but I do love a great ghost story. I will say I do have a good friend who claims to have seen a ghost as a child and while I don't think he did I do not doubt his belief in seeing it.

Tara Jordan link
2/11/2014 08:06:07 am

It was a strange experience because we brought along a student girl`s friend who pretended to be "psychic".As soon as we reached the place & stepped out of the car,she became physically ill,refusing to follow us.She claimed the place was charged with "evil energies".Eventually we drove her to the bus station & she took off without saying a word.The rest of us spent the day & a good part of the night walking in the forest.Of course we saw nothing "paranormal".This experience reinforced my inner conviction,that the "personal paranormal experience" was part of the "its only in your head" process.

Matt Mc
2/11/2014 08:19:10 am

I agree Tara that said that Only in you head thing can be very real for some people. I have always wondered what makes people so inclined to believe so thoroughly.

yakko
2/11/2014 04:10:01 pm

Oh, dear old Ed and Lorraine, practically neighbors of mine! What a fun couple they were - either the best or worst argument for a married couple going into the same line of work together. :-)

Tara Jordan link
2/11/2014 09:32:41 am

Personally,the very idea of pushing or implanting such schemes in children minds,is criminal & akin to psychological abuse.This is also an open door for even more sinister implications,such as Alien abductions,satanic ritual abuses "recovering memories",etc...
I believe the psychiatrists,social workers & other professionals who take part in this insanity,should be prosecuted to the maximum extent of the law.

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yakko
2/11/2014 03:59:29 pm

What is this anyway but another "recovered memory" schtick? And we all remember how well that went the last couple of times! At least we should be happy that these people aren't convincing their kids that they're being kidnapped by Satanists or abducted by aliens, I suppose.

People I know who belong to established religions that teach reincarnation do not engage in that sort of thing because: 1) your job in this life is to do good in the world to make your next life better, not to moon about what happened in the last one; and 2) the "you" who you were in the last life is not the "you" who you are now - only some kind of essence gets transferred, not a personality or identity, so in practical terms it doesn't matter who you were before. As one (Buddhist) friend of mine put it: thinking you were Cleopatra in a former life is no different than thinking you are Napoleon in this one.

Full disclosure: I was raised Lutheran and have no theological dog in this fight, but I do agree with you that beguiling one's children in such a way is bad parenting, to say the least.

Tara Jordan link
2/12/2014 09:39:59 am

Yakko
I think the Buddhist reincarnation concept is particularly popular amongst Western Buddhists, who somehow happen to be more spiritual than traditional Asian Buddhists.After living in Japan for years,I have yet to meet one Japanese who ever mentions his former life.In Japanese,there is a word for "past life" Zensei(全盛/ぜんせい),the word Jinsei (人生/じんせい) means life or actual life, but there is no word for next life.

Donna
2/12/2014 09:14:58 am

Matt, thanks for that link! I read the entire thing last night and it was fascinating. I haven't gotten to Tara's link about the Warrens yet but plan to check it out soon.

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Matt Mc
2/11/2014 07:14:40 am

Oh yeah the only reason I bring up the Exorcist story is because of the similarities that both affected young children that were thrown into the situation by adults. And yes it is not uncommon to have fans of the movie driving by my house and taking pictures of themselves at the gazebo where one of the supposed houses stood. It happens all summer long and it good for a laugh amongst me and my neighbors.

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Donna
2/11/2014 08:37:43 am

Very small children hear a story they like, they want to hear it (or see the movie or sing the song) over and over and over and over and over and .... They love the story, and they want to be part of the story. Then, when they do have a dream that incorporates elements from this story, they remember that dream as memories of living the events.

When my 7-year-old grandson was 4, he could tell tales for hours about how he used to be a Viking boy named Hiccup and that I (his grandma) used to be a Viking girl named Astrid, and that we would hunt dragons on our home island of Berk and train them to be friendly. (And yes, we *will* be celebrating my June birthday by going to see the sequel!)

His little sister will tell you that she was in her house during a tornado and it flew away and landed on a witch. That was my favorite movie as a child, and I had many dreams in which I was Dorothy Gale, and those dreams felt like real memories.

Thanks, Jason, for doing so much digging on this story. I have a couple of friends who believe anything about reincarnation, and it will be a relief to point them to this blog and the facts of how a little boy's fascination with airplanes turned into "memories" of being a pilot in WWII.

Reply
Clint Knapp
2/11/2014 05:29:43 pm

The most recent Coast to Coast show I heard the story on, and whether this was Jim Tucker or someone else I could not say, made very clear that the "researcher" who was talking had spoken to the parents, never the child, and that he acknowledged the whole thing was interpreted through the parents because- of course- a two year old child is very hard to understand.

