Soul Samples

About the Author

This site's own R. Leo Sprinkle key-figures entry documents him as a Condon Committee psychological consultant who conducted the February 13, 1968 hypnotic regression of Herbert Schirmer, concluding Schirmer's "emotional reactions suggest that he believes in the reality of the events he describes" -- a narrower finding than the Committee's own published skeptical verdict. He went on to conduct more than 500 hypnotic regressions of contactees and abductees across cases this site documents independently, including Carl Higdon, the Stanford, Kentucky abduction, Sandra Larson, Myrna Hansen, and Judy Doraty, and founded the University of Wyoming's Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation in 1980.

Sprinkle held a PhD in Counseling and Guidance from the University of Missouri (1961) and worked at the University of Wyoming's Counseling and Testing Center from the mid-1960s until his 1989 retirement. He was, by the account of multiple biographical sources, widely regarded as an authority within UFO research specifically -- one of the earliest academic figures to systematically study contactees and abductees, publishing roughly fifty journal articles and appearing on national television programs including ABC's That's Incredible and NBC's Tomorrow Show. But this same body of work also documents a clear divergence from mainstream academic psychology over time: he developed his own theoretical frameworks -- the 1988 "PACTS" model of Preparation, Abduction/Contact, Training, and Service stages in the contactee experience, and a 1976 concept he called "Cosmic Consciousness Conditioning," hypothesizing that UFO activity functioned as an educational program elevating humans from "planetary persons" to "cosmic citizens." By the time of this book's 1999 publication, according to Encyclopedia.com, he had come to identify himself as a contactee in his own right -- a research trajectory this site's own case files on Schirmer and Larson both explicitly flag as "a genuine and acknowledged potential source of investigator bias" in his hypnosis work.

Historical Context & Origins

The book arrived a decade after Sprinkle's 1989 retirement from the University of Wyoming, at a point in his career when his research had moved well beyond the Condon Committee consulting role that first brought him into UFO investigation. Its publisher, Granite Publishing, released it as the seventh volume in a small-press "New Millennium Library" series aimed at a metaphysical and paranormal-studies readership rather than a mainstream academic or trade audience -- consistent with the book's own philosophical, reincarnation-centered framing.

This article was not able to confirm that the book contains dedicated case-study sections specifically on Schirmer or Larson; its stated framing as "one person's views" and a general synthesis of soul-evolution philosophy suggests the book functions more as a career memoir and philosophical statement than as a case-by-case investigative record. Readers seeking the specific hypnosis-session details from either case should consult this site's own case files directly, both of which document those sessions independently of this later book.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's central argument, per the Journal of Regression Therapy's contemporary review, is that accepting reincarnation as real would expand conventional views of human potential and transform psychology into what one reviewer called a genuine "study of the soul" -- treating UFO contact experiences as part of a broader framework of spiritual and psychological evolution across lifetimes, rather than as a discrete physical-encounter phenomenon to be evaluated on conventional evidentiary terms alone.

That framing is precisely what makes the book valuable for understanding, rather than adjudicating, the Schirmer and Larson cases: it reveals the investigative worldview Sprinkle brought to his hypnosis sessions in both cases, a worldview this site's own case files treat as relevant context for weighing his conclusions rather than as either confirming or discrediting the sessions' specific content.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Herbert Schirmer Encounter case file documents Sprinkle's February 1968 hypnotic regression in full, alongside the Condon Committee's own more skeptical published verdict and Kevin Randle's later critical reassessment of the case's hypnosis methodology and Sprinkle's investigative bias. Readers wanting that complete evidentiary record should consult that case file directly.

This site's own Sandra Larson Abduction case file documents Sprinkle's 1975-76 hypnotic regression of Larson following a roughly two-month reporting delay, and separately weighs the case's "space mummy" motif against comparable contemporaneous accounts as evidence of possible shared cultural imagery rather than independent physiology -- an evidentiary weighing this book does not itself provide, since its own focus is philosophical rather than case-specific.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book's reception is thin and split along predictable lines. The Journal of Regression Therapy's 1999 review by Barbara Lamb was strongly positive from within the reincarnation-therapy and experiencer-support community, calling Sprinkle "a Godsend for thousands of people" and recommending the book especially for those working with abductees. A more measured outside assessment, from a Goodreads reviewer, concluded the book would "mostly appeal to UFO and reincarnation believers with a 'New Age' belief structure" -- flagging it as niche, in-group material rather than evidentiary ufology.

Modern aggregate reader data is negligible: Goodreads shows only 6 ratings averaging 3.67/5 with a single written review, too small a sample to draw meaningful conclusions from. This article found no evidence of a specific skeptical or ufology-community critical review of this particular book, as distinct from the well-documented general criticism of Sprinkle's heavy reliance on hypnotic regression -- a technique widely understood to carry a real risk of producing false memories rather than recovering accurate ones -- across his broader body of case work.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy is best understood within the smaller experiencer-support and regression-therapy community it was written for and reviewed within, rather than as a work that shaped mainstream ufology's evidentiary debates. Its real significance for this site's own purposes is diagnostic: it documents, in Sprinkle's own words, the philosophical framework -- soul evolution, reincarnation, cosmic citizenship -- that had come to define his approach by the time this book appeared, a framework his own case files note he had already moved toward well before its 1999 publication.

Set alongside this site's own Herbert Schirmer Encounter and Sandra Larson Abduction case files, this book functions less as additional evidence for either case than as a window into the investigator's own evolving worldview -- valuable context for weighing his hypnosis-session conclusions, precisely because it makes that worldview explicit rather than leaving it to be inferred.

The Book

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