Man Who Investigated Ghosts Tries to Become One…
April 27th, 2008
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In case you need any more reasons why these guys are loopy…
A well known self-professed psychic, spiritual healer and paranormalist was recently found dead, having hanged himself in his home in Blackfor, England. According to a news report:
A LEGENDARY healer and ghost hunter who helped thousands of women, men and children was found hanged on Monday afternoon.
Blackford resident Bill Harrison was thought to have [sic] hung himself in the shed at the bottom of the field on his land.
This was rather unexpected as he had a “workshop” scheduled for the near future and apparently showed no signs of considering suicide. Not to make lite of the suicide of anyone, but I can’t help but think that this is just another sign of how unstable and generally mentally unhealthy those who are involved in spiritual/paranormal activities often are. Apparently his “healing” was not enough to help himself deal with whatever demons were haunting him.
Bill Harrison was a “spiritual healer” in the UK who had gained quite a lot of attention for his “healing” sessions, his paranormal and ghost investigations and his trips to visit witch doctors in remote parts of the world. He apparently claimed to be a “psychic, clairvoyant, seer and healer” or something to that effect and had been successful enough to get some degree of media attention. Harrison had left a job in the fire department fifteen years ago to become a full time paranormalist.
Needless to say the guy was a bit unusual. He apparently had gathered some following and was known for selling “healing cards” and holding sessions for spiritual healing. Reportedly he stated this after he heard voices telling him to do so. According to his biographical page:
It was in 1983 that Bill first heard the voice that was to change his life forever. It led him to give up his career as a Fire Officer after 23 years of service, in order to dedicate his life to healing and helping others.
Aside from healing he had also been an advocate of the power of crop circles, spiritual photography and other paranormal topics. He was a regular on local television and radio shows. He had been cited as a medium of uncommon talent for communications with the beyond. He also advocated the use of photography and other psuedo-science in investigating hauntings.
BTW: The term for the past tense of “to hang” is not hung but rather “hanged” in circumstances where it refers to a hanging of a person as with a noose to cause death as a means of suicide or execution. As in “They hung the jackets on the wall.” versus “Saddam Hussein was hanged.”
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 27th, 2008 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Paranormal, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 27th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Well if his followers really buy into this stuff then I don’t see why they would cancel the healing sessions. He can still come and heal them. They won’t be able to get their photo taken with him though, unless you could a photo standing next to an orb or a smudge or something to be the same.
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April 27th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Otherwise healthy people do not generally commit suicide just out of the blue. It might happen occasionally when there is some kind of shock like an unexpected loss or something, but usually it’s something that happens from someone who has some very profound mental health issues which have been there for a while. It sounds like this guy did not seem reclusive or depressed enough to concern anyone right before this. If that’s the case he may have been unstable or bipolar or had some other issues going on.
I don’t know, but it’s not what I would wish on anyone. If he was a psychic healer who had left his job years ago and did all the things he is said to have been doing with ghosts and healing events then I think there’s good reason to think he probably was not playing with a full deck all along.
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April 27th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
“It was in 1983 that Bill first heard the Voice that was to change his life forever. It led him to give up his career as a Fire Officer after 23 years of service, in order to dedicate his life to healing and helping others.”
Hearing voices are considered by clinical psychiatry as an auditory hallucination and as a symptom of conditions such as schizophrenic disorders, manic depression and psychosis.
The Voice told him to give up a career (probably before he was pensionable), is it any surprise that the Voice would one day tell him to hang himself? Is it any surprise that he would do it?
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April 27th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Alternatively, he may have gotten better after a long bout of mental illness, and viewed that photo of himself in the teddy bear vest with sane eyes for the first time.
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April 27th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
DV82XL said:
I don’t know if the voice he heard is meant to be taken literally or not but it does seem that leaving to become a spiritual healer is not a very sane thing to do.
Being a firefighter can be a stressful job depending on where you are and what you happen to encounter you can end up seeing horrible tragedies and death and people you go to rescue but fail to save at the last moment. Plus you put your life at risk.
Maybe he just cracked and went loony?
I happen to know a couple fire fighters and they don’t seem to have much trouble with stress, but they’re in a small town so it might not be that they’ve faced much that bad.
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April 28th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
What gives any of you the right to judge someone you do not know. I had the honour to be one of Bill’s friends. He was niether loopy or mental. He was a genuine guy who gave selflessly to others and not purely for monetary reasons. There are few people that could achieve half of what he achieved in his short lifetime. If you cant say good about him, wish him well, with love and you never know you may surprise yourselves. There is a saying “you reap what you sow” if you say or do bad against others it will come back on you when you least expect it.
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April 28th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Browneyedgirl195 said:
I don’t know him personally, all we know is that he was a guy who had magic healing sessions and ghost hunts and witch doctory and so on. Perhaps he was a nice guy and actually believed that he was helping. I don’t actually know. All I know is that he dedicated the later part of his life to some really wacky and totally bunk stuff, such as energy healing, spiritual sessions, ghost hunting, crop circles etc etc etc.
