The Journal Herald from Dayton, Ohio • 17

(g March 26, 1984 THE JOURNAL HERALD Dayton, Ohio 17 AX V' v-- ft 4 I I -f 'i i '3 v. ff I If 'i 1 1 i I i I 1 it 1 i V- if BBBL Iff fflff if in bob w-- (7: il Li FUe photo Staff Illustration by Don Vanderbeek enjoying herself. That's what we had hoped, that she would feel happy and free." And if it turns out that Tina has innate psychic sensitivity, Roll thinks she should develop it and become "aware of the energies that seem to be responsible for the events and the possibility of controlling them, turning them off and on as needed." In fact, Roll thinks everyone should explore his or her psychic potential, just as mental and physical potentials are explored. "If things are supressed, we don't function so well. The normal way In society Is within religion, but very often It is not efficient for us.

Religion concerns a wider relationship. In most religious traditions, it Is believed that people are connected in some sort of fellowship and with a higher, larger principle in the world. And this supervening force or power is called God, Allah, Buddha or Tao." That sense of connection can be comforting. "It is comforting," says Roll, "because it is the way it Is. Human beings are in fact connected in this larger matrix." At the opposite end of the spectrum from William Roll is Ben Alexander.

Ben Alexander was In Dayton the middle of March, a guest of the Independent Christian Churches. Alexander, who was born id London in 1920, believes with his whole heart that the phenomena in Columbus were real. Tina." he says, "is a natural psychic" Rather than the brain as the force behind the Tina's telekinesis, Alexander believes that the spiritual (See Tina Resch oa Page 18) Eerie events have experts formulating explanations- By Janet Fillpa Suppose it's true about Tina Resch, that when the 14-year-old girl was at home in suburban Columbus earlier this month, there really were some most peculiar happenings: Eggs splattered on the kitchen ceiling, a telephone stretched mid-air across her lap, a coffee cup smashed against a fireplace, dishes shattered in cupboards, the stereo and television blasted, an upstairs shower ran, furniture shuffled, lights glowed. All that, and without the aid of a human hand. James Randl, a magician with the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, doesn't believe it But set aside the debunking, presume that something unusual Is going on and listen to three people with different views.

Parapsycbologists those who study events that cannot be fully described or explained by known physical principles call such mind-over-matter events psychokinesis. The mind interacts directly with the physical environment When the interactions happen repeatedly and cant be controlled, they are considered to be recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis. All last week, Tina Resch was at the Psychical Research Foundation in Chapel Hill, N.C. The project director there is William G. Roll, 56, a native of Wales and former research associate at the parapsychology laboratory at Duke University In Durham.

In the early 1970s, he founded the Psychical Research Foundation, funded by grants and trusts, to research parapsychologlcal events. As of last Friday, there had been no occurrences of psychokinesis, according to the Foundation. And, In a phone Interview Wednesday, Roll said Tina will likely stay in Chapel Hill throughout this week and perhaps into early April. She is undergoing both psychological counseling and numerous neurological tests because Roll believes two forces may be at work on hen extreme tension and an abnormally massive firing of nerve cells in the brain. The human brain, parapsychologists suspect, is the gateway to psychic phenomena.

The brain absorbs data often in the form of energy and also filters out other Information. Humans don't sense the full range of the light spectrum, for example, or sound waves. But they are out there. There may be other dimensions, aspects to the physical world beyond our direct grasp in an ordinary state of consciousness," says Roll. During psychic phenomena, the brain may be open to this broader reality.

The neurological reports on Tina are not yet complete, so Roll who spent nearly a week at the Resch home in Columbus cannot speak about her brain functions. But in Columbus and In Chapel Hill, he has informally observed her. "We are discovering that she's very sensitive to her environment. So she may have an underdeveloped access capacity," he says. By sensitive, he means the ability to pick up what others are thinking, know little details about their past, I and form impressions of objects hidden from view.

Most cases of recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis calm down in about two months, though they have been recorded from a single day to six years, Roll writes in "Poltergeists," Handbook of Parapsychology, edited by Benjamin Wolman, 1977. To hasten its end, Roll said Wednesday, Tina should "discover her emotions, including the unconscious ones." Recognition of her feelings, including the ones below the surface, will "take the sting away, take the negative force from emotions." Psychokinesis can occur with males and females aged 8 to the late 70s, but the most common age is 13-14, the tumultuous adolescent years of hormonal and psychological changes. Several years ago, Tina was having social problems in school. And her adoptive parents who at the time of this story did not wish' to be interviewed decided to have her tutored at home, says Roll. That situation never changed.

