Parapsychology-The Science of Mysteries

Psychical Research and Parapsychology are scientific approaches to the study of apparently paranormal phenomena. The "paranormal" (beside or beyond the normal) refers to unusual experiences that do not seem to be explainable in terms of our everyday understanding or known scientific principles. Paranormal experiences often seem weird, uncanny, or unnatural. Typically they are quite rare but there are a few exceptional "stars" who have regular paranormal experiences and may show seemingly consistent paranormal ability.

Then there arises an important question viz What does it mean to study psychic phenomena? A long-held, common-sense assumption is that the worlds of the subjective and objective are completely distinct, with no overlap. Subjective is "here, in the head," and objective is "there, out in the world." Parapsychology then is the study of phenomena suggesting that the assumption of a strict separation between subjective and objective may be wrong. Human experience suggests that some phenomena occasionally fall between the cracks, and are not purely subjective nor purely objective.

From a scientific perspective, such phenomena are called "anomalous" because they are difficult to explain within current scientific models.

Since the phenomena under study are rare and often contrary to common sense and the known laws of nature, most scientists remain skeptical as to the authenticity of the phenomena. Personal prejudices and beliefs of the investigator can have greater effect on the study than in other sciences. The possibility of the investigator being fooled by clever charlatans and of biased observation and reporting make people hesitate to consider evidence from studies as conclusive. All sorts of criticisms are made on the study, sometimes even going to the extent of questioning the personal integrity and honesty of the research worker.

The number of psychologists believing that the existence of genuine parapsychological phenomena has been demonstrated scientifically has increased considerably in recent times. Still, some even now try to explain away the reported occurrences in terms of known psychological concepts like suggestion, hysteria, hallucination, etc. or in terms of fraud, trickery, etc. Some accept the genuineness of psi capacities like extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK), but do not consider the evidence for survival or for life beyond death or for the existence of spirits adequate. There are scientists on the other extreme who believe that enough evidence has been gathered to prove the existence of spirits and think that it is possible to communicate with the spirits of dead individuals.

History:

The term "Psychical Research" was coined in the late 19th Century. Many of the early psychical researchers were particularly interested in phenomena that suggested the survival of human personality after death (e.g., hauntings and mediumistic communications).The Parapsychology Laboratory was established at Duke University in 1934. There, psi phenomena were studied by means of laboratory experiments under controlled conditions. The term "Parapsychology" was coined in the 1930s to refer specifically to controlled experimental research into apparently paranormal abilities such as ESP (e.g., telepathy and clairvoyance) and psychokinesis (mental influence on physical events). In recent years, both Psychical Research and Parapsychology have broadened their approaches so that a clear distinction between the two disciplines is no longer possible.

Some modern researchers prefer to identify their approach as the study of "anomalies" rather than "paranormal" phenomena, in order to avoid the assumption that such phenomena cannot be explained scientifically.

The Range of Paranormal Phenomena:

Most alleged paranormal phenomena can be categorised in terms of whether they are primarily mental (involving the obtaining of information in paranormal ways) or physical (involving paranormal influences on physical objects, events or processes, or on living systems). In practice, however, this distinction is often blurred (e.g., a phenomenon may have both mental and physical features). Additionally, there are varieties of miscellaneous phenomena that do not fit neatly into either category. Many parapsychologists do not accept some or all of these miscellaneous phenomena as the legitimate study of parapsychology. Parapsychology hence consists of the following:

Mental Phenomena (Examples)

Extrasensory Perception

Telepathy

Clairvoyance and clairaudience

Psychometry

Precognition and Premonitions

Remote Viewing

Mental mediumship

Dowsing

Past-life memories

Possession

Out of body and near death experiences

Apparitions

Automatic writing

Xenoglossy

Physical Phenomena (Examples)

Psychokinesis

Physical mediumship

Psychic photography

Thoughtography

Healing

Poltergeist activity

Materialization and dematerialization

Levitation

Miscellaneous Phenomena (Examples)

Bizarre coincidences

Miracles

Unidentified Flying Objects

Other mysterious sightings

Alien Abductions

Animal Mutilations

Corn Circles

Stigmata

Occult systems of knowledge and practice

Psychological Phenomena (e.g., lucid dreaming, glossolalia).

