Paranormal

Did You Know?

• The term paranormal has existed in the English language since at least 1920, consisting of two parts: para and normal.
• Since then, many individuals and groups have offered similar monetary awards for proof of the paranormal, with a combined value of over $2.4 million.

Paranormal subjects

Ghost hunting involves investigating locations reported to be haunted by ghosts, with teams attempting to collect evidence of paranormal activity. In traditional ghostlore, a ghost is a manifestation of the spirit or soul of a person, and alternative theories include belief in ghosts of deceased animals; the term is sometimes used synonymously with any spirit or demon, though in popular usage it typically refers to the spirit of a deceased person.

The belief in ghosts as souls of the departed is tied to animism, an ancient belief that attributed souls to everything in nature, and as the 19th-century anthropologist George Frazer explained, souls were seen as the 'creature within' that animated the body. The human soul was sometimes depicted in ancient cultures as a bird or other animal, but it was widely held that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, including clothing, as shown in artwork such as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The possibility of extraterrestrial life is not itself a paranormal subject, as many scientists search for unicellular life within the Solar System and projects like SETI conduct astronomical searches for radio activity; the paranormal aspect centers on belief in unidentified flying objects and associated phenomena.

Paranormal research

Approaching the paranormal from a research perspective is often difficult due to the lack of acceptable physical evidence from most purported phenomena, and by definition a phenomenon cannot be confirmed as paranormal using the scientific method because if it could be, it would no longer fit the definition. Despite this, studies on the paranormal are periodically conducted by researchers from various disciplines, and some researchers simply study beliefs in the paranormal regardless of whether the phenomena are considered to objectively exist.

An anecdotal approach involves collecting stories about the paranormal, and Charles Fort is perhaps the best-known collector of such anecdotes, having compiled as many as 40,000 notes on unexplained paranormal experiences from magazines and scientific journals. From this research Fort wrote seven books, though only four survive: The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents. Reported events he collected include teleportation, poltergeist events, falls of frogs and fishes, crop circles, unaccountable noises and explosions, spontaneous fires, levitation, ball lightning, unidentified flying objects, mysterious appearances and disappearances, giant wheels of light in the oceans, and animals found outside their normal ranges; he also offered many reports of out-of-place artifacts and is perhaps the first person to explain strange human appearances and disappearances by the hypothesis of alien abduction.

Skeptical scientific investigation

Scientific skeptics advocate critical investigation of claims of paranormal phenomena by applying the scientific method to reach a rational, scientific explanation, 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. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry aims to publicize the scientific, skeptical approach, carrying out investigations and publishing results in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

CSI's Richard Wiseman draws attention to possible alternative explanations for perceived paranormal activity, noting that while about 15% of people believe they have experienced an encounter with a ghost, only 1% report seeing a full-fledged ghost, while the rest report strange sensory stimuli such as fleeting shadows or the sensation of hearing footsteps. Michael Persinger proposed that ghostly experiences could be explained by stimulating the brain with weak magnetic fields, but Swedish psychologist Pehr Granqvist and his team determined that the sensations were merely the result of suggestion.

Oxford University's Justin Barrett has theorized that agency detection is so important in everyday life that it is natural for our brains to detect human or ghost-like behavior in everyday meaningless stimuli.

Belief polls

Surveys are useful in determining the beliefs of people regarding paranormal phenomena, and while these opinions do not constitute scientific evidence, they may indicate the mindset of a certain portion of the population. The number of people worldwide who believe in parapsychological powers has been estimated to be 3 to 4 billion. A 2006 survey by researchers from Australia's Monash University, with over 2,000 respondents from around the world, found that around 70% of respondents believe they have had an unexplained paranormal event that changed their life, mostly in a positive way; about 70% claimed to have seen, heard, or been touched by an animal or person that they knew was not there; 80% reported having a premonition; and almost 50% stated they recalled a previous life.

Polls conducted by Bryan Farha and Gary Steward in 2006 found fairly consistent results compared to a Gallup poll in 2001. A survey by Jeffrey S. Levin found that more than two-thirds of the United States population reported having at least one mystical experience. A 1996 Gallup poll estimated that 71% of people in the U.S. believed the government was covering up information about UFOs, and a 2002 Roper poll reported that 56% thought UFOs were real craft and 48% that aliens had visited Earth.

A 2001 National Science Foundation survey found that 9% of people polled thought astrology was very scientific, and 31% thought it was somewhat scientific; about 32% of Americans stated that some numbers were lucky, while 46% of Europeans agreed; about 60% of all people polled believed in some form of extrasensory perception, and 30% thought that some UFOs are really space vehicles from other civilizations.