SILENT VOICES

Haunting Experiences: Role of the Mind

There is a paucity of psychological research dealing exclusively with the role of the mind solely in haunted environments and yet there is also a vast array of concepts from psychology that are highly relevant. Almost a century of psychological research has demonstrated that factors as diverse as attention, arousal, context, belief, suggestion, expectancy, boredom, desire, fatigue, stress, and even personality, influence our perception of the environment. In this article I'll be discussing how belief and suggestion may play a role in our haunting experiences.

Bias & Belief
Given that haunting experiences are ultimately about the perception of sensory experiences, as defined earlier, every listed psychological factor above plays a significant role. Given the environment in which haunting experiences tend to occur and given the state of mind of those conducting investigations and reporting phenomena, the presence of each psychological factor is unsurprising. Indeed there is support for a hypothesis that “the perceptions of ambiguous events should follow a predictable pattern that is consistent with the factors that govern human attention,” (Lange & Houran, 2001, p. 287). The support shows that attentional bias is partly to blame for the interpretation of puzzling or ambiguous events as evidence of a haunting. It appears that bias, generally, is a powerful theme that runs throughout many of the potential psychological explanations for people’s experiences, explanations that, on the face of it, seem internally based. One obvious external cue, however, is the widespread belief in ghosts and related entities and how this may bias experiences or a retelling of an experience. Like placebo effects, such internalised beliefs and expectations tend to induce and structure ambiguous experiences. The influence of beliefs and expectations is arguably greater on perceptual illusions. In addition, as stated by Baker (2002, p. 109): “When researching cases parapsychologists often encounter two separate problems: emotion and belief.” Consider another passage by Irwin:

Two additional sources of bias spring from the popularity of ghost stories in fiction. First, some supposedly real-life cases initially may have been devised as a good story but then presented as authentic in the hope of enhancing their commercial potential. Second, fictional ghost stories (and folklore too) promote a particular stereotype of an apparitional experience and it is feasible that witnesses’ accounts of their experience unwittingly are distorted to conform to these popular expectations. Parapsychologists therefore must be a little wary of accepting consistencies in spontaneous apparitions: in part these consistencies may reveal only the fictional conception of apparitions.
Irwin (2004; p. 199)

Suggestion
Two psychological phenomena of critical importance to the incidence of haunting phenomena and the investigation thereof are suggestion, in which an implicit or explicit environmental cue may induce appropriate experiences, and contagion, in which one individual’s experiences trigger similar reports in nearby individuals.

Suggestion and related constructs have been repeatedly found to play a critical role in the incidence of haunting phenomena. Haunting-type experiences have been induced by suggestion through different experimental techniques (Terhune & Smith, 2006). Haunt-specific suggestions have also been found to inflate the reporting of anomalous experiences in field experiments (Wiseman, Watt, Greening, Stevens, & O’Keeffe, 2002). Suggestion may also result in the haunting phenomena stopping (Terhune, 2004). In addition to triggering haunt phenomena, suggestion may inform the content and interpretation of anomalous experiences and may contribute to the occurrence of false memories of haunting episodes. Research on the related phenomenon of contagion, though less studied than suggestion, indicates that under certain conditions, reports of anomalous experiences can trigger similar experiences in other individuals. This is in accordance with the finding that haunt phenomena are more likely to occur in sites with multiple individuals (McClenon, 2001).

In addition to their role in the incidence of haunting phenomena, suggestion and contagion need to be taken into account in field experiments and investigations of alleged haunts. The extent to which suggestion may have induced haunt phenomena, or determined its phenomenology, and the extent to which experiences were facilitated by contagion effects should be closely considered in individual case investigations. In field experiments involving participant tours (Lange & Houran, 1997), investigators must be aware that identifying a particular site as a haunt can influence the perceptions reported by participants as well as experimenters. Some, but not all, of these effects can be circumvented in part through the use of double-blind experimental conditions and the inclusion of independent control sites in field experiments of alleged haunts (Houran & Brugger, 2000). However, the occurrence of contagion effects and the increase in suggestibility conferred by restricted environmental stimulation (Cardeña & Spiegel, 1991) may render common features of field experiments (e.g., multiple experimenter teams, night-time investigations) highly counterproductive. 

References (Recommended Further Reading)
Baker, I. (2002). Do ghosts exist? A summary of parapsychological research into apparitional experiences. In Newton, J. (ed.). Early Modern Ghosts. Durham, UK: University of Durham.

Cardeña, E., & Spiegel, D. (1991) Suggestibility, absorption and dissociation: An integrative model of hypnosis. In J.F. Schumaker (Ed.), Human Suggestibility: Advances in Theory, Research and Application (pp 93-107). New York: Routledge.

Houran, J., & Brugger, P. (2000). The need for independent control sites: A methodological suggestion with special reference to haunting and poltergeist field research. European Journal of Parapsychology, 15, 30-45.

Irwin, H. J. (2004). An introduction to Parapsychology (4th Edition). North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
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McClenon, J. (2001). The sociological investigation of haunting cases. In J. Houran and R. Lange (Eds.), Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 62-81). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

O’Keeffe, C., Baker, I., Sherwood, S., Terhune, D. & Parsons, S. (2008). Parapsychology and investigating haunting experiences. Panel Discussion presented at the 51st Annual Parapsychological Association Convention, Winchester, UK.

Terhune, D.B. (2004). Investigation of reports of a recurrent sensed presence: Assessing recent conventional hypotheses. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 68, 153-167.

Terhune, D.B., & Smith, M.D. (2006). The induction of anomalous experiences in a mirror-gazing facility: Suggestion, cognitive perceptual personality traits and phenomenological state effects. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 194, 415-421.

Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Greening, E., Stevens, P., & O'Keeffe, C. (2002). An investigation into the alleged haunting of Hampton Court Palace: Psychological variables & magnetic fields. Journal of Parapsychology, 66, 387-408.

 
© Ciaran O'Keeffe 2011
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