A Duel on the Airwaves
It was to be a simple call in radio show. I would do the show from the comfort of my bedroom using my telephone. I was told it was a program on teenagers and the paranormal. High school students would phone in and ask their questions on ghosts and the supernatural and I would try my best to answer them. I had done shows like this many times in the past. It would prove to be anything but simple but perhaps one of the best radio shows I had ever done.
I waited for the call at the right time. The phone rang and it was the producer saying everything was ready for the show to start. There was one new element. In a quest for fairness and balance a psychologist was added to the program. I have nothing against balance and especially as we were dealing with impressionable teens, it might even be a good idea. Perhaps the both of us could really provide some insights to what the callers had to ask us.
I heard the musical theme of the show and the modulated voice of the host as she gave the line up including myself and the psychologist. The doctor was in the studio and proceeded to introduce me further and opened his comments by stating he didn’t believe in ghosts and such things. He then bombarded me with questions about the existence of ghosts and what “proof” I had that that ghosts were real. I started to smell a rat. This tack wasn’t what I expected but I knew I couldn’t withdraw from this fight. After all I had to defend a century of psychic research and two decades of my own study. The doctor invoked the name of the late Carl Segan as if that might wither me as the exposure of a silver cross would wither Dracula. I had little use for Dr. Segan who spent so much effort to brand psychic research as a “pseudo-science” and ban all psychic research from college campuses. For a man who believed in alien civilizations with no proof save some scattered statistics, the demand that ghost research provide evidence was a shade hypocritical. Carl Sagan’s opinions on the study of the paranormal doesn’t cut much mustard with me. I am sure he was well motivated to stop fraud but the harm he, and his group did, is still today holding back research.
I tried to answer the psychologist as best I could quoting cases and findings as diverse as the investigations of Dr. Thelma Moss and the studies at Duke University. We dueled verbally on the air back and forth with the doctor referring to people who do psychic work as just so many “fortunetellers.” I informed him that he shouldn’t insult fortune tellers as they have much in common with psychologists. Both provide a service to the public and studies show the advise of some so-called fortune tellers was the equal to that given by high priced followers of psychology. Just as there are poor fortune tellers who give out bad advise so there are bad psychotherapists to provide inferior or even harmful care. Even he had to admit this was true.
I pointed out that much of the proof toward the existence of ghosts and the paranormal can only be found in real life experiences. Seeing is truly believing. I told him of my own ghostly encounter in 1978 when, as part of an archaeological team, I saw I what I believe was a ghost. This encounter caused me to take up psychic research.
The good doctor told of an experience he had many years ago. While taking a cross country motorcycle trip he fell asleep while on the road. In a dream state he saw the image of his dead cousin who told him to wake up, saving his life. He rationalized the whole thing as a trick of the subconscious mind. His subconscious had conjured up the dead cousin from memories into a subjective hallucination and used it to convey the message that he needed to wake up. I asked if he was close to this dead relation. He said no. I asked why would his mind pick the cousin rather than say, a mother ,father, or beloved grandfather, someone who might be an authority figure? This life saving message would be better delivered by a role model rather than an obscure relation. I told him it might be simpler to believe it was a ghost rather than invent a convoluted theory about projected hallucinations. The important part of his vision was it had happened and he avoided a life-threatening accident.
He did admit that he didn’t really believe in an afterlife at all and I contended that might be what was influencing him in his stand on ghosts. A belief in post-death survival is a great comfort to people all over planet earth and it has been for countless centuries.
As we closed the duel of words I looked up and saw that two hours had passed. We still disagreed on the existence of ghosts but the doctor did state that this belief did give comfort to many who saw this as proof that life doesn’t end at the grave, but continues on. He had to admit ghosts do have their place in the world of psychology. Only one teen did call in to the show that night, I can’t even recall her question now . The show was one of the hottest debates I have faced in a long time. All in all, the duel did point out that rather than being rivals we both had a great deal in common. We both were on the same path, the quest for truth and the desire to help others who experience things outside the norm. It was great radio if nothing else.
