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The Other Side
The Other Side is a book written by Bishop James Pike with Diane Kennedy about his experiences of paranormal phenomena following his son's death by drug overdose in New York in 1966. The book was published by Doubleday and Co. Inc., Garden City, NY, in 1968 and in paperback, Dell Publishing, NY, 1969.
Pike, an Episcopalian, was the fifth Bishop of California. When poltergeist activity following his son's death mounted up, he led a public (and for the church, embarrassing) pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods of contacting his deceased son in order to reconcile. In September 1967, Pike participated in a televised séance with his dead son through the medium, Arthur Ford, who served at the time as a Disciples of Christ minister. Pike described these experiences in detail in the book.
Pike, an Episcopalian, was the fifth Bishop of California. When poltergeist activity following his son's death mounted up, he led a public (and for the church, embarrassing) pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods of contacting his deceased son in order to reconcile. In September 1967, Pike participated in a televised séance with his dead son through the medium, Arthur Ford, who served at the time as a Disciples of Christ minister. Pike described these experiences in detail in the book.
- GenresParanormalNonfiction
385 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
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February 17, 2017
It would be very easy dismiss The Other Side as the sad and self-deceiving apologia of a man bereaved of his son and bereft of his faith. It is also tempting to draw a facile parallel between Pike's apparent loss of his religious and intellectual bearings and his lonely accidental death in the Judean Desert a few months after this book came out (described in a book by his widow, reviewed by me here).
However, the author makes some effort to forestall criticism of his exploration of supposed evidence for life after death so soon after the suicide of his son. He is keen to demonstrate that he is self-reflective and that he has not lost his critical faculties, and he appreciates the irony of his new interest, recalling a quip he made following the furore over his televised séance with the medium Arthur Ford: "Having been under a cloud for believing too little, it's at least a change to be faulted for believing too much." Pike devotes some length to thinking through possible rational explanations for his experiences, but he similarly urges his readers not to reject accounts of paranormal phenomena out-of-hand.
Pike is also clear that he retains his distance from Spiritualism as a religion:
This 1937 report puts Pike’s explorations 30 years later into a less exotic context, and perhaps makes it less incongruous that Canon J. D. Pearce-Higgins of Southwark Cathedral advised him to "sit down with another person, take an inverted wineglass and place it on a smooth surface, cut out pieces of paper with one letter of the alphabet on each and place in a semicircle around the edge of the table... and see what happens". Pearce-Higgins and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, also brought Pike into contact with his first medium, Mrs Ena Twigg (although not mentioned, Stockwood also provided a foreword to Twigg’s memoir).
Pike turned to Pearce-Higgins for advice after experiencing poltergeist phenomena following his son's death, some of which, he says, was also witnessed by his chaplain David Barr (oddly misspelt "David Baar" in the British edition). In his opinion, his sessions with mediums brought forth information that could only have been the result of an implausibly elaborate hoax, some kind of ESP, or genuine contact with the dead. But can this be taken at face value?
On the one hand, Pike presents himself as an uncompromising "tell it as it is" figure – there's an amusing anecdote in the book about how he had given a Christmas Day sermon in Nazareth in which he had expressed his view that the town was Jesus's birthplace, to the puzzlement of his congregation. But on the other, Pike glosses over his relationship with his "secretary", Maren Hackett Bergrud, who was actually his lover, and although her own suicide is also an important part of the story, he leaves out the discreditable detail that he had tried to conceal the fact that she had died in his apartment by moving her body. The book was also written in collaboration with the woman who became his next wife, and who has since gone on to have a long career as an esoteric teacher. Might some "artistic licence" have slipped in?
One early paranormal experience was that Bergrud apparently awoke to find that part of her fringe (or "bangs", in Pike's American parlance) had been burnt away during the night, and Pike recalled his son had expressed a dislike of her hairstyle. But given her subsequent suicide, it seems very reasonable to suppose that this was a form of self-harm or attention-seeking by someone who was mentally troubled. It seems a likely bet that she arranged the various phenomena that occurred in Pike's apartment in Cambridge, UK, and Pike's lack of candour about his relationship with Bergrud obscures important context here.
