Music, Witchcraft and the Paranormal

Hi there, I'm K-Town, and on this edition of Mysterious Radio. All right, thank you for joining me tonight for another edition of Mysterious Radio. I'm your host, K-Town, and tonight my special guest is Melvin Willen, and he is the author of a book that's called Music, Witchcraft, and the Paranormal. And this book discusses the parapsychology and psychical research with special reference to the importance of music in paganism and witchcraft. This well-researched book has a ton of sources, including historical and firsthand accounts, relevant publications, and of course, the author's own thorough investigations. And it's available right now for you on Amazon in Kindle and also hardcover. And I'll start off by asking Melvin what made him aware that music may have a paranormal aspect. well it more or less started because most of my early career was actually to do with musical matters i was a teacher um i was a performing musician i did degrees in music But throughout this time, I was fascinated by the paranormal and finally thought, well, there's so much weird stuff that goes on in music. Let's see if there's even more weird things that I don't know about. So I started putting the two together and found there's lots and lots that people don't just seem to connect with. All right. So let's first go into, I would like to talk about music and witchcraft, if you don't mind me starting there. No problem. Okay, so tell me, you know, I do a lot of occult interviews and they've never mentioned anything about music and witchcraft and paganism. So can you tell us, you know, how far back does that go? Okay, well, I've approached the subject. It was the main subject of my second PhD. And I've approached it sort of historically, but bringing it right up to date. So as far as what a lot of people call witchcraft or paganism, which is basically just a nature-based religion or belief system, certainly there were musical accompaniments thousands of years ago when men and women were looking at the moon and the stars and believing that there was something going on there that was beyond themselves and they would use basic instruments or their voices to try and connect with this. We can see this in cave paintings and artefacts and things like that. And bringing it forward more and more and more, we found, of course, that in the 17th century, for instance, in Britain in particular, but also throughout Europe and possibly America, although I must admit I don't know so much about it in America, music accompanied any sort of rites or pagan practices that were going on there. The Druids, for instance, were particularly enamoured with using music. To this day, there are still bards within the Druid tradition that feel that music connects them more with the spirits, if you like. And then in the present day, music is used constantly in covens throughout certainly the UK and possibly abroad as well as an accompaniment to their rituals, but also to enhance the rituals because people believe with types of music they can achieve altered states of consciousness and connect more with the nature spirits that they're hoping to attract. Okay, so is this music that they are creating themselves or is this already produced music or what? Okay, it's both. Quite often, we're talking about a broad range of different people in these so-called covens or gatherings, And so many of them are capable musicians and can produce music themselves to accompany dance, for instance. But also recorded music is used from a very wide variety. When I've attended covens myself, I've actually found that they were often using music from the pure classical type traditions because they felt it connected with them. All right. So is it the frequency of the music? What is it about the music itself that they feel is necessary to use? I think it's not so much the frequency as the emotional impact it has on them. I think that music is very intangible as an art form. It seems to touch people in ways which other arts perhaps don't do. I mean, there's nothing to look at with music. We're just using our ears after all. And it seems to connect in ways that we just don't understand. And why does the inverted commas hair stand up on the back of our neck at times when we're listening to a piece of music, especially if there's no words. So there's nothing there to sort of connect us or we haven't heard the piece before. So it's not having a connection with some past event or past person. And just out of the blue, it seems to affect us. okay so i'm wondering if you've looked at um dr willan whether or not you know i mean they admit openly admit you know they do use spells and things like that so are they using it in connection with spells maybe to enhance it enhance them maybe yes i i don't see any reason why not um as as to put uh the people concerned into a generally positive mood i mean let's not forget that But certainly in my experience and everybody I've come across just loosely, nobody uses so-called spells for malign purposes. It's done for healing in much the same way as prayer is done in the Christian traditions to help people to overcome their difficulties, be they mental or physical. Very good. All right. That is very, very interesting. Have you, well, is there any place online, maybe you have some of it, music that we can hear that would be associated with paganism? Well, I haven't recorded or sort of made recordings available of the music that is used. But having said that, there are certainly lists of music. One of my books anyway, and my thesis on the subject lists in great detail the types of music that we used. And much of the time, people would be able to acquire that sort of music. Amazon sells it online and so on and so forth. OK, what do you think about people that would probably say, hearing you speak about this now or talk about it, you know, listening to it may have an adverse effect on you. Do you believe that that could happen? Well, no, I don't. I think that just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so beautiful music is in the ear, if you like, of the