kisma Johnson's blog: "Millions Share Paranormal Beliefs"

I keep hearing all these people out there saying there is no such thing as Ghosts or the Paranormal. You ever wonder why they say this. I strongly believe that there is more evidence to prove that the paranormal and afterlife does exists than there is to say it doesn't. When you hear there is a scientific explanation for why things happen, I would like them to explain experiences that so many of us have. The touching we feel, The shadows we see. What I think is going on is these people who are so against believing have had something happen with them also. Why wouldn't you come forward if you have had an experience with the paranormal, Maybe help us find the reasons why, if there is any? There are so many claims of things that go on that are just plain out ridiculous and shouldn't even be heard but we like to hear it or we wouldn't listen. A case in point is that show, “A Haunting“, I am a strong Paranormal and Ghost Believer myself but that is one show that I just cannot seem to believe in. The flying of the plates out of the covers, The big scratches on peoples bodies. That would be something I would have to see to believe. I would probably need a new pair of shorts, but it would make me a believer. Another thing that I find myself pondering on is the “being possessed”. To me I think that Hollywood pretty much had everyone thinking they were possessed or had evil spirits attached to them telling them what to do with The Exorcist. But these shows like A Haunting is pretty much making the real Ghost Investigators like Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson from TAPS, have to work harder in trying to prove their message and submitting what I have seen to be concrete evidence. So is it fair that these shows should be on TV to make a mockery of this unexplained phenomenon as ghosts? I dont know if it is reality but it is sure good entertainment, and for me a good laugh. Whats your thoughts? Post a comment, I always love to hear what others have to say.

This story happened a while ago in Dublin, and even though it sounds like an Alfred Hitchcock tale, its true. John Bradford, a Dublin University student, was on the side of the road hitchhiking on a very dark night and in the midst of a storm. The night was rolling on and no car went by. The storm was so strong he could hardly see a few feet ahead of him. Suddenly, he saw a car slowly coming towards him and stopped. John, desperate for shelter and without thinking about it, got into the car and closed the door..only to realize there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn't on!! The car started moving slowly. John looked at the road ahead and saw a curve approaching. Scared, he started to pray, begging for his life. Then, just before the car hit the curve, a hand appeared through the window and turned the wheel. John, paralyzed with terror, watched as the hand repeatedly came through the window, but never touched or harmed him. Shortly thereafter John saw the lights of a pub appear down the road, so, gathering strength, he jumped out of the car and ran to it. Wet and out of breath, he rushed inside and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just had. A silence enveloped the pub when everybody realized he was crying and....wasn't drunk. Suddenly, the door opened, and two other people walked in from the stormy night. They, like John, were also soaked and out of breath. Looking around, and seeing John Bradford sobbing at the bar, one said to the other... "Look Paddy.....there's that asshole that got in the car while we were pushing it!!!!

Who were you in a previous life? This question is now so popular that many westerners accept that they must have lived before. Believing in the phenomenon of Reincarnation, it is almost a spiritual system in itself. But what is the reality to reincarnation? I don’t know. Maybe it is exactly what people believe. But it is also possible to place other mechanisms upon the subject, and even place it in a totally new paradigm. A CASE STUDY To understand the subject in western terms, we need to know just what ‘evidence’ there is for it. Well, very little really. But we do have case studies. Here is a typical one. Nicola Peart shocked her mother when, as a little girl, she was given a dog. Calling it Muff, she said it was the name of her other dog, yet Nicola had never had a dog before. Questioning her about this, Nicola suddenly wanted to know why she was a girl this time. It seems Nicola used to be a boy, whose mother, Elsie Benson, lived in a grey stone house in nearby Howarth and her father had worked on the railways . Nicola was later taken to Howarth, where she recognised the house, and parish records showed that a John Benson had been born there in 1875 to a railwayman and his family. WHAT IS REINCARNATION? The above is a classic case of supposed reincarnation – the idea that when we die our soul is reborn into another body. As old as history, the idea is fundamental to many religions, most notably Hinduism, which is steeped in the Samsara, or wheel of rebirth. Whether a person is reborn to a lower or higher form is dependent upon karma, a principle which states that deeds in this life decide your place in the next. It is easy to dismiss reincarnation as impossible, but recent polls in the west show that between 25 and 40% of people believe they have been born before. One of the most famous believers is the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He has to believe for he is the thirteenth incarnation of the original Dalai Lama who came to the Lion Throne in 1391. MORE REINCARNATED CHILDREN A typical case of reincarnation is that of twins, Jennifer and Gillian Pollock, born in 1958 in Hexham, England. The previous year, their mother’s