A Representative Sample Survey of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences

Chris A. Roe

Exceptional Experiences & Consciousness Studies Research Group

University of Northampton, United Kingdom

Parapsychology is concerned with making sense of beliefs in and experience of phenomena which are often labeled “paranormal” and can be defined here as phenomena that seem to involve events or abilities that conflict with what C. D. Broad called the “Basic Limiting Principles” of science. Broad described principles that he believed to be “so overwhelmingly supported by all the empirical facts … that it hardly enters our heads to question them”.

Prominent scientists have proclaimed that such phenomena are impossible and have no scientific basis. For example, Richard Dawkins concluded, “The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans, and some of them have grown rich and fat by taking us for a ride.” Such beliefs and experiences are often described by skeptics as “anomalous” or “extraordinary,” suggesting that they are rare aberrations, falling outside of the normal range of healthy human experience. However, this view seems to be true only for the academic mainstream.

The general public tends to believe that such phenomena are real and frequently claims to have had personal experience of them. For example, two representative surveys of UK residents conducted by the market research company Ipsos MORI found that up to two-thirds of their sample reported that they believed in various paranormal phenomena. Gallup polls with US samples give a similar profile of belief to that of the UK.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most influential factor with respect to levels of paranormal belief is personal experience. McClenon found that 54% of those who expressed a favorable attitude towards the reality of psi cited personal experience as influencing their opinion, and Blackmore reported that of the 36% in her sample who professed belief in ESP, 44% cited their own experience as the main reason. This tendency is also true for the Ipsos MORI surveys cited earlier: of those who declared a belief in ghosts, a remarkably high 37% of the 1998 sample and an even higher 49% of the 2003 sample reported that they had had personal experience of ghosts; similarly high figures are reported for telepathy (35% and 41%), premonitions (41% and 48%), precognitive dreams (42% and 58%), among others. A positive correlation has also been reported between the number of subjective paranormal experiences and the strength of paranormal belief.

Taken together, these findings demonstrate that so-called paranormal experiences are quite common. But while they allude to the experiences that have shaped the respondents’ paranormal beliefs, actual details of those experiences are very limited. The aim of the current project was, therefore, to (i) look to confirm the high incidence of paranormal belief and experience among a representative sample; (ii) solicit accounts of those experiences to derive a better sense of their perceived evidentiality and impact.

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Chris Roe holds a Chair in Psychology at the University of Northampton, UK. He is the International Affiliate for England of the Parapsychology Foundation and is a Vice-President of the Society for Psychical Research. Chris served as the Perrott-Warrick Senior Researcher (2015-2021), Chair of the British Psychological Society Transpersonal Psychology Section (2015-2018), President of the Parapsychological Association (2015-2017), and as President of the SPR (2018-2021). He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Parapsychology and is on the editorial board for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research and the Transpersonal Psychology Review. His research interests are around understanding the nature of anomalous experiences and includes research on the phenomenology of paranormal experience, particularly as it affects wellbeing, the psychology of paranormal belief and of deception, as well as experimental approaches to test claims for extrasensory perception and psychokinesis, particularly where they involve psychological factors.

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Program chaired by Jacob W. Glazier. Download the Abstracts at https://parapsych.org/uploaded_files/pdfs/00/00/00/01/26/2023_pa_abstracts_of_presented_papers.pdf

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Published on January 31, 2025