Paranormal Beliefs

This is a collection of 500 contemporary fairy experiences: most from the English-speaking world. The pdf is 400 pages long: about 160,000 words. The experiences date from the 1920s to the 2010s and respondents were aged from three-years old to ninety  when they believe that they encountered fairies. It is hoped that the collection will allow for further studies of the supernatural and of supernatural experiences both by the editor and others. A second phase of collection is now underway.

October 10, 2023 update.
After an effort of many years, I have prepared a comprehensive timeline of UFO history that will be useful to UFO researchers and historians. “UFOs and Intelligence” is an up-to-date retrospective of UFO history (from Agobard of Lyons to the newly appointed US investigation agency UAPTF), intertwined with events in US and world history concerning military and civilian intelligence agencies and the cult of secrecy. It is now 679 pages and more than 555,000 words (including a substantial “Sources and Further Reading” appendix). Readers will discover or rediscover many events, people, and UFO cases they may not be familiar with. Some will find it useful for current or planned research projects. Military cases, those involving commercial aircraft, close encounters involving physical traces and other evidence, reports involving occupants or entities, and events surrounding military and sensitive nuclear sites are emphasized, but this timeline covers the full spectrum of UFO history, from contactee experiences to misidentifications of mundane phenomena and notorious hoaxes. Links to online sources are given, and links to biographical information are provided when available. A timeline like this allows us to view events from a different perspective, letting us make connections we might not otherwise see. It forces us to view the big picture, amid the grand flow of UFO cases, military security decisions, a vast swathe of personalities, and world history.

The ATransC publishes an occasional update email to a list which you may join using the form in the right column of each atransc.org page.

The focus of the update is current information about transcommunication from the perspective of the ATransC. It is interesting to note that the directors have been expanding the association's focus to include more of the "So what" of the lessons learned from transcommunication.

Previous issues can be read at http://atransc.org/forum/forum-27.html

Recent social psychological research raises the possibility that
some attitudes and beliefs may be implicit or inaccessible to
articulation. In this study a measure of implicit paranormal beliefs was constructed and administered to a sample of 105 Australian adults as an online project. Significant relationships were found between implicit and explicit (self-reported) paranormal beliefs, offering support for the validity of the concept of implicit paranormal beliefs. While explicit beliefs were found to be correlated with thinking style, no such correlations were evident for implicit beliefs. Some speculations on the origins of implicit paranormal beliefs are offered.

Current events in science imply that a new scientific revolution in physics is unfolding. This new revolution will be as much about mind and consciousness as it is about matter and physics. It will bring a new theory of physical reality that includes the consciousness that senses, interprets and interacts with physical reality. The new theory of consciousness will lead to explanatory models of the paranormal as well as explain how consciousness survives death. This prediction is not an optimistic 'pipe dream', but our present and future. A theory of this type has already been developed. It is based on a five-dimensional Einstein-Kaluza model of the space-time continuum. ‘Single field theory' or SOFT can easily account for paranormal phenomena and the survival of consciousness. Whatever theory finally succeeds in bridging the gap between mind and matter, indications are that it will have many of the characteristics of SOFT if it is not SOFT. Whatever the case may be, a valid theory that combines physical reality and consciousness is truly a theory to die for!

Some recent research suggests that psychological processes underlying the formation of paranormal beliefs have much in common with those underlying delusional beliefs. On this ground a survey was conducted to investigate the relationship between paranormal beliefs and distortions in reasoning known to be associated with the development of psychotic delusions. A convenience sample of 250 people completed an online inventory of questionnaires measuring the intensity of paranormal beliefs, schizotypal biases in reasoning, and the need for closure. Both dimensions of paranormal belief surveyed here were found to be predicted by reasoning biases.

Can memory and emotion be animated after death, as some perceived hauntings appear to be? If so, then such hauntings involve extended emotions across space and time. In certain circumstances, can the places we once inhabited include this 'afterlife' memory, even though significant changes in cultural, physical, and technological resources have occurred? Can we animate past memory (of an 'attached' presence) through forms of 'cultural cues' that help to recall past experience, and the memory of those experiences? If so, it means that both the emotions and the memories of lived and shared situations and events inhere partly in the places where they occurred. They reflect not only 'imprints' on the environment, but also 'imprints' in memory that may produce, in particular cases, interactive past presence.

