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In Brief
- Most of us report that we believe in supernatural powers such as clairvoyance and telepathy and in the existence of ghosts.
- The widespread reports of paranormal experiences very likely derive from many of the same mechanisms that help us make decisions in daily life.
- Research suggests that a highly active right-brain hemisphere may cause someone to be particularly susceptible to improbable beliefs.
You may have never personally caught sight of Jesus Christ’s face in a potato chip, but you have likely succumbed to an equally improbable belief at some point in your life. Many people claim that ghosts exist or that their dreams can predict the future. Some individuals even think they have seen the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich and Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun.
Although such beliefs may sound farfetched, they are surprisingly common. An opinion poll conducted in 2005 showed that three out of four Americans believe in the existence of paranormal phenomena. Other work has revealed that about one in three of us claim to have experienced the supernatural. The sheer ubiquity of these experiences has led many psychologists to wonder whether common mechanisms might underlie some of these widespread convictions.
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32 Comments
Add CommentSomebody, please give me an explanation for EVP's. How a digital recorder can pick up some of these things without a reception crystal or other such mechanism baffles me. Maybe I have a mental block in thinking it through, but some of those things I've heard plain creep me out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvp's are all b.s. I am a sound design student and I work with a lot of sound recording equipment, if you record white noise from any room, there are bound to be inevitable ambient noises or static in the recording equipment. When you slow this noise down, and turn up the volume and hear something like "I was killed in May" you're brain is playing tricks on you, as it could just as easily be "Twas grilled in hay". You hear what you want to hear. As for "reception crystal" I have no idea what you're talking about but it sounds exactly like pseudoscience. EVP's are as legitimate as goblins, demons, unicorns...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink about it, the complex synchronization of a neurological process, bone & musculature structure required to produce speech doesn't exist invisibly floating around in abandoned buildings waiting to whisper sweet nothing's into your ear.
Reading books = good. Skepticism = good. Herp-Derping = bad.
Mr. SuperString, Solokov has it right - for the most part. Much of what passes for so called "Supernatural" observations is simply our brains trying to do a very useful thing, that is, make sense out of confusing input or experiences. If you look at clouds or a textured ceiling long enough you start to see objects etc... (There are a number of elements that can contribute to such, receptor fatigue for example).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the use of the word "Supernatural”, we have different ways that it is used; however, for me it means unexplained, given our mental abilities and level of scientific knowledge. What it does not mean is "unnatural" or what people generally think of as magic!
Richard Carlson
EVP's are in most likelihood just our brains interpreting random sounds as voices - no ghosts involved. They are still very creepy sounding, though. It would be an interesting study to see what common factors different "creepy" images and sounds have, and if/how they differ across various cultures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@SuperString
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the reasons audio electronic devices can make "EVPs" is because when components degrade or breakdown they can sometimes start making sounds themselves. Signal to noise ratios, failing chips or transistors, radio interference, intermittent problems ... so many ways to make EVPs.
Once we were recording a small band and suddenly this deep agonising human sound appeared to be coming from everywhere. It was very weird, everyone was scared and "freaking out" until we found the sound's source.
We had set up a mike and a guitar amp in a hallway and a transistor in the amp had started to fail in a most creative fashion, and that, combined with the reverberation, the late hour of the night, and our inability to explain the problem was all it took for us to be in a state shock thinking "what if this is like the start of a horror flick but for real".
"Belief in the paranormal arises from the same brain mechanisms that shape most human thought."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo... thought comes from the same mechanisms that shape thought...
amazing.
"Some individuals even think they have seen the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich and Mother Teresa in a cinnamon bun."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHmm... are such food items still safe to eat? Are they more or less nourishing than garden variety ones?
