Paranormal

Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in

Proposals regarding the paranormal are different from scientific hypotheses or speculations extrapolated from scientific evidence because scientific ideas are grounded in empirical observations and experimental data gained through the scientific method. In contrast, those who argue for the existence of the paranormal explicitly do not base their arguments on empirical evidence but rather on anecdote, testimony, and suspicion. The standard scientific models give the explanation that what appears to be paranormal phenomena is usually a misinterpretation, misunderstanding, or anomalous variation of natural phenomena.^[6][7][8]

Etymology

The term paranormal has existed in the English language since at least 1920.^[9][10] The word consists of two parts: para and normal. The definition implies that the scientific explanation of the world around us is normal and anything that is above, beyond, or contrary to that is para.

Paranormal subjects

On the classification of paranormal subjects, psychologist Terence Hines said in his book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (2003):

The paranormal can best be thought of as a subset of pseudoscience. What sets the paranormal apart from other pseudosciences is a reliance on explanations for alleged phenomena that are well outside the bounds of established science. Thus, paranormal phenomena include extrasensory perception (ESP), telekinesis, ghosts, poltergeists, life after death, reincarnation, faith healing, human auras, and so forth. The explanations for these allied phenomena are phrased in vague terms of "psychic forces", "human energy fields", and so on. This is in contrast to many pseudoscientific explanations for other nonparanormal phenomena, which, although very bad science, are still couched in acceptable scientific terms.^[11]

Ghost hunting

Ghost hunting is the investigation of locations that are reportedly haunted by ghosts. Typically, a ghost-hunting team will attempt to collect evidence supporting the existence of paranormal activity.

In traditional ghostlore, and fiction featuring ghosts, a ghost is a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person.^[12] Alternative theories expand on that idea and include belief in the ghosts of deceased animals. Sometimes the term "ghost" is used synonymously with any spirit or demon;^[13] however, in popular usage the term typically refers to the spirit of a deceased person.

The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is closely tied to the concept of animism, an ancient belief that attributed souls to everything in nature.^[14] As the 19th-century anthropologist George Frazer explained in his classic work, The Golden Bough (1890), souls were seen as the 'creature within' which animated the body.^[15] Although the human soul was sometimes symbolically or literally depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, it was widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, even down to the clothing worn by the person. This is depicted in artwork from various ancient cultures, including such works as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (c. 1550 BCE), which shows deceased people in the afterlife appearing much as they did before death, including the style of dress.

Ufology

The possibility of

Early in the history of UFO culture, believers divided themselves into two camps. The first held a rather conservative view of the phenomena, interpreting them as unexplained occurrences that merited serious study. They began calling themselves "ufologists" in the 1950s and felt that logical analysis of sighting reports would validate the notion of extraterrestrial visitation.^[14][18]

The second camp held a view that coupled ideas of extraterrestrial visitation with beliefs from existing quasi-religious movements. Typically, these individuals were enthusiasts of

Both secular and spiritual believers describe UFOs as having abilities beyond what are considered possible according to known aerodynamic constraints and physical laws. The transitory events surrounding many UFO sightings preclude any opportunity for the repeat testing required by the scientific method. Acceptance of UFO theories by the larger scientific community is further hindered by the many possible hoaxes associated with UFO culture.^[19]

Cryptozoology

Cryptozoology is a pseudoscience and subculture that aims to prove the existence of entities from the folklore record, such as Bigfoot, chupacabras, or Mokele-mbembe. Cryptozoologists refer to these entities as cryptids, a term coined by the subculture.

Paranormal research

Approaching the paranormal from a research perspective is often difficult because of the lack of acceptable physical evidence from most of the purported phenomena. By definition, the paranormal does not conform to conventional expectations of

An anecdotal approach to the paranormal involves the collection of stories told about the paranormal.

The magazine Fortean Times continues Charles Fort's approach, regularly reporting anecdotal accounts of the paranormal.

