Alternate Perceptions Magazine, November 2020
An Exclusive Interview with Harold Sherman
Using ESP in the New Age
by: Interview conducted by Timothy Green Beckley, publisher UFO Review
[Editor’s Note: This interview that appeared in UFO Review, No. 15, in 1983, details what the acclaimed ESP author Harold Sherman (1898-1987), the founder and president of ESP Research Associates Foundation, formerly headquartered out of Little Rock, Arkansas, also had to say on the subject of UFOs. Though many paranormal researchers of today are probably not familiar with Mr. Sherman and his many accomplishments relating to the study and investigation of psychic phenomena, I sought Tim Beckley’s permission to reproduce this dated interview once again, here in the pages of Alternate Perceptions, hoping to reintroduce Sherman’s name and insights back into the field.
Harold Sherman certainly wrote quite a number of popular and thought-provoking books back in the day, detailing remarkable psychic testimonials and many containing helpful instructions on how readers could further develop their own higher powers of mind, books like Know your own Mind, How to Know What to Believe, How to Make ESP Work for You, How to Foresee and Control your Future, You Can Communicate with the Unseen World, How to Take Yourself Apart and Put Yourself Together Again, and You Live After Death. In fact, all of these books remain on one of my bookshelves here. I wrote an article awhile back about Harold Sherman for this magazine, which appeared in the February 2015 edition, number 203. It can be found here: http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=630&Itemid=53 ] Here’s the interview:
Timothy Green Beckley: Harold, you have been involved in ESP work and parapsychology for many, many years. Exactly, how did you get started in all this? Harold Sherman: When I was 17, I was in my family home in Traverse City, Michigan. It was becoming dark and as I was getting up to turn on the light, which was suspended from the ceiling, an inner voice said, “Don’t turn on the light.” It was such an eerie impression that I could not go against it. I went back to my typewriter and typed for perhaps ten minutes longer. Then it was really getting dark as the sun was setting. I reached for the light again, and more persistently than before, this inner voice said, “Don’t turn on the light.”
While I was hesitating, someone had run up on the porch and was banging on the door. Without having turned on the light, I ran downstairs and opened the door. An electric linesman burst in and said, “Don’t turn on the light, there is a high voltage wire down across your line outside.” I couldn’t explain it at the time, but as I had fixed my mind on the light, somehow I had tuned into the mind of the electric linesman, who had reported on a trouble call about ten minutes before. He found the high voltage wire down across the line of two neighbors across the alley and had run to their homes to tell them not to put on the lights. He had this one thing on his mind and I had picked up his thoughts.
TGB: What was the status of parapsychology in those days? Wasn’t it frowned upon and thought of as something only spinsters were into and smacked of charlatanism?
HS: That is completely right. I went to a local library hoping to find some information to explain what had happened to me. I thought, if this happened once, it would happen again. It must indicate the existence of some higher part of the mind. You can imagine how little information of an authoritative nature was contained on what was not even called parapsychology then. They did have the word psychic phenomenon, but very little was known about it. I decided that if I was to learn more about what had happened to me that afternoon, I would have to make a guinea pig out of myself and do some experimenting. I told a school chum of my interest in telepathy. He said that he always slept very soundly every night and that if I wanted to try an experiment, I could try to telepathically wake him up one night at a specific time. I said, “Well, that sounds like a good idea, Homer. I’ll try it.” I waited a few nights so that he would not be overly expectant. Then, one night, after ten o’clock, when I could be reasonably sure that he would be asleep, I talked to him. I got hold of my old high school annual, found his picture and looked at it until I could carry an image of him in my minds eye. While concentrating on his image, I said, “Homer, when the clock strikes two, you are going to wake up and think of me.” I continued that for about ten minutes. I had the sensation which felt as if some energy were going out of me to Homer. The next morning, he called me and asked if I had tried to wake him up last night. I told him I had. He asked, “What time?” I told him two. Homer said, “Harold, as the town clock was striking two, I woke up thinking of you so strongly, that it was as if you were right there in the room with me. I couldn’t turn off the light all night. Don’t ever try that again. You scared the hell out of me!”
TGB: Why do you think that some people have this ability that they can use, and yet with others, it’s like you can put them in front of a piano and they don’t even know one key from another?
HS: I think that we all potentially have E.S.P., but much depends on the training, the religious training. I still have it thrown at me that it’s the work of the devil. The school system taught you that you could only be aware of something through one or more of the five physical senses You weren’t supposed to have any knowledge beyond that.
TGB: What were some of the outstanding experiments that you conducted during your lifetime that you think shows really good concrete proof that telepathy does exist?
HS: Some years later, while I was in New York City, I had the first real opportunity to prove a case for E.S.P. The Russians had attempted to fly non-stop over the North Pole and land in the United States. Two planes were successful, but the third plane was forced down some 200 miles from the pole and was never heard from again. They arranged an expedition with a friend of mine, Hubert Wilkins, the famous explorer.
