by I always felt bad for John Thomas, the Detroit public school administrator who brought the Rhines to Duke University and got the whole parapsychology-at-Duke ball rolling.
His goal was to use science to find evidence of life after death, but that was all in order to communicate with his beloved dead wife Ethel. When the Rhines decided to focus on ESP instead of mediums it seemed to push that hope and Ethel further and further away. Thomas died without any real answer, but just before he died a medium said she got this message from Ethel about him: “My position to him is altered. I am nearer to him. I am nearer to him than I have ever been before.”
I’ve been on the lookout for a picture of John Thomas, and Sally Rhine Feather spotted this one when I was scanning pictures at the Rhine Research Center last month. That’s John Thomas on the left, Professor William McDougall in the center and an unidentified woman on the right (I love her outfit and hat).
