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Paranormal research blog |
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Whenever new information becomes available on a subject ASSAP covers, it is added to the relevant pages of the website straight away. So, just because you've read a page, don't assume it will still be exactly the same when you next look. That way the ASSAP website remains an up to date research resource. The photo (above right) is the ASSAP blogger himself, out looking for anomalies wherever they are to be found, so that you can read about them here. Important note: If anything in this blog does not make sense, try following the links in text! If it still doesn't make sense, that's probably my fault ... Previous blog pages ... (including ghosts, UFOs, poltergeists, flying rods, miracles, orbs, hypnotic regression, big cats, vampires, near sleep experiences, premonitions, shadow ghosts, paranormal photos, auras and dozens of other subjects) 12 Mar 2010: Noticing stories Here’s a memory test for you to try. Below are two lists of 10 words each. Read the words in the first list once, turn away from the screen and write down as many as you can remember. Then check and see how many you got right, out of 10. Next, repeat the procedure for the second list and finally compare scores with the first. Here are the lists:
How did you do? I'm guessing that, like me, you did better on the second list. It is not just because the words are associated with a subject we find interesting. It is also because they form a 'story', like a folkloric motif. They are apparently about a haunting, supposedly involving the ghosts of a nun or a monk and their forbidden love affair that no doubt led to tragedy. It is a fairly common motif associated with traditional hauntings. When people want to remember a list of items, the easiest way to do so is to create a story involving the objects. It’s to do with the way our brains store memories, by linking them with related items. It is therefore easier to remember linked items, such as a story for instance, than items with no obvious connection. This may be one of the reasons why we notice misperceptions. We misperceive all the time but hardly ever notice it. One reason why we DO notice misperceptions occasionally might be when they form 'continuity errors in reality' (see here). While this might explain why we notice misperceptions and see them as paranormal, it does not answer the question of why they usually take traditional forms like ghosts, or more recently UFOs? This could be because such motifs are more memorable so they are the first things that come to mind when we see something that apparently makes no sense. So we see a poorly-seen tree as a human figure and, because we are not expecting someone in that place, our brains turn them into ghosts or aliens. Our brains pick on these motifs because they are easily memorable. They are certainly more memorable than some random weirdness. This factor of being memorable might also explain why they are more psychologically appealing. 11 Mar 2010: Belief - a gateway to a haunted location?
It has been noted that, following an initial report of an apparently ghostly experience at a particular location, the number of subsequent paranormal reports (of differing types) at the same location usually rises rapidly. It is not just the original witness but others who start to experience things. Interestingly, some people who live at a haunted location may never experience anything paranormal while others present are getting weird stuff regularly. This appears to be a special case of belief lowering the threshold for noticing misperception discussed yesterday. Once people other than the original witness know that a location is haunted, their thresholds for noticing misperception is also lowered. It is belief that a specific location is haunted, rather than belief in ghosts in general, that is making the difference. The fact that some people present do NOT start experiencing odd stuff probably means that their personal beliefs (or disbeliefs!) in ghosts outweigh the group perception that a location is haunted. There are cases of places where there was little, if any, evidence that they were haunted until someone held a speculative vigil there. Since assumption-led methods, used frequently on many vigils, are likely to lead to some sort of positive result almost anywhere, whether it is haunted or not, the outcome is rarely in doubt. Some places now have a reputation of being haunted based almost solely on such a history! Effectively, it is belief that a place is haunted that produces many of the 'phenomena' reported in such locations. Assumption-led investigation methods are themselves based on belief. It is no surprise, then, that their use increases belief among people, whether present at the vigil or not, and reduces the threshold for noticing misperception. It is difficult to disentangle belief from paranormal research but, if when possible, it is highly worthwhile. 