IIG Preliminary
Hi everyone, I have not been able to read all of the posts here since my Preliminary demonstration, and I apologize if I won't answer to all of the questions and comments immediately. I have also promised to dear Jim Newman of the IIG that I won't post as many wall of texts, because this poor man, believe it or not, has actually read through everything I have written for the past year on the internet as VisionFromFeeling! I told the IIG that that in itself should qualify as a paranormal claim.
For those that enjoy an added perspective to the Preliminary, I will be typing up information about all of the things that took place backstage and behind screen and in between trials during the breaks.
I had a wonderful visit in Hollywood, Los Angeles, although I was there purely for the demonstration and did not have the chance for much touristing. All of the IIG members were very nice and it was wonderful to finally meet everyone.
Let me give you all just a few glimpses of some of the things I'd like to type up later on about the Preliminary. Things that were not seen on camera, or that perhaps haven't been revealed yet.
I was picked up about an hour late. I called Steve Muscarella and he said that the reason was they were having a problem with one of the clocks. What you shouldn't know, is that at one point while I was waiting I dropped all of the test papers that were in my hand and they spread all across the hotel lobby floor, and I was picking them up very quickly and worried that they would pull up and film me just as I was on the floor picking up papers. But luckily I still had longer to wait so no one would have known unless I wouldn't have just told you.
When they pulled up, I got in the car and James Underdown was driving. Steve Muscarella was sitting next to James and was filming, and IIG member Karen, who would be my follower throughout the test was in the back seat with me. They welcomed me to Los Angeles and were really nice. The arrival was filmed by Steve and will be made into some film later on.
We spent some time backstage at the theater and James Underdown checked me for any devices with a metal detector and even had to check my ears. Of course I had nothing such on me. I left my high heeled shoes backstage to be more comfortable, but didn't think anyone would notice, but people did.
Steve arrived again with the camera and we actually had to stage the metal detector process again for show, so what you will see on camera is actually a repeat since we already did that once.
I was very nervous backstage and I almost asked someone to give me a hug. I signed all the paperwork there, and asked that we review the procedure on stage and behind the screen, so we did that.
They had the hardest time fitting the microphone box on my dress. It kept falling off. James tried to attach it at first and then Mark Edwards figured it out and they had to attach it to the back of my dress with paperclips.
I did not know who Mark Edwards really was (a famous and talented mentalist and good skeptical observer) until at the very end of the test backstage again.
I told James that I had decided that if I were unable to conclude on an answer in a trial, that I would make that trial a pass, rather than to guess, so to better represent what my predictions are and not make it into a guessing game. He said I could do either way. I later turned out not honoring that decision.
At first when I saw the audience, there were very few people sitting there. I said that I had been nervous but the audience was small after all, but then was told that most of the audience was in fact still waiting to be let in.
I ended up actually not being nervous about the setting or the cameras or the people watching me. There were several persons watching me very carefully from every angle. Joe, and others, were sitting against the far wall facing the subjects on the other side, and Mark Edwards was actually watching me very closely and I did not realize who he was or why he was watching so carefully until afterwards when he told me who he was.
I knew that my answer from trial 1 would be incorrect, and after the trial was over and the subjects had left, and the microphones were off, I told Karen, James Underdown, and Mark Edwards all about that.
Similarly, I also knew that trial 2 would be correct, and that trial 3 would be incorrect, and shared that with IIG members.
I was very close to raising my hand at the beginning of trial 3, to announce that I was unable to complete this trial. I was feeling very exhausted and had the notorious "headache and nausea" that I've been talking about in the past, however, I just leaned back and took a deep breath and decided to continue and do my best.
I confided a lot in Karen in between trials. I would have wanted to have all of our conversation recorded and regretted that it wouldn't be. Just because it is better protocol to do so, because that way I can't claim to have said anything that I didn't say, or there be other issues with what I might have said.
I knew that people at home on the internet would be making rude comments about my weight. Call it psychic intuition, or just plain intuition. And I honestly don't mind, I agree that I am a bit chubby, but it's all the good food in the United States. I am not insulted by it one bit. I just think it is unnecessary and irrelevant to the test.
Before beginning the ultrasound section, the ultrasound technician Michele Ray was showing me her kidney and that is what we were discussing.