Establishment of the Parapsychological Association:

The Parapsychological Association (PA) was created in Durham, North Carolina, on June 19, 1957. Its formation was proposed by J. B. Rhine at a workshop on parapsychology which was held at the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University. Rhine proposed that the group form itself into the nucleus of an international professional society in parapsychology. The aim of the organization, as stated in its Constitution,became to advance parapsychology as a science, to disseminate knowledge of the field, and to integrate the findings with those of other branches of science.

Under the direction of anthropologist Margaret Mead, the Parapsychological Association took a large step in advancing the field of parapsychology in 1969 when it became affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general scientific society in the world. In 1979, physicist John A. Wheeler argued that parapsychology is pseudoscientific, and that the affiliation of the PA tothe AAAS needed to be reconsidered. His challenge to parapsychology's AAAS affiliation was unsuccessful. Today, the PA consists of about three hundred full, associate, and affiliated members worldwide.

Here we will describe the three particular phenomena of parapsychology in details.

Apparitions:

The term apparition is used for any kind of visual, paranormal related manifestation. The key word to remember is visual. A ghost can take the form of an apparition, like an orb or human figure that you can see.However, not all paranormal visualizations are ghosts. They can be in the form of trains, animals, and inanimate objects. Some apparitions of people might not always be a ghost, or spirit of a person. They might just be visions of things or people that were in that same location years ago. These forms of apparitions will not be conscious of their surroundings or of themselves. They are kind of like a holographic video of something that used to be there. This is called an imprint, and is caused by very dramatic and emotional events that become a part of the land and it's near surroundings. Most professionals in paranormal fields will use the word apparition to describe all paranormal visualizations to keep things simple and avoid any confusion.

Apparitions have been thoroughly studied by parapsychologists and other paranormal researchers since the 19th century.They can vary and can hold different characteristics. Some are very lifelike in their movements and looks. Others can be transparent, and fuzzy with jerky, puppet like movements. Others can be even less lifelike and appear only as patches, or other forms of light. They can visualize very suddenly and then disappear in the same manner. Every apparition has it's own special qualities. Some can come with smells, some can make sounds, and others can just make gestures to get someone's attention or communicate. Some people that have witnessed an apparition have actually tried to touch them. The majority of those individuals learn that their hands go right through the ghostly visions. In a few incidents however the percipient that have been able to touch them have felt a substance similar to a thin, flimsy fabric.

Apparitions are mainly of four types: the crisis apparitions, death-bed apparitions, haunting apparitions and reciprocal apparitions.

Crisis Apparition:

An apparition of an individual is considered to be a crisis apparition if it appears within the 12 hour period following his death. Many cases are reported where the apparition of the dead man appears to his relatives or friends who would not have even known of the event. One obvious explanation would be telepathy. It has been suggested that telepathy operates more when an individual is in a crisis situation. He sends a telepathic message which may be received by his relative or friend only after some time when his mind is in a receptive state (deferred telepathy). The message received by the unconscious mind enters the conscious mind in the form of an apparition of the dying man. Some others present at that time might through telepathy, share the experience.

Death-bed Apparitions:

An apparition that appears to a dying person, very close to the time of their death. They can be of dead relatives, angels, or mythological figures popular in various religions.

Haunting Apparition:

Haunting is an apparition seen repeatedly at the same place at certain times over a relatively long period of time. Several explanations other than that of survival have been suggested to account for the cases investigated.

