1 August 2019
I'm Sheree McNatty, Secretary of NZ Skeptics. I've just been asked by a teen about how Skeptics disprove psychics, paranormal activity and the afterlife. When I was a teen I was interested in finding proof of paranormal and the afterlife. I told enquiring Aunts that I wanted to be a Parapsychologist when I left school. I found the thought of people I had known who have died being somewhere else comforting and I wanted to experience it and prove it. Friends and I had seances, I did Tarot and tea leaf reading and tried mind reading. There had to be something after this left and I wanted it to be real. However, it led me to become a Skeptic as no matter what we tried it wasn't convincing. I also found out there was no point being a Parapsychologist as nobody is going to fund repeated experiments that have failed every time.
4 October 2015
A crew member felt their trousers being tugged, the bottom of someone's seat was kicked, a chandelier prop worked intermittently, and a hat was knocked off
1 May 1998
Perhaps it's a coincidence, but many experts in non-proven schemes fall on their own swords. For example, Hoxsey died of cancer, and recently a Lower Hutt clairvoyant went bankrupt (due to unforeseen circumstances). Dr Rajko Medenica, the Yugoslavian specialist whose unorthodox treatments created devoted patients and determined enemies, died at the early age of 58 (Bay Of Plenty Times December 3 1997). He practised in South Carolina and drew patients from around the world, including Muhammad Ali, the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran and the late Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia. He served 17 months in a Swiss prison two years ago for fraud, many saying that his unusual methods were not based on science, but that he preyed on those that had lost hope. He obviously didn't do the three guys mentioned much good either.
1 November 1994
A friend of mine once visited a faith-healer, one of the religious variety from the United States who periodically come to New Zealand to swell their bank balances. She attended the meeting because of a persistent pain in her elbow. Despite my suggestions that it was only tennis elbow, she was worried and thought perhaps the pain was serious. She had an aisle seat near the front and during the proceedings the "healer" approached her and asked about the pain in her arm. Apparently she hadn't told anyone why she was there. She was impressed.
1 November 1993
The New Internationalist Review, a magazine not normally known for gullibility beyond the political, decided not all that long ago to examine the paranormal. Our intrepid reporter Peter Lange decided to have a look.
1 May 1990
One of the highlights of the 1989 Conference was an entertaining history of the paranormal and pseudo-science in New Zealand. Part of Dr McGeorge's talk follows, beginning with his account of an attempt early this century to control quackery by legislative means.
1 February 1989
Radio Clairvoyant: Mary Fry's Own Story (Grantham House, $14.95).
1 August 1987
After we have marvelled at the endurance shown in "The Wooden Horse, and thrilled to the weekly plottings of "Colditz," can we be expected to be interested in yet another prisoner-of-war story? Especially if it all happened nearly seventy years ago? For readers with a skeptical interest in matters clairvoyant, the answer in the case of "The Road to En-