Double Interview: The paranormal research team of Nicholas A. Reiter and Lori Schillig

Together these Ohio researchers have authored an exciting new book that will soon-be-published for the first time. Entitled “The Bridges of Avalon: Science, Spirit, and the Quest for Unity,” this book will detail some of their most thought-provoking experiences and theories.

by Brent Raynes

Part 1 — Nicholas A. Reiter

Editor: When and how did you get interested and involved in this whole bewildering field of unexplained phenomena - from UFOs to haunted houses and such?

Reiter: My interest at an essential level dates back to my childhood. In kindergarten, I was prone to hogging up whole large sheets of drawing paper making pictures for the class of diamond shaped UFOs and aliens. By the time I was 11 or 12, the big UFO flap of 1973/1974 was upon us, and I was fascinated by it. I suppose I could go on and speculate as to why a kid of that age and that era was so fascinated with UFOs, but that would wander off. Needless to say, I was a boy space-cadet - dreaming of the day when my favorite science fiction could become real. I wanted a world full of future magic. I wanted to be able to leave this place and find my true Home planet! So in that sense, I guess my first love as a child was science of all sorts, but mainly space and space ships and the idea of UFOs being here from other worlds. From there, through my teen years, I became interested in ancient astronauts, Atlantis, ESP (I wanted to have some means of telepathically coercing girls into a date!), Bigfoot, and radionics. There was then about a ten to twelve year period where I let a lot of it slide - going to tech school, getting jobs, getting married and having three kids. But then, around the time my last son was born, life became mundane enough that I picked back up on my old passions - starting with two main areas of obsessive interest - UFO abductions and the life energy research of Wilhelm Reich. From there, it branched and turned and twisted into what we follow today!

Editor: How was it that you became so involved as a scientific researcher doing all the special studies you’ve done over the years - like your three part article we published awhile back in Alternate Perceptions about UFO-paranormal experiencers apparent sensitivity to strong magnets, how you constructed magnetic detection units for the homes of experiencers, and kept a record of anomalous readings/activations - plus your survelliance of “haunted” locations using devices that might help to detect and record unexplained or anomalous forces or energies. Can you explain some how you got involved in this and what sort of strategies you’ve been working on?

Reiter: In a very reduced sense it was pure passion and curiosity. I really have not done any experiments and research, either alone or with Lori, that many other folks haven’t done in their minds. The difference is I felt as though this was a mission - to NOT sit and read about it, but actually get up, get out, and MAKE new discoveries - contribute something real to the world in these fields. The fact that my “day job” has always been in technology or science, either electronics, photovoltaics, vacuum technology, or chemistry, is certanly a very large factor. The tools of the trade are always around me (instruments, scientific method, materials), so why not use them for our Quest? And frankly, the Quest for me is this: to explore the part of the world that has traditionally been the realm of the mysterious, the spiritual, or the “imaginal,” using the tools and methods of science, and to bring the resulting knowledge to the human race at large, freely and openly - like Prometheus handing out fire. The stratergy follows from that, and Lori and I have often likened it to a quest of knights errant. We have an objective, but every adventure along the way will send us down another forest path that in the end was part of the greater Quest anyway!  

Editor: Can you summarize what sort of results your field studies and experiments have yielded?

Reiter: Well, in the way of ghosts and haunts, I think our main contributions so far are: 1. That there is a multitude of phenomena that people have classically all attributed to spirits of the dead, but that in reality lie in areas such as psychokinesis, geo-physics, archetypes, “time energy,” and even the entities we and many others refer to as the Visitors. 2. In some cases, the energetic activity active in “haunts” does indeed produce physically measurable changes in the environment, such as subtle magnetic field distortions, areas of electrostatic charge, temperature inversions, barometric changes, and photographic anomalies. From these two primary claims, we have constructed a set of new and (we believe) useful theories that are novel in scope.

In other areas, we have used an electron microscope and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) to examine mystery residues from crop circles, abduction cases, and supposed crash retrievals. In the end, most have turned out to be pretty mundane. But a few are puzzlers - such as flourescent glassy micro-spheres from a crop circle.

I myself have considered gravity and time research to be part of what Lori and I have done in a greater sense, although this is also something I work on as part of another joint venture as well. We have seen anomalous low level weight and inertia changes in experiments using electrically charged hemispheres, or more recently, vibrating crystals of materials like quartz or sugar that have a helical molecular nature.

Editor: You and your associate Lori have written a book recently. Not yet published, but hopefully soon. I think it explores all of this weirdness and tries to develp a workable and logical set of theories for unexplained phenomena. Can you summarize for us your overall theories pertaining to the UFO-paranormal realms?

Reiter: That’s a real mouthful! If we were to say that we had one overall theory of strange phenomena, it would be one of total interconnectedness. In our book, “The Bridges of Avalon: Science, Spirit, and the Quest for Unity” we use this as the main metaphor. All of the topics are laid out with the theme of interconnected natures and aspects. We believe that UFOs and the Visitor phenomenon are one aspect of a great multi-level universe along with healing energy, ghosts, Time, and PSI. By examining all of these areas carefully, the commonalities can be found, and when followed, will lead to both a greater knowledge and a great wisdom. Maybe in the end, only Consciousness exists, and that all of the spiritual and mysterious phenomena we have chased are different expressions of pure Consciousness - at a universal level.

There have been only a handful of researchers who follow this theme of interconnectedness, bridging of phenomena without boundaries, or at least follow it with good published works to share with humanity! John Keel, Greg Little, the late Ivan Sanderson, Lloyd Aurbach, Jacques Vallee, are a few of our favorite picks. Maybe the ultimate goal of our Quest is to come up with that “Great Binding Theory.”

Editor: Have you ever had any personal experiences or brushes with unexplained phenomena yourself?

Reiter: Sadly, I have not had as many as I would have liked! I have seen, on a couple of occasions, nocturnal lights in the sky that I found hard to immediately write off. I may have seen the ghost of a family dog when I was a child. But I would have to say that the greatest on-going brush with the paranormal that I continue to experience are the wonders of the sometimes probability defying bizarre synchronicities and archetypes that have seemingly guided Lori and I down our mutual path. I have often joked to her that even if we find rational explanations for UFOs and ghosts, the high strangeness of archetypal synchronicity coming into your life to head you this way and that remains a great mystery for a lifetime. Worthy of a dozen books!

Editor: What do you hope for in the future for this kind of research and investigation?

Reiter: Speaking for Lori as well, I think we would like to focus more, if possible, on cases involving elements of UFO or the Visitors. Contacts/abductions and the Trickster. We also would love to be able to become more involved with earth mysteries and crypto-archaeology. In southeast Ohio, there is a fairly intense pocket of Bigfoot activity. Later this year, we hope to take some time and look at that. We would love to find some cases of claimed demonic activity too - to examine that first-hand from the perspectives of psychology and psi.

I myself will be continuing with gravity and time research, and as long as I have an SEM at my disposal, will hopefully continue to do analysis of more “crypto-artifacts”!

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For part 2 of this interview, with Lori Schillig, click here.