Further, we also now know that Arthur Ford kept an extensive file on Pike’s background, which he used to concoct evidence of communication. An early encounter with Twigg in which Paul Tillich "seemed to" come through (Pike is careful to hedge throughout), complete with German accent, reads particularly ludicrously.
Many people are bereaved suddenly and traumatically every day, yet the kind of phenomena Pike claims to have experienced are not usually present; while mediumship in its modern form has been around for decades, yet the dead have failed to convey anything that has advanced science or historical understanding. Pike does not acknowledge either problem. However, Pike was writing at a time when the notion of parapsychology seemed to be offering a scientific way to think about what had been formerly known as "magic and the occult", and there was a booming genre in books such as Allen Spraggett’s The Unexplained, for which Pike provided a foreword. Pike's open mind at the time was not in itself foolish.
The book also has some details about Pike's other interests and activities, as they affected or interrupted his exploration of the paranormal. These include his writing projects (perhaps plugged more often than is strictly necessary); his fatal interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls (travelling to Manchester to talk with John Allegro, on Yigael Yadin’s recommendation); and visits to Malawi and to Matabeleland in Rhodesia (in the latter instance at the urging of Kevin Skelton and John A. T. Robinson; he was briefly detained by the Ian Smith regime and then deported to Kenya). A constant distraction is the Episcopal Church’s consideration of whether he should be tried for heresy over his liberal religious views; the matter was resolved just before he went public with his paranormal experiences.
The American edition's Foreword includes a reference to "all who have thus shared of themselves – especially my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Phil Dick, Ann Borg and Michael Hackett", which for some reason is absent from the UK edition. This is of some interest: Mrs Dick was Nancy Hackett, the step-daughter of Maren Hackett Bergrud, and Phil Dick was the author Philip K. Dick. Pike relates that Maren had taken notes at a séance with George Daisley in 1966, although some other sources suggest that the notetakers were actually Nancy Hackett and Dick. Other works also report that Dick later came to believe that he had been in contact with Pike via a séance. Dick’s novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is famously based on Pike – and, like The Other Side, it proved to be a final work before its author’s premature demise.
However, the author makes some effort to forestall criticism of his exploration of supposed evidence for life after death so soon after the suicide of his son. He is keen to demonstrate that he is self-reflective and that he has not lost his critical faculties, and he appreciates the irony of his new interest, recalling a quip he made following the furore over his televised séance with the medium Arthur Ford: "Having been under a cloud for believing too little, it's at least a change to be faulted for believing too much." Pike devotes some length to thinking through possible rational explanations for his experiences, but he similarly urges his readers not to reject accounts of paranormal phenomena out-of-hand.
Pike is also clear that he retains his distance from Spiritualism as a religion:
The caution which the scriptural passages cited above [Deut 18:9 and Isa 8.19] present against seeking ultimate truth through mediums is, therefore, an important one, I feel. It is for that reason I could never make an -ism of all this... I could never put at the center of my belief and life communication with any finite being.Pike refers to the Church of England’s 1937 Report into Spiritualism, which, perhaps surprisingly, took a similar perspective rather than issuing an outright condemnation of what Christians have usually regarded as "necromancy" and forbidden occult practices.
This 1937 report puts Pike’s explorations 30 years later into a less exotic context, and perhaps makes it less incongruous that Canon J. D. Pearce-Higgins of Southwark Cathedral advised him to "sit down with another person, take an inverted wineglass and place it on a smooth surface, cut out pieces of paper with one letter of the alphabet on each and place in a semicircle around the edge of the table... and see what happens". Pearce-Higgins and the Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, also brought Pike into contact with his first medium, Mrs Ena Twigg (although not mentioned, Stockwood also provided a foreword to Twigg’s memoir).
Pike turned to Pearce-Higgins for advice after experiencing poltergeist phenomena following his son's death, some of which, he says, was also witnessed by his chaplain David Barr (oddly misspelt "David Baar" in the British edition). In his opinion, his sessions with mediums brought forth information that could only have been the result of an implausibly elaborate hoax, some kind of ESP, or genuine contact with the dead. But can this be taken at face value?
