This is Sally’s blurb from the website:

“Something Unknown takes us into the labs of several leading parapsychologists for a front row view into their current investigations. Compelling evidence for psychic phenomena is presented, along with thoughtful, even passionate testimony about the meaning and implications of these findings for humanity. Renee Scheltema has done a great service for parapsychology in creating this artistic and unbiased documentary.”

In addition to a project they’re working on with residents of Richmond, Virginia, they’re conducting a new online survey which you can participate in by clicking the link in the above paragraph.

Drs. Alvarado and Zingrone are both Assistant Professors of Research at the Division of Perceptual Studies in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences of the University of Virginia. (I got the picture of them from their website, as you’ll see!)

Update: Drs. Alvarado and Zingrone have also recently taken positions at the Atlantic University in Virginia Beach! Dr. Zingrone is the new Director of Academic Affairs and Dr. Alvarado is the Scholar in Residence.

Adam was a working class kid from New Jersey.  He grew up in the kind of neighborhood where if you studied or went to college, “this was not good,” he said.   Unfortunately, Adam never finished his education at Duke due to the Depression. That always bothered him. “It still hurts,” he said in an interview four decades later. He was a sensitive man. “Failure affected him deeply,” Rhine once wrote of Adam and sadly, after that one spectacular year of testing Adam never scored well again. Rhine paid for him to return to Duke one more time for more tests, but he did not do well.

“Doing those tests was extremely exhausting,” Linzmayer said in a 1974 interview with Seymour Mauskopf. “Very tiring.” He said that he felt rushed and that he had told Rhine that, “I could do better if I could take my time.  I can’t turn it off and on.”

But Adam was always proud of his work at Duke and the Parapsychology Laboratory and he kept in touch. He sent the Rhine family Christmas cards every year. At one point Rhine gave a lecture in New Jersey without telling Adam, who lived in the area. When Adam found out he wrote Rhine that he felt bad, and to let him know next time. In 1954, Rhine was once again in New Jersey, giving a lecture and this time Adam proudly attended with his wife and each of his three children.

Adam believed his extraordinary talent came from his mother, who sometimes had a feeling about things. She once had a bad feeling when his brother went to the dentist. A few hours after coming home Adam’s brother fell sick. They took him to the hospital, but he died that very day. His parents were so out of their minds with grief they left Adam at the hospital. Having just lost his brother, he had to walk seven miles home alone in shock. Poor little guy. By the way, a number of people I researched for this book said their mother had abilities. Hubert Pearce said it, and Carl Jung said the same about both his mother and grandmother.

Another interesting thing came out during the 1974 interview. Adam said he was lucky, that he grew up lucky. He liked to shoot craps and he always did well. “I’m a winner always.” Adam told Rhine that he could throw more 7’s than chance, but Rhine didn’t believe him. Rhine bet Adam he couldn’t do it and according to Adam he proved that he could.

It’s well known that the Lab got their idea of doing dice experiments to test psychokinesis from a gambler. Could it have been Adam? (To test whether or not people could affect the movement of objects with their minds, a subject would roll a pair of dice and either they got the roll they tried for or not.  I am greatly simplifying the experiment in this description.)

“It as just this imaginary thing. Honestly it’s just the studio who wants it to be made. We did a great one and then we did another one. It’s hard to go to the well again. But really, they’d just like us to be sort of alive, but pass it off to new guys. I don’t wake up in a sweat about it, but it’s getting so annoying I might just write the damn thing and get it over with.”

These pictures are from the event I did last year at the 92nd Street Y, when I moderated the questions for Dan Aykroyd and his father Peter.

At the beginning, Dan Aykroyd said he wanted to acknowledge the Ghostbusters in the audience. They looked so happy when he said that to them.

“I did not make myself clear about Edison. I am satisfied about the facts. There is a man named Fitzgerald in Detroit who is doing something similar. He is a young physicist. He claims to have read Edison’s notes, as well as those of Steinmetz [famous inventor and engineer who worked with Edison] and Tesla [another famous inventor and engineer]. I have only talked with him over the long-distance telephone. He claims to be able to register electric wave transmission given off by the action of a muscle twenty-five feet across the room. He wants to investigate mediums to discover whether they can transmit some physical force which his machine can pick up. I have a friend in Detroit investigating him.”

I wonder what happened to Fitzgerald. I didn’t copy the entire letter, and I’m not sure why I didn’t. I must have been tired. I’m completely ignorant about things like this though — does the body emit electric waves?

[That's a picture of Tesla that I found while googling.]

Dear Dr. Rhine,

I have heard so much about your experiments in telepathy that I rejoiced to get an authoritative account, and especially to know that a University Professor of Psychology was taking up the subject. And now I find that you were aware of my own work in the same direction, although it was carried on in a back-stairs manner and had no University status At the same time I was personally convinced of the reality of what you have rechristened E.S.P.

