Ghosted! : Exploring the Haunting Reality of Paranormal Encounters

Reports of paranormal experiences vary tremendously, but are often associated with ghosts, haunted houses, and otherwise eerie circumstances. There exist both classic and modern texts on ghosts and haunted or possessed people, places and spaces; many discuss traditional ideas regarding such phenomena or utilize now-outdated research in highly academic and technical ways.

This book offers a very different approach in reviews provided by a leading-edge research program devoted to who has ghostly experiences and why. With new insights both global in scale and multidisciplinary in scope, this collaboration by five researchers uncovers consistent evidence that anomalous experiences represent a very real "Haunted People Syndrome"--a term describing anomalous experiences that manifest recurrently to the same percipients and are interpreted as "ghostly"--with implications for future research across academia. The participation of new citizen scientists (the field investigators and researchers among us) is invited in furthering the exploration of paranormal mysteries. Photos and figures illustrating concepts and models are included, as is a glossary.

Brian Laythe, Ph.D., is the owner of Iudicium psychological consultancy, and the director of the Institute for the Study of Religious and Anomalous Experience (I.S.R.A.E.).

James Houran, Ph.D., is a research professor at the Laboratory for Statistics and Computation, ISLA--Instituto Politecnico de Gestao e Tecnologia (Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal) and research director at Integrated Knowledge Systems, Inc. (Dallas, Texas). He lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Neil Dagnall, Ph.D., is a reader (associate professor) in the department of psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University (UK). He has been involved with the teaching and researching of the anomalous for over 20 years and is a strong advocate of public engagement and education in science.