Chris French, Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, joins Cheddar Reveals to break down the psychology behind ghosts and what we perceive as the paranormal.

Cheddar Reveals

Psychology of the Paranormal

Welcome back to Cheddar reveals, brought to you by Curiosity stream in 2022, we are generally kind of skeptical as a society. And the question is just about everything and anything that we see on the day to day basis. So with that why has the belief in the paranormal persisted across the centuries into modern life, joining us now is Chris French head of the anomalous Tik psychology research unit at Goldsmiths University of London chris, let's start broadly here. Why is it that that we believe in ghosts? Whoa! There's there's so many reasons. One of those very complicated questions that doesn't have a a simple, straightforward answer. I mean amongst the many reasons, one is that we live in a society where although many people are skeptical of ghosts, many others aren't. So it depends on the kind of family that you were brought up in. If you had parents that believed in ghosts, have you had siblings, friends and so on, belief in ghosts also, I think it relates to what paul was talking about, It provides some kind of evidence for life after death now, although the kind of idea of ghosts themselves is a scary one for most people on the other hand, it does provide evidence for life after death and most of us really do want to believe that there is such a thing as life after death. And when we want to believe something, the evidence doesn't have to necessarily be that strong to convince us that it's true and then, I mean finally people really do have some very unusual and scary experiences. I mean just to give one example, one of the things that were very interested in is a phenomenon called sleep paralysis where people can hallucinate in the night, they can't move, they've got a very strong sense of presence and I think we broadly understand what causes it, but if you're the person who's having that experience, it feels incredibly real, It does not feel like a hallucination. So there's a whole range of different things that all feed together and ghosts provide a kind of umbrella explanation for all of those things. I've actually experienced that sleep paralysis and it does feel like oh my God, something's holding me down and it makes you kind of want to your mind go there and try to explain it away with something like a phenomenon, you know, like a ghost presence, but to that extent that psychological kind of um you know, need or a basis for humans that you try to explain away the desire, what is the psychological basis behind this? Well, as I say, um the fact is that, you know, we are so successful as a species because of a word I've heard a lot in just listening on the previous discussions, curiosity, you know, we want explanations for things. It doesn't necessarily matter to us psychologically whether the explanations are correct or not, as long as they make sense of what's happening in the world around us. So if we live in a society where everyone believing in ghosts and spirits and it just take for granted that they are part of the real world, then we will interpret the world in those terms. And as I say, it really does boil down to the fact that our curiosity is just an inherent part of being a human being. What's the psychological difference between being haunted or seeing, seeing kind of a friendlier ghost of a loved one? For example? Well, one thing I think, I think it's important to make the point that whenever I think when most people hear the word ghost, it summons up a particular mental image of a kind of full formed apparition appearing through the wall and then kind of, you know, maybe walking off and disappearing and so on. Now that is actually quite rare. Ghostly encounters are much more likely to be much more subtle things than that. They might be kind of walking into a room and feeling a sense of presence, You don't see anything or hear anything, you just feel as if there's something or someone in the room with you or it might be getting a chill down your spine or it might be unexplained noises. It might be a whole smelling perfume, it could be a whole range of things. So just to be clear that, you know, you have to consider the whole gamut of those kinds of so called ghostly experiences to understand why people might claim they've had a ghostly encounter now hauntings. Obviously that refers to a situation where you have a location that's said to repeatedly have these kinds of people have these kinds of experiences when they're in there and typically they will find that very terrifying. But another kind of related example, as you have said, is that sometimes people are not frightened by them, particularly if someone has lost a loved one, it's very common for them to experience that person is still being around in some way now. It might be that they occasionally maybe walk into a room and think they see them sitting in their favorite chair or it might be just that they get a whiff of their favorite perfume or tobacco they used to smoke or something like that, but often then they'll actually find it quite comforting experience. And then again, you get the, you get the kind of, all kinds of variations. You can get situations where people kind of tell you, oh yeah, my house is haunted, but I'm not worried because the ghost is friendly. Exactly, exactly. I've had friends that have that kind of same experience really quickly before I let you go here, I've only got 30 seconds. But you know, as a note at the top of the segment, we live in a skeptical society, how does that play into testing evaluating and then proving paranormal normal claims? Well, bear in mind you're talking to a skeptic now. So I don't think society is anywhere near skeptical enough. What I do know is that people do have these experiences and that these kinds of beliefs are very widespread across all cultures geographically and historically. So there's something there that needs to be explained. Either these paranormal phenomena do defy explanation in terms of conventional science, in which case that's amazing and we should just investigate it further or it's telling us something really interesting about the human mind now. I think it's the latter, but I could be wrong. I I agree with you there, but you have far more experience than I do chris really appreciate your insight. Chris french head of the Anomalous Tik Psychology Research unit at Goldsmiths University of London.