One Step Beyond and the media

I have been reading and waiting to restart this blog’s contribution to the internet for some time.   I just cannot wait any longer to share this find. I recently finished what quickly has become one of my favorite all time books: An Analytical Guide to Television’s One Step Beyond 1959-1961 by John Kenneth Muir. I remember this show adding to the wonder of my teenage years and to the family discussion of psychic experiences. 

This classic TV show just continues to give. Now the episodes are available on /www.youtube.com/.  Most are one episode to a 25 minute file but some are in 2 or 3 parts; still I believe they are all there. With the help of this book I am able to read the full list of episodes; and find them on my IPad each morning. I spend a half hour on my stationary bike watching One Step Beyond on /www.youtube.com/ and getting in shape. I am now up number 35 of 96.

John Kenneth Muir has made a great contribution to the study of psychic phenomena in media by dissecting the first of many significant TV shows from the ABC network on that subject. He starts by pointing out that some earlier studies have mistakenly given credit to Twilight Zone as the “first” in the genera but One Step Beyond was a full season ahead and Twilight Zone and fundamentally different in that it tried to be true to what parapsychologists have found in their studies. Some stories are about real events that happened and others are dramatizations of the type of events found and studied by parapsychologist. Mr. Muir makes an effort find the cases that each One Step Beyond dramatizes or to explain the fundamental truth shown in the story.

He gives credit to John Newland as the show’s host and director; and points out the craftsmanship and storytelling skills in each show. Mr. Muir had the opportunity to interview John Newland before his death in 2000.  These insights help us to see more of the dedication and skill that went into each of these half hour shows.

The shows were filmed in the late 50’s so it could and did cast many younger versions of today’s big stars: William Shatner, Warren Beatty, Leonard Nimoy and on the book’s cover Cloris Lechman. During that time most dramas were half hours long and I personally much prefer that length.  I believe it was the bankers that wanted all these hour long shows and with few exceptions we all suffer as a result. It seems most are just two half hour shows pasted together. And the whole is not bigger than it parts. One Step Beyond comes from a time when TV earned the time we spent watching it. An Analytical Guide ot Television’s One Step Beyond 1959-1961 helps up enjoy and appreciate that legacy.

 

Muir, John Kenneth   An Analytical Guide to Television’s One Step Beyond 1959-1969, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company,Inc., 2001.

 

www/youtube.com/ “One Step Beyond”  “(episode title)”

Need for Closure and ESP

During the months since my book Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life among Psychic Spies I was published in September of 2008 I have gotten e-mails from people who are either interested in my book or have read it. I want to answer these emails here rather in individually.

Without telling the story in detail let me just summarize. In my senior year of high school, and for a few years after that, my psychic ability grew. I started a trip down the rabbit hole when I took pity on some people I sensed were being used as subjects of experiments, probably in the Soviet Union. It seemed to me that the experiments were designed to develop and then control their psychic abilities. The psychics I was aware of were being trained to communicate with other psychics using a spoken language. As time passed I was drawn into psychic communication mostly with intelligence agents from the US, England, USSR. and the People’s Republic of China but also some amateur psychics. This came to a head during the summer of 1966. After a special phone call and because of an interview and some testing I describe in the last chapter I satisfied myself that — what I thought were communications, really were.

Most of the emails I get from readers are coming from amateurs who tell me they believe they are taking part in similar psychic communications to those I describe and they are being monitored by governmental groups today.

I know I was especially lucky because a fortunate set of circumstances and my ability to turn them to my advantage made it possible for me to eventually come face to face with agents from four branches of the US Federal government and a contact from the PRC. This all gave me closure and a degree of comfort that few others will probably ever have.

So it was that I dedicated Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life among Psychic Spies to “The causalities of the cold war’s psychic battlefields both foreign and domestic.” I think there are many whose daily activities have been distracted and whose lives were interrupted by some government’s efforts to identify psychics. But these psychics have no way to prove the reality of their psychic contacts. Still they are better off then the poor victims of “psychic training” efforts behind the iron curtain who were mostly mentally ground-up and liquidated.

