I am planning to get Joe Fisher's book (right now I have about a half-dozen books piled up, at various stages of readedness), but in the mean time I found an article online that I found quite interesting.. It's an excerpt from New Dawn magazine entitled "Hunted By Hungry Ghosts: The Joe Fisher Story."
I have a couple of other Joe Fisher books in my paranormal library, bought many years ago. Fisher is a rarity in the paranormal field--a professional who did real field work and original research. It would have been easier (and perhaps safer, in the long run) for him to merely have played armchair researcher and written a mediocre volume examining "channeling" (which is simply old school mediumship, dressed up for the New Age crowd). But instead, he chose to become personally involved, with himself as the research subject, with tragic results.
I don't think that we know (or can know) the whole Joe Fisher story; but it should disturb anyone who dabbles with the paranormal--be it by "ghost-hunting," channeling, the Occult, or obsessive UFO-chasing... Some of these forces, spirits, or beings seem quite capable of driving their human inquisitors to madness, and even death. They managed to drive an objective, professional investigator and writer, to madness and suicide.
Our ancestors believed in the reality of the non-physical; though they were cloaked in folklore and superstition, they had procedures for dealing with non-physical intrusions; they had a basic sense of "bad" interactions and positive ones, and they knew how to handle both.
We've lost much of the ancient knowledge of what once was called "discernment"--mostly, because we've spent the last hundred years pretending that the non-physical is not real.
As Fisher demonstrates, however, it certainly seems very real, and non-physical entities can have measurable physical effects. Filipa would signal "her" presence to Fisher by causing a loud "buzzing" noise in his ears--an effect that's identical to the initial stage of an OOBE. In my opinion, Fisher was dealing with a real non-physical being that was both sentient and aware of the physical.
To those whose knowledge of the paranormal extends no further than having read a couple of Shirley MacLaine books, "Filipa's" stalking of Fisher might not seem so malevolent, but it reminds me of the accounts detailed in Brad Steiger's "Haunted Lovers"--and if even half of those stories are real (I'm being generous), I'd consider any reader to be forewarned.
The most interesting aspect of Fisher's research, however, is how similar the channeled material is to much of what is produced by other dabblers in the paranormal.
While the stories spun through the "channel" Aviva Nuemann seemed very detailed, historically credible, and quite plausible, they proved to be completely "false"--none of them corresponded in any way with recorded physical history or fact. This reminds me of much of the information retrieved by hypnosis, either for the purpose of past-life regression, or for uncovering hidden memories, particularly of UFO "abductions." Hypnotically retrieved information, in other words, has the same character of Nuemann's channeled material--surface plausibility, a certain internal consistency (it is self-referential and seems to build a complete, coherent story), with detailed historical narratives--all which, on investigation, proves completely unverifiable. It would make more sense if: a) some of the information was wrong, and some right, or b) if the information was incoherent and internally inconsistent. To me, this suggests that what "channelers" and regressionists are accessing is some sort of psychological gestalt that is both real, intelligent, but completely disassociated from our consensus reality. This gestalt, or intelligence, may be quite skilled in mimicking human behavior and incorporating our information, but because it is not really a part of our world, it cannot--either by design or by inherent incapacity--completely conform to our official historical narrative. Interacting with it would prove quite corrosive, and potentially tragic.
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