If you went into an oyster bar in New Orleans and bit into a pearl in you oyster, would you believe in it, the pearl? Of course you would; like seeing, experiencing is believing. I believe in ghosts because I have experienced a ghost. 13 years ago I woke my wife of 8 years to tell her I had just dreamed of my ex-girl friend, somebody my wife had gotten to know. We were living in Miami at the time, and the ex was in Illinois. Upon hearing the dream my wife immediately said that I should call Mary, a mutual friend, because, in my wife's rather obvious interpretation of the dream, something bad had happened to my ex. Well, it was 2 AM, so I didn't call Mary. Mary called me later to say that my ex had been murdered that night, cut up by a knife-wielding burglar in her own home. Some people may go to great lengths to explain away such experiences, but I do not have that option. My ex was there. I know it. She visited me on the her way out of this world. I do not believe in the supernatural, it's just that nature is super. Dig a little deeper, look a little closer, and you will see for yourself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJohnGadway's comment in a nutshell:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'A dream bore similarity to a real life event so I drew the irrational conclusion that I'd experienced the supernatural.'
A perfect example of what the article was talking about.
What you're describing is called "synchronicity." You'd have to compare the unlikelihood of an unlikely coincidence to all of the billions of potential coincidences that DON'T happen in your life in order to calculate the real odds, and then you'd likely find them to be quite normal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome "beliefs" about "supernatural" are linked to the way our brain handles information input and actions output, for example, things as "deja vu" or "jamais vu" are a byproduct of the mechanisms inherent in our memory, seeing the face of sister Teresa, or anybody else, anywhere, is just a thing called "pareidolia", and has nothing supernatural, it's linked to how our brain perceives things outside it; when exhausted, you can fell you see images of persons standing stood in the border of a road. The feeling of levitating in a not fully awake conscience state is called "awakening palsy", and has also nothing supernatural. Francis Maziere, who wrote a book about his experiences in the Easter Island, was very surprised that natives told him that "In this world, there are beings we can't see". The so called primary schizophrenic symptoms: influence, stealing of thought, insertion of thought, broadcasting of thought, do have a correlate, as a swollen eye has a correlate to a boxing glove, in something known in the occultism environment as "the will", see for example the movie "Kim of India", featuring Errol Flynn and Sabu, and also "The fourth man", by Paul Verhoeven, to have a superficial and impossible to demonstrate image of what "the will" can be. That kind of phenomena are just elusive, as they're not natural facts, but are linked to some kind of "personnel power". The best approach to this kind of subject is not approaching it at all, this field is dangerous, and can overcome anybody operating in it. As a matter of an example, when exorcists chase a devil from somebody, they have the policy of not asking anything to the devil that goes beyond: "What's your name ?" and "How long have you been inside this person ? ". Going further is just curiosity killed the cat. Salut +
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, I meant you can feel you see, not "you can fell you see". Regards
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe funny thing about your article is that there are an awful lot of studies proving humans can see the future, crashed trains and planes always have unusually low passenger numbers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't be so quick to label things supernatural just because they are yet to be explained by science.
Believing your dreams reveal the future and seeing Jesus on a corn chip are very different things, the brain's ability to find a face in patterns is a well known and explained phenomenon.
Stick to science please you sound quite religious.
Have a look at: www.fortea.us Nothing to do with the Tea parties.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...that there are an awful lot of studies proving humans can see the future, crashed trains and planes always have unusually low passenger numbers."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as I know there are NO studies proving humans can see the future and the idea that trains and planes that crash have low passenger numbers is an urban myth that started, I believe, from a passage in Steven King's novel, The Stand.
Uh--pul-lease! Please do not scoff at the existence of things you have not seen. I have not seen a quark or a Higgs particle, or God, but I have seen ghosts! No big deal--they exist--just like other hard-to-believe things exist. Whatta ya mean the earth goes around the sun? Everyone knows the universe revolves around the earth! Badda bing!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone can see them if they choose to, but the materialist mindset rules them out summarily. Whether scientists or philosophers, they all seem to agree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this• “Telepathy and possession by the spirits of the dead are not ruled out as a matter of principle. There is certainly nothing impossible about abduction by aliens in UFOs. One day it may be happen. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as an explanation of last resort.” Richard Dawkins
• “Here is the problem with what they [ghost hunters] are doing: it’s not science. There’s not a single shred of evidence to suggest that ghosts exist, or that they can be identified by cold spots.” Steven Novella
• “From ghosts and gods to politics and conspiracies, [this is] how we construct and reinforce them as truths” Michael Shermer, from his webpage
• “What seems to have evolved everywhere, a good trick for dealing with a desperate situation, is an elaborate ceremony that removes the dangerous body from the daily environment, either by burials or burning, combined with the interpretation of the persistent firing of the intentional-stance habits shared by all who knew the deceased as the unseen presence of the agent as a spirit, as sort of virtual person created by the survivors’ troubled mind-sets, and almost as vivid and robust as a live person.” Daniel Dennett, from 'Breaking the Spell'
Long winded but succinct, ergo only the known physical world exists.
