Guest writer DR ROBERT YOUNG describes his evolution into a parapsychologist and offers reflections on the significance and nature of ghosts and related paranormal phenomena
Dr Robert Young’s Entry To Parapsychology
My interest in the paranormal began when I was a young boy. In the house I was brought up in, in Bedford, I had an experience when I saw a Golden Virginia tobacco tin owned by one of my parents that began jumping up and down on its own accord on the bedside table. I remember my mum holding me as we both looked terrified at the tin that was jumping about!
Then, in 1984, I saw Ghostbusters! After that, I knew what I had always wanted to do! I read as many books as I could on the subject, and my very first book was The Usborne Guide to Ghosts! The first serious books I began to read on the subject were Ghosts: The Illustrated History by Peter Haining and The A-Z of British Ghosts by Peter Underwood. After that, I collected and read anything I could regarding the subject of ghosts and hauntings.
When I was in school, the teachers asked me what I wanted to be. I said a parapsychologist! As you can expect, they didn’t have a clue as to what I was talking about!
When I was a teenager, I also began to look into the subject of UFOs and was again hooked!
In 1998, I lost my father to cancer and felt guilty that I wasn’t there when he died. About a year later, I was having a very vivid dream where I was in an empty house. It was darkened, and I was upstairs on the landing when I saw a door open and saw the side profile of a man walk out of a room. He walked down a staircase to the bottom of the stairs, and I followed him.
As we got down to the bottom of the staircase, the man turned around, and it was my father. He hugged me and said goodbye. I then woke up with the dream burned into my memory, like a dream I had never had before or since. I thought at the time, Was it the vision of my father saying goodbye to me? Or was it my subconscious dealing with the guilt I had for not being there when he died?
The strangest thing about the dream was the guilt that I had for a whole year about not being there when my father died! Never return!
After that, I began to question if ghosts really did exist and began to study, scientifically, ghosts and anomalous phenomena. I termed the phenomenon where people had dreams of their loved ones and friends visiting them and passing on messages while they slept, SDV, or spontaneous dream visitation, and I found other people had experienced the same thing I had.
It’s possible that when we are asleep, in an altered state of consciousness, and all our waking senses are subdued, i.e., sight, sound, touch, taste, and feeling, our ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) can activate and may allow spiritual entities to come through and communicate with us.
From this, I studied MAPIT’s British Investigators Training Course and the Advanced Investigators Training Course under Steve Mera. I studied diplomas in the fields of psychology, quantum theory, and Egyptology, studied parapsychology under Dr. Andrew Nichols, and became a faculty member of the American Institute of Parapsychology.
I then studied metaphysical science and anomalous phenomena and received my Ph.D. from Thomas Francis University in the United States. I then established and founded the British Ghost Society, the Office of Parapsychological Studies, and the Office of UFO/UAP Research in the UK.
I’m also a member of the prestigious Ghost Club. I currently also work in engineering.
Are Ghosts Real?
From a scientific point of view, do I believe ghosts exist? I do, but I do believe the Stone Tape Theory explains most sightings and experiences. To me, ghosts are images and sounds that are somehow recorded in the environment by some unknown process and are played back to a witness, being in the right place, at the right time, and with the right people being present.
Regarding poltergeists, I think that RSPK (recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis) and belief in the phenomenon play a huge part in poltergeist cases. I used to have an investigator, and all sorts of phenomena happened around him on almost every investigation we conducted. When he did leave the team, nothing much happened; we found out that he had all sorts of personal issues at the time he was with us, which was probably conducive to the phenomenon happening.
The most active locations I found were the Ancient Ram Inn in Gloucestershire and the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham. Again, the investigator I mentioned was also present.
I’m not against the belief that human consciousness can survive bodily death; in fact, no one will ever know until the inevitable arrives in each and every one of us. In fact, I hope it does! It would be a nice thought that we will see our relatives and friends again when we die, but I am of the opinion that ghosts are not proof of this, but a phenomenon that science cannot explain and maybe never will.
In 2015, I wrote my first book, Parapsychology, Ghosts, and Hauntings, and in 2021, I wrote the follow-up, Apparitions, Hauntings, and Poltergeists. Almost ten years ago, I joined MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), the world’s biggest scientific organisation investigating UFOs and related subjects, and have investigated 400 cases of UFOs, UAPs, abductions, and related phenomena.
My Thoughts on UFOs
I am now the national Director for MUFON UK and Ireland. I think the phenomenon of UAP and UFOs has probably the most substantial evidence into the reality of a paranormal subject than any other. We have military videos, radar tapes, military whistleblowers, high-ranking eyewitnesses such as pilots, military and civil, army, navy, police, the list goes on and on, and also the subject has been to Congress several times over the years into the reality of the subject and its seriousness into why our skies are being penetrated by objects of unknown origin and why it has been of no defence significance.
Nowadays, the tide has turned and the governments of the world admit that these things do exist, but to what they are we still don’t know, but I do think they do know and have done for many years. My personal belief is that these crafts and abilities are interdimensional and not alien per se, hence some of the paranormal qualities of the crafts and beings reported.
I think their being from a different dimension negates the need for hyperspace travel; instead, the craft shifts between dimensions instantaneously rather than the long distances involved in space travel. It is thought that there could be many dimensions. We live in the 3rd dimension; the 4th is time, so it’s possible the spirit plane is above the 4th dimension and the beings and crafts in UFO reports could reside in the 5th, 6th, or 7th dimension. Who knows, it can boggle the mind.
Maybe if ghosts do exist and are intelligent spirits, maybe that could be why it’s so hard to communicate with them and find hard evidence of their existence. We have our laws of physics that can’t be broken, and in their dimension, they have theirs, but from time to time, the veil between dimensions thins, so communication and phenomena occur. In the case of UFOs, if you are an advanced interdimensional species, you could have developed craft and propulsion systems allowing you to traverse in and out of dimensional time and space and shift into and out of our dimension, a fascinating thought!
Over the years in my research, I have even found correlations between psychical/parapsychological and ufological research and may even be part of the same phenomenon! But that’s an article for another day!
DR ROBERT YOUNG is a parapsychologist, ufologist, and ghost researcher. He has investigated hundreds of cases of apparitional experiences, hauntings, poltergeists, UFOs, and alien abductions. If you are interested in his research, he can be contacted at: itstherob@hotmail.com
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