My Library

My reading so many sources had familiarized me with what in the past had happened to other psychics and test subjects. And the tales of the behavior of other psychics in the past and in the present made for some great, but kind of sad, reading. Our modern world had a good history of psychics, readers, mystics, channelers and other kind of psychical entrepreneurs who temporarily bathed in limelight, only to disappear from view a year or two later. Many of them made outrageous claims which excited people, even the media. But then the claims came to pieces or bombed, and that was that. Public attention moved on to the next temporary luminaries who might appear and make an ass of themselves. Regarding laboratory test-subjects, it clearly seemed to me that many of them came to the lab with quite good paranormal abilities. But they were ground to dust by undergoing excessively tedious and boring experiments. Some test-subjects had been made, for example, to attempt as many as 10,000 ESP trials per day. Well, anyone's brains would give out. I used the analogy of taking a diamond and grinding it into dust by simple and unconscionable wear and tear. Most test-subjects lasted in labs only for three months or less. I had already compiled a list of a few former lab subjects, both in early psychical research and some from the parapsychology epoch which began about 1935 with Dr. J. B. Rhine. I'll mention and describe some of these in later sections of this book.