Such anecdotal collections, lacking the

Experimental investigation of the paranormal has been conducted by parapsychologists. J. B. Rhine popularized the now famous methodology of using card-guessing and dice-rolling experiments in a laboratory in the hopes of finding evidence of extrasensory perception.^[20] However, it was revealed that Rhine's experiments contained methodological flaws and procedural errors.^[21][22][23]

In 1957, the

By the 2000s, the status of paranormal research in the United States had greatly declined from its height in the 1970s, with the majority of work being privately funded and only a small amount of research being carried out in university laboratories. In 2007, Britain had a number of privately funded laboratories in university psychology departments.[30] Publication remained limited to a small number of niche journals,^[30] and to date there have been no experimental results that have gained wide acceptance in the scientific community as valid evidence of the paranormal.^[30]

Participant-observer approach

While parapsychologists look for quantitative evidence of the paranormal in laboratories, a great number of people immerse themselves in qualitative research through participant-observer approaches to the paranormal. Participant-observer methodologies have overlaps with other essentially qualitative approaches, including phenomenological research that seeks largely to describe subjects as they are experienced, rather than to explain them.^{[31][page needed]}

Participant observation suggests that by immersing oneself in the subject that is being studied, a researcher is presumed to gain understanding of the subject. Criticisms of participant observation as a data-gathering technique are similar to criticisms of other approaches to the paranormal, but also include an increased threat to the

Participant observation, as an approach to the paranormal, has gained increased visibility and popularity through reality television programs like Ghost Hunters, and the formation of independent ghost hunting groups that advocate immersive research at alleged paranormal locations. One popular website for ghost hunting enthusiasts lists over 300 of these organizations throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.^[33]

Skeptical scientific investigation

Scientific skeptics advocate critical investigation of claims of paranormal phenomena: applying the scientific method to reach a rational, scientific explanation of the phenomena to account for the paranormal claims, taking into account that alleged paranormal abilities and occurrences are sometimes hoaxes or misinterpretations of natural phenomena. A way of summarizing this method is by the application of Occam's razor, which suggests that the simpler solution is usually the correct one.^[34]

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is an organization that aims to publicize the scientific, skeptical approach. It carries out investigations aimed at understanding paranormal reports in terms of scientific understanding, and publishes its results in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

CSI's Richard Wiseman draws attention to possible alternative explanations for perceived paranormal activity in his article, The Haunted Brain. While he recognizes that approximately 15% of people believe they have experienced an encounter with a ghost, he reports that only 1% report seeing a full-fledged ghost while the rest report strange sensory stimuli, such as seeing fleeting shadows or wisps of smoke, or the sensation of hearing footsteps or feeling a presence. Wiseman makes the claim that, rather than experiencing paranormal activity, it is activity within our own brains that creates these strange sensations.^[7]

Michael Persinger proposed that ghostly experiences could be explained by stimulating the brain with weak magnetic fields.^[7] Swedish psychologist Pehr Granqvist and his team, attempting to replicate Persinger's research, determined that the paranormal sensations experienced by Persinger's subjects were merely the result of suggestion, and that brain stimulation with magnetic fields did not result in ghostly experiences.^[7]

Oxford University Justin Barrett has theorized that "agency"—being able to figure out why people do what they do—is so important in everyday life, that it is natural for our brains to work too hard at it, thereby detecting human or ghost-like behavior in everyday meaningless stimuli.^[7]

In "anomalistic psychology", paranormal phenomena have naturalistic explanations resulting from psychological and physical factors which have sometimes given the impression of paranormal activity to some people, in fact, where there have been none.^[38] The psychologist David Marks wrote that paranormal phenomena can be explained by magical thinking, mental imagery, subjective validation, coincidence, hidden causes, and fraud.^[6] According to studies some people tend to hold paranormal beliefs because they possess psychological traits that make them more likely to misattribute paranormal causation to normal experiences.^[39][40] Research has also discovered that cognitive bias is a factor underlying paranormal belief.^[41][42]

Many studies have found a link between

Bainbridge (1978) and Wuthnow (1976) found that the most susceptible people to paranormal belief are those who are poorly educated, unemployed or have roles that rank low among social values. The alienation of these people due to their status in society is said to encourage them to appeal to paranormal or magical beliefs.^[47][48]

