Dear Dr. Blackmore,
With great interest, I read the personal OBE account from November 1970 on your website. I must admit I was a bit surprised, given what I previously knew about your work and your book, The Meme Machine. I had no idea that you received your PhD in parapsychology.
Given the nature of the questions I’m about to ask, I have some concern about the sentence in your biography stating that you no longer research paranormal phenomena. However I must ask these questions of someone, and your particular area of expertise would seem to make you the ideal person to submit my query. Your 2016 lecture at the SANDS conference in Italy would have been the perfect forum to ask my questions but unfortunately, I wasn’t invited.
I’m not going to try to convince you that your alleged OBE wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination, because I’ve never had one myself and that seems to be the best explanation for the “experience” you described. Because I know you’re very busy and have an assistant screening your emails, I’ll get right to the point.
My first question is this: given that you presented reasonable evidence that your OBE wasn’t real, why did you call it an OBE? Why didn’t you just call it a drug-induced hallucination, as it seems to have been? Have you assumed that because your “OBE” probably wasn’t real, that every other alleged OBE must also be a hallucination?
More importantly, what do you do with evidence that if true, would invalidate your assumption? My remaining questions are all related the specific claims of astral travel (details here) by an alleged psychic named Rose Kopp. The most significant problem I have with the details provided in her account is that I seem to be left with only these three alternatives:
- Rose Kopp was a fraud who made several very lucky guesses.
- She was an exceptionally good liar.
- She was telling the truth while describing a legitimate OBE.
My questions to you about her story are this: the problem with assuming option #1 is correct is the level of detail in her story, and the corroboration of those details by law enforcement. Rose allegedly described crime scenes and details about the serial killer that she simply should not have known, unless options #2 or #3 prove true.
The problem with assuming option #2 is true are the facts that law enforcement corroborated the details of Rose’s involvement, and a man remains in prison for murder because of the conviction achieved with help of Rose’s information…according to the sheriff. Why would Sheriff Bill Landry verify that Rose Kopp provided crucial information that led to the arrest of serial killer Daniel Blank, if the claim was untrue? Wouldn’t that jeopardize his murder conviction?
And of course, the problem with option #3 is that you are a renowned expert on this subject, and you seem to be claiming it’s impossible. I agree that it shouldn’t be possible, given what we know from science and experience…but what do we do with this strange, incredible OBE account? Rose was in Hawaii, providing vivid and verified accurate descriptions to police officers in Louisiana. It’s impossible of course…unless a legitimate out-of-body experience is actually possible.
That’s why I believe we only have three potential explanations, which I’ve listed above. My last question is: can you think of a fourth option?
How could Rose Kopp either guess or know specific details that would prove crucial in a murder investigation? She was either extraordinarily lucky, extraordinarily wicked (colluded with a serial killer for some unknown, bizarre reason that “benefited” her reputation while putting him in prison, on Death Row) or extraordinarily gifted.
If you can’t come up with a “fourth” option either, using what rationale would you choose between options 1 or 2?
Thank you in advance for your time,
John
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