Teresa Hayden Stories
A Second Chance Life
I am happy to announce the publication of my psi fiction novel “A Second Chance Life,” available at http://www.thirdplacebooks.com/second-chance-life-teresa-hayden Twenty-six year-old Jude has had strange and deeply disturbing experiences since childhood: talking raccoons, prescient crows, and visions predicting the deaths of people he knows. Only an undemanding job, rock climbing, and a new girlfriend every few months can keep the weirdness at bay. He meets Sara, a grad student in counseling who has an intense interest in...
read moreTelepathy Goes to the Dogs
Telepathy: “The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas between minds by means other than the known senses.” (Stevenson, A. & Lindberg, C.A. (Eds.), (2010). New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd Edition). New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press, Inc.) Almost all dog owners believe that dogs have minds, and are not just machines driven by instinct. During the last century, academic psychologists have caught up with that conventional wisdom. The strict behaviorist theories of the 1920s-1960s ignored the mental determinants of...
read moreTime in the Desert: Memory Mirages
In my novel, A Second Chance Life, Sara is telling Jude about a dream she’d recently had: “I dreamt about the summer I drove across the desert from California to Utah, to my first job. In my dream I was me, now—well, maybe (in my forties), because Casey was with me. We were driving on a two-lane highway across the Nevada desert when we saw a young woman walking on the shoulder. We stopped to see if we could help her and it was me. Me, as a young woman, walking on the road.” Jude nodded, looking thoughtful. “But...
read moreHank: Death of a Dog
I had to put Hank down today. He was a rescued German shepherd. When I got him, the shelter said he was probably about 10 years old. I’d had him for two years. This morning, he couldn’t walk at all, not even drag himself with his front legs, the culmination of a slow loss of function in his hind end. He also refused to eat or drink, which was the sign for me to call the vet. The vet showed up at 1:00 this afternoon. She was sympathetic and efficient. I wore my Alpha Bitch tee shirt to call up the courage to be the one who makes...
read moreFeeling the Future
Just about everybody has had an intuition or a hunch or a “gut feeling” about a future event. But can we really feel the future? Some scientists are attempting to find out. I’ve decided to describe Daryl Bem’s Experiment 2 from his (2011) publication, Feeling the Future (see reference below). Dr. Bem, a respected research psychologist, magician, and debunker of ESP (psi) demonstrations, seems to me an ideal person to conduct research on hunches. Also, the procedure of the experiment is relatively simple, and the results are statistically...
read moreMagic, Science, and Psi
A magic show! Undergrads and grad students alike eagerly crammed the auditorium to see one of our psychology professors, Daryl Bem, present an hour of tricks, illusions, and sleight-of-hand. Bem, who had joined the Psychology faculty at Stanford in 1971, was a respected research scientist. And he proved to be a great showman. By the final curtain, I was ready to believe in magic. But Dr. Bem was not only a professional magician. He also debunked demonstrations of ESP (ExtraSensory Perception- today called “psi.”) For example, he appeared in...
read moreAnimal Prophecies
In the last post, I described the power animal, or guardian spirit, as a primary source of special powers and knowledge for the shaman. Often, these spirit beings assist in divination. Divination refers to acquiring knowledge (through nonordinary means) about something hidden (eg., the cause of an illness) or about the future (eg., the success of a hunting trip). (See Harner’s “The Way of the Shaman,” Harper & Row, 1990.) A prophesying power animal plays a role in my novel, “A Second Chance Life.” In the following scene, Jude tells his...
read moreSpirit Allies
In my novel “A Second Chance Life,” Sam, an Indian healer, has a dream involving his spirit ally (or guardian spirit): “That night, Cougar, Sam’s guardian spirit for the last several years, padded into his dreams, into the cabin. Sam lay on his side in the bunk, arms folded under his head, and watched the cat, belly brushing the floor, slink silently to the cot where Jude lay sprawled, a leg dangling over the side. The beast whuffed a bare toe, then glided to snuffle at Jude’s face, her whiskers twitching forward, the big cat’s way of...
read moreThe Feel of Real
In the late 1970’s, I was a psychology trainee on a psychiatric unit of a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. And I was scared. Patients talked nonsense, tried suicide, and shuffled aimlessly through the corridors looking downright miserable. They were medicated into submission and sometimes locked into restraints. I had no clue as to how to help them. But I was lucky to have Myron, one of the Aides, who took me under his wing. Myron was not afraid. He explained the therapies, the staff politics, and the stories of some of the patients. More...
read moreJourneys to the spirit world
In my short story “An Occurrence on Interstate Five,” Grandma ferries her dogs beyond ordinary reality through an ancient, amorphous space. Her journey has inexplicable consequences witnessed by several people. My tale is a variation on the classic ghost story theme, in which spirit beings create physical effects in the real world. But there’s a flip side to ghost stories: A person from the ordinary world enters the spirit realm. Visionaries, prophets, psychics and shamans are examples of people who claim to experience non-ordinary reality....
read more
