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The Science Behind Why People See Ghosts & Demons

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
Joined
Aug 9, 2001
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Does it take a specific type of brain to experience paranormal anomalies. Some scientists think so—but that can go two ways.

On the one hand, researchers specialized in parapsychology—the psychological study of the paranormal—have spent decades studying whether and how these anomalies exist in nature, outside of the human body, and how some people might be more prone to experiencing them. More specifically, they want to know if some people have unique “abilities” that allow them to, say, see ghosts, spirits, and any other entities that might exist outside of the person experiencing it (i.e. not in their mind).

On the other hand, skeptical scholars from the field of neuroscience and cognitive psychology have been trying to show that it’s more about how some people process reality, subjectively, in their brain. Some people might just be wired to produce these experiences in their mind, even though they may not be real.

Michiel Van Elk, a professor of cognitive psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands has a lab focused on cognitive differences that he believes are at the basis of why people believe and experience the paranormal. According to his research, paranormal believers are more inclined to trust their intuition and emotions, and are less guided by analytical reflection. They appear to perceive more “illusory agents” in random motion displays, meaning that they might have a bias for seeing shapes and objects when there aren’t ones.

“And we identified that paranormal believers had a stronger self-attribution bias, where in a random card guessing game, they more often took credit for positive outcomes, which were in fact caused by chance, than skeptics,” Van Elk told The Daily Beast. “These findings fit with the broader view that paranormal believers are prone to a range of cognitive biases, but at the same time, that these biases may well be adaptive for fostering mental health and self-esteem.”

A proclivity to paranormal experiences is distributed among the population, according to Christine Simmonds-Moore, a parapsychologist at the University of West Georgia. But that doesn’t rule out the existence of anomalies. For example, parapsychological research has shown that the concept of transliminality, a thin boundary structure between the conscious, unconscious, and environment, is a strong predictor of haunting experiences because it enables people to access paranormal experiences.

“There is some evidence that people who have more paranormal experiences have more communication between the hemispheres [of the brain], for example, and more potential for crosstalk,” Simmonds-Moore told The Daily Beast. “There's more permeability between areas of the mind and between people and the environment and social others, and potentially paranormal information” with the information being outside of the human brain experiencing it.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-neuroscience-behind-why-people-see-ghosts-and-demons?ref=scroll

maximus otter
 
That is very interesting. Are there any studies into whether people who experience more paranormal occurences have better mental health overall, then?
This does not include data on mental health, but for sure these experiences seem to be very common. Here is a USA survey published in 2018:
https://blogs.chapman.edu/wilkinson/2018/10/16/paranormal-america-2018/

To stay on topic, 58% of the participants believe places can be haunted by spirits (hence, they believe in ghosts).
 
That is very interesting. Are there any studies into whether people who experience more paranormal occurences have better mental health overall, then?
Listening to a lot of paranormal type podcasts, one thing I've noticed is there is a lot of promotion of mental health. Both from services advertising on the podcast and the hosts speaking about personal experiences with mental health issues (generally depression).

Whether that's random or not I have no idea.
 
Listening to a lot of paranormal type podcasts, one thing I've noticed is there is a lot of promotion of mental health. Both from services advertising on the podcast and the hosts speaking about personal experiences with mental health issues (generally depression).

Whether that's random or not I have no idea.
But Maximus's article above says '“These findings fit with the broader view that paranormal believers are prone to a range of cognitive biases, but at the same time, that these biases may well be adaptive for fostering mental health and self-esteem.”
so, surely, there should be some positive findings that indicate that believers have BETTER mental health than non-experiencers?
 
That is very interesting. Are there any studies into whether people who experience more paranormal occurences have better mental health overall, then?
Forgot I was going to answer this...

Here are a coupla starter studies around the topic, but I've not seen any regarding mental health (but I've not looked either) but I'd speculate that in the same way religious beliefs can help some people make sense of the world and cope with its vicissitudes, possibly belief in the paranormal (arguable, empirically, belief in a deity is a paranormal belief) might do the same, at least to a point.

Certainly once one reaches the point where 'The stars are God’s daisy chain' then one may need to re-evaluate one's thought-processes.

The “Haunt” Project: An attempt to build a “haunted” room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound
Christopher C. French , Usman Haque , Rosie Bunton-Stasyshyn & Rob Davis

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/4209/2/French_et_al_Haunt_accepted.pdf

Paranormal Perception? A Critical Evaluation. Christopher C. French
Abstract
The concept of extrasensory perception (ESP) implies that not all perception is dependent upon known physical sensory systems.
General ESP is typically sub-divided into three types: (i) telepathy (i.e., alleged direct transference of thoughts), (ii) clairvoyance (i.e.,
alleged awareness of remote objects or events other than by use of the known sensory channels), and (iii) precognition (i.e., alleged
knowledge of events before they occur, other than as a result of inference).

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.117.8727&rep=rep1&type=pdf

...I forgot that I'd built up a repository of such papers, including dowsing and 'time-slips' and so on. It's astonishing how bad some of them are. I've got one that literally attempts to redefine the p-value and its meaning (it’s a measure of the likelihood/chance of the result occurring when there is no effect, that is, that the null hypothesis is true).

"In fact it is commonly accepted practice to say that if the p-value is 5 percent (0.05) or less, then we can rule out chance as an explanation."
No it's not. Dearie me. Clue (1) 'in fact'. Clue (2) 'we'.
 
