Reincarnation Is A FACT!!!!!!!!

[skeptical]

There is a HUGE difference between the apparent claims in the 20 Cases book and the Life Before Life book. If I got hold of the 20 Cases book and it was like that I'd throw it in the bin. The methods cited in my book are reasonable and aslong as what is being reported is not fictitious then these events are suggestive of reincarnation.

Can you give a representative example of these methods? Specifically, what protocols were used to detect fraud, collusion, misremembering, hypnotic suggestion, delusion or other cognitive errors? What extraneous evidence was examined to verify the claims, and what methods were used to ensure that the claimant did not have access to this information prior to the claim?

Sceptics are often just like religious people, they will inadvertently make things up or totally miss things staring them in the face in order to verify their claims.

If you have seen that, that is unfortunate. You must understand however, that claims of this type are legion, and up to this point, they are nearly universally error ridden or downright frauds. (some are of indeterminate status) Given this, and given the extraordinary nature of the claim, it is surely understandable that people would begin to grow weary of these sorts of claims that can take a large investment of time to investigate only to discover that the evidence evaporates under scrutiny.

Nevertheless, there is always the possibility that a claim may bear the burden of proof, and if there are any apparently legitimate instances a good investigator like Joe Nickell would probably be willing to give it a proper examination.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Hi. I just did the dramatic thread title to get your attention... buuuutt there does appear to be pretty strong evidence of reincarnation. The evidence is predominantly events where young children appear to know many facts about other places that they could not have been to and people that they could not have met in their life. They claim that they know these facts because they were someone else in a previous life. Some of these claims are backed up by correlations between birth marks and wounds on the body of the 'previous personality'.

 

[skeptical]

Not even close to being debunked:

"Family friends, including A.J. Smith, editor of the Danville Times, and the Reverend J.H. Rhea, witnessed Mary Roff, heavily blindfolded, accurately ‘read’ to them the contents of a sealed letter in the editor’s pocket, and arrange, correctly, a pile of old letters which she could not see. The amazed editor wrote a long, detailed account of the incidence in his paper

Any decent stage magician can do this trick. Typically, people who are not trained in detecting deceit are "amazed" that the person can perform acts while "blind", but of course the person is not blind at all. There's nothing at all supernatural about it.

. . . [After Mary's death,] Mrs. Roff and her daughter, Mrs. Minerva Alter, Mary’s sister, went to visit Lurancy. Lurancy was looking out of the window of her house at the time and when she saw them coming down the street exclaimed - ‘There comes my ma and sister Nervie!’- the latter being the name Mary used to call Mrs. Alter when a young girl . . . Hoping that it might help their daughter’s recovery, the Vennums allowed their daughter to be taken into the Roff home. When asked how long she would remain there, Lurancy answered that the angels would let her stay until some time in May. She had never been in the house before but, remarkably, seemed to know everything about it. She also spoke almost daily of particular incidents in Mary Roff’s life, she recognized family members and friends, identified her favourite clothes and belongings and recounted past event known only to the family.

This sounds very suspiciously like a cold reading. Usually when these claims are made, people say "so and so knew my cousins name exactly!" or "so and so knew my mother's favorite locket!", when actually the person is simply using the John Edward method of "I see a man, he's tall, his name is something like John or Jim or something like a J or maybe an L or ..." etc, etc. and the relatives fill in the details. The relatives don't remember any of the misses, only the "hits", and then when they report them they sound quite spectacular.

Given that we know, for a fact and beyond doubt, that there are countless times when these sorts of cold reading incidents completely fool the average person, and that we have no incidents of true reincarnation that we know of, don't you think it is much more plausible to believe that this is just another incident of the former instead of the latter?

We cannot know for certain one way or the other given the age of this particular incident, but it would certainly seem more likely to be an example of cold reading than it would reincarnation.

 

[Space_Ed]

Can you give a representative example of these methods? Specifically, what protocols were used to detect fraud, collusion, misremembering, hypnotic suggestion, delusion or other cognitive errors? What extraneous evidence was examined to verify the claims, and what methods were used to ensure that the claimant did not have access to this information prior to the claim?

