A review of nearly 20 years of sociocultural research and trends on "ghostly episodes" (ghosts, haunted houses, and poltergeists) suggests that personal accounts, group investigations, and popular depictions of anomalous experiences function as active, meaningful, and potent cultural memes. These, in part, reflect interpersonal or group dynamics grounded in Durkheimian models, as well as Social Identity and Conflict theories. Expanding on and integrating these themes, this paper provides a general framework that explains the enduring popularity of ghost narratives in terms of their versatility, adaptability, participatory nature, universality, and scalability (VAPUS model). This perspective implies that ghostly episodes, as experiences and narratives, embody and exemplify the marketing concepts of "brand personality" and consumer engagement. Accordingly, social and cultural influences are discussed as important and inherent contextual variables that help to produce, promote, shape, and sustain these narratives.

Research Studies Psychology

Harry Houdini and his exposure of the fraud spiritualist, spirit photography, spirit slate writing, ectoplasm, clairvoyance, and other quakery and cons perpetrated on the gullible, by the likes of the Boston Medium Margery, the Davenport Brothers, Annie Eva Fay, the Fox Sisters, Daniel Dunglas Home, Eusapia Pallandino, and other con artists of their ilk. The whole country got excited by Houdini's campaign against faking spiritualists. He careened through the country, offering money for spirit contacts he couldn't duplicate by admitted magical chicanery. It was a heyday not only for Houdini but for the spirit-callers and there was an equally famous protagonist who thought the spirits could indeed be contacted, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A photo at the front records a meeting between Houdini and Doyle and Houdini gives Doyle his own chapter. There's an earlier chapter on Daniel Dunglas Home, the English engineer of spectacular paranormal effects. Houdini raises hell with spiritualists who were giving their (usually paying) clients a vision of heavens to come, and shares the methods used to practice "fake" and sensational spiritualism. Houdini was nothing if not unrelenting. As a taste of things to come, he ends his introduction with the words: "Up to the present time everything that I have investigated has been the result of deluded brains."

Books

Many studies of psychological misconceptions have used tests with methodological and psychometric shortcomings, creating problems for interpreting individual differences related to misconceptions. To address these problems, we developed the Test of Psychological Knowledge and Misconceptions (TOPKAM), administering it to two samples of psychology students. Results from the first study (N = 162) supported the TOPKAM's internal consistency and showed that the number correct on the TOPKAM was significantly predicted by measures of paranormal belief, faith in intuition, the ability to distinguish scientific fields and practices from pseudoscientific ones, and SAT scores. Also, scores on a measure of critical thinking dispositions in psychology predicted TOPKAM scores. A second study (N = 178) supported the TOPKAM's test–retest reliability at four weeks and showed that TOPKAM scores were significantly predicted by the same critical thinking dispositions measure and also by scores on a test of critical thinking, argument analysis skill.

Psychology Research Science

Verbatim Report of a Public Debate on "The Truth of Spiritualism" Between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph McCabe: Held at the Queen's Hall, London, on March 11, 1920 by Arthur Conan Doyle and Joseph McCabe

Books Spiritual

In 1813, Dr John Ferriar published ‘An Essay Towards a Theory of Apparitions’ which detailed his thoughts that people experienced what they thought to be ghosts which were actually optical illusions.

Parapsychology Ghosts Books

This Blog should hopefully cover some of my experiences whist investigating the paranormal, a few pieces of historical interest on locations I have investigated, a little bit on paranormal theories and some discussion on paranormal techniques. With some general updates and possibly even a little humour too!

