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THE GIFT: ESP, THE EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIENCES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE by Sally Rhine Feather and Michael Schmicker. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 284. $23 (hardback)
For those who are not familiar with the senior author, Dr. Sally Rhine Feather is an experimental and clinical psychologist. She is also the daughter of the founder of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University. The lab became well known worldwide and served as a major training ground for researchers into extrasensory perception and psychokinesis using the quantitative experimental approach, including new testing techniques and methods of analyzing results statistically, making possible the comparison of results obtained under different laboratory conditions.
The Parapsychology Laboratory later evolved into the Rhine Research Center with Dr. Feather as its Director of Development. Not only is she overseeing the research of others but she is carrying on the studies made by her mother, Dr. Louisa E. Rhine, who pioneered in collecting and analyzing accounts of psychic experiences that were sent to the Parapsychology Laboratory from all around the world. Her primary aim was to classify the types and forms of the experiences looking for patterns that could be investigated further and more reliably by means of laboratory experiments.
Dr. Feather has also chosen to collect and study accounts of ESP and other parapsychological experiences contributed by...