About Me (Rosemarie Pilkington)

Welcome to my little corner of the web!

I’ve been interested in psychic (“psi”) phenomena since childhood when I heard family stories of unexplained visions and strange happenings.  As a young adult, I immersed myself in articles, books, and journals on the subject and attended seminars and lectures sponsored by the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in Manhattan.

When I was 14 I met Jan (Yancy) Gericke who became my piano instructor, mentor, and “spiritual mother.”  Yancy, a very vital, unique person had had many psychic experiences but was rather frightened of them.  One incident she told me about concerned a friend who was a member of the ASPR and was genuinely interested in experimenting with psychic phenomena.  He persuaded Yancy to sit with him in a darkened room, their fingers touching a small table.  After sitting in silence for a time they were startled by a loud BANG that sounded and felt as though someone had hit the table hard from underneath. Unfortunately Yancy exited the room quickly and refused to sit again.

I had to set aside my interest while I was busy getting a BA in Music, a MS in Education, teaching school, giving music lessons, and raising a daughter, Elanor, from my first young short-lived marriage.  Around 1970 I got involved in opera production on Staten Island, where I live and had a wonderful two seasons working with conductor Vincent La Selva and performing with fine singers such as Henry Price, Catherine Malfitano and Olivia Stapp.

But then I met a fellow teacher who was psychically and psychokinetically gifted. I had the knowledge and he had the ability and the desire to advance himself through it.  He saw me as a way of achieving that and asked me to marry him.  I learned a great deal about the practical functioning of a psychic’s mind from living with him and was witness to some pretty cool psychokinesis.  

I also had many of my own psychic dreams and visions during this time.  In helping him to do research for a doctorate, I contacted and became acquainted with many of the world’s leading parapsychologists, many of whom encouraged me to get my own doctoral degree in psychology.

Under the mentorship of world-renowned psychologist and parapsychologist Stanley Krippner I earned a Ph.D. in Psychology (Consciousness Studies) from Saybrook Graduate Institute doing my dissertation on children’s ESP.  I presented the results of my experiment to the Parapsychological Association of which I am an Associate Member.

My desire was and is to impart what I’ve learned and experienced to others.  I’ve done this by teaching classes in parapsychology and alternative healing methods, by lecturing, and especially by writing.  I was a consulting editor for the newsletter “Mind and Medicine,” which was before its time and was not a financial success.  I wrote book reviews and articles for publications as varied as FATE magazine, The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, and The Journal of Scientific Exploration. 

MY BOOKS

I compiled and edited the anthology Men and Women of Parapsychology:  Personal Reflections, in 1987.  It consists of essays and interviews from leading parapsychologists eliciting why they had entered the field, what they felt was important, and so on.  The book was favorably reviewed and spawned several imitations by others.  It has been reissued as Esprit: Men and Women of Parapsychology, Personal Reflections, Volume 1 (2010) by Anomalist Books.  My follow-up, Men and Women of Parapsychology, Personal Reflections, Esprit, Volume 2 was published in 2013.  Both books received praise and are considered important additions to the parapsychological literature.

My favorite literary labor of love is my book, The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof: The Enigma of Séance Phenomena, published in 2006.  It’s the story of my friend Gilbert Roller’s experiences, with other teen-aged boys in the 1930s experimenting with séance phenomena and achieving some mind-boggling effects including levitations, seeming ectoplasmic manifestations, written messages, and psychic photography.  It also goes on to tie their experiments in with the classic séances of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, including those I call “secular” mediums.

MY FAMILY

My daughter, Elanor, passed away in 2006 after a long illness. I have two grandchildren, Amanda, who is the mother of Jordan; and Jeremy, whose two children are Christopher and Megan. So here I am a great-grandmother imparting what I have learned through experience, study and intuition to a new generation of seekers into the as yet unsolved mysteries of séance phenomena.