Cryptographic Cold Cases from Parapsychology
The British psychologist Robert Thouless wanted to transmit a cryptographic key from the afterlife after his death. This did not work, but at least some interesting crypto puzzles were created. Next Sunday I will give a lecture on this topic.
In 1948, the Briton Robert Thouless (1894-1984) launched an interesting experiment. He encrypted a message in a form that he believed could not be cracked and announced that after his death – if possible – he would transmit the key from the afterlife. If someone were to receive this key and were thus able to decode the text, it would be proven that there is life after death and that the dead can communicate with the living. One of the greatest sensations in the history of science would be perfect.
To be on the safe side, Thouless published two messages at once, which he had encrypted with two different keys – after all, one never knows what might be lost on the journey to the afterlife. When one of the two messages was promptly solved, he created a third. Thus, when Thouless died in 1984, he actually left behind two unsolved cryptograms and took the associated keys to his grave.
In the meantime, however, code breakers have solved both messages by this-worldly means. Incidentally, the two successful Thouless decipherers are readers of this blog: Jim Gillogly and Richard Bean.
Source: Gillogly
Quelle/Source: Bean
Lecture on Sunday
If you want to know more about Robert Thouless and his experiment, you should listen to the online lecture “Encrypted Life-after-Death Experiments of Robert Thouless”, which I will give together with Elonka Dunin, next Sunday at 6 pm (German time).
This presentation is organized by the ICCH group, for which I have already presented several times. As always, anyone interested can dial in for free. The dial-in link will not be published on the web for security reasons, but I will be happy to send it upon request.
The Wood Cryptogram
The three cryptograms published by Robert Thouless have been solved, but there are still open questions about this topic. Among them is a message encrypted in 1950 by the Briton T.E. Wood.
Wood, like Thouless, wanted to encrypt a text and transmit the key from the afterlife after his death. Since his demise in 1972, 50 years have passed without this having worked. Since also numerous code breakers could achieve nothing so far, Woods cryptogram is still unsolved.
As you can see in the following figure, Wood’s cryptogram consists of only 21 letters:
Quelle/Source: Schmeh
The encryption method Wood used is the same one Thouless used for his second message:
Quelle/Source: Schmeh
The key is a text, each word of which is converted into a number. The resulting numbers are added to the plaintext, similar to the One Time Pad. Perhaps a reader will eventually manage to crack this cryptographic cold case.
The Tribbe cryptograms
In 1980, Frank Tribbe and Clarissa Mulders, members of the “Survival Research Foundation,” wrote an article asking their readers to also create cryptograms and channel the keys after death. The two also asked that the encrypted texts be sent to the Survival Research Foundation for archiving.
I do not know how many encrypted messages were received by the organization. What is clear, however, is that these messages would be extremely interesting to today’s code breakers.
Obviously, the Survival Research Foundation no longer exists. I don’t know what happened to the cryptograms, if Tribbe’s and Mulders’ readers sent any in. If any readers here can help, I would be very interested.
Arthur Berger’s experiment
As I reported last year, a certain Arthur Berger also conducted a Thouless-type experiment. Like everyone who started such an endeavor, Berger had to consider what encryption method he was using. He decided to use a kind of book cipher. The basis was a dictionary, which (unlike the usual book ciphers) did not have to be kept secret. What was secret, however, was the word Berger selected from this dictionary. This word was the key which he wanted to transmit from the beyond. More details can be found in the article linked above.
Unfortunately, I do not know which dictionary Berger used and what the encoded text was. This information is available in the literature source “Berger, A.S. (1990). Tests for communication with the dead. In G. Doore (Ed.), What survives? (pp. 51-60). Tarcher.” which, unfortunately, I do not have on hand. Can a reader here be of further help?
My own experiment
Also unsolved is a cryptogram I made myself ten years ago. Here are the details of it. Like Thouless, I have resolved to transfer the key from the afterlife after my death, if that should be possible for me.
Quelle/Source: Schmeh
In the meantime, my readers are welcome to try to crack the message without my help. I hope they will not succeed.
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Further reading: A crypto mystery from 1948
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