Surprisingly, one in a hundred UK citizens believes they can communicate with the dead. Prominent figures, including Celine Dion and Kesha, also say they can feel death. Now scientists have tried to understand why.
The strange and frightening phenomenon seems to be much more popular than you might think, which has led a team of researchers to examine dozens of mediums and spiritualists in an effort to find out why some people believe in the paranormal.
Spiritists believe that human souls continue to exist after death and can communicate with the living through a medium or psychic. It peaked in popularity in the late 19th century and has made a kind of comeback in recent years, with research in the UK indicating that there are hundreds of thousands of believers spread across the country.
Unsurprisingly, the phenomenon of talking to souls who left their mortal envelope did not withstand rigorous scientific examination.
Scientists have found that spirit mediums are more prone to immersive mental activities and often have unusual hearing experiences, especially in early life. Immersive activities include experiences of altered states of consciousness and imaginative activities.
“Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and longing’. For our participants, the principles of spiritualism seem to make sense of the extraordinary experiences of childhood, as well as the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as practicing mediums ”. explained principal researcher Adam Powell.
Mediums who “listen” spirits are experiencing clairaudient, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairsentient (“feeling myself” or “detection”) communications.
“But all of these experiences can result more from having certain initial tendencies or skills than simply believing in the possibility of contacting the dead if we try hard enough,” Powell added.
The study saw researchers at Durham University conduct a survey of 65 mediums from the National Union of Spiritists. He found that more than 44 percent of respondents reported hearing voices of the dead daily, while more than 33 percent said they heard a voice the day before.
Most mediums heard the dead inside their heads, but about 30% said they heard voices inside and outside their heads. The average age of onset of clairaudient experiences was between 21 and 22 years.
The scientists also surveyed a control group of 143 members of the general public to understand the main characteristics of mediums.
The results indicate that people who hear voices turn to spiritualist beliefs to explain the meaning or significance of their strange experiences.
The researchers say they hope the findings will help people understand more about distressing or uncontrollable experiences of hearing voices.
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