Questions for Dr. Barry Taff?

[Christopher O'Brien]

We will be taping a special show with renowned paranormal investigator Dr. Barry Taff next Tuesday. Pls post your questions here:

Dr. Barry Taff, who holds a doctorate in psychophysiology with a minor in biomedical engineering, is a world-renowned parapsychologist who worked out of UCLA’s former parapsychology laboratory from 1969 through 1978 as a research associate. During his 43-year career, Dr. Taff has investigated more than 4,500 cases of ghosts, hauntings, poltergeists and conducted extensive studies in telepathy and precognition, which led to the development of the initial protocols and methodologies for what was later termed “remote viewing.” He was also himself investigated as a psychic subject in 1969, the results of which were published in Behavioral Neuropsychiatry, “A Laboratory Investigation of Telepathy: The Study of A Psychic,” Vol. 6, Nos. 1-12, April-December 1974-January-March, 1975.

One of the cases Dr. Taff investigated in 1974 gained international fame as the book and motion picture, The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey, released by Fox in 1983. Dr. Taff served as technical advisor on The Entity as well as being represented in the film by the character of “Gene Kraft”.

Dr. Taff has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs including CBS News, KNBC News, KABC News, Strange Universe, Unsolved Mysteries, The Joan River’s Show, A Current Affair, Hard Copy, Sightings, Judge for Yourself, The Extraordinary, The Montel Williams Show, The Wil Shriner Show, The Suzanne Somers Show, was a recurring guest on NBC’s The Other Side, Haunted History, Mysteries & Scandals, ABC’s World’s Scariest Ghosts Caught On Tape, The Girls Next Door and most recently the Sci-Fi Channel’s An Unknown Encounter & California’s Most Haunted (highest rated shows in Sci-Fi’s history) for which Dr. Taff also served as creative consultant and technical advisor.

He has consulted for government, business, and law enforcement, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Language Institute (DLI), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the FBI, Interpol, LAPD, California Highway Patrol, Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department, and the Westminster Police Department. He has served as a technical advisor or script doctor on the films Logan’s Run, Demon Seed, Altered States, Poltergeist, and The Entity.

In the spring of 2010, Dr. Taff’s new book; Aliens Above, Ghosts Below: Explorations of the Unknown was published by Cosmic Pantheon Press

 

[Goggs Mackay]

I've a couple of questions for Dr Taff Chris:

1. Do you have any theories to explain the fact that so many people, when experiencing sleep paralysis, seem to sense or see a malevolent entity? (In the past it was a witch/old hag sitting on your chest and in modern times there is the alien abduction phenomena.
(I have experienced sleep paralysis a number of times but never saw directly any entity of any kind.)

2. Do you believe that people who see ghosts or supernatural entities are ever seeing something that is physically 'there' and not just a figment of their imagination?
(I ask because I once saw an old woman in a place where no-one would be, a dead end, which she disappeared into. I was with a friend who also saw her. It wasn't until we could not find where she went that we even thought we'd seen anything out of the ordinary. In this instance we had to be seeing something actually there because we both independantly saw her and she could not have been real.)

3. Do you believe anything exits such as a 'collective unconcious'? Something that people sometimes have access to? (like with remote viewing)
If so, do you believe drugs or meditation can facilitate access?

 

[Steve-C.]

Chris, I have a couple of questions concerning the "Entity" case for Dr. Taff.
1- Dr. Taff has stated a few times that the woman from that case had 4 children, 3 boys and a young girl. according to Dr. Taff in other interviews, they never met the young girl. Why? the many times they went to the house I find it strange they never met the young daughter. Was doris hiding something?
2- Did Dr. Taff ever have Doris leave the house for a period of days and let the investigators try to see if the "entity" showed up without her being in the house. I think that would have told them if she was the cause of the many manifestations. I'm surprised that Dr. Taff and crew never tried that.

 

[Polterwurst]

First I would like to thank you, Dr. Taff, for your work and not being intimidated by debunkers, "parasiteology" puns or „ghost busters“ jokes. I hope you are well. Here are a few questions:

What do you say to the attitude adopted by many scientists of „a hundred years of nothing“ concerning psychic research or parapsychology?

Is there hard evidence (audio or video recordings, police reports) that there is really something happening with hauntings and poltergeist cases which seems to contradict our knowledge of natural laws and processes? That it's not all infrasound waves or other natural phenomana, people imagining or misinterpreting things or even hoaxing? If so, why is this evidence not widely known and the phenomena publicly accepted?

I guess that you have experienced your share of these phenomena. What were the most baffling and convincing ones?

Do you have a method of discerning if a witness is telling the truth about a „paranormal“ experience or if he or she is making things up or has possible mental problems?

Has it been your experience that poltergeist cases are mostly happening around young adolescent women? If so, why might that be? If not, where does the idea come from?

Could you always find a "focus person“ in the poltergeist cases you looked into ? If so, were there similarities in personality?

Have there been cases where you were quite convinced that there was something paranormal going on, but which eventually turned out to be completely hoaxed?

Did you find that sometimes, these focus persons would try to hoax a phenomenon when nothing seemed to happen? Or that they tried to "induce" phenomena?

Many parapsychologists think that these phenomena are caused by the focus persons themselves, not by some „outside agent“. Would you agree?

Do you look at other areas of research, like NDE or reincarnation research? Wouldn't they strongly suggest that there really is something like „discarnate consciousness“ (spirits, ghosts or whatever they've been called)?

Is there some degree of interdisciplinary exchange with the researchers in these fields of study? Maybe even with the more mainstream physicists who are now talking about things like dark matter, possible additional dimensions, spooky action at a distance and other unseen or intangible things (while most of them still maintain that there is nothing to psychic research or parapsychology)?