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ASSAP is a charity and learned society founded in 1981 to investigate, research and educate on a wide range of anomalous phenomena, from hauntings to UFOs, mediumship to monsters

Everything Paranormal Research

Reality television programs that explore purportedly paranormal phenomena with pseudoscientific research approaches have emerged in popular culture. These shows commonly feature electronic voice phenomena (EVP), whereby recording devices capture audio signals that are interpreted as paranormal messages. We compared perceptions for voices in EVP with actual speech, acoustic noise, and degraded speech. Some participants were told that the experiment was about speech intelligibility, whereas others were told that the experiment was about paranormal EVP. The paranormal prime increased the proportion of trials for which participants perceived voices in both EVP stimuli and degraded speech. When a voice was detected, low agreement was found regarding the content of EVP messages. In both priming conditions, participants reported general skepticism in the paranormal. Results are discussed in the context of theoretical perspectives on paranormal events, trait‐versus‐state accounts of paranormal beliefs, and pseudoscientific approaches to research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

EVP Ghosts Studies

The Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research, Incorporated (AIPR, Inc., or Parapsychology Institute) was established in 1977 and is a non-profit community association. The AIPR is based in Sydney, New South Wales, and its membership is world-wide.

Parapsychology Research

Translated by Nadia Fowler, edited by Joyce Morton, with a Preface by Peter Bander. This book is the documented result of six years’ arduous research into an astounding scientific phenomenon, accidentally discovered in Sweden by Friedrich Jürgenson in 1957. In some way, and for reasons not yet fully understood, voices of dead persons linked by affection or interest with the experimenter appear during playbacks of tape recordings on which no such voices were audible at the time of the original recording. These voices always state their names and may be identified as male or female, but all speak very much faster than is normal and employ a curious speech rhythm. In the course of his research, Dr Raudive was joined by eminent scientists, physicists, psychologists, and theologians, many of whom were university professors. Before undertaking the publication of this English-language edition, the publishers have requested other respected scientists and scholars to verify procedures and findings related in Dr Raudive’s book. The discovery of this phenomenon – later called the Electronic Voice Phenomenon – is a breakthrough of unquestionable importance.

Research Ghosts Books ITC

Can the Living Converse With the Dead? By Harry Houdini. Canton Daily News. 16 November, 1924.

Research Historical Archives

Founded in 1967 by Dr. Ian Stevenson, the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) is a highly productive university-based research group devoted to the investigation of phenomena that challenge mainstream scientific paradigms regarding the nature of the mind/brain relationship. Researchers at DOPS are particularly interested in studying phenomena related to consciousness functioning beyond the confines of the physical body, and phenomena that suggest continuation of consciousness after physical death.

Research Consciousness Studies

This study aims to contribute to a scientific understanding of intuition, a process by which information normally outside the range of conscious awareness is perceived by the psychophysiological systems.

PSI Parapsychology Research Studies

A set of brain regions known as the default network increases its activity when focus on the external world is relaxed. During such moments, participants change their focus of external attention and engage in spontaneous cognitive processes including remembering the past and imagining the future.

Studies PSI Research

The VAPUS model (Hill et al., 2018, 2019) characterizes the powerful "brand personality" of ghost narratives in terms of their Versatility, Adaptability, Participatory Nature, Universality, and Scalability. This suggests that these narratives act as cultural memes that partly reflect interpersonal or group dynamics. We use these themes in a review and conceptual synthesis of key literature to address the phenomenon of "gaslighting," which denotes the determined efforts of an influencer to alter the perceptions of a targeted individual. Modelling ghost narratives as psychosocial constructions implies malleability via attitudinal and normative influences. Accordingly, we specify and discuss two apparent manifestations of this narrative plasticity, i.e., "positive (reinforcing) gaslighting" (i.e., confirmation biases) or "negative (rejecting) gaslighting" (i.e., second-guessing or self-doubt). These ideas clarify some Trickster-type effects and imply that all ghost narratives likely involve gaslighting to an extent.

Parapsychology Psychology Research Science Ghosts

This is from a rare CD of recordings by the late Friedrich Jürgenson. He was one of the early researchers of E.V.P.

Research EVP

Your Go-To Source for Research into Ghosts, Apparitions, and All Things Paranormal

Everything Paranormal Ghosts Parapsychology Theories

We are passionate and dedicated people, steadfast in our commitment to provide solutions for activating the heart of humanity. HeartMath Institute empowers individuals, families, groups and organizations to enhance their life experiences using tools that enable them to better recognize and access their intuitive insight and heart intelligence.