One explanation is based on ESP. It has been mentioned that what one clairvoyant reads in an object is likely to be seen by other clairvoyants who later on see the object, even when the reading is incorrect. It is also believed that objects differ in the evocatory power or the power to stimulate clairvoyance. Some researchers speak of psychic impregnation of space by the dying man. The places which become haunted might be places which stimulate clairvoyance in the sensitives. Such persons might easily see, through clairvoyance, the image of an individual who had lived in that place or see an interesting event which had taken place there. Other clairvoyants coming to the location might have the same vision again and the place is supposed to the haunted. It is also possible that belief in the existence of a ghost inhabiting a place in the minds of many people living in the locality might create a telepathic image in the minds of people who come to that place. The other explanation is that of teleplasty. A dying man creates a teleplastic phantom as a medium produces a materialization in trance. The teleplastic phantom becomes independent, shows automatic behavior and is seen as a ghost.

Reciprocal apparitions:

In this case both the apparition and the person that sees it are still alive and remember seeing each other. Someone will be so lonely, worried, or missing the other that they will appear to that person in the form of an apparition and both will remember it happening. They can also be called ghosts of the living. This is a good example of how powerful the human mind and will actually is.

In experiments one person deliberately produces by volition an apparition of himself or of another man doing a particular act before a subject who is seated elsewhere. This process takes place through telepathic suggestion.L.E. Rhine, on the basis of her studies of spontaneous cases, comes to the conclusion that there are several cases where it appears that the deceased personality had induced the experience and a few cases where the initiative of the deceased person is the only possible explanation.

Reasons of Apparitions:

About every four out of five apparitions seem to appear for a reason. One of those reasons is to tell of the deceased persons own traumatic experience and/or death. Another is to give comfort to a family member or friend that has lost someone. Sometimes they just want to give important information to help the living as well. It may be that the other 20% of apparitions that do not seem to have a specific purpose are either imprint apparitions or have other matters to attend to that is unknown to the witness.

Premonitions/Precognition:

Premonition is a type of prophecy consisting of an impressionable warning of a future event. The phenomenon is characterized by such sensations as anxiety, uneasiness, a vague feeling of disquiet suggesting impending disaster to actual visual or auditory hallucinations. Premonition is sometimes referred to as a "gut-level" feeling. The sensation tends to occur prior to disasters, accidents, deaths and other traumatic and emotionally charged events.

The sensation of premonition may be considered precognition at times because there is no clear-cut line between them. However, generally premonitions are sense-oriented, dominated by a syndrome of physical uneasiness, depression, or distress that is without discernible source or reason. It is an unexplainable feeling that "something is going to happen." Precognition, on the other hand, is more precise, involving visions or dream of the event that is to occur in the future.

For some investigators premonitions can include actions of patients and individuals in magnetic and mediumistic trances who prophesy that their malady or some terrible event, to them, will occur within a certain period of time, and may subconsciously wish to fulfill that prophecy. It might be question whether the similar phenomena might occur in a veridical dream or hallucination. This is theorized on the conclusion that a post-hypnotic person generally weaves his action into the surrounding circumstances, even though the very moment of its performance may have been fixed months before. Therefore this raises the possibilities that fulfillment of dreams and hallucinations might be suggested through telepathic communication to a person from another agent, which may not be far-fetched or impossible.

Premonition Dreams:

There are a significant number of accounts of people claiming they have experienced premonition dreams, but in today’s world the idea is not given any credibility by the scientific community. Dreaming of good or bad unforeseen events occurs all the time in our dreams. But what if these nightly visions actually end up happening?

Premonitions are a certain form of dream, but not all dreams serve as premonitions. We are referring to a very specific form of dream here. Déjà vu can be put into this category. We have all had an experience when we feel we are experiencing something in waking life that we feel we have seen, usually in a dream, before.

Another consideration is coincidence. The dream or hallucination of an event could possibly coincide with the incident. Also, it is possible that impressions, whether they remain vague forebodings or are embedded in dreams, must at times be subconscious inferences drawn from an actual, if obscured, perception of existing facts. Such premonitions are by no means to be disregarded. However, frequently premonitions, no matter how impressive, prove to be absolutely groundless, where a ghostly visitant issues the warning.