Forgot I was going to answer this...

Here are a coupla starter studies around the topic, but I've not seen any regarding mental health (but I've not looked either) but I'd speculate that in the same way religious beliefs can help some people make sense of the world and cope with its vicissitudes, possibly belief in the paranormal (arguable, empirically, belief in a deity is a paranormal belief) might do the same, at least to a point.
I think you're probably right, Coal. A belief in anything that extends beyond a solepsistic view seems to be good for mental health in general. But it seemed such a confident assertion that those who believe in the supernatural have better mental health than those who don't, that I wondered if there had been studies done that proved this to be a fact. I can understand why it may be true, but I'd like to see some evidence that it actually is!
 
I think you're probably right, Coal. A belief in anything that extends beyond a solepsistic view seems to be good for mental health in general. But it seemed such a confident assertion that those who believe in the supernatural have better mental health than those who don't, that I wondered if there had been studies done that proved this to be a fact. I can understand why it may be true, but I'd like to see some evidence that it actually is!
Agreed...quick google scholar of 'Paranormal belief and mental health' pulls up a long list...here's a few, but I'd venture from a quick scan that they support the premise of the original post. More or less.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886909004929

Paranormal experiences, mental health and mental boundaries, and psi

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that paranormal beliefs and experiences are associated with thinner mental boundaries and traumas during childhood. This paper examines more thoroughly the relationship between paranormal experiences, mental health and boundaries, and psi abilities. One hundred and sixty two participants completed questionnaires about paranormal experiences (AEI), mental health (MHI-17), mental boundaries (BQ-Sh), traumas during childhood (CATS) and life-changing events (LES). A controlled psi experiment was also conducted. Significant correlations were found between paranormal experiences and mental boundaries, traumas and negative life events. The overall results were non-significant for the psi task and no significant correlation was found between psychological variables and psi results. These findings suggest that mainly mental boundaries concerning unusual experiences and childlikeness are associated with paranormal experiences. They also highlight the importance of association between emotional abuse and paranormal experiences, and that paranormal experiences occur especially frequently after negative life events.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00223980.1987.9915499

Mental Health, Belief Deficit Compensation, and Paranormal Beliefs​

The present study examined the relationship between religious and nonreligious paranormal beliefs and mental health, as well as the possibility that nonreligious subjects compensate for a lack of identification with traditional religion by increased nonreligious paranormal beliefs. Subjects were 80 undergraduates categorized as religious or nonreligious on the basis of scores on the Traditional Religion subscale of the Paranormal Belief Scale. Religious subjects had significantly higher total paranormal belief scores than nonreligious subjects. Those adopting religious paranormal beliefs were actually somewhat more likely to adopt other nonreligious paranormal beliefs. The failure of nonreligious subjects to compensate fully for this traditional religious belief deficit was reflected in their mental health ratings on the Langer's Mental Health Scale (Langer, 1962). Paranormal beliefs were found to be negatively correlated with reported symptoms of psychopathology, supporting the formulation that paranormal beliefs may serve to ensure psychic integrity by acting as “self-serving cognitive biases.”


https://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Abst...ity,_Magical_Ideation,_and_Paranormal.10.aspx

Religiosity, Magical Ideation, and Paranormal Beliefs in Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder​

Abstract

The relation between religiosity/spirituality (R/S), personal beliefs, and mental health has been extensively studied. However, concerning anxiety disorders (ADs), empirical evidence is scarce. This study investigated the differences in R/S and magical/paranormal ideation among obsessive-compulsive disorder patients (OCD; n = 49), patients with other ADs (n = 36), and healthy controls (HCs; n = 35). Our results suggest negative religious coping as being the only parameter showing significantly higher scores in OCD and AD participants in comparison with HCs. Negative religious coping reflects negative functional expressions of R/S in stressful situations. Logistic regression also suggested negative religious coping as the strongest predictor of group affiliation to the nonhealthy group. Further results show no significant differences between other R/S, magical, and paranormal ideation traits among groups. This study underlines an important role of negative religious coping in ADs yet does not clearly indicate a specific causality. Religious-sensitive treatment targeting cognitive aspects of negative religious coping are discussed.
 
Nice (open access) paper here on the hypothesis that what folk experience is linked solidly to their beliefs, social settings and ideologies and so on, very much discussed elsewhere.


Conceptual and Clinical Implications of a “Haunted People Syndrome”
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/628076/8/2021-27007-001aam.pdf

Evidence suggests that subjective and objective anomalies associated with ghostly
episodes form a unidimensional Rasch scale and that these interconnected “signs or
symptoms” arguably describe a syndrome model. This view predicts that symptom
perception—that is, the phenomenology of these anomalous episodes—can be markedly
skewed by an experient’s psychological set. This is impacted, in turn, by psychosocial
variables that affect attentional, perceptual, and interpretational processes. Therefore, we
present an overview that discusses how (a) Belief in the Paranormal, (b) Religious
Ideology, (c) Ideological Practice, (d) Social Desirability, (e) Latency, and (f) Environ-
mental Setting ostensibly influence the contents or interpretations of accounts. These
experiential details are similarly expected to reveal insights into the psychodynamics
being expressed or contextualized via these narratives. Future research in this area should
help to validate and clarify the proposed syndrome model, as well as explore which
nuances in the phenomenology of ghostly episodes reflect idiosyncrasies of experients’
psychological set versus the nature of the core phenomenon itself.
 
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