60 | June• 2018
OPENING HEAVEN’S DOOR
anything that eludes scientiic meas-
urementcannotexist.
FormyIrishandScottishHigh-
land ancestors, an extraordinary
wayofknowingthingswasalways
embeddedcomfortablywithintheir
culture. One summer afternoon,
myelderauntsandcousins,women
intheir80sand90s,allgathered
around the dining table.
Here,mygrand-
mother had painted a
saying on the wall: “Fra
ghosties and ghoulies
and long-leggedy
beasties, and things
that go bump in the
night:theguidlordde-
liver us.” A playful nod
toourwitchyCeltic
ancestresses. But now
wehadcometotalkof
such things seriously
for the irst time over lunch.
Wespokeofhowgreat-grand-
mother Maude had absolute con-
fidenceinherwayofknowing
things; how, when my grandfather
telephoned his mother to report
herhusband’sfatalheartattack
on his sailing boat, Maude replied
disconsolately:“Iknow”.MyAunt
Bea recalled, “Granny would be in
thelivingroomreadingabook,and
she’d suddenly slam it down and
mutter, ‘Damn! So-and-so is com-
ing and I don’t want to see them.’
Sure enough,” Aunt Bea said, “so-
and-so would show up ten minutes
later.”heNorwegianshaveaword
for this uncanny anticipation of vis-
itors:vardoger.
Our Highland ancestors called
the perception of a person’s double
‘second sight’. Cousin Marion of-
fered that she had been working at a
resortasateenagerwhenthehotel
caught ire, prompting her mother –
more than3000kmaway–towake
in distress and call
her. And my mother,
the uber-rationalist,
conceded she awoke
suddenly one morning
inheruniversitydorm
and phoned my grand-
mother, whom she
somehowknewtobe
in crisis. Granny was;
her dearest friend had
died that night.
Each experience was
diferent,butallwerewaysofknow-
ing, and they tilted the world on its
axis for a moment. Why hadn’t we
talked of them before?CAMBRIDGE PHYSICISTand Nobel
PrizewinnerBrianD.Josephsontold
he New York Timesin 2003: “here’s
really strong pressure not to allow
these things to be talked about in a
positive way.”
Harold Puthoff, a physicist at the
Stanford Research Institute ap-
pointedtooverseetheCIA’sremote
viewing (or clairvoyant) experiments
in the 1970s and 1980s, describedOften we are
held back from
embracing the
comfort and
reassurance
of spirits