I confessed to Wilkins that I had been experimenting with telepathy and he suggested that we try an experiment. For three nights a week, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, from 7:30 to midnight, I was to concentrate on him wherever he was in the far north and then record in mental images whatever was happening during his expedition. Wilkins thought that we should have a scientific witness in case anything of significance came of it. For this purpose, we got Dr. Gardner Murphy, head of a university psychology department. I recorded my impressions at the end of each day and mailed it to him so that it would have a postmark and therefore be on record. This was done for five and a half months. Over seventy percent of the impressions turned out to be remarkably accurate. For example, on Armistice night, 1937, I sat concentrating on Wilkins. I had the feeling that he was headed toward Saskatchewan, Canada and ran into a blinding snowstorm and had to make a forced landing in some town that sounded like Virginia. I saw an Armistice Ball and men in military attire. I saw Wilkins in evening dress.
I later found out that Wilkins had recorded in his diary for that day: “This morning took off on flight hoping to reach Saskatchewan but was caught in a blinding snowstorm. Was forced to turn back and make a forced landing in Regina. At the airport I was met by the governor of that province, who invited me to attend an Armistice Ball to be held this evening. My attendance at the ball was made possible by the loan to me of an evening dress suit.” I was astounded at how easy it was to get specific impressions once I had a good man to concentrate on.
TGB: You mentioned this experiment which took place over a distance of two or three thousand miles. Don’t you think that if telepathy can work over that distance, that it can also work in space?
HS: I absolutely do. In my book, Thoughts Through Space, Edgar Mitchell testified that one of the men walking on the moon, participated in a test with four psychics. They picked up impressions from E.S.P. cards at a distance of 150,000 miles. There is no limitation in time or space when it comes to the operation of the mind.
TGB: A question arises, If we here on earth have just only learned to use a very small fraction of these mental capabilities, doesn’t it stand to reason that perhaps beings elsewhere in the universe might have developed these same capabilities way beyond this point? HS: I am absolutely convinced of that. This has occurred in several instances that I know of. I am the founder of the History Resources Foundation. We are doing research in that area. It is possible, that if one retains one’s identity after death, for living mortals to communicate with those who have passed on.
TGB: Back before the era of UFOs, didn’t you actually predict the coming of the saucers and the space people?
HS: In 1946, yes. I actually dreamed the coming of the space people. I wrote a serious detailed article about my vision on how people would react to visitors from space. No one took The Green Man and His Return seriously. The only way I could get my story across was to write a science fiction novel which I sold to Amazing Stories. Ray Palmer was the editor. The Green Man was first written as a humorous story of a super-intelligence that arrives on earth and had certain abilities. He could stop power lines, cars and had an electrical influence on people. These effects had been reported later on, by thousands of people. After Kenneth Arnold’s UFO sighting, which took place a year after my story was published, Ray Palmer received hundreds of letters from readers who wanted me to write the next story about the new plan of living which the aliens were supposed to bring to earth.
TGB: Over the years, many things you wrote about in your story have come to pass. Do you think it is possible that these space beings were actually tapping into your conscious mind and putting this information there, to sort of put out feelers to the public, to see what their reaction would be? HS: I’m almost compelled to believe it now. I wasn’t conscious of it at the time.
TGB: Have you ever had a physical UFO sighting yourself?
HS: During the late 1950s, my wife Martha and I saw a UFO over Hollywood Boulevard as it stopped all traffic. We were at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. TGB: What exactly did it look like?
HS: It looked like a big luminous ball about the size of a full moon and was a couple of thousand feet above the hotel. It started as a small, extra-bright, star-like object, which kept coming down until it caught everyone’s attention. Hundreds of people saw it and stopped their cars. It was written up in all the Hollywood papers including The Los Angeles Times. When it got down low enough, it turned a pulsating red and then exploded. As the cloud began to drift away against the clear sky, we thought, “That’s the end of that.” But a couple of minutes later, it suddenly blossomed out again as a luminous, white light. I went up onto the roof with my binoculars and watched it for about ten minutes as it went higher and higher until it disappeared.
TGB: Did you feel any telepathic communication, or did you feel any vibes from this at all:
HS: No, I didn’t, but I didn’t attempt to get any impressions.
TGB: Have you had any telepathic contact with people who may have been from outside this planet? Have you investigated any accounts that you think are legitimate?
HS: There is a remarkable woman who came to visit me in the Ozark Mountains. Her name is Gretta Woodrew. She has written a book, On A Slide of Light. She has been possessed by an alien civilization. Gretta can do anything Uri Geller can do. She was with us for a few days. At one point, she went to sit down at the dining room table and all the silverware began to jump and bend. She waved her hands to break the magnetic lines of force and said that since she has been in contact with these higher beings, she has been walking around with a magnetic field. If she isn’t careful, it affects the objects she comes in contact with. We have sterling silver spoons that are all doubled up, which she didn’t even touch with her hands. She took three spoons of equal size, piled them on top of each other and said, “I’m going to tell one of them to shrink.” The middle spoon shrank before our eyes.