beholder. And I think that if somebody wants to believe that something is having an adverse effect on them, then it will. And if they don't believe it, or if they think it's having a positive effect, then I think it will. And the whole purpose of pagan music and music within witchcraft is to have positive effects. So I don't see how it could possibly have negative effects. I mean, let's not forget we're talking about the power of nature, which is all around us. Now, nature can be quite bad as I look out the window here and see the snow coming down and causing problems around me. Well, it can also be highly beneficial as well. The sun keeps us warm and it can burn us as well. True. And it comes to mind to me now that I have conducted an interview where a researcher travels the world talking about how now different frequencies are purposely inserted into music to affect people in a negative way. You know, that if it wasn't there, it wouldn't do otherwise. Have you heard about that or have you looked into this? Yes, I have heard about that. My experience of it is that it's quite often anecdotal evidence for this. And as far as I'm concerned, and I can only talk through my own personal research and my own experiences, if it's extremely loud music, of course, it's going to damage your ears, whether it's extremely loud Mozart or whether it's extremely loud so-called pagan music. So I think we should try and keep a perspective on this. And I don't believe personally, rightly or wrongly, that obscure frequencies are used to affect me in a bad sort of way. okay all right so let's move on to musical healing um i mean i think that different frequencies can absolutely have a direct effect on a person's healing so tell us about what you know about that well i i think that the vibrations from music can have a therapeutic effect we've only got to think of things like ultrasound when it's healing our muscles, which I know is not music as such, but it's still vibration. And I think vibration can be used in that way. And also, I would say that if somebody feels very relaxed in a meditative state, for instance, because they're listening to a piece of what they consider to be beautiful music, it's a subjective experience, and my beautiful music may be different to somebody else's beautiful music, then it can can make them more relaxed and therefore they may have more a beneficial feel to themselves they may get rid of some stress in the process and that can only be good for our minds and bodies all right so um do you recommend anyone listen to any certain type of music or where they can find you know healing music that's used for healing online i mean is that do you know of a place I don know of a specific place I worry about people that put on a list of music and say come and buy this music It on special offer at the moment That sort of thing worries me a little bit when I see that sort of a list of music and say come and buy this music It on special offer at the moment that sort of thing It worries me a little bit when I see that sort of thing But certainly there are composers and there are performers who try to make their music as enhancing for the spirit of the people concerned. And they are certainly available online. I can name composers if you like, But otherwise, people can just find them on the Internet. Okay. All right. Well, it's fair to say if you believe that it can have a positive effect on people, it can definitely some of this stuff can definitely have a negative effect on people. Yeah. And if somebody feels it's going to have a negative effect on them, then turn it off. Don't listen to it. Right, right. All right. Okay. So let's talk about, are you calling it paramusical? I can't say it. Say it for me. You know what I'm trying to say. Are you after paramusicology? Yeah, there you go. Paramusicology. There you go. Phenomena. All right. So it's the first time I've ever heard that. So can you tell us how you came upon that, you know, that that was even a thing? Yes, okay. I must admit, hand on heart, I made up that word myself. So it's a combination of two things, if you like. Parapsychology, so the para means beside. So parapsychology is beside psychology. And musicology is obviously the study of music. So I thought, right, let's put the para in front of musicology and we have para musicology, which means that the bits of music, bits within the study of music that aren't covered by pure musicology or sociology applied to music, things like that. So my study has been based on the bits of music, the aspects of music that can't be covered by any of the other aspects of music that are studied. All right. So let's, okay. So let me see where, what do I want to ask you here? Okay. So how do they tie together? I mean, how did you first figure out that that was, that paranormal phenomena was even tied to music? Right. Okay. That's a very good question. And I know exactly what happened in that direction. When you read about so-called paranormal experiences, most of the time it's to do with visual experiences. People say they see a ghost, they see an apparition, they are touched by something, they feel a presence. But in a minority of cases, but a sizable one, they hear something, so their ears pick up on something. Now, when it just sounds like creaking doors or a howling wind outside or something, then I'm not interested. But in another small number of cases, and by small, I do mean hundreds and hundreds, people hear music and there's no source for that music or there's no known source. So if you like, it's a musical ghost. You may not see anything, but you hear something and you go into that room and there's nothing in there. There's no music playing. There's no music playing outside. There's no music traveling across the fields around you or from the houses that may or may not be close by. And in some cases, somebody else will go into the room and they will also hear it. And there's no electronic equipment in there, perhaps. They may be indoors. They may be outdoors. they may be in a so-called haunted location they may be in a normal person's house where