Rhea A. White’s life took an unexpected turn in 1952, when she was involved in a bad car accident. This accident caused her to have a near-death experience, which changed her outlook on life after death. After she recovered from her injuries, she entered into the field of parapsychology, first studying mysticism, religion, psychology, psychiatry, philosophy and literary criticism. Later, she founded the Parapsychology Source Information Center, Parapsychology Abstracts International and Exceptional Human Experiences Network.

In 1990, she realized that traditional science wasn’t going to answer her question as to why she experienced the NDE and what it meant. Rhea began studying the reports of other people who had experienced NDE’s, along with other non-ordinary and anomalous experiences. She classified this study as “Exceptional Human Experiences,” which students of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology rely heavily on to write their dissertations. Rhea’s career spanned nearly 40 years, earning her the respect of colleagues and students alike.

Quoted from Palyne Gaenir:

From her early studies in Jung’s writings to her research work with J.B. Rhine, she was a driven thinker from very young. Editor of professional Ph.D. level journals much of her adult life, and founder of the Exceptional Human Experience Network, an organization dedicated to recognizing and better understanding the things that move us and evolve us, Rhea was one of those people who put out more work for good causes in the world than any one person will ever know about.

Rhea White passed away on February 24 of an undisclosed illness, which she battled for several years.

The New York Times has posted an 11-page article called Darwin’s God, which is based on the research of anthropologist Scott Atran. This is not an anti-religion article, but a study on its evolution. Religion comes in many forms, with many supernatural elements, and has existed long before Christianity. Atran delves into the question of why religion formed.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident?

This weighty article covers a broad variety of subtopics, including his theory on how humans are “hardwired” to believe in the supernatural as a survival mechanism, especially where the afterlife is concerned. The first and foremost fear that most of us have is death. Neither science nor religion has a definitive answer on what happens to our soul once we die.

Closed in 1995, the West Virginia Penitentiary attracts 20,000 visitors annually. Many come for a history lesson on the prison’s macabre executions and to listen to the tales of grisly violence that occurred since the prison was built around 1866. Visitors have felt, seen and photographed strange things inside the penitentiary.

A woman’s face has been repeatedly sighted in a window of the third-floor administration building, peering out at the prison yard. An blurry apparition known as the “Shadow Man” has been seen lurking around the psychiatric ward, the cafeteria and the catacombs.

The most well-known ghost, inmate No. 44670, has been haunting the penitentiary for 76 years. In life, he was R.D. Wall, who was serving time for first-degree murder. When someone caught him speaking quietly with the warden, word got around that he was a snitch. He was butchered by three inmates on October 8, 1829. Sightings of his ghost began sometime in 1930.

At night, tower guards often saw a man at the back of the administration building, above the spot where R.D. was murdered. When they would go to investigate, they would find the area deserted.

Source: The News&Observer

Robert Anton Wilson wore many academic hats, which included futurology, anarchy, and conspiracy theory research. He was also a prolific American writer, whose career spanned thirty-five years. His best-known work was the Illuminatus Trilogy (co-authored with Robert Shea), a satire about American conspiracy theories. Most of his work covered a wide berth of New Age topics, such as UFOs, crop circles, occult practices, etc.

Wilson didn’t believe in beliefs, but rather in probabilities. “Belief is the death of thought,” he once said.

In fact, he shunned dogmatic beliefs because he felt that they led to fascist behavior. In his book, Cosmic Trigger III: My Life After Death, he used the example of militant feminism to demonstrate how dogmatic adherence to any belief system can result in intolerant and even dangerous ideologies.

On October 2, 2006, Douglas Rushkoff appealed to the blogosphere for donations to Wilson, who was in severe financial trouble due to ailing health. Slashdot, Boing Boing, and the Church of the Subgenius wrote about Wilson’s plight. By October 10th, their efforts succeeded in raising enough money to support Wilson financially for at least 6 months.

Sadly, this generosity couldn’t help Wilson’s health which continued to deteriorate. Doctors gave him between two days and two months to live. Robert Anton Wilson died yesterday at age 74 from post-polio syndrome. Five days earlier, he closed his final message on his blog by saying, “Please pardon my levity, I don’t see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.”