Program starts tomorrow, Aug 04, 2012.

The TMI piece is the finale, Sept 15 (short season!)

I don't have cable; hope you all will report on this!

Is this a season of sensationalized pieces, or is there going to be serious investigation here? I hope it is the latter.

http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=75p8upcab&v=001ClIWeGrG49f42_...

Thank you, Lucy.

Your summaries seem very clear, even if the TV originals did get carried away with sensationalism.  I didn’t get to see the program and am very glad you did.

Regarding the first situation, two unrelated points come to mind.

1) Today in the newspaper a long article described how traumatic brain injury may or probably accounts for desertion by servicemen during war.  The article focussed on exemplary, experienced WWI soldiers who were later executed for desertion.  The point was that current research shows that brain trauma often leads to the compulsive need to get away.  But their findings could certainly apply to a current person too who wants to 'escape.’

2) Regarding hiding in the woods, according to  neighbor who collects goods for such homeless men in a woods in this region, there are hundreds in their one area alone. Of course not all woods offer the kind climate, weather-wise and socially, that is around here but I very sadly assume it’s happening in many places.

So the first episode seems very believable to me.  I hope you’ll post about others, especially the TMI ones.  Thanks.

Bets

I got a chance to watch the repeats on last Saturday night, but it wasn[t the shows that were originally advertised. Actually they repeated the Dead Man's Curve episode, which I skipped this week. They also showed "A Soldier's Homecoming," involving a death that was called a suicide by law enforcement but may have been a homicide. This one has not yet been posted for later viewing. (which bums me out as I definitely cannot watch this weekend ans was depending on the episodes being posted on-line). The soldier episode contained a brief excursion into scrying, with a bit by Raymond Mody, perhaps enough info to arouse curiosity in some people. The mom got peace but no leads to conclusive evidence.

The Monroe Institute had advertised that the Aug 11 episiodes would have a Monroe trainer in one, and the same person in the 18ths but they changed their schedule. Some guy named John Kortum is supposed to be in 2, but not as a TMI trainer but as a mystical healer.

The show featuring Lifeline in scheduled for Sept. I just listened to a new interview with a woman named Natalie Sudman, at Bob Olson's site. At the end, she mentions she was at TMI for the Lifeline program that was filmed for The Unexplained, so she is in the show. She thought the filmers did a good job. I wish they were more like an old-fashioned documentary, but I guess that isn't popular now. The interview with Sudman can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eb2xy3lXgM&feature=player_embedded

comment about the series and TMI

Quote:

So the long-awaited TMI installments have been shown and will be up for a week or two. Both glad and disappointed to see Natalie Sudman featured so much, especially in two. It is interesting to see her talk about her experiences and disappointing that others were not also featured.

Guess you can't do that much in 20 minutes, which is probably why the story they do follow seems a little fractured.

So in retrieval #1, Natalie has a guy run up to her. He has on a uniform...perhaps her not so distant experiences with the US military in Iraq made her look safe to a military person in spirit?...he says his name is Jerry Cranz (sp?) and he is blind (and she had suffered eye problems due to injury in Iraq) and he was killed at Shiloh (which she somehow is not familiar with, but I am originally from Tennessee so maybe I assume incorrectly that "everyone" knows about Shiloh).

So the program shifts to a geneologist, J. Mark Lowe, who has initials after his name, related to Geneology: CG and FUGA, the latter of which has to do with Utah, where a lot of geneology is done, so I assume that is supposed to mean he is very good at his work.

And he finds a Jerry Cranz (Kranz? they don't really tell us, so they?) from Illinois, 43rd regiment, 1/3 of whom were killed at Shiloh, skipping exactly how Lowe pinned that down, but that's his job, and then Lowe gets to 1930 using public records and a diary and then we shift to the present. In the present, we find descendents whose name has shifted to Almcrantz. It is frustrating to me to skip how they got there, both 1930 to now and Kranz to Almcranz, but the family seemed satisfied. It seems like a good "hit" to me, some kind of validation. It must have been interesting to the family to get this info out of the blue.

Sudman's second hit was a man named Josiah Smith from an area of NY state now apparently in NJ. Because she got a location, and dates the "Smith" name was not a problem here. In fact, Lowe turned up really good info here. Then the family moved to the Michigan area to farm. The commonality of the name would have eeb a challenge but became less so as Lowe had known someone who had researched his own SMITH family information, and that connection turned up a present-day family who turned out to have lots of info (in a box in the attic or someplace like that). So the family had lots of confirming information, including the location of graves.

Well something is going on here.

I do wonder what happened with the retrieval of another participant, who found a guy named Twitchell from Chicago. Was there not enough information for Lowe to find anything on this person? Did they find something but the family did not want to be on video? The viewer is left hanging. Maybe the point is that not every retrieval produces verifiable information.

Hi Lucy,

Regarding the family names across time,

Frequently it’s just clerical error by a census taker or in a church’s baptismal record that changes names.  It happens so frequently across the generations that it’s barely remarkable to a genealogist and wouldn’t have to do with the program’s theme.

Just a guess about the Twitchells-- that family might also be related to Paul Twitchell who was a leader of another approach to afterlife studies in the mid-1900’s, so maybe that family wanted to stay true to that tradition.

The results seem rather impressive to me.
Bets