The Articulate Dead [Paperback]

Michael E. Tymn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2008 | ISBN-10: 193194248X | ISBN-13: 978-1931942485 | Edition: 1

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were dynamic and evidential forms of spirit communication. A number of distinguished scientists and scholars studied some of the best mediums and concluded they were genuine. Unfortunately, there were also many charlatans and it was difficult for the general public to distinguish between the real mediums and the frauds. Scientific and religious fundamentalists along with a cynical press, were constantly on the attack, driving the genuine mediums underground or forcing them to abandon their gift.

In The Articulate Dead, Michael E. Tymn examines several of the best mediums of yesteryear and the scientific research surrounding them. A number of very intriguing stories unfold, including spirits directing an archaeologist in the uncovering of the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, spirits leading a researcher to crosses buried by American Indians, a deceased author completing his books through a medium, a Titanic victim coming back to tell about his new environment, and an afterlife researcher continuing his work after dying, to name just a few.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A resident of Kailua, Hawaii, Michael E. Tymn is vice-president of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc., and editor of the Academy's quarterly magazine, The Searchlight. He has been a freelance journalist for more than 50 years. His articles on paranormal subjects have appeared in FATE, Mysteries, Nexus, Atlantis Rising, Christian Parapsychologist, Vital Signs, Venture Inward, Two Worlds, Dark Lore, Alternatives, and The Honolulu Advertiser.

Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Galde Press; 1 edition (December 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 193194248X
• ISBN-13: 978-1931942485
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,364,311 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A 1958 graduate of the School of Journalism (B.A. Public Relations) at San Jose State University, Michael Tymn has contributed more than 1,600 articles to some 40 newspapers, magazines, journals, and books over the past 60 years. While most of his articles have dealt with subjects from the sports arena, Mike has done business, travel, metaphysical, and human interest features. He won the 1999 Robert H. Ashby Memorial Award given by The Academy of Religion and Psychical Research for his essay on "Dying, Death, and After Death." Writing assignments have taken him to such diverse places as Bangkok, Panama, Glastonbury (England), Jerusalem, Hollywood, St. Paul, and Tombstone. He has interviewed and written about more than 40 Olympians in his sports writing and has interviewed more than 20 scientists, researchers, educators, and philosophers in his metaphysical writing.

Mike's four metaphysical books include include "The Articulate Dead," "The Afterlife Revealed," "Transcending the Titanic" and "The Afterlife Explorers." His running book is titled "Running on Third Wind." "The Afterlife Revealed" has thus far proved to be his most popular book. His sixth book, titled, "Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discoverd the Afterlife" is expected to be released late 2012 or early 2013.

Mike serves as Vice-President of The Academy of Spiritual and Consciouness Studies, Inc. and is editor of the Academy's Journal and mini-magazine, "The Searchlight." He is a frequent contributor to "Atlantis Rising" magazine, "Running Times" and "National Masters News." Mike can be contacted at [e-mail]

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A long awaited book by an expert on mediums December 12, 2008

By Michael Schmicker

Format:Paperback

Michael Tymn is a recognized expert in the history of mediumship, writing extensively about the subject in his highly-respected online blog ([...] and in many articles for magazines and journals such as FATE, Nexus, Mysteries, Two Worlds, Atlantis Rising, The Summit, The Christian Parapsychologist, and other publications.

He brings a wealth of serious reseach and insights to "The Articulate Dead" and presents it with journalistic flair. As Mike notes in his preface, his goal was to "resurrect some of the most interesting and credible personalities and cases in the annals of psychical research from the period 1850 to 1940, what might be called the 'heyday' of mediumship, or spirit communications."

What we're offered is a fascinating look at some of the most convincing evidence available to date on the phenomena -- "evidence that seems to have been forgotten or ignored" -- strongly suggesting a continuing existence beyond the grave.

If you don't believe in a life after death, or comminciations from spirits, you may change your mind after reading this book. You don't have to take it on faith, take it on evidence. It's here.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read Especially for Time Magazine, Harvard and Dr. Pinker January 27, 2009

By William E. Stoney

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

A "Must Read" for Time Magazine, Harvard and Dr. Pinker

William E Stoney

1/25/09

On January 9th 2007 Time magazine published a special issue titled "Mind & Body. The major message of the issue as stated by the lead author, Dr. Steven Pinker of Harvard, was that "every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain. ....Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain....when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as anyone can tell the persons consciousness goes out of existence. Attempts to contact the souls of the dead (a pursuit of serious scientists a century ago) turned up only cheap magic tricks."

