Abstract

This paper describes how one of parapsychology\'s most critical thinkers, Robert H. Thouless, devised an ingenious test of survival and left two enciphered messages that he believed unbreakable and whose secret keys he planned to communicate after his death as proof of his postmortem survival. It details attempts to obtain his keys before and after his death and the implications of negative results. It provides a report from a cipher expert who claims to have discovered Thouless\'s keywords and to have broken one of his messages. The paper concludes by raising the question of false keys.