two children had been killed in a car crash. Moving to Whitley Bay in the early sixties, Mrs Pollock re-visited Hexham and the twins seemed to recognise the place. Later, sorting out some old toys, the twins recognised and named their dead sister’s dolls . It wasn’t long before they began discussing the crash – an event they supposedly knew nothing about. Equally puzzling is the case of Jonathan Pike, who, at the age of three, began talking about his wife, Angela, following a family move from Hull to Southend. On a bus in the town, he pointed to a house he lived in with Angela, and also the garage where he used to work . On a later trip he burst into tears, recognising the location where his daughter had been killed in a car crash. A long serving policeman remembered the case of the little girl being knocked down at that very location. Sometimes such remembrances can have life changing effects. Consider the case of Dorothy Eady. When she was three she was knocked unconscious. Following this she began to have dreams featuring a temple and gardens in ancient Egypt. She eventually became convinced she was the lover of the Pharoah, Sety. So all consuming was the feeling that Dorothy moved to Egypt, spending her life, right up to her death in 1981, in a primitive village close to Sety’s temple. One of the most convincing cases of supposed reincarnation concerned Mary Lurancy Vennum, a thirteen year old girl who lived in Watseka, Illinois in 1877. Having an epileptic fit she became unconscious for five days. Coming round, she claimed to have met her dead sister. Describing her, a family friend recognised the girl as his dead daughter Mary Roff. Soon after this, Mary was hypnotised by a Dr Stevens. The day following, Mary became Mary Roff, and remained so for four months. DR IAN STEVENSON Several researchers have studied reincarnation in minute detail. Principal among them is Dr Ian Stevenson, whose 1966 book ‘Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation’ is a classic. Researching some fascinating cases, he noted that often, any addiction such as alcoholism in a past life could reflect itself in the present. In some two hundred cases he noted birthmarks in the same place as wounds in previous lives. Such evidence led Stevenson to conclude that human personality may go ‘… much further back in time than conception and birth.’ FROM INDIA WITH LOVE Many cases came from the east, such as Kumari Shanti Devi, born in Delhi in 1926. At four she claimed to be the wife of Kedar Nath Chaubey from Muttra, one hundred miles away, who had died ten years ago. Eventually, Kedar Nath visited her. She flung her arms around him. On a visit to Muttra she knew other relations, even knowing where his wife had kept her precious things. Jasbir Lal Jat, a three year old Indian boy, offers similar evidence. Nearly dying of smallpox, when he came round from unconsciousness his personality had changed, claiming to have previously lived in Vehedi. He had died when he fell off a cart and fractured his skull. In 1957 a Brahmin lady from the town visited his village. He recognised her as his aunt. Knowledge of his past life came out, including his name, Sobha Ram. GETTING TO GRIPS The most convincing cases come from the east, except for one damning problem. Steeped in belief in reincarnation, such cases come from societies which practice the caste system, where a person is condemned to always remain in their class. Interestingly, most cases of reincarnation, here, involve a past life from a higher caste, offering incentive for collusion. Should we accept the above cases as proof of reincarnation, or could other factors be involved? Perhaps, rather than speak of reincarnation per se we should think in terms of the person being somehow possessed. PSYCHOLOGICAL MECHANISMS If we do so, we can place psychological ‘mechanisms’ upon the phenomenon. I won’t go into great detail of these mechanisms, here, as I’ve written about them elsewhere on this blog. But basically, they are thus: There is an ability of the mind to retrieve information of books and other media from the unconscious that the person has forgotten. It is known as cryptomnesia. Often including historical detail, it can be mistakenly seen as coming from a previous life. A further phenomenon is multiple personality, where the mind can seem to fragment into many separate characters, taking it in turn to ‘occupy’ the host. If such a phenomenon attaches to the idea of reincarnation, characters can appear to come from a previous life. BIRTH OF THE SOUL I have quickly skirted over these ‘mechanisms’ because they are not the central purpose of this essay. Rather, bearing in mind that these mind-functions can occur, I want to analyse past culture and mind anomalies to try to grasp where the idea of reincarnation came from. Early spiritual expression seemed to revolve around two central ideas. The first was animism, where the world was perceived as being split into a physical world, and a spiritual world existing parallel to it. Through the spiritual world, everything in the world had a ‘spirit’, thus animating the physical. The most likely cause of this belief was the ability of the prehistoric human mind to easily hallucinate, literally living their dreams as technology had not yet occupied the mind to an extent it later did. But regardless of this, the idea gave our early ancestors the idea that supernatural spirits existed, including the existence of a spirit reflection of man in the soul. MYTHS OF ANCESTORS The second thread of spiritual expression was that of ancestor worship. For instance, we can imagine that, if early man experienced his dreams more easily, and mistook them for evidence of the supernatural, then he would easily dream, and possibly see, his dead ancestors about him. In this way, a