I'm guessing from the title of your book that you think UFO research may have at least partially to do with „paranormal“ phenomena. What about „ball of light“ sightings? Could they be related to the orbs that are sometimes reported in hauntings and poltergeist cases (not the light artefacts caused by dust particles on some photos but real ball of lights that are allegedly seen and sometimes said to behave intelligently)?

Have you ever seen a light anomaly yourself? This light arc on the photo from the Entity case showed up only after the film was developed, I guess?

In the book "Wonders in the Sky" by Jaques Vallee, I recently read a historical witness report of a reverend who saw a luminous globe or cloud in a field at night (where several ghost apparitions had been reported before) which seemed to change into something like a classical ghost apparition when he approached it. Just another spooky story or could there be something to it? Maybe they were sometimes called ghost lights for a reason?

Have you ever seen something you would call an apparition?

Do you think it's possible that you have to have a certain mindset, psychic ability or whatever to have any genuine paranormal experience at all? E.g., is it possible that with two people in the same room, one sees an apparition while the other doesn't see anything at all (as has been reported)?

I guess your involvement with intelligence services had to do with the remote viewing projects? Or was there something else they were interested in? Do you think they really gave up on that entirely?

EDIT: I remember watching the Entity movie when I was a kid and thinking "Really? Something like this is supposed to really have happened? Shame I'll never be able to talk to one of these scientists, living half the planet away" Thirty years later, well lookit that. The internet is frickin' awesome!

 

[boomerang]

Just recently heard Greg Bishop's interview with Dr. Taff. Taff's depth and experience are dazzling. Don't miss this show!

I don't have a specific question. But I would love to hear more about Dr. Taff's theories regarding the links between holographic consciousness and known properties of universe. Maybe he might expound a little on certain psychic individuals whose bio-magnetic fields have been measured off the scale?

I'm really looking forward to this one.

 

[Wade]

this is pretty cool news, as i just made mention a few days ago in another post about the connection between poltergeist activity and troubled adolescents (possible psychokinetics) and even take in to account unusual em fields and i think mr. taff was one of the first to point this out, at least his accounts was the first i came across in pointing out the similarieties in multiple cases, at any rate i'll keep mine simple


if one was to accept the possibility of certain people being able to manifest these forms, be it tulpas, poltergeists etc. is not possible that some residual hauntings could be the result of some of these cases where the spirit in question outlived/outlasted the originator of the being in question, or would they tend to go away or "die" with the loss of the person that may be responsible for

it's an interesting scenario that people that are born with a mental disability or having trouble with rational thinking could be more open/receptive to inadvertantly channeling or even creating spectral beings, it's as if those whose minds are not preoccupied with the thinking that is needed to deal with everyday living have an all-access pass to the spectral realm.

i have mulled over at times that people who seemingly have full control of their mental fascilities have unleashed certain forces on us because they were unable to rein in their psyche and even more what if someone did make an effort to manifest an entity and endowed it anger issues or anti-social tendencies because the proginator thought themselves to be in control but had deep seated issues within themselves that they didn't even know about and projected them upon his or her creation,

 

[Polterwurst]

I just watched part of The Entity movie on Youtube. Should've done that earlier. While I think a lot of the movie can be dismissed as pure dramatization, I do have a few more questions now. I hope you anticipated them and asked them already, oh wise and mighty Paracast hosts. If not...maybe you could consider a second show with Dr Taff...?

 

[Randall]

Simple Question: Do you think that there anything in the array of paranormal subject matter that cannot be explained by sufficiently advnaced technology or scientific understanding? If not, why not?

 

[Steve-C.]

I was hoping more questions about the entity case would be asked, like mine, but I guess two hours just isn't enough. just a suggestion, maybe take a question from each poster instead of 3 or 4 from the same person. just a thought

 

[Polterwurst]

OK. I'll try to restrain myself this time, promise. Just one more question (for now). Btw: this is for another interview, so no answering post required (only if Dr Taff insists ).

You say that you had these difficult-to-explain experiences as a child, Dr Taff. Does that mean that this ability to "know" things you actually shouldn't have known, dimmed down or even stopped when you grew up? If so, might that be happening with other "sensitives" or "psychics" too?

I'm thinking of Uri Geller specifically, who either managed to fool lots of people in the 1970s (including scientists like Drs Puthoff and Targ whom I wouldn't call the gullible believer-type) or really did have some unexplained ability once but lost it somewhere along the line and now is nothing more than an inventor of bad TV show formats. I mean, there was even a scientist in England who said that he measured some real effect on metal stripes which Geller could only stare at from another room. And yet, he has been caught manipulating his demonstrations.

I guess it was concluded in at least some investigations of the english SPR, for example, that many "mediums" had some degree of ability but very often would fall back to hoaxing when those failed. So maybe there is some pattern there.

 

[boomerang]

Asking such hard questions of an articulate guest makes for a good interview. Which, I think, is yet another good reason to have Dr. Taff back again.

 

[Polterwurst]

Just so it doesn't get buried, I'll restate the question I feel is my most important one.

Do parapsychologists who are investigating hauntings and poltergeist cases look at NDE or reincarnation research? Wouldn't these strongly suggest that there might be something like „discarnate consciousness“ - contrary to what most parapsychologists believe (that it's "only" the subconscious power of a living person creating the phenomena)?

Specifically, what do you think about Ian Stevenson's body of work? With all its scientific approach and the unfathomable implications for us all, it seems to me that somehow it gets ignored, both by the public at large and by other scientists. That's surely how it seems here in my country.