Psychologists have found that individuals scoring high on the “need for closure” scale will use preliminary data to come to conclusions quickly. They are uncomfortable with ambiguity. People who have a low “need for closure” will take longer to come to a conclusioin and their solutions will be more creative. I would like to see some research that matches this “need for closure” with ESP test scores. It seems likely that psychics probably have a low “need or closure.” Many have lived on with questions about their abilities unresolved for long periods. .

So it is that I feel certain these psychics who have written me will be comfortable in their world of psychic impressions and not feel a great need for a conclusion. I fear that, if events had not given me the chance to close off that part of my life, I too may have continued living in some cloudy world. I would suggest and hope that those who are experieancing similar things would close off that part of their lives and move on as best they can. I realize that my suggestion may not be what they are looking for but I must suggest that they morn that lost part of their lives and move on.

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Chirumbolo, A., Livi, S., Mannetti, L., Pierro, A., Kruglanski, A. (2004) Effects of Need for Closure on Creativity in Small Group Interactions. European Journal of Personality, 18, 265-278.


Van Hiel, A., Mervielde, I. (2003) The Need for closure and the Spontaneous Use of Complex and Simple Cognitive Structures. The Journal of Social Psychology, 14, 559-568.

Telepathy vs. Delusion

My interest in telepathy is mostly with the special type of telepathy I call “spoken telepathy.” When a person reports telepathic ability we are faced with this conundrum: is this person talking to someone else someplace in the world or just talking to themselves? When a person chooses to turn to this extra-ordinary form of communication they must also turn away from the normal communication. One end of the conversation or the other must feel no one is listening, no one gets it, and no one cares. In the beginning they probably imagine that someone is listening and understands. Then something happens to those imaginary conversations. They became “real,” at least to that person. But as we observe this person; how do we determine if the subject is listening to the paranormal world or a delusion?

The scientific community usually assumes that they are “talking to themselves.” The scientific method requires a doctor to seek out the simplest answer first. These people are presumed to be delusional not telepathic. From the beginning of serious psychological study — more than a hundred years — a person who believed that they heard voices that were coming from other peoples minds had been considered psychotic. The reports by parapsychologists of genuine telepathic communication had been ignored in favor of the “simpler” answer. Indeed most tests of mental patients who claimed telepathic ability did not supported their claims.

But many researchers are reconsidering their earlier explanations after studying experiences like the one I reported in my book Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life among Psychic Spies. Here is one thread of the story:

I was twenty-two years old in the summer of 1966 and my growing psychic ability was causing many troubles. By that first week in July I was driving around the country and trying to make since out of the voices in my head. One of them said, “I want to talk to you, Philip.” This voice was different, he knew my name and he spoke slowly, not with the urgency that most armatures used.

“Well, talk,” I said. There was a long pause. “What do you want to say?”

He said, “I want you to go home.”

“I’m not done yet,” I said.

He was different. I couldn’t get a sense of his body movements like I usually could. His lips were not moving. His head was not moving. “Are you asleep?” I asked. “Wake up and remember this! Find a place and time when I can talk to you. Remember that my name is Philip Chabot.”

That afternoon, I got into a mental conversation with a man who had a high-pitched voice. I thought it was the same man I had talked to in his dream earlier. I hadn’t noticed his voice before, but he was asleep. (I could never associate a name with the voices.) By now, I was always assigning some show business name to all those I talked to a second time. I thought of him as the Jerry Lewis type. But, my intuition kept telling me this man was somehow affiliated or connected in some way to Dr. Joyce Brothers. He had the tenor voice of Jerry Lewis and the deep concentration that he could focus on you, and he and had the professional interest in some kind of psychology and he was talking with people about me.