Dreams which appear to be precognitive may in fact be the result of the "Law of Large Numbers". Robert Todd Carroll, author of "The Skeptic's Dictionary" put it this way: "Say the odds are a million to one that when a person has a dream of an airplane crash, there is an airplane crash the next day. With 6 billion people having an average of 250 dream themes each per night, there should be about 1.5 million people a day who have dreams that seem clairvoyant."

Premonitions occurring in a waking state are more predominant that those that occur in dreams because in the latter they are frequently disguised as symbols, and tend to go unnoticed. However, when theses symbols frequently reappear in dreams, the individual may learn to recognize distinguishing symbols or emotional tones.

Expalanations:

Psychological:

Various psychological processes have been offered to explain experiences of apparent precognition:

Cognitive failure/distortion models

Suited to explaining at least naturalistic occurrences of apparent precognition are several more or less hypothetical unconscious cognitive processes.Selection bias where people remember the "hits" and forget the "misses," remember coincidences more often than other non-coincidences, or when they were correct about a future event rather than instances when they were wrong. Examples include thinking of a specific person before that person calls on the phone. Human memory, it is argued, has a tendency to record instances when the guess was correct, and to dismiss instances when the guess was incorrect.

Cryptomnesia in which people retain knowledge of a certain fact that will occur in the future, but lose conscious knowledge of how they learned it. When the event comes to pass, it appears to them that they knew of the event without the aid of recognized channels of information.

Unconscious perception by which people unconsciously infer, from data they have unconsciously learned, that a certain event will probably happen in a certain context. As with cryptomnesia, when the event occurs, the former knowledge appears to have been acquired without the aid of recognized channels of information.

Self-fulfilling prophecy and Unconscious enactment in which people bring events that they have precognized to pass, but without their conscious knowledge.

Parapsychological Explanations:

There are several ways by which premonition can be conceived as occurring without fundamental dependence on normally recognized processes of perception and cognition, i.e., by psi.Firstly, there are several ways to explain premonition as aform of extrasensory perception. Premonition can be conceived as an extraordinary process of clairvoyance, involving no direct perception of the future. If, as is offered by the philosophy of determinism, all future events are determined by present conditions, then it can be suggested that it is clairvoyance of all the relevant present conditions that permits one to know their future outcomes.

Psychokinesis offers another explanation to premonitions. It can be suggested that precognition involves the influence of present conditions so that they conform with what is premonized, while a retrocausal process can be put up as an explanation, raising the idea that, at a future time, the ostensibly present conditions are influenced backward in time.

Some theories:

Psi-mediated instrumental response (PMIR):

It proposes that humans unconsciously and automatically scan their environment for motivationally relevant information that will only occur in the future of each conscious observer. This information will be used, by those who are so disposed, to place the person in a goal-relevant position with respect to its environment. This creates the experience of premonition, should some of this information have been represented in conscious imagery or other representational forms.

Resonance theories:

Another class of theories is based on the block universe model, in which future events already exist in spacetime, according to the special theory of relativity. The theories explain precognition as the retrieval of memories from the brain in the future, which could occur in a similar way to that in which ordinary memories are retrieved from the brain in the past.The theory proposed by Jon Taylor is based on David Bohm's theory of the implicate order, which suggests that if similar structures are created at different places and different times, the structures resonate with a tendency to become more closely similar to one another. Taylor applies the principles to the neuronal spatiotemporal patterns that areactivated in the brain, to show how an information transfer could be produced.

For example, a precognition would occur when the pattern activated at the time of the future experience of an event resonates with any similar pattern that is spontaneously activated in the present. This might enable the present activation to be sustained until it produces the conscious awareness of an event similar to the one that will be experienced in the future.

