My Last Edition

Leo Ruickbie Steps Down as Editor of the Magazine for the Society for Psychical Research It is the end, my friends. After nine years at the helm, I am steppingdown as editor of our Magazine. It has been a wonderful nine years,but not without its lows as well as highs. Since the first terrifyingmoment I…

The Best Evidence

One of the best things about editing this magazine is getting toshoot the cover image and the abstract simplicity of this issue’scover is one of my favourite images. Typically, though, a pictureis not worth a thousand words. Pictures and words do quite differentthings. Imagine the Bible as a set of postcards from the Patriarchs, withsome…

Lucky Charms in the First World War

Leo Ruickbie’s chapter ‘Lucky Charms in the First World War – Industrialized Magic’ is published in Katharina Rein’s anthology Magic: A Companion (Peter Lang, 2022).

The First World War and the Paranormal

Dr Leo Ruickbie’s research project on the First World War and the paranormal resulted in 9 articles, 4 conference presentations, a website and a book, Angels in the Trenches.

Life After Death in the Express

Major UK Newspaper Interviews Dr Leo Ruickbie About His Bigelow Contest Win With the headline ‘It’s the real million-dollar question: Is there life after death?‘, the Daily Express devoted a double-page spread to my contest-winning essay on life after death. Journalist Jane Warren chose to feature my favourite case from my essay ‘The Ghost in…

Bigelow Contest Awards in Las Vegas

Winners and runners-up in the Bigelow Essay Contest gathered in Las Vegas for an award ceremony at Bigelow Aerospace. Robert Bigelow, the founder of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS), and Colm Kelleher, its Director, handed out prizes totalling $1.8 million in front of a large audience on Saturday, 4 December 2021. Dr Jeffrey…

Bigelow Contest Winners Announced

The Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies has announced the prize winners for its contest to find the best evidence for life after death. And three people have found it. I had known for five days that I would get a phone call on Monday the 1st of November, the day of the announcement – five…

The $1,500,000 Question: Is There Life After Death?

Shook up the world of psychical research At the beginning of 2021, an American businessman shook up the world of psychical research by unexpectedly announcing an essay competition to present the best evidence for proof of life after death. Robert T. Bigelow, property developer and aerospace entrepreneur, offered $1.5 million in prize money to try…

Elves, Erlendur

Tribute Issue to Erlendur Haraldsson Bringing the Paranormal Review to an end seemed the sensible thing to do, after all, I always had to preface it as ‘the magazine of the Society for Psychical Research’. The simplest thing, then, was just to call it that. And now, along with the Journal of the SPR and…

Is There Life After Death? (2)

Call for Chapters Is There Life After Death? Vol. 2: Case Studies Edited by Dr Leo Ruickbie and Robert McLuhan for the Society for Psychical Research Rationale It is one of the fundamental questions that everyone will ask themselves, but in an age of global pandemics, with the increasing challenge to once universal religious certainties…

Phantasms of the Victorians

Funding Enables New Research Project The John Björkhem Memorial Foundation has awarded a research grant to enable the launch of my new project ‘Phantasms of the Victorians’. The project will analyse a largely unknown and unexamined case collection and a well-known but under-researched collection, both from the late Victorian Period, as means of advancing our…

26 Reasons Why the Evidence Has Been Ignored or Rejected

The Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research, 1 (2021) The global pandemic has re-focused attention on the ultimate questions. The new year has crept slowly out of its hole, only to be greeted with more of the same. A raven has forsaken the Tower of London prompting suspicions that the old prophecy is fulfilling…

Paranormal Review 96

Parapsychology in the Far East The Paranormal Review has been more than a magazine for me, it has been a journey through all that is going on in the world of psychical research. And so, the magazine itself has been something like a documentary project. It can never be a pure documentation because I am…

Paranormal Review 95

Star Gate (2): The US Government Programme on Psi Research, Part 2: Operational Psi With a letter from Tom Butler on the future of the SPR, I am delighted to see that the questions raised in my editorial for PR92 are still stimulating discussion. But as the debate continues, I see that the SPR suffers…

Paranormal Review 94

Star Gate (Part 1) In this issue, I am privileged to be able to bring you part one of a comprehensive overview of the US Government’s research programme on psi. From 1972 to 1995, various US militaries, agencies and departments contributed funding to a series of exotically codenamed projects, from Gondola Wish to Star Gate,…

Paranormal Review 93

Everyday Psi My children looked at this issue’s cover picture and asked ‘how do they do that?’ Still young enough not to be quite sure if it is a trick or real magic, they nevertheless see that it is extraordinary, if not impossible. This, in a sense, is how we often encounter the ‘paranormal’, in…

Is There Life After Death?

Call for Chapters Is There Life After Death? Arguments, Theories, Evidence Edited by Dr Leo Ruickbie and Robert McLuhan for the Society for Psychical Research