• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

American Paranormal Beliefs

I am also surprised to see Bigfoot so low down. The Atlantis question is really rubbish though and probably got a bit of a boost due to ambiguity.

"Do you believe ancient advanced civilisations once existed?" Why yes I do. The evidence still remains in some of the amazing things they built. Atlantis specifically? Not so much.
 
Oddly the most reasonable / likely to exist, bigfoot, comes in last with more believing in ghosts and flying saucers!
I'd guess the opposite to be honest...I mean most people at least know someone who claims to have had a "ghost" experience, if not had one htemselves...and UFOs are well embedded in both hollywood and the land of conspiracy theories. Whereas Bigfoot, unless there is a new and dramatic news story that catches on which there hasn't been for years, is pretty much confined to something most people have heard or read about but not recently.
 
The one that bemuses me is the 25% who believe people can move objects with their minds but only 19% that psychics can see the future. Not to say they can but belief in/use of/depictions of psychics is clearly very wide spread...but what examples of telekinesis did a quarter of the population have in mind?!
 
One thing the article seems to not touch on is regional paraormal beliefs in the U.S.

I understand this article is speaking about the most widespread beliefs. But for instance Bigfoot is more regarded in the Pacific Northwest. Some 3000 miles from the Pine Barrons in NJ, where people believe in the Jersey Devil.

While these are different creatures, the basic idea of a supernatural creature lurking in remote wooded areas is consistent.

Not sure if I have a point other than this article seems to be only scraping the very surface of American paranormal beliefs.
 
That's a great example of what I think of as Three Paragraph Brain Fart Online Filler. There is no reference to who did the survey, how, where, or anything really. Might have been 36 students at Chapman University, wherever that is. Even though there is very little text in the, ahem, article, the author's biases are very much in evidence. What passes for journalism these days is just embarrassing.

If I am going to assume anything about the "statistics" in this piece, it is that they are imaginary.
 
I am also surprised to see Bigfoot so low down. The Atlantis question is really rubbish though and probably got a bit of a boost due to ambiguity.

"Do you believe ancient advanced civilisations once existed?" Why yes I do. The evidence still remains in some of the amazing things they built. Atlantis specifically? Not so much.
I've been to Atlantis, or one version of it, anyway. The buried town of Akrotiri on Santorini (not, presumably, its original name) is a remnant of the Minoan/Cycladic civilisation that was destroyed by the explosion of Thera, and is one of the leading contenders for the inspiration for Plato's story. This civilisation was pretty advanced - look at this carved, wooden table that wouldn't have looked out of place in Versaille.
Plaster-cast-of-an-ornate-Minoan-carved-wooden-table-made-from-a-cavity-in-the-volcanic-ash-in-Akrotiri-.jpg
 
Here's more substantive info and links on the survey ...

Chapman University has initiated a nationwide poll on what strikes fear in Americans. The Chapman University Survey on American Fears included 1,207 participants from across the nation and all walks of life. The research team leading this effort pared the information down into four basic categories: personal fears, natural disasters, paranormal fears and drivers of fear behavior.

More details on methodology, results, relationship of the paranormal bit to the overall fear survey, etc. ...

http://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/research-centers/babbie-center/survey-american-fears.aspx

https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/r...apman-Survey-of-America-Fears-methodology.pdf

The media propagation of this story dispensed with an interesting tidbit from the survey results - circa 1/4 of respondents expressed no belief in any of the 7 paranormal categories listed, with another (circa) 21% of respondents expressing belief in only one of the seven. Only 5.0% of respondents expressed any degree of belief in all seven categories.

https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2017/10/11/paranormal-america-2017/
 
I'd guess the opposite to be honest...I mean most people at least know someone who claims to have had a "ghost" experience, if not had one htemselves...and UFOs are well embedded in both hollywood and the land of conspiracy theories. Whereas Bigfoot, unless there is a new and dramatic news story that catches on which there hasn't been for years, is pretty much confined to something most people have heard or read about but not recently.
What i mean is that a new species of ape or hominin is not a paradigm shift like life after death, aliens visiting earth or super advanced ancient civilizations. There is a good case for bigfoot, not much for most of the others.
 