If you are inclined to accept the above as the proven scientific evaluation of the mind brain relationship and therefore Dr. Pinker's above evaluation of the results of the scientific attempts to contact the souls of the dead 100 years ago, you must read "The Articulate Dead". Dr. Pinker was correct in noting that there were serious scientific investigations of communication with the dead, he just totally misrepresented the results. Michael Tymn has provided us with an extensive and very readable account of the real results of those scientific investigations.

Those of you who are not familiar with the extensive history of psychical research will find that history outlined in an appendix. It begins with the start of paranormal phenomenal phenomena at the home of the Fox family in Hydesville New York on March 31st 1848. The family learned to converse with the originator of raps that were heard throughout the house and found them selves talking with the spirit of a peddler who had been killed in the house several years before. From that beginning there was literally an explosion of such communications, first in the US, then in England, France and the rest of Europe. Spiritualist churches featuring messages to the members from their deceased loved ones through a medium were founded and flourished much to the concern of the traditional churches. Table tilting, wherein a table with the sitter's hands on top would answer yes/no questions or select letters from the alphabet by tilting on two legs or turning right or left according to a prearranged code became the primary parlor game. Numerous other communication methods were developed including several forms of the ouije board, trance mediumship using the medium's voice or more rarely a voice separate from the medium, and automatic writing that has been the source of many full length books of spirit communications.

From the beginning these activities aroused the attention of academics and others of the educated classes. They loudly and often proclaimed the gullibility of those who believed in such impossible phenomena. A hardy few however decided to give the phenomena a fair evaluation. They found, much to their surprise, that they were forced to conclude that at least some of the reported communications and physical phenomena (including levitation of furniture and people) could not be attributed to fraud and that the hypothesis of spirit communication and activity was the simplest and most believable explanation. Those people and their investigations are the subject of this book.

The credentials of the people who risked their professional reputations by their declaration of belief in communication with spirits will certainly make a reader wonder whether there is any logical reason to accept the word of Dr. Pinker over theirs. Some were well known only in their own time but others are still famous today for their accomplishments. You will read about the investigations and conclusions of three scientists, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes and Sir William Barrett, who were knighted for their inventions and accomplishments in physics, of one of the originators of the theory of evolution. (No not Darwin but his semi-forgotten co-originator Alfred Russel Wallace), of the acknowledged father of psychology, William James, of a Pulitzer Prize winning author, Hamlin Garland and many others.

The intellectual credentials of the investigators are important but it is the investigations themselves that must be the basis of whether we can believe that they really are discussions with the spirit world. The first thing to note is number of the mediums studied providing positive results. Equally, and to some even more evidential, are the lengthy and in depth studies of several outstanding mediums, studies that in one case continued for over 40 years with continuing evidential data of the reality of the deceased being contacted and without any evidence of fraud. You will also be impressed with the precautions that were taken to preclude the use of previous knowledge and "cold" readings. The sitters never used their real names and in many cases were represented by others who did not know them. This latter practice was used to make the spiritual explanation more readily believable than the mind reading hypothesis then and now proposed as the alternative. It is here that the details are critical and it is the details that this book provides that make it the ideal entrance into the world of spiritual communication and its evidence for the reality of the afterlife.

But there is a third element that is crucial in deciding if we can accept the evidence provided. The experimenters spent the majority of their efforts in proving that the communications were from the people they claimed to be and not from the imaginations of the medium. Most believed that they had indeed accomplished this beyond a reasonable doubt. They spent little effort in analyzing or discussing those parts of the communications that described the conditions in which the communicators found themselves since they had no way of assessing the validity or not of such descriptions. However what's it like over there is certainly the first question that comes to mind once we start to believe that we are communicating with the spirit world since even our religions have very little to say on that subject. As you will read, the descriptions from many different communicators do provide a reasonably consistent and understandable picture of the afterlife. And these descriptions also have strong implications on the way in which we should conduct our current lives. Thus, it is these descriptions and their implications that many of you will find the most interesting, thought provoking and perhaps the most important part of this book.

I am sure that most if not all of you who are reading this review are doing so because the issue of what happens after death has become personally important because of the loss of a loved one or because a recent birthday started you thinking about your own mortality. Being able to add a science based proof of the afterlife and a comprehensible image of its characteristics can add immeasurably to our own understanding and acceptance of our place in the universe.