Consciousness Research Spiritual Parapsychology Studies

Modern research with mediums-individuals who regularly experience and report communication from the deceased-includes investigations of mediums' accuracy, psychology, phenomenology, and electrophysiology and the therapeutic potential of mediumship readings for the bereaved. Anecdotal reports imply that chronic medical problems may be a serious concern for mediums.

Research PSI Parapsychology Studies

“Telepathy” is defined as “the communication of impressions of any kind from one mind to another, independently of the recognized channels of sense”. Meta-analyses of “ganzfield” studies as well as “card-guessing task” studies provide compelling evidence for the existence of telepathic phenomena. The aim of this study was to elucidate the neural basis of telepathy by examining an individual with this special ability.

Research PSI ESP Parapsychology Studies

This paper seeks to continue a program of research that explores the possible relationship between exposure to media messages and paranormal beliefs. Following the work of Sparks, Nelson and Campbell (1997), who reported the results of a random sample survey taken in 1994, this study reports the findings of a second random sample survey taken in the same geographic area several years later. The results of the survey show that paranormal beliefs are prevalent in the population and that they are related to reports of television exposure to programs that regularly depict paranormal phenomena. Like the findings reported by Sparks, Nelson and Campbell (1997), this study found that the relationship between TV viewing and paranormal beliefs was contingent upon prior personal experience with a paranormal event. However, the form of this contingent relationship was directly opposite from that observed in the earlier survey. In this study, the relationship between TV exposure and paranormal beliefs emerged only for respondents who reported personal experience with the paranormal. Plausible reasons for the conflicting findings and suggestions for future research are discussed

Research Studies

Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud ?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others

Books Spiritual

Throughout the 1990s, scientific studies dealing with anomalous phenomena have been actively pursued in Japan following a nation-wide rise in interest in supernatural phenomena and qigong. This review article covers various research actitivies in Japan.

Everything Paranormal Studies Research

Full audio recording from the flexi disk Vinyl originally included with the book 'Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead'

EVP Research

The present investigation tested the hypothesis that, as an aspect of schizotypal thinking, the formation of paranormal beliefs was related to spreading activation characteristics within semantic networks. From a larger student population (n = 117) prescreened for paranormal belief, 12 strong believers and 12 strong disbelievers (all women) were invited for a lateralized semantic priming task with directly and indirectly related prime-target pairs. Believers showed stronger indirect (but not direct) semantic priming effects than disbelievers after left (but not right) visual field stimulation, indicating faster appreciation of distant semantic relations specifically by the right hemisphere, reportedly specialized in coarse rather than focused semantic processing. These results are discussed in the light of recent findings in schizophrenic patients with thought disorders. They suggest that a disinhibition with semantic networks may underlie the formation of paranormal belief. The potential usefulness of work with healthy subjects for neuropsychiatric research is stressed.

Studies Research Psychology

When I began my research into near-death experiences in 1968, I was a skeptic and an atheist. Now I am neither. What convinced me after 50 years of investigating near-death experiences? As an M.D. and a Doctor of Philosophy, I could no longer deny the survival of consciousness after hearing thousands of accounts from patients and doctors.

Consciousness Research Spiritual

A paranormal blog aimed at paranormal enthusiasts and investigators.

Everything Paranormal

This classic skeptical work explores and exposes the methods of such "wonders" as "The Incombustible Spaniard," "Defiers of Poisonous Reptiles," and many others. Originally published in the 1920s, Miracle Mongers and Their Methods scrupulously examines the direct predecessors of modern psychics and mentalists.

Books

I have created NexusNewsfeed.com, not as a vehicle to fight the current mainstream manufactured reality, but instead to provide a vehicle for like-minded, independent thinkers, to help create something new. Something better. Instead of endless searches on the Internet, we will bring you the news, every day, right across the spectrum of hundreds of non-mainstream news Topics.