Details on several other different theories can be accessed at:

1) Alcock, James E. (1981). Parapsychology: Science or Magic?: a psychological perspective. Oxford: Pergamon Press

2) Walker, E. H. (1987). "Measurement in quantum mechanics revisited: A response to Phillips' criticism of the quantum mechanical theory of psi". Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 81: 333–369.

3) Marshall, N. (1960). "ESP and memory: A physical theory". British Journal of the Philosophy of Science 40: 265–286.

4) Taylor (2007). "Memory and precognition". Journal of Scientific Exploration 21: 553–570. http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_21_3_taylor.pdf.

5) Hyman, Ray (2007). "Evaluating Parapsychological Claims". In Robert J. Sternberg, Henry L. Roediger, Diane F. Halpern. Critical Thinking in Psychology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 219–223. ISBN 0521608341

Experiments to show premonitions/precognition in humans:

A Cornell University scientist has demonstrated that psi anomalies, more commonly known as precognition, premonitions or extra-sensory perception (ESP), really do exist at a statistically significant level.

In a paper soon to appear in the leading (peer-reviewed) social psychology publication, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologist Daryl Bem described nine experiments, in most of which he reversed the order of well-known psychological experiments such as recall and affective priming, so that what was usually seen as the cause became the effect. The experiments were carried out over a period of eight years and were well-designed and controlled and rigorous enoughto be replicated in the future by other researchers.

In one experiment subjects, all of whom were students, were briefly shown a word list and then asked to recall as many as they could. Later, they were asked to copy a list of words randomly selected from the same list by a computer. The surprising result of this experiment was that in the recall section of the experiment the subjects recalled at a significantly higher rate words they were later asked to type, even though they had no way of knowing which words would be on the list.

As regards particular experiments, a precognition experiment obviates concerns that there could be some subtle sensory cues from the targets that inform participants' responses, given that the targets are only generated after the data from the participant are secured. However, this creates the contrary issue that the target-generation process must not in any way be informed by the already available "responses". Particular experiments in precognition research have been critiqued for their methodological adequacy. Additionally, there has long been debate about the proper statistical analysis of the displacement effect.

More knowledge on experiments can be gained through:

1)Stanford, R. G. (1974). "An experimentally testable model for spontaneous psi events. I. Extrasensory events". Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 68: 34–57.

2)Stanford, R. G. (1990). An experimentally testable model for spontaneous psi events: A review of related evidence and concepts from parapsychology and other sciences. In S. Krippner (Ed.), Advances in Parapsychological Research (Vol. 6, pp. 54-161).

Jefferson, NC, US: McFarland.

3)Rhine, J. B. (1938). "Experiments bearing on the precognition hypothesis: I. Pre-shuffling card calling". Journal of Parapsychology 2: 38–54.

4)Rhine, J. B. (1941). "Experiments bearing upon the precognition hypothesis: III. Mechanically selected cards". Journal of Parapsychology 5: 1–57.

5)Rhine, L. E. (1967). ESP in life and lab: Tracing hidden channels. New York, NY, US: Macmillan.

6)Krippner, S.; Honorton, C.; Ullman, M. (1971). "A precognitive dream study with a single subject". Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 65: 192–203.

Some Famous Precognitions/Premonitions:

Titanic

A precognition/premonition factor may relate to doomed ships. The Titanic carried only fifty-eight percent of its passenger load on its disastrous maiden voyage when colliding with an iceberg in April 1912. A group of twenty-two stokers were late and the captain declared the ship would sail without them, a fact which may have saved their lives. The psychiatrist Ian Stevenson recorded more than nineteen incidents of premonitions and precognitions concerning the Titanic in England, America, Canada, andBrazil, which occurred within the two weeks prior to the ship's sailing date of April 10. Some cancelled their reservations after dreaming of the ship's doom; others said it was bad luck to sail on the ship's maiden voyage. Some of the survivors said they had felt uneasy but sailed anyway; the later is questionable because some sensation might have been prompted by after the fact thought.