In this article I look at Chilean paranormal investigators in the capital-Santiago-and their apparatuses. I argue that these recording devices appear somehow as "vibrant" things, but they work in conjunction with others creating articulate living worlds. The first argument is that these articulations are made salient through sonic atmospheres-universes of sound that envelope a particular temporal moment, and that escape any single person's volition or control. These atmospheres create sonic reverberations, in effect, momentary cosmologies, that bend, curve, and extend into the lives of the investigators that engage with them. My second argument is that these sonic atmospheres create worlds that are not taken for granted but subject to controversy, varying interpretations and sometimes, stabilizing concordances, and that need to be "transduced".

From the end of the 16th century, the areas of the Silesian-Moravian borderland, or northern Moravia itself, were the scene of fierce struggles against the dead rising from their graves. Later, mainly eighteenth-century publications began to use the term defining these phenomena as magia posthuma. The intensity of beliefs in posthumous magic peaked in late 17th and early 18th centuries. It was widely thought at the time
that a deceased person whose body does not show normal, postmortem changes (rigidity) was a witch or a sorcerer. In the first half of the 18th century, the belief in harmful dead expanded to include children as well. It was also in this period that people commonly believed that other corpses could be “infected” by a dead person who engaged
in sinister posthumous activity. For this reason, also the bodies of children began to be exhumed. It must be emphasized that none of the examined cases of children and toddlers, whose bodies were exhumed and subsequently burned by a hangman, had died before being baptized. One of the first such exhumations in connection with beliefs in
magia posthuma practiced by deceased children took place in the spring of 1701 in the village of Libavá (German: Liebau). Yet the mass hysteria and extermination of harmful dead in this village and its vicinities did not break out until 1726. This year, 13 bodies of adults (11 women and 2 men), as well as those of 60 children, were exhumed and
burned on the border. The person identified as “patient zero”, who allegedly spread the “witchcraft epidemic”, was Georg Pozler. The number of trials of living and dead, including children, began to decrease after 1755, following a decree issued by the Empress Maria Theresa on 1 March of this year, which was targeted against the old beliefs and
superstitions concerning witchcraft, magic, ghosts, apparitions and vampires.

Bigfoot lurks at the intersection of folklore, myth, natural history, the paranormal, and popular culture. Like other North American "cryptids" -Mothman, the Lizard Man, the Jersey Devil -Bigfoot intrigues precisely because it disrupts categories of classification. Literary critic Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has written that monsters are "disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration" (Cohen 1996, 6). As a challenge to human/animal binaries and accepted scientific taxonomies, Bigfoot has disturbed and also fascinated Americans for more than 70 years. According to recent polls, approximately 16% of people in the United States today say they believe that Bigfoot probably or definitely exists somewhere in North America's forests (Association of Religion Data Archives 2007; "Paranormal America 2017" 2017). Whether they are correct or not, this continuing interest and belief in Bigfoot provides the cultural historian with opportunities to consider Americans' changing attitudes toward the environment, science, and personhood. In this chapter, I will suggest that Bigfoot encounter stories also tell us about religion in the United States, especially the continuing appeal of mystery, enchantment, and monsters in a supposedly scientific, secular era. Stories of giants, wild men, and hairy monsters have circulated for centuries, but the modern Bigfoot is a byproduct of industrialization's impact on the landscapes of the mid-20th-century American West. In 1958, members of a logging crew in Humboldt County, California, noticed oversized footprints near their worksite; the loggers soon began attributing accidents and mysterious acts of vandalism to a "Big Foot" creature that seemed to resent their intrusion into the forest. Local and then national media picked up on the story, turning Bigfoot into a cultural phenomenon and, for some "hunters," a lifelong obsession. Though Bigfoot was initially imagined as a single, male creature, evidence of male, female, and juvenile Bigfoots began to be reported from Washington State to Florida. Was Bigfoot a hoax, undiscovered ape, remnant prehistoric human, or something else? Scholar Joshua Blu Buhs has shown how Bigfoot tales built on earlier wild men storiesespecially Nepal's Yeti and Canada's Sasquatch -while speaking to 20thcentury Americans' anxieties about the disappearance of "wild spaces" and

