Speaker 1: Kesha and the Creepies is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey Creepy is Today we are talking to Caroline Watt.
Speaker 1: Dr Caroline Watt is one of the leading para psychologists
Speaker 1: in the world. She's currently a professor of paras psychology
Speaker 1: at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. So here's the
Speaker 1: creepy backstory. In Andrew Colster and his wife Cynthia killed
Speaker 1: themselves and in a suicide pact, they left their state
Speaker 1: to support the study of the paranormal. This led to
Speaker 1: the creation of the Parapsychology Unit at University of Edinburgh.
Speaker 1: Dr Watt, who are speaking with today, wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to the chair of the unit as she joined the
Speaker 1: Parasychology department upon graduating from the university. Just so you
Speaker 1: guys know, we are across oceans from each other and
Speaker 1: my internet shitty, So there are moments that get a
Speaker 1: little funky but also might just be a ghost. Because
Speaker 1: we're talking about here we saw today here at Cash
Speaker 1: in the Creepies, we have a very special guest. I
Speaker 1: would like to welcome all the way from Edinburgh professor
Speaker 1: and Dr Caroline. What you worked hard for those titles.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you both. Oh just call me Caroline. Caroline. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you here to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I have like five billion questions and I think just
Speaker 1: to start off with for our listeners, can you explain
Speaker 1: what parapsychology is. So I'm a professor of parapsychology at
Speaker 1: Edinburg University and parapsychology is a scientific study of paranormal experiences.
Speaker 1: So it's quite unusual thing to find at university. But
Speaker 1: Edinburgh is one of a few places in the world
Speaker 1: where you can study para psychology. Why do you think
Speaker 1: they're out of everywhere in the world. Well, we have
Speaker 1: a bit of a track record. I mean, apart from
Speaker 1: the fact that, of course Scotland has got lots of ghosts. Um.
Speaker 1: We we have a chat record in our our department,
Speaker 1: the psychology department of which is where I work. Um,
Speaker 1: for many years we've had academics at that department who
Speaker 1: have studied the paranormal. So, um, I think Edinburgh's kind
Speaker 1: of got more of an open mind if you like
Speaker 1: to do these ideas than many universities might have and
Speaker 1: then you pivoted into para psychology. That's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I got into parapsychology out of curiosity as a psychologist.
Speaker 1: So I did my first degree in psychology, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't taught anything about parapsychology in that degree, but um,
Speaker 1: I knew as a psychologist that lots of people had
Speaker 1: paranormal beliefs and experiences. So I was just really curious
Speaker 1: as a psychologist about what lies behind these experiences, you know,
Speaker 1: is there any truth to them as our the je
Speaker 1: in you and paranormal and psychic abilities. And I suspected
Speaker 1: also that there would also be a lot of psychology
Speaker 1: in these experiences. So it was really curiosity that brought
Speaker 1: me into the field. Well, because I have had some
Speaker 1: strange experiences myself, and sometimes I wonder because I definitely
Speaker 1: have anxiety. So sometimes if something I'm very anxious about
Speaker 1: ends up happening, then am I psychic or am I
Speaker 1: just super anxious and just very prepared for the worst? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean that's a good example because for if you
Speaker 1: have something that you're worried about, even subconsciously, it can
Speaker 1: work its way into your mind and into your dreams.
Speaker 1: For instance, So you might dream about something that you're
Speaker 1: you're worried about and if that happens, if it comes
Speaker 1: true the next day, you may feel that you know
Speaker 1: the dream is predicting the future, but you One of
Speaker 1: the things that we found in our research is that
Speaker 1: people dream about all sorts of things, and they tend
Speaker 1: to forget the dreams that don't come true. And so
Speaker 1: most of our dreams don't come true, and we we
Speaker 1: noticed the occasions when they do come true because it's
Speaker 1: really striking and that makes us think, oh, maybe I
Speaker 1: predicted that in my in my dreams. So there is
Speaker 1: some evidence that we forget a lot of our dreams
Speaker 1: and we're a bit selective about what we remember well,
Speaker 1: especially if it does come true. Like you're saying, then
Speaker 1: it feels almost like playing a machine at a casino
Speaker 1: or something where you remember the time you want, but
Speaker 1: there's so many times you didn't exactly exactly. That's a
Speaker 1: good analogy in your field of work, to people scoff
Speaker 1: at you, or is it like how are you? How
Speaker 1: is what you do received in like psychology world, In
Speaker 1: the world where you're dealing with doctors and you're also
Speaker 1: dealing with paranormal people, I'm sure always have a bunch
Speaker 1: of questions as I do for you, but I also
Speaker 1: just wonder if your peers, how did they treat you well.
