William G. Roll 1926 – 2012

Everybody interested in parapsychology knows who Bill Roll was. He came to the Parapsychology Laboratory in 1957 after studying at Oxford. Rhine was excited about his arrival due to Roll’s interest in poltergeists, and the very next year Roll would help them investigate one of the biggest poltergeist cases the lab ever investigated, the disturbances at a house on Seaford, LI (written up in my book).

But the relationship between J. B. Rhine and Roll grew tense, and when one of Rhine’s contributors expressed interest in starting up a foundation to research survival issues only, Rhine recommended Roll to head up the new Psychical Research Foundation (PRF). From then on (1960/61) hauntings or poltergeists and cases like it were typically handed off to Bill Roll.

Rhine provided office space at the Lab for the PRF, but by 1963 something had changed and Rhine asked Roll to find another home for the PRF. “One does not invite a poacher into the park,” he said at the time. “Rhine was highly competitive,” Roll responded when told of Rhine’s comment. Roll left the Lab and worked out of a home office for a few years, then later the PRF moved into two small houses on the Duke Campus. By this time the PRF had become “a sponsored program” within the Duke Department of Electrical Engineering, because of their work with Electrical Engineering professors John Artley and William Joines, and the interest in psi by the Electrical Engineering Dean at the time, Dr. Alexander Vesic.

I wrote about one case Roll investigated, a 1961 Newark, New Jersey case which involved a boy who was living with his grandmother. Five years earlier his mother had murdered his father, a former Golden Gloves champion, and the disturbances were attributed to the dead father. (I’m always drawn to the sad cases.) But Bill Roll worked on many of the most well-known poltergeist cases that happened during his lifetime. He coined the term RSPK (recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis) to describe them, and later, with William Joines, he incorporated developing theories of quantum mechanics to help explain them.

I’m glad that the Rhine Research Center organized a PRF reunion in 2007. It was an opportunity to show him and his co-researchers that their work was still honored.

Rest in peace, Bill Roll.

These are some pictures I scanned from Roll’s book The Poltergeist. They’re from a 1967 case in Miami.

The picture of Bill Roll came from the web pages of the Parapsychology Foundation.

Jessica Utts Lecture

I came across this lecture given last year by statistician Jessica Utts (Department of Statistics, University of California, Irvine) titled: The strength of evidence versus the power of belief: Are we all Bayesians?

From the description on the page for this lecture:

“Although statisticians have the job of making conclusions based on data, for many questions in science and society prior beliefs are strong and may take precedence over data when people make decisions. For other questions, there are experts who could shed light on the situation that may not be captured with available data. One of the appealing aspects of Bayesian statistics is that the methods allow prior beliefs and expert knowledge to be incorporated into the analysis along with the data.

“One domain where beliefs are almost sure to have a role is in the evaluation of scientific data for extrasensory perception (ESP). Experiments to test ESP often are binomial, and they have a clear null hypothesis, so they are an excellent way to illustrate hypothesis testing. Incorporating beliefs makes them an excellent example for the use of Bayesian analysis as well. In this paper, data from one type of ESP study are analyzed using both frequentist and Bayesian methods.”

From that description it sounded kinda scary and that the lecture would go over my head, but I’m listening to it now and I’m able to follow it. Utts is explaining everything very simply and clearly—I have to believe she’s speaking with the idea that people like myself might be in the audience.

What is the deal with the ASPR?

While I was researching my book about the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory I repeatedly tried to explore the ASPR archives (American Society for Psychical Research) but I was never granted access. For a year and a half they put me off and I finally accepted that they just didn’t want me to see anything. They wouldn’t even tell me what they had. I’ve since learned I’m just one in a long line of people who had similar experiences with the ASPR.

Why? What a shame it is, because I imagine they house a valuable treasure trove of parapsychology history. Why don’t they want anyone (or few people?) to actually use their collections? Maybe there’s a problem. When I wrote about the NYPD’s cold case squad it also took a long time to be given access to the Property Clerk Division warehouse, and when I finally got inside I could see why. Much of what was supposed to be there was missing, and some of what was there was poorly maintained.