The media propagation of this story dispensed with an interesting tidbit from the survey results - circa 1/4 of respondents expressed no belief in any of the 7 paranormal categories listed, with another (circa) 21% of respondents expressing belief in only one of the seven. Only 5.0% of respondents expressed any degree of belief in all seven categories.
It nice to see the methodology laid out so completely, ta for posting that @EnolaGaia

I'd hazard a guess that the above owes itself to 'self-affirmation', i.e. in this case, if one has a strong belief in in something for which there is little (or any) objective evidence, it's easier to bolster one's self-image as a serious 'believer in phenomenon X' by trashing or disregarding other beliefs with the same evidence problem, than it is to examine one's own beliefs objectively.

Not unlike one religious sect being at war with another, while both are purportedly worshipping the same deity or deities.

It's interesting that those who's defence of their beliefs so often relies on accusations of not being open minded, are for the most part, very closed minded. The 5% that believe in all seven categories might perhaps be thought of as the small percentage of people who are truly open minded.
 
This years survey.

Paranormal America 2018 Chapman University Survey of American Fears
October 16, 2018

The Chapman University Survey of American Fears Wave 5 (2018) includes a battery of items on paranormal beliefs ranging from belief in aliens and psychic powers to Bigfoot and haunted houses.


2018-Fear-Campaign-Paranormal-Bar-Graph-1-580x448.jpg


Currently the most common paranormal belief in the United States is that places can be haunted by spirits (57.7%), followed closely by the belief that ancient, advanced civilizations, such as Atlantis once existed (56.9%). More than two out of five Americans (41.4%) believe that that aliens visited Earth in our ancient past and more than a third believe aliens are visiting now (35.1%). Of the items we asked about, Americans are the most skeptical about fortune tellers, with only approximately 17.2% believing that others can see the future. ...

https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson...XygVhmECs8zAONHYnRhB2m-kf71AxpeY0r8jHFY2toA88

And a response by Sharon Hill.

Believers are the majority: Paranormal acceptance in America is rising
Posted on October 25, 2018 by Sharon Hill

The results of the 2018 Chapman University survey of American Fears have been released and they suggest that America (that is, even well-educated America) is even more accepting of the paranormal than in the past three years. You can view the entire survey here but let me highlight the major points as well as some possible explanations for the numbers and some problems with applying them.

The survey asked a wider variety of questions about fears but I’m most interested in the paranormal subject areas. The following graphic shows the percentage of belief by subject. Between June 25 and July 10, 2018, a total of 1190 respondents replied to indicate their agreement with a belief statement on a scale from strongly agree down to strongly disagree. These percentages show either “strongly agree” or “agree”, or a positive belief statement. ...

https://sharonahill.com/2018/10/25/...r0t_ZOQknnpbQ2xfOsOc0pq4lot-CSBAtqiKdnfS3uCk4
 
Ghosts/spirits are surely the most "believable" thing there? They are, by their (super)nature immaterial, they are also localised and intermittent - it seems. They don't have to be the "souls" of the dead.

I suppose you could, hypothetically, explain contemporary alien visits in a similar way - the entities and their crafts are so advanced and/or different to anything we can understand that we are unlikely to obtain definite proof of their visits. Ancient "visitations" have the advantage of all of that, plus the fact that they happened thousands of years ago.

We would presumably have found definitive evidence of ancient, "futuristic" civilisations, not just "we don't know how they built "X", therefore aliens".

If people can move objects with their minds or predict the future, presumably we'd have proof by now.

The issue with bigfoot isn't that an unknown hominid or ape exists, simply that we haven't found definitive proof on a continent of 300+ million people.

I'm open minded but ghosts/spirits seem the most "likely" to "exist".
 
Back
Top