GHOSTWATCH
ALAN MURDIE takes a look at the pioneering work of the late Erlendur Haraldsson
If one were to pick a country in Europe that might claim as many ghosts as England, the prime candidate would be Iceland. In 1980-81 hundreds of Icelanders were asked: “Have you ever in a waking state personally perceived or felt the presence of a deceased person?” as part of a major survey into contemporary ghost experiences. Many hundreds replied, confirming they had.
This pioneering survey was just one of a number of major contributions to the field of apparitions and the fate of consciousness after death, made by the late Dr Erlendur Haraldsson over more than half a century of serious academic research. This was conducted both in Iceland and internationally, including Europe and North America and with fieldwork investigations in India, Sri Lanka and Lebanon.
He placed ghost encounters on a spectrum of experiences of an afterlife and entry into the next world, encompassing crisis apparitions, spontaneous contact with the departed, mediumistic communications, apparent memories between one life and rebirth, pre-natal memories and especially reincarnation. Rather than look to materialistic explanations, or putting phenomena in discrete categories, he considered experiences as a unified whole, overlapping and reinforcing each other. His own research projects reflected this diversity in a career where work in one area seemed to move almost seamlessly to the next.
A prolific author of articles for newspapers and magazines, as well as scholarly articles and books, his bibliography from the years 1960-2018 includes over 360 articles and books, translated into 14 languages.
Born on 3 November 1931 in Vellir in Seltjarnarnes, he was the son of Anna Elimundardóttir, a housewife, and Haraldur Erlendsson, a labourer. His early interest was astronomy, but after contemplating the depths of space he became interested in philosophy and the mysteries of the mind and existence.
After graduating from the University of Copenhagen in 1954, he travelled widely in the Middle East, encountering Kurdish rebels in Iraq about whom he wrote a book. Returning to Europe, he studied psychology in West Germany at Freiburg and Munich between 1964 and 1969, completing a doctorate. In between academic work he became a spokesman for Kurdish rebels from 1964 to 1969 and was vicepresident of the International Kurdistan Society (1965-1970). Travelling to the United States, he gravitated to psi research and met and worked with some leading American researchers.
In 1971, Haraldsson joined American parapsychologist Dr Karlis Osis on a study of deathbed visions. They set forth on four expeditions to India to collect cases, building upon work already undertaken by Osis, who surveyed medical professionals in the USA in the early 1960s.
For those keen to see a ghost or spirit of the dead, it appears we all have one good chance in life. It occurs right at the end of life when an apparition of a deceased person may appear, seemingly to fetch the dying person. Osis had already found this in replies to a questionnaire sent out to 285 physicians and 355 nurses in
1961, who reported having witnessed over 35,000 deaths of patients between them. They reported some 40 per cent of dying patients having visions or hallucinations, the overwhelming preponderance seeing the apparitions of dead people, usually deceased close relatives of the dying patient. Typically, the experience had a calming effect, and the apparition was interpreted as a spirit coming to greet the patient and guide them into the afterlife. These results matched what Osis and Haraldsson discovered in India, showing cross-cultural parallels with those in North America. Their Indian study revealed that of 10 per cent of Indian patients who were conscious in the hour before death, the majority reported experiencing an apparition or visions to medics in attendance (see K Osis and E Haraldsson in At the Hour of Death, 1997, third edition).
During two of their research trips, they met the famous and charismatic Sathya Sai Baba, who died on 24 April 2011 and who was India’s most famous, and controversial, swami or holy man, one of the most enigmatic and remarkable religious figures of the 20th century. Sai Baba attracted two million followers, including many who vouched for his miraculous powers, as he appeared to perform many of the miracles of Christ, including a ‘transfiguration experience’ in which witnesses attested to Sai Baba appearing on a hillside radiating “an intense light that shone from him and blinded the group”, one of a repertoire of paranormal manifestations. Chief among these were apparent abilities in materialising various tokens of devotion, such as amulets, rings and pendants and producing ‘vibhuti’ or ‘holy’ ash from the air in prodigious quantities. Haraldsson admitted some claims about the mystic “were truly mind-boggling”. Their own encounters with him, and the interviews with witnesses, led to two joint papers, and later a book by Haraldsson, Miracles Are My Visiting Cards (1987). By the time it appeared, the phenomena had been going on for about 40 years; if they had been fraudulent, Haraldsson argued, it would be
Haraldsson admitted some claims about the mystic Sai Baba “were truly mind-boggling”
expected that at least some associates of Sai Baba, who would be unavoidably required to assist in fraud, would have exposed it, either in confessions or inadvertent revelations. Yet this had not occurred. Even persons formerly close to Sai Baba who later became negative about him for one reason or another never even hinted at deceit concerning physical phenomena.
Inevitably, allegations arose when in 1992 an Indian newspaper claimed to hold film evidence showing Sai Baba using trickery when apparently materialising a gold watch he gave to the prime minister.
