Abstract

In late summer 2001, we were invited by David Fontana and Montague Keen to join an investigation into what appeared to be a remarkably reliable and consistent case of post-mortem communication. The communication manifested through anomalous spelling suggestions made by a computer's spellchecker. During our technical investigation, we discovered a software bug that accounted for many of the reported phenomena, but did not entirely defuse the mystery. Rather, the questions to be answered became more subtle, and the research situation more complex. Although the initial hope of a straightforward survival case has been deflated, there remains an interesting case that reiterates and sharpens many of the questions posed by more familiar types of survival cases.

In this paper, we describe our methods and discoveries. We discuss the case's loose ends and characterise the assumptions that would be necessary to support a non-paranormal explanation. We also evaluate various paranormal interpretations, and consider the potential for a form of ITC involving computers in this way. We discuss the type of evidence that the ongoing research would need to produce in order to make the case for paranormality more compelling.

This paper was published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (JSPR), October 2005. The full paper is reproduced here as PDF, with kind permission of the JSPR.