10 Mar 2010: Belief - the gateway to xenonormal experience? I have mentioned before how our brains dislike ambiguity in perception. Rather than show us a fuzzy tree in poor light, they might convert it to a shadowy human figure, taken from visual memory, complete with detail like clothing (see misperception). Other brain functions also dislike ambiguity, to the point of making us feel anxious. Think about the last time you made an important decision. Until you decided you probably felt anxious, listless and even downright miserable. Once the decision was made you probably felt a weight lifted from your shoulders. Then there are beliefs. We all have core beliefs which change very little for years or even over a lifetime. Even when faced with evidence contrary to a belief we may still not change our minds on such beliefs. We may even feel hurt, as though we had been personally insulted, when somebody challenges those beliefs. When I started to realise the power of misperception, I started to see ghosts - or at least human figures that turned out, on closer inspection, to be poorly-seen trees or clothes (see 3 Mar below). I had never before seen any ghost, even these misperceived versions. It was as though believing in misperception had lowered a threshold for me to have these xenonormal experiences. I must have seen trees in bad light many times before but only now did I see them as ghosts! Belief had acted as a gateway to experience. You could argue that, if I only saw these ghosts as a result of a belief in misperception, how did I know they weren't paranormal ghosts that I'd simply never noticed before? The answer is that I investigated each sighting at the time and was able to demonstrate, to my own satisfaction, that they were definitely misperceptions. Virtually no other ghost witness ever investigates their sighting at the time of the incident, which is understandable but unfortunate. So do people misperceive objects as ghosts because they believe in ghosts? In my experience, most people become firm believers in ghosts once they see one. But having seen one, they may well go on to see more. The first experience may lower the threshold for seeing ghosts through belief. If that first experience is a misperception, they may become more sensitive to these 'continuity errors in reality' afterwards. Before they see their first ghost, witnesses may disbelieve or believe in ghosts or have no opinion either way. Afterwards they are generally firm believers. Something similar may happen with psychics who generally have a dramatic experience that first convinces them they are sensitive. In the field of paranormal research we come across a lot of strong beliefs and disbeliefs. Not many paranormal researchers truly have no opinion either way. That is a pity because, if belief lowers the threshold for experiencing the xenonormal as paranormal, it means there are probably a lot of people in our field who are not seeing what they think they are. 9 Mar 2009: The best thing a paranormal investigator can experience! What is the best experience a paranormal investigator can have? Most, if not all, people would reply 'have a paranormal experience'. I would have agreed for most of my many years studying this subject. That was, until I had an even more illuminating experience. Vigils, particularly when organised around assumption-led methods, can easily be dismissed as of little value scientifically. However, that is not true. On such vigils I have observed other people having experiences that they later reported as paranormal. I saw what they saw and knew the explanation was definitely xenonormal. I have also witnessed things that I could not explain immediately, on such vigils, which were later explained naturally by other groups positioned nearby. This made me realise that human perception is highly variable, both from person to person and time to time. It also made me realise that many witnesses, particularly lone one, are not aware of the context surrounding their apparently paranormal experience. If they were, they might realise the true explanation for what they saw. While vigils are a highly artificial setting, they are not so different to someone experiencing something weird spontaneously. In both cases it is almost impossible to predict what will happen, or when, making observations liable to things like misperception. If it was possible to watch someone experiencing a spontaneous anomalous event, there is a high chance that it would be possible to see that there was a xenonormal explanation in most cases. I have had spontaneous weird experiences myself and always investigate them at the time. Without fail they have had a xenonormal explanation. Unfortunately, we cannot expect casual witnesses to investigate what they see at the time, which is when you are most likely to find the true cause. So, the best experience a paranormal investigator can have is to observe someone else witnessing a weird event. It is a profoundly eye-opening experience! 