there's there's nothing there or it may be in a ruin they may be in the woods the list goes on and on and people believe that they are hearing quite recognizable in some cases music and they don't know where it's coming from and so I investigated okay so let's talk about that in detail okay so tell us about some of the places where people were experiencing, you know, hearing some type of music and can't find the source of it. Yeah. Well, as I say, there's quite a few hundred to choose from, but there is a place in Suffolk, on the Suffolk-Essex border, which is about 100 miles away from London, fairly rural. And it was associated in the earlier part of the 20th century with an investigator called Harry Price, and the name of the place was Borley Rectory. Now, Borley Rectory is meant to be, it's burnt down now, it doesn't exist, but it was meant to be the most haunted house, according to Harry Price, in the whole country, if not the world. And he investigated it and spent much time there, and other people stayed there, and they witnessed all sorts of things. I must add, though, not music. Now, the rectory burnt down in 1939, and there's several houses there now. So you may say, well, why on earth am I talking about this place? It's not there, and there was no music anyway. But the dead opposite is a church which is still there, and many people have witnessed music coming from that church when there's been nobody in there. And the organ, where there is a small organ in there, I've visited many times, has been locked up, and yet they've heard music sounding from inside the church. And this is a wide range of people. So it could be people from the congregation that went along to do some cleaning, something like that. It could be pastors by. A large number of people have witnessed music in that church, and they don't know where it's come from. So that's one example of many. Okay, so now you've really piqued my interest about the most haunted or whatever that was. It was a house, right? It was a house? It was a rectory, so it was where the local rector of the church lived. Got you. Okay, so can you tell us, like, what did people experience? I know it's not there now, but can you tell us about some of the things that you heard that people were experiencing there? Yes, people experienced apparitions. There was a nun was seen flitting across the garden on several occasions. I mean, I've got to say allegedly, of course, to all of this, but I won't bore your listeners by repeating allegedly every time I say something. But a nun was seen there floating around, as I just said. A horse and carriage was seen going past and heard going past the rectory. There was poltergeist activity there. So things would shoot around of their own accord, according to the rector and his wife. There was writing that appeared on the wall. And I don't mean anything dramatic in terms of what it said, other than perhaps help me and things like that. There was a whole range of different other things. A brick was photographed flying through the air. There is a photograph of that. It's hotly disputed whether it's real or not, or whether a workman just threw it in the air so that someone could take a sort of spoof, hoax picture of it. There's lots of things attached to it. And many, many people stayed there. There was a thorough investigation and the results were mixed. I mean, it split the psychical research community down the middle at the time because half the people thought it was fraud and hoax and people not actually experiencing things but thinking they had. and the other half thought it was the real thing, the best thing that they'd witnessed. Wow, that sounds amazing. Okay, so let's go back to the church there. Did you, okay, so you said you visited there many times. Did anyone get anything, like I'm wondering if you left any type of recording equipment to try and get it on maybe a digital recorder or anything like that? Yeah, yes. I mean, machines have been left there overnight. The church is now very, very, what's the word? They're very unhappy about investigations taking place there now and have been for about the last 20 years. It's attracted a lot of silliness, if you like, from people going there, especially at Halloween and sort of fooling about in the grounds of the church. So it's kept very clear of that now. It's usually under lock and key, the CCTV. TV. So over the last 20 or so years, there's been nothing that's been sort of recorded as far as I know. But prior to that, there was various organisations, some of whom did overnight stakeouts there, some of whom left recording equipment in the church. Now, no music was recorded from any of those, but sounds were recorded. There was quite a spooky, if you like, sound that was recorded of what sounded like footsteps and a big sigh afterwards, like a human sigh. Now, whether this was a setup and a hoax or not, one can't tell. But having said that, a lot of people did hear music, even though they didn't manage to record it. It's a bit like whenever something happens, you just wish that you had a camera with you or some sort of recording machine and by the time you've got it of course whatever's happening is gone very frustrating yeah isn't that always the case my goodness um so have you experienced anything i have experienced poltergeist um not at the borley church but in my own house um i was it wasn't of a musical nature so strictly speaking it's not appropriate for this program for me to be talking about it but it was witnessed by myself and somebody else and it changed both of our minds about believing in poltergeist after that because something flew across the room there was nobody else there there was only me and her we were sat a few feet away from each other at a table and we both said blimey or words to that effect uh what on earth happened then and we had no explanation for it daytime, lighting, et cetera, et cetera. Where were you In a haunted location that you were investigating I was in my cottage And we were having a gentle bit of lunch And my cottage is not on a road It's surrounded with farmland and woods and things