The "Psychic Ether" hypothesis

Listening to another podcast earlier and they were talking about the psychic ether hypothesis, then proceeded to say “this is now more commonly known as stone tape theory” (which is something which does fascinate me and something we intend to investigate soon).

The podcast in question was ‘Uncanny’ and as much as I think it’s excellent, the spotlight which Danny and the BBC have put back on the paranormal, I do find it to be a bit “showy” for my tastes, given Danny’s past as a writer, it’s unsurprising he has a flare for the flamboyant however, I do like the fact he has both a believer and a sceptic present and it was the sceptic on this episode which lead me to read up about Henry Habberley Price and his theories/hypotheses about hauntings, apparitions and the afterlife.

H.H.Price was a Welsh philosopher and parapsychologist active throughout the  20th Century, the hypothesis he had which we now know as ‘Stone Tape Theory‘ was actually called ‘Place Memories’ – a hypothesis he has whereby he posited that hauntings may be due to the fact memories could be lost from an individual’s mind, somehow attaching themselves to places and then later being picked up by another individual in the form of a hallucinations.

However, Price did come up with the other theory which was miss-cited in the episode, the hypothesis of the ‘Psychic Ether’. The idea behind the ‘Psychic Ether’ (PE) is that it is it’s own dimension which runs parallel to our own. The dimension exists between mental and ordinary matter, obscuring it from the view of most. Price posited that the PE consisted of images and ideas and that apparitions are memories of people and under the right conditions could be witnessed by others in the form of hallucination (much like his earlier ‘Place Memory’ hypothesis, which has developed in to what we now call ‘Stone Tape Theory’), Price also believed that the dream-like state of the afterlife exists in the Psychic Ether, alongside the memories and ideas of those who have passed.

Price’s hypotheses haven’t been forgotten since his death, obviously Place Memory has evolved in to Stone Tape Theory and the idea of the Psychic Ether has also continued to evolve. In 1979 Michael Grosso attempted to expand on Price’s work, stating “ego may become fragmented in the afterlife state and when ones wish’s and desires are played out may experience a transpersonal state akin to those experienced by the mystics”. In 1998 an article was published by Ralph Noyes (a very interesting person in his own right) attempting to reinvigorate Price’s ideas and update them using more modern parapsychology, Noyes proposed that the work of Price was actually alluding to a “psychosphere” which he went on to say was “a vast and complex cauldron of ideas, memories, volitions, desires and all the other furniture of conscious experience and unconscious mental functioning” (which is a very long winded way of saying he believed Price was citing a form of sleep paralysis in his hypotheses), moving in to the 21st Century, Gracia Fay Ellwood stated Price’s work showed “a posited level of reality consisting of persisting, dynamic images created by the mind and capable of being perceived by certain persons”.

Most parapsychologists don’t completely disagree with Price’s work, with the main negativity coming from religious quarters as his theory directly challenges the ideology of the monotheistic afterlife.

However you interpret Price’s work, the idea of a parallel universe to ours, consisting of the memories and ideas of other people is fascinating.