Opponents of Sai Baba drooled over the exposure, with the story spreading into the Western media ( Independent, 2 Mar 1994), which claimed the film showed “tawdry sleight-of-hand”.
However, anomalous psychologist and expert on deception Dr Richard Wiseman joined Haraldsson in announcing the footage did not fit this simplistic narrative. The film was poor quality, revealing only enough detail to conclude that trickery was a possibility, but not definitely proved. ( Deception and Self-Deception and Investigating Psychics by Richard Wiseman, 1997).
Experiences in India cemented Haraldsson’s interest in apparitions and afterlife studies. Following a stint as a psychologist at the now apparently defunct American Society for Psychical Research in New York between 1972 and 1974, Haraldsson took up a post of assistant professor of psychology at the University of Iceland in 1974, progressing to associate professor in 1978 and attaining full professorship in 1984. This provided a base for his landmark survey
into ghost experiences in modern Iceland. In 1980-81 Haraldsson launched a wideranging population survey of apparitional experiences and encounters with the deceased in the country.
A short one-page questionnaire and a self-addressed envelope were distributed by five popular magazines: two for fishermen, sailors, and the fishing industry (covering 5,800 subscribers); two for people interested in Spiritualism, spirituality, Theosophy, and new religious movements (3,000 subscribers); and a magazine that circulated in rural districts. Readers were asked if they had ever seen an apparition, heard the voice of a deceased person, sensed a smell, felt a touch, or in some other way felt the presence of a dead person.
Where the initial answer to the question was yes, respondents were asked to supply a name, address, and phone contact for follow-up interviews. Receiving around 700 questionnaires with positive responses, some 64% of the participants came from the greater Reykjavik area, 21% from towns across Iceland, and 15% from rural areas, reflecting the approximate population concentrations in the country.
After excluding dreams and visits to mediums, Haraldsson and colleagues were left with 337 ghost experiences leading to recorded telephone interviews conducted between 1980 and 1981 and continuing up to 1986.
Some 307 responses contained the date and place of the experience, the senses engaged, how the deceased appeared and disappeared, the lighting conditions, how real the occurrence seemed, and other details. If respondents had more than one experience of the dead, they were asked which one seemed most impressive. Where the apparition was recognised or identified, efforts were made to trace details from official records, including the sex, age at death, cause of death and relationship to the witness.
As in UK surveys, visual apparitions predominated, followed by auditory experiences. Other sensory stimuli such as odours, touches and tastes were rarer. Many Icelandic reports could be lifted straight from case reports gathered in Great Britain recording encounters with life-like human forms:
I had recently started working in a factory when one day I saw a man walking at the further end of the machine at which I was working. He walked up to a wall near which the machine was placed and back. I went to see who the man was but found no one. When I told my co-workers about this experience and described the man to them, they were sure that this had been a ghost that some others had also seen. It was the former director of the company who had committed suicide.
With cases of recognised figures, Haraldsson studied official death records, verifying the deceased person’s gender, to establish the cause of death. With these findings, he suggested a large proportion of ghost sightings are of males, especially those suffering violent ends and accidents. This might be attributed to men living in earlier decades being more likely than their female counterparts to be involved in dangerous situations, such as war, the fishing industry or mining. The same pattern has been found in retrospective studies of the classic Phantasms of the Living (1886). It also matches the folklore of the world, where apparitions are typically of those dying suddenly or by violence, and the ‘troubled spirit’ hypothesis of popular tradition.
He further compared this Icelandic survey with data obtained by wider national surveys in Great Britain, Sweden and the United States, as well as findings of a multinational survey by Gallup and affiliated companies across most countries of Western Europe, showing interesting national differences and a widespread belief in the existence of psychic phenomena. Viewed in total, in Iceland, Great Britain and the USA over half of respondents report a paranormal experience. (‘Gallup Representative National Surveys of Psychic Phenomena: Iceland, Great Britain, Sweden, USA and Gallup’s Multinational Survey’, Journal of the SPR 53, 1985, pp.145-58). A later study, part of the European Values Survey, 2011 revealed 63.4% of Icelanders declare an acceptance of survival of bodily death, with about one third considering themselves as having a personal experience involving some kind of contact with the deceased.
From Iceland’s own past, working with researcher LR Gissurarson, Haraldsson helped retrieve for posterity the history of native psychic Indridi Indridason, known as a ‘middleman’ representing “an interface of rare quality between the two realms”. Indridason had a short career between 1905 and 1909, but ranks as one of the outstanding physical mediums of all time. He produced almost every effect ever observed in the séance room, on a par with the celebrated mediums DD Home and Eusapia Palladino. He produced raps, cold breezes, ‘transcendental’ music, spoke in voices including foreign languages (so-called ‘xenoglossy’) and levitated objects. Reports from observers also recount extraordinary effects: ‘disappearance’ of the medium’s left arm, strange lights, the apparition of ‘Emil Jensen’ (his spirit guide) in a pillar of light, the materialisation of objects and on one occasion the appearance outside the séance room of a phantom ‘monster-like animal’, part calf, part horse.