I don’t know first hand. A lot of “nice” people have some really wacked out beliefs or spend their life chasing something which is ridiculous. And I’m not implying he would have been a psychopath or mean spirited or deranged or anything like that.
My sympathy at the loss of your friend and I’m sure he was a good friend and important to people in his life. I hope that at least this might make some people take a closer look at people who push this kind of thing and think twice before assuming that it is healthy.
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April 28th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
He never pushed anything on anyone, we all have freedom of choice. I believe in being non judgemental unless you know a person! You clearly do not know what you are talking about! You come across as a very narrow minded, judgemental type of person and I am glad I dont know you.
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April 28th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Browneyedgirl195 said:
I never knew Stalin or Hitler personally. All I really have to go on are other people’s accounts.
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April 28th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Like I said – we all have choices. This is one sick site that I will not be a part of. Dont believe what other people say! Be an adult, responsible for your own choices and if you cant say good a bout someone dont say anything at all. Bill is a better person in life or death than a lot of the people on here!
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April 28th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Browneyedgirl195 said:
Okay. Don’t let the revolving door smack you in the @$$ on the way out
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April 29th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Sorry about your friend. It sounds like he had problems though. People without major problems don’t just up and decide to hang themselves out of the blue.
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April 29th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Finrod said:
By the way, I’m not trying to imply that this bloke was of their ilk. I’m just saying that non-judgementalism on the grounds of not personally knowing the person you’d otherwise judge makes no sense. Lets face it… we all automatically assess people on the grounds of what information we have about them, whether we know them or not. In fact, it’s impossible to avoid doing so.
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April 30th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
If you’d had (as I did) the pleasure of meeting Bill then you would probably agree that he was one of the warmest, most down to earth people you’d ever come across. Not only was he a compassionate man and powerful healer, he also had the ability to make other people feel special. His healing weekends were wonderful events and far from ‘wacky’. He will be very sadly missed by the many many people who loved and admired him.
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May 1st, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Sorry about your friend, but mentally healthy people don’t commit suicide and generally they don’t chase ghosts either. I’m sure he was a good guy to his friends and everything and I’m not saying he was a bad person.
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May 2nd, 2008 at 1:37 am
I guess what people are really saying is that it’s unfortunate no one thought to counsel or seek help for the man, instead of bolstering his delusions by praising him for sharing them. Of course, if you’re prone to believing in the paranormal then it’s unlikely you’d consider mental illness a possibility and would rebel against anyone who so much as suggested it.
Of course, if you really believe in ghosts or an afterlife of any kind, then you presumably will not be sad for Bill since he hasn’t really left us, he’s just passed over.
As for not judging people you don’t know, Browneyedgirl195, you seem to have judged the people here pretty quickly. Do you know any of them any more than they knew your friend? See how it works? You disagree with their take on life and happily condemn them for it – which is pretty much what they are doing too. It cuts both ways.
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May 6th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
One day ESP and all that goes with will be scientifically recognised. Do not fall into the trap of classifying something you do not understand. Some people are born with high IQ and others with low IQ – if that can be grasped then it should be possible to understand that certain people are born with exceptional gifts.
If you can accept a brilliant artist or muscian why can you not accept a brilliant healer and clairvoyant?
Whatever your thoughts, Bill was one of the most loving and giving people I have ever met.
It is to be expected that people will snipe. He was no stranger to that. Consider that he was up against that attitude the entire time that he sought to assist other people.
Have some respect and now let him have the peace he sought.
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May 6th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
aegis said:
No, I understand it quite well. It’s not the same as IQ by a long shot. The difference is there is no doubt that human ability to solve problems exists. Some people are good at cognitive tasks. Some are better. Some are not as good at it.
On the other hand ESP just plain doesn’t exist. There’s no scale of the ability to predict events in the future or communicate by mind. It is the sa
me for all persons. Zero.
There is a huge difference. Art and Music exists. Noone can stare at a painting and make a credible argument that it is not there or make a credible argument that the air does not vibrate when a piano key is struck. Yes, you can argue the value of the music. That’s a judgment call. You can say that Rembrandt didn’t make worthwhile paintings. The art world would strongly disagree with that, but it’s ultimately not *provable* because it is a matter of aesthetics.
On the other hand you can measure a person’s ability to ‘heal’ through energy medicine or some other hogwash like that. We’ve established very good methods of measuring health using good placebo controls and extended studies and so on. We know the answer to this. The answer is that this stuff by all apparent experiments and research simply is not so.
He may have been a very good, loving person. He may have tried to help people. He may have believed that what he was doing helped. In that case it’s a shame the life of a good and decent person was cut short.
