Böcker av Erlendur Haraldsson

In the world of parapsychology and psychical research Erlendur Haraldsson may well be remembered as one of the great investigators, particularly in field research. In a career spanning more than six decades Haraldsson worked with past luminaries such as J. B. Rhine, one of the founders of parapsychology and Ian Stevenson, whose work with children claiming past life experiences, has spawned much of the today's reincarnation research.Towards the Unknown chronicles Haraldsson's work in India, the Middle East, the US and Europe and includes his studies of the Indian spiritual teacher Sathya Sai Baba, the Icelandic medium, Indridi Indridason, deathbed visions, past life cases and a whole array of psychic phenomena.

The authors¿ preoccupation with Indridi Indridason spans several decades. Erlendur Haraldsson first read about him in the 1960s, perhaps earlier. He joined the Psychology department at the University of Iceland in 1973 and, during his course on paranormal phenomena, he would regularly discuss Indridason, Iceland's most prolific physical medium. Loftur Reimar Gissurarson, one of Haraldsson's students, soon became interested and wrote his BA thesis on Indridason (Gissurarson, 1984).Based on their research, they co-authored a monograph entitled The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason, which was published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Gissurarson and Haraldsson, 1989). The monograph was subsequently reprinted partially and in full in Renaitre 2000 in France, Luce e Ombra in Italy, and Parapsykologiske Notiser in Norway.Loftur continued the work and co-authored with William Swatos, the book Icelandic Spiritualism: Mediumship and Modernity in Iceland (Swatos and Gissurarson, 1997), much of it dealing with Indridi and the history of Mediums and Spiritualism in Iceland.Shortly after the year 2000, two Experimental Society minute books dating back to the Indridason period were unexpectedly found that contained new information (Haraldsson, 2009). Some time later, Haraldsson delved into the new material which resulted in three major articles being published in the Proceedings and the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (Haraldsson, 2011, 2012a) and the Journal of Scientific Exploration (Haraldsson and Gerding, 2010). It soon became obvious that only a book would do justice to Indridi, as he deserved to be known to the wider international public. This is that book.

From earliest times, people have speculated about what happens when they and their loved ones die. Their views vary from certainty about life after death to utter disbelief. Today, many continue to believe in the survival of consciousness after physical death with some claiming actual experiences of the departed and contact with them of some kind. In an era which we think of as the enlightened era of science, education and widespread secularism, many people report contact with dead. In a survey at the end of the 20th century, 31% of people in the USA , reperted they had felt that they had been in contact with some one who had died (Greeley 1975), and in Europe the number was 25% (Haraldsson and Houtkooper 1991). Scientist, Erlendur Haraldsson, a native of Iceland, sought an answer to his question, "Have you ever been aware of the presence of a deceased person?" In the modern and educated society of Iceland, one of the Scandinavian countries; he conducted an extensive survey. During the following years, detailed personal interviews were conducted with over 450 people who responded with a yes to questions about personal experiences of the deceased while in a waking state. These accounts form the basis for this book. The results are fascinating and make compelling reading.