Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
ONE NAUGHTY ADOLESCENT SYNDROME
2 The sceptics’ view
3 A close-up look
4 Outside the house
5 Another debunking magician
6 The Fox sisters confess
7 Some eyewitness testimony
8 Inside the house
9 Detailed investigations
10 The confessions examined
11 Rational gravity
12 How do the children do it?
13 When was Maggie lying?
14 Who should we trust?
15 Hume, Occam, Randi
TWO EUSAPIA PALLADINO & THE PHANTOM NARRATIVE
2 The séance
3 Why take it seriously?
4 Table-turning
5 Eusapia Palladino
6 Hypnosis?
7 Palladino in Naples
8 Palladino in New York
9 More rational gravity
10 Wiseman vs Palladino
11 Séance sex
12 The will to believe
13 The phantom narrative
THREE COMMUNICATORS
2 Piper and Leonard
3 Some Piper examples
4 Cold reading?
5 Fraud
6 The sceptics’ views of Piper
7 Some Leonard examples
8 Hansel vs Leonard
9 Oldfield vs Vandy
10 The Vandy sittings
11 Questionable logic and circular reasoning
12 Schwartz tests star mediums
13 Randi vs Schwartz
14 Wiseman and Hyman vs Schwartz
15 My view of Schwartz’s experiments
FOUR UNCERTAIN SCIENCE
2 Coincidence
3 Card-guessing and other psi experiments
4 What sceptics say
5 Methodological flaws
6 Creating doubt
7 The sense of being stared at
8 Sceptics vs Sheldrake
9 A psychic dog
10 What Wiseman did
11 Science or propaganda?
12 What’s the score?
13 Psychic spying—Hyman vs Utts
FIVE EXPERIENCE AND IMAGINATION (I)
2 The psychology of the believer
3 Ghostly encounters
4 Some other types of encounter
5 Analyzing the reports
6 The critics critiqued
7 Fallible memory
8 The psychology of the sceptic
SIX EXPERIENCE AND IMAGINATION (II)
2 The challenge for science
3 Could out-of-body perception be an illusion?
4 Some questions about Blackmore’s analysis
5 A doctor debunked
6 A determined sceptic
7 Listening to the experiencers
8 The transcendent element
9 Belief and experience are not the same
10 What does evolutionary psychology say?
11 ‘When I was big’
12 Wilson et al vs Stevenson
13 How conclusive are the criticisms?
14 Is this our destiny?
SEVEN PSI IN THE WORLD
2 Psi and science
3 Doubts about survival of consciousness
4 Arguments in favour of survival
5 But is it conceivable?
6 Psi and superstition
7 Psi and religion
8 My views on survival
9 Last thoughts
Suggestions for further reading
Notes and references
Bibliography
Index