Ghosts - research, evidence, and discussion.
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Features Archive:

2012 Archive:
 LIVE from Oddfest 2012
December 18, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Zombie Advocate Greg Lawson
December 11, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

The Real Exorcist Case with Thomas B. Allen
November 27, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Embracing the Joy of Ghost Hunting by Deonna Kelli Sayed
November 28, 2012


LIVE from the Haunted Stanley Hotel
November 20, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Animal Mutilations and ETs with Chuck Zukowski
November 13, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

The Origins of the Devil with Corvis Nocturnum
November 6, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

LIVE From Wareham's Haunted History Night
October 30, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Real Halloween Ghost Stories -- Part One
October 26, 2012


LIVE from the Central Texas Paranormal Conference
October 16, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Chasing Spirits with Nick Groff
October 2, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Real Wolfmen with Linda Godfrey
September 25, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Trekking the Ghost Frontier: Challenges and Opportunities by Deonna Kelli Sayed
September 21, 2012


Your Cryptid Encounters
September 4, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Lost Technology from the Great Pyramids with Steven Myers
August 28, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Harassing Spirits by Sharon Schindlbeck
August 27, 2012


Black Eyed Kids with David Weatherly
August 21, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

LIVE From the 3rd Annual Michigan ParaCon
August 14, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Time Slips
August 7, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

LIVE from Eastern State Penitentiary: Scared Straight
July 31, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Top Five Cornish Haunted Locations by Mark Porter
July 31, 2012


U.S. Civil War Ghosts with Mark Nesbitt
July 24, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Haunted Objects with Christopher Balzano and Tim Weisberg
July 17, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

The Paranormal Vatican with Gary Jansen
July 10, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Fact or Faked's Ben Hansen by Jennifer Hitt
June 27, 2012


Mission #100 Special
June 26, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Phone Calls from the Dead with Cal Cooper
June 19, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

The Real Dracula with Dave Schrader
June 12, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

A Supernatural Life: Richard T. Crowe by Ursula Bielski
June 11, 2012


All I Have is My Word by Angela Ward
June 6, 2012


What If the Government Disclosed E.T.s Are Real?
June 5, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Paranormal and the Law with Psychic Lawyer Mark Anthony
May 22, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Guidelines to Presenting Paranormal Evidence by Nick Ferra
May 18, 2012


Your Paranormal Encounters - 3 Year Anniversary Special
May 15, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Crop Circles with Patty Greer
May 8, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

After Death Communication with Gary Galka
May 1, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Living Legend Series: Troy Taylor
April 25, 2012


LIVE From Ohio State Reformatory
April 24, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Growing Up Psychic with Chip Coffey
April 17, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Residual Haunts or Paranormal Time Reflections?
April 13, 2012


The Union Screaming House with Steven LaChance
April 10, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

LIVE from the Phenomenology Conference in Gettysburg
April 3, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Bide One's Time: Life After Death? By Debra Prosser
March 31, 2012

Column - regular feature

Time Travel with Von Braschler
March 27, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Extraterrestrial Contact with Stan Romanek
March 20, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Hauntings at Fado: Irish Pubs, Ghosts, and Weird Chicago
March 16, 2012


Getting Psychic with John Holland
March 13, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

SPIRICOM with Thomas Pratt of MetaScience
February 28, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Farewell, Grant Wilson
February 24, 2012


Alien Abductions
February 21, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim with Scott Roberts
February 14, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Induced After Death Therapy: An Interview With April Slaughter
February 2, 2012


The Ghosts of Ohio with John Kachuba
January 31, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Pendulum Dowsing Study
January 25, 2012


Ghost Research: Science or Spiritual? With Dustin Pari
January 24, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Paranormal Pastoring: Part 2 by Reverend Sherrie James
January 11, 2012


The Patterson Bigfoot Film with Jeff Hilling
January 10, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast

Your Ghost Encounters
January 3, 2012

30 Odd Minutes - webcast



February 2, 2012

Induced After Death Therapy: An Interview With April Slaughter


Interview by Deonna Kelli Sayed

April Slaughter is one of the few paranormal researchers working with a psychotherapy treatment used to help individuals recover from severe grief and trauma. The treatment, Induced After Death Therapy (IADC), provides intriguing insights into the nature of grief, the mind, and how we may be able to access different elements of our consciousness. Ms. Slaughter shares her insights about what this compelling therapy means -- or not -- for serious paranormal investigators.

April Slaughter
What is IADC therapy? (Induced After Death Therapy)

IADC is a technique used in psychotherapy to help patients face, process, and recover from severe grief and trauma. Those who have undergone the procedure report seeing and conversing with the spirits of their deceased loved ones, which results in a drastic reduction and/or complete elimination of their associated grief. This technique was discovered and perfected by Dr. Allan Botkin during his many years of work with Vietnam Veterans in Chicago, Illinois.

Many readers may know very little about this. Can you briefly explain what happens during these sessions?

Typically, three sessions with an IADC trained psychotherapist are scheduled. During the first session, grief the patient is experiencing is discussed before Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is administered. It has been shown that EMDR quickly and effectively uncovers the 'core-sadness' the individual is grappling with, briefly accelerating the emotion, and then decreasing it dramatically.

The second session is when the IADC experience occurs. EMDR, in a particular sequence, is administered again. This assists the patient in connecting with what they believe to be the spirit of the individual(s) they are grieving. It is not hypnosis. The patient is in a relaxed state, but remains fully conscious.

