To Sleep Perchance for Psi

 

For the second Saturday in a row I headed to London for a one day paranormal conference; see here for the previous one: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2026/04/strange-central.html. This time I was going to the headquarters of the Society for Psychical Research, one of the world's oldest paranormal investigation organizations, founded in 1882. The conference was called "To Sleep Perchance for Psi"; and, as its name suggests, it was all about the paranormal factors related to sleeping. This was a far smaller event than the one at Conway Hall. About twenty-five people were there, tucked into a small conference room, including my good friend and comrade Mark Froud of Crafty Nihilist fame, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2025/09/ben-emlyn-jones-and-crafty-nihilist-8.html. The HQ itself is a very modest affair, as you'd expect because the SPR is registered as a non-profit. It is set back from the main street in some "mews" next to the Olympia London and has three floors with a stair-lift for disabled people. On the top floor is the world famous library and it's a pity I didn't have a longer time to browse there. I've recently joined the SPR and it's worth doing that just to read those classic paranormal books. The Society has no "party line" and people involved have all kinds of viewpoints. They just share a fascination with all things spooky. I saw a couple of other people I recognized from other conferences, but most of the delegates were new to me. However, I did meet a lady called Ursula who had been at Weird Weekend North 2026. I didn't recognize her so our paths must simply never have crossed; things like that do happen at large events, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2026/04/hpanwo-show-627-weird-weekend-north.html. 

The first speaker was called Chris Roe. He did a talk about dream precognition, the strange phenomenon of having dreams that come true. He gives a number of examples; some of them very famous, such as the schoolchildren who refused to go to school before the Aberfan disaster because they'd had nightmares about it the night before. Chris has controlled for many of the mundane explanations often posed by skeptics, such as the "law of large numbers". Dr Sheila Pryce Brooks followed Chris to the stage and described her research into sleep paralysis. This is something that I myself regularly experience and so was keen to learn more, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2016/06/sleep-paralysis-again.html. She is interested in its connection to other phenomena like the near-death experience and ghostly encounters. Regular readers will know that I have had a very significant experience like that myself. I told Sheila about it and she was impressed. I'm going to write to her and tell her the whole story, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2008/10/real-ghost-train.html. We took a lunch break and headed for a nearby pub where I got to talk to some of the new people I'd met; then when we came back it was time for Anthony Peake, the main reason Mark and I had chosen to attend the conference. Anthony is somebody I'm very familiar with, for example see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2025/07/anthony-peake-at-watkins-books-2.html. Somehow Anthony always manages to inject some new information into every one of his numerous lectures and this time he described a strange altered state of consciousness he had in 1996 when living an ordinary life as an airport administrator. The memory of it later came back to him when he visited Argentina in more recent years and saw the same place. He thinks it might be connected to the famous writer Jorge Luis Borges who lived near where Anthony visited and who wrote stories with esoteric themes that Anthony really likes. Cal Cooper came on next and talked about another famous element of sleep, after death communication in dreams. This is actually one of the most common weird phenomena of all; somebody dies and their relative sees them in a very vivid dream. He also talked about the history of the SPR's research into such dreams by former experts like William Dewi Rees, a vicar whose congregation reported them. He's also interested in the experience of people in the "death industry" like undertakers and morticians. I suppose I should include myself in that as a former hospital porter (have I mentioned that before?). He cited an early SPR publication called Phantasms of the Living. Unfortunately at this point I had an opportunity to add to the relevant literature personally by suffering another drowsiness attack. This time it was not possible to hide it because the auditorium was so much smaller than Conway Hall. I hope Cal doesn't think I dozed because he was boring me. He was not. As I said last week, it's just a problem I always have at conferences. The final speaker was Dr David Luke, somebody I know of though my collaboration with Niall Murphy, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/07/hpanwo-show-55-podcast-niall-murphy.html. 

David runs "Breaking Conventions" at the October Gallery which Niall used to record for his own podcast. David talked about the history of dream research and interest. It dates back much further than I thought, to the ancient world. We all know about Moses and Joseph in the bible who have interesting dreams; but such knowledge is even older. There is a Mesopotamian dream analysis book dating to the 1700's BC. In ancient Greece and Rome there were sleep healing centres. David also understands a lot of the skeptic arguments and in the panel Q and A at the end we had an interesting back-and-forth about coincidence theory and the limits of pareidolia. He has coined the term "randomania" to describe the skeppers' bias towards false-negatives, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2014/04/pan-pareidolia.html. 

After the event there was a meeting in the room for members only, but I decided not to go and headed to the pub with Mark and some more of our new acquaintances. A different pub this time, The Cumberland Arms which is literally across the road from the SPR office. I bet the bar staff there are used to overhearing strange conversations! We had a really good time with the speakers and other delegates; and then Mark and I both left because we had long journeys home. I'm going to stay in touch with some of the conference attendees and hopefully go along to future SPR events. If I do I will report on them too. What an amazing fortnight it has been for me!

See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/skeptics-portal.html.
And: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2023/06/afterlife-portal.html.