Michael Prescott's Blog
Archived blog focusing on the paranormal
Category: Psychology
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NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004. —– Psychics and Trickery I'm sick of Uri Geller. I mention this because, more…
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NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. Here's one of those essays, originally posted in 2004. —- The Dark Side of the Paranormal Years ago, on a whim,…
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In our last adventure, we looked at the Gnostic myth of creation as presented in The Secret Book of John, one of the ancient documents found at Nag Hammadi. As a story of God's origins and the subsequent creation of the material world, the myth is interesting but perhaps not particularly persuasive. There is, however,…
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Lately I've been reading Charles Mackay's famous 1852 book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. An unabridged version is available for Kindle for only $.99. The book is a carefully researched, often entertaining, occasionally tedious overview of mass movements encompassing harmless fads and fashions (the length of men's hair, the catchphrases of the…
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Something a little different this time: an interview with Richard Reichbart, author of the newly released study The Paranormal Surrounds Us (which includes an afterword I was privileged to write). The book has been put out by McFarland, a well-known and highly respected publishing house specializing in academic titles. Here's the book description from the publisher's…
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As my last couple of posts have suggested, I'm certainly open to the idea that discarnate entities – "spirits" – can harass, obsess, or actually possess living persons. But I think the idea has to be treated with caution. It can easily lead in the direction of paranoia. I found this to be a problem…
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Alan Sanderson is a psychiatrist specializing in hypnotherapy, who has become an advocate of spirit release therapy – a technique by which a hypnotherapist communicates directly with spirit entities purportedly harassing a patient. One of his cases, dating from 1995, involves a patient he calls Clara. He has written about it at some length in…
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Some time ago we had a discussion about whether some people are just born bad — the "bad seed" idea. Here's a lengthy article from The Atlantic dealing sympathetically but realistically with this issue. (You may be required to disable ad blocking on that page.) Starting at age 6, Samantha began drawing pictures of murder weapons:…
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The Atlantic offers a brief, interesting article on apeirophobia, the fear of eternity. Writer Bobby Azarian explains that he's had this fear since he was four years old. … every time I thought I had a grip on eternity, it slipped further away. The largest number of years I could imagine failed to make a…
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One of the most useful books I’ve read is a little self-help manual called You Can Be Happy Matter What, by Richard Carlson. The book was written early in Carlson’s career, before he became famous for a series of bestsellers beginning with Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. The later books never appealed to me all…