To add some credentials to the team: Antonia Mills is a Harvard PhD anthropologist who does research in India and the US

The Investigations:

Before we investigate cases, we have to find them. We have done so wherever we have looked for them, but cases are easiest to find in areas with a general belief in reincarnation. This includes India and Sri Lanka, where Dr Stevenson made his initial trips, along with other countries with simialr beliefs, including Thailand, Myanmar, Turkey and among the Druses in Lebanon. The geographical pattern of cases is determined to some extent by where we have people looking for them. We have been fortunate to have assistants in each of these countries looking for cases for us. They find them through a variety of means, some from occasional newspaper articles but most through word og mouth. We go where we find them. That does not mean ofcourse that cases do not occur in areas where we are not looking for them…

In fact we have found cases on all the continents except Antarctica and no one has looked for them there. In some ways looking for cases here in the US is harder than in other countries. In Thailand we sometimes seem to hit areas where we cannot stop to ask for directions without hearing about another case. In the US on the other hand we cannot just walk into a convenience store and ask if anyone knows of a child talking about a past life. That does not mean the cases are not here. When I give talks, people often speak to describing a child who reported pat-life memories.

We tend to use the same general methods when we investigate a case. We usually conduct interviews through a translator since few of the families in the international cases speak English. Though this may introduce a potential source of error in the process, the native translators are able to understand the informants with ease…

Some children only tell their parents about their memories but others tell any number of people. In the latter situation, we attempt to interview as many additional witnesses as possible. What we do not accept is hearsay testimony. If a villager says that he or she heard that the subject made a certain statement we do not accept it unless we can talk with someone who actually heard the child firsthand.

After we get as much information as possible from the subject’s side of the case, we move to the previous personality’s side. We talk to the family members to verify how closely the child’s statements matched the life of the previous personality. We also find out their impressions of their first meeting with the child. Since the child is often said to recognize members of the previous personality’s family or belongings at this meeting we want to get testimony of both families about it.



The above is a few extracts of the section on their methodology. They have over 2,500 cases.



Explanations they consider:

Fraud
Fantasy
Knowledge acquired through normal means
Faulty memory by informants
Genetic memory

Extrasensory perception
Possession
Reincarnation


Typical Case:

…Eventually when he was still 3 years old his grandmother did just that. She and Chanai took a bus to a town near Khao Phra which was fifteen miles from their home village. After the two of them got off the bus, Chanai led the way to a house where he said his parents lived. The house belonged to an elderly couple whose son, Bua Kai Lawnak, had been a teacher who was murdered five years before Chanai was born. Once there, Chanai identified Bua Kai’s parents, who were there with a number of other family members, as his own. They were impressed enough by his statements and his birhtmarksto invite him to return a short time later. When he did, they tested him by asking him to pick out Bua Kai’s belongings from others, and he was able to do that. He recognized one of Bua Kai’s daughters and asked for the other one by name.

Next paragraph goes to say his birthmarks matched with the wounds of the deceased.

 

[Space_Ed]

This story is all well and good on its own but you shouldn't take it seriously. It is the NUMBER of claims like this where children appear to know facts that they logically shouldn't which leads researchers to thinking that something is going on.

There is loads more stuff in the book but theres a few snippets. I recommend that you buy it.

 

[Fredrik]

A good start is the wikipedia article (note the scientific research section):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation

What exactly makes this research "scientific"? It probably isn't even close. If I wasn't so lazy I'd rewrite that part of the article myself.

 

[Hokulele]

Before we investigate cases, we have to find them. We have done so wherever we have looked for them, but cases are easiest to find in areas with a general belief in reincarnation.

Which indicates that this is a cultural bias rather than a natural phenomenon. This has all been addressed in my previous post, as well as the book I linked. Did you have any comment on that?

 

[Foolmewunz]

First Part..... Never Mind! Surfer Girl beat me to it. (It's certainly helpful when looking for vampires to go to goth bars and talk to people with barcodes tatooed on the back of their necks, too!)


Mods.... 68 posts and I ain't seen no Science, Mathematics, Medicine nor Technology. This ought to be with the other woo in General Skepticism. (IMHO)

 

[The Atheist]

Mods.... 68 posts and I ain't seen no Science, Mathematics, Medicine nor Technology. This ought to be with the other woo in General Skepticism. (IMHO)

Good call.

 

[plumjam]

Which indicates that this is a cultural bias rather than a natural phenomenon.

An unwarranted assumption.
In a culture where reincarnation is more accepted then a child's reports to its family of memories of a previous life are clearly going to be taken more seriously, passed around the family, friends, neighbours, and are more likely to be memorised/recorded than in a culture where reincarnation is routinely dismissed.
Here in the west if a child reports such things the response is most likely to be of the order of a kind but disbelieving "Sure, honey, of course you did." And end of story.

