The Gift: ESP, the Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People Mass Market Paperback – May 2, 2006

ESP is often passed off as delusion or coincidence. But decades of research by Drs. J.B. and Louis Rhine at Duke University provided ample evidence that it is a sixth sense, of sorts, more available to some than others.

Author Sally Rhine Feather is the daughter of the Rhines and is director of the Rhine Research Center in Durham, NC. Michael Schmicker, an investigative journalist, is the author of Best Evidence, a book which explores evidence for psychic phenomena and survival of consciousness at death. The two have collaborated on this book in offering dozens of stories from the Rhine Research Center's database. "Our efforts today no longer focus on whether ESP exists; we have strong evidence that it does," Feather states in the preface. "Instead, we are studying how ESP works, by examining how personality, emotional relationship, mental and physical states, education, gender, and other variables may affect ESP experiences."

The authors are quick to point out that the many cases in this book, taken from more 14,000 in the database, are not intended as scientific proof of ESP. While anecdotal, the great number of them must lead any open-minded person to consider that the explanation for them goes beyond fraud, delusion, or coincidence. Consider the case of a bank president who, during World War II, became very depressed while on a fishing trip, feeling strongly that his son, Bill, was the cause of it. A few nights later a telegram was received saying Bill had been critically wounded. The distraught father had no indication as to what the wounds were, but he began to visualize a head wound, right behind the ear, as well as some kind of arm wound. As it turned out, the actual injuries were almost exactly as seen by the father.

Many cases are of precognition - seeing events before they actually happen - such as the case of a woman driving toward the Pentagon with her husband and suddenly seeing huge clouds of smoke rising into the sky over the building. She became very emotional and began hyperventilating. Two weeks later, on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon.

Children have many ESP experiences that are often ignored by adults, who assume that they are the result of overactive imaginations. That apparently wasn't the case with a four-year-old child asked his parents if Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Charles were in a train wreck. "I see'd they did," the child told the confused parents. The next day, word reached the parents that the aunt and uncle had stalled on train tracks and their car was hit by a train. As far as could be determined, it happened almost the same time as the child's remarks.

A very interesting chapter deals with messages from the dead, such as deceased loved ones appearing to children before word had reached the family of the death of the person. In one case, a woman and her teenaged daughter traveled from Washington, D.C. to California and were greeted by the woman's father, whom they had left in Washington, D.C. As the father/grandfather greeted them, he slowly faded away. Soon thereafter, they received word that he had died.

The final chapter gives advice on recognizing and dealing with personally experienced ESP, the goal being to help the person accept, understand, and embrace the experience rather than fear it or pass it off as a trick of the mind.

This book is interesting, informative, intriguing, and inspiring. With 100 or so cases detailed, it offers plenty of variety and can be read in bits and pieces. Many of the experiences are simple enough to be shared with children as stories to enlighten rather than to frighten.

THE GIFT is both entertaining and informative, combining stories of psychic experiences with highlights of the history, research, findings, and political struggles of parapsychology. It is well written, clear, and easy to read. In contrast to the smear tactics that have been employed by opponents of parapsychology, this book is totally responsible and accurate. It is a delight to read.

What makes this an important book is the announcement by Dr. Sally Rhine Feather, head of the Rhine Research Center and daughter of pioneer researchers Louisa and J.B. Rhine, that the reality of "ESP" (precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance) has essentially been proved, not by the stories in this book, but by the laboratory experiments. She says:

"Parapsychologists no longer conduct scientific tests to prove the reality of ESP. There is ample evidence that it exists. ..." (Page 17)

There have been hundreds of studies, involving thousands of people, conducted according to the strictest rules of established science, replicated by a great many independent laboratories in at least 7 different countries, and documented in scholarly journals throughout the world. Of course, for the 65 million Americans who have personally experienced "ESP" (according to a 2001 Gallup Poll), we need no scientific proof.

THE GIFT should appeal to the widest possible audience. It could also be used as a supplementary college text, wherever academic freedom is allowed.

Recently I had an amazing experience. My father passed away at the age of 90, I was 56, and at the time of his passing, I was halfway around the world, in another country, more than 8000 miles away! Due to my work and travels, and the sudden-ness of my father's death, I could not make it back home to be with him. However, we knew he was in failing health for the last year or so, so I was ready for this to happen, well, as much as one can ever be ready for the death of a parent!

What is strange is that about four days before he took his last breath, in a quiet and peacefull sleep of death before he passed to the other side, I suddenly became very very ill, in my hotel room, felt like I was dying, felt like all the energy in my body was being drained away, and I had no idea why, at the time. I could not sleep all night, woke up in a sweat, had zero energy and felt like I was doing to die that very day. I was so scared I visited a doctor and had some blood tests done, because I was sure I was going to die of something weird. But no, I was okay the next day, it was just a 24 hour flu bug or something, the doctor told me after telling my blood tests didn't reveal anything abnormal except a high white blood cell count. But I didn't have a fever, I didn't have the runs, it didn't seem like the flu bug.

Then, four days later, I received the sad phone call: Dad has passed away. I wonder if somehow he was trying to contact me, halfway around the world, via ESP, that somehow his draining energy was making contact with my energy, which also felt so draining, and that this was his way of saying goodbye to me, after all these years of a good father and son bond. I still wonder about this, and am usually a skeptic when it comes to matters like this. I don't believe in God or any gods, and I don't really believe in ESP. And yet, this happened to me, and now I feel I want to find out more about what really happened. I feel that this book was a good place to start.