EHE Network

2001 Alexander Imich Essay Contest

The topic of the 19th Imich Essay Contest provides contestants with the opportunity to look at their unusual experiences, especially mystical, transcendent, and psychical ones, and afterdeath communications and other death-related experiences, exceptional healing experiences, out-of-body experiences, dreams and visions, synchronicity, encounters with apparitions, UFOs, and crop circles, and experiences at holy and power places. Accounts of these nonordinary experiences that usually describe details of the experience itself seldom deal with the experience's aftereffects. Over time, as one learns to integrate an exceptional human experience, it can alter the way one thinks about oneself, other people, other species-plant and animal-and Earth itself. These experiences also can change the way one looks at life and the world and the way one lives it. They can increase the sense of meaning in one's life. This is of central importance to the Exceptional Human Experience Network, cosponsor of the contest, which is funded by Dr. Imich, who is founder of the Anomalous Phenomena Research Center in New York City.

The essays, which can be as many as 40 pages long, double spaced, typed or word processed, should describe all the experiences you have had that you consider had the most impact on you as a person and on your life's meaning. If you have had numerous experiences, then describe the one of each type that had the most profound effect on you. Describe each experience in detail and the impact it had on you from the time of the experience to date. Sometimes it is useful, after you have recorded your experiences, to read them over a few days in a row, looking for themes that turn up in more than one experience. This can sometimes enable you to see the direction of your life more clearly. We call the process of writing about your experiences and teasing out their meaning the creation of an EHE autobiography. It is primarily about your deepest, highest inner life rather than the external circumstances of your life and the publicly available information about you.

Alexander Imich and the Exceptional Human Experience Network invite you to submit 4 copies double spaced of your unpublished essay written specifically for this contest. If an IBM-compatible computer is available, please send an electronic version instead, either on a diskette or as an attachment. The prize is a total of $1000, which may be given to from 1 to 4 contestants, depending on the number and quality essays submitted. Submission grants the EHE Network the right to publish the essay in its journal or newsletter and include the experiences in its database of experiences or on our website, using only your initials. (Essayists are free to publish their essays elsewhere.) We need your full name and address in order to notify you if you win a prize. Your essay can be the full 40 pages or less (the limit for past essays has been 20 pages). Because of the extended page limit, this contest will run the entire year of 2001. Essays are due at midnight, December 31, 2001. You may submit them any time during the year. It takes about 3 months to process the essays and determine the winner(s).

The winners will be announced on our website and will be notified individually. Any contestant who wants to be notified of the results, even if he or she was not a winner, should send a self-addressed and stamped envelope to the EHE Network at the address below. If you do not get a prompt response, it is because the winners have not yet been determined.

For information on past contests and more information on exceptional human experiences, check out our website at http://www.ehe.org.

Send essays to EHE Network, 414 Rockledge Road, New Bern NC 28562. No faxes accepted. Attached e-mailed submissions are preferred. Send to Rhea A. White at rhea@ehe.org.