Science may explain what’s behind paranormal experiences

Have you ever had a paranormal experience where you felt like you weren’t alone even though you were in a place with no other people? Neuroscientists are trying to explain what happens in our brain when we feel the presence of other people without them being physically present.

Scientific research is showing us that it is possible to understand ethereal experiences through scientific models of the mind, body, and the relationship between them.

A study conducted in 1894 by the Society for Psychical Research published the Census of Hallucinations conducted with 17,000 inhabitants of Europe. The main objective of this research was to understand why it was common for people to have seemingly impossible visitations that predicted death.

Given this context, the researchers concluded that such experiences occurred too frequently to be attributed to chance (one in every 43 people surveyed).

In 1886, the Society for Psychical Research published the book “Ghosts of the Living.” It contains several cases of telepathy, premonitions, and other unusual phenomena.

In this work, there is the story of a man who was visited by a nocturnal presence who warned him not to take the boat the next morning. Soon after, the man learned that everyone traveling on the boat had drowned.

These experiences happen frequently in people’s lives, and contemporary science offers ideas to understand them.

Science explains paranormal experiences

In this sense, researchers discovered that many of these supernatural experiences may be linked to sleep paralysis, which affects around 7% of adults.

Many of the reports collected by scientists sound like hypnagogiawhich are hallucinatory experiences that occur at the limits of sleep.

In sleep paralysis, our muscles remain frozen, however, our mind is active and awake. Given this, studies show that more than 50% of people who have had sleep paralysis report encountering a presence.

The interesting thing is that these reports are present in all societies, but the nocturnal presences materialize in different ways, and can give people a feeling of comfort or fear.

In 2007, sleep researchers J. Allen Cheyne and Todd Girard pointed out that if we wake up paralyzed and vulnerable, our instincts would make us feel threatened.

With that, our mind would fill in the gap. Finally, it is important to note that, in the last 25 years, scientists have discovered that it is unlikely that these cases of “supernatural” experiences are linked only to sleep problems, since they are also reported in Parkinson’s disease, psychosis, near-death experiences and grief.