However, for hundreds of years there were many good, compassionate, concerned doctors who wanted nothing more than to help people and honestly believed that they were doing so when they would knick an artery to “let out the bad blood.” There were medics in the American Civil War who thought they were doing good when they cut off a limb with a dirty saw that had been used on other patients. They thought they were preventing an infection when they were really introducing much more pathogens to the body.
Regardless of how hard they tried or their honest efforts to help, their methods were flawed and their beliefs were just wrong. They did little good and possibly much harm. For this they are not bad people or selfish or uncompashionate. They were just terribly terribly wrong in what they thought was the way to help.
No, that day has passed. Back in the dark ages before human cognitive bias, selective memory and illusions were understood, ESP and all that goes with it were taken very seriously. These paranormal beliefs were simply assumed to be the case at all levels. But science advances and we have refined the tools of understanding. That is why the days are past.
To go over this further:
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=251
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May 7th, 2008 at 2:50 am
To drbuzz0 – Thank you for taking the time to respond to my comments.
I have read some of your profile here and some of your comments.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and yours is respected.
We rely on what is scientifically proofable to form the basis of what we consider a sane and rational understanding of ourselves, our environment and our achievements.
Off course there are a lot of charltans out there who take advantage of vulnerable people. There are people out there who are dillusional and suffering from mental health problems that they may not even be aware of and turn from conventional attitude to form there own ‘world view’. You only have to pick up a main stream magazine specialising in this area, turn to the back pages and look at the claims on some of the ads.
The new law that has/is coming into force is there to protect the public from these type of people.
However, that said, there are genuine people who have gifts that cannot be scientifically proven or readily understood with rationale. Are we simply to dismiss them all as bogus?
What about the concept of God, can you explain that in scientific terms?
What about Jesus, his life, his beliefs and the accounts of him healing people, performing miracles and predicting his own death?
I am a Christian as are many other people throughout the world. His religion has survived for over 2000 years. Other religions have been formed on the basis of exceptional people having an impact on their own societies. Who are we to be arrogant and say ‘ok – not scientifically proofable so it doesn’t exist’? We can have that view but should not feel superior enough to ram it down other peoples’ throats – live and let live.
Bill was a healer – this much is clearly evident to all the people he assisted. He had a special gift for enriching peoples’ lives and offering comfort were it was greatly needed. How he achieved this is not relevent. He never claimed to be anything ’special’. He was someone who believed strongly in what he did and dedicated his life in the pursuit of gaining knowledge in that area and passing it on to people who had the same belief system.
If he was here Bill would be the first one to say ‘question everything’. In a way he was one of the biggest sceptics going because he refused to take anything at ‘face value’. He was in a very valid position to have his opinion and beliefs.
We all create our own sense of reality whether we are aware of it or not.
You, by your own admission, are not a Doctor – does that not make you some kind of hypocrite? Are we all not hypocrites? Does what you ‘dabble’ in not have consequence too?
The mind is a fragile thing and emotion/thought process plays a big part.
Bill, like anyway else, was just as susceptible to these emotions and thought processes. It is unfair to judge him on the basis of being a healer, physchic, clairvoyent or follower in the spiritual belief. Ultimately, Bill was a man with feelings – I wish people would remember him for that as well.
For my own part, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that when Bill needed help who was there for him? A man that had helped so many selflessly in numerous ways and asked for nothing in return.
That is the question I find difficult to reconcile.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Bill was a selfless person. Like us all he had his beliefs. He questioned everything. He helped many and was always there for them. He was more than a friend to me. He was compassionate, caring and there when I needed him. Please, like Aegis said, lets just respect him for his beliefs and let him rest in peace. He didnt brainwash or make people share his beliefs. He just wanted to make the world a better place. I will always love and cherish the memories of a generous, warm hearted giving person. Bill may you rest in peace and I for one look forward to meeting you again in the “afterlife”.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Why should we respect him? Just because he believed strongly in what is patent B.S.? I don’t think so. He never earned my respect while he was alive – his death, while tragic to those who knew him, doesn’t elevate his status in my eyes, or make what he believed any more true.
One of the things that we are slowly getting over is that this sort of nonsense, be it metaphysical, or spiritual, just doesn’t automatically mean we all have to tiptoe around the fact that it is nonsense. There is no more free ride here – your beliefs held behind closed doors are your affair, the minute they are hung out in public they will be treated like any other idea and subject to the same criticisms. If you don’t like that – keep them to yourself.
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October 31st, 2009 at 4:47 am
”When I eventually found out about Bill I was so shocked! I was further Shocked upon reading into it further that Bill Harrison hung himself as to me Bill was of good and a strong Charactor, as he seemed to me ……
Yesterday (30th October 2009), I had my third shock re: My Friend Bill is that he hung himself over a young lady……… O Bill ……… PEACE TO YOU BILL IN THE SPIRITWORLD M8”
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June 12th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I came here….
It was no easy thing… I don’t even know if my message will be read..
I feel I have to let you to know…. Bill didn’t hang over a woman… he died for the love of a woman.
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