Lincoln precognitive Dreams:

Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his own death six weeks before his assassination. However, his dream was not of being shot and dying, but of being an observer after the fact. He saw a long procession of mourners entering the White House. When he entered himself and passed the coffin, he was shocked to find himself looking at his own body. American presidents John Garfield and William McKinley experienced foreknowledge of their deaths.

Other Famous Premonitons can be accessed at:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C007446F/premonitions.html

The functioning of premonitions is not exactly known, that is, why some people possess them while others do not. One theory is that some people are more open or prone to psychic suggestion. A cause for the diminishing of this psychic ability in people is that a larger portion of the population has become less intuitive. With the advancement of the scientific age people have began to rely less on their sensations; it is just in recent years that science is investigating the importance of human intuition and sensation.

Further reading:

1) Randi, James (1995). An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 031213066X.

2) Scott, Christopher (1987). "Paranormal phenomena: the burden of proof". In Richard L. Gregory. The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press. pp. 578–581.

3) Hyman, Ray (2007). "Evaluating Parapsychological Claims". In Robert J. Sternberg, Henry J. Roediger III, Diane F. Halpern. Critical Thinking in Psychology. Cambridge University Press. p. 217.

4) Sannwald, G. (1959). "Statistische Untersuchungen an Spontanphänomene [Statistical analysis of spontaneous cases]". Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie 3: 59–71

5) Sidgwick, E. M. (1888). "On the evidence for premonitions". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 5: 288–354.

6) Saltmarsh, H. F. (1934). "Report on cases of apparent precognition". Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 42: 49–103.

Poltergeist activity:

Initially meaning “noisy ghosts” (from the German poltern "to knock" and geist "spirit"), the term in its modern definition is now associated with physical paranormal activity inside homes such as mysterious noisy disturbances or moving, misplacing of objects.

Included in the most common types of poltergeist activities are the rains of stones and other small objects; moving or throwing of objects, including large pieces of furniture; voices, loud noises and shrieks; odors which sources cannot be found (i.e. pipe tobacco when no one smokes). Poltergeists are known to have caused interference in telephones and electronic equipment, and turning lights and appliances on and off. The poltergeist might even become a full bodied or partial bodied apparition. Some poltergeists are said to pinch, bite, hit, and sexually attack the living.

Since no conclusive scientific explanation of the events exists up to this day, poltergeists have traditionally been described in folklore as troublesome spirits or ghosts which haunt a particular person, hence the name. Such alleged poltergeist manifestations have been reported in many cultures and countries including the United States, Japan, Brazil, and all European nations, and the earliest recorded cases date back to the first century.

Time of Occurence:

Anytime but paranormal activity usually increases at dusk. Generally poltergeist activity starts and stops abruptly. The duration of it may extend over several hours to several months; however, some cases have been reported to last over several years. The activity almost always occurs at night in houses when someone is present. Typically this is the "agent," an individual who seems to serve as a focus or magnet for the activity. The agent is usually female and under the age of twenty.

The Poltergeist in History:

A most important point about the poltergeist phenomenon is that it has appeared throughout history over a large cross section of cultures and generally exhibited the same characteristics. First century Jewish historian Josephus describes phenomena connected with 'possession' that would nowadays be attributed to poltergeist activity. Jacob Grimm, one of the brothers Grimm, writing in his Deutsche Mythologie, describes a number of cases including one from Bingen-am-Rhein dated to AD355, where stones were thrown, people were pulled out of bed, and raps and loud noises were heard. Writing in his Itinerarium Cambriae (AD1191) of his tour of Wales, clergyman and chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis describes an incident at a house in Pembrokeshire where 'unclean spirits' threw dirt and other objects, garments were ripped and torn,and the 'spirit' even spoke publicly of the various secrets of people present.

These are not isolated cases, Medieval chronicles are full of such incidents. The problem, however, with these accounts of poltergeist cases is that the sources for them were not written as 'history' as such; medieval chronicles include many signs, wonders and miracles and are not records of 'true' happenings as would be accepted today.