The word paranormal comes from the words "para" meaning beyond, and normal. So the term paranormal really means something that is beyond the normal scope of science or being beyond a scientific explanation.
Paranormal Investigating can be excited and scary at the same time. It takes a certain type of person to search for paranormal activity and if you really think about it, searching for ghosts or other paranormal activity is quite frankly, a pretty scary situation, which is why a Paranormal investigator must have a strong mental attitude, and be ready to not panic in stressful or dangerous situations.
This book is ideal for those who are new to paranormal investigation and also for more experienced investigators who want to learn more about how to apply a critical-path scientific approach. Perhaps most importantly, the book contains an entire chapter of information about precautions to be taken during paranormal investigation.

Both parapsychologists and skeptics have interests in investigating the nature of belief in the paranormal, albeit with somewhat different objectives in mind. Despite substantial variation across studies in the definition of the scope of paranormal belief, some degree of order can be imposed on the empirical literature by taking due account of the multidimensionality of paranormal belief. In this light, correlates of paranormal belief are surveyed in the domains of demographic variables, other beliefs and activities, cognitive variables, and personality. Particular emphasis is given to the need for a theory of the psychodynamic functions served by paranormal belief.

The identification of deviant burials as those of ‘vampires’ is a feature of excavated skeletons from sites across Eastern, Central and Southern Europe as well as the Balkans. Based on a close reading of historic and folkloric sources researchers have sought to match features of excavated sites with narrative descriptions drawn from vampire legend and myth. This study critically reviews the recent claims based on sites in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. Whilst it is found that there was a widespread belief in vampires across Europe, it is argued that it is difficult to make absolute claims for ‘vampire’ burials on archaeological grounds as in most cases there are alternate and equally compelling interpretations of the data.

KEYWORDS
ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SIXTEENTH CENTURY, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, VAMPIRE, DEVIANT BURIAL, PLAGUE, BLACK DEATH, FOLKLORE, PAGAN, BURIAL, WITCH, BALKANS, EASTERN EUROPE, CENTRAL EUROPE, SOUTHERN EUROPE, BULGARIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, POLAND, GREECE, ITALY, SLOVAKIA, LESBOS, VENICE, APOTROPAIC, VAMPIRIDZHIJA, PERPERIKON, SOZOPOL, PROSTEJOV, CELAKOVICE, DRAWSKO, GLIWICI, SOUTHWELL, KILTEASHEEN, LAZZARETTO NUOVO, NACHTZEHRER, KAMIEN POMORSKI

Although belief in paranormal phenomena has long been studied as if it were a psychological trait, many commentators recently have preferred to define beliefs as a psychological state. Somewhat surprisingly, the psychometric decomposition of a belief into state and trait components has yet to be undertaken. To this end a sample of 239 American adults completed a questionnaire measure of paranormal and traditional religious beliefs on four occasions at monthly intervals. An application of latent state-trait models to the data showed both paranormal belief and traditional religious belief to be predominantly trait-like constructs, with a small but significant state-like component. These findings may have specific implications for the assessment of paranormal beliefs, as well as general implications for a state theory of beliefs.

Le livre aborde des thèmes comme la croyance au paranormal, les expériences exceptionnelles, la survie de l’âme, les maisons hantées et le spiritisme, l’évolution des pratiques alternatives et les capacités paranormales.

