VOICES FROM THE OTHER SIDE
This issue focuses on a perennial topic not just of fortean research but of religious, scientific and philosophical enquiry down the ages: what, if anything, lies on the other side of death? A second question, and one that often follows the first, is: can we communicate with it – or it with us?
The first question has been exercising billionaire Robert Bigelow for some time and has led him to follow a far stranger path than those usually trodden by rich philanthropists sitting on tech fortunes. While Bill Gates is trying to save the planet by sending balloons full of chalk dust to reduce solar radiation and decrease global warming (see p.16), Bigelow – who has previously poured his spare cash into various parapsychological projects
– is more concerned with what happens when we leave this world: he is currently offering $1.5 million in prize money for any researchers who can point to proof of the afterlife. Dr Leo Ruickbie had a long chat with him about what exactly we might find on the ‘other side’ (p.36).
Poetry, too, has often grappled with the mysteries of death and intimations of immortality, but rarely has its probing of the veil between realities yielded anything quite as eccentric as James Merrill’s esoteric epic The Changing Light at Sandover, a voluminous postmodern epic that sprang from years’ worth of sessions with a Ouija board. Eric Hoffman explores the strange new worlds Merrill discovered, and asks whether Sandover could really have been the product of dictating spirits or of vanity, subconscious desire and selfdelusion (p.40).
Merrill’s otherworldly interlocutors were an odd bunch, but at least they appeared to have a coherent, if sometimes worrying, agenda. What can we make, though, of the phantom voices that have been reported coming down the phone lines or, these days, sending phantom texts to our mobiles? D Scott Rogo’s 1979 book Phone Calls from the Dead remains the classic, if controversial, study of such cases; but, as Theo Paijmans reveals, the phenomenon extends both backwards and forwards in time, with examples to be found from the earliest days of telephony to the age of the smartphone (p.30).
Many of these voices from beyond – from Merrill’s fallen angels to Rogo’s dead ringers – seem at times to possess a poltergeist-like sense of mischief, if not outright malice (elsewhere in this issue,
Paul Cropper reports on a more traditional, stone-throwing polt from the Himalayan country of Bhutan; p.14), but Helen Barrell finds that there’s comfort to be had from some of the post-mortem presences we encounter – and that loved ones visiting from the other side are just as likely to be feline as human (p55).
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ERRATA
FT401:19: Gary Tavender, of Howden, East Riding, spotted a footballing error in Alan Murdie’s account of four Millwall supporters camping on Cadbury Castle. “In 2011, Millwall were not even in the same division as Plymouth Argyle, but they did play against each other at Home Park in a cup match. This took place on 9 August 2011, not 29 as stated in the article.”