On the one hand, Pike presents himself as an uncompromising "tell it as it is" figure – there's an amusing anecdote in the book about how he had given a Christmas Day sermon in Nazareth in which he had expressed his view that the town was Jesus's birthplace, to the puzzlement of his congregation. But on the other, Pike glosses over his relationship with his "secretary", Maren Hackett Bergrud, who was actually his lover, and although her own suicide is also an important part of the story, he leaves out the discreditable detail that he had tried to conceal the fact that she had died in his apartment by moving her body. The book was also written in collaboration with the woman who became his next wife, and who has since gone on to have a long career as an esoteric teacher. Might some "artistic licence" have slipped in?
One early paranormal experience was that Bergrud apparently awoke to find that part of her fringe (or "bangs", in Pike's American parlance) had been burnt away during the night, and Pike recalled his son had expressed a dislike of her hairstyle. But given her subsequent suicide, it seems very reasonable to suppose that this was a form of self-harm or attention-seeking by someone who was mentally troubled. It seems a likely bet that she arranged the various phenomena that occurred in Pike's apartment in Cambridge, UK, and Pike's lack of candour about his relationship with Bergrud obscures important context here.
Further, we also now know that Arthur Ford kept an extensive file on Pike’s background, which he used to concoct evidence of communication. An early encounter with Twigg in which Paul Tillich "seemed to" come through (Pike is careful to hedge throughout), complete with German accent, reads particularly ludicrously.
Many people are bereaved suddenly and traumatically every day, yet the kind of phenomena Pike claims to have experienced are not usually present; while mediumship in its modern form has been around for decades, yet the dead have failed to convey anything that has advanced science or historical understanding. Pike does not acknowledge either problem. However, Pike was writing at a time when the notion of parapsychology seemed to be offering a scientific way to think about what had been formerly known as "magic and the occult", and there was a booming genre in books such as Allen Spraggett’s The Unexplained, for which Pike provided a foreword. Pike's open mind at the time was not in itself foolish.
The book also has some details about Pike's other interests and activities, as they affected or interrupted his exploration of the paranormal. These include his writing projects (perhaps plugged more often than is strictly necessary); his fatal interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls (travelling to Manchester to talk with John Allegro, on Yigael Yadin’s recommendation); and visits to Malawi and to Matabeleland in Rhodesia (in the latter instance at the urging of Kevin Skelton and John A. T. Robinson; he was briefly detained by the Ian Smith regime and then deported to Kenya). A constant distraction is the Episcopal Church’s consideration of whether he should be tried for heresy over his liberal religious views; the matter was resolved just before he went public with his paranormal experiences.
The American edition's Foreword includes a reference to "all who have thus shared of themselves – especially my good friends Mr. and Mrs. Phil Dick, Ann Borg and Michael Hackett", which for some reason is absent from the UK edition. This is of some interest: Mrs Dick was Nancy Hackett, the step-daughter of Maren Hackett Bergrud, and Phil Dick was the author Philip K. Dick. Pike relates that Maren had taken notes at a séance with George Daisley in 1966, although some other sources suggest that the notetakers were actually Nancy Hackett and Dick. Other works also report that Dick later came to believe that he had been in contact with Pike via a séance. Dick’s novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is famously based on Pike – and, like The Other Side, it proved to be a final work before its author’s premature demise.
September 20, 2017
A really great book about life after death. Very believable.
