Introduction

A Case History

I have utilized a question and answer/journal format for this book to provide a documentary account of our case. Among the interview participants are individuals who have experienced events usually equated with what is sometimes labeled the ‘supernatural’ or ‘miraculous.’

This book began to take shape after I read an article in Fortean Times magazine and traveled to rural Oklahoma for three days of interviews with Maxine Mc Wethy and her family. In recent years, they have been visited by newspaper, magazine and television reporters, among thousands of visitors who have interacted with ‘Michael,’ an unseen and all-knowing Spirit. The family’s first national television appearance was in the November 1995 ABC special “Ghosts, Mediums, Psychics: Put To The Test” and this footage also aired in the summer of 1996 on “20/20.”

For my part in this work, I offer you my usually spontaneous and candid responses to occurrences some would not find credible even if they, themselves, had been witnesses. The impressions I share with you encompass reporting, commentary, scholarship, research, criticism, teaching and whistle-blowing concerning all facets of contemporary life. Consider me your master of ceremonies for a startling odyssey into the unexplained as we find ourselves confronted by a day of expanded consciousness.

— Mark Russell Bell