For some reason, he wanted me to write a letter. I told him I would. He was the only person who really seemed to know me and wanted to help me. His was the only voice I heard twice that I believed wasn’t some kind of spy…

I got a postcard from the desk in the room and wrote, “I like your work.”

Then I addressed it to Jerry Lewis, Hollywood, California. I got a stamp from the clerk at the desk of the motel. Then I dropped it in the mail.

Two days latter as I was leaving the jail in Lebanon Missouri. My dad said, “Philip, your psychiatrist said that he had a vivid dream about you. He actually thought that you were going to send him a letter when he woke up. In that way, we would know where you were.” He smiled. “Don’t kid him about it, son. He is very serious.”

“Damn!” I thought. Then I realized that the voice I named as Jerry Lewis was “Dr. Austin.” He was the one who was asleep. Then he remembered and talked to me about it. He was the one I thought was talking to Dr. Joyce Brothers. I was going to have to explain that I sent the postcard to Jerry Lewis because he had such a high voice.

I hoped he would understand. I decided not to tell anyone except “Dr. Austin.”

So I was lucky to have a doctor who not only understood me pretty well but also one who communicated with me telepathically and shared his firm belief that he had communicated with me telepathically. He had even talked with a number of people about it, including my parents. Not only that but this Doctor, I called “Dr. Austin” in the book, was also questioned by the FBI because of the rest of the story. But you will have to read the book to get those details. He and I were able to tell that my belief in telepathy was real.

So we come back to the question: How could a psychiatrist or anyone who heard someone tell a story of telepathic communication know if it is real or delusional? I am afraid that I can not offer any simple answer to this question. Neither the telepath nor the observer will be able to know quickly and easily if the communication is real or imaginary. Rather we must turn to the richness of the experience. During a truly telepathic communication the psychic gets much more than just the words. I would get a since of the personality, the ambiance of the place and I would know how comfortable the subject of the communication was in their world.

So it was the richness of the communication that convinced me I was talking to real people not just the words they were thinking to me. In a larger since we have to ask “Is there any real difference in how the subject should be treated.” “Shouldn’t we develop a more conventional way of communicating.” I decided to turn away from using my psychic ability and to develop other skills and live mostly without the psychic ability that had provided a refuge for me as I struggled to start a life for myself. I waited for retirement to write my book and look back on the experiences from a distance.


Chabot, Philip; Operation Blue Light: My Secret Life among Psychic Spies; © 2008 Published by Cherubim Publishing, Sacramento, California.

Rose Marie: The Reminder case

Stories about many psychic experiences do not seem particularly meaningful as they get told to others but this one interests me. This is a story about actress Rose Marie. I read about this case some time ago and wrote her and asked some questions.

One of the things in her biography that interested me was that she was the daughter of a suit cutter. Latter, you will see why this interests me. She started in show business by winning an amateur singing contest and got her own radio show. By the time she was six, she was a national celebrity and she started a recording career for Brunswick Label. When she started making personal appearances, people didn't believe that the husky mature voice belonged to such a little girl. She appeared in 1933 movie International House.

As World War II came to end, she married Bobby Guy, who became the first trumpeter of the NBC orchestra. The two had been married for 19 years when he died on May 27, 1964 of any blood infection. He was 48. Her husband's death came as quite a blow. She wrote me, “The first six months I didn't go anywhere at all.”

She was on the Dick Van Dyke show, playing Sally, a breezy writer, whose aggressiveness scared away men. Soon after Bobby’s death she asked Richard Deacon, who also was a regular on the Dick Van Dyke Show, if he wanted to have any of her husband's old clothes. He did mention that he would like Bobby’s tuxedo, but he did not bring it up again. Rose Marie says, “he was very nice to me after my husband died, always trying to get me out and back in the, so called, living world.”

Eight or nine months past.

