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May 3, 2010 by blog owner for Milwaukee Ghosts Blog
A Note from Allison Jornlin of Milwaukee Ghosts: The ghost investigators of today owe a debt of gratitude to those who have gone before. Among those pathfinders who have lead the way are parapsychologists, psychical researchers, and academics like Daniel Kortenkamp from UW-Steven’s Point.
At the risk of professional backlash, these brave men and women still stepped into the unknown. I believe these explorers are very relevant to modern ghost hunters, who can find valuable insights to inform their practice in the work of these important individuals. Thank you Rusty for bringing us this intriguing interview!
An Interview with Prof. Emeritus Daniel Kortenkamp, Ph.D.
Q: How have you explored the paranormal
Q: How have you explored the paranormal in your career and/or personal life?
A: I have only explored the paranormal by studying the research being done in parapsychology, and teaching a course titled “Parapsychology”.
Q: Were you involved in paranormal research?
A: I have not done paranormal research. But, I have discovered that the research in parapsychology is as good as the research in any area of psychology. I have discovered that there is good, controlled, statistical, laboratory evidence for ESP and PK. However, these research results are not incorporated into psychology or science because the results cannot be explained by any accepted scientific theory. And, parapsychologists do not have a clue how to explain their results. There will have to be a paradigm shift in science before these results can be incorporated into an accepted theory of reality.
Incidentally, there are many phenomena in quantum mechanics which are just as contradictory to common sense as ESP or PK. For example, the reality that light is both a particle (photon) and an electromagnetic field. Or, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox. Or, the double-slit phenomena.
Q: Have you or someone you know ever had any personal paranormal experiences?
A: The most common “paranormal” experience is a pre-cognitive dream. I have had several dreams that predicted the future. However, everyone has around 6-7 dreams per night. That’s about 2,000 dreams per year, and about 150,000 in a lifetime. It is not hard to imagine that several of these dreams will be related to future events just by chance, even if there is no such thing as ESP. I don’t know if my pre-cognitive dreams were due to ESP or coincidence.
Q: Have you ever seen a ghost?
A: I have never experienced a ghost. People who have seen a ghost usually see the ghost wearing clothes. If the ghost is the spirit of a dead person, then do clothes also have spirits? Having said that, there is some very good research (done by Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler) comparing spirit mediums with control groups that produced significant results supporting a belief in ghosts.
A Note from Allison Jornlin of Milwaukee Ghosts: Many share Kortenkamp’s enthusiasm for Schmeidler’s work. According to Is there Life Beyond Death? by Hans J. Enysenck and Carl Sargent Schmeidler’s medium experiment has significant implications:
“An interesting recent advance, which promises greater progress in the experimental study of apparitions than hitherto, has been made by Gertrude Schmeidler and her colleagues. After investigating allegedly ‘haunted’ premises, they compiled lists of what ‘ghosts’ had been seen doing in the places in the house where they had been seen. Small groups of ‘psychics’ and sensitive’s were then asked to visit the houses and check off ‘correct’ actions and locations from a list which contained both true and false items randomly intermixed. Schmeidler found that some of the psychics were able to pinpoint, some to a highly significant extent, what the ‘ghosts’ had done and where they had been seen, claiming to have picked up this information from the ‘vibes’ in the building.
A control group of skeptics scored uniformly at chance on this task, a particularly interesting result for rather complex reasons. If we suppose that skeptics would tend to explain ‘ghosts’ in terms of hallucination and tricks of the light, and if we suppose that this really is the explanation for ghosts, then one might have expected the skeptics to score well, since they would naturally select precisely those shady corners, nooks or crannies which would favor optical illusion. But they did not. The psychics may, of course, have succeeded by ordinary ESP, but their claim that they directly picked up something from the buildings themselves cannot be discounted.”
Kortenkamp’s reading list
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
An Interview with Prof. Emeritus Daniel Kortenkamp, Ph.D.
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I took Dr. Kortenkamp's Parapsychology course back in the summer of 1998, and often refer to the studies we looked at in that class when talking to skeptics who will argue that there is no scientific way to study phenomena such as ESP. We used Zener cards to replicate the most common type of study method used, and of a class of 30 students, I was the only testing significant for 3 of 4 ESP abilities. It didn't really surprise me, as I had often had premonition dreams, and paranormal experiences as a child. I learned pretty early on that it was best not to discuss my experiences too much, because most people aren't accepting at all. The atmosphere in all of Dr. Kortenkamp's classes (I took several) was always one of respect and acceptance, which was refreshing.
ReplyDeleteTo provide a little background about my experience with the paranormal, my great grandmother, who actually predicted that I would be born on her birthday (which I was... it was not a well-received premonition at the time as my mother was only 16 years old and had no clue that she was pregnant), often had visions. Some people in my family simply say I inherited my "gift" from her. I fought the visions, both in dreams and in waking hours, for years. I still have a difficult time with them. I don't really see it as a gift, because so many visions are painful. My great grandmother didn't talk about most of her visions for the same reason.I have become more accepting of my own visions recently, though I am very selective about who I discuss these with.
I have started to take comfort in Einstein's theory regarding the fabric of time. When one sees time as a mesh, rather than just linear time, it becomes easier to understand why some people may be having visions. I think that every prophet has been someone inclined to experience time differently than the linear time that most people experience. A lot of my own visions are kind of blahse... they are about things that will undoubtedly happen but don't have much bearing on anything of importance. Others are about life-changing experiences. I have learned that there are a number of outcomes that I have little control over, despite having visions to warn me of these. Most of my visions are like memories, but there is no way I could actually be remembering these things following a linear model of time. However, if time is a mesh, an interwoven fabric, it makes it more understandable for me. Einstein's own theory has a lot to do with how one perceives time, and when we are talking about ESP, we are talking about perception. I don't know if this will help others like me, but I really needed to find a less mystical way to explain what I am experiencing. Now I see people who have actual psychic ability as simply people who are experiencing time differently.