Nancy L Zingrone

Nancy L Zingrone (b 1951) is an American psychologist, parapsychologist and educator. Her research has included ESP experiments, survey studies of psi experiences, and examinations of parapsychology texts from a science studies point of view.   

Nancy L Zingrone was born in 1951 in Berwyn but grew up in Woodstock, Illinois. She was awarded a Bachelor of Arts with honours in psychology from Mundelein College and a Master of Science in education from Northern Illinois University. She was a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University before pursuing a PhD in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Since the late 1970s she has taught parapsychology courses to undergraduates and in adult education programs. From December of 1982 when she became a research fellow (until 1986) and then visiting scholar (until 1993) at the Institute for Parapsychology (now  the Rhine Research Center), she conducted experimental parapsychological research, and managed (in 1984) and contributed as a faculty member to the Summer Study Program (1985-1993) of that institution. In the late 1990s and 2000s she conducted survey research with her late husband Carlos S Alvarado that focused on the features and psychological correlates of seemingly psychic experiences. Since his death from cancer in 2021, she has concentrated on her educational activities and on editing collections of his works.

Professional Roles

After ten years of membership in the Parapsychological Association, Zingrone served an additional 10 years on the board of directors from 1991 through 1999, including two terms as president from 2000 to 2001, and from 2003 to 2004. In 2015, she was awarded the Outstanding Contribution Award in recognition of her work in the development and presentation of graduate-level adult education courses in parapsychology. In addition to her service to the PA, Zingrone was also a member of the founding council of the  Asociación Iberoamericana de Parapsicología in 1995, served on the board of directors of the Rhine Research Center from 2010 through 2014, and on the Academy of Spiritual and Consciousness Studies Board of Trustees from 1985 through 1986, and from 2014 through 2017, including a year as vice president of that organization.1

Other posts have included director of publications at the Parapsychology Foundation and the executive editor of the International Journal of Parapsychology from 2000 through 2008, assistant research professor in the Division of Perceptual Studies in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia from 2003 through 2010, and the director of academic and administrative affairs at Atlantic University from 2010 through 2013.

Teaching

Zingrone was a senior core adjunct professor in the department of psychology of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Northcentral University from September 2013 to September 2022, when Northcentral merged with National University. Since then, she has been a Distinguished Core Part-Time Professor in the JFK School of Psychology and Social Sciences at National University, in the online one-on-one model for master's and doctoral students.

Along with Alvarado, Zingrone was involved in a variety of online teaching activities related to parapsychology. These included a dedicated YouTube channel, Parapsychology Online; a virtual research and education institute that hosts online classrooms on the AZIRE Moodle2, together with other online learning management systems; and the AZIRE Library and Learning Center in the virtual world, Second Life3.

From 2015 through 2020, Parapsychology Online has hosted the Parapsychology Research and Education Massive Open Online Course (ParaMOOC)4, a series of high quality online webinars from leading experts in the field of parapsychology. ParaMOOC is free to join and its recordings are freely available.5 There are no limitations to enrollment. Since 2023, in the absence of Alvarado, Bryan Williams, the research director of the Psychical Research Foundation in Carrollton, Texas, USA, has stepped in to craft the curriculum and invite the speakers for the annual ParaMOOC sessions. Williams has been a constant collaborator from the beginning of ParaMOOC.

During Alvarado's life, both Zingrone and Alvarado worked together to provide education through their articles and presentations on individual differences and seemingly psychic experiences, and on the importance of history of psychical research and parapsychology and its contribution to psychology and psychiatry, a lifelong agenda for Alvarado, and a goal that Zingrone continues to work towards.

Editorial Activities

Currently, Zingrone is the senior editor along with Sonali Bhatt Marwaha of the three volumes of The Carlos S. Alvarado Archives, in process at Rowman and Littlefield publishers. She is also working on "Hidden and Fragmented Mind and the Society for Psychical Research, 1882-1900," a project that was initiated by Alvarado early in his career, and on which he was working from 2019 to the fall of 2020, when he fell ill. This project, funded by the Parapsychology Foundation (2022) and by a Perrott Warrick Grant (2024), will be completed with the colleagial participation of Andreas Sommer and Renaud Evrard. Several other projects focused on Alvarado's work are in preparation as well.

Over her career, Zingrone has provided editorial skills to eighteen books, being part of an indexing team in 1988, as week as scan typing, proofreading and providing scholarly indexes from 1990 through 1993 for an academic publisher who focused on the history of religion and English literature, was the main editor for Alvarado and Zingrone's own Puente Publications which published four academic books in psychology and parapsychology in 1995, 2003, and 2007, as well as scan typing, proofreading and co-constructor with Edward F. Kelly on the index of Irreducible Mind 6. While a consultant to the Parapsychology Foundation from 1998 to 2000 and then as the director of publications at the Parapsychology from 2000 to 2008, she managed and edited four pamphlets, one monograph, three books, and for two years held the position of Executive Editor on the renewed International Journal of Parapsychology.

