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Neale Donald Walsch Conversations With God Author Plagiarist or Simply Having A Senior Moment

Neale Donald Walsch, the best selling author of the "Conversations With God" series has been accused of plagiarism.

On December 28, 2008 Mr. Walsch posted a blog on Beliefnet.com relating to what he described as a personal experience he had at his son's Christmas Pageant years ago.

It seems that the story wasn't that of Mr. Walsch however, but that of Candy Chand, a little-known author who had originally had the story printed in Clarity magazine in 1999 and then republished again in 2000 in the book "Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul".

Candy Chand had the story copyrighted in 2005 and an independent publisher even released "Christmas Love" as an illustrated gift book.

Ms. Chand claims that she happened to do an internet search on the term "Christmas Love" which was a story that occurred at her son's Christmas pageant approximately 10 years ago where the children were to spell out the words Christmas Love. One of the children inadvertently held the M card upside down and it read Christwas Love instead. As she was doing her search she came across Neale Donald Walsch's blog post where he claimed the story had happened to him personally. She then left a post in the comment section to Mr. Walsch claiming that the story was in fact her own published account of the incident.

According to The New York Times she then contacted Elisabeth Sams, the executive vice president of content and community of Beliefnet who took down the post and replaced it with the following message to readers "This blog chain has been taken down while Beliefnet investigates the ownership of the previously published material."

After further research it came to light that the article was almost verbatim the story written by Candy Chand in 1999. The only difference was in the first paragraph where Mr. Walsch claims that he "vividly remembered" the event.

Mr. Walsch responded immediately on Tuesday January 6th on his blog where he apologized to both his readers and Ms. Chand:

"I want to tell you something now that is remarkable to me...and somewhat sad. I have been contacted by the author of that story, Her name is Candy Chand and it is a true story. She is a published author, and the story is hers. How could I have remembered it and written it as if it was my own? The story itself was not typed up by me just the other day. In fact, it has been in my computer file for at least seven years. I went into my back-file the other day looking for the perfect copy to share on my blog a few days after Christmas. When I came across this story, it was written just as you saw it here in this blogspace on Dec. 28. That is, it was written in the first person, describing an experience that occurred with my son 20 years ago. As I read the old story I smiled, actually experiencing it as a memory in my mind, from my own life.

Now Ms. Chand has contacted me to inform me that the story is hers, has actually been published by her in more than one place (including a book), that it has been circulated around the Internet, sometimes with credit to her, sometimes not, for something like ten years, and that she would like due and proper credit for her authorship. I am embarrassed to say that her story and the "anecdote" that I attributed to my own life have apparently the exact same wording except for my personal introductory sentences

All I can say now - because I am truly mystified and taken aback by this - is that someone must have sent it to me over the internet ten years or so ago. Finding it utterly charming and its message indelible, I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of "stories to tell that have a message I want to share." I have told the story verbally so many times over the years that I had it memorized...and then, somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience. I am aghast at how improbable this sounds, even to me, yet I can find no other explanation for how this story came out of my mouth in Candy Chand's words."
Ms. Chand however doesn't seem to buy the story. "It's pretty difficult for me to believe that someone has a memory lapse that is word for word my story," she said. "He deleted the first paragraph. That's it."
Mr. Walsch has since decided to remove his blog from Beliefnet.com and the site itself was in agreement. As they said in their own statement he "failed to properly credit and attribute material from another author. As a result, Mr. Walsch has decided to remove himself from Beliefnet's blogging roster, a decision we will support in order to protect the mission and integrity of our site and community. As a faith-based web portal, Beliefnet will continue to hold ourselves and our writers to the highest standards of trust."
Mr. Walsch's staunch supporters however seem to be very upset by this decision as depicted by the many comments left on his site after his departure, and it seems that quite a few people believe it was merely a "senior moment" that occurred on Mr. Walsch's part.
As written by one fan "This phenomenon is well-known in police investigations and psych experiments have proven that the mind is susceptible to just this kind of false memory. I think the main concern is, Was there malicious intent? Obviously there wasn't. Methinks the punishment a bit harsh considering."

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