I would have asked to see my kidneys, only that I would have had to pull up my dress, and so I regretted that. I was very tempted to get to see my kidneys on the screen.
I knew that I was going to fail the test. My body language is very clear about that just before the ultrasound is about to begin.
Ever since I had submitted my answers, James Underdown would not speak another word to me or look at me again for the rest of the day and thereafter. I can understand that, from a skeptical point of view. I am the woo.
I was not sad to be incorrect in trials 1 and 3. I was happy that the test had been conducted to a standard that was well beyond my expectations and that the results were credible and reliable.
Several IIG members let me know that they had given me every chance to succeed and that they would have wanted me to succeed if I had such an ability. So much for all those woos who think the tests are set up for claimants to fail, since that is definitely not the case. I failed entirely by my own means, and the IIG was not responsible for my results one way or the other, and it is a good feeling knowing that.
When the man from the audience started talking about how when you feel you are about to have a hole-in-one in golf that is when it happens, I was actually disagreeing with him, and I actually agreed with what James Underdown was saying about it. So much for being an unskeptical woo.
I was happy to hear that Dr. Carlson was in the internet audience and said hello to him when I found out.
I had a feeling that the IIG were filtering out to search for only some of the most positive of the comments and questions for me.
I was highly surprised that no one who was present in the theatre made a big deal about either of the results, whether I was correct or incorrect, IIG members were fully impersonal toward the results. I was trying to do the same.
I only brought a bottle of water with me and other than breakfast, I had nothing at all to eat or drink besides water for the whole time. The test ended at about 5:00pm. As the ultrasound section was being set up, I actually popped backstage behind the audience and met some more IIG members that I recognized. I was offered food, but declined because I was anticipating the results section.
As soon as I had explained that my thoughts on the results were inconclusive and that I did not know how to conclude, the mood of several IIG members dropped. Especially James and Steve. But understandably.
Joe in the audience said that based on his observations on the fidgeting of subjects, he would have guessed the right person in trials 1 and 2, but not in trial 3, even though he would not have known how to guess between left and right kidney. I took this comment to be the most valuable experience I have taken with me from the test. However afterwards I found out that he was actually sitting some two feet from the row of subjects, behind the subjects, facing them and having access to plenty more cold reading than I and at a closer distance.
Backstage again I thanked him for his comment. I thought it was valuable information for my investigation.
After the test and the filming had stopped, SezMe came up toward the stage and talked to James and the others. I actually thanked SezMe for being nice to me on the JREF Forums and reached over and gave him a hug. He is adorable.
If I remember correctly, no one else at the IIG received a hug from me. But Spencer gave me a hug. Spencer wore a shirt with the text Wrangler written on it. He was in charge of getting together all the subjects to and from each trial. He did not get to meet me until after the test was concluded on. He said he had put over 100 working hours into getting all the people together. I apologized and thanked him, and he said he didn't mind the work and that he had chosen to do it.
Mark Edwards was really nice to me throughout. He is the one who listened to me the very most, although I did not know at the time that he was paying attention to what I was doing for a reason.
Everyone at the IIG put in a great deal of work into putting together the Preliminary. I apologized a lot, and thanked them, but they said they did not mind and that no one had done any work that they hadn't chosen to do. They had to say it a few times before I could stop feeling guilty about it.
When we were backstage again, I had to ask them what Wrangler meant when I saw it written on Spencer's shirt and Jim Newman said it had to do with herding cows.
Mark Edwards then revealed to me that he is a mentalist, and what he works with and that he was the only one who got to interview Connie Sonne after her test. I of course asked Mr. Edwards to demonstrate a trick for me. He asked me to think of a number between 1 and 1000, and then he wrote a number down on a businesscard. He then asked me to say the number, and turned his card over, and it was the same number as I had said. At first I was amazed, and I asked IIG members how he had done that. No one wanted to tell me his trick, but I actually figured it out in a while. I figured that he had only pretended to write down the number the first time, and had then quickly written it down when I said it, without appearing to move his hand, which is evident by that the numbers were sloppy written. I still have that businesscard from him with the number written on the back. My number was 256.
