In Memory of Karlis Osis

Karlis Osis died on his 80th birthday, December 26th, 1997. He had lived a rich and varied life, both personally and as one of the leading researchers in the field of parapsychology. I came to know him in 1971 when he, as Director of Research at the American Society for Psychical Research, invited me to join him in his study of deathbed visions. That was the beginning of a long and much cherished association that lasted until his death. Karlis, his wife Klara, and their three children formed a particularly tight-knit and loving family.

Karlis was born 1917 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. He lived through the horrors of the Second World War-first under the occupation of the German army, where he barely escaped being conscripted, then as a refugee, when he fled his country after Russian troops invaded Latvia towards the end of the war. After difficult travels through war-ravaged Europe, he found shelter in a refugee camp in the American Occupation Zone in southern Germany.

In Germany, Karlis started a new life. He entered the University of Munich, where, in 1951, he completed his studies in psychology with a thesis on Extrasensory Perception. While still a student at the University of Munich, he took a leading role in organizing seminars and lectures on parapsychological topics.

He then immigrated to the United States under a displaced person program. During a period of hard manual labor in a timber mill near Seattle, he entered into correspondence with J. B. Rhine about experiments with animals. This led Rhine to invite him to join the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, where he started a career in parapsychology which lasted until his retirement in 1983. After he retired and until his passing, he...