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The legacy of the Enlightenment is increasingly contested in the twenty-first century. It is undeniable that secularisation has gained ground as institutional Christianity retreated from the public sphere, but since the mid-twentieth century the supernatural (a close relative of religion, but one liberated from the traditional and institutional aspects of that phenomenon) has been resurgent in the West (Hanegraaff 2003). The early sociologist of religion Max Weber (1864-1920) identified ‘the disenchantment of the world’ (die Entzauberung der Welt) as the retreat of belief and participation in spirit-filled nature and traditional Christian religion, and the advance of science, despite the fact that its certainties failed to satisfy the moral and existential questions of, ‘[w]hat shall we do and how shall we live?’ (Weber 2001[1948]: 143). In the West, the Christian churches have trenchantly resisted the notion that ‘religion’ (which is traditional, legitimate, respectable and represents God and the miraculous) might have anything in common with unauthorised manifestations of the supernatural (the occult and the paranormal, now mainstreamed as prominent discursive motifs in popular culture). Following Weber, Keith Thomas in his seminal work, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) asserted that magical and supernatural beliefs no longer had traction in modern society. He contended that intelligent, modern people no longer believed in astrological systems, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts, or fairies (Thomas 1971: ix). Yet recent scholarship in the social sciences (in particular, Religious Studies) has revealed this disclaimer to be an assertion of professional boundary maintenance. Both embattled religious institutions in secular modernity, and the modern secular state itself, with its exaltation of science and technology, can be viewed as being under siege by the unsanctioned and powerfully renascent occult and paranormal. The paranormal is immensely popular in contemporary culture, and includes both Christian (angels) and non-Christian supernatural phenomena (ghosts, witches). Indeed, as Jeffrey J. Kripal has stated, it is ‘our secret in plain sight’ (Kripal 2010: 7).

This descriptive study was undertaken to discover and describe the psychological experiences associated with the healing attempts of transpersonal healers. These healers are defined as individuals who attempt to influence beneficially the physiology of living organisms through such methods as wishing, laying on of hands, prayer, and the transfer of "energy." Participants were selected who met specific criteria of social and/or scientific acceptability.
A sample of 10 books written by a variety of Impersonal healers was analyzed for content, and 10 transpersonal healers and influencers were inter-viewed. The data were scored using the Inventory of Transpersonal Healing Experience (ITHE), a scoring protocol developed by the author. Interviewees were also asked to rank the importance of each experiential area to their total healing experience.
The results of a qualitative analysis suggest that transpersonal healing/influencing involves the self-regulation of attention, physiology, and cognition, thus inducing altered awareness and reorganizing the healer's construction of cultural and personal realities. Attention is refocused towards intrapsychic processes, resulting in (a) increased accessibility of subconscious materials, (b) enhanced empathy, (c) heightened emotional responses, (d) modified attitudes, (e) altered meanings, and (f) distortions in time sense. Most significant among ontologic changes is the modification, or transcendence, of the healers' ordinary sense of self and their absorption within mediational constructs ranging from metaphorical to mythic.
Shamanism is discussed as a concept that most closely represents the findings of this research; transpersonal healing is proposed as a range of contemporary subtypes of "pure" shamanic practice. The core process--termed the "Shamanic Complex"--is described in terms of the methodologies used intentionally to activate an endogenous human potential. A taxonomic system is proposed for use in parapsychological research.

We designed, in French and in English, a single-item scale to measure people's general tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. The validity and reliability of this scale was assessed in 3 studies (total N = 555). In Study 1 (N = 152), positive correlations between the single-item scale and 3 other conspiracy belief scales on a French student sample suggested good concurrent validity. In Study 2 (N = 292), we replicated these results on a larger and more heterogeneous Internet American sample. Moreover, the scale showed good predictive validity—responses predicted participants' willingness to receive a bimonthly newsletter about alleged conspiracy theories. Finally, in Study 3 (N = 111), we observed good test-retest reliability and demonstrated both convergent and discriminant validity of the single-item scale. Overall these results suggest that the single-item conspiracy belief scale has good validity and reliability and may be used to measure conspiracy belief in favor of lengthier existing scales. In addition, the validation of the single-item scale led us to develop and start validating French versions of the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs scale, the Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire, and a 10-item version (instead of the 15-item original version) of the Belief in Conspiracy Theories Inventory.

