Start
At age fourteen, I buy a crystal and a book on how to work with crystals that instructs one to hold the crystal over the palm of the left hand until one feels an energy coming from the crystal. After two days of practice I feel and see a cool blue beam. After practice with several different types of crystals, I learn to distinguish a unique feel to each. I later notice distinct feeling around food items, then plants, and later people. The feelings from people turn into images that depict internal tissue.
I notice that I am perceiving people's health information and that there is a strange correlation with their actual health. I am detecting things that should not be detectable to the outside. I start to look for a normal explanation, but prior knowledge, external symptoms, confirmation bias, selective memory and other simple normal explanations are not responsible.
The investigation
In the summer 2007 I involve the skeptical community into my investigation as I have been unable to find an explanation myself. I contact the Independent Investigations Group IIG and we begin preparing for a test. I join the James Randi Educational Foundation JREF Forum to discuss the paranormal claim and test protocols with skeptics worldwide. I join a local skeptics group Forsyth Area Critical Thinkers FACT for more assistance with my investigation.
FACT and IIG recommend that I study the claim in order to learn more about it so that a test protocol can better be designed. I begin a lengthy study process which includes: psychic reading attempts on skeptics, testing different parameters of a test protocol to find out what test conditions the claim can agree to, a study together with FACT skeptics involving readings on five members of the public.
During this study I come across even more compelling cases of accurate medical perception that I can not find a normal explanation to. Some of these accounts occur under conditions that are dismal for documentation purposes and remain therefore as anecdotes not formal evidence. Yet the anecdotes also steer me in this investigation, I do not disregard them simply because they are not officially valid. I detect that a person is missing a left kidney, that a woman is missing her uterus, and other interesting cases. Further testing becomes based on the detection of which of persons is missing a kidney. A test protocol is finalized for the IIG test.
IIG test
In November 2009 I have a test with the IIG. The test has three trials. Each trial has six persons. One of six persons in each trial is missing a kidney. I have 27 minutes to choose which person and which side is missing a kidney in each trial, with a ten minute break in between trials. After all three trials the correct answers are determined with ultrasound examination.
In the first trial I know my answer will be incorrect. The perception did not function with these particular people. I know this before the results are established, making it not ad hoc excuses, which makes it a valid assertion to make. My answer in the first trial is incorrect.
In the second trial I am very confident of my answer, so confident in fact that if I am wrong I will have my claim falsified and over with. My answer in the second trial is correct.
In the third trial I am exhausted and the claim ceases to produce perceptions. I manage to choose a person I am confident in, but have to guess on the side. These are not ad hoc excuses but were stated clearly during the test before the results were established, again making them valid assertions to make. The person was correct, the side was wrong.
I fail to achieve the 100% accuracy required by the IIG Challenge. I do not falsify my claim since I realize that 100% of the answers in which I had been confident during the test (not ad hoc) were correct, and 100% of the answers which I was not confident in were inaccurate (not ad hoc). As a science student I know that the IIG test results mandates for more research.
The TAM demonstration
On July 2010 I have a small demonstration at the TAM convention with the JREF involving five persons one of whom is missing a kidney. I have a total of 30 minutes to choose the person. Out of the total of ten kidney spaces in which one is missing a kidney, I see a kidney clearly and many times in seven out of those ten, I see a kidney once and only weakly in one of those ten, and in the remaining two I never saw a kidney. I choose one of my two as the answer. That answer is incorrect. I declare that my claim is falsified since I had produced a confident answer which was incorrect. I end my investigation there and then and it is over.
I then step off the stage and am asked by audience members to show them my test notes. It is then revealed that I had seen kidneys in eight out of ten spaces, but not in two. One of the two was my answer and was incorrect. The other one was the correct one. I realize I need to continue with my investigation, since 90% of my perceptions in this TAM test had been correct. Only 1 out of 10 kidney spaces had produced an incorrect perception, ironically the one that I chose as my answer. (In college 90% correct equals an A.)
The reading with Michael Shermer
At TAM I do a psychic reading attempt on skeptic Michael Shermer during which I detect and describe that he has the Hepatitis C virus and I describe elements of his mind and emotions that he says agree with him very well. Shermer seems fairly impressed with the reading and can not propose a normal explanation to the outcome of the reading. I also do readings on two or three other TAM attendees, which also go well.
Today
In need of more tests until I have reached a satisfactory understanding of my paranormal claim of health perception, I have now embarked on a new study involving the detection of extracted sheep kidneys in hopes of basing a future test on this and not needing live human subjects for a test. I am also in the hopes of finding ways of doing more psychic reading attempts on skeptics, possibly also on non-skeptics and under ethical, safe, legal, and cost-free conditions.
If you would be so kind as to volunteer yourself or any organization or group of people in which you belong to sit for 30 to 60 minutes each for a psychic reading attempt I would be eternally grateful.
If you are skeptics or otherwise reliably scientifically and reasonably sound persons you will get to read my health perceptions of yourselves. If however you are not skeptics you will not be informed of my perceptions of you but can ask me to send it to your physician for their consideration only. You can certainly be reading or eating or doing something while I do the reading so do not worry about having to sit still for up to 60 minutes.
One or several skeptics will need to accompany to any reading occasion with non-skeptics to vouch for the ethical conduct of the reading.
For a reading I do not ask you any questions, I do not touch you, I use no materials such as dowsing rods. I look at your back and write down my perceptions, after which an appropriate method of determining its accuracy is used. The way I design these readings makes it impossible for me to cheat.
Please volunteer, I need to do readings on people. I will travel to almost any location. Contact me at brightstar@visionfromfeeling.com
Note that it should be obvious by now that I am not doing this for attention, not for setting up a future scam as a psychic fraud, and that I do not cheat. I am investigating an interesting sensory phenomenon which seems to accurately pick up on medical information that should not be detectable.
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