{"id":7019,"date":"2019-02-19T16:46:48","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T16:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/?p=709"},"modified":"2023-03-27T15:51:03","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T15:51:03","slug":"this-is-a-target-rich-environment-inside-the-rhine-research-centers-parapsychology-probes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/9thstreetjournal.org\/2019\/02\/19\/this-is-a-target-rich-environment-inside-the-rhine-research-centers-parapsychology-probes\/","title":{"rendered":"‘This Is a Target-Rich Environment’: Inside the Rhine Research Center’s Parapsychology Probes"},"content":{"rendered":"
Five minutes from Duke Hospital, in a quiet office park that also houses the offices of U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a real-estate agent, a financial coach, and a dentist, the Rhine Research Center is open for its eighth decade of business.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the space could pass for the home of any other association\u2014cookie-cutter office chairs, fluorescent lights, and shelves of old volumes collecting dust. It\u2019s the details that suggest something different. A bust of J.B. Rhine, the center\u2019s long-deceased founder, glowers at visitors across from a kitschy glass goblet full of bent spoons, and every now and then the phone rings, with someone calling to report a paranormal experience.<\/p>\n John Kruth, the executive director, sits at a table with his laptop and cell phone.\u00a0Wearing glasses, a goatee, two silver rings and a turquoise collared shirt, Kruth doesn\u2019t look like a stereotypical scientist. HIs phone\u2019s ringtone is a Star Trek sound effect. He refers to the movie \u201cGhost\u201d a lot, usually in a derisive way. Kruth has spent the past ten years researching in a field most people believe to be pseudoscience. The Rhine Research Center investigates parapsychology: extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, precognition, hypnosis, and energy healing, among other phenomena. He feels like he\u2019s found his calling, and his work at the Rhine is only getting started.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kruth has had an interest in parapsychology since his childhood growing up in Pittsburgh, but says conversations with skeptics inspired him to wonder how to communicate about parapsychology with people who don\u2019t know anything about it. That\u2019s when he realized he needed a science degree, and earned an M.S. in research psychology.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually grew up in a family and a community where it was very well accepted, these types of activities. I was practicing hypnosis and meditation from the time I was a very, very small child, and did visualization techniques, had different people in my family who were healers and doing energy healing, so it was not uncommon for me,\u201d Kruth says. \u201cBut when I tried to talk to other people about it, they thought I was nuts!\u201d<\/p>\n Kruth moved to Durham from Philadelphia in the 1980s because the Rhine was located here, but it took him years to first walk through the door. Kruth has now been at the Rhine for 10 years and executive director for seven, and he says he\u2019s doing what he\u2019s wanted to do his whole life: researching parapsychology and communicating the findings to as many interested people as possible.<\/p>\n The Rhine Center is still one of the leading parapsychology laboratories in the country. It\u2019s also one of the few left. But there was a time when the laboratory was cutting-edge science and one of Duke University\u2019s claims to international fame. Parapsychology arose from late-19th century English research into communication with the dead and apparitions. In 1930, Duke became the first American university to grant parapsychology a foothold, largely under the leadership of William McDougall. A British eugenicist and well-known social psychologist, McDougall became head of Duke\u2019s psychology department in 1927 and brought with him to Durham two telepathy and clairvoyance researchers, though they were botanists by training: Joseph Banks Rhine (who Kruth calls \u201cJ.B.\u201d in conversation) and his wife, Louisa E. Rhine.<\/p>\n In 1933, Duke awarded the first American doctorate in parapsychology. The student, John F. Thomas, later published the thesis as a book called \u201cAn Evaluative Study of Mental Content of Certain Trance Phenomena.\u201d For his thesis, Thomas tested different psychic mediums<\/a>, primarily a woman named Gladys, to see how accurately they could transmit messages from his own wife, who died nine years before he received his doctorate. Thomas\u2019s research found an overall success rate of 92 percent.<\/p>\n Two years later, with the support of University President William Few, McDougall created the country\u2019s first parapsychology lab, appointing Rhine, \u201cmop-haired ex-Marine sergeant,\u201d as director. The lab quickly captured a great deal of media attention, with The Chronicle reporting in 1937<\/a> that \u201cnearly every important journal in England and France during the past year has given accounts to the researches in extra-sensory perception carried on by Dr. J.B. Rhine.\u201d<\/p>\n After McDougall\u2019s death in his home on East Campus in 1938, Rhine dreamed of cleaving the lab from the psychology department, where his colleagues found him to be overly self-promotional. In 1947, the Rhine Lab split from the department but continued on campus with support from the Duke statistics department, which generally found his analysis to be sound. In 1962, Rhine established the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man in a big building a stone\u2019s throw from campus. Though he retired from Duke in 1965, he continued working until 1976, searching for a suitable successor. Rhine died in 1980. His last words to his wife Louisa were reportedly, \u201cThe work must go on.\u201d<\/p>\n