Speaker 1: It's funny, you know, if if I'm on an aeroplane,
Speaker 1: UM I tend not to tell the person next to
Speaker 1: me what I do, because yet all the stories of it,
Speaker 1: like if you're a doctor, you know, a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: and you say I'm a doctor and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: I've got this sort of can you have a look
Speaker 1: at it? So I turned, you know, if I want
Speaker 1: peace and quiet, I tend to keep it to myself
Speaker 1: what I do. But regarding my payers, my academic colleagues,
Speaker 1: those that I work with, um no. And this is
Speaker 1: why we have para psychology at Edinburgh. They know that
Speaker 1: we're actually good scientists, so we're good researchers just like
Speaker 1: they are. But you have to probably have personal contact
Speaker 1: with the researcher to realize that. It's It's just like
Speaker 1: any other prejudice or stereotype that if you don't get
Speaker 1: to speak to the people that you have ideas about,
Speaker 1: then the ideas can be quite mistaken. So I think
Speaker 1: for parapsychology, for it to thrive in in this sort
Speaker 1: of scientific world, psychologists like me have to be embedded
Speaker 1: within psychology departments in other university departments to break down prejudices,
Speaker 1: because there definitely is a lot of negative baggage associated
Speaker 1: with the P word. You know, some parapsychologists don't even
Speaker 1: like using the word para psychology because you think it's
Speaker 1: already got sort of toxic associations. Looking more into parapsychology
Speaker 1: and especially your background, it really interested me because from
Speaker 1: what I've heard, maybe this has changed. You have not
Speaker 1: had an experience with anything paranormal in your personal life,
Speaker 1: not personally, No, it was it was just curiosity, sort
Speaker 1: of intellectual curiosity, and it was a psychologist in me
Speaker 1: that brought me into paras psychology. And the word paras
Speaker 1: psychology gives you a clue, you know that there is
Speaker 1: a lot of psychology in there. So the two are
Speaker 1: quite close, closely related in many ways. Um. I do know,
Speaker 1: you know some parapsychologists who had an experience that kind
Speaker 1: of made them curious and that that's what brought them
Speaker 1: into the field. But a lot of them are kind
Speaker 1: of maverick people. They are quite independent minded. They're just adventurous,
Speaker 1: curious people. They might not even have had a personal experience,
Speaker 1: so they just know this is a kind of of
Speaker 1: area where you can do exciting things and um, you know,
Speaker 1: explores strange ideas and make an impact as well because
Speaker 1: it's a relatively small field, so you can make an
Speaker 1: impact because you're yourself. I'm you know, a big fish
Speaker 1: in a small bowl, if you like, yes to me,
Speaker 1: that seems like that would have a huge impact on
Speaker 1: people and our base fears of death and the unknown
Speaker 1: of afterlife in religion, which is something that holds a
Speaker 1: lot of communities and cultures and people together. And I
Speaker 1: just think that if you could scientifically back that there
Speaker 1: was a paranormal experience that is truly unexplainable, there are
Speaker 1: so many minds that could be changed. Because you see
Speaker 1: the ghost hunting shows and they're very addictive and they're
Speaker 1: really fun and all of that. But I think what
Speaker 1: you're doing is looking at it all with this skeptical,
Speaker 1: scientific but open mind. That's right, we're trying to I mean,
Speaker 1: the problem is what we call them spontaneous experiences, that
Speaker 1: is real world world psychic or seemingly psychic experiences, and
Speaker 1: you might include ghost experiences in that. These are actually
Speaker 1: very difficult to study in any controlled way, because they're
Speaker 1: happened unpredictably, and you know, you might take a TV
Speaker 1: crew along, but you know you can't see everything that's
Speaker 1: going on behind the camera. So to persuade the scientific community,
Speaker 1: we we think that you need to move into the
Speaker 1: laboratory and do more controlled studies. And of course when
Speaker 1: you do that, you're creating a much more artificial situation.
Speaker 1: So there's a bit of a trade off because you
Speaker 1: lose a lot of the drama, perhaps the emotional connection
Speaker 1: that you might need in a real world psychic experience.
Speaker 1: You get kind of watered down version. I think it's
Speaker 1: important that researchers study the paranormal in the laboratory situation
Speaker 1: because it's much more controlled. You you're not losing, you
Speaker 1: lose a lot in terms of the emotional impact of
Speaker 1: the event. You're studying kind of watered down version of
Speaker 1: a psychic experience in the lab. But I think you
Speaker 1: need that kind of control in order to persuade the
Speaker 1: scientific community that there might be something to psychic abilities
Speaker 1: in the real world. Spontaneous psychic experiences are more dramatic,
Speaker 1: but they're also much harder to study in any controlled way.
Speaker 1: They read a statistic and you would know better than I.
Speaker 1: But about fifty of people believe in the paranormal or anghosts.
Speaker 1: Is that about right? That's about right, yes, um, And
Speaker 1: that that's taken very broadly, so that would include, for example,
Speaker 1: traditional religious beliefs, so believing in a god, or believing
Speaker 1: that you can pray and heal someone or have things
Speaker 1: happen that you want because of prayer. These would also
Speaker 1: be regarded as paranormal beliefs. So there's quite a wide
Speaker 1: definition of what what you know, psychologists would count as
Speaker 1: as a paranormal belief And of about half of these
Speaker 1: people believe they've had a paranormal experience. So that means
Speaker 1: if you look, you know, you're walking along the street,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the people around you, about one in
Speaker 1: four will have had what they think is a paranormal experience.
Speaker 1: And that that's to me why it's obviously of interest
Speaker 1: to psychologists to study. So even if you have a
Speaker 1: spiritual experience or a very religious experience, or even participate
Speaker 1: in praying, that you would be part of the fifty yes,
Speaker 1: that would be counted as part of the because of
Speaker 1: the aspect that, um, you know that the sense of
Speaker 1: influence for one person, which is something and something happens,
Speaker 1: that would be a paranormal claim. So if you pray
Speaker 1: for something to happen, like a person to be healed,
Speaker 1: that have been studies, for example, looking at the power
Speaker 1: of prayer, and they come under the category of para
Speaker 1: psychology because there's no obvious normal mechanism to explain. You know,
Speaker 1: if people get better through prayer, you know what else
Speaker 1: is going on if it's not power normal? So many questions. Um,
Speaker 1: So I have a song called praying, which is just
Speaker 1: ironic that we're talking about this, But I do find
Speaker 1: myself either talking to my higher conscious just like the
Speaker 1: best version of myself or whatever is out there or
Speaker 1: the universe. I don't really like to put a label
Speaker 1: on it because I don't know what it is. And
Speaker 1: it does bring me kind of back down to earth.
Speaker 1: It makes me feel better. And like I was saying before,
Speaker 1: humans have such a fear of death. I think it's
Speaker 1: what drives most people in life, at least for me.
Speaker 1: What I see, it's wanting to leave a legacy and
Speaker 1: do something great while you're here, because we all know
Speaker 1: that we only have a finite amount of time, so
Speaker 1: opening up the parapsychology of it's opening up religion. You're
Speaker 1: opening up people's minds to the afterlife. And so in
Speaker 1: your heart, are you trying to prove that it exists
Speaker 1: or are you trying to prove that it doesn't? Or
Speaker 1: do you not know? Are you open? Like? Are you atheist?
Speaker 1: Are you ledges? Are you just well, you're you're being
Speaker 1: very broad there, Kesha. You're you're saying it's do you
Speaker 1: believe in it? But it's you know, we're we're talking
Speaker 1: about a whole lot of different things. So life after death,
Speaker 1: for example, the possibility of surviving some some form of
Speaker 1: our personality surviving after physical bodies has died. That's one
Speaker 1: hypothesis we call that the survival hypothesis, and reincarnation would
Speaker 1: be part of that, the idea that you survive and
Speaker 1: then you kind of come back. Um. But there's also
Speaker 1: the sort of psychic abilities of the living, for example,
Speaker 1: extrasensory perception, the claim that people can read one another's minds.
Speaker 1: And then another thing that parapsychologists study is called psychokinesis
Speaker 1: or p K. That's mind over matter, So it's the
Speaker 1: claim that people can influence physical objects or heal other
Speaker 1: people by thought alone or by willpower alone. So when
Speaker 1: you ask me, Kesha, what do I think? You know,
Speaker 1: what am I trying to prove or it depends what
Speaker 1: part we're looking at. So the survival question, for example,
Speaker 1: I have not personally done any research into survival the
Speaker 1: idea of life after death, but I having looked at
Speaker 1: the research that's been done, I found it's not to me,
Speaker 1: it's not convincing that there's any scientific evidence. Sorry everybody,
Speaker 1: but from what I've I've seen, the evidence is not
Speaker 1: not there yet, and that might just be because it's
Speaker 1: a very hard area to to look into. And of
Speaker 1: course there's a question of faith, which is not a
Speaker 1: scientific question and we we can't even you know, study that.
Speaker 1: But for the other area that you know, where I'm
Speaker 1: actually doing my research extrasensory perception. So the idea of
Speaker 1: telepathy or or people communicating, I'm my work is actually
Speaker 1: testing that hypothesis, So I'm not setting out to prove
Speaker 1: that it exists. So I've I've got a question in
Speaker 1: mind when I do a study, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: if we set up an experiment to see people can
Speaker 1: communicate with one another at a distance, you know, can
Speaker 1: they do it if we set up in a careful way,
Speaker 1: and so we test, we put we put them to
Speaker 1: the test and see if they can actually m communicate
Speaker 1: for example, the contents of a video clip or a
Speaker 1: postcard that's been randomly chosen. So it's about testing the hypothesis.
Speaker 1: And then if we get evidence, you know, we don't say, oh,
Speaker 1: that proves it. We just say this study proved provided
Speaker 1: evidence in support of the hypothesis. So it's all very
Speaker 1: kind of carefully worded because I think when you do signs,
Speaker 1: you have to do you know, small steps, baby steps
Speaker 1: all the time, and just try to be very careful
Speaker 1: in what you're claiming. I was reading a book and
Speaker 1: only a percentage of communication is actually verbal anyways. A
Speaker 1: lot of it can be visual, how you're holding your body,
Speaker 1: if you're crossing your arms, If you say something, you
Speaker 1: could say it twenty different ways, and your tone can
Speaker 1: be saying something so different. So when you do those studies,
Speaker 1: are people able to see each other they in separate places.
Speaker 1: They have to be separated for exactly that reason that
Speaker 1: there's so much communication that's going on non verbally. UM,
Speaker 1: So we do these experiments with two people, the sender
Speaker 1: and a receiver, and they're in two separate rooms, and
Speaker 1: the sender can hear the receiver about the receiver can't
Speaker 1: hear the sender. So, um, we're trying to stop the
Speaker 1: possibility that there's any normal communication available. So that includes
Speaker 1: all the senses that we know about. You have to
Speaker 1: be really careful when you do these experiments that you're
Speaker 1: not inadvertently allowing communication to happen. So yeah, we have
Speaker 1: we have to be very cautious with the two people
Speaker 1: know each other. The studies have tried it in different ways,
Speaker 1: so there are better results when the sender and the
Speaker 1: receiver know each other. Because I'm thinking of if me
Speaker 1: and my best friend, I know her so well. I've
Speaker 1: known her since I was seven, So if you put
Speaker 1: us in two separate rooms, you can put us across
Speaker 1: the country from each other, and I bet one out
Speaker 1: of ten times I could guess something that she was
Speaker 1: thinking about because I know her so well. I feel
Speaker 1: like the energy that she can put off, even in silences,
Speaker 1: there can be an energy put off from someone you
Speaker 1: know really well. What you're saying is very important, which
Speaker 1: is that people who know each other very well can
Speaker 1: anticipate each other's thoughts, and that's different from psychic often, so,
Speaker 1: for example, a married couple who have lived together for
Speaker 1: years say that you know, they can finish each other's
Speaker 1: sentences practically because they know each other's thoughts so well. Um.
Speaker 1: And And the way that we deal with that in
Speaker 1: our experiments is that the thing that the sender is
Speaker 1: sending has to be randomly chosen. So we don't allow
Speaker 1: the sender. We don't say, go into this room and
Speaker 1: think of a draw a picture, Draw any picture, because
Speaker 1: there's a fairly good chance, if you know each other
Speaker 1: very well, that you'll be able to guess what she's drawing,
Speaker 1: like one out of ten, Yes, I totally know. Yeah, easy, easy. Um.
Speaker 1: So what we do is we have as a pool
Speaker 1: of maybe a hundred pictures, and the sender is given
Speaker 1: one randomly, so they don't they don't know what they're
Speaker 1: going to and they don't get to choose it. They
Speaker 1: don't get to choose it. But you're quite right if
Speaker 1: they did get to choose it, then that would change
Speaker 1: the chances of success in the experiment because their preferences
Speaker 1: might match your preferences in the research that you've done.
Speaker 1: Has it changed your mind at all? Are you still neutral?
Speaker 1: Are you trying to stay as neutral as you can,
Speaker 1: or do you find yourself being swayed in one direction
Speaker 1: or the other. I'll tell you what I've changed. I'm
Speaker 1: not convinced yet that the I mean. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: extrasensory perception studies. That's where I think the strongest evidences.
Speaker 1: So there are studies that look at mind over matter
Speaker 1: using it sounds really boring, but using random number generators,
Speaker 1: and they have very very weak effects in them, and
Speaker 1: I've I don't find them very persuasive studies. But the
Speaker 1: EESP studies using what's called the gangs field method are
Speaker 1: quite interesting. And that that's the guns felt is a
Speaker 1: kind of mild sensory isolation procedure. So you have red
Speaker 1: light shining on your face, you wear headphones, you've got
Speaker 1: a mask over your eyes, and you essentially the receiver
Speaker 1: in this experiment basically just relaxes and free associates. They
Speaker 1: just describe what comes to their mind, so it's not
Speaker 1: like try to guess what the sender is sending. It's
Speaker 1: just describe what's in your head. And these experiments have
Speaker 1: got quite a long track record and on on the whole.
Speaker 1: They've they've got fairly positive results. So I'm I'm following
Speaker 1: up on that on that with my own work. So
Speaker 1: my my view is that there's definitely something there in
Speaker 1: these experiments, but we don't really have much clue as
Speaker 1: to what's going on. We know we've seen some patterns.
Speaker 1: So for example, studies with selected participants do better than
Speaker 1: studies with unselected participants. So what that means is that
Speaker 1: people who are believe in the power normal, who have
Speaker 1: had paranormal experiences, and who may have practiced some kind
Speaker 1: of mental disciplines such as meditation, or who are interested
Speaker 1: in their dreams and keep a dream diary, these participants
Speaker 1: tend to do better in these experiments than just a
Speaker 1: random person pulled in off the street. So there are
Speaker 1: some there's some patterns. I feel like that suggests there's
Speaker 1: something going on, but we don't really understand what it means.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like being open to it. It could be.
Speaker 1: It could be that because it's a kind of a
Speaker 1: weird experience doing that experiment, you know, sitting in a
Speaker 1: comfy chair, you do a relaxation exercise, and you've got
Speaker 1: this red light on, you've got goggles on your eyes
Speaker 1: and you're speaking out loud while someone else listens to you.
Speaker 1: It's a bit like dreaming, but you know someone's in
Speaker 1: the room taking notes at the same time, and it's
Speaker 1: a weird experience. And maybe it's simply the case that
Speaker 1: people who are creative are or who are good at meditating,
Speaker 1: are more relaxed in that environment and are better able
Speaker 1: to notice what's going on inside their head and better
Speaker 1: able to describe what's going on. So we're not quite
Speaker 1: sure why these people do better. And that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that our work is trying
Speaker 1: to look at when I think of psychic abilities, and
Speaker 1: also is into me with telepathy, like being able to
Speaker 1: communicate both ways and being cynical about it might actually
Speaker 1: keep you from being able to experience certain things from
Speaker 1: what you're saying, that's what I'm gathering a little bit. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's the case. Um, there's there's
Speaker 1: research that suggests that people who we call it, we
Speaker 1: have funny terms in parasocology, we call it sheep and goats.
Speaker 1: The sheep are the believers, and the goats go to
Speaker 1: the disbelievers. And it's actually from it's a biblical metaphors.
Speaker 1: It's from the from the day of judgment. I think.
Speaker 1: So the sheep are the believers, the goats the disbelievers.
Speaker 1: And there's some evidence that we actually call it the
Speaker 1: sheep goat effect in our studies, that the sheep on
Speaker 1: the whole tend to score more positively than the goats.
Speaker 1: So the people who disbelieve tend not to do so well.
Speaker 1: And I do I do think in the real world
Speaker 1: people who are sort of cynical and skeptical. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they have weird experiences, as I'm sure they do, but
Speaker 1: I think they probably find a way to explain them
Speaker 1: away or to account for them. Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's not only the believers of strange experiences of para
Speaker 1: normal experiences. I think everybody does. But we have different
Speaker 1: ways of interpreting these experiences. In my personal life, usually
Speaker 1: the women I'm around we like to talk about this
Speaker 1: stuff more than men. Is that me just generalizing or
Speaker 1: have you found that to be true? That is true,
Speaker 1: It's not true that in the lab if you do
Speaker 1: a trled experience, women and men score at the same level.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to who is willing to send
Speaker 1: in reports of experiences or who writes to the parapsychology labs.
Speaker 1: It's more women than men who report experiences. And I
Speaker 1: think that maybe not because women are more psychic than men,
Speaker 1: but because culturally it's more acceptable for a women. You know,
Speaker 1: the stereotype is that we're more kind of in tune
Speaker 1: with our emotions and are more intuitive, We're more willing
Speaker 1: to talk about at these things. So I think that
Speaker 1: makes women more likely to report paranormal experiences than men.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not that they have more experiences, but
Speaker 1: they're more willing to talk to other people about them, right,
Speaker 1: just because of the stereotype of being emotional being very
Speaker 1: open about it. It's quite hard to know where the
Speaker 1: psychic comes in there, because it's very hard to separate
Speaker 1: what's normal and knowing each other's habits and sharing personalities
Speaker 1: and sharing genetics, and then what's the paranormal. So it's
Speaker 1: really really difficult to to separate these two out well. Also,
Speaker 1: I would think especially genetics, like my brother, we do
Speaker 1: share the same mother, so we were raised in the
Speaker 1: same household. And the nature versus nurture of human beings
Speaker 1: and the psychology behind that is our mothers are very
Speaker 1: open about all of these kinds of topics and nothing
Speaker 1: was off the table versus I know some people that
Speaker 1: grew up in a home opposite of that, where it
Speaker 1: was just very pragmatic, are less inclined to just talk
Speaker 1: about this kind of stuff all day. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think when when you're trying to judge if it
Speaker 1: is this a paranormal or psychic communication or not, it's
Speaker 1: easier if the event is unexpected. So it's a bit
Speaker 1: like I was saying, when we do our experiments, we
Speaker 1: have a sender and a receiver, and the center has
Speaker 1: a randomly selected target, so the receiver can't guess what
Speaker 1: what they're they're going to be thinking about. And I
Speaker 1: think it's the same in life. It's something really unexpected happens,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, you you've you know, you break
Speaker 1: your ankle walking off the cab, or you know your
Speaker 1: bitten your hand gets bitten by a dog or something unexpected,
Speaker 1: and your brother or your mother or your family member
Speaker 1: gets that feeling, then that's that's more likely to be
Speaker 1: psychic for me because it's unexpected. It was coming out
Speaker 1: of the blue, so it seems more like a kind
Speaker 1: of dramatic communication at that point, out of the ordinary exactly,
Speaker 1: not something we would talk about all the time, not
Speaker 1: saying it happens all the time. I has there been
Speaker 1: anything you've seen that has just completely blown your mind. Well,
Speaker 1: I've I've taken part in experiments where, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I was the sender and it was scance felt experiments actually,
Speaker 1: and um, my friend was the receiver and there was
Speaker 1: one In fact, it was the other way around. I
Speaker 1: was a receiver, so I was a person relaxing with
Speaker 1: the red lights and everything. And you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: someone who thinks that they're psychic, but I and I
Speaker 1: normally don't get very vivid mental image ry at all.
Speaker 1: So I closed my eyes, I don't really see anything.
Speaker 1: But this one time I closed my eyes and I
Speaker 1: kind of got this very clear image of a peacock
Speaker 1: feather and I thought it was so clear and unusual
Speaker 1: for me. And I just said, it's a peacock feather
Speaker 1: and she said, yes, you know, this ender, that's what
Speaker 1: the sender was looking at. So you know, I've had
Speaker 1: I've had a striking experience which was quite unusual because
Speaker 1: it was nothing like you know, normally it's not as
Speaker 1: clear as that in the lab. So I've had that
Speaker 1: kind of experience, but it's been in a in a
Speaker 1: controlled environ and so I can't you know, I don't
Speaker 1: believe it was just a coincidence. Um. You know, I've
Speaker 1: taken part in experience, and I've also run experiments where
Speaker 1: overall I've done um, you know, have a precognition study
Speaker 1: with the gun spell, which is about getting impressions about
Speaker 1: a future target that you will see at the end
Speaker 1: of the session. So you lie back, you relax, you
Speaker 1: describe what's going on inside your head, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the session, we randomly select a film clip
Speaker 1: and show it to you, and then we judge the
Speaker 1: similarity between your impressions and the film clip. And I've
Speaker 1: done that and got with sixty people what we say
Speaker 1: statistically significant results, meaning that we've got more successful um
Speaker 1: identifications of the picture that you would get by just
Speaker 1: a chance. So you know, I've seen I've seen that,
Speaker 1: and that makes me think that that it's worth pursuing
Speaker 1: this line of research, because you know, I think something
Speaker 1: is going on. I am really fascinated with the psychology
Speaker 1: of people, why people are the way they are, why
Speaker 1: they are who they are, because if there was ever
Speaker 1: proof of a paranormal like a spirit hunting be opening
Speaker 1: the door to something so huge for humanity. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ideas if you do see a ghost.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm actually reading a book at the moment,
Speaker 1: which is it's about um. It's called The Haunting of
Speaker 1: Alma Fielding, and it's a story. It's a true story
Speaker 1: about para psychologist who investigated a woman called Alma Fielding
Speaker 1: who had a lot of poltergeist experiences around her. Um. So,
Speaker 1: you know, objects would fly off the shelfs and so on,
Speaker 1: and he he was a psychologist, but he he tended
Speaker 1: to think of it as not a spirit, but as
Speaker 1: a sort of psychological projection from Alma of her desires
Speaker 1: and traumas, if you like. So there are some you know,
Speaker 1: if you see a ghost or a polter geist, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean this proof of the afterlife, to mean some
Speaker 1: that's creating the effects around you. So there's different theories
Speaker 1: basically to to explain ghosts, Like one's energy could become
Speaker 1: so powerful that you are sending or receiving an image,
Speaker 1: but that's not actually approve of afterlife. It could just
Speaker 1: be you're wanting to it could be the living. I
Speaker 1: mean if you think, um, you know, there's a theory
Speaker 1: about poltergeist, which is this idea of objects moving around.
Speaker 1: You know. For many years, par psychologists thought that maybe
Speaker 1: the focused person that that it seemed to center on.
Speaker 1: The phenomena centered on they they thought was that like
Speaker 1: an adolescent person. And the theory was that, well, this
Speaker 1: adolescence have kind of a lot of turmoil going on,
Speaker 1: a lot of repressed energies and feelings, and um, that
Speaker 1: that might be expressed through um, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: them actually physically acting out, they psychically act out around them.
Speaker 1: So that's one theory, you know, behind the polter Geist.
Speaker 1: What is the definition of a polter guyst because when
Speaker 1: you say poulter guys, I get so many different images
Speaker 1: in my head from different movies and books. Well, it's
Speaker 1: a German word. Pulter means noisy and guys means ghosts,
Speaker 1: so it's a noisy ghost. So it's basically a rowdy
Speaker 1: ghost that sort of throws things around, you know. It
Speaker 1: affects physical objects with furniture around, throws plates across the room,
Speaker 1: It seems to center usually on a person. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it doesn't sort of occur randomly. It seems to
Speaker 1: there's like an outbreak in a household, and then it
Speaker 1: goes on for a few weeks and then it kind
Speaker 1: of usually peters out. Um, So the thought was that
Speaker 1: it might focus on articular person. That's what parasitologists have
Speaker 1: thought might be going on. But the problem with these
Speaker 1: events is that they you know, they start off they're
Speaker 1: quite dramatic, but over time they gradually wane, and so
Speaker 1: they're actually quite hard to study because again they're unpredictable.
Speaker 1: And then typically the parasitologists might come along with a
Speaker 1: camera and then nothing happens that they leave the room
Speaker 1: and they played lip taps right, or as you're saying before,
Speaker 1: it could be that you're so full of some sort
Speaker 1: of emotion that your energy is literally making things fly
Speaker 1: off the walls, and then maybe after you do that
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks, then you've calmed down, like
Speaker 1: a good therapy session. Yes, exactly, there was a place
Speaker 1: near Edinburgh, oh, Hampton Court. Yes, I have heard that
Speaker 1: some places do seem to have one specific kind of
Speaker 1: haunting and something that people see over and over. It's
Speaker 1: a reoccurring thing, and it's generally everyone sees a woman
Speaker 1: in the corner, or everyone here's footsteps in this one room.
Speaker 1: I don't actually know that much about Hampton Court and
Speaker 1: the underground vaults, so I was wondering if you could
Speaker 1: just talk about that. Yeah, well, I mean there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of a difference with a ghost and haunting,
Speaker 1: So let's let's sort of do with that first of all.
Speaker 1: So ghosts might just be a kind of experience that
Speaker 1: might happen just once in one particular location, where you
Speaker 1: see a figure, for example, or you hear something and
Speaker 1: you think there's nobody actually there. But haunting is where
Speaker 1: there's a repeated event in a particular location. And so
Speaker 1: there's certain locations, typically of course, historical locations where they
Speaker 1: develop a reputation for being haunted because lots of people
Speaker 1: have seen the same thing there or have had lots
Speaker 1: of unusual experiences in Hampton Court Palace Um in Surrey
Speaker 1: Um has quite you know, it's got five hundred years
Speaker 1: of history, so there's been plenty of Henry King. Henry's
Speaker 1: wives have been beheaded there, and that's not very nice. No, no,
Speaker 1: he was he was harsh. She was harsh anyway. So
Speaker 1: it hit the Haunted Gallery in Hampton Courts, so called
Speaker 1: because Catherine Howard, one of Henry the Eight's wives. Um,
Speaker 1: she sort of was found committing adultery and then was
Speaker 1: sentenced to death and she ran to the king to
Speaker 1: plea for her life and was ragged screaming along this
Speaker 1: this gallery and then and later of course she was beheaded.
Speaker 1: And then in later years people would see this figure
Speaker 1: and walking in the gallery. So we did an experiment there.