Then one evening, he was escorting her to an evening at the Playboy Club on the Sunset Strip. They were having a good time and Deac thought it might not be amiss if he mentioned the tuxedo. Finally he took a deep breath and plunged into the conversation while they stood in line at the club’s buffet table.

“Rose, do you remember when you. . . “, he began.

“Deac, are you still interested in . . ." she started at the same time. They were both talking about the same subject at the same time; many months after they had first discussed it.

In order to make sure there was something beyond chance, I asked her, “How formal was the ‘affair?’ What I mean is in everyone else had on tuxedos, then both of you thinking of one, since it didn't have one, would be so hard to understand would it?”

She said, “No, it was not a formal affair. Deac had just called me to take me out for dinner and to hear a new group that was playing there. He was always doing things like that, because he knew I was home and wouldn’t be out of the house, so to speak. No one was wearing tuxedos.”

For this purpose of this discussion we will assume that what happened was of a psyche nature; though it may not be as dramatic as most events I have researched. It interests me because there seems to be a link between her father’s work as a suite cutter and the subject of the psychic experience — as Tuxedo. The psychic activity, in this case does resemble the activity, at least the interest, of a suit-cutter. As we look into the question of “Why do psychic experiences happen?” the psychic events can best be understood if we think of the psychic actions as a special personality within the psychic. This personality that we can see in the psychic events was formed by our early ideas about the nature of the unknown. So the Unknown has a personality. A personality that was formed by early childhood experiences. In this case the personally had an interest in clothes.

Many of our patterns of interest are affected by our parents, psychic events are only one variety.

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Kleiner, Dick. “The Ghost Who Danced with Kim Novak.” New York: Ace Publishing Corp., 1969. p. 100

Letter from Marie, Rose to author, 15 June 1970

Sensing death

Since the earliest recorded times we have noticed that animals seem to know of coming death and danger. So it is natural that parapsychologists have attempted to bring these animal psychics into the laboratory and test this ability. Could animals have the ability to know of things like death as a result of some basic psychic activity? If so how do we measure this ability for science?

We can look for some significance to the many age-old stories and superstitions that animals know about death. One behavior that people have often noticed was an uneasiness even depression in animal behavior before the death of a companion or themselves.

These sad slow movements of the dog who knows, even before the rest of the family, when his master has died, have been reported too many times the disbelieved. Animals seem to have ability at knowing about death. Undoubtedly it served them well in the wild.

Robert Morris reported an experiment that involved rats. He took a group of rats scheduled to be killed. And let each one run individually in an open change, two minutes. The assumption was that those who were to be killed would not move around as much as those who were not. That is like the dog that stayed in one corner or under the porch when he knew of a death and his family.

Immediately after running, each was taken to a coworker who either destroyed it or returned to its cage. This was done according to a random plan that was not known to the open field scorer. To that open field scorer didn't know which animals were to live and which were to die, and the coworker didn't know how each animal had performed in the open field. After the test, the scores based on how often a given rat had crossed a line in the cage, were compared with record of which one dies. Half of the animals that lived were active enough to leave their original square, but not one of those who died were even that active.

Also animals know what their masters are going to do, especially if that will hurt them. Another experiment was recorded by two scientists who used the pseudonyms of Duval and Montredom. They reported it in 1968. Animals can use psi to protect themselves from harm.

The procedure of the experiment was too randomly give one side of the cage or the other a small electrical shock. The whole procedure was automated so that no experimenter needed to be present. The experiment illustrated that the mice used psi sensations to protect themselves from shock. “Actually,” the report reads, “the mice avoided the shock more than one would expect by chance... (probability < .001). This significant result can be ascribed to psi, for the animals apparently must have used precognition or clairvoyance in order to make these correct choices in responses.”

If the situation is hopeless animals relax and await their fate whereas if they know of approaching danger and take measures to avoid it. The psychological motivations for these psychic flashes of awareness are easy to see.

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Morris, R.L. 1970 “Psi and animal behavior: a survey.” The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 64:242-260