Category: Uncategorized

It’s Sunday morning and it’s a winter wonderland. That’s the view out my front window. Time to go out and build a snow fort.

After I make sure I’ve got everything ready for my trip to West Virginia tomorrow. The last time I left NYC was … I can’t remember. I went to Bermuda and Paris in the 80’s. Oh wait, I went to California in the early 90’s. That was the last time. It’s been ten or more years. And next month I going to North Carolina for THREE months.

Well, 700 boxes of treasure await me at the Duke University library. I should be okay.

Missing Photo! A photograph was here! Don’t know where it went!

Last weekend my friend Kevin and I visited the former Kings Park Psychiatric Center. We tried briefly to find the graveyard but no go. The picture above is of one of the doctors residences. There is something so beautiful about the abandoned. My camera died with that picture, but there are many great sites about Kings Park.

Here’s one.

And another!

I’m reading at a bar called Rocky Sullivan’s, tonight at 8PM. Rocky Sullivan’s is an Irish bar at 129 Lexington, between 28th and 29th.

If you’re not sick of hearing me read, stop by!

Everything about our concert is lovely, including the flyer. The dress rehearsal is Thursday. I can’t wait. Dress rehearsals are fun because you get to sing with the musicians, but it’s more low-key than a performance. (I also love the “high-key” of the actual performance.)

I’m starting to meet people who know what they are talking about. Carlos Alvarado, Ph.D has been helping me, pointing me to books and journal articles. He told me about J. B. Rhine publishing a skeptical article about the medium Mina Crandon, better known as Margery. Rhine was the head of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, although not at the time. When the article was published he was studying philosophy at Harvard (or had just finished). Then Dr. Alvarado sent me this amazing picture of Margery.

UPDATE: More (and better) pictures of ectoplasm on my other website here, here and here.

Oh yeah. This is going to be an interesting book to write. The best part though, is what followed the publication of Rhine’s doubting piece. That is really what my book is about. As I found when writing about the police, their investigations are fascinating, it’s true, but so are the politics and the passions behind the scenes. Joseph Rhine had a complicated personality, but he was the right man for the job. And so was his less visible right hand man, Gaither Pratt.