Jim Newman admitted that he has read everything I have written on the internet as VFF. All the threads on JREF, on the British Skeptic Forum, on stopvisionfromfeeling, and my website. I apologized to him and promised that I would write fewer walls of texts, and explained that they come about when there are 20 people asking me questions, and only one of me.
Before entering the stage to have the test, I was interviewed by IIG member psychologist John Suarez. I then had a follow-up interview with him after the test, which is on the video. After the test again, backstage, Steve made his own interview with me. Steve basically asked the same question three or four times: "will I become a practicing psychic?" I answered to that same question from a different perspective every time, and eventually reminded him that he had already asked the question already.
Jim Newman is concerned for my mental well-being, even though my perceptions do not come with a sense of reality. And Steve Muscarella later called me the day after and raised hell on the phone for two hours about how I would become the next practicing psychic and for allegedly offering healing treatments to people. It was awkward and a bit uncomfortable, because these concerns are based on misunderstanding of what I am doing with this investigation and they are acting on their worst expectations that become real in their minds. Now is that delusional?
Overall the IIG was very nice, and I do not understand paranormal claimants who have nothing but complaints about their test process. I don't have a single complaint, and am very grateful for all the work that was put in by everyone.
Unfortunately, I knew that trials 1 and 3 were incorrect when I reported those answers, and that trial 2 was correct, and I think that my performance was good enough to warrant more testing. This time, I would require more elaborate screens, so that no one can try to explain accurate "guesses" on tattoos on arms, clothing, hair, etc. and also so that I can better concentrate on the kidney area. I do not need the promise of being verified as a psychic, or being awarded a cash prize, all I am interested in is having more experience with it and learning more about it.
I do not expect there to be any paranormal explanation. I do think that I might be doing unintentional and automatic cold reading of some external symptoms, that translate on their own through synesthesia into corresponding feeling and images, and that that is nothing paranormal at all.
I would love to hear from the audience, how many correct guesses (correct person and correct kidney) you had, and also why you would have made those choices. Of course you did not have the advantage of being as close to the subjects as I was, but I would still like to hear your thoughts.
Do look out for another test of kidney detection up ahead, but do not worry, I will not bother the IIG, the JREF, or the local FACT Skeptics with this. There are plenty of one-kidney subjects in the world, and something less formal, and with an actually even stricter testing protocol, can be arranged. I do not expect it to pass me as a psychic, or to entitle me to any cash prize, I only want to experience more cases and more data.
I do feel that my results from the IIG Preliminary first of all obviously did not qualify me to proceed to their formal test, but meanwhile I am unable to conclude the claim as entirely falsified or meaningless just yet. If I encounter more cases of inaccuracy, I will be better able to conclude that way. I would honestly rather have had three incorrect trials and to falsify the claim, than something like what we have that is somewhere in between and it is difficult to know what to make of it. Especially since I knew 1 and 3 would be wrong, and 2 would be correct.
I embrace the incorrect results from trial 1 and 3 just as well as I do the accuracy of trial 2. And I still maintain that I detected Dr. Carlson's missing kidney and that it is the same as what trial 2 was in the Preliminary.
You will never see me becoming a practicing psychic. I will never share what are my personal, subjective impressions of health to other people outside of this investigation. I might still investigate the migraine healing claim, if I can find volunteers for it and if it is legal to conduct such a study, mainly only to falsify the claim made by the man whom I attempted to treat.
I have done none of this for attention to myself. I do not mind attention to the topics of paranormal claims and paranormal investigation, because those are fascinating topics and few who make those claims fully allow insight into what it is all about. I regret that that has opened me up for a lot of criticism and personal attack, but I feel that I made the right choice anyway.
No matter how strongly some of you suspect that my goals are to become a practicing woo, my motives have actually been to investigate an experience that I was unable to explain on my own or to dismiss simply as false memories, lies, or delusion. I think I have showed on the Preliminary some of what is going on, by having the right person in two out of three trials. And I hope that my work will be a contribution to skepticism.
Look out for another kidney detection test up ahead, but no time soon.
Thank you for putting up with my claims, and I am sorry that I truly was not the paranormal claimant you all expected me to be, because that has lead to a lot of the frustration and impatience that we have seen.
VisionFromFeeling
