I chose reincarnation as a subject for Herring Girl not because I was a believer, but because I wanted to write about the history of my home town, and reincarnation seemed a good fictional trope for linking the present with the past.
But when I researched the literature, and experienced past-life regression hypnosis myself, I encountered some evidence that was hard to dismiss. Though I remain agnostic myself, I definitely believe that our lives are far richer if we open our minds to the possibility of things we don’t understand.
So I thought it would be interesting to find out about other people’s belief in, and experience of, phenomena such as reincarnation, spirit possession and ghosts. So in 2014 I ran a survey on this topic, in which over 2,500 people took part – if you were one of them, thank you! Over 1,400 people also took the time to describe some of their extraordinary experiences. I will be posting reports on this wealth of material in the coming months.
Photo credit: Flickr/michellekopczyk
Parapsychology experiences
Selected verbatim reports from 1,400 people about their personal experiences of one or more of the 16 different paranormal phenomena listed in the survey questionnaire. Briefly, the phenomena listed were: life after death, spirit possession, reincarnation, haunting, benign or malign spiritual entities, precognition, telepathy, communication with spirits via a spirit medium or physical phenomenon, spiritual healing, telekinesis, dowsing, psychometry.
The first of these reports will be available shortly.