 

[EHocking]

Well, none of Garrette's points disagrees with any of the text that you quote from the Mysterious People page.
Please indicate which part of Garrette's argument is unsound, or, alternatively, which part of the Mysterious People account supports your argument.

Not even close to being debunked:

Originally Posted by Garrette
.#1: The Watseka Wonder
The claim: Mary Lurancy Vennum became episodically possessed by the spirit of Mary Roff from February 1, 1878 through May 21, 1878. During that time, Vennum—as Roff—revealed numerous intimate details about Roff, Roff’s family, and Roff’s friends that Vennum could not possibly have known.
The facts:
1. Vennum’s first “fit” came in July 1877; they recurred frequently through January of 1878.

Mysterious people account agrees.

2. Mary Roff had died at the age of 18 when Vennum was 15 months old.

Mysterious people account agrees.

3. The Roffs were long-time neighbors of the Vennums.

Mysterious people account agrees.

4. Vennum had no episodes of possession until she was seen by Dr. Stevens who came all the way from Wisconsin when Mr. Roff insisted on him because Stevens had treated Mary Roff.

Mysterious people account agrees.

5. Mr. Roff was present at the first session with Vennum and Stevens, and he was present at most of the following sessions. Mrs. Roff was present at some of them, too.

Mysterious people account agrees.

6. Vennum ‘brought forth’ numerous unidentified spirits but got no reaction. Later, when she said “Mary Roff,” Mr. Roff insisted that Mary be the one to speak.

Mysterious people account agrees.

7. Between sessions, Vennum—ostensibly as Mary Roff—spent considerable time at the Roff residence, speaking with and learning about the Roffs. The hits came only after several of these visits had occurred.

Mysterious people account agrees.

Debunked.

Not even close to being debunked:

Since the passages you quote agree with Garrette's account - that the girl in question didn't relate her "possession" to the other girl until after she met Stevens AND the girl's family, what part of that webpage, apart from argument by incredulity, debunks Garrette's debunk?

 

[Foster Zygote]

An unwarranted assumption.
In a culture where reincarnation is more accepted then a child's reports to its family of memories of a previous life are clearly going to be taken more seriously, passed around the family, friends, neighbours, and are more likely to be memorised/recorded than in a culture where reincarnation is routinely dismissed.
Here in the west if a child reports such things the response is most likely to be of the order of a kind but disbelieving "Sure, honey, of course you did." And end of story.

It is unwarranted to assume that children in all cultures spontaneously report past life experiences. It strikes me as odd just how often the "reincarnation" is a poor child who was someone relatively wealthier and living nearby in his/her past life.

 

[Garrette]

Not even close to being debunked:

---snip---

I recommend you take Skeptical's response to heart, but if you found it insufficient, then rather than playing whack-a-reincarnee the same way we used to play whack-a-psychic detective, let's make the same agreement we informally did regarding psychics:

You pick the one single case you feel is the strongest evidence for reincarnation. You start a thread for it in the appropriate sub-forum. You lay out your claims, addressing the specific aspects you find most convincing. You provide sources. (I am familiar with the link you provided; at least I was when I wrote the original post; it is very good at making claims and even better at missing mundane explanations).

Heck, Rodney, I'll even pledge a willingness to spend a few dollars online if necessary to acquire an otherwise inaccessible source document. (But only a few...)

After you have done that, I'll be happy to dig into your case whether it is the Watseka Wonder or not.

 

[Bikewer]

Hokulele's comment about cultural bias seems to be right on, but I'd be inclined to go further than that. These cases seem to all come from areas where Hinduism is the prominent religion, and belief in reincarnation is not just a minor part of Hindu beliefs, it's essential to the entire system.
We have people here who are indoctrinated into a belief in reincarnation for thousands of years (I don't really know when Hindu beliefs originated) or so.

In "Spook-Science tackles the afterlife", author Mary Roach interviews an Indian scientist who has been researching stories of this sort for years. He wants desperately to believe, rather like Mulder. However, his scientific training has led him to reject all the anecdotes he has studied.

http://www.amazon.com/Spook-Science...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207230924&sr=8-1

 

[Garrette]

Brilliant!

Thanks.

Before I bought the Life Before Life book, if I had read the summary that Garette has given of the 20 cases in Ian Stevenson's book I woudn't even have given it a thought.

Those cases primarily are not from Stevenson. They are Montagu Keen's list of supposed best cases/best evidence. Some of Stevenson's cases just happen to make the list.

