Dr. David Luke lectures in psychology at several London universities and is a writer and researcher with a special interest in altered states of consciousness, parapsychology and extraordinary human experiences. He has studied ostensibly paranormal phenomena and techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites. He lives life on the edge, of Hackney in London. We are pleased to welcome David as our May 2009 Author of the Month.

I woke up this morning with a psychic advert left lingering in my dreaming mind. It was some kind of oneiric flyer for a new type of yoga, it even had a telephone number on it to call. This fanciful hypnopompic intrusion brought me back to the idea that if science can identify...

Following his wife's death six years ago, David Stannard has become accustomed to spending quiet evenings alone at his home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. So it came as a surprise to the 73-year-old when he looked up from his television one evening to discover he was sharing his living room with two RAF pilots and a schoolboy. 'The pilots were standing next to the TV, watching it as if they were in the wings of a theatre,' he says. 'The little boy was in a grey, Fifties-style school uniform. He just stood there in the hearth looking puzzled. He was 18 inches high at most.' Mr Stannard's guests never said a word and vanished after 15 minutes. That night, he says, the walls of his house, which had always been white, looked as though they had been redecorated in...

Paris - Neuroscientists investigating a young woman with epilepsy believe they have stumbled on an explanation why some people feel a ghostly presence nearby or develop paranoia or persecution.The 22-year-old young woman was being assessed for brain surgery for epilepsy but was otherwise psychologically healthy. Part of this evaluation was to pinpoint the area needed for surgery, using thin electrodes implanted into a region of the brain. Reporting the case in Thursday's issue of Nature, the weekly British science journal, the doctors say that when they sent a small current to the woman's left temporoparietal junction, she said she had the impression there was somebody behind her. The sensation was so real, The person was a "shadow," young and of indeterminate sex...

The popular illusionist Derren Brown, who is touring this month, talks to This Is Local London about his fascinating career. Many of those who have seen him on TV, or in his live shows, know that Derren Brown is an utterly baffling talent. His brand of psychological illusion uses elements of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship. Whether he appears to be reading people's minds, contacting the dead, guessing people's dreams, or telling them their detailed medical history just by looking at them (as he does in his TV special Derren Brown: Messiah) often the results seem to defy logic. The illusionist shot to fame in 1999 when Channel 4 asked him to put a TV show together. This resulted in the immensely successful Derren Brown: Mind Control being...

How are some people able to commit horrible crimes like serial killings”and actually enjoy doing this? It all comes down to the old-fashioned concept of empathy”the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes. At one time, scientists didn't understand how ANYONE was able to do this. Psychologists have identified people they've labeled "sociopaths," who do not have a conscience and are unable to imagine how other people feel. We know these people are made, not born, usually by extensive abuse in early childhood. But how did the rest of us avoid this sad fate? The answer could be mirror neurons. In 1996, scientists probing the part of a monkey's brain that controls movement noticed that these cells fired not only when the monkey performed a...

A peek into one of the most intriguing childhood mysteries reveals that imaginary playmates are a staple of early development and persist well into the school years -- later than researchers once thought. "I'm beginning to think it never goes away," said Marjorie Taylor, head of psychology at the University of Oregon and a leading researcher on children's pretend play. "What I think is it morphs into a different form." Taylor and University of Washington researcher Stephanie Carlson explored the hidden world of imaginary companions in a study that appears in the current issue of the journal Developmental Psychology. "The phenomenon of the imaginary friend is really misunderstood," Taylor said. "People thought it was rare -- it's...

Methods of latent impact on the human psyche are no longer secret. Academician Igor Smirnov of the Russian Academy of Sciences is often referred to as a father of psychotropic weapons. At the age of 28, he became the head of a laboratory in Russia"s 1st Medical Institute. He is the author of numerous sensational discoveries. Back then, he was faced with a task to "create" human-geniuses, who would be capable of becoming great scientists, magnificent inventors. Smirnov main goal was to make those people use the reserves of their own psyche. His first top-secret experiment in psycho-reconnaissance was carried out in 1984. Professor Smirnov possesses several dozens patents on various inventions. Nowadays, staff researchers of Russia's Scientific Research Institute...

There's no intelligent life on Saturn - and not just because its temperatures tend to dip more than 300 degrees below zero and the atmosphere is made up mostly of helium and liquid hydrogen. OK, mostly because of that. What could make it really uncomfortable for Saturn's inhabitants is the extreme lunar force of more than 30 spheroid satellites circling the planet. Here on Earth, one moon is enough to deal with. There's a long history of anecdotal evidence documenting the effects of our moon's activity - specifically full moons -on human behavior. Having one solitary moon rather than Saturn's 30-plus doesn't mean we aren't unphased. By the monthly lunar phases. Going back to ancient times, it was believed that a full moon brought...

Ever have a hunch, an instinct or an intuition? Research psychologist Dean Radin, Ph.D., claims that hunches might actually Foretell the Future. The University of Oregon's Ray Hyman, Ph.D., however, isn't so sure. Alex, a university colleague, was cleaning his double-action, six-shot revolver in preparation for a bunting trip later in the month. In this pistol, when the trigger is pulled the hammer is cocked, the cylinder revolves, and the hammer falls on the next chamber, all in one smooth motion. For safety's sake, Alex normally kept five bullets in the revolver, with the hammer resting on the sixth, empty chamber. Before cleaning the gun, he later told me, he removed the five bullets and set them aside. When finished cleaning, he began to put the bullets back in...

The life of psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ was haunted by coincidences. In 1972 her father, physicist Russell Targ, cofounded the Stanford Research Institute to investigate psychic phenomena. Elisabeth participated in his ESP experiments, and he encouraged her to “remotely view” and predict her birthday presents before she opened them (and claims she was correct most of the time). Elisabeth Targ was an academic superstar. She graduated from high school at age 15, was fluent in Russian, German and French, and eventually graduated from Stanford Medical School In July of 1998, Targ and colleagues at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco published a double-blind study in the Western Journal of Medicine that rocketed her to fame in the field of complementary and...