Ray Hyman is a psychologist, amateur magician and leading critic of parapsychology. He has served appointments by government agencies to evaluate paranormal claims and testified as an expert witness in court proceedings. He is a co-founder of the Committee for Scientific Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), now the Committee for…
Suspicions of cheating by Carl Sargent, a British experimental psi researcher in the 1970s, voiced by Susan Blackmore, a leading critic of parapsychology, have become one of parapsychology’s most famous cautionary episodes, raising questions about protocol, inference, experimenter conduct and evidential fairness. However, close scrutiny fails to support Blackmore’s claims….
Some reincarnation cases look more like possession, challenging standard categories. After appearing to die but reviving, Sumitra Singh repudiated her former identity. She no longer identified herself as Sumitra but claimed to be an educated Brahmin woman named Shiva, who had been killed a few months earlier, then maintained that…
JW Dunne (1875–1949) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and aeronautical engineer who turned dream records into a theory of precognition and then a sweeping philosophy of time. The article links his best-selling dream experiments with his doctrine of serialism, showing how questions about future memory led him towards an elaborate account…
Experimental psi research continues to explore whether mental intention can register in physical systems designed to behave unpredictably. Brazilian physicist Gabriel Guerrer is one of a new generation of researchers testing consciousness-related effects with optical and noise-based devices, whist maintaining a focus on replicable laboratory procedures. Guerrer has pursued the…
Nicola J Holt is a British psychologist and psi researcher whose work has focused on the relationship of creativity and other personality traits with anomalous experiences. She has explored how imaginative style, intrapersonal awareness and experimental conditions may shape anomalous performance in both laboratory and everyday settings. Sender stability and…
This article presents 51 accounts of past-life memories of European children and compares them to cases from Asia. The length of the intermissions between lives tends to be much longer in Europe, and this may help to explain why there are relatively few European cases and why most of those…
Research on anomalous perception depends on understanding how ordinary perception becomes unstable, biased and prediction-driven. Jürgen Kornmeier has examined ambiguity, pareidolia and reversal dynamics, showing how the brain constructs meaning from uncertain input and how apparent spontaneity can conceal earlier neural change. Ambiguous emotional faces and ambiguous geometric figures elicited…
Automatic writing in the early twentieth century found one of its most accomplished exponents in an Irish medium whose scripts blended literary polish, spirit communication and evidential detail. Admirers emphasised voice, personality and striking verifications; critics noted the difficulty of separating survival claims from clairvoyance, inference or subconscious reconstruction. Her…