Most recently, Zingrone was a guest editor of the December 2022 issue of Journal of Anomalistics/Zeitschrift für Anomalistik with Cedar S. Leverett which focused on "Women and Parapsychology: Observations — Reflections." Zingrone also published an editorial, was involved in the vetting of invited and submitted articles, and was the third author of the survey provided by Gerhard Mayer, and Leverett in that issue.

Research

Checker Effect

The checker effect refers to an anomalous influence on the outcomes of psi experiments caused by the first people who check the results – usually the primary investigators. The effect was first reported by Feather and Brier,7 who found significant differences favouring Feather when she acted as checker.

Zingrone and Debra Weiner collaborated in an attempted replication. The first series revealed a significant checker effect (p = 0.006): Zingrone’s data achieved marginally above chance scoring while Weiner’s scored significantly below. The second series tested for Observation Theory, which posits that experimental results exist in a probability cloud until a conscious observer ‘collapses’ them to a defined outcome. Blinded session data was compared with non-blinded data where the experimenters knew which of them had been predicted by the subjects to check which segment of data. The blinded runs revealed no checker effect, but the non-blinded data revealed a significant checker effect (p = 0.025), replicating the first series and providing support for Observation Theory.8

The first series of tests in a second experiment revealed no checker effect under non-blinded conditions. In the second series, the checker effect again emerged under non-blinded conditions but not blinded conditions.9 

Auras

Zingrone and Alvarado asked about seeing 'auras' in five survey studies of paranormal experience. They hypothesized that individuals claiming this ability would show similar psychological variables and report a higher frequency of other seemingly mystical and psychical experiences. This proved to be the case across all five studies, a surprising consistency given the wide variations in the studies’ language and location. ‘Aura viewers’ claimed more vividness of visual imagery and reported more fantasy-like experiences than controls; they also practised meditation more often. Zingrone and Alvarado concluded that aura vision is related to cognitive processes involving visual imagery and fantasy.10 In further research, they explored the suspected association between synaesthesia and seeing auras, finding a robust relationship across their five studies.11

Out-of-body Experiences

Zingrone and colleagues investigated the effect of body posture and activity on the nature of out-of-body experiences (OBEs). From previous research, they predicted that OBEs would be more frequent in states of low physical activity and when the experient is lying down. This was confirmed by analysis of hundreds of cases sourced through public appeals. People who reported an OBE from such positions also described a higher frequency of typical OBE features than those who were active and standing.12

Hauntings

Zingrone and Alvarado studied the characteristics of 172 haunting cases collected and coded by Gauld and Cornell in 1979, exploring differences between hauntings with apparitions and hauntings without apparitions. Following a conjecture by Ian Stevenson regarding poltergeist phenomena, they hypothesized that apparitional hauntings would reveal more instances of intelligence, agency and intention than standard hauntings. These main predictions were not confirmed, but there was a higher frequency in the apparition group of reports of doors or windows opening or shutting and hands seen or felt. Overall, they found that experients of apparitional hauntings tended to notice a greater number of features in more detail than those of non-apparitional hauntings, indicating that the presence of apparitions has a marked influence.13 

History of Parapsychology, Psychology and Psychiatry

Zingrone’s doctoral dissertation, From Text to Self: The Interplay of Criticism and Response in the History of Parapsychology, dealt with substantive criticism and response in the history of psychical research and parapsychological research from the early twentieth century through the 1990s. Using the methodologies of the history and rhetoric of science and discourse analysis, she provided in-depth investigations into the seminal texts Extra-Sensory Perception14) and into the formal debate on the status of parapsychology as a science that was published in 1987 in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, with commentary in 1990. She also provided a brief history of the field, and discussion of the application of the demarcation problem in the philosophy and sociology of science to the criticism of  parapsychology. Two published papers resulted from this work.15

Zingrone and Alvarado also collaborated on personality and individual differences survey research and in the history of psychical research, psychology and psychiatry.16

Works

Below are listed a few of over 60 articles Zingrone has published in peer-reviewed journals and in books, many co-authored with Alvarado and others, that are not inluded in the Literature list beliw. The articles and book chapters are followed by some of Zingrone’s blog, website and YouTube channel postings.

Articles

Alvarado, C. S., & Zingrone, N. L. (1997). Out-of-body experiences and sensations of “shocks” to the body. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 61, 304-13.

Alvarado, C. S., & Zingone, N. L. (1997–1998). Factors related to the depth of near-death experiences: Testing the “embellishment over time” hypothesis. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 17, 339-44.

Alvarado, C. S., Zingrone, N. L., & Dalton, K. (1998–1999a). Out-of-body experiences: Alterations of consciousness and the five-factor model of personality. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 18, 297-317.

Alvarado, C. S., & Zingrone, N. L. (2003). Exploring the factors related to the after-effects of out-of- body experiences. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 67/3, 161-83.

Alvarado, C. S., & Zingrone, N. L. (2015). Features of out-of-body experiences: Relationships to frequency, willfulness, and previous knowledge about the experience. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 79, 98–111.

Zingrone, N. L. (1974). Extrasensory perception among the deaf. Parapsychology Now (Newsletter of the Illinois Center for Psychological Research), 2/10, 7–11; 2/11, 9-11.