I am seeing a big discrepancy between how the researchers say they conduct the research and how the debunkers claim they carry out the research.

This is quite common. Your next step to resolve the discrepancy is looking at the actual source documents (or as close as you can get) to see who is correct (or closer to it).

In my experience, though, even the claims of methodology are different, and the difference should give you a big clue:

Paranormal Investigator: We took adequate precautions, but I am conveniently not providing the details.

Skeptic: The actions you took were specifically A, B, and C. A was fine; B was inadequate to prevent X, and your failure to also do D and E meant that Y could be the explanation for the effect.

If you don't give a lot more credence to the skeptic statement, then there is some serious learning to do.

There is a HUGE difference between the apparent claims in the 20 Cases book and the Life Before Life book. If I got hold of the 20 Cases book and it was like that I'd throw it in the bin. The methods cited in my book are reasonable and aslong as what is being reported is not fictitious then these events are suggestive of reincarnation.

And there's the issue. So far, the absolute extent of your case is this:

A second hand source without providing relevant details says some cases were convincing of reincarnation.

The only "debunking" a second hand source requires is pointing out that it's a second hand source that doesn't provide relevant details.

Sceptics are often just like religious people, they will inadvertently make things up or totally miss things staring them in the face in order to verify their claims.

Besides what has already been said to address this, would you find it offensive if I said

Believers are often just like idiots. They will ignore the most basic precepts of good research and pretend that alternate explanations do not exist despite being informed about them several times.

The book is a well written book despite Garette's very good attempt to make Ian Stevenson look like a fool...

I have done nothing of the sort. I imagine I would enjoy Mr. Stevenson's company. He and Montague Keen are two believers who strike me as being quite sincere without any conscious attempt to defraud or to act the charlatan. They also strike me as reasonably intelligent and probably fine hosts and dinner companions. But mostly they strike me as people who have let their desire for belief in their respective areas overcome their otherwise discerning faculties. It is not making them "look like a fool" to point out the considerable shortcomings in their research.

To add some credentials to the team: ---snip---

Credentials are a lovely thing, but they do not a substitute for proper research and methodology make.

 

[skeptical]

To add some credentials to the team: Antonia Mills is a Harvard PhD anthropologist who does research in India and the US

Just a quick point, it is all well and good to have credentials in Anthropolgy, but that doesn't by itself mean that the person is a skilled investigator of alleged paranormal phenomenon. The case of the "Alpha kids" is a paradigmatic example of PhD's being fooled by simple tricks. That doesn't mean this person IS being fooled, just that having a particular degree doesn't really amount to much. One should not be too impressed by credentials when investigating these sorts of claims because _anyone_ can be fooled, and academics more often than not think they can't be, which is obviously a problem.

The Investigations:

Before we investigate cases, we have to find them. We have done so wherever we have looked for them, but cases are easiest to find in areas with a general belief in reincarnation. This includes India and Sri Lanka, where Dr Stevenson made his initial trips, along with other countries with simialr beliefs, including Thailand, Myanmar, Turkey and among the Druses in Lebanon

Right off the bat, this is a huge red flag for an obvious reason. This sounds very similar to the fact that only predominantly Roman Catholic areas have visions of the virgin Mary. A reasonable person would now be very suspicious.

<some snipped for brevity of post>

Some children only tell their parents about their memories but others tell any number of people. In the latter situation, we attempt to interview as many additional witnesses as possible. What we do not accept is hearsay testimony. If a villager says that he or she heard that the subject made a certain statement we do not accept it unless we can talk with someone who actually heard the child firsthand.

Just a nit, but strictly speaking, if someone tells you what they heard someone else say, that is hearsay in the legal definition of the word.

After we get as much information as possible from the subject’s side of the case, we move to the previous personality’s side. We talk to the family members to verify how closely the child’s statements matched the life of the previous personality. We also find out their impressions of their first meeting with the child. Since the child is often said to recognize members of the previous personality’s family or belongings at this meeting we want to get testimony of both families about it.

And here is the critical point: How do they eliminate collusion, intentional or otherwise? How do they verify that the statements made by the people are not just groups examples of a cold reading? What controls have they done? All of this is the most critical part. Simply interviewing people is the tip of the iceberg, especially when you know going in the belief in reincarnation is ubiquitous among the people you are interviewing.