Le paranormal est omniprésent dans notre culture. Il suffit d’ouvrir un quotidien pour y trouver un
horoscope. Des publicités pour tel voyant ou tel marabout arrivent régulièrement dans nos boîtes
aux lettres, nous vant ant les mérites de l’un pour connaître notre avenir, de l’autre pour un retour
d’affection. Les films et les séries télévisées nous abreuvent sans arrêt de personnages ayant des
dons tels que la prémonition, la télékinésie ou encore la télépathie. Des émis sions de débats nous
sont proposées sur le phénomène ovni, sur les dialogues avec les anges, sur l’efficacité de la
radiesthésie ou encore de la sourcellerie. Certains chrétiens nous parlent avec beaucoup de foi des
visions mariales, des miracles réalisés par le saint Esprit ou encore des stigmatisés. Nous
rencontrons parfois des personnes qui nous racontent leur vision de fantôme, leur sortie hors du
corps, leur expérience de mort imminente ou encore leur enlèvement par les extraterrestres.
L’intérêt populaire pour le paranormal est loin d’être neuf. Déjà, au 19e siècle, l’engouement pour
les phénomènes médiumniques et le spiritisme était énorme. Les médiums faisaient tourner les
tables dans toute l’Europe et autant, sinon plus, au Nouveau-Monde.

As several scholars have noted, the use of superimposition effects in cinema to conjure such apparitions as ghosts, fairies, devils, and other fantastic creatures finds a significant precedent in spirit photography, a spiritualist practice by which the image of one or more spirits was ‘magically’ captured on a photographic plate. However, arguing for a relationship of direct filiation between spirit photography and the tricks employed in film remains problematic, especially given that spirit pictures were entangled with matters of religious belief. This article calls for a more solid insertion of spiritualism’s visual culture into the pre-history of film practice, giving three main cases in support of the relationship between spirit photography and early cinema. Firstly, the commercial use of spirit photographs within the spiritualist movement suggests that the circulation of these images was not exclusively informed by matters of belief. Secondly, the popularization of exposures of spirit photography operated by numerous stage magicians in the late nineteenth century can contribute towards explaining the insertion of multiple-exposure techniques in the technical expertise of early filmmakers. Thirdly, a documented case in which spirit photographs were presented to a paying public in the vein of magic lantern entertainments demonstrates that the spiritualist visual culture intersected the nineteenth-century tradition of the projected image, too. Thus, by sketching a history of superimposition effects in photography, stage magic, magic lantern, and cinema, this article claims that visual representations of ghosts in the nineteenth century constantly wavered between religion and spectacle, fiction and realism, and still and moving pictures.

This study explored the hypothesis that paranormal beliefs stem in part from a need for control over life events. A sample of 174 Australian adults participated in a mail survey of paranormal beliefs, three spheres of locus of control, the desirability of control over life, and efforts to exert control over the physical environment.

Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932) was as fascinating a man as one could hope to find. Author of The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents, Fort was a master cataloguer of the weird, the unexplained and the bizarre which the scientific establishment of his day chose to ignore and ridicule.

The Fortean Research Center was founded in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1982 to honor and continue Fort’s work. During the two decades of it’s existence, this volunteer group of researchers and investigators delved deep in the waters of the ignored, the ridiculed, and the unexplained. Exploring events in Nebraska, and far beyond that included ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot encounters, animal mutilations, government cover-ups, alleged alien abductions, psychic phenomena, cult activity, and even a sighting of a blob-like mystery creature (although somewhat less intimidating than the one depicted on the cover of this book) the Fortean Research Center became recognized among members of the Fortean, paranormal, and UFO research community around the world, as a reliable and trusted source of information.

This volume contains the entire collection of the Journal of the Fortean Research Center. 23 issues in all. They have been reproduced as a facsimile edition, meaning spelling errors, pre-computer production and typographic problems, and primitive printing methods are all evident. Hopefully, this will prove more nostalgic than off-putting. These publications are a reflection of their time, and demonstrate in many cases the beginning steps into subjects familiar to the public today: alleged UFO crashes and landings at government installations, alien abductions, cryptozoology and more.

The world seems to grow stranger by the day, so take a look back and see just how strange it was a generation ago. Enjoy, and stay curious!