specific form of ancestor worship was birthed. In effect, the dead became early gods to ancient peoples. But they also became much more than this. The residue of ancestor worship is with us today, in the way we remember, and try to emulate, figures from the past. So we can imagine that, in early times, this reverence for the ancestors would give the impression that those ancestors lived on in those alive. From here, it is a small step for an acceptance that the soul survived death, and was reborn in another person, confirming that the ancestors are with us still. SHARED PSYCHOLOGY We must now turn to the human mind. We like to think of ourselves as individuals, yet the more I look into human behaviour, the more it becomes obvious that we are not. Rather, we seem to be an amalgam of three types of influence. These are the archetypal, emotional and situational. Jung was one of the central theorizers of the archetypal. He noted that we seemed to have a collective unconscious which held within it universal shared symbols. In terms of personality, these included the child, sage, trickster, hero, mother and various other character archetypes. In effect, these are the various stages and character influences of the human mind. We can therefore argue that ‘personality’ is not specific to the individual, but is an inevitability of shared psychology. Emotions work in a similar way. We can exhibit various emotions by degrees and to specific responses, but the emotion, once exhibited, is not so much personal as shared by all. It is as if we exhibit emotion as individuals, but in doing so, we dip into a communal pool of exact emotions. The situations we find ourselves in can also have a communality about them, rather than individuality. This can be understood by reading a great storyteller such as Shakespeare. The beauty of the Shakespearean tale is that it outs the ideosyncracies of the human mind, rather than place. His plays can, quite literally, apply equally to any culture at any time. This is because there are only a certain number of situations a person can find himself in. The individual or cultural expression may vary, but the basic influence of a situation does not. A NEW MODEL OF THE INDIVIDUAL The crux of what I am saying is that what we call individuality is not personal, as such, but a specific mix of particular archetypal, emotional and situational influences that are inherently communal. A classic case is falling in love. The situation is boy meets girl. The emotion is love. The archetypes involved will invariably revolve around the hero and seductress. This situation is common to most people in all times. It is only personal to the individuals involved. The actual amalgam of influences is communal to the species. VALIDATING REINCARNATION If the above model of the individual can be seen as possible, then we can look to reincarnation in a new way. We can argue that an ‘individual’ is a basically false concept, and people through all time have reflected the influences you have in your life today. The attractiveness of the idea is that you are, therefore, not that much different from a person from the past, so in effect, just a small change in your psychology could, metaphorically speaking, turn you into that person from the past. If this is so, all that is needed is a tiny snippet of information, had through cryptomnesia, to turn even a child into an ‘entity’ from another time – in a psychological sense, at least. So okay, this isn’t reincarnation as popularly believed, but if the amalgam of influences is correct, then it can be seen as a universal soul within everyone. And a vehicle through which ‘characterisations’ from the past can find expression in the present. So tell me, who do you want to be today? By Anthony North, December 2007

Conspiracy theories can be like the more malign aspects of cults. The success of such a process is that it can invoke so many beliefs in demonic forces out to get us that we flock to the guru for protection and salvation. This is the defining point of the success of the good -or bad - of a religious creed. Frighten enough people into believing in the Devil and they’ll buy anything you say. Conspiracy theories do this exact process, but in reverse. Scaring kiddies to death: They tell you the good guys are really demons and the only person to trust is yourself. Hence, instead of creating strength through meaning, they produce paranoia of unimaginable degrees. And by the time they’ve finished, there is absolutely nothing in the world to trust, for evil is all around, and you should be fearful. We’re conditioned for conspiracy from childhood. At school, kids form into gangs. The gangs have a secret, an initiation, and become a closed club. People outside the gang are suspect and cannot be trusted. At home, parents threaten the bogeyman. You want to go out? Well be careful of the pervert. Watch he doesn't get you. Don't take sweets from strangers. Don't talk to anyone you don’t know. There's a chance: We live in a mad world, made madder by the reality of chance. Things happen in the world that suggest order. Forever, the coincidence will come along and slap you down. When you least expect it you’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and wham! Coincidences produce just as many fortuitous events, but we forget them. Pain is easier to remember than pleasure, and the fates are out to get you. The result of childhood, of coincidence, the after spill of religion, is a mind-set of insecurity, where the worst is expected, and we’re unlikely to be disappointed. And in this world the conspiracy theorist is king. He weaves his ink-filled wand, wraps his fears about your spine, and chills. You are his; you are the conspirator’s apprentice and live in a house of cards upon a foundation of sand.

