Matt,

An honest reaction!  It is natural to be skeptical of exotic supernatural experiences with which we have no analogies in our own life experience.  We can't help our natural reactions.  But our reactions place us in what I  (or rather Boris from this site) call a "Ghetto mentality" when we AUTOMATICALLY dismiss experiences as fictional which conflict with our established perspectives.  Actually, you are doing all I ask you to do--read about the experiences and see how they resonate with your current intuition.  But our intuition can change with new instructive experiences.  

When my bright and humble friend Leonard was visited by his dead son Jeff and the next day by Jeff's wife Karen, I too was skeptical because of the lack of analogies in my prior experience.  The fact that Jeff's spirit drove his Dad's truck for several minutes with Leonard at his side seemed too much for me to swallow.   Yet I know that this experience after the plane crash eliminated Leonard's need to grieve and simplified his task of tying up his son's loose financial ends.  Jeff's spirit conveyed planty of verifiable information during the bizarre ride.  I feel bad about my initial reaction because it hurt Leonard and it was me--not Leonard--who applied pressure to discover why he was able to circumvent the grief process.   Now I treasure his experience as one of the most valuable afterlife confirmations I've ever encountered.  Yet emotionally, because it is so unusual, it does not inspire me as much as my other less spectactular paranormal experiences.  I guess all this just means that there is no substitute for personal experience or, at least, direct involvement in the paranormal experiences of those you know well and can vouch for.  

Matt, have you read the paranormal experiences described in my "God and Destiny" thread, which is now on p. 2 of this section?

Don  

Happy Girl,

Posters on this site seldom accept my challenges to read anything.  So I'm grateful for your open-mindedness.  Your reflections on Martin will surely influence how I portray the book to future spiritual adventurers.  If you read psychiatrist Scott Peck's new book on exorcisms, I'll be very interested to see if he alters your perspective on Martin.  Peck has the highest respect for Martin's research, but differs with him on the odd point. 

Mattb,

You don't know my brother and me.  So as I said, I sympathize with your reluctance to accept my brother's exorcism account.  But I thought you and Happy Girl might be interested in the paranormal spirit activity encountered by two of the well-known pioneers of psychoanalysis, atheist Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, especially since Jung's experiences build up to a climactic encounter with what just might be demonic activity. 

The paranormal phenomena that preceded Jung's call to mediumship were eventually witnessed by Freud.  Jung recounts these experiences in his
biography "Memories, Dreams, Reflections."  I'll share just 4 key incidents.  The first incident terrified Jung's mother who was sitting nearby:

(1) "Suddenly there sounded a pistol shot.  I jumped up and rushed into the room from which the noise of the explosion had come. . .The table top had split from the rim to beyond the center. . .The split ran through the solid wood.  I was thunderstruck.  How could such a thing happen?. . .If it had stood next to a heated stove..., then it might have been conceivable." 

(2) "Some two weeks later I came home at six o'clock in the evening and found the household--my
mother, my 14-year-old sister, and the maid--in a great state of agitation.  About an hour earlier there had been another deafening report...In the cupboard I found a loaf of bread, and beside it, the bread knife.  The greater part of the blade had snapped off in several places...One of the best cutlers in town examined the fractures with a magnifying glass, and shook his head, `...There is no fault in the steel.  Someone must have deliberately broken it piece by piece (105-106).'"
In fact, no one had touched it!

(3) Jung visited Freud in Vienna and listened as he ridiculed the occult and the paranormal.  Jung explains what happened next:  "While Freud was going on in this way, I had a curious sensation.  It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot--a glowing vault.  And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing that the thing was going to topple over on us.  I said to Freud, `There, that is an example of a so-called cataleptic exteriorization phenomenon.'  `O come,' he exclaimed, `That is sheer bosh.'  `It is not,' I replied.  `You are mistaken, Herr Professor.  And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report!'  Sure enough, no sooner had I said these words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase.  To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty
...Freud only stared, aghast, at me (155-56)."  At the end of Jung's biography is appended the letter that Freud wrote him in a sheepish attempt to explain away this paranormal manifestation.

(4) "Around five o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday the front doorbell began ringing frantically. . .  Everyone immediately looked to see who was there, but there was no one in sight.  I was sitting near the doorbell, and not only heard it, but saw it moving.  We all simply stared at one another.  The atmosphere was thick, believe me!. . .The whole house was filled as if there was a crowd present, crammed full of spirits...I was all aquiver with the question: `For God's sake, what in the world is this?'  Then THEY cried out in chorus, `We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what we sought.'  The Jerusalem allusion seems intended to evoke Jesus' exorcisms of demons.   Did young encounter demons or were discarnate humans imitating demons?  You decide.  The upshot of this spirit infestation was Jung's willingness to become their mouthpiece and to channel a work entitled "Seven Sermons to the Dead (190-101)."  This channeled material is appended to Jung's biography (178-90).  Jung "later described it as a sin of his youth and regretted it (378)."  In retrospect, he concludes that there was something sinister about his call to channeling--as if he were seduced into an involvement with an evil energy.

Don