But beyond this personal reason there are broader social reasons as well. You are probably aware of the increasingly more visible and acrimonious debate between the believers and the atheists. Its resolution is important because it has the potential of altering the church/state separation our forefathers so wisely included in our constitution.
It is equally important to resolving the intra religious disputes that have already caused countless deaths as true believers seek to impose their beliefs on all about them by the gun and the bomb. The facts provided by the communications described in this book may be the only way mankind will ever resolve these problems. Thus it is truly tragic that the leaders of that scientific process have chosen to ignore and to denigrate without examination the communication data that have been collected by methods that they would easily see are scientific in design and process and which have been replicated again and again for over a century. Yes there remain many unanswered questions and reason for doubt but the quantity and quality of the communication data then and now certainly deserve the best scientific attention academia can muster.

Dr.Pinker, read this book and tell us if you wish to repeat your Time magazine statement.

In the spirit of full disclosure I am, with Mike Tymn, a member of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies. Please note that the investigation of spirit communications is far from a dead subject (pun intended). I recommend that you follow up your reading of this book by going to the Academy's web site, [..] that will introduce you to the current research on spirit communications. I also recommend the author's own extensive blog to which he frequently adds articles on many aspects of the spirit communication evidence past and present. [..]. To those who want to read what are described as the best evidential case histories I recommend another Academy member and author, (The Survival Files), Miles Edward Allen's web site
[..]

Finally I leave it to Amazon's capable hands to provide a list of the other current literature on this subject.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative for both researchers and open-minded skeptics January 15, 2009

By R. Craig Hogan

Format:Paperback

In the first stages a science's development, individuals carefully record phenomena they observe in the natural world, not fully understanding the relationships among them or their causes, but intent on advancing their understanding through careful attention to the data. The records become natural histories. In the early 19th century, William Smith, Georges Cuvier, and Alexander Broignart recorded the presence of fossils in layers of rock, leading to theories about stratification. Adam Sedgwick, Charles Lyell, and Roderick Murchison then used that understanding to map geological periods in the stratifications. Eventually, sciences of geology and evolutionary biology developed from these natural histories.

Observations of natural phenomena involving the afterlife and after-death communication were recorded from 1848 through 1944 by the early pioneers such as John W. Edmonds, Allan Kardec, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Barrett, Federick W. H. Myers, James Hyslop, Richard Hodgson, Oliver Lodge, and Robert Hare. Their observations provided natural histories of the afterlife and after-death communication that had the potential for providing succeeding generations of researchers with the bases on which to formulate theories and perform research. Hare, for example, noted in 1855 the "deliberate attempt on the part of the inhabitants of the higher spheres to break through the partition which has interfered with the attainment, by mortals, of a correct idea of their destiny after death" (quoted on page 10). However, the partnership between scientists on the next plane of life and researchers on this plane of life remains poorly understood and virtually undeveloped today, in spite of Hare's very early observation of this natural phenomenon. Researchers into the afterlife and after-death communication have not sufficiently attended to the records developed by these pioneers, and today's research remains poorly developed because the natural history from this period hasn't guided research designs.

We who are engaged in research in the afterlife and after-death communication owe a great vote of thanks to Michael Tymn for reviving the natural history of that period from 1848 through 1944 to bring to us the neglected records we need to inform our studies of the afterlife and after-death communication today. The Articulate Dead provides a chronological overview of after-death communications from the Fox sisters through Wicklund's astonishing discoveries of the sinister effects lower-level discarnates have on people. Most of the valuable insights from the period described in the book have been neglected because of the current fascination with near-death experience research that can more readily be fitted into today's dominant, physical-science research paradigm. Researchers wouldn't consider holding séances to gather data, even though through the encounters Tymn describes between people on the two sides of life, clear, valuable insights into the nature of the death, the afterlife, and after-death communications have emerged.

I recommend that anyone engaged in afterlife and after-death communication research purchase a copy of this book and read it thoroughly, then listen to as many of the Leslie Flint séance tapes as he or she can obtain, and only then begin to develop theories and create research designs. Only with this solid background in the literature can we move forward in our attempts to understand death, the afterlife, and after-death communication.

And because it's an interesting, easy read, I recommend that skeptics and people who don't know the rich literature and history of after-death communications read this book as a primer, then delve into any of the lives and mediumship accounts of the great mediums and researchers described in the book. The open-minded, albeit skeptical reader cannot help but be moved at least a few steps from ignorance toward understanding by the contents of this book.