My dealings with the ASPR is so contrary to every other experience I had researching parapsychology. The people at the Rhine Research Center, the Parapsychology Foundation, the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia, and of course the Special Collections Library at Duke, couldn’t have been more professional, encouraging and helpful. They want people to use their collections.

What is going over there at the ASPR? Their website looks like it hasn’t been updated in years. Perhaps someone who has made it inside or who used to work there can explain why the ASPR is so determined to prevent researchers from accessing their archives?

This is me at the Special Collections Library at Duke doing what I love best.

Rhine Research Center is Looking for Research Volunteers

Title of Study: ESP and Motor Automatisms.

“Our aim in this study is to explore ESP in dissociated states of consciousness. The word ‘dissociation’ is often linked to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality), but all of us experience milder versions of it in everyday life. A simple example is keeping your car on the road while talking to the person sitting next to you. It is this more normal type of dissociation that we are interested in for the study.” For more information go here.

In other news: Segments of Eileen J. Garrett’s 1954 Haitian Diary have been published in the October issue of Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal and can be downloaded for free here. The Diary describes her experiences with practitioners of Vodun in Haiti.

From the Paranthropology website About section: “The journal aims to promote an interdisciplinary dialogue on issues of the paranormal, so as to move beyond the sceptic vs. advocate impasse which has settled over the current debate, and to open new avenues for enquiry and understanding.”

And, ICRL Press has just published,  Mediumistic Phenomena.  “This is a  fascinating account of the investigations performed by the distinguished Italian physiologist, Filippo Bottazzi and a number of his professional colleagues, with the famous medium, Eusapia Palladino.  Originally published in Italian in 1906, it has now been translated into English for the first time by Prof. Antonio Giuditta and Ms. Irmeli Routii.”

Long Island Ghost

In the paperback version of my book, in a “P.S.” section at the back, I briefly tell the story of my one and only personal experience with the unexplained.

“When I was six or seven, I had wandered off from home and lost my way. I wasn’t afraid. I was always drifting off to explore and getting lost, but I always managed to find my way home. This time I passed by an elderly woman in her yard with a bunch of cats. I love cats and I asked if it was alright if I pet them. She said of course, and after a few minutes she very kindly invited me inside for milk and cookies. When I was done she walked me home. Turns out I was only a few blocks away from my house. My mother punished me for straying too far and that was that.”

“A year later I decided to go back and visit the lady and her cats. But when I got to the house the whole place was in complete disrepair. The roof was partially caved in and the front yard was wild and overgrown. I stood there trying to understand what I was seeing. I knew even at that young age that this was a lot of damage, and that the place had been neglected for a long time. I also knew this meant that something was off about my visit with the lady. So I just stood there, completely flummoxed …”

The rest is in the book! I was out on Long Island recently and I took a picture of the house. I’d written to the current residents while I was working on the book to find out if they ever had any weird experiences there, but they didn’t respond.

Through the Wormhole

The Science Channel has a show called Through the Wormhole and I watched the episode Is there a sixth sense? It was so well done. The show focuses on current research so there isn’t anything about the Rhines and their pioneering work, alas, but they still did a great job. It’s well worth watching.

Ted Serios

I don’t really know a lot about Ted Serios. He was said to be able make images appear on Polaroid film by using his mind. He called them “thoughtographs.” Gaither Pratt, a scientist formerly associated with the Duke Parapsychology Lab, tried to replicate the phenomenon under controlled conditions at the University of Virginia, but ultimately was unable to do so (Exploratory Investigations of the Psychic Ted Serios, 1967).

Serios had to get a little drunk in order to function and it was funny to read Gaither write about something like this in a sober, serious and professional manner. “A session would begin with Ted imbibing a portion of alcohol in the form of a beer or dry martinis until he felt he was ready to begin ‘shooting’ … Sessions usually continued until about fifty or more trials had been made. A session ended when we felt that Ted was too intoxicated to continue …”

Serios and Pratt couldn’t be more different but they liked each other. Ian Stevenson, the co-author of the paper, described Serios as “the most lovable subject with whom we had ever worked …” and when Gaither died, “Ted wrote me a touching letter about him.” I’d love to see this letter.

There’s a wonderful video of an experiment with Ted Serios on YouTube.  The picture is a screen grab from this video.  For more information, Michael Prescott has an informative post here.