Over the last few hundred years more famous cases include the 'Tedworth Drummer' of England in 1661, where a drum which belonged to an imprisoned beggar proceeded to play on its own, accompanied by various other phenomena such as the hurling about of chairs, beds with servants sleeping in them being lifted up, and loud scratching noises. A series of bizarre and frightening incidents which took place on a Tennessee farm in 1817 has become known as the 'Bell Witch Haunting'. The Bell Witch herself was thought by many to be the spirit of Kate Batts, one time neighbor of John Bell, owner of the farm where the disturbances took place, and who had apparently been involved in a dispute with him over land. The phenomena included apparitions of strange animals, whistling, disembodied voices, loud laughing and singing and vicious physical assaults on people at the farm, which are claimed by some to have resulted in the death of John Bell.

Explanations for Poltergeist Activity:

Spirits:

Poltergeist activity has often been believed to be the work of malicious ghosts. According to Alan Kardec, the founder of Spiritism, poltergeists are manifestations of disembodied spirits of low level. They are believed to be closely associated with the elements (fire, air, water, earth).

Psychokinesis:

In the 1930s the psychologist and parapsychologist Nandor Fodor advanced the theory that some poltergeist disturbances were caused not by spirits but by human agents suffering from intense repressed anger, hostility, and sexual tension. Fodor successfully demonstrated his theory in several cases, including the most famous "Thormton Heath Poltergeist" in England, which he investigated in 1938. The case involved a woman whose repressions caused a poltergeist outbreak and apparently a vampire attack. The Spiritualists severely criticized Fodor, but he won a libel suit against a Spiritualist newspaper.

Independent and anecdotal research have shed some light on this odd phenomena. The general consensus is that the cause may actually be the result of subconscious psychokinesis. Psychokinesis is essentially a mind-over-matter situation that is unintentional....and is delivered involuntarily by an entity at the site of the activity. Research has revealed that many suspected Poltergeist agents are females under the age of 25, who are completely unaware that they are the causing this type of activity. Emotional problems associated with these individuals have been attributed to poltergeist activity, and include emotions such as anger, anxiety, paranoia, and schizophrenia.

William G. Roll studied 116 different poltergeist cases and found that the agents were often children or teenagers, and supposed that recurrent neuronal discharges resulting in epileptic symptoms may cause recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK), which would affect the person's surroundings.

Other investigators have also investigated agents finding that those in poor mental and physical health are vulnerable to stress. Patient having unresolved emotional tensions have been associated with houses where poltergeist activity occurred. When studying the personalities of agents psychologists found anxiety reactions, conversion hysteria, phobias, mania, obsessions, dissociative reactions, and schizophrenia. In some cases therapy eliminated the poltergeist activity.

Pierro Brovetto & his colleague Vera Maxia wanted to explain the origin of poltergeist phenomena, characterised by objects flying around the room "of their own accord".

"Poltergeist disturbances often occur in the neighbourhood of a pubescent child or a young woman," the authors note in their paper.

So Brovetto and Maxia came up with a mechanism to explain just how these women and children create such havoc. Like so many problems that arise in adolescence, puberty gets the blame. Puberty is a modification of the child body which involves various organs, chiefly the brain. Brovetto and Maxia hypothesize that the changes in the brain that occur at puberty involve fluctuations in electron activity that, in rare cases, can create disturbances up to a few metres around the outside of the brain. These disturbances would be similar in character to the quantum mechanical fluctuations that physicists believe occur in the vacuum, in which "virtual" particle and antiparticle pairs pop up for a fleeting moment, before they annihilate each other and disappear again.

Brovetto and Maxia believed that the extra fluctuations triggered by the pubescent brain would substantially enhance the presence of the virtual particles surrounding the person. This could slowly increase the pressure of air around them, moving objects and even sending them hurtling across the room.

For more information refer poltergeist paper in the journal of Nueroquantology.