8 Mar 2010: That doppelganger feeling Doppelganger's are very rare indeed. They usually involve someone seeing the apparition of a living person who is nearby. There are few, if any, reliable reports of this phenomenon, however. There is another, equally rare but less well-known, kind of doppelganger phenomenon where someone feels there is someone near to them (a 'presence'), imitating everything they do. Many people would assume these two phenomena are one and the same but there is no compelling evidence that this is the case. It would be great to examine, in detail, a contemporary reliable report of the 'apparition' type doppelganger, should one turn up. In the meantime, there may be an explanation for the feeling some people get of a presence or figure, often invisible, that is imitating their own actions. Regular readers may already have guessed that this phenomenon may be related to the way OOBEs are created. It seems that the 'presence' doppelganger may be caused by unusual activity in the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the same part of the brain most likely responsible for OOBEs. Given that the TPJ gives us our sense of position in space, it is not surprising that it can be responsible for a feeling of a separate nearby presence. An article in Cosmos magazine describes research on this subject. They refer to a 'shadow person'. This should not to be confused with 'shadow ghosts' which occur in peripheral vision and are not usually very close to the observer, whom they do not mimic. These 'ghosts' are most likely caused by the sensitivity of peripheral vision to movement and misperception. Everyone's brain is different, partly due to genetics and partly due to how it is used. It is inevitable that some individuals will be more prone to things like OOBEs, doppelganger presence, misperception and so on. For this reason, when anyone witnesses something extraordinary, we must examine the person, and their previous perceptual experiences, every bit as much as the scene of their reported incident. 5 Mar 2010: CCTV ghost ASSAP's Heritage Officer, Ian Topham, spotted this article about a CCTV ghost video in a local newspaper website (actual video), the News and Star. The 'ghost', seen in a video at a Carlisle off-licence, consists of overlapping orbs, suggesting an object with multiple highlights very close to the lens. The jerky motion appears to be due to the camera using a time lapse method rather than continuous recording (note the cars that appear and disappear in the top left of the frame). This is very reminiscent of previous security camera ghosts (see here) that appear to be caused by insects walking across the protective glass screen in front of the camera lens. If an insect was actually ON the lens itself it would either not show up at all or, if it was fairly big, it would appear as a black shape. When CCTV cameras started to become common, paranormal investigators thought they might prove a treasure trove of ghost images. While there have certainly been many CCTV ghost videos, the vast majority have explanations such as insects or faint images from old recordings when video tapes are reused. Doubtless there are also many strange images that are not even noticed because no one looks at the recording unless they are seeking something in particular. So, overall, CCTVs have not brought the rush of ghost images we anticipated. Even when weird images ARE found, they have to be analysed cautiously, in a similar way to still paranormal photos. The same coat draped over a chair has made me misperceive a person yet again (see 3 Mar)! It really does seem to be a powerful visual stimulus for misperceptions. It also fits with the idea that we notice misperceptions only when they represent something 'wrong' with a scene (a visual continuity error). In this case, I noticed the 'figure' only because I knew there could not be one there. If the building had been full of real people, I might well not have noticed the coat, unconsciously dismissing it as just someone sitting down. 3 Mar 2010: The ghost in the chair!
The misperception was so convincing that it caught me out again later, after I'd forgotten about the original incident. It reminded me of previous incidents where clothes, when hung or draped in a way suggesting a human posture, have given a powerful impression of a figure when seen in peripheral vision. Indeed, they may form the most easily reproducible examples of misperception around. More powerful than trees, bushes and so forth (example in photo - see here for account of the sighting). Reproducing misperception is notoriously difficult, as I have outlined here before. But maybe here is a chance to do some reliable experiments. What percentage of people would see a coat draped on a chair as a figure in their peripheral vision? How many would fall for the same trick a little later? How much would you need to change the position of the chair or coat for it to trigger a misperception again in the same individual who had become used to itt?
Last month's (February) website figures are an average of 9637 hits per day. Though down on the previous month's 11465, it is still up (by 12%) on the same month in the previous year!
© Maurice Townsend 2010 |
Welcome to the ASSAP paranormal blog! Though this blog is aimed at anyone interested in the paranormal, it will be of particular interest to the paranormal research community. Updated frequently, but not regularly (don't expect something new every day!), it covers any paranormal topic, as well as highlighting recent changes to the ASSAP website. You may not notice it but this site changes on an almost daily basis. 
Yesterday (see below) I speculated that personal belief may lower the threshold for noticing 
The other day I noticed a human figure sitting on a chair! It made me jump, almost literally, out of my skin. That was because I knew for a fact that I was completely alone in a locked building! I had caught sight of the figure first in my 