October 2, 2025
I remember seeing this book in my mum’s room when I was young and the cover (of an insubstantial woman standing in front of a grave) disturbed me greatly. 50 years later I still don’t like looking at it but having read the book the terror of the book has dissolved. I’ll be honest. It was a long and at times boring read. The first bit is about his last few months with his son. Bishop Pike was not your conventional priest. He was being charged for heresy by the church as he didn’t believe in life after death, the trinity, the virgin birth .. which makes me wonder why he was even in the church. His son was on hallucinogens regularly and suddenly took his own life in a hotel room when things appeared to be getting better for him. We never find out the ins and outs of his death - how and what and why but it is suggested that his spirit reveals the details to his father (not shared for legal reasons I would assume). After his death the father starts experiencing poltergeist activity in the presence of 2 other church officers. Not things hurled around but arrangements of books and items in his apartment. Burning of the bangs of the female flat mate (though she had depression and also eventually took her own life). He started seeing mediums as he felt his son wanted to get in touch. Eventually one of these seances was televised and he was the brunt of sensationalist attention. The medium was also a church man (all this blows my mind but this was the 70s when maybe they were more open to things like that). The last few chapters are interesting but heavy going because after the chapters of seances (not as interesting as you would think as the messages are often garbled and not clear or rambling and he often goes on and on to convince you he is being totally impartial and critical ) he deals with all the arguments against his psychic experiences. He believed it was his son communicating with him and it is clear he is using his legal training to dismantle all possible arguments against his method and conclusion. At the end of the book I was undecided as to how much of it was manifested due to the grief of a parent or actual demonic interference or was actually his son. Some of what his son told him of his “life” after death was disturbing for someone like me brought up in the church - the people who have passed over talk of Jesus but he is a seer, not a saviour. Life after death seems to be a process of learning and growing. I am wondering if TJ Klune read this before writing under the whispering door as the whole experience seemed so similar. Bishop Pike died mysteriously in the Israeli desert after this book was published and I’m not sure how well received it would be in the church today or even generally. I found it long and quite boring at times but I think if you approach it as a treatise like his other books you might be more sympathetic.
July 31, 2020
I first ran across the name of Bishop James A Pike in relationship to Philip K Dick; The main character in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is based on Pike's experiences (maybe not so much his character - It's been a while since I read Transmigration). I also saw a copy of a document mentioning Pike's death, with the words "Good riddance!" scribbled on it.
Pike was a controversial character, and the paranormal events leading up to, and occurring after, his son commits suicide, are noteworthy. Pike attends several seances, which provide information that is both deep and obscure. As he mentions, if this wasn't the real thing, then whoever gathered up the information should work for the CIA. (In light of the comment above, maybe they did?)
Pike was a controversial character, and the paranormal events leading up to, and occurring after, his son commits suicide, are noteworthy. Pike attends several seances, which provide information that is both deep and obscure. As he mentions, if this wasn't the real thing, then whoever gathered up the information should work for the CIA. (In light of the comment above, maybe they did?)
January 29, 2025
This story is so wild. I picked this book up several years ago after reading The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which is based loosely on the story of Pike's death, but it took me a while to get around to reading it. I felt sharp empathy for Pike's grief for his son, which pervaded this account from start to finish. I couldn't help but continuously jump ahead in my mind to the events that followed the publication of this book: his increasing focus on the paranormal, his expulsion from the church, his search for answers that led to his death in the deserts of Israel. I can completely see why Dick found him a compelling figure; I did too.
March 28, 2020
A fascinating read: a subject usually treated in a sensationalist manner is instead recounted with a calm, almost academic style. Bishop Pike went through the trauma of his son’s suicide and then the experience of paranormal phenomenon – contact by his son’s spirit via telekinesis and séances – while facing heresy charges from his church, all the while presenting a public “stiff upper lip” image. But then, Pike was a master of public relations.
However, from this book it’s clear that Pike was sincere in his belief that his son was contacting him, and that spiritualism was a valid phenomenon. That presented him with a bit of a problem. Pike always had the socially right enemies: the segregationists and fundamentalists anathema to mid twentieth century liberalism. While conversing with the dead drew criticism from some on the religious right, who believed these spirits were probably demonic in origin, religious liberals were embarrassed by one of their own seeming to take the supernatural seriously.
However, from this book it’s clear that Pike was sincere in his belief that his son was contacting him, and that spiritualism was a valid phenomenon. That presented him with a bit of a problem. Pike always had the socially right enemies: the segregationists and fundamentalists anathema to mid twentieth century liberalism. While conversing with the dead drew criticism from some on the religious right, who believed these spirits were probably demonic in origin, religious liberals were embarrassed by one of their own seeming to take the supernatural seriously.
December 28, 2015
Time to die and start working from the other side.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews