Spirituality in Clinical Practice
March 18, 2021
Brian Laythe, James Houran, Neil Dagnall et al.
27 citations
Subjective and objective anomalies associated with ghostly episodes form a unidimensional Rasch scale, and these interconnected signs or symptoms arguably describe a syndrome model. This model predicts that the phenomenology of these anomalous episodes can be markedly skewed by an experient's psychological set, which is impacted by psychosocial variables affecting attentional, perceptual, and interpretational processes. The overview discusses how Belief in the Paranormal, Religious Ideology, Ideological Practice, Social Desirability, Latency, and Environmental Setting ostensibly influence the contents or interpretations of accounts. Future research should help validate the proposed syndrome model and explore which nuances reflect idiosyncrasies of experients' psychological set versus the core phenomenon.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan, Neil Dagnall
23 citations
Among people who have experienced lucid dreaming, those who also report nightmares and sleep paralysis tend to score higher on measures of paranormal experience and belief, but the correlations are weak. A tendency toward reality-testing deficits—especially auditory and visual hallucinations—shows the strongest links with these sleep-related dissociative experiences. Paranormal experience alone does not predict lucid dreaming, nightmares, or sleep paralysis once hallucination-proneness is accounted for, but it becomes a significant predictor when hallucinations are controlled. The findings suggest that internally generated cognitive processes, such as hallucinatory tendencies, play a key role in conscious control during lucid dreaming and related dissociative sleep states.
e-space (Manchester Metropolitan University)
May 28, 2026
Kenneth Drinkwater
9 citations
Paranormal belief is a multidimensional construct best measured with eight distinct factors: haunting/ghosts, extra-terrestrial, superstition, religious beliefs, psi (premonition/psychokinesis), extra-sensory perception, astrology, and witchcraft. A new 50-item scale developed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated good internal reliability and validity, correlating positively with established measures. Non-believers performed less well on perception of randomness reasoning tasks, and belief in the paranormal correlated positively with proneness to reality testing deficits. The measure also showed excellent consistency alongside mental toughness in a real-world context, suggesting improvements for future item design.
Spiritual Psychology and Counseling
June 1, 2025
Neil Dagnall, Kenneth Drinkwater, Giovanni Caputo et al.
1 citation
A single case study of a 36-year-old man in France who reported ghostly encounters after playing the horror game Doki Doki Literature Club! tested the Haunted People Syndrome model, which describes such episodes as arising from people with heightened sensitivities, paranormal belief, and perceptual contagion. The participant showed slightly below-average haunt intensity, above-average recognition patterns for the syndrome, and scores indicating high transliminality, paranormal belief, and stress. His narrative aligned with the proposed process, and he experienced depersonalization, derealization, and dissociated identity, with aftereffects of situational enchantment. His understanding of the experiences evolved through active sense-making.
Journal of Scientific Exploration
March 31, 2025
Ciarán O’keeffe, Brandon Massullo, Brian Laythe et al.
1 citation
A reanalysis of a case study by Auerbach et al. (2023) on a poltergeist-like disturbance investigated with virtual technology during the COVID-19 pandemic finds that the case strongly aligns with the Haunted People Syndrome (HP-S) model. HP-S conceptualizes ghostly episodes as an interactionist phenomenon arising from individuals with heightened somatic-sensory sensitivities, stirred by dis-ease states, contextualized with paranormal belief, and reinforced via perceptual contagion and threat-agency detection. Content analysis by an independent researcher showed the case had below-average 'haunt intensity' and a pattern resembling embellished or false testimony, yet it displayed most HP-S recognition patterns. The findings imply that ghostly episodes are best understood through a biopsychosocial lens, regardless of potential psi contributions.
PLoS One
November 13, 2024
Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan, Neil Dagnall
1 citation
Traditional Paranormal Belief (TPB), which involves belief in supernatural forces that provide social-level control, predicts higher distress and lower coping, whereas New Age Philosophy (NAP), which involves belief in individual-level control, shows no such association. In a sample of 3,084 adults (ages 18–91), TPB was significantly linked to worse well-being as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale, while NAP was unrelated to either distress or coping. The findings support the idea that TPB is associated with an external locus of control, specifically the notion that unknown supernatural forces influence existence.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 6, 2026
Neil Dagnall, Andrew Denovan, Claire Murphy-Morgan et al.
People who hold strong scientific beliefs tend to rely on analytical-rational thinking, while those who hold paranormal beliefs tend to rely on intuitive-experiential thinking. In a sample of 300 adults, traditional and New Age paranormal beliefs correlated positively with intuitive processing and negatively with analytical processing; belief in science showed the opposite pattern. Two subgroups emerged: Higher Evidence-based Thinking (55% of participants) with high scientific and low paranormal belief, and Lower Evidence-based Thinking (45%) with low scientific and high paranormal belief. Cognitive rigidity (dogmatism and need for closure) did not differ between groups, suggesting these traits are belief-neutral characteristics of strongly held convictions rather than specific to scientific or paranormal worldviews.
The Innovation
March 1, 2026
Álex Escolà-Gascón, Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan et al.
A large-scale, randomized, double-blind, multicenter trial across 13 hospitals in the UK and Spain tested whether the human mind can access information during clinical death when exposed to auditory stimuli governed by quantum entanglement, synchronized with a 127-qubit IBM quantum computer. During cardiopulmonary arrest, neurophysiological biomarkers were measured. After reanimation, 142 survivors completed recall tests and near-death experience scales. Recall lucidity increased as cerebral oxygenation dropped, and near-death experiences correlated with neuroplasticity during arrest. Biomarker models explained up to 56.8% of variance in recall. The authors argue these findings suggest consciousness may persist during clinical death, quantum-bound and detectable.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
December 1, 2025
Álex Escolà-Gascón, Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan et al.
A new metric called the Attribution Consciousness Index (ACI) estimates the likelihood that neural activity supports conscious processing by balancing measures of dynamic information and complexity. Using brain simulations and artificial neural networks, the ACI follows a log-normal distribution, enabling robust thresholding: values above 10 correspond to over 90% probability of conscious emergence. The framework also applies to artificial systems, explaining 38.4% of variance between biological and AI-derived patterns. While not measuring subjective experience, the ACI predicts when neural or artificial conditions are poised to sustain consciousness, with potential applications in disorders of consciousness, anesthesia monitoring, neurorehabilitation, and evaluating neuroprosthetics, generative AI, and robotics.