Astral travel

Astral travel

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is another favorite piece from my days as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner. Had to put it together rather quickly this morning because a link to it was embedded in the next article in the ongoing series on evolution.]

Astral travel (or astral projection) is supposedly the ability for a person to enter into a trance so deep they are able to travel great distances without their physical body. Sounds impossible to believe, doesn’t it?

This writer has to admit to a fair amount of skepticism about this ability, having never experienced it personally.  Does that mean the ability doesn’t exist, or does it only mean that this one particular individual has not personally experienced it?

What evidence (if any) exists to support such an outlandish claim?

Psychic Rose Kopp lives in Honolulu, Hawaii. She claims to have an ability to leave her body and visit remote locations, which she does occasionally to assist the police in solving a crime. After a grisly murder was committed in Gonzales, Louisiana, a childhood friend of Police Chief Bill Landry suggested that he ask Kopp for help obtaining information about the robbery and murder of elderly Lillian Phillipe, the third in a series of similar crimes.

The serial killer left no fingerprints or DNA, making the police very frustrated with the lack of progress in the case. Kopp agreed to help. She asked Landry to send a picture of the victim and one personal item the victim had touched. Three more homicides were committed in Landry’s jurisdiction before Kopp received the package from Landry.  The killer was increasing the pace of his murders.

Kopp describes astral travel as a shamanic journey that she embarks upon by entering a trance induced by repetitive chanting accompanying a rhythmic drumbeat.  According to Kopp, she left her body during a trance and in her mind she flew over Diamond Head, across the Pacific, California, Texas, and finally arrived in Gonzales, Louisiana, at the crime scene of the Lillian Phillipe murder. There she claims that she was able to “see” the killer and tell Landry he was a white male, about five foot nine and powerfully built.  She told Landry the killer had entered the house through the roof that he reached by placing a wrought iron chair on top of the air conditioner.

Landry’s investigation shockingly confirmed the details Kopp gave from “visiting” Phillipe’s house. The chair was still there. Because those three additional murders had occurred between the time Kopp’s help was requested and her receipt of the related items from Landry connected to the victim Phillipe, in desperation the police chief asked Kopp to remotely use her psychic abilities to visit Louisiana a second time, hoping to obtain additional information about the killer.

On Kopp’s second “astral” visit, she claimed the killer’s car contained betting slips indicative of a gambling problem.  The FBI profile of the killer had predicted that excessive gambling debts would be the motive for the robberies. Kopp also said the killer’s girlfriend worked in a diner and relayed that her name sounded like “Cindy” or “Candy”.  She saw a vision of a severed cow’s head immediately after seeing the vision of the girlfriend at work.  The jarring image almost startled her out of her trance. These images made absolutely no sense to Kopp.

But as a lifelong resident of Ascension Parish, Chief Landry knew the history of the area well and they made perfect sense to him.  He knew an old slaughterhouse had closed that was near a diner.  The old slaughterhouse had used a cow’s head like she described to advertise the business. Asked by Chief Landry if she could add anything to the killer’s description, Kopp mysteriously said she saw an old woman’s hand write “River Rat” on a notepad.

The very next time the killer struck, he shot an elderly woman in the face and her husband in the chest.  Both victims barely survived.  The wife was asked if she could describe her assailant.  Because of her facial injury she was unable to speak.  She took a notepad and wrote the words “River Rat” on it.

How could this be possible? How could Rose Kopp have accurately predicted the exact same words a future victim would write before the crime occurred?

An informant’s tip led the police to suspect a man named Daniel Blank, a self-employed mechanic with a waitress girlfriend named Cindy and a known gambling problem.  Blank matched the physical description given by Rose Kopp almost perfectly.  He was arrested and convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death.

If the information provided in the program Psychic Investigators on the Biography Channel was true, Rose Kopp amazingly provided the police with the following information:

• Gave them an accurate and detailed physical description of the killer.
• Correctly identified the killer’s means of entry into the Phillipe house – the chair on the A/C unit.
• Correctly provided the name of the killer’s girlfriend and her place of work.
• Correctly noted the killer’s gambling problems.
• She incredibly knew somehow of the “River Rat” description the old woman would give after his next attack left a witness.

If the information in the program was not true, then it must mean that:

• Police Chief Bill Landry participated in a hoax in a case involving a serial killer, seriously jeopardizing the ability to bring justice to the murderer.
• Kopp was actually an accomplice of the serial killer.
• The victim who wrote “River Rat” on the notepad must have collaborated with both her assailant and Rose Kopp.
• Rose Kopp must have visited Louisiana and the specific locations in question at some point in the past, in spite of no evidence to indicate she’d ever been there.

Critically analyzing this information seems the prudent course of action. However, healthy skepticism should not lead one to automatically conclude Kopp and Landry’s stories are simply impossible to believe, because there is investigable and verifiable claims being made in this account.

How could anyone who believes in the foundational premises of evolution — that something could come from nothing and inanimate matter could become alive without a miracle — summarily dismiss information such as this without any real consideration or further investigation? If out-of-body experiences can actually happen, isn’t that a precursor of the near death experience or actually becoming a ghost?  We know that a large percentage of the world’s population believes they have had a NDE experience themselves. If it is truly possible, does astral travel offer some semblance of proof that our spirit and physical body can be separated?

Is it the spirit itself evidence that we were created in God’s image?

[Author’s update: Daniel Blank remains on Death Row in Louisiana, awaiting execution for the murders reported in this story.]