A World in a Grain of Sand

Many people around the world accept the possibility of telepathy or clairvoyance. Very rarely, however, has anyone been able to demonstrate these psychic faculties with enough accuracy and reliability to produce significant results in repeated experimentation. An exception to this was the Polish engineer and industrialist Stefan Ossowiecki.
Ossowiecki (1877–1944) is perhaps the most gifted psychic ever to come under the scrutiny of researchers. He demonstrated a range and quality of clairvoyance that no one has exceeded, at least under experimental controls. Equally important, he was eager to learn more about his talent and allowed a variety of researchers to use him in experiments. Anecdotal accounts of his talent abounded, but it was the controlled observations of investigators in experiments conducted in Paris and Warsaw that confirmed his gift. For the first time, this book brings to English-speaking researchers and the public detailed accounts of the crucial experiments carried out with Ossowiecki, which produced compelling evidence of paranormal cognition.

Mary Rose Barrington is a retired lawyer in London.
The late Ian Stevenson was a research professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He was the author of European Cases of the Reincarnation Type (2003) and Children Who Remember Previous Lives (2001).
A member of the Society for Psychical Research, Zofia Weaver is a past editor of the Society’s Journal and Proceedings and, although Polish by birth, she lives in Nottingham, England.

Mary Rose Barrington , Ian Stevenson and Zofia Weaver
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 200
Bibliographic Info: photos, appendices, glossary, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2005
pISBN: 978-0-7864-2112-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2133-3
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii

Introduction (Ian Stevenson)      1

1. The Life and Times of Stefan Ossowiecki (Zofia Weaver)      5

2. The Formal Experiments      26

Early Experiments by Geley and Richet      27

Reception at the Institut Métapsychique International      45

Geley Probes Deeper      55

Co-Operation from London      62

Reports by Various Other Researchers      70

3. Informal Experiments and “Fieldwork”      85

Demonstrations of Clairvoyance      87

“Fieldwork”      103

Telepathy?      117

Out-of-body Experiences?      118

Premonition/Precognition?      119

Influence at a Distance?      122

4. Answers and Questions (Mary Rose Barrington)      124

Afterword (Ian Stevenson)      151

Appendix I: Archaeological Experiments      159

Appendix II: Chronology and List of Cases      165

Appendix III: Biographical Profiles of the Experimenters      175

Glossary      179

Bibliography      181

Index      185

“fascinating…invaluable”—Journal of the Society for Psychical Research.