Many cultures even have a specific name for the ghoulish occurrence. According to a 2018 survey in the International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research, at least 8 percent of the general population and around 30 percent of people with psychiatric illnesses have reported having one of these nighttime episodes at some point in their lives. This mixup is almost always accompanied by a sensation of entrapment, floating, or detachment from one’s body-and in many cases sleepers see an accompanying demon or hag. Scientists have yet to pinpoint the roots of this phenomenon, but some think it occurs when the brain crosses wires between conscious awareness and the dream-filled REM stage of slumber. Furthermore, psychiatrists have deemed many visions the result of sleep paralysis, a poorly understood condition in which the afflicted wake up and find themselves unable to move. People who experiment with psychoactive drugs like LSD and magic mushrooms frequently report spiritual fantasies. The paper concluded that some occurrences provided “instantaneous relief from painful grief symptoms,” while others strengthened preexisting religious views.Įven in those without mental illness, temporary changes in brain activity can lead to run-ins with wraiths. A 2011 analysis published in the journal Death Studies looked at hundreds of incidents of supposed interaction with the deceased. These vivid encounters, which psychologists call “after-death communication,” have long been among the most common kinds of paranormal experience, affecting skeptics and believers alike.Įxperts think that such specters help us deal with painful or confusing events. One 1971 survey in the British Medical Journal found that close to half the widows in Wales and England had seen their mates postmortem. Just as most amputees report what’s known as “phantom limb,” the feeling that their detached appendage is still there, surviving spouses frequently report seeing or sensing their departed partner. Research suggests that the brain may summon spirits as a means of coping with trauma, especially the pain of losing a loved one. The apparitions in movies like The Grudge and The Amityville Horror will stop at nothing to chase down their human victims, but ghosts aren’t innately terrifying. You need a little company Loneliness can take a dark turn. That’s why a snapping twig can activate the fight-or-flight reflexes that make us scream. But, van Elk says, this propensity can cause us to sense the presence of another even when we’re alone. “You can either think it’s nothing, and it could be a potential predator, or you can think there’s a predator, and there’s nothing.” Psychologists suspect humans evolved a cognitive bias toward the latter mistake for good reason: Our ancestors had to keep a constant lookout for stealthy hazards like leopards and snakes, and folks with a “better safe than sorry” attitude were more likely to survive and reproduce. “If you’re walking in the woods and you see movement, you can make two errors,” says Michiel van Elk, a professor of social psychology at Leiden University. Unfamiliar and threatening environments kick our survival instincts up a notch. It’s easy to disregard the notion of paranormal activity in broad daylight, but everything changes when you head into a dark basement. You’d rather not risk it Your brain is looking out for you. This mental quirk is so powerful that it can deceive us even in real time: In another study, conducted by Goldsmiths’ French, participants were much more likely to report witnessing a key bending of its own accord if someone standing next to them mentioned they had seen the eerie incident happen too. In the 1990s, psychologists at the University of Illinois at Springfield gave the same tour of the century-old and long-closed Lincoln Square Theater to two groups of people, telling only one cohort that they were investigating a haunting sure enough, the visitors who were informed of the excursion’s specifics were far more likely to report intense emotions and strange occurrences. We’ve evolved to take cues from the outside world to escape threats like an animal chasing us, so a well-placed hint can make us see things that aren’t there. We have such a tendency because the human mind is highly suggestible, French says. “Believers are a lot more likely to report anomalous sensations, and they’re also more likely to conclude that those sensations indicate a ghostly presence,” says Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London as well as a self-described “wet blanket” skeptic.
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