Blogs Alternative News

The author summarizes five experiments in which he studied the psychokinetic (PK) effect (the mental influence on the outcome of chance processes) under tight supervision by independent observers. Through the use of prerecorded random events as targets, the observers could evaluate the results independently, without having to trust the reliability of the author or his equipment. The total of these five studies, which represent all the work done under external supervision, produced an effect deviating by 3.67 standard deviations from chance expectancy. The odds against such an outcome are about 8,000 to 1. Thus, the results support the extstence of a PK effect on prerecorded random events, in agreement with previous experiments. The observed PK effect is inconsistent with current quantum theory. It shows that the theory is not correct when applied to systems that include human subjects. Furthermore, the existence of a weak mental effect on the outcome of chance events cautions the physicist to be careful in the interpretation of results that are based on relatively few chance events.

Studies Research PSI

Welcome to Paranormal-Encyclopedia.com, a free website dedicated to providing accurate and unbiased information about the world of the paranormal.

Research Everything Paranormal

Presents opposing viewpoints on the existence of paranormal phenomena such as extrasensory perception, unidentified flying objects, and the prediction of the future Do paranormal phenomena exist? -- Are UFOs real? -- Does ESP exist? -- Can the future be predicted? -- Can humans interact with the spirit world?

Books Everything Paranormal Ghosts Parapsychology UFO

A research project on the UFO phenomenon is proposed in which UFO targets are treated on a par with astronomical objects having no fixed coordinates. Specifically oriented monitoring techniques and strategies involving small telescopes which are connected to CCD detectors, spectrographs and photon-counting photometers are presented. Expected exposure-times for acquiring a good S/N ratio of the target using all the proposed instruments is also evaluated. Finally, physical information which is expected to come out from data analysis are presented and discussed in detail.

Research UFO

The Psi Encyclopedia is a new collection of articles and case studies about psi research, the scientific investigation of psychic phenomena. It's a work in progress, being created by the Society for Psychical Research in London.

ESP PSI Research Parapsychology

View the latest from the world of psychology: from behavioral research to practical guidance on relationships, mental health and addiction.

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We investigate whether quantum theory can be understood as the continuum limit of a mechanical theory, in which there is a huge, but finite, number of classical “worlds,” and quantum effects arise solely from a universal interaction between these worlds, without reference to any wave function. Here, a “world” means an entire universe with well-defined properties, determined by the classical configuration of its particles and fields. In our approach, each world evolves deterministically, probabilities arise due to ignorance as to which world a given observer occupies, and we argue that in the limit of infinitely many worlds the wave function can be recovered (as a secondary object) from the motion of these worlds. We introduce a simple model of such a “many interacting worlds” approach and show that it can reproduce some generic quantum phenomena—such as Ehrenfest’s theorem, wave packet spreading, barrier tunneling, and zero-point energy—as a direct consequence of mutual repulsion between worlds. Finally, we perform numerical simulations using our approach. We demonstrate, first, that it can be used to calculate quantum ground states, and second, that it is capable of reproducing, at least qualitatively, the double-slit interference phenomenon.

Studies Research Theories

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and experience. Para-psychology studies anomalies of behavior and experience, called paranormal experiences. Paranormal phenomena transcend the boundaries of time, space and force. Para-psychology is divided into two main branches: a) extra-sensory perception (ESP) which is the study of communications ostensibly without the known sensory organs and, b) psychokinesis (PK) or the study of physical events that apparently occur without involvement of any recognized motor organs.

Psychology Parapsychology ESP

The Rhine Research Center explores the frontiers of consciousness and exceptional human experiences in the context of unusual and unexplained phenomena. The Rhine’s mission is to advance the science of parapsychology, to provide education and resources for the public, and to foster a community for individuals with personal and professional interest in PSI.

Parapsychology Ghosts Spiritual PSI ESP Research

Search Results Web result with site links Science | HowStuffWorksscience.howstuffworks.com HowStuffWorks Science has explanations and colorful illustrations related to earth science, life science, and other wonders of the physical world. ... and construction of mechanical devices, equipment, structures and public works systems

Blogs Research Science

In spite of strong public expressions of skepticism from the scientific community, polls show that more than nine out of ten American adults profess belief in paranormal phenomena. Some scientists view this as a social problem, directing much blame (but little research) at a variety of sources including lack of critical thinking skills, fads, need for transcendent experiences, failure of the educational system, and cultural cycles. Social impact theory provides an alternative focus: it views paranormal beliefs as a natural consequence of social influence processes in interpersonal settings.

