Ghosts - By Hans Holzer Page 0,23

fashionable again. Set free of materialism, metaphysics could well become man’s chief preoccupation of the next century and may even yield a world-wide consensus on the nature of life and the universe.

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By 1971, this prophetic view of Life magazine took on new dimensions of reality. According to the Los Angeles Times of February 11, 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell attempted to send mental messages to a Chicago engineer whose hobby was extrasensory perception. Using ESP cards, which he had taken aboard with him to transfer messages to Chicago psychic Olaf Olsen, Mitchell managed to prove beyond any doubt that telepathy works even from the outer reaches of space. The Mitchell-Olsen experiment has since become part of the history of parapsychology. Not only did it add significantly to the knowledge of how telepathy really works, it made a change in the life of the astronaut, Mitchell. According to an UPI dispatch dated September 27, 1971, Mitchell became convinced that life existed away from earth and more than likely in our own galaxy. But he doubted that physical space travel held all the answers. “If the phenomenon of astral projection has any validity, it might be perfectly valid to use it in inter-galactic travel”; Mitchell indicated that he was paying additional attention to ESP for future use. Since that time, of course, Mr. Mitchell has become an active experimenter in ESP.

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A few years ago I appeared at the University of Bridgeport (Connecticut). I was lecturing on scientific evidence of the existence of ghosts. My lecture included some slides taken under test conditions and attracted some 1,200 students and faculty members. As a result of this particular demonstration, I met Robert Jeffries, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the university and an avid parapsychologist. During the years of our friendship Professor Jeffries and I have tried very hard to set up an independent institute of parapsychology. We had thought that Bob Jeffries, who had been at one time president of his own data-processing company, would be particularly acceptable to the business community. But the executives he saw were not the least bit interested in giving any money to such a project. They failed to see the practical implications of studying ESP. Perhaps they were merely not in tune with the trend, even among the business executives.

In an article dated October 23, 1969, The Wall Street Journal headline was “Strange Doings. Americans Show Burst of Interest in Witches, Other Occult Matters.” The piece, purporting to be a survey of the occult scene and written by Stephen J. Sansweet, presents the usual hodgepodge of information and misinformation, lumping witches and werewolves together with parapsychologists and researchers. He quotes Mortimer R. Feinberg, a psychology professor at City University of New York, as saying, “The closer we get to a controlled, totally predictable society, the more man becomes fearful of the consequences.” Sansweet then goes on to say that occult supplies, books, and even such peripheral things as jewelry are being gobbled up by an interested public, a sure sign that the occult is “in.” Although the “survey” is on the level of a Sunday supplement piece and really quite worthless, it does indicate the seriousness with which the business community regards the occult field, appearing, as it did, on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

More realistic and respectable is an article in the magazine Nation’s Business of April 1971 entitled “Dollars May Flow from the Sixth Sense. Is There a Link between Business Success and Extrasensory Perception?”

We think the role of precognition deserves special consideration in sales forecasting. Wittingly or unwittingly, it is probably already used there. Much more research needs to be done on the presence and use of precognition among executives but the evidence we have obtained indicates that such research will be well worthwhile.

As far back as 1955 the Anderson Laboratories of Brookline, Massachusetts, were in the business of forecasting the future. Its president, Frank Anderson, stated, “Anderson Laboratories is in a position to furnish weekly charts showing what, in all probability, the stock market will do in each coming week.” Anderson’s concept, or, as he calls it, the Anderson Law, involves predictions based upon the study of many things, from the moon tides to human behavior to elements of parapsychology. He had done this type of work for at least twenty-five years prior to setting up the laboratories. Most of his predictions are based upon calculated trends and deal in finances and politics. Anderson claimed