Explanations they consider:

Fraud
Fantasy
Knowledge acquired through normal means
Faulty memory by informants
Genetic memory

Extrasensory perception
Possession
Reincarnation

And what, exactly, is their methodology? In what cases did they determine fraud, compared to the number that they determined reincarnation? Surely some large percentage of the cases were fraudulent since we know for a fact that many carefully investigated cases are. If their methodology is sound, they should have a large number of frauds, as well as the ones they consider legitimate. What I am looking for is what specific protocols they use to ferret out the frauds from the "legitimate", that needs to be spelled out in detail.

Typical Case:

…Eventually when he was still 3 years old his grandmother did just that. She and Chanai took a bus to a town near Khao Phra which was fifteen miles from their home village. After the two of them got off the bus, Chanai led the way to a house where he said his parents lived. The house belonged to an elderly couple whose son, Bua Kai Lawnak, had been a teacher who was murdered five years before Chanai was born. Once there, Chanai identified Bua Kai’s parents, who were there with a number of other family members, as his own. They were impressed enough by his statements and his birhtmarksto invite him to return a short time later. When he did, they tested him by asking him to pick out Bua Kai’s belongings from others, and he was able to do that. He recognized one of Bua Kai’s daughters and asked for the other one by name.

This is just anecdotes exactly the same that you get from family members after a cold reading. Watch interviews with people who think that John Edward can really talk to dead people, they tell nearly identical stories of all the "hits" he makes that cannot be chance. Then, you watch or read an account of an unedited performance and you find out he is wrong about 90% of the time, and just keeps fishing for information and getting feedback from the family, but only the hits are remembered. This is very common in these types of claims.

They need to give MUCH more detail about how the eliminate frauds and cold reading techniques. They need to provide examples of fraud detection and controls they use. This is not nearly enough information.

Next paragraph goes to say his birthmarks matched with the wounds of the deceased.

Do they describe the wounds and the birthmarks exactly? Do they have pictures to verify? All of this is simply anecdotal claims, made by people in cultures that have an overwhelming belief in reincarnation. What is needed are details not of the claims, but of the procedures and evidence that _support_ these claims. Again, they should be able to show large numbers of cases where they detected fraud, since undoubtedly _some_ of the cases are fraudulent.

 

[godless dave]

Mods.... 68 posts and I ain't seen no Science, Mathematics, Medicine nor Technology. This ought to be with the other woo in General Skepticism. (IMHO)

I agree.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Using the "it's only anecdotal" strategy here seems a bit bizarre.
How could you do a non-anecdotal experiment in this area?
Of it's nature the data in this area has to be anecdotal.

You raise a good point. However, I utterly disagree with you. I can think of several ways to come up with real evidence (not anecdotal observations) if reincarnation were a fact.

First, I think reincarnation advocates have the cart before the horse. They have an idea and are looking to support it, rather than following observations and looking at all the available evidence.

If reincarnation arguments aren't merely apologetics (where they start with a belief, then try to build a case to support that position), then the only "phenomenon" the theory of reincarnation is trying to explain are these children's stories, which are collected as anecdotes.

As PlumJam correctly points out, that's really the only way these stories would ever come to our attention. Surely we couldn't take a given number of children and isolate them from confounding influences until they're old enough to talk and then see what sort of past life memories they've got--and with what frequency etc. So there's no way to know how much of these stories were "fixed" memories (supplied by prompting from the family, confabulation, outright fabrication, etc.)

So, if the question is how best to explain these stories, I've already pointed out that Occam's Razor strongly prefers the mundane explanations. But, that's not evidence, that's just pointing out that if you did find evidence of reincarnation, you'd have to overhaul an awful lot of what we know about neuroscience, memory, language, etc.

Back to PJ's question, "How could you do a non-anecdotal experiment in this area?"

One way is to test one of these kids. You'd have to come up with several bits of information that are not likely to be known by the kid or the family (or the neighborhood) etc. Then, ask the kid questions based on those bits of information. If he can remember some details about a past life, we should expect him to remember others. The problem with anecdotes is that much is made of a "hit" with no consideration of a great many "misses".

I know there are stories of similar tests being done with reincarnations of holy men (where the kid is supposed to pick out possessions that belonged to the deceased llama or whatever), but those can hardly said to be done in controlled circumstances. (I tend to doubt the veracity of their retelling since those who profess them have pretty strongly vested interests in proving that the kid is the reincarnation.) At least they're on the right track. It is most certainly possible to come up with non-anecdotal tests of the kids' stories.