However, the psychological dysfunction theory has been disputed by other researchers, including Gauld and Cornell who said the psychological tests employed were invalid. Psychiatrist Ian Stevenson proposed that spirits of the dead may account for more poltergeist activity than realized. In his study of a number of cases attributed to agents and to spirits of the dead, Stevenson noted significance differences. The phenomena in living agent cases was without purpose and often violent, while cases involving spirits of the dead featured intelligent communication, purposefulmovement of objects, and little violence.

There are a number of poltergeist cases where the people involved have no psychological problems at all, and where there are no adolescents in the household. How can we explain these? A further point is that there are millions of troubled teenagers all over the world, but the vast majority do not cause poltergeist activity to occur. Other researchers have suggested that 'spirit entities' are responsible for the phenomena, perhaps generating the power by attaching themselves to suitably disturbed teenagers. But the very nature of these hypothetical 'spirits' means that scientifically at least, they cannot be properly investigated, though there are interesting tape recordings of a 'voice' from the Enfield Poltergeist case. However, if accounts of the more extreme unexplained occurrences alleged to be caused by poltergeist activity are themselves exaggerated, or even completely unreliable, which is entirely possible in older cases, then no further explanation is required.

Others:

Poltergeist disturbances that have not been traced to fraud have been attempted to be explained scientifically. David Turner, a retired physical chemist, suggested that ball lighting, another phenomenon, could cause inanimate objects to move erratically.Some skeptics propose that poltergeist activity might be caused by simpler phenomena such as static electricity, electromagnetic fields, ultrasound, infrasound, or ionized air. Hallucinations, like the sounds of bells or footsteps, may be caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Famous poltergeist cases:

Poltergeist activities have been reported in many countries, and chronicled by occult writers such as A. R. G. Owen and Colin Wilson. Well-known instances of poltergeist activity include the Epworth Poltergeist, the Bell Witch in 1817, and activity surrounding the Fox Sisters, whose experiences started the Spiritualism Movement of 1848. Others include the Tidworth Drummer (1661), where poltergeist activity and phantom drumming noises plagued a magistrate who arrested and confiscated the drum of a vagrant drummer, and the Livingston Wizard (1797) of West Virginia, where all cloth items were cut into spiral shapes, and objects flew about without explanation.

The Rosenheim Poltergeist in 1967, where a Bavarian attorney's office was plagued by electrical phenomena such as the unscrewing and bursting of light bulbs, the tripping of switches, and phone numbers called thousands of times, was investigated not only by psychical researchers, but also psychologists and physicists, as well as the electric company. It was found that the phenomena always occurred in the presence of a 19 year old female employee.

Some famous cases can be accessed at http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa080999.html

Nevertheless, the inability to find a convincing explanation for the phenomenon, the significant amount of poltergeist cases exhibiting similar characteristics occurring over a long period of time in widely different cultures, and the bizarre but somehow consistent nature of the phenomena, make the poltergeist perhaps the most baffling and enduring of unexplained mysteries.

Sources & Further Reading

1) Carrington, H. & Fodor, N. The Story of the Poltergeist Down the Centuries. Rider & Co. 1953

2) Gauld, A. & Cornell, T. Poltergeists. Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1979.

3) Goss, M. Poltergeists: An Annotated Bibliography of Works in English, Circa 1880-1975. The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1979

4) Owen, A.R.G. Can we Explain the Poltergeist? Garrett Publications. 1964.

5) Playfair, G. L. This House is Haunted: An Investigation into the Enfield Poltergeist. Souvenir Press. 1980.

6) Price. H. Poltergeist: Tales of the Supernatural. Bracken Books. 1993 (1945).

7) Rogo, D. Scott. On the Track of the Poltergeist. Prentice-Hall. 1986.

8) Roll, W. G. The Poltergeist. Wyndham 1972.

9)Sitwell, S. Poltergeists: Fact or Fancy. Dorset Press. 1988 (1959).

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Anuj Srivastava

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