and snow at the moment. And so therefore, there wasn't a case of a lorry went past and dislodged something or, you know, a rat crawled up somewhere and pushed something off or anything like that. It was completely inexplicable as far as both of us were concerned. So has that happened anymore? Or is that the first and last time it's happened? That's the most dramatic. There have been very, very other minor things that have happened, which I've always thought, well, this could have been caused by this, this and this happening. So that's the only one where I couldn't actually use my powers of reasoning and say, well, I think that, you know, this was another example of it. I've always been able to explain away other things that have happened, but this one I still can't explain. Okay. All right. Okay, so can you tell us about some other places that you've investigated where people were hearing music coming from somewhere? Yeah. Well, again, it's another church, but this is quite an interesting one. It's in Northamptonshire, which is in the Midlands, Midland part of Britain, England, and at a place called Fotheringay. and this was a fatheringay church and a couple, a married couple I think they were, were visiting churches. A lot of people do that in this country for the architecture and things like that. Nice day out, let's visit a church. And as they approached the door of this church, they heard music from the inside and it sounded to their ears, these were educated people like it was sort of medieval renaissance type music and they thought, oh crumbs, there must be a concert going on in there, so we'd better not go in or a rehearsal or something like that. Well, they listened to it for a few minutes and they thought, well, it sounds rather grand. Perhaps if we just creep in, we'll be able to sort of listen to a little bit of it and see what's going on. So they opened the door and crept in and the church was completely empty. And they were utterly baffled by this. The music stopped as soon as they went in and they explored the inside of the church. I've been there a few times. It's not a massive church, so it's not like Canterbury Cathedral where there could be something lurking behind the altar somewhere or something. And they found there was nothing there whatsoever. So they were intrigued by this, so they did some research about it, and they found that even taking into account the change in the calendar, because there was a change in the calendar in later centuries, so some of the days would have different dates. So taking that into account, they found that there was actually a very grand internment ceremony there of one of the Tudor kings or sons of a king was interred there on that particular date. And there would have been quite a big ceremony there with the music, which was most appropriate. And they were baffled by it. That's, wow. Okay. There's plenty more of those, by the way Yeah, I bet Let me see here What do I want to ask you now? Now, do you think that's some type of residual? You know, maybe Because with the churches, you know, of course they played music in there And maybe we're just hearing some type of residual You know, sounds From when they were in there for so long, you know and it's just kind of, you know, kind of infused itself into that environment or whatever. Yes. I mean, there is a theory which is popularly known as the stone tape theory. And this was coined after, of all things, a BBC, I think it was BBC, play in the 1970s, which was made up a fictional thing about a building where they believed that there was a playback in an event that had happened hundreds or a hundred years before, and that in the right circumstances, whatever those are, and with the right people, whoever they are, they can witness a playback in time, which comes out as either visual and or sound, hence the stone tape, the stones of the building, act as some sort of battery for the sound or the vision to be replayed. And that's been posed many times since then for a number of locations where music and or visual activity has been experienced. So there's a possibility, as you said, residual events playing back. There's a possibility that that happened and still does. Right, right. Okay. Now, I want to know if you know of any examples where music has been directly tied to an entity that was haunting a certain location. An entity as in a single person? Well, there's various, and this was a difficult one because there's various public houses, taverns scattered around the country where music has been heard. And people have said, oh, that's old Fred, the landlord who was here 100 years ago, that's playing his violin upstairs and that sort of stuff. And with public houses who are always keen to get more customers, it's always slightly worrying about whether that's actually true or not. There was an interesting example at Versailles in France, near Paris, where a couple of school teachers, ladies attached to Oxford actually, were visiting Versailles and were visiting the palace when they saw people that seemed to be dressed up in clothing that wasn't appropriate to the 20th century, was more appropriate to the 18th or early 19th century. And they also, at least one of them, also heard music in the sort of area where they were, which was Le Petit Trienon in Versailles. And they explored that and they tried to work out what the music was and got experts to try and work it out. And it seemed that the music that they'd heard being played was appropriate to the people that they were also seeing as apparitions, if they were indeed apparitions at the time. And that's the so-called anadventure or the case of Versailles. That's interesting there. All right. So let's talk about the musical mediums. So can you tell us more about that? That's really interesting. Yes. Musical mediums. This is a vast subject. There's a book which I'm not plugging at the moment because it doesn't come out until later in the year. but it's by an American publisher called MacFarland. It's an encyclopedia of music and the paranormal. And there'll be a very big section of the book on musical