As you say you contacted the ghosts of a dead boy and his mother in broad daylight in mid september then why not be more flexible with your own timeline?
I don't think The Professor is claiming that anything paranormal took place on his most recent visit to The Devil's Chair. The story of the boy and his mother more likely came from reading the headstones. And "voices" in quotes could mean many different things -- most notably, the emotions and recollections that visiting a special place, a familiar place, a place one has developed an appreciation for and yet is unnoticed by most people and abandoned most of the time, can evoke.
Historical places I've visited, especially ones rarely visited by the public, where events of significant import but that are little remembered or appreciated occurred, certainly "speak" to me that way. Especially ones I've returned to repeatedly, and had a chance to learn their details. The voices in which such places speak to me, like the voices with which mountains speak to mountaineers and flea markets speak to bargain hunters, are not the kind you can play back from a recording. It's a metaphor for subtle perceptions and evoked emotions. The decibel level of the voices of departed souls is as meaningless as the weight of a meme.
The Professor, it's obvious that most people here think that you are either attempting to gain publicity by means of a challenge claim you never intend to carry out, or planning to carry out the challenge in order to attempt to win the prize by trickery. They may be right; I certainly can't prove them wrong; but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that your claim is sincere. That you've had experiences that you truly believe are paranormal. You wouldn't be the first magician to start out with an interest in the craft of mentalism and get drawn into curiosity about some version of "the real thing" -- parapsychology, spiritualism, occultism, Wicca, or judging from your Invocation script, the usual roll-your-own hybrid. (Your Invocation has a homespun genuineness to it that is the opposite of showmanship. I think you must believe in it because otherwise you would be too embarrassed to recite it, or even post the text.)
If you've had such experiences, it's understandable that you'd see them as evidence of the paranormal and therefore a way to win the MDC. If indeed you can offer such evidence, it would be well worth the JREF's million.
But here's the problem.
Experiences of paranormal phenomena are not necessarily paranormal phenomena, any more than dreams of elephants must be elephants. (This was, I believe, first pointed out by Susan Blackmore in her classic essay "The Elusive Open Mind." She observed that it makes no sense to call an "out of body experience" anything other than real,
as an experience. That is, it really is an experience that people really have. The real question, she further observed, is whether anything actually leaves the experiencer's body, and based on evidence to date the answer must be no.)
Having an experience, though, cannot win the MDC. Even if you could somehow cause everyone else present to also have the same experience, that would still not be sufficient. Subjective experiences of paranormal phenomena are well known to exist, and are not even particularly rare. Everyone dreams. Many hallucinate. Dr. Michael Persinger claims to be able to cause people to feel a strong sense of the presence of an etherial "entity" by electromagnetically stimulating their temporal lobes.
That's why one of the rules of the MDC is that the results cannot involve subjective judgment or interpretation. You must demonstrate an unambiguous objective paranormal effect. Not an experience. Not, as the more cynical (or less gullible) members here call it, a show.
Voices on tape
could constitute such a demonstration, if and only if proper controls are in place. Therefore, I urge you to make your best efforts to negotiate the protocol in good faith. Please understand that it is equally critical to rule out all possible trickery whether you are sincere or not, and whether others believe you're sincere or not.
At the same time, I also urge you to ask yourself these questions, with as open a mind as possible:
Have you considered the possibility that the voices, and other paranormal phenomena including the presence of paranormal entities, that you have experienced at The Devil's Chair, were your imagination?
Has anyone else ever accompanied you and heard the same voices you did?
Have you ever attempted to record the voices?
Do you really think the voices you experience at The Devil's Chair can be recorded?
Respectfully,
Myriad
