Category: General

Sunny’s is a great old bar on the Red Hook, Brooklyn waterfront.

The best picture I found of it came from Sam Horine’s website, I hope he doesn’t mind. He’s an extremely talented photographer who takes pictures of my favorite subjects, forgotten and abandoned places. Not that Sunny’s is forgotten. But it’s off the beaten path.

Reasons to get off the beaten path, besides me: Ted Conover, Ken Wishnia, and just the area period. Bring your camera.

Directions. Sunny’s is at 253 Conover Street (between Beard & Reed Streets).

There’s the IKEA water taxi that’s free from Pier 11, and it leaves every 20 minutes. If you promise to shop at IKEA I think it’s okay to take it. Pier 11 is at the corner of South Street & Wall Street. To get to Pier 11 take either the 2,3,4 or 5 train to Wall Street and then walk east. Seriously, if you’re going to go out there you should go to IKEA. I plan to pick up some bowls I saw there last time.

Or, you can take the B61 toward Red Hook from Atlantic Ave. & Court St. (or from the A train midtrain exit at Jay Street Borough Hall). Get off near the end of the line at Van Brunt & Beard streets., walk 1 block right and 1/2 block left.

Or take the B77 bus down 9th Street from Park Slope (or from the Smith and 9th Street F train stop–exit at the rear of the train and come down the stairs to street level and the corner bus stop.) Take the bus in the direction of Van Brunt Street and Red Hook.

I was sorry to read that Thomas R. Tietze died last October. Tietze wrote an excellent book about the medium Mina Crandon titled, Margery; An entertaining and intriguing story of one of the most controversial psychics of the century. He wrote other books as well, but this is the one I read while researching the Parapsychology Lab.

There’s an obituary here. He was only 62! And apparently he was an English teacher for 32 years. “He loved a good laugh, a good book, and a good pipe.” I’m sorry I didn’t think to write him a note to thank him for his great research (I did credit him in my book, though). My condolences to his family and friends.

1959. Rhine speaks at NYU’s Institute of Philosophy. “I was one of the discussants of a paper given by Norbert Weiner,” Rhine wrote. “The audience was mostly philosophers, mathematicians, and computer experts. I do not think I made much impression on them. On the other hand, there was no show of opposition or criticism. I suppose one could say they have their own bonnets full of their own bees.”

That one caught my eye because Norbert Weiner was a mathematician I studied when I was a grad student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and he was particularly interesting to me at the time. I should try to find out what paper he was presenting in 1959.

The paperback of Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy and Other Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory came out today.

Woohoo!!

You can buy it here!

This is the slightly different cover. It has a new P.S. section, where I tell a couple of ghost stories, (one of which I’ve already posted here) recommend other books to read on this subject (with explanations as to why I’ve recommended the ones that I have) and I also try to correct the bleak impression I gave at the end of the book about the field of parapsychology.

I’ve scheduled my first reading which will take place on April 4th, at Sunny’s Bar. All the details are in the Events section which you can click on above.

Hopefully there will be more events, perhaps a radio show or two. In any case, Unbelievable is now more affordable, and easier to carry around!

I haven’t read Dark Intrusions, but from a review by Nick Redfern, which can be read in its entirety here:

“… this is a truly excellent and wide study of a phenomenon undertaken by a man who has not only been touched and changed by SP [sleep paralysis] himself, but who has had the courage to seek out the answers to this mystery, and who ultimately triumphs, rather than merely playing the role of victim to the menacing entities that invade our slumber.

As Proud states: “… the SP state puts you in direct contact with your soul.”

The publisher has more about the book here, including a table of contents. This whole subject is just so disturbing and scary to me. I don’t know what to make of it (which doesn’t mean I’m not buying it, I try to have an open mind). The subject makes me think of Communion, Whitley Strieber’s book about alien abduction. (Strieber gets a chapter in Proud’s book.) I also didn’t know what to make of Strieber’s experiences either. But ever since reading his book, from time to time at night I look out the window and wonder how I would respond if aliens suddenly appeared. I feel lucky that I’ve never had to answer that question.

Thanks to Guy Jackson for pointing me to The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena on YouTube, and thanks to ChortleNEOK, the person who uploaded it. In it are brief appearances from all sorts of people I learned about while researching my book.

It was uploaded in 8 parts. Part 6, for instance, has a small section about EVP which begins at 6:52. Raymond Bayless and medium Attila von Szalay (I wrote about them in my book) show up with writer/researcher D. Scott Rogo at 7:52.

[Videos removed because the link no longer works.]

I also liked the section about Ted Serios in part 3 (Jules Eisenbud also appears). Gaither Pratt, a Duke parapsychologist, wrote that Serios had to get drunk in order to perform. Apparently they all had to wait around while Serios drank and drank. It just made me laugh reading that, knowing how serious Gaither could be. So I laughed again when I saw the quick shot of a bottle on the table in the Serios section, which starts at 7:16.

[Videos removed because the link no longer works.]

The actress Kathryn Grayson, who recently died, was brought in to play a psychic in part 2. Anyway, it’s fun, for the history, and the people who made this really did a lot of research. Something interesting called the Central Premonitions Registry was mentioned in part 1. It comes up when I google it, but nothing to indicate that it’s still an active concern.