We examined the extent to which anime fans believe in paranormal phenomena and whether these beliefs are associated with preferences for specific genres of anime. Anime fans rated their preference for a variety of different anime genres and completed a measure of paranormal beliefs. A comparison of anime fans' paranormal beliefs with a sample of university students showed that anime fans were lower on four out of seven dimensions of paranormal beliefs. After constructing a five-factor model of anime genre preference (drama, slice of life, mecha, action, and hentai), we examined the relationship between genre preference and paranormal beliefs. Regressions controlling for participants' sex, age, and religiosity showed that greater preference for action and hentai uniquely predicted greater endorsement of paranormal beliefs above and beyond the other genres of anime. The results suggest that greater preference for, and likely greater exposure to, these two genres of anime is associated with endorsing a belief in paranormal phenomena.

What is meant by the paranormal? Though it cannot be defined exactly, except as a group of anomalies, it is better known for what it is not. It is not normal. As a group of phenomena it is broken down as either ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception) of PK (PsychoKinesis): This breakdown represents a natural split between purely mental and physical. There are still arguments against the legitimacy of parapsychology based on an older mind/matter (religion/science) dualism, yet parapsychology itself is plagued by internal arguments whether psi is mental or physical. Once that road is traveled, we can move on and develop a physical theory, which may be necessary because of certain shortcomings in parapsychology if for no other reason. The final acceptance of psi in the scientific community will depend on a theory which can form a framework for research. Such a theory is necessary and is recognized as such, whether mentally or physically based, by most parapsychologists. Yet analogies between characteristics of psi events and modern physical phenomena demonstrate that a physical theory is what is really needed. This leads to the question “is there such an ‘animal’ as Paraphysics?” Unfortunately, very little has been done along the line of developing a real a physical theory and there may still be reasons why such a theory may be unacceptable. The physical theories presented are broken along two basic lines paralleling trends in modern physics: Quantum mechanics versus field theory. The greater trend seems to be toward an explanation along quantum mechanical lines. However, arguments for both are given. Some general characteristics of psi are mentioned, but the main emphasis will be on the relation of psi signaling to the inverse square law, physical barriers to ESP and electrical brain waves. Some of the theories dealt with in more detail are those authored by Wasserman, Marshall, Walker, Dobbs, Forwald, Carrington, Roll and Puharich, among others. Again, these are physical theories, related directly to the physical aspects of psi. Where possible, comments either pro or con relative to the different theories are discussed. And finally, I propose my own physical theory, or perhaps my first speculation on which a true physical theory will develop. My own theory is completely original, approached from a completely different angle and hopefully far more basic than the theories thus far investigated. * The original paper comprised more than one-hundred handwritten pages and was entered into a word processor nearly two decades later, so the intent was never to publish this paper. Yet it is important because it was the starting point for all of my later work in physics, the history of science and paraphysics. Although never published in its entirety, all the material in this paper eventually found its way into other published work.

What part does luck play in the success of individuals, enterprises and countries? Think of examples. From politics to careers to finding the love of your life, there has never been more advice available, yet at the end of the game, some people seem to have been lucky and others not. Why is this so? Can you really do much about it?

Publicado originalmente en 2008, este trabajo sigue siendo el mayor inventario mundial  de informes fotográficos de "ovnis" durante el año de la oleada de 1954. En los años siguientes, el Proyecto FOTOCAT ha editado los siguientes siete informes especiales:

Report #2 (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos)
Argentina, The Year 1965 in Photos 
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Argentina, El año 1965 en fotos
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Report #3 (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, Manuel Borraz Aymerich, Heriberto Janosch & Juan Carlos Victorio Uranga)
Avistamientos OVNI en la Antártida en 1965
Online access:
https://www.academia.edu/31467521/AVISTAMIENTOS_OVNI_EN_LA_ANTARTIDA_EN_1965.pdf
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Report #4 (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos & Ole Jonny Brænne)
Norway in UFO Photographs: The First Catalogue
Online access:
https://www.academia.edu/12870685/NORWAY_IN_UFO_PHOTOGRAPHS_THE_FIRST_CATALOGUE
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Report #5 (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos & Martin Shough)
Spheres in Airborne UAP Imagery
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Report #6 (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos)
An Approach to UFO Pictures in France
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Report #7 (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos & Wim van Utrecht)
Belgium in UFO Photographs. Volume 1 (1950-1988)
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Report #8 (Manuel Borraz Aymerich & Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos)
THE MARFA LIGHTS. Examining the Photographic Evidence (2003-2007)
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The Bedford Springs Resort and Spa is haunted. This haunting takes the form of two materializations. First are the historical documents, objects, and photographs on display there, the things left behind. The second involves those presences who have remained behind and/or have returned, former guests who continue to partake of the ‘Bedford Springs Experience’. These returning guests are not professional ‘ghosts’, those encountered on ‘ghost hunts’ or sensed by mediums. They are also not commercial ‘ghosts’, those marketed by the resort for their economic potential. These ghosts are those frequently encountered by both staff and guests during the daily activities and routine tasks performed there. They add an uncanny element to the social character that is the Bedford Springs Resort and Spa.

On June 25, 2021, the US Department of Defense released a 9-page “Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” It was a public version of a longer classified report prepared for US Congress, a 17-page report that has been released to UFO researcher John Greenewald under FOIA. This UAP report is sanitized and certain words, lines and entire sentences have been redacted by being blacked out to hide information such as military systems and operational details. By comparing both documents chapter by chapter, a number of inferences may be made, both about the document itself and about the differences between the two versions. That is the purpose of this article.

Shamans and artists have been perceived as similar across a variety of dimensions. Nonetheless, these similarities have not been systematically explored and are poorly understood. This study was designed to investigate these similarities.

Stanley Krippner (personal communication, January 12, 2010) provided the initial definition of a shaman that, after minor modifications to more fully represent knowledge about shamans, became: A shaman is a socially designated spiritual practitioner who obtains information in ways not available to the shaman’s community through the voluntary regulation of the shaman’s own attention, which is used for the benefit of the shaman’s community and its members.  Defining constructs were operationalized and validated cross-culturally to support multidirectional comparisons between artists and shamans using archival data from psychology, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, art history, and creativity studies.

Previous publications about 24 well-known artists provided archival data for comparisons with shamans. The dimensions explored included familial influence, talent, neurological functions, calling to vocation, social support, personality, training, initiation, inspiration, positive disintegration, transliminality, imaginal realms, altered states, purported psi experiences, mental health issues, soul retrieval, spiritual emergence, transpersonal orientation, intent to benefit, and creativity. Tables, charts, and diagrams organized archival information that, supported by descriptive comparisons, explored the nature and extent of similarities between artists and shamans. The integration of visual art, poetry, and stories provided an emic artist’s perspective and alternate ways of knowing for the reader.

The study found that four artists from traditional cultures fulfilled all defining constructs of shaman, comprising a set of prototypical shamanic artists. In contrast, twenty artists fulfilled some, but not all, constructs defining shaman. These shamanlike artists were noncentral members in a fuzzy set where the shamanlike artists had family resemblances to traditional shamans and shamanic artists.

The study identified and articulated gaps in knowledge as well as establishing a broad, well-grounded theoretical model that can serve as a foundation for future research on relationships between contemporary artists and shamans, and, potentially, contribute towards transformation of art experiences in artists, art audiences, and art institutions.

Denita Benyshek, a professional visionary artist and cross-disciplinary scholar, explores the relationship between shamanism and artistic creativity through visions, dreams, artwork, and autobiographical stories. Using the definition of shaman constructed by anthropologist Ruth-Inge Heinze, Benyshek demonstrates how artists shamanically journey to other realms, undergo destruction and rebirth, unite opposites, and receive inspiration from nonordinary states of mind, anomalous experiences, transcendent consciousness, and sacred spirits. Painter Paul Cezanne, choreographer Martha Graham, sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and Mande blacksmiths provide examples of shamanic creative processes. This article may support future studies that find shamanic artists contribute to individual, societal, and planetary healing.

Benyshek, D.M. (2015). The contemporary artist as shaman. ReVision, vol. 32, nos. 2&3, 54-60.