Research Studies Psychology

Founded in 1882, the SPR was the first organisation to conduct scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models

Everything Paranormal Parapsychology Research

Strange Effects from UFOs" (a NICAP "Special Report") is now online. Its author, Gordon Lore, kindly gave permission and Barry Greenwood did the scanning. It contains an early catalogue of UFO cases with alleged physiological effects

UFO Research

SurvivalAfterDeath.info was started by Thomas Jones of Wales and David Duffield of West Virginia on April 11th 2002 with the aim of publishing articles, books and photographs relating to survival after death and psychical research. We were an independent group which regularly cooperates with several distinguished psychical researchers and parapsychologists. SurvivalAfterDeath.info is now managed by Webmaster Kevin Williams of www.near-death.com

Spiritual Consciousness

Back in 2010, Drs. Carlos S. Alvarado and Nancy L. Zingrone, established a project called “The Alvarado Zingrone Institute for Research and Education” under their consulting business, Alvarado Zingrone and Associates. The AZIRE was founded to be the category under which all of their online educational activities could take place. The original site contained lots of information about their own work (and this site includes that too) but especially highlighted the founding and development of The AZIRE Library and Learning Center in the virtual world, Second Life (which was founded before the website, on August 29th, 2009), as well as the WizIQ-based and Moodle-based teaching activities of the pair (which came along in 2010 with the original website). More recently also subsumed under The AZIRE aegis is the YouTube Channel Parapsychology Online.

Parapsychology Research

The coming of the fairies, by Arthur Conan Doyle, illustrated from photographs. Author of "The New Revelation", "The Vital Message", "Wanderings of a Spiritualist". This book contains reproductions of the famous Cottingley photographs, and gives the whole of the evidence in connection with them. The diligent reader is in a good position form a judgment upon the authenticity of the pictures. This narrative is not a special plea for that authenticity, but is simply a collection of facts the inferences from which may be accepted or rejected as the reader may think fit. The series of incidents set forth in this little volume represent either the most elaborate and ingenious hoax every played upon the public, or else they constitute an event in human history which may in the future appear to have been epoch-making in its character.

Books Spiritual

Research suggests a “Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S)” defined by recurrent and systematic perceptions of anomalous subjective and objective anomalies. Such signs or symptoms are traditionally attributed to “spirits and the supernatural,” but these themes are hypothesised to morph to “surveillance and stalking” in reports of “group-(or gang) stalking,” We tested this premise with a quali-quantitative exercise that mapped group-stalking experiences from a published first-hand account to a Rasch measure of haunt-type anomalies. This comparison found significant agreement in the specific “signs or symptoms” of both phenomena. Meta-patterns likewise showed clear conceptual similarities between the phenomenology of haunts and group-stalking. Findings are consistent with the idea that both anomalous episodes involve the same, or similar, attentional or perceptual processes and thereby support the viability of the HP-S construct.

Parapsychology Psychology Studies Research Science

In the Ganzfeld technique, the visual and auditory perceptual fields are homogenized. After a short exposure to completely unstructured sensory input, participants transit into an altered state of consciousness. Visual homogenization is typically accomplished by a combination of goggles and bright light; auditory homogenization is accomplished by the presentation of unstructured auditory noise via headphones. The induced state is phenomenologically similar to a transition state between wakefulness and sleep, characterized by alterations in attentiveness, perception, and awareness, as well as by a compressed sense of time. Due to these replicable features of the Ganzfeld‐induced state, it can be used within empirical research on the neuronal underpinnings of altered states phenomena. After a historic overview, here, we present data from a study on the stability of the subjectively experienced effects induced under different auditory homogenization conditions. In a fully randomized within‐subject design (n = 24), we tested for the effects of three different auditory noise conditions: (1) violet, (2) white, and (3) brown noise. The combination of a standardized psychometric assessment, ratings on subjective time perception, as well as open reports prove the Ganzfeld‐induced effects as being stable and effects within each participant as highly replicable, and therefore well suited for experimental purposes. Finally, the subjective experiences elucidated by the Ganzfeld technique are discussed within the framework of predictive coding and how changes in the interaction of top‐down and bottom‐up brain mechanisms could lead to the observed phenomenology.