References to the "supernatural" are not what they seem to be, i.e., magical, mystical, beyond the realm of logical and rational - at least, not for me - and most likely, not for a whole lot of folks. Some do subscribe to that connotation for sure, but I want to suggest that "supernatural" events as described by John Gadway and others of a similar nature are just not able to be explained by the scientific knowledge of our time. Just like microbial facts of life were present before Leeuwenhoek actually saw them thru his microscopic lens, etc., etc. I truly don't know how we experience a visual reality as Gadway describes, but I don't doubt his version. I had a similar experience when the teenage son of one of my closest friends from childhood lost her son in a horrible train accident. My friend's tortured face and the feeling of her pain came to me in an unexpected flash during my workday. What's important here is that she and I had not been communicating for over 8 years. When I came home and told my wife, we thought it was strange - but not "supernatural." and then I received a phone call that informed me of the tragedy that had happened the day before in their home town approximately 60 miles away from where I was living at the time. One could attempt to write this off as happenstance or coincidence, and I might also except for the very visual flash I saw that was coupled with the felt emotion of untold grief that I also experienced.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResubmitted after 'cleansing' a Word document
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone can see them if they choose to, but the materialist mindset rules them out summarily. Whether scientists or philosophers, they all seem to agree.
- - "Telepathy and possession by the spirits of the dead are not ruled out as a matter of principle. There is certainly nothing impossible about abduction by aliens in UFOs. One day it may be happen. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as an explanation of last resort." Richard Dawkins
- - "Here is the problem with what they [ghost hunters] are doing: it's not science. There's not a single shred of evidence to suggest that ghosts exist, or that they can be identified by cold spots." Steven Novella
- - "From ghosts and gods to politics and conspiracies, [this is] how we construct and reinforce them as truths" Michael Shermer from his web page
- - "What seems to have evolved everywhere, a good trick for dealing with a desperate situation, is an elaborate ceremony that removes the dangerous body from the daily environment, either by burials or burning, combined with the interpretation of the persistent firing of the intentional-stance habits shared by all who knew the deceased as the unseen presence of the agent as a spirit, as sort of virtual person created by the survivors' troubled mind-sets, and almost as vivid and robust as a live person." Daniel Dennett from 'Breaking the Spell'
Long winded but succinct, ergo only the known physical world exists.
I don't find so strange that some people can see ghosts of every kind, or even to talk with them, or just only to here their voices. It is not only in psychiatric clinics that are those people: when they have not a dangerous behaviour they are also everywhere. Even nowadays with handy and similar objects, one is no more sure if a person talking alone is schizophrenic or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd in my basement which is painted at random, one can see every kind of image: strange animals, grotesque faces, and many many things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDifficult as it may be, we should appreciate there are some things which have not been explained. When I read material on a subject which some may wish to improperly rationalize because they are in unfamiliar territory I can do no other than to smile and know, in time someone will come along and solve one of the most long standing mysteries of or time, but it hasn't been accomplished yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to find an explanation for dreaming of a bulls eye in a sidewalk and saying to someone, "it looks like the Gorda plate to me" and find three days later a M 7.0 arrives on the Gorda Plate. Is that good enough? But science will say it's a coincidence, yet I find it unlikely because it was a rare event.
So, the mystery continues and as they say "all in good time."
When I was too young for sophisticated duplicity, 55 years ago when I was 10, the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Bulletin had a magazine insert called American Weekly. Contained within it was a test for ESP. Five pairs of Duplicate cards were to be cut out and then you were to sit back to back with a partner. One person laid their cards in whatever order they chose and the other was to attempt to duplicate that order. I performed twenty tests with each of my younger step-sisters. Chances of duplicating the order was 120 to 1 per test. With my older sister (She was about six.) we matched 96 out of 100. With my younger sister (4 y/o) 92 out of 100.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor those of you who think that perceived paranormal events are generated through errors of observation and judgement, pshaaw! You just are lacking the proper endowment of allowance for the occurrence of events beyond your ken and never having the truly weird overcome your preconceptions.
