A collaborative team called the Ghost Gang uses adversarial collaboration to study ghost experiences, bracketing personal beliefs to explore the phenomenon systematically. They present the theory of Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S), which understands ghost phenomena from psychological, social, and environmental perspectives. The approach advocates ruling out normal explanations before considering parapsychological ones, keeping an open but critical stance. The text describes a participatory research method aligned with transpersonal and community-based approaches, aiming to equalize academic hierarchies and generate new insights into a common human experience.
Two experiments adapted a latent inhibition (LI) paradigm—normally used to study how attention filters irrelevant stimuli—to test whether a psi (psychic) stimulus might be processed like an irrelevant stimulus. Because creativity and positive schizotypy moderate how irrelevant stimuli are processed, the authors hypothesized these variables would also moderate any psi effect. In Experiment 1, a standard LI effect appeared but no psi effect; however, non-linear cognition in the creative process (e.g., intuition, hypnagogia) was significantly linked to a psi-LI-like effect. In Experiment 2, a significant psi effect emerged that seemed to operate under the same conditions as LI (attenuated by high attentional load), but creativity and positive schizotypy did not moderate its strength. The LI effect was significantly enhanced by non-linear cognition and attenuated by originality.