Another line of non-anecdotal evidence is related to the stuff I brought up earlier. If there's a disembodied something that holds memories of past life, we should expect some brain structure to interact with that. If reincarnation were real, we could presumably find such structures and maybe even detect and measure that disembodied something.

Granted, absence of this evidence doesn't prove that the thing doesn't exist, but this is a type of non-anecdotal evidence that would be possible. This is the sort of thing it would take for me to reconsider my position. You have to admit that nothing exists except anecdotal evidence.

Memory is very plastic, and that's really all we're dealing with here. There are no controls on the information the kid might have been exposed to from other sources.

The mundane explanation that I accept (in the absence of any other evidence) is that in a culture where a lot of people take reincarnation as an assumed fact, you have a toddler doing some random behavior. Someone in the family or community thinks that behavior is similar to a behavior or mannerism of someone recently deceased, and starts talking about the kid being the reincarnation of that person. From there, everyone begins collecting (or inventing) proof of that. (No one considers the great many behaviors the kid does that look NOTHING like the supposed previous life.) The accounts of what the child actually did or said get lost in the developing story that gets spread around. At the same time, the kid is pretty much taught to "remember" (it's very easy to implant false memories) events from that person's life.

With this explanation, no disembodied thing that can somehow store memories is required. No brain structures that somehow upload and download these memories (or otherwise interact with the disembodied thing) are required. There are no conflicts with what is known about memory, language, brain function or neuroscience in general. It's much more parsimonious.

So if you weigh ALL the evidence, it points to the mundane explanation. As a skeptic, that's the one I provisionally accept.

 

[aggle-rithm]

I would like to point out that I don't 'believe' in reincarnation either, it appears to be the rational conclusion from their 40 years of research.

A few years ago I wrote an article for "Skeptic Report" called "Bottomless Can of Worms". That's what you open when you posit a supernatural explanation for something.

Even if you rule out all naturalistic explanations for kids remembering things they shouldn't remember -- how do you narrow down the supernatural explanations to JUST reincarnation? Why can't it be something else? For instance:

1. Why can't the kid be channeling the spirit of the dead person?
2. Why can't the kid be POSSESSED by the spirit of the dead person?
3. Why can't the kid be possessed by SATAN, who has intimate knowledge of the dead person?
4. Why can't the kid be under the influence of aliens, who have dissected the dead person and so have access to his memories?

And so on, and so on, and so on...

This list only includes aspects of the paranormal that are in the cultural consciousness. Imagine the weird explanations you could come up with if you posit any possible paranormal explanation.

 

[Rodney]

Well, none of Garrette's points disagrees with any of the text that you quote from the Mysterious People page.

See below.

Please indicate which part of Garrette's argument is unsound, or, alternatively, which part of the Mysterious People account supports your argument.

I would be delighted.

3. The Roffs were long-time neighbors of the Vennums.

Mysterious people account agrees.

No, they were never neighbors and did not know each other until the Roffs "heard about the [Lurancy Vennum] case and were reminded of their own daughter's similar problems."

4. Vennum had no episodes of possession until she was seen by Dr. Stevens who came all the way from Wisconsin when Mr. Roff insisted on him because Stevens had treated Mary Roff.

Mysterious people account agrees.

No, the account makes clear that Dr. Stevens saw Lurancy only after she had many episodes of possession. Further, the account says nothing about Dr. Stevens having treated Mary Roff. If he did, so what?

5. Mr. Roff was present at the first session with Vennum and Stevens, and he was present at most of the following sessions. Mrs. Roff was present at some of them, too.

Mysterious people account agrees.

The account is silent on this issue, but -- in any event -- how does this debunk the story?

6. Vennum ‘brought forth’ numerous unidentified spirits but got no reaction. Later, when she said “Mary Roff,” Mr. Roff insisted that Mary be the one to speak.

Mysterious people account agrees.

Again, the account is silent on this issue, and again, how does this debunk the story?

7. Between sessions, Vennum—ostensibly as Mary Roff—spent considerable time at the Roff residence, speaking with and learning about the Roffs. The hits came only after several of these visits had occurred.

Mysterious people account agrees.

No, the account states that Lurancy "had never been in the [Roff] house before but, remarkably, seemed to know everything about it."

Since the passages you quote agree with Garrette's account - that the girl in question didn't relate her "possession" to the other girl until after she met Stevens AND the girl's family, what part of that webpage, apart from argument by incredulity, debunks Garrette's debunk?

Garrette's "debunk" is a combination of speculation and misstatements of facts. He has done nothing to discredit the story.