Research has associated paranormal belief with low cognitive ability, low IQ and a lack of science education.^[49][50] Intelligent and highly educated participants involved in surveys have proven to have less paranormal belief.^[51][52][53] Tobacyk (1984) and Messer and Griggs (1989) discovered that college students with better grades have less belief in the paranormal.^[54][55]

In a case study (Gow, 2004) involving 167 participants the findings revealed that psychological absorption and dissociation were higher for believers in the paranormal.^[56] Another study involving 100 students had revealed a positive correlation between paranormal belief and proneness to dissociation.^[57] A study (Williams et al. 2007) discovered that "neuroticism is fundamental to individual differences in paranormal belief, while paranormal belief is independent of extraversion and psychoticism".^[58] A correlation has been found between paranormal belief and irrational thinking.^[59][60]

In an experiment Wierzbicki (1985) reported a significant correlation between paranormal belief and the number of errors made on a syllogistic reasoning task, suggesting that believers in the paranormal have lower cognitive ability.^[61] A relationship between narcissistic personality and paranormal belief was discovered in a study involving the Australian Sheep-Goat Scale.^[62]

De Boer and Bierman wrote:

In his article 'Creative or Defective' Radin (2005) asserts that many academics explain the belief in the paranormal by using one of the three following hypotheses: Ignorance, deprivation or deficiency. 'The ignorance hypothesis asserts that people believe in the paranormal because they're uneducated or stupid. The deprivation hypothesis proposes that these beliefs exist to provide a way to cope in the face of psychological uncertainties and physical stressors. The deficiency hypothesis asserts that such beliefs arise because people are mentally defective in some way, ranging from low intelligence or poor critical thinking ability to a full-blown psychosis' (Radin). The deficiency hypothesis gets some support from the fact that the belief in the paranormal is an aspect of a schizotypical personality (Pizzagalli, Lehman and Brugger, 2001).^[63]

A psychological study involving 174 members of the

Research has shown that people reporting contact with aliens have higher levels of absorption, dissociativity, fantasy proneness and tendency to hallucinate.^[65]

Findings have shown in specific cases that paranormal belief acts as a psychodynamic coping function and serves as a mechanism for coping with

Polls show that about fifty percent of the United States population believe in the paranormal. Robert L. Park says a lot of people believe in it because they "want it to be so".^[76]

A 2013 study that utilized a biological motion perception task discovered a "relation between illusory pattern perception and supernatural and paranormal beliefs and suggest that paranormal beliefs are strongly related to agency detection biases".^[40]

A 2014 study discovered that

It was also realized that people with higher dopamine levels have the ability to find patterns and meanings where there are not any. This is why scientists have connected high dopamine levels with paranormal belief.[81]

Criticism

Some scientists have criticized the media for promoting paranormal claims. In a report by Singer and Benassi in 1981, they wrote that the media may account for much of the near universality of paranormal belief, as the public are constantly exposed to films, newspapers, documentaries and books endorsing paranormal claims while critical coverage is largely absent.^[82] According to Paul Kurtz "In regard to the many talk shows that constantly deal with paranormal topics, the skeptical viewpoint is rarely heard; and when it is permitted to be expressed, it is usually sandbagged by the host or other guests." Kurtz described the popularity of public belief in the paranormal as a "quasi-religious phenomenon", a manifestation of a transcendental temptation, a tendency for people to seek a transcendental reality that cannot be known by using the methods of science. Kurtz compared this to a primitive form of magical thinking.^[83]

Terence Hines has written that on a personal level, paranormal claims could be considered a form of consumer fraud as people are "being induced through false claims to spend their money—often large sums—on paranormal claims that do not deliver what they promise" and uncritical acceptance of paranormal belief systems can be damaging to society.^[84]

Belief polls

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (November 2021)

While the existence of paranormal phenomena is controversial and debated passionately by both proponents of the paranormal and by

A survey conducted in 2006 by researchers from Australia's Monash University^[86] sought to determine the types of phenomena that people claim to have experienced and the effects these experiences have had on their lives. The study was conducted as an online survey with over 2,000 respondents from around the world participating. The results revealed that around 70% of the respondents believe to have had an unexplained paranormal event that changed their life, mostly in a positive way. About 70% also claimed to have seen, heard, or been touched by an animal or person that they knew was not there; 80% have reported having a premonition, and almost 50% stated they recalled a previous life.^[86]

