My Library

When on 4 June 1972 I departed New York to visit Dr. H. E. Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute, I was quite sure I had finally taken leave of my senses. During the long taxi ride to the NY airport I was encased in dark, foreboding feelings of gloom and doom. Frankly put, I felt stupid - which is one of the worst feelings one can have - and why, I suppose, so many pretend they are not stupid. But there were two reasons I dared to make the trip. Dr. Karlis Osis had quipped that I had no place else to go other than the American Society for Psychical Research. It was of course quite infantile of me to make the trip to SRI just to show him and everyone that I WAS invited to another place. But second, I was sure that the respected Dr. Puthoff would want to see some convincing experiment conducted under his supervision and control. Without such an experiment, at the nation's second largest "think tank" to boot, all of the Schmeidler and Osis work would soon disappear under the cloying onslaught of doubt which would come in from all possible directions, including from within parapsychology itself. I absolutely adored Gertrude Schmeidler, and aside from Osis's relative innocence regarding scumbaggy human machinations, I admired and respected his experimental designs. If, then, I did not at least dare to try elsewhere to take part in some kind of experiments, I felt I would be abandoning them because of simple cowardice. THEN! OH MY GOD, and even worse! There were also my three networks to consider, composed of the Buell Mullen, Ruth Hagy Brod, and Zelda Suplee Centrals. THEY would NOT appreciate cowardliness. If I didn't go to Puthoff, surely the word would circulate that I had been invited by him, but had declined because I really couldn't produce. Would not this be a visible signal to opportunistic skeptics everywhere?