Speaker 1: This is work that I did was Professor Richard Wiseman,
Speaker 1: who I've collaborated with quite a lot, and we asked
Speaker 1: it was really about the psychology of ghostly experiences, so
Speaker 1: it was not a vigil. So it's not the sort
Speaker 1: of thing you usually see on Telly where a bunch
Speaker 1: of people sit in the haunted location with a camera
Speaker 1: and wait for things to happen. What we did was
Speaker 1: we um we got the warder of the palace, so
Speaker 1: this is the people who kind of know they take
Speaker 1: two guides around the tours round and they know where
Speaker 1: people report the experiences. We gave them a floor plan
Speaker 1: of two areas, the Haunted Gallery in the Georgian rooms,
Speaker 1: and we got them to mark on the floor plan
Speaker 1: where it is that people report strange experiences, and there
Speaker 1: were clusters, you know, where people were reporting these experiences.
Speaker 1: So we had this kind of map and then we
Speaker 1: get off people, members of the public, a blank map
Speaker 1: and we asked them to walk around the space and
Speaker 1: to mark on their map where they were having experience.
Speaker 1: It's like feeling chills or sensing a presence or hearing
Speaker 1: feeling at touched, you know. So we were interested to
Speaker 1: see whether people agreed, you know, with the warders what
Speaker 1: the history was, you know, where the haunted experiences were happening.
Speaker 1: And we found that yes, they did agree, even though
Speaker 1: and we one of the things we wondered was what
Speaker 1: is it Because they've read the tour book and asked
Speaker 1: people that question before they did the experiment. Some people
Speaker 1: had no idea of the history and some people did,
Speaker 1: so we only looked at the data for those who
Speaker 1: had no idea, and they showed the exactly the same pattern.
Speaker 1: So that was that was very interesting. That suggests that
Speaker 1: there's something about these locations that are causing people to
Speaker 1: have an unusual experience because they agree it's not random.
Speaker 1: It's in certain parts of the room where they're saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel cold here. So that was one of the
Speaker 1: things that we did, and then we we did a
Speaker 1: follow up experiment with a similar kind of idea in
Speaker 1: the underground vaults in Edinburgh and the Hampton Court study
Speaker 1: was like in broad daylight, it was kind of busy, um,
Speaker 1: lots of tourists mulling around. It was quite surprising that
Speaker 1: lots of the people in our experiment had strange experiences
Speaker 1: given it was actually quite a kind of bustling. It
Speaker 1: was that spooky, yeah, it was. It wasn't spooky, It
Speaker 1: wasn't spooky. But the Emperor Vaults are are spooky. You know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of dark, they're damp, and they're kind of underground.
Speaker 1: There are the kind of underground caverns underneath the bridge.
Speaker 1: There's another one that's called Mary King's Close, which is
Speaker 1: quite a good tourist attraction. It's kind of an underground
Speaker 1: street and it also was reputedly haunted. But that that
Speaker 1: one is not a kind of ghost tour, it's quite
Speaker 1: a historical tour. I'd recommend that I'm not I have
Speaker 1: no personal investment in this. By the way, folks, but
Speaker 1: the underground vaults. What we did was we got again,
Speaker 1: we got the tour guides, because there are people were
Speaker 1: taking tours around the vaults and they had kind of
Speaker 1: built up a dossier, if you like, a where in
Speaker 1: the vaults, which one there were ten vaults, ten rooms,
Speaker 1: which was the most spooky and where most people were
Speaker 1: getting experiences. And we ranked ordered the ten vaults from
Speaker 1: the most to the least haunted. So we had what
Speaker 1: we called our Haunted Order. And then we got individuals
Speaker 1: of the public individually went to one of the ten
Speaker 1: vaults and then they would spend about ten minutes in
Speaker 1: there and with a questionnaire, you know, right down what
Speaker 1: they were experiencing, and we were we found that their
Speaker 1: reports matched the Haunted Order, So the same thing essentially,
Speaker 1: it was slightly different design, same thing as a Hampton
Speaker 1: Court Palace um study that people were agreeing which was
Speaker 1: this haunted vault, which was the scariest vault to be in,
Speaker 1: and which was the least haunted? So was that when
Speaker 1: you say scary as vault to at least aunted. So
Speaker 1: is that according to historical like the most messed up
Speaker 1: things happened per room. It's it's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: that there were historical events happening there. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a slaughter in the in one
Speaker 1: room and you know the other room as a bakery.
Speaker 1: Not that. So it was more that when people visited
Speaker 1: these rooms before our experiment, there were more strange experiences
Speaker 1: happening in one vault compared to another one. So it
Speaker 1: was it was the track record, I feel like the
Speaker 1: ghost track record of the vaults, and we were basically
Speaker 1: finding um Even when we had people who had no
Speaker 1: knowledge beforehand of what was in the vaults, they still
Speaker 1: agreed where the strange experiences were happening. So to us,
Speaker 1: that suggested, actually, there's something about the environment, not necessarily
Speaker 1: anything ghosts, something about shape and the lighting and the
Speaker 1: temperature and the humidity of the vaults that may contribute
Speaker 1: towards people having um sing weird experiences. And we did
Speaker 1: find both studies found that the majority of the experiences
Speaker 1: that what we're reporting what to do with changes in temperature,
Speaker 1: usually feeling chilled, but you know, sometimes it would be
Speaker 1: the other way around, feeling unusually hot. So that might
Speaker 1: be something to do with the environment that they're in. Well,
Speaker 1: I assume like the ventilations, lighting, or if a room
Speaker 1: is just colder because it's in a different floor or whatever,
Speaker 1: those kind of things. I'm sure you've thought of all
Speaker 1: those things. Well, we have, but I mean, I think
Speaker 1: these are quite subtle things you're not For example, if
Speaker 1: you're in a room, you you maybe not consciously thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, how light or how dark the room is
Speaker 1: relative to light in the corridor outside. And when we
Speaker 1: we found that that was one of the factors that
Speaker 1: seemed to influence I think what might be happening at
Speaker 1: least you know, this doesn't explain August at all, but
Speaker 1: you know what, what we observed was that people may
Speaker 1: be unconsciously responding to subtle things in their environment without
Speaker 1: being aware of it. It's not that there was like
Speaker 1: a blowing through, but you know, there could be quite
Speaker 1: subtle even things like geomagnetic activity. So you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know, very very subtle kind of environmental things that
Speaker 1: we don't normally pay any attention to maybe having some
Speaker 1: influence on us. Another another study, if I've got time
Speaker 1: to mention, it's not study that that I did, but
Speaker 1: it was about infrasound. Um, so this is someone called
Speaker 1: Vic Tandy, who found that he was working in a
Speaker 1: workshop and and he noticed he kept getting this kind
Speaker 1: of blurring in his vision and kept seeing a figure
Speaker 1: off to his to his right, and um, he felt
Speaker 1: it was haunted. He felt it was quite a booky experience.