Patients often report seeing, hearing, and even touching those they felt they've lost, helping them to resolve any 'unfinished business' and to move past their grief. These experiences last anywhere from just a few seconds to several minutes and cannot be predicted or controlled by either the therapist or the patient.

During the third session, the patient returns to discuss their experience and to address any issues still outstanding with their therapist. If need be, the experience can be induced again to resolve any remaining grief associated with the deceased.

It seems that the emphasis is on the emotional experience rather than the need to believe the experience is actually real. Can you elaborate?

The IADC experience is unique to every individual who undergoes the procedure. The patient is (except in rare cases and circumstances) the only individual to perceive the event. Trained therapists agree that while it seems to help their patients process their grief, they cannot claim that they are actually speaking to the dead. IADC is a therapeutic technique, not a way to prove the existence of life after death.

Dr. Botkin, who developed IADC therapy, suggests that this does not endorse a spiritual experience. However, what are your own personal conclusions?

Being that I am a 'believer' in life after death, and the ability to connect and communicate with those we love on the other side, it is natural for me to believe that IADCs are not only possible, but actually do occur. Being an entirely internal and personal experience, an IADC cannot be viewed as proof of anything to anyone external to the patient. I myself have undergone the procedure with overwhelming success, having seen and spoken to three individuals who have passed on. The experience was real to me, and is real to the thousands of patients who have undergone IADC therapy. That is all that is important.

This technique did not originate from within the paranormal community but how may it impact our research?

The paranormal community is often sharply divided into two groups of people: those who want to prove the existence of life after death and those who want to disprove it. I do not believe I belong to either of these groups. Instead, my goal is - and has always been - to validate my own personal beliefs, and not to convince anyone else that paranormal experiences are authentic. Every individual is uniquely motivated to pursue answers about the other side. We are hardwired to be curious, but we are also hardwired to doubt that which seemingly cannot be scientifically proven. Perhaps the information and emotional fulfillment stemming from IADC experiences will inspire people within the community to realize that there are greater implications to being 'connected' than capturing the next great 'ghost' photo or disembodied voice. There is a bigger picture to view; it's just a matter of opening your eyes and being willing to see it.

What is appealing to you about IADC, considering your own research deals with the "unseen" rather than just emotional healing (although I know there can be links between the two)? Or, I suppose another way of to look at this question is how many paranormal experiences do point to the need for the witness/recipient to heal or treat it as a metaphysical experience?

The IADC experience intrigues me because it doesn't seem to matter what the religious and/or spiritual beliefs of the patient are when undergoing the procedure. The results are the same. These people are reconnected to and healed by those who have loved them and passed on, regardless of whether or not they believed they still existed in whatever form. Those of us who actively seek out answers about the afterlife are most often driven by the desire to 'know' that all is not lost. We can put up this front that 'ghost hunting' is just a fun way to spend a night in the dark, but in my opinion, there is an underlying desire in all of us to be connected. We spend far too much of our time preoccupied with what equipment we can buy and use to measure something that I truly believe you can only accurately gauge by using the internal instincts you were born with. IADC experiences happen when you are in the right frame of mind to receive them. By constantly being pre-occupied with the notion of proof, we ignore the signs and positive implications these experiences can provide to us.


Do you feel it is important to distance some paranormal aspects from IADC research to honor objectivity and to make it easier for the scientific/psychological community to embrace it as a type of treatment?

IADCs are designed to help patients come to terms with their grief, to attain peace, and to live their lives in a better state of emotional health. It was not designed as a parlor trick, or as entertainment for those in search of a ghostly thrill. A dividing line between your average paranormal investigation and the IADC experience is necessary here in that this is a purely personal and therapeutic experience, the gravity of which can impact your life on much deeper levels than anything you experience ghost hunting.

Finally, what does IADC mean for those of us doing "ghost work"?

Again, I don't know that IADCs are necessarily relevant to every paranormal investigator/researcher with relation to their goals.

You recently stated on your social networking sites that these experiences are rarely negative, if ever. That contradicts the cliched language that ghostly events are creepy or weird. What can we do to better educate ghost hunters, researchers, and the general public about this research dynamic?

There has never, in the thousands of documented cases, been an instance where the patient encountered anything negative in nature during an IADC, even if they had some preconceived notion that they might. This is interesting to me because those who would claim it is 'all in our heads' might have a tough time explaining how someone overcome with worry or fear would walk away from an IADC uplifted and healed rather than frightened or emotionally hurt in some way.

All we can do to better our understanding of the 'unseen' environment that constantly surrounds us is to approach it with an open mind, a desire to learn, and the willingness to let go of everything we were taught the afterlife is or isn't.

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. ~Roald Dahl




April Slaughter is a longtime paranormal researcher, author and journalist from Dallas, Texas. She is the Executive Director of The Paranormal Source, Inc. (a non-profit research and education corporation) and is a leading researcher of EVP-ITC phenomena. For more information about April and her ongoing research, visit her official website .




2014 Haunted New England Wall Calendar by Jeff Belanger photography by Frank Grace
Check out the 2014 Haunted New England wall calendar by Jeff Belanger and photography by Frank Grace!


Paranormal Conferences and Lectures
Don't miss the following events and lectures:

Jeff Belanger and “The Bridgewater Triangle” at Dedham Community Theatre - April 6, 2014 9:00PM

The Spirits of the Mark Twain House - Hartford, Connecticut - April 12, 2014

Paracon Australia - East Maitland, New South Wales, Australia - May 10-12, 2014