Parapsychology Research Studies ESP

The Ghost Club is the oldest organisation in the world associated with psychical research. It was founded in 1862 but has its roots in Cambridge University where, in 1855, fellows at Trinity College began to discuss ghosts and psychic phenomena.

Everything Paranormal Ghosts Research

The Global Consciousness Project is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists and engineers. We collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in up to 70 host sites around the world at any given time. The data are transmitted to a central archive which now contains more than 15 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials generated every second.

Research Studies Parapsychology PSI Consciousness

For thousands of years those of Ra have sought to teach the Law of One to seekers of truth on Earth who wished to learn of the unity or oneness of all things. This basic law of all creation is buried deep within each of our hearts because we really are one in love and in light, the building blocks of the universe. We are all manifestations of the One Infinite Creator. We are the Creator. We are not learning this law for the first time but are remembering it yet again as all mystics have taught throughout Earth's history. Our journey of self-realization is the discovery or remembrance of this essential truth, our essential identity. A waking up, as some have called it, within an illusion of separation.

Books Spiritual

No other organization in the world performs the job that the Parapsychological Association does. The PA provides a professional home for scientists and scholars around the world who dare to investigate phenomena shunned by mainstream science. The PA unites both the skeptics and the advocates of parapsychology’s controversial findings in productive scientific dialogue. The PA provides objective and reasoned information on what is known and what is not known about parapsychology to the media and the public, who are all too often beset by the irrational claims from those with unscientific beliefs in either the existence or non-existence of psychic phenomena.

PSI ESP Parapsychology Research

Recently, the University of Pennsylvania has become a center for research on ghosts. Usually restricted to the fields of (Para)Psychology and Religious Studies, the study of ghosts has never been approached in a serious or comprehensive way in the humanities, the social sciences, or healthcare. In the academy, ghost belief has been something to be explained away. Studies that consistently show that large percentages of people in Japan, Brazil, South Africa, the United States, India, France, the Philippines, Russia, Thailand, and many other places believe in ghosts or claim to have felt or seen ghosts are treated with a metaphorical smirk or a disappointing shake of the head. How could people believe in something that has no scientific proof? Why believe in something that does not have comforting psychological benefit that belief in “higher powers” (gods, goddesses) does? Why would people continue to create literature, art, ritual, film about menacing specters? In efforts to account for this irrational belief, ghosts have been relegated to symptoms of socio-economic conditions, a lack of access to education, a pre-modern religio-cultural leftover, or simply as a psychological coping mechanism.

Research Parapsychology Psychology

If you’re into the spiritual side of life death and the paranormal you’ll enjoy my articles Written by Amanda APS

Blogs Spiritual

A five-year scientific investigation into life after death and other dimensions 'The most important scientific investigation of life after death in history'

Consciousness Research Theories

https://archive.org/details/The_Skeptics_Guide_to_the_Paranormal_by_Lynne_Kelly

Books

This is a complete copy of the book, originally published by ASSAP in 1993. It has NOT been updated since, so it will inevitably be out of date. It is provided because there is so little information available on this subject. Unfortunately, little work has been done since as very few researchers have studied the field. Regrettably, the SLIDE project no longer exists though ASSAP is still interested in reports of SLI

Research Studies

This paper contains a narrative overview of the past 20-years of environmental research on anomalous experiences attributed to “haunted house.”

Ghosts Studies Research

This collection documents the subculture of individuals who believe in extraterrestrial beings and their presence on and around Earth. It focuses on websites created by members of this subculture, and which document a belief in extraterrestrial encounters (e.g., UFO sightings, crashes, or abductions, and government conspiracy theories relating to concealed knowledge of, or interaction with, extraterrestrial beings).

UFO

A blog by John Cox devoted to exploring and celebrating the life and legacy of HARRY HOUDINI in history, media, and in pop culture. Updates daily.

Blogs