Speaker 1: And then one day he had one of these big
Speaker 1: fencing swords, you know, a file that's thank you. He
Speaker 1: had it clamped in this workshop and he noticed that
Speaker 1: it started to vibrate. And he was an engineer, so
Speaker 1: he was kind of curious, why is it kind of vibrating?
Speaker 1: And he moved it up and down the workshop and
Speaker 1: he discovered that there was a kind of a standing wave.
Speaker 1: So there was a very low energy sound wave in
Speaker 1: the workshop that you couldn't hear. It was too low
Speaker 1: for our auditory system, but it was the foil was
Speaker 1: picking it up. And he discovered that there was a
Speaker 1: new air conditioning system had been put in. This big
Speaker 1: kind of fan was creating a kind of vibration, or
Speaker 1: a low energy vibration in the room. And that he believed,
Speaker 1: and there's evidence from elsewhere as well, that that can
Speaker 1: cause kind of strange visual effects because it can affect
Speaker 1: you that your eyeballs. So he thought it started off
Speaker 1: as a kind of haunting experience. But he believed that
Speaker 1: he found a kind of physical explanation for it. But
Speaker 1: it took a little bit of detective work. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't at all obvious what what the cause was, right,
Speaker 1: It's just so interesting as you're talking and thinking of
Speaker 1: crystals and how certain kinds of stones could be have
Speaker 1: different pulls depending on what your body has made out of.
Speaker 1: So you have to take all of this into consideration,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you do. It's just such a fascinating
Speaker 1: line of work. I mean, it seems like you would
Speaker 1: never be boring. It never does get boring. No, no,
Speaker 1: except if I've got a hundred and fifty essays to mark.
Speaker 1: Oh jeez, Okay, well I will let you go. But
Speaker 1: I just wanted to Are you a spiritual person a
Speaker 1: religious person? No? I I like mother Nature. You know,
Speaker 1: I loved the environment and you know the planet. But
Speaker 1: you know I'm not I'm not a spiritual person. I
Speaker 1: don't think even in like these psychic moments, does it
Speaker 1: make you feel more connected to anything inside yourself or
Speaker 1: anything else or to the other person. Well, I suppose
Speaker 1: I'm normally the person who's running the experiment rather than
Speaker 1: having the experience myself. Have you ever had an experience
Speaker 1: where it just like sent chills up your spine and
Speaker 1: it just made you feel like maybe there is something? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to. I mean actually, um so one of
Speaker 1: the things I did was Richard Wiseman again, was that
Speaker 1: we were doing a kind of theatrical event which was
Speaker 1: a recreation of a Victorian seance. Okay, so see, never
Speaker 1: a dull moment in my in my job, right, And
Speaker 1: what we were doing was it was kind of an
Speaker 1: experiment because you know, we weren't trying to raise any spirits, okay,
Speaker 1: without giving any secrets away, I was kind of helping
Speaker 1: out behind the scenes, shall always say. And I had
Speaker 1: to hide, so I was like a kind of secret
Speaker 1: accomplice I had to hide in. It was down down
Speaker 1: in Mary King's Close actually, and I was down there
Speaker 1: on my own waiting for the group to arrive, and
Speaker 1: I could hear footsteps around me, and um, I thought,
Speaker 1: that's really strange because I know there's nobody else here,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I could hear the footsteps. So that was
Speaker 1: definitely a you know, a hair standing off at the
Speaker 1: back of my neck experience. Oh my gosh. Well, I
Speaker 1: definitely would love to check in in like five years
Speaker 1: and see what other creepy things you experience, because I
Speaker 1: bet if you're opening yourself up to it, as you said,
Speaker 1: you might be receiving more creepy things in your life.
Speaker 1: I hope so, I hope so well. I just want
Speaker 1: to say thank you very much. If you would like
Speaker 1: to tell our listeners where to find you or more
Speaker 1: information about you, now would be the dame. Just you
Speaker 1: can tell about a girl like a website or Cussler
Speaker 1: Parapsychology Unit. That's our website, and on that you can
Speaker 1: find a little bit more about what we do and
Speaker 1: hopefully you might be able to get involved. Great. Well,
Speaker 1: if you ever need somebody to study, I'm your girl, right.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thanks for infoting me. It's been fun.