George Knapp was joined by clinical psychologist, Dr. Allan Botkin, who discussed how he created Induced After-Death Communication (IADC) therapy while counseling Vietnam veterans in his work at a Chicago area VA hospital. While IADCs, which seem to allow for communication with deceased loved ones, appear to be supernatural, Botkin stressed that he tries to avoid speculating on the nature and veracity of these experiences, since his focus is primarily on facilitating healing and recovery for his patients who are struggling with grief and trauma. "That's the only argument I really want to make: it works," he said, "it heals people to a degree that has not been even thought to be possible."
He explained that, after having great success with a treatment known as "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing," he began tweaking the technique in the hopes of improving its results. While working with a patient named Sam, who was a Vietnam veteran that had befriended an orphaned girl during the war and witnessed her gruesome death, Botkin tried this new form of therapy and was startled by the results. Toward the end of the session, "a big smile came over Sam's face" and, upon opening his eyes, he reported seeing and talking with the girl, now fully grown, as well as hugging her. The veteran marveled that he could feel the girls arms around him during the hug, which Botkin thought was some form of hallucination. This assessment soon changed when his other patients also began reporting similar ADC experiences as a result of the revised treatment.
Over the course of the evening, Botkin detailed a number of remarkable cases of IADC events that have been experienced by patients in his care. In one unique session, the subject opened his eyes after only five seconds, which made Botkin think the process hadn't worked. However, the man then detailed a lengthy ADC and thought that he'd had his eyes closed for two minutes. Another patient, who was traumatized from being a young child present at the assassination of Martin Luther King, claimed to have actually communicated with the slain civil rights leader during his IADC treatment. Botkin also told the story of a Vietnam vet who was communicating with his best friend that was killed during the war and was delighted to see, seated behind his departed companion, "all the rest of the guys in the company that had died."
Little People of North Carolina
In the first hour, Sky Ships over Cashiers website editor Mary Joyce talked about an ancient race of Little People who once lived in the North Carolina mountains. According to Cherokee lore, she said, when the tribe migrated to North Carolina long ago, they discovered "neatly tended vegetable gardens" throughout the area. The Native Americans subsequently discovered 'little people' emerging from "under the ground" at night and working on their gardens via the light of the moon. Lending credence to the reality of these tales, Joyce revealed that excavation projects in the region have unearthed tiny skeletons and, within an ancient burial mound, small tunnels were also discovered.