Further records kept by the Icelandic Experimental Society concerning the séances conducted came to light in 2000, in the form of minute books rediscovered after half a century, detailing protocols and the conditions imposed. Haraldsson
concluded: “In the mediumship of Indridi Indridason there is not only strong evidence for paranormal physical phenomena, but in addition we find an exceptional number of different phenomena that have been interpreted as pointing towards human survival of bodily death.” (See LR Gissurarson, & E Haraldsson, (1989) ‘The Icelandic medium Indridi Indridason’ in Proceedings of the SPR, 57, pp.54-148 published as a book in 2015 by White Crow)
All this work led to the inevitable question: To what or where do we go after we die and what is the fate of the individual soul or the spirit?
In searching for answers, Haraldsson looked into reincarnation. His interest in past life memories dated from 1969 and his year at Virginia University where he met Ian Stevenson, the founder of modern reincarnation studies commencing with his study Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966) and eventually expanded into numerous and voluminous case studies.
In 1973 Haraldsson was requested by Stevenson to study a rebirth case from Iceland (cases from Europe and North America are comparatively rare). This later developed into a national survey of reincarnation across Iceland in 1974, repeated in 2006. Again, he engaged in further international forays, following up past life memories found among children in Sri Lanka and Lebanon. These suggested personality traits from past lives might continue, based upon statements made by young children who recalled a previous existence. Again, he found children who died a violent death in the previous life they remembered predominated and were more likely to display symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder than those displaying no such memories.
Haraldsson later wrote a book, I Saw a Light and Came Here: Children’s Experiences of Reincarnation (2017), its title inspired by a statement by Purnima Ekanayake, a Sri Lankan girl who told her parents that she saw a light while disembodied before being reborn. Her body carried birthmarks, linked to a previous incarnation as a man killed in a traffic accident. Purnima started to speak of her memories at a very early age and spoke persistently about them.
Although a cross-gender case, Purnima did not act in a masculine manner, as had sometimes been identified in other cases described by Stevenson. Haraldsson found children typically forget these memories when they attain the age of six, but Purnima still spoke freely of her previous life at the age of 10.
In some cases, further suggestive evidence was accumulated. Another, investigated with Tissa Jayawardane from Sri Lanka, was the case of Chatura Buddika Karunaratne, born on 20 April 1989 in the rural area of Metiyagane in the Kurunagala district of Sri Lanka. At the age of three Chatura made several statements regarding a previous life, including where he had lived and how he died while travelling in a truck through a forest. The boy associated two
Purnima spoke of her memories at a very early age and spoke persistently about them
birthmarks with his claimed memories. His statements were recorded and published, leading to an identification with a deceased person found in the area, whose circumstances corresponded to the boy’s statements.
Following publicity, MP Martin, a retired farmer and mason in Henegedara, came forward, believing the profile fitted his son MP Dayananda, who had joined the army in August 1985 and died on 18 April 1986, as a result of injuries suffered in a bomb blast. The birthmarks found below the ear and on the neck of Chatura corresponded to the location of the injuries. (‘Birthmarks and claims of previous-life memories
2: The Case of Chatura Karunaratine’ in Journal of the SPR, vol.64, 2000, pp.82-92). Haraldsson’s co-worker Tissa Jayawardane continues this research (see www.newstrails.com/lives-reborn-sri-lankanresearcher-trying-prove-continuity-lifedeath/2017).
Dr Erlendur Haraldsson died at Reykjavik on the evening of 22 November 2020 at the age of 89. He is survived by his widow Bjorg Jakobsdottir, a Middle Eastern scholar, and two children, Harald, a psychiatrist, and Anna Elisabeta, an engineer.
I had the pleasure of meeting Erlendur Haraldsson on a number of occasions at conferences and events between 2005 and 2017 and always found him pleasant and mercurial despite his focus on death and survival. Displaying the energy and enthusiasm of a much younger man, he had an easy and infectious humour, at the same time remaining profoundly dedicated to his research and moved by many aspects of it.
My own impressions bear out what he told interviewer Rosemarie Pilkington about his career in 2011, recorded in Men and Women of Parapsychology, Personal Reflections (2013). Regarding advice for those wishing to adopt psychical research as a career he arguably – and sensibly – suggested that one should get a grounding in another science or discipline first before embarking upon psi studies. For him it had led to a life full of fascination and learning.
He stated: “I cannot think of anything I would like to have done differently… I have had a lot of good luck, came to know the right people at the right time… I enjoyed all of it and am in retrospect happy for all these opportunities that came my way or I created.” Altogether, it seemed he felt fulfilled by the course his life had taken and having followed what he believed to be his destiny.