The Association for the Study of Unexplained Phenomenon (ASUP, Inc) a non-profit research and educational corporation dealing with the paranormal and dedicated to the study of theories concerning the survival of the human consciousness after death, has announced today that their research and development staff has completed work on a prototype device similar to what is commonly called FRANK’s BOX, after its original inventor, Frank Sumption, that has been claimed to be a working, “telephone to the dead.” The ASUP began fabricating their device after they learned that the original “box” would not be made available for serious research by groups like their own.Almost a year in the making, the R&D team at ASUP now say that their box outperforms the original devices; preliminary testing suggests that the new box does appear to create coherent words and phrases, in fact team engineer Ron Ricketts has reported that while still working on the device on a work bench with the system running, the speaker said his own name very clearly on three separate occasions. The group however is making no advanced claims for what they now call the Mini Box, except to say they will begin field testing of the unit and that it will be made available to anyone seriously interested in studying it. The Mini Box has a U.S. patent pending.The ASUP’s Director of Operations, April Slaughter has explained that the group is not in the business of selling technology, but that the Mini Box will be made available to anyone interested by the first of the year, through a separate company that specializes in high tech gear for paranormal investigators. She indicated that the units will be sold at as close to the cost of manufacturing them as possible.Slaughter will be introducing the box at this year’s TAPS outing to the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado on the weekend of November 16th, where she will allow investigators to use a prototype unit. She again cautioned that the ASUP is making no wild claims about the device, except to say that it functions perfectly and that they have had great results from limited testing in the lab.Anyone wishing to learn more about the Mini Box may contact ASUP Coordinator, Rick Moran, who will be more than happy to set up interviews to discuss the device for interested media. Mr. Moran can be reached via e-mail at rick-moran@asup-inc.org.

We are all aware of science and what it means to the modern world, but how many really know the central reasons behind science, its overall methodology, or how it came about? In this post, I’ll attempt to offer a glimmer of light. But in doing so, I want to highlight something else. Namely, science, today, is arriving at concepts that seem to invalidate the very processes of science itself. The discipline remains uneasy with this – perhaps because it would open up ‘truths’ about the paranormal. EARLY IDEAS The first awareness of science in a modern, western sense came from the ancient Greeks. Imbued with a curiosity about the world separate from the machinations of gods, a methodolgy was finally devised by Aristotle in the 4th century BC. To him, we should understand the world by a process of experience and observation separate to the old accepted ways of belief. Europe was to lose touch with Classical knowledge, with Christianity rising as the only, belief-based, system. Science proper was carried on by the Islamic world. However, the 11th century Reconquest of Spain caused a rediscovery of Classical texts as western minds began to study the libraries left behind as Islam retreated. Such alternative knowledge to the Bible put pressure on Christian intellectuals. Hence, when it was realised that Aristotelian cosmology agreed with the Bible on certain factors - a stationary Earth at the centre of the universe, for instance - some theologians attempted to place Classical knowledge within a Christian system. Such intellectualism came to a head with St Thomas Aquinas, who theorised that there were two ways to understand God’s Creation. We can work with revealed or natural theology. The former was our belief in God; the latter became the first official acceptance that man’s mind could work alongside God to understand the world. PHILOSOPHY This attempt to allow a degree of science into the Medieval world was to prove a can of worms. For once an idea is out, it is hard to put back or hold at bay. Hence, by the 13th century the monk, Roger Bacon, began to argue that science could best understand the world through experimentation. By the early 14th century, the need to use man’s mind to understand the world was fighting for acceptance. Principal to the process was William of Occam, arguing for less secular power in the hands of the Church. He even dared to moot such ideas as democracy. But of most importance to science was his invention of ‘Occam’s Razor’. Stated simply, he argued that the simplest form of statement is superior to endless hypotheses. It was the beginning of reductionism, where a simple answer becomes more sensible than the more complex. DEFINING PARAMETERS