Many people claim to hear the voices of those who left this world, hopefully for a better one – whether they’re relatives, friends, and so on. But such experiences aren’t necessarily the result of any supernatural phenomenon. Whether we like to accept it or not, the human brain is capable of many illusions.
ScienceAlert.com tells us about some research that identified the characteristics that could make someone more likely to believe in hearing voices of the dead. High sensitivity to auditory hallucinations, unusual auditory experiences during childhood, as well as a predisposition to high levels of absorptions when it comes to tasks, are all on the list. For those who claim to be clairaudient mediums, these traits are more present than for the rest of the population.
A better understanding of hallucinations
The researchers involved in the study are confident that the discovery could potentially provide help when it comes to an understanding in a better way of the upsetting auditory hallucinations that are tied to some mental illnesses, including schizophrenia.
To come to the new conclusion, researchers analyzed 65 people from the UK’s Spiritualists’ National Union who are claiming to be clairaudient mediums, as well as 143 individuals from the general population who don’t usually claim to have supernatural experiences involving dead people.
People claiming to see or hear the spirits of the dead don’t represent anything new. What’s for sure is that science is still interested in fully uncovering the mechanisms behind such experiences – whether we’re talking about any illusions of the human mind or not.
Peter Moseley. a psychologist from Northumbria University in the UK, declared:
Spiritualists tend to report unusual auditory experiences which are positive, start early in life and which they are often then able to control,
Understanding how these develop is important because it could help us understand more about distressing or non-controllable experiences of hearing voices too.
The new study doesn’t rule out the possibility for ghosts to exist if that comforts you in one way or another. Instead, it confirms that if they do exist, they manifest in the physical realm much less often than people (like to) believe.