Zingrone, N. L. (1982). Parapsychology and the public. Midwest Psi Research Institute Newslette, 2, 26–34.

Zingrone, N. L. (1988). Authorship and gender in American parapsychology journals. Journal of Parapsycholog, 52, 321-43.

Zingrone, N. L., & Alvarado, C. S. (2008). Out-of-body experiences and headaches: A research note. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 72, 107-10.

Book Chapters

Zingrone, N. L. (1994). The medium as image: Power, pathology, and passivity in the writings of Cesare Lombroso and Frederic Marvin. and parapsychology: The proceedings of the 1991 Parapsychology Foundation conference, ed. by L. Coly & J. D. S. McMahon, 90-123. New York: Parapsychology Foundation.

Zingrone, N. L., & Alvarado, C. S. (2009). Pleasurable Western adult near-death experiences: Features, circumstances, and incidence. In The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation, ed. by J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James, 17-40. Santa Barbara, California, USA: Praeger/ABC-Clio.

Zingrone, N. L., Alvarado, C. S., & Hövelmann, G. H. (2015). An overview of modern developments in parapsychology. In Parapsychology: A handbook for the 21st century, ed. by E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz, 13-29. Jefferson, North Carolina, USA: McFarland.

Web Posts and Blogs

February 2013 to present. Thinking and Learning Online Blog. Seventeen blogs uploaded about teaching online, learning online, supporting the Thinking and Learning Online YouTube channel, and providing support for the annual Virtual World MOOC series with colleagues Nellie Deutsch, Doris Molero, and Valerie Hill.

April 2014 to present. Thinking and Learning Online YouTube Channel. 118 videos uploaded, 13,945 views (February 13th, 2024), providing support for the Second Life/Virtual World MOOC series (2014 to present); most viewed videos were Second Life tutorials for students in the ParaMOOC series. Additional tutorials are using Excel for statistical procedures and on APA formatting skills.

June 2014 to present. Parapsychology Online. Twenty-six playlists that focus on ParaMOOC lectures, recommendations, researchers, and topics of research in academic parapsychology and psychical research.

January 2020 to present. Parapsychology Online. Support for the Parapsychology Online YouTube channel and the Parapsychology Research and Education online course (known as the ParaMOOC series, which ran from 2015 to 2020 and from 2023 to the present) since 2020.

Michael Duggan and James G. Matlock

Literature

Alvarado, C.S., & Zingrone, N.L. (1994). Individual differences in aura vision: Relationships to visual imagery and imaginative-fantasy experiences. European Journal of Parapsychology 10, 1-30.

Alvarado, C.S., & Zingrone, N.L. (1995). Characteristics of hauntings with and without apparitions: An analysis of published cases. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 60, 385-97.

Alvarado, C.S., & Zingrone, N.L. (2012). Classic test no. 90: ‘The pathology and treatment of mediomania’, by Frederic Rowland Marvin (1874). History of Psychiatry 23, 229-44.

Alvarado, C. S., & Zingrone, N. L. (2020). Classic text no. 122: Camille Flammarion on the powers of the soul. History of Psychiatry, 31, 237-252.

Feather, S., & Brier, S. (1968). The possible effect of the checker in precognition tests. Journal of Parapsychology 32, 167-75.

Kelly, E. F., Kelly, E. C., Crabtree, A., Gauld, A., Grosso, M., & Greyson, B. (2007). Irreducible mind: Toward a psychology for the 21st century. Lanham, Maryland, UA: Rowman & Littlefield.

Pratt, J. G., Rhine,J. B.,  Smith, B. M., Stuart, C. E., & Greenwood, J. A. (1940). Extra-Sensory Perception after Sixty Years. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Bruce Humphries..

Rhine, J. B. (1934). Extra-Sensory Perception. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Boston Society for Psyhic Research.

Weiner, D.H., & Zingrone, N.L. (1986). The checker effect revisited. Journal of Parapsychology 50, 85-121.

Weiner, D.H., & Zingrone, N.L. (1989). In the eye of the beholder: Further research on the "checker effect." Journal of Parapsychology 53, 203-31.

Zingrone, N.L. (2006). Complicating the conversation: Rhetoric, substance, and controversy in parapsychology. Journal of Parapsychology 69, 3-21.

Zingrone, N.L., & Alvarado, C.S. (2000-2001). The dissociative experiences scale – II: Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and frequency of experiences. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 2/1, 145-57.

Zingrone, N.L., & Alvarado, C.S. (2015). A brief history of psi research. In Extrasensory Perception: Support, Skepticism, and Science: Vol. 1: History, Controversy, and Research, ed. by E.C. May & S.B. Marwaha, 35-79. Santa Barbara, California, USA: Prager.

Zingrone, N.L., Alvarado, C.S, & Agee, N. (2009). Psychological correlates of aura vision: Psychic experiences, dissociation, absorption, and synaesthesia-like experiences. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 37/2, 13-168.

Zingrone, N.L., Alvarado, C.S., & Cardeña, E. (2010). Out-of-body experiences and physical body activity and posture: Responses from a survey conducted in Scotland. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 198, 163-65.

Endnotes