Such a methodology became the rockbed of scientific methodology. And it was to find further acceptance at the beginning of the 17th century with Francis Bacon. Arguing against belief, he said that if a man begins with certainties, he will end with doubts. Yet, if we were to begin with doubts, we shall end in certainties. This reversal of knowledge was vital to a world beginning to feel confident with itself intellectually. Bacon had reversed belief in favour of science. And the stakes were high. It was about what constituted knowledge. And Bacon understood very well that knowledge is power. But whilst the basics of a scientific methodology were being put in place, it still required a master-stroke to validate science above all doubt. This came with the father of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes. THINKING RIGHT In his 1637 ‘Discourse on Method’, Descartes laid the foundations for the modern intellectual mind. Introducing Radical Doubt, he argued that we should deny everything. Only with absolute scepticism can we look at the world and realise how it works. And to do that, man needed a frame of mind by which he could discover. Discounting belief, discounting everything about him, at the basis of man’s mind was the ability to think. In his famous dictum, ‘I think, therefore I am’, he placed man’s mind as central to how he discovers the world. EMPIRICISM As the 17th century was coming to a close, one vitally important essay appeared - ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’. Written by the philosopher John Locke, it was the final piece in the scientific methodology that was soon to rise supreme. Validating empiricism, Locke argued that man is born with a mentally clean slate. There is nothing in the mind until impressions enter it from experience of the outside world. Only through experience could we know things. And mentation itself was simply reflection upon the sensations we experience. The method of science was complete. Today, science is accepted as a process by which we observe and experiment. In this way, we collect data. And from analysis of this data, we put forward theories. Once the theory is in place, further experiment and observation goes on to prove or invalidate the theory, nudging science forever onwards. It is a process that led to the modern world, confirming our sciences as the path to knowledge. RETURN TO DOUBT This, then, is the story of how science became what it is. And whilst I would never deny the vital importance of the process, the whole system presents some severe difficulties, today, regarding knowledge, and the paranormal in particular. First of all, science was created to understand a material world, working in predictable and mechanistic ways. Unfortunately, though, science itself has now gone a long way to invalidating these processes. Typically, quantum theory has shown that, at a fundamental level, the universe is anything but mechanistic, or probabilistic. Rather, the universe is a state of flux which somehow produces the world we think of as material. PARTICULAR IMPROBABILITY Essential to what we perceive as the material world is, it seems, consciousness. We can come to this conclusion by realizing that when a measurement is made in the world of particles, to carry out the test, the particles must be bombarded with light. Light is, itself, made up of particles. Hence, in ‘looking’ into the quantum world, we are actually affecting it in terms of a collision. Until this point, a particle can be in any probable state it could be in. Only in ‘observing’ does a definite, hard reality present itself. But the problem is, that reality is essentially a result of our observation, rather than its true state. Hence, an essential element of ‘reality’ is our ability to observe it. ROLE OF THE MIND This places consciousness at the heart of our ability to observe and experiment with the universe, and everything in it. Descartes’ dictum – I think, therefore I am – is suddenly not only a process of methodology, but of creation. The problem of the role of mind in the world is made even more difficult when we think of Locke, and his idea of the mind being a ‘mentally clean slate’. As the world has history before we are able to conceive it, how can we not have something in the mind that gives reality its validity? To go even deeper into this paradox, if a conscious observer is essential to creating the world we experience in the first place, who was viewing the universe before life existed? As the universe is said to have existed right back to the Big Bang, then consciousness must also have existed for this to occur. VALIDATING THE PARANORMAL This all suggests that science, as understood today, is alien to how the universe really is. Rather, the universe must hold, within itself, a form of connective consciousness with everything in the universe. Such a view holds vital importance for the paranormal, for such a connective consciousness would permit the free-flow of information throughout the universe, and allow mind an ability to affect matter. Further, such a consciousness would be eternal, giving a hint of credence to the existence of ‘entities’ existing before our time, probabilities of ‘time’ yet to come, and the troubling possibility of ‘consciousness’ surviving death. IN CONCLUSION Of course, at this stage in our understanding of the universe, such concepts must remain basically supernatural, with no rational way of conceiving them. Similarly, science must go on in the way it has been conceived to exist. But maybe it is time for a slight change in the ‘over-view’ of the scientific mind. For whilst it is slowly drawing back the veil of this enigmatic universe, it could peak intellectually over the horizon and accept the material world may not be all there is. By Anthony North, November 2007

