![]() ![]() However, the exact attribution or meaning of these occurrences typically reflects the percipient’s religio–cultural milieu, with many people ascribing their experiences to hauntings or poltergeists (collectively termed ghostly episodes) ( Hill et al., 2018, 2019 Houran et al., 2019a). Some research suggests that outwardly disparate “(entity) encounter experiences”-e.g., spirits, angels, gods, demons, poltergeists, extraterrestrials, Men in Black (MIB), and folklore–type little people-generally have similar narrative structures ( Evans, 1987 Hufford, 2001 Young, 2018) and perceptual contents ( Houran, 2000 Houran and Lange, 2001b Houran et al., 2019a). This paper examines a real-life and rather remarkable “ghost story” via a mixed methods approach that continues our series of studies about people who claim to be haunted by anomalous beings or sentient forces ( Laythe et al., 2018 Drinkwater et al., 2019 Houran et al., 2019a, b O’Keeffe et al., 2019 Ventola et al., 2019 Lange et al., 2020). Putative psi cannot be ruled out, but we conclude that the family’s ordeal fundamentally involved the symptoms and manifestations of thin (or “permeable”) mental boundary functioning in the face of unfavorable circumstances or overstimulating environments and subsequently acerbated by poor emotion regulation, histrionic and catastrophizing reactions, and active confirmation biases. There was also some evidence of perceptual congruency among the family members’ anomalous experiences. Specifically, the reported anomalies both correlated with the family’s scores on transliminality and paranormal belief, as well as elicited attributions and reaction patterns aligned with threat (agency) detection. We found reasonably consistent support for HP-S from a set of quantitative observations that compared five proposed syndrome features against the family members’ psychometric profiles and the structure and contents of their anomalous experiences. The primary percipient also completed a measure of adverse childhood events and supplied an event diary of her anomalous experiences. Guided by prior research, we administered the family online measures of transliminality, sensory-processing sensitivity, paranormal belief, locus of control, desirability for control, and a standardized checklist of haunt-type phenomena. Secondary percipients included her husband and adult daughter, all of whom reported an array of benign and threatening anomalies (psychological and physical in nature) across five successive residences. The case centered on the life story of the primary percipient, a retired female healthcare worker. We tested the validity and practical utility of the HP-S concept in an empirical study of an active and reportedly intense ghostly episode that was a clinical referral. ![]() This view helps to explain why these anomalous experiences often appear to be idioms of stress or trauma.
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