Polls were conducted by Bryan Farha at

A survey by Jeffrey S. Levin, associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, found that more than two thirds of the United States population reported having at least one mystical experience.^[87][89]

A 1996 Gallup poll estimated that 71% of the people in the U.S. believed that the government was covering up information about

In 2017 the Chapman University Survey of American Fears asked about seven paranormal beliefs and found that "the most common belief is that ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis once existed (55%). Next was that places can be haunted by spirits (52%), aliens have visited Earth in our ancient past (35%), aliens have come to Earth in modern times (26%), some people can move objects with their minds (25%), fortune tellers and psychics can survey the future (19%), and Bigfoot is a real creature. Only one-fourth of respondents didn't hold at least one of these beliefs."^[91]

Paranormal challenges

In 1922, Scientific American offered two US$2,500 offers: (1) for the first authentic spirit photograph made under test conditions, and (2) for the first psychic to produce a "visible psychic manifestation". Harry Houdini was a member of the investigating committee. The first medium to be tested was George Valiantine, who claimed that in his presence spirits would speak through a trumpet that floated around a darkened room. For the test, Valiantine was placed in a room, the lights were extinguished, but unbeknownst to him his chair had been rigged to light a signal in an adjoining room if he ever left his seat. Because the light signals were tripped during his performance, Valiantine did not collect the award.^[92] The last to be examined by Scientific American was Mina Crandon in 1924.

Since then, many individuals and groups have offered similar monetary awards for proof of the paranormal in an observed setting. These prizes have a combined value of over $2.4 million.^[93]

The

By location

Authors

Skepticism

Notes

References

Further reading

• French, Chris. The Science of Weird Shit: Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal. United States, MIT Press, 2024.
• Bader, Christopher D.; Mencken, F. Carson; Baker, Joseph O. (2017). Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture (Second ed.). New York: New York University Press.
  ISBN 978-1-4798-1965-2
  .
• Bell, V.; Halligan, P. W. (2013). "The Neural Basis of Abnormal Personal Belief". In Krueger, Frank;
  ISBN 978-1-84169-881-6
  .
• Cohen, Daniel (1989). The Encyclopedia of the Strange (Hardcover ed.). New York: Hippocrene Books.
  ISBN 978-0-88029-451-5
  .
• Crawley, S. E. (2001). "Psychic or fantasy-prone?". The Skeptic. 14 (1): 11–12.
• doi:10.1080/00050069208257576
  .
• French, Christopher C. (January 1992). "Factors underlying belief in the paranormal: Do sheep and goats think differently?". The Psychologist. 5: 295–299.
• Hatton, K. (2001). "Developmental origins of magical beliefs". The Skeptic. 14 (1): 18–19.
• ISBN 978-1-57392-979-0
  .
• Holden, K. J.; French, C. C. (2002). "Alien abduction experiences: Clues from neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry". In Spence, Sean A.; Halligan, Peter W. (eds.). Pathologies of Body, Self and Space (First ed.). Hove: Psychology Press.
  ISBN 978-1-84169-933-2
  .
• Irwin, Harvey J. (2009). The Psychology of Paranormal Belief: A Researcher's Handbook (First ed.). Hatfield, Herts: University Of Hertfordshire Press.
  ISBN 978-1-902806-93-8
  .
• Jinks, Tony (2011). An Introduction to the Psychology of Paranormal Belief and Experience (Illustrated ed.). Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland.
  ISBN 978-0-7864-6544-6
  .
• Lange, R.; Houran, J. (October 1998). "Delusions of the paranormal: A haunting question of perception". Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 186 (10): 637–645.
  PMID 9788641
  .
• S2CID 20803932
  .
• Stein, Gordon (1996). The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal (Illustrated ed.). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
  ISBN 978-1-57392-021-6
  .
• doi:10.1016/0191-8869(94)00146-J
  .
• Wilson, Krissy;
  S2CID 144569464
  .
• PMID 16848946
  .

External links

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Myths and legends.

• Paranormal at
  Curlie