I recently had an amateur astronomer reduce my UFO story to a Sun Dog event. After I read the full description of this type of manifestation I realized that he just wanted to avoid SERIOUS consideration of what I had viewed and copiously reported to him.
So for those of you that are unalterably opposed to accepting these events as being true, maybe some moment
in your future will allow for a transcendent experience. If not your ass will finally be just dead. If you find this re-assuring continue down a path of rigid determinism. Reject the observer's role in the universe.
I know that my complete termination isn't inherent in this reality. I might deserve it. I may need to be recycled. My past might not make a good prelude for anything. In turn, since I do not control this process, I can accept that this organic mass containing ME serves purposes that I can not know, fathom or bend unless I am more than just this.
The grand bartender asked Descartes if he wanted a drink and Descartes promptly disappeared when he replied, "I think not."
So, do you want a drink or not? Keep your options open and your opinions qualified. If the weird happens to you be able to accept it. It took me a while to understand how incredibly ignorant I am. Grant yourself leave to be uninformed about everything in its entirety.
I knew it was a tease. But I am telepathetic because I have ESPN.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo understand what goes on in the brain, the subtitle of this article should be reversed "most human thought is shaped by the same brain mechanisms from which paranormal belief arises".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThink about it. The human brain evolved over millions of years to pass on the attitudes and practices that enabled humans to survive as hunter gatherers. Yet for all but the last 200,000 years that brain was used by humans who did not have speech. The brain did not evolve to learn by having things explained to it. It learned by observing events and absorbing how to respond to them.
What we know of evolutionary history tells us that the brain did not evolve to think. The modern human brain evolved about 200,000 years ago with the ability to communicate by speech. For the next 190,000 years the main innovations were better stone tools.
That changed around 10,000 years ago when the sudden plunge into the Younger Dryas mini Ice Age forced humans to change their lifestyles, breaking practices of millions of years. They herded animals they had previously hunted and cultivated crops they had previously gathered in the wild.
That change in lifestyle forced humans to change how they used the brain. It produced conscious thinking. The brain that had evolved to visually observe and absorb what went on around it to produce automatic responses was then used by humans to consciously work things out.
Farming required humans to settle on land, which produced settlements, then towns. Pottery appeared about 9,000ya, then thousands of years later metals, the wheel and many other innovations, all products of the same brain used differently.
Observing and non-consciously observing events is the basic mechanism of the brain. We can see it in children who absorb what goes on around them like sponges. The basic mechanism now passes on cultures and social attitudes from generation to generation.
Cognitive scientists have found that conscious processes use a tiny fraction of the brain. The large brain evolved to absorb what it observed to have things worked out in advance so it could produce fast, expert, automatic responses to events. Conscious thinking is an unnatural use of the brain. See www.ideasintuitionandthinking.com.
The almost universal belief in spirits in every known human culture indicates that the human brain evolved with a need for an explanation for events. Supernatural belief was how brain explained events with no logical physical cause. So humans now think consciously with the brain that evolved to accept supernatural explanations for events.
We have to remember that much of what we call science today was called supernatural or mythology even in the recent past. One merely has to examine the current theories surrounding quantum physics to see what many would call some pretty amazing if not "mystical" stuff.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeing a skeptic or rather someone who constantly questions the validity of certain facts at all times has replaced critical thinking in my mind. The latter of which is the actual job of the true scientist. Rather than simply dismissing what many have called supernatural events or objects for millenia, mostly because of the antagonistic relationship fostered by some between science and religion/mysticism, we should try to have open minds which is actually the definition of a true scientist. So many things that scientists have originally rejected as mythology or superstition have later been proven to be true that science and scientists need to be careful as to what they mock or brush off as "ridiculous" especially in the times in which we live where science itself seems to be under attack by our very authority figures.