Her only outside diversion was a weekly Girl Scout meeting. Moreover, Roll says, she was missing chances to learn the social skills which teen-agers need to develop. MA major source of tension for her was her family situation," judges Roll. "She was spending too much time in the house with everyone. Everyone needed space around them, a freer life, to be less cooped up in the house." He characterizes Tina is "bubbly and joyous" in Chapel Hill.

"She's really Modest little germ triumphantly tackles a continent Ellen Goodman At Large mary. Now Brian, mind you, had a reputation for utter close-mouthedness. He wu a loner, you might say, a human isolation ward, and the entire chain of medical history might have ended here if it weren't for a particularly aggressive TV reporter assigned to Brian's candidate. In pursuit of a quote on Super Tuesday, Jane tried to press past Brian at the very moment when this modicum of restraint did something unprecedented in the history of the service: He sneezed all over her microphone. So It wu that precisely one week later, Jane wu just beginning to feel a little fullness in the nasal passages she sat at friend's table ia Boston.

She and her friend laughed. They poured two glasses of wine, They poured two more. One's wine glass got confused with the other's. One's germs leapt to the other. And that for the medical record, is the shaggy germ story of how I got such a miserable cold.

BOSTON No one knows where the germ had originally germinated, but It Is believed to have spent the summer of 1983 hibernating in Houston. By September, however, this particular germ was once again on the move, lodged in the throat of a small boy named Mike, who was entering the Houston school system. On the first day of the school year, Mike fell Into the care of a student teacher by the name of Allison, who spent the morning comforting the crying boy on the assumption that he wu emotionally upset Reconstructing the scenario today, we estimate that Allison kept the boy on her lap for a cumulative two hours during that Monday morning. But let me continue. Between that day and the following Tuesday, when Allison had developed cVtain ringing in her ears aad a stuffed nose, she had split a pizza with two of her roommates, SUy and Beth, breathed into the ear of her boyfriend Charles and shared the telephone with at feast six other students in her dormitory.

Beth, who wu only 19 and not yet what you would call Independent toon decided to take her sore throat home. On the plane back to Mom and Dallas, she sat in the non-smoking section next to Jeff, a wholesaler for a California health-food outlet who believed in vitamin and mind over matter. Jeff gave Beth a sample of ginseng tea, which came in bandy week later when Beth's mother wu laid low by a cold of known origin. As for Jeff, he later found himself in Chicago hotel functionally unable to work. For the first time since he had moved from Athens.

Ohio, to San Diego he was suffering from balloon-headedness and the realization that people will not buy health foods from a sick man. Soon Jeff disguised himself In a business suit and took the germs back to Saa Diego on an L-101 1 with precisely 256 other passengers. But at home things began to get out of hand. Jeff, running a fever of 102, opened the childproof aspirin bottle the only way it could be opened, with his teeth. The next teeth on that bottle belonged to Jeff's boss, Elizabeth, who wu at that time suffering only from a modest headache.

Elizabeth, whose nickname back There was an uncomfortable moment week or so later, when Peter's wife came into the office to discover that ail three of them shared the same symptoms. At that point since It wu almost Valentine's Day, Helen decided that it might be wise to go home to St Louis for a while, where she poured out her soul and her cold into wads of Kleenex which she left on the Uble belonging to b.T college roommate's husband, Thad. This man, by general acclamation, was healthy a horse and always kept his feet dry when it wu raining. But 10 days later, that same Thad kissed his wife good bye, poured some cough medicine down his throat, squeezed some decongestant up his nose, and took off for Washington to give a training session to the Secret Service men about to cover the presidential candidates. Because of a shortage of equipment the very sort of thing that Thad railed against la his annual memos, be wu forced to lend his ear receiver to an agent earned Brian, who wu soon to be assigned to the Massachusetts pri east wu Biffy.

wu an air-kisser. By now It wu almost Christmas, deeply into party season and soon Elizabeth wu kissing air all over southern California. Among those Inadvertently smacked wu the caterer, Toshihiro, who did these wonderful things with svocsio and sushi and wu In great demand all the way north to Los Angeles and San Frandsco. It wu bad enough that Toshi spread something besides wasabi oa the sushi which infected the entire state. Toshi also had dinner with his son, Peter, who worked la Silicon Vaiiey and wu hiving an affair with a computer programmer.

Helen. lilUt.il Uui COLOR.