I desire no more evidence; only now the subject is on the way to becoming respectable, treated in a handsome volume, published by Henry Holt, & vouched for by several Professor as a branch of Psychology.

Yours faithfully,
Oliver Lodge

Lodge is referring to the book Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years, which was co-written by J. G. Pratt, J. B. Rhine, Burke M. Smith, Charles E. Stuart, and Joseph A. Greenwood. I double-checked and was happy to see that Rhine had credited all the telepathy experiments that Lodge had undertaken before Rhine. The Lodge letter was very gracious and Rhine was thrilled and proud to get. He wrote a very admiring and grateful letter back.

Ah, the last paragraph from Rhine says this: “I hope, as most Americans do, that the Nazis can be kept from carrying out their threat of destruction of English civilization. I heartily wish we were allied with you on this as we were in 1917.” A year and a half later he would get his wish.

“I do not think Houdini ever claimed he was doing anything but magic. When Mother and I had our talk with him he showed a serious attitude toward the scientific investigation of psychical matters. That might have been because our sponsor, Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, was with us and he and Houdini were old friends. Dr. Prince claimed that Houdini was really quite open-minded on telepathy and was not sure had had not had some such experiences himself.”

In 1926, Houdini and William McDougall (Rhine’s soon to be mentor) had arranged for a psychical research symposium at Clark University. So that would have taken place just before Houdini died. I remember reading the address McDougall made at Clark. It included this:

“ … it [parapsychological research] runs the risk of leading its students into a slough of despair, or entangling them in a quagmire where no sure footing is found, where will o’ the wisps gleam fitfully on every hand, provoking hopes that are destined to disappointment and emotions that blind us to the dangers of this obscure region … Let it be admitted then that this is no field for the causal amateur … It is a field of research which at every step demands in the highest degree the scientific spirit and all around scientific training and knowledge.”

Not very hopeful! 1926 was also the same year that the Rhines had attended a seance conducted by medium Margery. Shortly after they would publish a paper declaring her a fraud. Houdini had come to the same conclusion two years before. So they had that in common.

My Dear Eddie:

“… I am enclosing a copy of my letter to Dr. [Joseph] Banks Rhine of Duke University written in March of this year. This letter I wish you would stick in your pocket and read at your leisure. I wrote the letter to encourage Dr. Rhine to carry on in his work and not be stopped by scientific scoffers.”

“In 1923 I put on the first program that was ever produced for radio on the subject of telepathy on our radio station WJAZ. I did this with the cooperation of Dr. Robert Gault, head of the Department of Psychology of Northwestern University, and Dr. Gardner Murphy of Columbia.”

“In 1938 I put on a program on extra-sensory perception which program was supervised not only by Dr. Gault but also by Dr. [Joseph] Banks Rhine, who was then starting his work at Duke University on extra-sensory perception. This program I put on the national chain and carried it on for nearly a year. There was no faking. It was a sincere attempt to make extra-sensory perception a subject which should be discussed …”

“Before I used Dr. [Joseph] Banks Rhine I called a number of scientists out on my yacht each Sunday to interview him and ascertain whether or not in their opinion they thought he was conservative.”

“I’ll never forget what our great physicist, Dr. Arthur Compton, said. After he talked with Dr. Rhine for over three hours on my yacht he said, “Rhine, I was asked out here to ascertain whether or not you were conservative enough. My answer is going to be that you are too conservative. You’re trying to explain everything by the laws of science. You can’t do that. There are too many facts which we must accept cannot be explained by the now known laws of science.”

McDonald then closed his letter by asking Rickenbacker to keep his letter to Rhine confidential.

Rickenbacker said he read the letter to Rhine with interest, but I have to say, he doesn’t sound very enthusiastic in his answer. He sounds like he was just being polite.

But after googling him for a while I see he had a few psychic experiences during the war (and near-death experiences) so he was definitely open-minded about the subject.

Also, McDonald mentions a recent American Magazine article of Rickenbacker’s titled: When a Man Faces Death. McDonald said it was one of the most inspiring articles he has ever read, but he makes an interesting correction. He says Rickenbacker made a mistake that “so many people make in referring to the science as ‘mental telepathy.’ All telepathy, as we know it, is mental.” So Rickenbacker must have written about telepathy in the article.

I want to add that I love the story McDonald told about Compton saying Rhine was too conservative. Years later Rhine would say that Compton was too credulous.

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.

But in 1961, with Rhine’s help, IBM in Canada conducted an ESP test with Maclean’s, a weekly magazine, and a Canadian Broadcasting Company radio series called ESP.

A card was inserted in the July 29, 1961 issue of Maclean’s and readers were given instructions. According to letters I found between Rhine and IBM in Canada, the results were inconclusive, and the experiment was not refined or repeated. I tried to find records for the experiment. I contacted Macleans and IBM archivists, and they did their best to locate them, but it looks like nothing from this test has survived.

(You can read IBM and ESP Part One here.)