The survey revealed that people on the whole have a rather rosy attitude towards paranormal phenomena, tending to believe more in the positive or benign aspects of spiritual life, such as angels and the laying on of hands, than negative ones, such as demons and poltergeist activity.
The 2,541 people who took part in the survey were asked to rate the credibility of 16 different paranormal phenomena from ‘extremely likely’ to ‘extremely unlikely’. The phenomenon rated by most people (33%) as ‘extremely likely’ was life after death – only 18% of respondents thought that life after death was ‘extremely unlikely’. The next most credible phenomenon was telepathy, with 30% rating it as ‘extremely likely’, followed by precognition (26%), dowsing (27%) and spiritual healing or ‘the laying on of hands’ (25%).
At the opposite end of the credibility spectrum – by quite a long way – was spirit possession. Possession by a non-human spirit entity was rated ‘extremely unlikely’ by 52% of the people who took part in the survey; possession by a deceased human spirit entity was rated ‘extremely unlikely’ by 48%. Also considered ‘extremely unlikely’ by large numbers of people (36%) was physical communications from a spirit entity (e.g. via feathers, lights, etc.) and the existence of malign spirits such as demons (36%) – interestingly people felt that angels were somewhat less unlikely.
It would be interesting to conduct the survey in a less secular society. Although people responded to the survey anonymously, the invitation to take part was extended to people on the Mslexia database and to those who followed Mslexia on social media – i.e. mainly highly educated women writers, mainly living in the UK – who were asked to pass on the link to their associates. The vast majority of the women I interviewed during my research for The Children Who Sleep By The River [LINK] believed implicitly in life after death, in the active involvement of ancestor spirits in their daily lives, and in spirit possession by both benign and malign human and non-human entities.