Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Kenneth G 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.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Kenneth Graham Drinkwater, Neil Dagnall, Stephen Walsh et al.
12 citations
People who claim to have paranormal abilities—such as psychic powers or mediumship—describe their experiences as deeply tied to their personal history, beliefs, and sense of self. In interviews with 12 participants, four main themes emerged: formative influences like gifted family members or unusual childhood events; subjective experiences of transcendence or extra-sensory perception; embodied processes, especially a sense of control; and perceptions of reality involving self-awareness and surreal experiences. Participants used autobiographical evidence to validate their abilities and often dismissed conventional explanations. The findings suggest that belief in paranormal ability is inseparable from how individuals interpret and make sense of their own experiences.
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.
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.