mediums. So who is a musical medium? A musical medium is somebody that believes that they are in touch with a dead composer or performer, and that this person is connecting with them, not necessarily visually, although in some cases they see them, but more, they create within the person the ability to write music that they would have written had they still been alive. And it goes back about 100 or so years. There's a very famous example from America called Jesse Shepard, who produced all sorts of music that seemed to come to him from a whole range of composers. More recently in this country, in the 20th century, was a lady called Rosemary Brown, who believed she was in touch with composers. She wasn't a musician herself. She worked as a dinner lady in a school. She was a housewife and a dinner lady. She played the piano very badly. And all of a sudden, these composers were coming through her and she was writing down the music. It was filmed by the BBC, her actually writing music. She couldn't really play it too well because it was too difficult for her to tinkle out on the piano. So professional musicians mainly had to play the music. And it was way, way, way beyond what she was capable of doing herself. She was basically a completely untrained lady that was being channeled to produce music. And this was a section of my thesis that I really explored in great depth, making contact with her and dozens of other people. and found in some cases the results were pretty spectacular. In some of the cases, the results were awful, but some of them were so good that I thought, well, there's something going on here. Okay, so this, okay, I've got a couple of questions here. Can we still see that, where the BBC filmed her actually writing the music? I mean, is that available somewhere? Yes, it is. If anybody goes online and they just put in Rosemary Brown musical medium, then they will come across all sorts of clippings of her doing interviews, including, as far as I can recall, the bit where she's actually writing down the music being dictated to her by the Hungarian composer called Franz Liszt. Okay, and she is a medium, right? She was known to be a medium before this started happening to her? No, not really. She's dead now. She's been dead about 10 years, by the way. She was a sort of a spiritualist. She went to a spiritualist church, so she did believe in God and the concepts of spiritualism, but she didn't think of herself as a medium. She thought of herself as a mother. She had children and as a dinner lady going to school and producing dinners for the children. And she liked to play a little bit of piano. She had piano lessons as a child, a few, but she wasn't well off. She was the sort of lady that you would see down the supermarket buying bananas or whatever and you wouldn view her as anything special or amazing with musical capabilities And who was she channeling? Do you know which composers? Yes, lots. Most or many, at least, of the big names from the so-called classical repertoire. So Liszt was her main composer, but Beethoven and Chopin came along, Schumann came along, Bach came along, Handel came along. the sort of standard composers. It was a shame that some of the really obscure ones didn't come along. She was asked whether any of them would make contact with her, and she said that for some reason there was no connection between her and some of the more obscure composers, you know, like Scriabin or Guillaume de Macho or anybody very obscure. That is interesting there. Do you know if that's happening today? I mean, is there anyone that you know today that claims they are in contact with a musical composer? There are people that I investigated between 10 and 15 years ago that were young enough to still be doing it. Some of them have subsequently, alas, died because they weren't particularly young at the time. But I'm not in touch with any of them specifically now. but they were certainly still doing it uh still producing music like that a few years ago say 10 years ago um as to anybody specifically at the moment doing it um i'm about to be starting a new sort of launch to see if there are people in the present tense that are still producing this sort of music i wouldn't mind betting that there are um and i wouldn't mind betting that some of them are producing some extremely good music and and it would be very difficult to know where they're getting it from. And also, unfortunately, some of them will be producing awful music and you'll think, why on earth do they think this has got anything like any bearing towards the composers that they're claiming it comes from? Yeah. The music that Rosemary was channeling, did they release that music or no? It was released on records on vinyl years ago. There was a couple of recordings um as far as availability now i expect that it's there i expect that on youtube there are recordings of it and things of that nature but i commercially i don't know of a cd or anything like that that's actually got you know the best of rosemary brown or anything i've got the recordings on record of course oh you do okay all right be interesting to hear that that is amazing actually. Okay. So the last thing I want to talk about, Dr. Whelan, is the paranormal and martial arts and how did you find that connection? Yes. Well, I've been a practitioner of martial arts for some years in different traditions, but most recently in Wing Chun and Krav Maga, which is more of a combat system than a martial art. But one is always hearing stories. And I've been hearing these stories for 10, 20, possibly 30 years, of supernatural things that martial artists can do. They can knock people over from the distance. They can do the death touch. They can use powers of telepathy to know when somebody is about to attack them, and so on and so forth. Superhuman beings, it's straight out of Marvel Comics, some of it. So I thought, right, let's do an investigation of this and see what I can find. And on the whole, I found that the martial arts people that I visited around the country were very, very down to earth. And they thought most of what the paranormal