Karlis Osis

Karlis Osis
Karlis Osis testing his stepdaughter in a psychokinesis experiment.
Born	Kārlis Osis December 26, 1917 Riga, Russian Empire
Died	December 26, 1997 (aged 80) USA
Nationality	Latvian
Fields	Parapsychology

Karlis Osis (26 December 1917 – 26 December 1997) was a Latvian-born parapsychologist who specialised in exploring deathbed phenomena and life after death.

Karlis' first research, conducted in the 1940s, was inspired by the work of William Fletcher Barrett, specifically his book, Death Bed Visions. In an attempt to build on Barrett's research, he and Erlendur Haraldsson conducted a four-year study whereby they sent out hundreds of questionnaires to doctors and nurses in both the US and northern India, asking them about their observations regarding dying patients. The results, covering 50,000 patients, showed that a large proportion reported their adult patients seeing visions just before death.

Their research highlighted differences between cultural experiences near death. They found that a person's religion greatly influenced what was seen and that this was most apparent when observing the differences between Indian and American experience where Indian patients were far more likely to see a personification of death than Americans.

He repeated this experiment again in 1976, this time investigating the effects high fevers, painkillers and diseases which specifically affect the brain, had on a patients reported experiences at the time of death. Despite the far smaller pool of data (the newer study involved just 877 doctors in the USA alone), Osis concluded to his satisfaction that what he called the "sick brain hypothesis" – that the decrease of brain activity was causally linked to near death experiences – did not stand up to scrutiny.

On being asked about the practical applications of his theories, Osis remarked that "One definite finding of the research is the diminishing fear of death".

In 1957, Osis became the director of the Parapsychology Foundation in New York, being elected as president in 1961. In 1962, he began working with the American Society for Psychical Research, work which continued for many years. In 1971, he and Haraldsson co-authored the book At the Hour of Death, describing the results of their research.

In the 1970s Osis conducted many out-of-body experience (OBE) experiments with the psychic Alex Tanous. For a series of these experiments he was asked whilst in an OBE state to try and identify coloured targets that were placed in remote locations. Osis reported that in 197 trials there were 114 hits. However, the controls to the experiments have been criticized and according to Susan Blackmore the final result was not particularly significant as 108 hits would be expected by chance. Blackmore noted that the results provide "no evidence for accurate perception in the OBE".