Even parroting back what a parent might have discussed in passing isn't enough for a child that young to be describing being hit in the engine and crashing. The language and conceptual experience just isn't there. How many times have you told a two year old child what a word is only to have it come back mangled with some substituted, missing, or added consonants?

"Socks" become "focks", dogs become woofs, and good luck getting any two-year-old to say "engine" coherently, let alone know that being hit in one causes a crash.

A two-year-old boy might know what a plane is, and certainly knows what falling down is. If anything it seems more likely the boy had a dream, woke up sobbing about his plane falling down, and the parents made up everything else.

Reply
Coridan Miller
2/12/2014 01:24:48 am

Jason, I am curious if you have ever read or debunked the Omm Sety story. Reincarnation is the one fringe or new age theory I am keen to believe in simply on my own personal beliefs and fragments of memory/deja vu feelings.

I admit to there being no scientific evidence, nor do I revolve my life around the belief (even if I did know all about a past life, I would rather focus on the current one). It's just that if there is any form of afterlife, I'm betting on that (and certainly hoping for it). The "brief crack of light" philosophy is not one I care to believe in.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/12/2014 11:59:39 am

I've heard of her, but I haven't examined her story in great depth. She claimed to be in regular psychic contact with the spirit of Seti I, but I don't know of any systematic effort to check her statements against what was or was not known at the time.

Reply
Coridan Miller
2/12/2014 02:53:41 pm

I first heard about it in "Ancient Mysteries" by Peter James and Nick Thorpe (a book I think you might like, it's a tour of fringe theories) and it had some details similar to the story you posted; such as Dorothy Eady's Egyptian beliefs started after visiting an exhibit with her family.

Drew
2/12/2014 07:44:08 am

Tricky to consider, but I'm starting to get that same co-opting feeling I get from the 'Europeans were in America first/built everything' folks from the rise of Christians interested in reincarnation.

Reply
The Other J.
2/12/2014 03:32:55 pm

Is there any connection between the Division of Perceptual Studies and the Contemplative Sciences Center at UVA? I didn't find anything, beyond the general frustration and embarrassment they've brought the university.

The Contemplative Sciences Center is -- uncharitably -- basically the hobby horse established by a billionaire hedge fund owner for his trophy wife. Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire, married a former model from Australia named Sonia who fell hard for an Ashtanga yoga guru named Jois. Eventually if you wanted to have anything to do with Sonia, you had to be involved with Jois Ashtanga yoga. She and her family got special treatment from Jois, which apparently irritated other followers. When Jois died, Sonia and Paul started establishing boutique Ashtanga yoga centers in Jois' name in swank neighborhoods, and a few years ago went to UVA to establish the Contemplative Sciences Center.

It's basically a center where they study and teach about contemplative meditative practices, religion, and yoga, but the way it's been established and presented feels more like a marketing scheme than an actual academic research center. And the money put into it and how it was presented to the community really rubbed many at the university the wrong way -- it came off like a rich person buying academic panache for his wife's preoccupation.

Anyway, both the DPS and the CSC have been criticized for dealing with more fringe topics in less than academically rigorous ways. Since both are at the same university and both deal with more esoteric psychological subjects, I wonder if some Paul Tudor Jones money isn't making its way across grounds and supporting the Ghostbusters.

In either case, I can't see Thomas Jefferson being that okay with it all. There's nothing wrong with studying the psychology of paranormal phenomena or the physiological and psychological effects of meditation. But such research should be done in a disinterested way with the same rigor brought to other sciences and research. Not doing the proper background research, as shown with Tucker here, or so blatantly linking a manufactured research center with a personal money-making venture, is a bit unseemly.

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PaulN. link
3/19/2014 08:36:56 am

Has anybody heard of Bridey Murphy? Probably the first of the so called reincarnation through hypnosis fads of the 1950's. It is, probably, the beginning for many of the new age ideas on reincarnation. It resulted in a couple of books, two movies, and parodies by Stan Freberg and Carl Barks.

Reply
final year projects link
5/4/2014 06:20:10 pm

nice posts

Reply
Ragnar
12/14/2014 01:25:39 pm

James Leininger also remembered his "sister" who had died many years ago. He also knew there was a painting that James Houston's mother had done of his sister that was still alive.

I get not wanting to believe in reincarnation. Many stories people tell are obviously either false or greatly embellished. But the Leininger's are really honest people and haven't profited from their story. The book didn't exactly fly off the shelves and they never tried to push James to carry it on any further. They let things drop once his nightmares stopped. He's just a normal kid, albet one with an amazing experience he remembered.

I don't know why I'm even writing this. It won't convince anyone. But knowing a lot about the Leininger's, being a neighbor I wanted to at least add some to the article.

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          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
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        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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