My Library

When word got about that Cleve Backster was conducting experiments on sperm, the gossip lines exploded regarding how and from whom he got his specimens and under what circumstances. I'll leave it to your imagination here -- and in any event, imagination rather than first-hand facts always takes precedence regarding these kinds of things. Besides the soap-opera drooling, the lascivious thrill of such speculations, the real purpose of such gossip probably had more to do with discrediting and stigmatizing certain individuals who might be making breakthroughs outside of the central and organized pale of parapsychology. If the reputations of such contributors can be destroyed, or at least brought into question, then their work need not be considered or contended with. In my direct experience of them, Monroe and Backster were paragons of propriety and hard work. But neither were accepted as parapsychologists by the hard, inner core of parapsychology -- although certain recent encyclopedias published in the 1990s have restored this well-deserved appellation to them. All this "negative" gossip ultimately had a tentative outcome. "Zelda," I said, "why don't we write a book on the sexual proclivities and phenomena of psychics, psychical researchers and parapsychologists beginning when the first Psychical Research Society was formed?" Zelda was a bit flustered at this. "I've thought about it," she replied.