God has hidden his wisdom from the "wise and intellectual among us and revealed it to babes" It would be almost entertaining to see you amateur experts pass off as ridiculous an awareness of what you consider supernatural if it wasn't so serious. I believe 100% in the Bible and it makes known the source of all supernatural events. There are no 'departed souls of the dead'; the dead are simply dead; but there are spirits with a minority being those of the 'fallen angel' variety that exercise wicked control over mankind. They also pretend to be ghosts & UFO's.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would venture that as scientists keep probing into dark matter/energy they'll find the proof for Heaven itself and along with it, what we consider "spirits". Spirits therefore are just as real as you or i. They are made of non-baryonic matter of which there is more mass than the mass we are made of. In fact, to these spirits we might seem just as spirit-like or even more so, since we're made up of so much 'fluff' with much space between the bits our atoms are made of.
For the record, i'm not a Creationist although i certainly believe in creation. And with other issues the Bible touches that might be scientific, it is completely reliable.
I have experienced things that some would say could only have been explained by ghosts, I have seen and heard things that have scared the daylights out some of the people I have been with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have also died a couple of times and had experiences with dead family members, so do I believe in the after life? I do not know. But as for scientific analysis you will find that who ever you study and quote for or against it will always be biased towards that persons personal believe.
All this study shows us is that believing in anything other than real scientific prove is to believe in false hoods such as gods, a recent National Geographic show stated a study that showed we are genetically groomed to believe in gods for some reason. Fortunately a high percentage of us prefer to believe in science than false gods, so maybe the gene is been succeeded by a scientific gene today.
What was considered 'supernatural' in Middle Ages now become 'scientific'. We can routinely 'resurrect' people after several minutes of being 'dead', talk to and see someone who is in a faraway city, etc., etc. What will be said about 'today supernatural' in several hundred years?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@John Gadway: Metacognition's not your strong suit, is it? You're falling into the EXACT faulty thinking that this article talks about and are completely oblivious to it. Nick692's comment summed it up nicely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd @oldvic.... to be truthful, they taste heavenly. :-)
I am likely a right-brainer, having driven my abstract collage artist friend crazy with "seeing" various creatures in his art. I don't see the Virgin Mary in potato chips, but I did jokingly say to my friend after eating a pot roast and trying to convince him of the non-verity of such apparitions, "Hey, human beings are meaning makers. We could probably see Jesus in the gravy (on the plate)!" Then, to my chagrin, we looked down, and sure enough---there he was! (Coincidentally.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, I must take issue with the complete dismissal of what are generally seen as "paranormal" effects. Sometimes paranormal means "off the wall," and sometimes it just means "not yet proven or fully understood" and history is full of such instances. A few centuries back, the notion of a human "flying" across the country would have sounded quite paranormal. Sometimes it takes time for science to catch up.
Your article suggests that nothing at all has been found in official studies on telepathy and the ability to affect objects through cognition. But that is not true. A research program that went on for about 25 years at Princeton University just closed when the researchers retired, and they saw effects in their many studies. The effects dwindled with time in any given experiment, as I understand it, but there was a pattern emerging across experiments: strongest effect at first, then a little less, then a little less, etc., until the effect disappeared. Current scientific methodology discounts such low reproducible effects, but then perhaps we are also falsely ignoring real phenomena.
Analogies might be the phenomenon of "beginner's luck." I know I always seem to do best at something like darts the very first time I throw. Then I seem to become too conscious and complicated as I try to replicate it. Pretty soon the darts are going out the window.
Take "falling in love." That glow is quite strong at first, and gradually dwindles or gets replaced by something else, yet the phenomenon of "falling in love" is plenty worth studying.
The Princeton studies did look at things like mental communication over space, and mental concentration effects on the outcomes (odd or even #s) of a random number producing machine. They did see a small, but statistically significant effect--which dwindled over time, but was seen across many different subjects. Their conclusion was that something was going on, but we don't yet understand what it is. It will take much more funding and dedication from a new generation to look into this.
The comments on reducing all spiritual experience to brain phenomena, while they may have substance in most cases, cannot be universally applied. There are awesome spiritual experiences of an organic kind and much more profound experiential insights of a cosmic kind that transcend and subsume the whole of creation, including the human body. For an example see the website article http://www.cosmic-mindreach.com/Cosmic_Insight.html.
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