The Occult. The term sends a chill down the spine -for some. This is the world of evil and mystery, where sinister magicians prowl the borders between the physical and ethereal. Where the subject causes real fear, it is sanitised for western feeling, and images of Harry Potter fill our heads. Yet in reality the Occult has been essential to the life we live today. Its birth: The Occult was actually born following the life of Christ. Up until this time, most religions had been pagan, and even the few non-pagan religions maintained a spiritual tradition of mysticism. Survivals of this are the Christian tradition of Gnosticism and the Jewish Cabala. Both employing ritual and meditation designed to enter a more spiritual world in order to understand and manipulate the physical world, they enshrine what was to become Occult. The death and Resurrection of Christ was, infact, a deeply Occult event. What Christ symbolised was that man could descend to a God-head, manipulate the physical world, and return. This was the essence of Gnosticism of the time. But in order for Christ to be different, unique, He had to become the only person who could do this. Hence, Gnosticism had to be wiped out - ruthlessly - and this natural Occult power branded as evil. This was the genesis of Occultism as evil. And it has remained so ever since - even though throughout Western intellectual life the Occult has been at the cutting edge of the knowledge systems and societies we have created. The hermetica: Other than Gnosticism and the Cabala, several other Occult sciences were to impede on western consciousness. These included Astrology, Alchemy, and a system of knowledge known as the Hermetica. The Hermetica itself is an ancient treatise thought to have been written by the mythical magician Hermes Trismegistos. Most likely an amalgamation of the Egyptian god Thoth and Greek messenger of the gods, Hermes, the treatise is an identification of the existence of ‘prime matter' as the roots of the physical universe, and the work deals in the relationship and sympathy between man and the universe. By Anthony North

By Judy Keen, USA TODAY ROSSVILLE, Ill. — When Witch School came to town, Mayor Terry Prillaman stopped in to welcome the owners, as he does whenever a new business opens. "If you don't like them, don't patronize them," he says. "It's like a tattoo parlor: You don't have to go in." Youth pastor Andy Thomas, though, believes the arrival of witches in this town of 1,200 created a "spiritual battle" pitting "the forces of darkness against the forces of light." Rosella Ray, who runs the Village Art & Culture Center, a shop near the school, keeps her distance from the witches. "They just do their thing, whatever their thing is," she says. Witch School opened in July on Chicago Street, the main drag here, between the Harris Insurance Agency and Wally's Pub & Eatery. Since then, it has been the chief topic of conversation, rumors and speculation around town. The witches couldn't be happier. "It's been great for business," CEO Donald Lewis says. "I do understand that some people, not understanding what we are, might be afraid, but they shouldn't be. … There are no headless cats, there are no missing children." FIND MORE STORIES IN: Mayor | School | Lewis | Judy Keen | Witch | Andy Thomas | Wiccans The witches bought a building that had housed a gift-basket shop and moved here from their former headquarters in Hoopeston, 7 miles north. There are no classrooms; the school operates mostly online. Lewis says it has more than 190,000 registered members. Five people run online classes, ship books and merchandise and sell wands, incense, candles and other items. On Halloween, two workers wore long black robes and pointy witches' hats. The school's website refers to Rossville as a "pagan colony." The school offers séances, initiations and rituals six days a week. Prillaman says two people showed up at a City Council meeting to object to the school. He has had maybe four phone calls from people who said the witches shouldn't have been allowed to move here. "I told them, 'I don't remember voting on you coming into town,' " he says. "Back in the 1920s, there was quite a presence here" of the Ku Klux Klan, Prillaman says. "What do you suppose people were saying back then?" Witch School pays property taxes, collects sales