Gretta has been speaking to groups of scientists whom she holds spellbound with her stories of things to come. She has been told that there is going to be a great change taking place on the eastern coastline within the next year and a half. Gretta and her husband have sold their beautiful place in Westport, which they had for thirty years and bought a place further from the coastline in North Carolina.
TGB: This is the type of contact that we are getting more often now from people who profess to be in contact with extraterrestrials. One of the reasons that they are coming here is to warn us about these earth changes and disasters that are slated to happen. Have you found this in your line of work? HS: Yes, but you have to be very careful. Some people are very excitable and very imaginative.
TGB: Is it possible these spirit beings that you have written about, might actually be in communication with UFO people? Do they operate on the same level?
HS: No. I’ve asked them that. They are in different dimensions and spheres of activity than we are. If a space being died and went into a dimension beyond the so-called physical experience, there would then be a connection. There are all kinds of planes of existence that I have become conscious of. Each plane possesses certain vibrations. When we leave this plane, we go to the plane that is determined by our spirit gravity. Those whose spirit gravity is low, need help to go higher.
TGB: Have you personally done research on this yourself?
HS: Yes, and I am in contact with other researchers all over the world. Anyone who has a tape recorder can experiment with spirit communication in their own home.
You should pick a certain time, usually at night when your mind is clear and you would not be disturbed. Then turn on the recorder and begin speaking to a friend or relative that has died, as if you are making a phone call. Ask them to respond, if they are within reach of your voice. Just leave the recorder on and let it run for two or three minutes. It will help if you meditate for a few minutes before you start to clear your mind of any fear or destructive thoughts. Send out feelings of love. Play the tape back and listen for any sounds or voices that may have been picked up. It may not work the first time. Do the same thing again the next night. In time, you will hear spirit voices, and will encounter light, sound, static or interference through which these spirit voices have to come. Sometimes they are low or in whispers, but you will know without a doubt, that they have to be coming from another realm of existence.
TGB: What have you picked up on tape? What sort of communications?
HS: Here is one that I would like to tell you about.
The Lamoreaux brothers are two unusual pioneer experimenters in Washington state. They have recorded hundreds of voices in the last ten or fifteen years. One of their friends, Jim Remick, was killed in an accident. They communicated with and asked him questions about his experience in the afterlife. One question they asked him was, “Do you have any rule of living, where you are now? Is there any God over there?” He said, “We have never seen God and many people ask if we have seen Jesus or any of the great spiritual leaders. No, we don’t know anything about that. But we do feel the presence of a great Higher Power, who has over all care of life and existence on these planes. We have six rules of living:
1 – To live as you are a part of everyone.
2 – To help everyone.
3 – To not let anyone feel alone.
4 – To love everyone.
5 – To forgive everyone.
6 – To learn to live as you are one with everyone and everyone is one with this higher power.
Jim suggests that since these rules are so basic, everyone on earth should start living by them to prepare for the life to come.
Twenty years ago, Jurgenson, the Swedish naturalist, was out in the forest recording bird songs. When he played the tape back, he heard his deceased mother’s voice. He continued to experiment for the next few years. Jurgenson has developed an instrument which he has sold to a manufacturer in Sweden. He claims that he can record twenty minutes of conversation on it and will be revealing it this spring. It is difficult to get the funds to research anything of this nature.
TGS: Why do you think funding is so difficult? Is it insecurity on the part of both the government and the religious groups, when it comes to life after death?
HS: Years ago, Dr. J. B. Rhine, the famous investigator at Duke University, told me that a very wealthy man, a great religious leader, came to him and offered him fifty thousand dollars for his work. There was one condition to the offer, which was that Dr. Rhine should not do any research on life after death. When Dr. Rhine asked him why, he said, “How do you suppose that makes our religion look when and if you can prove that everyone survives death, regardless of religious faith? In other words, there are efforts to protect what people feel they have and believe, even at the cost of knowledge. TGB: Do you think there is a New Age of awareness ahead, where UFOs will land openly, and all mankind will communicate telepathically and we’ll know that our loved ones exist on the other side?
HS: There is this new film E.T. Can you imagine the number of people who developed a real human feeling for this little extraterrestrial? They are willing to accept, not with fear but with love, the appearance of beings from a higher planet. We are being prepared for something. Perhaps, it is an evolutionary process that is taking place in our consciousness.
A few years ago, Ingo Swann and I were assigned by the Stanford Research Institute to take a psychic poll of the planets Jupiter, Mercury and Mars, and record our impressions of what existed there. We were one hundred percent right as to what they would find there as the space modules have in recent history, passed those planets and transmitted tangible data, which backs up the impressions we received way before those modules reached those planets. Through the development of instrumentation, all of this knowledge is expanding the mind of man. This is an exciting time to be alive, if we don’t destroy ourselves.
TGB: Are you working on anything currently?
HS: Yes, my new book, DEAD OR ALIVE – Norman Vincent Peale was nice enough to say, “How marvelous is your sensitivity, productivity and your insight. I find it very thoughtful indeed.” It pleases me that people of that caliber are finding value in it.