Scientists and the Paranormal

Plenty of people report paranormal experiences, but when those accounts come from prominent members of the scientific community might they be even more significant? Scientists are trained to be objective, and those that reach the top of their profession have had their objectivity endorsed by their peers.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, founder of Jungian analysis and originator of the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, had several paranormal experiences. (more…)

The ghost mobile

Contributed by Alan Aitcheson

A true story, hard to believe but it really did happen, real life can be far stranger at times than fiction.

I was talking to a friend the other night recalling a couple of spooky events that took place several years ago. When my eldest daughter was in her final year at school I bought her a new mobile/cell phone, she used it for a year or more then decided to buy herself a new one. I had the old mobile phone back and used it myself for a further year before it become obsolete. I smashed it and threw it in the bin.

Totally forgetting about it, until two policemen arrived at my door around two years after getting rid of the phone; they informed me that an emergency 999 call had been made and I was the named owner of the mobile phone. (more…)

Broken glass & spirits?

Posted on behalf of Marcy

I'm curious about whether there is any symbolic meaning to the occasional sound of broken glass (with no apparent origin or cause) in a home. It's a very distinctive noise, and repeated searches of the house have yielded no source. It sounded as if a lamp had been shattered, or perhaps a drinking glass had been dropped. It's a small house and I've gone through it thoroughly trying to find the cause. (more…)

Great Grandmother

Posted on behalf of Bill, 27 May 2010

I was staying at an aunts farm in their old farm house which was then only being used as a guest house. I was laying on my back after retiring for the night and suddenly had feeling of being watched. I looked toward the foot of the bed and saw the wispy image of what appeared to be a woman standing there looking at me. After a couple of seconds she turned around and floated through the doorway, (closed door).

I told my aunt what happened. And after describing what I had seen, She explained the room I had stayed in was once her grandmother's room. Needlessly to say I asked for a different room for the next night.

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The boy in my attic

This account is posted on behalf of cf3547

We just moved into our apartment in north carolina my boyfriend and i are young and we both got kicked out of our houses because he was white and i was black and our families didn't believe in interacial relationships. So me and my friend were putting the old things in the attic while my boyfriend seth got us somethin to eat from the restraunt when i put the glass in the attic the light turned off i got my phone and when i did the door shut and i saw a teenage boy looking at me when i asked him who are you he was gone so i tried to open the door but i forgot my cell phone when i finally got my phone i turned around and there was the boy again i got scared and he got closer and when i was on the edge of the steps he pushed me down the stairs i was unconisous. (more…)

The Walking Stick - An Apport?

A member of my local Spiritualist Church, who held a prominent position in a well-regarded voluntary organization, gave the following account at a meeting. His friend recently tripped on the sidewalk and this gentleman joked that she might need a walking stick. Shortly after he happened to find a brand new walking stick behind the kitchen door of his home. Neither he, nor anyone he knew used such a walking stick. And it isn't the kind of thing one easily forgets! The bottom showed no signs of wear and the label indicated it came from a distant part of the country.

Enquiries from friends and neighbors left the gentleman none the wiser where the object came from. An apport (manifestation from Spirit)? (more…)

Psychic Ability: Is It Real? What Does It Mean?

The term psychic power refers to any ability by which mind can interact with matter by means beyond currently understood laws of science.

Parapsychology, the scientific discipline devoted to the study of psychic ability and other paranormal phenomena has coined the umbrella term psi to refer to a number of distinct categories of psychic ability, namely: (more…)

Some Personal Psychic Experiences and their Implications

Throughout history humans have reported experiencing phenomena that could not be explained by the known laws of nature. There is now a vast catalog of such experiences, and indeed if one raises the topic of the paranormal in any group it's usually the case that at least one member has experienced something strange.

Over the past century or so we have adopted a more systematic approach to the study of the paranormal, from the formation of learned societies for psychical research, through the many experiments and masses of data collected by J B Rhine to modern parapsychological research employing latest technologies. The statistical method of meta-analysis, which allows the results of multiple studies to be combined, reveals the odds against chance for the amassed evidence to be immense. (more…)

Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon

Interview with Professor Joaquim Fernandes, PhD in History, at the University Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal

1.What led you to the research of the Fatima Apparitions?

From long time the Fatima Apparitions story was considered controversial and a lot of authors and thinkers thought that they were supported more by political than religious reasons and motivations. Then, we wanted questioned what really had happen there by accessing the original archives and documents.

2. What kind of difficulties and obstacles did you find during the research?

The main obstacle was to access to the Fatima sanctuary documents, namely the so-called Formigao archive, that were classified until the end of the 1970’s when we proposed to study them. Following having the chance to read them, one of the authors (Fina d’Armada) was badly punished in her professional career.

3. Did you find any kind of surprises there?

The main surprise was that the extraordinary events could not gave been invented. In our opinion they occurred in fact. (more…)

Synchronicity, Cause and Effect

The term Synchronicity was introduced by psychologist Carl Gustav (C.G.) to describe meaningful coincidence in his classic 1950 essay Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. Jung makes an eloquent attempt to define synchronicity as an alternative to cause and effect as a connecting principle. Jung's theory is paralleled by the paradigm-shifting discoveries in physics of relativity and quantum mechanics which shattered the then widely held belief in a deterministic, "clockwork" universe.

If reality is likened to an ocean, infinite in both expanse and depth, then the material universe is the surface of that ocean, and the non-physical its vast depths. Synchronicity is the observable effects of submerged activity upon the surface. This hidden activity is beyond human understanding, but we do, on occasion, glimpse its effects.

Causality vs Probability

In a causal/deterministic (model of) reality, cause precedes effect thus:

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