aspects of the martial arts were absolutely rubbish. There was nothing to it at all. Excuse me a minute. I'm just going to have a little sip of something. okay i i visited one uh a gentleman who i won't name because he's still around and uh he was he was saying that he could knock people over without touching them and so i asked him to knock me over without touching me and he said no he couldn't do that because the power he would generate would be so much that it would probably hurt me and i might sue him So I said, well, I promised to write out something on the spot to say that I wouldn't, but he still refused to do it. So there were quite a few of these people that refused to display their great talents when I was around. But having said that, there were other examples where it would seem, and I only say seem, that there were certain things that they could do through training, perhaps, or through meditative states that were beyond normal people's normal capability. So I've experienced one thing myself, which was extremely worrying for me at the time, which I thought I couldn't do, and I did it. And that was attending a course in Hapkido, which is a form of Aikido. And we spent the whole day, much to my horror, more or less meditating. I find it difficult to meditate, but anyway, I tried. and for hour upon hour we sat there very uncomfortably, in my case, meditating. And then at the end of this meditation, the instructor, who'd been saying various things during it, told me to stand up and produced a rather thick wooden board and said, you're going to smash that with one of your fingers. And I was horrified because I thought if I break my finger, which I'm certainly going to do, I won't be able to do any of my music because I still play the guitar, et cetera. for months to come and maybe never. And at this point, he insisted that I did it. So I thought, oh, well. And much to my amazement, I smashed this board, it's fairly thick, about an inch and a half thick plank of wood with one finger. Now, I thought perhaps this was a trick piece of wood. So I asked whether I could keep it and he agreed to this. And I took it away and in the next few days, took it to a carpenter who informed me that, no, it was a solid piece of normal wood, and it would take quite a strong hammer blow with a metal hammer or something to actually break it, and then it would splinter in a different way to how I'd done it. So I thought, well, perhaps there is something that's not just trickery to do with going into a certain state of mind, being able to release energies, if you like, in your body, which wouldn't normally be there. wow um i have heard that sometimes some of them are able to harness some type of supernatural power yes during their training somehow that's happening i don't like that supernatural i don't think it is i think it's natural power that's within us all it's just a case of whether we can tap into it i don't think it's sort of above us as supernatural would imply I think we've all got it. It's just a case of finding it and then putting it to use. I mean, I certainly don't think that mine was supernatural power or anything. I just think I tapped into something through this meditation, perhaps, that allowed me to do something that I couldn't usually do. Well, I have heard of magical martial arts. Is that a thing? Magical martial arts, I've not come across, other than a hoax situation. And I have seen people doing so-called feats of magic within martial arts. And I've chatted to them afterwards and they said, well, I think we fooled most of the people, but not all of them. Really? Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Go on. I was going to ask you, I mean, have you seen anything or gotten anything on videotape that you truly couldn't explain as far as, you know, something that is just beyond what any human could do as far, you know, concerning martial arts? I mean, have they displayed anything like that to you? Well, there was a series many years ago called The Way of the Warrior, which described so-called, and this is their word, not mine, supernatural feats within the martial arts. And the problem I have with that is that, like anything that appears on television or video or these days on YouTube, Facebook, you name it, you don't know what the provenance was of that. There's so many possibilities of hoax going on that you don't know whether it was actually real or not. And I am therefore highly suspicious about it unless I am physically present and observing something that I can sort of work out myself. This is why parapsychologists these days seem to spend a lot of time in the laboratory rather than going out on field trips, you know, going to haunted graveyards or whatever, because they want the controls that they can then put into place rather than being out in the open where all sorts of tricks can be got up to should people want to and I've certainly come across a good deal of hoaxing in my time in various situations including the martial arts I must say where people have tried it on and have usually either admitted to it or have been caught out inadvertently. yeah well this has been a very interesting conversation and i gotta admit you know your field of study is very interesting so i appreciate your time dr willin please uh take a moment to tell my listeners where they can find more information about you or anything else you're working on okay um well most of the information about me can be found if you just google my name um which is melvin willin and there you will find that it directs you to my web page which is extremely out of date it's going to be updated in the next few months i think um it will also give details there about various books about half a dozen books that i've written on a variety of subjects within the so-called paranormal and and look out for the encyclopedia in hopefully the next few months very good we want to have you back to talk about one of your other books uh dr william many blessings to you and i really appreciate your time okay thank you very much indeed. 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