taxes and uses city-owned water and gas systems, the mayor says. And it occupies a building that otherwise probably would be empty in a town that already has plenty of vacant storefronts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Rossville's streets were lined with antique shops that made it a popular tourist destination. Many have closed, and a block of them burned down in 2004. A ConAgra plant that makes aerosol products is the town's biggest employer. Two of the four churches here have led the opposition to the witches. Thomas, who works at Rossville Church of Christ, and other residents organized weekly prayer meetings focused on the school. Church members put up a billboard that reads: "Worship the Creator, not creation." Some witches, whose religion is called Wicca, believe that elements of nature, symbolized by the earth, sun and moon, are deities. Thomas worries that young people will be attracted by the witches' spells, potions and aura of mystery. "We're concerned and uncomfortable," he says. "I think people would be happier if they weren't here, but it's not our goal to run them out of town." Debbe Tompkins, president of Witch School, says she doesn't resent people who fear her and her colleagues. "I was raised fundamentalist Baptist, and I understand exactly where they're coming from," she says. "I can't fault them." Last month, church leaders invited Robert Kurka, a theology professor at Lincoln Christian College, to talk about Wiccans. About 150 people showed up. He urged them to study the Bible and be prepared to talk to the newcomers about their own Christian beliefs. Before that meeting, Ray says, she thought getting rid of the witches would be best. Afterward, she says, Kurka's advice "made most of us feel like maybe we should just be even stronger in our own faith. … We decided as a community to live and let live." Judy Rayfield, who cuts hair at the Chicago Street Hair Co., isn't so sure. "Some people say 'live and let live,' but the main thought of the Christians is we would like to see them close," she says. "They're in darkness. They're deceived." Lewis, who like Tompkins bought a house here, says Christians have nothing to fear. "We want to challenge the community to be more open-minded," he says. Even opponents, he says, "know that we are not Satanists, that we are not sacrificing cats in the back room. … We have always hoped to attract other pagans to the area, but our religion doesn't normally recruit in the way Christians do and in the way they're afraid we will." Thomas worries that some people here think the witches are harmless or humorous and that the Witch School could deter people from buying homes or opening businesses. "Our ultimate goal would be to convert them to Christianity," he says. "If that doesn't happen, I don't know what will be next."

The "plantoid" is a concept robot for exploring Mars. Its roots would explore the soil, while power and telecommunications are provided by the main stem and the solar "leaves." Image: Courtesy International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology SESTO FIORENTINO, Italy -- Professor Stefano Mancuso knows it isn't easy being green: He runs the world's only laboratory dedicated to plant intelligence. At the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology (LINV), about seven miles outside Florence, Italy, Mancuso and his team of nine work to debunk the myth that plants are low-life. Research at the modern building combines physiology, ecology and molecular biology. "If you define intelligence as the capacity to solve problems, plants have a lot to teach us," says Mancuso, dressed in harmonizing shades of his favorite color: green. "Not only are they 'smart' in how they grow, adapt and thrive, they do it without neuroses. Intelligence isn't only about having a brain." Plants have never been given their due in the order of things; they've usually been dismissed as mere vegetables. But there's a growing body of research showing that plants have a lot to contribute in fields as disparate as robotics and telecommunications. For instance, current projects at the LINV include a plant-inspired robot in development for the European Space Agency. The "plantoid" might be used to explore the Martian soil by dropping mechanical "pods" capable of communicating with a central "stem," which would send data back to Earth. The idea that plants are more than hanging decor at the dentist's office is not new. Charles Darwin published The Power of Movement in Plants -- on phototropism and vine behavior -- in 1880, but the concept of plant intelligence has been slow to creep into the general consciousness. At the root of the problem: assuming that plants have, or should have, human-like feelings in order to be considered intelligent life forms, Mancuso says. Professor Mancuso blends in with the greenery. He touches a formerly neglected office plant. Photo: Nicole Martinelli After the folksy 1970s hit book and stop-motion film The Secret Life of Plants, which maintained, sans serious research, that greenery had feelings and