SPR LECTURE - CALLUM COOPER - CONVERSATIONS WITH GHOSTS

Conversations with Ghosts was an idea for a fourth book for Dr Tanous, and it was intended to be written by Dr Karlis Osis and himself, outlining their various investigations of ghostly phenomena while working with the American Society for Psychical Research.  The existing short manuscript - of no more than a couple of chapters - was archived by the Alex Tanous Foundation for Scientific Research, and left incomplete.  Now, thanks to the Foundation’s support, the book has finally been completed using additional notes and writings of Dr Tanous, and interviews that were conducted with him on his thoughts and theories into ghosts and conscious survival beyond death.  Additionally, this book provides not only a first-hand insight into the Tanous/Osis investigations, but also draws on people’s personal experiences with Dr Tanous during his various explorations of ghosts and hauntings.  This is a rare insight into the work and mind of a psychic psychical researcher.

Callum E. Cooper is a psychologist and a doctoral candidate based at the University of Northampton (UK), within the psychology division’s Centre for the Study of Anomalous Psychological Processes. He is a member of the Society for Psychical Research, the Parapsychological Association, the Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies, and a Hope Studies Graduate Researcher (Hope Studies Central, University of Alberta). His research and lecturing cover topics such as: parapsychology and anomalous experiences, the psychology of death & bereavement, positive psychology, and Egyptology (regarding ancient mysticism). He has lectured on parapsychology in the USA and throughout the UK. In 2009, he was award the Eileen J. Garrett Scholarship from the Parapsychology Foundation. He has received the Alex Tanous Scholarship Award from the Alex Tanous Foundation for Scientific Research, three times over, and has remained strongly associated with the Foundation ever since. Additionally, he is the author ofTelephone Calls from the Dead.

Alex Tanous, D.D. (1926–1990), came from Portland, Maine, and was an international teacher of philosophy, well-being, and parapsychology. He was the author of several books, including: Beyond Coincidence, Is Your Child Psychic?, and Dreams, Symbols and Psychic Power. He spent many years working with groups and families investigating psychic phenomena, including his own abilities, through the American Society for Psychical Research. He held five degrees, including a bachelor of arts in theology, three masters degrees in theology, philosophy, and education, and a doctorate in theology (doctorate in divinity). He guest-lectured all over the world, and regularly in the colleges and universities of New York. His most frequent lecturing post was at the University of Southern Maine, where he had given lectures on healing, dreams, and had established the first parapsychology course within the USA to be taught with credit.

Praise for Conversations with Ghosts

‘‘Parapsychologists of a certain generation will know Alex Tanous as a talented psychic who spent years working with researchers to help understand his special abilities. Mr Cooper has done the field a great service by assembling this collection of Tanous’ own haunting investigations that reveal not just some good ghost stories but another dimension to Tanous’ talent.’‘

—Richard S. Broughton, Ph.D.
Author of Parapsychology: The Controversial Science

Dr. Alex Tanous was Dr. Osis’ favourite and most successful psychic in sophisticated out-of-body experiments, and in investigations of places of reported hauntings and apparitions. What was particularly prominent in this research was the emphasis on the importance of these phenomena for the question of survival of death.  In this book Tanous describes and
reflects on his remarkable personal experiences.

—Erlendur_Haraldsson, Ph.D.
Author of The Departed Among the Living: An Investigative Study of Afterlife Encounters

It’s about time Alex Tanous was brought back into the public eye, and this book shows why he should be remembered as one of the best psychics of several generations. Tanous was an enormous influence on me, and I hope that readers of this book feel some of that influence as well.” Anyone interested in ghosts, spirit communication or paranormal investigation will gain much from reading this book and getting to know Alex Tanous.

—Loyd Auerbach
Atlantic University, Author of ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists

This book chronicles the strategies used by Alex Tanous when he was interacting with entities and realms that mainstream Western society considers imaginary at best and hallucinatory at worst. But Tanous was a deep thinker and careful investigator who worked with scientists and kept meticulous records of his investigations. This is what makes Conversations with Ghost a valuable document, not only for advocates of so-called “psychic phenomena” but for anyone interested in the unexplored potentials of human behavior.

—Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.
co-editor, Varieties of Anomalous Experience

In Conversations with Ghosts, Callum Cooper makes a very important contribution to survival research literature, by bringing to light one of history’s most gifted out-of-body projectors, Alex Tanous.  Tanous described himself as a “pioneer, - testing, exploring, and discovering through (his own) ability.”

Cooper includes Tanous’ case notes: they offer an inside view into Tanous’ psychic abilities and insights regarding the out-of-body experience and the hauntings he investigated. One tantalizing account explains how he personally experienced his own body-double, which went out-of-body with Tanous, forming a “triangle” with Tanous’ inert body.

Cooper is to be commended for allowing readers to know about this most intriguing researcher and experiencer.

—Elizabeth E. McAdams, Ph.D.
President, International Foundation for Survival Research