emotions, the scientific community has avoided talking about smarty plants. So while there has been a bumper crop of studies demonstrating that green matter can be nearly as sophisticated as gray matter -- especially when it comes to signaling and response systems, few talk about intelligence. To christen the lab in 2004, Mancuso decided to use the controversial term "plant neurobiology" to reinforce the idea that plants have biochemistry, cell biology and electrophysiology similar to the human nervous system. But although LINV is part of the University of Florence -- where Mancuso teaches horticulture -- funds for this fertile field of research weren't forthcoming. Studies at LINV were eventually given lymph -- 1 million euro so far, with about 500,000 euro to come -- from the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, a bank foundation that mainly supports cultural events and art restorations. What convinced them to provide seed money? "Looking beyond the name at the research," says Paolo Blasi, a physics professor at the university who's on LINV's board of directors. "It sounds almost like a pseudoscientific field, but now even skeptics are convinced because of the validity of the work." In addition to studies on the effects of music on vineyards, the center's researchers have also published papers on gravity sensing, plant synapses and long-distance signal transmission in trees. One important offshoot of the research activity is an international symposium on plant neurobiology. Next year's meeting will be held in Japan. Leopold Summerer, advanced-concepts team coordinator at the European Space Agency, remembers that the term "plant intelligence" raised a few eyebrows when collaboration with the lab was proposed -- even on a multidisciplinary think-tank team that's used to pondering ideas out of left field. Nonetheless, Summerer says plant research may provide important ideas. "Biometrics can provide some of the most inspiring resources for us," he says. "Solutions found by nature that might not seem related to real engineering problems at first sight actually are related and give technical solutions." Radical as the LINV sounds, if it weren't for a lone sugarcane stalk perched on a cabinet, the lab looks like any other. While white-coated researcher Luciana Renna patiently tests for DNA markers, molecular biologist Giovanni Stefano analyzes data on two computer monitors around the corner. During a visit to the lab's two greenhouses -- where research is being conducted on the effects of light on olive trees and reactions in Venus flytraps and the Mimosa pudica -- Mancuso points out a few neglected office plants sent there for a little TLC. Mancuso, however, is no plant-whisperer. Under-tended plants are a long way from understanding sweet nothings spoken softly to them, he explains. "Plants communicate via chemical substances," Mancuso says. "They have a specific and fairly extensive vocabulary to convey alarms, health and a host of other things. We just have sound waves broken down into various languages, I don't see how we could bridge the gap."

A fraudster who claimed he helped put former TV star Michael Barrymore in touch with the spirit world has been jailed for three years. Craig Shell obtained goods worth £74,000 by posing as a businessman and tried to get hold of another stash worth £108,000 in a year-long scam. He told one company he duped that he had top connections in the media, royalty and Parliament, said prosecutor Nicolas Cartwright. advertisement He also maintained he worked with West Mercia Police as a medium and was employed on a TV programme called Most Haunted. Shell approached Redditch Spiritualist Church to run their raffle with the first prize a £500 trip to Paris. But the raffle was just another con trick dreamed up by the 22-year-old to make himself feel important, Hereford Crown Court heard. Shell, of Comberton Road, Kidderminster, pleaded guilty to nine counts of deception, theft and fraud and asked for 18 similar counts to be taken into consideration. Judge David McEvoy QC said he had shown no remorse for a calculated course of conduct which he embarked on to gain respect. His victims included a vending machine firm which let him take out a lease hire agreement after he supplied bogus banking details, said Mr Cartwright. He told a design company he was a TV medium and offered a discount store in Bromsgrove goods before trying to steal toiletries worth £25,000 from another firm. Shell congratulated the winner of the church raffle at a social event, but the Paris trip never materialised. Instead, he pocketed the ticket money. His police record showed deception offences stretching back seven years. His fake identities included posing as a managing director and a clairvoyant. Shell, who had worked as a chef and a care assistant, suffered from a personality disorder, said Abigail Nixon, defending. One of four psychiatrists who examined him claimed he was untreatable. He had low self-esteem due to cruel treatment as a child and had blocked out emotional issues with painkillers.